I get all my news from the ‘net. My wife will ask me about some story that was just on the national news and I’m always saying “Already heard about it” or “That was new 2 days ago”. So, I figure I would start a new segment in my blog…‘What I’m Following Today (WIFT)’. I’ll put some quick hitters from stories that I have found in the morning, or last couple of days, and the link.

WIFT:

Florida Gold?
I purchased an empty lot, multi-family zoned, in Florida when I used to live there and just missed selling it 2 times (went to escrow once and almost closed once). The property tax is killing me though and it is too high for the property. Hopefully with the declining prices my tax bill will drop too…

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The 361 largest U.S. cities will experience a combined loss of $166 billion in economic growth, led by $10.4 billion in the New York-Northern New Jersey area, according to the study. Los Angeles is projected to slow by $8.3 billion, followed by $4 billion each in Dallas and Washington and $3.9 billion in Chicago….

Property values in Florida are projected to decline by $79.7 billion next year, lowering property-tax receipts by $589 million and sales taxes by another $148 million. New York’s property-tax revenue may decline by $686 million.

Why Oprah Wont Help Obama
I don’t know if I agree with this one. I think that Obama having Oprah (especially at campaign stops in South Carolina) will help him.

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Winfrey’s endorsement — and her announcement that she will appear with Obama at campaign events in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire on December 8 and 9 — helps bring the following four things to Obama: campaign cash, celebrity, excitement and big crowds.

The four things that Obama has on his own in great abundance — without Winfrey’s help — are campaign cash, celebrity, excitement and big crowds.

It’s Time for a College Football Playoff
Think about a 16 team playoff and some of the matchups. Kansas/Hawaii, USC/Oklahoma, BC/LSU…and think about the second round…you could have LSU @ West Virginia. This would be better than the NFL playoffs.

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I have recently found out that the Nintendo Wii console is not an easy thing to buy. If you go on Ebay the going price for a new Wii (sports pack) is in the mid $400 range. There are a few used ones out there (Amazon and Ebay) but they are in the mid to high $300’s. All the local, major chains (Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, etc.), where the purchase price should be $250, would be easy but of course EVERYONE is out of stock. Then, I go to shopping.com and any online store with a Wii has it at a minimum of $530. That is just crazy.

I fell like Ahab…”Hast thou seen the White Whale Wii”. I cannot find one of these bad boys anywhere, to save my life. What is funny though is that my son, who I’m trying to buy this for, doesn’t even really want this. He insists that a PSP would be better but a 7 year old who has lost a gameboy, 6 of 12 gameboy games, and 2 backpacks just isn’t a good candidate for a $200 handheld.

This search may be me just reliving my child hood again. I remember one Christmas that I wanted the Power Glove. That glove was a piece of trash but I had to have it. So maybe if I find one I should just turn around and sell it for $150 more than I paid for it like everyone else on EBAY? Anyway, I plan to sit out front of Circuit City Sunday morning and try to get a voucher. They usually get in about 10 a week and on Sunday they give out vouchers (first come, first served) an hour before they open. Anyone with one is guaranteed a Wii.

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A commentor in the original thread posted an interesting rebutal of the research conducted by a University of Arizona professor on the role Haiti played in the spread of HIV. This has been an interesting topic to read about. I never knew that the CDC labeled Haitians (and Haiti) as high risk for HIV and how it effected the Haitian economy by carrying a stigma of being linked to aids.

