วันพุธที่ 29 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

Ancient birds' wings preserved in amber

  • 28 June 2016
Two wings from birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs have been found preserved in amber.
The "spectacular" finds from Myanmar are from baby birds that got trapped in the sticky sap of a tropical forest 99 million years ago.
Exquisite detail has been preserved in the feathers, including traces of colour in spots and stripes.
The wings had sharp little claws, allowing the juvenile birds to clamber about in the trees.
The tiny fossils, which are between two and three centimetres long, could shed further light on the evolution of birds from their dinosaur ancestors.
Image copyright RSM / R C McKellar
Image caption The wings possessed little claws to allow the birds to climb around in trees
The specimens, from well-known amber deposits in north-east Myanmar (also known as Burma), are described in the journal Nature Communications.
Co-author Prof Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, said: "The individual feathers show every filament and whisker, whether they are flight feathers or down feathers, and there are even traces of colour - spots and stripes."
The hand anatomy shows the wings come from enantiornithine birds, which comprised a major bird grouping in the Cretaceous Period. However, the enantiornithines died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
Dr Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Edinburgh University, described the fossils as "spectacular".
Image copyright RSM/ R.C. McKellar
Image caption Overlapping flight feathers can be seen erupting from the amber
Image copyright Other
Image caption Colour differences in the birds' plumage can be clearly seen
He told BBC News: " They're fantastic - who would have ever thought that 99-million-year-old wings could be trapped in amber?
"These are showcase specimens and some of the most surprising fossils I've seen in a long time. We've known for a few decades that many dinosaurs had feathers, but most of our fossils are impressions of feathers on crushed limestone slabs.
"Three dimensional preservation in amber provides a whole new perspective and these fossils make it clear that very primitive birds living alongside the dinosaurs had wings and feather arrangements very similar to today's birds."
Image copyright Other
Image caption Fine structure in the feathers has been exquisitely preserved
The international team of researchers used advanced X-ray scanning techniques to examine the structure and arrangement of the bones and feathers.
Claw marks in the amber suggest the birds were still alive when they were engulfed by the sticky sap.
Dr Xing Lida, the study's lead author, explained: "The fact that the tiny birds were clambering about in the trees suggests that they had advanced development, meaning they were ready for action as soon as they hatched.
"These birds did not hang about in the nest waiting to be fed, but set off looking for food, and sadly died perhaps because of their small size and lack of experience.
"Isolated feathers in other amber samples show that adult birds might have avoided the sticky sap, or pulled themselves free."

วันอาทิตย์ที่ 26 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

Wider World by CS: หนึ่งในพระสมเด็จที่สวยที่สุด

Wider World by CS: หนึ่งในพระสมเด็จที่สวยที่สุด: วันนี้ลงให้ชมพระสมเด็จที่สวยงามที่สุดและดูง่ายที่สุด ภาพที่ลงเทียบของจริงสีสรรค์เหมือนเกือบร้อยเปอร์เซ็นต์ พระองค์นี้มีดีที่ ๑.พิมพ์ทรงคม...

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วันเสาร์ที่ 25 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

Wider World by CS: หลวงพ่อเงินพิมพ์นิยม

Wider World by CS: หลวงพ่อเงินพิมพ์นิยม: ลงให้ชมพระหลวงพ่อเงินพิมพ์นิยม ๑.พิมพ์ทรง/ขนาดพระ ๒.เนื้อโลหะที่ใช้หล่อพระ ๓.คราบเป้า ๔.ความแห้งของโลหะ ๕.เนื้อที่เทหล่อระหว่างเนื้อ...

