... it is Music. Intelligence. Art. Life. And Love too. I see Cities of EcoPods coalescing vibrantly. Terra-forming.
Cred: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
sandmars_mro_big.jpg 2037×2532 pixels
A collection of beautiful, wonderful works from all around the real world. Really.
- Mark
- Central, Massachusetts, United States
- I like using ellipsis... My monicker represents my keen awareness of my limitations... ... the suspense is killing...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Cat's Bitter Disappointment After Sneaking Up On Pigeon
Check out this website I found at digg.com
this is VERY funny!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Ugh...
It's Scutigera Coleoptrata Season!
Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
Spring is in the air. The plants are sprouting. That last pile of snow on the shady part of your neighbor's lawn has successfully melted. And your bathroom is alive with terrifying, multilegged creatures that look like this:
Yes, it's active season for everybody's favorite arthropod, scutigera coleoptrata, aka the house centipede. One of these bad boys scuttled across my bathroom floor just last night. My cats, which were born in the South and are still somewhat disappointed by Minnesota's distinct lack of huntable palmetto bugs, think this is great. I'm less enthused. But I figure that when life hands you horrifying household pests, the least it can do is make them interesting.
With that in mind, I present:
Four Facts You Didn't Realize You Wanted To Know About That Thing Living Behind Your Toilet1.Scutigera Coleoptrata are Not Your Fault
Stop beating yourself up. Unlike, say, cockroaches, house centipedes aren't hanging around because you didn't clean the kitchen. At least, not directly. Scutigera coleoptrata feed on spiders and insects--they're actually pretty beneficial if you're willing to do the devil's arithmetic here and decide that you'd rather have one fast-moving centipede than a colony of roaches. That said, leaving crumbs and half-eaten sandwiches about does create a nice environment for s. coleoptrata's food to grow in. So it might not hurt to clean.2. Scutigera Coleoptrata are Efficient
They're actually capable of eating several other bugs at once, noshing on one meal while holding onto another with one of their 30 legs. They usually hunt at night, waiting for prey to get close enough that they can jump onto it, lasso it in, or whip it into submission.3. Scutigera Coleoptrata are Not a Toy
House centipedes do their hunting via a set of venomous front legs. The good news: They won't come looking to start a fight with you and, most of the time, even if you do egg them into attacking, they won't be able to break your skin barrier. The bad news: That's only most of the time. S. coleoptrata has apparently successfully stung humans before. Not life-threatening, it's supposed to feel a lot like a bee sting.4. Scutigera Coleoptrata Will Not Forget This
Photo courtesy Kenta Hayashi
Unlike a lot of household pests that can be expected to die shortly after breeding, s. coleoptrata can live as long as seven years. There's a distinct possibility they've been in your house longer than you have. During that time, they can grow to be as big as 1.75 in. long. Unsurprisingly, getting rid of them isn't easy. Sticky traps are often recommended, but the house centipede can escape those by simply breaking off the stuck legs and growing them back later.
via boingboing.net
... and compassion for all.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Break up the Big Banks...
... Let's start the breaking up party...
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
... Support A New Way Forward...
On Saturday, A New Way Forward is sponsoring a nationwide day of action to demand that our leaders (1) nationalize (2) reorganize, and (3) decentralize the banks as a first step toward building a more just economy.
On Saturday, come to a rally near you for speeches, street theatre, petition gathering, and phonebanking to Congress. (I'll say a few words at the New York City rally.) Add your voice to this growing movement to demand our tax dollars be used to fix our problems, rather than preserve the fortunes of those who created them.
http://www.anewwayforward.org/rally-list.php
If you can't come, make sure our Senators and Representatives hear us by signing our petition to Break Up the Banks:
http://www.democrats.com/break-up-the-banks
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
follow me in the virtual:
http://twitter.com/numbone
http://numbone.posterous.com/
http://numbone111.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Won't be fooled again...
William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything. Now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it. 
Bill Moyers Journal . William K. Black: CSI Bailout | PBS via pbs.org http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Do NOT miss this...
... get it on DVD. I mean it: BUY a copy of this movie. Then watch it repeatedly. Live fully. Love forever.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
He was?!?