Article Link:

October 30, 2007
Empire State Medical Association Denounces Incomplete Research Claims made by Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Worobey on “HIV Coming from Haiti”

Empire State Medical Association Denounces Incomplete Research Claims made by Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Worobey on “HIV Coming from Haiti” (www.nyesma.org) The Empire State Medical Association is highly concerned about the claims by Michael Worobey that “AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic”. We reject the comments that “researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years — first in the U.S. population and then to other nations.” Gilbert and Worobey, analyzed samples from only five of these Haitian immigrants dating from 1982 and 1983. They also looked at genetic data from 117 more early AIDS patients from around the world. This genetic analysis allowed them to calibrate the molecular clock of the strain of HIV that has spread most widely, and calculated when it arrived first in Haiti from Africa and then in the United States. The researchers virtually ruled out the possibility that HIV had come directly to the United States from Africa, setting a 99.8 percent probability that Haiti was the steppingstone. For Haiti, the history of HIV/AIDS represents stigma, discrimination, and racism. In 1982, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) incorrectly inferred that Haitians were at increased for acquiring HIV as a racial group (1). HIV/AIDS therefore became known as the “4H Disease”, affecting homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.

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This week’s online publication for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has is a new article describing the origins of the HIV virus. Michael Worobey, PhD from University of Arizona, and his team basically deduce that the HIV strain that is widespread in America spread from Central Africa to Haiti by Haitian emigrants working in Congo.

It seems that the basic theory is that the virus went from the animal population (chimps) to humans in Africa, developed into different strains of the virus, and made it’s way through the majority of the world through Haiti. There are two additional theories that carry on the story: a) Some of these infected migrants made their way to Miami and introduced it to America there or b) homosexual sex travelers went to Haiti and Trindad, caught the virus and spread it through the homosexual community in America.

This is an abstract of the original article:

The Emergence of HIV/AIDS in the Americas and Beyond
Gilbert MTP, Rambaut A, Wlasiuk G, Spira TJ, Pitchenik AE & Worobey M
(2007) PNAS In press

HIV-1 group M subtype B was the first human immunodeficiency virus discovered and is the predominant variant of AIDS virus in most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the circumstances of its origin and emergence remain unresolved. Here we propose a geographic sequence and timeline for the origin of subtype B and the emergence of pandemic HIV/AIDS out of Africa. Using HIV-1 gene sequences recovered from archival samples from some of the earliest known Haitian AIDS patients, we find that subtype B likely moved from Africa to Haiti in or around 1966 [1962-1970] then spread there for some years before successfully dispersing elsewhere. A ?pandemic? clade, encompassing the vast majority of non-Haitian subtype B infections in the US and elsewhere around the world, subsequently emerged after a single migration of the virus out of Haiti in or around 1969 [1966-1972]. Haiti appears to have the oldest HIV/AIDS epidemic outside sub-Saharan Africa and the most genetically diverse subtype B epidemic, which might present challenges for HIV-1 vaccine design and testing. The emergence of the pandemic variant of subtype B was an important turning point in the history of AIDS but its spread was likely driven by ecological rather than evolutionary factors. Our results suggest that HIV-1 circulated cryptically in the US for approximately twelve years before the recognition of AIDS in 1981.

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Article Link: Civil rights activists offer new voice

A group of Spelman graduates have formed a group asking for support as they march against the injustice in the Megan Williams case as well as other crimes against women…

The recent mass rally in Jena, La., protesting alleged racial injustice has led some pundits to ask whether it signaled the dawning of a modern civil rights movement.

Now that the Jena headlines have subsided, a group of Spelman graduates and others are asking different questions: What about cases in Logan, W.Va., or West Palm Beach, Fla.? Where are the rallies, calls to justice and media blitzes in those cases, which involved alleged crimes both horrific in their detail and with strong racial and sexual overtones.

But within those questions posed by the young women lies a more provocative one: Isn’t it time for a modern civil rights movement to protest intra-racial violence just as vigorously as inter-racial violence? Particularly when it’s a crime against women.

The young women hope to start changing that. They’ve launched a vigorous Internet campaign and blog, “Be Bold, Be Brave, Be Red.” They’ve made a YouTube-style video about the two cases, and others, on their Web site (www.documentthesilence.wordpress.com). And they’re encouraging people nationwide to wear red Wednesday and to hold observances to draw attention to the Florida and West Virginia cases. Their message is that violence against women of color is worthy of protest regardless of the perpetrator’s race.