Jack Daniel’s Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave


In a photo in Jack Daniel’s old office, Daniel, with mustache and white hat, is shown at his distillery in Tennessee in the late 1800s. The man to his right could be a son of Nearis Green, a slave who helped teach Daniel how to make whiskey.
LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Every year, about 275,000 people tour the Jack Daniel’s distillery here, and as they stroll through its brick buildings nestled in a tree-shaded hollow, they hear a story like this: Sometime in the 1850s, when Daniel was a boy, he went to work for a preacher, grocer and distiller named Dan Call. The preacher was a busy man, and when he saw promise in young Jack, he taught him how to run his whiskey still — and the rest is history.
This year is the 150th anniversary of Jack Daniel’s, and the distillery, home to one of the world’s best-selling whiskeys, is using the occasion to tell a different, more complicated tale. Daniel, the company now says, didn’t learn distilling from Dan Call, but from a man named Nearis Green — one of Call’s slaves.
This version of the story was never a secret, but it is one that the distillery has only recently begun to embrace, tentatively, in some of its tours, and in a social media and marketing campaign this summer.
“It’s taken something like the anniversary for us to start to talk about ourselves,” said Nelson Eddy, Jack Daniel’s in-house historian.
Frontier history is a gauzy and unreliable pursuit, and Nearis Green’s story — built on oral history and the thinnest of archival trails — may never be definitively proved. Still, the decision to tell it resonates far beyond this small city.
For years, the prevailing history of American whiskey has been framed as a lily-white affair, centered on German and Scots-Irish settlers who distilled their surplus grains into whiskey and sent it to far-off markets, eventually creating a $2.9 billion industry and a product equally beloved by Kentucky colonels and Brooklyn hipsters.
Left out of that account were men like Nearis Green. Slavery and whiskey, far from being two separate strands of Southern history, were inextricably entwined. Enslaved men not only made up the bulk of the distilling labor force, but they often played crucial skilled roles in the whiskey-making process. In the same way that white cookbook authors often appropriated recipes from their black cooks, white distillery owners took credit for the whiskey.
In deciding to talk about Green, Jack Daniel’s may be hoping to get ahead of a collision between the growing popularity of American whiskey among younger drinkers and a heightened awareness of the hidden racial politics behind America’s culinary heritage.
Photo
Claude Eady, far left, a retired distillery employee who is a descendant of Nearis Green, with Nelson Eddy, Jack Daniel’s in-house historian, at the distillery in Lynchburg, Tenn. Credit Nathan Morgan for The New York Times
Some also see the move as a savvy marketing tactic. “When you look at the history of Jack Daniel’s, it’s gotten glossier over the years,” said Peter Krass, the author of “Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel.” “In the 1980s, they aimed at yuppies. I could see them taking it to the next level, to millennials, who dig social justice issues.”
Jack Daniel’s says it simply wants to set the record straight. The Green story has been known to historians and locals for decades, even as the distillery officially ignored it.
According to a 1967 biography, “Jack Daniel’s Legacy,” by Ben A. Green (no relation to Nearis), Call told his slave to teach Daniel everything he knew. “Uncle Nearest is the best whiskey maker that I know of,” the book quotes Call as saying.
Slavery ended with ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, and Daniel opened his distillery a year later, employing two of Green’s sons. In a photo of Daniel and his workers taken in the late 19th century, a black man, possibly one of Green’s sons, sits at his immediate right — a sharp contrast to contemporaneous photos from other distilleries, where black employees were made to stand in the back rows.
But corporate history-keeping was a rare practice in those days, and over time memories of Green and his sons faded.
“I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision” to leave the Greens out of the company’s story, said Phil Epps, the global brand director for Jack Daniel’s at Brown-Forman, which has owned the distillery for 60 years. Still, it is unlikely that anyone in the Jim Crow South thought a whiskey marketed to whites should emphasize its black roots.
As the brand’s anniversary approached, the company started researching its various origin stories. It decided that the case for Nearis Green’s contribution was persuasive, and should be told. “As we dug into it, we realized it was something that we could be proud of,” Mr. Epps said.
A business built on slave help may not seem like a selling point, which may explain why Jack Daniel’s is taking things slowly. The Green story is an optional part of the distillery tour, left to the tour guide’s discretion, and the company is still considering whether it will flesh out the story in new displays at its visitors center.
Visitors to the Jack Daniel’s distillery, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Only recently has the company begun to embrace the story of Nearis Green. Credit Nathan Morgan for The New York Times
