Completely different. I defy you to stay seated and not move your feet, at least, while listening to this. ;-)

Charlie Rich had a hard to pigeonhole musical talent, writing and performing songs that would range from country, gospel, pop, rockabilly, soul, jazz and blues – at times holding strictly to a specific genre, and at others blending those styles to new and exciting effect.  He is best known for the hits he had with Behind Closed Doors and The Most Beautiful Girl in the early ’70s.

His first group in the 50′s featured his soon to be wife, Margaret Ann, on lead vocals for the Velvetones, who focused on jazz and blues numbers.  Through the years, Margaret Ann would have a profound impact on Rich’s career, writing many great songs for Charlie.  Quite a few of those songs were covered by artists as diverse as Tom Jones and Bobby Bland.  Pass On By, which follows Rich’s cover of When Something’s Wrong With My Baby in the link is an additional example of her stellar talent.

It may not be political, but I just had to share it…

Singing the Bessie Smith song, “Kitchen Man.” This lady has some chops! Great voice! And she has some really great backing on this, too.

I think we all remember this incident from last November. The students were gathered peacefully in the school quad, demonstrating against the proposed tuition hike. They were not on a public street. They were on university grounds- the university that they were paying tuition to attend. Presumably, the tuition they are paying should allow them to gather peacefully in a public space at the school. They were sitting on the ground and refusing to move. The campus police pepper-sprayed them from a few feet away.

Documents subsequently received from the University of California indicate that the pepper spray used was military grade and, based on manufacturer instructions should be used from a minimum of six feet away – much farther than the close range at which the students were sprayed.

With the help of the ACLU of Northern California:

nineteen students and alumni filed a federal lawsuit against UC Davis over the University’s treatment of protesters during a Nov. 18 demonstration in which campus police were caught on video dousing seated protesters with pepper spray. The lawsuit seeks to determine why the University violated the demonstrators’ state and federal constitutional rights and seeks to result in better policies that will prevent repetition of such response to a non-violent protest. The lawsuit charges that Administration officials and the campus police department failed to properly train and supervise officers, resulting in series of constitutional violations against the demonstrators.

Thank you, ACLU, as you continue to stand up for our Constitutional rights.

Doesn’t that look tasty?  If Dutch scientists have anything to say about it, you may be eating it soon.  That 0.75 inch-long piece of string is actually a piece of cloned muscle.  They’re hoping to be able to turn that idea into a synthetically-grown, real-meat hamburger by the end of the year.  The idea is to replace the current meat industry and stop the significant environmental damage caused by raising food animals.

Addressing a meeting of scientists in Canada, Maastricht researcher Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by as much as 60 percent.

“We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources,” he said.

Food scientists say current methods of meat production cannot be sustained, so lab-grown meat is a perfect solution.  There’s been no word about whether or not vegetarians would want to eat this processed meat, but I don’t doubt the marketing plan is already being laid.  The future of meat may very well be in those petri dishes, but I, for one, plan to pass up this particular Dutch treat.

Little Jimmy Scott was born in Cleveland, Ohio on July 17th, 1925, the third of ten children.  Scott has Kallman’s syndrome, which is a genetic condition that involves an inability to perceive odors (ansomia or hyposmia) as well as delayed puberty.  This resulted in Jimmy Scott’s height remaining 4’11″ until he was 37 years old, at which point he had a growth spurt of 8″.  Around the age of 13, Jimmy’s mother Justine Scott had her arm ripped out of the socket while saving her daughter from a speeding drunk driver.  She died from blood loss.  The driver, who was wealthy, gave $50K to the family, money which a judge placed in trust for the orphaned children.  However the children, who were placed in orphanages and foster homes, never saw any of that money.

“Jimmy Scott can touch you in your deepest parts and even find spots that you never know you had. He sings the slow notes slower than anyone else and he has a way of bending notes that is uncanny. It’s like he is trying to find out how much he can control and try a note without messing up his perfect pitch. He sings behind the beat further than anyone else ever could and every time I’m certain that he finally gets too far back, he returns somehow.“

The NYPD says that counseling services are readily available for any officer who feels they need it, and have actually implemented a program of peer-counseling. But wouldn’t the simple act of seeking help for depression call into question an officer’s job capability? Wouldn’t that make most officers, even if they recognized they had a problem, afraid to come forward and seek help for fear of losing their job, or simply being ridiculed, pitied, or seen as weak, by their fellow officers?

This is by no means isolated to the NYPD. It is a nationwide epidemic. On average, there are around 300 reports of police officer suicides every year. That is nearly twice the number who die in the line of duty. Many police officer suicides go unreported or are just classified as accidental discharges of their firearms, because they don’t want to stigmatize the family or bring unwarranted attention to the issue, mainly to protect that thin blue line.

It is a problem that can’t improve without significant awareness and attention from on high. Not to mention, the recent images of police abuse from the Occupy protests do nothing to help their cause, and can only contribute to their level of stress and distrust from the public. A change in the very culture of law enforcement, that needs to alter the fundamental core of how these organizations operate, is going to be required. Perhaps we even need to examine how working people often have no choice but to work themselves beyond their limits, just to be considered adequate at their job. A good place to start, I think, would be to stop treating police like they are military forces.

