What If They Gave A Protest...

...and no one came?

 

That's not entirely true. Many people who came were turned away, but in point of fact, this protest was one of the worst advertised protests I've ever heard of.

 

Or rather...NOT heard of.

 

Running a protest entirely off Twitter is suboptimal. Some of us old farts, the folks who would stand up and be counted, didn't know.

Why This Will Pass

 

For once, someone actually spoke the right word: millionaire.

 

It's a matter of perception. Say to someone, "I'm going to raise taxes on the top 1% of earners," or "People who make $250,000 or more should pay more in taxes," and no matter how correct that policy may be, it's a percentage that's too nebulous and an income that's too low. People will assume they are part of either group (people are disnumerative) and rebel.

 

Ahhhhhhh, but call them millionaires, and you've finally raised the right image in their heads: Rich Uncle Pennybags, the Monopoly character, right down the monocle and striped pants.

 

It's about fucking time someone got the NLP right.

The Gates Of Hell

 

I've been contemplating the problems that face America: the economy, the insecurity, the unemployment, the classist state of our society, the (marginal, admittedly) rise in civil unrest.

 

I've been coming to grip with, as David Byrne would sing, "Well, how did I get here?" What systemic problems does America have that put us in the position of practically being at each other's throats when we should, in point of fact, be all over the powers that be, both actual and implied?

 

I came up with one I hadn't given much thought to before: Gated communities.

 

It never really occured to me how deeply this facet of America affects the people who live within and without, and more, how culture reinforces this paranoid creation.

 

You can go all the way back to colonial America to find a form of isolated community in this nation. Indeed, the moment people started looking for more room and leaving the harbor cities and towns, people have effectively gated themselves off from other people. When you have to ride a day on horseback to get to the city, you've become out of touch with social interactions of a diverse sort. People who move out and are closer to you share at least one attribute, the need to be out of the city.

 

Western expansion, with all the room to the left of the coast, made this phenomenon part of the American experience. Indeed, the customs and mores of that era-- personal responsibility, multiple gun ownership, a rugged individualism, paranoia about strangers-- echo to this day amongst people who ought to know better. The distances involved in moving through Montana or Colorado, the rugged terrain, and the natural dangers abounding, these all made for a healthy distrust of people who just showed up at the end of Main Street. How did they get there, and what did they want?

 

Natural questions. The very topography and isolation formed what would be in effect gated communities, with their own security forces as well as their own media, their own medical care, commerce, and justice.

 

Slide forward to the 20th century. While out west, these isolated communities were slowly, glacially, becoming less and less isolated, back east, people were being thrust together in larger and larger cities and megalopolises.

 

See, until the rise of the automobile and public transportation, a city dweller with a lot of extra cash could buy a "country" home just a few miles away fro the squalor of the inner city. Believe it or not, for example, in New York, Coney Island was once the reserve of the well-to-do like the Astors and Vanderbilts. If you went there now, you'd be hard pressed to find remnants of those families. Indeed, you'd find an inner city environment, squatting right by the shore. Affordable housing, paved streets, infrastructure...and a gated community.

 

At least the denizens of this gated community have to leave to shop for food.

 

In a nutshell, we start to see where the problem lies. When a community stops being part of the community, then it is no longer a community. At least in those old west towns, a body could walk in and have a drink at the saloon and talk to people, however uncomfortably. In today's modern gated communities, you can't even make it past the security booth, and woe betide you if you do have a reason to be there: you're under constant surveillance, marked and tagged as an outsider from the second you walk in to the second you leave the compound.

 

One can understand how these compounds could have arisen in the redder parts of the country, but why have these "reservations" sprouted up in some of the most diverse and integrated parts of the nation?

 

Fear. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's a manufactured fear, if you ask me.

 

Fear of crime. Fear of terror. Fear of them. Fear of information. I'll get to that last in a moment.

 

And the media feed these fears, despite the fact that there's more important news to be covered.

 

If five years ago, you had led a newscast with the fact that the American debt is skyrocketing through the roof because of spending on two wars and the Bush tax cuts, you'd have been fired from any local newscast, much less a network cast. "If it bleeds, it leads," is a truth, not a truism, in journalism. And if you watch the news closely, despite the fact that most violent crime is committed by the majority race of white people, inevitably and disproportionately one of the lead stories is about a minority criminal.

 

Why? What is the point and/or purpose of fomenting that aspect of American society? To foment fear. And fear drives like-minded people closer together.

 

The dynamic of huddling together for protection is nothing new to the American experience. Indeed, the very cliche "circle the wagons" was in response to an attack on the (mostly) white folks heading through (mostly) Native American territories.

 

And probably acting like jerks as they did, but I digress.