"Marx was Right!"
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger.
Watching the news with the G20 protesters in London carrying banners reading "Capitalism Failed Us" and "Marx was Right!" I felt quite good about the day's events. In 1983 and 1984, I was living in London and going to protests like this myself and it brought back long-forgotten memories. When I was younger, I considered myself a staunch socialist, but as I got older that way of identifying myself fell away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, it seemed like Marxism was something that the world had moved on from and so did I. During the dotcom era, I was as greedy a capitalist as the next guy. Five years ago, slimming my library down for a cross country move, I unemotionally tossed all of my "Karl Marx and related" books. Boy do I regret doing this now!
One recent evening, I was writing something and I thought I'd coined a nifty new phrase to describe a major factor in the economic meltdown: "fictitious capital." I decided to Google the term and it's a good thing that I didn't pat myself on the back too hard because it's something that Karl Marx came up with about 150 years before me. That Google search led me down a Karl Marx rabbit hole that lasted for weeks (My wife, Tara, called it "worse than your reggae phase!"). I bought a new copy of "Capital" and read deep into the night. I emerged a few days later, bleary-eyed, unshaven and proudly declaring myself a socialist again.
The work of Karl Marx is ultra relevant to understanding the world's current financial mess, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Marx has become intellectually indispensable to me again, as if there ever should have been any doubt. It's fascinating to consider that during the time period when Marx was writing "Capital," there were few factories in England --it was largely an agrarian society still-- yet somehow Marx was able to see clearly the mess that we would be in today. He's the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this. Marx viewed history with a very, very long telescope. How he was able to see so far into the future is a mystery of his particular genius, but Marx accurately extrapolated how capitalism's endgame would play itself out at the very birth of the system. Marx saw how utterly destructive this system would ultimately become. Look around you: Marx was right. If you disagree, well, I have a challenge for you: Start reading Marx's "Capital" and see what you think afterward. Keep an open mind and try to get past the drier chapters up front. It's a richly rewarding intellectual journey to take. There is an online course taught by Professor David Harvey that I found quite helpful, you might want to take in some (or all) of his lectures for chapters that are more difficult to understand. Maybe some of you might want to form an online reading group on Facebook. The important point is to READ Marx again and to rediscover how prescient his ideas really were and how well they explain what's going on today.
The Revenge of Karl Marx by Christopher Hitchens
Marxism (Wikipedia) An excellent overview
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (13 part video lecture series)
posted in: Economy , Old school , politics
via boingboing.net
... and he had a bitchin' beard!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
GREEN is GOOD...
White House plans modified Washington Monument in 'carbon-free' National Mall-->
One of President Obama's key campaign promises was to make the U.S. a leader in sustainable green energy, and by the looks of this concept, he intends to lead by example. The White House unveiled today a plan for a 10-megawatt wind turbine near the top of The Washington Monument, with underground feeder cables to send the generated power to the D.C. grid.
Boring traditionalists are likely to reject anything that alters the Washington Monument so radically as unpatriotic, but imagine the green message it would send to the rest of the world. Queen Elizabeth recently bought a humungous wind turbine of her own, so Obama clearly believed that America should follow the U.K.'s example and unveil a bold green symbol for America.
In fact, 10 megawatts would actually be enough to power all of the Washington, D.C., metro area, so maybe he plans sells power back to local utility Pepco put a dent in that trillion-dollar federal deficit.
Via The White House
via dvice.com
... in my pockets.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Econopocalypse...
America's bankers are oligarchs
Writing in the Atlantic, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, takes a hard look at the econopocalypse and decides that the root of America's (and Europe's) economic woes is the cozy relationship between super-powerful bankers and government -- oligarchy. So, he says, we cannot fix the economy until we break up the banks, curb executive compensation in the finance sector, and turn it into "just another industry."The Quiet Coup (via Making Light)
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise...The government needs to inspect the balance sheets and identify the banks that cannot survive a severe recession. These banks should face a choice: write down your assets to their true value and raise private capital within 30 days, or be taken over by the government. The government would write down the toxic assets of banks taken into receivership—recognizing reality—and transfer those assets to a separate government entity, which would attempt to salvage whatever value is possible for the taxpayer (as the Resolution Trust Corporation did after the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s). The rump banks—cleansed and able to lend safely, and hence trusted again by other lenders and investors—could then be sold off.
