thinking about the world differently . . .
May 21st, 2012

Genius Mind – just let flow

From time time I see something that makes me stop, look, smile, and smile and just enjoy.  This is one of these occasions. I saw an article on Lifehacker. Lifehacker is an online community that is dedicated to “hacking your life”, not the kind that leads to cybercrime, but the type that breaks the thinking walls around your life, invents stuff (because it can!) and figures out how to things better! The community notoriously refuses to accept things as they are and asks many questions.

This article was published April 29, 2012 and it titled Repurpose a Soda Bottle Into a DIY Irrigation System. Here is that double-punch item: What to do with garbage that threatens to take over the planet (a good thing there are more and more planets being discovered where we could move to when Earth is totally choked up with plastic bottles, the oceans no longer are able to sustain fish due to the thick layer of floating plastic flotsam) and how to deal with watering your plants in the summer if you take a trip or something (maybe to check out that newly discovered planet?)

Repurpose - better yet: STOP using

In the article, the writer, David Galloway, explains the idea came from a blogsite in New Zealand called Provident Living, and they simply use a two-liter plastic bottle into which 2 holes were punched with a small screwdriver on the bottom. Bury the bottle near a plant, fill it with water, and your plant will receive a steady watering – no work on your part. Here is the article in the New Zealand Provident Living website. If you want to screw on the top of the bottle, make two other small holes just below the neck – they will act as air intakes to replace the water dripping out. Watering too slow? Enlarge the holes at the botton, just slightly, and test again.

Simply ingenious!

Posted in Do it right!, WOW!, brainiac, question everything!, technology | No Comments »

May 19th, 2012

It Doesn’t End…

In 2006 Reverend Marciel Maciel was relegated to lifetime of penance and contemplation when the confirmation of his abuses of seminarians in the Legion of Christ (which Maciel founded) – whom he taught and guided – surfaced and it was impossible to sweep them under the bulging carpet any longer. I suppose the presence of three children he fathered with two women was rather a stark admission of a severe moral failing for a priest who was touted by Pope John Paul II as a model for priestly ethics and virtue.

So much for purity on one side and for careful selection of who receives fatherly blessings …

Marcial died in 2008. In 2009 the legion came out of the closet admitting his sins. Quite speedy for an immoral order of priest – just one year. (Yes, I know you think I am judging the immoral order… Read on.)

Thomas Williams has grown to be a very prominent person in the Legion and represented the Legion in the past years as a spokesperson. He was also an author and teacher. He was a moral theologian and a superior in the Legion’s general office in the Vatican.

On Tuesday last week he admitted to a relationship with a woman that resulted in the birth of a child. No further information was provided about the child’s age other that to say the child was born “a number of years ago.”

I believe that celibacy is immoral and breaking it is not a sin in my mind. What is immoral is the admission of the Legion that it had knowledge of the events for a number of years and it did nothing. It also admitted to the true sin of 7 of its priests having abused minors in their charge and having done nothing about it.

That is immoral. That the Order knew for years that Maciel was a pedophile and has done nothing for years because it was what? Respectful of Maciel? Maybe it was reverence of Maciel?

It boggles the mind to think that people who tout themselves as “moral pillars of the community”, who preach to others about morality – can justify hurting minors and hide it. They justify lying about decrepit behavior and hide it. They collude and hide behavior they would decry and condemn in the strongest terms from the pulpit – if it was practiced by non-Order members.

I rest my case – this order is corrupt, it should be disbanded, not rehabilitated as it is currently under the guidance of Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, a papal delegate since 2010.

Jesus must be suffering even worse wherever he is now that people bearing his name in vain are such heinous moral criminals.

Posted in brutal, moral bind | No Comments »

May 18th, 2012

Facebook – the IPO

Today, Friday 18 May, 2012 marks an important day in Mark Zuckerberg’s life. Today he becomes a multibillionaire officially and publicly. He joins the rank of the “captains of industry” – whatever that term means. Mr. Z. will control 56% of Facebook by the end of the day and will also be fabulously rich. (I bet he will be well above the 1% – more like the 0.0001%…) See more about the 1% – 99% later in this post…

So Mr. Z. will now preside over a public company that is basically made of air, maybe not even. It is made of dreams, or thoughts, barely.

One of my favorite humorists, Andy Borowitz, makes hay of this momentous occasion and in his usual style, takes no prisoners whatsoever – everyone falls. Yesterday he published a piece titled “A Letter from Mark Zuckerberg“. It is an alleged (no more than that!) letter written by Mr. Z. to potential investors in Facebook.