 

Gated compounds are just circled wagons with lawns and hot tubs.

 

But look. A gated compound also gives the illusion of being responsible to a community without the mess of actually having dissenters and outsiders to inject an opposing viewpoint. It encourages "samethink" and punishes, through ostracism and shunning, people with minority views.

 

Or worse, views that would be majority in the larger world. It allows for a purification of the belief system that reinforces whatever squeaky wheel is the loudest. This is where things get interesting.

 

We've all seen the dissonant memes coming from the far right: there is no poverty in America, blacks are doing much better than ever, but committing crimes at an alarming rate.

 

Not that middle class or even wealthy people don't commit violent crimes, but huh? How is that even a possible line of logic? Why would any people who as a whole are "doing better" commit crimes at an increasing rate?

 

It's the perception of crime. It's the fact that the media hump this shit until they're blue in the face, and these memes get made up by the opinion makers who feed into these pockets of purity. And those pockets echo these inconsistent and mistaken (to be kind) memes until they are conventional wisdom, common knowledge and accepted as fact.

 

Which they aren't. By any means.

 

But worse than this it gets. See, it's one thing to reinforce a wrong-headed belief amongst a group, that's wrong, but when confronted outside the group, say at work, with conflicting information, and suddenly the violent reactions range from utter close-mindedness to rage at the person trying to ptu a new perspective on things.

 

This gets carried back to the community as "you know what this idiot at work told me?" There's no reasoning with fear, you see. It's not a logical construct. It is, in fact, a deeply emotional reverberation because it fits that most basic of human emotions, terror.

 

Fear is hell.

Let's Avoid Jokes About "Briefs"

 

I'd hire this lawyer to...handle...my case in a heartbeat.

And Lest You Thought I Was Whistling Past The Graveyard...

 

...in saying the office is Obama's to lose, take a look at this

Republicans Really Are Thin-Skinned

 

Erect a momument to a brother, and they get all butthurt and demand the right to refuse.

 

Next, they'll put it in the back of the bus...

The Economist Has It About Right

 

Obama's re-election is his to lose, not the Republicans to win.

 

This was also true in 2004, when Bush got lucky as the Dems chose arguably the worst candidate they could. Or his dad in 1988. Or Reagan in 1984.

Get Your Bike On

 

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to ride my bike to work, only to be stymied by the fact that my boss, while nominally a "green," refuses to allow bikes into the office and since he owns the building, refuses to set aside bike parking.

 

This despite the fact there's an entire sub-basement with empty storefronts in the wake of 9-11, but I digress.

 

It looks like I may get my chance, starting next year.

Good News! (or not?)

 

LightSquared has announced it has a breakthrough in its attempts to establish a nationwide wireless network.

 

Unsurprisingly, some people have a problem with this.

They Shoot Rogues, Don't They?

 

They do if they lose $2 billion!

Orion's Belt

 

NASA announced a new "deep space" rocket yesterday: the Orion spacecraft, capable of exploring the outer solar system.

 

My recollection is, when this project was first discussed way back in the dim dark '80s, the idea was to basically throw a nuke under the spacecraft and propel it into deeper space that way, after a conventional chemical booster launched it into high earth orbit.

 

It seemed to me to be an efficient way to spend nuclear bombs in a peaceful manner.

 

I'm sad to see that was eliminated from the project.

The Truth Is Out There

 

Y'know, there are some mysteries that have a really prosaic truth underlying them: people are gullible and excitable.

Yea. Good Luck With That.

 

Asking clemency from a man who was cheered for slaughtering hundreds? Can't imagine that will end up in a happy place.

Jumping The Shark

 

Whoa. They hire lip readers now to follow the First Lady around????

 

These right wingers are treasonously sick!

Who Cares?

 

So Sarah Palin was a typical 70s chick: smoked dope, snorted coke, slept with, well, whomever she slept with, got knocked up and eloped with the man she's barely married to. Who cares?

 

Well, no one should, I suppose.

 

Except she was just a few million votes from being VP of the country. And while, again, none of this matters to us, there is an observation to be made here.

 

We choose our leaders-- not just political, but role models, celebrities, and captains of industry-- with all the discretion and care that a vending machine displays in choosing quarters. And then we expect them to live up to some baseline norm of behavior.

 

The very act of pursuing fame, influence and power is the very act of a madman, so someone who actively pursues it ought to keep in mind their feet are clay, too. So are the legs, hands, torso, head...hell, they're human and they ought to remember that and show a little humility, instead of preaching inhuman behaviors like abstinence, fidelity, or thrift.

 

Humans are animals, first and foremost. That Sarah Palin slept with a basketball player in college only highlights this fact.

 

That she would get upset about it now only highlights her shame. For you see, it's not the act that created the regret, it's that someone found out about it.

