Muted Rumblings

A public letter to the state of Mississippi

2011-10-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

*sigh*
So, it's that time of the decade. That time when a small group of "christians" try pushing an agenda counter to the status quo, under the auspice of "protecting" someone. In this case, a fertilized egg.

Let me start with my personal position. I have no kids. Not for lack of trying. But I had an operation as a kid that functions pretty well as a vasectomy. Despite this, I lost count on the number of times I heard the phrase "I think I'm pregnant". And each time, I secretly rejoiced. Though as time wore on, I stopped letting myself hope. I'm good with kids, I love shaping minds, and generally I feel that procreation is the ONLY way to keep people on this planet.

That said, I'm not only pro-abortion in the case of dangerous pregnancies, but I'm pro-choice. And if you'll bear with me, I'd like to tell you why.

The source.
First, I object to the source. Christianity. Not that the source IS Christianity, but that it's religion, it's dogma. Separation of Church and State is the very foundation of this county and every attempt to twist that degrades us. And it's not all christians, is a small group of folks that brought us 'creation in schools'. It's about The Wedge. The wedge is a plan to "return America to it's core christian values." They want abortion made illegal, they want women's rights repealed (like voting, and choosing their own manner of dress), and they want THEIR religion taught in schools. In short, they want the U.S. to have all the same things that terrify us about Islamic law.

[that's right folks, you vote against Roe v. Wade and the terrorists win!]

The Law.
Okay, so let's ignore the fact that this is about "abortion" and let's talk about "life". Long before abortion became an issue, we had a bunch of pretty well defined laws about what's "no longer alive". These laws vary slightly from state to state, but the long and short of them is that if the person cannot continue living without mechanical life support, and cannot answer for themselves, then the closest relative has the right to determine their fate. This is so accepted that "pulling the plug" is a common term for ending ANYTHING that's gone on too long.

Okay, so let's flip that over. If brain-dead mechanical assistance means "no longer alive" then brain-dead mechanical assistance can also mean "not yet alive". In short, the fetus is NOT a legal person UNTIL it can survive, on it's own, without mechanical (or biological) assistance. Now, I may not be completely current on the specifics here, but the last I heard, the earliest a child survived a premature birth was about 6 months. And with mechanical assistance about 4 months. I'm willing to assume that no child has, or would, willingly sign a DNR, so those states that require a mechanically assisted wait period should have that apply here too.

So, until we have facts to the contrary let's say 4 months is the earliest a fetus has survived to childhood. Heck, let's say 3. So, 3 months is where the "not yet alive" fetus (legally) becomes a "person" (legally). Prior to that, it has all the same rights (in that state, country, region) as a terminally ill person, not able to support their own life, and not responding to machines. If you choose to treat them as one of the family, great. If not, then a coat hangar in a back alley shouldn't be your only option (homework assignment: go watch Dirty Dancin' again).

Logic.
If we're going to get into legal structures, let's get deep. If someone has a knife in their hand and are slowly pushing it through your chest, to your heart, what are your legal rights? What are your Moral rights? Ethical rights? Think about it. Certain types of pregnancy are just this dangerous to the mother. If an egg deposits in the fallopian tube, the growing "child" will stretch and rupture it long before term, killing both the mother and the fetus. Suicide is illegal (irrational, but we'll get to that another time). Murder is illegal (everywhere). Why should we want laws that allow them in the case of pregnancy?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/07/1023558/-Occupy-My-Uterus-My-Ass!-Fertilized-Eggs-Are-NOT-People

Social
There are dangerous precedents involved here. If we flip these proposed abortion laws back over, then DNRs become illegal, unplugging people becomes illegal, and in short order, we have a vegetative hospice system that rivals the current penitentiary system in both size and cost.

Even in cases where the pregnancy isn't dangerous, there's issues. First, this affects how deep the government can drill into your life. There isn't just a "child" here, but the mother. Best case scenario, her body will be wracked with changes for 9 months, and then she'll be saddled with emotional and financial responsibilities for the rest of her life.

Then there's the financial aspects. Not only do I feel that a woman AND the father have a say in the pregnancy, but the people who have to pay for the results should too. If the mother is on welfare, shouldn't "the people" have a say in that particular pregnancy, or at least provide a proxy?

Compromise
I'm willing to concede that the "child" left growing inside it's mother will probably grow into a baby, and may live to vote. But one final point I'd like to make:
Does it HAVE to be inside THAT mother?
We've proven that in-vitro fertilization can work. In cases of rape, incest, drugs, ignorance, etc., can we just trade out the mothers before implantation occurs? How about freezing the fertilized egg until a host can be found? Then the egg can be moved and allowed it's chance? This works even if everything else is ignored. People of mississippi, I encourage you to ponder.

T-Mobile Inspection...

2011-02-11T02:21:00.001-08:00

I'd like to take a look at the local run of T-mobile commercials. Normally I'm only moved to comment on the truly idiotic fare provided us. But the latest run of t-mobile commercials are incredibly spot on if you know what you're looking for. The basic idea is to knock off the famous Apple commercials featuring two spokesmen "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" featuring all the troubles of Windows, and the simpler, easier solutions from Apple. The targeted Mac audience at the time was younger, hipper crowds with an artistic flair, and those commercials reflected it. The PC was represented by an older, more corporate looking gentleman who (no offense) looked a little bloated. They were wildly effective, and I can understand why others have mimicked them.

This new crop of commercials features a pretty brunette woman representing t-mobile, usually in some eye catching pink outfit keyed to the T-mobile corporate pink. On the left side of the screen, a dull-witted young man with the ATT network represented by a scheming, balding older man. On the surface it kinda looks the same. But that's where it ends. In the first commercial, the speeds of the two networks were represented by motorcycles: T-mobile being a rice rocket that never moves onscreen, whereas ATT is represented by a pocket bike that actually delivers our hapless customer to the commercial. Careful observers will notice that at no time does the t-Mobile bike move or even gets touched, and the pink-clad rep doesn't even have a helmet. "4G" users in the LA area have noted that coverage is a little spotty if you end up behind a barrier, like a few sheets of writing paper. Like the cycle you can't ride, you get coverage you can barely use.

Similarly, if you read this article in Wikipedia, you'll see that the highly touted "4G" T-mobile LTE network isn't really 4G at all, it's an interim step between the two formats. LTE is actually a high-speed version of 3G, and to be fair, it is almost twice as fast (at best rates). Most of t-mobile's competitors have not succumbed to this dishonest labeling, even those who also have LTE or other interim networks. This effect is illustrated by the T-mobile girl, looking shockingly thin, almost anemic, wearing a pink sundress designed to give her the illusion of greater substance while the ATT rep is in a good fitting suit.

Since Apple has been partnered with ATT for so long, and the commercials are carefully constructed not to take shots at the iPhone hardware that must run on ATT, one must wonder, did Apple let t-mobil get the number of their ad agency with the purpose of undermining their efforts using T-mobiles own commercials? :) I feel like T-mobile has gotten what it deserves with these obvious rip-offs.

Rave Act of 2011 (AB74)

2011-01-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

The following is the silliest anti-rave legislation I've ever seen. Look carefully at the wording... this applies to everyone who:

plays any recorded music (including Musak, country rock, etc)

at "night" (between sunset and sunrise"

during an event that lasts more than 3 hours (not necessarily all at night)

not in a bar or sports arena.

So, any club that doesn't serve alcohol, most restaurants, and any kind of dance instruction (like Sr night polka dancing) would all be breaking the law. Every time a store has a sale (ie "event") and has musac plying, all night prayer vigils, and congressional meetings where the national anthem is played are all in violation. While it's fresh in my mind, EVERY New year's eve party would probably break this law.

Movie studios could only operate during daytime hours. Heck, Ralphs, Vons and Home Depot all played Xmas music well after dark. Oooh, yeah, Let's not forget halloween. Most of those parks and spook-houses have some kind of music running for 5-6 hours at least. And at the extreme silly end of the interpretation chain, a ladies' sewing circle plays Fox news in the background all afternoon, but happens to run a few minutes after sundown would be in total violation if Fox plays ANY kind of pre-recorded music. Speaking of fox, how about those late-running all-day football fests. Those are events and what beer commercial doesn't have some music....

This bill is ill-conceived, and ill intended. The fallout from this could be immense if passed. But if people know that it's coming, it won't stand a chance. Forget telling your raver friends, tell everyone who ever listens to music and does anything at night.

New Rave Act (AB74)

Assemblywoman Fiona Ma proposed legislation yesterday to ban large electronic music events in California. In her own words “The introduction of AB 74 is the first step toward eliminating these dangerous events”. Read the full text of the proposed legislation at the end of this email.

