Living in the Land of Black Hawk
Rock Island, IL

QC Mississippi Mud

David Koch's Reverse Tea Party

Monday, August 30th, 2010

All this tea party talk and I finally read about David Koch actually speaking to the Crowd. Wow. I don’t know what people know about this guy or not. I’ve been hearing about him ever since Greg Palast covered the Koch brothers involvement in starting the libertarian party in his book “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”

here is the wikipedia entry on Davod Koch;

David Hamilton Koch (pronounced /ˈkoʊk/ "coke", born May 3, 1940) is an American engineer, politician and businessman. He is one of the co-owners (with older brother Charles) and an executive vice president of Koch Industries, a conglomerate with major petroleum and natural gas holdings that is the second largest privately held company (after Cargill) in the United States.[1] He is the second richest man living in New York City, as of 2010.[2] He is a major funder of conservative causes, including the Tea Party movement.

So, he’s a rich guy that actually made his start by ripping off Native Americans that owned small oil wells across Oklahoma. Just google David and Charles Koch and spend a few hours reading about these guys. But here it is in a nutshell;

David Koch started the tea party “movement”. I put movement in quotes because I don’t think that the word “movement” applies to anything that rich people do... unless it’s in the bathroom. Not to say that they aren’t people, just not people like you and I working toward a better world.

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It's In Your Genes

Sunday August 29th, 2010

Apparently there's a voting gene?

Genopolitics

Marijuana Keeps Us Young!

Wednesday August 25th, 2010

It is being suggested that the endocannabinoid system regulates the chemicals that govern aging mostly through marijuana's ability to regulate inflammation. Dr. Robert Melamede, PhD from the University of Colorado is hot on the trail of evidence that will eventually prove that marijuana is actually an essential fatty acid and should be regarded an essential nutrient for the human physiology. Alzheimer's for instance, is significantly reduced in regular and even casual cannabis users because of the ability of anti inflammatory agents in general to prevent and or slow the necrosis of brain tissue which is the result of the completely painless brain inflammation.

Watch a video here where Dr. Robert Melamede suggests the many and proven benefits of Marijuana

That Rough Beast Triumph Foods Once More Slouches Toward The Quad Cities

Tuesday August 24th, 2010

Here we go again.

Has anyone noticed the extra flooding that is happening all across the country lately? How is this trend (that we know will continue) going to effect the region now know as the "Future Hog Slaughtering Capitol of the World" formerly simply known as the Quad Cities.

Well, let us think about this. If we continue to have increased rain as climate scientists predict (dry areas get drier and wet areas get wetter), then it is quite possible that we will have real game changing flooding in the coming years. There are many people living in the quad cities that really don't want the du-stink-shun of living in the largest hog slaughtering town in the world. No thanks.

I've always supported Dick Durbin and more recently Phil Hare and they've always made good desicions I thought. However it seems that money talks even to Dick Durbin and Phil Hare. These are horrible jobs that devalue existing local meat cutters and bypass many local possibilities. I predict that if the Triumph Hog Slaughtering Facility becomes reality then we will have an even less local diet here in the Quads than we already have. These products will inundate our local grocery stores who's meat cutters will very likely be let go. This is a much more highly skilled position with more benefits and higher pay. How does anyone here expect to benefit from Triumph locating here? By bringing just about the worst jobs humans have ever created to the QCA? Thanks but no thanks Mayor John Thodos. You can do better by the people of the Quad Cities than that. I'm appalled that you would actually present this as something that is a good idea.

Regarding Undocumented workers in America

I organize for various just causes and one of my most recent organizing efforts is regarding local food networking. I am very quick to point out how hard these people that come from Mexico work at the lowest paying jobs in America all the while putting up with our conceited and arrogant position regarding these wonderful "jobs" and their "stealing of them" from "hard working" Americans. If you want to understand what hard work is, just go take up that work yourself and see just how long you last in the brutal heat. I'd also like to point out that when a mexican family moves into your neighborhood, a small corner vegetable store is coming soon to the neighborhood. That's one import from Mexico that is seriously beneficial to neighborhoods all across America. Simply their habit of depending on a more widely distributed food system which guarantees strong local ties to food producers and resilient local food networks.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Tuesday August 24th, 2010

I just found this while doing my research on Robert Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I'm saddened by the fact that while Charles Sanders Peirce actually contributed hugely to society he died in poverty. This is so wrong. That we as a species didn't stand up a long time ago and put a stop to this inhumane treatment of our brilliant but socially challenged absent minded professors. This guy was so ahead of his time that making sure that he died in poverty set the whole human race back...

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced /ˈpɜrs/ purse) (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peirce was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years. It is largely his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, and semiotics (and his founding of pragmatism) that are appreciated today. In 1934, the philosopher Paul Weiss called Peirce "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician".

An innovator in many fields (including philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, mathematics, statistics, research methodology, and the design of experiments in astronomy, geophysics, and psychology) Peirce considered himself a logician first and foremost. He made major contributions to logic, but logic for him encompassed much of that which is now called epistemology and philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder. As early as 1886 he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits, an idea used decades later to produce digital computers.

Charles Sanders Peirce was the son of Sarah Hunt Mills and Benjamin Peirce, a professor of astronomy and mathematics at Harvard University, perhaps the first serious research mathematician in America. At 12 years of age, Charles read an older brother's copy of Richard Whately's Elements of Logic, then the leading English-language text on the subject. Thus began his lifelong fascination with logic and reasoning. He went on to obtain the BA and MA from Harvard. In 1863 the Lawrence Scientific School awarded him its first B.Sc. in chemistry, summa cum laude; otherwise his academic record was undistinguished. At Harvard, he began lifelong friendships with Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Chauncey Wright, and William James. One of his Harvard instructors, Charles William Eliot, formed an unfavorable opinion of Peirce. This opinion proved fateful, because Eliot, while President of Harvard 1869–1909—a period encompassing nearly all of Peirce's working life—repeatedly vetoed Harvard's employing Peirce in any capacity.

Peirce suffered from his late teens onward from a very painful nervous/facial condition then known as "facial neuralgia", which would today be diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia. The biography by Joseph Brent says that when in the throes of its pain "he was, at first, almost stupefied, and then aloof, cold, depressed, extremely suspicious, impatient of the slightest crossing, and subject to violent outbursts of temper." Its consequences may have led to the social isolation which made his life's later years so tragic.

