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Wikipedia this is why I love you: I goog 17 June, 2014Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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Wikipedia this is why I love you: I google "List of dystopian films" and I get one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films
"Springfield is like Jamaica." — Shaw 17 July, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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"Springfield is like Jamaica." — Shawn Matthews, Springfield MO
I want John Sayles to make the movie of 17 July, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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I want John Sayles to make the movie of this story.
Big article live on Huffpo's front page right now. 26 March, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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Please go comment on it, Like it, tweet it or whatever you do!
Introduction (take two) 17 February, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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(Or maybe this would work as an introduction? I got a lot of negative feedback on the one a few posts below.)
At the beginning of the 19th century, China was the largest, strongest, wealthiest country in the world, and had been for 2,000 years. At the end of that century, it was on its knees before Europe, begging for permission to pretend it was still something like a sovereign nation. Europe sucked wealth out, and pumped opium in, which it forced China to accept at gun point. Industrializing Russia and Japan pushed in from the north and east. Chinese government administration disintegrated. Floods, famine, disease and violence killed tens of millions. It was normal for cities to employ armies of early morning workers to clear away the dead left by the night. By the end of the century even that service became unreliable.
The imperialist industrial societies feasting upon China were an entirely new phenomenon in human history. They behaved according to a logic China could not decipher, they conquered with a limitless energy China could not fathom. For a thousand years, China had treated delegations from Europe like buzzing flies. But in the 19th century, industrial Europe's demand for Chinese goods became unstoppable, as did its gunships. China still refused to trade goods. It didn't need anything Europe made. It insisted on payment in silver. That one-way trade gave China a growing mountain of hard cash — just like it has today thanks to the exact same kind of one-way trade with the rest of the world, especially with the United States.
If China had retained its sovereignty, all that silver might have paid for a modernization program undertaken by an emergent reform movement. That is exactly how modern China has used its mountain of U.S. dollars. But Britain had a different plan for China, and the firepower to make it happen: It would Chinese tea, silk and other goods not with silver, but with addictive opium from its Indian possessions. China's government forbade opium. So Britain fought and won a war to force China to accept it. That is how China fell.
How did most Chinese leaders and intellectuals react to the rise of the industrial imperialist countries? At the beginning of the century, they believed China had the best possible type of government. At the end of the century they believed the same thing. Looking back at them, you will be tempted to ask how they could remain so blind. What prevented them from seeing that the world had changed, that their ancient imperial government was not viable in the modern world, and that a better way had become available?
If you're an American living in the early 21st century, chances are you can find the answers to those questions by examining your own thinking. For 300 years we were the most dynamic society on earth — which eventually made us the most wealthy and powerful nation on earth. Then, just like the defeated China I described above, we began shipping off our wealth and industry in exchange for a powerfully addictive drug.
In our case, that drug is cheap consumer goods from China and elsewhere. China did not force this upon us. Most of the products Americans buy from China are made or marketed by U.S. companies. Sixty years ago, we were the workshop of the world. In blind obedience to a kooky economic dogma, we intentionally stopped making things that China and other once-poor countries started to make more cheaply. For instance, when Korea and China were developing national steel industries from the ground up, American bankers bought the major U.S. steel companies to extract as much cash as possible with no intention of reinvesting one cent in modernization. The American revolution was partly fought to remove British ban on American industrialization. Now, we were doing it to ourselves.
Conservatives and progressives both agreed that deindustrialization was the way to go. Progressive Robert Reich, for example, favored replacing manufacturing with "symbolic analysis." It turned out, however, that only a few "symbolic analyst" jobs paid better than the good old fashioned high-end manufacturing. Today, Korean steel workers earn almost what "overpaid" American steel workers used to — but Korea is reinvesting in its steel industry as a matter of national independence. Japan had a high-wage steel industry just like ours when the Korean and Chinese competition rose up. It continued to reinvest and today produces more steel than ever.
Japan and Korea are two of the most highly educated countries in the world. Why didn't they throw out manufacturing in favor of "symbolic analysis" like we did? The answer is that both countries are an example of a new kind of society that is capable of making rational long-term decisions about their economies.
This book is not a call for us to make America into China. Through its ordeal of conquest, reform and revolution, ancient China did not become one of the countries that confronted it, it became modern China. Our beloved America, stuck in so many ways in the 19th century, is embarking on its own unique 21st century ordeal. It will not emerge as a copy of China or Japan. It will emerge as a modern America, founded on its own ancient traditions. Just China's renewal was founded on Chinese traditions, such as authoritarian bureaucracy, America's renewal will be based on Anglo-American traditions, such as the sanctity of personal liberty, private property, rule of law, entrepreneurship and immigration.
Today, though, our minds are just as closed and our vision just as narrow as the Chinese leaders who clung to the Qing Dynasty as English warships blasted their way up the Perl River. Because we are not being attacked from outside, but undermining ourselves from within, it may be even harder for us to change our thinking. But we must.
Recently I was driving on Missouri Route 60. To my left, a freight train pulled hundreds of shipping containers stacked two by two, every one displaying the mark of a Chinese shipping giant. To my right, a seemingly endless chain of payday loan offices advertised "first loan free" and "instant cash". All of America has not yet hit rock bottom — just half of America. The respectable Chinese leaders of the 19th century waited until China passed over to warlords and revolutionaries before they rethought their assumptions. It's hard to guess what America hitting rock bottom would look like, and who power would fall to if that happened. Let's not find out. Who's ready to start rethinking assumptions now?
1.2 The Great Mobilization 31 January, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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A totally unimaginable quantity of United States steel — in the form of bombers and bombs, ships and submarines, tanks and trucks, all delivered and powered by United States oil — tipped the balance of World War II. How in just a few short years did U.S. industry flip from utter depression and disorganization into a brilliantly conducted symphony of production capable of such a feat? Hollywood never made a war movie about it. Most historians barely mention it. One recent account called the mobilization "effortless." For the workers and managers involved, however, it was a grueling battle whose outcome was uncertain until almost the very end.
Left wingers tend to recount the mobilization as a story of government command and control. Right wingers paint a picture of a spontaneous response by free markets to the demands of war. Both sides have it wrong. To the exasperation of many New Dealers in the administration and the press, Roosevelt nationalized nothing and didn't flinch from pouring billions of dollars into private hands. But he did recruit respected industrialists to organize production. The wisdom and character of their leadership put their central planner counter parts in Europe and the Soviet Union to shame — but there is no doubt that too were central planners, even if they did not have coercion as one of their tools. In fact, it was the lack of coercion that made war planning in the U.S. so much more effective than elsewhere.
Chief among Roosevelt's economic organizers was was life-long Republican and star of American capitalism, William Knudsen. Knudsen was a working class Danish immigrant who began on the shop floor, started his own manufacturing business, revolutionized production at Ford Motor Company after Henry Ford bought his company, and finally moved to GM where he led Chevrolet to surpass Ford's sales and forged the modern auto industry in the process.
In Knudsen's day, Detroit was Silicon Valley. Auto and other new "high tech" industries were revolutionizing human life just as profoundly as computers, mobile phones and the Internet is today. Knudsen and his generation of engineers were analogous to top software developers of Silicon Valley who have repeatedly reinvented the way software is created in ways that make possible the breakneck pace of change and the mass distribution of new technologies. From the 1920's through the 40's, high-tech dreamers like Knudsen carried out a similar revolution by fundamentally reinventing mass production.
Mass production is the technique of breaking down skilled artisan craft work into many small steps able to be performed by relatively unskilled workers. The purpose originally was not primarily to reduce wages — in fact, wages for mass production workers were often higher than for their craft counterparts in the older industries. The purpose of mass production was to increase speed and quantity.
British Rolls Royce airplane engines were built along the old craft lines. So too in France where warplane production had been turned over to craft labor unions. Neither country therefore had any hope of suddenly producing the "clouds of airplanes" they were requesting from the United States. Same for battleships and transport ships. The problem was that the United States did not yet produce any airplanes or ships using the new mass production methods. Asking the U.S. shipbuilding industry to fill the seas with ships was sort of like asking the accounting industry to reinvent Google. It wasn't going to happen.
The problem was as high stakes as could be. It was clear to all that if the U.S. was not politically and economically able to deliver the needed armaments, Germany would eventually take all Europe. The pressure was especially great in the beginning of the war when the Soviets still swore not to fight Germany.