Fiona Ma's legislation is just one part of a larger agenda by the police and policy makers to shut down electronic music events in California. Our music and culture is being discriminated against and if we don't stand up and fight, they will succeed.

Thanks very much for your time! You can find the proposed legislation here:
*
*

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the Anti-Raves Act of 2011.

SEC. 2. Section 421 is added to the Penal Code, to read:
421. (a) Any person who conducts a public event at night that
includes prerecorded music and lasts more than three and one-half
hours is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of ten thousand
dollars ($10,000) or twice the actual or estimated gross receipts
for the event, whichever is greater.

(b) Subdivision (a) shall not apply to a public event on private
property if the entity that conducts the public event has a business
license to operate a bar, club, theater, entertainment venue, or
other similar business, or to conduct sporting events, and conducting
the public event is consistent with the business license.

(c) For purposes of this section, "night" means that period
between sunset and sunrise.

SEC. 3. No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to
Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because
the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school
district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or
infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty
for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the
Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the
meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitutio

Cold and Flu season

2010-12-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

"An expectorant increases bronchial secretions and mucolytics help loosen thick bronchial secretions. Expectorants reduce the thickness or viscosity of bronchial secretions thus increasing mucus flow that can be removed more easily through coughing, Mucolytics break down the chemical structure of mucus molecules. The mucus becomes thinner and can be removed more easily through coughing" (Adams, Holland, & Bostwick, 2008, p. 591).

One of the worst rated drugs available over the counter is a cough syrup that contains both an expectorant AND a cough suppressant. If you read the above definition again, it should become quite clear why. Since the popularity of the first medication to contain this combination went through the roof, many others have followed.

But the problem isn't so much with the products, but with the drug-seeking culture we live in. People drink this stuff to get high. It doesn't just suppress symptoms, it makes you feel stoned. That's why it's popular. And then, because it's popular, people who don't know the definition of the word "expectorant" buy it because everyone else does.

Fortunately for most people, the expectorant in Robitussin DM isn't proven to work. It's only medicinal function is as a cough suppressant. Unfortunately that doesn't keep the knock-offs from using actual expectorants. And the people who take those medications usually end up with a mild form of pneumonia caused by unreleased mucous in the lungs.

*sigh*

Read a label this week. Read one every week. Understand what you read.

Columbus day

2010-10-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

Things to do while waiting for the mail on Columbus Day

Really, there's nothing like Columbus Day for the ultimate non-holiday. He didn't "discover" America. How can you "discover" a place that's already occupied? He wasn't even the the first European to get here, the vikings clearly made it first. And before them, the Asians traded Jade here. And long before that, on the steppes of russia, someone crossed an ice bridge to get here and start the human population. But, the mail stops running anyway. So here's a few things to do to "honor" his "achievement".

Go on a LONG trip (kinda goes without saying). But not just around the corner, you need to go somewhere SO FAR that someone else has to fund your trip.

Remember, you can ignore the accepted laws of nature when you do. 1000 years before columbus sailed, the size of the earth was known. To sail from England straight to China is almost as long a trip as going 'round the other way. The difference is: no place to stop (if the America's aren't there). The crew was near starvation when they landed in Bermuda.

Go someplace that doesn't speak your language, but don't take a translator. Off to China, no one even speaks Mandarin.

Go looking for drugs. Columbus was looking for a faster Opium trade route.

Remember, No matter where you end up, that's where you meant to arrive. If you're heading for Florida and end up in Ohio, make sure to call them all "Gators". Columbus died believing he had landed on India, twice. He didn't take an interpreter the second time either.

Make friends wherever you end up. And of course we treat our friends properly by raping, enslaving and killing them. Once they're dead, you can plunder their homes.

My first whack at parody

2010-08-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

When did the internet start?

2010-07-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a line in the UK series Red Dwarf when I came across a plethora of pages musing about the beginnings of the internet. Many answers were given from 1965 when the first email was sent to 1991 when the world wide web was released.

Okay, first of all, the internet is not email. You wouldn't be reading this if it was. And it's not the web either. I worked with the Xanadu project team who were the ones responsible for writing Hypertext. Html was supposed to allow people to transmit documents and keep the biblios in order. The current version is a complete travesty compared to the original intent.

No, look at the word: Inter- net. You see, once upon a time, you couldn't connect from one side of the country to the other without a long distance call. Yes, in the early 80s there were "networks" but most people did internet stuff on local "Bulletin Boards". Mostly colleges and universities provided local network access, and major providers like AOL (Apple on line), Prodigy (no, not the band), and Genie were just huge, dialup boards with no national connectivity.

Some nodes, that had overlapping service, would connect to each other to allow users to extend services to greater areas. I used to dial up to a BBS called MNet. It served southern Michigan via dialup and short wave (yes, transmission of modem signal over ham radio... the first WiFi). MNet was within the boundaries of MichNet, the local Michigan Statewide network. MichNet could connect to Ilinet, the university of Chicago, which had a link to Some Corporation in St.Paul. These sorts of links went on and on.

Eventually, these links became part of ARPANET. A network begun on the west coast and reached all the way across to the country by the 1970s. And legitimately, this could be called an internet. However, it was never intended as a public access net. A great deal of email traffic was sent through Arpa, true, but this was almost exclusively amongst college staff and students. The real internet was yet to come.

In the early 80s, the National Science Foundation was considering linking up Arpa, local networks, and a number of supercomputers to the national board servers to see if they could benefit from it, and added a second net for the military. It was the inception of the NSF net that was the real internet. Finally AOL could email UMass and then off to Xerox in California. the date of decision for this great project was April 15th 1985. It took until 1986 to really get going.

They decided to wait 10 years before the first review, but it took no time at all. By 1990, All the major providers had linked up and the local networks like Michnet and individual universities; and they were all working pretty much seamlessly in one vast network. This was the first real "internet". In 1995, the NSF reviewed the internet and decided that the NSFNet was more of a distraction than an aid. So the project was ended and the connections were rebuilt by the private sector. It took a few weeks to stabilize, but when it came back on line, May of 1995, we had the Internet as we know it today.

Micro Solar

2010-05-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a friend about transitions of technology, and she mentioned that it seemed like anything that saved a lot of people money and environmental stress moved so much slower than cheap easy ways to make money, like vinyl to tape to cds to iPods. Somewhere a long the line, it occurred to me, The biggest problem with the solar movement is the big ticket up front with no appreciable service jump or payoff in sight. However, people have seemed to grasp the concept of the CFL bulbs (*shudder*) just fine.

Then I came up with an idea. If someone could make a small device, and a modular solar system, solarizing a house could be done in increments. For example if the refrigerator could be plugged into a box that was plugged into a wall outlet AND to a solar panel such that the power provided to the panel was converted and delivered as the preferred source to the device, then people start saving Immediately, even with a fairly small system. Modularize the panels so that one plugs into another like those little Honda generators to increase the wattage each time and people can save a little to get a new panel rather then taking out a loan to do the whole job.

But wait, there's more. We have devices designed to create shade (oddly, called "shades"). Instead of a rooftop device, what about an easily installed, fixed window awning that provides solar power? and who says they have to be square? Couldn't a solar panel be manufactured in attractive shapes and such to help blend in with decorating motifs? Imagine a victorian cut panel over your sink, that feeds a battery. The battery is plugged into a small regulator that powers your garbage disposal. Later, you put one on the roof to help power your fridge, and another one later that powers your TV. It may take years to "go off the grid" but that's years of reduced power usage. And most importantly, these smaller systems could be installed in apartments and rentals on a temporary basis and moved with the occupant. This would quadruple the customer base in a minute.

A hopefully helpful though sent out into the world.
If you use it, think well of me
- EJ "Tedward" LeCouteur

An open letter to spammers

2010-03-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, first of all, don't let my general loathing for you get in the way of your enjoying this letter. I'm genuinely trying to help here. I think if we can turn on that little bulb above your head, everyone can benefit.

Okay, so, I want to clarify that although I include "Opt-out" mailings as spam they are by no means included in this. In my mind, opt-out mail companies, like Mac Mall/PC Mall take the email addresses they have accumulated (usually from you buying their products) and sell them to "related companies" who also want to sell you stuff that they know, for sure, you probably want. For example, buy a computer at Mac Mall, and you get software advertisements from some other company. Never mind that they WILL NOT EVER remove your address from their list, and even though they make it so that you can legally "opt out" of any list they create, they can, AT ANY TIME, create new lists to put you on.

No, The spam that I'm addressing is a step slimier than that. These are the guys who use one of several means to gather your email address (web spiders, list hijackers, viral infection, purchase from opt out companies) and try to sell you stuff you DON'T want, nor have ever inquired about, though hijacked servers. Often, these schemes are just covers for credit card frauds and such.

