The Revolt Of The Parking Lots: The Symbiosis Of Kudzu And MacAdam

"It's alive! Alive!"

As Voltaire said, "MacAdam, c'est la pépinière de kudzu ",  or asphalt is the nursery garden of kudzu.
Kudzu gives volatility and mobility to the moribund parking lots, which are strung across the face of the world like an asphalt archipelago...

... and kudzu is the Polynesian-like  race to which they gave birth, and which propagated across the islands in the sea!  (Polynesian =  poly  "many"  +  nesoi  "islands")

Petroleum techniques has pinpointed the original macadam lot in  Titusville, Pennsylvania, and DNA tests have determined that all the present day parking lot kudzu has descended from one original mother kudzu plant  (Sample 125847:kud:1957 42 40/ 83 02)  somewhere in Shelby Township, Michigan in an area described by the old Packard Proving Grounds:

aerial view

facing Old Van Dyke Road

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Christmas Art

by Johnny B.

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Radio Raheem

Spike Lee marching in Washington D.C. demonstration against police violence.

Sal's pizzeria was in the NY Times Crossword today, and I could only remember Danny Aiello at first, not Sal. (Do The Right Thing)

Spike Lee foresaw and prophesied Michael Brown and Eric Garner in his film in the character of Radio Raheem (I'm pretty sure that was the name... too lazy to look it up).
Of course, it is easy to prophesy future violence against black folks when you're in a society that has such violence as one of its hidden pillars.

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The Median Is The Message

The Median is a statistics which separates the higher 50% of a population from the lower 50% of the population. It is a real number, in that it does actually occur in a data population, whereas an average need not actually occur.
For example, in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.8  the median is 3 - right in the middle, and the average is 1+2+3+4+5.8 = 15.8   divided by 5 = 3.16,   and 3.16 is nowhere to be seen in the original data.

On December 12, 2014, The Pew Research Center released a report:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/
Wealth inequality has widened along racial, ethnic lines since end of Great Recession
By Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry

...Our analysis of Federal Reserve data does reveal a stark divide in the experiences of white, black and Hispanic households during the economic recovery. From 2010 to 2013, the median wealth of non-Hispanic white households increased from $138,600 to $141,900, or by 2.4%.

Meanwhile, the median wealth of non-Hispanic black households fell 33.7%, from $16,600 in 2010 to $11,000 in 2013. Among Hispanics, median wealth decreased by 14.3%, from $16,000 to $13,700. For all families — white, black and Hispanic — median wealth is still less than its pre-recession level...

 The 2013 figures are $141,900 for white households, $11,000 for black households, and $13,700 for hispanic households.

Fully 50% of white households are under the $141,900 figure, and fully 50% of black households are below the $11,000 figure, and fully 50% of hispanic households are below the $13,700 figure.

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A Corvette World War II; Artist: 孙以煜

 

 

 孙以煜
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The Deconstruction Era

 Deconstructing The Capitol Dome

When the Republicans were victorious at the 2014 mid-term elections, I said to myself that now they have two years to botch things up in their own idiosyncratic way.
I hoped very much that they would not, but by and large Republicans are not conservatives as I am; I read The American Conservative, whereas most other Republicans take pleasure in things like The Drudge Report or Breitbart or even worse, things like NewsMax.

Of course, Democrats reading material is often hardly better.

In the BBC this morning, updated at 2:31 AM:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30443960

...The US House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn budget, hours before government was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday...


As presented earlier in the week, the 1,600-page bill also includes a number of provisions intended to gain votes from both parties, including:

• increasing the amount an individual person can contribute to a national political party from $32,400 to $324,000
• blocking the District of Columbia from using its own funds to set up regulatory systems for marijuana legalisation
• measures that would significantly weaken financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank law, including restrictions on derivatives trading
• blocking certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations
• cuts in the budgets of the EPA and the US tax agency
• increases in the budget for Wall Street regulation agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission...

Looking at the underlined sections, I am quite sure that the increased risks of weakening Dodd-Frank will not be mitigated in any significant manner by the increases in the budgets of Wall Street regulatory agencies.

The bill allows for banks to make risky loans with funds that are tax-payer insured.

This means that the chances for another future bail-out has just increased significantly.

If you recall, in 2008 none of the Wall Street regulatory agencies could do anything effectively to stave off the financial crisis.
And the same thing will be true in... say, 2017... to use my favorite "black hole" year as the example.

Since this is a modest example of what is in store when the new Congress begins next year.....
make your own prognosis.

