This Is It Bakery & Deli

Located at 443 Cooke St in Honolulu, I believe it was the first New York-style delicatessen in Hawaii.

They bake their own bread, bagels and cookies everyday and have lots of interior seating for customers.

Hours are Monday to Friday 6am to 2:30pm; Saturday 7am to 2pm.

They have a second location called This Is It...Too, which is conveniently located on the ground floor of 1001 Bishop St on the mall side.

Street Food Vendors: Hawaii Hotdogs

Hawaii Hotdogs can be found setup next to the Hawaii Supreme Court, at the intersection of Mililani and Merchant Streets
.
They sell Nathan's brand hotdogs and have a good selection of bottled water and canned soft drinks.

The stand is open Monday to Friday from 11am to 2pm.

Independant Coffee Shops: Downtown Coffee

Located on the ground floor of Pioneer Plaza at 900 Fort St Mall.

Open Monday to Friday 6am to 5pm and Saturday 7:30am to noon.

Here We Go Again!

A couple of people were apparently a little miffed about my post where I debunked the claim that Charles Darwin made the following quote about black Africans :

"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light.
His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled.
A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour.
In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.”

There was an objection raised because, even if Darwin never said it, it did not disprove the quote itself.

Okay, let's give it a shot:

"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa"

Not the whole continent. The northern part has been inhabited for centuries by Berbers, Arabs, Copts and other ethnicities. Yes, there were undoubtedly black people in the north, but they weren't the dominant power back in, for example, the time of Carthage.

"crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light."

Unlikely, since diamonds usually must be dug out of the ground from deep mines tunnelled into the earth. Sometimes, you can find them on the surface, but the majority must be mined. I challenge anyone to tell me where these "acres of diamonds" were that black Africans were simply walking over for centuries. Besides, the diamonds would have been of no value to them without the technology to cut and shape them.

"His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled."
Powerful and docile animals? Sure, they had cattle and donkeys.  But these animals had to be captured wild and then domesticated, which they did and the donkey was first domesticated in Africa. But, if you're talking about animals like the African elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus or the Cape Buffalo, I'd say that you're out of your fucking mind! Animals like those are either very difficult or absolutely impossible to domesticate. You may be confusing the African elephant with its cousin, the Indian elephant, which has been domesticated by humans all over Asia. African elephants are too dangerous and unpredictable. The Cape Buffalo, by the way, has been nicknamed "The Widowmaker" by people who live in the area it inhabits.

"A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use."

The Haya of Tanzania have credited with the discovery of steel over 2000 years ago, centuries before Europe caught-up. African civilization went from the Stone Age into the Bronze and Iron Age simultaneously and you can read about iron metallurgy in ancient Africa.

"In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud."
Idiotic! Ruins of stone structures have been unearthed by archeologists. The beginnings of the walls of Benin City were back in 800AD. Read something.

"With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.” 
You really need to read more than stuff that tells you what you want to hear. An 8000 year old canoe was found in Nigeria, cut from mahogany (see last point about Africans never cutting timber). Ancient Egyptians could assemble planks of wood into a ship about 5000 years ago. The Ethiopian city of Axum traded by sea with India and the Somalis carried-out trade with Sri Lanka. The ancient Mali Empire had a large navy and is speculated to have been able to reach North America by sea. West African ships traveled the waterways, primarily with paddles or poles, but were also known to use sails.

Again,  do some reading. 

One more thing, if the dark skinned people were so primitive, why were ancient Polynesians able to navigate their way across the Pacific Ocean without the aid of maps or a compass? Read the answer here. They were doing this back when Europeans relied on blind luck and seldom left sight of land.


Duane Browning

Abandoned Shopping Carts

If you've ever wondered if there was a phone number you can call to report an abandoned shopping cart you've noticed sitting outside the retailer's property, you can stop wondering. I've taken it upon myself to collect the contact information of various retail outlets in Honolulu to make it easier for you to call a store and tell them where their stolen carts are located.

Living in Hawaii is expensive enough without stores having to pass the cost of lost shopping carts on to their customers.

When you call, please be as specific as possible when you tell them where their carts are located. A street address, a nearby business, etc any information that helps them know the exact location of their cart will help them retrieve their carts as soon as they are able to send some one.