But here's where we get to the point. The following subject line was on a letter to me:
~~~Good day :~~~Vicodi~ _ P~ercocet~~~
Okay, we get it. you're offering Vicodin and Percocet. Notice that the two primary ingredients are changed so that humans will pattern recognize the names but computers, specifically spam filters, won't read it. Thus, you can get your spam in front of human eyes instead of automatically getting filtered.

But, (now, listen closely) anyone who has a spam filter is willing to lose the occasional real letter, making their life just that more irritating, in order to avoid getting letters JUST LIKE THIS. So, why the alteration to slip it through? Are you hoping that someone will say "Wait, Vicodin AND Percocet???? i gots to get me some of that!"

Okay, so, I get it, just one sucker clicking the wrong thing will become subject of identity theft or some other form of fraud that could be worth thousands to you. But if people are already filtering you, why the deception? Someone who has a filter is ALREADY WISE to your schemes. And any companies providing mail service will have even better spam traps. SO WHAT'S THE POINT.

Why don't you restrict yourself to fraudulent porn sites and such? I mean the only grubworm lower than someone who would defraud the public in a manner like this would have to be the person who actually tries to buy pharmaceuticals on the internet.

E-coli happens

2010-02-27T01:42:00.001-08:00

It's a med-tech joke. Really, you don't want to know.

I light myself on fire for a living. I've looked down many gun barrels held in fear, anger, duty, and jealousy. I've been shot, stabbed, frozen, drowned, electrocuted, hit by cars, fought with horses, angry women, bullies, and dragons. I've died in the desert sun, on mountain snow, on grassy field, and on placid lake. I've stepped through deaths door so often, I have my own coffee mug there.

But never have felt so fragile and helpless as in the hands of the AMA. So, in case my feelings for them aren't clear, I've asked the ghost of Johnny Cash to help out...

On the other hand, despite my brush with the only Drug Pushers I've ever had the displeasure to meet, I feel that I leave the better for it. I have data confirmation that my self-diagnosis over the years have been 100% correct. And despite a little brush with what must have been acid reflux a couple years ago, my heart is in fine shape.

Yes, I'm a fat bastard who needs to lose weight. And I already took the first few steps towards that goal. I bough an iPod so that I had something to listen to on walks (personal best this week, I broke the 20 minute mile). And I recently bought a real refrigerator.

You see, since I moved in to Culver City over 6 years ago, I've had this tiny mini fridge as my only unit. Sounds great until you realize you can't have frozen foods, or large quantities of anything that can spoil. Basically, it sucks. But now I can keep whole heads of lettuce, healthy snacks, all fruit popsicles, etc in there and know they'll come out right. It's remarkably improved my eating habits.

Plus, I feel even more empowered to continue listening to my body (and totem) for dietary cues. So far, they've been dead on with what I need.

In short, I feel like a new man. And it only cost me $800, three needle pricks, completely toxifying myself with bad prescriptions, and a couple weeks of stress.

Alchemic Tango

2010-02-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

So, I recently had a pretty severe inner ear infection that caused me to break a 12 year streak and seek medical attention from the 'guys with the good drugs'. That's right, the almighty, allopathic, AMA. One ear infection and I end up spending $800 for a blinding array of tests to have them tell me the things I diagnosed for myself were, in fact, the case. Oh, and here, take some pills. Never mind that the things we "just caught in the nick of time" are things I've known about and have been treating for years. Oh, and here, take some pills. Never mind that ALL I wanted to do was get some antibiotics for my ear. Oh, and here, take some pills.

The AMA was formed to combat hucksterism and the patented medicine industry. If you're drawing a blank here, think of Sweeney Todd and the Pirelli's Miracle Elixir scene. Oh, and here, take some pills. In this case, Todd would be the humble and well-intentioned AMA, and Pirelli would be the shameless huckster portrayed in the movie. Thing is, the AMA did eventually move on to the atrocities displayed in the movie by Todd: literally cutting the throats of it's competition (in some cases) to attain dominance over american medicine. Oh, and here, take some pills.

Now, I walk out of the clinic with 6 bottles of pills, multiple punctures, referrals for two specialists, and a pear tree up my partridge. These last few days have incited more stress in me than the last 10 years of running my own business. Oh, and here, take some pills. Never mind that I found some startling similarities between my 'treatment' there and typical cult indoctrinations: 15 hour fast, separation from home, change of name, group-specific terminology, and let's not forget the drugs. Oh, and here, take some pills.

And now, having googled all the various pills they gave me, I find that one of them counteracts another, two cause symptoms that counteract each other, the one pill I feared most turns out to be the most innocuous of the bunch and the ones they put me on first are the most likely to kill me. Yaaay... Oh, and here, take some pills.

Tis the Season

2009-12-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

I think I just spoke to my father for the last time.

Years from now, I'll look back at this as a present, the likes of which I may never get again, but right now it feels like a dark pall on my Xmas day. Lemme 'splain.

First, my father has been sick. Really sick. He's over 90, so this is hardly a shock. He smoked for 40 years, worked in a factory and generally lead a sinful, meat-eating, stripper watching life. But my mother died a couple months back and apparently, that's all that was holding him together.

Though we don't talk about it much, most of the members of both my bloodlines have selected the time of their deaths. My mother's mother left a little note the night she died. My mother called and talked to everyone before she kicked. My father's father was particularly cruel by telling the boys to stand against the wall in punishment until he came back down stairs, then laid down to die. The examples go on and on.

Before my nana died, we had a Very intense talk amidst a sea of aberrant behavior for her. She hadn't been lucid for days but managed to speak her peace to me before drifting off again. Most folks made the same remark.

Well, I just had about the same conversation with my dad. He's cleaning out, speaking his peace, and looking for solace in his last days. Even if I talk to him again, I doubt I'll get my dad, but rather a rapidly deteriorating shell.

Merry Xmas to me.

*sigh*

What's Microsoft really saying?

2009-08-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, this image to the left is from the amusingly wonderful folks at Photoshop Disasters. It shows two Microsoft ads, One for the US, and the other for Poland. MS is doing backflips to explain why the black man's head is [badly] replaced with a white man. Notice the hands aren't different.

But here's where it gets really good. What ELSE is this image telling us? First take a good long look at the monitor in front of the woman. It's not plugged into anything. Also, notice the white laptop in front of the edited man.... It's a Mac Book Pro with the apple logo carefully removed. So, apparently, the IT tools YOU need are to unplug your MS machine and get a Mac. :)

Oh, and if you happen to be black and heading to Poland, wear a white mask. ;P

An open letter to Coors

2009-08-01T02:01:00.001-07:00

Thank you so much for providing your "Cold Activated Can". Long have I hoped that nature could have provided me with some sort of sensory mechanism, say, on my hand, that was just as capable of responding to temperature as my mouth. But, bereft of a naturally calibrated system like that, we have to resort to vision and your new packaging.

I know what a monumental task it must have been to develop this bleeding edge technology in this economy. Thermographic imaging has come a LONG way since the recent invention of candles and lemon juice. Even the little known technology of "mood rings" could not have advanced the industry as much as YOUR product. Clearly a Nobel prize is in your future.

Thank you so much for spending your company's profits on this immensely helpful technology. Thank you for not spending those profits in a temporary price reduction, pay increases for your workers, or re-opening plants to put more people to work in these trying times. Thank you for pushing millions of dollars into the advertising industry instead. The 3-4 people in your commercials clearly needed the money more than the people who faithfully made and consumed the one American beer that can be sometimes successfully argued not to be cold urine.

Now, I will take my leave. You see, a few of my buddies have taken our cues from your workers in the deep south. We'll be donning white (and black) apparel, covering our heads with white (facepaint) and marching on the local McDonalds. Imagine their faces when they see 100 Mimes burning a Fleur-De-Lis on their front lawn. Nothing says "stop it" like the burning symbol of France!

Heelarious

2009-07-02T01:53:00.001-07:00

No...
I roll my eyes at "safety third", I get tiffed when someone blows up buildings in new york, I even get a little queasy when some shmuck commits genocide in the name of racial purity. But this... this... Baby's first High Heels?!?!?!?!?! BLAAAAARRRRGGH.....
I can't stop vomiting. Will somebody please crash their server?

Seriously.... the 'fashion' world must be stopped. I felt weird when someone started telling people what to wear. And I can't imagine letting someone else decorate my home. But imposing adult fashion on Babies?!?! really? How about Baby's first mascara? AAA cup training bras? Baby's first Botox? Fetal breast implants? It's bad enough LA is infested with women who have every curve sucked out of them until they look like little boys, then inject their lips, breasts, and gawd knows what else with the fat they sucked out of somewhere else. But do we have to start them on this track before they can develop a normal adult psychosis about their looks? GAAA!

You cannot deny a man a stick, who lives in the woods.

2009-06-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