However far the distillery decides to go, it is placing itself at the center of a larger issue that distillers and whiskey historians have begun to grapple with only in the last few years: the deep ties between slavery and whiskey.
“It’s about paying down the debts of pleasure that have accrued over time,” said John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.
An exhibit on George Washington and slavery opening this fall at the first president’s Northern Virginia home, Mount Vernon, documents how he relied on six slaves (and two Scottish foremen) to run his rye whiskey distillery, one of the largest on the East Coast.
“They were key to the operation in making whiskey,” said Steve Bashore, who helps run a working replica of Washington’s distillery. “In the ledgers, the slaves are actually listed as distillers.”
Slavery accompanied distilling as it moved inland in the late 18th century, to the newly settled regions that would become Tennessee and Kentucky. Though slave owning was nowhere near as common there as it was farther south, by the 1800s many successful farmers had at least a few slaves, who tended to be closely involved with whiskey production.
Some of the earliest prominent Kentucky distillers, like Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna and Jacob Spears, relied on slaves to run their operations. (Craig and McKenna’s names are now on whiskeys made by Heaven Hill Brands, but those were created long after slavery was abolished.)
Washington wasn’t the only president to use slaves in his distillery. In an 1805 advertisement, Andrew Jackson offered a bounty for a runaway slave named George, whom he identified as “a good distiller.”
Databases of ads for slave sales, as well as runaway slaves, are full of references to slaves as skilled whiskey distillers. In 1794, a Richmond, Va., man placed a $20 bounty on a slave named Will, who “has a large scar on his right side just below his ribs” and “understands making of whiskey.”
Slaves did more than just provide physical labor. If Green taught Daniel to distill, said Michael Twitty, a food historian, he probably would have drawn on generations of liquor-making skills: American slaves had their own traditions of alcohol production, going back to the corn beer and fruit spirits of West Africa, and many Africans made alcohol illicitly while in slavery.
“There’s something to be said for the fact that Africans and Europeans were both people in the Southeast who carried with them ancient traditions for making alcohol,” Mr. Twitty said.
Another aspect of the Jack Daniel’s tradition that is being reassessed is the so-called Lincoln County process, in which unaged whiskey is passed through several feet of maple charcoal, which removes impurities and imparts a slight sweetness.
According to legend, the process was invented in 1825 by a white Tennessean named Alfred Eaton. But Mr. Eddy, the Jack Daniel’s historian, and others now say it’s just as likely that the practice evolved from slave distilling traditions, in which charcoal helped remove some of the sting from illicitly made alcohol.
Other contributions are even harder to pin down. Though slave owners tended to value their slaves’ distilling prowess, they rarely documented how the slaves made such fine spirits.
Evidence often has to be found outside the archives. Recent archaeological work in Kentucky has uncovered material pointing to slave distilling at a number of sites, including the famed Pepper distillery near Frankfort and another operation owned by Jack Jouett, a Revolutionary War hero.
“It’s like looking at slave distillers out of the corner of your eye,” said Nicolas Laracuente, an archaeologist who has worked extensively at the site of Jouett’s house. “The reason we’re not finding them in the archives is that they didn’t have the right to be recognized.”
A re-creation of the grist mill and distillery at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia. Washington relied on six slaves to help run his rye whiskey distillery, one of the largest on the East Coast. Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times
Mike Veach, a whiskey historian, said the influence of enslaved African distillers may explain a mystery in the development of American whiskey. Traces of German, Scots-Irish and English distilling traditions are evident in the American style, but there’s much that can’t be traced to an earlier source — a gap that slave traditions might fill.
“I don’t know what role slaves would have played,” Mr. Veach said, “but I’m sure it was there.”
Fred Minnick, the author of “Bourbon Curious: A Simple Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker,” said it’s doubtful that a full accounting of enslaved people’s contribution to American whiskey will ever be written. “It’s extremely sad that these slave distillers will never get the credit they deserve,” he said. “We likely won’t ever even know their names.”
Despite the recent attention from Jack Daniel’s, Nearis Green’s name is just a faint echo, even among several of his descendants who live in the area. Claude Eady, 91, who worked for the distillery from 1946 to 1989, said he was related to Green “on my mother’s side,” but didn’t know much about him.
“I heard his name around,” he said. “The only thing I knew was that he helped Jack Daniel make whiskey.”

