September 27, 2008 archive

Gimme my damned burger!

An assistant public prosecutor was arrested after an argument at a fast-food joint in Kyoto turned ugly when staff wouldn’t accept his expired coupon for a free burger. The enraged-and drunk, naturally-man grabbed the assistant manager and slammed him against a wall.

Speaking of the munchies, Russian sumo wrestlers Roho and his brother Hakurozan were both booted out of sumo after testing positive for cannabis. This came on the heels of another Russian sumo wrestler, Wakanoho, being tossed from the sport after getting caught with a joint.

The sumo brothers initially denied possessing any weed, but Roho later came clean, telling a JSA committee, “I obtained marijuana from a black singer during the tour of Los Angeles [in June].”

Roho reportedly confessed after the committee told him, “We want you to tell the truth; we won’t tell your stablemaster.” Sure hope his stablemaster doesn’t read newspapers or watch TV.

In a related development, the Japan Sumo Association went even further to pot when chairman Kitanoumi resigned his post over the ganja flap

Elton John ~ Rocket Man

Swiss pilot Yves Rossy flew across the English Channel this morning with a homemade rocket backpack.  

Yves Rossy, 49, who calls himself Fusionman — half man, half bird — made the 21-mile, jet-powered flight from Calais, France, to Dover, England, in just less than 15 minutes while traveling at speeds of more than 125 mph, The Daily Telegraph said.

~National Geographic

Image from AFP/Getty (Slide Show)

The winged craft weighs 120 pounds and has four kerosene burning jet turbines.  There is no rudder – he used his head and  back to steer.

After the flight Rossy said, “With that crossing I showed it is possible to fly a little bit like a bird. I am full of hope there will be many in the near future.”

OK, now, Wash-Mooooo has been taken to the slaughterhouse and the choicest cuts bought by JP Morgan Chase (full disclosure: I bank at Chase).

Didn’t anyone know that this was going on? Well, of course people did. For example, back in May of this year, William C. Dudley, an Executive VP at the New York Federal Reserve Bank said:

So what has been driving the recent widening in term funding spreads? In my view, the rise in funding pressures is mainly the consequence of increased balance sheet pressure on banks.

And, obviously, “balance sheet pressure” is a nice way of saying trending toward a risk of insolvency.

Of course, the Fed has been acting for a year now like we are facing a liquidity crisis, when we are actually facing a solvency crisis … but if you carefully read an analysis by a fairly senior person in the Federal Reserve System, its all there. What’s up?

Join me below the fold.

If you wish to destroy, you need power.

If you wish to create you need power.

How do we tell the difference?  How do we know whether our actions destroy or create?  

‘Course if you worry too much about it then you probably won’t do anything at all, will become paralyzed and indecisive, “Do I dare to eat a peach?”  And no one wants that, I’d imagine.

In hexagram 34 of the I-Ching “Power of the Great,” the oracle claims that what is great and what is right are not separate, that real power has rightness inextricably woven into it.

So perhaps destroyers don’t have power, but merely force.  Perhaps those are two different things.

And maybe the way one obtains power has something to do with it as well.  Maybe if you go about trying to gain power the wrong way, you end up with only force.

With some dynamite anyone can blow something up, something way bigger than their own physical strength would allow.

We also have opportunities to gain personal power, which is why freedom is such an important right to us.  We want to make our own decisions about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That is a kind of power as well,  I think.