Newspapers have been sighing this dying gasp: "But, where will you get your investigative journalism?" To which I've always cynically replied, same place we've gotten it since watergate... no where. Part of the point of investigative journalism is secrecy and the incapability of information to get out. Now with photo cell phones, everyone with $100 and a 7-11 can become part of the information flow. If watergate were to happen nowadays, it'd be some maid snapping pictures rather than a journalist who couldn't sleep.

Well, here we go. All the US and canadian journalists were thrown out of Iran before the election (probably because they knew they would have to steal the election) but the information network we built (ie the Internet) simply cannot be stopped. This tremendous access to information delivery systems has made the old investigatory measures less necessary, and in many ways less effective. Everything is becoming more transparent. Modern bloggers can see through walls and hear through doors that no flatfooted ink monkey could have ever dreamed of achieving. And as technology gets better, so will this effect.

Print is dying because it's already been replaced... in every way... by better stuff. Instead of paying a few people with limited connections to investigate, we've made the entire world our reporting team. The news media outlets get it. half the time they're citing the net. Print needs to catch up or die. And then where will we get information that's 1-100 days old?

On elevation

2009-06-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

There's been a quiet debate over the choice to put elevators or escalators into a building. Elevators are safe, they take people in wheelchairs, large loads, strollers, etc with the same aplomb. The down side is that they don't work without power.

Escalators, on the other hand, turn into a set of stairs when the power is turned off. Their down side is that they use power constantly, even when they're not in use, until they're turned off completely.

Okay, so, here's an idea for some entrepreneur, for what it's worth:
Create a wide-step escalator that has a button at the entrance point. A wheelchair can enter the stationary step, hit the button and be taken exactly to the exit point (and no further). Add a 20 second delay to insure that someone else doesn't activate the thing while the chair disembarks. Then, people who don't need it, can "take the stairs", and those who do, get escalated at whim.

Someone really creative might make that button a "stop/start request" button. The stairs would have weight or laser sensors to let them know if someone is on, and they keep rolling, only while needed, then automatically shut down when not in use. The button at the entrance would then either stop the escalator while running or start it up while not running. If it's used to start running, it runs through the above, single trip cycle before starting it's auto-roll again.

To Whom it may concern....

2009-05-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

While on my evening stroll I came across an interesting site: a white car parked in front of the El Pollo Loco at 912 N Vermont. I checked the time, it was 6:15, and since that area is part of the 4-7 anti gridlock zone, it was the ONLY car parked on Vermont. Naturally, it was causing traffic backups as people dodged out of that lane to go around.

As I approached the car, I noticed it was an LA City college campus security vehicle (funded by the Sheriff's department). Well, now, as a cab driver, I heard my share of "you're supposed to set an example" speeches, so I decided to wait and see if this was the right time to deliver one of my own.

So I leaned up against car #67 with license plate CA exempt 1051619 for a few minutes until someone appeared. An officer in white with 2 bags of chicken did appear around 6:40. In that time waiting, another vehicle (civilian), inspired by the police car, had parked behind him, in full view of the 'anti-gridlock' and 'no parking 4-7 pm' signs.

I asked if the officer had the time. He did. I pointed out that quarter to 7 was in fact well between 4pm and 7pm. But he brushed past me. I checked his badge number #77 and tried to point out that the El pollo loco had it's own off-street parking lot but he rolled away.

So, I went to LACC campus security to report him, where I found the car AGAIN.... parked in a Red Zone. And, of course, the officer in question was the post commander. So naturally, reporting him would do no good.

After 2 years of putting up with the construction of that ridiculous parking lot, and the avarice in which parking tickets are issued on my street, I think it's time that someone tell this clown that he's not king of his private hill.

Earth Day

2009-04-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

I know You're probably getting inundated with Earth-this green-that. And If you've read this blog, you know how I feel about plastic. So, here's a little Earth Friendly tip that will save you money, and save the planet:

Get a safety razor. They're still pretty cheap, the only thing you throw out is Metal, and the blade refills are cheap in 100 packs. I just got this one, and I couldn't be happier. And If you REALLY want to get jiggy, you can always get a straight razor and strop and throw out nothing. Works for anyone who shaves.

The Zen of Dow

2009-03-06T15:01:00.001-08:00

For a very long time, the Dow industrials hovered around 1000. Then because of Reganomics, or Voodoo Economics, the Dow tripled in one term, leaving us with the first major bubble. If popped, leaving Bush Sr with the mess to clean up. His term ended with an even higher mark than when he came in.

Then there was Clinton. Because of Y2K, the clinton years were blessed with a bubble that was known to have a fixed end date, plus a couple of financial wizards making for unbridled prosperity for precisely his term. Once the threat of the y2k bug was over, the computer market deflated (much the way a blister does when the burn is gone) and the market should have returned to about 4000. But it didn't, because Dubya wanted to keep things moving upwards. And they did everything to prevent what is happening right now.

Okay, without the artificial, and temporary need for 100s or 1000s of geeks, and without a housing market that was clearly cheating someone, the market needs to return to the pre-inflationary levels. Wall street will have to take it's belt in a bit, and the cold war will have to finally end. Does this mean socialism for all? No, but another "new deal" is already on the table (look it up). I'm predicting that the current price of stocks at 6600 will drop another 2500 points before this all ends, then at about 4000, we'll begin a reasonably stable rebound.

But under Obama, it will NOT be like it has since the 80s, buy low and sell high will be for the people who actually do the investigations not just any scammer that can get a trading ticket. Getting rich in the market won't be just a matter of getting as much money in as possible, it will be a very hard and difficult journey. That said, I think this will also end a lot of our globalization as people will start to invest in the things they can see: local businesses and brands, and not on vague speculations like the last 30 years.

Fatwa against Ethanol!!

2009-02-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, a couple days ago, a company called "cleantech" created a storm with the announcement pasted below stating that Islamists should avoid the use of biofuels. Okay, I won't go into the fact that I can't find a single source about this and that the entire storm seems to be based on this article alone. But I do have a couple things to say.

First Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. Just like Methanol is methyl alcohol, and isopropanol is isopropyl alcohol. They're not "derived" from the other, any more than moisture is "derived" from water. How a major news figure in the biofuel industry could screw that up is beyond me.

But lets get to the second, and much more important part, the sources of ethanol. The Muslim cleric is opening up a can of worms here that could plummet muslim countries back into the stone age. Let's ignore the fact, for a moment, that hundreds of everyday chemicals are technically "alcohols" including a little something or other in pretty much every food we eat. Let's ignore, also that ethanol is a common cleaning ingredient, and therefore is found in trace amounts on almost every surface of every product sold.

What we cannot ignore is that one source of industrial ethanol comes from deep inside the ground. Crude oil. That's right crude oil is a mix of hundreds of chemicals. To be useful for anything but a lubricant, these chemicals must be separated. The easiest way is to use their different boiling points in a process called fractional distillation.

Distillation works a bit like boiling the water off a pan of rice, the rice stays and the water goes elsewhere. FD does the same thing but on a much more complicated scale. None of the chemicals are changed, they're just separated so that you can get to a more pure version of one or more, easily. But like the rice where you can't really get rid of all the water, you can't get an absolutely pure version of a chemical through distillation.

Since one of the chemicals in all crude oil is ethanol, and nothing can be completely removed through distillation, ALL petrol distillates have some tiny percentage of ethanol in them. Therefore, this declaration does the reverse of what it was clearly intended to do. It also removes Muslims from the Petrol industry and everything to do with crude or distilled oil.

So, ban ethanol if you must, but it won't save the OPEC nations, it will devastate them. This also assumes that anyone takes the proclamation seriously. Remember a Fatwa only applies to that particular cleric's followers. Various clerics have been tossing fatwas around like monopoly money for years now and I doubt anyone is paying attention. Here's a list of some famous ones.

Muslim cleric decries biofuels as sinful
February 20, 2009
Islamic scholar calls for further study as he notes that any use of alcohol is prohibited, even as fuel.
Adaptation of biofuels could be limited in Muslim communities after an Islamic scholar yesterday called for religious groups to study whether biofuels violate the ban on alcohol in the religion.

Sheik Mohamed al-Najimi of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy told the the Saudi newspaper Shams that the prophet Mohammed prohibited all dealings with alcohol—which would include buying, selling, transporting, drinking, serving and manufacturing.

Ethanol is derived from ethyl alcohol, which al-Najimi said would fall into the prohibited category. In the process to make ethanol, sugar or starch from plants is converted into ethyl alcohol through yeast fermentation (see Tweaking corn genes to boost biofuel yields).

Biofuel "is basically made up of alcohol," he said.