 

And there's the rub: for some reason, humans with all the brainpower in the world and all the records of history, personal and world, somehow miss the lessons of their lives.

 

We're human. Nothing more, nothing less. If you believe in God, S/He forgives us for this. If you do not, then standing at (or near) the top of the tree of evolution ought to serve as a reminder it's that much farther to fall.

 

Note this is not an excuse for hedonism or indulgence. We are still human and we ought to be trying to better ourselves. The one thing a celebrity like Palin ought to be doing is not lecturing us to be perfect beings. She ought to be reminding us that we do sometimes fail, and ecnouraging, not lecturing, us to try again.

 

And one thing we owe ourselves is to choose better leaders. People who acknowledge our imperfections. People who demand more of themselves, but don't impose their values on us, expecting us to live up to some standard even they can't.

 

The key to life is to set goals for yourself that exceed your current expectations. The way to fail is to force goals that are unrealistic.

 

You know what that implies? Plato said it best: "γνῶθι σεαυτόν"

 

"Know thyself."

 

We live in a society where that's frowned upon, where the very act of learning about who you are is considered ooniegoonie psychobabble, and unproductive in a society where time is money and money is everything. And yet, not a day, NOT A DAY, goes by where examples of people who DON'T know themselves act out in irreparably embarassing fashion, harming themselves and worse, the people around them.

 

And we smirk, content in the knowledge that, hey, that wasn't me that ripped a ten-year old child a new one in voicemail or got caught with a hooker in a dark alley.

 

Even though it could have been. Even though we ourselves, but for the grace of God, would be someone else's juicy gossip tidbit.

 

Really. You have something in your life that would be someone else's "Ooooooooooooh". Maybe you like fetish porn. Maybe you smoke dope. Maybe you drink to excess on occasion and get naked in a bar. Maybe you pick your nose and eat it. Maybe you peek over in the next urinal to compare size.

 

Oh, wait, those are mine...

 

But you get my drift. No one lives a life so incomplete that they don't indulge their inner demons every so often.

 

Not even Sarah Palin. And the shame is on us for letting her think she does. And for letting her get any influence over us, whatsoever.  

Ron Paul: Murderer

 

Holy shit! You know that question that Ron Paul got lobbed at him by Wolf Blitzer Tuesday night? The "hypothetical" one about the healthy 30 year old who dies because he has no insurance and should the nation just have let him die?

 

Turns out, it wasn't so hypothetical after all!

This Is Good News For The McCain Campaign!

 

Rumour has it, Sarah Palin nailed some hulking black dude back in 1987.

Petty Fours

 

Obama attacked over a paper clip by FOX News et al.

How Much Does It Cost To Be Poor In America?

 

A lot more than it does to be rich, actually.

And Many Of Them Are Right-Wing Bloggers!

 

Dementia is underdiagnosed by 75%

His Name's Not Jean val Jean, But...

 

...he was hungry, nonetheless.

Brown's Warren Terror

 

I think Scott Brown's days are numbered. He was elected for his Teabagger views, and then turned out to be more moderate than they would have liked. They'll support him but the way the supported McCain.

Jelly Bellies

 

A new type of battery.

Flats & Heels

 

The good news: Prices remained flat in August. Except for food, but that was offset by a decrease in energy prices.

 

The bad news: So did retail sales. That's particularly troublesome, since the back-to-school push is one retailers count on to propel them from the doldrums of spring and summer into the holiday selling season.

 

As a result, anticipate you'll start seeing Christmas decorations side-by-side with the Halloween themes normally seen in stores this time of year.

SASQ

No

 

The district is going to be eliminated in the 2012 reapportionment (NY lost two House seats). Weprin was the most inept candidate imaginable (he'd lose an election to a Girl Scout if it was for a Boy Scout office).

 

I mean, really, a Jew running in a predominantly orthodox Jewish district can't win against a PAPIST*????

 

Turner will have his insignificant year in office, try to run for Senate and get his lunch eaten. Meanwhile, he makes no difference to the balance of power, and the residents of the district knew this going in.

 

 

 

* deliberate terminology to invoke one of the prejudices of said district.

WHERE ARE THE MOTHERFUCKING JOBS, WEAKER BOENER???

 

Think about a nation whose government has abdicated all responsibility towards the people. The aristocracy, the wealthy, become more and more wealthier as the poor become poorer and more numerous. The nation is on the brink of bankruptcy, in large part because it has recently funded two unpopular and unnecessary military adventures against a people who are governed by a tyrannical regime, one they were paranoid would launch an attack at any moment against them.

