chuck kottke

Here comes the sun, do da do do, here comes the sun, and I say; it's all right.:sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ===========================================================

Greetings West Coast drumerXYZ! :drummer::sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny::sunny:

Those in the ivory towers of power think they'll always be able to control the citizens; but they're in for it now, since a truth once told cannot be again hidden, and a movement once started will not go away conveniently to suit their agenda for control and domination. It may take better organizing, it may take a more cohesive message, but justice and fairness will prevail.

> As long as freedom and justice live in the heart and soul of every man and woman, this movement remains alive and will re-surge. For as long as the injustices persist, so too will the call for freedom, justice, and liberty persist.;) The Bell of Liberty Rings on in the hearts and minds of each and every one of us. Wish as much as you might, the days of the Plutocracy are numbered, for no tyranny can contain the human spirit.

^^ That's interesting! Gatherings are a sign of solidarity, a link of brotherhood across the globe.:sunny::clap: As long as the inequities persist, we will persist in demanding accountability and change. ;) Number ebb and flow, but this is a movement from the heart, a movement for social justice.

Wow, I'm happy to hear that Occupy really is everywhere!!:):):) Hm, I suppose, Canadian fir & spruce needles, they do get quite messy and all, especially if they're dirty, you know, mixed with tar sands and all that..;) But that's interesting, an unusual reason to shut it down.. seems like a needle in a haystack excuse to me. Sounds like the authorities are looking for any excuse to shut down the demonstrations... At least Toronto is going strong!! YAY!! Kingston's movement is peaceful, or it's like crickets signing in Kingston? I 'm not quite following you on the woman dying of an O.D. in her tent - and social equity issues the Occupy movement is fighting for - doesn't Canada have a top notch heath care system? I am confused. But even so, for the media's sake, I'm sure they blame the camps, much as it is here in the mainstream media - since they all know who they're working for. Goodnight Canada!:)

I'm always amazed with Texas, never had imagined a Wurstfest there! :laugh3: One could imagine that here perhaps.. but quite the tuba playing in the video, impressive! Wurstfest They do covers of?? covers on the wurst whilst cooking it? :P

It was sooo warm here today, the snow almost started to melt. Thanks Canada for sending us your weather!:rolleyes::laugh3: I was dodging Canadian-induced snow-ice avalanches falling off the metal roof on Violet's barn - but you get 1 sec. warnings before being impacted, so that's fair. And is there an Occupy Canada movement going on?? (occupy Ottawa for instance.. seems like it would make sense, given the nature of Harper's regime and all ..)

:laugh3: Fair Trade Spam, 100% organic shade grown, & made with love.:P

> Welcome mel16! Good to hear your enthusiasm for Coldplay, and I'm happy you got to enjoy them at the iTunes Festival gig in July!! Hope you have fun here, now that you're a member, you can do more than just lurk, you can actively stalk!:laugh3: Nevah mind me, just being silly.:jester: Anyhow, hope you have the time of your life! ;)

:laugh3: Age is a state of mind more than anything else. And since I'm twice your age and I still act like a kid at times, you're extremely young Nick! ;)

the sum is greater than the parts - together we are stronger than what we are apart from one-another. From the many, one. Diversity is the tapestry, but on one gigantic Navajo blanket is woven the story of all. “The increasing unrest in the land and intensifying protests in the streets are a necessary lament for a collective dream that has been lost. Not simply the loss of the ‘American Dream’ of a consumer society and endless economic growth; but, the loss of the real dream, the dream behind the dream, the dream of an America that has not been yet.” But is it a lament, or a presage for a coming day, when we reach a higher plane of existence together, when we hold upon high those principles which we hold dear, and make real the dream we are dreaming.:sunny::sunny::sunny: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90dahjahLR0]Coldplay- Here Comes the Sun - YouTube[/ame]