Al-Najimi said his opinion on biofuels should not be considered a fatwa, or a legal pronouncement in Islam, but should prompt Islamic leaders to study the issue.

Al-Najimi said he thinks a ban on biofuels should extend beyond predominately Muslim countries to include Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad who ride in vehicles using biofuel. Many Western and Eastern governments have established mandates for biofuel to be blended in petroleum based fuel in increasing percentages (see India, EU affirm new biofuels and Ethanol blend increases while oil reaches new low).

Fire Breathing Survey

2009-02-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

A couple months ago, a boston area man entered the hospital with burns from learning fire breathing. Unfortunate for him, but the accident may lead to some good. An attending surgeon has taken an interest in fire breathers and has been working with NAFAA to produce some clear information regarding fire breathing and the various fire arts. We ask that you support this effort in any way you can, so that we can benefit from the results of actual, scientific research in our area. The first step is a survey for fire breathers. If you have breathed fire in any capacity, you are encouraged to fill it out. If you have not, please forward to any fire breathers you may know. Here's the survey.

All data will go directly to research, it is voluntary, and completely anonymous.

Steampunk bike project: the beginning.

2009-02-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, so upon checking with Kings, All of the bikes they sell, turn-key, are cruisers with coaster brakes. So the project has been accelerated a little. I don't have to save up the money for disk brakes, but I am going to make sure the coasters are in tip-top shape. I asked my bike guy while I was there and he suggested that I strip and paint first then worry about getting the brakes solid. So, Currently the cruiser is in pieces on the floor.

While researching accessories, I came across the very first motorcycle, the "Reitwagen" ("riding car") - built by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. You can see it in the picture there. It's a lovely thing and Oh So steampunk. But I'm sure it's a little out of my price range. ;) There was a steam version made in the early 1800s, but much less is known about it. Anyway, since the Reitwagen was built and retired in 1885, there's not only a precedent for my vehicle, but I'm free to go any direction I like as the next one didn't come around until Harley Davidson in 1903.

Fortunately there are no "period police" in steampunk, so screw 'em anyway. Still I like the name Reitwagen (right wagon), and that's what I'm going with for now. It's about the romance, not about historical accuracy. Plus the steam machine (another good name) didn't have a catchy name like Reitwagen.

Okay, so i got in the can of brass paint. I'm very happy with the initial results. So I'm getting primer and a clearcoat. Get this, the clearcoat is reflective: it turns the whole bike into a reflector (like street signs). Which means I can do away with all the standard reflectors to gain visibility. heheeeee

I've put in a bid on eBay for a genuine, 1890s miner's lantern, the kind frequently used on bikes. You know that's so because in addition to the front reflector, there's also two gems on either side for port and starboard running lights. Totally geting geeked about this. Next I have to find a rear light.

I found the kind of kickstand I want. This one flips up to the rear of the machine and forms a tripod with the front wheel. It works better on heavier bikes because the frame is kept upright and not leaning over on a spike. The bike that currently hosts the engine could so use something like this.

Oh, and as for the fenders, I think I want to try making my own. The ones available for purchase are gonna need a little tweaking anyway to get rid of the chrome. Plus, in the same week, I saw a show on PBS on making curved wood pieces, and found a website where someone else had made his own. So, I figure "screw it, I'll give it a whack." Not like I haven't worked with wood before.

My bike shop, Orange 20 bikes, tells me that I have options on white tires. So we're a go on that end. But that can also wait. I'm sure they can help me with other projects like wood pedals, brass chain, leather grips, and a big "Ah OOOH ga" horn.

Genetic tampering

2009-02-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

I watch a lot of PBS. Something I caught was a show on the genetic occurrences of weight gain. This interested me in that I'm a big fella.
Okay, so here we go.

There's a substance that clamps onto certain parts of our genetic makeup that can be passed along with the gene itself. This substance can prevent a gene from activating and is transmissible.

There has been documented evidence that crop failures, droughts, and seasonal excess can affect people's statistical health for up to two generations. That is to say a drought this year might cause heat disease to rise in all the progeny of children who are 12-14 when the drought occurs.

We know that certain phenotypic variations are not genetic as previously imagined (homosexuality, weight, color, etc). But it is possible that these chemicals are causing traits to pass generations by cutting off or over stimulating genes.

So here's the golden goose in all this. Since about the 1960s (yes, I'm blaming Twiggy), women have been hitting fad diets to meet progressively smaller ideal body types.

Let me take a moment to be clear, I do not agree with these "ideals". All these women in LA running around looking like little boys from the back with oversized breasts make me question the sexuality of anyone who finds them attractive. Given my druthers, the ideal body type would be a lot closer to the Khardasians than the Hiltons.

But I digress. I'm beginning to wonder if the current trend towards obesity in the US isn't being CAUSED by the diet industry.

Follow this logic.

Women in the 60s and 70s start dieting. Most of those diets were some variant or another on starvation.

Starvation triggers a response that alters the genetic traits to hold onto any weight that can be gained

It also causes the hunger system to amp up.

Women have children during this time (thin women are usually attracting a mate)

the genetic markers to hold on to weight and for increased hunger are passed on to their progeny

What's worse, since this generation tends towards the rubenesque, all their members favor dieting.

This increases the probability that the same genetic traits get passed on to the next generation.

Unless this new generation embraces acceptance of body type, and stops dieting, the third generation will experience a genetic structure of profane obesity.

I hope i'm wrong about this, but... wow, it's too ... solid.

From the ACLU

2009-02-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is some good stuff from the ACLU, and finally in video form.

Steampunk Bike project: concept

2009-02-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, So i've decided what I'm doing with my two bikes. First, I have a motorized 10 speed using a motor from Kings motor bikes. Despite tweaking a lot we keep having back axle problems with it. The mechanics tell me that it's a function of the 10 speed rear hub and how the wheel connects to the axle (one one side, and the middle).

So, they tell me that a single speed bike, like a cruiser is the answer. Single speed bikes have a wheel that connect to the axle on either side, as close to the supports as possible (none of this middle stuff). The bike above was gifted to me for burning man a couple of years ago. But, because I was planning on returning each year to the Burn, I didn't want to really go crazy with my playa bike. Well, now that the fuss with LAFC is over and I'm not going this year, I think I'll make this bike my spring project.

First, it needs to be de-palyafied, and taken apart down to the frame. Then, I'm going to re-paint everything from the ground up with a metallic brass paint. Also, I learned that black rubber tires didn't pop up until the early 1900s. Previous to that, all rubber was white. They found that adding carbon black to the rubber gave it better grip which was necessary to make early cars work properly. So, I'm thinking about all white tires, or at least very wide white-walled knobbies.

Next, I want to replace the fenders and chain guard with wood covers. It's not all that authentic, but these absolutely scream "steampunk". I spotted these in my local bike shop and they may be the inspiration for this project. But when I found the mother-load at Woody's, I knew this was gonna look amazing.

Then, transfer the motor over to the new cruiser and add an olde thyme bike seat made of all leather with a gooseneck spring. I want to see if I can get one of the old carbide miner's lights for the front (updated to california night riding standards). I think the hard part will be getting leather grips and reducing the plastic content of the other fittings.

The final addition will be a "snoopy" airplane leather helmet and a pair of these brass RAF goggles and maybe a silk scarf. Add a bomber jacket and maybe those explorer pants with the flaps at the thighs and the look will be complete. Heheheeee...

Keep checking back for updates on this project.

Rain Rain come and stay

2009-02-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

I haven't been so happy to see it rain since I had a girlfriend that got extra frisky during every downpour. My allergies have been getting the best of me for near a week. I don't ming blowing my nose every 5 minutes, but I lose sleep. I mean I don't get ANY major REM sleep because I have to get up every hour to blow my nose. So, this break from allergies is a total blessing. I'm loving it.

Rain away.

Email etiquette

2009-01-29T18:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've been on the internet since, well, since before there WAS and internet. But we still had mail back then and there has been an etiquette about mail since at least the early 80s. Some of the information gets updated as new technology springs up. So, here's the early '09 edition of Digital Heloise.

CONTENT

First of all, you must realize that anything you put in email should be handled in exactly the same way as regular mail. Many of the same laws apply, but more importantly, the same social dynamics apply, only faster. For instance, if you think your boyfriend isn't going to share that scented letter on pink parchment with a room full of frat boyz, you're delusional. But similarly, if you write a sufficiently hot letter in email, you can be sure someone is reading over his shoulder, or will get the first round of forwarding.

