A letter to the Financial Speculators

Dear Thieves,

I have come to warn you as Jacob Marley's ghost came to warn Scrooge (loosely quoting Dickens): "You will wear the chain you forge in life. You make it link by link, and yard by yard... For it is truly required of everyone, that one's spirit should walk among his fellow men, and travel far and wide. If that spirit does not, it is doomed to wander the world and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared."

How do you feel now? Are you happy in your cold, big house? Are you beloved by all you have touched? Does your money comfort you in the loneliness of your thoughts? What if you lost all your money? What would you have then? Do you have friends who come through for you in the hard times?

You sure did have what Scrooge would admire as "a good head for business." You sold out yourself, your fellow brothers and sisters, our children, your country, and mankind, but you did do a lot of business. You took the easy way. You took the greedy way. It didn't feel right, but your values are "greed is good." As Dr. Seuss' character, the Once-ler, says, "If I didn't do it then someone else would." You justified your lies.

"Would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? ...It is a ponderous chain!" Every time your ego clouded your judgment, every moment you were silent when you should have spoken, every dream you have shattered, is a link on your chain.

The hubris you wear as a shield now prevents you from knowing, "This means YOU." But someday, your chain will keep you awake. Someday, your chain will wear you down. Someday, your chain will chill you with its loneliness.

There is no way out. The only way is sacrificing short-term payoffs for long-term benefits: "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings were a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" Your business distracts you from your real business.

The rest of us wish you "a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. You'll be very merry and very happy, we have no doubt!"

Prop 8 - The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Cookie vs. The Lizard

Response from Obama Mama

A response to some typical anti-Obama rhetoric...

Obama supports the Born Alive bill state and Fed that does not encroach upon Roe v. Wade rights

Besides being mistaken in logic and facts, I find it bizarre that many call extremely successful people hateful names and labels. Maybe those could learn lessons from their successes instead.

First:
At the time of the first proposed Illinois state born alive bill, there was already an existing Illinois law that insured that life-saving treatment would be given to infants, but sponsors of the BAIPA said that the law did not go far enough. This is a ploy used by Illinois abortion opponents to implement their ultimate agenda of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Barack Obama supports the 2002 federal bill b/c it does not encroach upon Roe v. Wade.

In 2005, a Born Alive bill was signed into law by the Illinois Senate and this bill specifically provides that it does not affect any existing federal or state laws regarding abortion. That means that it does not encroach upon any of the rights granted under Roe v. Wade.

Obama supports this 2005 version of the Illinois Born Alive bill. The legal point is that the bill only passed after the Roe v. Wade exclusion was added.

Second:
You must not agree with thousands of economics experts. http://media.economist.com/media/pdf/Totals1.pdf
Overall rating of tax plans:

1 is very bad, 5 is very good

Rating	1	2	3	4	5
McCain	42	47	22	17	2
Obama	6	23	48	39	13

Third:
Iraq's problems need to be tended to by Iraq. They have an $80-billion surplus they are not tapping, yet the US spends $10-billion/month there. If you were a fiscal conservative, you would be outraged. Let's instead get bin Laden.

Last:
Please be aware of the value-laded terms published and promoted out of the Luntz Republican Playbook, which uses emotionally-laden doublespeak. When ever you hear terms like "Healthy Skies," "Born Alive," "Freedom," "Patriot Act," etc. you know for sure some part of the legislation enacts exactly the opposite of those terms or a clever diversion from the real intent.

In sum:
A vote for McCain is a vote for an erratic, dumb, rash decision-maker. It is a vote for the rich people getting richer and more corrupt while the poor and middle-class get poorer as a result of the weight. It is a vote for a continuation of the whole worlds' hatred of us. A vote for McCain is an invitation for more aggression/"nukes" against us. He is not smart enough to manage complex systems and sanctions. It is a vote for continued killing of our sons and daughters in wars because we think we know best what other countries must do.

A vote for McCain is a vote to increase the deficit. It is a vote against middle-class values, strength, and growth. It is a vote against new, innovative industries of energy and economic development. It is a vote to subsidize risk for fat cats. It is a vote for someone who doesn't think of Plan B. It is a vote for someone who doesn't rely on empirical data from scientific consensus to make decisions. We want a president who can actually understand that data and its implications.

Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million.




Get the facts, please http://www.barackobama.com/issues/. Be suspicious of bizarre, value-laden, emotional terms and odd logic and character assassinations.

To those of you who wish to abstain from voting all together, I'm sorry, but our founders, country-folk, and enlightenment thinkers died and sacrificed for you to vote. For the commoners to not rise up and voice their right is shameful. This process, the actual exercise of inalienable freedom is, in fact, the beacon of light in the dark world that can never go out. Not after 1776 happened.

