ZOMG, this product contains cannabis!

Does anybody alive even remember why it was outlawed?  No, of course you don’t – but you’ll do yourself well to look over the historical – and hysterical – record.

Let’s take a few choice quotes from the era of marijuana criminalization, shall we?

“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”
[1934 newspaper editorial in favor of criminalization]

“All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”
[Texas legislator arguing for criminalization]

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I found this new video very disturbing:

Britney Spears was [rightly] excoriated for saying “I think we should just support our President in everything he does.” I expect to hear at least as much criticism of this stupidity – which brings Oval Office hero-worshiping to a new and nauseous level.

I totally agree with the “be the change” concept – nothing new (although still very rare).

But Ashton Kutcher (not the world’s brightest sociopolitical bulb) and Demi Moore pledge to be “servants” to President Obama. What the fuck are they talking about? Kutcher is the same moron who recently referred to President Bush as our “commander”.  Is he channeling jungsturm or something?

Who are these people?

And how many of them do you think could actually sit down and engage in a substantive, nuanced conversation about the important issues they’re pledging about?  Two, three, maybe?

This new Harpo Productions video feels right out of a 1930s propaganda machine. I truly sympathize with President Obama – a human facing inhuman expectations. He will have a very hard time living up to the high-style, breathless absurdity of fluff like this.

Hey idiots: pledge loyalty to ideals, or goals, or foundational principles that stir your heart and soul. Respect others, hope for the best for them, empower them, agree and disagree with them, but don’t worship them.  Pledging to be a “servant” to a single person is called a cult.

Hollywood needs political cluefulness, not a new branch of Scientology.

Here’s my pledge: I pledge to fight against blind, unquestioning loyalty of any kind. It’s what got us into the mess we’re in – and it’s certainly not going to get us out.

How about for Thanksgiving, we give thanks that we’re not being tortured to death?

Valleywag picked up a FriendFeed discussion between a few of us yesterday regarding the bailout bill within which Scoble blames “people like [me]” for the coming “breadlines”.  It rings a little hollow considering where I’ve been on all this and where he’s been (i.e. nowhere), but it brings a much more important issue to the fore.

To the thread in particular, I realize how acerbic my tone can be when discussing such things and try to be cognizant of that every time I write.  Sometimes my frustration – the result of a bit too much anguish about our national slumber – gets the best of me.  But Americans sat mostly silent as international and domestic crimes were perpetrated in their names and their economy was wrecked – choosing to glide along as if they had far more important things to think about.

Robert is right to describe the financial mess as the result of our collective idiocy.  The bill for one or two generations of stupidity has now come due and our remaining credit cards have been declined.  And for the moment, the social media characters participating in the specific tendril of web masturbation that is Robert’s “what to do” post have come up substantially empty.  So, I’ll see what I can come up with.

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I can’t help but notice some chilling similarities between the Bush Administration’s approach on the financial crisis and the Iraqi War Resolution.  I literally sat awake until almost 5:00 this morning fretting about this.
Let’s look at a few of them:

• We were told that calamity was imminent, and a failure to act and do exactly what Bush asked of us would result in a disaster;
• Congress was strongarmed into doing something big and something fast, without time for proper analysis;
• We were conned into spending hundreds of billions of our hard-earned dollars (much for the benefit of corporate malfeasants) – only to take a giant step backward;
• We handed legal immunity and absolute control to the very authorities who demanded the actions;
• We were lied to every step of the way.

And eventually the majority came around to see it as a colossal blunder.  So, I think Congress would serve itself and the People well if it took a much more measured approach to this, or even refused the bailout.  I know, I’m asking for cajones of steel here, but I can dream.

If this goes through, it will be the swindle of the century.

I’ll close with a few words from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That is fascism; ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

How did we get here?  Is it too late to stop it?

Every American should sit through (and actually digest) this interview in its entirety [Part 1] | [Part 2].  Whether you watch or listen, please take the time to do so with open ears and an open mind.  It is probably the most powerful and sobering assessment of the American condition I have heard in years.

Bacevich’s 2007 op ed in the Washington Post provides some sad but interesting background.  His new book is here.

Growing up, there was a book that first got me excited about computers.  I’d never really forgotten it, but over the years it had faded deep into memory.  And fond memories they were – the book was whimsical, full of strange artwork and far-out metaphors.  It really helped me – a middle-school kid in the middle of nowhere trying desperately to think big – to see outside my small world and into a universe of infinite technological possibility.  I was probably 12 or 13, just starting to tinker with TRS-80s and early Apples and really having my mind opened up by these strange little boxes.

A few months ago – for some reason – that book popped back into my mind.  Who was that guy?  What was that book?  And off I went to figure it out.

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I’ve often whined in these pages about various modalities I enjoy online and, also, my frustrations with some of them.  A couple of years ago, right after the great big anorexia brouhaha of 2006, I remarked that folks seemed to be starving for conversation, and online tools hadn’t matured to the point where it could happen very well.

What I really love about blogging – other than getting my opinion out there and pissing people off – is curating.  I love finding cool, random things that inspire or touch me in some way and sharing them with all of you.  My hope is that you see, read, or feel things you would not have otherwise.

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Robert Scoble suggested today that if he could make one rule about the Internet, it would be “no anonymity.”  I like Robert but I don’t like his idea.