The U.S. sitting out the war for so long ironically helped to win it. It gave Bill Knudson the time and the space to retool American industry for war production. He was intimately familiar with the meticulous preparation that went into merely producing a new model of car. Hundreds — or thousands — of suppliers needed to be lined up. Work had to be divvied up among them in a way that would actually work. Failures by many of them had to be expected. A whole new foundation of machine tools — the machines that make the machines — would need to be designed and built, each one of them also drawing on a network of suppliers. He had told Henry Ford it would take 18 months just to create a successor to the Model T (causing Ford to stick with the T). As a member of the "National Defense Advisory Commission" he had scarcely 18 months to create an entirely new national economy, and no formal power to make it happen.
Knudsen knew Midwestern and Northeastern manufacturers from his long experience building cars with them. He knew what they produced and where they produced it. A central tenant of classical liberalism — known today as conservatism or libertarianism — holds that economic planning must fail because planners can never have perfect information, judgment or motives. With his homeland and six living sisters trapped behind Nazi lines, Knudsen's motivations were perfect. His information and judgment were not perfect, just incredibly good.
Knudsen worked tirelessly to set up a new economy sector by sector, factory by factory, but everything had to happen in parallel. He worked it out in long discussions and brief phone calls with owners of every kind of business. He knew their own plants by name and number. In some cases the owners invested their own money in expansion, in other cases Knudsen promised government loans that he didn't at first have the formal authority to make — he made them anyways.
He and his team spotted, and predicted, bottlenecks in production and did whatever they could to eliminate them. For example, machine tools were an especially difficult problem. Before you could build a new kind of airplane, your factory, and all your suppliers' factories, would need to acquire and configure appropriate machine tools — machine tools were the machines that built the machines. The machine tool industry was still dominated by very old firms in New England. The firms had not fully switched to mass production and Knudsen judged they would not be able to scale to the needs of the new economy. He contacted smaller manufacturers in the Midwest who followed more modern practices and convinced them to begin scaling up. One of them, betting on war, had already begun investing in expansion. Knudsen poured in loans and encouragement, and connected them with the network of manufacturers who would soon be their wartime customers.
Knudsen played the role of a true organizer, constantly meeting with an convening other industrialists, large and small, to get things moving. He constantly planned ahead of the goals Roosevelt or the Army were setting, knowing that they didn't come close to what would be needed in the end. Eventually, Roosevelt would keep on adding zeros to his production targets past what even Knudsen had dreamed of.
As war neared it became easier to get business owners to participate, but as Roosevelt added more and more zeros to the end of production targets, the impossibility of the project appeared absurd at times. Toward the end of the first phase of Knudsen's planning, he found himself large auditoriums filled with industrialists reading out lists of materials and parts that still needed to be produced. As hands went up, aids would take down their names and work out agreements, often just by handshake, before the night was over. The press criticized Knudsen for "auctioning off" the defense of the nation. But really, he was just getting it done.
Knudsen wasn't the only leader of the war mobilization. There were several central figures, and the lineup changed over time. There were some rivalries and many conflicts, but progress never stalled. In just the first two years, all of the following industries had either been totally revolutionized or were well on their way, and all of them had been vastly expanded: steel, aluminum and every other kind of metal used in manufacturing, military and merchant ships, motor vehicles, airplanes, machine tools, small arms, ammunition, agriculture, mining, radio, and many others.
Henry Kaiser's construction company — which had never built a ship before — built several huge ship yards where ships would be fully mass produced for the first time in history, mostly by workers who had never had anything to do with ships. Kaiser's first ship model was the "Liberty Ship," a very large cargo ship that would transport millions of tons of food, coal, oil, arms and troops to Europe. The first ships took a few months to finish — record time for such large vessels. Kaiser pushed his ship yards by fostering friendly competition among them. They raced to cut their times while always sharing their successful innovations with each other. Results were unimaginable. Each yard kept cutting the other's record in half. Eventually, one of the yards completed a ship from start to finish in three days. Three days.
Aircraft posed an tougher challenge, with hundreds of different systems that all had to work perfectly, all tightly intertwined with each other, involving hundreds of thousands of precision parts. At times it appeared the planes would never get off the ground. New aircraft plants were raised all over the West. But eventually Detroit was recruited to convert auto factories to build airplane engines, and inevitably the planes themselves.
Even when the planes were finally flying, there was still trouble. Air crews were accustomed to ordering improvements to the planes as they discovered them. For example, sliding bomb bay doors were requested when German fighter pilots learned to wait for the sight of bomb bay doors flapping open — a sign that the bomber would have to slow down and hold course. Mass production made such changes nearly impossible: the factory was essentially a giant robot, with workers serving alongside machines and tools. The robot couldn't adapt to new requests the way old-style teams of craft airplane makers could.
What to do? Here Bill Knudsen saved the day once again. Under heavy criticism from the press — at first for doing too much, and then for doing too little — Knudsen had been replaced by a more political appointment. Instead of complaining to the press, leaking stories of "what really happened," or returning to Detroit in a huff, he told the president, "If you want me to stand sentinel at the door, that's what I'll do — I'll do whatever you call upon me to do." He was made a three star lieutenant general in the army, given a plane, and told to roam the country — and the world — finding and fixing jams and bottlenecks in production. His solution to the problem of modifying aircrafts was simple: keep production moving by leaving the designs alone, and modify the planes after they were done. Civilian airlines took on the job, training thousands of new airplane mechanics virtually overnight.
All through the economy, over and over, problems like that were quickly solved — problems that today would lead to endless delays and eventual failure. What made things different back then? The urgency of war? No. Leaders like Kaiser and Knudsen were behaving no different in preparation for war than they had for their entire careers. What pleased them in their work was constantly figuring out how to do things faster, bigger and better.
What made the war mobilization different was that they — the most dynamic and driven industrialists — were driving it. Many New Dealers had been deeply suspicious of them from the start, but Roosevelt wisely overrode their objections.
Do we have to wait for World War III to mobilize like that again? Today, our economy is treading water. In the 1930's, it was drowning. If they were living in a different time, it was a time that was definitely more likely to produce the success they accomplished. Industrial leaders like Knudsen and Kairser were not unique to their time. We have plenty like them today.
Knudsen and Kaiser appeared as heroes on the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek, but were unknown before the war mobilization. Right now, thousands of equally driven and talented characters are working miracles in obscurity: the people who built out Google's global server infrastructure, who reinvented database technology to allow Google to look up anything you might ask within a thousandth of a second, or who reinvented it all again to allow Facebook to stand up to the demands of the most data-intensive application ever run. Those folks have redesigned the very structure of your day-to-day life, and you've never heard their names.
The story of recent industrial breakthroughs doesn't stop with famous and fashionable Internet companies. There are hundreds of unsung heroes behind the recent — and almost unnoticed — reinvention of the U.S. auto industry. Amazing leaders are making radical breakthroughs all over our economy. Many are immigrants, just like Knudsen, though these days they tend to come from Asia, not Europe.
Why, then, with all those industrial heroes, is the U.S. economy hobbling along at a the pace of a 17 year old dog while Asia, for example, is exploding? There's an answer that probably most of you reading this are thinking of right now: It's that Asia still has a ways to go, and we've basically arrived. That was the thinking that made Roosevelt refrain from directly building up our means of making a living in the Great Depression. He said, "We've already got all the capacity we need." Meanwhile, half of America was staving, and even the wealthiest Americans were still living a material a life that would be considered slumming it by most middle class people today. He was just as distant from the half of America that was suffering as nearly all liberal, progressive and conservative politicians and writers are today. He was as out-of-ideas as our current elite is today.
Half of America today is living in a nightmare, or something close to it. Almost the whole other half is living a life unfit for human beings: sitting in a cubical 50 or 60 hours a week pushing paper instead of living their own lives and raising raising their own children. What we know from the past few thousand years is that humanity is not a zero-sum game. New tools and new patterns in social organization — such as rule of law, human rights and democracy — make new and better life possible. Though it is remote from the typical American consciousness, boring industrial and organizational changes of the past several decades have freed billions of people from fear of death by starvation, disease, flood and violence.
In America, the Great Mobilization lifted tens of millions out of misery. After the war, America's amazing new economy powered prosperity here for two generations — for many Americans, but far from all. Moreover, almost from V-Day on, the dynamism of the war economy was not able to translate into peacetime. First came a very gradual slowing of growth, and then a decline in real wages. They've been falling for most Americans every since 1977.
Many upper middle class Americans today are just as far removed from the misery that consumes half their country as lords and ladies of the middle ages. Meanwhile, working class and poor Americans are stuck wondering what's wrong with them that they're so different from everyone on television and in the movies. This book is looking for those who can see through this haze and can summon the clarity and resolve to say it should be different.