> Public education is in my mind a matter of self-improvement for the citizens of the country. Moving away from public education disenfranchises the poor and weakens the country by lowering access to education which in turns creates a less capable work force and less competent citizenry. If however one wishes to educate one's own children in an environment separate from the public educational systems, I think that's a right, provided the education is a quality one. But I really don't like the idea of marketizing everything; if one decides to send one's children to a public school, good. If one decides to send one's children to a competent educational setting other than the public school system, good. But when forces attempt to politically drain or go the "wrecking crew" route to the public educational system, my hair starts to stand on end. And if some argue the marketplace works as well in education as it does with widgets, I take issue with this. For the purpose of education is to prepare citizens so they can be fully capable and balanced individuals in society, capable of self-initiative, creativity, compassion, as well as working well with others. If we reduce it all to standardized test-taking evaluations and competitions for chits, it becomes a mad scramble to the bottom for our civilization. And I come from that hyper-competitive background, I excelled at defeating others in tests and academic achievement; don't want to return to a system devoid of context, lacking compassion, and rewarding too heavily individual achievement at the expense of group success. What is more important is the success we achieve together, balanced with compassion and relaxation in life.;) Addendum: If the issue is motivation for educators, and motivations to keep the educational quality high, I would say there are many ways of keeping the quality of education high in public schools, such as rewarding those teachers for outstanding academic excellence in teaching based on a combination of results including student improvement and peer review; to keep balance in the system, some educators in certain fields perhaps should be reviewed for the qualities to which they impart in their students; one who teaches history for example might be better evaluated for ability to impart understanding of societal effects and the thinking of the day, and to the degree to which they impart an understand of the value of empathy and compassion in their students. So to each branch of learning, a different purpose and a different method of evaluation would seem appropriate to achieve a better result. So you see there are effective ways of ensuring that the quality of the education remains high, markets are not the only means of motivating people to improve, and in some areas (such as health care) are inappropriate to the given field.

DC Douglas #OccupyWallStreet 4 Reasons: #OccupyWallStreet – 4 Reasons (2011) - D.C. DOUGLAS (1) Reinstate Glass Steagall (2) Audit the FED (3) Reverse the Supreme Court's ruling - End Corporate Personhood. (4) Overhaul the Tax Code - make the 1% Pay Their Fair Share. ================================================================= But this doesn't go nearly far enough to fix the problem. Richard Wolff believes we need to change how we structure businesses, so businesses become democracies, owned by all the employees, and decisions are put to a vote. No more top heavy organizations where the top skim off all the benefits of increased productivity, no more ignoring or dodging the social and environmental implications of the business's decisions. Many are calling for amendments, declaring that money is not free speech, corporations are not people. A good start. I would go further, stating our inherent right to fair elections, our right to allow all candidates equal access to the modern public square - that of the broadcasting system, all registered candidates given equal and ample air time at no charge, in exchange for those broadcasters use of the frequency spectrum taken from the public commons. Cap the level of donations to a level affordable by the broad majority of citizens; less than 1/2 of 1% of the average income in the country, so broad citizen's support of candidates will count more than the very wealthiest .1% buying off the candidates and the parties. For preventing the problems from recurring requires making democracy work first.

> Winning the will of the citizenry usually works best when one stands for peace and justice, for violence simply gives an excuse for the police to try and disband the movement, and paints it all as a bunch of rabble-rousing hoodlums, rather than what it is - a group of competent individuals demanding justice and a more inclusive world view in our system. What the state does, under the control of those in power, paints a picture in the minds of the public; if those in power are reasonable, they will not act violently towards those who pose no threat to the public's safety, but if they do act violently towards non-violent activists, then it will be for all to see and decide who's right and who's wrong, which side is ethical in its actions and which is not. Albert Einstein Institution - Advancing freedom through nonviolent action

Tonight on C-Spam: The House Ethics Committee decides to vote on whether or not to censure Representatives who engage in Spamming.:P

