FURTHERISM a rejection of kabuki

Echo

2010-10-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

GOD IS HERE!
God is Here!
god is here!
right here
right now
it is all true
all of it
the hereness
the second coming
the coming again
and again
and again

how do I tell you?
do I scream it?
do I howl it?
do I pray it?
do I beg you?
does it matter?

GOD IS HERE.

the first pulsars of
the cosmic shockwave
have pierced
the citadel
of perception

look
the how I know
the wheres
and hows dont matter

now
my vision may
be dismissed because
s/he/it is not
what
we were told to expect
you can only tell by
the truth and nakedness
of my words

I wasnt “told” any thing
no prophetic warnings
no special messages
nothing but wow
as the cosmic dimensions
of the pulsar embodiment
passed through
plain of existence

I am the village boy
running back to town
to tell everyone that
the foreign army has arrived
I am the village boy
half excited half scared
with no news except
life is about to change
I am the village boy
who will always be
able to say
I saw it first
among my friends

II
God’s shoe
the cosmic foot
rolls from heal to toe
the cylindrical arc of otherness
passes over
squishing all
Like some bug
on the ground

was I strong enough
to standwith death?
did the sacred asanas
teach the right angles
to pierce the
jeffersonian plane
a crumbs shoe
passed through
perfect wave
rolling energy
rhythmically
vibrating
infinity

in joy
in side
in Body
caverns
biotic archways
chambers
niagaras
filigree
veins
arteries
lungs
soul

this is the palace of kublai khan
this is the holy of holies
this is the maternal womb
this is the galactic center
this is the end of history
this is what everyone has been waiting for
this is golgotha revisited
this is arc and covenant
this is the alter
this is the unimagable
this is it

cohen
ginsberg
light hair
mckenna
jesu
nanak
patanjali
voltaire
vonnegut
me
you

III
I want my sperm released
I go to the center of now
cells shake
mind quakes
soul awakes

I want oneness
comfort
love
I want to be relieved of my burden
I want to rid myself of the blindness of sexuality
I want the orgasm of marriage
I want the pure love of the universe flowing through my veins
I want the reward
any reward

I dont want a dealer
I dont want a priest
I dont want a guru
I just want me
my wife
my children
with eyes open
be free from
distrust
dishonesty
bond
mortgage
servitude
that keep honesty & love at bay

FREEDOM
without forgiveness
or bankruptcy
of society
this American dream
is without works

Moloch
Satan
Ego
I have met you
Face to Face
Get behind me
You do not
Cannot
Exist
You cant see the Face
Of God
And live
You
Bind my awareness
To the depths
of depression
To the breadth
of education
To the heights
of worship

God is here

Bibliography
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http://www.tomrussell.com/merchandise.php?cat=1&id=7
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/fortune.html

A Prayer for Equinox

2010-09-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching.
Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words.
Rely not on theory, but on experience.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

-- from the Kalama Sutra

Cosmic Turkey!

2009-11-26T17:21:00.001-08:00

What if mother earth is just a giant egg? A big crusty element of a large sentinel being that we have taken over and have been sponging off of the surface, kind of like a parasite? As the being inside, like a dinosaur egg comes awake or hatches, it would have to unfold like a transformer. No different than a baby chicken, an eagle, or a human baby.

A being or baby inside of mother earth, something that big, would have to gestate for a really long time -- you know: eras, epics, or ions (nine months in god's time). The reconstituted being would probably emerge from its pupa shell like a butterfly in second stage its enzymatic evolution, or even a birth process involving some type of post-gestational birth canal into a new reality of existence. I would want to be around to watch such a birth going on -- I mean, wouldn't you? Maybe I would even use my video camera and film it for YouTube.

Such a process on an egg 8 thousand miles in diameter might not bode well for any fungus or mold that was stuck to the egg shell. Even if the shell became a skin, it might be really difficult to hang on -- emotionally speaking. It would make the 1960s look like child's play!

Now, to put this in a perspective, if the being were like a a bird, coming out of its egg that large, the baby bird would have a wingspan of over 20,000 miles. A butterfly would be even bigger. If it was just a baby being, after watching my two kids get bigger since they were born, this bird fully realized is going to grow into something really large in its conquest of space and dimensionality.

Hypothetically speaking, if mother earth was such an egg, and an egg that big was cracking, or a mega-large pupa shell being was being discarded, what would it look like. I mean in relative terms from our perspective. It would cast off waste products as it broke apart. Pieces of the surface flying off. Scabs, boils, pimples, rashes, growths -- those icky bodily type fluids. The cosmic afterbirth.

Think of how big ejaculate is, relative to the outside of the human body? On a cosmic scale, would it look at feel like space junk floating outside of its body?

Maybe the purpose of our civilization, our economy, our cites, our factories, the pollution, the pimples, the eruptions, all the electric lights at nights, maybe they are all just for decoration of the shell, skin, the ectoderm of this being as it changes, transforms, or evolves into its next existence. What would such an evolution look like to us? How long would an egg that is 24 thousand miles across take to crack? What would happen to all that mass and matter? Would you even be able to observe it happening, unless of course you were living there right when it cracked?

If it was a bird emerging out of the fires, a Phoenix rising on a galactic scale, you would be able to recognize it? I sometimes wonder if that is the purpose of Buddhism. To learn to sit really quietly so you can sense when the cracking starts and the end begins? Or is this what the Mayans figured out with the long count calendar? Is this the big change? Is this what the Sikhs are waiting for: the next evolution?

Maybe the evolution isn't us, but it is the pedestal of our existence. Maybe global warming is not man made. Maybe it is just the energy generated when the earth goes through its gestational shift. A fart here and there, a skin lesion. You know, a biologic response to what is going on inside or out.

If this is the case, it could be kind of fun! Happy Thanksgiving!

Peace to all,
Light to all,
Love to all

Earth Angel

2009-07-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the 1960s. Time is going backwards. Time machine may just a metaphor for undoing past wrongs. Which raises the question: Can Obama apologize for slavery?

Would You Take the Blue Pill or the Red Pill?

2009-05-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

How does morality work in the human mind? This video is fascinating.

The Eyes of The Shepherdess

2009-05-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

This post could be called "Sailing Past The Sirens"

"I saw a big circus tent, and I crawled over to it and lifted the canvas and looked inside."

"What did you see?"

"Everything!"

-- as retold by Johnny W.

I have an announcement, W.J. lied to me....there was no circus tent! There was just this ominous smokey cloud that came in from the west that engulfed me in a transforming matrix of alternating metallic colors, orange and blue vibrating into red and white and back again. The pattern was an apple-core quilt style with a dot right in the center of each piece. The quilt wrapped around me and my sympathetic vibrating harmonized with the nano-colors as fabric passed through me destabilizing everything I have ever known to be true.

At some point, I realized I had entered a portal of infinity with nothing to hold on to. I was scared shitless as every molecule in my body was vibrating at bee speed, and getting louder. I also knew that I was on my own, all alone, and if I did not make it back, I would be folded by this undulating matrix into the fossil record of infinity.

For reasons of safety and self preservation, I moved away from the vortex, not sure if I was pulling this new reality with me, contaminating other areas, or if its gravity was weakening. Time and space were definitely stretching. Only at this point did I wake my other and ask for help, only to confront an enraged archetype that had been summoned from hell against her wishes. I was standing naked before Isis, and it was not pretty.

Industrial Disease

2009-05-05T02:49:00.000-07:00

Warning lights are flashing down at quality control
Somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in the hole
Theres rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
Theres a meeting in the boardroom theyre trying to trace the smell
Theres leaking in the washroom theres a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
goodness me could this be industrial disease?

The caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post
Theyre refusing to be pacified its him they blame the most
The watchdogs got rabies the foremans got fleas
And everyones concerned about industrial disease
Theres panic on the switchboard tongues are ties in knots
Some come out in sympathy some come out in spots
Some blame the management some the employees
And everybody knows its the industrial disease

The work force is disgusted downs tools and walks
Innocence is injured experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
That these are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze
On itv and bbc they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless theology is worse
History boils over theres an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease

Doctor parkinson declared Im not surprised to see you here
Youve got smokers cough from smoking, brewers droop from drinking beer
I dont know how you came to get the betty davis knees
But worst of all young man youve got industrial disease
He wrote me a prescription he said you are depressed
But Im glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later - next patient please
Send in another victim of industrial disease

I go down to speakers corner Im thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say theyre jesus one of them must be wrong
Theres a protest singer singing a protest song - he says
they wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to keep their factories
They wanna have a war to stop us buying japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease
Theyre pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you rule brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in espana and sunday striptease
Meanwhile the first jesus says Id cure it soon
Abolish monday mornings and friday afternoons
The other ones on a hunger strike hes dying by degrees
How come jesus gets industrial disease

As Long As The President Said It Was Okay...

2009-04-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is a concise video laying out the whole argument of torture and why it is wrong. It also shows graphically what we as Americans allowed to happen over the past 8 years. It is a half hour well spent, IMO.

Pig Flew

2009-04-30T05:55:00.000-07:00

Here is my contribution to the debate and bio-terrorism alert...

Birdie birdie in the sky
Why do you do that in my eye
I will not laugh I will not cry
I’m just glad that pigs don’t fly

And watch out for republican flu...(hint: its more deadly)

.

Smart Freedom, Not More Rope

2009-04-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

Hey, the world is changing. It will not be the same. Mixing Terrence McKenna, teachings from Kundalini yoga, wilderness awareness experiences, economics, Mormonism, and the recent conference I attended presented by the California International Bankers Association, 2012 is going to be a big year. If we are lucky, citizens are going to own the insurance markets, car manufactures, and every other "over-leveraged" capitalist industry. And the pandemic is global, with the pathogen being the IMF and World Bank.

If we are lucky, we are not going to be "communists" in the sense that the Catholic Church today was once as oppressive as today's Taliban, which they were during the dark ages. One of our biggest objectives should be in avoiding the post-soviet privatization, where billionaires were politically created by merging mafia with government. But if everyone owns stock that they can freely buy and sell, those citoyens are then responsible for the actions of their businesses in their communities.

The capitalists have sold the world enough rope to hang them many times over. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is not to use that rope.

This post written in Berkeley, CA (go figure). Regardless of how crazy you think Berkeley is, is it not an expression of freedom? So maybe Berkeley should be studied as a model.

"We All Want Our Children to Be Well Adjusted..."

2009-04-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

"...it is just that there is nothing for them to be well adjusted to."

We Are In The Birth Canal...

2009-04-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

What Water Shortage?

2009-04-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

Think you might like to try waterboarding for sport? This guy made a bet that he could go 15 seconds...

...and you read their magazine fro the articles. So why do you watch the videos?

What Does the Road Look Like Going Forward?

2009-04-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Warren of Harvard University and the head of the Congressional Oversight Committee for the TARP funds addresses what she calls the BIG QUESTION -- one that has to be answered within the next six months: What does the road look like going forward?

Then the good professor gives a history lesson in finance beginning with GeoWashington ending with today's uncertainty.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2

thedailyshow.com

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Derivative markets . . .an understandable explanation

2009-04-16T05:41:00.000-07:00

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers, most of whom are unemployed alcoholics, to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar and soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on security markets worldwide. Naive investors don’t really understand the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, their prices continuously climb, and the securities become the top-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, although the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently fired due his negativity), decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. Heidi demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Therefore, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKI BOND drop in price by 90%. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80%. The decreased bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans. The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment extensions and having invested in the securities are faced with writing off her debt and losing over 80% on her bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 50 workers.

The bank and brokerage houses are saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock negotiations by leaders from both political parties. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by a tax levied on employed middle-class non-drinkers.

Finally an explanation I can understand!

(H/T Richard A.)

Words Added to Sticks And Stones

2009-04-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

From ABC News:

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover was 11-- hardly old enough to know his sexuality and yet distraught enough to hang himself last week after school bullies repeatedly called him "gay."

