Mowing on Monday

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Last week, this income inequality report failed to get the attention of our mainstream media.  In a nutshell, the gap between rich and poor widened again – this time reaching record levels unseen in almost a century.  Top wage earners - the so-called 1% - raked in 19.3% of all household income during 2012, surpassing the previous all-time record of 18.7% last set in 1927.  The remaining 99% earned a mere 1%.  Why is this report so damning – and shocking?  History has shown: Income inequality drives Depressions and Recessions and brings massive social unrest.  Not a word on the evening news, but we see it everyday in our communities.

Every other day of the week is fine, yeah

But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes

You can find me mowin’ all of the time.

For some reason, everyone in my neighborhood prefers to relax on Sunday and mow the lawn on Monday.  For obvious reasons, I prefer to mow my lawn with the sprinkler system running – no explanation necessary.  Why every Monday but not Tuesday, you ask?  Bizarre, I have to admit. Perhaps it just turns out that way.

Good lawnmowers make good neighbors.  We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood.  Witness this daily exchange every time neighbors meet at the mailbox:

“Good afternoon, Mr. Briggs. How are you today?”

“Mighty fine, Mr. Stratton. And yourself?”

Although everyone in my neighborhood mows the lawn on Monday, not everyone mows in quite the same way.   Here is the odd part: Some of us aim our lawnmowers in straight parallel lines, while others tend to meander, zigzag, or form contour circles around their homes. Why should Euclid matter as long as the grass is cut!  Folks of different strokes, notwithstanding, good lawnmowers make good neighbors. We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood.

Until a strange thing happened! Suddenly Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles won the right to be treated as legal persons.  Then they secured easements that granted them special access rights and privileges.

You would think homeowners in the neighborhood might find common ground to form a Monday grass cutting alliance.  Oh no!  The Lampposts, in league with the Manhole Covers, started a PR campaign that warned the homeowners on Magnolia Street to beware the residents of Hawthorn, who now regard the residents of Dogwood with suspicion and sneer at the residents on Elm, who scorn the residents on Elder.

In short order, Lampposts convinced the homeowners on Magnolia to love the neighborhood more than their neighbors who dwell on Hawthorn, Dogwood, Elm, or Elder – all of whom no longer look like, act like, or think like ‘real’ neighbors, they claim.

The Manhole Covers think of themselves as ‘Job Creators’ (although any job that has ever fallen into an Open Manhole quickly disappears – never to be seen again).

Utility Poles accuse lawnmowers of engaging in class warfare.  Cutting grass no longer levels the playing field, they insist; and the teachers, nurses, and other working folks living on Elm are oppressing the Lampposts and Manhole Covers, they claim.

Meanwhile, the Lampposts and Utility Poles say: “If the residents on Elder lose their healthcare or pension benefits, they should consider themselves ‘empowered.’

Legal but non-living persons now rule the neighborhood.  They never created a single job but reserve the right to trample on our bushes and shine flashlights at night through our bedroom windows.

Years ago when a Lamppost burned out, a service truck came to the neighborhood and replaced a bulb. This year, the Lampposts say: “Buy your own bulb and replace it yourself.”  Then they demand a bonus, a pay raise, and a tax cut.  Last year, their service truck morphed into a Jaguar.  This year, their Jaguar morphed into a Rolls Royce.

The situation has set neighbor against neighbor, and I am starting to think garden vegetables now speak on behalf of homeowners.  Today, you can hardly tell the difference between a Lamppost versus a real person anymore.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood has gone to pot.  Everywhere ... overgrown grass, weeds taller than Utility Poles, short sales and bank foreclosures, and neighbors no longer talking to neighbors.  If there is one lesson to be learned, forget the Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles.   Forget the polemics, stalking points, and dog whistles. Oh, how I yearn for the smell of fresh cut grass, E Pluribus Unum, and a friendly neighbor exchanging friendly greetings at the mailbox again.

Oh, Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee

That Monday evening you’d still be here with me.

