So the idea is that Natural Human Rights arose out of the observation that people naturally followed certain laws even if they weren’t told to do so.  These were called “natural rights.”  It started with “Cyrus the Great” as stated on the webpage of the United for Human Rights website.  Quoting from the website just mentioned, it reads, “In 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia, conquered the city of Babylon. But it was his next actions that marked a major advance for Man. He freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder in the Akkadian language with cuneiform script.

Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient record has now been recognized as the world’s first charter of human rights.”

It is interesting and one can be proud as an American that we are part of this history of establishing, declaring and defending a set of human rights.  These rights were declared and defined in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.  The United States had declared their independence from the British because, while the British king had recognized the idea of human rights, the United States felt that they must take a stronger stance in defending a set of human rights for our people (or for all people, at least in principal).

What does this mean, if you think about it?  Well, it means that people fought and gave their lives for these principles, for these rights, in America, and elsewhere as well, of course.  Though, the US Constitution is the oldest written national constitution in use.  From this beginning, until now, this has been a defining characteristic of who we are as a country and nation.  Presidents are sworn to defend this constitution.  One can say that one loves his or her country to the extent to which he or she believes and supports all of these “rights,” because they do define America and who we are.  While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a defining characteristic of America, many of the rights in the Universal Declaration are in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

It has been very perplexing to me to notice that at times, those people or groups, who defend and advocate for these rights, are viewed in a negative light and given negative labels.  These are the rights that define us as a country.  It seems to be a given that if you love your country you will defend the principles upon which that country is founded and defined.  It would make more sense to say that an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union is a defender of these same values and beliefs – the same values that define us as a country.  That truly is something that is perplexing to me.  Even my left, logical brain, sees contradictions in the way that some people and groups have been viewed, or scorned, for believing in these values and advocating for the defense of these values, or rights.  There will always be crises but immediately afterward, we as a nation do realize who we really are and what defines us… that there was always good and moral reasons for establishing these rights for all people and that by writing it into a constitution we can be guided in determining the just thing to do, the best moral decision based on these rights, these principles.

As I had mentioned, it puzzles me when I notice that some of these rights that define us as a country, are found to be inconvenient, disagreeable or when they are challenged and that two people who equally love their country could be on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to the defense of these rights.   Specifically, I’d like to refer to the following rights (I will refer to items from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the assumption that one can find a similar right specified in our Constitution or Bill of Rights) :

1) Article 5.  No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

2) Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. and related to this is,

3) Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

I would find it highly immoral to deny any of those rights.  Yet, our nation did these things.  My left, logical, brain says that is and was morally wrong and unjust.  It is embarrassing for anyone who loves America to realize that this did happen and was done.

4) Article 11 – 1 Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.

5) What is most important to be noticed about Article 19, is that this right of freedom of expression, exists regardless of frontiers.  People have gotten angry at those who would protest their countries actions, “on foreign soil” as if that was not their right.  It is, though indeed, one might not find it spelled out in our constitution but neither is it’s opposite:  “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

6) Article 22: “Everyone has the right to social security…”

7) Article 23: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment… and Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

Article 25: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

9) It wasn’t clear that any of these specifically define a right to protection against unlawful search and seizure. 

I believe in these rights because I think they are necessary for justice and a moral society.  Defending and supporting these rights is an expression of righteous behavior and belief.  It seems to me that most if not all of these reflect the values of America and as such define who we are as a nation.  I believe there are good reasons for all of these rights.

So for us in America, spring is coming.  In another place, so far away, the Persian New Year approaches.  It is called No Rouz.  There is a great tradition of 12 days of celebration, being with family and gift giving.  On Wikipedia, it is spelled Nowruz, meaning “New Day” – that is the name for the Iranian New Year and corresponding traditional celebrations.  Nowruz is widely referred to as the Persian New Year.