Sirdeaner L. Walker found her son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hanging by an extension cord on the second floor of her Springfield home on Monday night. Walker said Carl, a sixth-grade student at the New Leadership Charter School, had been taunted and threatened by classmates for weeks before he killed himself.
She said that she contacted the school repeatedly over the last six months to ask teachers to intervene after learning her son had been targeted by students. Walker said her son’s classmates called him gay on a daily basis, made fun of his clothes and threatened to harm him, according to the Springfield Republican.

The 43-year-old, who had just returned from a church service for her son, said Carl was a Boy Scout who played football and basketball. Walker found her son’s body when she went upstairs to check on him on Monday.

Watch the video here.

Coming Around The Bend

2009-04-14T20:14:00.001-07:00

It is like everything is done. And everything that can still be discovered becomes instantaneosly processed, proved, and allocated. The excitement has become mundane. Yet here we are, on the precipice of reality, and there is no there there. We have failed a humans to come to terms with our existence. Even James Dobson says the culture wars are over. The victory and loss seem empty. All we have to look forward to is eternal boredom?

What's that Wall-E?

What if the key is backward? What if our reality starts with death and progresses toward birth? This would make sense in a quantum physics world. And if symetry is required, it is the same coming and going, going and coming. So we don't know what is happening except that we are at one end of the chronic infundulum. Stretching back and forth between earth and the dogstar Beetlejuice. Existing in a flashlight beam shown in a room of mirrors.

If time is backwards, and we start old and get young, that would make a lot of sense in terms of rituals like baptism, de-education or brainwashing into purity. And how happy you are as an old person directly affects whether you are happy as a child.

$14,765,596 Per Second

2009-04-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past 20 months, the US Government and Federal Reserve have spent over $14 million per second propping up the nation's financial system. Over those months, the total bill reached $12.8 trillion. BTW, that is about equal to our GDP. Wheeeeeee!!!!!!

Via Bloomberg.

Threats: Foriegn & Domesitc ( & Financial)

2009-04-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Der Spiegel is reporting that the Russian banking sector is about to break free of Putin's bandage and start bleeding. Remember what happened after the 1998 Russian financial crisis? In the US, it was not fun and games.

Elsewhere in Der Spiegel, Austria is tipsy, not because of Schnapps, but because that countries banks are deeply exposed to high-risk loans in Eastern Europe.

And in Strasbourg, home of NATO and a bunch of EU offices, things have turned black and white. Well, there are a few rainbow flames too. Basically the city of Strasbourg is on fire. Given the kidnappings of factory managers, the riots in London, the riots in Strasbourg, can't we label the EU as a haven for terrorists?

Elsewhere, the German head of French firm Total says we are running out of oil. Of course, the French hate freedom so much they don't want to be free from oil.

And the Germans said "Nein!!!" to Monsanto. Genetically-modified korn is now illegal in Germany. At the same time, they have said "Jawohl!!!" to no-clothing-not-optional hotels.

BTW, Spain is faltering. Maybe that is why they ran to charge Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, and other Bushies - in order to generate some good news.

Did I mention that the country of Greece is facing bankruptcy? What about the global food crisis?

Where is Superman when you need him?

Only You Can Prevent Homosexuality!!!

2009-04-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Legos Versus Logos

2009-04-13T02:20:00.000-07:00

Since I was a young boy, I have always been in awe of Bertel Thorvaldsens's Christus. Not the original, which I have never seen, but the copy in the Mormon Church's Visitor Center on Temple Square. They copied it in marble, cubit for cubit.

From Sweden, we get this report of a newer, plastic Jesus.

Members of the congregation donated nearly 30,000 Lego bricks to build the 5ft 8 high statue, said Per Wilder, the pastor of the Oensta Gryta Church in Vaesteras, about 70 miles west of Stockholm.

"This work began a year and a half ago so we saw that the initiation date was fitting in well (with this year's Easter holiday)," he said.

"It is a fantastic installation and it will be there as long as we think it is in a good spot."

The model was based on the Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsens's, 19th century work 'Christus', which depicts the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The pastor said the statue would remain permanently at the church and there were no plans to sell it to raise funds.

I am glad religion continues to redefine creativity.

The Crime of The Century

2009-04-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that what has happened is that we have been swindled. The marketeers in New York have created increasing risk and pretended to mitigate those risks through diversification, and by so called creation of liquidity (yeah, in your pants). Then these risks were repackaged, "innoculated", and sold as safe. They were toxic shit sold as creme brulee.

The chefs controlled the accounting firms, the regulators, the rating firms, the major media, and the business schools. Q.E.D.

Revenge of the Killer Ants

2009-04-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

On a dark and stormy night, not far from here, there was a mad scientist who had mistreated as a child. He was only looking for love...

Truth Be Told - Probablistic Circular Logic

2009-04-09T06:49:00.001-07:00

Jesus said the truth will set you free.

Buddha sat under a bodhi tree until he found truth.

Charles S. Peirce said that we can not know truth, we can only alleviate the irritation of doubt.

Quantum physics teaches that we can predict or experience, but not both.

Maybe this is a truth that will set us free.

Abi Dhabi Doo

2009-04-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

As we try to pick a system under which we want to live, how does this one sound? Remember, if you are not part of the discussion, you will only get what they have to offer:

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as lined as her forehead now. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice - witty and warm - breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her boyfriend was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said - if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."

Her husband Daniel bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realized that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said - right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned - but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame of his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally too," Karen says. "I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralyzed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

Where Are We Going to Keep the Chickens?

2009-04-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.

This is from Chris Hedges recent post at TruthDig.com.

As the thieves get richer, and we find out that our rendering unto Caesar isn't going to pay off, we need to think about where we are going to keep chickens, goats, cows, and other domestic animals in our urban environments. Either that, or we need to start hyper-miling, er I mean hyper-caloring. In other words, what are the easiest foods to grow that have the most sustanance in terms of growth and resource efforts. What can we eat that is the most nutricious on a human level for the environmental stress on the planet? Six billion people with pitchforks will not be pretty if there is not enough food to go around. And if you are still sporting that AIG t-shirt from that golf junket last July, why not paint a bullseye on your forehead.

Basically, our economy is shambles, the earth is wounded, and the smart people are babbling like the guys in Ward 3. The not so smart people are holding tea parties -- pinkies up I say! Labels, agendas, slogans, and schools of thought will take years to implement. We need something quicker. We need action building a new society from the ground up. The sooner we do this the fewer people are going to die. We don't want another two or three generations wounded and scarred at the dna level before we can start building a better world. Lets start with the basic american principles of honesty, sacrifice, and pulling together for the community. So it has to start with the community. If you build a better society, they will come. If not, it is game over. The Camusian imparitive on a global scale.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Twitter

2009-04-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Biz Stone

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Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

Take Home Quiz: What is the difference between profit and value? Answer in the comments.

Like Sulfer From the Brim of the Devil's Volcano

2009-04-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Don't touch the Queen! John Oliver explains the role of the Queen in a modern democracy.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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The Poisonous Queen

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New American Gothic

2009-04-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Politico is reporting that Obama told a meeting of Bank CEOs “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Fill Full

2009-04-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, an Ivy League professor studying the world religions traveled the world interviewing enlightened teachers. In Japan, a renowned Buddhist priest greeted the professor as well as all visitors with a tea ceremony. Graciously, the professor sat down as the master placed a cup and saucer on a small stool before the guest and began to pour. The cup soon filled with tea and began to overflow. The tea soon filled the saucer and began to flow onto the stool and then the floor. The professor, who had been patient and respectful, jumped up and shouted “its full, can’t you see it can’t hold anymore?” The Zen master replied “You are like the cup. How can I teach you if you have no place to put it?”

Jon Stewart is a Prophet

2009-04-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

Don't believe me? Would you have recognized Jonah in Ninevah? Or Elijah? For sure Mohammed. I mean if you had been there.

The CrossOver is Starting to Happen...

2009-04-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

Some elders who believe in the innocence of Rosebud are spoonfeeding this stuff about Geithner. They must really be scared. The entire system has to be rebooted and that process has never been tested. It was never supposed to happen this way. So now they start telling the truth. Even though we can't handle it. Because they are scared shitless if we find out after the reboot has begun. That is when those typically face pitchforks, anarchy, and armageddon. Not pretty.

In exchange for calmness, they are starting to offer truth. Geithner was too friendly, too cozy, and understaffed (maybe by design). Serious men with serious pedigreed backbones held everything together by wrapping their balls round the system and screaming. They were rewarded handsomely. When they over-reached, they lied like chameleons. Everything is okay, they say. We have too much to lose to have done that. You have no choice but to trust us.

The banks runneth is over. The reports are coming out proving fictitious entities are neither immortal or impartial.

To move off that game plan, they are offering the family jewels. Michelle Obama touched the Queen, and the Emperoress accepted the support embrace. Honest kabuki. Elizabeth's head will not be impailed on a pole by London Bridge. The great families are ready to accept democracy in exchange for their mortality.

The great white hope is a black man.

The WaPo article has too much access and too high a level for it the result of hard work. Deep Throat had a bench of willing cocksuckers behind him. Finally someone called bullshit. And whoever that person is, I say thank you.

Update: Politico is reporting that Obama told a meeting of Bank CEOs “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

The U.S. Embraces the Red State Strategy

2009-04-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

From Calculated Risk:

In case you were wondering, red is bad, the redder the badder. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank calculates an aggregate statistic showing how the economic indicators are working or not (over the past 3 months). On a bright spot, things in Wyoming, Louisiana, and Alaska suck less than for the rest of the county.

Whatever you do, don't look at this graph. It gives new meaning to the phrase Less Than Zero.

And I accidently thought there were some bringt spots on these graphs, until I realized those were just the borders.

The Arc of the Covenant

2009-04-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

What is in your ark?

Support Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project

2009-04-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.912project.com/

If that isn't clear enough, this will help.

The Colbert Report

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In Celebration of Fools

2009-04-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Story One

Equipped with a BB-gun to control altitude and a small American flag mounted on the chair, Kent Couch flew his lawn chair tied to a number of balloons 200 miles from Central Oregon to Idaho. Mr. "Lawn Chair" Couch is a hero of fools. God Bless Him.

Story Two

In today's Financial Times, Yu Qiao, a professor of economics at Tsinghun University in Beijing is concerned that Asia will be the victim if the U.S. bond bubble bursts. Basically, Mr. Qiao rightly observes that as investors don't trust stocks and corporate bonds due to the past decade's over-inflated values and the recent popping of those bubbles, "smart" money has gone into U.S. government bonds in droves -- thereby creating a new bubble. He says:

Analysts have warned of the dangers of the US Treasury bond bubble that developed in late 2008. Although insurance against sovereign debt default may reduce credit risk, it is unable to safeguard the real value of dollar-denominated securities. If this bubble burst, east Asians would be victims. Their economies directly hold more than $1.6 trillion of US sovereign debt, or 25 per cent of the total held by the public. Including direct holdings, Asians may hold half of the outstanding public-owned Treasury bonds. China, by some estimates, directly and indirectly holds more than $1.2 trillion of US Treasury bonds. If the dollar collapsed, the consequences would devastate Asians’ hard-earned wealth and terminate economic globalisation.

Interestingly, he cites the early 1970s collapse of the Bretton-Woods monetary system that was created after WW2 as a similar event when the United States sold out the global financial market for national gain.

The provision of stable, reliable and viable dollars may be subordinated to short-term US interests, posing a risk to global monetary stability. In the long term, America may seek to resolve its economic mess by devaluing the dollar at best and a default at worst. This is depicted in a Chinese proverb: “Drinking poisonous liquid to quench thirst”. History points to examples such as the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. It is the foreign holders of US obligations denominated in dollars that would end up paying.