Read the rest of this very sad story about a person who was certainly misunderstood

Quit Ripping on the Locavores

Monday August 23rd, 2010

Why an Anti-Locavore Rant in the New York Times Is Just Plain Wrong

Word Of The Day: Heterosexism

Monday August 23rd, 2010

Christian Right Bigots Are Hiding the Truth -- Early Christians Condoned Gay Marriage

The Suffering of Fallujah

And Also I Have These Thoughts...

It really drives me nuts that I cannot get hardly any video of Bajka performing. No matter where she goes, she goes without much video. Ok, I just found a live concert of Bajka performing with Radio Citizen. One of my favorite lines; "A pledge for creations soul" I think this is really Bajka's poetry. I've seen Bonobo recently in Chicago and Andreya Triana, I could swear, was singing this line as well during Bonobo's performance.

Which was fantastic by the way. Bonobo is quite possibly a favorite of all time for me. Which is incredibly rare. I don't go in for fads much and I've been extremely eclectic in not just my musical tastes but just about everywhere in life. In listening to Bonobo I realized that my own music, which I've been composing for years, is predominantly itself downtempo. I found this to be a great discovery and look forward to hearing what Simon Green has to offer us musically in the future.

Bonobo is truly built on an evolution of music irresistible to any true musicologist like myself. I hear so many of my own influences in Simon Green's musical palate. It's hard to know where to start so I won't. We all know that everything is built upon the accomplishments of the past. Clearly Simon Green has made everything his own in this very thoughtful feeling music.

Latest News Bitz

Friday, August 6th, 2010

New York Senate Passes Temporary Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

Whose Hands? Whose Blood? Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq

Ending American Empire

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under

Climate News

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

The Scales Fall
Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right -- U.S. Abstains from Voting on Resolution

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Report: More than One Out of Three U.S. Counties Face Water Shortages Due to Climate Change

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

History of Oil Spills

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Solar Activity Changes Regional Jetstream Flows
Quiet sun puts Europe on ice

Royal Society Links Climate Changes to Geological Shocks
'Tiny' climate changes may trigger quakes

I just found this though it is a few years old... reminds me of soylent green.
Seafood May Be Gone by 2048, Study Says

Welcome to the Police State

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

Foreclosure by Swat Team

New News Bits from Hell

wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Womens Marijuana Movement - well... this one came from heaven actually

Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well by Greg Palast (reporting from hells gate, gulf of mexico)

On Being A Christian Nation From "A Christion Nation"

Dick Cheney Caused Gulf Oil Spill

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

This is so bad. I can't, no one can, say how bad it really is. This has never happened on earth. This is a lot of oil in a place that many people depend upon their food for. It guarantees poverty for many decades for the region. We have failed to protect what was as close to paradise as we knew. A civilized country like Norway demands from its business owners that every safety device possible is used, while in America we allow the robber barons to have their way and save $500,000.00 dollars. Half a million dollars could have prevented the Gulf Oil Spill... I wonder what that ounce of prevention was worth? A decade or more of lost profits? By all rights BP should be disbanded, stripped of all wealth, and the people that deregulated our oil industry should be brought up on charges. In Norway, they would certainly pay.

But just because Dick Cheney is the main cause doesn't mean that we're off the hook. No, unfortunately each and every one of us is guilty of this spill. Every one who drove a car and used the convenience of oil. In fact I consider us all children of oil even if you didn't drive a car. You still probably wouldn't exist without oil. The world without oil would have certainly been a much slower and more sustainable place. None of the "Too big to fail" other than our penchant for being at the mercy of the weather in our agricultural schemes. No, now that it looks like it's just come home to roost. How fitting it should come to roost here in America's (and Mexico's) Paradise formerly one of the most alive places on the planet now doomed. Just watch the video and think about how the people that made these decisions will not have to feel the impact of their decisions at all. Who will make them pay for this?

Google Nexus One revisited

Sunday, Feb 28th, 2010

Wow… even after several weeks of ownership of the coolest geek gadget since the internet itself it has still not worn off. Wow is the word.

However, there is the small fact of the fastest phone ever falling prey to the same old same old… Apple unveiled it's latest market strategy this week by suing google by proxy. HTC is the recipient of the lawsuit claiming 20 patent infringements by the HTC / Google Nexu One smartphone (Really a pocket computer).

I know have to ask the question; Why Steve? Why would you try to take my new favorite toy away? Is it because the open source framework for developers is way better if you're developing for android, and developers have been jumping ship over there at apple to code on a better platform?

Maybe I'll never know the answer to these and other pressing questions but I still have to ask them.

At any rate, the web appears to be saturated with adds for the Google Nexus One…

And no wonder at all, this thing is the fastest thing in anyones pocket these days. It boasts a 1 giga hertz processor. Most smart phones including everything blackbery has is running at an unbelievably slow pace… equivalent to about the speed of a 333 megahertz machine. This phone easily surfs the web faster than my macbook pro can. Does it replace it? Absolutely not! But in a pinch, I can come home for lunch and if I have to do a transfer at my bank I'm able to log on and make the transaction nearly as fast as I would on my 17" laptop.

Google Nexus One by HTC is finally in my pocket!

Suday, Feb 28th, 2010

I've had my Google Nexus One (unlocked version) for about a week and a half now and I've decided I'll never get past the wow stage with this thing in a million years. Particularly endearing is the Google Sky Map App. I've been waiting for this little gem for twenty years at least. Now if I can just have my flying car I'll be set… Just kidding, I'm really a died-in-the -wool die-hard hippie and have been for meny years either an active environmentalist, or an evnironmental activist, whichever you prefer and am ecstacically using my macbook pro and my google nexus one, two of the greenest devices on the market.

Perhaps being 48 has something to do with it but I'm not one of those anti technology people at all. In fact, I've embraced most of the neat stuff right away and believe me, this Google Nexus One is the ultimate in neat stuff. Let me put it this way, I've never been more integrated in my life. This thing is so cool that I started worying about what would happen if I lost it… then I thought about how easy it would be for someone to log on to my bank and buy things… not really, this thing does seem to be pretty secure. Our software dev team is currently looking at this thing as the next step in our enterprise solution for the people in field. This makes everything we're writing all that more powerful. Not surprising that it's coming from the geeks at google.

In other parts of my life…

I'm still working on the super secret project I've been working on for the past 6 months. No I can't say any more about it other than I'm having fun walking through the hells kitchen that software development usually seems to be. Wish I could say more but I won't be able to reveal anything till release day. I promise it is right around the corner!

More to come later

Peace Now, Badweather, Crow, Dave

I'm looking for a new country to live in!

January 22nd, 2010

Yes you heard it right. I'm leaving for a country that actually cares about me.