“If it’s going to be about nooses,” said organizer Fallon Wilson, referring to the genesis of the Jena case, “it’s also got to be about other forms of violence too. You cannot just advocate for race alone. Things are more complicated than that.”

“A lot of young black women organized for Jena, but where are they for Megan Williams and others?” said Bailey.

Article Link: Ministers meet opposition for decision not to march.

A march has been scheduled for November 3rd for Megan Williams and there is a new wrinkle in that some people are not happy that the former chairman of the New Black Panther party is providing legal assistance to the family and has organized the march…

Members of the Charleston Black Ministerial Alliance are facing opposition to the group’s reluctance to join in a protest march organized by a controversial black lawyer.

The alliance held a meeting Sunday at New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church to explain its position to community members.

Instead of support, the group was met with outbursts of anger.

Some in the audience became confrontational with the black ministers, accusing them of perpetuating the perceived bigotry that will be the target of the planned protest.

At the meeting, Rev. Lloyd Hill, who heads up the alliance, denounced the organizer of the Nov. 3 march, Malik Shabazz, co-founder of Black Lawyers for Justice and a former chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Shabazz’s group is providing legal assistance to the family of Megan Williams, the young Charleston woman who says she was raped and tortured for days by six Logan County residents.

Article Link: W.Va. Woman Speaks About Torture Ordeal

Megan Williams thought she was going to a party. That’s why she tagged along with a woman she hardly knew, up a remote southern West Virginia hollow to a run-down trailer surrounded by beer cans and broken-down furniture.

“But there wasn’t no party,” Williams said. “I realized I’d made a bad mistake.”

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This one is a long time coming. Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County teen convicted of child molestation charges for receiving oral sex from a 15 year old girl, is finally out of jail after almost 4 years. He was stuck under the Georgia Child Protection Act of 1995 that made it a felony for having sex with someone under the age of consent, which is 16 in Georgia. The act made the crime a mandatory 10 year sentence.

I have never condoned what they did that night at a New Year’s Eve party. They filmed a small party where multiple guys had sex with the 15 year old girl and another 17 year old girl at the party. What they did was ridiculous and even worse because they had the bright idea to film the whole thing. But, and this is a big one, it was all consentual between everyone there and they were all in high school.

Wilson’s four-year legal odyssey has inflamed racial tensions in Georgia while capturing the nation’s attention.

Black civil rights leaders alleged race and class have been at play in the case, which sparked protest marches and demonstrations in Douglasville, where Wilson was prosecuted. Douglas County prosecutors, meanwhile, have vehemently denied race played a role, noting all the defendants and victims in the case are black.

The case stems from a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party Wilson attended at a Douglasville hotel in 2003. Wilson was charged with raping a 17-year-old girl at the party, but was acquitted. He was ultimately found guilty of felony aggravated child molestation for receiving oral sex from the 15-year-old girl, a crime that carried a minimum 10-year prison sentence under state law at the time.

Four other male youths at the party pleaded guilty to child molestation of the 15-year-old and sexual battery of the 17-year-old. A fifth pleaded guilty to false imprisonment. Their party was captured on a profanity-laden and sexually graphic video filmed by one of the male youths.

Since Wilson’s conviction, the former Republican state lawmaker who authored the state Child Protection Act in 1995 has repeatedly insisted it was never his intent to lock up teenagers involved in consensual sex acts. Last year, the Legislature changed the law to make similar acts a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in prison.

The Supreme Court noted that legal change in the 48-page opinion it issued in Wilson’s case Friday morning: “For the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of ten years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime,” wrote Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, who sided with the majority in the court’s 4-3 decision in favor of freeing Wilson.