What caused the collapse of the Bretton Woods system? Republicans fighting unpopular wars. Nixon & Vietnam, in particular. The US Government needed to pay for the war, and they were running out of gold which they promised to exchange with governments for dollars. Well, dollars were being printed like crazy, and no other country wanted to hold them. In 1971, Germany was forced to accept a pile of schiesse and they said "Never Again" and the balloon popped. The dollar fell, the economy damaged, and inflation went up up up. In 1980, St. Ronald Reagan blamed everything on the demonized Jimmy Carter and the Republicans were reborn as the party of honesty and integrity.

If, as Marc at Adored By Hordes says, "History does not repeat itself, it rhymes", look for the Chinese to get really pissed when this current mess bursts. They will blame Obama, not Bush.

Mr. Qiao introduces what Asians need to do to protect themselves, but chickens out when it comes to enforcement claiming ignorance.

The basic idea is to turn Asian savings, China’s in particular, into real business investments rather than let them be used to support US over-con are vulnerable to any fall in the value of the dollar, equity claims on sound corporations and infrastructure projects are at less risk from a currency default. But Asians do not want to bear the risk of this investment because of market turbulence and a lack of knowledge of cultural, legal and regulatory issues in US businesses. However if a guarantee scheme were created, Asian savers could be willing to invest directly in capital-hungry US industries.

He then enumerates all the guarantees the US government should introduce to make sure the Asians are secure in their investments. Trust the Americans once again - the defenders of freedom, democracy, and capitalism. They have such a good track record. As soon as such an agreement was put in place, the Darth side would reneg if given power (or take it by force). If I were the Chinese government, I would bypass the U.S. Treasury altogether and lend directly to American industries and American homeowners. Give zero interest rates on loans, with repayments pegged to a Chinese-monitored international basket of currencies. This would put political pressure on the US not to print money and inflate the debt away.

But then again, the Chinese have pretty much forgotten their supposed idealism of equality, throwing that baby out with Mao's bathwater.

Isn't This Really Our Ultimate Choice?

2009-03-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

As the world gets more an more twisted, it is starting to hurt all over. We always knew it would when we hit the boundary. Now in our culture wars, we have a big choice to make. And there will be no going back. The patriarchy is already going forward with their plan because they don't think sustainability can organize without compulsion. And they believe in their compulsory promises of 110% success rates. Yes, even after the list of failures making 110% impossible -- well at least for everyone.

So if your choice is in favor of faith in eco-balanced biotic environment, what choices must you make to ensure the likely success of that reality?

Similarly, if you think our best chance of survival is a self-consuming cybertransport sailing across the dimension of air as a ancestors did sea, looking for yet another promised land, let's see once and for all the detailed plan of how this is going to work and for how long. Let us judge for ourselves whether such a future is better than the historical divine or magical garden of earthly delights.

If enough of us believe in either option, let us evaluate and democratically debate the required social contract to ensure its success. Just giving one side all the money and means of production while the rest of the biotic world becomes disposable inputs is not credible in insuring success. You can't call an engineered solution to be divine inspiration or the invisible hand of a benevolent dictator. Similarly, the idea that we can let biology run lassez-faire unbalanced by empathetic compassion is humanistically devoid.

The world is not ending, a reality is ending. And we just don't know which one. My personal opinion is that we are juggling too many perceptions of reality that something has to give. This is a new day. This is the end of the culture wars. We will be on the same page.

This is a precipice - a tipping point - a commitment.

The feminine Mother Earth and God's creation versus the self-consuming engineered creation of what at best could be considered a life raft and at worst a pirate ship. I think given that choice, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Lincoln, Gandhi, and a host of angels would make the same choice. The would also lament that after thousands of years of sacrifice by others, we couldn't keep from getting to this point. It is as if all of history was a struggle to avoid the big plastic inevitable, while living as comfortably as possible. I wonder what they did wrong. Why didn't they sell out? Why did they think they could trust us? We showed them, haven't we?

I know there is one thing most of them would agree on, that we need to avoid violence in making this choice. And most would probably also agree that the choice should be a democratic process, if not a striving for traditional unanimity.

And the patriarchs keep marching forward, because they are scared too.

Yu Na

2009-03-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

If you have not heard of her before, think of Michael Jordan in his first NCAA tournament. (Except she won the MVP.)

BTW, Nike has heard of her.

London's Burning (April Fools)

2009-03-30T06:34:00.000-07:00

So after the Battle in Seattle, the Tussle in Turin, and a decade of lies, the calm and quaint British capital is hosting the new international meeting of global leaders, or at least the important ones, on April Fools Day.

So what should be expected? This website is suggesting the visitors will be served more than tea and crumpets. they are planning a party at the Bank of England where they invite the public to feast on Bankers' Brains!

This is the schedule:

On April 1st, the G20 are coming to London to face up to economic crisis and political meltdown
Lost your home? Lost your job? Lost your savings or your pension? This party is for you!

At 12 noon, April 1st the Bank of England.

Capitalism has been heating up our world for years, melting the icecaps, burning up the rainforests, pushing the planet to tipping point. Now we're going to put the heat on them. At the London Summit , the G20 ministers are trying to get away with the biggest April Fools trick of all time. Their tax-dodging, bonus-guzzling, pension-pinching, unregulated free market world's in meltdown, and those fools think we're going to bail them out. They've gotta be joking!

We can't pay, we won't pay and we are taking to the streets
Many, many imaginative actions will be taking place across London on April 1st. One major focus will be four separate carnival parades culminating in direct action against the financial follies in the City of London among them carbon trading.

Full circle back to 1649? 'A very English revolution!'
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will lead themed processions starting at 11 a.m. from the following rail stations:

Moorgate
Red horse against War;
Liverpool St
Green horse against Climate chaos
London Bridge
Silver horse against Financial crimes
Cannon Street
Black horse against land enclosures and borders in honour of the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers
At 12 noon, April 1st, we're going to reclaim the City, thrusting into the very belly of the beast: the Bank of England.

Early a.m. April 2nd, we're going to bang on their hotel doors, @ the Excel Centre, Canning town to deliver our message of a world beyond capitalism.

I doubt bankers' brains taste all that good, but I think people are getting angry and many in the upper MBA classes do not know the pain except from an intellectual perspective. There's a hard rain going to fall and wash the trash off the sidewalk.

Big Big DOG

2009-03-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

When I have a dog, I want it to go "woof woof" and mean it.

And then I went fishing...

Zombie MBAs (Part 2)

2009-03-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times has a good column on MBA grads, discussing the role and quality of leadership training the schools espouse. It is a good read.

There was a time when management was just management, the science of providing organisational support for innovators and salespeople to win customers and revenue.

Managers tracked resources, physical, financial and human, and tried to improve efficiency. Occasionally they made an acquisition or pushed into new markets, and this was strategy.

But somewhere along the line management morphed into the sexier-sounding "leadership". Managers were globe-trotting executives - catalysts for change. They had a business press eager to turn them into icons, to photograph them in their penthouses, preening over their empires as if they, rather than their shareholders, owned them.

Business schools were eagerly complicit in this super-sizing of management. They no longer educated mere MBAs. They were churning out "future leaders".

If Waterloo was won, as the Duke of Wellington claimed, "on the playing fields of Eton", then the triumphs and disasters of our recent global economic history had their roots in the classrooms and cafeterias of Harvard , Wharton , Stanford, Insead and other leading schools.

It is not a legacy any of these schools may wish to boast of at the moment. In fact, it may be time for all of them to cool it with leadership and return to more modest goals and language. To recognise the truth that it makes no more sense for a business school to claim it teaches leadership than for a school of Byzantine studies to make the same claim.

What business schools can teach is organisational behaviour. They can teach compensation systems and recruitment processes. They can offer classes on cash and non-cash incentives, on training, promotion and the value of a corporate culture. They can offer frameworks for negotiations, strategy decisions and implementing change. But when they bundle this up and call it leadership, they risk leaving their students with the faulty impression that they are now qualified, if not obliged, to go into the world and lead. It breeds the arrogance for which MBAs are mocked.

Not all MBAs can be leaders, nor need they be. Every business needs followers: people who are good at what they do, who are able to implement the plans laid out by leaders.

Great leaders tend to be those who can synthesise, simplify and persuade. They provide clarity so that those below them can do their best to achieve a common goal. But leadership should not be the brass ring at the climax of every business career. It is a function, like finance or marketing, at which certain people excel and others do not, and should be treated as such.

Every MBA course must be re-evaluating what it does these days. The rise of the MBA almost exactly mirrors the rise of the economic system that is now in the hospital emergency room.

Leading business schools have tried to distance themselves from the fiasco, offering prescriptions to cure the illness without ascribing blame for its cause. Anyway, it's just a few bad apples, they say. Nonsense. Business schools cannot trumpet their role in educating business leaders, then go quiet when their alumni are caught captaining the Titanic and manoeuvring the iceberg. Their alumni were derivative traders and regulators, collateralised debt obligation salesmen and corporate raiders. They were in this up to their necks, partly because there was no one higher up the ladder to stop them. They were leaders, so they led.

The recent officer class of global capitalism has been the MBA class. But it was a case of lions led by donkeys, at least in the financial industry. Honest individuals and businesses came to rely on a system that betrayed them.

Business does not need any more leadership courses - particularly not at the MBA level. It needs people who are competent, entrepreneurial and ethical,tough enough to make a buck yet modest enough to accept that free markets and businesses are simply components of healthy societies - not all that matters.

The Fall of a God

2009-03-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

Those damn communists are at it again. This time they are attacking free market economics where we are strongest and most vulnerable. They are going after the symbol of America that is bigger than apple pie, old glory, or the New York Yankees. These guys are gunning for George W. (Washington that is.)

China thinks just because we as a nation have sold ourselves into indentured bondage by issuing trillions in bonds and bad subprime bank assets, that we will actual repay them. (Please, no sniggering - show some respect to the new overlords.) But one of their first items of business is to replace the dollar with a global basket of currencies.

Now I know what you are thinking: how quaint of a socialist notion that a plurality of nations should take precedence over the demands of one. Yes, we Americans have a proven track record of truth and justice, fighting the good fight making the world safe for freedom and democracy. And we have done such a good job creating peace, love, and harmony in this world, that we have nearly bankrupted ourselves. And now, when we are down and wounded, China decides that they can't trust us anymore.

US! Can you believe it? I mean besides police actions in Iraq, Grenada, Panama, Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, and Vietnam, we have been a country of model behavior. Well, unless you count our economic policies that have failed to achieve their stated objectives in Haiti, the Palestinian territories, Georgia, Guatemala, Africa, and Wall Street. But overall, we have a pretty good track record of being that shining light, that beacon on the hill.

So what's up China? You are is a nation that we propped up on the back of WalMart and our empty downtowns, and now you are turning on us? We were friends. Remember Nixon? Can't you show a little Christian compassion?

How dare the Chinese take on the U.S. Dollar? Next thing you know, they will be making a movie, comparing the destruction of the Dollar to the time Elijah's God destroyed Ba'al in the first recorded Divine Smackdown. The fall of a post-modern God. Bastards!

Once again, the Marxist (pre)dictum that the capitalist will sell the communists the rope is too close to our collective necks for comfort.

By the way, don't fret over the image of the dollar shrinking. I was talking to an economist recently and he said inflation isn't a bad thing if it is expected. That is a big relief.

There is a God(dess)

2009-03-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Just cancel the Olympics. I don't know how you can get better than this.

Zombies R US(ofA)

2009-03-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

As Stephen Colbert used to ask:

George W. Bush - Great President or Greatest President?

On the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Obama tried to inform America why AIG was so pivotal in the Rape of Lady Liberty. He said AIG was just a normal insurance company until, in the search for more and more profits, grafted an investment bank on its back. And that investment bank operation got over involved in derivatives and other risky assets, primarily associated with the subprime mortgage market.

