Let’s just hope NBC news is correct and she intends to get “out of politics for good”. We could only hope!

Maybe she was having trouble locating Africa on a map, or maybe her eyesight began to become strained by staring across the Bering Strait too much.

Prefixes

ā-, ab- (away, from)

ab-ducō, lead to (abduct)

ad- (to, towards, in addition)

ad-vocō, call to (advocate)

ante- (before)

ante-cēdō, to go before, precede (antecedent)

circum- (around)

circum-stō, stand around (circumstance)

com-, cum-, con-, cor-, col-, co-, - (with, together)

com-pōnō, put together, compose (component)

cōn-sentiō, feel together, agree (consent)

contrā- (against, opposite)

contrā-dicō, speak against or oppose, opposite (contradict)

contrā-veniō, come against (contravene)

Total: The sound becomes identical to another by taking on all of it’s phonetic features

Partial: The assimilating sound acquires some traits of another, but does not become fully identical to it.

Regressive-Progressive

Regressive (anticipatory): A change in which the sound that undergoes the change comes earlier in the word (nearer the beginning) than the sound which causes or conditions the assimilation.

Progressive: Changes that affect sounds which come later in the word than (closer to the end of the word) the conditioning environment.

Total Contact Regressive Assimilation (Latin-> Italian)

Octo-> Otto (It.)   Noctem-> Notte (It.)   Factum-> Fatto (It.)   /k/ is before /t/ which conditions it to change; thus it’s regressive. The /k/ is immediately adjacent to /t/; thus it’s a contact change.

More examples: Somnus->Sonno (It.)   Septem->Sette (It.)

• The US is the world’s largest seller of weapons abroad, arming dictators, militaries, and terrorists that repress or victimize their populations, and fueling scores of violent conflicts around the globe.

• The US is the world’s largest provider of live land mines which, even in peacetime, kill or injure at least several people around the world each day.

• The US has military bases in at least 50 nations around the world, which have led to frequent victimization of local populations.

• The US military has been bombing one Middle Eastern or Muslim nation or another almost continuously since 1983, including Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq (almost daily bombings since 1991).

The first part of each sentence seems to be the fact, while the second part is opinion based upon the fact and thus not considered a fact, but commentary on it. Therefore my first sentence was a bit misleading, I should have wrote, “Here are some facts (followed by commentary based on them) about U.S. foreign policy.

But before I go on, I must write that I’m not anti-American or anything like that. This is an easy tag to place upon anyone who seems to criticize America these days. It’s also a very effective weapon to use against those who are against American Imperialism via unjust means. I’m very much a patriot, but the definition of “patriot” means different things to different people. I like Noble Prize winner Albert Camus’ definition of what a patriot (or any other synonym) is: He writes, “The true patriot is one who gives his highest loyalty not to his country as it is, regardless of what it does, but rather to what it can and ought to be.”

What I wonder is if anyone high up in office believes that U.S. foreign policy breeds terrorism? I think so. They have to. Here’s an example, though rather dated, but none-the-less informative. It’s a segment from a Noam Chomsky interview:

“President Eisenhower, in an internal discussion, observed to his staff, and I’m quoting now, “There’s a campaign of hatred against us in the Middle East, not by governments, but by the people.” The National Security Council discussed that question and said, “Yes, and the reason is, there’s a perception in that region that the United States supports status quo governments, which prevent democracy and development and that we do it because of our interests in Middle East oil. Furthermore, it’s difficult to counter that perception because it’s correct. It ought to be correct. We ought to be supporting brutal and corrupt governments which prevent democracy and development because we want to control Middle East oil, and it’s true that leads to a campaign of hatred against us.”

So there’s no question now, I believe, that governments don’t believe that some of their actions are “blowbacks.” But to the extent of this belief, we may never know. Now as far as why lay people believe that the U.S. would never do such an intolerable act, well there’s many easy reasons that are easy to grasp. Obfuscation is one and propaganda is another. Those 2, I believe, may make up 98% of the reasons why U.S. citizens believe what any U.S. president has to say about foreign affairs. Here’s an example by President Clinton in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly:

“Because we are blessed to be a wealthy nation with a powerful military and a worldwide presence active in promoting peace and security, we are often a target. We love our country for its dedication to political and religious freedom, to economic opportunity, to respect for the rights of the individual. But we know many people see us as a symbol of a system and values they reject, and often they find it expedient to blame us for problems with deep roots elsewhere.”