Reminder:  Tomorrow is Tuesday, the day we bring our trash bins to the curb.

Remember the Raisin!

The people who like to manipulate us by creating and preserving anger like to give us slogans.  Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, Remember Pearl Harbor, Remember the Raisin! Never Forget!! 
 
All these things are inevitably forgotten despite the slogan advertising campaigns and sooner or later we'll get tired of remembering 9/11. Sloganeers will get tired of milking the faded fear and self-pity and choreographed mourning. The people who were born too late to remember it will eventually need to be told to remember something else that some party needs to cultivate anger about, so as to pass some kind of horror like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 or the Patriot Act.  9/11 will be forgotten by most everyone but historians and those who remember will remember it in context of the things we did and the laws we passed and the freedom we gave up while we were whipped into a passion.

Think calls to 'always remember'  are genuine and untainted by politics?  Wonder why we shouted Remember Hoover! in 1936 but nobody remembers to Remember Bush?  Remember Katrina and at least 1800 fatalities?  Why not?   We spent billions and billions on a the Largest government agency in history and abridged the Bill of Rights in 2001, but we didn't do a damned thing to improve reactions to natural disasters which you can be sure will occur more often than a repeat of 9/11.

I suspect that calls to remember are  calls to preserve a mental state in which we can be manipulated, tricked and sold some unsavory product. Stay angry, stay afraid and obey.

FOX: Bow down to my God or get out.

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

-George H.W. Bush-

Perhaps you're old enough to remember, as I certainly am, to remember when Dwight Eisenhower had his arm twisted by the Knights of Columbus into adding a mandatory affirmation of  individual and collective subordination of  national allegiance and legal obligation to religious belief.  It may have had something to do with the need to give the rabble some reason they could understand to make us seem like the good guys in the struggle against the Communists for world domination of the 1950's but it's really the same struggle for domination our founders participated in against tyranny over the human mind and spirit by Established Christianity in Europe and it goes back millennia - or longer.

Perhaps you're old enough to remember the days of the Vietnam war, the conflict that like the Civil War was never really won, never really resolved and which still divides the nation our kids are forced to call indivisible every morning. Anyone my age either cringes or puffs up in self-righteous idiocy when he hears "America - love it or leave it."

That fulsome piece of carrion of course deconstructs to "this country is only for those who agree with the lowest and angriest common denominator" and that, at the time, being the John Wayne/Martha Ray duo shouting that if you don't support the war and all it's horrors, lies and sinister motivations, you're not a "real" American. And of course real Americans believe in the correct god and them commies don't and there's the whole story. Napalm - God wills it!

Isn't it odd, by the way how we still make a hero out of that bloated, talentless fart-bag despite his support for the oppression and slaughter of two million people in order to preserve a system of government that had enslaved them?

Does anyone doubt that Fox, had it existed 50 years ago would have supported that national embarrassment, the stench of which still is detectable like some cosmic background radiation?  Fox, in fact has always supported the dichotomies the Right uses to foment anger, promote dictatorial colonialism and criminal exploitation and set us one against the other. Men against women, rich against poor, white against black, corporate against individual -- those contrived dichotomies have always set up the most ignorant, deluded, misinformed and stupidly self-righteous to be the good guys, the sensible, clear thinking guys who oppose science, empiricism, mathematics and indeed honesty in favor of myth and legend, whether corporate, political, religious or any mixture of them. Those clear thinking, God fearing deniers of evolution, geology, cosmology, nuclear physics, climatology and history.

Hence when a President like George Bush the Elder says he can't understand how someone who doesn't believe in some god or another can be considered a citizen and thus demonstrate his contempt for the letter and spirit of Our Constitution and indeed the Enlightenment and Humanist movement that produced it, you won't hear a peep of protest from the gaggle of birdbrain gigglers at Fox.

Yes, I'm tired of listening to the things Fox News is tired of and particularly since one of those things is my freedom. Every time some parent somewhere gets tired of his kid being cajoled, coerced, forced and even bullied into not only acknowledging some category of deity, we're affirming that our freedom itself is subordinate to what its shamans say that deity demands.

