Esoterica
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This work by Mikki Kendall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 
 
 

tytodiem:

“It is as beautiful as it is rare.  A frost flower is created on autumn or early winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants or occasionally wood. This extrusion creates wonderful patterns which curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance.”

 
 
deluxvivens: jtotheizzoe: grazgul: Just your daily reminder that this exists. Being a former and current Longhorn, I really enjoyed this issue of The Alcalde (our alumni magazine). Because this guy is my guy. But when you dig a little deeper into Dr. Tyson’s time in Austin, a frustratingly sad story emerges. Not only was Neil looked down upon by many “in charge” (but not all) for his desire to popularize science early on and live a full life (I feel him on that one), but he was stopped by campus police fairly often on his way to the physics building, across the street from where I work. How many times was he stopped going to the gym? Zero. On the first day, they told him they needed to play on the faculty basketball team. I know it’s not indicative of my university as a whole, but as much as we’d like to think that’s history, it still happens today, for reasons more than color. Perhaps less than years past, but until it’s never, it’s too often. I don’t want to miss the next Dr. Tyson because we judge them at the door and don’t let them be the full person they are. Science is an open club, no membership rules, no dress code, and no limits! Ron McNair got plenty of that as well— i’ve heard stories about his charming racist classmates.
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deluxvivens:

jtotheizzoe:

grazgul:

Just your daily reminder that this exists.

Being a former and current Longhorn, I really enjoyed this issue of The Alcalde (our alumni magazine). Because this guy is my guy. But when you dig a little deeper into Dr. Tyson’s time in Austin, a frustratingly sad story emerges.

Not only was Neil looked down upon by many “in charge” (but not all) for his desire to popularize science early on and live a full life (I feel him on that one), but he was stopped by campus police fairly often on his way to the physics building, across the street from where I work. How many times was he stopped going to the gym? Zero. On the first day, they told him they needed to play on the faculty basketball team.

I know it’s not indicative of my university as a whole, but as much as we’d like to think that’s history, it still happens today, for reasons more than color. Perhaps less than years past, but until it’s never, it’s too often.

I don’t want to miss the next Dr. Tyson because we judge them at the door and don’t let them be the full person they are. Science is an open club, no membership rules, no dress code, and no limits!

Ron McNair got plenty of that as well— i’ve heard stories about his charming racist classmates.

 
 

When people ask—and it seems like people always be askin to where I can’t never get away from it—I say, Yeah, that’s right, my mother name was Henrietta Lacks, she died in 1951, John Hopkins took her cells and them cells are still livin today, still multiplyin, still growin and spreadin if you don’t keep em frozen. Science calls her HeLa and she’s all over the world in medical facilities, in all the computers and the Internet everywhere.

When I go to the doctor for my checkups I always say my mother was HeLa. They get all excited, tell me stuff like how her cells helped make my blood pressure medicines and antidepression pills and how all this important stuff in science happen cause of her. But they don’t never explain more than just sayin, Yeah, your mother was on the moon, she been in nuclear bombs and made that polio vaccine. I really don’t know how she did all that, but I guess I’m glad she did, cause that means she helpin lots of people. I think she would like that.

But I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was.

Deborah Lacks, as quoted in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (via greaterthanlapsed)

(Source: existentialcrisisfactory)

 
 
spastasmagoria: npr: ‘Softball-Sized Eyeball’ Washes Up In Florida; Can You I.D. It? via The Two-Way Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission WE WANT THIS MYSTERY SOLVED! — Tanya B. Oh. My. 

spastasmagoria:

npr:

‘Softball-Sized Eyeball’ Washes Up In Florida; Can You I.D. It? via The Two-Way

Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

WE WANT THIS MYSTERY SOLVED! — Tanya B.

Oh. My. 

 
 
Watermelons in the Sand of Sahara: Cultivation and use of indigenous landraces in the Tombouctou Region of Mali

notime4yourshit:

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai) is mainly cultivated worldwide for its dessert type, sweet, red flesh fruits. Other types with white flesh are cultivated for their seeds more locally in some parts of the world. The cultivation and use of these watermelons are less documented than the dessert type watermelons.

