Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Janet Emerson Bashen, formerly Janet Emerson, attended Alabama A&M until she married and relocated to Houston, Texas, where she now resides.
In January 2006, Ms. Bashen became the first African American female to hold a patent for a software invention. The patented software, LinkLine, is a web-based application for EEO claims intake and tracking, claims management, document management and numerous reports. Bashen will soon release the federal sector counterpart, EEOFedSoft, MD715Link and the web-based AAPSoft for building Affirmative Action Plans.
(con't.)
Janet Emerson Bashen was issued U.S. patent #6,985,922 on January 10 2006, for a "Method, Apparatus and System for Processing Compliance Actions over a Wide Area Network."
Bashen’s educational background includes a degree in legal studies and government from The University of Houston, and postgraduate studies at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Administration. Bashen is also a graduate of Harvard University’s “Women and Power: Leadership in a New World.” Bashen will soon be pursuing her LLM from Northwestern California University School of Law.
Bashen maintains a very strong community commitment and is on the Board of Directors for the North Harris Montgomery County Community College District Foundation, and chairs the Corporate Advisory Board of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc., and is a Board member of the PrepProgram, a non-profit organization dedicated to preparing at-risk student athletes for college.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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This is happening mainly out of the political media's limelight, and the long range implications aren't being discussed. Increased U.S. spending, especially at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, reflects Africa's growing importance to counter-terrorism efforts. LA Times: U.S. military investing heavily in Africa.
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The Pentagon has begun a burst of spending in Africa, expanding its main base on the continent and investing in air facilities, flight services, telecommunications and electrical upgrades as the U.S. military deepens its footprint in a region with a rising threat of Islamist terrorism.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures, detailed in unclassified federal documents, demonstrate Africa's increasing importance to U.S. military and counter-terrorism operations as the war in Iraq has ended and American troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
By far the most significant expansion is occurring at Camp Lemonnier in the deeply impoverished nation of Djibouti, a sleepy backwater on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, just north of Somalia. The sprawling base, built out of a onetime outpost of the French Foreign Legion, has been the Pentagon's primary facility in Africa for a decade.
Defense officials last month awarded $200 million in contracts to revamp the base's power plants and build a multistory operations center, aircraft hangar, living quarters, gym and other facilities on a sun-scorched 20-acre site next to the tiny country's only international airport (with which it shares a runway).
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The developing world is starting to realize the value of copyrights, patents, and trademarks. BusinessWeek: Africa's Maasai Tribe Seek Royalties for Commercial Use of Their Name.
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Sometimes, to get your point across to the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania, you have to talk in cows. Lawrence ole Mbelati, a tribesman, stands in front of a group of about 70 Maasai leaders and elders from a district in northern Tanzania, holding a picture of a red-and-brown fountain pen. Introduced in 2003 by Italian pen maker Delta, it was part of the company’s “Indigenous People” luxury line. Called Maasai, it retailed for upwards of $600. “That’s like three or four good cows,” ole Mbelati, 35, tells the group.
Ole Mbelati, who works for a Kenyan nongovernmental organization, has driven down from Nairobi. He’s speaking in Maa, the Maasai language, but wears jeans and a polo shirt. Most of the elders have come in the clothes they wear every day: bright red shukas, wrapped around them like togas. Some have sneakers on, but many wear homemade sandals crafted from tire treads. The women, as well as some men, wear intricately beaded earrings, necklaces, and armbands. They sit in a concrete building usually used for classes in veterinary medicine. Many have placed black wooden rods, the mark of a chief, on the table. A few hold up mobile phones, recording ole Mbelati as he explains the ways in which others are profiting at the tribe’s expense. “Whose name is being used?” he asks. “It’s the Maasai name. Who is becoming strong economically? The people who are using the Maasai name.”
The Delta Maasai pen is just one of the products on display in ole Mbelati’s outreach session, an effort to organize one of Africa’s most famous tribes to lay claim to the commercial use of their name and image. Maasai leaders have come by public transportation, in Land Rovers, on motorcycles, and on foot to a small compound of roughly painted buildings to listen to a two-day presentation on intellectual property. According to Ron Layton, a New Zealander who specializes in advising developing world organizations on copyrights, patents, and trademarks, about 10,000 companies around the world use the Maasai name, selling everything from auto parts to hats to legal services.
Layton estimates six companies have each made more than $100 million in annual sales during the last decade using the Maasai name. In 2003, Jaguar Land Rover sold limited-edition versions of its Freelander called Maasai and Maasai Mara.
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Last week the Grambling State football team forfeited a game, by refusing to play, citing unsanitary conditions at their facilities. Shadow League: Grambling State's Administration is to Blame.
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Traditionally, Grambling has been to HBCU football what Notre Dame is to major college football. They were nationally prominent and a brand that resonated with the masses. Under Eddie Robinson, the "G-Men" were the standard by which all other HBCU programs were judged.