Dana Perino "is tired" of "atheist's demands" for freedom from religion and says "they don't have to live here."  I wonder if her  distaste for individual freedom of conscience includes the suggestion that the bones of Madison and Jefferson and Franklin and Washington be disinterred and dumped elsewhere in some free country, but of course even that obvious extension of her idiotic ire implies an intelligence far too great to exist in such an empty skull.

Dana Perino and the bastards who pay her are the enemies of freedom, truth, justice and what I used to think of as our great nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Yes, I'm tired of you Dana and of the miserable, evil, corporate bastards who pay you to undermine everything special and praiseworthy about our country - or should I say my country, because not only are you not part of it, you're not worthy of being part.

The part of it you hate is the heart of  Democracy, the soul of freedom and if you won't tolerate the humanity, the humanism at the heart of America - you don't have to live here.

SYRIA-US DISAGREEMENT

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Even within families, there is serious disagreement over current Syria strategy. I refer to a conversation last night with my oldest daughter.

First some background: My daughter is a high-ranking officer assigned to the Pentagon with substantial Mid-East experience: 4 deployments totaling 8 years on the ground (in Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, as examples), starting with the first Gulf War (1990-91).

Her viewpoint: Stay out. Why? No matter how bloody and violent, no matter how unconscionable, no matter how sectarian and divided, virtually all peoples of the region – including combatants fighting amongst themselves – share a unanimity of attitude: They demand the right of self-determination and prefer to be masters of their own fate without the intervention of former colonial powers. After the first Gulf War, George Herbert Walker #41 made this blunder. He kept a residual U.S. force stationed in Saudi Arabia – often cited by al-Qaeda as a motive for targeting U.S. interests (recall the Khobar Towers bombing incident). All sides in these various and sundry Mid-East conflicts share the same xenophobia.

Acknowledging her point, I raised another issue: Mid-East conflicts have metastasized cancer-like beyond the region; witness the spate of terrorist incidents spanning 4 continents. IOW, when regional conflicts spill into our territory and put our citizens at risk, we have a compelling national security interest at stake.

Her reply: We should make every effort to protect our citizens and maintain security within our borders; but we should avoid another Archduke Ferdinand moment that may draw us into deeper, more protracted, and more costly conflicts. After decades of supplying arms to our so-called allies in the region - such as Saudi Arabia - the time has come for regional powers to get their own house in order and do some heavy lifting, she says.

My response: Too late. We cannot re-write history and reset the clock of Mid-East perceptions. In the past half-century, various governments have used American foreign policy as a scapegoat – for reasons both right and wrong – to cover their own failings. Since the cancer of Mid-East conflicts have metastasized worldwide - and Western interests are often in the crosshairs of these conflicts - we have little choice but to intervene.

Our discussion in a nutshell: A perfectly civil and reasonable exchange of views between father and daughter – now shared with readers of this forum. How ironic! General Daughter shuns military involvement; formerly Pacifist Dad makes a case for intervention.

As thorny and nettlesome as this Syria issue has become, it should not turn into another partisan slugfest. By all means, argue the merits but avoid the temptation to engage in wanton and gratuitous Obama-bashing. Mid-East conflicts have vexed 11 U.S. presidents since Eisenhower.  So please be forewarned: If you gang up on President #44, this cephalopod will ink your aquarium and drown you in torrents of citations and references. To quote the estimable Wednesday Addams: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

More images and videos below the fold:

Datashock and Awe

I've had a lot of datashock recently. Datashock?  Why that's what you fell when you're hit with data that contradicts everything you took for granted about yourself.  I recently had a DNA test for instance, expecting that it would reflect the generations of genealogical data I'd been putting together for years and going back centuries.  Imagine the surprise to find that I'm half Scandinavian.