What, then, is the equivalent of the World War II mobilization for peace time here at the beginning of the 21st century?
1.1 Background to the Great Mobilization 26 January, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
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It's hard to picture it, but right up until Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war against the U.S., the American people were committed to avoiding war at any cost. World War 1 left us resolved to let the rest of the world fight its own battles. Even in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt won reelection with a promise not to, "send American boys into any foreign wars." That was already after the Nazi Government had conquered France, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Poland and several others, and bombed Britain, and stripped German Jews of civil rights, and placed tens of thousands Jews and political opponents in concentration camps.
After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt still felt so constrained by the anti-war stance of the American people that he declared war only on Japan, not Germany or its fascist ally Italy. (They declared war on the U.S. a week later.)
The U.S. entered the war with almost no means of making military trucks or jeeps, tanks, warships or military aircraft. A few short years later, the United States had produced more of all those than the rest of the combatants combined. In the end, United States war production surpassed, by an order of magnitude, what anyone had thought possible. The industrial leaders and workers who pulled the whole thing off were dumbfounded by their own accomplishment.
That story is proof of something that almost everyone these days would deny: that America can consciously choose to upgrade its means of making a living. I'm going to spend some pages later in this book explaining what I mean by "national means of making a living," a concept that's been banished from the intellectual landscape. Think of the more familiar demand for "jobs," which is an incomplete substitute that will have to do for now. The World War II mobilization proves that it's physically and organizational possible, at least under certain conditions, to create high paying jobs for virtually everyone.
Before get to the story of how the industrial mobilization was accomplished, I want to touch on the sad state of the economy before the war, to show that no matter how stagnant and indebted our economy has become today that places no limits on what we can accomplish tomorrow.
On December 8th, 1941, Japan dropped bombs on a country that appeared to be stuck in a permanent stupor. For a decade, the U.S. had suffered official unemployment rates as high as 25%. Millions were homeless and living close to starvation. Why? The immediate reason was very simple: Factories and shops closed because their products couldn't find buyers, in other words people didn't have money, or were saving what little money they had. And wealthy investors weren't investing.
That frozen economic state had been caused by a chaotic economic boom and bust that few at the time understood. The boom that led to the bust was an economic bubble, focused mainly on the stock market, but also other kinds of assets. Think of farmers buying stocks in imaginary companies instead of fertilizer — and banks lending them money to do it. In that madness, many people believed they were becoming rich.
But the stocks of imaginary companies (and wildly inflated prices of real ones) only had value as long as new buyers were willing to keep the bubble going by pushing prices even higher. Eventually, as it always does in speculative bubbles, reality set in. Suddenly there were no buyers for stocks. The imaginary companies were correctly revalued to zero. But now, because no one could have any trust in the market, stocks in real companies and virtually every other kind of man made asset went almost to zero. The farmer who bought stocks instead of planting crops was left with nothing.
Business owners who had expanded capacity during the boom now had to destroy it. They didn't have enough customers. And as they closed workplaces and laid off workers, their pool of customers shrank even more, causing more closures in a self-reinforcing deadly cycle.
America had been through booms and busts many times before — some more dramatic than 1929. It was considered normal for tens of millions to be periodically thrown out of work in revolutions of the business cycle. Most Americans were very poor by today's standards, and close to half were poor by contemporary standards. Nevertheless, most Americans had gotten used to life improving noticeably every decade or so. America's dynamic economy was to the 19th and early 20th centuries what Asia has been to the 20th and early 21st: America was the low-wage, well-educated, high-tech economy that had nowhere to go but up. Plus, unlike many of today's Asian "miracle" economies, America had diverse and abundant natural resources.
When the Great Depression didn't go away quickly, therefore, it felt like something had changed. Something had. Now that American wages and living standards were among the highest in the world, there was no longer a strong external force constantly pulling upwards. In 1930, the world economy was even more globalized (though they wouldn't have used that word) than it is today. There were plenty of other places investment capital could go, and our products were no longer far cheaper than those of other industrialized nations. (Japan is ran into this same problem starting in the 80's and 90's. China is just beginning to feel it today.)
Roosevelt's New Deal pumped huge amounts of money directly into American pockets. That money would create "demand," which business would mobilize to satisfy by reinvesting in capacity. Or so the theory went. It didn't work. John Maynard Keynes, the economist of the hour, said it shouldn't matter whether the government put money into productive work or just paid people to "dig ditches" — all that mattered was jump starting demand. The New Deal did dig a lot of "ditches," but also funded massive projects for power generation, transportation and more.
No matter how much money the government spent, however, economic growth didn't take off. After a very slight lift in the middle of the 30's, the economy began sliding backwards again. Roosevelt then went further, taking many other kinds of steps, such as imposing price and wage controls and many other more complex regulations. Supporters of the New Deal believe that it helped, and that the tenacity of the Depression was simply too great to be overcome by any government action. Critics of the New Deal believe that the artificial market signals sent by government spending, and the blockages caused by extreme regulation, only prolonged the Depression.
You might ask: Why Roosevelt didn't invest directly in building new industrial capacity? That would have put money into pockets, but also would have overcome the problem of investors' reluctance gamble on increasing capacity again. The reason was not a fear of central planning. Roosevelt and his economic advisors generally believed that America and other industrialized countries had reached the highest possible level of production and consumption. The problem of the Depression, as they saw it, might temporarily be one of under-utilization of labor and resources, but the permanent underlying problem was that America would never be able to consume all the of the goods that modern capitalism (of the 1930's) was capable of producing. The problem Roosevelt believed he had to solve was one of wealth redistribution, not of wealth creation.
Though present day economists disagree about the New Deal, they nearly all agree about what finally got us out of the Depression: World War II. The war required the government to pay for — and organize — a massive build up of industrial capacity that put virtually every American to work. The war overcame Roosevelt's hesitance to create new industrial capacity, and it overcame business's aversion to national planning and organization of the economy.
The story of how the war mobilization succeeded defies labeling by liberals or conservatives, champions of central planning or laissez-fair economists. No industries were nationalized. The economy remained fully in private hands. The effort drove the widest and deepest period of American entrepreneurship ever seen. The bulk of the new capacity was not specifically war-related — machine tools, steel, aluminum, magnesium, plastics, pharmaceuticals — and so laid the foundation for today's world industrial economy.The story of the mobilization is a story of uniquely American economic, political and social traditions and institutions pulling off something incredible.
Over the next 50 years, the inheritors of that industrial miracle would live prosperously while allowing almost every last ounce of dynamism flow out of our economy. After a little while, that prosperity could only be paid for by borrowing huge sums from other nations, because we had stopped producing so many of the goods we wanted (and weren't producing enough stuff to trade). In one short generation, the U.S. was transformed from a country that made the vast bulk of industrial goods consumed in the world and the world's largest creditor nation, into a largely de-industrialized "service economy" that is today that world's greatest debtor by a margin of trillions of dollars.
Why can't we mobilize again? Why can't we build new industries that are the most advanced in the world — to make the things we need that we are currently borrowing to buy? Is world war the only circumstance that can force us to get our act together? Isn't there some way for us to summon the political will to do it simply because it is the right thing to do? What would that look like?
We'll get to those questions later in the book. But first, let's look at how exactly our most recent great economic mobilization actually worked.
Introduction 25 January, 2013Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
Tags: The Book
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This book is a proposal for a Big Plan to Save America. If this is the first time you've come across one of these, then I want to make sure there's something you understand: I'm just one of thousands of crackpots and wackos who are peddling one of these Big Plans. They're all around you. You'll meet dozens at any Tea Party rally or "Occupy" protest, you'll hear them late at night on the AM dial, you've probably got one in your family somewhere.
What we all have in common is a complete lack of credentials. And yet, whenever an old order collapses, the new one that replaces it is ushered in by crackpots with Big Plans. Usually, it's a disaster. Hitler, Mao and Lenin were crackpots with Big Plans. But so were Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine.
Crackpots owe their place in history to the intellectual and political laziness of respectable, credentialed people. Members of Congress, successful business owners and virtually everyone living comfortably in a trendy urban neighborhood won their position under the status quo. The solutions they instinctively champion, therefore, do not shake the status quo at its foundation.
Liberals propose policies. Conservatives propose tax cuts. Both sides sincerely believe their proposals will help people. But they aren't thinking seriously of anything like, say, pulling up the bottom half of America into the middle class, inverting the U.S. trade imbalance, or ensuring that every capable child has access to the world's best education (three goals of my crackpot Big Plan).