Laura Fitton asked: “What one ‘rule’ would you make about the Internet?”, and in the thread that resulted, Robert replied that he’d eliminate anonymity. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlin was inspirational to me, in some ways, as a teen.  He had a biting wit and was more a social commentator than comedian.  I saw him live a couple of times – once at the University of Maine where he autographed a dollar bill for me.  The fact that it took me several months to spend that money was as much about my respect for him as my flat-broke-ness.

One of my favorite Carlin rants is here – Carlin on Politicians – and I’ll miss that penetrating side of him.  He could make us laugh so hard that our guts hurt, and not always because what he said was funny, exactly – but because it was so sadly true.  In his later years, I was sad to see him move more toward aimless anger and jokes about death and poop, but I suppose that’s how things go.

He died at Saint John’s in Santa Monica – just a mile or two from my place -  at the age of 71.

Hey pork-lovers: remember the pig brain mist story?  Well, mother nature’s delivered us a fresh little firmware upgrade, just like I promised!

ABC is reporting that the “National Security Principals Committee” held dozens of meetings in the White House specifically planning who and how to torture. The principals conspiring to commit these war crimes included the vice president, then-CIA director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to ABC, Ashcroft at one point asked, “why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

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“… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”

[so old it's cool again.]

Years ago, I read Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head, and found it to be a good and interesting book, even if somewhat inconclusive.

Somehow I missed Rolling Stone’s profile of him over a year ago. It’s a really interesting story – his influences and where they took him. I saw Pinchbeck on the Colbert Report a few months ago talking about his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and I was quite confused.

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Y’all know how I feel about factory farming in general. Stuff like this really upsets me, and one of these days, Mother Nature is going to bite back. When she does, it’ll be pretty hard to feel sorry for those she bites. Those of you who eat meat should, at the very least, be sure it’s not commercially farmed and never saw the inside of a slaughterhouse. (In the words of Michael Pollan, “pay more, eat less.”) Video is here.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey: “Torture, as you know, is now unlawful under American law. I can’t contemplate any situation in which this President would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.”

Senator Arlen Specter: “Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; he did just that in disregarding the express mandate of the National Security Act to notify the intelligence committees.. didn’t he?”

Mukasey: “I think we are now in a situation where both of those issues have been brought within statutes and that’s the procedure going forward.”

Specter: “That’s not the point. The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he?”

Mukasey: “I don’t know.”

[Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/30/08]

“All Religions were invented by the Devil to conceal God from Mankind.”

I love this story. Seems that Garrett Lisi, a broke 39 year old surfer from Hawaii, has stunned scientists by presenting a viable, testable “theory of everything” that unites particles and forces within the universe.

While some are calling it a “long shot,” a few top scientists are pleasantly surprised and not so fast to write it off. Lisi’s theory takes gravity into account – something that, to date, has only been accomplished by string theory. String theory, as some of you know, requires ten or eleven dimensions to really work. Lisi’s theory has higher dimensions, too – but unlike string theory, it proves out just fine in our “ordinary” four-dimensional (3d+time) existence. I just like the E8 structures, which were discovered in 1888 but not fully computed/proven out until this year.

Whoa, dude, totally intense.

I’m very much looking forward to PopTech 2007, which kicks off later this week.  I’ll see some of you there – and those who won’t be there can catch the live webcasts, courtesy of Yahoo!

I’m also excited to meet and learn from Steven Pinker, who I’ve been grooving to recently via his new book, The Stuff Of Thought.  He and his partner Rebecca Goldstein are profiled in this cool piece at Salon: Proud Atheists.

Peggy Noonan with a smart piece about dialogue and its importance in political discourse. The UFlorida taser kid could have fit nicely within, too. Let them all speak if we are to find our way home again.

An interesting metaphor on the recent tasering of Andrew Meyer at UF.

Larisa Alexandrovna seems to have just awakened to the fact that the American population is sleepwalking. I think what happened is a big problem, but don’t see why it matters that he is black. It creeps me out only slightly more than Ike Skelton’s sneering attitude toward the protesters during yesterday’s briefing by Patraeus. It’s an outrage regardless of race, and I think good people should be outraged. But I think that a lot, and don’t hold out as much hope for organic outrage as I used to. Too much comfort around here the last generation or two. Sorry, Larisa, that you’ve just tuned in to how tuned out your fellow Americans are.

“My life doesn’t revolve nor has it ever revolved, around psychedelics. They enhanced my life — psychedelics can enhance the life of any intelligent, courageous person, and they might even represent our last great hope for planetary survival — but they didn’t replace my life or become its central focus. Second, it shouldn’t be implied that the acid elves sell talent by the pound — or the microgram. The psychedelic drug doesn’t exist that can make a creative genius out of a hack or turn a neurotic weenie into a happy fully-conscious human being. You have to bring something to the table, and be willing to risk your belief systems. Some people want to go to heaven without dying.”

I listened to this podcast a couple weeks ago and it got me even more worked up about impeachment. Constitutionalists are furious about the precedents being set by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their co-conspirators. I’ve heard smart guys like Jonathan Turley, Jim Dempsey and David Cole expressing concern for a long time, but this segment especially moved me.

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Enjoy this great fractal gallery, thanks to my bro. Fractals are interesting and not just because they’re pretty. They reveal an underlying nature, fundamental truths about symmetry and nature. It’s one of those unique art forms that reveal deeper truths about the universe. If you think I’m crazy and are feeling really adventurous, read about Fibonacci numbers.