I don't want to be that guy that is always contradicting everything, but there are so many topics and opinions flying around (conflicted, multi-layered issues that require some actual thought) that are receiving little in the way of civil debate/discourse. Some people understand what's going on (even with differing takes on the issues in question), but I don't think we get to hear from most of them. They're not on the big news payroll. We all need to take a deep breath and pull back a little bit. Let's listen to reasonable people. That doesn't mean they have to moderate or non-partisan or without a position, just reasonable... willing to rise above the political fray, if only for a moment and if only slightly.
Both quick reads.
A REASONABLE business perspective on the Washington flogging of Goldman-Sachs
A REASONABLE liberal perspective on the Arizona Immigration Law
So long as each side goes for the jugular by ratcheting up their opponent's position to the unlikely extreme, we'll get no where. If we work by that notion, the debates between the Fascist-Nazi-Rebuplicrats vs the Communist-Nazi-Demoplicans will yield nothing but (somehow) more outrageous and unproductive rhetoric. Fine, each side has an agenda and the extreme positions play a role... but they can not play a central role. It's time to grow up, behave like adults and get some shit done.
Pardonez moi pour "la merde," s'il vous plait.
Also, please pardon my poor French.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Happy Earthday To You
A perspective on green that I liked... (reading required)
SHOPPING!
Set your hypocrisy beams on stun so we can all get through this.
Much of the following I am guilty of, complicit in or tend to facilitate with extreme prejudice. It doesn't mean I don't have a differing opinion from my actions. Let the bloodletting begin.
Reduce reuse recycle.
easy as 1-2-3, or is it 3-2-1.
We create so much trash. So much recyclable trash, even. Recycle! Great! We recycle the 4 quadrillion plastic bottles of water we consume each year. That we created them in the first place is waste, pure and simple. Reuse? Well some clever artistes make sculptural chandeliers out of the used bottles. That is a drop in the bucket, or bottle, and it is useless as well, though may have some value for social significance, so long as it is lit up by a compact fluorescent bulb powered by a wind turbine, solar array or Ed Begley pedaling a generator bicycle. Reduce! Reduce? Not a viable option. Nothing can change the fact (fact in this case meaning my passionate opinion) that something that should not be produced was still made and used... or to clarify, we do not need all this bottled water, Haitians, Rwandans and Darfurians do. But that is beside the point, for now. There is a company in New York City that bottles local tap water and sells it locally at a profit. Now, this more sustainable but not realllly sustainable. Return to the average bottled water company. That's a factory making the bottles, people and machines filling them with water, planes, trains and trucks transporting them to our favorite Wal-mart store so we can by a case for $5. And then we dutifully recycle the empties (which makes it all ok). All of which requires fuel to transport the empties and energy to process and clean them to turn them into the next generation of ridiculous products for us to buy. Wasteful from the word go. The upside? Jobs and industry. 10 years ago, bottled water was a $35 billion industry, (due to a limited research budget at McBlogland Enterprises, current market numbers are unavailable). What is most disturbing is that the US is not leading the world in consumption of bottled water, rather, Western Europe has us by about 4 times. We can do better! I would assume we pump much of our drink buying dollars in sports drinks and sodas, which is fodder for another day. I guess Europe drinks in fear of their bad tap water and plagues and such. Back on topic.
We make a lot of unnecessary stuff. We are in a rough economic time. It is pretty messed up, the engine of the economy is stalled, but we are still producing and consuming garbage. Bottled water... garbage. A new cell phone every 18 months... garbage. The ipad... garbage. The answer isn't recycling and taking 3 minute showers and buying clothes from thrift stores or hippies that make everything out of hemp, it's wayyyyy bigger than that. And until the global community gets a sense of that (you know, thinking exactly like me), we'll find ourselves climbing out of this economic abyss on the back of novelty ice cube trays and baby on board signs. I firmly believe that we already make enough stuff to satisfy the world, it just isn't getting to the right places. I'm not arguing for a redistribution of wealth, just a redistribution of stuff. Ever see the show about hoarders in the US, people living with piles upon piles of stuff in their homes? Granted, there is a psychological element here... but America makes for a perfect setting. Ever see the episode of the family in Kazakhstan with so much stuff they couldn't walk through their yurt? That's what I thought.