Why can a crackpot like me, but almost none of my respectable friends, set his sights on those universally-desirable goals? Because only a crackpot with nothing to lose, and/or a massive chip on his shoulder, has the freedom to think about the steps needed to accomplish those big goals when each one of them would put the status quo in danger. I'm not accusing my respectable friends of willfully selling America short to protect their entrenched positions. It's more subtle than that. Their comfortable lives and/or emotional health confine their imaginations. It's just a quirk of history: When things fall apart, crazy plans become the future, and crazy plans are delivered by crazy people.
Most crackpot Big Plans floating around America today are pretty scary. Fed by conspiracy thinking, often anti-semitic and xenophobic, they call for expelling immigrants, militarizing civil society, or rolling society back to feudalism by eliminating all government functions other than the judiciary and police. The experience of the last century points to one of them gaining the upper hand in an American collapse. What you have then is a mass movement of crackpots, carrying out a crackpot plan under the leadership of a crackpot leader.
But it only goes like that because all the healthy people refuse to acknowledge that any crackpot scheme — neither a heinous one nor a beautiful one — could be the future.
I'd like to propose an alternative. We need talented, good people — not crackpots! — to step up now and choose, from a position of freedom, before everything begins to fall apart, to start really fixing America. Dear respectable friends, learn from the past couple of centuries. You don't need to wait until the chaos that is consuming half of America already comes to your own neighborhood. You can stop right now acting as though tens of millions of Americans are not suffering excruciating exploitation, violence and isolation. You can stop right now pretending that we're not coldly snuffing out half of generation of young people. You can stop right now imagining that we can borrow forever from China, Japan and Europe. Accept all those realities and allow your mind to begin thinking clearly, without regard for the status quo.
It's happened once before: it was the American Revolution. (I'll tell that story later in the book.) To do it again, we need a few thousand, committed, talented, non-crackpot local leaders to come together and use the democratic system that was bequeathed to us by the Revolution. We just have to get you non-crackpots together in the right way, run 500 of you for Congress and one of you for president, then do what needs to be done. What needs to be done? And how? That's the subject of the first part of this book. How we will come together and win state and national elections is the subject of the second part. I know it sounds crazy. I know only a few of you will take the leap and continue reading. A few is all we need. It's going to be beautiful.
America and the parable of the silly gardener 20 July, 2012Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
Tags: economics
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After many successful seasons, a gardener decided he never wanted to get his hands dirty again and resolved to grow his garden without planting. He suggested to his neighbor that she could plant it and keep a portion of the produce, but she already had a garden of her own. He threw seed on top of the hard ground, but it didn't sprout. He got down on his knees and begged the earth to produce, but nothing happened. Finally, he came to his seneses, dug into the ground, planted, and was rewarded with one more bountiful season.
Every industrialized economy in the world, like every garden, was planted. The American economy has seen many planting seasons, but this time around we're that silly gardener who doesn't want to get his hands dirty. We're trying to tempt others into planting with tax breaks and giveawauys. We're scattering seed on hard ground by providing little bits of capital to trendy projects. We're on our knees begging, trying to "stimulate" demand, by repaving roads and digging ditches.
Both progressives and the conservatives in America have developed an ideological opposition to planting, directly building industry. Conservatives believe in the power of the seed alone: the entrepeneur. Progressives believe in that too, but also think of the soil and water that nourish the seed: the past invention and infrastructure that make the entrepeneur possible. Both sides have written the planter out of history altogether.
Who plants national economies? In American history it has almost always been an even mixture of the government, the military, and Wall Street. The planters of other industrial economies are all some combination of the same players, in some cases a little more military or a little less banker. The good fortune of America has been that the prevailing interest of its economic planters for almost 200 years was national industrial economic development. The path was not always perfectly direct, but in the end industrial development was always the purpose that trumped everything else. The American Revolution was fought for the freedom to develop our economy instead of langish as a source of raw material and customers for another country's industry. The Civil War was fought for the industrial cause when the Confederacy formed to protect a Latin American style planation economy. Today, however, America's power elite are invested in the world economy as a whole with no particular interest in replanting our economy here at home.
The world's most modern communications and transportation systems were always America's. Some of them, like the canals, telegraph, highways and Internet were planted by the government and military. Others, like the railroads and airlines were planted by a combination of Wall Street, government and the military. The world's most advanced and high-value industries were always America's. Our steel industry, oil industry, and auto-industry were planted mainly by Wall Street. Our aluminum, plastics, and pharmaculticals industries were planted by the government and military for the second World War.
Don't forget the seed. Railroads, for example, were begun by a thousand local entrepreneurs. But America's national railways were built in a chaotic and messy yet centrally-directed effort by Wall Street, fueled by massive government subsidies, that squashed those local entrepreneurs like bugs. Like most large scale centrally planned economic efforts, there was massive waste and redundancy, but in the end America was covered with rail that served as a new infrastructure on which new generations of entrepreneurs and planners could build.
The world's best communications and transportation systems are no longer America's. The world's highest-value, largest and most dynamic industries are no longer America's. There is only one global industry that America truly dominates: Facebook. It employs 6,000 people.
Americans don't want to dominate. We just want to be able to take care of ourselves by going to work and earning a decent living. To get back to that place, we need entrepeneurs. We need to build on past invention and infrastructure. And we also need to do some gardening. Our elites in government and on Wall Street no longer want to get their hands dirty. It's easier to invest in other gardens that others have planted. Our elite now draws its wealth from the world economy, not the American economy.
End of story?
Not quite. We choose our government. So there is the possibility of a group of Americans stepping up and offering to get their hands dirty by replanting the American economy.
What would planting new industries look like in the 21st century in America? It's our destiny to find out. When you think about how fast, with modern technology, poor countries such as Korea or China were recently able to plant new modern economies, you can't help but wonder what a country as advanced as America would be capable of.
I want to find out what we're capable of.
Pig races! 10 June, 2012Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.
add a comment
Went to the Cape Fair pig races yesterday. It's an event they do for charity every year. It is NOT related to the official sport of pig racing, in which juvenile pigs actually race. This was a handful of grown up pigs waddling toward some oreo cookies. With the GOP primaries coming up, every local politician and hopeful politician was there with a booth. There was an auction to support the community scholarship fund, in which they were all put on the spot and goaded to out bid each other.
I wish I had a picture of the pigs, but we forgot the camera. It was on TV last year though:


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Police officer due before court charged with theft and assualt (From The Argus)
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Police officer due before court charged with theft and assualt
2:54pm Monday 14th July 2014 in News
A police officer will face court charged with theft and assault.
Andrea Kinnear, 38, who is with the Metropolitan Police force and based at Heathrow Airport, will appear at Brighton Magistrates' Court on July 31.
She is charged with theft and assault following a domestic incident in Brighton in April.
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Sodomy Laws
Control Technique
Sodomy Jokes
Contact Us
United States Sodomy Lawscompilation v1.0 (January 28, 1998)
The following state laws explain the legal penalties for consensual sexual behavior between a person's sexual organs and the mouth or anus of another. These acts fall under the general legal rubric of sodomy or crimes against nature where it is marginalized, banned, and penalized. Related acts and questionable laws are also provided where applicable. States which attempt a rational explanation claim that these acts harm the "moral welfare" of society and they have decided that all harm to "moral welfare" can be best remedied by strict penalties imposed against the individuals who partake in those behaviors.
No state has attempted to explain how any particular private consensual act between adults harms the "moral welfare" of society but still the laws remain on the books and legal enforcement continues. This causes citizens to lose respect for the legal system and to not take its laws seriously because they assume that other laws share the same irrational, unreasonable, and ignorant basis.
To prevent further erosion of public respect many states have repealed their laws that previously banned consensual sexual behavior between adults. If government wishes that citizens treat its edicts with respect, the repeal of all unjust laws immediately is required.
Note: This information is provided solely for the purpose of making people more aware of laws restricting certain consensual sexual behaviors in the United States.
The creator of this compilation is not a lawyer and the information contained herein is not intended as and should not be considered to be legal advice. While this information is believed to be factual, you should consult your state's lawbook or a lawyer for definitive legal opinions and advice prior to engaging in any consensual sexual act(s) with your adult partner. Furthermore, state laws are subject to change at any time, so you should periodically review them in order to determine if your behavior remains in compliance with them.