The piece is a step or two above the usual funny that Borowitz puts out (always enjoyable to read Borowitz’ sharp pokes at the prevailing culture!) It is about why Facebook is so great, why invest in it – all in the style and depth of the normal fare of Facebook stuff – shallow, trivial, and artificial.

The opener, for example is this:

Dear Potential Investor:

For years, you’ve wasted your time on Facebook.  Now here’s your chance to waste your money on it, too.

How true! Future Economic Historians might shake their heads when they calculate the untold amount of time spent by folks on Facebook, driveling along with nonsensical, empty posts.

And fitting rapidly into the role of “Captain of Industry”, Mr. Z. (in the mythical letter to investors) says this when discussing the difference between Facebook as a technological investment and the legions of busted dot-coms of the recent past:

For one thing, those bad dot-com stocks were all speculation and hype, and weren’t based on real businesses.  Facebook, on the other hand, is based on a solid foundation of angry birds and imaginary sheep.

And there you have it! The “solid foundation” of billions of dollars in “investment”. Sounds much like the recent attempt of JPMorgan Chase to earn billions of dollars on paper, out of breath and air, out of mere wispy thought in trading (that flopped miserably! No matter, the US taxpayers will bail JPM out…) Perhaps the Angry Birds is even more solid than the JPM reliance on an obscure index to leverage on.

And more. Mr. Z. could have easily written the following words to his investors:

Finally, if you invest in Facebook, you’ll be far from alone.  As a result of using Facebook for the past few years, over 900 million people in the world have suffered mild to moderate brain damage, impairing their ability to make reasoned judgments.  These will be your fellow Facebook investors.

Priceless – hey Facebook zombies – welcome to the club, that’ll be $38 per ticket. FB – on NASDAQ started the day at $42, plummeted briefly to $38, and has risen to $41 again at 12:30pm Central time. It has been seesawing around 40-41.50 all day so far. The initial volume was HUGE, but has petered off to small numbers since.

Get a ticket, and login and get your brain-damage-du-jour…

Worthwhile reading this brief piece!

Promised up there more on the 1% vs 99% question:  Here is an interesting article about the issue of income inequality and it meteoric acceleration

Posted in bungled thinking, greed, question everything! | No Comments »

May 17th, 2012

Delicious Food Makes Bowls Empty…

Dinner at Gandhi Mahal in Minneapolis is always a treat! They are here:  3009 27th Avenue South  Minneapolis, MN 55406, and their phone is (612) 729-5222.

J and J and I had a dinner there on May 10, as a “training dinner” for J (guess which!) before her trip to India. We had Cabbage Baji, Mushroom Paneer, Achari chicken, and Aloo Naan (Aloo Paratha). This was exquisite.

Achari Chicken is chicken breast with crushed red pepper,  blended with garlic and ginger. The chicken was cubed and cooked to be made so-so soft – it was in the class of “fall off the bone”. Knife? We don’t need a knife, the side of the fork was a perfect match to the soft chicken. Lovely dish.

Mushroom Paneer are mushrooms deep-fried in cheese all in a savory, creamy, spicy gravy. Well, just read it again and you know what you are up to.

The Cabbage Baji was julienned cabbage slightly spicy, then stir-fried with potatoes.

And of course the rice – how can you eat this kind of food without rice to absorb the delicious sauces?

Here is a picture :grin:

Aftermath of a Gandhi Mahal dinner :grin:

The observant viewers among you might spy take home dishes in the top right corner of the picture…

The main menu here [PDF] and their current Winter menu here [PDF].

Posted in Do it right!, World of Mouth | No Comments »

May 15th, 2012

Ah… yes, the “Idiot Box”

Television left my life about 8 years ago – give or take a few years. The love affair my culture has with TVs has been increasingly unsatisfactory to me for several years. Yes, there were a lot of channels to browse, but instead of bringing in more rich content, it brought more channels of dumb into my life. I was even offered by local franchises as many as 500 channels, “for a mere $35 per month.” All full of more dumb people doing more and more dumb things, and doing in front of legions of other people, presumably equally dumb.

The question must be reverberating in your minds: “How do you stay informed about what’s going on?” Legitimate.

I’d like to reverse the direction of the question and ask you – how do you get informed about what’s going on? Fox (“Fair and Balanced”) news? Maybe Howard Stern? Glen Beck? Rush Limbaugh? All these famous paragons of information, reason, and logical presentation. Their analysis is staggeringly short, they don’t need no stinkin’ analysis… Is this really “news” and “information”?