วันเสาร์ที่ 11 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

MH370: Blaine Gibson's one-man search for answers

  • 10 June 2016
     
     
     An undated handout photograph made available on 10 June 2016 by Blaine Alain Gibson showing Blaine Gibson holding new pieces of debris possibly belonging to the missing Malaysian Airlines plane MH370
In March 2014, Blaine Gibson was sitting in the living room of his childhood home, surrounded by memories.
He had held on to the small house in Carmel, California for eight years after his mother passed away, visiting occasionally from Seattle to comb through the artefacts of their family life.
Now he had finally arranged to sell the house and this was to be his last visit. With boxes of pictures and documents to sort through, daytime TV became his constant companion.
Then Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, and Blaine Gibson was hooked.
"I was stuck in the house and it was on the rolling news all day," he says. "And it hadn't just crashed into the South China Sea, it went across the Malay Peninsula to somewhere in the Indian Ocean. It was a complete mystery."
Mr Gibson sold the house and flew back to Seattle, but the mystery of MH370 stayed with him. For a year he investigated quietly, reading articles and posting on a Facebook group dedicated to the disappearance, until he read that there would be a commemoration for families on the first anniversary.

Blaine Gibson with piece of debris found in Mozambique
A dedicated traveller, Mr Gibson had been moving from country to country with no overarching purpose. Now he sensed he had a mission. He booked a ticket to Kuala Lumpur and headed to the event.
He mingled with family members and listened to their stories. He watched as a woman called Grace stood up to talk about her mother, and it reminded him of his own late mother.
"I was touched by the plight of the families," he says. "I just couldn't imagine how they felt, knowing nothing about their loved ones for a year.
"So I just decided, I'll go look for it for myself. I always suspected that the first piece of evidence of that plane would be a piece of debris washing ashore somewhere, that someone just happened to find."
For a year Mr Gibson visited beaches from Malaysia to Mauritius to the Maldives, keeping an eye out on some and combing others. Then one ordinary day in Mozambique, scanning a coastal sandbank, he saw something that didn't belong there.
Blaine Gibson showing two pieces of possible MH370 debris found in Madagascar
When he picked up the triangular piece of debris from the sand, it was lighter than he expected. But he felt immediately that it was from MH370. Air crash investigators working on the case have since said it "almost certainly" is.
"The question people ask me is how could you find this?. But you could ask someone how could you possibly win the lottery? Nobody looks at the huge number of times you bought tickets and didn't win. They just look at the one time you did," he says.
Listen: One man's quest to find MH370
Three months later, Mr Gibson is back in the news. His travels have taken him to Madagascar, where he has turned up what may be another piece of the puzzle - debris that appears to be part of an in-flight TV monitor.
It may be another small coup for a man operating on the fringes of a huge international search effort. Mr Gibson sees himself as an important addition to the main search, someone at ground level, in among the sand and tall grass, talking to locals.

Blaine Gibson showing two pieces of possible MH370 debris found in Madagascar
Mr Gibson says his search for the wreckage fits in well with his love of travelling and his ambition to visit every country (current count - 177). But it's clear that there is a powerful love of mystery involved.
Before MH370 appeared on his radar, he had travelled to Russia in 1996 to investigate the so-called Tunguska event - an enormous explosion over Siberia in 1908 thought to have been caused by a meteor.
He went to Ethiopia looking for the Lost Ark of the Covenant - the chest, known to Indiana Jones fans around the world, that according to the Bible holds the Ten Commandments.
And he's dabbled in studying the collapse of the Mayan Civilisation.
He is frank about having less luck with those adventures than with MH370. "I did not find the Tunguskan meteorite," he concedes. And: "In Ethiopia I did not actually find the Ark, but I think I was near it."
But when Mr Gibson speaks, there is an almost child-like sense of awe at chasing mysteries of such scale. "I love travelling, and I love solving mysteries, and I love to do good things for people," he says.
There is also a sense that the pursuit of mystery lends purpose to an otherwise itinerant lifestyle.
"Yes it has given me purpose," he says, "and purpose in things I enjoy - travelling, meeting people, and solving mysteries.
"I've learned a lot about aviation and I've learned a lot about oceanography. I've learned something about marine biology and something about politics. And I've learned something about people too."
As for the celebrity that goes with it, he says it is "not that important" to him. He puts himself out there to publicise the search for the plane and keep it going, he says, and if that means giving interviews, so be it.

