Today is the Thirtieth of January. Big day in history, though you might not know it: to begin with, in 1661, Oliver Cromwell was officially, formally executed. He had been dead for over two years. Just in case, ya know. He was a bit of a rascal.
In 1835, Richard Lawrence attempted to assassinate President Andrew Jackson, but both his pistols misfired. President Jackson instead beat him with his cane. This was the first known assassination attempt on a U.S. President.
In 1882, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born.
In 1948, Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi was shot and killed.
In 1969, The Beatles performed together for the last time, in an impromptu concert on the roof of Apple Studios, London, at No. 3 Saville Row. It was broken up by police, because of the traffic problems it caused on the streets below (go figure!).
In more current news, the Danish Air Force has opened its UFO archives to the public.
And a UFO was documented by Germany's air traffic safety office.
And Israeli Prime Minister Olmert was taken to task at Davos by Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, before he left the building in disgust. (Good video).
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Owls for breakfast, hippos for lunch
Today is the Twenty-eighth of January. On this day in 1887, snowflakes measuring 15” across x 8” thick fell on Fort Keough, Montana.
Someone's come up with a very interesting answer to the honeybee problem. I hereby promise to leave the hornets' nest in the eaves of my shop, alone. Pollinate away, little critters! Fly! Be free!
And here's an interesting answer to our energy troubles, at least to some degree. Go, Norway!
Alberto Gonzales is a worm. Watch him squirm. Disgusting.
Bring on the shackles, indeed: let's watch these guys squirm too. Jail is too good for the likes of these folks, 'cos I don't think there's much doubt about their guilt anymore.
Someone's come up with a very interesting answer to the honeybee problem. I hereby promise to leave the hornets' nest in the eaves of my shop, alone. Pollinate away, little critters! Fly! Be free!
And here's an interesting answer to our energy troubles, at least to some degree. Go, Norway!
Alberto Gonzales is a worm. Watch him squirm. Disgusting.
Bring on the shackles, indeed: let's watch these guys squirm too. Jail is too good for the likes of these folks, 'cos I don't think there's much doubt about their guilt anymore.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Future pink
Today is the Twenty-seventh of January. On this day in 1757, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born.
In 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was born.
In 1947, the Los Angeles Times (and later, Time magazine) reported that the crew of the oiler USS Caliente weighed anchor from nine fathoms and discovered that an overhand or lover's knot had been tied in the chain twenty feet from the anchor.
In 1984, filming for a Pepsi commercial went terribly awry when Michael Jackson’s hair product caught on fire.
Computers serve two basic purposes, in terms of economy: they create demand for more disposable goods (computers, programs, accessories), and they reduce the need for new employees by facilitating paperwork and book-keeping. More jobs are lost to computers, than created by building them or programming for them (and that's to say nothing of work lost to computer-controlled robots, eliminating jobs at twice that rate, or higher). Different kinds of work, to be sure, but employment all the same. The net effect is a loss of jobs. Computers just aren't helping.
Teaching kids to use computers in school is early job-training. Worse- it's free job training for industry, because business taxes rarely (if ever) go to schools. Ask yourself: why should you pay for your kid to be trained to do data entry? Even if they're learning to code: don't fool yourself- the days of madly-wealthy computer programmers are gone-daddy-gone. Ahh, the roaring dot-com Nineties! They're as gone as the roaring Twenties.
We should not give them computers in school- we should give them classes that teach them to use tools that make things and fix things: wood shop, metal shop, plastics, even electronics shop; cooking, accounting, home economics, sewing, design ferchrissake. They should be using their abundant imaginations to be making new things and developing skills that will be usable "across multiple platforms"- what we used to call being handy. It's a good thing to be, useful. Java, flash, and C++ are not usable across multiple platforms: they are skills related to a very, very limited range of jobs. They will not help your kid when the power goes out and he still needs to eat, or when the alternator goes out in her car when she's between jobs, or when the kitchen table, the toaster, or the TV goes down.