Continuing from Wikipedia.org:

Nowruz and the spring equinox

The first day on the Iranian calendar falls on the March equinox, the first day of spring. At the time of the equinox, the sun is observed to be directly over the equator, and the north and south poles of the Earth lie along the solar terminator; sunlight is evenly divided between the north and south hemispheres.

So, this is now a time that has greater meaning for me than in so many past years.  Yet, we will be apart, my wife and I, on this time of celebration.  Sometimes it seems there is Nietzsche’s void that separates us and at other times, I think of Victor Frankl who penned the book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  He was writing from a concentration camp…  and somehow, without knowing where his wife was, as they were separated, he could feel a connection to her.

Pictured left “Sofreyeh Haft Seen”. These things represent good fortune for the coming year: health, posterity, happiness, well-being, and prosperity.  This image is taken from the website: Culture of Iran: No-Rooz, The Iranian New Year at Present Times

I am part of a group in my Church and have felt inspired to do things that involve giving and acting to help others and putting our teaching, our beliefs, our morals into action.

This is what I wrote for my about statement as to why I was joining Moveon.org:”I am a business owner of Future Wave Designs, a NC Web Design and Web Development company, located in Carrboro. I also work a second job to make ends meet when work is slow in web design and development. I have a background in social work. I want to get involved in doing things that make a difference in my community. I feel that I have a moral obligation to work for a more just and fair society that cares about the people, all people, especially the most vulnerable. This is a part of who I am, my values and beliefs.”

So, here is Jean’s poem.

What did I want?

By Jean Jones

Sometimes it takes a dream to remind me
to remind me what I wanted my whole life.
Some people dream of being famous, some people dream of being rich.
I dreamt of being a writer, and even more so, a good one at that.
I dreamt of a writer whol lived perhaps, in New York,
perhaps a Beat Writer, like Burroughs, except he lived in Wilmington,
like I lived, and he knew the writers I knew, like Ron Bayes,
and Howard McCord,
and there he was on the radio, talking about another writer he knew,
a contemporary who went to school when I when to school,
who got a degree like I got a degree, and he was honoring her,
like I would like to be honored,
and it all came back to haunt me when I woke up:
In the end, I wanted to be a writer and famous,
not famous like American Idol,
but famous like William Burroughs,
so punk rocksters like Ian Curtis who I worshipped,
would pay homage to me like I wanted.
I thought of something I had read before
I went to bed:
from the Bible, of all things, and it opened a window to my heart: It said,
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,”
and He did,
in a dream, in a reminder of what I always wanted: Not fame, not money,
but respect
as a writer, a desire many others I have known,
and some of them that I met also
got famous,
and made a career as a writer,
while others, like me, simply watched them as we
went on with our lives. . .

The latest addition to the collection “The Angel of Death” by Jean Jones, is reproduced below. I enjoyed this, I hope you will as well. Jean offers this introduction, with his poem below.

The youngest son of the late shah of Iran was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston, after he had “struggled for years to overcome his sorrow,” his brother said.

Pahlavi, 44, died from a gunshot wound that apparently was self-inflicted, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office.

Boston police said officers responding to a 911 call found the man dead in his home in the city’s South End neighborhood shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. A police spokesman did not know who made the call or whether it came from the home.

Fardia Pars, who is close to Reza Pahlavi, said by phone from Paris that Alireza Pahlavi went into a deep depression following the 2001 death of his sister Leila Pahlavi, who was found in a London hotel room at age 31 after overdosing on barbiturates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/alireza-pahlavi-suicide-i_n_804347.html

THE ANGEL OF DEATH MAKES A VISIT BY JEAN JONES

“So, you’ve come by at last.”

“Were you expecting me?”

“Ever since her death, I’ve been waiting.”

“Did you think you’d escape?”

“No. I knew you’d come.”

“Well, unlike the Romanovs, you escaped.”

“No one escapes you. I know that. My father didn’t escape you.”

“No, he did not. He escaped being sent back to Iran in exchange for the hostages, but I claimed him at the end. Do you know what his final words were?”