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Kabbalah Overpass

Photo: Daryldarko
https://www.flickr.com/photos/daryldarko/

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Disgust On All Sides

From The American Conservative:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/torturing-god-out-of-jihadis/
Torturing God Out of Jihadis
By Rod Dreher
December 11, 2014, 12:39 PM

Michael Peppard pulls something particularly horrifying out of the Senate torture report:

The Senate committee was supposed to believe that a cruelly tortured man had thanked his torturer for breaking his religious faith. It goes without saying that the Senate committee found, after scrutinizing over 6 million pages of documents, “no CIA records to support this testimony” (487 n. 2646).

During the same hearing, Sen. Nelson asked about Hayden’s plans, if he suspected al-Qa’ida was training people to resist such techniques. His answer is chilling.

DIRECTOR HAYDEN: “You recall the policy on which this is based, that we’re going to give him a burden that Allah says is too great for you to bear, so they can put the burden down.” (487)

The new report does not describe the many techniques of religiously-themed abuse that I compiled from ex-detainee memoirs and interviews in 2007-08, nor does it extend our knowledge from the 2009 report, which admitted techniques such as forced prostration before an idol shrine to generate “religious disgrace.”

But what Hayden’s comments do show is that using religion as a weapon in prolonged psychological warfare was an actual “policy” – not a result of agents gone rogue.

The goal was to create a burden so great that a person’s religious faith would be destroyed. Nothing could be further from our country’s founding principle.

Peppard, who teaches at Fordham, has been studying how the US used religious abuse as a weapon against Muslim detainees. See here:

(Peppard quote:)

"This is truly unspeakable. I do not believe that the Islamic religion is true, and I have no problem with sending people who wish to make war on us in the name of Allah straight to Hell on the battlefield. They want to be martyrs in battle, fine, let’s give them what they want.

"But to take a captured prisoner, even one we can reasonably be certain has done evil things from religious motivation, and compel him to desecrate his religion, is to my Christian mind one of the most evil things that one human being can do to another. That the history of the Church shows Muslims have done this to Christians again and again and again does not make it right. It is always and everywhere a manifestation of utter barbarism. Again, consider the experience of Fr. George Calciu, a prisoner in the communist Pitesti prison camp in Romania:

They took very distinct steps. The first step was to destroy the personality of the youth. For example, the guards would come, together with a group of young prisoners who had converted to Communism, into a cell where there were perhaps twenty young students, and would try to intimidate them. They would beat them without mercy. They could even kill somebody. Generally, they would kill one of them – the one who opposed them the most; the most important one. Generally, he was a leader. They would beat him and even kill him. Thus, the terror began... "

The Terror began in the 20th Century and is building.

The government of our country has lost any sense of morality, and has sold its soul to Power and Mammon. Many of the people have, too. We are becoming the enemy, little by little, and sometimes by large leaps.

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photo: Islamoyankee

The Revolt Of The Parking Lots 2014: Kudzu Comes Of Age

Within a small fracture in the macadam covered parking lot, small plants gestated and began to grow. They owed their lives to the protection given to them by the shelter of the randomized cracking of the asphalt lots and to the heat sink of the dark, black, sun-absorbing tar.

They joined the parking lots in their attack against the Urban.

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photo: architecturalafterlife.com

Let Them Eat Cake!

 House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

Or,as I believe is more historically correct, let them eat brioche is closer to what Marie Antoinette actually spoke before the deluge" "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche."

http://news.yahoo.com/policy-snags-hold-1-1-trillion-spending-bill-080608675--finance.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Time running short, Republicans and Democrats agreed Tuesday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and delay a politically-charged struggle over President Barack Obama's new immigration policy until the new year.
In an unexpected move, lawmakers also agreed on legislation expected to be incorporated into the spending measure that will permit a reduction in benefits for current retirees at economically distressed multiemployer pension plans. Supporters said it was part of an effort to prevent a slow-motion collapse of a system that provides retirement income to millions, but critics objected vehemently.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the bill...

These pensions have been sending out alarms for over 20 years.

This is how the present generation of politicians handles these problems: break the promises, break the retirees backs, break any vestige of honesty and honor.

We are living in times where our "rulers" are aggressively stupid and craven. Our leaders cannot analyze and fix; they can only make unreal promises, and then make us all walk a short plank.
After a generation of death and despair, the sun will come up again, and history will forget us.


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The High End Dimes Weigh In

When I drive to the county campus to get flu shots and go to the farmers' market, we drive through Pontiac, Michigan. I usually circle on MLK Blvd. and get off at Telegraph Road. If We are going further west, I complete the semi-circle on MLK Blvd and get off on Cesar Chavez Road.