This is a work in-progress, so I will add more numbers and weblinks as they become known to me.

I feel obligated to mention that if you are in possession of a shopping cart - either you found it or you just took it home and decided to keep it - you are in possession of stolen property and that is a felony. Depending on the value of the shopping cart, it could be a charge of Petty Theft in the second or third degree. I've never heard of anyone being charged for having a stolen shopping cart, but I don't think you want to be the one they decide to prosecute in order to discourage the next guy from doing it. You never know when these guys might decide to "get tough on crime" by starting with you or some one you know.

If you find a shopping cart but cannot determine which store it came from, you can report it as Abandoned Property by calling 586-1589.

If you see shopping carts in a homeless campsite, call the City Department of Housing at 768-4687.

Report Abandoned Shopping Carts

Store Phone # Toll-free # Weblink/Email address Costco 808-526-6100 link Food Pantry 808-735-7246 866-390-2278 link Foodland 808-735-7246 866-390-2278 link Don Quijote 808-973-4800 extension 0 Twitter Long's Drugs 800-746-7287 link Marukai 808-593-9888 link Ross' link Safeway 808-524-4554  ext 0  link Sam's Club 808-945-9841 888-746-7726 Sack 'N Save 808-735-7246 866-390-2278 link Home Depot 808-521-7355 extension 0    Times Supermarket 808-831-0811 link Walmart 808-955-8441 link Target 808-441-3118 ext 0 or 808-206-7162 ext 0 HTML Tables

Racist Quote Attributed to Charles Darwin

I have to admit that I have never more than glanced at a few pages of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in my lifetime. In general terms, I know what he said in the book, but high school biology was never my strong suit and I've never been interested enough to buy or borrow a copy of Darwin's opus in order to read his words for myself.

Perhaps that is my loss, I admit.

Charles Darwin was a prolific author, writing many books and articles all of which have been collected into one place and published online at the website The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Darwin was also known to view Western colonialism as spreading the benefits of its civilization, though he strongly opposed the mistreatment of native peoples. He was against slavery as well as classifying different human ethnic groups as separate species.

Imagine my surprise when I found this quote being attributed to Charles Darwin:

"Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light.
His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled.
A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour.
In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.”

This quote can be found reproduced in many locations, mostly on Christian Creationist websites and White nationalist forums.

That creationists would spread it around is not surprising, since if Darwin could be exposed as a racist then the entire theory of evolution could then be perceived as stained because the most famous book in support of it was supposedly written by a bigot. If a bad person wrote a book in support of something you hate, then that makes your own position stronger, according to this reasoning.

White racists' use of this quote is also not surprising, but they use it for an entirely different reason. Charles Darwin is being used as a way to scientifically justify their feelings of superiority over blacks. Since Darwin is perceived as an authority figure in the field of biology and evolution, then his words can be used as evidence that even the greatest scientific minds viewed black people as inferior to whites.

But, despite the large number of places where this quote can be seen on the Internet, the actual source material is never mentioned. Charles Darwin is said to be the author of it, but the book or article where this quote first appeared is never stated for people to read the quote for themselves. After all, Darwin could have been quoting someone else and responding to it, or he could have said something before or after the statement and the quote as given is being taken out-of-context and there is also the possibility that Charles Darwin never said those words in the first place.

Having some free time, I decided to find the quote for myself. I did not have enough time to read everything that the guy ever wrote, so I attempted to Google the quote itself. White racist and creationist sites dominated the results, of course. This was not unexpected. but, no matter where I looked, I couldn't find anyone who stated which of Darwin's published works this quote first appeared in. I could find the quote easy enough, just not the source material. However, Charles Darwin wasn't the only person who is being quoted as saying these words.

One site quoted these words as having been said by the then-Governor of South Carolina to the Speaker of the State House of Representatives, circa 1865. This is a bit vague, since South Carolina had three men occupying that office just in that year.

1. Andrew Gordon Magrath (December 18, 1864 to May 25, 1865) Confederate governor, deposed by the Union Army;
2. Benjamin Franklin Perry (June 30, 1865 to November 29, 1865) appointed by President Andrew Johnson; and
3. James Lawrence Orr (November 29, 1865 to July 6, 1868) who was the first elected Governor under the South Carolina Constitution of 1865.