But that's nothing compared to what I found out.  You know that mysterious database used by every hardware and ladies' underwear marketer to send you catalogs and interrupt your most private moments with phone calls?  An article in CNN Money yesterday had me laughing about the errors in her publicly disseminated information the reporter found when she went to AboutTheData.com . I stopped laughing when I checked my own information.

I've been running a long and angry battle with companies like Experian to remove erroneous data from my credit report: 'aliases' that originated in clumsy data entry and became irrevocably enshrined, addresses I've never heard of, addresses that never existed, household members long dead and other items likely to follow me to the grave before Experian ever takes the time or makes the effort to look into revising the Gospel. It's the same story with various web sites that claim to have data about me and my house and other things. The stock answer to my assertions of error is that "Sir, we get our data from public records and they cannot be changed." Thus spake Zarathustra.

But that's nothing. AboutTheData  asserts, despite evidence to the contrary, that I'm 93 years old, have no children and my DNA and birth certificate be damned, I'm German.  Of course they know my credit cards and everything I have ever purchased with them.  they know the size of my house and what it's worth and what I payed for it and when it was built, but they also insist that I have a large mortgage on it which I don't.

This is the kind of data that affects one's life, one's well being, one's credibility and for the most part it's immutable, unchangeable, ineradicable. Now unlike the other people search sites like Pipl.com, AboutTheData does allow one to edit this farcical farrago of  data, although I'm tempted to let them think I'm 93. I'm tempted to tell them I'm dead actually, although I now understand why my mailbox is full every morning with prepaid funeral fliers, ads for nursing homes, walk-in bathtubs, home nursing services, motorized wheelchairs and crematoriums. (It would be nice if the IRS thought I was deceased, but I'm sure they have their own databases. )

But it's still a shock to think about how we assume, living in an "information age,"  that the information about your age is true, but it seems more and more that no one has any interest in correcting mistakes or even hearing about the ocean of ludicrous errors they spend so much money and bandwidth maintaining against the unheard protests of a baffled, astounded and rightly pissed-off public.

Purple Haze

I like to read books by theoretical physicists who are good at presenting mind-bending material to the general public. I should say that I like reading about these things in English because I can't, quite frankly, even imagine being able to follow the math involved in portraying multidimensional universes, Calabi-Yau manifolds, P-branes and loop quantum physics, just to scratch the surface.

The idea of other universes, possibly an infinite number of them with every point therein stretched out on holographic membranes only a tiny distance apart yet forever isolated, fascinates me far more than any science fiction written these days. There was one school of thought not long ago.  I'm not sure it gets any credit or ever did, but it attempts to explain the relative weakness of the gravitational force by postulating that force particles, or gravitons are able to leak into neighboring planes where they perhaps show up as 'dark' matter, but I'm so far from being able to talk about such things intelligently that I might as well be in another universe. Another universe perhaps identical but perhaps subtly different. I have sometimes nonetheless to wonder if somehow, by some random quantum fluctuation, we don't on occasion just take that tiny jump to the left, that little step to the right, and do the time-warp again.

 I'll bet that you've occasionally asked yourself if you've just woken up in another universe, almost exactly like the one you were in yesterday -- almost.  Silly sci-fi scenarios involving worm holes and time warps are just that: silly -- and we've all read or watched the cheesy movies. The pilot loses contact briefly only to reappear in another time and place. The guy wakes up on groundhog day every day.  You've seen that movie I'm sure.

And yet.

Over the weekend I was motoring south down the Indian River Lagoon as a thunderstorm engulfed us.  The radar reflecting off the rain made the radar screen a sea of purple superimposed over the GPS chart.  I couldn't see ten feet in any direction, reflections  from my nav lights in red and green made an eerie glow in the downpour..

It passed in time for me to be able to find my intended port and eventually to arrive safely home -- but still -- did I return to the same place I set out from? I was gone only a couple of days, but how and when and why, if  this is still the same reality, did all the yogurt in all the supermarkets and groceries in the world suddenly become Greek?  A small thing, but small things add up. And when did the hipsters stop calling each other "bro" and unanimously begin saying "brah?"  Just what did happen in that purple downpour just at the edge of the Bermuda Triangle?