This photo essay describes and documents watermelon production and processing of seeds of indigenous, white flesh watermelons in the Tombouctou region of Mali. The crop is grown in sandy soils in the desert, relying on a short period of rain for the seed to germinate.

In 2008 the watermelons were cultivated on around 540 ha in the region. Three watermelon seed types were identified: Fombou, Kaneye, and Musa Musa. For many people the seeds from these types are an important food source. In addition, dessert types called Kankani were also cultivated.

The men take care of the field work related to the watermelon production and the women in the households process seeds into various snacks, flour to make sauces, and oil for meal preparations. Many use most of the seeds in their own household, and only surplus seed is sold on the market. Women, often organized in groups, are also engaged in local sale of the seed derived products.

 
 
the-painted-wren: wethetrees: roseweightless-blue: The Sun and Inner Planets Moving Through Space People always seem to forget that our solar system isn’t stationary. We’re all flying through spaaace, man. dude. This never occurred to me. Whoa. I might just start screaming in horrified joy.

the-painted-wren:

wethetrees:

roseweightless-blue:

The Sun and Inner Planets Moving Through Space

People always seem to forget that our solar system isn’t stationary. We’re all flying through spaaace, man.

dude.

This never occurred to me.

Whoa.

I might just start screaming in horrified joy.

(Source: cyberneticstarchild)

 
 

Different Place, Different Race: Lumbees in Florida’s Panhandle

oklahomboy:

Different Place, Different Race: Lumbees in the Florida Panhandle

The Jones Family and the Florida and North Carolina Census

This is a handy example of hundreds of Indians from the Florida panhandle who often migrated back and forth between North Carolina and Florida. Many had family roots in Robeson County North Carolina but had been living in Floridas Lumbee settlemets at Scotts Town (Jackson County), Scotts Ferry (Calhoun County), Woods (Liberty County), and others for generations. In the Carolinas these Indians were identified as “Indian” but in Florida would be identified as “White”, or more often, as” Black”, “negro”, or “Mulatto” by census takers and local officials. Hundreds of court cases, military enlistment forms, and other documentary evidence point to this being common during the 1860-1960 Jim Crow era. Indian in the Carolinas had enough clout to be able to muster some small amount of political control over their identity, but the small amount of Indians in north Florida’s panhandle were often documented as catching the brunt of the local white power structures uninformed attitudes and actions towards native Americans, especially in the lower south such as Florida’s panhandle, south Alabama, and south Georgia, places many Lumbee and Sumter County Cheraw had migrated to work in the turpentine industries.

The comparison of these two identifications of the same people as 2 different races on 2 different documents illustrates this lack of self-determination the Florida Lumbee was saddled with.

1910 census…Walton County….Bruce Community….Florida
#57   Jones, Arther E     36   white male   b.NC   turpentiner
         ”    ” , Dovie        30   white female b.NC
         “    ” , Alton         5   white  male   b.FL
         “    ” , Margaret    3    white female b.FL
         “    ” , Grace        1    white female  b.FL
 
1920 the whole family back in Robeson Co. NC censused as “Indian”
 
1930 census….Robeson County NC….Pembroke Dist 35
         Jones, Arthur C     57   Indian full-blood   b. NC
         “     ” , Dovie        52   Indian full-blood   b. NC
         “     ” , Alton B      24   Indian full-blood   b. FL
         “     ” , Margaret   28    Indian full-blood   b. FL
 
The Jones family was one of two dozen Lumbee families living and working in Florida on and off. Some of the other families with similar situations include the Ammons, Ayers, Barnwell, Bass, Blanchard, Boggs, Brown, Bullard, Bunch, Bryant, Chason, Chavis/Chavers, Conyers, Copeland, Davis, Doyle, Goins, Hall, Harris, Hicks, Hill, Holly, Ireland, Jacobs, Johnson, Jones, Kever, Long, Lovett, Mainer, Martin, Mayo, Moses, Oxendine, Perkins, Porter, Potter, Quinn, Scott, Simmons, Smith, Stafford, Stephens, Sweat, Thomas, Whitfield, and Williams

By Chris Sewell - http://floridahybridpeoples.blogspot.com/

 
 

notime4yourshit:

The Legacy Of The Black Scientific Renaissance In The 70’s 80’s & 90’s

William Massey, who was a researcher at Bell Laboratories for 20 years, explains how the three decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s at Bell Labs were to black scientists what the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was to black artists.