In Pontiac, Michigan, there is a group of young ladies known as The High End Dimes, and they had a take on grand juries and the killing of young men that was extremely brief and incisive, and sort of shocked me by its power; it recalled past eras, past wars, and summed up a weaponized society better than I ever could wish to.

When I said hello, they said, speaking of the nation as a whole:

"Welcome to 'Nam."

So I had a funny look, wondering why they were referring to my Vietnam era.

Then they said:

"Welcome to Kill-A-N*****-Nam!"

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A Great Nebesh Happened There

My mind is spinning like a dreidel...

When I wrote the post yesterday about Chanute, Kansas, and the municipal endeavor creating their own broadband system, I titled it:

Chanute, Kansas ! Huzzah ! 

Now every time I see it fly by me as I edit, I wonder

(1) is it Hannukah yet?  (I pronounce the word with a hard "ch" sound as in the Scottish "loch", and that is usually transliterated as Channukah)  so it's the "Chan-" in "Chanute" that misleads me.

and

(2) I think of Eddie Cantor singing "That Old Sultan's Harem".
"Cantor" in Hebrew is Chazzan  (sometimes chazzin), and it is the "ch" and the "-zz-" in "huzzah" that beguile.

As an aside, the letters of the dreidel spinning toy are Nun, Gimmel, Hey, and Shin - n,g,h,sh - and their symbolism is as follows:

sh = sham = "there"

h = haya = "happened"

g = gadol = "large, great"

n = nebesh = nebesh 

and there is some doggerel like "nebesh gadol haya sham", or an approximation to the title.
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Fire At The Hand In Hand

(Mirvat, a second grade school girl, practises her Oud at the Hand in Hand Arab Jewish bilingual school in Jerusalem December 3, 2014. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

Like school arsonists, Netanyahu rejects Arab-Jewish coexistence
By Mairav Zonszein
|Published December 1, 2014

The prime minister’s reaction — or lack thereof — to the arson attack against Jerusalem’s bilingual school reflects what can only be understood as contempt for Palestinian-Israeli partnership.

The arsonists who set fire to the Arab-Jewish bilingual school in Jerusalem Saturday night decided to pile up the first graders’ books and burn them in the middle of the classroom. Jews burned books. Belonging to six years olds. In Israel’s capital.

All Israeli citizens should feel they were targeted. A premeditated, intentional act aimed at instilling horror and fear into a small minority of Palestinians and Israelis whose only crime is an attempt at living in partnership and equality. An act of terror. It is reflective of nothing less than a national crisis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not see fit to issue a special statement, nor did he find it necessary to visit the school. He sufficed with this condemnation at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday:

We are making great efforts to restore calm and tranquility to Jerusalem. Of course, we will not tolerate attacks from any quarter and we will not tolerate setting fire to a bilingual school as we saw last night. We condemn any such attempt and we will act as vigorously – and with as much unity – as possible to restore quiet and law and order in all parts of the city.

He couched his statement in the larger context of unrest in Jerusalem. Netanyahu does not see the burning of schoolchildren’s books and a first-grade classroom as a stand-alone incident worthy of independent mention. It is on the same level as Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers who control their movement from behind shields and walls and armored vehicles. Jewish citizens in the Jewish state burned Jewish books. He can’t blame this one on Mahmoud Abbas – so I guess he has nothing to say.

Ms. Zonszein's article left out details supplied by Reuters:

...One of its classrooms was set ablaze, books were burnt and graffiti reading “Death to Arabs” was sprayed on a wall.

This is not a mere burning of a few textbooks; this is a part of our return to the darkness we thought we had escaped from in World War II.
This is Brennungsnacht 2014 - (Book) Burning Night  2014.

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Life Imitates Art

 The Griffins of Family Guy

And the Art that is pertinent to this post is that section of The Arts known as "Family Guy".

As you may - or may not - know, Peter Griffin and Lois Pewterschmidt Griffin of "Family Guy" are devotees of the band KISS. There is an episode wherein they take off to attend a latter-day KISS Koncert, leaving the kids and Brian (the dog) to their own devises....

(Yes; devises, not devices. I use the word in the sense that Peter and Lois have bequeathed to Brian, Meg, Stewie, and the fat boy the house to maintain and to keep under control during their absence at the koncert.)

She-who-must-be-obeyed has some family members who have recently done a Kiss Kruse on board some hulking ocean liner. There was a series of escapades very much like those of the cartoon series, except that the Time Machine on the real-life cruise (aka kruse) was not functional for most of the trip.

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Whew! Dodged That Bullet !