I know that I've sounded reather radical at times in my life but I've always stuck it out and worked hard to make it better for not just myself but for everyone. Now I have to think about myself and the thought occurs to me that I'd be better off if I just left for either Canada or Mexico. Canada has people covered well and I'd probably get in knowing flex even though I do have CF I think they'll find me valuable enough to welcome me with open arms. Mexico on the other hand would leave me with plenty of money to pay for healthcare which is high enough quality in Mexico that I'd be happy for many years living high on the hog as they say.

Why you ask? I'll tell you, the stupidest decision ever made by the supreme court earlier this week has a lot to do with it. The other thing is that MA voters can't really be that stupid can they? Well what the hell would a spineless bunch like the Democrats need a political majority anyway!!! You're right, what the hell was I thinking! The way to win this thing is to lay down on the ground like a carpet and invite people to dust their feet off on you for another half century!!! Right!

So… since I'm not a carpet, I'll be doin' the walkin' round here.

News Flash!!! (no pun intended) Google Operating System Coming Soon!!!

January 15th, 2010

I've been saying for quite a while that google is going for micorsofts soft underparts in a final attack on the software giant very soon! It looks like that time has come for the great beast micrsloth to meet its maker. Perhaps the "Remove Microsoft completely" button will soon be a reality

Where Google Goes From Here?

Rising Cloud

January 9th, 2010

Besides being my grandmothers 94th birthday, today is the final push on the software development. I still had to take the time to photograph this scene on the Mississippi River this morning.

We haven't seen cold weather like this since I was a child. We have been experiencing warmer and warmer winters all my life. We've gone (in my lifetime) from zone 5 in the quad cities to nearly zone seven. This interestingly cold summer and winter are not indications of our being wrong about global warming. Rather these are actually instabilities in the climate system as things increase the rate of change that we are as organisms used to.

My Latest Interests Are…

December 31st, 2009

I find the zMachine very interesting, particuarly the Linear Transformer Driver which is a souped up version of the Marx Generator which actually gets its ideas from its earlier cousin (and inspiration for the flux capacitor in the Back to the Future movie) the Explosively pumped flux compression generator

Oh, and don't forget to check out this interesting phenomenon:

Pinch (plasma physics).

In other news, high fructose corn syrup proven to cause human obesity

Finally bought a Mac!

December 5th, 2009

Clearly this is blogworthy if nothing else on this page is. My productivity has gone through the roof! I wish I had done this years ago.

Don Juan on Petty Tyrants

November 14th, 2009

"My benefactor used to say that a warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one." -- Don Juan (The Fire From Within p34)

See: Types of petty tyrants found in people

'A petty tyrant is a tormentor.......Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction.'--Don Juan

Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.

The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers have to go to extremes to find a worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry. Then warriors develop a strategy using the four attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing.

He said that what the new seers had in mind was a deadly manoeuvre in which the petty tyrant is like a mountain peak and the attributes of warriorship are like climbers who meet at the summit.

Control and discipline refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a selfish way but in the sense of a total examination of the self.

Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain of the man of knowledge.

The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness. Even the worst tyrants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior.

The mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make.

Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.

To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control. Instead of feeling sorry for himself a warrior immediately goes to work mapping the petty tyrant's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behaviour.

To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline. A perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming feature.

Forbearance is to wait patiently--no rush, no anxiety--a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.

A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.

Timing is the quality that governs the release of all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam. Forbearance means holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it. To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.

Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.

After warriors are defeated they either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life.

america takes a 25 year step into the future

November 10th, 2009

6 signs that the american empire is coming to an end

10 of the Nuttiest Statements Elected Officials Have Made in the Health Care Battle

Truth, Tolerance, Forgiveness and Love

October 3rd, 2009

We are both sacred and flawed.

Our flaws exist to teach us about truth, tolerance, forgiveness and love. Without these vulnerabilities we would not be who we are. At the root of all our great accomplishments are the flaws that drive us to seek a vision and reach beyond ourselves to join in the sacred conversation going on around us at all times.

Each moment like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow waiting to be plucked through eyes of love.

Another issue near and dear to my heart!

Oct 1st, 2009

Imagine No Religion? Atheist Movement Gains Momentum

Time to Hit The Streets People!

September 22nd, 2009

Things are getting ugly out there and I think we're the winners here but hey, we're still getting our ass handed to us for lunch. The Health Care Insurance Industry and the rest of the scumbags on wallstreet that have (as I've been saying for months) stolen more money than ever before in the history of the world. Back in the day, we just chopped off all their heads. Today, we just live in fear as we become part of the jobless recovery. I know, I know, off with their heads is a strong statement. So is stealing 18 trillion dollars and the permanent impoverishment of the very people that made you rich by buying your garbage.

Why Right-Wing Demagogues Are Trying to Peddle Ludicrous Conspiracy Theories

With Global Capitalism Exposed as a Sham, All the Global Elite Have Left Is Pure Force

Past Comments Revisited

September 19th, 2009

I've been saying this exact thing for years.

Long Time Silent

Sept. 17th 2009

Here's a good one, we need real action here:

Stop GOP Hooligans From Stalling Health Reform

Life Without Bumblebees? It's Not Just Honeybees That Are Mysteriously Dying

Two Things Today

August 30th, 2009

Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
By Fred Gardner, O'Shaughnessy's . Posted August 28, 2009.

5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future. Posted August 27, 2009.

Liberals are losing the Health Care Debate

August 23rd, 2009

The Policy-Speak Disaster for Health Care
by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Response To A Comment

August 18th, 2009

Hi Harry,

Thanks for the comment.

I just have one question; "Is that all you got Harry?"

Nothing intelligent or thoughtful?

Oh Right, you're the rugged individualist and being intelligent or thoughtful is a sign of weakness among "conservatives". (I put "conservative" in quotation marks because really, what exactly are you conserving besides a fear based political climate? Or perhaps the bank accounts of your rich friends who help you legitimize your false outrage by paying you to disrupt townhall meetings on health care?)

At least we liberals are trying to communicate. But then, we're the winners here.

What is your comment calculated to do?

There is no pretty way to say this Harry, since I've been abused seriously by your kind in the country of my birth for no good reason at all but fear and hate. I won't be pulling any punches here.

Lets be clear here Harry, conservatives are SORE LOSERS!

Conservatives are hateful in triumph (if you call being rode like a herd animal to power by George W Bush triumph) and hateful in defeat. Come to think of it, the entire conservative world view is all about fear and hate.