The problem with the quiz Jay is that it misses the point of achieving a more honest government, a more perfect union. I put faith in our ability to right wrongs and put force behind basic rights; the right to fair elections is what we must do to restore honesty in government. Even if you want much smaller government, we will still need our representative government to be accountable to us.;) I was listening to HereOnEarth, radio without borders today on Wisconsin Public Radio, and Jean had on an interesting guest - Luis J. Rodriguez - author of the book It Calls You Back: One Man's Break With Gang Life.Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders - It Calls You Back: One Man’s Break with Gang Life Luis grew up in Los Angeles, experienced the uprising and riots of the 60's there, and I managed to ask him a question about whether or not he felt there were violent instigators planted within the crowd of protesters in Occupy Oakland, instigators who were there as operatives to start fights (in other words attack the police) in order to allow or prompt the police to respond violently against the protesters and break up the protest. He responded saying "Well I was fortunate to go to occupy Oakland just before the general strike was called, and my experience in a lot of these struggles especially if people are doing it peacefully, if they're doing it to bring messages out to people, they're not doing it not to hurt anybody, is you will have people who will take it to a violent level, and whether they're plants or not it ends up in the same result - it discredits the movement - you know how that goes. And then it starts undermining why people are there. so My sense of it is that there are probably some people who just want some... because I remember.. Some of them are probably planted by the police, cause.. That was in the 60's, that happened quite often, where plants showed up in all kinds of organizations, and generally they were the ones that were the quickest to go to battle, the quickest to say "let's knock things down," and then you had to question "Why is this guy going at it so hard?" and then you find out years later they were being informants, paid informants, or paid operatives. So I think that's what people are getting at or harkening back to. If this is paid for by the police or not, the end result is it's going to make the movement look bad, and hurt as much as possible some of the good things they're trying to do." So I think much the same - some are anarchists, and their violent actions hurt the movement by making it look bad, and some may be paid informants/operatives inciting violence to allow the police to act violently, and who knows who's paying them to do this?? But the less anarchists doing violence the better, since the winning of public sentiment comes when descent people simply asking for justice and fairness rally together, and any injustices against them is then seen as a form of brutality from authorities acting as conduits for powerful behind-the-scenes people. Check out Luis J Rodriguez's website, and "The Dream that has Yet to Be" The website of bestselling author, Luis J. Rodriguez Occupy the places where the power is - as Michael Moore likes to put it, we're reclaiming our language - Occupy no longer refers to the US Middle Eastern occupations, or the Israeli occupation of Gaza, now we've gone to where the real problem is - Wall Street and Main Street in every town! ;)

YES:jester: ================ ..now what was the question again?