 Dillon Hall, Assumption College, Windsor, Ontario

I like all kinds of blogs.
I came across one that is moribund (i.e., has not been updated for approximately a year or more), and it had this chilling look into surveillance:

Random Laundry
http://randomlaundry.blogspot.ca/2011/07/hot-time-summer-in-city.html

Hot time, summer in the city

Blog! Hello! How are we today?
Since last we've spoken written, many things have happened, indeed.

1) I have been dating a wonderful man for two months (as of tomorrow, if we must be all official about it). Long-distance as we are, we're making it work. TGFS = Thank God for Skype!

It gives me chills to think of Skype back in the day I was dating three girls at once at Assumption College in Canada. Very frightening.

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Chanute, Kansas ! Huzzah !

Have you recently tried to get a big tele-comm company do something simple, like install new service for your aged mother?

Can you believe (1) how long it takes on the phone, and (2) the fact that there is at least an 80% chance they will get the order wrong.... twice, not just once.
When you get something to read, can you believe how "disinformative" it is?

To me, this is all the result of the basic fact that the fruits of technology are being monopolized more and more by the elite citizenry (thanks to the US Supreme Court) of corporate entities, and less and less is being passed on to the rest of us.

I mean, one of the so-called benefits the working shlimazel was the miracle of multi-tasking.
Are you kidding?! To be able to do 3 things at once - all poorly - is a benefit?
For whom could such a thing be beneficial? It could only be beneficial to a company which already does not care how sloppily they operate, and which already provides crap to the consumer.

Read the following:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/?tag=chanute

AT&T's Regulatory Hypocrisy On Proud Display In Kansas, Where It's Fighting To Keep The State A Broadband Backwater
Broadband
by Karl Bode
Thu, Dec 4th 2014

Like any giant, pampered duopoly, ATandT claims to loathe regulation when it has even the remotest potential to hamstring anti-competitive behavior (like Title II on the net neutrality front), but is perfectly fine with it when it protects the company's long-standing stranglehold on the United States broadband market. One of many glaring illustrations of this is in Kansas, where the company recently wrote but failed to pass SB 304, which, like nearly two dozen similar laws around the country, would prohibit towns and cities from wiring themselves for broadband -- even in cases where nobody else will. From the bill:

"Sec. 4. Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly offer or provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers."

Like many of these bills, if you then look closer at the bill's definition of "unserved," you'll find it includes very expensive and capped satellite and wireless broadband, making it incredibly hard to gain approval:

"Unserved area” means one or more contiguous census blocks within the legal boundaries of a municipality seeking to provide the unserved area with video, telecommunications or broadband service, where at least nine out of 10 households lack access to facilities-based, terrestrial broadband service, either fixed or mobile, or satellite broadband service, at the minimum broadband transmission speed as defined by the FCC."

Facing an immensely uncompetitive duopoly between ATandT and former Washington Post run CableOne, the city of Chanute, Kansas has been looking to build a citywide fiber network capable of offering 1 Gbps speeds at around $40 per month. After defeating ATandT's attempt to pass new regulations hamstringing the project, Chanute now finds themselves face to face with a 1947 ma-bell era law that requires companies get permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to sell bonds to fund such telecom projects. With the KCC likely to approve the request, ATandT lawyers have jumped in to intervene, according to the Wichita Eagle:

"Any decision made by the KCC could impact ATandT’s business operations in the area, which is why we asked to intervene in the proceeding," the company said in a written response to questions from The Eagle. “ATandT remains interested in both broadband issues and the work of the KCC."

As I've noted previously, ATandT's also in the process of going state by state paying asking state lawmakers to gut any and all remaining consumer protections (like laws requiring they continue offering 911 to the elderly) so it can back away from aging DSL markets it doesn't want to upgrade. In Kansas specifically, ATandT has promised locals they'll be awash in all manner of miracle broadband improvements, if only they eliminate the Kansas Corporation Commission’s consumer protection regulations and minimum quality-of-service standards. Well, at least the ones that apply to ATandT.

Again, just so we're clear, this is the same company that insists that absolutely any regulatory effort to protect consumers from duopoly power is the very worst sort of government over-reach, but has absolutely no qualms about using government over-reach and regulation to make sure broadband prices remain high and service quality continues to suck.

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Ben Carson "Supports" Me: 2016

Actually, a Dr. Carson bumper sticker supports my coffee cup when I visit my mother. She asked me once if I wanted it, and I said that, thanks, I could use a coaster right then, and I've used it ever since.

So, Dr. Carson compared the USA to Nazi Germany once, and he doubled down recently. Wolf Blitzer asked him if he was serious in his parallel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/03/ben-carson-to-wolf-blitzer-i-stand-by-my-nazi-germany-u-s-comments/

“But to make the comparison, Dr. Carson, to Nazi Germany, the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis, the devastation that erupted in Europe and around the world, to the United States of America,” said Blitzer. “I want you to reflect on what that potentially means.”