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Reviews for El Mañana LyricsPerformed by Gorillaz
By Pages: 1 2 3 Current page No. 2/ 3
Add Your New Review About The Song
Read it people | Reviewer: Indigo | 8/4/07
Read the end of the Rise of the Orger (Gorillaz auto-biography). Noodle isn't dead.
the truth | Reviewer: SiriusSpade | 8/2/07
They said noodle was suppose to die, but she didn't. The real story is on wikipedia under murdoc niccals. It tells you about this dude who had a grudge with them and wanted to get rid of noodle so he can be in a band that he thought murdoc would create after leaving the gorillaz. He was in the tower when it was falling and noodle would have a parachute and jump out of the tower before it crash which leaves the guy dead. It's on wikipedia. check it out.
Gorillaz | Reviewer: Damon | 7/27/07
People weren't lying when they said that Noodle dies,but it was only in the video.Very sad,but I'm pretty sure it was only for the video,she couldn't be leaving the Gorillaz.El Manana is a great song,the lyrics are very interesting if you take the time to read them.
Actually... | Reviewer: red | 7/12/07
El Manana is correct... it means tomorrow or morning... Think about it like this: The morning of the next day is the tomorrow.
As far as the way you're all trying to figure this out, most interpretations are correct.
By the way, this song is linked to the song Feel Good Inc.
El Mañana | Reviewer: Jamey | 6/6/07
Sad, sad song. Read the lyrics, they're awesome.
Has anyone else told anyone that Noodle dies? I heard it once, and it was the biggest load of shit I ever heard.
Noodle must never die.
xplanation | Reviewer: piller | 6/5/07
ok...to0 clear things out for you guys...in el manana Noodle doesn't die....it was a set up...in the rise of the ogre murdoc tells that she safely parachuted before it crashed.
explanation of what happens | Reviewer: piller | 6/5/07
Noodle doesn;t die...and also she was the main guitarist not singer...two D is the singer....it was a set up and she parachuted off before it crashed (Rise of the Ogre, xplains it more)
the meaning | Reviewer: raven | 5/19/07
The meaning of the song is about the group Gorillaz losing there best singer NOODLE. that was all a hoax because she comes back in there new album "Slowboat to hades" w/new vocals from her. This song sometimes gets me teary eyed just buy listening to the words and watching the video.
more interpretation | Reviewer: Anonymous | 4/29/07
It's pretty necessary to see the music videos for Gorillaz songs. Going along with the loss of innocence theme: the sister song, Feel Good Inc., shows the rest of the band trapped in a tower looking out at the simple pleasure of Noodle's windmill, which gets destroyed in the Manana video- that seems to confirm Saran's comment.
this song and it's title | Reviewer: GorillaGerg | 4/2/07
Well wouldn't Ell Manana mean he tommorow cause if it was the tomorrow it would me la manana so it it just a grammical error?
Add Your New Review About The Song
By Pages: 1 2 3 Current page No. 2/ 3


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Help! What do I call it on the save the dates?!!!!
- Posted 5 months ago by gwendolyn88
- last comment
Haven't posted on here in a while because frankly, I just don't have the skin to take any sort of negative comments or comments that aren't of the udnerstanding value but ughhh where else to go…
We have been "planning" an October 2013 wedding.. the date (10/13) meaning something to me since my parents got married on 10/13/72 and celebrated 40 years. I felt that was a nice way ot making sense of a date and I love the number 13. But we need a place to live first and it is beyond difficult. I'm just getting so stressed because I would need to buy my dress like NOW to have it for October and we still haven't booked our date/venue. Besides the fact that October could be sold out where we really want (i'd be willing to go into November) We are both very SET on what we want and HOW though so we are not going to go for an "off" day or get married at City Hall so this is just what we have to do.. wait.. try to save. I'm just really frustrated and feeling let down and afraid it won't be the way we dream it. It's been 10 years and I'm incredibly anxious to start baby making so I'm just way anxious. I just needed to vent to people who would understand. Please don't make me feel stupid for feeling how I feel. It so sucks
It's ok. Take a deep breath. I got engaged 9 months before our wedding and had all the details worked out in less than 2 months. (yes I am crazy.) Do you have a budget set and an idea of how many people you're inviting? Figure that out, then subtract 10% from your budget, then start looking into places that can accomodate you. Have a glass of wine. Book a caterer and get FI on board to research florists, photogs, DJ/band. Have a glass of wine. You have some time on those. Have a glass of champagne and look at dresses. I bought my dress at David's and walked out with it the same day. If you're nervous look into sample sales, but those are best if you're a pretty standard bridal size. Have another glass of wine. Find someone to marry you. You got this. It's a party. A big-ass party. As long as people have food and something to drink and don't have to sit next to someone they hate they'll have fun, and that means you'll have fun. And really, I cannot discount the value of a glass of wine while planning.
@soontobeMrsBoo: Has anyone told you you're awesome today? You're awesome TY… especially for all the excuses to drink wine and champagne. You got my attention.
@StarIzInkd: Hahahaha thank you! Like I said, I had everything done in 2 months. You just have to start knocking stuff down. Also I find I am much more creative (and care a lot less all at the same time) after a glass of wine. Everything sounds like a great idea! Have fun planning–this is supposed to be the exciting part.
Deep breath. Planning a whole wedding can be daunting but it can also be really fun. It just depends on the way you look at it. First thing first, set a budget. This is so critical and will make planning much easier. You can adjust the budget a little further down the line if you like, just don't go crazy is my advice. Second thing. Find a venue. You're right that venues do go quickly but i find things tend to work out for the best in the end. If its meant to be it will happen. Try looking at nontraditional places, like a park, library or even a senior center (sometimes they have nice rooms where they hold bigger events). Third thing is the dress and the planning gets much easier from there in my opinion. Set a schedule for when things are due, especially if you are on a budget. And just have fun! Ask for help, some women love to help plan these things. Good luck!
I booked almost all of my vendors in 2 months so you can do it in a short time! Can you book anything now or how long do you have to wait?
OMG i feel the same way!!! I been feeling anxious i been panicking so much lately and my wedding is in June. Definitely take some time to see how you envision yourself the day of the wedding. I have had a rough time with my budget and that is absolutely making me stress out a lot. What i try to do is just relax and sometimes is best when you write out what you really want and what would be essential for you on your wedding day. Two weeks ago i started off with my guest list. Sat down with Fiance and talked about and it was fun, we started talking about the people that have been there for us and what not and it felt so great! I have not booked the venue yet and i dont have a wedding dress either! But i want to enjoy this process as much as i can and definitely work around my budget so i have decided to not stress out! Hope this helps a bit!
We made the guest list, I tried on dresses, we have venue ideas so all of that is there.. it's just the actual DOING what needs to be done. Figures this weeks Say Yes to the Dress had an episode of brides with 2-4 months to teir wedding.. so was NOT a good idea to watch that. I was flipping out watcing it.
@StarIzInkd: lol yeah i am starting to stress a bit out!! still no dress shopping. i will be hopefully this weekend. What venue are you thinking about in nyc?
@StarIzInkd: I'm another bride that ended up buying the sample of my dream dress at the bridal store – didn't have to or need to due to a time crunch, but it just ended up working out that way and the sample was in amazing shape and saved me a couple hundred dollars. Things will work out! Oh yeah, and both of my sisters got married after 6 month engagements! It can be done!
@butterfly1988: Chateau Le Mer is our #1. It has EVERYTHING I want and is very slightly over budget whereas most other places don't have everything I want and are DEF. over budget. Hoping they will come down a bit seeing as though I expect they'd want to book up the rest of this year.
Where are you looking?
@E_Lynne615: I am considering buying the sample now for the fact that I am not thrilled with the debt my dress will leave me with… sample should help out a bit. I am also looking at another dress now that I have yet to try on.. I'm just not excited to try anything on now until we get our date.
@StarIzInkd: I have a tasting and tour at rebar in brooklyn this Thursday! It was our first choice we love the industrial feel and it feels more like us. But ive looked at other places such as Thalassa restaurant, Ici restaurant and anima. My guest list right now is 50 and im really trying hard to cut it down. My parents have been amazing and said they will be taking care of the venue and i honestly dont want to spend that much…im trying to find ways to cut down the price…have you found your dress yet?!
@butterfly1988: So awesome of your parents to help!
I found my dream dress but its price is my nightmare lol the more I look though the more I'm gonna have to give in and I'm fine with that. I did find a second dress I really love that's a bit less $$ but no one has it so I'm gonna wait til I'm ready and ask the store to order it/borrow it like they said they could. Have u found yours?
@StarIzInkd: aww i hope you get it soon! I honestly was dreading going to a wedding dress store because of the prices. i ended up going to davids bridal today just to take a look and i found one dress that i really liked…it was more then i expected to spend. My mother has offered to pay for my wedding dress … and i dont want her to spend so much. BUT on our way home today we met up with a family friend (kind of bumped into her) she works for a wedding designer in the city and has offered to make my dress!!! which for me would be great because i am in love with Jim Hjelms beautiful lace gowns! Which is way beyond my price range. Im feeling so happy! Hopefully it will work out! Do you know where you want to go for your honeymoon?!