Yesterday I watched a video clip of Barney Frank, where he suggested that we file a shareholder lawsuit against AIG for fraud, as we as a country are the biggest shareholder in AIG.

Then it hit me: we as a country and economy are just like those Zombie Banks that are technically, non-technically, hypothetically, and every other -ally so beyond life support that they are undead. Not even Mary Shelley or all the King's men can bring them back to love and life.

At first I thought such a lawshit against AIG would serve some cathartic need, it is pointless. There is nothing to sue for. Our investments in these banks and financial institutions, call it a bailout or whatever, is dead. There may be marginal money there for operations, but a lawsuit by the United States would be frivolous because there are no assets in priority. What I mean is this: AIG, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc etc etc became involved in fraudulent activity years ago. And although Obama said what they did wasn't against the law, he did suggest that these financial institutions did not act in their shareholders' best interest. And they lost trillions.

If you know anything about shareholder lawsuits, a plaintiff attorney only has to find one person (and preferably a few) to file a lawsuit against a corporation along with a request seeking class certification. A class action lawsuit against AIG, BofA, Citibank, Wells Fargo, or General Electric's finance arm would bring any of these companies down. And hard. Now I can think of at least a hundred million people who could serve as lead plaintiff. And I am sure there is a Weil Gottshal, or a Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, or a Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz willing to take such a case.

And what is the chance that such a lawsuit would be successful? Would it be that hard to show fraud? The only thing the companies have going for them is that such a massive discovery process would likely bankrupt a plaintiff firm, even one well capitalized. And any such suit would take priority over a suit by the Attorney General's office. So, all the 'good' money we have poured into these bad financial service firms will become attachable assets in such litigation. I mean if Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner couldn't remember to put strings on the money, do you think they protected the money against shareholder lawsuits? (And if they did, what did they know and when did they know it?)

So it appears that we may be at risk of having to bail these companies out again again again. Is this why Obama and the Fed are setting up a shadow banking system? Whether it is a class action lawsuit or a smoking gun or a butterfly flapping its wings in China, we are at big risk.

The only way out is to collectively agree that the zombies are not only bad, but that they can't be rehabilitated without the baptism of bankruptcy for the remission of sins (and obligations). And a truth commission. It is well known that if you are attacked by a zombie, you will become one. And as we are under attack, we must be very careful.

And there is something else too: we need to be able to say what it is that we want and then build it. We are so afraid to sit down and imagine what type of community, nation, or world we want to inhabit. Very few people have been having that discussion, although that seems to be changing. As Terrence McKenna says: "if you can't describe a reality, you can't inhabit it."

As we are on the topic of zombies, what are corporations anyway? Fictitious individuals granted to possiblity of immortality? WTF.

Definition In Exquisite Detail

2009-03-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt drew up an index to categorize the discomfort caused by stinging insects. The attack of the bald-faced hornet is "rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door." A paper wasp delivers pain that's "caustic and burning," with a "distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut." The sweat bee, on the other hand, can hurt you in a way that's "light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm." In bringing this to your attention, Gemini, I hope to inspire the rebel in you. Your homework is to create an equally nuanced and precise index of experiences that feel good. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will be able to call on tremendous reserves of intelligence as you identify the numerous modes of pleasure that are available to you, and define them in exquisite detail.

I have always enjoyed Rob Brezsny's horoscopes. I like the free will part - nothing good can happen without some degree of freedom. Otherwise any pronouncement about the future would be a curse: the rhythm of life would be the great inevitable. In such a reality, the bad guys win. I refuse to accept their depression. We do have a choice. This you know in the part of you that can't be denied.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water

2009-03-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

You would think that after AIG got their latest trillion, the banksters would be getting fat, dumb, and happy. Well, it seems that the commercial real estate market is going to test their resolve. According to that ultra left-wing investment company Apollo Management, the other shoe is about to hit. (given the number of shoes that have been dropping, the beast must be a millipede.)

The Financial Times, you know that pinko newspaper is reporting Apollo's concern that the commercial crap has not even hit the radar:

Leon Black, founder of the firm, said the extra costs of cleaning up the US banking industry could total as much as $2,000bn, putting further strain on the economy. He said the woes of the commercial property had not yet been reflected fully on bank balance sheets.

“You have the black hole of commercial real estate and that hasn’t happened yet,” said Mr Black in a wide-ranging interview on FT.com.

“There you are sitting with $4 trillion of debt and you know not all of it’s bad but a lot of it is diminished and that really hasn’t yet been addressed.”

He warned it would be 12 to 18 months before there are lasting signs of US economic recovery.

If you are interested in this topic, go here to watch his interview.

What is the Past Tense of Twitter?

2009-03-20T12:20:00.001-07:00

Flat is the New Up

2009-03-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

I was chillin' on the digital leash last night with my Hyde Park GSB homie Bondmaster BK, and he dropped a rap floating around his gim homebase: Flat is the New Up.

He and his korporate krew have made big-bad giving sweet taste of 30 forty 50 cent per. You do that and the burbpunks come begging for more. Please baby baby please.

Now burbsters are hooked, nutting on a derivative jones. Need it, want it, gotta have it. Subpunkhookedsters ain't got rhyme or rhythm, just reason. Can't tell if the George W was a bum, a bridge, or a buck. History slam. Can't tell if it is up. Can't tell if it is down. BYOI. Bring your own "it".

Flatlined. Zombie Power. The End of History is nigh'.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Michael Steele's Rap Battle Response

comedycentral.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Mark Sanford

Bladerunner

2009-03-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Only God Can Move Mountains

2009-03-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Reading tea leaves in Appalachia has never been one of my hobbies, but they are there to be read. I think the second coming is at hand if the religious right start making sense. LEAF is a fundamentalist Christian Fellowship in Tennessee that has begun an environmental campaign to stop mountain-top removal "in order to preserve God's creation."

If Cows Could Fly...

2009-03-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

Outlawing Childhood

2009-03-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

I sometimes joke that if I sent my 8 year-old daughter three blocks to the neighborhood grocery store by herself if I would probably get arrested. Yes she would have to cross a major street, but there are traffic signals and crosswalks, but I never ever see kids out walking free. I just chalked it up to living in Los Angeles. (BTW, my neighbor says he nearly has a heart attack each time he sees my daughter playing in our front yard because of all the crazies. But then again, having a heart attacks is his hobby.)

But last night, I was listening to As It Happens from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (to listen, the story is in part one of the link at 14:50 to 27:50). They told the story of Lori Lavarre-Pierce from a small town in Mississippi. Lori was supposed to take her 10 year-old son to soccer practice last week. He asked his mom if he could walk. He had walked the same route the night before with his dad and sister, a route that he had taken many times. He knew the route. Mom said okay and gave him her cell phone. The kid left, and since she had to go to practice to meet a parent, she showed up 15 minutes after practice began. What she didn't know, was that in that period of time that he son walked to practice and she arrived, all hell broke loose.

It seems that people FREAKED OUT!!! A number of people reportedly called 911, and the police went to her home, and then to the soccer field. the first thing the police officer told her was "Do you know that you could have been charged with child endangerment? Your child is too young to walk alone." The kid only made it a few blocks from home before he was intercepted by the police. The police then drove the kid to soccer practice and then went looking for MOM.

Now being a DAD, I can appreciate divine justice, but this can ruin the kid too. The Canadian program did not play gotcha journalism. They followed up with an interview of Dr William Byrd who studies how children lose more and more freedom in each subsequent generation. More importantly, the study shows how such loss of autonomy, specifically the freedom to roam, screws up the kids brain and social development. Basically, kids who do not roam free by age 12 have more difficulty dealing with stress -- and they have much more difficulty connecting with their environment.

And we think AIG was a catastrophe....

Would You Trust This Man With Your _________?

2009-03-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

If AIG only lost $100 billion, then why did they get much more than that in a bailout? WTF?

Temple of Wall Street: WWJD?

2009-03-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:
Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Matthew 18:32-35

You go Jesus! Throw those muthers out of the Temple of Wall Street

Sunday in East Pakistan with George

2009-03-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

THE BIGGEST LOVE

2009-03-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

Barb attends the Veil Ceremony inside the temple and is lead into the Celestial Room where Nancy and Cindy wait for her. Realizing this may be the only glimpse she sees of what it will be like to be with her family in the afterlife, Barb breaks down, explaining she's facing a disciplinary hearing the next day.

I am coming out the the closet as a mormon. I was born one and will always be one. Can't do a damned thing about it, and boy have I tried. I have generations of mormon dna exploding in my jeans. Even if I am not tethered to the mothership via a lifeline, mormonism is a reality for me.

I really enjoyed watching the portions of the endowment ceremony on the show last night. I was in awe of the raw primeval purity of the snippet of the endowment ceremony that was actually shown. Last night I saw the entire ceremony in a totally different light. It was a beautiful thing. But to the eyes of someone on the outside, they go: “WOW!, this ain’t any category of religion I have ever seen before” (except for some jews and masons).

Lets ponder this: if Mormons are as unique and different as what was shown in camera, what do you really know about Mormons? How many other cultures are out there that you do not show the least curiosity about? And why do you think so many people are afraid of Mormons? Are you afraid? If so, why? If you saw this episode, you saw as deep as anyone can see without living the life. You observed ground zero of a faith, in living color.

If you are mormon, how do you feel about this being shown? Why are you afraid of having people see it? Jesus said "judge not, lest ye be judged". Are you being judged? Did you judge first or second? If it was a judgement, was it an eye for an eye or the other cheek?

If one can know the truth and the truth can set one free, does this mean all truth? That rabbit hole is calling all Alices. Mormon, Hindu, Jew, Muslim and Iroquois. Some people believe the yogis and zen masters helped dig the rabbit hole. Jesus liked rabbits too.

He Who Dies With The Most Debt Wins

2009-03-16T04:22:00.000-07:00

When I was conversing with the demi-gods of economics at the University of Chicago - not the nobel winners, rather the students who coveted being future nobel prize winners, I am reminiscing about the first year of grad school (known as "The First Year). Ken, Shannon and I would sit around the International House bending our mind to the latest theories (and the lack of fleshly pleasure).

Someone had brought up the slogan "he who dies with the most toys wins." I took that and transfigured it into "he who dies with the most debt wins." Everyone got it. Shannon wrote it down and posted it on his dorm door he was so moved.

Debt being the objective was a horribly ironic concept at the time, and know we see what happens when this quantum reality is made flesh (i.e., it is not longer a schroedinger probability).

Oh prophets of doom, open your mind and seek reality and prophesize from the realm of the four-leaf clover instead of the three. You have to be willing to accept leprochans and unicorns in the schroedinger's cat theory of reality.

This is the box you need to think your way out of.........

The Big Uno

2009-03-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

I have long argued (personally, not on this blog) that Los Angeles is the Nuevo Jerusalam. As proof I can only offer this canonedrum:

. . . Los Angeles is more one with everything than anywhere else on the earth . . . . . . . . .

...and that isn't saying much.

For Shits and Giggles

2009-03-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Obama: Fire Geithner

2009-03-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars.

AIG is totally bankrupt. We knew that they were financially bankrupt, now we know they are morally bankrupt too.

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments. The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has asked that the company scale back future bonus payments where legally possible, an administration official said Saturday.

LEGAL AUTHORITY???

HEY CAPITALISTS!!! These guys are destroying your utopian vision. You had better stand up and fight for your dream otherwise these monopolist guys are going to burn your house down too!

If AIG is "contractually obligated" to pay the "bonuses", then AIG needs to file for bankruptcy. The resulting contractual claims become unsecured liabilities, which have the lowest priority for actually being paid in the restructure - and they will likely not be paid out. These guys are only able to pay themselves out because of the bailout. This is fraud - bonuses for success not earned. But this is a fraud on a pre-Armageddon scale, destroying everything it its path.