So views, messages, slogans and speeches like this reiterated over and over to the American public, as well as a public school system that nearly refuses to teach up-and-coming students more honest history, is (are) a big reason(s) for the near absence of any speculation of wrong-doing by the U.S. government overseas.

Funny enough, later in this speech, Clinton seems to contradict his “clash of values” idea of the earlier passage.

“Some people believe that terrorism’s principal fault line centers on what they see as an inevitable clash of civilizations. . . . Specifically, many believe there is an inevitable clash between Western civilization and Western values, and Islamic civilizations and values. I believe this view is terribly wrong.”

Yes there’s a clash of civilizations but it’s because of what the U.S. “does” and not because of what it “is.”

Q: So now you’ve written about what war is. What’s your conclusion?
A: The goal of the book was to portray the disease that war is and how that disease in wartime infects and destroys individuals and societies. I had started writing at Harvard on a Nieman fellowship after I left the war in Kosovo, but it took on a kind of urgency after 9/11. I woke up and realized in New York that we’d all become Serbs, that all of that flag-waving, all of that jingoism, that mass suppression of individual conscience — which I had seen in countries in war around the globe Ð was now part of my own society, part of where I lived. And it frightened me.

I’m not a pacifist. Wars are always tragic, but probably inevitable; I would think they are inevitable. I supported the intervention in Bosnia. I supported the intervention in Kosovo. I feel that we failed as a nation by not intervening in Rwanda. If we’ve learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable. You have blood on your hands, and we do for Rwanda.

But I also understand what war can do, especially when you fall into the dark intoxication that war brings. That process of dehumanizing the other, that ecstatic euphoria in wartime, that use of patriotism as a form of self-glorification, that worshiping of the capacity to inflict violence — especially in a society that possesses a military as advanced as ours — all of those things I wanted to expose in the book, so that people would at least understand war for the poison that it is.

[…]

Q: I want to ask you about the role of religion and war. It’s often blamed for war. What did you find?
A: In wartime, religious institutions are usually the worst offenders. For instance, in Bosnia the UN could get Serb, Muslim, and Croat commanders together for a civil discussion far more easily than they could get the religious leaders [together] — imams and Serbian Orthodox clerics and Catholic priests.

Religion lends itself to that kind of triumphalism, that notion of the crusade, the purging of evil, the sanitation of dark forces by the forces of light. Certainly within the mosque, the church, you had individuals who stood up, but they very much ran against the institution. Many times these institutions are called upon by the state to sanctify the cause, and they usually are more than willing to do so.

Q: I took it that in your book you were saying that religion was not the underlying cause of the war, but was used by those who were fighting the war to justify what they were doing for other reasons.
A: In the war in the former Yugoslavia, religion was not the cause of the war. First of all, most Yugoslavs had very little religious education. I remember sitting around with a bunch of Muslim troops from the Fifth Corps. Not only was I the only one among the group who spoke Arabic; I soon realized I was the only one who’d ever read the Qur’an. The notion that they were fighting for religious identity was absurd. It was part of the myth of war.

What happened in the former Yugoslavia, and what happens in all fratricides, is what Freud calls the “narcissism of minor difference,” where you seize on absurd differences — you know, dialectic differences. And, of course, religion becomes the way by which you differentiate yourself from the other, and you suddenly say, “Serbs, or Muslims — these are not characteristics that they have; these are vices and we can never deal with these vices until we purge them from our society.” They don’t commit crimes; they have things inherently built into their character. I mean, it’s very much like anti-Semitism. And the only way to get rid of it is to eradicate it, because to be a Jew, to be a Serb, to be a Muslim is to have these qualities that destroy our civilization, and we must, therefore, destroy them.

Once you get into that situation, which the worst kind of [situation that] religion can back up, then you move very swiftly from the language of violence, the language of dehumanization of the other, toward the actual destruction of the other. We turn them into an object linguistically, and then we turn them into an object quite literally — a corpse.

In Bosnia, religion did not cause that war. It was warlords who often came out of the Communist Party and the breakup of Yugoslavia, who overnight became nationalists, who appropriated religion and used religion as a way to prosecute the war and denigrate the other. In every case, I think religion was used. I don’t think religion was a cause.