So, watch your content. Don't put anything in there you wouldn't mind other people seeing, and certainly don't put in stuff you wouldn't want to end up in court. [Emails are now admissible, from the right source] There's a program called Carnivour that's in most major providers now (Earthink was the first to roll over like a good puppy). It sniffs emails for certain keywords. So you can be sure that every crack you ever made about shooting George Bush in the face has ended up in some FBI file or another.

Same with pictures. If you don't want nude pictures of yourself ending up on the internet... DON'T TAKE ANY! Like that girl from High school musical, we may never know if she actually, naively took some secret shots intended for her boyfriend alone; or if her PR manager suggested she do it so that she'd get more attention just when she was ready to break out. But the point is clear: no one can be trusted forever. Eventually they'll get mad at you and send them out, or get stupid and let someone unscrupulous get ahold of them, and BAM, you're a porn star.

Audio-Visual cues. You might be smiling when you type something, or it may sound sarcastic in your head. But what we hear on the other side is "whirrr- Click", and what we see is a bunch of 12pt. black lines. It doesn't matter what, exactly, you do to rectify this, just as long as you do SOMETHING. Emoticons were custom made for this. You know the little sideways smiley faces like this > ;o) <. Some people use the Manga Eyes version =o.O= where the little Kilroy set of eyes should tell you all you need to know. And some people get a little funny with html tags. Which is best? None of them. The only wrong one to use is "nothing". Worse, to start using one of them, then forget sometimes.... then they're never sure what's up.

Oh, almost forgot. ALL CAPITAL LETTERS MEANS, PRETTY UNIVERSALLY, THAT YOUR VOICE IS RAISED. MORE THAN A COUPLE OF WORDS AND IT'S CONSIDERED "YELLING". USE THIS _ONLY_ WHEN YOU'RE actually yelling. ;o/

APPLICATION

Your mail application should have the basic set of features. There's good ways to use them, and bad ways. For most individual letters, you're gonna use the "To:" field for the address and be done with it. This is totally fine. It's when multiple people get mailed that many folks start getting fuzzy.

First, you need to know your audience. If you're sending to a bunch of people who all know each other well (say, 'the coffee club"), and you're SURE they all have each other's mail addresses, then it's generally OK to put all the addresses in the To: field and send away. HOWEVER, many folks have announcement lists, joke lists, etc with people from all parts of their life (family, friends, co-workers, mistress, etc) where the To: and even the CC: field wouldn't be appropriate.

Why? You ask... well, let's start with what each field is for:
To: sends a copy of the letter to every address in the to field, and posts those names in the quick view of people's email applications.
CC: sends a copy of the letter to every address in the to field, and does NOT post those names in the quick view but they can be seen once the letter is opened.
BCC; sends a copy of the letter to every address in the to field, and hides the addresses in this field from all other recipients.

The original ideal behind these goes something like this. You feel like your boss is sexually harassing you. So, you send a letter TO him saying how you feel and that he should stop immediately. You CC his boss so that he knows it's not just between the two of you and this has other folks involved. Also, his boss notes that the letter is addressed to his subordinate and doesn't call you with a confused apology. You BCC your lawyer so that an exact copy gets out at the same time just in case you're fired on the spot, then you have a paper trail to work with. Worst case scenario, but I think it brings the point home.

Now, in modern emailing, let's get back to that joke list. First, you don't just put people on lists, you ASK them first. (This is called Opt-In mailing, ie, they know about it before they start getting mail). It's polite. Also, there's been attempts at legislation to make Opt-Out mailing illegal (ie when they start sending the mail and give you a way to get off the list). But more important is to protect their address. Put the ENTIRE joke list addresses in the BCC field instead of the other two, then put YOURSELF in the To column. Many mailers will not let you have an empty To, Subject, or Body area. This way, your co-workers don't end up on one of your friends' sports lists, or the monday night bridge roundtable.

SPAM

First of all, you should never buy anything that arrives in your email. EVER! There's enough spam and identity theft scams out there that anyone who actually has something to sell will find a better way. Even if you do luck out and find that one, honest email offer, you're only promoting the spam experience for other companies who see that it's working. Spam is potentially more damaging than viruses. Many companies and individual pay for mail (and internet) service by the bandwidth used. Spam dramatically increases the traffic through almost every machine, and causes lost emails due to over-filtering. It's the digital equivalent of all those Starbucks cups and water bottles gathering in the Pacific.

Now, here's some important tips to reduce spam in our lifetimes:

1) Set your mail app to "do not download images" If something slips through the spam filter and you have one of those split screen mail browsers, just clicking it to get rid of it could pull a request for the images and verify that your address is real, and read. By not downloading images, you may not get off the spam list, but you don't move up the ladder either into the "preferred sucker" list.

2) Never opt-out. If you didn't opt in, then don't opt out. Again. many of these opt-out scams are just a way to track active addresses.

3) never,ever, NEVER-EVER open files you didn't request. You might know so many people that you might not know who's sending you .doc files, but for crying out loud, get a company list and check against it when you get something.

4) Report to Spam Cop. If you have the time, reporting spammers can mean faster turn-around for eliminating their schemes. Generally, they take over a server (happened twice in the same week to me) and have their spam go to a fake site that they install in the server. Spam cop will figure this all out and notify the appropriate people. As soon as the cracked server is shut down or repaired, then none of that wave of spam will work if other people hit the links.

5) Your penis cannot be enlarged, there's no foreign wad of money waiting for you, and russian brides know WAY more about our legal system than you do. Think about it. If "it" was actually true (whatever it is), then you wouldn't need a spammer to get the word out. If they ever invent a pill to make penises bigger, it'll be on EVERY news and blog in the world.

6) That joke isn't funny, the kid isn't sick, Microsoft will NOT pay you for forwarding this letter. Chain letters turn YOU into a voluntary spammer. There's a great site called Snopes that allows you to check and see if the claims on most emails are true. Poke around and see a few of the scams that have been perpetrated.

Finally, learn all you can about your anti-spam software. Look for feature like "whitelists": a place where you can say that NOTHING from these addresses should ever be considered spam. Check the spam folder frequently. Remember spam is designed to look like real mail. A LOT of real mail gets caught in the spam filter. And sometimes you can dil it down so that no real mail gets caught, but the stuff that gets sent to multiple addresses does.

Email is one of the most important methods of communication today. By allowing spammers to take hold and control it, you give up a big part of our culture, and one of the best methods of global communications yet. Treat it nice.

No mo' Gitmo

2009-01-22T18:44:00.001-08:00

Okay, so it was a day late, but Gitmo will be closed in a year, giving enough time to transfer out the detainees, close up the prison, re-assign the officers and fire the nuke.

Waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation tactics are outlawed.

And Microsoft is laying off people.

It's a good day.

No more LAFC

2009-01-12T14:29:00.000-08:00

When people here the news that there's no more LAFC, they ask "WHY? what happened?" And I wish I had a really good answer.

Last year, we discovered that the Pyro, no matter how unsafe, was a more important part of "The Burn" than the fire performers. I called out Crimson in an open letter, but the response did not answer the core questions. We had no communication until this month.

So finally, I sent her a letter at the end of last year:

"So, it's looking like enough previous members are gonna be returning to make LAFC happen for 2009.

The question on my mind is: did I piss you off too much? You've never gone silent on me and I don't know if I should hand off the torch to someone else to give the lafc a fair shot at the great circle."

Not exactly groveling, not snarky or mean. Just a straight question. But, certainly an open door. I think, subconsciously, I wanted her to step through. She did.

She came back stating that the list was shut down, LAFC would not return, and that I could not function as a Shin, co-shin or helsman. She listed two reasons why, neither of which I believe.

"You continue to complain year after year after year and one of those complaints is about having to create choreography."

For the record, LAFC voluntarily started group choreography long before it was a requirement. This is one of the reasons she came to us in 2004 to build her fiasco "the Pulse". I've never had a problem building group choreography. I HAVE had a problem with the inequity about choreographic judging and the level of work different groups are expected to do. In 2006 both Amber and I were read the riot act about our choreographies looking too similar to the previous years (for different reasons. That was the second year in a row that LAFC had combat choreography). While, that year, other groups literally did the same, exact choreography.
No, I don't have a problem doing choreography, I have a problem being expected to produce while others phone it in.

"Your leadership is being questioned by members of the community and former members of LAFC will not be returning if your are in any kind of a leadership role."

This is EXACTLY why there are more than four groups in conclave. Back in 2000, crimson called 4 people to help her run the conclave. I was one. But after that year, most of the SFFC would not return if Crimson was at the helm. So she opened it up to any group. And yes, Mutaytor split off LAFC immediately, and in progressive years Phoenix split off from them, Pois in the hood split off from LA, Garnish split off early, And the more geographically convenient groups, San Diego and Santa Barbera pealed off too. People have had MANY options for spinning in LA, One person is not an excuse not to spin.