Clearly that is the defining characteristic that separates us. I choose the folly of living my life in love and compassion because I'd rather live in a world like that, and you choose the folly of living your life in a spy thriller in fear of the liberal takeover of the media and our government. I say things like "our" government and you say things like "My" government.

Read More

Obama Goes Soft on Health Care

August 17th, 2009

Well, we knew it was a real possibility that the promises of the Obama campaign would founder on the rocky shores of unreason. It looks like we've won nothing at all. George Bush and his cabal of power junkies convinced themselves they had a mandate and real political capital. They had no trouble taking the reigns of this country and running it into the ground. To fix it was admittedly a tall order requiring a very courageous man (or better yet a woman) that was willing to risk everything including his life and political career doing what was right and needed in this time of crisis. Instead we got compromise from the Democrats who hold most of the power in Washington. This will never be seen as the true nature of liberalism at its best, but just weakness that we weren't able to go in for the kill and have a truly socialist society, everything the conservatives fear. No, we are proving that they are right. Why take care of a bunch of losers like us with decent medical care. We can't even win when we win.

On Saturday, President Obama said:

Whether or not we have a public option run by the government (like Medicare which only uses 2 dollars per hundred to maintain the program) is one huge sliver! This is literally going to shave a sliver of my life off at the very end. Probably a 10 year sliver. Health care is now down to several things for me. Eating healthy, riding my bike, and not getting sick.

What happened to;

Those were strong words and true words as well. Americans don't want corporations running their health care. That is why we voted for you. We had a reasonable expectation that you would side with the little people on this and you have betrayed us. President Obama has treated us like children and now father knows what's best for us. Just a little sliver of our lives, and a little sliver of your souls goes to Big Pharma. My condolences Mr. President for the loss of your integrity. A public option is not a sliver but the very crux of the health care matter. We want health care professionals to make the money we pay out for health care not fat bloated CEO's and their health "management" corporations. Besides, if this co-op idea was such a great alternative, the republicans wouldn't accept it as compromise. They would kick and scream all the way down that road or any road that leads to a solution that embraces any real populist agenda. Let be known from here on out that we've been betrayed.

In the end, all I have to say is this: I will not shed one drop of sweat on behalf of the corporations who run this country. I will accept homelessness and status as an indigenous person. No medical care. No teeth. What the hell, one of the most respected people in history had terrible teeth. And when he went to deal with the British Viceroy of India, he did it in a loin clothe. Gandhi was truly a courageous man.

I'm truly sorry that I spent 2008 working for "Change we can believe in", I lost my brother and some good friends and I'd rather have been at home spending the last 6 months of my brothers life here at home.

So we'll continue letting seniors get government run health care known as Medicare run by nameless, faceless bureaucrats and the rest of us will have sub standard medical care because toothless co-op's which will not have nearly the bargaining power will be at the mercy of Big Pharma forever.

The rest of us can then have "nameless, faceless corporations and their bloated CEO's sucking us dry and denying care with their quack doctors they hire that have been run out of the medical system for incompetence and now run their Denial Departments.

I wonder how heavily invested in big Pharma and the health "care" insurance industry Senator Hatch is? I wonder if it occurred to Sen. Orrin Hatch that he himself is one of the bureaucrats we don't want making decisions regarding our health? The scary nameless and faceless ones he speaks of probably live in his closet coming out only to give him money to lie to his own people.

Perhaps we should all invest in our own medical rapes!

News Bits

August 14th, 2009
Rock Island, IL

Climate Disobedience Is on the Rise and It's Not Just for Radical Activists Anymore

Here Is How We Support Our Troops?

August 13th, 2009
Rock Island, IL

Here's a great way to deal with your costs, sweep them under the rug! Just what the military did to Wayne McMahon of Albany, NY. Wayne grew up struggling and saw the military as his ticket out of a bad neighborhood. He joined, and in my opinion served his country admirably. I'm a raging liberal as they say and it just doesn't matter to me when I look at Waynes story what side of that line I'm on. I am outraged by the treatment of this soldier by the system upon his return to civilian life. I am outraged by the lack of understanding on the part of superior officers who I'm sure were doing the same damn thing. Drinking themselves to sleep at night under nearly constant bombardment. What sort of sadistic system would allow a person to be run out of the military for exhibiting symptoms of a disease which the military itself caused? This is an on the job injury. But you know, we are used to it here in America. When a corporation finds you no longer useful they never seem to fire you for the real reason they're letting you go because generally they don't have good reasons. It's cost cutting or political usually. No, they usually trump something up and have highly developed strategies for discreditting and assasinating the characters of whistle blowers and people that were injured on the job. If you're injured on the job in America, look out 'cause here comes the hammer. They usually find a way to shed the cost of your medical treatment as soon as possible.

So, the Pentagon is acting like a corporation. And we are just it's feed stock. Like a machine it swallows us up and spits us out without remorse or compassion.

The Tragedy of Our 'Disappeared' Veterans

Open Letter to President Obama

August 9th, 2009
Rock Island, IL

Let me be frank Mr. President, we need another F.D.R. and that is not what you're delivering.

your campaign promises were grand and we knew that much of it might go by the way side when things got down to business... hmmm, down to business. Even that phrase speaks what we all know about business, the direction is downward.

Open Letter to President Obama

Right Wing Goon Squads Promote Less Choice For American Health Care

August 9th, 2009 Rock Island, IL

Yes the employers will drop insurance coverage only if the employees let them. They should then just walk off the job and find another employer. Or don't you believe that we should abandon the poor rich people in their time of need? Democracy is all about standing up for what is right and you think it is right that corporations ride Americans like a herd animal to their own slaughters because they (under)paid for the ride. I get it.

Read More

Latest Stories that I think are worth reading

August 7th 2009

It really is this easy to take back your life from corporations. Hunter gatherers work 18 to 26 hours a week in the wilds. This wonderful machine of ours is really eating us alive and we just keep working to make others fabulously wealthy. Just read these stories and ask yourself the question: "Who am I making richer?".

Are We All Corporate Shills?

How We Became a Society of Gluttonous Junk Food Addicts

Right-Wing Turncoat Gives the Inside Scoop on Why Conservatives Are Rampaging Town Halls

Essential News Bits

August 1st, 2009

First off I'd like to point out that at the end of these seemingly (and quite correctly!) depressingly titled articles (as well as at the end of "these times") is a vision of hope for the future. Joe Bageant like me simply believes it best to go down laughing our ass off at the mountain of cheap plastic crap they got us to buy.

