Category Archives: Justice

The pain pills saga

The dentist prescribed ibuprofen 800s and, for me to take at night if the toothache became severe, Hydrocodon-Acetaminoph 7.5-325.  This is a narcotic.  “Pain pills.”

I have a large zipper bag with four compartments.  There is a main compartment, which I can lock; a front compartment; a left side compartment; and a right side compartment.

Every afternoon when I sit on my bunk, I empty my pockets and put my phone, debit card, and cash in the main compartment.  I take my afternoon meds, which are already in there, and lock it all back up.

Related:  Giving it all away

Continue reading The pain pills saga

Why you should know about Freddie Gray’s life

Janell Ross’s 12/19/15 WaPo column includes a remarkable statement:

The abbreviated and not at all easy life of Freddie Gray was, to some extent, shaped by Gray’s choices. He was an American and an adult with at least some of the attendant free will that people assume comes with either status.

In the present political climate, I never expected to see such words in print.

Read the article:
Continue reading Why you should know about Freddie Gray’s life

This program turned me away.

Adapted from a 12/03/15 e-mail to my brothers and some others.

Given instability at the shelter where I’ve been for almost five years, I decided to apply to a certain program affiliated with a major national charity and major local soup kitchen.  This program is residential, has a nice facility, and (as I understood it) was geared toward taking men with histories of addiction or homelessness and rendering them self-supporting.

Since it is a residential program, I would no longer have to carry my bags everywhere I go, vastly increasing the radius within which I can look for work; and, I supposed, I would be able to work any shift.  After all, unlike the shelter where I’ve been, they’ve got a big shove towards self-sufficiency.

They rejected me.

I wrote:

Baptismal grace means: when you get knocked down, you get back up.

Blog post (from October ’14, about getting back up): Life in the outer darkness

In the immediate future, I will be checking out options in transitional housing, and case management services at the clinic where I’m currently in treatment for everything I’m in treatment for.

=====================================

What happened?

Continue reading This program turned me away.

Headlines about race

Beginning as of the earliest link below, I have, and plan to continue to, attempted in good faith to copy every single headline that appears in my Yahoo! News feed pertinent attitudes toward race.

My hypothesis was that, overwhelmingly, it is only the attitudes of white people towards race, that are studied and reported.  The data here below speak for themselves.

Continue reading Headlines about race

“Seeing red” is real. But how does it happen?

The scientific reason your world brightens up when you do

This study affirms some common observations about color perceptions and emotional states. When one is enraged, the color red appears more vivid in one’s perceptions; when depressed, the color blue. When one feels elated, all colors appear brighter, and in times of severe depression color perception can all but disappear; the world looks black and white.  Or, perhaps, bleak and white.

The study attempts, and IMO fails, to attribute these things to the activity of neurotransmitters such as dopamine.  But there is no finding of direct action by such neurotransmitters on the color-perceiving apparatus of the visual cortex.

Continue reading “Seeing red” is real. But how does it happen?

Justice for Jazmine Barnes

On Sunday, December 30, 2018, this 7-year old girl was sitting in the rear of her mother’s SUV as it exited the parking lot of a Houston shopping center.  A pickup truck pulled alongside, and someone in that truck opened fire upon Jazmine’s vehicle, killing her and injuring several others.

Her mother, the driver of her vehicle, said the shooter was white.

A firestorm of racial furor ensued.  Perennial race-baiting provocateur Shaun King offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perp.  Someone claimed it.  However, persons the snitch named are both black.

Man convicted in Texas girl’s death as family went to store

Related:  I really want to see Shaun King pay a snitch $100K.