Complying with Blitzer’s polite request, Carson explained: “Again, you are just focusing on the words ‘Nazi Germany’ and completely missing the point … and that’s the problem right now. That’s what PCism is all about. You may not say this word, regardless of what your point is. Because if you say that word, I go into a tizzy. We can do better than that.
When I was a child, and when you were a child, they used to say, ‘Sticks and stones break my bones, words will never hurt me.’ What ever happened to that? We need to get to the point where we can look beyond the word and look for the meaning.”

I could have been sure that Blitzer was trying to explicate the meaning of "Nazi Germany" when he spoke of the slaughter of 6 million and World War II. Apparently Dr. Carson has his own, private meaning in his own, private language.

Calling somebody "Hitler" is a bit like "Sticks and stones..."
However, from this I gather that Dr. Carson is saying that calling somebody or something "Nazi Germany" is a bit like pulling pigtails and having an food fight, and the real meaning is not in the words Dr. Carson is using, but somewhere else... but it unfortunately has not left a forwarding address.

We should ask Bill O'Reilly whether Dr. Carson is smart enough to know what he is talking about.


He still does a good jump protecting tables from coffee cups.

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A Hymn

a reprint from 2009.
I came across it, and had totally forgotten it, and it charmed me.

When lilies of the field are pressed between the good book's pages, in sweet Lord Jesus' raiment dressed, their seeds endure for ages!
refrain  
God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace.

The wheat upon the open plain, stretch forth their heads to pray; costume themselves in diamond rain, and their winnow fan array.  
refrain
God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace. 

Currents of the His saving waters, sweep in the ebb and flow; they bring a saving grace to me, and to the flowers to grow.  
refrain
God's seed endures forever, blown on the wind of grace; it will always bloom again and grow to His embrace.

See me at the harvest,
see me at the bee;
lay me up in in bundled straw
yearning to be free!
And when the harvest's over,
and no more stalks to scythe,
buy some time with lemonade,
and we shall be alive!

------ This was written in tribute to Fanny Crosby.
Her hymns are much better than this crude attempt, but she was a better religious person than me, too.
The form is odd; at the end it jumps into a new meter...everything. I thought it a fault, but it is a metaphor for the time when everything will change.
At the end "buy some time with lemonade..." may seem incongruous, to you as well to me, but it just was a picture of those who had passed were sheaves of wheat, cut down and laid up, in a barn or in the fields, where they wait - in barns where the late afternoon sun experiments with cracks and breaks in the carbolineum wall boards, and lights the dusty interior -

and the harvesters take a lemonade break...

and by the time they wipe their lips dry, we shall have been re-born.

Obviously, I require a songwriter to go with these lyrics.

--

Peter Pan

The Real Hook - Cyril Ritchard

We watched Peter Pan last night on NBC.

It was live, and it was a re-make of the old ones we saw in black and white.

Review:

Well.... who the heck decided to cast Christopher Walken in the role of Hook so admirably done originally by Cyril Ritchard ?! (pronounced Ri-shard' )

Mr. Walken had no expression. It was as if in addition to a hook for a left hand, he had suffered from an attack of botox... and the Botox-monster had followed him ever since, seeking to inject the rest of him.

Apart from that big flaw, it was good.

I was surprised that after all these years, the sound quality was little different from the old days, the live broadcast picking up the characteristic background roar of real-time TV productions.
The Audio had an unmistakable hint of the kinescope about it.

On the other hand, the quality of the video had increased so greatly that it was almost impossible to obscure the flying lines attached to the actors.

Ms. Williams was wonderful.

--
note
Christopher Hewett of TV's Mr. Belvedere also played Hook on the stage.
My daughter was present once in the 4th row when she was 5 or so. Captain Hook was blustering on about how he would kill Pan.
My daughter bolted out of her chair and shouted, "Oh, no you won't!"
Mr. Hewett stopped and turned to face her and leered, "Oh, yes I will !"

--

My Commentator

She-who-must-be-obeyed is listening to Morning Joe, and there is a gold-plated (silver-spooned?) panel of learned heads wagging about the Staten Island grand jury.
This is the correct place to insert "Blah, blah, blah."
Most of the recent slide into Police State / Weapon State / Guantanamo State Violence slipped by those heads.

Personally, I get more listening to Chris Rock.

