Let’s see how many people I can piss off . . .
Saw a good thread over on Balloon Juice. In a nice rant about the stupidity of how the mainstream media is covering the effects of the financial collapse on Wall Street, John Cole made the comment “I may have to just shoot my tv.”
This particular sentiment was picked up in the discussion which followed. One of the best passages from that said, in part:
Fifteen years ago I was so broke I sold my tv to make rent. I didn’t have much of a withdrawl. I spent the next 10 years without a tv, and I began to notice very weird things. I noticed how a ton of people couldn’t describe an event or situation without referring to some TV show. I call it the Seinfeld Effect, because at that time so many people would try to describe some event in their life and they just couldn’t without saying ‘Omygod it’s just like that Seinfeld where George and Jerry do that thing with..blah blah blah’.
I don’t watch TV. We got out of the habit when caring for my Mother-in-Law, since regular programing would greatly confuse her Alzheimer’s-addled brain. Eventually, we just dropped our cable service altogether, and didn’t bother to reconnect it once she passed away. I don’t miss it in the slightest. I get my news online and from the radio, I watch movies (and a few select TV shows which enough people will recommend) via DVD/NetFlix. And I think that I think more clearly as a result. It’s a lot like giving up on religion.
Seriously – you stop believing stuff just because it is on the tube. You stop buying-into the whole cultural imperative to be on top of the latest fad, the latest product, the latest brainwashing. You start to think more for yourself, and to give less of yourself over to others.
This isn’t the first time I have given up on TV. While in grad school my TV died, and I really didn’t see the sense in buying a new one. For about four years I just didn’t watch TV. Then I learned the same lessons as I have this time. Except this time, I look back on the period between those two absences, when I did occasionally watch TV (though still a hell of a lot less than average), and I am convinced that I lost more of myself to being sucked into the TV than I ever thought possible at the time. It is only when you are outside of that trap that you see just how insidious it is.
So, the old adage is right: kill your television. Because it is killing your ability to think.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Art, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society
So, last time I borrowed money from a bank, for a Federally-guaranteed Small Business Loan, it was a bit of a nightmare. They wanted to know everything down to my shoe size, with a fair amount of documentation to support the claim that I wear an 11 wide. And, needless to say, they wanted to know exactly what I was going to do with the $50,000 I wanted to borrow – complete with a detailed business plan, revenue forecasts, et cetera. Given that I wanted to borrow the money, I didn’t find this too onerous; rather it seemed to be a reasonable expectation, if a tad tedious.
But don’t expect that street to run both ways.
Where’d the bailout money go? Shhhh, it’s a secret
WASHINGTON – It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?
But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,'” said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest?
None of the banks provided specific answers.
Well, no, of course they didn’t. It might lead to somewhat awkward revelations, such as this:
AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
Your tax dollars at work.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and dKos.)
Filed under: Climate Change, Global Warming, Government, Politics, Preparedness, Religion, Science, Society
From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.
Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States – and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.
That’s President-elect Obama, in his weekly radio address this morning, announcing his top science advisors.
Compare that to the mindset we’ve put up with from the Bush administration, the latest round of which was announced yesterday:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration announced its “conscience protection” rule for the health-care industry Thursday, giving everyone from doctors and hospitals to receptionists and volunteers in medical experiments the right to refuse to participate in medical care they find morally objectionable.
“This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
The right-to-refuse rule includes abortion, but Leavitt’s office said it extends to other aspects of health care where moral concerns could arise, including birth control, emergency contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research or assisted suicide.
Science hasn’t been a priority for the last eight years – conforming to ideological and religious demands has been. That may be a good way to make your political base happy, but it sure as hell is a bad way to deal with the problems we face as a nation and a planet.
Even with the misgivings I may feel about the prospect of an Obama administration, this is a very welcome breath of fresh air. We’ve got real problems facing us, and for once in a long while it feels to me like we have adults back in charge of dealing with them.
Jim Downey
Cross-posted to UTI.
Gotta love it:
The One
More here: Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy: The Animated Gifs
As TNH said in the comments there: “Who knew that Bush’s most notable skill was dodging thrown objects?”
And more from me later.
Jim D.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Politics, RKBA
. . . you’re curious, I posted a thing to Daily Kos this morning about what some people find to be confusing: my liberal/libertarian politics and my support for gun rights.
More later.
No, really.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society
The radio said 13 degrees. It’s cold enough that the cats have left taking turns curling up on my lap, and have parked themselves on radiators. We’re fortunate that we can afford to heat this 125 year old house, at least enough to keep us warm if we wear layers.
And the news is as cold as the weather: 533,000 jobs cut last month, over one and a quarter million in just the last three months. Take a look on how Yahoo! news titled that link – it’s very telling. As I have written previously, I think we’re in for a long haul, something akin to a true depression rather than just a bad recession. All the elements are in place, many are already playing out just as they did during the Great Depression. And, as bad as it is, I think this is also a time of potential – potential to make some changes which would normally be resisted by entrenched interests: reregulation (intelligent reregulation) of the financial sector; revamping transportation to create an infrastructure supporting mass transit; introduction of single-payer health insurance; elimination of our insane War on (Some) Drugs.
