Want Some Words…

This story is about democracy and why a limited (voting) franchise is better than an unrestricted one. It was first brought to my attention in Robert Heinlein’s book of essays Expanded Universe, and is quite hard to find, since it’s probably not as popular as some of Twain’s other stories. I found it online after being pointed to a different story by a different author. That is why the internets are so great.
The Curious Republic of Gondour by Mark Twain

I’ve got an idea.  Yes I do.  How ’bout, instead of giving Wall Street 700 Billion Dollars, Washington, gives everyone in the US 2 Million Dollars.  With a population of approximately 305,358,236 (US Census Bureau estimate), that’ll cost the gov’t less money, and, really ought to kick the economy up a notch.

Just a thought.

Deborah Fisher explains why public sculpture is inherently rude, and argumentative, and why it’s good to challenge our “internal notion of reality”.

A sculpture is this essentially rude thing, whose sole purpose in life is to take up space. It should therefore be unsurprising that public sculpture is, more often than not, the site of outrageous conflict, and that the overwhelming response to that inescapable fact is generally to settle on the most numbingly bland public work possible.

Found this pic out there, and liked it. I may resurrect it for Buy Nothing Day (it is a graff for last years event).
Be a maker, not a consumer.

On the occasion of Obama asking all of us to help out poor Hillary Clinton pay off her campaign debts.
The more I hear from Obama, the more I think “politics as usual”.

from webmd.com comes this article.
The headline really bugs me, because it’s such a misnomer. “Healthcare” and “health spending” is so untrue, it’s illness, or medical care, and spending.
Health spending would be on stuff like good, clean foods, exercise equipment, gym memberships, etc–stuff that keeps you healthy in other words, not spending on things to help us when we become unhealthy/sick.
I just wish that otherwise great sites, like webmd, would realize this, and stop using these euphemisms, so that people might realize that except for checkups, going to a doctor isn’t about health, but rather about sickness.

Article on WikiLeaks

Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.

Martin Luther King Jr.

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.in/wiki/Wikileaks
Check it out, decide for yourself.

A gift for my daughter
Actually a gift for anyone in your family, or circle of friends, which boils down to five simple words, a simple truth that’ll set you free–”No one owes you anything.”
Merry Christmas.

More on Harry Browne And here

WendyMcElroy.com: No natural harmony of interest in society
Well I’m sure not every single one of us is lee=ss free than our grandparents (or great grandparents), but this short blog post from Wendy McElroy brings up the point that human civilization has tended toward more freedom, and the guarantee of our basic equal human rights, throughout history–until the 20th century, where rights are no longer guaranteed, but legal walls have been put up to separate classes of people–by race sex, what have you–and rights have been replace by state-imposed privilege, and entitlement.
I think that we’re definitely in Heinlein’s “Crazy Years”, he nailed that one just about right.

A different approach to powering your home, than my previous nuclear battery one, over at Geoff Manaugh’sBLDGBLOG. Growing algae in balloons, in a way that makes it produce mucho H₂. Some beautiful renderings of the project (it’s an urban design project in Iceland), and some commentary from Geoff about how depressing it is that we go to these lengths to, basically, just keep on doing what we’re already doing, instead of trying to change the fundamentals of our society.
Growing algae to produce power is an interesting concept, but really it’s useless without designing communities that use less energy. People just don’t seem to believe in frugality any more, and that’s what we need to return to.
And, no I’m not a hippy, preaching back to the land, and such, because, damnit, I love my tech, and my Schtufff, but with 6 billion people (is that right) on this planet, we really need to figure something out, don’t we?