Religion is used for differentiating warring populations the same way ethnicity is, race is. It’s one of the tools those who want to manufacture a war use — a very effective one. Unfortunately, within the institutional church or the synagogue or the mosque, there are religious leaders who are willing to go along with that enterprise.

The interview was done quite some time ago actually (2003) and could be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week622/hedges.html

Also, I found this page on some Psychology website and about “10 Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature.” Rather interesting actually. The “truth” about Muslim suicide bombers was thought provoking.

Most suicide bombers are Muslim

According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?

The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single. 

 http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php/?term=pto-4359.html&fromMod=popular

The opening two tracks hit like a perfect one-two punch reminiscent of Lifes Rich Pageant. Everything in between is not as fast and hard-hitting as the first two tracks, though they’re on average more aggressive than anything on the previous two albums. And about the final track…the closer “I’m Gonna DJ”…what a amazing and exciting recording. I was there in L.A. 5 years ago when they first played the track live in front of an audience. Subsequent bootlegs have not deterred my likeness for the track (which would be played at every concert since). And with this new album I was wondering how they’d record it and how it would sound. Well the achieved an amazing result, I believe. As of now it has the highest play-count on my iTunes for the album.

The entire album is lean with a 3 minute track norm and 33+ minute existence. What excites me the most is the energy that runs through the entire album. Even it’s slower songs have some weird sense of urgency. I’ve read that they suddenly realized that life is short. It sounds like they carried that mantra into the recording studio.

In other R.E.M.-related news, I got two tickets this morning to see them in Berkeley on May 31st. I goofed earlier this year and didn’t renew my fanclub membership on time and thus missed out on the fanclub ticket specials. Oh well. Their only other show in California is 2 days before in Los Angeles. I’m still undecided about going for the following reasons:

money–time–the drive–money–going by myself–money–a place to stay

Well, I’ve gone by myself before so that’s not too much of an issue, and I always have places to stay when I go down south, but my friends live east of L.A., not necessarily in the city so thus I have a nice 40 minute drive by myself back to their house after the show. I’ll have time as well since I’ll be out of school, but I’ll have to miss a couple days of work. The upside? Well besides the actual show and seeing my friends again, Michael Stipe is having a book signing the night before the show at some bookstore in Hollywood. The book is a new collection of band photos through the last few years. And since I’ve never met a member of the band, this is my chance. I’d probably buy the book anyways, but autographed by JMS in person and possibly a handshake and photo with the best songwriter in the past 28 years…well that tips the scales and it looks like I might just buy that ticket to L.A….though now the best I’m most likely to get is the lawn. But I’m not complaining.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) concludes, “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Now a few myths, of course, have been propagated against the belief in global warming. The famous article published in Science magazine in 2004 stated that between the years of 1993-2003, 928 papers published in peer-reviewed journals supporting the IPCC’s conclusion on global warming, either explicitly or implicitly, and none disagreed with it.

What the minority of these deniers have in common is that they all seem to try and undermine the growing scientific community that advocates more strict environmental regulations (i.e. the Kyoto Protocol). The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OSIM) went as far as to start a petition that stated that, “the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” They were calling for the U.S. government to not sign the Kyoto Protocol. This happened between 1999 and 2001.

But let make a detour into a discussion about technology and the popular belief that technology will save all our problems. Most people say something along these lines because the track record of past technologies seems to be infallible. And, if technologies are successful, most of them take time to develop and thus succeed, time like decades. Think cars, gas heating, electric lighting, computers, and airplanes. Many new technologies also have many side-effects, mainly they create unanticipated new problems. The cost effect of putting these technologies into work in a life-death situation cost much more then typical preventive care (i.e. taking care of the environment now, individually and collectively). This point mirrors preventive care in healthcare. It is far cheaper and cost-beneficial for a person (and the healthcare industry) to take vitamins, eat healthier, exercise more often and most importantly, see doctors for regular check-ups, then it is to wait until you need triple bypass surgery. Think preventive care for an oil company; an oil spill will always cost exponentially more (economically, ecologically, environmentally and morally) then routine care to prevent such a spill. Any oil company will tell you that.