There is a limit to what Mr Gibson's suspected plane parts can tell us. The fact that they are all small suggests that the aircraft hit the water hard, rather than being glided down by a pilot, and he believes firmly that the pilots did not purposely down the plane.
They also indicate that the Australian search team is looking in roughly the right place - oceanographers predicted that aircraft parts would eventually wash up where they've been found.
But they are unlikely to ever tell us why the plane ended up thousands of miles off course, in one of the most remote corners of the earth. Realistically, unless they find the "black box" flight recorders at the bottom of the ocean, we'll never know for sure
In the meantime, Mr Gibson's quest continues. After another raft of media interviews, he's headed down the south-east coast of Madagascar and eventually to South Africa.
First though, he has to make an important stop in the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, to turn in his new find.
"I feel very good when I hand in the debris," he says. "I feel like I have contributed something. But at the same time there is a sadness. These are pieces of evidence that the plane crashed."
And the new piece, the TV monitor case, will be the hardest, he says. Much harder than a part of a tail or wing.
"Every time you fly, you see the monitor on the back of the seat in front. For somebody, this might have been the last thing they saw."

วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 9 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

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 ๖.ฐานพระ
๗.ราคาของพระองค์นี้/แล้วแต่ผู้ครอบครองจะบอก...


ม.โชคชัยทรงเสี่ยงไชย

วันพุธที่ 8 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2559

Breaking the ultimate glass ceiling

Hillary Clinton's historic night in time-lapse
Hillary Clinton's historic night in time-lapse 01:21

(CNN)Hillary Clinton has gained the support of enough delegates to make her the first woman to clinch the nomination, presumptively, of a major party for president of the United States. CNN asked a group of illustrious women to weigh in on the meaning of this moment. The opinions expressed in these commentaries are theirs.

Gloria Steinem: Now it's up to us

As a teenager, I volunteered for Adlai Stevenson, and was told to hide in another room if the candidate happened into our campaign office, because he was that unacceptable thing, divorced, and couldn't be seen with women who, of course, could only be perceived in one way.
As a grown-up activist, I learned to campaign with movements outside various presidential campaigns, since those campaigns rarely knew how to talk about issues of gender, race or both, even when candidates were representing those for whom such issues were key -- a national majority -- better than was their opposition.
    In this Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton has been elected by the race gap and the gender gap because she represents this national majority of the too often excluded -- as did President Obama. Both Obama's and Hillary Clinton's victories mean we are finally moving toward a democracy in which people who make decisions look like and represent the people most affected by them.
    Now, it's up to us to elect Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most experienced presidential candidate in history, to the White House where we need her to be. Unlike Obama in his first campaign, she is already well-known, not a new face on which we can project unrealistic dreams. She's been part of a democratic process that by definition doesn't come out with perfection for one group.
    What we do know is that wherever she has been, she has made the outcome more fair than it would have been without her. That's why we would need her, no matter what Republican she could be running against, and especially against the unfair, bellicose, divisive and globally embarrassing Donald Trump.
    This campaign is going to be hell -- but the result will be worth it.
    When Barack Obama entered the White House, a building partly constructed by slaves, that sight alone was worth a lifetime of campaigning. When Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the White House, the sight of a woman honored not just as a partner or mother of someone else -- but for her own brain and heart and work -- that sight will begin a new era, too.
    Gloria Steinem is an author, activist and co-founder of The Women's Media Center.