Cleaning up the megabanks will be complex. And it will be expensive for the taxpayer; according to the latest IMF numbers, the cleanup of the banking system would probably cost close to $1.5trillion (or 10percent of our GDP) in the long term. But only decisive government action—exposing the full extent of the financial rot and restoring some set of banks to publicly verifiable health—can cure the financial sector as a whole.
This may seem like strong medicine. But in fact, while necessary, it is insufficient. The second problem the U.S. faces—the power of the oligarchy—is just as important as the immediate crisis of lending. And the advice from the IMF on this front would again be simple: break the oligarchy.
posted in: Economy , ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIERUNHIDE
via boingboing.net
... (right-click > Learn Spelling) Wake up Obamamaniacs and get our Obomonomics in order: Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, and Big Energy, then we'll talk Big Government when the work is done.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
FFR: A "Keeper" for getting...
Brain Rules: Oliver Sachs meets GETTING THINGS DONE, paperback ships, DVD goes free
Avi sez, "John Medina, author of Brain Rules, an excellent summary of 13 neuroscience hacks applicable in daily life, has put the cool companion DVD online for free as an introduction to the paperback release of the book."Here's what I wrote about Brain Rules when the hardcover came out:
Brain Rules in paperback
John Medina's Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School pulls off a terrific trick: combining popular science with touching personal memoir and a bunch of practical conclusions for improving work, education and personal life.
Brain Rules takes the brain's mysteries apart into twelve pieces: Exercise, survival, wiring, attention, short-term memory, long-term memory, sleep, stress, multisensory perception, vision, gender, and exploration. He discusses the best, most current science describing what drives each one, delving into psychology, neurology, evolutionary biology, and practical disciplines like behavioural economics, organizational science, and pedagogy.
Woven into the science are a series of vivid anaecdotes from Medina's life and from case histories gathered across the scientific literature, and emerging naturally from that are a series of eminently practical recommendations for reforming the workplace and the education system, and for improving the way that we interact with ourselves and others.
Medina's approach to the subject combines the best aspects of Oliver Sachs and Getting Things Done, making the book into something that's part manifesto and part education. The BrainRules.net site features a ton of audio and video about the book's subject (Medina's descriptions of the value of multisensory learning are very compelling) and other supplementary material, and the book comes bundled with a DVD containing much of this material as well.
via boingboing.net
... (forgetting?) things done. FFR (for future reference).
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Beautiful! Mesmerizing work! This Man Knows his maths...
Reuben Margolin's kinetic wave sculptures
Kinetic artist Reuben Margolin was featured on a recent episode of MAKE: television. He uses salvaged wood, metal, cardboard, and other recycled materials to create massive mechanical wave sculptures. Absolutely incredible work.
via boingboing.net
... very well. His work recalls DaVinci.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
All us BBoomers better...
... follow this closely:
Read it carefully. Do not despair. Stick with it for a deeper understanding; we need all the helpful, mindful input at this time!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Now HERE is someone with a goddamn pulse. And he's effing dead! What's it say about the rest...
Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention: King Kong (1968)
Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger.
Utterly astonishing clip of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the BBC studios in 1968 performing a nine-minute workout of "King Kong."
I realize that the music of Frank Zappa tends to be what is called "an acquired taste" but in my never so humble opinion, this is one pretty darn tasty performance! I'm someone who considers him a genius, but I have reservations about the "smutty humor" aspect of his work. My own preference in Zappa's material tends to this era and the original Mothers of Invention. The collective "character" of the original Mothers can only really be compared to Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, if you ask me, where every musician was contributing an absolutely unique voice to the proceedings. It wasn't just the music, which was wonderful, but the personalities of the players themselves that made it so special. The Mothers came from diverse backgrounds, a bunch of SoCal n'er-do-wells who were tending bar, driving trucks and pumping gas by day, and by night, willing participants in Frank Zappa's quest to meld a bunch of wild men R-n-B freaks into a disciplined avant garde orchestra capable of playing Stravinsky-inspired free jazz on electronic instruments one minute, a sea shanty the next and then following that up with a little 50s doo wop sung in a helium falsetto. This performance of "King Kong " (taken from a BBC series called "Colour Me Pop" one of the first pop shows to be broadcast in color) and a second performance from French TV that same year show just how magnificently honed this group was. They stop and start on a dime. Watch for Zappa's idiosyncratic conductor's hand signals. Watch the duel drummers. AND TURN IT UP LOUD!!