 

Taxes on the wealthy were never lower than under the current government. So low, in fact, they were practically regressive, since the poorest 99% combined owned and earned less than the top 1%. To fund all this militarism, rather than raise taxes on their patrons, the government borrowed. Heavily. With no real way of repaying the money. Meanwhile, the wealth drained out of the national economy, along with the increasingly more dangerous climate conditions, created massive unemployment and more and more jobless and poor.

 

People resorted to stealing bread.

 

Some brave politicians suggested taxing the rich, but they were shouted down loudly by the majority party.

 

The titular leader was in a weakened position because of all this. He called for a crisis management team to propose budgetary recommendations to the legislature that would be non-binding, but a starting point for negotiations.

 

Meanwhile, the poor had limited representation in government, and in fact, were prevented from voting in many cases. A strong media campaign that masked deep support for the current system but superficially called for radical change in politics and elimination of so-called "progressive ideals" helped polarize the nation even further.

 

Sound familiar?

 

That was 1780s France.

 

It will happen here. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes and Santayana was spot on. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Shorter Rich Americans

 

We screwed up! Oh, god, someone HELP!

Faster Than A Speeding Satellite

 

It's SUPEREARTH!

Hypothetical Question

 

What happens when the Earth burps?

The Answer Seems Pretty Settled To Me

 

It makes for better porn flicks.

Own A Piece Of Space History

 

But only if you're a school. Or a retired shuttle astronaut.

Predicting Change

 

It is possible.

 

This supercomputer showed that careful analysis of the news would have predicted the Arab Spring.

 

The next step? Apply it to real-time news.

 

The actual study is here, and yes, the world is worse than you think.

Asinine

 

Y'know, I totally got why people were upset with JC Penney's "I'm Too Pretty To Do Homework So My Brother Does It For Me" shirt, but this? This is just stupid.

 

Hell, I  was allergic to algebra and I got a 98 in it!

 

Fucking Regents exams...how do they work?

Put A Lid On It

 

You might have missed the foofaraw from Sunday night's Mets-Cubs game.

 

If you recall, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, when baseball restarted the Mets took to wearing caps from the FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority and NY's EMTs. They were initially banned by the league on the grounds they were not uniform caps, but ultimately Major League Baseball relented, and the Mets were allowed to honor the heroes of that day for the rest of the season.

 

Each year since, the Mets have simply put those caps on for any game played on September 11.

 

This year...well, let's review the circumstances first. The Mets were playing the Chicago Cubs on national television, ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. They requested from the league a dispensation to honor the first responders yet again.

 

That request was denied. Whether it was a harsh rebuke or merely a reminder, the team went public with its disagreement.

 

Little noticed in the kerfuffle was the fact that both teams had special caps manufactured for the occsasion, which included an American flag patch. Indeed, all teams were issued these caps for games that day.

 

Coincidence? Think the manufacturer got a little peeved that his caps would not be featured during the single nationally televised game that day?

 

What do you think? Why else would Bud Selig get so upset? 

Put Up Or Shut Up

 

Assuming President Obama is actually committed to this bill, and given the vigor with which he presented it, there's no reason to think otherwise, the Republicans are in a dilemma over the jobs creation bill.

 

Either they piss off their base enormously, or piss off the other 75% of the country to an equal degree.

 

You'd think the choice would be easy. You'd be wrong. If we weren't in such dire straits economically, I'd be tempted to opine for letting the Republicans screw things up more, and prove their jackassishness, but it's too deep in the game for such trivialities.

*WHEW!*

 

Well, at least America isn't alone anymore.

Hate, Incorporated

 

It is truly breathtaking, the depths to which Teabaggers will manufacture hatred (video link)

"A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?" asked host Wolf Blitzer.

Paul, a medical doctor, first responded by saying American society is primed to believe government would pay for it.

"Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him,' he said.

When pressed on the question, Paul responded: "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," to applause from many tea party backers in the audience.

"But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?" asked Blitzer, to which several voices in the audience cried out, "Yes!"

To his credit, Ron Paul himself said no, but his own answer is a bit unsettling in its own right, and reveals a terrible knowledge of American history.

"No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals," said Paul to additional applause. "And we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. This whole idea, that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because they dump it on the government, it becomes a bureaucracy," he added.

Congressman, we tried that for the first 150 years of America, and we ended up with people who were starving in Applachia and dying in our streets. Old people were living in the most extreme forms of poverty until the New Deal, and I note that your own experience with treating the indigent began in the 1960s, well after the New Deal's fabulous implementation of safety nets.

Indeed, most Americans never even had health insurance until after World War II, when FDR's mandatory disability insurances were expanded to cover illnesses and injuries off-site. A government program YOUR HOSPITAL BENEFITTED FROM to treat the indigent. Idjit!