 
 
Birth of 30 Genetically Modified Babies May Lead to a 'Designer' Human Race - ICTMN.com

adailyriot:

The recent birth of 30 genetically modified (GM) babies has sparked an ethical debate over whether fertility experiments help hopeful parents conceive or if scientists are altering humanity.

The existence of the infants was revealed the night of June 29. Fifteen of the babies were created over the past three years in a fertility program run by the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science (IRMS) of Saint Barnabas in New Jersey. They are all healthy.

Two of these one-year-old infants have the genes of three parents—two women and one man, reported the Daily Mail. Scientists were tasked with repairing the defected eggs of women undergoing infertility treatment, so they inserted mitochondria from donor eggs into these eggs, in addition to DNA from sperm cells. Their efforts were successful, creating at least two babies with the DNA of three parents. If these GM babies reproduce, this genetic change will be passed on to their offspring. The long-term effects of carrying DNA from three parents is yet to be seen.

Toying with the essential make-up of the human species is shunned by some geneticists, who fear that this technique could lead to the creation of a new race of humans—a designer breed crafted to amplify, pluck or fuse superior characteristics such as beauty, strength or high intelligence.

Professor Jacques Cohen, the IRMS science director who trained the embryology group for 18 years, discovered the method used to create GM children. He is regarded as a highly controversial yet brilliant pioneer in reproductive medicine. Among his most notable accomplishments, he is responsible for making it possible for infertile men to have children of their own by injecting sperm DNA directly into a fertile egg in a petri-dish.

However, many view his research and ambitions—such as his claim that he could clone children—as overstepping the boundaries of nature. “It would be an afternoon’s work for one of my students,” Cohen said of cloning a child. He has reportedly been approached by “at least three” individuals asking him to clone a child, but he had to deny their requests.

Indian Country Today Media Network wants to know your opinions on genetically altered babies: Is it the beginning of a new and potentially beneficial frontier in reproduction, or could playing Creator backfire?



 
 
madamethursday: [Image: A hand drawn illustration from a book of three African doctors assisting a pregnant person in labor, who is laying on a bed. One doctor holds the person’s stomach, the other their feet, and the third a knife to begin a c-section. They are in a square room of some kind.] angrybrownbaby: fyeahblackhistory: AN EXAMPLE OF AFRICAN MEDICAL SCIENCE. ILLUSTRATION OF AFRICAN DOCTORS IN 19TH CENTURY (1879) KAHARA,UGANDA PERFORMING A CAESARIAN SECTION. THIS OPERATION WAS UNKNOWN IN EUROPE AT THE TIME. Africans were performing many advanced medical procedures long before they had been conceived in Europe this is just one of many examples. The British traveler R.W. Felkin who reported this noted that the healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and Felkin concluded that this technique was well-developed and had clearly been employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing. Referece: “Notes on Labour in Central Africa” published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, volume 20, April 1884, pages 922-930. Click here for more. For folks who think c-sections are an invention made by western medicine.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m44w3ighJU1qgfbgio1_1280.jpg

madamethursday:

[Image: A hand drawn illustration from a book of three African doctors assisting a pregnant person in labor, who is laying on a bed. One doctor holds the person’s stomach, the other their feet, and the third a knife to begin a c-section. They are in a square room of some kind.]

angrybrownbaby:

fyeahblackhistory:

AN EXAMPLE OF AFRICAN MEDICAL SCIENCE. ILLUSTRATION OF AFRICAN DOCTORS IN 19TH CENTURY (1879) KAHARA,UGANDA PERFORMING A CAESARIAN SECTION. THIS OPERATION WAS UNKNOWN IN EUROPE AT THE TIME.

Africans were performing many advanced medical procedures long before they had been conceived in Europe this is just one of many examples.

The British traveler R.W. Felkin who reported this noted that the healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and Felkin concluded that this technique was well-developed and had clearly been employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing.

Referece: “Notes on Labour in Central Africa” published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, volume 20, April 1884, pages 922-930.

Click here for more.

For folks who think c-sections are an invention made by western medicine.

 
 
 
 
 
 
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