Or maybe your “news” and “information” consists of the 15 seconds video clips per topic from CBS, ABC, MSNBC – whatever. So you really think you can get information in 15 second clips, or maybe they now raised it to 35 seconds?

Gives new meaning to the term “boob tube”.

The term “Idiot Box” came to me from FCC Commissioner Lee Loevinger. See here. He was briefly (1960-1961) a Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, then President John F. Kennedy’s head of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. He later became an FCC commissioner.

Justice Loevinger refused to buy an “idiot box” until his daughter could prove to him she could in fact read a paper.

And there is your answer to your question of me regarding how I stay informed: I read.

On the web – multiple sources of news, not just one. I read from all over the world, representing multiple perspectives on the news, not just Rupert Murdoch’s point of view. I spend much time doing this – every day! The same amount of time you spend sitting in front of the “boob tube” riveted by advertising (as much as 15 minutes or MORE per hour!), nonsensical banter by reporters clueless about what they are blabbing, or the inter-reporter chatter shoveling drivel at you.

I get news, I get information, I get perspectives. And you?

I concluded many years ago that I do not drink poison regularly because it is harmful to my body. I do not eat trash because it is harmful to my biology. But amazingly I regularly swallowed doses of mind-poison, sitting in front of the TV, letting the poison, garbage, trash, stupidity come in, no, being shoveled into my body – yeah, the mind part of my body. It was a puzzle why I let it happen but I resolved it by changing my habits.

It took time to clear the addiction, but it worked. Occasionally now I even watch a clip or two of TV news reports online – on a specific topic I am pursuing. Hey, I even watched Fox News, and even saw O’Reilly shoot off his mouth, behaving like a dolt, and saying almost nothing of value – again on the web.

Earlier today I read about the Supreme Court in Minnesota and one of the Justices mentioned was Lee Loevinger. I found the story about him quite interesting, and the tiny vignette about “Idiot Box” amused me, so I share it here with you.

Posted in Do it right!, technology | No Comments »

May 13th, 2012

UPDATE: First Step – Long Overdue

Clay Bennett is a political cartoonist in Cahttanooga TN. Quite gifted. I have publicized his work here before.

His cartoon today is a perfect accompaniment to my post from yesterday “First Step – Long Overdue“!

The NEW, IMPROVED US Presidential Seal

Here is the direct link: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/may/13/presidential-seal-gay-marriage-obama-cartoon/

Posted in Do it right!, Politics | No Comments »

May 12th, 2012

First Step – Long Overdue

The GLBT Community in the USA (and the world) and the straight community in the world now have a pink declaration from a black President. Not bad, a good first start. May the day come when we find it unusual to talk about the gender orientation of anyone, when it becomes a no-topic, not interesting, not an issue. I think it will take time, many years, but perhaps the last 5-6 years of political advances by the GLBT community to gain political clout, and the recent statement by President Obama portend that the direction is set and the movement is progressing.

Still dismaying are the regressive, back-to-the-dark-ages pronouncements of the extreme right, and their continuing attempts to hamper people of any orientation to define their lives the way they see fit. I am particularly amazed by the Tea Partiers who on the one hand shout about liberty and “get the government off our backs”, yet limit liberty of choice of life partners and life companions, and add governmental restrictions.

There will come a time when the patience of the other parts of society – the ones being put upon by Tea Partiers and other right wingnuts – will expire, then watch out, it will be political and social annihilation of massive proportions. these folks will be driven under and removed from ANY say-so in societal processes, they will be driven off into some sort of political “desert” where not only no one hears them, but no one wants to hear them, and they will have no more voice. They will be treated like felons in the USA, including a form of disenfranchisement.

I believe that the willfulness of tea Partiers and other extreme rightwingnuts is a danger to society. They refuse to engage in any discourse, in any form of discussion, in any form of governing EXCEPT for themselves, their interests, and their benefit. The rest of us can burn! This is simply dangerous.

Enough, I have railed about this many times on this blog.

