octopi are smarter than they look
perhaps too smart, for one who longed to escape the confines of the aquarium
more next time
Blessed Be
20090227
20090225
20090222
Today in the Life
[with apologies to John Lennon and Paul McCartney]
when I was a kid, old people worried about cheap imports from Japan, except of course for transistor radios; my parents bought me my first transistor, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, when I was only 10 or 11 [that was like 7 or 8 today]
by my teens, people complained about the cheap and poorly-made goods they bought from Hong Kong, and a few years later from Taiwan
and today’s world? an e-mail making the rounds lays out the daily agenda:
John Smith started early
✪ having set his alarm clock [MADE IN JAPAN] for 6 am
✪ while his coffeepot [MADE IN CHINA] was perking
✪ he shaved with his electric razor [MADE IN HONG KONG]
✪ put on a dress shirt [MADE IN SRI LANKA]
✪ designer jeans [MADE IN SINGAPORE]
✪ and tennis shoes [MADE IN KOREA]
✪ after making breakfast in his new skillet [MADE IN INDIA]
✪ he sat down with his calculator [MADE IN MEXICO]
to see how much he could spend today;
✪ after setting his watch [MADE IN TAIWAN]
✪ to the radio [MADE IN INDIA]
✪ he got in his car [MADE IN GERMANY]
✪ filled it with gas [FROM SAUDI ARABIA]
and continued his search for a good paying job
at the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day
✪ checking his computer [MADE IN MALAYSIA]
John decided to relax for a while so he
✪ put on his sandals [MADE IN BRAZIL]
✪ poured himself a glass of wine [MADE IN FRANCE]
✪ turned on his TV [MADE IN INDONESIA]
and wondered why he can't find
a Good Paying Job in the USA
more next time
Blessed Be
when I was a kid, old people worried about cheap imports from Japan, except of course for transistor radios; my parents bought me my first transistor, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, when I was only 10 or 11 [that was like 7 or 8 today]
by my teens, people complained about the cheap and poorly-made goods they bought from Hong Kong, and a few years later from Taiwan
and today’s world? an e-mail making the rounds lays out the daily agenda:
John Smith started early
✪ having set his alarm clock [MADE IN JAPAN] for 6 am
✪ while his coffeepot [MADE IN CHINA] was perking
✪ he shaved with his electric razor [MADE IN HONG KONG]
✪ put on a dress shirt [MADE IN SRI LANKA]
✪ designer jeans [MADE IN SINGAPORE]
✪ and tennis shoes [MADE IN KOREA]
✪ after making breakfast in his new skillet [MADE IN INDIA]
✪ he sat down with his calculator [MADE IN MEXICO]
to see how much he could spend today;
✪ after setting his watch [MADE IN TAIWAN]
✪ to the radio [MADE IN INDIA]
✪ he got in his car [MADE IN GERMANY]
✪ filled it with gas [FROM SAUDI ARABIA]
and continued his search for a good paying job
at the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day
✪ checking his computer [MADE IN MALAYSIA]
John decided to relax for a while so he
✪ put on his sandals [MADE IN BRAZIL]
✪ poured himself a glass of wine [MADE IN FRANCE]
✪ turned on his TV [MADE IN INDONESIA]
and wondered why he can't find
a Good Paying Job in the USA
more next time
Blessed Be
20090221
awake yet?
if you still think the "economic crisis" can be fixed, you might benefit from going to the links in the September 18 post again and considering how well we've done so far; if that doesn't work, spend a day sorting through Google hits for broken + economy
more next time
Blessed Be
more next time
Blessed Be
Hey! where’s my bailout?
it’s nice to see General Motors making a logical decision that recognizes things are changing and that we all need to wake up to realities we’ve ignored for decades, at least since 1929 if not earlier: survival over the long term is impossible without sustainable, reality-based decisions
refusing life support for a company that isn't making it is a Business 101 decision; we need more such sensibility, especially among those who spend my money, i.e. governments; how ironic that GM's bosses don’t believe governments should apply the Saab logic to them
the most important question is why more taxpayers aren’t speaking out about using our money to support failing multinational companies from the Wall Street, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Etc School of Business Administration, especially a company like GM that is still paying its executives obscene wages, building cars fewer of us want to buy, and repeating broken promises about electric vehicles out of one side of its corporate mouth while out of the other side resurrecting a 60s-era gasoline-powered muscle car, the Camaro, and making the Corvette, another greenhouse-gas generator, more powerful than ever
governments should apply the Golden Rule and treat GM the way GM is treating Saab; GM won't be the first large company to go bankrupt and it certainly won't be the last
governments definitely have a major role here, but it's not to prop up private-sector capitalist entrepreneurs who can no longer survive in today's world because they've ignored evolving realities
the first priority, of course, is to redirect bailout money toward minimizing the difficulties auto workers will face and help them transition to the long-predicted green "future" that's here now; might be a good time to make some reality-based revisions to bring employment insurance into the 21st Century; this will, of course, require that federal cabinet ministers stop suggesting some workers find temporary [and paltry] bridge financing more lucrative than a pay cheque
the next step would be to direct what's left of the requested auto bailout money to help design and develop the infrastructure Canada needs to make electric and other non-hydrocarbon vehicles more practical
and, of course, GM must go on the auction block if it cannot successfully restructure itself in today's market, just as dozens of North American automobile manufacturers and other companies have over the past century, and just as GM expects Saab to try today; GM's been losing money for too long to expect a taxpayer bailout; hell, it might even survive corporately under new ownership as a sustainable company, albeit one making different and fewer models than GM has been
maybe if someone buys the rights to Chrysler's Viper they'll pick up GM's Corvette, too; who knows? after the dust settles there might still be a future for boutique companies making specialty and niche products, such as Ferraris or Hummers
there's a bright future for companies like ZENN or Tesla, and government should be supporting and promoting them as a diversion from our previous unsustainable path
perhaps governments could help launch a new Canadian company, buying some of GM's assets like the plug-in Volt and introducing new model lines, such as up-dated and redesigned EVs, a more-practical, less-expensive version of the Tesla, or a plug-in Viper, all engineered for Canadian weather and potentially profitable exports
that might initially cost more than what the gasoline-car companies are asking for today, but it’s more likely to be seen in hindsight as a sensible and sustainable investment
and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel [pun intended]; we already have the seeds for transition, from ZENN cars and others to hundreds if not thousands of electrical conversions across Canada
the will is here
the technology is here, and getting better every day
it’s time we stopped throwing money into a broken bucket
more next time
Blessed Be
refusing life support for a company that isn't making it is a Business 101 decision; we need more such sensibility, especially among those who spend my money, i.e. governments; how ironic that GM's bosses don’t believe governments should apply the Saab logic to them
the most important question is why more taxpayers aren’t speaking out about using our money to support failing multinational companies from the Wall Street, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Etc School of Business Administration, especially a company like GM that is still paying its executives obscene wages, building cars fewer of us want to buy, and repeating broken promises about electric vehicles out of one side of its corporate mouth while out of the other side resurrecting a 60s-era gasoline-powered muscle car, the Camaro, and making the Corvette, another greenhouse-gas generator, more powerful than ever
governments should apply the Golden Rule and treat GM the way GM is treating Saab; GM won't be the first large company to go bankrupt and it certainly won't be the last
governments definitely have a major role here, but it's not to prop up private-sector capitalist entrepreneurs who can no longer survive in today's world because they've ignored evolving realities
the first priority, of course, is to redirect bailout money toward minimizing the difficulties auto workers will face and help them transition to the long-predicted green "future" that's here now; might be a good time to make some reality-based revisions to bring employment insurance into the 21st Century; this will, of course, require that federal cabinet ministers stop suggesting some workers find temporary [and paltry] bridge financing more lucrative than a pay cheque
the next step would be to direct what's left of the requested auto bailout money to help design and develop the infrastructure Canada needs to make electric and other non-hydrocarbon vehicles more practical
and, of course, GM must go on the auction block if it cannot successfully restructure itself in today's market, just as dozens of North American automobile manufacturers and other companies have over the past century, and just as GM expects Saab to try today; GM's been losing money for too long to expect a taxpayer bailout; hell, it might even survive corporately under new ownership as a sustainable company, albeit one making different and fewer models than GM has been
maybe if someone buys the rights to Chrysler's Viper they'll pick up GM's Corvette, too; who knows? after the dust settles there might still be a future for boutique companies making specialty and niche products, such as Ferraris or Hummers
there's a bright future for companies like ZENN or Tesla, and government should be supporting and promoting them as a diversion from our previous unsustainable path
perhaps governments could help launch a new Canadian company, buying some of GM's assets like the plug-in Volt and introducing new model lines, such as up-dated and redesigned EVs, a more-practical, less-expensive version of the Tesla, or a plug-in Viper, all engineered for Canadian weather and potentially profitable exports
that might initially cost more than what the gasoline-car companies are asking for today, but it’s more likely to be seen in hindsight as a sensible and sustainable investment
and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel [pun intended]; we already have the seeds for transition, from ZENN cars and others to hundreds if not thousands of electrical conversions across Canada
the will is here
the technology is here, and getting better every day
it’s time we stopped throwing money into a broken bucket
more next time
Blessed Be
20090215
mythstory links
long ago, in a previous century, I came to understand, and wrote about, the concept that myth is what’s left of history, i.e. what today will be at sometime in the future [I once suggested myth was the history men rejected when they took control of keeping written records ☺]
I was sorting hits from a Google search recently when I came across this magnificent site of indeterminate age that seems to be an excellent index to e-content about myths, legends, history…
beware the impermanence of the Internet! Myths & Legends has been around since 1992, and at one time was on an MIT server; today’s content is dated at 2002; the main page is dated at 2003
more next time
Blessed Be
I was sorting hits from a Google search recently when I came across this magnificent site of indeterminate age that seems to be an excellent index to e-content about myths, legends, history…
beware the impermanence of the Internet! Myths & Legends has been around since 1992, and at one time was on an MIT server; today’s content is dated at 2002; the main page is dated at 2003
more next time
Blessed Be
20090213
21st Century censorship
we’ve come a long way since George Orwell wrote 1984 and it’s interesting how much our world reflects his once-improbable Big Brother visions, in spirit if not according to the letter of the novel
in many ways we’ve gone far beyond Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, but it’s scary how few people realize it and even scarier how few care
censorship, of course, is an ancient and time-worn strategy for authorities of all stripes; in today’s information age, managing Truth is easier than ever, and more anonymous thanks to hi-tech; unlike the citizens of most 20th Century dictatorships, we don't even realize it's happening
don't believe it? tried to find any concrete, real-world information about Al-Qaeda?
noticed how hard it was to access news about Yellowstone’s unprecedented quake swarm, if you ever heard about it in the first place?
what have you heard about the US-Russian dash toward conflict in South America?
the explanation is always that a website was “overloaded”, “crashed”, etc, because of the high number of people trying to access the info; They call it an Information Bottleneck; you could choose to believe that, or you might wonder if They left the phone receiver off the hook deliberately, to give everybody a busy signal instead of an answer
a recent Utne Reader article suggests authorities are realizing the Internet’s potential as a “flexible and effective mechanism for thought control”; Utne describes modern control of access to information as censorship by frustration
more next time
Blessed Be
in many ways we’ve gone far beyond Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, but it’s scary how few people realize it and even scarier how few care
censorship, of course, is an ancient and time-worn strategy for authorities of all stripes; in today’s information age, managing Truth is easier than ever, and more anonymous thanks to hi-tech; unlike the citizens of most 20th Century dictatorships, we don't even realize it's happening
don't believe it? tried to find any concrete, real-world information about Al-Qaeda?
noticed how hard it was to access news about Yellowstone’s unprecedented quake swarm, if you ever heard about it in the first place?
what have you heard about the US-Russian dash toward conflict in South America?
the explanation is always that a website was “overloaded”, “crashed”, etc, because of the high number of people trying to access the info; They call it an Information Bottleneck; you could choose to believe that, or you might wonder if They left the phone receiver off the hook deliberately, to give everybody a busy signal instead of an answer
a recent Utne Reader article suggests authorities are realizing the Internet’s potential as a “flexible and effective mechanism for thought control”; Utne describes modern control of access to information as censorship by frustration
more next time
Blessed Be
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