Lest you think those in the audience who actually shouted "Yes!" were some form of liberal plant, I give you this:

Paul, an unapologetic isolationist, defended his views, and said that Santorum’s contention that the country was attacked by Al Qaeda because the terrorist organization resented America’s position in the world was wrong.

“This idea that whole Muslim world is attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,” Paul said.

Many in the crowd began to boo and hiss, drowning out Paul as he attempted to explain Muslim sympathies for the plight of the Palestinians.

Clearly, a position more in keeping with liberal doctrine, that American hegemonic ambitions had more to do with the terror attacks of 1983 and 2001 than our "freedoms" or prosperity.

It saddens me to see this much hatred on public view. If its not booing a legitimate rationale for a belief, or cheering the death of a poor soul who, like millions of his peers, thinks he is immortal against the better judgement of God and man (or for that matter, cheering a muderous bastard,)  then it's a bloodthirsty war chant against Ben Bernanke.

 

I mean, when Dick Cheney says you've gotten too bloodyminded, you might want to reconsider your words.

 

These folks aren't Americans. I really wish they would stop identifying as such. They are brownshirts, goons hired to thug up American life and American politics.

 

Look, when liberals protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or protested the G-8 conferences, we were called "commies," "fascists" (clearly, no one studies history anymore,) "terrorists" and worse.

 

When are these folks going to be called out on their extremism? How many people have to get blown up in a building before we start hunting these folks down and carting them off to a time-out in the pokey?

 

When do we get America back from them? Is it going to be before or after they've raped the shit out of her?

 

The saddest part is, this is not hatred that comes from a place that one can comprehend. This is not hatred that comes from having watched someone die because of the actions or inactions of another. This is not hatred that comes from injustice or misjustice. This is not hatred that grows from the pain of existence in a society that is cruel and unfair.

 

This hatred has been manufactured and marketed to these people. This is not a grass-roots hatred but one that has been delivered by Fedex and the Internet after testing in front of focus groups.

 

It is the hatred by the privileged against those who have not attained that status. It is hatred that grows from boredom and the gnawing feelign that somehow, one's life was a failure, and someone must be to blame for it, and finally focusing on someone or someones conveniently presented as "them."

 

A man dies (hypothetically, but it's all too real a scenario,) and a crowd yells for more. An innocent man dies, and its left to God to sort it all out.

 

I'm not sure God aprpeciates the extra work, guys.

 

A nation dies, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but to the sound of thunderous applause.

 

They ought to be ashamed.

 

Y'know How Your HMO Is A Big Inhuman Corporation?

 

It ain't getting better anytime soon...

Krugman Gets It Right

 

But then he almost always does. Barro is an ignorant douchenozzle.

It Turns Out...

 

...Mondays really DO suck.

That Word, "Open-Minded"...

...you use it, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Some scientists and politicians proclaim that significant global warming will occur because of man-made carbon dioxide, CO2. However, the science of global warming has not been settled.

Uncertainty exists in this proclamation. It is based on computer calculations of at least 20 theoretical mathematical models predicting 20 different temperature increases. None of the models totally matches the Earth's actual temperature patterns. Forcing elements and feedbacks in the Earth's climate system that drive temperature changes are not well understood and it is currently not possible to isolate and determine their values.

So this is the new trope the spincyclists are trying on for size? Because we can't track a precise temperature increase, global climate change is not real?

Really? Really? You mean, it doesn't matter that ALL the models show a temperature increase to dangerous levels? That's not important? What's important that they, in some OCD fashion, must be precisely aligned?

Idjit...fucking over-educated, underintelligent idjit...

 

Who Cares????

 

It does and that's great.

 

 

Wednesday, The Shit Hits The Fan

 

Literally

 

Al Gore presents a 24 hour global marathon of recorded lectures that are location specific to detail how global climate change impacts ordinary citizens in every time zone around the world, starting at 8PM EDT, September 14.

Taibi All But Says It

 

We almost had Kristallnacht in DC.

Zombie Spongebob Square Pants

 

No. Really.

Too Big To Fail?

 

Apparently, Jamie "Douchbag" Dimon thinks not.

He was referring to new capital requirements that call for banks to hold core tier one capital that equals 7% of risk-weighted assets. That number climbs to 9.5% for systemically important financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America.

 

“I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” he said. “Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it’.”

 

If he'd stop offshoring profits and stop supporting corporations who do, this might have a little more meaning to me...

 

What You Didn't Read This Morning

Three passengers were detained on a flight from Denver to Detroit for an inordinate amount of time spent in a restroom.

 

They were having sex by all not-for-family-news accounts.

 

I tip my hat. Hell, I barely fit into a rest room on a plane, and they squeezed three people in AND got naked?????

Attention Californians!

 

Call or write Governor Jerry Brown. Get him to sign this bill ASAP.

