Birthday reform

I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit of grinch when it comes to birthdays. A big party once in a while is fine, but every year is over the top. And even "big" birthdays don't warrant big parties in my humble opinion. My big 3-0 was quiet a do, but my big 4-0 had prisely two attendees (not counting three cats), perfect. These days I have so few friends that live anywhere near me I just couldn't bring myself to throw a huge party when so many of the people I'd want to drag out to celebrate wouldn't be around. Yeah I know real friends would travel around the world for a party, but really its just not right to expect people to drop everything, plus a bundle of cash to show up for a few hours of boozing and cake.

So I guess I'm a birthday luddite because if I had kids of my own it seems like I would have a whole different perspective on birthdays. I'd be expected to throw a huge party for every kids birthday, and drag my kids to everyone elses presents in hand. And now even kids attending other parties expect to get presents, WTF? Being child free agent J and I get invited to precious few kids parties but those we've been too (and even the "pre-birthday" baby showers) are usually non-stop consumer good orgies http://www.birthdayswithoutpressure.org/

Graffiti as art

My neighborhood gets graffiti everywhere, and it sucks. I mean not just that it sucks we have graffiti, but the graffiti itself sucks too. These guys are amature scribblers of the worst kind - I've seen three year olds who could paint a better picture and even sign their name more leggibly. Of course most of these people are not trying to be artists - they really only qualify for the label "tagger" and are just trying to claim territory like a dog marking its territory.

Like I said, it sucks... oh that their sidewalk pissant efforts were something more like we find at The Wooster Collective.

That's graffiti as its meant to be, well executed, interesting (often inciteful) and an improvement on what is there already. If I was sure it wouldn't attract wannabe scribblers too I really wouldn't mind seeing more of this around - it would brighten up a lot of our drab and ugly post-modern condo buildings. Compared to some of the official "art" that public art dollars pay for I know which I would choose!

Executor in Chief

It's nice to know that George Bush is working (working hard!) on establishing his legacy as Executor in Chief.

I think I have a solution to the death penalty problem - make wrongful execution a crime punishable by death. I doubt anyone who's convictions that execution is right will by ready to step up to the plate - after all as the article points out, 123 people sentenced to be executed have already been proved to be innocent while waiting to die, so goodness knows how many were actually executed before their innocence was proved, or took their knowledge of innocence to the grave.

I guess George finds plenty of validation for his plans in the bible, that is if God didn't talk directly too him with instructions...

Dick "El Predicto" Cheney

Many thanks to the Tin Man for sending me a link to this You Tube wonder:

Holey [sic] smokes batman, who would have thought old Dick Cheney could have been so insightful, so forthright and just so, so, so damned RIGHT back in 1994? Just goes to show, in Washington you're made to be dumb as the dumb-ass you work for. I suppose Bush would argue that's why he has to be so dumb - because he works for the United States people. You know how that saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice... I must be an American voter"

Two dollar bill R.I.P. (just my $2.00 worth)

No that wasn't a typo, I really did mean $2 worth and not $0.02 worth (or 2 cents worth). I just got a copy of Utne Reader and couldn't help noticing an article about the two dollar bill. You know that just kind of funny looking bill that might turn up in your change but once a year, if that.

Well according to Utne the $2 bill is getting a new lease of life thanks to its use in strip bars who are rapidly catching on to the idea of giving their customers change in two dollar bills. This meant customers no longer had any bills smaller than $2 to tip waitresses and performers. The idea of handing out $2 bills apparently started in Texas at a club called Baby Dolls, and this fact became so well known in the town that it was assumed any man spending a $2 bill had obtained it from Baby Dolls. The upshot was that actual patrons of the club would feel obliged to spend every one of the bills before leaving the club to avoid future embarassment next time they opened their wallet. So not only were patrons forced to tip at least double what they usually did, they also had to spend all the change before leaving thus further improving profits for the club and dancers.