My brother and I used to point and laugh at the useless junk they foisted on us in the 70's and 80's (like when they tried to sell us "green" flavored koolaid, or cheese "whiz"). This shit just made us laugh our asses off. I was born at the beginning of the of the 60's, 1961 to be exact (or thereabouts), and I was fortunate enough to have been born to parents that were uniquely bent. My father was a farm boy who showed us how to raise ducks and quail and various other animals as well as turned our backyard into a working farm every year of my life. It's no wonder I turned out the way I did.

My mother was simply on fire to live. She would have been an amazing hippy but she just barely missed that boat. Instead she was Catholic but just thought of things like healthy food and additives as being separate entities and really knew what real food was. Like I don't think anyone in America understands anymore. Women have been transformed in less than thirty years from shepherds of food knowledge into corporate warehouse inventory specialists. I'm sure that last observation was inspired by reading Joe Bageants latest article; Consciousness Capitalism: Corporations Are Now After Our Very Beings.

But don't read that one first, save it for last. Read these two first;

This one first, because it's too serious - How Bad Will the Economy Get? Really, Really Bad

Then read this one: The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse

And then finally, this one from the Heyoka himself, Joe Bageant: Consciousness Capitalism: Corporations Are Now After Our Very Beings


Enjoy!

p.s. It is better to laugh than it is to cry, but we will all do our share of both I'm sure.

Finding found art

From reading my blog one might think this is the ramblings of a quite ordinary person! Which is just fine and even a bit refreshing no doubt... but in reality I'm quite an unusual sort of person.

I'm a storm chasing, found art hunting post industrial aborigine with whom one finds oneself spending just a few critical hours with, which then rekindles the sacredness and the magic of this place in your heart. It's a sad and lonely job mostly.

We are in the end of times for sure. We did the best we could, and maybe it wasn't quite good enough. It never seems to be, yet things still change. And now I can move on to the rest of my life. Whatever that might be. Excitedly.

New skins, new direction

July 28th 2009

After many days without food due to an attack of pancreatitis, I'm back to feeling good again. I've been in remission for the last 12 years or so. I'm a little disturbed that it's here again.

On the upside, I know I probably won't have another attack for a while. I'll stay off the bad food and ride my bicycle like I have been.

I saw the most incredible storm last night. My friend and I rode our bikes down to the river and down the bike path. As we got to the river we saw these towering clouds. They were illuminated by the setting sun in a rainbow of beautiful rose tones. As we looked on, in full sunshine, there was lightning striking within the hearts of the two massive thunder heads.

Later that night we took another ride and the lightning of this very same storm was constant. The storm stretched from Iowa City to Chicago and the Quad Cities had barely missed it. In fact, I believe that Silvis and Hampton might have felt the tail of this giant storm. It was one continuous band of red on the radar, a super cell coming in from the north and west. If it had been from the southeast it would have been devastating.

We were treated to this really cool view of a storm that came really close to hitting us but not quite. It was truly awesome to see. I kicked myself for not going back and getting my camera. Those pics would have been sweet.

Here a few of the pictures from today.

I know it doesn't make up for missing the storm of the year but I won't forget my camera again!

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july 2?th, 2009

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A favorite quote of mine

July 24th, 2009

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

Berthold Auerbach - (German novelist, 1812-1882)

Sony Vaio VGN-NR310E

July 9th, 2009

This is by far the absolutely worst computer ever released to the world. Even after upgrading to 2 gig's of ram I found the CPU up against the wall at 100% and freezing the computer frequently. I'm sure it doesn't help that Windows Vista is something of a hog when it comes to resources.

I have heard all over the net that Sony Vaio computers have serious heat problems. I'm not experiencing any of the behavior that I heard related to that but I do think it seems hotter than hell and wonder about it. My last laptop definitely got hotter and hotter towards the day it ultimately failed. I'm sure the two are related. Heat death, we may not be sure about the ultimate fate of the universe, but the Sony Vaio is burning down the house... literally.

Read More

Or you could try a really scary and depressing news bit!The Dark Side of Climate Change: It's Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only the Few Will Survive

The Most Scary Thing of All!

Climate scientists, which by the way, as a group, represent the largest collaboration of scientists in more countries than ever before in all of human history, are proving themselves as cagey as economists. No one wants to point at the climate models worst case scenarios as anything other than aberrations in their calculations. That's what these scenarios were called when they fell too far outside the statistical center. Now that we have much more data collected we now see that things are accelerating much faster than climate models had originally predicted. Or rather, we now know that these "unbelievable scenarios" are much more likely to come true than had been originally estimated.

Illinois is supposed to become more like East Texas within a mere 90 years if we don't stop pumping co2 into the atmosphere, we are virtually dooming the human race to near extinction. Estimates are that the currrent carrying capacity for human life is about 8.5 billion people. It's possible that we are going to see a reduction of the earths ability to support human life to a mere billion people in that same 90 years! In addition to this, the "zone of life" will be on the edges of the arctic and antarctic circles. Check this out on a map, the only survivable place on earth in just 90 years could be mostly underwater. Ever think about growing gills in that lab Mr. Monsanto?

And if that were'nt bad enough, there is a possibility that we may have pushed the earth toward an extinction event that will rival even the Cretaceous / Tertiary Extinction Event that killed the dinosaurs. The current period of extinction already has a name. It is known as the Holocene Extinction Event.

The scientific consensus in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is that "Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change." "There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5 degrees Celsius, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe."

Thanks to Our Fossil Fuel Addiction, We May Be Setting Ourselves Up for a Catastrophic Natural Event

Scary news bits!

July 3rd 2009

Enjoy!

Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System

The Global Warming Lie Detector

Climate Skeptic: "I Was Hoping People At EPA Would Pay Attention" To My Work

Dean Baker | Economy Loses 467,000 Jobs In June; Unemployment Edges Up to 9.5 Percent

Kill the Indian. Save the Man.

John Trudell - Madness and This sounds like the guy who read the poetry for Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed you! Black Emperor.

Scientists reveal the effect of fishing on cod size and question turning crops into fuel.

Report Provides Blueprint for Communities to Tackle Global Warming

Hey Progressives, Join Forces to Fight the Health Insurance Industry!

Rock Island Virtual Market Website Launch

June 29th 2009

I just had the idea that i should buy the domain name www.rockislandmarket.com. My intention is to bring local growers together with local Rock Island, IL residents and avoid the middleman as much as possible.

More News

June 26th 2009

Touring Empire's Ruins: From Detroit to the Amazon

Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism? Because We're Right

The Ten Main Reasons I Don't believe in God

Please watch this movie about our food

June 25th 2009

If you care about your food, watch this movie Food, Inc..

btw - U.S. Study Projects How 'Unequivocal Warming' Will Change Americans' Lives

And - Taking Down the Corporate Food System Is Simple

The Latest Greatest skin for this site

June 16th 2009

Here is my latest contribution to humanity.

