Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
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The Children of the Poor
Gwendolyn Brooks
1
People who have no children can be hard:
Attain a mail of ice and insolence:
Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense
Hesitate in the hurricane to guard.
And when wide world is bitten and bewarred
They perish purely, waving their spirits hence
Without a trace of grace or of offense
To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred.
While through a throttling dark we others hear
The little lifting helplessness, the queer
Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.
And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of
The malocclusions, the inconditions of love.
2
What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.
But I lack access to my proper stone.
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.
3
And shall I prime my children, pray, to pray?
Mites, come invade most frugal vestibules
Spectered with crusts of penitents’ renewals
And all hysterics arrogant for a day.
Instruct yourselves here is no devil to pay.
Children, confine your lights in jellied rules;
Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules.
Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray.
Behind the scurryings of your neat motif
I shall wait, if you wish: revise the psalm
If that should frighten you: sew up belief
If that should tear: turn, singularly calm
At forehead and at fingers rather wise,
Holding the bandage ready for your eyes.
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News
Just because there is voting doesn't mean its a democracy. What keeps our democracy from becoming more like Russia's?
Medvedev Moves to Stamp Out Dissent Before Stepping Aside for Putin Return
President Dmitry Medvedev stepped up efforts to stamp out dissent before Vladimir Putin’s planned return to the Kremlin, warning officials against challenging his policies a day after firing Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
Anyone in government who questions the president’s plan to boost defense spending must quit or “work elsewhere,” Medvedev said after observing a counter-terrorism exercise in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural Mountains today. “Russia isn’t a banana republic” and must maintain an army that reflects its status, he said.
Medvedev, who agreed last week to swap places with Prime Minister Putin after presidential elections in March, yesterday ousted Kudrin for publicly criticizing planned increases in defense spending. Kudrin had been in office since 2000, overseeing the nation’s recovery from its 1998 default by reining in public spending and by creating rainy-day funds that cushioned the impact of the global credit squeeze.
Another vestige of institutional sexism falls in Australia.
Australia lifts ban on women in military combat roles
Australia has lifted all restrictions on the roles that women can carry out in its armed forces.
Suitably-qualified female soldiers will be able to serve in the special forces and front-line combat units.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the ban would be lifted immediately but may take up to five years to implement. Critics described the move as premature and a gimmick.
Scary.
Video shows Washington monument shaking during quake; rapelling inspection today
Video recorded inside the Washington Monument shows the earthquake shaking its structure and people running down the stairs as debris falls from the ceiling.
The National Park Service released video on Monday (September 26) from three security cameras mounted inside the monument 500 feet above ground level.
The video shows the monument's walls shaking as the earthquake hits, chunks of stone falling from the ceilings and tourists rushing to evacuate through a stairwell.
Rest in peace.
Doritos inventor Arch West dies, will be buried with chips
When Arch West, the man credited with inventing Doritos, is buried on Oct. 1, he will be joined by a sprinkling of the bright orange chips that have become a cheesy, tangy, American institution.
His daughter, Jana Hacker of Allen, Texas, told the Dallas Morning News that the family plans on "tossing Doritos chips in before they put the dirt over the urn."
West, who was 97 when he died of natural causes last week, was a former Frito-Lay executive. He reportedly came up with the idea of Doritos when he was on vacation with his family in Mexico and came upon a snack shack selling fried tortilla chips.
What what this supposed to accomplish? The store will re-build with insurance money and replace the product that was destroyed. This will only result in more animal deaths, no?
Animal group claims it set fire to Idaho fur store
(Reuters) - Animal rights activists claimed responsibility on Monday for a fire that caused $100,000 in damage to a Boise-area store that sells fur coats and fireworks, authorities said.
No one was injured in the early morning blaze at Rocky Mountain Fur & Fireworks, a retailer in Caldwell, Idaho, about 30 miles northwest of the state capital.
The North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which says it conveys messages for unnamed animal advocates, distributed a statement from a group calling itself the "arson unit" that said it set fire to a store stocked with "chemically treated skins of thousands of tortured animals".
This is a very cool study that illustrates the strong relationship between race and social status. If would frighten people if they understood how feeble the human mind really is.
What You Wear Can Influence How People Perceive Your Race
What you wear can influence how others view you — specifically what they perceive your race to be, a new study finds.
The findings show how stereotypes and prejudices play a powerful role in how we mentally categorize people, says Jon Freeman, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in psychology at Tufts University.
The researchers, a group of psychologists and sociologists from Tufts, Stanford University and University of California, Irvine, asked study participants to determine the race of computerized faces wearing high-status attire (a business suit) or low-status attire (a janitor’s jumpsuit). Faces viewed in high-status attire were more likely to be seen as white and faces viewed in low-status attire were likely to be seen as black.
Pour yourself another cup, ladies. Do it for your health!
Coffee cuts depression risk in women
Drinking coffee may lower women's risk of depression, a new study says.
Women in the study who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee a day were 15 percent less likely to develop depression over a 10-year period compared to those who drank one cup of coffee or less per week.
The researchers cautioned, however, that the new study only shows an association between coffee consumption and depression risk, and cannot prove that drinking coffee reduces risk of depression in women.