“I’ve read them many times: “I wait upon Fate, never ceasing to pray for Iran, and for my people. I think only of their suffering.”

“And now it’s your turn.”

“How do you want it to end?”

“There’s a gun there by the desk. You know what to do.”

“Were you there when the Romanovs were killed?”

“I watched how the princesses had to be finished off with bayonets as they had stuffed jewels in their blouses which had deflected the bullets.”

“You make sure it all works out in the end, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And what happens to Iran?”

“Many believe that Iran’s fate is being left to the hands of six world powers.”

“And what do you think?”

“After this I saw another angel with great authority coming down from heaven, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. He cried in a mighty voice:
It has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen!

She has become a dwelling for demons,

a haunt for every unclean spirit,

a haunt for every unclean bird,

and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast.

For all the nations have drunk

the wine of her sexual immorality, which brings wrath.”

“Operator, I want to report a death at the South End. . .”

I was first inspired to do this in a class that was part of my Master’s Degree program in Social Work. The geneogram was introduced and it bears much in similarity to the family tree. A geneogram usually includes more or a specific focus on family trends that are passed on from generation to generation and other family dynamics.

In addition, the semantic web technologies are perfectly appropriate and helpful for genealogy, and family tree writing. The word Semantics deals with meanings. In the sense of the semantic web we are looking at embedding meaning into web content so that computers can understand it and work with it.

Popular sites like Ancestry.com and Familypedia.wikia.com
exist for this purpose. The latter is a wiki., that uses the mediawiki software, which also powers Wikipedia.org

I met Thomas through the poetry readings in Wilmington, NC, soon after I moved there in 1992, over 18 years ago – nearly half a lifetime ago. I had just come to a new city and knew no one. I was becoming a poet, as it were. So, I found out about a weekly poetry readings, an open-mike, at the Coastline Convention Center, overlooking the Cape Fear River in downtown Wilmington. It was a great atmosphere. Very nurturing. I don’t mean just the location and the scenery, though that was nice. I mean the people, the MC – her name was Dusty. A circle of friends developed. A group of regulars. Thomas was among those. There was also Jean Jones, my co-editor with Word Salad Poetry Magazine… David Capps… Just Jeff Wyatt… and others. We would all share our poetry and our lives.

It was in that context that we became met and became friends.

Some many years later, I moved away from Wilmington, to the triangle area of NC – Chapel Hill area. For a while there, Thomas and I lost touch with each other… until last year, in 2009. What struck me was how easily we were able to reconnect and resume our friendship. I don’t know why 9 years went by without us staying in touch but that didn’t matter any longer.

Unfortunately, Thomas said his poetry from the 90s and before then was lost. That is indeed unfortunate. So, I would ask him about what new poems he had written. For a while, he wasn’t finding the time to write. He had lost his wife, tragically, to suicide. He said he had a haiku poem about that and in her memory. Wow! To sum up anything at all relating to such, with a haiku! Anyway, then he did start writing again. You can find a poem by Thomas Childs in the Fall 2010 edition of Word Salad.

I guess it goes without saying, that I wish he had more time… time to share more of his talents – his writing with others. It would have been quite a gift. One of the hardest things about writing something like this, is not feeling like one has said enough. I guess that’s ok. I titled this, “thinking about…” so, perhaps I’ve left an opening to say more later.