Bottom line: teaching kids to use computers will not help them do anything except find a job as a desk jockey or a 10-key operator. Is that really what you want for your children? A career as a Customer Service Specialist at a call center? That's what's coming, if we stay on this track. Mark my words.
This much is certain: there is no going back to our consumption-driven way of life. We simply have to change: economy will demand it. Businesses can not think of themselves first as profit-making machines- they must reconsider their places within their communities (of whatever size). A business is inseparable from its community, in the same way that your hand is inseparable from your body.
That's a better metaphor than you might think, actually. If the body represents a community, then the blood is its money, the brain its government, the heart its industry. Wait a sec, you might say- where is the service sector? We here in the US are all about service sector jobs, after all. In terms of the body, the service sector would be things like the immune system, the glandular organs, the skeletal system. In other words, a very significant -but very small (in terms of volume) segment.
Now, in terms of this metaphor, what the hell has happened with our economy? Think of it this way: growing population means a growing body. When the body grows but the blood supply doesn't match its growth, then blood becomes more precious (prices go up). The credit crisis? Something in the body (the banks; our veins and arteries I suppose) decided that the flow of blood wasn't fast enough (because, of course, population has grown while manufacturing capability has dwindled- the body grew but the skeleton hasn't produced the blood to fill it), so they demanded more than they were giving. Organs couldn't keep up with the demand- they can't pump more blood out than they get in, and they can't make it themselves-- so they atrophied as a result (homeowners defaulted on mortgages, businesses defaulted on payrolls, millions of jobs lost).
The problem is that money is pooling, not flowing. Blood clots in the brain and heart are threatening the health of our national community (execs are pulling in oversized salaries and not spending the money locally, ultimately leaving banks in the lurch). We need manufacturing jobs- jobs that produce real goods and real wealth. In a short time, this will stimulate spending and buying- and saving! --because there will be things worth buying, and people earning paychecks to buy the stuff with. Blood will fill our veins; savings rates will start to rise again, banks will be happy, and credit will loosen up again.
Now let's get back to the new economy -the one that will work for your kids and grandkids, the one we need to build. Disposability is simply no longer an option. Our landfills are -well, filled. Most of the stuff we use today can't even be safely disposed of in a landfill anyway, yet frankly was made to be thrown away. Raw materials are dwindling, and rising in cost. Disposability is not a sustainable way of life, and we're coming up against the final wall.
We need to demand reliable appliances, fixable appliances, and to settle for nothing less. Industry, instead of preparing to meet those demands, is running in the opposite direction: making goods that are cheaper to buy at first but more expensive in the long run because you're buying three disposable items for every one fixable item you might have bought instead. This amounts to a race to the bottom, as GE, Sony, Philips, etc, run themselves into the ground. In ten years, these industries will be hemmoraging, as consumers revolt by buying from more local, more accessible companies whose products are more reliable and ultimately repairable. Pink slips will flow by the thousands as these huge manufacturers of crappy 'goods' have to cut back. This is the economic crisis to come, and there's no stopping it: the only thing we can do is change course, now.
In 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was born.
In 1947, the Los Angeles Times (and later, Time magazine) reported that the crew of the oiler USS Caliente weighed anchor from nine fathoms and discovered that an overhand or lover's knot had been tied in the chain twenty feet from the anchor.
In 1984, filming for a Pepsi commercial went terribly awry when Michael Jackson’s hair product caught on fire.
Computers serve two basic purposes, in terms of economy: they create demand for more disposable goods (computers, programs, accessories), and they reduce the need for new employees by facilitating paperwork and book-keeping. More jobs are lost to computers, than created by building them or programming for them (and that's to say nothing of work lost to computer-controlled robots, eliminating jobs at twice that rate, or higher). Different kinds of work, to be sure, but employment all the same. The net effect is a loss of jobs. Computers just aren't helping.