Here is an example of the Learned Commentators in our society:

Salon
Chris Rock’s lesson for Ross Douthat: Why the right is so deluded about Ferguson
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/02/chris_rocks_lesson_for_ross_douthat_why_the_right_is_so_deluded_about_ferguson/

Ross Douthat [is]  the New York Times’ supposedly reform-minded right-wing columnist... His most recent piece...  is a bravura display of how not to think about the politics of race.

...  “Last summer,” Douthat writes, “around the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, I wrote a column making — gingerly — a case for optimism about race and politics in America.”  From today’s perspective, he concedes, the column doesn’t look great. Watching as Ferguson “seethed and smoldered,” Douthat writes, forced him to make “a case for greater pessimism.”...

There is much more in the article, but I am only interested in the appalling fact that so-called opinion-makers are very much out of touch with the facts of the society upon which they comment.

From behind me, She-who-must-etc. says that another black child was shot last night.

Well, these things were not reported before.

No one commented.

Chris Rock commented and is aware of what is going on.

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The "Don't Shoot" Greeting

 Old Style Victory Greeting

The "Don't Shoot" greeting has actually been around for quite a long time, and pre-dates Michael Brown's passing. In the photo above, we see US President Franklin D. Roosevelt using the old-timey "V for Victory", which in time morphed into a V for  "Peace" in the Vietnam Era.

These greetings expressed positive desires for the actualization of positive goals: victory and peace.

The "Don't Shoot" greeting is more apotropaic in nature, designed to good-naturedly turn away a bad event; i.e., getting fatally shot while standing in the street in the downtown of a highly weaponized society.
There is, however, a small component there which suggests the good outcomes of - if not long life - at least continued life.

Witness its use by these important figures;

The Dalai Lama has a truncated version:

Pope Paul The Sixth displayed it frequently back in the 1960s and the 70s:

Pope Benedict followed that tradition:

So also did Karl Rove:

Vladimir Putin of Russia followed suit:

independently adding his own variant:

Prime Minister Modi of India:

and Pope Francis:

We have it from good sources that the European form is often a "Don't Shoot" followed by another symbolic greeting: a "You Betcha!":

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The New Peace Sign

I did my first general, everyday, silent à la St. Louis Rams  "Don't Shoot"  greeting, and it was accepted with pleasure, and a measured "Hands Up" response was returned on its own.

It is much easier  - and feels much better, too - than pretending I am in a choke hold and being suffocated.

--

World War R

 

World War Z or the Fall Of Saigon...

I saw the film World War Z.
It was so bad that I forgot what it was all about, and had to read a review to remind myself.

I do not think I have ever seen a duller film, unless it was the film about ice rink zambonis going rogue,  which was produced in Canada and titled World War Zed.

I see no reason to add my knocks to the already huge knock pile of complaints against Pitt enterprises.
However, the other morning I recalled that I said that Zombie films and Vampire stories are a "Diseased Resurrection" Myth, that our society and times has created for God-alone knows what horrid reasons are hid in our breasts.

Resurrection is the end of entropy.

Resurrection denies the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

There's a symbolic mythos for ya! World War R!


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O really, O'Reilly?

Bill O'Reilly is a slow thinker. I mean the electrons move slowly, about 40 miles per hour versus the regular pace for electro-magnetic phenomena. I think that is why he says such odd things at times.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2858586/Bill-O-Reilly-slammed-fellow-Fox-News-contributor-claiming-St-Louis-Rams-players-staged-Ferguson-protest-aren-t-smart-know-doing.html

Bill O'Reilly has remained a controversial voice in the aftermath of a grand jury deciding not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, but on Monday the anchor went so far he even manged to alienate a fellow Fox News contributor.

Remarking on a group of St. Louis Rams players who adopted a 'hands up, don’t shoot' stance in a show of solidarity for Ferguson protesters prior to Sunday's game, O'Reilly said on The O'Reilly Factor; 'Quite frankly, I don’t think they’re smart enough to know what they’re doing.'

He then added again, 'I absolutely don’t think they’re smart enough to know what they’re doing.'

The militarized police forces - even more, our entirely weaponized society which took off into the far corners of extreme paranoia after 9/11 - has bothered me for a long time, and we hopefully are beginning to see the pendulum slowly begin a counter-movement.

I don't know exactly what Mr. O'Reilly meant when he said that the black players were not smart enough to know what they were doing. I really cannot guess. Since there is a possibility of racially charged interpretations, Mr. O'Reilly is finding it hard himself to determine exactly what he knew what he was doing.

Personally, I think the hands-up and don't-shoot symbol should become widely spread throughout the country until the people recover their rights from the law enforcement lobby and the Patriot Act is revoked.

Problems With Telephones

They "draw" calls.

