Café con Leche

Segregated Proms

I thought this practice ended 30 years ago but I guess not.

Lifetime is airing a movie based on the true-life story of Gerica McCrary, who in 2002 fought to have her high school, Taylor County High School in Butler, Georgia, integrate their senior dance after 31 years of segregation. Unfortunately, things went back to normal the following year.

Billboard Controversy

Even I find this billboard offensive. If Mexicans love Mexico so much, they should stay there otherwise learn to live and respect this country. Spanish television does not promote illegal immigration as these people seem to think. It's a business; the demand is there and someone is going to make money off it. However, crossing off CA and replacing it with Mexico is pretty insulting to all of us who live in CA.

New billboards advertising a Spanish-language newscast on KRCA-TV Channel 62 were intended as an attention-grabber for its core audience, but instead have struck a nerve with activists seeking to curb illegal immigration.

Daryl Jurbala, communications director for Americans for Legal Immigration said that

"I don't think it's responsible for anyone to encourage or reward or try to make illegal immigrants feel welcome."

We Misunderestimated our President

Possibly the worse Bushism ever

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

At what point do we cross the line?

Another story about Indians and the Secret Service.

President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.


The Star refused to provide the information.


[...]


Organizer Christine Walton asked for Popat's race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.

He’d been explaining how the SPD are required to investigate all calls, which I said I understood, but I was still looking for some real accountability. That’s when one of the three non-uniformed men stepped forward, brandishing his badge, and began talking at me with his own rendition of the voice of absolute authority.


“I’ve listened to this for over five minutes. Look here. You see this?” Special Agent McNamara said, producing his badge. “This is a federal badge. We’re not with the rest of them. We’re federal agents from Homeland Security...”

Don Emilio Fulci

I can't imagine that this story is true.

It was the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. "Stand down," came the order from embarrassed national security types.

Desprate for a Job

The NY Times this weekend featured the outlandish lengths that job seekers are forced to go in this bad economy.

Desperation appears to be the order of the day, with unemployment at a nine-year high. About 25 percent of the nine million Americans counted as unemployed have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, according to the Department of Labor. In some of the hardest-hit industries, like technology, finance and manufacturing, many white-collar workers have been out of work two years or and more.

"These times are rife with the temptation to do extreme things," said Andrew Sherwood, chairman of the human resources firm Goodrich & Sherwood Associates, which is based in New York. "More and more, necessity is a driver. Job seekers have moved from the cocky 'buy me if you like' approach of the '90's to doing and saying whatever it takes to get a job."

The hard-knocks atmosphere has led DiMassimo Brand Consultancy, a New York City advertising firm, to conjure up a job competition styled after the "Survivor" reality TV show. Starting Sept. 15, 10 contestants, all eager for an entry-level job at the agency, will move into DiMassimo's Madison Avenue office, which will be renamed DiMassimo Island for the occasion.

Over several days, they will compete in a range of advertising-related tasks, including an "all-nighter" to put together an ad proposal and make attempts to get a meeting with the chief executive of a company whose account DiMassimo has been trying to land. DiMassimo executives will vote contestants off the island every night until they have a winner. The last person standing earns the entry-level position, with an initial salary of $25,000 to $30,000.

[...]

Stephan Schiffman did not even have a position open when a Washington man recently showed up without warning at his Manhattan sales training company, the DEI Management Group. Though the man was denied entry, he refused to leave the downstairs lobby, where he waited for the next two hours, even after security was called. In the end, Mr. Schiffman saw the man to appease him.

"He claimed he wanted to talk about a book that I'd written, but he ended up begging for a job," Mr. Schiffman recalled. "He was completely wired, bouncing off the walls. Even if we'd had something available, he wasn't qualified."

Another man, after being turned down for a position at DEI's Huntington Beach, Calif., office, came to work anyway. "He hired himself," Mr. Schiffman said. "Some of the managers were away after the interview and the people just assumed that he'd gotten the job." Like everyone else working there, he came and went from 9 to 5, spending a total of a week or so blending into the ordinary rhythms of office life before he was finally discovered and asked to leave

Access to Healthy Foods Limited in Poor Neighborhoods

Most people think that poor people are fat/obese because they like to eat junk/unhealthy food where as I think it's because they don't have easy access to healthy food, i.e. fruits and vegetables. Now a new study confirms that grocery stores in lower income black neighboorhoods offer fewer healthy foods than stores in more affluent areas. The poorer neighborhoods tend to have more "mom and pop" stores which don't have the space nor the relationship with distributors to get a large variety of goods and therefore provide fewer choices to their customers. Furthermore, the lack of private transportations makes it difficult for poor people to leave their neighborhoods in search of healthy food.

Last month, researchers from USC and UCLA and another local advocacy group, Community Health Councils Inc., added numbers to the pictures. Their survey, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, compared grocery stores in affluent, mostly white neighborhoods in West Los Angeles with those in low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods in South L.A., Inglewood and North Long Beach.

In West L.A., 80% of the stores carried skim milk, compared with 38% in South L.A., where some didn't carry milk at all. West L.A. stores stocked, on average, 26 types of fruit and 38 kinds of vegetables, twice the variety found in South L.A. stores. In West L.A., 33% of the stores had a diabetic food section, compared with just 4% in South L.A. stores. Yet African Americans are twice as likely as whites to suffer from diabetes.

[...]

According to the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, the ratio of major grocery stores to population in South L.A. remains at pre-1992 levels of one for every 42,000 people, compared with one for every 24,000 people in Los Angeles County overall.

Cleary, large corporations could make so much money if only they were willing to take risk and open grocery stores in these neighborhoods.

Valedictorian flunks out

Bridget Green, the valedictorian of Alcee Fortier Senior High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, failed to graduate because she flunked the math portion of the exit exam five times.

Bridget received an A in her Algebra II class and top grades in all her other classes yet she couldn't pass this basic test. How can someone who failed a 10th level math test get an A in Algebra II? And the most shocking part is that the principal was shocked that this would happen.

I don't know whether to feel sorry for her or to be angry at the school system especially after taking a look at the sample questions.