According to Utne since 2001 the practice started in Texas has spread far and wide among strip bars such that the clubs use of them has increased the demand for the two dollar bill from the federal bank by tens of millions of dollars in bills per year. So big was the increase in demand that the Feds actually went off to investigate the source of increased demand. My prediction is we are now inevitably looking a the demise of the venerable $2 bill. Rumors of the bills frequent use in strip bars will spread far and wide, this will lead to a certain puritanical demographic into shunning the $2 bill, refusing to use it or take it as change. "My goodness, I'm not taking that bill, I don't know where its been!", will come the cries (as if we know where any of our currency has been!) Similarly anyone attempting to use the bills will become stigmatized such that they will just not want to spend them and hence accept them any more. Ultimately there will be calls to remove the "stripper bill" from circulation. There will also be spirited support for the bill by its fans - using it will be seen as a form of defiance. Support or lack of for the $2 bill will probably even feature in 2012 presidential debates (if not sooner) as some kind of moral litmus test for candidates. But the government, pandering to its base, will eventually be forced to oblige and remove the now tainted twofer.

If you want more evidence of the rarity of a $2 having interesting applications, just read about how certain Florida shoppers are using them.

Power to the people - but not in my backyard

It kills me that I live in Oakland which has a major Pacific rim port with a lot of wide open flat industrial land and no one is doing something like this wind generator project, in England of all places. Oakland isn't in the Dakotas but we still get plenty of a wind and as the Port of Oakland is a major polluter and had a profit of over $200 million last year I can think of no better way for them to make amends.

Oakland has a really bad rap, and doesn't have much to be proud of. I can think of nothing better to see when driving off the Bay Bridge as you enter the East Bay then some whopping great turbines twirling in the breeze generating power. Since the Port is already knee deep in towering cranes over 300 feet high I can't imagine that a few dozen turbines would hurt anyone and they integrate perfectly into the existing land use, and provide power exactly where its needed. A project like this would really put Oakland on the map - it might even make those crunchy granola types in Berkeley jealous.

Driving ourselves to extinction

I couldn't believe it when I came across the video below. If you watch carefully you'll see someone miss their freeway exit, make a U-turn on the freeway and drive back to the exit in the outside lane, and then make another U-turn to the exit.

I mean WTF? Miraculously no one is killed in the making of this video but really they should have been - the driver of that car should be dead because whether they realized it or not it was effectively attempted suicide and attempted manslaughter all thrown in. They might as well have sat on the freeway bridge and jumped into traffic... If we have become that dumb and that coddled that someone can get away with something so stupid and walk away scott free to drive another day there really is no hope for us.

Once in my youth I remember one of my brothers suggesting that all criminals should just be executed. I'm not sure where that line of thinking sprang from, perhaps he'd been studying the Old Testament too closely, but I seem to recall some debate about the wisdom executing everyone who commits a crime. If you can get past the dubious ethical basis of executing anyone at all (which America seems to have no problem with) then there are still insurmontable problems. Like determining which people broke a law which they had no idea existed (I did this once myself - so I should be dead), and proving they broke a law in the first place - of which America again provides dozens, if not hundreds of examples of failing to do so - sending innocent people to the gas chamber, electric chair and the like.

However, when I see a video like that I really feel that person should not be alive any more regardless of what they are thinking. Yeah, that's a pretty shocking conclusion, but go figure that the other 99 times out of 100 the person would probably have been broadsided by a truck and probably killed several other people. Even more shocking is that with all the technological advancement we have we still allow people to take personal command of several tons of steel and propel it at 60, 70, 80 or more mph down the freeway separated from other people doing the same thing surrounded by nothing more than a few feet of thin air and a strip of paint a few millimeters thick.

It really is time that cars ran on rails and people took the back seat to technology on this one. If necessary the backseat can have a driving simulator so they can pretend they are driving and yacking on the cellphone. Sure technology lets us down but at least that is something we can fix, unlike the 150 or more people killed by human error on US roads every single day. That's better than 1 in a million odds of not making it home each day - orders of magnitude better than winning the lottery. I think the next "fish" religion/darwinism bumper sticker should combine the two concepts - a fish with wheels on a crucifix tombstone.

