Category Archives: Education

“If Only I Had Teeth Down There!” | Mama’s Health Blog

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“If Only I Had Teeth Down There!” | Mama’s Health Blog.

Rapex Condom

Rapex Condom

Call it provocative, call it medieval, whatever you call it aside from self-defense classes, self-imposed curfews and bodyguards it has to be one of the most progressive devices created to help prevent the rape of women. Invented by South African doctor Dr. Sonnet Ehlers after treating a rape victim who said, “If only I had teeth down there,” the female condom dubbed “Rapex” is being readied for distribution after 20 years of research.

“According to Dr. Ehlers “As soon as the man puts his penis in the woman’s vagina the condom catches it. The “teeth” of the condom then penetrates his skin and causes severe pain. The man will have to go to a hospital to have the condom removed,” she said. It will also collect the rapist’s DNA.”

30,000 of these condoms are being distributed in South African in various cities where the World Cup games are being played. South Africa has one of highest incidences of rape in the world.

While some think it increases a woman’s feeling of vulnerability, one could argue that women walk in the world and shape their lives around knowing their vulnerabilities. Others argue that the device is medieval, “Yes, my device may be a medieval,” Dr. Ehlers says, “but it’s for a medieval deed that has been around for decades,” she said. “I believe something’s got to be done … and this will make some men rethink before they assault a woman.”

While I don’t believe one thing will prevent rape, I do believe in having an arsenal from which to choose. What do you think?

Someone hand me my mace, my brass knuckles and my Rapex condom. It’s eleven at night and we need a loaf of bread!

- Aunt B

 

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Heart Mountain Pilgrimage Set for Aug. 10-11 – Rafu Shimpo

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Heart Mountain Pilgrimage Set for Aug. 10-11 – Rafu Shimpo.

CODY, Wyo. — This year’s Heart Mountain Pilgrimage will be a multigenerational arts festival and will be held on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 10 and 11.

Reservation deadline is July 1. Register online at www.HeartMountain.org.

The focus of the event will be to bring in the younger generations to continue the efforts of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

The weekend will be centered on three documentaries. Each is different in its message, reminding the audience of the World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans while asking the question: “Could this happen again?”

“Ken Watanabe’s America: Japanese Americans and Post-9/11 America” will be shown at the Wynona Thompson Auditorium on Friday evening following the pilgrimage dinner at the Holiday Inn. A panel discussion is scheduled after the movie.

Saturday events will be hosted at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center. An outdoor arts fair featuring local and Heart Mountain artisans and authors will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Among other presentations and demonstrations outside, Eric Muller will introduce his new book, “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) with a short presentation and book-signing.

Inside the center, two films, “Hiro: A Story of Japanese Internment” and “An American Contradiction,” will have alternating schedules throughout the day. Each film will be introduced by the filmmakers with a short question-and-answer period after the screening.

There will be several showings of each film throughout the day. Guests will be invited to explore the exhibits and the outdoor arts fair while waiting for the movies. Food vendors will be available and a bus will take people from the ILC to the honor roll, walking tour, and hospital complex.

Lee Nellis, a private contractor with Y Loop Road Trips, is working with the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and will be offering Heart Mountain hikes on Thursday, Aug. 9, Friday, Aug. 10, and Sunday, Aug. 12. Reservations for the hike can be made through him at www.ylooproadtrips.com or by calling (307) 250-9382.

Schedule of Events

Registration will include entry to the following events:

• Reception hosted by Youth Council on Friday, Aug. 10, from 4 to 5 p.m. at Holiday Inn in Cody.

• Pilgrimage Dinner on Friday, Aug. 10, at 5 p.m. at Holiday Inn Ballroom.

• Presentation of “Ken Watanabe’s America” on Friday, Aug. 10, at 7:30 p.m. at Wynona Thompson Auditorium in Cody.

• Interpretive Learning Center Arts Festival on Saturday, Aug.11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1539 Road 19, Powell.

Featured Programs

• “Ken Watanabe’s America: Japanese Americans and Post-9/11 America.” In the years since 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans have faced harassment and discrimination. One group of Japanese Americans took a stand, and defended their countrymen. Ken Watanabe, the star of “Letters from Iwo Jima,” traveled to America to get to know these brave Japanese Americans.

He met and extensively interviewed Norman Mineta, a Nisei who was interned at Heart Mountain during World War II and who was the U.S. secretary of transportation when 9/11 occurred. In this film, Watanabe explores the link between the Japanese American experience and the discrimination experienced by Arab and Muslim Americans in a post-9/11 world, and shows that those who know their history are not doomed to repeat it.

• “An American Contradiction.” Seeking knowledge about her country’s history and heritage, filmmaker Vanessa Yuille journeys to her mother’s birthplace, Heart Mountain. Former internees reflect upon the experience of leaving their homes as children and the wartime hysteria that stripped them of their lawful rights.

This dark chapter of American history not only contrasts with the natural beauty of the landscape but also calls into question the definition of what it means to be an American. Through her investigation, Yuille challenges the audience to correctly define the true nature of what happened there.

• “Hiro: A Story of Japanese Internment,” 2012 Student Academy Award winner. Filmmaker Keiko Wright explores the life of Hiroshi Hoshizaki, a retired grandfather of six, who was imprisoned in an internment camp during his adolescence. As the film follows him on own journey to confront the events and memories of his past, the viewer learn of his experiences while imprisoned at Heart Mountain and the traumatic repercussions on him and his family.

The voices of “Hiro” tell a story of the political hysteria, racism, and scars that internment evoked during the World War II era — feelings that still echo to this day.

