With the market still on the way down down down, what we will do WHEN THE MONEY’S GONE?
One of my favorite humans, Bobby Conn, has been predicting the current crisis for some time. Take this video down, and pass it around. Pure genius.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MJcMy-3fHs&feature=related[/youtube]
In other news, we’re off to Paris for a couple of weeks. We’ll miss you, dear visitor!
So much common sense has been lost. Here’s an effort to restore a touch of equilibrium: FREE RANGE KIDS.
I live two blocks from an elementary school, and I NEVER see a child walking past my house on his or her way to school. Every last kid is driven by parents. Parents who are so consumed by fear (well, it IS a Catholic school, so this makes sense) that their precious Pat may be whisked away by a bad guy. In Healdsburg? Find me a whiter, yuppier, more NIMBY-fied town than Healdsburg (outside of Marin County, of course), I dare you. Absolutely no reason to have fear, yet their children are not allowed to leave the YARD, let alone walk to school.
Was it like this when you were a child? Were you so strictly confined? I’m betting not. STOP THE MADNESS! FREE THE CHILDREN!!
Okay, a pretty weak post, but check the site out. We’re (including this father of a five year old) being totally anal, paranoid parents. Time to pull the sticks out of our asses and let our kids live a little.
When I was wee, say about nine years old, I’d take the bus from Redding to Sacramento to visit my pops. These trips happened over the summer, were always hot, and were always a bit disconcerting for a young man fresh out of 2nd grade traveling alone. I never took Greyhound, always Trailways. Remember Trailways? I barely do…given my family’s economic situation, I can only guess they were a budget version of Greyhound, which is like saying a cheaper version of Thunderbird.
Anyway, around half way through the four hour trip, we’d stop at Sambo’s. Someone would usually befriend me on the bus and we’d eat together. Otherwise, I’d make like a man and belly up to the counter all by my little self. Either way, Sambo’s was always a welcome site. It meant, “I’m almost to daddy!” Talk about powerful conditioning.
The chain itself has a somewhat interesting history, one that I’m sure can be analyzed through the lens of race relations in the United States. Rather than bore you with my analysis, I’ll simply provide the Wiki entry for Sambo’s Restaurant and let you do the heavy lifting: Sambo’s is a restaurant, formerly an American restaurant
chain, started in 1957 by Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett. Though the name was taken from portions of the names of its founders, the chain soon found itself associated with The Story of Little Black Sambo. Battistone and Bohnett capitalized on the coincidence by decorating the walls of the restaurants with scenes from the book, including a dark-skinned boy and tigers.
Pretty rich so far, right?This is some great icing:
A kids club, Sambo’s Tiger Tamers (later called the Tiger Club), promoted the chain’s family image.
Wow. I may be old, but I’m not that old. Sambo’s proliferated throughout the country concurrently with Max Headroom. In other words, not exactly ancient history. Still waiting for that “dawning of the Age of Aquarius” because I promise you it’s not here yet.
(Hmmm…is it a coincidence I ended up co-founding a winery called roShAMBO?)))
This just in from one of the most dedicated humans I know, Frank Scura.
Emergency Alert: FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito!!!
We are trying to give away 100,000 free burritos in the State of California this Saturday.
Get RAD, B RAD, U R RAD, RAD enough to Roll!
Here is a great one for you; this Saturday October 11th ASEC is launching our inaugural “RAD” (Roll Anything Day). This is a holiday dedicated to leaving behind cars, motorcycles, busses or whatever gas guzzling, veggie oil burning, natural gas farting device you or your parents are using and going out on the town Rolling your Skateboard, Bike or what ever form of “Non-Motorized Transportation” you choose. Go out and explore your city, Parks or Mountains, hang out with your friends and family or go see how many spots you can hit or shops you can check out in a day.
Break a sweat, work up an appetite and Roll to any Chipotle in California between 11-3PM and get a FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE!
If you have never checked out Chipotle before you need to, they make the tastiest Mexican Food I have ever had, no joke just ask Danny Way, Bob Burnquist Read the rest of this entry »
Some time in the late 1960s, before even I was born, my dad was living in Marysville, California. If you don’t know Marysville, you’re not missing too much. In the 1850s, due to a gold rush boom, it was one of the biggest cities in California. Now, it’s not much more than dust and walnut shells. My pop, he was a reporter for the local paper, the Appeal Democrat. At the time, he was a real big Cutty Sark man. Big enough that he passed out drunk in bed and burned his house down. Fortunately, his trusty beagle got him up and out of there…a dog he later gave to the pound. Not a bad guy, mind you–just not a real dog lover.