Chicken or Beef? The Ultimate Answer

I have friends that used to keep a blog called "Chicken or Beef?" but they have moved on to new places now ("Mousebacon" and "This is My Dangerous Career").

It occurred to me today in an Adams inspired moment of silliness (Douglas Adams, not Samuel Adams) that "Chicken or beef?" could have been the ultimate answer. You know the ultimate answer to the ultimate question, the question of life, the universe and what's for dinner?

Fear of falling - up!

Apropos nothing, here is a flying interlude...

I was flying my paraglider at the coast this weekend and cloud base was low, around 700 feet and I was at about 650 feet, moving reasonably slowly into the wind at just a few mph. For once cloud base at the coast was fluffy white cloudlets drifting overhead, not just an opaque blanket of fog (stratus) that you slowly disappear into while the ground (or ocean) melts away into white below you.

So I'm flying around at that height and starting to feel like the cloud is "coming right for me" because its blowing onshore at a reasonable speed and I'm so close to it. Then I notice when I'm looking up at the cloud just over my head and I start to feel a vertigo like dizziness coming on, like I was looking over the side of a tall building at the pavement, even to the point that I actually sensed some fear that I might fall up and hit the cloud... Granted that fear was perhaps well founded - cloud base can be a turbulent place to be where thermals peter out, and air layers mix up often violently - but I have a feeling it's source in this case was less rational and more primal, just like vertigo.

The solution was simple, just look down which when flying holds no ill feeling for me at all. But it was a weird experience and I'm now wondering if there is a name for the phenomenon.

Hitchens on O-Town

The article "Brutality by the Bay" about Oakland hit my radar today and I started reading it without even noting who it was written by. Lets just say I was shocked that none other than Christopher Hitchens was weighing in on O-Town and the recent raid of the Your Black Muslim Bakery in connection with the murder of local journalist Chauncey Bailey.

Why GOP doesn't want to reform healthcare

This Alternet article gives the facts behind America's bloated, inefficient, and second rate (well actually seventeenth rate - or worse) healthcare system. And it makes the point that our system is focused on sickness not on health because a healthy population isn't profitable. Nothing new there - I knew most of it and I haven't even seen Sicko yet.

However its link to employment figures is interesting - it points out that the explosion in healthcare spending which is the reason for the explosion in healthcare costs to Joe Public, has been the driving force behind the explosion in healthcare employment. So guess what happens if you throw out the inefficient private healthcare system and put in one that is efficient and centrally managed by a single payer? Well you'll get massive unemployment in the healthcare sector because a business that spends six times what other countries spend on administration is clearly going to need far fewer employees - and that, as Bush would say, is "bad for the economy".

So America, you're going to have to continue to suffer because no government wants to sit by as hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers lose their jobs and ruin their unemployment statistics. Can you imagine the battles with unions that will happen if the squeeze on these bloated HMOs ever comes along? Never mind that it might be good for the health of the rest of us, never mind that it would save us hundreds of billions, and never mind that its what works for every other developed nation.

Rapture agenda

I have to say I was shocked by the high profile GOP people involved in this Rapture baloney thinly disguised as support for Israel... See the video. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

You can take your taxes and ...

Hot on the heels of my last post about "America: Freedom to Facism" as if by magic a court ruling shows up that lets a man off who has been refusing to file and tax return and pay his "taxes". Apparently they failed to show that his income was actually taxable, which was one of the main points of AF2F - that employment wages are basically straight barter - you give your time and the employer gives renumeration for what that time is worth.

Okay, so there could be some profit in the wages for time equation - maybe if you're a CEO making say $50M a year it could be argued you salary was inflated and your time wouldn't be worth $50M to you. But just how you'd ever show that I don't know. You could also argue that most people are drastically underpaid for their time, so what is that - a loss that you can write off against other taxable income (such as stock market profits).