There is no such thing in the recent past as a single call taking place at a leisurely pace upon a telephone or cell phone or Smart phone; the probability that one will hear a click or gnash or eructation from the bowels of the telephonic device, indicating that yet some other person wants to waste your time in ceaseless palaver, is 100%.
It is uncanny.


Calls are drawn to telephones as moths to the flame.

--

Citizens United

Modern day Terminator!
Hawking fears A.I.
The Imperial Memorial of 1958 -
when Sarah Connor was born -
spoke of the need for virtue confronted
by non-humans riding motorcycles...
and nude-crashing into biker bars!
and the right to voice your opinion
in a letter with a 3 cent stamp!
Ha! 
3 cents ignores the human costs involved;
Ha!
the corporate voice:
a CONELRAD siren;
pierces the silent holy night,
and grabs and pulls at
Christina's human legs!
desperate for home!

12 Things Successful People Do Before Breakfast

I saw this article, paused a moment, then decided not to read it.
https://trove.com/me/content/W7PO6?chid=175147&_p=trending&utm_source=wp&utm_medium=Widgets&utm_campaign=wpsrTrendingExternal-1-opt

The picture above accompanied the article. I thought it nice that so many such articles about successful guys and dolls had pix of runner-types.
I run in the mornings, and have for over 45 years.
Of course, I am of the generation that was of the opinion that if a media event had anything to do with "running" or "sweating" attached to it, it bestowed Dickensian names upon them, like The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner.
This made it abundantly clear that running had something of the unruly street urchin, pickpocket, cut-purse, rabbit-stealer, or the riff-raff that impersonated Chelsea pensioners about it.
(It is only in the recent past that we see Zen running and Yoga Jogging.)

I did read the titles for the 12 sections; I just skipped the explanatory gab.
For example, if the title of section 4 is Do Their Daily Exercise Before Breakfast, I'm sort of sure I don't have to red much more about it.
Now, if the author, in an attempt to be waggish, had titled the section using out-of-date euphemisms, such as Do Their Daily Dozen Before Breakfast, I probably would have peeked at the body of the section to determine what "dozen" things we were talking about.

I glanced at the titles.
I saw that I did most of those very same things, except for (1) writing down things I'm thankful for, and (2) check my emails.  I tried writing down things I'm thankful for once, but I did not need the list short term, and I found that long term when I went back to read the list of the great miracles of my life, I had no idea what I had been writing about!
I don't "do" emails because (a) nobody emails me, and (b) I have a thing about telephones, and that includes the very intrusive iPhone, which to me is little more than a futuristic tracking device (may as well tattoo a bar code on my cranium!),  a cause for alarm when it rings while I'm in the car and I can not extricate it from my pants pocket without guiding my auto into a concrete barrier.

Hence, today I learned that the traits of successful people are not the necessary nor sufficient causes of success, but merely accoutrements... like designer porte-manteaux or club bags or valises which attendants carry alongside successful celebrities as they march into the spa or club or salon.

--

A Surprise!

 Gates Of Dawn

I wrote the post   The Dream Factory: The Tidal Wave   on the morning of Sunday, January 27, 2013
and I never went back to it to remark that it was that very night at about 7:30 PM that my father died.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-dream-factory-tidal-wave.html

That afternoon I read the entire chapter Piper At The Gates Of Dawn from The Wind In The Willows to him. His sister used to read it to him years ago, and it was his favorite. I thought perhaps to break and continue the next day, but something beyond conceptual nagged at me to finish.
I finished about 6:15 PM.

I forgot the tidal wave I had seen the night before.

--

Facebook Flaps

Ms. Lauten, the Republican aide who made nasty comments about the Obama kids, has lost her job.

... Sean Spicer, communications director for the Republican National Committee, tweeted Monday that “children, especially the first daughters, are off limits.”\

But while Lauten’s comments were “inappropriate and insensitive, the mainstream media’s coverage of this story is appalling,” Spicer said, adding that in more than 20 years in politics, he has “never seen one of the countless inappropriate comments by Democrats ever covered to a fraction of this” remark by a previously unknown staffer.

It's just politics, Mr. Spicer. Try and keep your make-nice words separated from the politics. I mean, it's not like the rest of us were born last night, is it?

--

Removing Assad

Remember that we gave our blessing and backing to the removal of Ghaddafi from Libya, and Libya of today is a failed country looking for a parking spot to seat their national congress.

--
note
12/04/2014
The US acknowledged that ISIS has training camps in Libya.

The Still Small Voice Of Miniature Roars!

... and thereby equals or surpasses the grand opera of Walt Whitman! Does it not?

