The Tale of the Heike
In Japan in the 12th century, the Taira and the Minamoto clans battled for control of the country. This story is told in an epic tale known as The Tale of the Heike. There is a line in the story that reads "...the might fall at last, they are as dust before the wind." This quote immediately came to mind when I heard today of the passing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. No wind blew more fiercely that this man, who triumphed over injustice and endured what few of us could withstand.
He was a talented professional boxer with a spotty criminal record before he was wrongfully convicted of multiple counts of murder. Wrongfully convicted twice at trial. He did not give up his pursuit of justice and in November of 1985, nearly twenty years after the murders took place, Rubin Carter was released from prison on a writ of habeas corpus. Prosecutors considered trying him a third time but finally realized they could not convict him and dismissed the charges.
In the years after gaining his release, Rubin Carter spent years helping to free others who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. He was Executive Director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, from 1993 through 2005.
Two years ago his doctors informed him that he had prostate cancer and had between three months and six months left to live. Two years later, he finally succumbed. RIP
* * *
I saw an old friend today and learned for the first time that his daughter has given birth to a child within the past few weeks. When I first met this friend, his daughter just a child, working in the business owned and operated by her parents. I tutored her a little, helped her write the essay for her college application and of course, did her first tax return.
Now she lives halfway round the world and is a wife and mother. Her parents raised her to be an outstanding woman. However, I can't help but feel pride at having been at least a small positive influence on her life.
We talk about leaving the next generation a better world and a better life than we had. Maybe we can't do it as individuals on a grandiose scale. Instead, maybe we can do it by helping those within reach to better their own lives? Just a thought.
* * *
Normally, when a high-level executive has worked for a big corporation for a quarter of a century, they're probably not going to get fired over personal use of company email. Except of course for Darlene Tipton, who was Vice-President, Standards and Practices for the Fox Cable Networks. She was using her company email to try to raise funds for the families of the passengers on Malaysian Air Flight MH-370.
This whole thing is weird. She wanted to raise money for these people but also wanted them to waive their right to sue for damages. Why? "It isn't fair for them to benefit twice" was her statement on the subject but that just doesn't make sense.
How hard would it have been to use a personal email account? You can establish one in about three minutes.
Keep an eye on this one, it isn't over.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
New Jersey can't ban forms of the word "atheist" on their personalized license plates. Not when they approve a plate reading "Baptist."
There is no good reason to have a wedding with a Planet of the Apes theme.
No, landlords cannot charge on a per person basis. That would be discrimination against families.
Maybe everyone that subscribes to the notion that 4/20 is the best day to smoke some weed is doing it unconsciously because this is the birthdate of Adolf Hitler?
30,000 Chinese workers on strike for pensions after years of making Nikes. China passed laws requiring the employer to provide pensions and the like, but none of 400 probes into these companies showed any firm in full compliance with the laws. I guess our government's assistance in trying to move China from Communism to Capitalism included assistance in how to not run a government.
The Crash News Network should have stuck with the search for the plane rather than posing this question: "Can the Klan rebrand?" Hate doesn't need rebranding. It needs education to eliminate it.
The former Army Ranger who fired on the position where Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan is still suffused with remorse. He should forgive himself. The U. S. Army can never be forgiven for this and many other cover-ups.
More high school seniors are applying to more universities. The universities have to send out more acceptances in order to fill the entering class, given the resultant increase in offers of admission being declined. Competition is fierce. Maybe the time has come for a new system of college and university admissions.
It isn't a good thing for someone on the board that oversees the California Public Employee Retirement System to be consistently filing late reports. If she can't do that, how can she be trusted to properly protect the $288 billion in pension funds?
Judges should probably not be yelling "I hope you die in prison" at someone they just sentenced to life in prison.
I have no desire to see a short film titled "Dragula" with Barry Bostwick in the title role.
I'm sick and tired of hearing people claim their family was the creator of the corn dog on a stick. Stanley Jenkins came up with the idea at least a full decade before any of these people started making them.
* * *
April 20th in History (Hitler's birthdate having been noted above, he has been removed from the following list of events):
1303 – The Sapienza University of Rome is instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.
1453 – The last naval battle in Byzantine history occurs, as three Genoese galleys escorting a Byzantine transport fight their way through the huge Ottoman blockade fleet and into the Golden Horn.
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador.
1535 – The Sun dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting Vädersolstavlan.
1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1657 – Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 – The former king, James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry.
1752 – Start of Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, a new phase in the Burmese Civil War (1740–57)
1770 – The Georgian king, Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1789 – President George Washington arrives in Philadelphia after his inauguration to elaborate welcome at Gray's Ferry just after noon first inauguration of George Washington
1792 – France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.
1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.
1818 – The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle is upheld.