Before that mysterious, disorienting moment,  president Obama should have been impeached for any involvement in Libya and now his delay in  bombing Syria is "shameful" according to one Krauthammer I won't mention by name.  No, I don't believe in space aliens flying around at night with their lights on or in ancient aliens, prophecies and apocalypses, but something is happening here and I don't know what it is. There's a purple haze all in my brain. Lately things just don't seem the same.

Who's paying for this?

This morning, I noticed that, in at least one Senate committee, it is possible to get bipartisan consensus. And considering the recent history of our Congresscritters, that is something that nobody, especially not the president, should ignore.

Leaders of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said they reached an agreement on Tuesday on a draft authorization for the use of military force in Syria that was much narrower than the request made by President Barack Obama, paving the way for a vote by the committee on Wednesday.

Among other provisions, the draft, which was obtained by Reuters, sets a 60-day limit on U.S. military action in Syria, with a possibility of a single 30-day extension subject to conditions.

And that's good - no boots on the ground, limited engagement. If we have to do something (and I'm not convinced we do), that's a good start. But, you know, I think there's more that could be done there.

Now, this agreement was set up by Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-TN). And the thing about Corker, aside from him being a rank-and-file GOP drone, is that he wants to be a budget hawk. For example, he was one of the Senators who voted against disaster relief following Hurricane Sandy (and we'll ignore the fact that he frequently requests disaster relief for his own people).

So, I went to his web page, armed with the address of a couple of people with my last name in Morristown, TN (yeah, I'm impersonating a Tennessee native, but at least I'm using my own name, right?).

Senator Corker,

I will admit that I don't agree with you on a lot, but I like the agreement you reached with Sen Menendez, for no American troop involvement, and for no involvement longer than 60 days. Thank you for that.

But I don't think you went quite far enough. I think that any military intervention needs to be funded, so it doesn't add to the budget deficit. This can be through money already promised to the military budget for 2013, or special "war taxes," or possibly even from monetary donations from organizations and private citizens.

(I really like the idea of a free-market solution to funding military strikes, but I'm not sure it will go over well with some people.)

In an age where crippling budget deficits are being passed on to our children, and the fiscal cliff is looming over us again, how can we, in good conscience, add to it?

No, I don't think it'll do any good. But this is the type of logic he's used before - maybe it will strike a chord in that tiny little brain of his.

Imagine

Police confiscating cash and property without due process, stopping-and frisking suspiciously 'different' citizens for any damned reason.  Police SWAT teams invading private homes, terrorizing law abiding civilians, screaming obscenities for hours and waving automatic weapons; police harassing people trying to open their own doors; shooting a man over a dozen times for getting a pack of cigarettes out of his own car in his own driveway -- I could go on, and of course I have ranted endlessly and probably all too often -- and more than probably to no effect.

We're a nation of scared-shitless cowards and kept that way by endless fear mongering, endless promotion of anger by a 24 hour propaganda machine interested only in boosting ratings and profits by hiding the fact that violent crime is lower than in a hundred years and getting lower.  Most people you ask will tell you that things are getting more dangerous every day. A few of them may have a valid case for that.

One can't go for an hour without hearing some dimwitted diatribe about Obama's tyrannical government trying in Communist fashion to promote industrial safety or safe food and water and air -- and to reform our unfair and inadequate health system -- just like a fascist, but egregious infractions of Constitutional protections?  Hey, that's different, unless of course it's the second amendment so vital to that apocalyptic war against authority we dream about.

I read this morning about three Bronx kids, two girls and their brother, all siblings, who were verbally abused, handcuffed, beaten, choked, pepper sprayed and thrown to the ground by a swarm of police apparently for no better reason than for playing handball in a park while wearing Muslim hedjabs.  The girls had their scarves pulled off for the crime of not producing identification quickly enough while being black and/or Muslim, or so the police say.  Within moments dozens of police swarmed the area intimidating and tackling  bystanders and arresting one who tried to record a video of this obscenity.