Article link

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David Stern is a hypocrite! What am I talking about? Lets take a stroll down memory lane. It’s 2006 and Game 4 of the NBA Western Conference finals. The Spurs and Suns are in epic battle for the right, no, the privilege to represent the West in the Finals. With eighteen seconds left in game, Robert Horry who ironically known for his late game shots, takes a shot of a different nature, he gives a Steve Nash “cheap shot”, sending him into the courtside tables. Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudamire clear the bench. As a result of a arcane NBA rule that states, “all the players who are seated on the bench must remain in that immediate vicinity. If the rule is violated, the Basketball Operations Department is notified and each guilty individual is subject to a suspension of a minimum of one game and fine up to $50,000. The head coach and/or assistant coaches may assist in acting as peacemakers.”

As a consequence, Boris and Amare are suspended for one game. Although, no one threw a punch or was directly involved any brawl. Commissioner Stern instantly drew fire for the suspensions. During a contentious interview with Dan Patrick on ESPN Radio, Stern said Stoudemire and Diaw should have known that there is no room for interpretation in the leaving-the-bench rule, which players are reminded of before the season and again before the playoffs. “The players knew the rule…” So, Stern believes that a rule is a rule, right? Apparently not!

Fast forward to today’s news conference regarding NBA officials and gambling. An internal review discovered more than half of the league’s 56 returning referees technically violated the N.B.A.’s prohibition on nearly all forms of gambling, Stern said at a news conference after meeting with the league’s board of governors. “Our ban is absolute,” Stern said. “It’s my view it’s too absolute, too harsh, and not particularly well enforced over the years. After some careful deliberation, I have decided that I will not be taking punitive action against the referees that violated this rule.””I determined going into a casino isn’t a capital offense” Capital offense?( I guess wearing urban wear is a capital offense) Furthermore, he states, “I am not going to punish individuals for violating a rule that I am going to change anyway.” Huh? what happened to a rule is a rule? David, the referees knew the rule, there is no room for interpretation! I am sure Phoenix fans that the aforementioned rule was “too absolute, too harsh.” Tisk, Tisk! David, fine these dudes and or suspend them. You can’t flip flop, a rule is a rule! As the commissioner of the NBA, the owners and players have to view you as civil minded and even keeled.

Ok, Ok, I know that some of my fellow web2freedom bloggers, will say, who gives a damn if a referee wants to play the slots or online poker as long as it’s in the off-season and has nothing to do with basketball. I believe that allowing referees to gamble in any format is a mistake. Gambling is an addiction. These new rules will serve a gateway for someone to get into debt and owing large sums of money is nothing more that incubator for point shaving. David Stern, your out of bounds!

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OK. If you haven’t heard already Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer, does not like black people. I don’t know if that is the case but he does think that Africans are intellectually inferior…

In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Before I even address that comment I want to tell a story about myself in school working on my bachelors, wont mention the school but it is the best engineering school in the South, and when I had an epiphany about intelligence. There is a general class on electromagnetics that everyone has to take if you are majoring in electrical engineering. That was the hardest class I think I have ever had. I would study, study, study and I still only had a surface level understanding of what was going on in the class. It actually seemed like everyone else was in the same boat and the grades reflected it because the average was around the mid 30’s out of 100. But, there were two people in the class that just got it. A Russian dude that was probably 30 at the time and a good friend of mine from NY. He had dreads and looked nothing like a stereotypical engineer but he was a genius. The two of them basically taught the rest of us enough so we could just pass the class…and we were are all extremely bright but we needed help.

What I found was that there are a lot of smart people of all different races. The common denominators of most of them (not all)…a good drive to succeed, decent schools growing up, and someone at home (parents, mentor, etc.) that instilled good educational habits. Then there are just some that are plain geniuses and it was just a gift. I saw as many white, Asian, Indian, and Black people who fell in the genius category but way more middle-upper class white people in the pretty smart but not genius area. So, I believe that your environment and home factors really have a big factor on intelligence. Not race or sex and I base that only on the super smart people I have run into in my life because it has been about equal (by race) across the board.

Late yesterday, the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution in New York, issued a statement saying it was suspending the administrative responsibilities of Dr. Watson as chancellor “pending further deliberation.”