A new website skin called; "paper"

Of course it is broken in IE6, well a little bit anyway. Not enough to warrant fixing it though. Not when IE6 is being used by only 14.5% of the browsing public. I was just going to say something not so nice about the people that are still using IE6 but it's not their fault.

Clearly the great beast micorsloth rules the world but if you break it down, the little beast IE6 is dying a slow death. As of May 2009, IE8 is rolling in at 5.2%, with IE7 grabbing 21.3% and IE6 still sitting at 14.5%. Firefox is kicking some browser ass and coming in at 47.7%!!! Google Chrome (my personal favorite) is just barely out of the box but this is certainly one to watch over the next year. Safari has a somewhat captive audience of course but it is a nice browser, I really like it but then my use of it is limited to making sure my pages don't look like total crap to mac users out there. Opera one of my favorite when it comes to setting up a computer for a disabled person since it appears they're the only ones that thought people would like to control the css and java etc.. Go ahead and try to turn images off in IE or any other browser for that matter. Only Opera allows this level of control client side. Obviously big advertisers sleep well at night knowing that your computer has no choice but to download that bloated and ignored graphic. These are the same people that said that if I get up to make a sandwich during a commercial break that I'm stealing from the company that sponsored the program. Absolutely ludicrous!

Google Eventually Creates "Remove Microsoft Completely" Button

June 12th, 2009

I've been using google docs for quite a while now. I have to admit, ever since gmail came around, microsoft is taking a hit on my computer. I figure that it is only a matter of time before Google comes out with a button that reads: "Delete microsoft from your computer forever!". When you press this button all your computing problems will go away... Of course we'll have new and improved Google problems but hey, I figure it's a good trade.

Read more

Dick Cheney receives all time most evil person on earth award

June 7th, 2009

previously reserved for the likes of people such Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, pol pot, Mao Tse Tung, Charles Manson and George W Bush, Dick Cheney has been nominated for the coveted award for his blaming 911 on the only person who actually did warn the Bush administration of Al Qaeda and the impending attack. In actuality, Dick Cheney did everything he could do to ignore Richard Clarke's warnings.

See Jon Stewart rip Dick Cheney a new one

The True Cost of Gasoline

June 3rd, 2009

This conversation might be done in the style of a screaming match between myself and a soon to be dinosaur SUV driver who became indignant because my bicycle was in his way.

Convenience = Planetary Suicide

The more convenient a thing is, the less likely we are paying the true cost of using it. Future generations will pay your way for you. Our free lunch comes at the expense of children not yet even born. Put that in your right-wing evangelical pipes and smoke it. Read more

Goodbye GM

June 1st, 2009

Goodbye, GM

Poetry Beneath Us All

May 31st, 2009

There is an under current of poetry beneath us all
throw out your words to reach it.

the words that go beyond hearing
sights beyond seeing

there are many words that slide off the tongue readily,
but do no justice to the truth

there is a thrill that we seek
and a balance that we need
and a bargain that we strike
with our demons and
our angels
and the average joe
there just to show
how easy it is
to be outside it all

The song that stays
in the back of your mind

the words that sit
on the tip
of your tongue

Let them go
Let them go

The fear thats churning
through your guts

the crazy thoughts
that drive you nuts

let them go
let them go

giving life to a dream
one breath at a time
daily devotion
is required
for it to be

that's all

I don't think its a dogma
I'm just annoyed with spending the time learning new words to describe the

I don't talk about all the past systems of belief that fit within the framework that your'e describing

the beauty way

both the good
and the bad

words are things
and since there are no things really,
this means that words can never truly do reality any justice.
and so we will endlessly beat
around this burning bush
hoping to flush out the truth
keep it simple

authority issues saved my life

when I took my first hit of freebase cocaine I had some thougts. They went like this: "I like this. I like this a lot. This is going to be a problem."

I realized that I was being controlled from the first moment. Having real issues with authority (or so they said) actually was the path that lead me out of addiction.

its better to do your own duty imperfectly than to do anothers however perfectly.

you make money, don't let money make you.

being a wage slave amounts to doing anothers duty.

I have taken a vow to be on strike when it comes to doing things that harm the earth. I find that if you think deeply about things you'll find that the simpler you live the less damage you do to the environment. In sacred honor of those who will come after me.

I'm a gardener not a farmer.

here is why you should chase your dreams

because you're going to strip out everything that doesn't matter. And life will be simpler and joyful

dreaming the second dream

Its better to dream your own dream imperfectly than dream anothers dream however perfect it seems

I only believe in magic as it inspires the hands to bring it into being

when my heart and mind agree, I do.

doing only happens when you're on a path with heart.

a nice balance of doing and not doing. This is not to say, equal amounts of doing to not doing,

rather, do no harm, the hippocratic oath of the healer applied to the earth and our environment which requires a very thoughtful use of doing. That is how I inform my actions. I'm convinced that living simply is the way to prosperity.

Herbs and Spices are Good For You!

May 30th, 2009

Among other things, the holidays are a time of national dysnutrition: the disease of excess. Dysnutrition happens even in the most developed countries when food is plentiful but the overall diet is based on eating all the wrong balance of foods. Sound familiar? The typical American diet that is high in simple carbohydrates -- white flour, white salt, and processed food -- is aging us. We are getting all the bulk without the nutrients, plus adding to our propensity for developing real food cravings. So whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore, you can start to reverse aging by simply choosing to eat the right foods to keep you full of vim, vigor, and vitality, especially over the holidays. Read more

Some of my Poetry and Prose

Spring, 2009

I'm working on getting some of my stories written down. Eventually I'll have a book! I expect that I'll write exactly one book... maybe two at the most.

Vision Quest

They Had Only To Be

Today's Interesting News Bits

May 28th 2009

I know this is a blog but sometimes this is all I have to say; "Read these articles!"

Our Urban Future

Bill Moyers: How Can We Expect an Industry That Profits from Disease and Sickness to Police Itself?

Supreme Court Hands Medical Marijuana Major Victory

Ditching My Wheels

The 10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories

Deadly Salmonella: Frozen Food's Newest Ingredient

Obama's Guantanamo Appeasement Plan

US "Problem" Banks Rise to 15-Year High, FDIC Says - Margaret Chadbourn and Alison Vekshin, Bloomberg News: "US 'problem' banks climbed 21 percent to the highest total in 15 years in the first quarter as provisions set aside for loan losses weighed on earnings, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said."