Joe

Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true.Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

~ Joseph Campbell Quotes

This is the major contribution of Eastern philosophy to the West.

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

Damon brings up some good points on Palin. Yes...absurdity, and scary.

"I want to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here four-thousand years ago...because she is going to have the nuclear codes."

LHC Rap

Amy showed me this the other day. Funny, educational, and... groovy.

LHC Homepage

Large Hadron Collider (Wikipedia)

Are you better off today than you were 8 years ago?

I'm looking forward to a president who understands that there are intelligent ways to solve problems, rather than simply making knee-jerk decisions that sound good. I'm looking forward to a president who will rebuild our reputation in the world -- not only do our enemies resent us, but our allies despise us. I'm looking forward to a president who relies on empirical research and the scientific consensus to make informed decisions. I'm looking forward to a president who recognizes that evolution underlies all of science and is not living in a backward world of superstition and creationism that was put to rest 150 years ago. I'm looking forward to a president who will do what works to invigorate the economy. I'm looking forward to a president who will invest in new technologies and science to drive our economy to make us competitive again in the world.

I look forward to a president who understands a balanced approach to free trade and its effects on our economy at home. I look forward to a president who can diffuse Russia. I look forward to a president who can strengthen youths' desire to become productive men -- at home and in the middle east. I look forward to a president who neither placates nor outwardly despises the people stifled by the entitlement cultures promoted by the government. I look forward to a president who understands that modern warfare requires much more covert than overt ops and involves much more economic pressures and forces than ever. I look forward to a president who turns responsibility over to the "owners" of the country relies on the support of the rule of law as the accepted governance of the country, rather than using the US military as the police. I look forward to a president who values high-quality education as the great equalizer. I look forward to a president who understands that the health insurance system has made us more unhealthy. I look forward to a president who understands the impact of environmental pollutants and that many children (the poor are over-represented) have far too many chemicals coursing through their growing bodies.

I look forward to a president who contributes to operating on America being seen as the great beacon of democracy, equality, and freedom around the world instead of the brutalizing bully for oil that it has become. I look forward to a president who looks for unchecked power as leading necessarily to complete corruption -- which is exactly why our economy is in the dire straights it is in now -- due to banks and investment firms marginally operating within weak laws. I look forward to a president who realizes that trickle-down means trickle-out and that the application of this theory has compromised the infrastructure for entrepreneurship which has stymied our country. I look forward to a president who is not in the pocket of entrenched lobbyists and actively changes the "a-law-for-the-cash" congress. Most of all, I look forward to a president who acts from a set of timeless principles with good judgment, rather than merely talking about "values" buzzwords and fundamentalist bible-beating and using fear to propel the emotions of the people.


Keith Olbermann Interviews Barack Obama:

Fur Berry Ninja

Lacking Integrity

Dear Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches,

We the People do not authorize you to use our money to bail out the banks as you will most certainly not bail us out of our home foreclosures and layoffs. You stood by the free market when the banks, speculators, and loan sharks inflated share prices without creating value and now the People ask you to stand by the free market while it self-corrects.

Instead you sign a blank check from our checkbook for more of the same.

Ironically, you have created quite a welfare state... A welfare state not of single mothers and their poor children, but a welfare state that rewards military contractors' spending and corporate financial speculation.

-"We the People"

Radiohead Nude Remix

A friend sent this to me today. It a remix of a Radiohead song created with old computer hardware...very cool. It's worth a listen if you have a moment. While you wait for the song to start (@ 01:10) read the story behind it. The remix is perfect for Radiohead.


Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

More Nude remixes can be found here.

Bizarro

I love the Bizarro comic strip. I try to read it just about every day. I think it is the best daily comic since the Far Side. I saw this the other day and thought it was pretty good...

 

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

We had a chance to go see Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and TV host of NOVA scienceNOW on PBS, at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, FL last week. Below is a video of Dr. Tyson answering a question about dark matter and the speed of light.

R.E.M. on N.P.R.

To those of you that appreciate R.E.M....

If you did not catch the R.E.M interview on NPR this morning, it's worth a listen if you have a minute. Steve Inskeep does a so-so job interviewing them, but of course they make it pretty interesting. I had no idea that Michael Stipe came from generations of Methodist ministers. The "Extra Interview Clips" are pretty good as well. The sound clips in the interview from the new record sound decent. They also have a full concert recording from SxSW that I haven't listened to yet.