1828 – René Caillié becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbouctou.
1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the experiment falsifying the theory of spontaneous generation.
1865 – Astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the L'Immaculata Concezion.
1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law.
1876 – The April Uprising, a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from domination as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.
1884 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum Genus.
1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1908 – Opening day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League.
1912 – Opening day for baseball's Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston.
1914 – Nineteen men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner's strike.
1916 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.
1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.
1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.
1939 – Billie Holiday records the first civil rights song "Strange Fruit".
1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1945 – Twenty Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme are killed in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.
1946 – The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations.
1951 – Dan Gavriliu performs the first surgical replacement of a human organ.
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1964 – BBC Two launches with a power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.
1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.
1978 – Korean Air Lines Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.
1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1984 – The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada.
1985 – The ATF raids The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.
1986 – Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.
1998 – German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.
1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.
2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.
2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.
2013 – Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Japan's last reactor is shut down at midnight.
2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya'an, in China's Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.
Famous Folk Born on April 20th:
Emperor Go-Komyo of Japan
Napoleon III
William Bedloe
Eli Whitney Blake, Jr.
General Holland Smith (an exceptional U. S. Marine officer)
Walter Costello
Harold Lloyd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQmmds1QNFY)
Joan Miro
Edward L. Beach (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clQiHkRih7c Navy Cross recipient)
John Paul Stevens (retired USSC justice, WWII veteran and one of the few living witnesses to Babe Ruth's "called shot" in the 1932 World Series)
Tito Puente (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPvMEZoZoZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbVaisNPgh4)
Nina Foch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlqy_JJeMFA)
Guy Rocher
Robert Byrne
George Takei (http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi353305369/ and yes, that's George Takei standing next to John Wayne, when Wayne is introduced)
Ryan O'Neal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4Rfj1wp0Q)
Edie Sedgwick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8sptsjCk18)
Michael Brandon
Judith O'Dea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8dNRL0hNig)
Steve Spurrier
Bjorn Skiffs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-qweh7nbQ)
Jessica Lange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZjTxIrr4h0)
Luther Vandross (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIOu2sYxoc)
Clint Howard
Don Mattingly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Dnem1Edkk)
Crispin Glover (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYjdKbMT_c)
Lara Jill Miller
Felix Baumgartner (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f-K-XnHi9I)
Carmen Electra (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKp6a2fjna4)
Todd Hollandsworth (never developed much after his spectacular rookie season)
Joey Lawrence (weird how he and Lara Jill Miller have the same birthday)
Miranda Kerr (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPyPZNA89iQ)
He was a talented professional boxer with a spotty criminal record before he was wrongfully convicted of multiple counts of murder. Wrongfully convicted twice at trial. He did not give up his pursuit of justice and in November of 1985, nearly twenty years after the murders took place, Rubin Carter was released from prison on a writ of habeas corpus. Prosecutors considered trying him a third time but finally realized they could not convict him and dismissed the charges.
In the years after gaining his release, Rubin Carter spent years helping to free others who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. He was Executive Director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, from 1993 through 2005.
Two years ago his doctors informed him that he had prostate cancer and had between three months and six months left to live. Two years later, he finally succumbed. RIP
* * *
I saw an old friend today and learned for the first time that his daughter has given birth to a child within the past few weeks. When I first met this friend, his daughter just a child, working in the business owned and operated by her parents. I tutored her a little, helped her write the essay for her college application and of course, did her first tax return.
Now she lives halfway round the world and is a wife and mother. Her parents raised her to be an outstanding woman. However, I can't help but feel pride at having been at least a small positive influence on her life.
We talk about leaving the next generation a better world and a better life than we had. Maybe we can't do it as individuals on a grandiose scale. Instead, maybe we can do it by helping those within reach to better their own lives? Just a thought.
* * *
Normally, when a high-level executive has worked for a big corporation for a quarter of a century, they're probably not going to get fired over personal use of company email. Except of course for Darlene Tipton, who was Vice-President, Standards and Practices for the Fox Cable Networks. She was using her company email to try to raise funds for the families of the passengers on Malaysian Air Flight MH-370.
This whole thing is weird. She wanted to raise money for these people but also wanted them to waive their right to sue for damages. Why? "It isn't fair for them to benefit twice" was her statement on the subject but that just doesn't make sense.
How hard would it have been to use a personal email account? You can establish one in about three minutes.
Keep an eye on this one, it isn't over.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
New Jersey can't ban forms of the word "atheist" on their personalized license plates. Not when they approve a plate reading "Baptist."
There is no good reason to have a wedding with a Planet of the Apes theme.
No, landlords cannot charge on a per person basis. That would be discrimination against families.
Maybe everyone that subscribes to the notion that 4/20 is the best day to smoke some weed is doing it unconsciously because this is the birthdate of Adolf Hitler?
