"The feminist author Gloria Steinem is leading a campaign to pressure Speaker Christine C. Quinn to allow a City Council vote on a bill that would require businesses to give their employees paid sick leave." (NYTimes)
To sign the MoveOn.org petition, please click on the photo below :
From This Is Colossal : New Interpolated HD Video of Curiosity Mars Rover Descent Depicts Real-Time Landing
Using footage provided by NASA, Reddit user Godd2 just spent the last four days on behalf of all humankind creating a stunning interpolated HD version of the descent. In layman’s terms interpolation involves taking a choppy video, in this case NASA’s 4 frames-per-second video, and rendering the “missing” frames in between resulting in an incredibly smooth 25 frames-per-second video. This is, I believe, the closest approximation ever of what it might feel like to land on another planet in real time using actual footage. Amazing.
Since last week, a viral Photoshopped picture of a nude Prince Harry appearing in a group picture with the Royal Family has been making the rounds on Facebook pages. It's a funny joke, we hope you can get a few cheap laughs from it. LOL !
Suzannah B. Troy faces censorship yet again, this time by YouTube and the NYPD's Intelligence Division.
Following are the two videos, which face censorship :
"Mayor Bloomberg Yelled Down CityTime ECTP at Press Conference NYPD Intelligence Lt."
"Mayor Bloomberg Private Army NYPD Intelligence Det. Lynch Refuses to Identify Himself + Abusive!"
Confirmed on NYTimes: Bystanders Hurt in Manhattan Were Hit by Police Gunfire
Confirmed on CNN: Police gunfire responsible for wounding all 9 innocent bystanders in Empire State Building shooting in New York
Was NYPD Responsible For All Innocent Bystander Shootings Outside The Empire State Building Today ?
Rumors are flying around that all of the innocent bystanders, who were shot outside of the Empire State Building this morning, were not shot by bullets from the the shooting suspect, Jeffrey T. Johnson -- who was shot dead by police -- but by bullets shot by police. Not yet confirmed, but I heard this from a very reliable source. I wonder how this will change the narrative of today's story of a disgruntled ex-employee shooting indiscriminately at the throngs of crowds outside the Empire State Building ?
From The New York Times, the police description of the firing of the bullets seems to indicate that the only people shooting their weapons outside the Empire State Building were police officers, not the lone gunman, Mr. Johnson :
The Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said one witness had told investigators that Mr. Johnson had fired at the two officers, “but we don’t have ballistics to support that.” Mr. Browne said “it’s possible” that the officers had shot him before he could return fire.
One officer fired seven times, the other nine times, Mr. Browne said.
According to the Associated Press, the NYPD has so far admitted that some of the innocent bystanders were struck by bullets or bullet fragments shot by the responding police officers, but the story has not yet been fully told : if the gunman Mr. Johnson did not fire his weapon, that means that the collateral damage that took place today was as a result of "friendly fire."
Businessman's will orders gay son to marry woman, or else son will lose $180,000 inheritance. How's that for de factor LGBT discrimination ?
The late Frank Mandelbaum's dying wish was that his son marry the mother of his grandchild. Only Robert Mandelbaum, 47, a Manhattan Criminal Court Judge, is already married - to a man. Robert Mandelbaum is now fighting to overturn his father's will, arguing that the only 'mother' his two-year-old son knows is his longtime partner Johnathan O'Donnell, 39.
Earlier today, Rosie O'Donnell blogged about having had a heart attack last week. Earlier this year, Mr. O'Donnell purchased a luxury condo from the Rudin family in the complex that used to be St. Vincent's Hospital, before it closed. Everybody is glad that Rosie is doing better, and we all wish her a speedy recovery. Some community activists hope that Ms. O'Donnell will see her heart attack as a wake-up call to create a full-service, Level I Trauma center in the Lower West Side. With the Rudin family's luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, there is now no trauma-emergency care in the entire Lower West Side of Manhattan.