But thanks to a rogue president, an incompetent athletic administration, and a state government that has reduced its endowment to a third of what it was, Grambling's football program has now reached critical mass. Three coaches in one season, 17 consecutive losses since 2011, and the embarrassment of forfeiting Jackson State's homecoming, pale in comparison to the institutional abuse of the players, which has finally boiled over ...
But what President, Frank Pogue and Athletic Director, Aaron James allowed to transpire under their watch was simple neglect. Pogue and James are now, like the Frank Lucas and Nino Brown of Grambling. They whacked Coach Doug Williams on September 11, capturing national attention, in a territorial power struggle that would have made for a great episode of The Wire. Williams’ crime was circumventing the administration in his successful effort to fund new flooring for the weight room. The administration’s attempts to subvert Williams gave the players no choice but to stage a boycott to expose the working conditions at Grambling State.
The dysfunctional duo of Pogue and James has done volumes of damage, tarnishing Grambling's legacy that Coach Eddie Robinson and Williams polished, putting the school on a national stage for the last half century. They should be fired immediately, Williams should be reinstated, and the Grambling State football team should finally have their concerns addressed. Because by failing to supply their student-athletes with a safe environment, the foundation that HBCU's were built on has been violated.
ESPN screenshot
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The court will soon decide if bans on affirmative action are legal. Economist: Minority report.
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LAST week the Supreme Court heard a case challenging an affirmative-action ban that Michigan voters added to their state constitution in 2006. The case, Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, does not concern the constitutionality of affirmative-action programmes themselves: the court banned quotas but upheld the use of race as an admissions “plus factor” in Regents v Bakke in 1978, in Grutter v Michigan in 2003 and again, just barely, in last spring’s Fisher v University of Texas. Schuette asks whether the 14th amendment’s equal-protection clause bars states from ending racially conscious admissions policies.
The oral argument last week made the issues in Fisher look jejune by comparison. Attorneys were quizzed by the justices on everything from democratic theory and two obscure precedents involving minority access to the political process, to the “mismatch” critique of affirmative action and minority enrollment statistics at Michigan’s public universities.
John Bursch, Michigan’s solicitor general, opened his defence of the ban with the claim that “requiring equal treatment” cannot possibly violate equal protection. This line was a prepackaged confection for John Roberts, the chief justice, who wrote in 2007 that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The theory of constitutional colour-blindness underlying this sentiment, though, is but one reading of the 14th amendment. It does not jibe with what the authors of the amendment meant by the phrase, and though it has been increasingly popular with justices in recent years, the colorblind reading of equal protection discounts the reality of race and racism in American democracy. Aristotle conceived of equality as treating “like cases alike”; identical treatment is not equal treatment, he argued, if individuals are not similarly situated.
Mr Bursch was on firmer ground when he noted that the amendment “does not repeal an anti-discrimination law” and therefore does not venture into territory which two earlier cases suggest may be constitutionally forbidden. In 1969, the court struck down an initiative undercutting fair-housing policies on the grounds that it “place[d] special burdens on racial and religious minorities within the governmental process by making it more difficult for them to secure legislation on their behalf.” And in 1982 the court applied the same principle to nullify a Seattle ballot initiative banning busing to desegregate the city’s schools. In Schuette, an attorney for the respondent, Shanta Driver, asked the court to strike down the Michigan amendment based on these precedents.
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Fortune magazine has released its annual 50 Most Powerful Women in Business list, and the good news is that three dynamic African Americans are included in the roundup.
Ursula Burns, CEO and president of Xerox; Rosalind Brewer, CEO and president of Sam's Club; and Shonda Rhimes, creator of hit shows Scandal and Grey's Anatomy, are among some of the most influential and biggest names in business today, according to Fortune. Other names on the list include PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi (No. 2), Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (No. 5) and Marissa Mayer, president and CEO of Yahoo (No. 8).
Burns, 55, is ranked 13 for successfully transforming Xerox. "Over half of its $22 billion in revenue comes from services such as customer care and IT outsourcing," the magazine says.
Brewer, 51, is ranked at 15. She is responsible for one of three operating segments at the retail chain. "The Lockheed board member drove sales up 5 percent and operating income up 6 percent at Sam's Club and has been building its online business," Fortune says.
Rhimes, 43, is ranked at 50, knocking Oprah off the list. Calling her shows mini-empires and major money-makers for Disney-ABC, Fortune says Rhimes was a natural fit. "Rhimes, a prolific creator and executive producer of hit dramas, makes the list for her impact on popular culture."
Shonda Rhimes (Michael Buckner); Rosalind Brewer (Bryan Bedder); Ursula Burns (Larry Busacca/Getty)
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Welcome to the Black Kos Community Front Porch!
Pull up a chair and sit down a while and enjoy the autumn air.