Related articles

• NYPD: On-Duty Officer Commits Suicide In Queens (newyork.cbslocal.com)

The “conservative” elements in American politics have always been unsettled by any loss of power.  If you’re not old, white, rich, and male, you don’t deserve to have any choices in your life, other than the ones they select for you.  They fought non-property-owners being able to vote. They fought slaves being free.  They fought freed-slaves being able to vote.  They fought women being able to own property. They fought women voting.  They fought women taking contraceptives.  They fought women’s right to choose.  Let’s face it – they fight change at every turn.

Thanks to our President, the fight over contraceptives is back on the table, and so is the battle over the right to choose.  In this regressive political climate,  a new law designed to punish women who want an abortion is working its way through the Virginia state congress.  It’s widely accepted that forcing a woman to get an invasive ultrasound procedure utilizing a transvaginal probe is not only medically unnecessary, it can be dangerous.  Since, under the law, women and doctors will have no choice in the matter, it’s being called “rape by object”.

The governor of Virginia, proud of his Republican roots, has repeatedly said that he will sign this monstrosity into law the moment it hits his desk.  Well – Robert McDonnell has said that in the past, but now he’s not quite so sure.  It seems that the constant bombardment from the “liberal media”, the mocking from the “Daily Show”, “Saturday Night Live”, and talk show hosts, and the fact that the public are just now finding out what the procedure actually involves has caused the governor to re-think his position.  Apparently unconcerned, Republican power brokers have reassured their minions that the governor will sign it into law.  What the courts have to say after that may be a different story.

According to a story in the Atlantic Wire, some Greeks may well wind up having to pay for their jobs. They may owe “back pay” for retroactive pay-cuts for contracted public workers. As many as 64,000 Greeks will go without pay this month.

Salary cutbacks (called “unified payroll”) for contract workers at the public sector set to be finalized today. Cuts to be valid retroactively since november 2011. Expected result: Up to 64.000 people will work without salary this month, or even be asked to return money. Amongst them 21.000 teachers, 13.000 municipal employees and 30.000 civil servants.

Wait until Scott Walker in Wisconsin, other governors intent on cutting government workers’ pay, and, for that matter, many of those in the federal government, get a gander at that one. I’m sure that they would love to be able to do that here in this country.

Technically, Ty isn’t Henson’s granddaughter – but don’t tell her that. Although not related, Henson and his wife raised Ty’s mother.  She calls them Mom and Dad, so as far as Ty’s concerned, they’re her grandparents.  Spending weekends with the Hensons is something Ty enjoys.

As a reward for getting good marks in kindergarten, Scott took Ty skating at a rink down the street from his home.  The trouble started on the walk home.

A female deputy constable called Scott’s name and told him to step away from the girl.  She explained that there was a report of a white man chasing a black girl, and she wanted to question Ty separately.  When Ty identified Scott as her “Grandpa” and ran to hug Scott’s leg, the deputy relented and started questioning Henson.  Upset, Scott told her he just wanted to take his grandchild home, so the deputy let them go.  A little later, with the Henson home in sight, four police cars converged on them.

 Officers jumped out of their vehicles with tasers drawn, demanding that Henson throw up his hands and step away from the child.  The officers grabbed the child and put her in the backseat of a vehicle.  By now there were a total of nine to ten police cars surrounding Henson and his granddaughter.

“ I gave them the phone numbers they needed to confirm who Ty was and that she was supposed to be with me (and not in the back of their police car), but for quite a while nobody seemed too interested in verifying my story. One officer wanted to lecture me endlessly about how they were just doing their job, as if the innocent person handcuffed on the side of the road cares about such excuses. I asked why he hadn’t made any calls yet, and he interrupted his lecture to say, ‘We’ve only been here two minutes, give us time” (It had actually been much longer than that). Maybe so, I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, but there are nine of y’all milling about doing nothing by my count so you’ve had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y’all can figure out you screwed up.”

By this time, there were 10 police cars at the scene, including the shift supervisor and the deputy that had already talked with them. Scott felt he was guilty of the “heinous crime of babysitting while white.”  Eventually they released Henson, but there were no apologies issued, and Ty was left with a negative view of law officers.  Scott feels bad about that.

“I hate for a 5-year-old to be subjected to such an experience. I’d like her to view police as people she can trust instead of threats to her and her family, but it’s possible I live in the wrong neighborhood for that.”

This time a chameleon. The world’s tiniest chameleon, Brookesia micra, was discovered in Madagascar,

where a biological expedition found these tiny beasts snoozing in vegetation a mere four inches off the ground.

Link.

Here’s another picture, of a juvenile Brookesia:

Galt MacDermot won a Grammy in 1960 thanks to Cannonball Adderly’s recording of African Waltz.  Several years later he would compose for the rock musical Hair, for which he is probably best known.  MacDermot also composed and recorded a good amount of other material, often working with high caliber drummers such as Bernard Purdie and Idris Muhammad.  In recent years his work has been used by many hip-hop artists, including rapper / producer Oh No, who’s 2006 album Exodus into Unheard Rhythms was created solely from MacDermot samples.

I find this stuff fascinating…

Potamites montanicola (“mountain dweller”) was discovered and named by Peruvian scientists. The colorful lizard was discovered at an altitude where you would not normally expect to see such lizards.

This is the only member of the genus known to live at such altitude. It is yet unknown what biological mechanisms help the lizard to survive in this harsh environment, much colder than what it’s relatives in the genus prefer. Scientists also believe the lizard may be nocturnal, which raises the question of how it maintains its body temperature during night time. In some cases, individuals were observed swimming in streams, which is rather unusual behavior for the members this genus.