Posted in Do it right!, WOW! | No Comments »

May 1st, 2012

Les femmes du 6ème étage – the Women on the 6th Floor

This is a movie released in 2010. Directoed by Philippe Le Guay. Cast includes Fabrice Luchini (businessman Jean-Louis Joubert), Sandrine Kiberlain as his slightly bored, rather remote and detached wife, Suzanne Joubert), and Natalia Verbeke (as the newly-arrived Spanish maid in their household María Gonzalez.)
It is set in Paris in the 60s. Jean-Louis Joubert and Suzanne live in a huge house in which several Joubert generations lived and died. Joubert’s mother recently died, also in the same house. Maria is a new maid in the household, recently arrived from Spain in search for better life.
The premise of the movie is that life never remains the same, even in staid, stable, and seemingly calcified Paris of the bourgoisie. Indeed, Jean-Louis finds an awakening in his life and begins to appreciate the finer sides of familial relationships. The teachers? A lively group of female domestic workers from Spain. They help each other, support each other, share their sorrows, fun, joy, and dreams with each other. They are even willing to include Mr. Joubert – and he jumps in, at first reluctantly, then with both feet, and head first!
What a delightful movie.

The Women on the 6th Floor

To me it brought back the values I hold so precious: Family are the people who go looking for you if you do not come home when you said you would. It is not necessarily those related to you by blood. Culturally, we place much too much value on the unchosen family and neglect horribly those who we choose to be our family – friends, buddies-fol-life, friends who will NEVER ever leave, even when you are impossible. My own family while perhaps great achievers and magnificent people (I suppose by some definition of “magnificent”) have not looked for me when I came home late, never. While many friends have.
Enjoy it.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

April 30th, 2012

Money Physics – Huh?

“Victor Yakovenko is an expert in statistical physics and studies how the flow of money and the distribution of incomes in American society resemble the flow of energy between molecules in a gas.”

That juxtaposition of disciplines got my attention. If you read my blog with any regularity, you may have come across my rants on wealth transfer, money, economics etc. (here, here, here, and here, for example). The keywords from science and economics, especially money flow, inequality, investments piqued my curiosity.

Science Daily published this little gem on April 19, 2012. In it, they present the studies by Victor Yakovenko who is a physicist and an expert in statistical physics. He plotted the percentages of population enjoying a greater amount of income. As you can imagine, the percentage of population experiencing extremely low incomes is rather high. The next dollar of income is experienced by less population, and the next dollar of income is experienced by a smaller percentage yet, and so on. When you get to larger numbers – say $100,000 of income, only 8% of the population (roughly) has that. the percentage of the population with higher incomes gets smaller and smaller.

The curve, strangely enough, resembles the Boltzmann-Gibbs curve. Boltzmann-Gibbs curve applies to the way energey is distributed in molecules of gas. But there is a twist: the upper 3% bracket of income earners – about $140,000 and up – are placed along another curve – named after Vilfredo Pareto. This curve points clearly that the class of earners in that bracket (3% top earners) derive their incomes from investments primarily, and not so much from work (labor.)

Professor Yakovenko points us to that depiction of our two-class society. Indeed, we knew it, we felt it, our compatriots in the Occupy-something show it over and over again in vivid terms. The power of money in American politics shows it to us in many examples and manifestations (corporations now enjoy “personhood” in the USA!)

And here, in plain mathematical depiction, Yakovenko demonstrates it. I guess the were wrong to think it was “We are the 99%“ - it is really “We are the 97%” – we should not quibble about the numbers, really …

Yakovenko goes further. He analyzes the periods of greatest inequality between the two classes. The findings are that the greatest inequality is during economics bubble-bursts: S&L Crisis of the 1980s, DotCom bubble burst of 2000, and the Housing/Banking bubble burst in 2008.

You have any doubts about who is getting richer? It is not you. If you were really among the 3%, you’d have hired someone to read my blog, you would not read it yourself :grin:

Posted in WOW!, brainiac, greed, technology | No Comments »

April 29th, 2012

Is Portugal the Next Greece?

Portugal has long been an issue in the European debt-ridden scenery. It managed to skate by the budgetary cuts and draconic measures imposed on the Greek economy and people (in order to save the banks and the fat-cat owners of Greece!)

But maybe the balancing acts performed by the Prtuguese government are not enough and the Protuguese economy will soon plunge into the deep see of debt and the extraction of bailout from its citizenry – the massive wealth transfer we saw already in the USA, in Ireland, in Greece and soon brought to you by bangsters in Portugal too.

People on the street are clearly in pain. Frank Bruni wrote an excellent article on Saturday April 21, 2012 titled “On Old Walls, New Despair.” Along with the op-ed article, there were some images, strong imagery about the pain expressed by the Portuguese, published in this article. One image especially spoke to me – it looks like a tombstone with an epitaph to Portugal.

The Destinations is Erased

Posted in corruption, greed, stay in touch | No Comments »

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