News bits and a browser review!

May 22nd, 2009

Bush May Haunt Republicans for Generations to Come

Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs - By Jim Hightower, May 22, 2009.

Thanks for not using Microsoft! (browser review)

Note to Garrison Keillor: "No justice, No Peace"

May 21st, 2009

Dear Garrison,

I hope this finds you well. I have been a fan of your show for many years. After reading your recent article; "Keillor: Retribution makes poor politics --- let's move on" I have decided to "move on". I will no longer listen to your show. I'm just the little guy but I will do what I can when I can.

Read more...

And Now For the News

May 20th, 2009

People Died in New Orleans because Donald Rumsfeld is a fucking asshole?

Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

How We Talk About The Environment Has Everything To Do With Whether Well Save It

What I'm Listening To Lately

May 16th 2009

Lot's of stuff really, but lately I keep coming back to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Dead Flag Blues. You can read the words to the song here.

I think I'm a little closer to understanding why I like abandoned urban scenes. I see the plants begin to take over very quickly. Within a short period of time our presence here will be all but erased. In less than a generation whole cities could be gone. Rather than depress me this fills me with a deep faith in the ability of life to renew. It makes me feel small and small things mostly go unnoticed. I realize that in many ways I've lived in and on the shadows. Peering into cracks and crevices that go who knows where.

Ever since I read "Black Elk Speaks" I've been pondering his words. That someday the world of the white man would be rolled back like a carpet and reveal the world of the native again. Always seemed a little farfetched to me... until recently. I believe I see how it will happen. To put it mildly, or even positively, we are waiting for the impending paradise.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is the perfect music for this. Written with the end of things as we know them in mind.

No News is Good News

May 16th, 2009

Howard Zinn: Changing Obama's Military Mindset

The Case of the Missing H-Bomb: The Pentagon Has Lost the Mother of All Weapons

It All Comes Down To Food

May 15th, 2009

Michael Pollan: "Don't Buy Any Food You've Ever Seen Advertised"

Latest news bits of interest (or loathing)

May 14th, 2009

The Luis Ramirez Murder: A Violent Act of Injustice

Income, Nothing But Income

Farmer in Chief

The Nuclear Heart of the Earth

From The Other Side of the Universe

May 11th 2009

GRB 090423: The Farthest Explosion Yet Measured

This is an amazing find. an explosion possibly from the first wave of stellar death when the very first blackholes were forming.

An explosion so powerful it was seen clear across the visible universe was recorded in gamma-radiation last week by NASA's orbiting Swift Observatory. Farther than any known galaxy, quasar, or optical supernova, the gamma-ray burst recorded last week was clocked at redshift 8.2, making it the farthest explosion of any type yet detected. Occurring only 630 million years after the Big Bang, GRB 090423 detonated so early that astronomers had no direct evidence that anything explodable even existed back then. Read more

Why Legalizing Drugs Would Make Our Country Safer

May 5th 2009

Currently we spend a huge amount of money fighting drugs and with little to show. What if we took that considerable budget and made our borders secure instead of imprisoning one in three young black men?

If drug smugglers can make inexpensive submarines capable of delivering a load of cocaine to San Diego, then they are just as capable of smuggling a nuclear weapon stolen in the impending collapse of Pakistan.

Houston, we have a problem.

It is virtually impossible to absolutely guarantee that we will be safe from such weapons. The only thing that can be done is to work with the U.N and establish a peace keeping force that can occupy Pakistan. Is this really true? If so, then we are in dires straits because I don't think we are going to be effective at preventing those nukes from falling into the wrong hands.

Here's a moment when I'm hoping the C.I.A. does its job and has those things monitored closely. I would certainly support a team whose sole purpose was to assure the safety of the world by going in and taking the nuclear weapons facilities by force should they fall into fundamentalist hands. I would also hope that religious communities around the world would denounce such activities as completely unholy. I believe that Muslims and Christians (and the rest of us caught between) don't really want to be associated with such a horrible act. Unfortunately, I fear that many among us hope for this "heavenly" confrontation between "good" and "evil" and pray for the spark that will ignite the world in war.

So, lets think about what we could do to alleviate the suffering of our fellow man and become that shining beacon of hope that I was taught America was. We can live up to that vision but we have some hard work ahead of us if we expect to make it happen. (and even this course is no guarantee)

By legalizing drugs we would save all the money that we use to arrest, try and finally incarcerate one in three young black males as well as many other non-violent offenders. Besides, right now we imprison more people than china. Yes, that's right folks, the "freeest nation in the world imprisons the highest proportion of its own population bar none.

Now take all that money and spend it on border patrol. The entire DEA can be re-tooled to stop that nuclear weapon from entering our country. A truly just cause.

Under the current state of affairs, there will be no stopping fundamentalists from smuggling a nuke into America, riding an elevator to the hundredth floor and destroying an American City.

If we continue down the path of empire it is a virtual certainty.

Bad Trouble in Pakistan

And Also Climate Chaos Predicted by CO2 Study

Making my decision regarding the use of wordpress as opposed to throwing something together using notepad, xhtml 1.0 strict, and css

May 5th 2009

I have decided that I will continue throwing something together using notepad, xhtml 1.0 strict, and css.

Yes I have to manually create a "most recent post listing in the right or left hand column. Yes I'm using google docs to write this post and then using notepad to strip any odd encoding that might be going on underneath it all and using Filezilla to upload it to my server.

I've also moved back to Rock Island and am taking a hiatus from anything more serious than a bike ride to the river to do some fishing.

Recent articles of note:

Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe -- And Here's Why It Matters

Defying the Economic Odds: The World Melts Down, China Grows

Other news

I've been unofficially diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. Unofficially because although my doctor in Iowa City says it is highly likely, we still don't have the results back from the gene sequencing. I should know for certain in a few weeks.

We kids thought that we were just carriers so when we started developing symptoms of CF we automatically ruled it out. If it weren't for the diligence of my sister I still wouldn't know.

CF is caused by a mutation in the gene, cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). The product of this gene is a chloride ion channel important in creating sweat, digestive juices and mucus. Although most people without CF have two working copies (alleles) of the CFTR gene, only one is needed to prevent cystic fibrosis. CF develops when neither allele can produce a functional CFTR protein. Therefore, CF is considered an autosomal recessive disease.

This makes the third thing she's accurately diagnosed using nothing more than the Internet and her keen awareness of her own body. My brother thought that he was showing symptoms of CF prior to his passing in May of 2008. (Arguably my worst year yet.)

And another thing to check out (highly recommended)...

www.cognitivepolicyworks.com

Re-living the Depression

March 2nd 2009

This is a combination of things I think I'll need or just want to do... My grandmothers stories of life in the depression are going to come in particularly handy I believe.

 1. A few extra bicycle inner tubes and patching rubber and cement.

 2. Books like Bushcraft, etc.

 3. Start a good soup kitchen.

 4. Form a neighborhood coop

 5. Local Food Security! - establish relationships with local farmers and create neighborhood farmers markets.

 6. Buy some solar panels.

 7. Learn how to make soap.

 8. Make Beer with your friends

 9. Play music in a band

10. Record my grandmothers stories (she's 93)

11. Retrofit my house in Illinois for the 21st century

12. Buy a good sleeping bag

13. Get a good knife

14. Get a flint and steel and become good at starting fires... (already have one, this is fun!).

15. Go fishing with your nephew

16. Oil my boots up so they'll be water proof.

17. Talk to my Dad.

18. Visit Star

19. Go Climb a mountain with Tom, or ride our bikes up or down the bike path on the Mississippi River, or build a raft and float down the river till we think it's warm enough and stay for the winter. In the spring sell the raft for a couple hundred bucks (assuming that we continue to use currency), and ride our bikes or canoe back up river.

20. Build windmills out of Ford F-250 truck parts.

21. Help your neighbor build a windmill out of Ford F-250 truck parts.

22. Go to your local senior center and find out if anyone knows how to can vegetables and make jams and stuff. (I learned it from my Mom and Dad as I was growing up. I don't like doing it. It's hot sweaty work but there's nothing like the enjoyment of eating something you yourself grew last summer, in the dead of winter.)

23. Learn about nutrition in your local area. (By this I mean learn about local plants and berries, nuts, etc. that you can eat and assemble a healthy diet from those items. I've spent years thinking about and researching this in my region. I'd like my food to come from no more than 50 miles away. Kids today eat "enriched foods" which just doses the stuff with vitamins so we don't really have to understand proper local nutrition. Moms have been reduced to corporate inventory specialists. Ok, i know that might be over the top. Surely there are some moms out there that actually make things from scratch, can their garden vegetables and collect and can berries that all grow wild around her house. In fact, my sister actually does these things. We were blessed by a great Mom and Dad who turned our backyard into a farm every year of my life. We had Ducks, Banty Roosters, we raised Quail, had dogs, cats, snakes, and the occasional wounded bird that needed a little tlc and recovery time at the VanThournout homestead. And we lived right in town! This was around 72' or so. We kept a constant flock of Mallard Ducks for about three years running. We clipped their wings so they'd stay the first year and all the children were allowed to fly as far as they wanted. They always came back. We eventually released them at a large lake near the Mississippi river.)

News flash!

Check out this Video of Keith Olberman Ripping George W. Bush down to the ground! deprogrammer.com/video

What's this all about?

At some point I became interested in web design mostly for the massive expansion of human communication that it represents. It was during one of my political phases and I was writing articles about what I thought was going on in America at the time... You can read those if you visit my past articles page.

My theory has been that people all over the world are able to communicate through the internet and that they use whatever they can find laying around. This means they may be using very dated computers (like I was in the beginning) and tiny monitors. So that led me to the Accessibility / Web Standards movement. I always seem to end up in some movement. I just wanted to be sure that people using old equipment would be able to view my websites.

And Furthermore...

Many of us have expressed our concerns regarding the effect of technology, in some cases, having an overall negative impact upon society... Specifically the "Big Brother Effect". I quit watching television years ago yet I'm still forced to watch it in every conversation I have with people. The influence that television has upon our lives warrants a very active stance against the conglomeration of the media into very few hands among other things.

I'd like to talk about a little known or talked about principle. Countering the Big Brother Effect there is an equal and opposite effect... I call it "little brother". Little Brother is the sum total of everyone out there fighting the beast one by one. We see more than we've ever seen before as a society. We know about things now because we saw it on Youtube. Politicians have felt its effects. It matters what you do and say. Our word is our magic and we can use it to liberate or imprison ourselves.

Web designers were there early on thinking about these things and putting some practices in place that would ensure that the world wide web remained a truly free place. We know corporatioins want what we've got in the open source world but we've gotten smarter. Corporations tried to patent the human genome for gods sake! A small group of selfless individuals worked tirelessly so that the human genome could be released under the public domain... kind of makes me a little sick to think about these things...

It has been important to me that my webpages load on virtually any computer because I know what crap the real freedom fighters of the world must be using to forward the cause of humanity, justice, environmental awareness... Little brother is out there with a cell phone and a laptop that we threw away because we wanted the latest greatest toys on the market...

So..... I say; "Keep It Simple!"

I design my sites using server side includes, css and xhtml 1.0 strict. I do the best I can at adhering to current web accessibility standards.

Out of complete boredom I started having fun using a tiny piece of java I got from A List Apart ,Paul Swoden's styleswitcher. You can see the results of my playing around at One Sky Media

Other Stuff

I'm also interested in cosmology. Two of my favorite resources for that are the Asronomy Picture of the Day and a great site on Stellar Evolution.

I also happen to like taking pictures (and tweaking them), playing guitar, eating at great restaurants, and drinking good beer. It is important that all these things are locally produced as well. This blog may drift into all those areas.

Home Brew? or Wordpress?

This website is also an attempt to determine which platform I like better, my own home brewed site www.qcmississippimud.com or the wordpress generated blog, mississippimud blog

I also think that you should live locally. What's that mean? Well, most of our food comes to us from 2000 to 1500 miles away. Meanwhile local growers are forced to sell their produce to large distributors that send it who knows where. Thinking about how much oil it requires to produce and deliver my food is a little frightening.

So there are these local farmers, they grow organic food and sell it directly to the public. Sometimes this is actually illegal. There are what they call CSA's (Contract Service Arrangements) where a family might pay a yearly fee and in return they recive a "box" of food once a month or every two weeks. Lots of CSA's get the families involved in picking, canning, planning, and other activities. So poke around and find that farmer and start buying your food from someone you can get to know and trust. See; www.sustainablequadcities.org for more info.

All things are connected.

As we enslave the world for cheap goods it is important to note some third world nightmare keeps our American dream propped up. Each purchase we make, depending upon whether it is made with virtual slave labor or not determines the state of the world that we live in. Much of the evil we find along the way is rooted in our daily lives.

Please think about how your spending effects the world.

Dave VanThournout   ©2009 - All rights Reserved                Valid (x)html 1.0 strict and CSS, 508             powered by One Sky Media