Happy Earthday!
End of diatribinous outburst.
SHOPPING!
Set your hypocrisy beams on stun so we can all get through this.
Much of the following I am guilty of, complicit in or tend to facilitate with extreme prejudice. It doesn't mean I don't have a differing opinion from my actions. Let the bloodletting begin.
Reduce reuse recycle.
easy as 1-2-3, or is it 3-2-1.
We create so much trash. So much recyclable trash, even. Recycle! Great! We recycle the 4 quadrillion plastic bottles of water we consume each year. That we created them in the first place is waste, pure and simple. Reuse? Well some clever artistes make sculptural chandeliers out of the used bottles. That is a drop in the bucket, or bottle, and it is useless as well, though may have some value for social significance, so long as it is lit up by a compact fluorescent bulb powered by a wind turbine, solar array or Ed Begley pedaling a generator bicycle. Reduce! Reduce? Not a viable option. Nothing can change the fact (fact in this case meaning my passionate opinion) that something that should not be produced was still made and used... or to clarify, we do not need all this bottled water, Haitians, Rwandans and Darfurians do. But that is beside the point, for now. There is a company in New York City that bottles local tap water and sells it locally at a profit. Now, this more sustainable but not realllly sustainable. Return to the average bottled water company. That's a factory making the bottles, people and machines filling them with water, planes, trains and trucks transporting them to our favorite Wal-mart store so we can by a case for $5. And then we dutifully recycle the empties (which makes it all ok). All of which requires fuel to transport the empties and energy to process and clean them to turn them into the next generation of ridiculous products for us to buy. Wasteful from the word go. The upside? Jobs and industry. 10 years ago, bottled water was a $35 billion industry, (due to a limited research budget at McBlogland Enterprises, current market numbers are unavailable). What is most disturbing is that the US is not leading the world in consumption of bottled water, rather, Western Europe has us by about 4 times. We can do better! I would assume we pump much of our drink buying dollars in sports drinks and sodas, which is fodder for another day. I guess Europe drinks in fear of their bad tap water and plagues and such. Back on topic.
We make a lot of unnecessary stuff. We are in a rough economic time. It is pretty messed up, the engine of the economy is stalled, but we are still producing and consuming garbage. Bottled water... garbage. A new cell phone every 18 months... garbage. The ipad... garbage. The answer isn't recycling and taking 3 minute showers and buying clothes from thrift stores or hippies that make everything out of hemp, it's wayyyyy bigger than that. And until the global community gets a sense of that (you know, thinking exactly like me), we'll find ourselves climbing out of this economic abyss on the back of novelty ice cube trays and baby on board signs. I firmly believe that we already make enough stuff to satisfy the world, it just isn't getting to the right places. I'm not arguing for a redistribution of wealth, just a redistribution of stuff. Ever see the show about hoarders in the US, people living with piles upon piles of stuff in their homes? Granted, there is a psychological element here... but America makes for a perfect setting. Ever see the episode of the family in Kazakhstan with so much stuff they couldn't walk through their yurt? That's what I thought.
Happy Earthday!
End of diatribinous outburst.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Another side
Austan Goolsbee, chief economist on the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, has a slightly more optimistic take on the reform bill than Ratigan (see yesterday). Now, with full embedded video technology (so you need not click on a link, only click play)... I give you Goolsbeeeeee. Goolsbee comes on at about the midpoint, so you'll have to work through the background as framed by my dear friend Keith Olbermann unless you click forward to the four minute mark or so. Your choice.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Monday, April 19, 2010
They call me the streak
Two days, two posts. Impressive.