Technology will also allow us to do new things which, again, may or may not be for our good. Most of our current technological problems are due to previous technological problems and so forth. To draw another parallel, think of the “making more money vs. making less money” scenario. Being “wealthy” is commonly seen as respectful, whereas not being “wealthy” is generally not. Well, the rich person also has many more side-effects of being rich, including bills for an over-the-top-house, cars and other toys. These all cost money and more money to take care of. Thus this wealthy person is working 60 hours a week to make more money to help maintain his lifestyle that he or she won’t even be able to enjoy as he or she is stuck at work most of the year. Now the “less wealthy” person is working less, making less money (only enough for things that matter, like insurance and food, for example) yet still enjoying the more leisure time for him or herself and the family, etc. And everyone knows how healthy, mentally and physically, those activities are, as opposed to stress.

Now back to global warming, another myth which is interesting is the one that states that global warming is happening, but that it is not caused by greenhouse gasses, and thus not humans fault. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is actually a consequence of climate change, not an effect, it is claimed by some. The latest IPCC report states that chemical analyses of carbon dioxide show the increase in the atmosphere, and an accompanying decrease in oxygen concentrations, are mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. So 10-30% of emissions in the past 20 years are due to land use change, mainly, again, deforestation. The rest of emissions are due to fossil fuel burning. If you’re wondering how the chopping down of our forests contributes to a warmer climate, it is simple. The new, “exposed” land increases the reflectivity of the land surface, which means lower amounts of solar radiation are absorbed. Also, it is important to note that sunspots have occurred more frequently on the sun which can contribute to a warmer Earth, but scientists agree that the affect is minimal compared to manmade affects.

As for the melting of the ice caps, the results are obvious; higher ocean levels. The central valley of California, in which I live, would be flooded via the San Francisco bay, and more acutely, the Stockton delta. The verdict seems to still be out about the melting of the ice caps. No noticeable change has been noted since 1978, but further heating will only lead to the eventual melting of the ice caps.

Though the verdict is not in as far as the melting of the ice caps, the sea water levels are widely believed to have risen 0.1-0.2 centimeters a year over the past 20th century. This has been caused by seawater expansion and gradual meting of the caps. At the rate that warming is occurring, the IPCC predicts that sea levels will rise by 9-88 centimeters by 2100.

What fascinates me is the political debate that surrounds global warming here in the U.S. Republicans tend to no believe it whereas Democrats do tend to believe it. Go figure. Republicans in this country tend to be tied and in support of big business. The acceptance of global warming by out White House and the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would mean tighter restrictions upon business, and thus, possibly less economic productivity which thus leads to possibly a lesser economic output by a country that sees its economy and the all-mighty dollar as the sole reason for existence. Speaking of big business against environmental restrictions, I remember something I wrote last year or so in response to the video posted on YouTube in response to Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. I wrote,

“So I saw Al Gore’s film on global warming the other night, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and I have to say it was pretty good. It’s not often when the science community is not polarized, but this time the ones who don’t believe in global warming seem to be a small minority. A real small minority. I won’t go into the specifics of global warming because most people have an idea of what it’s about, but what I worry about is the propaganda against it. It’s funny how important a virtue like ignorance is for the right in this country. But what’s not funny are the poor souls who fall for it; the coercion, the play on religion, the manipulation of the media.

Even though there’s unanimous evidence supporting the theory of global warming, a person always has there doubts. But then I heard about ‘Al Gore’s Penguin Army’ and saw the parody on YouTube. The video is a short spoofing on Gore’s film that is supposed to be by a young 29-year old man from Beverly Hills. An amateur. The Wall Street Journal eventually found out that the film came from “”a computer registered to DCI Group,” a public relations and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., led exclusively by Republican party officials. DCI has counted corporations such as General Motors and ExxonMobil amongst its clients.”

DCI Group’s response: “We do not disclose the names of our clients, nor do we discuss the work we do on behalf of our clients.” Nice.”

This is an example of big business maliciously against the common belief of global warming. Funding and intimidation also play a big role, I believe, in naysayers against global warming. This link sends you to a few good paragraphs about this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Funding_for_partisans

To finish, something really makes me wonder. Do conservative voters not believe in global warming only because their representatives say it’s not true? I believe this to be the case. In other words, I believe that the majority of republicans do not believe in global warming only because the Bush administration has not acknowledged it. Not because they have looked at the facts themselves, but only because their representatives have said so. Now this is a scary thought! People putting this much trust into politicians and not thinking twice about the words politicians say. Not thinking about their motives, reasons, nothing. And in response to that last statement, I believe that global warming is occurring at a dangerous rate and human activity is at the center of its progress. I believe this not because I am a climatologist, but because the overwhelming majority of the scientific community (the experts) believes so. A majority of Republicans, and myself, do not have sufficient education in climatology to make an educated decision based on their investigations of climate change. And in any case like this, I believe it is safer, much safer, to take sides with the experts in the matter, and in this case, again, its scientists. In this case, the majority and the experts are both on the same page which doubly stacks the cards against the non-believers. The majority is not always the best group to follow in a debate as the 1996 Oakland Ebonics controversy showed.