So I'm actually guessing that an IRS argument would go like "your tax free allowance is basically what we think you're entitled for your time, everything else in excess is profit for your time and incentive for you to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for money". But that hardly seems right since everyone gets the same allowance so it is saying that an unskilled worker's time is the same value as a highly skilled one (say a doctor, teacher or rocket scientist). Economically that makes no sense to me... but then again I expect they just decided any other way of taxing wages as income is unworkable and more regressive so they just stuck with what they figured was easiest to enforce (or not as the case may be!).

America: Freedom to Fascism

I just got done with watching America: Freedom to Fascism using NetFlix on demand (you can also watch a low res version yourself for free on Google Video).

This documentary could have been made by Michael Moore - I rather wish it had for the reason it would gain wider audience and of course notoriety. But other than that I think it was spot on and concurs with many of my thoughts on "What's wrong with the country formerly known as America?". The truth is at all times there have been many things wrong and until the last twenty years or so it seemed like the general trend was to improvement. But as this documentary points out America that no longer appears to be the case.

The writer Douglas Adams mused on how humans had spent thousands of years coming up with ideas to make everyone happy (without nailing any one to a cross) but how each one seemed to revolve around the movement of small green pieces of paper "which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." - I think this documentary essentially says they same.

It seems like there may have been a few liberties taken along the way - so far the best evidence I can find for the case that the 16th Amendment was never ratified indicates it is based on minor technicalities that probably apply to any amendment's ratification you care to examine. It seems pretty clear that the spirit, if not the exact letter of the amendment was ratified by the required 75% super majority of states. Other arguments made against the legality of taxes may stand except of course, apparently, in a court of law. However the larger point is really quite beyond the legality of collecting non-apportioned income tax - it is how that, and many other "anomalies" of this supposedly "free" country continue to be enforced basically by brute force of collusion between money, media and corporate collusion in the houses of power that run the show and hold all the big bang, bang you're dead weapons.

That said - don't forget you've never had it so good - and even if the answer to "You think that's freedom you're living" is a hearty "No!" it is, almost the closest you'll get in the world. At least that is until unverifiable electronic elections become ubiquitous, untraceable humans and money - illegal, and descent - treason. Chose your moment to act or act up wisely America, because your days of freedom may be numbered.

Shoppers fear Chinese goods - but keep shopping at Wal*Mart

Business Week's story Shoppers concerned about Chinese goods misses some obvious points when it quotes "Joyce Simple, a church secretary, interviewed on a recent shopping trip to a Wal-Mart". Joyce says "I'm scared to death. We are dependent on our government inspecting things, I would be careful of anything that came from China."

Gee didn't anyone tell Joyce who the #1 importer from China is and the huge percentage of WalMart inventory that comes from China - last I heard it was close to 80% inspite of their red-white and blue flag waving activities. Oh well, ignorance is bliss but if she really wants to avoid Chinese goods she should shop else where and put money where her mouth is.

Later on in the article it says "There's no question that too many Chinese manufacturers and food producers put the bottom line ahead of safety". Oh really, well I think there may be a certain carrot being dangled in front of them by major retailers like WalMart who put the bottom line above everything else as almost any article or interview with a former WalMart supplier would reveal. So if there was anyone who chose to turn a blind eye or pray to god (literally) that quality goods would be delivered at bargain basement prices, that would be WalMart.

After all for the corporation there is nothing to lose - most of the time they would be okay and if there was a problem then well, it is easy for them to point the finger at the government and say it was someone elses for not inspecting the goods. Thus they are simply leveraging the wonderful economic crutch of "externalities" whereby society gets to foot the bill for all of industries blunders - from pollution, global warming, industrial accidents, to poisoned consumers - while they reap all the profits from cutting corners at every opportunity.

You see when it is convenient big government is a big evil monster that must be destroyed because its always telling us what to do with pesky laws and regulations, and collecting those nasty taxes and driving prices up. At other times those same people will tell us it is of course the governments job to protect us from them. Naturally they wont say it literally, but when things like ground plastic in pet food show up because they went with the cheapest bid (hmmm, rather like NASA has always had to do) and they want the government to foot the bill for testing every load of food that arrives because they can't trust their corner cutting suppliers, well that's the implication.