Take A Close Look

 

This may be the face of the cure for AIDS.

A Grand Slam

 

Barack knocked one out of the park last night with the bases loaded. It's hard to see the GOP standing up in the face of his brutal assault on their elitism.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) 9/11 Changed Everything.

 

I spent the dinner hour last night investigating gyms around my neighborhood.

 

All my life, I've been an on-and-off gym rat. A body like mine takes a lot of hard work, a combination of intense training and hard-core drinking and eating, to develop this perfect set of mushy but bulky muscles. I can lift a Buick but look ridiculous in a Speedo. That sort of thing.

 

I haven't been to a gym regularly since I spent eighteen months with a personal trainer in the early '00s, and I've been suffering injury after injury, even just walking down the block. The final straw was curtailing my bike riding this summer, a real passion, because of a bout of severe tendinitis.

 

I was walking home from what will likely become my new gym and I started to let my mind wander (realize that I had no clue about this story perking in the background, altho it's conceivable that subliminally I heard it being discussed on one of the ubiquitous TV sets around the gym.)

 

I started to think about this weekend. see, I got a guest pass from the gym and I wanted to find a way to use it that simulates how I'd regularly use the facilities. After all, if it's packed on Monday nights, that's something I need to know.

 

It's 9/11/11, after all. I determined to try to avoid the television as much as possible that day. And I started to think about how the world has changed.

 

Not your world. Not the world world. My world.

 

I've changed a lot since 9/11. That event was a catalyst in my life, created a whole new dynamic for me.

 

I guess I realized that security was an illusion, that the very people in charge of protecting us couldn't, or wouldn't, or more likely, couldn't be bothered. The oceans no longer protected us from our enemies, and all the duck-and-cover drills we learned as kids were meaningless when the building itself was about to collapse. You get a little scared (first post. I'll get to that in a minute.)

 

If security is an illusion, then why was I protecting myself, my thinking went? If enemies foreign could smite me, surely enemies domestic could do it, and for far less incentive. So why was I sitting in an office, making gobs of money for someone else, all for the crumbs of recognition I was getting? Sure, I was making good money (still am, just not quite as good,) and the people were nice and the perks of the job were enjoyable, but it was all an illusion.

 

Ten years later, the job isn't as fun, the perks have been culled to the bare minimum, I haven't had a raise of any note in eight years (9/11 changed things there, too,) the people around me are antsy, and the illusion has been damped down. I still work where I worked on that fateful day when the plane tore past my office window, but the man who worked here that day is gone. And soon, the man he evolved into will likely leave as well.

 

Part of it is, I'm sure, just the normal aging process. But some of it is because of the realization that the illusion is incomplete.

 

In the 1990s, I would have been content with working, then going out with buddies after work, getting drunk and staggering home to my family (that's changed, too.) That's an illusion too, and it's an illusion designed to feed the illusion that a job matters to your life.

 

The money does, its true, but the job itself is pretty meaningless. Unless you can find a real meaning in it. Making someone else richer is not a meaning. It's an excuse.

 

My attitude towards life changed, mostly. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when most people were pondering how to protect themselves-- duct tape, plastic sheets, first aid kit, cell phone-- I took up SCUBA diving. I always wanted to do it, and realized that buildings fall but achievements last. I may as well do the bucket list thing now.

 

I was careening towards fifty at the time. I knew I'd have fewer days ahead than behind shortly. Time is a companion that guides us through life, gently reminding us that we don't have as much of its companionship left as we hope. Diving meant dive vacations, which meant travel. I never traveled much as a kid/man. Now I travel regularly. There's too much of the world to see, both above and below the water, and I need to see it, to record it for posterity, and to have stories to tell in heaven or hell.

 

That was the first psychotic break from my previous life. I started looking through the lens and into the world, shooting pictures. Again, to record what I saw, how I saw it. I took cameras below the water because I realize 99% of the people around me (including you, my readers, but I'll get to that in a second) will never see the undersea world up close and personal, the way I can shoot it.

 

The final break from what I will euphemistically call "reality" came on August 4, 2005. A friend and co-blogger (if she ever stops playing with her kittens and iPad), Katrina, persuaded me that my voice needed to be heard. I was too intelligent and too passionate to sit around on blogs and websites commenting. So I did. Timidly, at first. This was, after all, the height of the frustration the nation was having with then-President Bush the Younger, and a lot of vitriol was flying in both directions. I really didn't know how I'd stomach taking responsibility for my own words at my own blog.

 

It took a while. A year and a month, almost precisely, for me to reconcile myself to the fact that I was going to have to strip away a few layers of undergarments if I was to communicate my message, and make an impact. I've tried to make this a personal blog even as I've talked about world events and made connections between disparate things. I know my hit count it way below where it could be. I know other blogs that have started the same time as mine and through a combination of fortune, harder work, and more likeable personality, those blogs have flown high.

