It is still there … my blinkers are unable to keep out the 24/7 streaming of imagery and strange activity that bombards us from all around. But long before I found that I had no allies in the sound government camp amongst the hard metal people and that they were revealing themselves as hard-right, Christian bigots to a large extent intent on hatred and preaching doom to their listeners, who profited neither in pocket nor in soul, I had also been coming to realise that the news and pundits depended on outrage and anger to peddle their wares. That people flock to bad news is just the way it is, but it is tragic that they will seek far and wide for that horror or injustice, not satisfied until something has made their blood boil that day. But how to continue to write and not take advantage of that inherent instinct and find things that anger me and write about those? Do you read editorials? Aren’t they always about something that one should be outraged about?
There was a standard opening to letters to the editor in The Times in London in the 1800’s, when it really was an extremely widely read publication and very indicative of its times [ha … ha, ed.], “I am shocked and appalled …,” and so they would get published of course. The letters that began, “I had a very solid day and appreciated the efforts of my neighbours …,” not so much. Indeed there was a book published called Shocked and Appalled about letters to the editor of The Globe and Mail, a Toronto daily.
I helped my father do research for an exciting book about the question of whether it truly was better to marry or burn, or as the Victorians were debating it, marriage or celibacy, that generated a fascinating series of letters to the editor of the Times, so I read a lot of letters to the editor. I still remember one that basically said, when poverty comes in the door, love flies out the window.
The letters were very revealing because people had widely different ideas about how much money you needed as income in order to afford to marry – class revealed and so many assumptions. Pure gold for the social historian. And then it gets funny – I went to see if I could find a link to dad’s book but couldn’t quite remember the title, and stumbled across what really shouldn’t exist, or should be even less visited than this inane blog, a subcategory, Best Selling Letters to the editor Books, which does indeed list dad’s book. Best cellar indeed. It ages well. I assume all Letters to the Editor Books are on there. The one about The Globe is, although it doesn’t have an attractive picture of the cover, unlike my pop’s. But I am digressing into the pleasant instead of explaining why I am digressing into the pleasant.
I don’t want to write about shocking and appalling things, and somehow want this blog to be a break from that for me as well as for you … an escape into the personal and the philosophical … a look at the deeper academic aspects of a question without being hopelessly polemical – a coffee shop on the cyber street of information.
Or maybe a tea shoppe … pets and pet peeve’s allowed, but you have to breathe deeply and take off those shoes. That is how I am trying to treat my own cranium after all and it would seem a disservice to not extend the same courtesy to all and sundry. Especially sundry.
Dang I wish I wrote that on Sunday … but have a sundry Friday or an all Friday, whichever you would prefer. The tea is on the house.
does this sound familiar?
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/01/greece-at-crossroads-oligarchs-blew-it.html
since no one else is posting today…
“Let’s just use some common sense, shall we? For nearly 40 years we’ve been governed under the economic ideological belief of trickle-down economics. The belief that low taxes will give more to the job creators (aka the rich), and that excess will then spill over to the rest of us. And for nearly that exact same amount of time wages in this country for the poor and middle class have been flat, while the richest among us have flourished like never before. Right now, around 42-44 percent of our nation’s wealth is owned by just 1 percent of our population. Exactly how much more do they need before that starts trickling down? And are there really people out there who believe that without regulations businesses would simply choose to act morally and ethically? Because with regulations many don’t, so how would the behavior of these unethical companies (and there are many) improve with fewer regulations?”
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/jon-stewart-slams-new-ideas-republicans-2016-same-exact-thing/
c’mon. i know you laughed.
i admit it. i wasted most of the day on the computer. (especially wasteful was the job search part.)
one last comment before dinner… it is sad as hell that Obama was such a shitty president that the republicans now are saying with straight faces, that they are the party to save the middle class. never before in the history of this country have we elected a president with such a clear mandate, and never before have we been so callously sold down the river. so see ya in hell Obama. (all IMO of course.) 😯
Remember, guns don’t kill people, chimps kill people.