Teaching kids to use computers in school is early job-training. Worse- it's free job training for industry, because business taxes rarely (if ever) go to schools. Ask yourself: why should you pay for your kid to be trained to do data entry? Even if they're learning to code: don't fool yourself- the days of madly-wealthy computer programmers are gone-daddy-gone. Ahh, the roaring dot-com Nineties! They're as gone as the roaring Twenties.
We should not give them computers in school- we should give them classes that teach them to use tools that make things and fix things: wood shop, metal shop, plastics, even electronics shop; cooking, accounting, home economics, sewing, design ferchrissake. They should be using their abundant imaginations to be making new things and developing skills that will be usable "across multiple platforms"- what we used to call being handy. It's a good thing to be, useful. Java, flash, and C++ are not usable across multiple platforms: they are skills related to a very, very limited range of jobs. They will not help your kid when the power goes out and he still needs to eat, or when the alternator goes out in her car when she's between jobs, or when the kitchen table, the toaster, or the TV goes down.
Bottom line: teaching kids to use computers will not help them do anything except find a job as a desk jockey or a 10-key operator. Is that really what you want for your children? A career as a Customer Service Specialist at a call center? That's what's coming, if we stay on this track. Mark my words.
This much is certain: there is no going back to our consumption-driven way of life. We simply have to change: economy will demand it. Businesses can not think of themselves first as profit-making machines- they must reconsider their places within their communities (of whatever size). A business is inseparable from its community, in the same way that your hand is inseparable from your body.
That's a better metaphor than you might think, actually. If the body represents a community, then the blood is its money, the brain its government, the heart its industry. Wait a sec, you might say- where is the service sector? We here in the US are all about service sector jobs, after all. In terms of the body, the service sector would be things like the immune system, the glandular organs, the skeletal system. In other words, a very significant -but very small (in terms of volume) segment.
Now, in terms of this metaphor, what the hell has happened with our economy? Think of it this way: growing population means a growing body. When the body grows but the blood supply doesn't match its growth, then blood becomes more precious (prices go up). The credit crisis? Something in the body (the banks; our veins and arteries I suppose) decided that the flow of blood wasn't fast enough (because, of course, population has grown while manufacturing capability has dwindled- the body grew but the skeleton hasn't produced the blood to fill it), so they demanded more than they were giving. Organs couldn't keep up with the demand- they can't pump more blood out than they get in, and they can't make it themselves-- so they atrophied as a result (homeowners defaulted on mortgages, businesses defaulted on payrolls, millions of jobs lost).
The problem is that money is pooling, not flowing. Blood clots in the brain and heart are threatening the health of our national community (execs are pulling in oversized salaries and not spending the money locally, ultimately leaving banks in the lurch). We need manufacturing jobs- jobs that produce real goods and real wealth. In a short time, this will stimulate spending and buying- and saving! --because there will be things worth buying, and people earning paychecks to buy the stuff with. Blood will fill our veins; savings rates will start to rise again, banks will be happy, and credit will loosen up again.
Now let's get back to the new economy -the one that will work for your kids and grandkids, the one we need to build. Disposability is simply no longer an option. Our landfills are -well, filled. Most of the stuff we use today can't even be safely disposed of in a landfill anyway, yet frankly was made to be thrown away. Raw materials are dwindling, and rising in cost. Disposability is not a sustainable way of life, and we're coming up against the final wall.
We need to demand reliable appliances, fixable appliances, and to settle for nothing less. Industry, instead of preparing to meet those demands, is running in the opposite direction: making goods that are cheaper to buy at first but more expensive in the long run because you're buying three disposable items for every one fixable item you might have bought instead. This amounts to a race to the bottom, as GE, Sony, Philips, etc, run themselves into the ground. In ten years, these industries will be hemmoraging, as consumers revolt by buying from more local, more accessible companies whose products are more reliable and ultimately repairable. Pink slips will flow by the thousands as these huge manufacturers of crappy 'goods' have to cut back. This is the economic crisis to come, and there's no stopping it: the only thing we can do is change course, now.
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