@butterfly1988: That is FABULOUS!!! Best of luck! Post pictures when you get your dress
We are planning to go to Sandals ANtigua… w've been planning a vaca there for the last 10 years and we still have yet to go so eventually I said that should be where we go for our honeymoon lol… elast that way everything is included in the price and we don't have to worry about extras. Where are you going?


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There are several types of arthritis, but osteo-arthritis is the most common. It's often referred to as the "wear and tear" arthritis. Because as we age and gain weight, that describes the breakdown of the cushion at the end of the bones. Without that cushion, the bones rub together and that hurts. For many, that happens in the knees.
Now, here's what's new. Texas Tech is launching a study to see if acupressure could help women with osteo-arthritis in the knees.
Dr. Yan Zhang said, "With acupressure, we use fingers or hands, and press on certain points where we put needles for acupuncture. While doing that, we try to relieve pain and relieve some tension at that point to promote some circulation"
Researchers at Tech are looking for women between the ages of 50 and 70 with knee pain in both knees. If you become a part of this study, they will show you how to use acupressure as a home remedy.
If you'd like more information, call this number at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center- (806) 743-2222.
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LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) – An employee at a Kentuckiana pharmacy has been arrested for stealing drugs.
According to police, Kimberly Rogers admitted to taking Hydrocodone and Xanax from Pharmacy Alternatives. Rogers was an employee at the pharmacy when she was arrested.
Rogers has been charged with trafficking a controlled substance.
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Whoa! I never expected something like this! iPhone Comic Book Reader
– via ispy1964's LiveJournal
Whoa! I never expected something like this! iPhone Comic Book Reader
– via ispy1964's LiveJournal
Better Late Than Never: Watchmen
Much of this shift can be attributed to a single masterpiece: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Of course, Moore didn't invent the dark, troubled superhero. He was working with archetypes based on specific pre-existing characters, in this case derived mainly from the roster of Charlton Comics, a long-suffering publisher that had recently been absorbed by Moore's then-employer DC Comics. But Moore took the bleakness, neuroses, brooding philosophy, and nihilism that had been coursing through comic books for decades, and elevated the form to high art, something for the smart set and the post-grads as well as comic-book nerds and pimply teens. With Watchmen, he set out to write a comic-book series with the depth and heft of a Moby Dick. Audacious? Sure. Pretentious? Probably. Did he succeed? Indubitably. At the risk of being slightly hyperbolic, Watchmen is such a monumental achievement that it makes Moby Dick look like a flaming pile of horseshit by comparison.
He has the advantage on me. I've not yet read Moby Dick (shut up).
But Watchmen is a monumental achievement.
I'd stopped reading comics, but kept popping into comic stores. I saw the covers for the individual issues of Watchmen, but didn't know what was up. I was out of the loop by then, having GAFIAted for good.
Then a (now-former) friend twisted my arm and had me read Frank Miller's Batman: Year One in collected form.
Somehow I also got to read the collected Watchmen.
Absolutely frikkin nuclear.
I've read it again within the past 2-3 years, and it still staggered me.
It's one of those rare things that revolutionizes, redefines, and reshapes everything that happens after it. It is a turning point, a high point.
In the 1970s, artists and writers for DC and Marvel would again and again state that comics were able to do much more than what was being published. Many of them would go off to other companies or raise money and self-publish. But not one of them achieved Watchmen status. How sad is that?
And now the buzzbuzzbuzz is already building over the upcoming movie. A movie that is in some jeopardy of ever being released other than as a highly-pirated unauthorized leak! See Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily post: SAVE US! Warner's 'Watchmen' In Legal Peril After Judge Won't Dismiss Fox Suit.
I hope for a resolution. But sometimes these rights issues drag on and on.
In the meantime, if you haven't yet, get the collected Watchmen and read it. Put aside whatever notions you have about comic books. This transcends all of them. It's literature.
Previously here:
Watchmen Movie: Video Contest (which is over, by the way)
Watchmen: The Movie
– via Medialoper
I first saw this over at mj's blog.
Then I went to the source post.
Take a look at this video. It is staggering. It is Apple Insanely-Great staggering. It is an absolute breakthrough in the field of electronic comic books. I can't say enough about how radical and breakthrough this is. Look!!!
Absolutely staggering. I'd been after Warren Ellis to jump in and pioneer eComics (here and here). They've gone beyond anything I could have imagined. I salute you! You have taken my breath away! You will change the world!
Update: I was so excited by this, I didn't do much research. The underlying app is called Comic Reader from Blue Pilot Software. My skin is all tingly. This is something that Changes Everything!
One Manga: the home of manga …
These scans are apparently from Japan. I have no problem with that since it's been established in my mind that when it comes to protecting American Copyright, we can go fuck ourselves in Japan.
Steve Ditko: the Paranormal Man
Steve Ditko is, along with Jack 'King' Kirby, one of the most important visual stylists in comic book art. A key architect of Marvel's Silver Age, Ditko famously co-created Spider-Man and Dr Strange and shaped their formative adventures between 1962 and 1966. His dynamic approach to storytelling combines iconic character design, idiosyncratic body language and surreal 'cosmic' scenarios. But while Kirby is widely acclaimed as a major influence on contemporary comic aesthetics, Ditko remains a reclusive and cultish figure, shunning interviews and earning a reputation as "the Thomas Pynchon of comics." Ditko also warrants attention for being the only comic book artist to be discussed as much for his political philosophy as for his distinctive illustrations.
However, one of Ditko's most memorable post-Marvel creations is Shade, the Changing Man, published by DC in June 1977. This regrettably short-lived series is one of Ditko's most ambitious projects, and certainly his most baffling. A strange, erratic tale of inter-dimensional espionage and (literally) mind-warping underwear, Shade defies adequate summary or satisfactory explanation. It does, however, include some feverishly inventive visual ideas, thanks chiefly to the possibilities of Shade's M-Vest, a piece of alien technology that induced fearsome hallucinations in those around him. The series is also famed for the Freudian nightmare of its central relationship – Shade is pursued by his homicidal former girlfriend – and for a number of inexplicable jumps in narrative.
Rac Shade! God, how I loved that comic. Another sin of DC Comics. Another was killing Jack Kirby's Fourth World.
Writer Anthony Neil Smith was the other half of that Not Dull Book Signing at Bookpeople that I posted about here.
His blog uses type that will drive you to reading glasses (yes, dammit, I am now using mine daily; can I blame Microsoft for that? Why not?!!).
See a picture of him and Gischler at that signing. He also points to pictures posted by Bookpeople.
He wants to write a comic book too. (I think Gischler might have rubbed it in, heh-heh.) He better watch out for DC Comics!
Don't forget to visit Out of the Gutter magazine too!
More evidence in the Siegel case against DC, dating from 1938 – 1947. Here's a peach, from exhibit B, which shows use of that most dependable and passive-aggressive classic, time-honored and revered by bullies, pimps, and producers of neither talent nor vision everywhere, in any industry, since time began: don't forget, we made you, we helped, and so now you owe us everything forever.
He's talking about how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were screwed and screwed and screwed and screwed for decades and decades and decades by those slimeballs we all funded with our pennies as kids: DC Comics.
Siegel and Shuster happened to create something you might have heard of. It's called Superman.
Why the hell do any of you get upset when I say repeatedly: Fuck the Suits! You don't need them! You don't want them! The electronic future belongs to writers, not to the gonifs who only know how to expertly cut crooked deals.
Anyone who signs a book contract today is just asking for poverty five years from now. They will tie your balls so tight in evil option clauses that you'll consider suicide! What? You really think you'll be able to afford a lawsuit to break free?!
Get out of your contracts!
Break their fingers to release your electronic rights!
Get their teeth out of your neck!
Their future will be as beggars, pleading with you for a limited license to produce a printed souvenir of your electronic work.
– via Warren Ellis
Previously here:
MammothMedia Loses Another Pair Of Balls
You CAN Fight And WIN!
This is a followup post to: Comic Books (Almost) Come To iPhone. Of immediate interest also is Print IS Dead (Well, To Some Of Us. OK: Me!)
Since I don't (yet!) own an iPhone, I had to count on the
kindness of strangers well-placed threats a pal over three thousand miles away to call up what I suspected was a free Japanese manga offered at the App Store.