On Wednesday, Bruce Stillman, president of the laboratory, had issued a statement saying the laboratory’s trustees, administration and faculty “vehemently disagree” with the sentiments of Dr. Watson, who has served as director and president of the laboratory, whose school of biological sciences is named for him.

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor study plant and animal genetics, cancer and other diseases. Dr. Stillman said they did not “engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson.”…

There is wide agreement among researchers on intelligence that genetic inheritance influences mental acuity, but there is also wide agreement that life experiences, even in the womb, exert a powerful influence on brain structure. Further, there is wide disagreement about what intelligence consists of and how — or even if — it can be measured in the abstract.

For example, in “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, dismissed “the I.Q. industry” as little more than an effort by men of European descent to maintain their prominence in the world.

So to his comments…I have no comment. I’m not smart enough to understand. I will leave you with a little something a different Nobel Prize winner thought…

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.

In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

Article Link - James Watson
Article Link - Albert Einstein

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I haven’t even played Halo 3, or do I have an Xbox 360, but I find it amazing how many people have bought the game. It has only been out since Sept. 25th and it sold more games than all Playstation 3 games sold for the last 5 months combined. 3.3 Million games as of October 12th…I must be about the only person to not have the game.

Within 12 days, it had sold 3.3 million copies, according to the NPD Group, which measures U.S. video-game sales performance.

The NPD numbers, published today, show Halo 3 outselling the next best-selling game, Wii Play, by more than 10 times (Wii Play sold 282,000 from Sept. 2 to Oct. 6, the five-week time period NPD measured in its latest report).

It seems like the Xbox 360 has separated itself as the platform for older kids and young adults. The Wii seems like the family choice and best choice for younger kids. I told my son that we might upgrade to one of the newer game systems for Christmas but I think I will get him a Wii. Why? I have a good amount of co-workers that play Halo and Madden. So, if we went with the 360 I would be the one playing. This is for him so I will get the more “kid oriented” system, or so it seems.

Overall, the video game industry has continued to capitalize on the new generation of consoles. NPD reported that in the five-week period ending Oct. 6, sales of games, consoles, mobile gaming devices, and accessories were $9.37 billion, a 47 percent increase over the $6.38 billion during the same period a year earlier (a significant figure, but remember that this industry is cyclical, with the peaks tied to the release of new consoles).

Article link

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If you haven’t heard about this new, hybrid, staph infection that is going around you need to be aware. Apparently this germ has become resistant to many antibiotics and leads to a very serious infection. So serious that it may kill more people than HIV/AIDS.

The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated.

This little germ is no joke. It can cause a variety of different problems and is spread by casual contact. That is what is scary to me because you know how common a handshake is at work and you don’t know if the hand you just shaked is clean or what it just touched. Howie Mandel, of Deal or No Deal fame, has it right…he doen’t shake hands. He just daps everyone up or gives them a pound. I think I’m going to give my boss a pound tomorrow at work.

MRSA, which is spread by casual contact, rapidly turns minor abscesses and other skin infections into serious health problems, including painful, disfiguring “necrotizing” abscesses that eat away tissue. The infections can often still be treated by lancing and draining sores and quickly administering other antibiotics, such as bactrim. But in some cases the microbe gets into the lungs, causing unusually serious pneumonia, or spreads into bone, vital organs and the bloodstream, triggering life-threatening complications. Those patients must be hospitalized and given intensive care, including intravenous antibiotics such as vancomycin.

This hasn’t really been talked about in the articles I’ve seen but it is really hitting the black community hard (2/3 of the cases). Something like this is just awareness and passing the word. It is not anything to get hysterical about but the word needs to be spread.

In the new study, Fridkin and his colleagues analyzed data collected in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Tennessee, identifying 5,287 cases of invasive MRSA infection and 988 deaths in 2005. The researchers calculated that MRSA was striking 31.8 out of every 100,000 Americans, which translates to 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans in 2005.

Article link

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