About the EMS response and transport time that people live in fear in the West Village, the artist and political blogger, Suzannah B. Troy, wrote that Ms. O'Donnell "would not have made it to Beth Israel like Richard Scheirer --- Rudy Giuliani's guy that died because he had a stroke and did not make it from the West Village where there is no St. Vincent's Hospital -- no trauma level 1 hospital."
2011-12-25 Bill Rudin Robber Baron Band-Aid Flyer(CBS News) Rosie O'Donnell says she is "lucky to be here" after suffering a heart attack last week.
O'Donnell, 50, detailed the experience on her blog Monday, saying that she helped lift an "enormous woman" out of her car on Aug. 14 - and that a few hours later, her chest ached, her arms were sore, she became nauseous and had clammy skin.
She initially thought she had pulled a muscle, she continued, but then added in her free-verse writing style, "Maybe this is a heart attack/i googled womens heart attack symptoms/i had many of them/but really? - i thought - naaaa."
O'Donnell said she took a few aspirin ("Thank god/saved by a tv commercial/literally") and went to a cardiologist the next day.
She said her coronary artery was 99 percent blocked. A stent was inserted.
"They call this type of heart attack/the Widow maker/i am lucky to be here," she wrote. "Know the symptoms ladies/listen to the voice inside/the one we all so easily ignore/CALL 911/save urself."
A rep for O'Donnell told Us Weekly that she is now "home and resting comfortably." Earlier this month, she revealed that her fiancee, Michelle Rounds, was diagnosed with desmoid tumors.
The comedian recently hosted "The Rosie Show" on the Opera Winfrey Network. It was canceled in March.
After government integrity and healthcare activists held a mic check and balloon release inside Grand Central Station, the activists marched to Pfizer headquarters, where they did a speak-out and mocked the Pfizer marketing gimmick called, "Get Old."
British authorities threaten to raid the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to get Assange
The wire services of Reuters is reporting that a major diplomatic crisis escalated on Wednesday in London over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after UK authorities indicated that they would storm Ecuador's London embassy if Ecuadorian diplomats did not turn over Mr. Assange, who has been taking refuge there for two months.
In response, the Ecuadorian government quickly raised legal and diplomatic concerns over the British threats. Reuters reported that Ecuadorean government officials said such a raid would be considered a "hostile and intolerable act," and it would violate the sovereignty of Ecuador's government, and, by extension, its Embassy in London.
"We want to be very clear, we're not a British colony. The colonial times are over," Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa, Reuters reported.
The Ecuadorian Embassy in London posted the following statement yesterday on it's mission's website :
“We are deeply shocked by British government’s threats against the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian Embassy and their suggestion that they may forcibly enter the embassy.
This is a clear breach of international law and the protocols set out in the Vienna Convention.
Throughout out the last 56 days Mr. Julian Assange has been in the Embassy, the Ecuadorian Government has acted honourably in all our attempts to seek a resolution to the situation. This stands in stark contrast to the escalation of the British Government today with their threats to breakdown the door of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Instead of threatening violence against the Ecuadorian Embassy the British Government should use its energy to find a peaceful resolution to this situation which we are aiming to achieve.“
The Associated Press wire service has already reported that British police have made arrests of peaceful activists outside the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Ms. Brown tapped into the revolution in both society and in publishing that was already taking place in the late 1950's and early 1960's when she wrote her bestselling book, "Sex and the Single Girl," in 1962.
Ms. Brown updated Cosmo with sexy young contributors, who, as trailblazing writers, had embraced writing about daring and controversial subjects, such as workplace sexual harassment, pre-marital sex, birth control, and abortion. Among the bright and famous contributors, whom Ms. Brown recruited to write for Cosmo, included Rona Jaffe, who some argue helped to launch the sexual revolution in America with the 1958 publication of her shocking novel, "The Best of Everything."
