Jul
23
2010
So it’s been said that if it weren’t for the stoners Dominoes pizza wouldn’t still be in business.
Well, it would seem that those stoners should know that the business that they’re supporting via their desire to crave their munchies is a mighty right wing business. Â You too can see the gory details by visiting http://www.goodguide.com/contributions#sector=All%20Categories&sort=leaning&query= and simply mousing over the Dominoes logo. Â It seems that Dominoes contributes about 20 times as much money to the Republicans as they do to the Democrats. Â Quite likely not so supportive of those very customers’ viewpoints.
Tags: campaign finance, Dominoes, political, safeway, Stoners
May
01
2010
Carbon capture and storage “is not a practical means to provide any substantive reduction in CO2 emissions, although it has been repeatedly presented as such by others.” That’s what Engineering researchers from Texas have concluded.
In an article just published in the Journal of Petroleum Science And Engineering, researchers Michael Economides and Christine Ehlig-Economides find that the storage requirements for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are so great as to be unfeasible. Unfeasable in the sense that the current estimates are 5 to 20 times lower than that which is likely needed. In other words, a storage space the size of a U.S. state would be needed just to store the CO2 output of one single power plant.
Pipe dream indeed.
Tags: CCS, CO2, GHG
Apr
22
2010
Frighteningly enough, these days it’s reasonably probably that they might.
Thanks to insurance industry reform that happened in the 1980’s, your boss can take out a (tax free) life insurance policy on you and keep 100% of the benefits from that policy without sharing any of it with your surviving family members. And many companies are doing just that. Hundreds of companies, like Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie are doing just that. Often times using the proceeds to cover the retirement benefits of the employee and, in addition, make a little profit. And this is not a rare situation. A full 20% of the life insurance policies sold in the US are sold for this purpose. That’s $8 billion a year in premiums, which also was estimated to cost us taxpayers $9 billion in tax breaks over a 5 year period. Not to mention that it weakens a company’s incentive to provide a safe work setting.
Less safe? You might ask yourself if it would seem like somewhat of a conflict of interest with an employee’s desire to have their employer maintain a safe working environment for them, wouldn’t you? But as with anything in the corporate arena, it depends on the bottom line. OSHA fines for not providing proper safety equipment? Do they equal less than the amount of the insurance policy? Yes? Don’t worry about it then.
There recently was an attempt to reform this practice out of existence, but the insurance industry was able to lobby congress and derail reform. Does this sort of power of the insurance lobby seem a bit familiar as of late? Maybe in relation to health care reform?
In any case, this all is a bit too creepy by my standards, but my standards aren’t that of Corporate America.
If you’re interested in finding out more, MSN’s Money Central did a good job covering this Dead Peasant/Dead Janitor concept and Michael Moore included it in Sicko. And if you find it as distasteful as I do, you might want to this about contacting your representative.
Tags: Dead Janitor, Dead Peasant, Life Insurance, Michael Moore, Sicko, Worklife
Mar
10
2010
Many civilized people in these United States are likely under the impression that racism has been all but eliminated in this country. But if you aren’t a pale, white skinned American, you’d likely say otherwise. As a matter of fact, you’d possibly say that racism is on the rise in The United States. And, as is pointed out in this video, it would seem that the media is continuing this racism through a bias in coverage of events when it comes down to race. An example given was the small amount of airtime given to the latino marches for civil rights that happened all across the country in 2006, bringing together 100s of thousands of latinos, in comparison with the Tea Party marches that recently have received a massive amount of airtime even though smaller numbers of people are participating.
The dark side of this bias is that it may actually be driven by a foundation of racism within the Tea Party faithful themselves, with a news bias to further that racism.
This is definitely something to consider as we consider the motives and desires behind the Tea Party supporters. The video below is the 1st in a series of videos on the topic and allows you to make your own informed decision. Have a look.
[tubepress video="0KTJ2LyBn3E"]
Tags: Bias, Racism, Tea Party
Feb
28
2010
So I’m in the offices of a company that I’m doing some contract work at, and I hear the receptionist mention the name The Velvet Underground. A name that I would hope would perk up the ears of anyone with any shred of musical knowledge. It turned out that the person that the receptionist was talking with was a friend of mine, a friend who actually brought me to the company to work on the contract.
It turns out that this friend didn’t actually know who The Velvet Underground was. This is even though he has a fairly broad knowledge of non commercial (and thus credible) music in general. Still, he didn’t know The Velvet Underground.
So I was left with only one course of action.� First I had to actually point him in the direction of the musical genious that was The Velvet Underground. And secondly, I had to revoke his musical credentials, if only temporarily.� For he has exposed me to amazing music in the same way that, hopefully, I have for him.� That’s what friends are for.
Tags: Lou Reed, Stoner Music, Velvet Underground
Feb
15
2009
So, if one were to map out the intersection of the various subsets of our culture, it seems likely that one of the groupings that you would notice is the one between geeks and hippies. And I can understand a large part of the reason behind this, mainly since I am included in that intersection. But what makes me ponder a bit is figuring out the reasons why this intersection exists as well as the history behind it’s existence.