Business is a leveraged expansion of society. And there are pitfalls, and consequences for getting it WRONG. And this is way past "getting it wrong." This is such a non-remote possibility that every American kid learned it playing the game Monopoly. "GO STRAIGHT TO JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200." In fact, playing the Parker Brothers board game, a future monopolist received more ethics training just in getting sent to pretend jail than they ever got in business school.

What did Jesus say about putting new wine in old bottles? This thing is going down. No one trusts it.

Jon Stewart - America's Hero

2009-03-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

"For both politicians and journalists, trust is the coin of the realm. Without trust, the system breaks down."
Sally Quinn
Washington Post
November 2, 1998

So what happened? Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer in a forest and it made a sound? Wow!

I am reminded of when Senator Joe McCarthy was rebuking some poor kid for once being part of the lawyers guild which in republican speak meant communist (code: not us). Treason was in the air. A very distinguished elder attorney turned on McCarthy, castrating the beast with the simple words:

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

It changed the world. Ushered in the freedom of thought called the sixties. Well freedom is out of the bag. And just like the israelites, it has taken two generations before we could enter the promised land of freedom. So what are we going to do with it?

One thing I do know is that if our children read about this stage in our saga in the history books, they will think we were being really stupid and cavalier.

Left, Right, Center & Progressive

2009-03-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

Just tell the truth!!! Here are four journalist discussing what is going on in the world: China saying they are very worried about the US debt load and the strength of their "investment", Maddoff's relatonship with NASDAQ , Cramer vs. Stewart, & health care. I swear you can almost hear the conservative, Tony Blankly of the Washington Times, cry. This comment on why AIG can't go public with who they payed their bailout money to was odd:

"Everyone is worried that once the default on these derivatives start it will be unstoppable....So we just don't want people being able to calculate who is vulnerable, because then there will be panic calls."

I am glad he is siding with stability versus nationalization.

Blankly then says something very odd when talking about Maddoff's victims versus the unemployed and recently homeless:

"Its not just rich greedy people who are victims, but life's brief fever will be soon over for all classes of victims, so I don't know if we have to have this unseemly fight over who has been more victimized by life. There is probably room enough for everyone in that category. (audible sob.) That's okay."

BTW, China is the BIG STORY. If we don't pay, they will take our houses. And they have the population to fill all the vacancies. Maybe we should wake up.

The Case of the Missing Mortgage Documents

2009-03-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

It seems that a lot of banks can't get their hands on the actual original mortgage documents. The problem is that a mortgage document is a bearer instrument that can be bought and sold. If a bank attempting to foreclose can't produce the actual mortgage document, they can't prove they have still own the rights to foreclose on the underlying real assets. See, the bank may have sold the loan to someone else, so that person has the rights. So if Bank 1 forecloses but had sold the note to Bank 2, they are stealing.

Feel bad for the banks? Remember they are the ones who wrote the laws. They wanted to be able to buy, bundle, subdivide, and resell the mortgages. And they made big Big BIG MONEY & PROFITS doing this over the past two decades. Now they need us to ignore their laws so they can foreclose on properties even though they can't locate the original mortgages. Remember, the mortgages are fungible as cash. I think they are classified under M3, the part of the money supply the Bush Administration decided that after 11/10/2005 they didn't need to track any more. They claimed the costs to collect M3 data outweighed the benefits the data provided (just like the 92 torture tapes).

But what is the fallout:

Deutsche Bank got a hard shock [in late 2007] when a judge in the state of Ohio in the USA made a ruling that the bank had no legal right to foreclose on 14 homes whose owners had failed to keep current in their monthly mortgage payments. The Judge asked DB to show documents proving legal title to the 14 homes. DB could not. All DB attorneys could show was a document showing only an “intent to convey the rights in the mortgages.” They could not produce the actual mortgage, the heart of Western property rights since the Magna Charta if not longer.... Banks live in the exotic new world of “global securitization”, where banks like DB or Citigroup buy tens of thousands of mortgages from small local lending banks, “bundle” them into Jumbo new securities which then are rated by Moody’s or Standard & Poors or Fitch, and sell them as bonds to pension funds or other banks or private investors who naively believed they were buying bonds rated AAA, the highest, and never realized that their “bundle” of say 1,000 different home mortgages, contained maybe 20% or 200 mortgages rated “sub-prime,” i.e. of dubious credit quality.

Now this same issue came up again in Ohio in 2009. A judge stopped foreclosure on 34 houses because no notes were produced.

And now, according to NPR:

Many mortgages are not held by banks, but by securitized trusts — complicated arrangements that involve many investors and byzantine legal documents. Homeowner advocates say they're finding a surprising number of improper mortgage documents and — in some cases — fraud that can delay foreclosure.

For years, lawyers defending homeowners against foreclosure had just one option: Convince lenders to re-negotiate the terms of their mortgage. Now they're taking their cases to court.

The 'Rocket Docket'
In Fort Myers, Fla., it's been called the "rocket docket" — a special court that hears — and clears — hundreds of foreclosures each day.

An average case takes just two to three minutes. State Circuit Judge James Thompson gets right to the point with homeowner Theresa Weber: "Miss Weber, it appears the bank has done what's necessary to get a judgment of foreclosure. Can you think of any legal reason why one should not take place?"

Like nearly all the other defendants, Weber answers, "No" and she gets what appears to be the standard judgment — 60 days to vacate the premises.

There are few tears in this court, mostly resignation.

In Miami-Dade County, across the state, Ana Fernandez says she thought that would be her fate as well.

Fernandez says she made a big mistake a few years ago when she refinanced her home. The new mortgage started with monthly payments of $1,200, but soon ballooned to $2,600 per month. "There was no way that I could afford paying that mortgage," she says.

Fernandez's home is a modest but recently updated three-bedroom house in Miami Gardens. She's lived here for 24 years.

When Fernandez contacted her lender, Chevy Chase Bank, she says the bank was no help: "They told me the best I could do was [get my payments] up to date and then start paying again, which would still leave me with the $2,600 [monthly payment]."

Fernandez learned firsthand how difficult it can be to convince lenders to negotiate terms that allow borrowers to remain in their homes.

Negotiating To Stay In Homes

When Fernandez's lawyer, Ray Garcia, took the case, he found that Chevy Chase Bank had no proof that it, in fact, owned her loan.

In a hearing, a lawyer representing the bank conceded that he did not have the original mortgage note — something that's required by law. What he did have was a copy.

Chevy Chase Bank bought Fernandez's loan from another institution. And, Garcia says, when he examined the copy, it showed ownership of the loan had never been assigned or transferred to Chevy Chase. In a recent interview in his office, he said: "As we sit here today, they haven't produced a note. They've produced absolutely no record evidence that Chevy Chase has a right to bring this action."

Chevy Chase was recently acquired by Capital One Bank. A Capital One spokeswoman maintains the company has filed the original note, but otherwise had no comment.

Producing The Mortgage Note

The demand that banks seeking foreclosure "produce the note" is a cry that's gotten attention from housing activists and real estate attorneys across the country.

For banks that own and service the loans they originate, finding the original paperwork is rarely a problem. But with loans that have been securitized — parceled with other mortgages and sold to investors — the original mortgage note can be elusive.

Lawyer April Charney, who works with Jacksonville Legal Services in Florida, has become well-known as an expert on defending homeowners against foreclosures. She says asking the bank to produce the paperwork is just the beginning.

She says lawyers who take the time to study the mortgage notes and the securitization agreements will almost always find deficiencies, and sometimes, fraud. "These loans are so tricked up by the Ponzi scheme that became the world of securitization and derivatives, that there is no owner to these loans," she says. "They just totally failed to comply with their contracts."

Charney has a full caseload and she's been working to train a small army of lawyers through seminars across the country.

The new world of securitized mortgages, she says, is layered and nuanced. Some courts, overwhelmed by a growing backlog of foreclosures, can even be hostile to attorneys who want to slow down the process.

But in some cases, it's the judges who are beginning to ask probing questions of plaintiffs seeking foreclosures. In California, federal bankruptcy judge Samuel Bufford has written about some of the new issues courts must consider in foreclosure cases. "One of the problems I see … is I don't seem to have the right parties before the court," he says. "I've taken testimony … and found out that the owner of the mortgage is somebody else who has not shown up in court at all."

A Changing Landscape

It's a still-developing area of law and it's one that could change abruptly with new federal legislation governing foreclosures.

Still, the growing number of legal challenges troubles Talcott Franklin, an attorney in Dallas and an expert on securitized mortgages.

He says mortgage-backed securities are an important part of a healthy housing market. If many of the legal challenges being mounted around the country are successful, he worries, that could undermine a vital financial tool.

"My big fear," Franklin says, "is that we'll get a series of decisions, based on not fully understood facts, which will prevent securitization from going forward in the future."

Franklin doesn't blame homeowners or their lawyers for bringing the challenges. He's more critical of lenders and their attorneys for not doing a better job understanding securitized mortgages and for not taking care of important legal matters before going to court to foreclose on a home.

So why are people just walking away when they could fight it out?

How Money Works (dumbed down 4 kids)

2009-03-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

If you ever wondered where money comes from or how it is "created", watch this video.

Why Should You Care About Armenians?

2009-03-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Because when the sewage systems in places like Iceland, Ireland, and Mexico fail, the shit goes everywhere.

From Citizen Economist:

On 3 March 2009 in the space of a few hours the Armenian dram evaporated from about 300 per dollar to about 400 per dollar and 275,000 drams per ounce of gold to approximately 365,000 drams per ounce of gold. This rapid 30% currency poofing is like when the Kazakhstan currency went poof but without the strategic geo-political considerations. Nevertheless, extremely ominous financial troubles stir in Eastern Europe. One knows the conditions are dire when Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan advocates using the Russian ruble as a stable currency.

As fiat currencies represent the common stock of nations; Armenia’s future is ominous. Trend Capital has reported that Ogtay Hagverdiev, of the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers Economy and Finance and Credit Policy Department head, said. ”It will take time to restore the country’s economy. A revolt among the people may begin in the meanwhile.”

The Armenian government may soon default. Rising prices, the effects of inflation, will soon begin. Shortages, a common effect of currency problems, may appear. Civil unrest may follow like in Iceland, Greece and China.

JUNCTION POINTS
Large buildings in urban environments are often constructed in such a way to reduce the effects, such as sound, of the outside. It can be inspiring to sit in perfect silence without any sound to be heard coming from the bustling outside streets. How is this silence possible with the hustle and bustle of a metropolis only a few yards away?

The answer lies in the construction. For example, an inner building can be built within the walls of an existing building with the walls of the inner building connected to the outside building at only a few junction points. This will greatly limit the effects of the hustling and bustling metropolis.

The investor can learn a lesson. The reduction of junction points with businesses, organizations and governments can greatly reduce various risks to one’s capital and their effect on one’s personal life. If the relationship is no longer mutually advantageous then any attachment through junction points should be easily severed.

Defining one’s throughput and then implementing the Theory of Constraints thinking process can be extremely helpful in developing the Four Hour Workweek. This may allow one the freedom to live where, when and how they want. The transitions accompanying the great credit contraction will provide tremendous opportunity for wealth generation and accumulation. Being able to understand the environment will allow one to swim with, not against, the current.

As the great credit contraction grinds on more fiat currency illusions, like the Armenian dram, Kazakhstan tenge or British Pound, will evaporate either wholly or partially. As poet John Greenleaf wrote, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”

I am sure many Armenians, Kazaks and British, who had their life savings evaporate, wish they had a last plane account with an institution like GoldMoney where they could have kept their cash balances in a tangible asset because no matter what happens with its fiat currency price the gold or silver is still there. When these currency devaluation events happen, and a golden sword of Damocles hangs over the US Dollar, it is extremely fast.

If These Were EKGs, What Would Be Your Diagnosis?

2009-03-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

Are we going to accept indentured servitude going forward? Are these contracts blessed of God and can't be put asunder? Does God have the legal responsibility to enforce the Devil's contracts?