Catching up slowly, but I went to that other Canadian woman’s blog, and dang but how do people get so busy? I thought her comment on Greece was good, and then I went to see about the author, and here is what I just have to rant about … what is with people that they are so part of something they criticize? She is described as: “Portfolio Manager, attorney, finance author, a regular guest on North American media.” and she runs two podcasts and a blog. If financialization [I think that was her word] of the world is the problem … then being a media darling and portfolio manager might have an enormous element of capture …
but maybe them’s just sour grapes … although other than my financial dependence, which does irritate us both, I have no regrets about not becoming a full blown academic. career woman. I can imagine how lots would have been great, but I have no desire to go to an office or have that kind of relationship with other adults … the students, fine, but the adults … for some reason you end up wearing shoes and clothes you don’t really like when you have a “career” … I think I am like Tom with the balloons.
and Good Morning
Supreme Court Considers Whether A Sock Is Drug Paraphernalia
http://www.npr.org/2015/01/14/377266975/supreme-court-considers-whether-a-sock-is-drug-paraphernalia
Oh jeez. No need to comment, since you know exactly what I would say.
Bottom line is that the internet is an instrument of evil. Those of us here have been battling on, in our own way, to try to be a force for good. But we’ve been overwhelmed by an avalanche of bad. I refuse to participate anymore. Good luck all.
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/01/28/police-family-poisoned-themselves-fearing-apocalypse/21136060/
Somewhere out there is some dumbass website operator who pushed them over the edge. And his defense will be “Hey, I was just trying to sell them some MRE’s!”
another old fave (and on the list of why I don’t why I like it so much, but I do)
pushing sleep boundaries again.
The internet is not an instrument of evil. It is an instrument that has brought enormous economies to all sorts of transactions, including information, much of which is accurate, in large part because of the pervasiveness of the medium.
Are books evil? Words? That some people have bad ideas is not a reason to dislike the medium that brought them to light. How has the internet impacted your children’s education? It made mine incredible … the ability to present material visually has changed how we can learn and the ability to hyperlink instead of plodding along on one tangent has opened the doors to so much more inquiry. The access my eldest has to information about the human body and the way the information is presented will change people’s health care for the better across Canada and probably the world. Doctor’s operating remotely with cameras …
Skyping … with patients, customers, family thousands of miles away
eBay …
Maps …
Recipes
My blog!
How to rent a hippie van in LA, and the ability to run a business that rents them
Amazon
Getting a tool box, with tools we selected, delivered on someone’s birthday, thousands of kilometres and a boat ride away without leaving the couch.
Traveling – reservations, hotels etc. – massively driving the price through worldwide competition
AirB&B
Ubercab
Most price discovery
Music, lyrics, tabs
When is the bus coming to which stop … my kids have by the minute timing
Photographs …
Weather, tides, climate
Science information … math … ask Dr Math and he will know!
email
I say tools are what you make of them and the internet is the best thing since the printing press … it will take time but the information genie has been slowly leaking out of the bottle and now the lid just got a lot leakier.
In fact just last night an old friend of my youngest spawn came over whom I hadn’t seen in a while and he had really struggled with high school and his cohort graduated two years ago. When I asked him how things were going, he sheepishly said that he had just finished high school, that very day, finishing his last correspondence course. Thank you internet! And he was slipping through the cracks and not always onto nice pavement, but a really nice kid who works well with his hands but has trouble with rote learning and authority.
say what you mean, mean what you say. EO – you have been all over the map. after ridiculing any of my opinions no matter how well supported, as to media capture, including the internet, now in your nihilistic very best, not only tacitly admit i was right, but go way further generalizing, “the internet is an instrument of evil” and that you “refuse to participate anymore”. say what you mean, and mean what you say. to make that even more clear, either get on the right side of the future, or please do quit posting!
and talk to your kids more, OK?
the tide is going out, and i have pulled anchor.
and denial of serious issues facing the middle class is not pessimism, unpatriotic, or right wing propaganda. the first step necessary for change is admitting that there is a problem.
read this from the Associated Press – or should i say the so called MSM (Main Street Media).
the first two paragraphs here, but please read the whole thing…
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve has declared economic growth “solid.” But several new reports show most Americans are treading along a dangerous financial tightrope, where one slip could be devastating.