    Alyssa Milano: A platform to change the world

    Women, in all our profound glory, can change the world if given the opportunity. I didn't really realize this, my own innate power, until I had my daughter and I was witness to her power. She has changed my world with her compassion and strength.
    I know if given a platform without boundaries, she can change the world.
    This isn't about politics, it's about my daughter. It's about my daughter realizing her power while she's still young enough to have the energy and passion of blind hope. It's about her feeling she can be anything because she is smart and strong and nothing divides us.
    And at the very least, maybe she will be able to breastfeed in public without being judged and made to feel like she is doing something wrong. Oh yeah -- reality.
    There's so much more women need to accomplish to feel like we have arrived in American culture. Hillary Clinton's nomination is hopefully the beginning.
    Alyssa Milano is an actor known for her starring roles on popular series such as "Charmed," "Who's the Boss" and "Melrose Place." She is a philanthropist and serves as a national ambassador for UNICEF, and an entrepreneur who started TOUCH by Alyssa Milano, a line of licensed sports apparel for women. She is the host and a judge on Lifetime's hit series, "Project Runway All Stars," a wife and mother to two young children.

    Barbara Ehrenreich: I support Bernie, but...

    In 1984 I dragged my 13-year-old daughter into Manhattan to a rally featuring Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. I was no fan of the Mondale/Ferraro ticket and had supported Jesse Jackson in the primary, but the sexist attacks on Ferraro -- the suggestions that menopause would make her scatterbrained and flighty -- got me going.
    My daughter, who was being sullen in an age-appropriate way, pushed toward the front with me to get a good view. "That could be you someday," I told her, and I detected a tiny glint in her eye.
    Thirty years later, after Abu Ghraib, Condoleezza Rice and a host of Hillary Clinton transgressions, I have even less reason to imagine that women are the morally superior sex. I am a fervent supporter of Bernie Sanders, as my granddaughters know.
    But if Clinton wins we will watch the inauguration on TV and I'll say the same thing to them: That could be you.
    Barbara Ehrenreich is founding editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author of, among other books, "Nickel and Dimed."

    Donna Brazile: Everything is possible

    Donna Brazile-Profile-Image
    For the first time in our nation's history, a woman is the presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party. This is a moment of pride for all Americans, regardless of their political preferences.
    Forty years ago, I felt a similar pride as I sat at home in Louisiana and watched as the late Rep. Barbara Jordan delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention — the first woman, and the first African-American, to do so.
    I have felt such moments of pride at many points in recent history for the achievements of Shirley Chisholm, Patsy Mink, Sandra Day O'Connor, Condi Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Mikulski, Sonya Sotomayor, Loretta Lynch, and so many others. Thirty-two years after Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to land on a major party ticket, we have reached a major milestone.
    It's been a journey. Are we there yet? Not quite, but we are moving forward. And I feel lucky to have a front-row seat.
    Ten years after Jordan's historic speech, I first met Hillary Clinton while working on a project for the Children's Defense Fund. She was an impressive woman, but I had no idea that she would eventually be the first to shatter this particular glass ceiling. I think of that when I meet women today, especially young women. You never know who among them will break out and make history.
    But for those as yet unknown women to distinguish themselves, we as a society need to create an environment where anything is possible for all women and girls. We celebrate achievement, but we make achievement possible with opportunity.
    Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. A nationally syndicated columnist, she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in America."

    Barbra Streisand: The message to girls

    I feel a tremendous rush of pride because this is a woman who is more than qualified to be president. Isn't it interesting how a barrier seems insurmountable -- until it comes down? I hope girls across the country are thinking, "That could be me." And like I said after the first woman got a best director award, it's about time!
    Barbra Streisand is a singer, actress, director, composer, activist, and philanthropist.

    S.E. Cupp: Clinton's less inspiring lessons

    S.E. Cupp-Profile-Image
    On the day Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination for president, it's hard not to wonder what message young women in America will learn from this historic moment.
    For sure, they will learn, if they didn't already know, that a woman can compete for the highest office in the land. They'll also learn that women are a major force in electoral politics, and if any politician wants to win, he or she will likely have to do it with the help of women voters.
    But I fear they'll also take away some less inspiring lessons.
    To put it in modern parlance, Clinton just isn't a girl's girl.
    If you believe any one of the dozens of accounts and stories -- from the many victims of Bill Clinton's sexual harassment, from Clinton aides like George Stephanopoulos, and from journalists like Carl Bernstein -- Hillary Clinton enabled her husband's behavior, helped cover it up, and then later bullied his victims into keeping quiet. She's since had to defend her own insistence that every victim of sexual assault be heard and believed.
    Her uneasy role as a feminist who only fights for women who don't threaten her stature and grasp of power makes her, at best, a controversial role model. At worst, it makes her the exact opposite of the kind of women we say we want to be -- women who support each other.
    The way for women to get ahead isn't at the expense of other women. I just hope the young girls looking up to the first female nominee know that.
    S.E. Cupp is the author of "Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity," co-author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right" and a columnist at the New York Daily News.