I Don’t Understand by Jean Jones

Whenever it happens, I don’t understand except for rare instances.
I will go backwards here and try to recollect.
When my mother died, it was a complete shock. Her last words
to me were, “Same time next week then?” after I had taken her
to the Dollar Tree that Sunday after visiting her at the nursing home.
I said, “Yes, same time next week,” and I never spoke to her again.
The following Tuesday I got a call from the emergency room physician
at New Hanover Memorial Regional in Wilmington and I was told that she
had died of a massive heart attack. My brother died in prison only several
months before he was scheduled to be released and I told him he could live
with me for several months before trying to make it on his own two feet. The
doctor at the prison said he did not want to take all of his AIDs medications.
I received a call from my father’s nursing home saying he was going to die
within 24 hours. I showed up and spend most of the night with him. When I went back
home that night, I got a call the next morning saying he was dead. And now you,
Thomas Childs, a man my exact age who I went to school with at UNC-W, I remember
when you used to be dj and you got involved with those young woman and it cost
you your job, and then you got married, and your wife died, and then you were in
jail for breaking the law, but you were out, and you were starting a new life,
and you wrote poems of starting over, and Bruce was supporting you,
taking pictures of you, publishing you,
and now he’s starting over, marrying an Iranian wife in Turkey,
and then I got an email from him
about your death, and it reminds me of the first time I heard about a friend
dying- Sam Ray, with his suicide, and I had just seen him for several weeks at my apartment
before his death, and the last time I saw you was at Bottega,
reading some of your new poems, and Bruce
had taken pictures of you and I dropped you and Bruce off at Bruce’s motel room
and you seemed hopeful about your future prospects, you were always hopeful,
and now to hear about your death, does it ever make sense?

When people communicate and when computers communicate there is a syntax to that communication.  Until recently, the semantics of the communication was not made known in a way that computers could understand.  Applications on the web have given the impression that they understood what you meant, the semantics, by allowing you to ask questions and seem to get answers in the way of websites or a search engine might respond to your search with this statement, “Did you mean…?”  However, in terms of the web, for the most part, none of these websites had any meaning embedded into them, at least nothing that would help a computer program to understand what was on the web page.  They just have information to allow a browser to know how to display the content for human viewers to understand.

This leads to the topic of syntax.  Syntax is about structure, the structure of sentences and phrases in English.  Written communication in English is structured with grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Similarly, when we speak much of that structure also exists in the way we speak.  Punctuation is articulated, sometimes, with pauses, for example. 

A definition if syntax from the website reference.dictionary.com is as follows: “Computers. the grammatical rules and structural patterns governing the ordered use of appropriate words and symbols for issuing commands, writing code, etc., in a particular software application or programming language. “¹  So, in terms of the web, we have web pages that are presented in the browser using different languages or markup code.  There is also a structure to the way the browser requests the web page from the web server.  There are rules that define how this communication must be structured.  This is the syntax of the communication. 

Semantics is about the meaning of what is being communicated.  Before the semantic web started changing things, there was virtually nothing on a web page or in the code underlying a web page to tell a computer anything about the meaning of what was on the web page.  The computer, by way of the browser, knew how to display the content but had no understanding, as it were, of the semantics, the meaning of what was being communicated. 

The semantic web is not about teaching computers to speak and understand English or any language, per se.  Languages are a bit more complex than what would be required by the semantic web.  However, this is about including coding the web page with information about the meaning of what is contained on the web page.  This semantic code will not be displayed to the viewer but it will be read by computers.   Some semantic web applications will involve what is called “natural language processing” but there will be limits and requirements to what can be said or asked.

By including semantic web technology in web pages and in web applications, search engines will better help us find what we are seeking.  There are already some semantic search engines out there, such as what you will find at hakia.com  In addition, just one other example of how this can help us is with the ability to combine and reuse information from various sources.  Information can be pulled in from a number of different sources and used in an entirely new way. 

More on this topic will be coming.  I find this very exciting. 

I just downloaded this tool from Microsoft’s website.  It is called Live Writer.  I can add various blogs to the application and publish from my desktop.  This is a pretty useful tool.

I started adding some of the different plug-ins that Microsoft has for the tool.  This feature allowed me to post a map from Bing on my blog.  I added a push-pin that showed my home/business location.  I can zoom to different levels from street level to a wider view that shows more of the surrounding cities and even more.

There are a large number of useful plug-ins that extend the functionality of the software.  These let you include a number of different things in your blog, from video to website images, to content from the various photo sharing sites.

I’ll have to share more when I learn more about the features.