Even Jesus threw the money changers off of the old Wall Street. Why does Judaism require that you can only be indentured for 7 years? Why does Islam prohibit the charging of interest? I think the goal is that they knew, at least when those prohibitions were codified, that non-bounded servitude denies the underlying humanity of the individual and the family.

We have to be careful here. It is easy to run amok and tear everything down in the horde name of justice. But we can't accept injustice either. There is a needle that needs to be threaded. Are you ready kids?

Jon Stewart 4 Oversight Czar!!!

2009-03-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, someone calls these guys on the carpet for the common man!! This is a MUST WATCH!!

Note: There is a problem with the following videos. In the meantime, go to this link.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Slow Down, You Go To Fast

2009-03-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

If we are to rediscover meta-economics, then it will be found through a reaffermation of the primacy of nonviolence and beauty.

Woody Tasch
Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered

How is this for "radical":

Dante Hesse runs a small organic dairy farm in Ghent, N.Y. Hesse lets his herd of 60 or so cows graze on open pasture. He avoids giving them growth hormones and antibiotics. Hesse says his cows might live a decade or more, and they stay productive longer than the average for more industrial farming.

A couple of days each week, Hesse makes the trip from his Milk Thistle farm to farmers markets in New York City. Even before he finishes setting up his stand, customers start lining up for his milk, at $5 a quart. Hesse says he could sell even more milk — plus butter and cheese — if he could just build a processing plant right in his barn.

For that, he needs to raise about $700,000 — a sum of money that has been hard to come by in the current recession and credit crisis. Hesse has a particularly hard time borrowing money because he has nothing to back up the loan. He rents his barn and his land. He's got no co-signers. Last fall, unable to get a loan through ordinary means, he turned to his customers and asked them for help.

"We feel pretty strongly at this point that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in helping, and the way the economy is now, one argument might be that it's a bad time to be doing something like this," Hesse says. "But I think the inverse is true, that it's actually a good time because people are scared of the stock market, and they know that food is a vital part of survival. And local food is going to become very important in the very near future."

Hesse is offering 6 percent interest for an unsecured loan of $1,000. His business plan taps into a pair of burgeoning movements — the first characterized by an interest in organic, locally grown food; the second by an environmental approach to economics.

That approach is championed by Woody Tasch, a venture capitalist and author of the new book Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money. Tasch argues that money is flying around the globe too fast. He rows hard against mainstream economics, which says growth is good and the marketplace knows best. "I've just had it with all of this so-called 'making-a-killing expertise,' which is actually killing the planet," he says. "I think one of the antidotes is daring to move to the other side of our brain, and kind of put down all that economic and fiduciary nonsense and just act like regular people."

Tasch and his Slow Money Alliance take their name and inspiration from the Slow Food movement, which started 20 ago in Italy. Tasch isn't arguing against all growth. Rather, he's saying that some as yet undefined portion of capital should be steered toward smaller, local farms and businesses that are friendly to the environment. His group aims to raise as much as $100 million this year, then let regional funds start investing in businesses they like.

The idea of investing in a farmer like Hesse, who's got no collateral to back up a loan, might seem overly risky to some. But one customer at the market stops to ask Hesse about the deal.

Josh Goldstein of Brooklyn says he and his wife are interested in lending money to Hesse. They've lost faith in the stock market, and are ready to put their faith instead in a business and product they can see — and taste.

"The milk, first of all, it's like no milk you've ever had," Goldstein says. "We've been looking to invest some money in local green companies. We just thought it looked like a good opportunity — somebody local, somebody we know, somebody we can trust."

For now, Hesse is putting the finishing touches on his plan to seek investments from his customers. He's also hoping he might get the backing of an outfit like the Slow Money Alliance. He knows it might take him a while to get where he's going. In this economy, he's almost got no choice but the slow road.

Stealing Fire

2009-03-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

Professor Paul Friedrich, a very distinguished professor of anthrolinguistics emeritus at the University of Chicago, said "Poetry is the precurser to philosophy. If that is the case, what do you make from a poet who calls god on the carpet in submission. And god obeys? Submission is the will to power.

How close can you get to the sun? Can you see the finger of god and live? What do we do with the failures?

"I hate and I love at the same moment."

This poetry attempts to go there. Ladies and Gentlemen, FranK BidArt Part 1.

Why Does It Have to Be So Hard?

2009-03-12T02:48:00.000-07:00

Trick question: it's not!

The Plight of Microbes

2009-03-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

Nano Technology has come a long way. UCLA and Hebrew Univeristy have developed a motor that is powered by two living beings. It is so much better when they call them motors rather than living microbes that will serve their entire lives as slaves to a nano machine. Don't worry, its okay: their lives have no meaning. We know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I think the worst they are going to do to humans is to devolve us to a happy servile class, while the primate kings and queens will be allowed to breed a leadership class. Note that when they try to make sure we have at least an ethical level of happiness, they do have another stated goal:

Researchers hope the findings will help employers better understand what they can do to create more productive workers.

Proponents of Directed Panspermia include famed DNA-explorers Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel.

So is it possible, and I am going out on a limb here, that as our planet is being destroyed, we are trying to develop spore-like nanotechnologies that can be encoded with evolved DNA instructions that can be shot out of a space cannon mounted on a gravity-less space station, on the prayer that they land sometime somewhere on fertile soils? Terrence McKenna argued that this is the case for mushrooms that have an odd, other-worldly chemical structure and life form that allowed them to travel through time and space before landing on this planet. Are mushrooms the fruit of the tree of knowledge that we are forbidden from eating?

Maybe panspermia is the underlying motivation for secret societies and masonic or mormon rituals -- that have the signs and tokens to identify themselves as fellow travelers to each other in the group. It is not for this life but the life in the future in intergalactic population as we master the universe? For example, if we, you or me are shot out of a cannon like Hunter S. Thompson (but in gravityless space), and land on a planet called Beetlejuice and start the cycle of life, are those rituals burned into our DNA - the secret code capable of unfolding into life? Will we have to go through all the stages of evolution at the next planet to get to homosapien, as discussed in Your Inner Fish? And will the practice of those rituals allow us to identify and communicate with one another? Is this why the rituals are usually accompanied with a blood oath, because they can't accept a sub-optimal outcome such as prisoner's dilemma? Will we have the faith of a mustard seed to become a mustard seed on this intergalactic journey? Maybe religious practice is how you fight off the curse of prisoner's dilemma or even a way of meditating on the intergalactic journey that could take a millennium. Who knows?

Am I out of my mind? I really can't tell.

The Lions Are Dying

2009-03-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

It is estimated that by 2030, the lions in Kenya will be extinct. Won't it be fun to tell our children's children what it was like when we reminisce that we once had animals like lions, tigers, sharks, wolves, and whales roaming the earth? Boy, won't they be impressed and maybe even jealous that they weren't born earlier?

We Have All Inherited Geronimo's Legacy

2009-03-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

Given the financial meltdown, are we Americans not being treated with the same respect as has been granted the Apaches for several generations? Or the Navajos? Or the Lakota? Or the Nez Perce? Or the Iroquois? Or any native people?

How Can You Tell If A Republican is Lying?

2009-03-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

"His lips are moving."
Richard A.

So what about bankers, AIG, the Fed, and Geitner? When can you tell when they are lying?

Sutra Atman

2009-03-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Threading the I of the Needle....

Alan Watts explains where Jesus went~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How Bad Is It?

2009-03-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

The AARP will stop matching employee 401K contributions on March 22, 2009. Nuf said?

No? Okay, Saks, General Motors, newspaper group McClatchy, clothing company J.Crew, FedEx, UPS, Coca-Cola Bottling, Reader's Digest, Motorola, Regions Financial and Sprint Nextel are also suspending contributions. Oh happy day!

Happy Valley

2009-03-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

It is OFFICIAL! According to a recent survey, Utah is the happiest place on earth (assuming the United States is the happiest country in the world). Homogeneity has its benefits.

It is Not Secret, It is Sacred

2009-03-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

As reported earlier, there is a lawsuit filed by the descendants of Geronimo against Yale University because Prescott Bush and his fellow secret society members. Maybe we can we find out in the cases discovery lots of cool things. What things? Who in government are members? Who in the banking world are members? Who in the hell is probably stealing our money?

We can "follow the money" or we can look at the organizations that produce the beneficiaries of our national largess in a largess way (and I am not talking about welfare moms rather welfare kings). Let's once again look into private clubs that "are too big to fail", er, I mean "too big to ignore". We love to investigate the mafia, but what about the fraternities that promise their members (and often deliver) absolute insurance protection against investigation of crime, malfeasance, and war. We have long been warned against the mafia. As a mormon growing up, I was warned repeatedly about "secret combinations."

Skull & Bones is about to be investigated in the Geronimo case. Hamlet's father is calling from the grave still. I don't know if Skull & Bones is really an organized syndicate that was passed down through the descendants of the old time pirates on the high seas. We do know that several pirates "retired" to New York, New England, and other colonies and states.

So if you know how to use a technology such as lying, cheating, stealing, and terrorizing to make gains, why would you stop. Especially if you can go legitimate. We know the mafia got into legitimate businesses such as trash hauling, construction, politics, and union organizing -- not because they loved those businesses, but because they could make a ton of money. Is there any reason to doubt that pirates would have done the same. Let me think of what type of symbol they would choose as trademark...

It is rumored that Averell Hariman, Prescott Bush's business partner, had his briefcase combination set to 322 when he shuttled classified dispatches between London and Moscow in WWII. So does this prove that the Russell Trust Association, dba Skull & Bones Society, is a legitimized crime syndicate? Not at all. But there is that troubling lingering question of whether we know them by their fruits. If everything is secret, who knows who owns the fruit and who is too big to fail. We know Arbusto Energy/Harkin Energy was too important to fail, such that the Saudis had to come bailout a bonesman. What up with that?

NPR is supposed to run a story this afternoon on All Things Considered about the Geronimo lawsuit. Check it out.

"Who's to doom when the judge is up for trial?"
The Mekons

Trillions Missing is Nothing New

2009-03-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

"The books are cooked year after year."
Franklin Spinney

It sounds like when Obama says he has found two trillion that can be cut from the budget (2009 SOTU), he may be on to something.

No More Dough Til We Know Where It Goes!

2009-03-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake.com, has sent out a request for truthful information (what a novel concept). It seems that on January 13, Rep. Alan Grayson asked Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn to provide the names of the banks that received $1.2 trillion since September 2008.

Kohn refused.

Last week, AIG announced $61 billion in 4th quarter 2008 losses. Economist Nouriel Roubini called it "a nontransparent, opaque and shady bailout of the AIG counterparties." Still, the Fed refused to answer questions from Democrats like Chris Dodd and Republicans like Richard Shelby -- where did the money go?

Jane has asked people to sign a petition. The petition says: "Dear Members of Congress: The public needs to know where all our money has gone. Restoring public trust is critical in getting our economy back on its feet. We ask that you move swiftly to re-regulate and bring transparency to a financial system whose rules have been written by bank lobbyists for their own benefit. No additional bank bailout funds should be approved until that happens."

We're now being told it will take another $750 billion, in addition to the original $700 billion, to bail out the banks. We may not be able to stop the fraud, but it is important to be on some record somewhere as being fully opposed to this fraud. This is not to say that there are not problems, but how are we to know whether any of the right things are being done if we are kept from seeing. If your lack of oversight offends thee, pluck it out. Only you can prevent forest fires.

Sign the petition here.

BTW, the Federal Reserve Bank takes the position that if they tell to which banks and institutions they gave $4,000 from every man, woman, and child in this country ($1.2 trillion), the credibility of the financial institutions would be challenged. After the Bush Administrations wars of lies and deceit, you would think we would have learned our lesson. Maybe we actually attract what we deserve.

Joke of the Day!

2009-03-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Understanding the stimulus bill

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, "I don't understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?"