posted in: Happy Mutants , Old school , Video , music
via boingboing.net
... of us?!
Time to TAKE STOCK...
Congress considers inventory of spectrum use in America
A new bill before Congress calls on the NTIA and FCC to inventory the spectrum use in America. Previous work on this by the likes of the New America Foundation found that the vast majority of US broadcast spectrum was sitting fallow -- either squatted on by members of the National Association of Broadcasters (who get their spectrum for free but are theoretically required to put programming in it and use it in the public interest) or reserved from allocation to keep from interfering with licensed users (many of whom were not using their spectrum at all).Three tiny slices of open spectrum, at 900Mhz, 2.5Ghz and 5.7Ghz, have created a massive economic and technological revolution through WiFi and other unlicensed uses of the public airwaves. The potential for new economic and technological gains from more open spectrum is unimaginable. Getting that spectrum into use is damned good policy, and long overdue.
My only concern is that the FCC will look for short-term cash gains by auctioning off all or most of the fallow spectrum for exclusive use, as has been done with 3G licenses. But this short-sighted approach trades the immediate gains from an auction for the perpetual income stream that arises from the commerce and activity that's enabled by open spectrum. Think, for example, of the total economic benefits that the nation and the world have derived from WiFi -- from cards and base-stations to hotspots to all the gains in efficiency and new opportunities created by wireless networking, and compare this to the paltry sums extracted by a few phone companies selling crippled, metered, filtered 3G network access.
The bill, entitled the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, was introduced last week by John Kerry (D-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). It amends part of the Communications Act by adding a requirement for a national survey of what's being broadcast into our radio airwaves. The survey will cover everything from 200MHz to 3.5GHz, and will be run by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, with input as needed from the Office of Science and Technology.New bill calls for inventory of US spectrum
via boingboing.net
... and make sure what's ours stays ours. Write, call, support this work for future best use of the airwaves. Let's make sure we get our money's worth.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Please MAKE TIME to LISTEN...
Wikileaks needs your help
via boingboing.net
... we all need to honor TRUTH into the future to remediate our tired world. This man has a healthy dose of it ... ... enough to get us well again if you will but listen. Please donate.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Time for the 21st Century "Smokey & d'Bandit" IV, V, &VI...
via boston.com
C'mon Hollywood: Put up the Do-Re-ME!!! Get some crashing over with! There's just enough stock here for the Three-quel!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Patriotism Due NOW...
... where are the rich, republican PATRIOTS NOW when their country needs them???
From MoveOn.org:
This is ridiculous. The media has been obsessing about President Obama's plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans—from 35% to 39.6%—even asking if that makes him a socialist.1
But do you know what tax rate the wealthiest Americans paid on the top portion of their earnings at the end of Ronald Reagan's first term? 50%.
Under Richard Nixon? 70%. Under Dwight Eisenhower? 91%!
Shocking, right?
And for all the whining about rolling back Bush's irresponsible tax cuts, the truth is that Obama's plan cuts taxes for 95% of working Americans. Further, it closes huge tax loopholes for oil companies, hedge funds and corporations that ship jobs overseas so that we can invest in the priorities that will get our economy back on track.2
We saw a great chart in The Washington Monthly3 that shows just how absurd Republican complaints about Obama's budget are. Check it out and pass it on:
Sources:
1. "A socialist? Obama calls back to insist no," The International Herald Tribune, March 8, 2009
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/08/america/barack.php
2. "Tax Cuts," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-tax.html
3. "Soaking the Rich (Redux)," The Washington Monthly, March 8, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51234&id=15733-2933906-HT3cRux&t=1
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