-Harry

The Return of the Mix Tape

For a long time now I have been wanting find a good way to be exposed to new or different music that I will probably like. Way back when, the only to be exposed to new music was basically via radio or word of mouth. This wasn't all that bad; the music on the radio had to be palatable by the public and if someone you knew recommended music to you, there was a good chance you might like it.

When I was growing up, the thing to do was to make a mix tape. Throw down some of your favorite tracks, straight from vinyl or cassette or eventually CDs to another cassette. You would give these out to your friends and it was a good, actually great way to get exposed to all kinds of different music. This was real nice especially when pop radio didn't play the music you usually like to listen to. I had mix tapes galore and constantly had one in my car for years.

Eventually, the cassette format went by the wayside. Yes, I still have some cassettes, but I do not have a good player to listen to them on and most of them have deteriorated over the years. The point here is that we are no longer making or listening to mix tapes anymore. Now we have digital media, CDs, MP3s, and whatever comes next. Of course these formats offer better sound quality over the cassette, some would argue not necessarily over vinyl. However it is very easy nowadays to rip a CD, get the MP3s and put them on your MP3 player/iPod etc. You can even purchase your tunes à la carte, one song at a time. Folks I know have amassed huge collections of of digital music to the point where they have more than enough music to listen to for the rest of their lives and not have to repeat very much at all. While it may be nice to have every piece of music ever recorded at your fingertips, I do not find it practical for getting into new music, or finding music you might like that you haven't heard before.

Radio is nice in that it repeats songs at some, sometimes annoying, frequency. This gives that "oh yeah, I've heard this one before" kind of moment that might lead to purchasing music or just finding out more about the artist. The same things goes for cassettes, or even CDs that you might play over and over again in your car or home stereo. I guess satellite radio would be good for this too, except I still can't get over having a recurring payment for radio. So,mix tapes traded between friends or at least folks with similar interests in music, were an ideal way to get exposed to new music that you might like.

So now that computers that can burn CDs or even DVDs are pretty much ubiquitous, you would think that people would be making more mix CDs, but I do not really see this happening. While I have a handful of mix CDs from friends that are great, I do not see people getting into them in the same way that we used to get into mix tapes. Now, being a parent for the last 8 years and in graduate school for the 2 years before, it is quite possible that I haven't a clue what people are actually doing out there with their music. They may in fact be getting into mix CDs or even playlist sharing or something that serves the same purpose. However, I have not heard of this so much. Instead I see people sharing gigabytes of MP3s at a time, or maybe someone makes an MP3 CD with 10+ hours of music on it. Again this may be nice to have, but it does not have the repetitive quality of some kind of shorter format or radio station that I think is necessary to truly get exposed and get into new music. For me, getting this much music all at once it a little overwhelming. I think it does serve a purpose for the music collector, just not the purpose I am interested in here.

Internet radio stations can be real nice. I especially like the "personalized" internet radio stations like Pandora or Last.fm (I'm listening to last.fm right now). These are all certainly terrific ways to get exposed to new music. There is decent repetition, not too much and the stations tend to be very specialized, especially the the "personalized" stations where you can "seed" your own personal radio station with particular input related to the music you want to listen to. As great as these are, they are only good when I am sitting in front of a computer in a situation where I can listen to music. I think that currently, most folks are like me and can only tune in to these radio stations from their computers. I do not (yet) have the ability to tune into these internet radio stations from my car, where I spend at least an hour a day listening to something.

So until we have a new, better, portable, cheap, personalized technology that enables us to hear new music that we will like any time we want, I propose a return of the mix tape, or really a mix CD. In the meantime, 80 minutes of music selected by musically like-minded friends is exactly what I think would fulfill this need. I think it would be cool to get 3-12 folks with a shared interest and relative taste in music and start a mix tape club. Each person would take a turn and make a "mix tape" (CD) for everyone else. Now that some people have these massive digital music collections, it should be easier than even before to make a pretty good mix. I've been thinking about this for a while (hence the need to write this) and thought that while everyone should be free to make any mix they want to, it would be cool to at least have some kind of theme to tie the music together. These themes could be determined ahead of time or just kept in mind while the mix creator mixes.