 

But I'm proud of the work I've done here, and prouder still that my small corner of the world has not contained my barbaric "YAWP!" I'm proud to have been quoted, prouder still to have won awards for my blogging (sheesh...I forgot to include those when I switched to the new format!)

 

But more, I'm proud of the friends I've made blogging.

 

9/11 changed the world, but it changed me even more and for the far better. It made me look at myself and take a hold of my life and start doing something to make a difference in my own world, and I hope, in yours.

 

Even so, I'd give all that good that has happened back to see the world the way it was at 8:45 AM, September 11, 2001.

Errr, A Better Headline Next Time?

 

This article is about how gold came to earth in meteorites.

 

Yup. He went there.

Well, Now, This Is Interesting

 

Apparently, you can report on Texas football games and interview Texans, so long as you're not with Al Jazeera.

God, I Hope Not!

 

Or at least, they have more interesting and engaging conversations.

 

It's seems almost empirical that they do. It strikes me that intelligence manifests itself in constant communication.

 

Oh. Wait. It's about the mechanics of speech, that they have "vocal chord" like structures...

Klein Boggle

 

As Ezra points out, if this doesn't make you mad as hell, then nothing will. All your raises and bonuses? Gone to HMOs and doctors.

Ecce Homo, Ergo Elk

 

Fat, drunk and antlered is no way to go through life, son.

The Train Is Rolling Down The Track

 

I don't mean the Burlington train, I mean the labor train.

 

People are getting pissed. Rightly so.

He Cantor Be Serious!

 

Eric Cantor might have rendered himself irrelevant, between the debt debacle and the emergency storm aid controversy.

Looser Regulations Are Not The Answer

 

Letting the environment suffer so polluters can make more money is not going to create jobs. Companies are making gobs of money, and stuffing mattresses with it.

Hungry Hungry HIPPO

 

Well, the results are in, they are not pretty and the atmospheric study of greenhouse gases is being curtailed.

 

Tents are folding up, the animals are being packed into train cars, and the only thing left behind will be the clowns to distract the rubes from the truth.

 

We're doomed.

Another Day, Another Speech

 

Let's hope this time, he actually comes out a-speakin'.

Contracting Perry Perry

 

Rick Perry really believes SocSec is a Ponzi scheme.

 

I have a newsflash for him: If the top 1% of people own 90+% of the wealth, then "capitalism*" itself is by definition a Ponzi scheme. Welcome to the party, pal!

 

*America is about as capitalist as Yad Vashem is Nazi Germany. It is the very antithesis.

Tech Noir

This might end up being a "tl;dr" essay, so please forgive me in advance. I'll try to be brief, but some of the concepts need exploring.

 

I woke up this morning at 3AM to the sound of garbage cans being emptied by the sanitation collectors. I couldn't get back to sleep, partly from the startle, partly because I just don't sleep so well anymore.

 

Mostly, because I started to think about Glenn Beck.

 

Well, sort of. His name came up in the monologue.

 

See, I started to think about the past twenty years of hatred and intolerance...really, fifty years, but liberal thought had managed to mask the undercurrent in American society and like mushrooms in a dank basement, hated took root and spored.

 

It's not that hatred is a new concept in America. Ask a turn-of-the-century Italian, or Catholic. Ask any black man from any era, frankly. Ask a woman. Ask someone gay.

 

It's that hatred has become mainstream. That's a novel situation in America, to be honest. Yes, there have been strands of hatred that seemed mainstream, but they've been beaten back and repudiated. I'm not sure that can happen this time, at least not for a while. Let me get into why.

 

To sum it up in a word: technology.

 

Human history suggests that advances in technology have mostly paced human development. I think that's because technology has been accessible to the layperson almost right away. (There are exceptions, and I'm getting to that.)

 

Some caveman smacked a flint rock and started a fire. It's not an unlikely scenario to suggest that happened on more than one occasion accidentally. The technology of fire rarely needed to be transferred or communicated. Another sharpened a rock into a knife. Similarly, it seems like an event that transcended special knowledge.

 

Smelting metal, hammering brass, working with iron and steel, all seem to be accessible technologies. Even if you couldn't figure it out for yourself, once it was taught to you, it wasn't hard to replicate. You could study it, adapt it, improve it. Moreover, you understood the dynamics, even if the underlying physics or chemistry was completely unknown to you. Fire hot, rock melt, glowing stuff hammer: sword.

 

Naturally, with technology came applications. Nothing is invented in a vacuum because inventions come about through need. Or opportunity. Usually, the first applications of any technology, from rock knives to fire to swords to gun powder and so on, is warfare.