Nearly half of U.S. households — 47 percent — say they spend all of their income, go into debt or dip into savings to meet their annual expenses, according to an analysis of Fed survey data released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts.”
http://news.yahoo.com/almost-half-us-households-exhaust-salaries-165336261–finance.html;_ylt=A0LEV7tWf8pUhXcAEjwnnIlQ
well i ran out of editing time, but my message gets through despite some obvious mistakes. i got pulled away as i was writing that, so just posted what i had so far. life seems like a rat race, even when you are unemployed. maybe be back later.
short, sweet, but not MSM.
“There is growing unease in stock and bond markets around the world that the current Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has retrieved former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s blinders out of the mothballs in some musty old closet at the Fed, thus setting the U.S. economy up for more epic convulsions.”
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/01/the-fed-that-never-sees-it-coming/
i bet you never even heard about this pipeline EO. what about you Dude? is the media captured? how hard is it to be informed, even of things that impact your very own neighborhood?
http://truth-out.org/news/item/28780-tar-sands-pipeline-planned-for-dane-county-eclipses-kxl
it isn’t even a matter of being for or against, it is a matter of simply being asked.
edit: and make sure to read the comments – all of them.
this article is fairly unremarkable, except for this paragraph. but i should always post a link anyway. bold face mine.
“The big Wall Street banks have enormous influence in Washington, DC, in large part because of their campaign contributions. They also support – directly and indirectly – a vast influence industry, comprising people who pose as independent or moderate commentators, edit the financial press, or produce bespoke “research” at think tanks.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/citigroup-elizabeth-warren-dodd-frank-reform-by-simon-johnson-2015-01#7to2Vmbfoj0gBJSt.99“
I have been scanning ads for employment and there was a classic one for someone who could write and help with a campaign, etc., the idea being they would give you the talking points and you would write to order and I could just smell the sock-puppetry. There was no mention of what you would be writing in support of, and I am sure it would turn out to be a political party from the way it read. Many people at the swamp failed to recognize them – that guy with the long cereal name, that guy who called me dude and tried to be cool earlier on, probably Dagney although I also think she might have been helping to bankroll the site – it is one of my possible explanations for the kid glove treatment she got despite her appalling comments and attitude. Dagney, the reverse miner, putting 8 million ounces give or take a billion, back into the mountains. As if she would survive a reordering of society. Fantasy land.
although I disagree with the final lines of the song … no last act, an ongoing flux. The earth’s last act will come long after mankind’s. We are just along for a tiny bit of its ride. But from stardust to stardust, what can you do.
well, i know you have a new blog post, but sure am glad i checked back here first. obviously you totally get what i kept saying about all of the fake personalities at TFMR. also that there is absolutely no way that the career internet scam artist who was running things there did not at the very least give the sock puppets that shared her right wing and/or fundamentalist world view a total free pass. further, and yes, i too believe that TFMR actually was compensated for hosting them as an umbrella wing-nut issues and talking points astro turf site of sorts. it was during the lead up to the 2012 elections that it became clear to me. it also became clear that any sock puppets spinning a more moderate view, or God forbid a liberal perspective were beaten senseless mob style, and if necessary, summarily executed by the piggest (oops – but i’ll leave that) piece of shit of all, aka “Turd”.
but i do believe in karma, so all is well that ends well, even if some of the right wing Christian Taliban nut jobs like Stane “end” up in Hell!
and that means you too Ann Barnhardt, er i mean Dagney. damn it, please excuse me while i go projectile vomit.
one last thing – i think some of the snowjobbed sheeple over there, or should i say “Freople!!!” (still puking), actually believed that they were living real life in some kind of sick, dark and twisted Ayn Rand dystopia.
but i ramble…
OK, all vented. no desire to edit. see ya at the next blog post. peace out. 🙂 🙂 🙂