This is the listing of one of two offered that I screensnapped on an iPhone at Apple Store Soho yesterday:
Contrast that to the way the description appeared on my Microsoft-crippled PC:
Amazing how the iPhone — a cellphone! — does it correctly while a desktop PC doesn't. Typical Microsoft, huh?
My friend grabbed the second of the two manga and here's what it looks like inside:
All of that black space makes me conclude that what we're looking at here is a digital reprint — an eReprint — of something originally published on paper. Panels were sliced up to single screens. What I don't understand is why some of them — like the final one here — weren't enlarged to fill more of the screen. Perhaps the Japanese did something unthinkable: they were lazy and just did a scan of the print!
I don't know what's going on here technically. This might be nothing more than a PDF file wrapped in a proprietary PDF reader. At over 5MB, that seems very likely.
I'll have a go at Warren Ellis one more time: This is a new landscape. Your specialty is doing new things. You know people. Tech people. You can pioneer this new medium. Dear God, Ellis, do that before someone gets the idea to throw up an eReprint of Shatter! That'd kill things!
You can have your own imprint: Ellis eComics.
After that, who knows? You might even get an energy drink spin-off!
I was just bleating the other day about the death of print and how comics should be going e (especially Warren Ellis, who I consider the Gold Standard of graphic novelists active on the Net).
I didn't know one comics publisher in England is already moving that way: iPhone comics app arrives — Read 2000AD on your handset
From the App Store:
Clickwheel Comic Reader — FREE (link opens iTunes)
Warren Ellis, who first trumpted 2000AD being downloadable, might take some notice.
I'm not certain how good an experience these Clickwheel items will be on an iPhone. They are PDFs. Unless the PDFs have been customized to fit actual size on the screen, I suspect there will be a lot of pinching in/out and 4-way moving around in panels for reading.
But also of note is a Japanese company that it seems is offering, um, something. I'm not quite sure what. Manga or Manga-like cover over a text book?
Again from the App Store:
BBMF — FREE (link opens iTunes)
BBMF — FREE (link opens iTunes)
(Yes, they have the same name, but are two different items.)
Since the file I'm showing here is 5.5MB in size, I have to think this is an actual Manga. Unfortunately, they don't show anything beyond the cover shown above!
I don't have an iPhone yet. But I've just dragooned someone cross-country to try one of these Japanese ones and send me some screensnaps. I will post again tomorrow.
Meantime, if anyone has tried either of these, leave a Comment. If you've seen reviews, leave a Comment with a link!
I'm glad David Rothman over at Teleread did this post so I didn't have to!


text:
JWU Network Access – Ongoing Protection for Your Computer
The installation of the updates and anti-virus is to help prevent disastrous outbreaks of viruses and worms by keeping your computer up-to-date. We strongly advise you take proactive steps to keep your computer safe.
run microsoft windows update
update Symantec anti-virus
scan and clean your files
perform an anti-virus scan
call the university help desk
© 2013 Johnson & Wales University. All rights reserved.


text:
President Barack Obama cancels Orlando campaign stop to monitor Sandy
Frmr. Pres. Clinton speaks at Orlando rally
ORLANDO - Racheal Patterson took her space in line around 2:30 Monday morning.
The 9-year-old from Orlando said her mother let her miss school just so that she could see President Obama speak, but unfortunately, her dream didn't come true. As Hurricane Sandy grew larger, President Obama and his team made the decision to abort Monday's campaign rally on the University of Central Florida campus to monitor the storm from the Oval Office.
Not what Rachael, nor UCF student Rosana Eustache wanted to hear. She and her friends also braved the cold in the early hours of Monday morning in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Commander-In-Chief. While Eustache was disappointed, she said the change of plans didn't change her thoughts on the election.
"I'm still voting for him! Obama 2012! Obama 2012!," she chanted with friends she brought to the rally with her.
UCF Graduate student Marguerite Tarrenga seemed to mirror those sentiments, commending the President for making the decision to tend to the country instead of the campaign trail.
Tarrenga said. "He's the active president and he needs to take care of what he needs to take care of. He's the President of the United States, so they need him more than we do."
So while there was no President Obama, former President Bill Clinton headlined the event, covering all the points President Obama hit last Thursday at a campaign rally in Ybor City. Not skipping a beat and keeping the crowd energized, he ended his 30-something-minute speech with this:
"You should vote for the person that has a better economic plan, a better budget, a better health care plan and a better energy plan who believes that we are all in this together. We'll beat on your own every single time. Go elect President Obama. Thank you and God Bless you."
Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Senator Bill Nelson were both on hand at the event as well.
Although the president had to leave early, he was in Orlando last night campaigning, making this his 15th stop in the Sunshine State this year.


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So the Houston Rockets are in a free-fall right now, having dropped 5 straight games just as they appeared to be closing in on clinching a playoff berth. After watching these clowns the past few games, I'm pretty convinced they will not make the post-season this year. They seem to always get torn apart in the third quarter, and they just have no real team identity and they look pretty lost in crunch time. I know they have a few winnable games down the stretch, but I'm not even convinced they can beat the Hornets right now (especially w/Eric Gordon back in the mix).
So unless the Nets get lucky w/the ping pong balls, they're looking at likely entering the 2012 NBA draft w/only a second-round pick from Miami. Not good news for a team that has so many needs to fill.
Just curious what happens if and when the Rockets don't make the playoffs. Would they get Houston's pick in 2013 w/less protection? Anyone know how that shakes out for the Nets?


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Teen arrested over Sports Direct damage
A teenager has been arrested after Sports Direct signs were torn down, in and around St James' Park last week.
It happened during, and after Newcastle United's reserve match with Sunderland last Thursday. Signs inside the ground and at nearby shop on Blackett Bridge were targeted.
A 16-year-old male was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage on Saturday, and has been bailed pending further enquiries.
Detective Chief Inspector Ian Bentham, from Northumbria Police, said:
– Detective Chief Inspector Ian Bentham, Northumbria Police
"The investigation is continuing and we are still appealing for people to come forward."
"If anyone recognises the people who have carried out these criminal acts, they are asked to contact police in the strictest of confidence so we can take the appropriate action."
Police are continuing to examine CCTV footage and images which have been circulating on social media networks.


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A major new European Union study is set to examine the effects of growing genetically modified, blight-resistant potato plants on biodiversity and the environment in agricultural ecosystems. It will also see the first GM crops being grown in Ireland since the late 1990s.
In a statement issued last month, Teagasc (the Irish agricultural development agency) announced it is seeking a licence to carry out field trials of GM potatoes as part of the AMIGA consortium – a group including representatives of research bodies from 15 EU countries.
Late blight, caused by the fungus-like organism Phytophthora infestans, decimated the Irish potato crop in the 1840s, leading to the Great Famine. Since then, the disease has remained a problem for Irish farmers, who have had to use chemical fungicides to maintain potato yields. Genetic modification has the potential to protect the potato plant from late blight attack without the need for large amounts of fungicide.
The potato variety Desiree has been transformed with the Rpi-vnt1.1 gene, which confers resistance to P. infestans. The gene was taken from the wild potato species Solanum venturii and inserted into the cultivated potato.
While there are indications that public concern over GM crops has declined in the UK, the news that field experiments will be carried out in Ireland for the first time since the late 1990s has drawn some criticism here. In a statement released last week, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) – which certifies organic produce in Ireland – claimed the experiments would be a waste of taxpayers money. "In light of the fact that Teagasc has lodged an application with the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] for a licence to grow GM potatoes at its headquarters in Oakpark, IOFGA are demanding that Teagasc be held accountable for their decision to waste taxpayers money on this project."
Grace Maher, IOFGA's development officer, said growing GM in Ireland would be "economic suicide" and that the move would put at risk an export market worth €9.1bn (£7.6bn): "Ireland has an excellent reputation internationally as a clean green island that is also a GM-free region, and we need to build on this reputation not destroy it."
The statement ends by accusing Teagasc of pedalling an "unwanted technology": "In this austere economic climate we need to end wasteful public spending immediately and enforce accountability on those who continue to do so."
Unfortunately the IOFGA seems to have jumped the gun. Funding for the research will come directly from the EU's FP7 research programme– a €50bn fund earmarked for research and technological development. There is no question of further money coming from Irish taxpayers.
No matter where the money comes from, however, there is a wider issue at stake here. Teagasc is Ireland's agriculture and food development agency. Its role is to carry out research leading to a better understanding of agriculture and new agronomic techniques. To accuse such a body of "wasting" money by doing the very thing it was set up to do is ridiculous.