Historians and women's rights archivists debate about which early writer was the first to begin to influence society away from the repressive and conformist 1950's, even at this late date, most people attribute "Sex and the Single Girl" with more influence, even though "The Best of Everything" preceded it by four years. For example, look at how The New York Times puts Ms. Brown into a separate category, as if Ms. Jaffe hadn't already begun to alter social mores with her own writing :
Helen Gurley Brown, who as the author of “Sex and the Single Girl” shocked early-1960s America with the news that unmarried women not only had sex but also thoroughly enjoyed it — and who as the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine spent the next three decades telling those women precisely how to enjoy it even more — died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 90, though parts of her were considerably younger. (NYTimes)
But there is no doubt that Ms. Brown did provide a platform for writers, such as Ms. Jaffe and others, to create an outlet for an alternative view of about what women had the freedom to do, other than to push each other on the rat race down the marriage aisle, like Ms. Jaffe used to say.
Cosmopolitan's Helen Gurley Brown dies aged 90 ; Editor's 32-year stint at helm of women's magazine saw introduction of frank discussions about sex (Guardian)
VIDEO REWIND AND PARODY UPDATE
One year ago, on August 12, 2011, Suzannah B. Troy posted a YouTube video about Chad Seigel's response to a grievance complaint that Ms. Troy filed against Mr. Seigel's professional ethics.
And only yesterday, Ms. Troy was moved to criticise Mr. Seigel's perceived misogynist attitude by producing and staring in a parody video about the fact that Mr. Seigel once described a woman's vagina as a "Venus fly trap."
Steve Kardynal has made a viral YouTube video (with over 8 million views in less than 3 days) from the song "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen. The hilarious parody was made from videos recorded from Chatroulette.
Steve Kardynal Makes Chatroulette 'Call Me Maybe' Parody, Dances In Bikini (HuffingtonPost) * Bikini-Clad Fur Dude Shocks Chatroulette Users With Flawless Carly Rae Impression (PerezHilton)
Hilarious, viral YouTube video made by Steve Kardynal of the song "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, set with videos recorded from Chatroulette.
From The Amsterdam News :
The judge has set another date in the criminal case against 71-year-old community activist Joseph “Jazz” Hayden. Last week, a large group of supporters packed the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse demanding that District Attorney Cyrus Vance drop the charges against Hayden.
Hayden faces two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, stemming from a December 2011 incident when police found a pocketknife and a miniature replica baseball bat after searching his car.
Hayden alleges that the charges against him are a result of his filming police activities in the Harlem community. “I can unequivocally state that this stop and arrest were in retaliation for my work as a citizen reporter aggressively covering police-community relationships in the Harlem community,” said Hayden.
For the past four years, Hayden has implemented “Copwatch,” a program in which he and his team patrol the Harlem area and videotape police as they stop and frisk people. ...
Read more : Harlem activist could face up to seven years in prison
Watch as how Joseph "Jazz" Hayden has documented the questionable NYPD use of "stop and frisk" :
Fran Lebowitz spoke about the intersection of Occupy Wall Street and Michael Bloomberg, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
"The thing I have enjoyed the most, I have to say, about Occupy Wall Street, because I am a vengeful and superficial person, is to see Bloomberg not have any idea which way to go with this thing. ... We know how he really feels, because, I mean, this mayor is not even in the 1%. He's in the 1% of the 1%. We have a mayor, who is so rich, that he will not live in a place actually called Gracie Mansion. It's not nice enough for him, you know ? He has not in any way attracted the ire of these [activists], which is shocking to me. I mean, when I walk around and sometimes these kids talk to me, I say, 'Go to Bloomberg's house.' You know, the day that they went to rich people's houses, I said, 'Go to Bloomberg's house,' and those kids said to me,'No, no, no. He's O.K., he said we could stay.' I said, 'What are you talking about ? This isn't his city. Anybody can stay. This is not his estate.' ..."And we've seen the new, doe-eyed Christine Quinn -- all of a sudden, champion of the people, you know, not in fact his henchman or henchwoman that she's been for the last 40 years of his mayoralty, who helped him overturn two elections in order to have this third term.
Two days after the Zucotti Park eviction, Ms. Lebowitz said, Mike Bloomberg "is a central villian in all this." In respect of Speaker Quinn, Ms. Lebowitz said, "She is an architect of this."