The professor replied, "I don't have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I'll be glad to explain it to you." The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor's house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, "First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can." The student did as he was instructed.

The professor then continued, "Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it." The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool.
The confused student asked, "Excuse me, but why are we doing this?"

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn't think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough.

However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, "All we're doing is wasting valuable time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you'll really have accomplished is the destruction of what could have been truly productive action!"

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile, "Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill."

This is What Trickle Down Economics Looks Like!

2009-03-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here is where we are. We here in the land of the free are no longer free. We have broken every rule that was created to safegard individual liberty and community vitality. We have replaced government oversight, which in a democracy is or should be the community prerogative, and replaced it with privately-owned, privately-controlled oversight without accountability. We get only to read the annual reports. And we have known since 2002 that we can't trust those. So we have very large corporate-owned collective farms, with the benefits privatized. We are like soviet communists only without the illusion of shared residual benefits. And privatized collectivism used to be called fascism. No, I am not comparing us to the Nazis, I am just saying that our current system, where the corporation gets to tell you, at risk of punishment with unemployment, that you have to follow their principality's governor's whims. And as there is less and less "public" space, you are more and more beholden to their whims. The government has a hard time ruling what you do in your personal sovereign private spaces, but a corporation can tell everyone working for them what to do and how to do it. Government can't do that. So who is oppressing who?

Oh yes, we are like the children of israel who had to sell ourselves into indenturement, which became slavery when everything went subprime. And the blind necessarily become the mentors as freedom goes underground. And then we line up for the trickles that are the latest marketing jingles mixed with free samples. Freedom implies options. What options do we have?

We do have to solve this one. It is not a test. There will not be a do over. Are we going to leave it up to Obama? To Limbaugh? To the Saudis? To the Chinese? Is there any thing at all out there, anything, that could bring all these together for their own and the collective higher and better selves? We have to find it, whether it starts at the bottom or it starts at the top, it has to find us.

Last night I was talking to Arnaud at a cafe. We were talking torture. He was raising the standard argument that if you could save a thousand lives, or the life of one of my children, by using torture, what would I be willing to do? I don't believe there is an intellectual answer to that question. Because the urges are not intellectual. And you do what you do. But there is an intellectual question here that no one is asking: how did we get here? How did we get to the point where torture because an acceptable answer? Therein lies the Way.

Whose Reality Is It Anyway?

2009-03-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Back in 1968, nine and ten, we had a shift in consciousness. An evolutionary leap. We have spent the decades since trying to nullify it. We went into total lockdown in the war against nature and multidimensional truth. That war cost a lot of money. And you may not have noticed, but the bank is empty. They got away. And there is only one thing we can do to stop them.

Do you know what that is? If not, why not? What the hell have you been doing for the past few years? Have you not noticed the signs? No, not the biblical ones (they're there too), but the signs that say that if in your country it is for society's benefit to Tazer 12 year old autistic boys at school, to use interrogation tactics on others that you would never have done to yourself (well maybe a few of you are into that and that’s okay), is it surprising that the economy is also falling apart? I know I can't responsibly say that because someone from Harvard, Yale or Chicago didn't study it and plant the national flag on it as new territory of the sovereign, that truth can't be trusted because it has not been blessed?

O Lord,
Give us the rights granted under the ninth amendment of the constitution.
Grant us full equality and privacy. And if we have to give up our privacy, grant us respect and dignity.
Give us freedom to discover the truth for ourselves.
Grant us freedom from our blindness to all that is or may be true.
Grant us the freedom to stand naked before God (whatever that god may be - or until everyone agrees on the same truth).
Please teach us how to love our fellow humans, and tell us if it should extend to animals too? (I have a really religious friend who would really like to know?)
Grant us wisdom how to avoid an apocalypse that so many dream for...

But who is the lord?
A lord was one who had a royal land grant. They were lord of the fee. When controlling populations through bonded agri-servitude, this was effective. Slavery also made a lord and master. Now there are war lords, overloads, middle managers, and officers. they have lordly powers. But I digress. The american dream was the goal of being a lord and master, to feel the power of freedom. that dream was plucked, packaged, sold, and outsourced -- all in the past one generation. You may even have seen it happen right before your very eyes, taken photos, facebooked about it. It didn't really work. The problem of how to feed and deal with 8 or nine billion people is still out there. And no one wants to share. They say it is not fair. Something about incentives not being aligned... form over some substance

But fair is not cannot be weighted. and fair cannot be balanced. And so we are back to square one.

How are we going to do such a foreign concept as fair? Marc thinks facebook will be the primary communication method. We have to build up our neighborhoods. Not as fortresses, but as living breathing communities. build your community with your neighbors. You doubt me? Ask yourself this question: does it make sense? What would an economist tell you? Got it!

If you want to live, you had better believe that this at least is within the realm of possible outcomes that becomes more and more probable each day we wait for the experts to solve this problem. They are all so smart they even can ell you how much pain is worth in compensation.

So how do you stop it? You ask yourself what is true. Start with the stuff close to you. Your place. The dirt under your feet. Accept it and validate it and love it. Not the earth, but the dirt that you live next to. Not the Matterhorn. The dirt under your feet, building, concrete, however deep you have to connect with that that gives you life, food, bread, death. And that above that an entity that twists life, burning everything in its path. And the narrow path that leads between father and mother starts right beneath you feet so start loving that dirt. And respect that it is not just you that needs that dirt. Start with the microbes all the way up through worms, and pets and humans all the way up to the birds. And the dirt below is glued to other dirt, my dirt, and we learn that we are all connected.

Even a lord will get crushed by this cosmic drama. God as an ant's.

Unless we side step the tsunami, step into the different dimension of consciousness so the gamma particles of the dying can pass through, missing your vitale organs. A different reality. Turn just enough.

Of course I don't know what this means. We have to pay attention if we are ever going to get back to the garden of eden. Isn't this what it is all about. A fight for those who want it to be a sustainable garden of bliss, and those who don't have faith in the mystery of nature and the cosmic dance so they cling to "safe" technologies that have to be micro-managed. There isn't a cost benefit study than can even go there. They are not that good. They don't know what those numbers mean and they are afraid to find out. Because then their privileged position goes away.

Ouch.

We have global warming. It is an imperative that we do have to address. This is about how we force 8 billion to consume like 2 billion, and should the imperialists be allowed to continue their consumption at the same levels because the discomfort would be to great -- and that would be cruel and possibly unusual. But we need to save ourselves, or take the camusian koan serious on a societal level. But isn't that what we are doing in waiting for Obama to solve everything.

As people need to get ready, lets connect on how to garden, share, love, trust, laugh, cry, and feel safe. This is what we need. So what technologies are out there right now that address these issues on a neighborhood basis. Your job is to go out there and find them. Share them. You can post them here in the comments, but I hope the number of comments are not reflective of the influence of the coming movement. I don't even know if I will be associated with it, I hope so, but I do see it coming. And you are a part of it too. Make it happen.

Black Women State of The Union

2009-03-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is as interesting a play relevant today. Bends race, gender, time, politics, sex, bodies, and minds. Well acted, even for professionals. Smart, sharp, and sassay what again? Makes u wonder how we got here.

unTil March 15th, 2009 at the company of angels in los angeles. @ the alexander hotel. a new york experience downtown.

Be We Me

2009-03-06T05:41:00.000-08:00

What are your first premises? If you don't know these, how can you love yourself? If you can't love yourself, then how can you know what love is? How can you build with love if you are indentured by love and operating on a deficit?

How does one download a new operating system? Isn't that what we are doing? How are we judging the system we are putting in its place? Are we going to put new wine into new bottles?

As we finally arrive at the future, all bets are off.

We Be Me
Me Be We
Be Me We
Be We Me
Me We Be
We Me Be

Digamma
Qoppa
San Sampi

Immortality

2009-03-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

I would like to introduce you to our newest competitor, Turritopsis Nutricula.

TN is a jellyfish that is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature. Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die. Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."

The jellyfish are originally from the Caribbean but have spready all over the world. Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.

While most members of the jellyfish family usually die after propagating, the Turritopsis nutricula has developed the unique ability to return to a polyp state.

Having stumbled upon the font of eternal youth, this tiny creature which is just 5mm long is the focus of many intricate studies by marine biologists and geneticists to see exactly how it manages to literally reverse its aging process.

Yes, that's right. It does not die. Conceivably this either means that our scientists (cue fanfare) figure out a way to replicate this process, in which case we're all going to become perpetually regenerating immortals or this is a sign of some super-species that's going to (naturally) destroy us all. Somehow it's utterly fitting that it's a tiny, tiny creature with tentacles that manages this feat.

Why is God trying to replace us? What did we ever do to deserve this? I just hope they leave the bluefin alone.

The bulk of this post was taken from a very interesting blogsite.

Thinking Inside The Box

2009-03-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

So I knelt there at the delta
at the alpha and the omega
at the cradle of the river
and the seas
And like a blessing come from heaven
for something like a second
I was healed, and my heart
was at ease.

Leonard Cohen

All Things Zombie!

2009-03-05T06:17:00.000-08:00

Zombies are becoming the mascot for how utterly strange this world is. Instead of good versus evil, this should be a fight between the living and the undead. If you don't know whether or not you are living, odds are you are part of the undead. If you have hope, faith, and charity, there is a cure for Zombiism:

Listen...........

Zombie MBAs

2009-03-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

Warning: If you are ever attacked by a zombie, you will become one. That is what they say. If you or anyone you know has a mortgage, a credit card, or has attended one of three business schools, you had better move to Cuba. It is one of the few places outside of rural Alaska where you can avoid the dreaded MBA Zombie.

Crack researcher (and Zombie fighter) Deborah Barrow has just released her top-secret study of where the Generation Z (that is Generation Zombie) became that way. While not reminiscing about the good old days where kids could run free after school and climb trees with abandon, she does identify where the Zombies go through their initiation rituals and final transformation.

And the biggest Zombie Mill that spawned our current threat? Harvard, or as said by the Zombies themselves, Haaavaad. Don't say it out loud - there may be evidence that if chanted, zombies will appear.

The next on the list: NYU Stern School of Business. Stern is the German word for star, so this must be where they get their training in astrology, figuring out the exact moment to strike. I never knew how they could act in unison. I always thought it was a keen sense of smell, but this changes everything.

And the third? Cornell? That school that wants to be in the Ivy League, but can't decide if it is a state school for the unwashed masses or an elite up-yours-I'm-privileged private school. Somehow that makes sense. Only Zombies would want to have a dairy and farm lab nearby for their ghoulish experiments. Frankenstein is making way too much sense right now.

Now we know what happened to the banks. Be very careful out there. And destroy your credit cards and mortgages, if you have any. It is very important to stay alive. Plant a garden.

The Bank CEO Pleads For A Bailout

2009-03-04T21:10:00.000-08:00

Would You Give the Messiah Food With Pesticides In It?

2009-03-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

If the Messiah came to your house for dinner, would you serve him genetically-modified food? Would you give him organic? Would you give him food harvested by near-slave labor?

As you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.

Is Rush Limbaugh A Russian Spy?

2009-03-04T18:05:00.000-08:00

It is well known that Rush Limbaugh really wants Obama to fail. Well it appears he might get his wish, which is shared with Igor Panarin.

Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.

"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy _ a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

Detroit Breakdown

2009-03-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

The markets are failing. No not wall street, the auction markets. Here are two examples:

A few months ago in Utah, Tim DeChristopher, a 27 year old student, threw a Holy Hand Grenade into the Bush Administration's sale of gas and oil leases on BLM land adjacent to our National Parks by bidding hundreds of thousands of dollars for leases he never intended to pay for.

Then this past week, Cai Mingchao bid up the price up to $40 million for two bronze heads and now if refusing to pay. He says he never had the money to pay, but that it didn't matter because the objects were looted from China and should be returned. China is calling for the objects to be repatriated. The art had been "owned" by Yves Saint Laurent.