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Archbishop 'uneasy at bin Laden's death' (From Oxford Mail)
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Archbishop 'uneasy at bin Laden's death'
9:20am Monday 9th May 2011 in News
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, expressed unease at the way al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden died.
He spoke after visiting Emmanuel Church in Bure Park, Bicester, to bless the foundations of a new church building.
Dr Williams, said yesterday: "Obviously we are dealing with someone whose record is appalling and was responsible for atrocities, but at the end of the Second World War war criminals were given a trial.
"I do not want to judge anyone, but I wanted to express the unease being felt by quite a lot of people."
Comments (3)
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6:31pm Mon 9 May 11
Victor Meldrew2 says...
So if the Archbishop pops off back home to one of his two Palace's he can give us another lecture on stamping out poverty and deprivation and not feel uneasy about that.
12:02am Tue 10 May 11
Severian says...
He may feel uneasy about Bin Laden's death, but not as uneasy as I do about pathetic liberal clergy always trying to be nice to people who would happily stick a knife in your back the moment it is turned.
"At the end of the ... war the war criminals were given a trial". Actually Archbishop at the end of the war the ALLEGED war criminals were given a trial, for the reason that not all of them were guilty, and indeed some of them were found not to be.
In Bin Laden's case though we have saved ourselves all a lot of time, trouble, and hypocrisy, by just getting rid of him. And well done the USA for beating us to it. I for one had a drink to celebrate and lost absolutely no sleep over it.
10:15am Wed 11 May 11
CLLR KEN TIWARI says...
getting mixed-up, with the dirty-politics
of this world ?
Cllr Ken_Tiwari_R&S/paris
Comments are closed on this article.


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The permanent closure of the Chicken Ranch on August 1, 1973, made international headlines. The legendary brothel—reputed to have maintained continuous business for 144 years—seemed invincible until that fateful day. But if the brothel's opponents had hoped the story would end there, they were surely disappointed. Immortalized by a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and subsequent motion picture, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" grew in fame and notoriety even as time and neglect took a toll on the original building. Decades passed, and rumors spread even as memory faded. The Chicken Ranch had moved to Dallas and became a restaurant, some recalled. No, it had burned to the ground, others said. They tore it down long ago, argued another. No matter the story, one thing remained consistent: There was nothing left to see.
Now, on the 40th anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure, GHOSTS OF THE CHICKEN RANCH takes readers on a photographic tour of the brothel's ruins and shows that "nothing left to see" is not entirely true...
Also available in softcover: http://www.blurb.com/b/4482020-ghosts-of-the-chicken-ranch-soft


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Home » Opinion » Editorials
Ayotte's dinner: Talking with Obama is wrong?
Among the dozen Republican senators who joined the President for dinner and conversation at Washington's Jefferson Hotel Wednesday night was New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte. Friendly with Sen. John McCain, Ayotte drew criticism from some libertarian and conservative activists for joining the President (and McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., two famously moderate Republicans). Somehow, Ayotte would have accomplished more had she snubbed the President and joined Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster of CIA director nominee John Brennan, the outraged activists suggested. Nonsense.
Just days before, Ayotte was on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanoplous" saying that she was open to a grand bargain on debt reduction. She would consider revenue increases, she said, but only if they included tax rate reductions, came with serious entitlement reforms, and the new revenue was dedicated exclusively to reducing the federal debt.
To suggest that there is no value in conveying that message to the President in person, in a casual setting in which a working relationship might develop, is to misunderstand the way politics works.
Last August, Sen. Tom Coburn (who attended last Wednesday's dinner) came to the defense of the Tea Party during an interview on MSNBC. Among his points was that Tea Party activists "understand that you've got to have human relations to get along in this world." It is amazing and disappointing that so many activists on both sides think that progress is made by refusing to work with anyone in the other camp.
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Weekly brother gave police wrong name


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The West Chester Borough Council voted on Tuesday to sign a one-year contract with AlliedBarton Security Services to conduct patrols in the neighborhoods surrounding West Chester University on weekend nights.
Local firm ELPS Private Detective Agency has been conducting the patrols since March of last year, but AlliedBarton underbid the agency for the 2013 contract.
"Our hands are tied," said borough council member Jordan Norley. "We have to go with the lowest bidder."
Norley added, "There have been no complaints about [ELPS] by the police or anyone at all. We had a good working relationship, and they knew the neighborhoods."
West Chester mayor Carolyn Comitta thanked ELPS owner Jeff Stine for the work he did.
"You really did a great job," Comitta said. "I thank you and the residents thank you. You did such a good job that borough council would've rehired you if they legally could."
AlliedBarton is one of the largest private security firms in the country with $1.6 billion in annual revenue. The company also runs the security operations for over 100 universities nationwide.
The company is headquartered in Conshohocken, and also runs security for Chester County including the county courthouse.
A representative for AlliedBarton at Tuesday's meeting said that the organization would attend monthly campus community coalition meetings and provide input.
The representative also said that his team could provide reports on the progress of the patrols on whatever schedule borough council wanted.
Borough council put out a request for proposal last month as the ELPS contract was set to expire at the end of January.
ELPS sent in a bid of $18.50 per hour, while the AlliedBarton bid was $16.67 per hour.
"I wanted to thank borough council for 2012," said ELPS owner Jeff Stine. "We really enjoyed the assignment."


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So I don't know if everyone has seen the "Blackout Autzen at homecoming" group on facebook, but I was wondering if it is true. In the group they said it is because we are unveiling an all black uniform which i think could and should happen this season (and this would be a good game to do it). I just haven't seen anything but this facebook group saying it is happening this game for sure and calling for a black out this game. Does anybody have a link verifying this at all? I personally love the idea of all balck jerseys! (I just hope it would work better for us then Georgia's black out)
UPDATE: So in the time i posted this and watched forgetting sarah marshall the event changed to a "YELL-O-Out" . My understanding is there still is supposed to be new uniforms, but hearing them possibly being one pieces scares me....... alot! Maybe the black out was changed because of georgia or maybe just becauseits hard to set up.


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Foreign media reports 'killing Bahrain tourism'
A Tourism chief has called on Bahrain to step up its public relations war to combat foreign media reports, which he said were killing Bahrain's travel industry. It follows the temporary suspension of visits by a major cruise ship operator, which cancelled stops in Bahrain on February 8, last Wednesday and this coming Wednesday over security concerns.
Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) tourism committee chairman Nabeel Kanoo said more needed to be done to counter negative reports about Bahrain in the West. "The hotels and tourism sector have lost more than 40 percent in revenues over the last year," he said. "This is a significant percentage in a small country like Bahrain." Kanoo said it is not only the hotels that were suffering, but also related businesses. "The old suq, the gold trade, taxi drivers, travel agencies and operators as well as traders have been bearing the brunt of the disturbances," he said. Kanoo, who is a YBA Kanoo board member and deputy general manager of its travel group, said the private sector was ready to step in to help the government project a better image of the country. "We will take all necessary steps to ensure we do our best," he said. "We will do everything we can to get tourists back - whether they are cruise passengers or others." He blamed unfair reporting by foreign news agencies for the cancellation of cruise ships. "This is all due to the continuous media misinformation," he said. "No one knows Bahrainis are peace-loving people and that the problems here are just temporary. Every nation has problems and these are solved." However, Kanoo added steps were needed to ensure everyone lived peacefully and prospered. "Now is the time to take some courageous steps," he said. "A new effort is needed." Mathias Tourism managing director Richard Mathias, whose company promotes Bahrain to the cruise industry worldwide, said visits to Bahrain by more than 20,000 cruise passengers since the season started in mid-December had passed without incident. "Cruise tourists have enjoyed themselves in Bahrain, even going everywhere on bicycles, roaming around in the suq and visiting historical places," he said.
The Aida Blu, which was the only cruise ship making calls to Bahrain this season, is scheduled to make three other weekly visits before the season ends next month. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Bahrain's Taxi and Pick Up Drivers Union said cabbies had been directly affected by cruise cancellations. He said cruise tourists used around 150 taxis every Wednesday. "We hope they don't stop coming because that would affect us," he said.
Seatrade Middle East officials earlier said every vessel that berthed in Bahrain could be worth around $300,000 to the economy, with an estimated spend of $274,165 per call. Up to 70 cruise ships docked in Bahrain every season before the country was hit by unrest last year. Only 29 visits took place between November 2010 and February last year, when cruise operators cancelled stops in Bahrain due to anti-government protests. Costa Cruises, which had scheduled 30 visits to Bahrain this season, skipped the country altogether this year and opted for Khasab, in Oman, instead.
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