So. You can see why I don't believe her answer. But it's not like she could say "I didn't like that you called me out on the pyro thing last year". Nor could she say, "I'd rather have people that kiss my ass, and you're more trouble than you're worth." Whatever. I think it's politics, or fate, or whatever. It really doesn't matter to me. And here's why.

Back around 2002, I was known as "the safety Nazi." And when we started NAFAA, some people joined just to make sure we didn't "regulate them out of a job". It was a weird time, but I learned a lesson in duplicity. I had to leave my fire troupe because of a member who was a chronic drinker. And I don't mean a regular social drinker, I mean I didn't feel safe until she had a couple of drinks in her. Those people who joined to keep an eye on things started remarking about how I was performing with someone who broke the very first rule of the NAFAA guides. I couldn't live with the hypocrisy, so I left the troupe to keep NAFFAA clean.

About 2 years ago, we started Red Swan. And though it's not delineated in the mission statement, it was our goal to elevate fire performance into a respected art form. To place people in corporate events that have been previously inaccessible. And we wanted to get performers out of gigs where they are disrespected, underpaid, or mistreated. But again, I run into the duplicity.

Burning man expects people to pay to be in conclave, yes, they get a great party, but they're formally expected to work for months on their choreography, provide video proof of their work, compete for the position AFTER putting in all the work, show up days early to check in, show up 2 hours early for the gig, no dressing room, no bathroom, bad communication, bad organization. Frequently, their well-planned choreography gets cut significantly by upwards of 15 minutes. THEN, they have to protect themselves as 40,000+ people turn into a frenzied mob, often trampling equipment or performers. You can't really say they get the same party as everyone else, because they're expected to be sober for the performance.

Yeah. Now, frost that cake with the fact that I've gone a little deeper into debt each year I've gone to the Burn, while my business(es) suffer from my absence. You can see that I have plenty of reasons not to go. I'll miss my friends, but I dare say I won't miss putting up with Crimson's shit any more.

Ebony and Irony

2008-12-31T01:03:00.000-08:00

Ebony and Irony live together in pure dis-harmony
Side by side in the Senate main floor, oh lord, why dont we?

Neo's know: that people aren't the same where ever they go.
There is good and bad ...in other folks,
But nothing wrong, with any song
they choose to sing, until they get nailed ... and then they get jailed.

Ebony and Irony live together in pure dis-harmony
Side by side in the Congress main floor, oh lord, why dont we?

Ebony, Irony living in perfect harmony
Ebony, Irony, nooooo

Dems all know that people are the same where ever they go
There is good and bad in evryone,
They've learned to hide, they've learned to slide
Each other the slack need to survive 'till Gingrich arrives.

Ebony and Irony live together in pure dis-harmony
Side by side in the chambers Supreme, oh lord, why dont we?

Ebony, Irony living in political harmony (repeat and fade)

Eco Gym

2008-12-26T22:01:00.001-08:00

I am releasing this idea to the world. For I am lazy and unwilling to see it through to it's end. So use it if you wish and think good thoughts of me if you do.

Since the Yuppies still insist on climbing fake stairs, walking treadmills, and riding fake bikes, all instead of just doing the real thing, I suggest we put them to work. Instead of pugging this equipment in to give them digital readouts, why not plug generators in and let them provide power? Heck, at least enough power could be generated to run the bloody machine. A few bikes in a spin class could power a pretty nice sound system. A whole gym that runs on the power of the people pushing generators instead of friction wheels would be a beautiful thing.

So, come on Bowflex, Weider, Nautilus, and Golds, let's see some training devices that are also power devices. Then, people can not only get buff and built, but they can get green as well....

Go Hulk!

MILK COUNCIL SCANDAL!

2008-12-24T21:18:00.000-08:00

Shocking pictures released indicate that the cows chosen for the California Milk and Cheese ads have been regularly subjected to casting couch auditions. These "casting cows" rarely ever even see a camera, let alone make it on screen. But they are subjected to the lowest form of humiliation nevertheless.

"These charges are patently ridiculous", claims David Bilkson, chief treasury director of the Milk Council. "Anyone could have taken those photos. You can't even see faces, I mean, how do we know they even auditioned?"

The state prosecutor, Dirk Benson, vows to unveil the entire scandal and bring the entire ring to justice. "Thank God this came out after people got their Milk for Santa," he ruefully admits.

DJ Grumpy Bear

2008-12-07T02:39:00.001-08:00

I learned a lot tonight.

1) you CAN pull together a choreographed piece in two days.
2) NEVER listen to a promoter who says he "just wants xmas music"
3) NEVER listen to 'the drunk girl' when she says a music change is in order.
4) never let her friend select the music.
5) never trust strangers with your sound system.
6) A second change in music type is NOT the answer.
7) Never judge a celebrity by the cover.
8) even female body builders/ wrestlers can be effeminate, fragile, or out of their element. (Yeah, I met Chyna tonight)
9) it's never THAT bad, even when half the floor clears (from the drunk chick's music)

So, for my first, paid DJ gig, it could have been worse. I should have stuck to my guns and told the drunk chick to piss off, but after being told to switch from xmas music to "anything" else, I was caught off guard. Psytrance was keeping the party going and was neutral enough to allow people to chat and carouse. Once I got rid of "that retro shit" and played Gloria Estefan, it completely killed my vibe. Plus, after a song or two the drunk chick was back bugging me to play "something danceable". I think it would have been a much better party if I had pushed her in the pool.

Knott's Inferno Mix 2009

2008-11-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

Red Swan Entertainment has provided the Inferno Stage at Knott's Scary Farms Halloween Haunt for the last two years. In addition to wrangling 20 performers and a dozen spotters, we provide our own music for the show. Since they won't let us have live music, and we must provide a cd, we went with a friend who created two stunning mixes for us.
Check 'em out:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7817978401066367605&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7179575558474923286&hl=en

For 2009, we decided to take a lesson from the performers and accept "auditions" for this year's mix. Any DJ who would like to do so may submit a mix for consideration for the Inferno Stage mix.

Because this is a public venue and a park with a lot of things going on, there are some restrictions to what we may accept. Submitted mixes should have the following attributes:
- 15 minutes long
- preferably music without copyright entanglements
- All tracks must be appropriate for 13 year old + (ie "clean" ratings)
- All tracks, Ambient to Goa, Breaks to TechStep, should be danceable.
- limit radical changes in style and speed to 1-5 times total, please.
- Knotts likes the mix to have a definitive end (like big Hollywood spectaculars). Drum build and a gong, or, in the case of our second year, the dragon's roar; etc.
- We prefer the last 5 minutes or so to have a lot of energy and an epic build
- we prefer the opening sequence to have a seriously strong hook to gather the crowd

You're encouraged build whatever mix you like, without regard to previous versions or preconceptions of what would "fit" at Knotts.

Since we like to have the mix ready for performer auditions, and we'll need some time to decide, all submissions should be with us by Mach 1st, 2009.

Winning mix will be awarded $100 and [if available] 2 guest passes to the Haunt.

Please send links to online mixes or Audio CDs to
http://redswanfire.com/contact.html

On the woes and ways

2008-11-29T03:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, by now, you should know I run a few websites. But the one that's my bread and butter is Bearclaw Manufacturing.
http://www.bearclawmfg.com/
I make and sell fire performance equipment (big shocker, no?), and do so primarily through the website.

Well, back in April 2007, I installed the current version of the site. It's got a lot of cool things about it and, quite frankly a few things missing. Fortunately it's ope source, so there's a plethora of contributions to fix the issues I might have with it. Why a few of these are not in the basic install is completely beyond me. More on that later.

So, Over the last few months I've been looking over my earnings sheet and noticed a disturbing downward trend. Naturally, this bothered me a bit. I took a look at a wide variety of indicators and correctly foresaw the crash of the housing market and the current depression we are suffering.

Unfortunately, I've also noticed that my ONLY customers of late have been either returning customers or ones that I contacted directly. Add that with the convenient timing of the downturn compared to the installation of the new website and you get one big, embarrassing oversight. It seems my new website is not optimized for web searches.

Yup, generic title, no meta tags, and the information that I transferred over was pathetic. So, I looked on the contributions page and found a plethora of ways to help. Again, I don't know why a couple of these are installed standardly in the basic package. But, Okay.... we might just want a sales page that can't be found. *sigh*. So for a year and a half, my sales have been declining, mostly because google doesn't know what to do with my site.

It's all fixed now, and maybe a little better for the trouble. So, now we just wait for a few spiders to crawl the site and we should be done. Here's hoping. I hate being on page 36 of a google search for fire poi. *shudder*

Red Swan Recruitment

2008-11-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Red Swan Wants YOU!

If you haven't heard, Red Swan Entertainment is a fire performance talent management company. Our job is to connect fire performers up with jobs. And not just the same old jobs, but good ones. We started with running the Inferno Stage at Knott's Berry Farm during their Halloween Haunt in 2007. Then, we did special spots for new ABC shows, a piece for the History channel, charity gigs, music videos, another run at Knott's, and more.

