http://vimeo.com/6064337 Go there and check out a cool video about the concept of Fair Trade. It’s not some commie propaganda. It’s actually something of an antidote to the oligopolies we have today, the ones Adam Smith warned us about. In fact, Fair Trade is exactly what Smith wanted us to have. So watch and learn!
I’m so confused, thanks to Christine O’Donnell’s identity crisis. Apparently, she’s been me all along and I’m someone else. Now when I listen to “You’re So Vain,” does that mean the song’s really about her?
Discuss. Also a link to the video: Click here.
“One of the most interesting new computers, both as a piece of machinery and as a specimen of capitalism in action, is the Osborne I. Its creator is Adam Osborne, an author of computer books who decided to break the price on-computers. The Osborne I is a very strange-looking piece of equipment. When folded up, it resembles a bulky white briefcase; it is advertised as the only computer that will fit underneath an airline seat. When unfolded, it looks like an outdated military radio. It comes with a full-sized keyboard, a 64K memory, two disk drives, and software for word-processing and accounting that would cost more than $1,000 if bought separately. Osborne offers the whole package for $1,795, which makes it the best bargain on computer power in the business. The catch is that the built-in screen is about the size of a postcard, although it is much easier to read than that would suggest. For an extra $300, you can buy a normal-sized monitor and attach it to the Osborne.
In a perfect world, everyone who had a home computer would also have an Osborne to travel with. According to dealers, Osbornes are selling so fast that many people must have decided that it makes sense not just as their second computer but as their first.
The Otrona Corporation also makes a portable computer, called the Attache. It is smaller and lighter than the Osborne (less than twenty pounds, versus the Osborne’s twenty-three), it has dual-density disk drives, and its higher-resolution screen displays a full eighty-character line, instead of the Osborne’s fifty-two. Its only drawback is that, at $3,995, it costs more than twice as much as the Osborne.
One other tip on hardware: If you live in a climate less humid than Panama’s, you must invest $100 in an anti-static mat to place under your desk. If you don’t, in wintertime you’ll get shocks of static electricity when you touch your machine. There is always the possibility that this will erase what you’re working on at the time.”
From The Atlantic Monthly, 1982: Article here.
We want to create world peace. But peace is not merely the absence of war. There is so much internal strife and that prejudice feeds into the national aspect. We have to change ourselves if we want to change the world. – Arun Manilal Gandhi
I love the channels at the end of the satellite spectrum, the public access and noncommercial ones. That’s where I find some real treasures. Today’s treasure was the wisdom of Arun Manilal Gandhi, courtesy of an address made at BYU on 23 March 1999, broadcast on KBYU, 8AM on a Saturday morning. He taught about controlling anger and controlling violence not only against other people, but also violence against the world. When you consider the violence contained in the disposal of a usable pencil, and the nonviolence in picking up the disposed pencil for more use, you will see part of the lessons he taught.
He discussed keeping an anger journal. He said it would be useful if one kept it in order to control anger and to change its ability to control us. This sounds like something I’d like to take up. If we hold ourselves to account for our violence, we will want to naturally reduce our debts in that area.
We would also want to do that to be a better example to others. The healing the world needs begins first in our own hearts. Whether Gandhi or Jesus says it, it’s still true.
Anything done through fear will not last. Anything done through love will last forever. – Arun Manilal Gandhi
I first heard this Led Zeppelin song when I started listening to the radio back in the 6th grade. I always liked the guitar riffs in it and loved the complexity of the melodies. I never really understood the lyrics, and reading them didn’t help much. They just sort of conveyed a feeling of yearning for some bygone time. When I found out the title, “Ten Years Gone”, that yearning feeling grew in my imagination.
I was 11 years old when I first heard it and maybe almost 13 when I first bought the Physical Graffiti album and discovered the title of the song. I was a kid, then, barely ten years after any sort of thing. The stuff ten years gone in my past was far, far behind me and wasn’t the stuff of yearning. So I imagined then what my life would be like in ten years, when I could reflect back on that moment.
It’s now 30 years later, give or take some months. The song came up in my mix and I had to sit back and reflect on what happened to that young boy from 1979 or 1981. I put the song on repeat and started this note.