• “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II.” This book presents 65 color photographs of life at Heart Mountain shot by Bill Manbo, an internee who was an amateur photographer, along with four essays interpreting the photographs. One of the essays is a reminiscence by Bacon Sakatani, and another is by Eric Muller, the book’s editor.

Travel Information

The following hotels have rooms blocked for the event:

• Holiday Inn in Cody, (307) 587-5555. Discount code: K1HMWF

• Comfort Inn in Cody, (307) 587-5556. Discount code: K4HMWF

• Buffalo Bill Cabins in Cody, (307) 587-5555. Discount code: K3HMWF

• The Cody in Cody, (307) 527-3360. Discount code: Heart Mountain Reunion

• Super 8 in Powell, (307) 754-7231. Discount code: Heart Mountain Foundation

Air Travel

• Yellowstone Regional Airport in Cody (COD). Two miles from the central business district of Cody. The Cody Hotels listed above all provide shuttle service to and from the Cody airport. Time to the hotels from the airport is around 5 minutes. If staying in Powell, the drive is approximately 30 minutes.

• Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, Mont., 109 miles from Cody. The drive from the Billings airport will take approximately 2 hours. You will need to rent a car.

Both airports offer car rental services.

Facebook Buys Facial Recognition Firm Face.com: What It Wants With Your Face

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Facebook Buys Facial Recognition Firm Face.com: What It Wants With Your Face.

Facebook Facial Recognition Face Com

Prepare for Facebook to be a whole lot more in your face.

Facebook announced Monday that it will acquire facial recognition firm Face.com, an Israeli company that has worked with the social network for nearly two years to identify and tag people in uploaded photos.

Integrating Face.com’s facial recognition capabilities into Facebook marks an effort to encourage even more photo sharing on the social network and, further down the road, could yield new advertising opportunities or even features that bring facial recognition to the physical world, experts say. That extra convenience, tagging photos based on friends’ faces, whether on a smartphone or laptop, is also likely to bring a fresh round of privacy concerns over the limits of Facebook’s reach into its users’ lives.

“Today, facial recognition for Facebook is about photographs. But future uses of this technology could absolutely extend to recognizing people in the real world,” said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. “Facebook is becoming a search engine for people. It’s building a catalog of humans, and today that’s a two dimensional experience. Tomorrow it will take place in the physical world.”

Facebook declined to specify how it will integrate Face.com’s team and technology into its offerings. A spokeswoman for the social network told The Huffington Post in an email, “People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience. This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”

Face.com’s technology, which has been available to Facebook members since 2010, enhances the social network’s core strength: photos. Face.com’s facial recognition tools spare users the trouble of manually tagging friends in each image they upload, and instead scans the faces of people in photos to suggest names.

For Facebook, an uploaded photograph is good, but an uploaded photograph that’s been tagged is even better: It’s more likely to be seen by a greater number of people, and in turn helps Facebook provide the up-to-the-minute personal information that keeps users returning to the site. The visibility of photos depends on a user’s privacy settings, but generally speaking, if my friend Jason uploads a photo of me and doesn’t tag me in it, only Jason’s friends will be able to see the image. On the other hand, if Jason tags me in the picture, friends of mine who don’t know Jason will see the image of me in their News Feed.

But these tagging features aren’t yet as robust on Facebook’s mobile app, where U.S. users are spending more time accessing the social network and where tagging is even more labor-intensive. Experts say the acquisition will yield new tools that would make it simpler for members to tag their friends in photos — particularly those uploaded from mobile phones — and would ensure activity on the site stays high.

“The low-hanging fruit here is removing restrictions from photo uploads and enabling people to upload photos more quickly and make those photos more contextually relevant to their network and anyone depicted in those photos,” said Altimeter analyst Rebecca Lieb. “While it [facial recognition technology] definitely has desktop advantages, I see it largely as something to remove friction from mobile updates. Facebook is aggressively trying to move into mobile and improve consumer experience, while also monetizing it with ads.”

Face.com’s facial recognition capabilities might also eventually be used to tag objects or brands in photos, which could open up new sources of advertising revenue.

Forrester’s Epps notes that some companies are already using facial recognition technology to identify clothing in images posted online, and Facebook might wield Face.com’s technology to tag brands and retailers shown in users’ pictures. In 2011, Facebook gave users the ability to tag brands in their photos. That could evolve into a tool that automatically tags Coca-Cola cans or Levi’s jeans as a way of increasing visibility for Facebook advertisers.

“Facial recognition technology like Face.com’s is literally about faces. But that same kind of graphical analysis can be applied to anything,” Epps said. “Facebook will stay core to its people focus, but it could potentially branch out to shopping, for example.”

The social network could also use Face.com to help us find our friends. Facial recognition technology might be used to build an image-based search engine where users could search for each other with photos, rather than names, Lieb says. And in the long run, Facebook could even integrate facial recognition capabilities into wearable technology, enabling users to assume Terminator-like capabilities and identify people just by looking at them. Imagine being able to call up a stranger’s Facebook profile on your Google Glasses or Apple iSpecs as you shake hands for the first time. According to Epps, that kind of technology may not be too far off.

“We could see intelligent recognition where you don’t have to go to Facebook, but instead you have an app that follows you through the real world,” Epps said.

Facebook’s previous flirtations with facial recognition have been met with some resistance from users, and have drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates and regulators. After Facebook launched its “Tag Suggestions” last year, privacy officials in Europe launched an investigation into the feature and privacy groups in the U.S. filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Apple and Google have integrated the technology into their own photo offerings, iPhoto and Picasa respectively, though doubts persist about the implications of facial recognition.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt said facial recognition was the one technology the web giant developed, then withheld.

“I’m very concerned personally about the union of mobile tracking and face recognition,” Schmidt told audiences at the All Things Digital conference in 2011.

Click link at top of page to watch video.

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