    Jane Fonda: This is a thrilling moment

    This is an emotional, thrilling moment. I've known Hillary Clinton since the 90s when she wanted to talk to me about the challenges of raising a child as a famous woman. She's as intimate and personable as can be and she'll make a real difference on so many levels. Now everyone just has to get out, vote for her, and hold her feet to the fire!"
    Jane Fonda is an actor, co-founder of the Women's Media Center and a member of the Advisory Council of the ERA Coalition.

    Terry O'Neill: You want a revolution?

    I won't say that I never thought I'd see the day when a woman would be nominated for president, because as a feminist, a mom and a leader of a national women's organization, I knew this day would come. But I'm particularly proud that it is Hillary Clinton who is making history today.
    I became politically active because I wanted my daughter to grow up to be proud of me. I was on the Tulane University law faculty in New Orleans when white supremacist David Duke was running for governor, and I certainly didn't want my daughter to grow up in a state run by white supremacists. But I also wanted her to be proud that her mom did all she could to stop Duke, and then to work for social justice in our community.
    Hillary Clinton -- who, like me, grew up in a middle-class family, went to good schools and got a law degree -- began her career fighting for children's rights, and she's still fighting. That has continued to be an inspiration to me to keep doing the work I do.
    Hillary Clinton has won the nomination despite the double standard routinely applied to strong, talented women. She has shown us that not only can we break through the glass ceiling, we can also shatter the prism that distorts the view of women in politics.
    You want a revolution? This is a revolution.
    Terry O'Neill is the President of the National Organization for Women

    Leah Ward Sears: Now let's correct all gender inequities

    The success of Hillary Clinton shows that American women have made great gains. And that's a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I don't believe that her achievements will much change the plight of the average woman struggling to balance work and family.
    Although many women have, in recent years, attained high levels of professional success, we're still subject to the outdated notion that women are primarily caregivers. As such, we're expected to balance work and family in ways not required of men.
    When I was a little girl, for example, I wasn't allowed to call my father at work unless it was an emergency. I was told he didn't need any distractions from home. Even after becoming chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, that accommodation was never afforded me, however, either by my children, my husband or my mother -- who told me not to bother my father!
    I was expected to handle familial obligations while at work and still keep pace with my male peers. Most men (and many women) still unconsciously sanction male privilege, and until this mindset changes, gender inequities will continue to exist, no matter who is the president.
    Leah Ward Sears is a retired chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and is a partner at the Atlanta Office of Schiff Hardin, LLP.

    Anne-Marie Slaughter: Cheer, but not just because she's a woman

    Anyone who could do the math knew this day was coming: the day when a woman was nominated as the presidential candidate for one of America's two political parties -- a woman with a good shot at winning. Talking to a friend about it on the phone this morning, my voice suddenly wobbled and my throat caught; the emotion caught me off guard but I knew where it was coming from.
    "We're making history," I said. "A woman is going to be the president of the United States." My friend, who is a Republican but who is very scared of Donald Trump, quickly corrected me. "Not just a woman," she said. "The right woman. We will be safe. We will flourish. We will be in good hands."
    What kind of president Hillary Clinton will be is more important to my friend than Clinton's gender, as would certainly be true for me if the shoe were on the other foot. If a Republican woman were nominated for president, I would only feel moved if it were a woman I could support.
    Donald Trump is deeply wrong to think that women would vote for Hillary Clinton just because she is playing "the woman card." That view is as demeaning to women as to assume that men would vote for Trump because he is a man is demeaning to men.
    So it's complicated. It isn't just "a woman." It's the right woman at the right time.
    But neither is it just this candidate. If Hilary Clinton were a man, I would be happy to see the candidate I support win the nomination. But I would not feel the profound solemnity and emotion of this moment, as I will feel when I watch her accept the nomination at the Democratic Convention.
    Hillary Clinton is making history. But that is something to cheer (and even to cry over, just a little), only if you think history is marching in the right direction.
    Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president and CEO of New America, a nonpartisan organization committed to big ideas that break ideological boundaries. She writes here strictly in her personal capacity. She is the author of "Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family.