So one day he walks into a bar in Marysville for his early afternoon fill. Problem is, he’d already had his fill at the bar next door. Across the bar he spies his good friend and fellow drunk, Joe Fulcher. Joe was (he’s got to be dead by now, Joe) a good guy. Never sober, always black. Meaning, he was a black man. And still is, if he’s alive (which I doubt, like I said). My dad sees Joe and hollers across the bar, “HEY YOU FUCKING NIGGER!” in the friendliest possible fashion. You see, Joe and my pops were just tight like that. Joe turns at the boisterous entrance line…and it’s not Joe. No, it’s a different black man. A bigger black man. A man who is decidedly NOT my father’s friend and who very much did not appreciate the greeting. Long story short, my dad got his ass kicked that day and learned a big lesson about the appropriateness of the public utterance of racially insensitive descriptors.
Pope Benedict XVI today said that the global credit crisis shows that the world’s financial systems are “built on sand” and that only the works of God have “solid reality”.
Need I really comment?
Between mobile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, television, and the countless waves beaming from satellites, between computers and phones, we’re disrupting the way we make…ourselves. Think about it. These waves course through the air and permeate our every cell, weaving their way between the synapses, interfering with the impossibly vital inter-cellular electric communications–the very spark of life. (Pictured are human thalamus neurons communicating via electronic exchange)
Nary a soul alive will argue the basic premise: That every one of these waves passes right through our bodies. We take that for granted. What we’re too afraid to admit is that, in the process, some of these signals scramble ours.
From one in 10,000 people born with autism in the 1970s to 1 in 150 today. That doesn’t stagger you?
Wi-Fi (see below) is well-documented as being at least three times as powerful as mobile signals. Young children? Their thin skulls make them Read the rest of this entry »
About a week ago, my wife informed me that she’d had enough. Enough of the dire predictions of brain cancer, enough of the pointless incoming texts, enough of the time wasted checking voice mails. Enough, already, of her mobile phone. So she left a message on her mobile telling callers to reach her at home or at work. On a LAND LINE. No nasty radiation, no worrying about charging, and vastly improved call quality.
I was more than a little impressed. And jealous. How I’d love to do away with my pocket computer/phone/camera/peso-to-dollar currency converter. And I do try to leave it away from my person as often as I’m able (which is never because I am utterly addicted to that little Blackjack II). But watching her effortlessly and absolutely painlessly move away from her phone is inspiring. She’s exercising more, reading more, even talking to her friends in person on occassion. She’s everything I’m not, everything I can’t be, chained as I am to my posture-destroying, gray matter-frying device. Mind you, she’s no Luddite, just a very smart girl who finally woke up and realized that having her mobile did nothing to improve the quality of her life and arguably impinged upon that quality.
Amazing, I say. How often is it that someone asks, “What am I doing? Why do I have this? What is it doing for me, really?” No, we always buy the newest, latest, just because everyone else (iPhone???) has. In this household, one of us has broken away from the greatest electronic plague in human history. Gives me hope that one day I will be able to shake the infection as well.
“But with no clear consensus on a deal emerging, and with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah falling on Tuesday, some Capitol Hill aides speculated that a final deal may not come to a vote before Wednesday.”
Oh visitors, please do tell me something: What the hell does a religious holiday have to do with whether or not we pass legislation? In a nation founded largely by atheists and agnostics, one that has very, very, very clear Constitutional division between church and State, reading words like those above really flummoxes me. Not that I believe we need to act quickly (I’d rather see informed action than rushed action), but Rosh Hashanah should play no more part in our government affairs than any of the other days dedicated to imaginary invisible beings.
*I suspect even saying the word “Jewish” will label me to some as anti-Semitic, right? Far, far from the truth. The chosen people? They’re in my blood. This is about faith v. politics, nothing more.
Turns out Wi-Fi may well be more damaging to our bodies than mobile signals. In fact, the German government advises it’s citizens to refrain from using Wi-Fi. Along with this, a number of studies show great cause for concern. Rather than link to them, I’ll let you search on your own. The feeling of discovery will be rewarding/I’m too lazy to bother/you should be concerned enough to look it up.
So, as of today, our household is Wi-Fi free. Paranoid? Maybe, but I’ve a six year-old son (kids are far more susceptible, with their reduced bone density) and why not be proactively safe, rather than belatedly sorry? Do I really need to be able to move around into any room with my laptop? Seriously…we’ve become accustomed to so much portability that it’s counter-productive. I prefer spaces designated for certain activities. A house that can quick-change at a moment’s notice (first it’s a bedroom, now it’s an office!), just not for me. Defined spaces, areas I can go to get away…this is what I’m after in a domestic retreat. Tying my computers down, it’s a real domestic improvement. You follow? Oh, my connection speeds are drastically improved, not that it really matters to me.
Ask yourself this question: Is the threat of cancer, proven or not, more important to me than the ability to move my computer around my home. If the answer is yes, ditch your Wi-Fi. If the answer is no, I pity you something fierce.
Now, what to do about my neighbors whose Wi-Fi signals perforate our walls?
(Next Week: A report on how Andrea is faring after her first week of ditching her mobile phone. No, we’re not Luddites, we’ve just realized how we’ve unthinkingly adopted every new techology, without measurable quality of life gains.)