I closed my eyes and saw the world as I saw it back then, looking out of my second story bedroom window on the yard below. Yes, I’m older and more experienced, but there’s still a part of me that’s 11 years old. I still look into the world and find a way to discover its magic in spite of all the evil that tries to get in the way. I love to discover new things, to find the good on the planet. It’s there, and my heart is open to receive it.
Now that I’m 42, there’s plenty in my life that’s now 10 years old or more. Have I been a good steward of the life that 11-year-old bequeathed to me in all my annual incarnations? Have I done right by the boy that looked out the window and wondered what it would be like to one day reflect on ten years since something happened? I’d like to think so. My heart tells me so, and my mind has no objections.
And I still look to that future and what it will hold for me. I truly have no idea what each passing moment may require of me, but I know if I approach the things that are coming with a heart wide open and eyes ready to see the good in everyone, I’ll find the hope that keeps me going.
There’s a Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin I want you all to read… As I read it, I couldn’t help but recall the pandering, blackmailing, populist politician Willie Stark from All the King’s Men. Is America stupid enough to elect Palin in 2012? I think we are, and I hope I’m proven wrong in 26 months or less.
Also, have fun with the Sarah Palin backstage rider…
I tire of hearing people declare the Constitution is founded upon Judaeo-Christian principles and then proceed to use that as an argument to justify something horrendous, like ending true religious freedom or letting corporations or populists blind us to their insidious attempts to further undermine the dignity of humanity. Let’s set the facts straight: the Constitution is based upon the laws of mammon, not God.
Mammon is the Hebrew word for financial dealings. One who deals with money is a mammonai, simple as that. For those that claim to be Christian fundamentalists, they need to know that Jesus told his followers that they can choose to serve either God or mammon. The two are exclusive. And yet, the Constitution enshrines protections for the worst excess of capitalism: chattel slavery.
Looking back in the Old Testament, one finds these verses dealing with the treatment of escaped slaves:
15 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee:
16 He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him. – Deuteronomy 23:15-16
And now, from the Constitution:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. – US Constitution, Article 4 Section 2
The Constitution is in opposition to the Law of Moses. The Constitution is therefore not Judaeo, nor is it Christian, with or without the hyphenation. The first limitation on the powers of Congress is its restriction against Congress doing away with slavery. What would Jesus do? Hmmm?
Men wrote the Constitution. Men made compromises with each other, bargained, debated, and settled for less than they demanded in the process of writing the Constitution. Men continue to work with the document, not prophets. Moses’ law did not serve as the basis for the Constitution, nor did Jesus’. If the writers of the Constitution did not choose God, then they must have been serving mammon. Let the blood of every slave worked to death in the fields testify to that conclusion.
Set aside arguments for or against the safety of genetically modified, or GM, foods. Consider their impact on property rights. I recently saw a report on how a farmer that collected his own seeds ran into trouble when a herbicide-resistant strain of canola started growing on his property. He couldn’t get rid of it with normal herbicides and sued Monsanto for the damages caused to his crops.
Monsanto counter-sued the farmer for growing its canola without a license. Monsanto won both of its cases. While the farmer is appealing the case, he’s outclassed in terms of what he can do legally. Other farmers that maintain their own seed banks have been sued by Monsanto when some of Monsanto’s species started to grow on their property. The farmers never intentionally planted the crops, but courts have nevertheless held them liable for violating Monsanto’s property rights.
This is a travesty. Leave the benefit or harm of GM crops aside: no amount of benefit could justify the way Monsanto is essentially polluting the countryside and then using that pollution to take down farmers not using its products. Simple laws that should keep plundering such as this from happening have been easily perverted by Monsanto’s legal teams. Yes, Monsanto’s got to make a profit to stay in business, but for it to destroy rights in the name of profits is inexcusable.
I think it’s a strong possibility. I’m not happy about it, because I think she’s proof stupidity exists. All the same, this is a discussion. What factors will contribute to Palin winning in 2012? What factors will hinder her chances? Discuss.
Mount Sinabung is erupting, right after I have a Geography lesson about the “Ring of Fire” in which I mentioned the most remarkable area for volcanoes has been the western part of Indonesia. Now this. I think I’ll skip a discussion of major earthquakes in light of my new-found powers.