If anyone wants a decent perspective on the financial mess/shenanigans, I suggest you check out Dylan Ratigan's explanation. And his Goldman Sachs explanation is pretty good as well, though cluttered with morning show banter. Too often on the evening news or Today show such stories get 45 seconds and you don't know any more than you had prior to hearing the report. So before you go back to youtube to watch cat videos, give it a shot.
They are both video links, so no extra reading will be required. If I was reading this, with that information, I'd be at least 13% more likely to click on those links and check them out.
And make no mistake, I wouldn't normally suggest anyone listen to someone named Dylan, especially one who has a capacity for hot-headedness, but he is passionate about it and he makes sense. He's got his own angle, but makes his case well. Give a look, give a listen. I feel more informed in the last 20 minutes than I had in the course of the previous year.
If anyone wants a decent perspective on the financial mess/shenanigans, I suggest you check out Dylan Ratigan's explanation. And his Goldman Sachs explanation is pretty good as well, though cluttered with morning show banter. Too often on the evening news or Today show such stories get 45 seconds and you don't know any more than you had prior to hearing the report. So before you go back to youtube to watch cat videos, give it a shot.
They are both video links, so no extra reading will be required. If I was reading this, with that information, I'd be at least 13% more likely to click on those links and check them out.
And make no mistake, I wouldn't normally suggest anyone listen to someone named Dylan, especially one who has a capacity for hot-headedness, but he is passionate about it and he makes sense. He's got his own angle, but makes his case well. Give a look, give a listen. I feel more informed in the last 20 minutes than I had in the course of the previous year.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
April, mid to late... April
Having dogs is not like having kids.
I yelled out the window last week "Mickey! Stop eating that chair." If Mickey was my kid, this probably wouldn't have happened.
And, for fun, I roll Mickey on his back, grab his legs and spank him while he chews on a rubber bone. He loves it. If Mickey was my kid, I'd be in jail for this one.
There's also the caging of dogs that is nothing like the caging of children.
I've started up the farm again. Death and destruction is already upon us. I began some seeds indoors and got them going before plopping them in the ground. After one night in the ground, a mole had tunneled right underneath my plantings. Also, some speckled something has tainted the leaves on the plants that aren't already necrotic. I am not much of a plant grower. Perhaps I'll get lucky with a few this year, it has to help that I have planted in April instead of August. I added a bag of topsoil to my quite infertile growing medium, so I remain confident. Gonna be a bumper crop... of something.
The pine pollen that had yellowed the world a couple weeks ago has now disappeared making outdoor blogging a possibility. Surely this will kick up my posting frequency. It's blog or exercise. Or neither. But not both. Definitely not both.
So, we're all up to date. I see future blog posts about the banjo, hypocrites in politics and other important issues of the day. Whether you see those blog posts... that's another matter.
I yelled out the window last week "Mickey! Stop eating that chair." If Mickey was my kid, this probably wouldn't have happened.
And, for fun, I roll Mickey on his back, grab his legs and spank him while he chews on a rubber bone. He loves it. If Mickey was my kid, I'd be in jail for this one.
There's also the caging of dogs that is nothing like the caging of children.
I've started up the farm again. Death and destruction is already upon us. I began some seeds indoors and got them going before plopping them in the ground. After one night in the ground, a mole had tunneled right underneath my plantings. Also, some speckled something has tainted the leaves on the plants that aren't already necrotic. I am not much of a plant grower. Perhaps I'll get lucky with a few this year, it has to help that I have planted in April instead of August. I added a bag of topsoil to my quite infertile growing medium, so I remain confident. Gonna be a bumper crop... of something.
The pine pollen that had yellowed the world a couple weeks ago has now disappeared making outdoor blogging a possibility. Surely this will kick up my posting frequency. It's blog or exercise. Or neither. But not both. Definitely not both.
So, we're all up to date. I see future blog posts about the banjo, hypocrites in politics and other important issues of the day. Whether you see those blog posts... that's another matter.
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