How Heatlh Care Works Now
1. Use a new healthcare industry to allow businesses to get away with lower salaries (Businesses stupidly went for this thinking it would weigh less).
2. Build a new industry and new jobs. Part of the deal was that as workers moved to new jobs, health care industry could take all their money from the last employer.
3. When baby-boomers retire, harvest their asses.
4. Let somebody else worry about all those bodies in the streets and in the emergency rooms.
5. Guess who gets to be “somebody else”? Not us Baby Boomers — YOU GUYS.
Right Wing Mindset
Starting a series of photos called RIGHT WING MINDSET. If you can’t stand the thought that anything on this planet might be getting a mouthful of food, a board foot of wood, an inch of space, without you control it and get to dole it out, then, my friend (?) you’ve got a bad case of RWM. Get help. Get treatment. Or get fucked. Me and my little Canon will be out taking shots at YOU.
First up, we have a bus stop, on Yesler, Seattle, Washington. Now, class, what makes this an example of RWM? That’s right – nowhere to sit. Because some poor, homeless boozer might be able to lie down in a dry place and get some sleep, the rest of us, including old women with plantar fascitis, children and working guys, don’t get to sit down and take a load off. What? A serf might be able to rest or read a book? They’re not learning to read in our education system, anyway, so why would they need that? Ayn Rand must be spinning in her grave (spin, Ayn, spin – preferably upright on something hard and hot).
Bus stop, Benaroya Hall, 3rd Avenue, Seattle, Washington. Oh, look. People at the bus stop might be able to walk into the ticket office and go the restaurant and cafe without having to walk all the way down the block and chance missing their bus. Well, those bus people can’t eat or drink on the bus anyway, can they? The guy with the crutches and the woman with the baby stroller shouldn’t be pounding down caffeine, anyway.
QED
This was part of a discussion for Norwescon panels:
The problem with these panels at fan cons is that often terms are not defined before they start, and they spend most of the hour tearing the terms apart instead of getting into the meat of the subject. If somebody thinks global warming is “junk,” use the scientific method — ask them for their reasons. Require proofs. And no, they don’t get to quote scientists whom we find out are pissed about having their names used in an argument for a theory they never backed. Either GET the proof — or go back to the lab.
Most religion IS the original science, but it is based on older theories. Or equipment. For example: “I have an eye. I can see the sun move. Therefore, the sun moves, not the earth.” With math, a proof could be offered that the EARTH moved. Certainly helped with those pesky retrograde planets. At last, with space travel, somebody could stand on the moon and see the earth as the planet it was. With the original (eyeball) equipment. Meanwhile, religion stayed static, depending on the old eyeball observations. It can’t change or move because it limits the equipment.
If religion or politics want to BE science, they have to bring proofs — and then where is faith? Or economic theory?
How to sooth a religious person who thinks the Big Bank is about creation: point out that it’s ONLY really about the movement of objects through space. If they ask, “Well, what if you prove there’s a god?” the shrug is: “Then it’ll be proved.” But remind them of what Douglas Adams said. QED.
Ethiopia is MUCH more civilized than us — they divide science and religion quite happily, and don’t mix them up. That very religious country is very proud of the Lucy exhibits.
Rejecta
Note to the author of the Darwin Awards books and site:
Nearest and I just read Next Evolution and laughed our heads off; you have nothing to apologize for, reporting on the stupidity of the Ape That Walks Like A Bacterium.
We very much enjoyed your science detours. You’ll understand my next question as based in scientific curiosity, and not anger (well, maybe a bit, dealing with the Rejecta). I’m NOT a scientist, but I hope I understand scientific rigor:
Given that the human male seems to kill a large proportion of the females of this species (admitting that this is an unproven proposition and would need research), especially if he has a history of being rejected by females, or if any female rejects him, is it possible that this is an extreme development of a normal breeding instinct?
As most — if not all — males fight and/or kill males of their species to prevent the other males from passing on their DNA (even though — or if — unconsciously), could the killing of human females, contingent on a given male being rejected or otherwise not allowed to breed, be an attempt to make her unavailable to another male to pass on his DNA?
Taking into consideration of “unnatural” environments — as the roebucks described by Konrad Lorenz, that gored fenced females and young because the males could corner them — is it a natural human instinct for the male human to kill the female he cannot impregnate?
Does the “unnatural” human environment actually PREVENT many deaths through education and societal controls?
(You probably recognize the Garbage Brain that can lead to being a scientist, or an engineer… or a ham radio operator).
(Possible reference: the 1989 Montreal selective killing of females).
Thank you for your time.
DBarr
Thanks for the advice
How DARE they?
It’s being demanded I sacrifice for a war, when I’ve been sacrificing all my life for the environment, and the people who want the war have never tried until now. I’m just a bit ticked off about it. I’m not swearing because I did all my swearing at the radio last night.