The original quote was about Emily Dickinson, whose lapidary poetry reminds me of complex minatures, certainly. And Memory itself : what is it, but a smaller rendition of reality?

Now I have found a wonderful blog.
It deals with miniature trams.

I feel like a panopticon Homer who has stumbled into a minute panoramic workshop of Hephaestus, where gilded maidens no larger than Mycenaean fibula pins move, and small tripod-footed amphorae smoke like steam.....

Victoria_Street
http://glennofootscray.blogspot.com/

--

My Immigration Policy

First, the Boomer Generation:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/2/arizonaa-s-grayingfrontieroffersglimpseofuschallengesahead.html

... As of October this year, there has been an eightfold increase in the number of people on the waiting list for adult day health care and respite services like home-delivered meals and help with bathing and laundry — totaling 2,345 for Arizona and 425 in the tri-county area bordering California that includes La Paz County. The elder care crisis in far western Arizona is significant, professionals believe, since it may hold some clues to the demographic challenges faced by the United States as a whole in coming years as millions of members of the baby boom generation reach 65 at a rate of about 10,000 a day...

That's 10,000 a day, and some will leave the workforce and retire and start receiving Social Security benefits.

If we define the range of working age adult as 15+ to 64 (after Krugman), we are loosing an enormous number of workers and experience and savvy, and are increasing the burdens on benefits like Social Security and Medicare.


Second, my immigration policy would be to ensure that at least 2,000 - at least! - potential members of the workforce enter into the country per day during this same period, or - preferably - somewhat before the flood of retirees.

There will be FICA payments to continue funding Social Security, Labor will not become exceedingly scarce and thus skyrocket in cost (hopefully we get beyond our present phase of letting wages stagnate). There will be political effects, but where people are alive and vibrant, there is always politics.
It is only when there is no pie to slice that people cease to argue about how to divide it up.

--

Apologies Misfired

There is the right way and the wrong way to gad about those Dantean circles of hell. There is not just one way; there are many, and the modes of penitence are dependent upon the sin committed.

For example, recently we posted about a situation:

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-baleful-trinity-of-power-alcohol.html


US lawmaker's aide draws ire over first daughter scolding
https://news.yahoo.com/us-lawmakers-aide-draws-ire-over-first-daughter-030751995.html

Washington (AFP) - A US lawmaker's communications director was facing social media calls she be sacked after her Facebook rant about President Barack Obama's daughters prompted widespread anger.

Elizabeth Lauten, spokeswoman for Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, wrote a scathing post to her Facebook account scolding Malia and Sasha Obama, 16 and 13, for looking bored while attending a public event with their father on Wednesday...

and this ended with an extensive Mea Maxima Culpa:

Ms. Lauten goes on:

In her apology, Ms Lauten wrote: "After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words online I can see more clearly just how hurtful my words were."

Substance abuse and violent acts usually require hours of prayer.

It usually only takes about 20 seconds for the realization that one has been very over-the-top in a nasty way. And remorse gallops in at around 22 seconds after the rant.

The rant was bitchy and the apology was ridiculous.

--

Dion O'Banion's Credit Card Company

Apparently, the cost of real security on the Internet or in commercial networks - like the cost of so many other things: the cost of remaining Ebola free, the cost trying to reduce CO2 levels, etc. - is just too much to be serious about.

So we will play catch up, and "make-do in the meanwhile".

I have signed on with a credit card company - Dion O'Banion's Credit - that has taken a hint from protection rackets for the neighborhood store owners of early 20th century Chicago, and which makes it their strategy to accept  "protection"  money to defend their card-holders from prominent (yet faceless!) groups of hackers and techno-thugs. 
They hack the hack, in other words.
Dion's takes interest and some extra vig (a cut, a take) for protection, and makes our lives here much easier, since our militarized police only deal with insurrection-scale problems.

And - just guessing at the near future - when Net Neutrality is scuttled and destroyed, Dinny O'Banion's will be ready with its groups of hackers to provide illegal internet access and speed to fight against the coming Prohibition...

providing urban Internet Speakeasies instead of the present Internet Cafes, making "bathtub" broadband, or being broadband-runners sneaking access from Rogers in Canada into the States...

 "What's The Password? ...  And Yer User ID?

And Yer Momma's Maiden Name?...  "

--
photo:  http://www.deadoralive.net/obanion/intro.html

First They Shot...

When They have shot all the black men, women, and children that they need to in order to fulfill Their visions of violence...

then They will come for us; They will come with Their automatic weapons and Their armored attack vehicles.

We have written the script for society, and They are but our actors, whom we applaud all the while we are enraged, for is not Murder now considered as one of the Fine Arts?

--