75 years ago today, during the great Depression, Prohibition ended. It is time to do the same thing again, but with marijuana. Legalize it. Regulate it. Tax it. Treat it like alcohol. Pardon or commute the sentences of everyone in prison for using it or selling small amounts. Quit funding para-military squads in local police departments in the name of “stopping drugs”. It’s a waste of people and resources to fight this pointless war.
It’s been well over 20 years since I last used pot. If it was legalized tomorrow, I’m not sure I’d ever use it again. I don’t have a dog in this fight, from that perspective. But as someone who loves liberty, who hates to see government empowered through fear-mongering, who thinks that we will need all of our resources to deal with *real* problems rather than artificial ones, the time has come to end Prohibition again. And I hope that the new president will have the balls to do so.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, BoingBoing, Emergency, Failure, Feedback, Government, Guns, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Society
An update to this post… In the four days since the site went public, we’ve had almost 75,000 hits. That’s more hits than I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site this entire year. I’d say it’s off to a good start. Interesting that it has already started to propagate beyond the usual gun forums and whatnot – we got a lot of hits from a link on SomethingAwful, and we’re seeing some links from people’s Facebook and Myspace pages.
* * *
Did you see this post in the NYT about the future of publishing? I was going to write about it, but have been occupied with other matters. Then I saw this piece by Clay Shirky in response, and figured I’d just tell people to read what he said. An excerpt:
There are book lovers, yes, but there are also readers, a much larger group. By Gleick’s logic, all of us who are just readers, everyone who buys paperbacks or trades books after we’ve read them, everyone who prints PDFs or owns a Kindle, falls out of his imagined future market. Publishers should forsake mere readers, and become purveyors of Commemorative Text Objects. It’s the Franklin Mint business model, now with 1000% more words!
* * *
Got a note from a friend in response to yesterday’s doom & gloom report. He asked what my advice would be for anyone wondering about how to handle some modest investments (and acknowledged that I am not a financial advisor in any professional way). My reply:
Warm clothes and sturdy shoes.
* * *
Well, I have other matters to attend to. Have a longer post working in the back of my mind, perhaps for later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Emergency, Failure, Flu, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Writing stuff
Sometimes I wish that I listened to my own advice. For literally decades, my mantra of advice for friends has always been “trust your instincts”. This isn’t just some mystical mumbo-jumbo: a healthy, functioning human brain with a decent amount of education and experience is an amazing data processor, with multiple layers of analysis always going on – and one of them is what your subconsious is considering that kicks up to your conscious awareness as a “gut feeling”. This is the premise behind the book Blink (which I haven’t read, but have read enough about from the author and others to have a decent understanding of).
OK, so what am I going on about now?
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
Just this, when I originally conceived Communion of Dreams, I was writing a book about . . . wait for it . . . the aftermath of an economic collapse. Yeah, the bulk of the book you see now was pretty much the same. But the backstory was more about how a series of severe but not pandemic flu epidemics lead to the collapse of the world economy around 2011 – 2012. And how that collapse would lead to a significant downturn of the human population worldwide, as the carrying capacity of the planet changed. Yes, I still had the extant plot device of the Fire Flu there, but it was to be what Diabolus became in the current version – a terror threat that played off of the memories of what happened a generation previously.
But I was writing this initially around 2000 – the economy was just too good, things seemed like they would be smooth sailing forever. Trying to get people to think about, let alone believe, that an economic collapse could occur was just too difficult. Most people only understand the functioning of the economy when it smacks them in the face – and in spite of the brief downturn following the 9/11 attacks, few people understood what was building on the horizon.
So I went with the current revision of the book.
I should have trusted my instincts. They have only very seldom let me down. Because now there is a growing awareness of the precariousness of our economic situation. Most people are still only thinking that we’re in for some “rough times”, which I gather they think will be a limitation of how many new plasma televisions they can buy. But even that level of understanding would be enough for them to understand what I was (or, rather, would have been) writing about in that earlier version of Communion.
And yes, if you look at what I said above, you can conclude that I think that things are actually going to get a lot worse for a lot longer than what the current awareness believes. It really depends on how foolishly our government and business leaders act – right now I am not optimistic. Will it mean a global economic collapse? As one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite roles said:
Personally, I’d give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?
Jim Downey
(With apologies for having my Monday doom and gloom a day late – it was a busy weekend launching Ballistics by the inch.)
Filed under: Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society
Forget what I said two weeks ago – we’re now up to $7.7 Trillion:
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.
That comes out to something like $24,000 from every man, woman, and child in the country.
Wave bye-bye to your money.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
You better watch out,
You better all cry,
You better all pout,
AFA is telling you why:
The evil gays are coming to town.AFA‘s making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who’s naughty and nice.
The evil gays are coming to town.They’ll get you when you’re sleeping.
Or even when you’re awake.
Evil gays are bad, not good,
So be good for God’s own sake!You better watch out,
You better all cry,
You better all pout,
AFA is telling you why:
The evil gays are coming to town.
The evil gays are coming to town!
Jim Downey
*with apologies to J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie. HT to Sully. Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.
Communion Of Dreams 