The Downscale people are finally coming to the conclusions the Upscale people have known all the time.
Downscale, of course, are those childish minds who think they can solve everything by war: The Kill To Cures, the Patriots, The Right People. They voted for Reagan and smugly smiled when he tore the solar panels off the White House. They didn’t know the deserts they were damning their own kids to.
Upscale are those of us who can’t be classified because we can actually think. Our opinions look gray because they’re based on the situation at the moment, on questions based on more than just one Approved Truth. I buy the solar panels from the Danish and Swedish companies who used to be American companies but lost their funding under the Oil War presidents.
Downscale loves war. They think they can simply wipe out the Bad Guy and burst their problems like a pimple, instead of keeping up a schedule of regular hygiene. They never seem to get it that both sides think they’re the Good Guy. They get all surprised when the other bad guys shoot back and start wiping out their DNA. They don’t start thinking until they’ve lost the chance to have grandchildren.
Upscale knows that war is what happens when you screw up. We don’t need to be “forged in the fires of experience” to figure something out. We know that interfering with other people’s lives will lead to instability, social collapse and war. Bullets kill. War is expensive. Lots of women and kids get killed. Soldiers – when they come back at all – come back crippled and/or screwed up in the head. Both sides lose, lose, lose.
We’ve lost every war we’ve been in. We lost the war with Great Britain; it was only a war to loosen up taxes and give the right of choice to white males.
We lost the civil war, a war the Upscale would never have fought, because Upscale knows slavery is wrong. We don’t have to see our fellow human beings whipped and degraded to know this isn’t what a decent human being does. Downscale is still mad about it, and doesn’t want any more colored immigrants; they had to have their Jim Crow laws taken away from them like a handful of linty candy.
We lost our wars with the First Peoples – the people we call the Indians. We’ve been left with a shattered environment we hardly have the resources to repair, and our wars with sick, dying peoples have made us think we’re invincible. The First Peoples have known who we are all along, right out into the islands of Hawaii, and the northern territory of Alaska.
We lost World War One when we got involved, and stirred up the pot that would just lead to more bad soup. We lost World War Two when our men came back and started to act the drill sergeant to their children and families; our children are raped in huge numbers and wander the streets just to get away from Dad, and blame our gay communities because of what their own blood did to them. We beat small, exhausted countries who had already been battered to pieces against another empire and added to our own legend of invincibility, in our own minds.
The women of Japan tied their babies to their backs and jumped into rivers and off mountains when they heard the Americans were coming, because of what the American Marines had done to Haiti in the 1920’s. America practiced torture in all the defeated countries, gaining experience for the Cold War.
We lost the Cold War when Russia went down the path we’re going down now. Our belief we’d won chained us to them, and is dragging us toward the same cliff. For the same resources, in the same places.
I won’t have to list the following quotes for the Upscale, but the Downscale might want to know before they start thinking their own experience is special.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Experience is a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other.”
Goethe said, “He who will not hear, must feel.”
Robert Frost said, “War is for everybody, for children, too.”
A Simple Lesson In Economics
There’s a lot of confusion up here over this, so I’ll keep it simple:
Capitalism works on a straight line. It gobbles forward using worker base, resources, whatever, until it uses everything up and smashes into a wall. Then it has to stagger around and go find something else to eat (see buffalo, cod, grazing land, fossil fuels).
Socialism — sometimes called “Communism,” although this is rare on this planet, at least since the industrial revolution — works in a circle (And before anybody starts squawking about the Evils Of Communism, that thing Stalin ran in the Soviet Union is now being called “State Capitalism.”).
This system goes: take out, put in — and try to put in a little more than you take out. Eat the big fish, not the breeding fish, and don’t destroy the wetlands that produce them. Leave land and people and societies fallow occasionally – let things rest and recover and get going again, while using other recovered resources. Basically, don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
One form of socialism that everyone uses is the biggest part on your car: the road. Socialism also needs to cover transportation, health and education because EVERYBODY needs them.
When Capitalism works in a circle, it’s like a snake eating its own tail. It eats all the big fish, then when they’re gone, the next smaller, fish, then the NEXT smaller fish. It’s why the middle east — once a garden of fruit trees — has been eaten by goats and sheep.
And WHERE does our society come from?
Capitalism keeps wanting a bigger and bigger chunk, until the providers peel away to the next good deal. It leaves behind those who can’t keep up — and yet if the pirates fall from the yard-top, they’re the first ones to dive into social services. We ALL get sick and old, or have bad things happen. We need someplace to rest and recover.
The fish need wetlands to rest and breed in. Surely we’re as deserving as fish?