"Come here, you little motherfucker, you like recording?" said one cop, mashing the 18 year old bystander's  face into the pavement;  punching  and pepper spraying him.

"Where's the phone? I'll break your arm." He screamed at the college student.

Of course the police have a cover story. Pulling one's 12 year old sister from a raging policeman who was "escorting" the children out of the park is criminal assault of course and the police were injured and had to be hospitalized -- of course and although Internal Affairs is "investigating" my bet, based on experience is that not a damned thing will happen to them. My guess is that this, like so many of the disgusting offenses that happen constantly all over the nation; like so many of the abuses of  civil rights and constitutional protection, whether it be the right to assembly, protection from searches, seizures without warrant, probable cause or any pretense of due process it will just fade away leaving only the stench of hate, racism, injustice, fear and smug hypocrisy. And all the while we will be concerned about what the leaders tell us to be concerned about; get angry on cue, ignore this fact and believe that fiction.  All the while we'll belabor the same talking points pursue the same bogeymen and we'll cringe in fear of  our neighbor's shotgun while Policemen carry machine guns, batter down our doors, blind us with gas, beat us with clubs, sodomize us with broomsticks and shoot down unarmed citizens and get way with it.

Imagine if you will, a boot stamping on a human face forever. Imagine a voice screaming "Freeze Motherfucker!"  forever.  Imagine.

A Labor Day Message from Robert Reich

Science Funnies

Who says scientists don't have a sense of humor?

"It is rather unfair to assume that there is anything improbable about science overlapping with humour. Popular TV and radio shows such as The Big Bang Theory, Infinite Monkey Cage, Museum of Curiosity and Dara O’Briain’s School Of Hard Sums happily marry science with jokes. And, as Brian Cox, the scientist and presenter of Wonders of the Universe, points out, comedians such as O’Briain and Ben Miller are physics graduates. “There is a strange nexus between physics and comedy that I seem to be a part of,” Cox told the Daily Telegraph. “It’s a powerful if strange alliance. 

Dara O’Briain did mathematics and physics, and is passionate about it. Ben Miller did a PhD in physics. Robin Ince [his co-presenter on Infinite Monkey Cage] is a very good friend of mine.”

Here are some for you to chortle or groan over:

A Higgs boson walks into a bar and asks everyone to take part in an act of penitence. “What are you doing?” asks the barman. “Giving mass.”


Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero? He’s OK now.

A photon checks into a hotel and the porter asks him if he has any luggage. The photon replies: “No, I’m travelling light.”

What does a dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac spend most of his time doing? Staying up all night wondering if there really is a dog. 

A TCP packet walks into a bar, and says to the barman: “Hello, I’d like a beer.” The barman replies: “Hello, you’d like a beer?” “Yes,” replies the TCP packet, “I’d like a beer.”


Pavlov is enjoying a pint in the pub. The phone rings. He jumps up and shouts: “Hell, I forgot to feed the dog!”

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who know binary, and those who don’t.


When I heard that oxygen and magnesium hooked up I was like OMg!

The barman says: “We don’t serve faster-than-light particles here.” A tachyon enters a bar.

Two atoms are walking down the street. One says to the other, “Hey! I think I lost an electron!” The other says, “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m positive!”

What do you call two crows on a branch? Attempted murder.

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The bartender says: “What’ll it be, boys?” The first mathematician: “I’ll have one half of a beer.” The second mathematician: “I’ll have one quarter of a beer.” The third mathematician: “I’ll have one eight of a beer.” The fourth mathematician: “I’ll have one sixteenth of a…” The bartender interrupts: “Know your limits, boys” as he pours out a single beer.


Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says: “Five beers, please.” 

A programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen.” The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.

A student travelling on a train looks up and sees Einstein sitting next to him. Excited, he asks: “Excuse me, professor. Does Boston stop at this train?”