Some mix tape themes I've been thinking of:

• Great covers
• The worst songs from the best bands
• Music history for your kids (à la School of Rock): the songs/artists that they must know about
• Songs about animals (Rock Lobster, The Monkey Song, Mammal, The Love Cats, etc)
  
• Food songs (like Weird Al, but not Weird Al)
• Songs that 'B' (or some particular letter)
• B-sides / rarities
• Old School
  
• Songs that make feel blue
• Songs that make you feel ???
• Songs that mention New York
• Songs about any city
• Acoustic songs
  
• Live music / bootleg compilation
• A compilation of songs from other compilations
• Favorite Reggae songs
• Putumayo favorites
• Great music to dance to
• Songs you can't play on the radio
  
• Punk influences
• The DC scene
  
• The _____ scene from the 19??s
• Great local bands
• Tallahassee in the 90s
• Songs ripped from vinyl

It would be nice to get something like this going. I've had some friends that have tried this type of things before with some success, I think. We'll see...

Keep on listening.

-Harry

Scans From The Tech

As part of my trip to San Jose, CA, I had the pleasure of visiting The Tech Museum there. Arriving at the museum, you are given a "TechTag" which you can then use at the various exhibits inside. Some of the exhibits provide some sort of output or digital souvenir about your experience with the exhibit. The TechTag is just a piece of paper with a scannable code on it which can be used at the museum's website where you can view your digital souvenirs.

Two of the exhibits that had especially interesting souvenirs were the 3D Head Scan and a Thermal Image Scan. The 3D Head Scan exhibit scans your head with a laser and gives you a pretty good, well at least interesting, 3D rendering of your own head, kind of like Max Headroom. The Thermal Scan takes a thermal image of your body.

After visiting the museum I got online with my TechTag, looked up my digital souvenirs and created a web photo album from some of the images from these exhibits. The album contains several images for the 3D Head Scan one one image from the thermal scan. I got the 3D Head Scan images from screen shots of the 3D rendering client you have to use to see your 3D head. The 3D client software allows you to pan, scan, turn and zoom your 3D head around to view it. Doing this was actually pretty freaky, given the imperfections in the scan. Take a look at the some of the screen shots to see for yourself.

Another Letter to Superdelegates

I believe in Barack Obama. He represents what this country so desperately needs: the audacity to force a new political paradigm, the desire and vision to finally make honest, positive change in our country and the hope to make it all reality.

I did not know much of Barack Obama 18 months ago. My wife and I started discussing him as the buzz about his presidential bid was becoming louder. I checked him out, tried to see what he was all about. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was not the typical Washington politician I was used to. He was sincere; he was real, more so than any politician I has seen or heard in my 35 years.

We read his book, The Audacity of Hope, last summer. Reading it I got real feel for his integrity, honesty and leadership. I learned that he is well versed in the political system and that he has the wherewithal and persistence to make good things happen. He is not selfish. He is not greedy. He does not do what he does for himself; Barack Obama truly serves his country and the people he represents in every sense of the word.

Superdelegates, consider Barack Obama. Be diligent in getting to know him, what he can do and what he stands for. Understand that he is the only one on the playing field that does not closely represent the establishment that has steered our country away from hope and prosperity. Vote for Barack Obama, he is right choice for the right future of America.

Letter to Superdelegates

Barack Obama is the only candidate that cannot be bought by lobbyists. Because politicans have sold our fragile democracy away to the highest bidder, the Founding Fathers' immense sacrifice and legacy to us, the common people, has been trampled and defiled. Democracy itself is undermined and the power of the people is marginalized when corporations, through their lobbyists, in effect buy laws.

The triangle of corruption turns to iron (the iron triangle) when, in wartime, defense contractors buy laws that subsidize their own private businesses. Perpetual war, waged on the blood of our underpriveleged, undereducated young people, is not a moral choice for the engine of our economy.

Barack Obama does not oppose all war. He knows (like all sane Americans) that Islamic extremists and more want to kill us as much as possible. But Obama opposes a rash war. He opposed this dumb war, when the rest of America was duped into thinking Osama and Sadam are the same person.

Hillary Clinton was duped and takes lobbyists' money. John McCain is still duped into continuing a perpetual war. Only Obama talks about how his campaign is not his, it is instead a social movement of Americans standing together to voice the changes they want to see: world reconciliation, a retraction of imperialism, and kicking the lobbyists' influence right out of Washington entirely.

This is why I got "hooked on hope" and now, I see that once again only Obama has provided the judgment and vision out of our economic slump towards a future spurned on for generations by growing a green energy sector. Superdelegates, Mama says, "Vote for Obama!"

False Pretenses

I came across this the other day. Someone analyzed all of the Bush administration's references to Iraq's WMDs, Iraq's links to Al Qaeda or both over time up to a shortly after starting the war with Iraq in 2003; it even shows a bar graph shedding light on an organized PR campaign to fool the Americans and everyone else into going to war with Iraq.

It's an interesting read. It kind of makes them all murderers in a sense, IMO.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/