So you see, shopping at Wal*Mart is just perpetuating corporate welfare - to those that need it least, and its perpetuating businesses that do what everyone does best - looking after #1 above all and screwing over their neighbors for nickels and dimes.

Notariety for O-Town

One of my biggest gripes about living in the USA (spare me the "so move somewhere else" quips - you're boring me!) is the f**ked up health care, or rather health insurance situation. I was really happy to see that Michael Moore had tackled this issue with his new movie "Sicko", even happier that unlike Fahrenheit 911 it is getting universal, bi-partisan acclaim, and ecstatic that my home town Oakand (aka "O-Town") is getting previews of the movie projected on the head quarters of Kaiser. Like all HMOs Kaiser gets some "special" attention in Sicko.

I'm event more pleased to point out that Moore makes a point of telling us that Kaiser, as a corporation is legally obliged to maximize profit for its shareholders, yes there is a supreme court ruling to that effect, Kaiser could get sued if they didn't put the dollar before your health. Not the kind of behavior you want from an company that is supposedly trying to give you health care. As Moore tells us frequently - profit is not something that has any business being considered in conjunction with health care.

George Hypocrite Bush

Said George Bush today "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical — and it is not the only option before us"

Well that's a very convenient attitude to take when you talking about embryos which at the time of harvesting are no more "alive" than a hunk of flesh from your nose that any plastic surgeon would willingly lop off - for the right fee.

So George, how come in Iraq you have no problems causing the death of hundreds of thousands in the hope of saving some human lives? Even at his worst Saddam didn't have that kind of effect on the people of Iraq. Could it be that Mr Bush you are a hypocrite pandering to a special interest in the hopes of keeping your friends in power?

Cliff Notes

A sweet story from the UK about someone who discovered the real power of music - using Cliff Richard tunes to disperse evil hoddies.

Tim Griffin resigns - the real story is missed by US "press"

US Attorney for Arkansas Tim Griffin has resigned but a search of Google news is showing that there has been little coverage of the story so far in the main stream. The longest story from CNN details his involvement in the ongoing Gonzales attorney firings scandal. However every seems to be missing the connection between Griffin and an ongoing investigation into voter caging that may eventually implicate none other than Bush's "Prince of Darkness" Karl Rove. To quote from Greg Palast's announcement of June 1st:

Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US Attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin's resignation, "We're not through with him by any means."

Conyers indicated to the BBC that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive 'caging' operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove.

Griffin has not responded to requests by BBC to explain this 'caging' operation. However, in emails subpoenaed by Conyers' committee, Griffin complains to Monica Goodling, an assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, about the BBC reporter's reproduction of caging lists in Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse."

Last Wednesday, Goodling testified under a grant of immunity before the House Judiciary Committee that Gonzales' Deputy Paul McNulty, "failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote 'caging' during his work on the President's 2004 campaign."

Goodling's testimony prompted Conyers' request to the BBC for the Griffin emails.

Last night Palast showed Conyers a Griffin email from August 2004 indicating that Griffin not only knew of 'caging,' but directed the operation.

Hmmm, and the next day Griffin resigns, coincidence? Just how long before the real story breaks? You can help Palast's story get some coverage by digging it over at Digg.com

Bleeps from the past

I couldn't believe today when I pulled up my Napster start page - with is on the Electronica page - and saw the featured album was by Jean Michel Jarre. It's been a long time since I was into his work, at the time well ahead of the electronica curve. Maybe Napster somehow knew I was trolling the favourites of my youth today with a monster ELO-fest. Anyway I started listening to Teo and Tea and you know what, it's pretty darned good. If you're all into electronic or used to be a Jarre/Vangelis/KraftWerk/<insert 80s electro-pop band of your choice> you might want to give it a try.

Here's a link to listen to it for free on Napster - Téo & Téa