 

Whether it's killing your neighbor or wiping out the next kingdom, you're going to use the latest technology because either your opponent doesn't have it, or more, because he does. Rare is the occurence where a lighter-technology overcomes a more advanced technology, and usually that comes down to incompetent application of the more advanced technology.

 

Side note: You might think 9/11 was such a case, but spot on, you'd be wrong. I'll demonstrate momentarily.

 

Even as late as the invention of the automobile, we obtained a technology that the average educated person could fathom. I mean, really, think about it: you turn a key or press a button, which completes an electrical circuit that sends an impulse down a wire that jumps a gap that's in a closed cylinder filled with explosive vapor that creates a pressure wave forcing a piston downward, which is connected to and impels motion in a wheel.

 

That's your basic car engine, in a nutshell. And among the first widespread uses of the automobile was warfare. It allowed information...key word there...to move faster, weaponry to be deployed farther and faster, and troops to be repositioned.

 

Ultimately, however, technology becomes deployed for more benign purposes to the general population. Fire becomes cooking, knives become utensils, swords become...well, letter openers, gunpowder becomes fireworks, guns get used for hunting food, and engines become the family station wagon.

 

The 20th century saw a phenomenon unheard of in past milennia. We started to see the rise of technology that was limited in access to the general population. Airplanes, for example. Yes, the physics of flight is fairly simple: you have to generate lift that overcomes the weight of an object. How many people have driver's licenses versus how many have pilot's licenses?

 

There's a reason for that: piloting a plane requires a mastery of three dimensional thinking, a specialized training that, because of the hazards and conditions, is not available to everyone who walks up to a plane. Indeed, we pay good money (and often, pretty lousy money) to people with that special knowledge to get us from point A to point B safely. How many of us have chauffeurs, tho?

 

You can go down the list of technologies invented in the 20th century and find any number of instances where technology has exceeded human ken and evolution. Biotechnologies, genetic engineering, computers, atomic energy.

 

Software. And here's where we start to get into the rant.

 

Now, let me preface this by saying I'm no Luddite. I've studied computer science with experts. I can program in BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, and compile assembly code. I've used PCs since the early 80s. Even today, I can still crack my knuckles and write a simple Visual BASIC program for Excel or a macro for Word.

 

When I learned to use computers, we had to write our own programming. Conditional commands, root calls, subroutines...we understood by looking what a program was supposed to do-- usually because we were scratching our heads trying to figure out why it wasn't working. We got our hands dirty from start to finish. I've written ten punch card programs to add two numbers and print the answer out.

 

There was a time when MicroSoft held the patent for the most complex single piece of human engineering in history: Windows NT. Software had become so complex that no one person would ever again write a complete program. If you needed to splice in the time into a program, you could buy an off-the-shelf piece of component software. You'd work on one small part of a program, while a group of programmers were dedicated to melding your facet into the larger whole, comprised of hundreds of other facets and calls.

 

It became a religious ritual, frankly. A scriptorium of monks from the Middle Ages would feel at home, as each worked on a separate page of the Bible, illuminating passages, scribing chapters and verses. 

 

And like those religious rituals, it was shrouded in mystery from hoi polloi. 

 

Do you understand how blogging software works? Could you explain it in a sentence? And that's relatively simple word-processing/database management stuff! Imagine a CAD program. 

 

But wait, there's more to this analogy.

 

Information from the Bible was passed along in ritual fashion, designed primarily to manipulate the populace through propaganda, and a faith in the purveyors of that information: the priests, the bishops, the Pope. Similarly, in this great information age, where nominally anything should be available to anyone, we are so inundated with data that we rely on others to sort it all out for us (myself included, and by reading this, you too.)

 

Now...marry the two concepts in your head for a moment: technology is used first and foremost in warfare, and information is shrouded in mystery and parceled out in easily digestible bits and bytes.

 

And now you know why I was awake at three AM, thinking of Glenn Beck. The right wing, the folks who own much of the infrastructure-- radio networks, computer software companies, internet providers, media firms-- to declare technowar on the world, have declared war not on Iran or Al Qaeda (altho they too have been targeted) but on the American people.

 

That's the bummer. The good news is...well, anyone know how the church lost its stranglehold on the Bible?

 

That's right: someone common invented the printing press and a new way for information to be distributed came of age.

FINALLY!

A video game for the rest of us!


UPDATE: KO had a point last night: It's wrong to wish death on people like Sarah Palin or Mickey Mouse Bachmann, mostly because some right wing nutcase might use it as an excuse to shoot liberals, and so I've rethought this post.


A little. I think any nutcase will find an excuse (ask Jared Loughner) so I'm still thinking about buying this game.