Viva La Revolution! :cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

>I feel I need to respond to this, for it grates hard against the working citizens everywhere. I will answer within the framework of the text: Tibor Machan: ‘Occupy’ protests predictably misguided Thousands of Greeks have been violently protesting that the freebies they had taken for granted may have to be reduced, even completely cut. Few of them seemed to have a clue about how one cannot get blood out of a turnip. After decades of living off the work and incomes of other people and future generations – via borrowed funds – their gravy train is very likely to reach its termination point. > Assuming this to be the case misses the mark - I believe the Greeks are protesting austerity measures, slashed wages, and job cuts. If the elites running the banking system and the Greek government had the citizenry in mind, these huge mistakes would not have been made. Jobs need to meet the demand for what is desired, I agree, but blaming the citizens for misguided policies is absurd. And I believe, globally and here in the US, the focus by the media and the power elite is on cutting wages and benefits for working class citizens, while the super rich get even richer off the backs of everyone else. That is the problem, and the richer they get, the more money they plow into politics to steer even more money and power their way - it's the fat at the top that needs to be trimmed. Benefits that create healthy citizens are not bad investments, so allowing families time off for early childhood development and bonding is essential; the most important investment we can make is in the health and wellness of the citizens. In much of Europe the attitudes of these Greek protesters is routine. Europeans have welfare states in spades, and few have ever warned them about the hazards of living in such systems. These past few years may finally have produced such a warning but only by creating hardship for those who have become completely dependent on the system. > The European experience is far superior to what we have in the US - a real social safety net, time off to raise a family, some guarantees in life; that's a plus for society. Welfare is the bad label pasted on all social programs - better to see these things are social improvements, building a healthier and more vibrant society so that markets and the economy can function properly. Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain are just the more drastic examples, but the entire continent is experiencing the consequences of decades of profligacy. Instead of testing a truly revolutionary alternative to socialism – which, of course, crashed with the demise of the old USSR and its colonies – namely a truly consistent free-market, capitalist economic order (with its proper constitutional framework intact) – what most Western European politicians chose to do is to turn toward "socialism with a human face," of the democratic kind (i.e., without outright or explicit police-state measures). > We've seen what the extremes of Capitalism can produce here, I find that a poor choice to make if one wants to progress. Socialism wasn't the case in the USSR, one might better term that Stalinism using the mask of Communism; basically a totalitarian state unlike what Karl Marx had proposed and envisioned. Free market is just another label for unregulated and unfair market practices, the kind of corporatocracy we have seen enough of. But when there isn't sufficient wise thinking in government about debt and market stability, what we see is what we get. This has been a strategy largely adopted in America as well. Promoters of more and more entitlement programs and top-down federal and state government economic regulations have been clamoring for America to become a so-called compassionate system. > Barely adopted, for how poor the poor are here - it's truly unfair, and how hard they must work just to stay afloat, how the men with the top hats see the men in the mines is appallingly unjust. To see the working class neighborhoods in such poor shape, and all the working poor who can't get medical help because the insurers drop them while raising rates, to improve their profit margins and then buy off the whole political process. Entitlements? Social Security isn't an entitlement, like some handout - it's a government run insurance program which we pay into, a means of ensuring at least some income in old age to prevent the elderly from becoming destitute as was the case in the "good old days". And regulations are there as a result of unscrupulous business practices that have severely hurt the public, harm which led to the introduction of the Glass-Steagall act to provide a firewall between banks and the marketplace. Compassion is where it's at - for without that, it's back to the barbarism of corporate lords and working class slaves. Never again! These and similar ways were meant to accommodate the moral and political sentiments of the former Soviet system of reckless forced wealth redistribution and egalitarianism. The only difference is that, while the Soviets realized that their planned economy requires a police state and met their demise by applying its policies, the Western welfare states try to square the circle by preaching compassion and kindness while enacting laws and regulations that, in fact, require a firm hand by the government. > The exact thing I was thinking, the idea that Socialism and Fair Markets, Honest Government somehow = Communism which must be destroyed is alive and well. Well, I've got news - the Soviet System wasn't communism, and it failed because there were no Fair Elections, and the economy was completely planned by insider cronies. What I and others advocate is honest government, sensible market regulations, and government where it should be - for schools, roads, basic research, safety nets, peace initiatives, small defense, and sensible regulation and oversight of things which on an individual level, no one else can do. The laws that regulate can be sensible and fair if we get a process in place to make the elections fair. So, as it has become clear that no system can survive with the reckless economic policies of the welfare state, what is left? We see the answer on the streets of New York and many other cities with the attacks on "Wall Street." Just as Germans in the 1930s turned upon Jews, whom they irrationally held responsible for their economic woes, the Occupy protesters are scapegoating a segment of the American population that not only does not deserve their scorn but may actually be the last hope of the American and even world economies. > So, as it becomes clear that no system can survive when it doesn't allow for fair elections and panders to the top .1%, what is left? We see the answer in enacting what those protesting are asking for - accountability, ecological wisdom, fair markets, fair elections, and the like. Unlike Germany in the 1930's, the US has responded to economic failures from the unregulated marketplace with programs to put citizens back to work, sensible market oversight, and social safety nets. But Germany today is well ahead of us in terms of having a sensible system! We could use a lessen or two from the German model today. And if those Wall Street gamblers had been so wise, then why did the collapse happen? I think all games require rules, require some adult supervision by the citizens at large, lest they get out of hand and lead to calamities. What these people are calling for is just a bit short of stringing up or liquidating the very people who are mostly hard at work trying to earn a living for themselves and their clients. (No doubt some on Wall Street are cads but if that warrants picking on them en mass, then the protesters ought to descend upon Washington, D.C.) > Bullshit! The people hard at work go unseen by the media, those are the workers, the managers, the educators, the people who are not the plutocrats! The majority of people working in the investment houses are workers too! The problem is, and justly so, with a small minority of extremely wealthy con artists and schemers, who have set things up on such a precipice as it is. But there is some culpability for the failings down the line as well, since choices were made to just keep quiet and keep busy, rather than blowing the whistle on it all. But if there is careful intelligent oversight, and promotion of worker-owned businesses, a restoration of real democracy in fair elections, then less is the urge to try some trickery. Promote the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Yet given the mainly mindless commentaries on the Greek, Portuguese, and Italian economic situations, given how so very few mainstream observers pick the correct culprit – namely, the welfare state and its coercive wealth redistribution and punishment of productivity – it isn't surprising that young Americans tend to turn on those who are managing to make it in this economy. They feel, having been so urged to feel, that they are owed an education and a living. We are the society we make possible, and to get a good start creates the engine for the economy. If saddling the students with unbearable debts, degrading working wages, and waging class war is Tibor's idea of justifiable, I wish him well on some island of his own to turn into his private plutocracy. No more rule by iron fists from up on high. We the People run this land. Send the blue meanies packing!:smug:

Whether by chance mutation, jumping genes, viral genes (non-jumping ones), or man-made genetic alterations, I just might a little bit - it's all on a roll of the roulette wheel.;) But perhaps I'll just dream the impossible dreams, for with imagination comes the evolution of thought, patterns of equal merit in human survival and success as any modification of our DNA could offer. We are not birds, yet we fly; we are not fish, yet we dive; we are not celestial objects, yet into space we go!!:sunny:

Well, without getting too specific, in my mom's case, she had been prescribed a level of thyroid medication 10X higher than what she had been getting, and while a little increase was warranted (she was loosing energy a lot during the day), the 10X increase almost killed her from a stroke. And if that weren't enough, I spoke with a nurse at the clinic where this doctor worked, and this nurse privately explained to me that the doctor my mom had been seeing was well past retirement age and had become senile, but was too stubborn to retire or admit having made mistakes, and many other patients were given the wrong doses of medications, some with serious effects as well. But the good old boy network kept it hush-hush, or that's what was explained to me. So having that first-hand experience, I can see how it can happen, and even with competent professionals, there are mix-ups between one doctor and the next, communication mistakes that are serious in their implications. But in this case, I trust if a jury is given as full a disclosure of the facts as is possible, they ought to make a good decision, if all other things are correct in the process. But if a doctor makes a mistake which is unintentional, calling it manslaughter seems inappropriate; maybe it could be called negligence leading to accidental death, at least saving the physician from having to wear such a harsh label.

Hey Reilly, I'll evolve - once you get the right design, it's smooth sailing on the high seas! ;) Sleep - well, whatever produces a best fit for the niche, that's all one really needs; sleep is for dreamers, perhaps one can evolve to have a snorkel? Ah, you traditionalists, where's your sense of adventure? Let natural selection and a desire for seafood drive you in your evolutionary quest!! Be one with the sea, as Cousteau is. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl7aM3nCqC0]Calypso - YouTube[/ame]

Q; Wyrd: "People that argue about what a bullsh*it it is that we evolve from apes and fish ... have my sympathy, even though I am a die-hard evolutionist. Because let's face it, it IS nonsense from an evolutionary perspective as well. We didn't evolve from the apes and fish that are around. According to the theory of evolution we just have the same ancestors. This is a huge difference that people never seem to realize. (disclaimer: I call myself a die-hard evolutionist not because I am such a believer, but because I made my job out of it - I write reviews/articles about it and do experiments with keeping the theory in mind - I am a professional evolutionary ecologist :smug:) >> Obviously so, but for simplicity sake, one can extrapolate to the nearest living relative of the organism from which we evolved, and in some cases, not much has changed with certain organisms over millions of years - so how do you know if we did or didn't evolve from Amphioxus? :P Have you pulled down their genes? ;) Just simple gill slits and a notochord, but in a few million years, just you wait and see!:laugh3: I often wonder about the before forms, which intrigues me because it gets a bit blurry when one goes back and back.. a mystery to be solved, lost to the mists of time.. But I still love the idea that we evolved from something similar to Tarsiers, tree shrews of a sort actually, but the image is so fascinating, like some little Yoda sitting in a tree... waiting to leap at a moth!:laugh3: But I think what Dawkins is saying is that we evolved from a similar ancestor to the lobed-finned fishes of eons ago. And I think about fish and fish fries and chips and the English traditions.. Naturally these fish wore suits and ties, they were proper types! ;) But that being said, I agree with Dawkins, I just think in terms of pre-walking stage organisms. Dry land is overrated, I think more like the dolphins and whales, back to the sea!:mudkip: And you know, when one thinks of it, I'm sure Jesus would have agreed. He and his disciples were fishermen, they served up fish and bread (no chips in those days), and must have had an understanding of the role of questioning and investigation about things - he wanted people to think, the parable of the mustard seed was all about getting people to think. Scientific inquiry is much that same - question things, observe things, consider the real meaning of things.

Funny name for a place - "potbelly subs":laugh3: As opposed to the slim sub place.. Gee what made me happy today? Basically going to the organic grocery, getting some good foods! And sharing the Kolackys with my mom. That made me happy.