June 7, 2008 archive

Inconstant Sun

Howdy, buckaroos. Finally got some time here, after way too long. Got a little hail and snow the other morning, been a chilly spring. Thought I would ramble on a little about this here planet we got, and climate, and energy.

The sun is for the most part blank. Only a small magnetic signature remains from the small sunspot that formed.

Random Japan

If you can’t do the time…

Police busted four foreigners, including a British employee of Merrill Lynch, and six Japanese, for possession and use of cocaine and cannabis after early-morning raids on Roppongi nightclubs DownTown and Odeon. Some suspects told police they bought the drugs from an “African guy” at various bars.

Two men who ran the Peach Girl hostess club in Kasai on the outskirts of Tokyo were arrested for violating the child welfare law after hiring a bunch of 14-year-olds to work as hostesses.

Ouch!

When is a raise not a raise? When you manage a McDonald’s burger joint in Japan, apparently. A new wage system to be implemented by the fast-food chain this summer will finally pay overtime to store managers, but it will also abolish an allowance previously paid to them, meaning their total wages will remain unchanged. Somebody call Mayor McCheese!

And, speaking of the Golden Arches, four people trying to surreptitiously film a porno flick in a Saitama McDonald’s were arrested and charged with indecent exposure and obstruction of business… or should that be doing the business?

According to the Shukan Post, a 37-year-old tattooed mama from Sakai was arrested for using a pair of scissors to try and cut off a man’s… uh, manhood, after claiming that said man tried to procure sex from her 17-year-old runaway daughter.

Funkalicious Friday: Back!

Ok ….semi back, for blogging purposes. I could explain why or I could give you the short version…so here is the short version.

Whine whine whine whine whine. I could go on, but I hate whining!

This Brave Nation

I’ve just gotten home from my first day of attending the National Conference on Media Reform that is taking place here in the Twin Cities this weekend. Over 3,000 people from all over the country have convened to talk about how we can restore both our democracy and the media. It was a good day. My hope is to share some of what I’ve learned over the course of the weekend in several essays. And this is the first.

I’d like to start by highlighting the screening of a film I saw that was sponsored by The Nation magazine and Brave New Films. They have produced five short films pairing activists in conversation about their motivations, struggles and dreams. They are calling them This Brave Nation. Here’s the trailer:

Friday Night at 8: Transformation (or 100,000 Cinderellas)

Lou Reed:

Who doesn’t love the thought of transformation?  Pumpkins into a golden coach and all.

Cinderella, oh that’s what they fed me as a girl and I stumbled into many transformations as a result.

Modern culture calls it a “makeover.”  Well, yeah, you can change the surface in so many ways.

But transformation?  Oh that’s another thing entirely.  The surface is the form, the transformation fills that form and makes it breathe, like Galatea, like … well, I can’t think of any other examples.

Midwest city, yearning for real culture and finding none, I go to college and meet a strange group of wild misfits.

We end up renting a flat together and there are many stories I could tell about that, but I’m not going to.

America should have listened to Jimmy Carter on Energy in 1977.

With the news of a possible raise of oil prices to even $150 per barrel (see Meteor Blades’ diary), I thought it was worth going back 31 years to a televised speech by Jimmy Carter in early 1977.  

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes.

snip

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

We did not listen, and now the “future” of energy shortages controls us.  More, after the fold.

Also on Daily Kos:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Exposing Revisionist History: Washita Massacre w/ Modern Implications

Since some have questioned the validity of the Police Brutality against Longest Walkers in Ohio, perhaps a little history review is in order. Who is innocent and who is guilty? Which side of the story is predominantly told and why? These are questions needing to be asked, for the devastating effects of genocide are still alive today.

Attempts to revise history are abundant in this video.


Geronimo

The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.

And especially having “never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged,” was Custer. Distrubing is the fact that some people still try to spread his lies after 140 years.

Friday Philosophy: Looking back at the present

The WeaveMothers agreed with a request to vibrate a string.  They were whole as well as individual.

Maybe the unit would understand.

_ # ^ &  _ # ^ &  _ # ^ &  _

Imagine a future.  In my future, you would choose a good one, one good for coexistence on this planet as long as we all have to live here.  

See if you can act so as to turn reality towards that future.  Plan.  Create or discover the necessary resources.  Shape a scheme.  

Set up the dominoes, as many as you can build, and try to find the words that will generate the change you seek.  You will undoubtedly fail.  Analyze feedback.  Loop.  Hope for convergence.  Better yet, design for it.

pony party: in the wishful thinking category

In the what- if-our-politicians-had-guts category…

and said what they really thought . . . George McGovern is an interesting guy:

“[M]ost Americans see the establishment center as an empty, decaying void that commands neither their confidence nor their love,” McGovern asserted in one of his campaign speeches. “It is the establishment center that has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster-a terrible cancer eating away the soul of the nation. … It was not the American worker who designed the Vietnam war or our military machine. It was the establishment wise men, the academicians of the center.

“I have no fear of doing battle with some character threatening me with a box cutter. What sets my teeth on edge is seeing a frail little aging woman trying to get her shoes off to be searched, lest she slip by with some trinket that could endanger the republic.”

[The Patriot Act is] “completely unnecessary … a contradiction of the Bill of Rights,” said the 83-year-old McGovern. “I’ll go to jail rather than accept such an invasion of my freedom as an American.”

In the I-know-it’s-only-a-movie category

. . . but this speech stays with me. This is what I want from a leader.

some of my favorite lines…

america isn’t easy. america is advanced citizenship…

we have serious problems to solve. and we need serious people to solve them.

…making you afraid of it and telling you who is to blame for it.

i was so busy keeping my job, i forgot to do my job…

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