Without a name to attach to the quote, finding out who said those words, when he said them and where his words are being quoted from was not getting any easier.

Then, I struck gold. Pure gold. I found the original work where the quote first appeared, the book it appeared in, the year the book was published and also the entire quote in context. Most importantly, I discovered who said (actually wrote) those words.

Here is the original quote:

"Education, sir, is the development of that which _is_. Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa--rich beyond the dream of poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived--stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!

 "And this creature, half child, half animal, the sport of impulse, whim, and conceit, 'pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,' a being who, left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger--they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people----"

These words came from the book "The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan" written in 1905 by Thomas F. Dixon Jr. It was the second book in a trilogy, preceded by "The Leopard's Spots"  in 1902 and followed by "The Traitor" in 1907. "The Clansman" served as inspiration for the 1915 silent movie which glamorized the Ku Klux Klan, "The Birth of a Nation", directed by David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith.

While Dixon opposed slavery, even though his family had owned slaves before the Civil War, he viewed blacks with contempt and strongly supported racial segregation.

If you'd like to read the quote for yourself, go to this link where it begins in the second paragraph from the top of the page.

While creationists and white racists like to spread this quote around and attribute it to Charles Darwin, they cannot provide a source from which they are quoting. But, I can and I have.

You may be wondering how it could be that a racist quote written by one man - Thomas Dixon - could be attributed to another man - Charles Darwin - and people wouldn't catch-on right away and thoroughly dismiss it as the fabrication that it is. The answer is simple: most people haven't read "On the Origin of Species" or any other book by Charles Darwin and those people who have are typically science students or scientists and Darwin's books are part of their field of study. Even so, the fact is that over 100 years have gone by since Darwin's death and so much more research has been done in the study of evolution that Darwin's books, while groundbreaking in their day are now quite antiquated.

The fact that very few people have read all of Darwin's works makes it that much easier to pull it off. How is the average person to know what Charles Darwin did or did not say? They can't, so people who either want to attack Darwin personally and professionally (creationists) or use him to justify their own racism (white nationalists) can do so quite comfortable in the knowledge that people who know better will be few and far between. An added plus for racists is that people who have read Dixon's books are even fewer in number than those who've read Darwin, so most people won't know from where the quote actually originated.

But, now I know and so do you. Pass it on.

If you'd like more information about the technological achievements of African civilizations, you can see this article on Wikipedia, History of science and technology in Africa.

Read Part 2 where I respond to people who think the quote is accurate, regardless of who said it.

 12,304 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THE TRUTH ABOUT THIS QUOTE!

as of SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

Duane Browning

Text Spammer Contacted Me

I received the following message from 202-680-0444:

"Need help with bills? You have been pre-qualified to get a No credit check payday loan up to $1000 right NOW on ur phone!  www.MyCashCall.net (reply-stop)"

After discovering that the number is a cellphone registered to Verizon Wireless, I called their toll-free number 800-922-0204 to file a complaint. My cellular number is on the National Do Not Call Registry and violations can result in civil liability.


While the operator was courteous, his only advice to me was to call my own carrier - CREDOMobile - and try to have them block the number. I then told him that my number is on the National Do Not Call Registry. I further informed him that since I had reported a possible violation of the Registry and that one of their customers may be abusing the service of Verizon Wireless by sending unsolicited text messages, it was now incumbent upon them to investigate. In short, the burden had passed from me to them.


While I have an unlimited texting plan, the same is not always true of others who have been textspammed, so these messages are costing people money. Why should the victim have to go through all the trouble of contacting their cellphone carrier to try to get the number blocked, when a far easier solution is for the offender's cellphone carrier to investigate and take action?


Anyway, this particular spammer seems to be rather new and there aren't a lot of complaints filed online against him yet. He seems to be advertising various websites that offer payday loans.


Websites being advertised include, but are not limited to:

www.CHKadvance.com

www.MyCashCall.net

www.speedy-advance.com

CHKadvance and speedy-advance are registered by Domains By Proxy, LLC through Go Daddy. MyCashCall is registered with Namecheap. My guess is that they registered them like that to prevent angry letters from arriving at their home or office, as well as pissed-off people calling them on the phone.

The route I took seems to be the one that offers the best chance for success: call Verizon Wireless to file an official complaint against this number.

Duane Browning