Now with the Presidential race a big issue this year, what will happen if the Republican nomination, John McCain is elected into office and becomes our next politician? He believes in global warming, which is in direct contrast to his party (and a major complaint the right have against him). So will conservative voters start believing in global warming if he becomes our next president? I wouldn’t doubt it. As another Republican candidate this year and my geology teacher have said this week, “Leave science up to the scientists.”

Nasal
[m]- voiced, bilabial
[n]- voiced, alveloar
[ŋ]- voiced, velar

Affricates
[tʃ]- voiceless, palatal
[dʒ]- voiced, palatal

Glides
[M]- voiceless, bilabial
[W]- voiced, bilabial
[j]- voiced, bilabial

Stops
[p]- voiceless, bilabial
[b]- voiced, bilabial
[t]- voiceless, alveloar
[d]- voiced, alveolar
[k]- voiceless, velar
[g]- voiced, velar

Fricatives
[f]- voiceless, labiodental
[v]- voiced, labiodental
[θ]- voiceless, interdental
[ð]- voiced, interdental
[s]- voiceless, alveloar
[z]- voiced, alveolar
[ʃ]- voiceless, palatal
[ʒ] - voiced, palatal
[h]- voiced, glottal

a Key to Places of Articulation

Bilabials: Bring both lips together.
Labiodentals: When the bottom touch the upper teeth.
Interdentals: With the tongue between the teeth.

Alveolars: With the tongue raised, touching the alveolar ridge in various ways.
Palatals: Raising the front part of the tongue to the palate, farther back from the alveolar ridge.
Velars: Raising the back of the tongue to the velum, farther past the palate.

Glottals: Air flowing through the open glottis out the open mouth. ex: [h]

4. Alveolar
7. Palatal
8. Velar
11. Glottal

Manners of Articulation

Stop: Complete closure of the mouth. The sound is not produced until the mouth opens.
Nasals: Same as a stop (complete closure of mouth) but with air escaping through the nose.

Fricatives: Friction. No complete closure of the mouth, thus you can prolong the sound.
Affricates: The combo of a stop and a fricative.

Glides: When the tongue glides from the back of the palate to the alveolar ridge.
Liquids: Only 2 and both have a psychological reality. [l] and[r]

As for the subject matter of these artists, well it’s more mature then most others. Mature, but not necessarily “adult.” It’s mature, but not corny or cheesy. Mature but not typical or too straight forward. These artists really make you work to understand their music. And I also think only certain people can truly understand their stuff. Is one of those persons me? Maybe or maybe not.

Listening to artists like these, and then listening to other “artists” of less creditability, makes for a difficult listening experience. Other artists (those of the two “categories” that come to my mind, new country and emo) just seem to not be too sincere or honest or real or believable. Again, it’s a personal thing, but I just thought that clinical depression that seemed to have ran through all of these singers, was interesting.

Phonemes: The smallest segment of sound which can be distinguish 2 words. English has 44. The words Pit and Bit differ by only 1 phoneme, P and B. Pet and Pit differ. only in the vowel, again, by only one phoneme. These are “minimal pairs,” when pairs of words differ. by only 1 phoneme.

The 44 (more or less) phonemes in English can be divided into Consonants or Vowels. Vowels can then be divided into Pure (bit, bet, bat, but), or unchanging vowels, and Dipthongs (boat, but, bay), or gliding vowels.

Consonants: the non-vowels. A sound characterized by complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx. (wiki)
Vowels: A,E,I,O,U. A sound characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. (wiki)

Shared properties of nasals
Voiced: Consonants pronounced with viberation of vocal chords.
Labials: Pronounced with the lips. sound examples- /p/ /b/ /m/
Nasals: Phonemes that are spoken w/ air expelled through the nose.