The next "big thing" and the next anti-"big thing"

So first it was the dot com crash - everyone saw that coming right? Well they should have done - people were predicting it for years. My friend the Tin Man started bugging me about it before most even realized the dot com era was here, let alone on its way out. There was never really any "if" about it, it was just a question of when the merry-go-round would stop sending everyone flying off into economic disarray.

Then there was 9/11. Of course most of us never saw the planes coming, either actually or metaphorically (apparently the CIA/FBI/NSA and Bush government did the latter), but some of us wondered just how long the government could keep the FUD masquerade up. They made it easier by pumping over a $1,000,000,000,000 of borrowed cash into the national economy while simultaneously pulling cash out of the local economies. It was kind of like sitting in foamy bath tub of bubbles with air coming in an bubbles getting bigger and fewer, rising over our head, popping here and there, their connections getting more and more strung out (like local economies and our bank balances) until we are all sitting under this single tenuous shiny impossibly thin veil of something not quite sure of what is holding the bubble up there. Then one day along comes a butterfly called "sub-prime" that flaps its wings and brings it all crashing down. Pooh - no more bubble and we're sitting cold, wet and alone in the tube crying for mother to bring us a warm blankey.

There, there, America, Mama will keep baby cosy and warm, Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe, Of course Mama's gonna help build the wall...

So I ask you - what will be the next big thing and what will be next anti-"big thing" to bring it all crashing down. I mean I'm only 40 and I've already experienced a whole bunch of these - oil crisis, 1987 stock market crash, dot com crash, and now the sub-prime implosion (it's an implosion because Uncle Sam doesn't like to talk about banks crashing any more).

Be my guest - post your best guesses as a comment and let's see who gets it right!

Torture

This article got me thinking - what is worse: a President who protest his innocence of lying by arguing about what the definition of "is" is, or one who wants to protest his innocence of torture by arguing about what the definition of "torture" is?

Read the second to last paragraph and you'll realize that times really have changed, and when brute force is substituted for intelligence it is definitely a change for the worse.

Dog mauling

Analogy - if cars randomly went crazy and killed people. Find dog mauling statistics.

How to arrest 2,000 people a day

I guess I'm going to have to read the book to get the real facts, but this Alternet article reveals more staggering figures on how the USA wastes staggering resources busting people for petty drug charges. Over 600,000 arrests a year for simple possession of pot - not dealing or trafficking, just possession. That's one an a half times the population of Oakland getting a criminal record every year. Okay, I'm ignoring the possibility of multiple arrests of the same person but even so. And the combined figure for all pot (not other drugs, just pot) arrests at over 800,000 per year exceeds all violent crime arrests.

Isn't that just mind numbingly crazy? Does anyone see the huge problem with this? Never mind the economic arguments - that legalizing pot could add $30-odd billion in tax revenue to the governments coffers, and remove a $100+ billion source of revenue from the criminal underworld.

This country has...

This country has jumped the shark.

Yes, that's right - I'm saying "The United States of America aka Team USA has JUMPED THE SHARK". I hear that phrase applied almost every day to some thing or other and a few weeks ago I started realizing it applied most appropriately to the USA. The signs are everywhere and if you don't see them you have jumped they shark with Team USA too.

Birthdays without pressure

Being child-free I get invited to precious few kids birthday parties but I know they can be veritable orgies of proto-consumer excess and sugar infused excitement - and I probably haven't experienced anything like the examples of birthday party hell out there. I like to think our friends with kids are better than those examples but I know how easy it can be to sucked into the madness. We've certainly seen some bad examples at "pre-birthday party" baby showers... kids not even born yet with enough clothes for the next three years, and three of everything a new parent could need.

I used to think that feelings about too many gifts at parties were because I'm an old fart, or I'm just jealous that when I was a kid I probably only had one or two parties where anyone other than my immediate family was present. Furthermore I don't recall ever getting more than one major present per birthday and that was always from my mum and dad. When I got older my big brothers managed a few cool gifts but other relatives usually gave money or clothes - my grandma was always good for a hand knitted sweater at Christmas, or a few 50p coins stuck in an envelope. Mind you 50p was serious dough back then - it could by a lot of crisps or bottles of soda!

But I do get this feeling that I'm perhaps not the only one to think there could be a problem, as the Birthdays Without Pressure web site puts it, "children's birthdays are out of control" and that out of control parties contribute to:

• A too much stuff culture
• A me first culture
• A trash and waste culture
• An entitlement culture
• A envy culture
• A more of everything culture

and that is precisely what we don't need when the next generation grows up because it is exactly those things that brought us the baby-boomers who got and kept us in this big global warming over consuming mess in the first place. The last thing we need just when conservation might actually be cool again would be a whole new generation who couldn't give a damn and wont do anything without a gift bag at the end of it (don't you get it? - the gift is life and you get it up front with a whole lifetime to enjoy or squander it as you wish).

Okay, end of rant, this grinch is going home...

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.