So what happens when governments and citizens disregard or stop believing that society and the economy are working for them? I think we are getting some data to analyze. I am not saying what they are doing is right or wrong, but if more than 50% stop believing in Baal, as Ezekiel showed, the gods get replaced.

Stay tuned......

Armageddon Strategy

2009-03-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I wrote about the rent strike at the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. The battles of the New American Revolution are spilling over into the aisles. . . that is the supermarket aisles. Specifically, the struggle is a battle between corporations. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that grocery stores are being squeezed by shrinking demand because their customers don't have money, and the manufactures of food who say they need higher profit margins to cover costs or they will go bankrupt. All those cost increases that occurred as a result of higher fuel prices, food stocks, and so on.

Grocers said that Unilever last year increased the wholesale price of its Skippy peanut butter by about a nickel a jar after shrinking the contents of the container by almost 10%.

Thank god the government has been saying for years that there are few if any signs of inflation. To me, Skippy skipped and jumped up 16+ percent. Gas prices went way up. Food prices went way up. Housing costs went way up. Health care prices went way up. The cost of wars went way way up. Good thing inflation didn't go up too. Otherwise we would be in trouble.

But while the corporations fight each other over prices and shelf spaces, there are some other things going that you may not know about. The L.A. Times is reporting today that port cargo levels up and down the west coast are declining faster than the Titanic. On the same page, one half of all hospitals are in the red (I assume they mean they are losing money). And at Freddy Mac (the giant mortgage lender), the Bush-appointed CEO resigns after five months on the ("heck of a") job.

And closer to home, a woman I work with told me her sister got laid off today from Honeywell. Why? (Please don't say it is the economy stupid) rather her division issues the rebates for solar power, tankless hotwater systems, and so on. Rumor is that for weeks they have not had money from the State of California to pay the rebates because the Republicans were trying to cripple the government.

What really disgusts me is that we have an honest to god crisis brewing here. And there are those that a rejecting helping their fellow citizens and instead are banking on Armageddon or worse as the way in which they will win back political power. Even if they are correct in believing that this Armageddon Strategy will win back power for team elephant, Jesus will be pretty pissed off. Not at the Jews, not at the atheists, but right where it belongs: at those who kicked others while they were down.

Collective (Un)Consious

2009-03-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

In economics, there is a theoretical method to find someone's utility curve, that is the potential imputations or combinations of consumption goods that give someone the same level of satisfaction or, alternatively, the same level of happiness. For now, let's ignore the foolishness that someone may say 4 cokes and 12 bags of Cheetos makes me as happy as I would be if I instead had fourteen cokes and three bags of Cheetos. The "economic model" says that if we observe mix 1 of products and the consumer can't make up his or her mind to exchange if offered a trade of mix 2, the faith is that they offer the same level of utility and the consumer is indifferent.

By offering this consumer a variety of choices, say 3.9 cokes and 12.2 bags of Cheetos, and monitoring the resulting behavior, we can graphically tease out a map showing all the different combinations that the consumer would not be able to say which they liked better such as 0.04 cokes and 31 bags of Cheetos. In theory, truth is revealed by making a series of small (read marginal) changes and see what happens to the choice (assuming the person doesn't die from malnutrition in the meantime).

But this is how we as humans do discover things. It is not quite trial and error, because our brains allow us to jump past many possible iterations because we know that razor blades and babies are not good in any combination (yes, economists would make such a comparison -- even if only in private).

In existentialism, we never really learn the truth. We realize others are judging us and we try to fit their expectations. Our ego, id, self, or whatever is feeling out the constraints placed on us by family, friends, social organizations, community, state, nation, on up. Existentially, we grow up when we fit in and allow the reality of time and space to crystallize us in place. But we feel comfortable there in some fashion because we glow or at least minimize pain.

But is it the truth, or is it just a place of comfort?

I was listening to Terry Gross interview someone on Fresh Air a few months ago and heard someone talking about how truth flows in the rumor mill. You get a bunch of people each with little bits and pieces of knowledge talking back and forth until some type of unified theory comes together. Some would call it detective work. But the funny thing is, although there may still be some holes in the analysis, the general picture is pretty damn good in terms of accuracy as to what actually happened. Emptywheel (aka Marcy Wheeler) at FiredOglake is exceptionally good at this in uncovering many crimes of George W. Bush. And now the documents are beginning to flow, we see that Marcy got it right.

Individually, we may have enough knowledge to be able to find the elephants tail. Collectively, we know what has to be done with or to the elephant. Collectively we may have 643 pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle. But as the HeiligeZeitGeist pulls us together in awareness, we can pull this truth together. Any everyone will be aware and they too will get it -- whatever it is. But together we can work a way forward. And we need to do it in a way where everyone's voice counts. Kind of like a worldwide Quaker meeting conducted over the internet. MarcLord believes that this coming together via the blogosphere and/or facebook is literaly the Body of Christ. Just by saying that term, I used the internet to invoke centuries of theology, millions of peoples' personal experiences, a common metaphor, a cooption toward the future, a lens through which to interpret reality, and a potential call to political action. And hopefully it makes sense that by organizing a movement based upon the call from giddeon's blogspot trumpet, others can say "fuck yea, that makes sense. Count me in." Funny thing is, the body of christ doesn't need a profession of god to take collective action.

Consider the lilies. Or the birds then. How do they take off on a moments notice and act in unison? Instinct? Learned behavior? Trust? I don't think it matters why, rather it matters that they do it. We are getting to the point where we need to take action. Serious action. No, not guns. Democratic action with an informed population that has a reason to care. We are almost there. People are starting to care now that the allotments from the great father in Washington are late in being dispersed. Something about the manufactures of those allotments being crooks or worse. But if the bribes or allotments are not being paid anymore, we don't have to keep out mouths shut about all the injustices in the world. Those natives are getting more restless than we are. And don't we want to be on the right side of history?

Arianna Huffington says you (yes you and everyone) should start a blog. Write what you know. Write what you love. Take back your life and make it your own. It is a first draft of history. It is you defining yourself instead of being existentially defined by others.

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I Am Hungry

2009-03-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Ten Thoughts to Ponder for 2009:

Number 10: Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8: Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

Number 7: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

Number 6: Some people are like a Slinky..Not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5: Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4: All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to Criticism.

Number 3: Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you $30.00?

Number 2: In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

And The Number 1 Thought For 2009:
We know exactly where one cow with Mad-cow-disease is located among millions and millions of cows, but we haven't got a clue as to where millions of terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of homeland security.

Thanks to DeeDeeLanee for the joke.

I Have A Voice!!!

2009-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you've got the undivided attention of big business, big leaders and big thinkers. Imagine that they're sat on your sofa listening intently to what's on your mind. What would you ask them?

This year, DAVOS let the great unwashed hordes participate. Well, not as equals in terms of Swiss Fondue and rigidly starched bed linens, but even Osama bin Laden could have posed a question to the worlds richest partyers via YouTube' special World Economic Forum channel. Ordinary people got to petition the financial and political royality and say "WTF are you doing?" They also got to make suggestions. Kind of like the YouTube Debates in the primaries. It is an opportunity to throw the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch. Although the project is closed for this year, you do have almost a year to come up with new video questions for next year.

This is actually a very important model for solving the world's, country's, state's, city's, neighborhood's problems. Well, maybe "solve" is a strong word -- but what about "slove"? We need to think differently to get out of this soggy box. And I don't think "solve" will get us where we need to go.

How would you use this technology to change your world? I really want some responses here in the furtherist wilderness.

OG or AIG?

2009-03-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

Make it stop!!! Now!

AIG is the biggest insurance company, ney casino in America -- and we are bailing the owners out. These losers just lost 65 thousand million dollars. For those of you who don't know how much 65 billion is, it is simply 65 followed by a whole lot of zeros like yourself. Yes, the market needs stability, and if AIG goes down, so do most of the banks, pension funds, and others tied to the Credit Default Swap (i.e., insurance market). AIG is the key to the collapse. It should be put under conservatorship, for the sake of the economy. Bankruptcy can't happen because the courts can't move fast enough to facilitate a successful solution when the economy needs pricing and signal information from the market.

But AIG's corporate officers have NO credibility. They cannot ever ever ever restage a comeback because no one can ever believe them again. They are a Bernie Maddoff. They will not get it back until they and their investors who let this happen are somehow purged. I don't care if you call it nationalization, socialism, communism, democratic control, or free market healing, just make it happen.

We are delusional if we think the guys who, although did not create the mess, financed it and gave the priestly blessings to these contracts, are fully discredited. They already don't have credibility, which has the same root word as credit. See, they got none. And neither does Citibank, Bank of America, Moodys, S&P, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Andersen, Deloitte, E&Y.

After Enron and WorldCom, why did all of Andersen's accounts look bad? They all had to change auditors. That didn't happen at the other accounting firms. So selection bias made Andersen the fall guy. Why else did the other accounting firms "buy" all those Andersen partners (who by the way were all dicks)? This crisis was a long time brewing, and you know for damn sure that they don't think anything has changed except for their anticipation of more regulation for their industry and financial losses for a couple of years.

BTW, I think the Adelphia Communication prosecution was a set up. Yes they were breaking the law, but the USA sent a very old man to prison. That was the image the news controllers wanted you to remember. You barely heard of the fraud at the subprime lender Conseco/Greentree. An insurance company in the mortgage business? You do the math.

Dog Bites Man

2009-03-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pom Poko is literally translated as Heisei-era Raccoon Dog War Pom Poko. The movie Pom Poko is an imagining of what happens when the lazy but honorable masses become aware overnight of the pending collapse of their traditional way of life. As with all tragedies, the characters become almost two-dimensional comic figures staving off the inevitability of progress. And given the characters are silly raccoons, they don't have much chance for success. Oh the comic fun of children's theater.

But if we were faced with a similar ecotragedy, how could we give it a happy ending? I was intriqued (sic) by Takahata's exploration of how the animals would take on such a Herculean effort. For wild uneducated animals to even try to invoke the prophesies of the first International Olympic Committee of against the beast is outside the box -- at least the box we recognize. The movie shows the successes, failures, hopes, and disappointments that these silly utopians have to process as they evaluate their hopelessness.

I like how the plans the raccoons develop could be interpreted as an extreme artistic makeover. They learned early on the violence didn't solve the problem. Their small successes came once they chose to fight the nemesis with dancing, magic, and awe and wonderment. I like how the movie leaves their successes in place, only to be futile in the grand scheme of things. I wonder, what more could the raccoons have done? If we were in their position, knowing what we know from their experiences and partial successes, what would we collectively do to succeed? I mean, this is a movie about desperate efforts that resulted in a string of fantastic partial successes.

I think the unanswered takeaway from this movie is: Is a collection of partial successes good enough to stave off collapse?

A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

Historical Note: in 1994, Japan selected Pom Poko for consideration as its best foreign-language film in the Academy Awards competition. This was the first time an animated film has been been submitted in the foreign-language category.

Mutiny in the Barrio

2009-03-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

The petite bourgeois have fired an opening salvo in this the New American Revolution. Move over Paris, your great revolution of the landless is about to be eclipsed American style.

In case you missed it, the mostly Hispanic and Asian merchants that rent all the booths, shops, and grill spaces in Los Angeles' famed Grand Central Market successfully staged a rent strike, demanding a 30% reduction in rents and elimination of a joint-marketing/advertising fee. The 40+ tenants formed a union and collectively struck paying rents. The rents were eventually paid -- more than two weeks late. Yes the landlord threatened all of them with eviction, but probably realized that it might be difficult to pay the mortgage with an empty building. Plus there would probably be a ton of litigation over who owns the fixtures. Round and round we go, where no one knows. Probably down the drain.

Well, Atlas shrugged yet again. I think his back is getting to be pretty sore after the long days he has been pulling. Maybe Atlas was just the young Sisyphus who is yearning for retirement.