    Erica Jong: Women need not wait anymore

    When Hillary Clinton lost the nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, I wrote in my notebook, "I can't believe how desolate I feel." Just as black men got the vote in 1870 and women not until 1920 -- 50 years later -- we were getting a black president before a woman president.
    Much as I admired Barack Obama, I was sad that once again women came second. My daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, who was then 30, believed that Obama was better than Clinton. But I saw Obama as a brilliant constitutional lawyer with limited experience -- and Hillary Clinton as a brilliant lawyer with lots of experience. She got my vote in the primaries.
    When Clinton graciously committed herself to campaigning for Obama and unifying the party, I was sad yet proud. When she made her 18-million-cracks-in-the-glass-ceiling speech, I wept.
    She will be a great president who will do her best to unite the country. I wish her the goddesses' speed.
    Erica Jong is a poet, novelist and nonfiction writer with more than 24 books published. Her novel "Fear of Flying" celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2013, and has sold over 27 million copies in 42 languages. Her latest novel is "Fear of Dying."

    Anna Deavere Smith: Clinton's disruptive question

    Hours before Hillary Clinton rode to victory in the California primary, I was in the back of a San Diego high school library. With their teacher and school principal riding shotgun, a group of predominantly Latino eleventh graders were yielding their planned focus on "The Great Gatsby" to meet with myself and leaders in their community to discuss matters related to social inequity in America.
    I noted that the girls outnumbered the boys three to one. (High demographic numbers do not necessarily result in power -- think pre-apartheid South Africa). The front three rows were filled with girls, except for one single African American boy whose tinted blond hair popped out of his designer hoodie. The seats in the very back row, at first barely visible, were filled with boys.
    The boys said nothing for the first 35 minutes. A boy in the back row raised his hand five minutes from the end of the session and asked one unexpected, perplexing, disruptive question. Does the disruptive question carry power? On behalf of American history, Hillary carries a disruptive question: Why is it that we the land of the free have yet to elect a woman president?
    Tuesday does not answer the question, but it hopefully will solve the problem in November with history pointing in the direction of progress.
    Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and professor.

    Sahar Aziz: A new norm for my daughter

    What makes Hillary Clinton's presumptive nomination of historical significance is not simply that she is a woman, but that she is an overtly confident and ambitious woman. Despite advances in women's legal rights, a "good woman" in American workplaces is still shaped by gender stereotypes. 
    She must be smart yet deferential, firm yet perpetually pleasant, and competent yet self-deprecating. Failing to comply with these contradictory burdens leads to professional stagnation.
    All too often I and my female colleagues in the legal profession have experienced the harmful effects of gender stereotypes. Having a strong personality, taking the lead, and offering constructive criticism makes us abrasive, unprofessional, or worse.
    Meanwhile, our male colleagues with similar personality traits are recognized as leaders and rewarded accordingly. Indeed, men are disproportionately over-represented in leadership positions as managing partners, judges and law school deans.
    To be sure, just having a woman as president is not good enough to advance women's equality. America needs a woman who is not ashamed of her strength of personality and confidently takes on the reins of leadership.
    Clinton's nomination sends a powerful message to American society that women no longer have to bend over backward, change their personalities or hide their innate leadership skills to professionally succeed. As this becomes the new norm, I hope my daughter and her generation can be their authentic selves, free from the gender stereotypes encumbering my generation from breaking the glass ceiling.
    Sahar Aziz is an associate professor at Texas A&M School of Law, where she teaches national security and Middle East law. She is a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding