Deadly Bombings

 Boston

In the last 24 hours, there were bombings in Boston, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Nasariyah. At least 33 people were killed and 300 wounded.

No one has claimed responsibility for any of the bombings so far.

When I stopped writing about guns, I think it was due to a sudden clarity about violence in the USA. I cannot claim any great intuition about Iraq, since I have never been there.
However, when writing about Newtown, it quickly became crystal clear that guns were here to stay and any laws that were passed would not restrict guns in any meaningful way. Indeed, it was suddenly clear that in a society where there are so many guns and which now allows most of its citizens to carry concealed weapons, that Mr. LaPierre of the NRA was actually correct when he opined that the only way to make schools safe is to have armed guards.

Our future would be a future of armed guards. Here I sit tonight watching the NBC News ( a rare event ) and one of the main topics is how to provide security for public events, and I sense that one part of the response will be more armed guards.

 Baghdad

I realized that the rest of my life would be lived in a society that thinks it can control "irrational" violence through the just exercise of "rational" violence. I think what I saw clearly was that violence, whether rational or irrational, justified or unjustified, feeds off itself and grows exponentially.

And we are never to escape it now.

Just look at the Gun Control law which is not a beginning, but sounds more like an end, a souvenir of a moment of morality thrown to the people of Newtown.
And there are attempts by these same lawmakers to allow people who have a license to carry a concealed weapon in one state to be able to go into any other state carrying that same concealed weapon.

How fascinating that gun people think it perfectly acceptable to overextend the power of the government and trample on the states' laws when it comes to their guns -  a perfect example of gun fascism which has infiltrated everywhere in our lives.
(This has nothing to do with hunting. Gun conversation in the USA is incredibly complex. The stridency of the discourse has nothing to do with hunting, a perfectly acceptable pursuit.)

I am so sorry for those people who have been killed and wounded, and I extend my condolences to their families.

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An Adventure In Art (16)

 

 The market underneath the elevated La Motte Picquet Grenelle Metro line near the Eiffel Tower. 

Photography

Eric Parker

hard to locate home site 

designer of site pathcom.com

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Syria... Iraq...

When the plans of the ruling elites reach fruition, and Syria erupts into full scale civil-sectarian war, the same thing will happen in neighboring Iraq, where we have already the depths of the divide between the religious groups.

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The Last Memorial...

... for a long time, I hope.

Today is the memorial for my affinal aunt.

My mother is now the last survivor of her immediate family group of patrilineal and matrilineal siblings.
I believe she is quite up to the burden.

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An Adventure In Art (15)

Book at the Library in Fairhope, Alabama

MetalSculpture

Deedee Morrison

Deedee Morrison Sculpture

http://www.deedeemorrisonsculpture.com/

photo: David Wetzel

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Answers To Old Questions: The Universal Blues

Do you like the Blues?
Do the Blues make you smile? Cry? Feel good or bad?
Do they make you think of hard times in the midst of good times?

The Blues are the Singer and the Song, the Singer and the Audience, the past of all and the hopes of all.

The Blues are the present and the past.

The Blues are all these things in one complicated ("complicated"  in the sense of  "rolled up and layered together") experience.

The Blues are the pleaching and interweaving of growing things with a history and a future, and they just keep on keeping on.


So, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

You do not understand the Blues; you live and feel the Blues.
We hear the Universal Blues, yet deny the Singer and the Song.

--

Bitcoins (2)

However, having said bad things about bitcoins, we must stop and consider:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/bill-janeway-the-two-innovation-economies.html#more

The Two Innovation Economies by William Janeway:

For 250 years, technological innovation has driven economic development. But the economics of innovation are very different for those at the frontier versus those who are followers striving to catch up. At the frontier, the innovation economy begins with discovery and culminates in speculation… progress has been achieved through trial and error. The strategic technologies that have repeatedly transformed the market economy – from railroads to the Internet – required the construction of networks whose value in use could not be known when they were first deployed.

Consequently, innovation at the frontier depends on funding sources that are decoupled from concern for economic value… cannot be reduced to the optimal allocation of resources. The conventional production function of neoclassical economics offers a dangerously misleading lens through which to interpret the processes of frontier innovation.

Financial speculation has been, and remains, one required source of funding. Financial bubbles emerge wherever liquid asset markets exist. Indeed, the objects of such speculation astound the imagination: tulip bulbs, gold and silver mines, real estate, the debt of new nations, corporate securities. Occasionally, the object of speculation has been one of those fundamental technologies – canals, railroads, electrification, radio, automobiles, microelectronics, computing, the Internet – for which financial speculators have mobilized capital on a scale far beyond what “rational” investors would provide. From the wreckage that has inevitably followed, a succession of new economies has emerged. Complementing the role of speculation, activist states have played several roles… transcend[ing] narrow economic calculation: social development, national security, conquering disease….

Bubbles are part of nature.
When the bubbles burst, there may yet remain a valuable technology, sometimes not.

--

Brother, Can Ya Spare A Bitcoin?

In Yahoo News:

Advocates describe Bitcoin as the foundation stone of a Utopian economy: no borders, no change fees, no closing hours, and no one to tell you what you can and can't do with your money. Just days ago the total value of bitcoins in circulation hit $2 billion, up from a tiny fraction of that just last year.

But late Wednesday, Bitcoin crashed, shedding more than 60 percent of its value in the space of a few hours before recouping some of its losses. Critics say the roller coaster currency movements are just another sign that Bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst.

Jackdaws are also known for their lust for shiny objects, which they hoard hither and yon.

"Bubble" is just another name for "Madness" and "Folly".

The exchange the bitcoin is traded on is Mt. Gox, and it provides the following:

Hi everyone, just a quick update on the situation and what happened last night.
First of all we would like to reassure you but no we were not last night victim of a DDoS but instead victim of our own success!

Indeed the rather astonishing amount of new account opened in the last few days added to the existing one plus the number of trade made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag. As expected in such situation people started to panic, started to sell Bitcoin in mass (Panic Sale) resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine!

To give you an idea of how impressive things were here are some numbers that we would love to share with you guys:
- The number of trades executed triple in the last 24hrs.
- The number of new account opened went from 60k for March alone to 75k new account created for the first few days of April! We now have roughly 20,000 new accounts created each day.
Due to these facts we have been busy working on improving things since last week and our team has been working around the clock to improve Mt.Gox to catch up with the demand. We will continue to release several updates today and in the coming few days to improve our system overall performance.

Also please note that we may have to close the exchange for two hours in the next 12 to 24hrs to add several new servers to our system.
Thank you for your understanding and continuous support!

I can't wait to invest in something run by these fellows.
I especially am fond of statements issued by financial institutions which begin listing a number of points with an expression such as "First of all...", and then proceed to ignore all the following ordinal numbers.

New servers are the ticket !

Bitcoin avoids all the authorities who muck up the real world currencies.
It also allows every stock or currency scam in the world to be run.

Read Mt. Gox's Facebook page; it is rather pathetic:
https://www.facebook.com/MtGox/posts/453409538076792

The only person who would think such a thing a good idea is my mother's investment guy.

--

Nutritional Dictatorship

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/10/1832621/monsanto-protection-act-power/

Liberals and Tea Party members alike are up in arms over the so-called “Monsanto Protection Act,” a provision snuck into the emergency budget bill that essentially exempts biotech firms like Monsanto Company from judicial review.

Now that President Obama has signed the law, Monsanto may plant genetically modified seeds even if a court of law orders them to stop. While this is blatantly unethical, and possibly unenforceable, the newfound public outrage over the Monsanto Protection Act ignores the fact that Monsanto has already been above the law for decades...

The Company sign resembles a tombstone or memorial. Interesting.

 http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/04/nutritional-economics-101.html
 http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/04/inequality-of-nutrition.html

--

An Adventure In Art (14)

 

Primary Color Field #1

Neon tubes, electronics

Orest Tataryn

Orest Tataryn: Art Light Design 

http://oresttataryn.com/

photo: Cat O’Neil 

--

If I am not mistaken, Mr. Tataryn is the only artist of those featured whom I have met. 

He was a member of a Toronto group I refer to in a short story as "The Neon Bandits", but certainly they were not actually bandits. They did stretch the law somewhat by setting up displays without permission of the owners of the site. They disassembled everything the next day and cleaned it all up. 

But my imagination said "bandits", and so it was. 

He had two compatriots in neon, Alfred and Michael, I think...

--  

Nutritional Economics 101

refer to:  http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/04/inequality-of-nutrition.html 


The genetically modified corn of Monsanto  (GMO corn) has less nutritional value than Non-GMO corn.
GMO corn costs the same or more than Non-GMO corn.

N = nutritional value of corn at time 0
M = money value of corn at time 0
------------------------------------------

When I buy it at the store, I exchange M units of money for N units of nutrition.
N = M 

By substituting GMO corn with Non-GMO corn which has a value N'  less than N

N' = M'     where M' => M    and   N' < N     this is not possible.

Assuming that profits must remain at the level M', we must add something to the left side of the equation.
We call this PR  for Public Relations efforts covering advertising to lobbying Congress:

N' + PR = M'
(we are paying for the nutrition value and the PR efforts)

There is a sense in which the consumer trades Nutrition for Public Relations (since profits M remain at a certain level and accepting GMO corn with less nutritive value), and is thus funding their own malnutrition.


--

An Adventure In Art (13)

 

Man At The Scene Of Petrol Pipeline Explosion, Lagos

Photography

Akintunde Akinleye

Akintunde Akinleye

http://www.akintunde1.com/EN/page/Home

--

Inequality of Nutrition

Canada's Only Non-GMO Corn Seed Company

GMO Corn has 14 ppm of Calcium and NON GMO corn has 6130 ppm. 437 X more.

Or, genetically modified corn is impoverished in Calcium content compared to non-genetically modifed corn.

The report in its entirety is on Moms Across America 
http://www.momsacrossamerica.com/stunning_corn_comparison_gmo_versus_non_gmo

Think about it.

To me, it represents a Nutritional Transformation of Wealth, in that the decrease in nutritional value is mirrored by an increase in profits for a corporation. There have been no increases in productivity in the corporation, nor have there been any economies instituted.
What has happened is that the value represented by nutritional ingredients has decreased on the consumer side, and this decrease is matched by an increase of profits on the corporate side.
The story of food in our lifetimes:  there are enormous profits in the reduction of food quality, taste, and nutrition; each reduction is mirrored by an increase in profits.

In essence, we are seeing more money go to the rich, while less nutrition flows to the other members of society.
Nutrition is valuable, money is valuable, and we are trading more money for less nutrition.
That must end up as some form of economic poverty. If I traded away $2 for every $1 someone gave me, it would be obvious. Similarly to trade away one valuable good for less of another is a fool's game.

That is so contrary to basic Economics that the only way that it works is the Advertising and Propaganda that makes us believe there are great benefits for the consumer and society as a whole.

I am beginning to wonder if we have ever seen a technological innovation that delivered "fair value" to the consumer.

--
also Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/monsanto-gmo-drought-tolerant-corn

and read the comments section in Moms Across America for a pro and con.
--

An Adventure In Art (12)

 

Diego Rivera

Photography

Edward Weston

as featured in Southern California Architectural History

http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/

--

 

Some Buddhists Who Are Not Smiling

 

Smile of Bodhi

The Asia Times:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-090413.html

Burma/Myanmar's radical "969 movement" has been central in the recent brutal pogroms against minority Muslims that have left at least 40 dead and 12,000 displaced. The Buddhist monk-led group, however, cannot be understood outside of the interface between President Thein Sein's government and the country's racist society at large.

Nor can it be explained without examining the respective roles of a) the State, which in effect offers the country's neo-Nazi Buddhists impunity, b) Thein Sein's inaction, even amid indications of ethnic cleansing against minority Muslims, and c) the Aung San Suu Kyi-led opposition's moral bankruptcy throughout the crisis...

How many times have I read writers who dislike religion as a whole..., except for Buddhists, or Zen Buddhists? Or who take part in no religious displays, except for - perhaps - some Buddhist meditation.

Buddhists are humans, just like the rest of we clowns, schlemiels, schlubs... or Neo-Nazis.

And the part played by Aung San Suu Kyi and the opposition must be understood, lest she turn out to be another Media creation celebrity that was paraded around to persuade us. She could be the Tiger Woods of Politics and Human Rights if this goes the wrong way.

--

An Adventure In Art (11)

 

La Ultime Cena de Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro's Last Supper

Print

 

Jeffrey Bienvenido Pena

@oncefive

http://www.jeffreypena.com/

--

Why Democracy Is In Trouble (2)

 Solon of Athens and Salamis

Congress has dithered for 4 years, and shows indications that it will dither 4 more.

Furthermore, the economic lessons we have learned over the years are elusive to most of us, even at the highest level of setting policy.

Beyond this, we are rarely in control of our emotions.

If it were left up to society at large and the Media which feeds it, the great questions of the day would be handled roughly in the exact same way that the Rutgers basketball coach matter was handled.

When the time came for decisive action, the Roman Republic had the institution of Dictator, who would lead for a prescribed period of time, and then would retire from the scene. The farmer Cincinnatus performed this service twice for the state.
When Athens and Sparta found themselves tied up in knots of social conflict which defied the efforts of their assemblies, Solon and Lycurgus were given extensive powers to institute reforms, which all parties were bound to observe.

If you read the previous post Why Democracy Is In Trouble (1), you may have noted that The Federal Reserve has been our fiscal Cincinnatus, Solon, and Lycurgus. The agitation against it by people such as Ron Paul is based in profound ignorance of the dynamics of democracy, for when Cincinnatus does not heed his country's call, there are the Octavians who will.

And Octavian - Augustus Caesar - never retired.

That is why it is Congress' duty to inform itself and to lead with knowledge, not uninformed political passions.
It is Congress' job to lead, not to tear down those who are the only ones performing within the vacuum of responsibility that Congress itself has allowed to endure.

--

Tlamictiliztli ! - The Human Sacrificial News

A four year old boy playing with a gun:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/us/tennessee-gun-death/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

A pistol in the hands of a 4-year-old boy went off during a weekend cookout, killing the wife of a Tennessee sheriff's deputy who was showing his guns to a relative, state police said Monday. No one saw the boy pick up the weapon before the shooting, which occurred Saturday night in Lebanon, east of Nashville, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristin Helm said. The single shot killed 47-year-old Josephine Fanning, the wife of Wilson County Sheriff's Deputy Daniel Fanning.

 These are the unavoidable accidents that are "acceptable" statistically in a Gun Culture, even though the people living in a Gun Culture do not find them ethically or socially acceptable.

It is the same as automobile accidents. The way things are, there will be a certain number of sacrifices of human lives. There is no way around it. In the case of guns, we can talk years and years about keeping guns under lock and key, but then we face the horrifying reality that Adam Lanza of Newtown had a gun safe in his own bedroom...

Another statistic.

-- 

Portugal's Drug Policy

I had a post on Drug decriminalization vs legalization that was not thoroughly thought out: "Decriminalize or Legalize?"
A better approach may be Portugal's as described in Der Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060-2.html

This may work as a first step in society's re-hab in getting rid of its addiction to the paranoid psychosis of The War On Drugs.
Any further steps are up to us and our understanding of various states of awareness.

--

An Adventure In Art (10)

Self

Fahamu Pecou

featured on earthcandy: food.fashion.flyness

http://earthcandyarts.com/tag/fahamu-pecou/

--

Sugar

I do not think I ever had a "sugar crash". I have eaten 10 or 12 cookies at one sitting, and never had a sugar let down at some time afterwards. I do remember a Schwartzwalde Kirschtorte I shoveled into my mouth one morning in Toronto, and I was flying for hours, but that was the only time. And that was not a crash, more like a 'phetamine sugar rush.

I still gaze at the cookie section of the store. I like my own better. I have been thinking of chocolate chip made with unsweetened chocolate, since there is so much sweetener already in the batter.
I have also found that using some Sugar in the Raw seems to give a crystalline light crunch for the first few hours of a cookie's life. (Most cookies have a half-life of a day.) And I always make my own brown sugar from unrefined molasses and white sugar and turbinado.

I have also added agave with good results.

It is obvious that cookies are one fact of life that is grossly under-represented in literature and film. Every form of Lit. and Cinema could gain something by the inclusion of cookies. The War of the Worlds comes to mind; Battlestar Galactica; The Aspern Papers by Henry James; The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.
The Sun Also Rises....

Batter up !
--

Mad Men, Alas!

John Ciardi's Translation of Dante's Inferno

The important thing is Ciardi's translation, not the original Dante. We are in the realm of derivative tripe.The notion that Don Draper is reading Dante and is somehow deriving any deep - or shallow - meaning from it is inane. It is a device to get us "halfway through life's journey", and thus promises and end to this, but I find it all too boring to hang on to the inevitable end of bleak questions: what did that ending mean?

Who cares?
Who is Betty, anyhow, and who cares? I mean, what's up with that character? Is she going to get a brain and a heart when she gets to the Emerald City?

What will they do? Tell me that this immorality and lack of direction ends up in a disastrous Nemesis ?

If so, then Matt Weiner has disingenuously forgotten that we are living the disaster, for what is the Present but the inimical Fate of the Furies come for revenge?

Since we already know the ending, Mr. Weiner should at least try and make the walk to a predetermined end somewhat interesting, but it is all the same stuff and buff and boff and toff.

How do I know it's all the same thing week after week? The fact that Dante is used as a door stop or a bottle opener is a good indication. It all ends up with a tedious attempt to portray tedious immorality.

--

PS

I am sorry about this post. It is too negative and nasty. However, the Betty character and Matt Weiner's adoration of January Jones puts me over the edge.
I cannot understand pushing the Betty piece aimlessly around a boring chessboard.

--

Puzzlers

The Big Bang Theory

What is Leonard Hofstadter's IQ ?
Describe how you determined it.

--

A Kierkegaardian Moment

 

The Future Eden of Ringworld

Kierkegaard's leap of faith described a recurring jump to bridge the gap between very different phases in human life. These are more like passages that dot our lives, rather than a one-time event.

I had a Kierkegaard moment ("K-jump") when writing about guns after Newtown.

I was just watching a 60 Minutes segment of the parents of the dead from Newtown, and their lobbying effort to persuade state legislatures to pass meaningful gun laws. (Part of the show includes the startling information that the Lanza mother's gun closet was in her son's bedroom !) My K-jump had come back in January after the moment I realized that there was no real common ground between a gun culture and a no-gun culture.
As long as guns are as plentiful as dandelions in a spring field, the best security there is in a school is more guards in the form of trained and armed guards. Otherwise, there will be too high a probability of mortal chaos.

There are nations and societies in the Western world which actually have gun control laws that work; we are ignorant of them. If we are aware of them, we belittle them in the exact same manner we belittled the UN weapons inspectors who said that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction program.

I think of the Gospels and I think of Gandhi, and my mind goes there.
Then I think of the American Revolution. Then Waco, which was an atrocity by any description. And I, too, have smoked the long burning weed of libertarian meth about repressive and dangerous government...

Then my mind goes to that place where guns are enshrined in the Second Amendment.
But then I am strongly drawn to the belief that the Second Amendment was not to guard against the US government - as the participants in the Whiskey Rebellion may have held - but to allow communities to defend themselves against Native American attacks and slave uprisings.

I did the K-jump when I realized that there is no common ground between the Gun Culture and the Non-Gun Culture.
Gun Culture does have its own logic, and the USA is uncovering it and implementing it.
Non-Gun Culture is possible in this violence-worshiping world only if we live according to the Sermon on the Mount or under the philosophy of Satyagraha of Gandhi, or the ways of peace of Islam and Judaism and Buddhism and all the other ways to the Holy which deny violence.

The Gun Culture is alien to me now, and so are all its manifestations in the near future. I hope to spend the rest of my life building a sanctuary where the way of Peace can be practiced; the sanctuary may be little more than a shelter where the remnants of the survivors of the politicians' destruction of the world economic system may huddle, or it may be a New Eden.
It is in the hands of God.

The one thing I do know is that there is no common ground between the old world of weapons and warfare and the new world of Peace and Truth. I admire the efforts of the Newtown parents, but I think they will soon discover that the logic of weaponry will overtake them.

I am sorry about this. I know that the paradigm is working together and negotiating, and I myself have said so. But this is not a matter of taxes or no taxes; taxes are not a moral issue. The definition of moral issue should not be extended by our greed to include all that a generation desires.
But the matters of the Sermon on the Mount are such matters, and they do not appear in the best light when we see them in the Big Easy which is the Present, the times of casuistry and avoidance of such morals; it is the Time of Paranoia and Thuggery.

Like the Amish withdrew, yet witnessed the slaughter of their Innocents at Nickel Mines.

The Present is a time-bomb.

--

An Adevnture In Art (9)

 

Valley Pasture

Quilting and Thread Work

Jean McLaughlin Cowie and PatriciaGould

as featured in Capital City Arts Initiative

http://arts-initiative.blogspot.com/2010/04/double-vision.html

--

Why Democracy Is In Trouble (1)

 Washington Post: Opinions
 Neil Irwin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-the-financial-crisis-was-bad-for-democracy/2013/04/05/84d668de-9c73-11e2-9bda-edd1a7fb557d_story_2.html

...Congress has sat on its hands while the Fed has sought to boost the U.S. economy with tools that are particularly ill-suited. The central bank’s main instruments for boosting the economy — its target for interest rates — has been at rock bottom for four years and counting. It has tried buying trillions of dollars in longer-term securities, which seems to have helped propel the stock market and lower mortgage and other interest rates, but the Fed appears to be getting less bang for every hundred billion bucks it deploys — and the strategy has come at some risk of inflation and new bubbles...

--

Islamic Satire

Bassem Yousuf

Mr. Yousuf points out the foibles of the Muslim Bortherhood in Egypt, and sometimes mocks Mr. Morsi, the President. Mr. Morsi has come to view himself and the Brotherhood as the State itself, and possibly as the Din (the Faith) itself, and like many leaders of Arab countries, tends to view criticism of himself as criticism of Islam, and to think that mockery of his pomposity and self-importance is mockery of Islam itself.

...Egypt has become deeply polarised. Many pious, ordinary citizens agree that performers such as Mr Youssef come close to exceeding the bounds of decency. Egyptian law forbids any insult to religion, while tradition immunises Arab heads of state from public ridicule. Yet it remains striking that whereas the Morsi government has opted to punish its critics, it has largely spared right-wing religious commentators who deride Egypt’s opposition as infidels, routinely blast Jews and Shias, and incite hatred against Egypt’s large Christian minority. Moreover, its resort to hounding the press smacks of the methods used by Hosni Mubarak’s ousted regime.

Or, indeed, of other Arab countries, where satirists in particular have paid a high price for dissent. Since November, Sami Fehri, a Tunisian producer of a political puppet show that mocked his country’s Islamist leaders, has been in prison on corruption charges. Nadim Koteich, whose bitterly sarcastic take-offs of politicians, in particular those of Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia, are popular on Lebanon’s Future TV, often gets death threats. Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger, has been in jail since last June for “ridiculing Islamic religious figures”. Hadi al-Mahdi, an Iraqi radio humorist, was shot dead in 2011.

The region’s leaders might pause to ponder the words of Ahmed Sanoussi, a Moroccan comedian better known as Bziz. After an 18-year ban from appearing in public, he was asked if there should be any rules for satire. “Yes,” he said, “to attack only the powerful, not the weak.”

As I continue my studies of Arabic, I think I shall try to find those writers who mock and satirize the inflated egos of the Arabic speaking countries.

--

A Dangerous Idea

 Anti-Austerity Demonstration in Lille, France

Some time ago, maybe as far back as 2008, some people wrote about the measures governments might take when things begin to unwind. I think grabbing peoples' deposits was one possibility. It is still a possibility.

There is no limit to the lengths politicians will go to place burdens upon the citizens to correct the disasters that politicians themselves have wrought.

Keep it in mind as we begin talking about the tit-for-tat of spending cuts in a rage for fiduciary appearances. Whose ox was gored, and as a result how many innocent bystanders will be gored in order to get back to fiscal health?
It is eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, and our dollars of present money for our dollars of past wasted money.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9976603/Rehn-big-bank-depositors-could-bear-cost-of-bank-failure.html 

Plans from Brussels put the onus on bank depositors, rather than the taxpayer, to bear the costs of bank failures.

"Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming directive assumes that investor and depositor liability will be carried out in case of a bank restructuring or a wind-down," Mr Rehn, the European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner.

"But there is a very clear hierarchy, at first the shareholders, then possibly the unprotected investments and deposits. However, the limit of €100,000 (£85,000) is sacred, deposits smaller than that are always safe."

Mr Rehn was referring to a directive being drafted by the European Commission on bank safety which would set out investor liability in the law of member states. He was speaking in an interview with Finnish TV after Cyprus last month forced richer depositors to suffer heavy losses in order to secure a €10bn bail-out from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.

Cyprus had initially planned to make people with deposits under the crucial €100,000 mark to take a cut also, before backtracking in the face of an outcry. Smaller deposits are supposed to be protected by state guarantees.

Mats Persson, director of think-tank Open Europe said: "Rehn was only re-stating what's in an EU proposal tabled in 2012, which quite sensibly suggests a mechanism whereby first, investors and secondly, large depositors - rather than taxpayers - foot the bill when a bank goes bust.... "

There is a 60-40 chance this idea will reappear soon. It is not 50-50, since the assault on deposits still stands for deposits over €100,000, and has not flat-lined.

--

President Obama's Budget

I do not think President Obama has any doubt that the Republicans will reject his budget proposals. He can put anything in it; he could recommend the privatization of Social Security like George Bush did, but all it takes is those three little words  "and raise taxes"  for the majority of the muddlers to bray  "Nay"  and shake their fuzzy heads.

Everyone knows it, too.

--

YES, In My Backyard !

Big Government is usually bad when it is "pork barreling" someone else, but when it helps me...., that's another matter.

The Los Angeles Times:
 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-sequester-west-20130407,0,5412062.story

CODY, Wyo. — For many, the federal budget ax that fell last month has meant a few nicks here and there. For Joe Kondelis, it's sliced a lot deeper.

After stewing for days, the 53-year-old opened his wallet and delivered a $2,000 check to the Cody Chamber of Commerce to help pay for snowplowing at Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't easy. Cash is scarce once Yellowstone shuts down for the winter.

But after automatic spending cuts idled the National Park Service plows and threatened to delay opening day for two weeks — two weeks that could cost his beer distributorship $100,000 in sales — Kondelis felt he had no choice...
 
But a weave of contradictions surrounds the episode, reflecting the tension between self-sufficiency and codependence, between these Westerners' stated desire for a smaller, more limited government and reliance on the services that people have come to expect from far off, little-loved Washington, D.C.
"We all want to cut the deficit but don't want to sacrifice the lifestyle that money makes possible," said Warren Murphy...

Shari'a Law

A good article on diyya and qisas in Sharia Law, with emphasis on the recent ruling in Saudi Arabia that a man be paralyzed by medically induced paralysis......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/05/sharia-law-diyya-saudi

There is also an article on the BBC about whether Sharia councils are properly serving women in obtaining divorce:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22044724

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The Second Battle Of Karbala in 1434 H.

Mr. Kerry and Saud ibn al Faisal

There is no doubt anymore that US policy is intent on destroying the power of Islam that traces back to 'Ali and his son, Hussein. In effect, we seem ready to obey the orders of the Sunni dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, so as to aid them in their battle against the Shi'a of Iran and Syria  -  not to mention Bahrain, against whom Saudi Arabia has sent troops to quell their own "Arab Spring"  -  whom they perceive as heretics and enemies.

We have taken sides in a religious war...., once again, just as we once stumbled into such a conflict in Iraq. We show no desire for a peaceful settlement. Our media are filled with accounts and pictures of the "good" Syrian rebel forces and the depradations of the "bad" Syrian Army forces.

Once again, we have taken the easy descent to chaos...

Once again, I find myself turning my face against a government which refuses to see beyond our own insularity and our own lack of understanding and our own culture of warfare.

(1434 H. is the year in the Islamic calendar, the 1,434th year after the Hijrat)

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Rutgers Basketball Coach

I am trying to get this bon mot right:
(We are talking about the coach's alleged offenses)

If the accusation were not true, then the defamation was well invented. 

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Backyard Syndrome

If seems the only states addressing gun control are Connecticut and Colorado, scenes of recent mass killings of young people.

We do not factor in risk probabilities unless a disaster happens in our own backyard.

The Arkansas oil spill is another example. The risks involved in oil pipeline transport of the tar sands oils will probably only be appreciated by the neighbors of the oil spill in Arkansas.
The rest of us continue on.
Why?

What is there so compelling in our madness that we ignore the risks? Starting back at risk evaluation in bank holdings in sub-prime mortgages in 2008 and up to school shootings, why do we feel so incompetent in the face of these dangers, so much so that we cannot respond in any creative way?
Shootings? Get everyone guns... that'll stop it.
Contamination of water tables? Never happen.
Climate Change? A deception of an international cabal of scientists.

Personally, I would rather not wait until my backyard is the site of a mass shooting spree over an oil spill in the middle of a tornado... and health care costs too much to do anything about it.

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note

It may be that certain manifestations of "faith" are essentially refusal to evaluate risk.

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An Adventure In Art (8)

Tangerine Dream

Jennifer Woodburn

Jennifer Woodburn  Artist Studio

http://jenniferwoodburn.blogspot.com/

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Memorial Weekends

We are off for my aunt's memorial; she passed away in her 100th year, three days after my father's funeral. A month later my first cousin passed away in his 78th year. Then just before Easter my mother's sister-in-law passed on.
My mother is now the sole survivor of her generation in the two families.

She now wants to become closer to her nephews. Two of them have expressed such a desire for a renewed intimacy, and she thinks it a good idea. So do I.
There seems to be a good deal of discord and ill-feelings floating around at our destination this weekend. I am not sure of the exact provenance of it all, but will probably hear some explanatory tales, most of which will refer to entities who are unknown to me or whom I have jumbled up in memory.

There are also some manifest eccentrics making plans to be there, so there will be many chances for shenanigans and stories to be told.

Things happen in three, and then they just keep happening. Things happening in threes obviously means something like there is a first occurrence, then a second. Anything after the second is a third occurrence, and at this point people generally stop counting.
We hope there are no further reckonings, for the list is long enough.

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Religious Wars

I am not sure that I believe the notion that religious wars are endemic to our species; I am not sure that there are such things at all.

What I mean is I am not sure that there are and have been wars fought solely on religious grounds without any other political or economic causes; I am not sure that today's commonly used concept of mad blokes flailing at each other in the name of their gods - and for no other reason - ever existed.

I fully agree that religion is a mighty focus of the groups, tribe, or nation, and often serves the purpose of providing a unifying theme and narrative to disparate groups to unite their efforts into some form of violent behavior, but that is not the same thing.

Religion may serve to differentiate "Me" from "You", and its stream of emotion may be dammed and utilized as a dynamo, but it seems to be subservient to other promptings of the species, promptings for land, wealth, food, or the spur of ancient slights and crimes culminating in aeons long vendettas.

This is an important point, I think, because it is so often spoken these days by people arguing about religion.... which itself is merely a cover for deeper discords. I say "deeper" in a paradoxical way, for you may ask, "What is deeper than religion?"  I believe, however, that most practice of religion is fairly superficial.

There is a proof historical:
The Maurya emperor Ashoka embraced the doctrine of the Lord Buddha after the bloody Kalinga War. He propagated Buddhism throughout his empire, "Ashoka regarded Buddhism as a doctrine that could serve as a cultural foundation for political unity." (Jerry Bentley)
There is the religious doctrine as carrier of imperial policy, and the relation to the Holy has been totally obscured.

Of course, modern critics of religion usually seem to think of Buddhism as somehow being apart from other religions and superior to them. If I had a nickel for every modern atheistical johnny that said, "I don't hold with religious stuff, but I frequently do some Zen meditation.", I would now have about 20 bucks.

That attitude about Buddhism is a stereotype, a positive stereotype, granted, but still a stereotype in that it is a fervent belief in a certain script, rather than a understanding of the real world. It is as if modern day understanding of Buddhism strips the smells and sounds from the religion's followers. I am quite sure that when we conjure up stereotypes of Muslims, there are plenty of smells and sounds, not to mention beards. When we imagine Fundamentalist Christians, we smell the soot of burning Qurans and sweaty Sunday sermons in Alabama. When we think of Jews, there may be the sights and sounds of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Then we think of them coming together. Then they fight.

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notes

I believe even the concept of Jihad is an exception that proofs this rule.

The Dark Brothers Do Basketball

Video Chief Justice of the Near Future

I looked at the Rutgers basketball video again. What I saw was a bunch of outtakes run together in rapid sequence, giving the coach the appearance of being a beast on 12-cylinders.

It reminded me of pornographic films from antiquity, specifically those produced by The Dark Brothers, who used to film much trash. I always found such films to be incredibly dull and boring. What was good was the previews: the rapid fire sequences of outtakes that moved as if there was urgent intent behind the vapid looks and sighs.

So the coach wuz fired over a Dark Brothers-type basketball porno-violence video.
The Today Show had an on-line poll yesterday, and a full   97%  of responders said the bum oughta be given his walking papers!

It used to be hard to get 97% unanimity, except back when Joe Stalin ran the Party Congresses.

If it was not true that the coach was guilty of ghastly acts, it was a defamation well invented.... and videoed.

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The Pagan Claim On The Future

In the New York Review Of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/apr/02/new-american-sadism/

...[Mr.] Brill’s article makes one comprehend not just the talk in Washington about the supposed absolute necessity of replacing Medicare and Medicaid with “market-oriented” health care, but also the full human cost such a change would bring. 

If the elderly and the poor are stripped of the few protections these government programs give them, they’ll be left at the mercy of a medical industry and insurance companies whose already huge profits, so they imagine, will then get even bigger. 

Despite the claims that these are high-minded proposals that will fix our national debt, and despite their veneration as such by the political establishment and the media, what is being offered to the American people is nothing more than thinly-disguised money-making scams.

I am a capitalist. I was born at night, too, but not last night.
When health care companies speak to shareholders, do they emphasize the increase in the quality of care, or do they emphasize profits?

We all remember, I hope, the cheers that went up in the audience during the GOP’s presidential debate last spring in Tampa when Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate and former doctor, stated that he would let an uninsured man lying in a coma die without lifting a finger.

“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk,” he said. “This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…” at which point, a few members of the audience shouted “Yeah,” cutting off the congressman in mid-sentence.

At that point, Mr. Paul and a number of other fellow Americans rejected and denied Christianity, and Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, to boot.

There is a real chance that the future might belong to the Pagans.

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No PostsToday...

Mythical Machines

I got up so early that I went back to bed. I jumped back in bed at 3:45, having set the alarm for 5:30.
So I arose at 5:35 AM, having been in the middle of a dream where bells were tolling merrily in joyful Quasimodo abandon, which turned into the odd sounding throbs of my alarm - I actually use the word "alarum" myself... I really do. It is just as if I were an Elizabethan cove and strutting about the Globe.
Nobody notices.

This means I get on the computer later than usual.

And soon She-who-must-be-obeyed will be up and demanding her ancestral digital rights to Locus Computensis and all the chattels and appurtenances thereto.

There is no way around it.
My daughter had visited for Easter, and early Easter morning we both noted She-who-must-etc. had the habit of putting on a display of bleary eyed befuddlement when she had just risen from the Vatican apartments: if greeted, she mumbled, if queried about some bagatelle, she grumbled that she could not jump start the old grey matter at this ungodly hour.

Unless, however, one or both of us had contravened some prerogatives of the monarchy.
For example, if the coffee machine is not centered on the proper coordinates, there will be a general denunciation and court of inquiry, a process which puts the lie to sluggish-morning-brain syndrome.
The placement of counter top items would even strain the navigational abilities of Captain Hornblower at the sextant and astrolabe.

Anyway, when the computer is demanded, I yield it. Thus, no posts in the 30 minutes I am on the computer.

I could buy another laptop, but I am too cheap.
While She-who-must-etc. has an iPhone, I still have my 12 year old Nokia with the picture of a teddy bear on the display. It works well.
And I do not have a phone plan; it is pay-as-you-jibber-jabber.

I was changing banks and checking accounts the other day, and the management of the bank I was exiting from pointed out to me the outrageous number of benefits they included with their new and refurbished checking accounts: how could I not love them ?!
Manager: "There is free access to ATMs everywhere in the known world..."
Me:  "We last used an ATM 20 years ago."
Manager:  "... extra special debit cards..."
Me: "We never used a debit card... ever."

and it went on like this.

I said that I realized that I was painting a picture of myself as the most palaeological and geezer-like coot that ever came down the pike. It was so bizarre that I had to get everyone together in a huddle at the line of scrimmage and told them that we loved all the local folks, but headquarters obviously did not want our business. Sorry. Had not a thing to do with them. Not a thing to do with any eccentricities on anyone's part.

At this point, my phone rang. I excused myself and checked who was calling - unimportant, as usual - then set the phone down on the manager's desk, unanswered. Why not? Everybody sets their slim iPhone down and desk-vogues them, don't they?

The Teddy Bear display on that boxy old Nokia was quite clear, and I saw them catch sight of its paradoxical smile.
The Manager sighed and shrugged his shoulders in defeat.
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An Adventure In Art (7)

from Latino Immigrants in Southwest Detroit

Photography

Carlos Diaz

as featured in  http://diaphotography.wordpress.com/

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The Trouble With Basketball

 

There is a video from Rutgers about the basketball coach, a Mr. Price.
I will not describe it, because you may watch it anywhere.

The Today Show is interviewing Mike Lupica, a sports columnist, and he thinks any coach that touches a player should be fired. I suppose he means "touches" in the sense of "hits" or "kicks" or something like that. I suppose he means any touch other than a neutral nudge. Who knows anymore?

Everyone is wringing their collective hands in the morning segment of the 2 Minute Hate. ("Hate" may be too strong a word, but the media types are howling.)
Even LeBron James Tweeted his condemnation.

I played sports for a long time.
I have no trouble nor stress when I remember the coach yelling at me or kicking me or whatever.

However, I will never forget things like this idiotic country of zombies walking into Iraq.
I cannot forget things like 2011 and a Debt Ceiling and a Know-Nothing Congress.
I will never forget Michigan starting to tax seniors' pensions in 2012..... never.
And my response to all those will be served... cold.
I cannot forget abuse and offense like that. But my memory of Big Wally Bazelewicz cursing my lazy dog manner of shuffling down court brings a smile to my face.

I guess the Rutgers coach made some homophobic remarks. That is not a practice that should be allowed to continue, but it is not a firing offense in the context it occurred.

When I am on the B-Ball Court of Life, if I am dogging it, Life itself comes along and kicks me in the butt !

Cripes! A nation of zombies !

--
notes

My apologies to the old time Navaho Academy Basketball team for inferring there was any problem with their basketball. The swastike is an ancient Native American - as well as Asian - symbol of life.

Populism

The People’s Bank 
Abby Rapoport  April 1, 2013 
How did deep-red North Dakota end up with the nation’s most populist financial institution?
http://prospect.org/article/people%E2%80%99s-bank-0

When the financial crisis struck in 2008, nearly every state legislature was left contending with massive revenue shortfalls. Every state legislature, that is, except North Dakota’s. In 2009, while other states were slashing budgets, North Dakota enjoyed its largest surplus. All through the Great Recession, as credit dried up and middle-class Americans lost their homes, the conservative, rural state chugged along with a low foreclosure rate and abundant credit for entrepreneurs looking for loans.

Normally one of the overlooked states in flyover country, North Dakota now had the country’s attention. So did an unlikely institution partly responsible for its fiscal health: the Bank of North Dakota. Founded in 1919 by populist farmers who’d gotten tired of big banks and grain companies shortchanging them, the only state-owned bank in America has long supported community banks and helped keep credit flowing.

The bank’s $5 billion deposit base comes mostly from state taxes and funds. The money is leveraged so the bank can offer loans for local small businesses and infrastructure projects; the interest, rather than going to Wall Street banks, stays in the state. The Bank of North Dakota rarely makes direct loans; instead, when a community bank wants to give a sizable loan but lacks the capital, the state bank will partner on the loan and provide a backstop. Such partnerships help ensure that small-business owners, farmers, and ranchers can access lines of credit—and they strengthen community banks, which is why North Dakota has more local banks per capita than any other state...

... policy experts like Sam Munger, the managing director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for State Innovation, say that by offering partnerships and avoiding the risky practices of commercial banks, like subprime lending, the state bank was instrumental in keeping community banks healthy. “It’s partly because you have civil servants in charge,” he says, “rather than folks whose paychecks depend on how much money the bank makes in a quarter.”...

Good read, or as the angel said to St. Augustine, "Tolle, lege !"

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An Adventure In Art (6)

 

 Février et Thé

Photography

Marie-Ange

Rêver au Sud

http://derevesenemotions.blogspot.com/

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Times Of Change

 Experiment In A Bell Jar

I was looking at a photo of Pope Francis at the tomb of Saint Peter, and thought of his being the first American Pope. So I thought then about the many changes we have undergone in the past few.

Change is a process, and it has a long lifetime; it has a genealogy and its own evolutionary history. Rarely, if ever, does it pounce upon us unawares and us totally clueless. Even the attacks of September 11, 2001 were anticipated by people whose job it was to follow how we pushed folks like Al Qa'ida and how they push back: there had been a bombing at the WTC not even 10 years before, but that one used a blind cleric and an old and rusty Volkswagen mini-bus.
Who'd a thought that Al Qa'ida would use airplanes? I'm sure that the common consensus of our vast intelligence community was that the most we should expect from Al Qa'ida at that time was a fertilizer bomb in the back of a U-Haul rental truck, only this would be a step up from old Tim McVeigh, and the truck would have the power hoist.

Anyway, change always occurs: it matters how much it impinges upon us and how thoroughgoing it is.

Right now we are in an experimental bell jar to be a world wide experiment in Climate Change, thanks to various "conservative" ideologies and our natural inertia.

What else? Stockton, California will enter into bankruptcy, and the next phase of thst process will determine whether California State Law requiring contributions be made to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) takes precedence over federal bankruptcy laws.
In other words, may the pension system be raided to satisfy creditors?
There are arguments pro and con, but what is important is that this is the biggest city ever to enter bankruptcy, and I think there is a good probability that federal law will prevail over state law.

That outcome would change the landscape of communties country-wide suffering under burdens of debt...
just as...
anyone? anyone?...
just as the Cyprus situation has loosed the genii in the bell jar of essentially "stealing" from people's personal deposits.

The change would be in the law and the way governments think: once a government starts thinking in the manner of highwaymen and brigands when it comes to the pensions and deposits of its citizens, we are in for trouble with a capital T.

However, even this situation was foreseen way back in the 90's. It was foreseen that the promises of pensions, private and Social Security, would be transgressed and contradicted by politicians seeking an easy fix in a short period of time...
The shorter period of time the better, so an election could take place while the scapegrace politicians were still in favor, and before too many people could figure out what had just been done to them.

We are right smack dab in the middle of all those science fiction tales I used to read. Olaf Stapledon comes to mind: a society exhausted in spirit and maniacally expending fossil fuels (look at nighttime satellite pictures... do we really need all those lights on?)
Our Best and Brightest are tragically short sighted.
What's going to save us? I think Immigration may provide new leavening for the bread.

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Health Costs

From the Daily Yonder:
http://www.dailyyonder.com/how-medicare-could-fix-us-healthcare/2013/03/15/5717

The problem with escalating health-care costs is actually pretty simple.

The people who make decisions about medical costs (doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, drug companies, device manufacturers) have a vested interest in seeing us spend more money on health care, not less. More money in the system means more chances for them to grab a share.

The one player in the game with the power and interest to control medical costs is Medicare. Medicare has so much market power that it can buy care at reasonable prices. Patients have a powerful advocate, and it’s very popular with beneficiaries. It has its own center for experimenting with better pay incentives to health care systems to get better care for more people at lower cost. (Hospitals don't get paid when they let things go wrong.) If Congress would permit it, Medicare could bargain for drugs at reasonable prices and pay only for devices that have been proven to work. But Congress will not.

Even though Congress won’t let a plan like this move forward all at once, what if we looked for a way to phase in this solution over time? 

 

Chart shows growth in per capita costs in Medicare and private insurance. Medicare has done a better job of holding costs down. (Data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

First, let’s look at the various players in the current system and the specific problems they face. Then, we’ll come back to the solution...

 Good read.

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Big Tent

 A Tent Of Many Colors

A religion is a big tent which covers a diversity of people.

Religion must take this diversity, and then to find those areas of the lives of intelligent beings wherein diversity and distinction and difference disappear naturally and without compulsion.

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An Adventure In Art (5)

Détente en musique

Martine Alison

Ma Dollhouse Joue Un Grand Air De Peinture

http://martinealison.blogspot.com/

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