Carbon Bootprint
You’re traveling on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, and you see this tourism sign: “Duncan Memorial Cedar Tree.”
Gasoline is expensive, and the tree is a ways in on a pitted logging road.
It’s the skeleton of two rather medium-sized cedars that have grown together, with a few patches of scrubby branches at the top. It is not a truly big, old-growth cedar; it is dry, sick, and has no bark. It looks more like an ancient juniper than a healthy big cedar. It’s in the center of a scrubby, sprayed, dried-out tree farm. The only shiny, pretty things you’ll see around the cedar are the huge, new, blue-and-white ”This is a Managed Forest” signs.
If you’re interested in what 200 years of logging has done to the native forest, it could be of historical note. If you’re interested in seeing a healthy, magnificent, oxygen-pumping tree and forest, it’s just depressing. Save your gasoline and offset the carbon footprint that’s been widened by this forest.
If you are determined to see it, pat it on its mutilated wood and apologize for your species. We did. And promised it that we’re well on the way to poisoning and diseasing our way back to a remnant population, so the planetary machine may have a chance.
There’s always hope.
Cure For The Common Homophobe
Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain
The Olympic Peninsula, especially the rural parts of the area, are not unusual in the presence of racial and religious prejudice and homophobia. The best people will blurt out antiquated prejudices, from comments on Hemingway’s biography to just who is shooting at a whale.
But help may be on the way!
Twilight, a series of vampire genre novels for young adults, is set in the western peninsula town of Forks. A movie may be filmed there, using local characters.
Now Forks is no worse in the presence of homophobia than any other rural American town. All across this country, homosexual kids always need to watch their backs; being called “gay” has been proven in American towns and the military to being the preparation for a death sentence. There is no evidence it is that bad in any way at Forks — in so many ways, it’s Live and Let Live out here. But it’s in the atmosphere.
If a movie is made in the area, Hollywood will be in town. That’s an industry that can’t afford to excercise prejudice toward anyone with any artistic ability, because it takes a lot of people to film, act, choreograph, costume, edit, compose, advertise, and just move stuff around.
Arts and media are a refuge and a livelyhood for many in the gay community, mostly because the GBLT community honors and appreciates education, the humanities and the arts. Arts and music are never despised, ignored, or lost because the funding for the local high school went to the football program (the community up here that let this happen knows which one it is; we don’t need to go into personalilties).
If the smart, hard-working members of the gay community who work in film show up, working with local people, dining in local restaurants, relaxing in local bars, it’s going to do a lot of good. These people can be role models for smart, artistic or musical kids who have never had the support they deserve in the area.
It’s hard to practice homophobia when the local kids find out what good people gay people are.
Check out: http://www.glaad.org
Dog protects seal
Where’s a video camera when you need one?
Buddha is a handsome, friendly black lab/greyhound cross. He looks like Anubis with floppy ears. He prefers to catch thrown rocks (his owner requests he not be indulged).
Last week, while strolling along the surf, intent upon looking for agates, I nearly stepped on a dark, speckled baby harbor seal. He gazed up at me curiously. Knowing his mother had either left him while she fished, or he was out on his own, I went around him.
Dan and I went our way. We kept turning back to watch the seal through our Russian military surplus minocular. The seal remained on the beach, moving up past the surf, unperturbed by humans walking by, even when the Clallam Bay football team boys came down to run in the gravel.
But then came Buddha. Oh, no! Dog and baby seal! We were too far away to prevent an incident, but we should have known Buddha wasn’t a problem.
He carefully straddled the seal, which stared up at his belly. Then he barked loudly and angrily at the water, obviously protecting the seal from the surf. This continued for some time. Once satisfied he’d done his duty, Buddha went trotting on his way, as the seal continued to watch him.
Buddha may not be the brightest bulb in the socket, but there’s no questioning he has a good heart.
(People have asked so heeeeere’s Buddha!
Give a Shit
I just realized why China is going to eat our lunch.
Go get the movie Mad Max — Beyond Thunderdome. Watch it (It’s fun!).
Then ask what is the real difference between two of the movie’s societies, both founded by females. They’ve both got light. They’ve both got the same fuel. They’ve just got different sources.
It’s not oil. It’s not corn. It’s not electricity. Victor Hugo jumped up in the middle of Les Misererables to demand why society was being so incredibly wasteful of this home-grown product. And he was only ranting about farming.
The Chinese aleady know how to use and process this fertilizer/fuel. Farms all across China are producing it for independent use on farms and in villages.
We, instead, are using billions of gallons of precious drinking water to literally flush it away. We are idiots.
And it’s why Josh Whedon’s Firefly got it right about everybody in the future speaking Chinese. The Chinese are going to kick our butts.
Or the shit out of us — either reference in pertinent.