The main situation, as I see it, is this huge connection between the hippie culture and the San Francisco Bay area, as well as where many of those hippies were sprouting from at the culture’s birth. And where that was coming from was universities like Cal in Berkeley. No doubt many of those hippies were involved in fairly geeky studies. Fast forward to the birth of Silicon Valley and you have to be sure to add universities such as Stanford and San Jose State, and online communities such as The Well.
Now when you think of a classic geek, you likely think of someone fairly intellectual, someone probably fairly creative, and likely someone pretty forward thinking (you can’t dream in Sci-Fi realm without thinking forward now can you?) So what do you think of when you thinking of a hippie? Maybe someone who might not adhere to the standards of hygiene that the rest of society does (exactly what this blog’s name pays homage to.) Likely someone with long hair. Probably someone who operates a bit outside the box of your normal member of the rest of society. But also likely someone who’s fairly creative and someone who’s fairly forward thinking. So it’s probably those shared traits that bring these two groups together.
So that’s what I’ll leave as my conclusion to that question. The reason is the shared traits and the history is the shared community.
But my entire reason for writing about this is that there was a truly geeky accurance just a couple of days ago. That was when Unixtime reached 1234567890, which according to an online conversion site happened on Friday the 13th of Feb 2009 at 23:31:30 GMT (15:31:30 PST). And Bay Area geeks (and hippies) couldn’t help but celebrate unixtime reaching 1234567890 as reported in Laughing Squid.
Oh, and I hope you caught the reference behind this post’s title. 
Tags: berkeley, geeks, hippies, unixtime
Feb
03
2009
Apparently Christian Bale was having a hard day at work recently, on the set of Terminator 4, and he ended up erupting in a spate of anger. The whole thing ended up getting recorded and folks have subsequently used it as the basis of music. There’s one such song that’s a mashup/remix of it (a mashup with a little bit of a good Electro House track from STFU called Shut The Fuck Up, which I’ve played out in DJ sets) called Bale Out – RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix. Have a look, but be forewarned that it’s Not Safe For Work.
Tags: Christian Bale, Mashup, RevoLucian, STFU
Feb
02
2009
I just learned that the man who coined the term Zippy (meaning Zen-inspired Professional Pagan), Fraser Clark, passed away recently. I only heard of it today, but it seems that this news may be more than a week old. Apparently he succumbed to liver cancer. But as one would expect, he was surrounded by friends at home when he died.
Living in the San Francisco Bay area in the 90’s, and being involved in the dance music community, one couldn’t help but feel the influence of Mr. Clark. The primary realization of that path is through the phrase P.L.U.R., which stands for Peace Love Unity Respect. In San Francisco in the 90’s it seems that this motto was one that many people in the scene truly took to heart.
It was a realization of the synergy between the British New Age Travelers and the Ravers that inspired Clark to create a club night called Megatripolis at Heaven in London in the early 90s. The aspect of this club night that truly raised the energy was the concept of combining talks from visionaries along with dance music, primarily of the chill/ambient type. It’s my feeling that by presenting this visionary information in a TAZ environment Clark served to raise the level of society a notch.
It may simply be my jaded view of things, but I can’t help but feel sadness in the belief that all too much of these energy raising actions have left the dance music scene. The combination of spirituality and visionary ideas alongside ecstatic dance as well as ambient music doesn’t seem to occur as much as in the past. But with repressive laws such as the RAVE Act (which was inserted into the Amber Alert bill courtesy of our current Vice President Joe Biden, BTW) one would expect such a result. And don’t even get me started about the decline of Burning Man. Even so, there are still events that uphold these ideals. You just have to search a little harder to find them.
If you’d like to find out more I’d suggest reading this very nice article announcing Fraser Clark’s passing as well as Matrixmaster’s bio of Fraser Clark (along with Fraser Clark podcasts.)
Namaste.
Tags: Amber Alert, Burning Man, Fraser Clark, Visionary, Zippy
Jan
17
2009
Well, in a figurative way at least. I was heading to an interview at CBS Radio when I passed an action that the people at Direct Action To Stop The War had set up where they had a dunk tank sort of setup with a George Bush figure that you could throw shoes at. How could I resist? Especially after having been in costume protesting at the previous inauguration? (And NO, they didn’t get our permission to publish that image.)
Anyway, with the first try I found out the holding onto a show at the sole (of a shoe with an extended sole) causes one to not release that show so easily. The end result was throws that were way too low. So I ended up taking a second change and knocked The Fuhrer square in the head on one of the two attempts. VERY satisfying. Although I would have been immensly MORE satisfied if hundreds of thousands (or is it in the millions now) of Iraqi women and children hadn’t died unnecessarily alongside thousands of US military. (But screw the Blackwater security folks over there.)
The same antiwar activists will be setting up shop tomorrow in the same Justin Herman Plaza location tomorrow as well as at the Civic Center in San Francisco on Inauguration Day. So if you’re in the area you might get some satisfaction in taking part.
Tags: antiwar, George W. Bush, shoe