30,000 Chinese workers on strike for pensions after years of making Nikes. China passed laws requiring the employer to provide pensions and the like, but none of 400 probes into these companies showed any firm in full compliance with the laws. I guess our government's assistance in trying to move China from Communism to Capitalism included assistance in how to not run a government.
The Crash News Network should have stuck with the search for the plane rather than posing this question: "Can the Klan rebrand?" Hate doesn't need rebranding. It needs education to eliminate it.
The former Army Ranger who fired on the position where Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan is still suffused with remorse. He should forgive himself. The U. S. Army can never be forgiven for this and many other cover-ups.
More high school seniors are applying to more universities. The universities have to send out more acceptances in order to fill the entering class, given the resultant increase in offers of admission being declined. Competition is fierce. Maybe the time has come for a new system of college and university admissions.
It isn't a good thing for someone on the board that oversees the California Public Employee Retirement System to be consistently filing late reports. If she can't do that, how can she be trusted to properly protect the $288 billion in pension funds?
Judges should probably not be yelling "I hope you die in prison" at someone they just sentenced to life in prison.
I have no desire to see a short film titled "Dragula" with Barry Bostwick in the title role.
I'm sick and tired of hearing people claim their family was the creator of the corn dog on a stick. Stanley Jenkins came up with the idea at least a full decade before any of these people started making them.
* * *
April 20th in History (Hitler's birthdate having been noted above, he has been removed from the following list of events):
1303 – The Sapienza University of Rome is instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.
1453 – The last naval battle in Byzantine history occurs, as three Genoese galleys escorting a Byzantine transport fight their way through the huge Ottoman blockade fleet and into the Golden Horn.
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador.
1535 – The Sun dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting Vädersolstavlan.
1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1657 – Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 – The former king, James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry.
1752 – Start of Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, a new phase in the Burmese Civil War (1740–57)
1770 – The Georgian king, Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1789 – President George Washington arrives in Philadelphia after his inauguration to elaborate welcome at Gray's Ferry just after noon first inauguration of George Washington
1792 – France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.
1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.
1818 – The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle is upheld.
1828 – René Caillié becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbouctou.
1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the experiment falsifying the theory of spontaneous generation.
1865 – Astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the L'Immaculata Concezion.
1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law.
1876 – The April Uprising, a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from domination as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.
1884 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum Genus.
1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1908 – Opening day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League.
1912 – Opening day for baseball's Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston.
1914 – Nineteen men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner's strike.
1916 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.
1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.
1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.
1939 – Billie Holiday records the first civil rights song "Strange Fruit".
1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1945 – Twenty Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme are killed in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.
1946 – The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations.
1951 – Dan Gavriliu performs the first surgical replacement of a human organ.
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1964 – BBC Two launches with a power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.
1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.
1978 – Korean Air Lines Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.
1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1984 – The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada.
1985 – The ATF raids The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.
1986 – Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.
1998 – German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.
1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.
2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.
2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.
2013 – Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Japan's last reactor is shut down at midnight.
2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya'an, in China's Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.
Famous Folk Born on April 20th:
Emperor Go-Komyo of Japan
Napoleon III
William Bedloe
Eli Whitney Blake, Jr.
General Holland Smith (an exceptional U. S. Marine officer)
Walter Costello
Harold Lloyd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQmmds1QNFY)
Joan Miro
Edward L. Beach (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clQiHkRih7c Navy Cross recipient)
John Paul Stevens (retired USSC justice, WWII veteran and one of the few living witnesses to Babe Ruth's "called shot" in the 1932 World Series)
Tito Puente (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPvMEZoZoZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbVaisNPgh4)
Nina Foch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlqy_JJeMFA)
Guy Rocher
Robert Byrne
George Takei (http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi353305369/ and yes, that's George Takei standing next to John Wayne, when Wayne is introduced)
Ryan O'Neal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4Rfj1wp0Q)
Edie Sedgwick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8sptsjCk18)
Michael Brandon
Judith O'Dea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8dNRL0hNig)
Steve Spurrier
Bjorn Skiffs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-qweh7nbQ)
Jessica Lange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZjTxIrr4h0)
Luther Vandross (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIOu2sYxoc)
Clint Howard
Don Mattingly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Dnem1Edkk)
Crispin Glover (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYjdKbMT_c)
Lara Jill Miller
Felix Baumgartner (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f-K-XnHi9I)
Carmen Electra (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKp6a2fjna4)
Todd Hollandsworth (never developed much after his spectacular rookie season)
Joey Lawrence (weird how he and Lara Jill Miller have the same birthday)
Miranda Kerr (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPyPZNA89iQ)
posted by me at 8:34 PM
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