Now, just because people signed up doesn't mean they were forced to do gigs. All we do is notify you when work is available. Either we post general jobs to the gig list, or we contact you directly if you meet specific needs. Then, you decide if you want the gig. More business, no stress, What more could you want?

"How about my fire troupe?" Oh, so you're in a troupe, are ya? No problem. If the troupe doesn't mind it's members doing occasional solo gigs, we'll take them all. We don't always get asked for "dark-haired female fire eaters", sometimes they specifically want a troupe, or a mixed group of people. In those cases, being in a troupe can be a benefit.

Okay, yeah, sounds too good to be true? Fine, yes, we take a small cut, but only on the gigs We get you. If you get a gig on your own, you get the whole gig. And, if get a gig you can't handle, you can have us manage it for you, no stress. And you can even take a finder's fee if you like.

If you're on our gig, we ask that you represent. Follow NAFAA regs, pass out Red Swan cards when requested, and be professional. You're welcome to keep a pack of Red Swan cards to pass out when you're not at our gigs; but, no pressure.

So, you see, for just a little bit of your time, you get a lot of benefits, and no stress. We get another performer, another set of skills, another unique person that may be just what someone is looking for.

So why not sign up with Red Swan today?
http://redswanfire.com/performers_sign-up.html
Or feel free to write or call with questions.

I told you so...

2008-11-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

For those who didn't believe back then, I can [unfortunately] say: "I told you so".

I was going through all my old blogs, transferring them to blogspot, when I cam across this
http://people.tribe.net/tedward/blog/296c45bd-04cc-441c-929f-242ba86176d3

It seems that more than 2 years ago, I called the current financial crisis. So, for all those unbelievers, I say :P nyah nyah.
...
Of course, I'd rather not have been right on this one, but you take the victories you can.
Here's another prediciton: Assuming he survives to swear in, Obama will the new JFK yet get almost as much accomplished as Clinton. After two terms, Biden will run and win, but his priorities are elsewhere and he won't get much accomplished.

Welcome

2008-11-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

It took me a long time to get used to blogging. I just couldn't imagine the arrogance of it. What on earth could be so important that you need to inflict it upon the rest of the world.

Well, I guess I'm more arrogant now. :)

I started blogging some time back. I'll see if I can get my Tribe blogs up here. Based on those, you can expect a complete mixed bag of nuts. Sometimes theoretical physics, sometimes politics, sometimes toe jam. But I will say that I don't like pulling my punches, so if you can't take the heat, get out of my kitchen.

Time to testify

2008-11-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

Last year, I performed on Halloween with Tangee and completed our little fire sword grudge match. Here ya go...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-hgrf9fHto

Let me tell you, that's an intense minute, and far more strenuous that most people imagine. At the end you see me put my hands on my knees. That's because the chest pains were starting to kick in. A few seconds more of fighting and it felt like I was beginning a full coronary. Since my dad had 7 of them before he noticed it, I can well imagine that this was, indeed, my first heart attack.

After that gig, and after paying off a bunch of bills, I had some money left over. And for many other reasons, I lusted over the iPod Touch. So i put money and desire together with the standard Catholic-guilt conditional: I must use it 3 times a week for exercise. Not having a music player was the final excuse I was clinging to.

Okay, quick tangent. Excedrin came out with a catastrophically unsuccessful commercial. Based on research that showed most people did not fully trust doctors, combined with it's third place ranking in headache elimination, they had their spokesman say " did I listen to 'research'? NO. That's for doctors." Well, it turns our people do respect clinical research. I write this testimonial not because I don't think people believe the research, but because re-inforcing testimonials DO work.

So, if you look back at my blogs you will see some of the progress I made over the last year. My resting heart rate went from 100+ down below 90. My heart rate recovery time after exercise dropped from 45 minutes to about 10 minutes. And my blood pressure dropped from "hypertension" level to "normal" levels pretty quickly. In short, I was back to being "healthy like ox" by the beginning of the summer. I would have liked to see some changes in my physique, but I did, at least, maintain the measurements I had dropped to during the first Knotts gig.

So, when this year came around, I was still a little shy about performing regularly. Partially the physique, partially because I didn't want to suffer those chest pains again. So, I avoided getting scheduled more than one day in a row. But I allowed Michelle to put me on more than once a week. I ended up performing the same number of days, but worked almost twice as many all told. Plus, that last week, I was onstage quite a bit.

But, instead of falling apart like last year, I felt pretty good. I managed 14 performances in a week with some almost as intense as the combat. But instead of chest pains, I muddled through. And instead of three days of pain and sickness at the end of the run, I actually had a little energy afterwards. In short, I feel pretty good.

For this, I salute my iPod. Of course, I've picked up the 2nd Generation Touch, so now I have access to Nike+, a whole system for walking and running management. Plus, I have twice as much room on this thing, so lots of choices in music. But, really, it comes down to getting off my ass and taking a little stroll. Then a couple more. Then a slightly longer stroll when the view got boring. Then a little hike. Until, eventually, I would walk all day.

I may still look like a bear, but, 'I strong like ox' and a lot healthier too. So, based on this, I encourage you to find a way to get yourself moving. An ipod shuffle is super cheap, and can hold about 8 hours of music. You don't need a gym membership to walk around the block. And the more you do, the safer your neighborhood becomes (criminals don't like people watching them). And, hey, you might get a bit healthier too.

BOOYAH!

2008-11-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

President Elect Barack Obama.

Sounds so sweet.

Now, we just got to keep him alive until January... :oP

No on prop 8

2008-10-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry for all the non-California residents reading this, but we have a hot-topic issue coming up on Nov 4th.

A little while back, we had a court case go through that allowed gay marriages to happen here. The gist of the ruling is that although our legal concept of marriage comes from the religious base, it has been tied up with legal ramifications (visiting rights, health insurance coverage, next-of-kin, etc) and many people do not get religious marriages anymore, but rather seek legal entities (judges) to perform the ceremonies. So, with this as a given, the constitution has no ruling in it about who may become married, and thus, the state should not discriminate based on the races or sexes of the humans involved.

So, this year, a group called "protect marriage" is pushing prop 8 through which repeals this decision and attempts to amend the state constitution to forever prohibit gay marriage. Their primary method so far has been to quote incidents from Massachusetts where a book "King & King" was read to second graders. They sued to get the book banned, but the judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_and_King

So, after that scare tactic failing to work, they've picked up a new campaign, one without commercials. They're actually threatening to build a list of all companies who donate to 'no on 8' without an equal or greater sum going to 'protect marriage'. That list will be publicly posted as "marriage haters." My favorite computer company has responded:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/24/182745/66/429/641316

Just a little back story on marriage.
When we wandered the lands as nomadic peoples. Everyone's survival tasks were pretty clear. Women gathered local plants, found water, and protected the children. Elders formed long range scouts and often filled in the time gaps where others hated to be awake. Men, all of them of hunting age, would leave together and return together for hunting. There were no real assets to pass down other than genial leadership. And since any pair bonding that happened was pretty much public knowledge, the males could easily track their progeny. Women, of course, have been able to assuredly track their progeny up until only a couple of decades ago (in-vitro fertilization).

When we settled into farm life, two big things happened. First, assets, particularly land ownership, stated gathering fast. Second, occupational specialty made a rise. You see, when all the males of breeding age hunt together, there's no one left behind (other than elders) to muddy up the family lines. But when you have farmers, blacksmiths, milkmen, shop keeps, etc, the opportunity for discrete infidelity arises. For the women, this means they get the best genetic mixes, so it's advantageous to them. For the adulterous men, they have an opportunity to pass progeny without giving up assets to attract a mate or tend to her or their offspring. Only the faithful male loses out on the deal; his property passes to someone else's child and he puts in all the work of support with no genetic benefit.

These faithful, but cuckold, men often became disgruntled and problematic for the community. So, they turned to the highest order of power they could: the priests and the leaders. Slowly, but almost universally, the promise of fidelity got woven into the fabrics of major religions, and into the laws of the land. Frequently the punishments were very harsh ('stoning' in the times of the bible), and carried the additional incentive of being a "sin".

Nowadays, anyone with tickets to Jerry Springer can get a paternity test done and proof-positive identify a child's genealogical decent. The specific need for "sin" and "promises" to track progeny and inheritance lines is OVER. Frankly, if we don't need gay marriage, I say we don't need any marriage. Certainly not from a legal stand point. Married couples get so many legal benefits from our government that other pair bonded couples, and singles, do not get. So I say let's give to Caesar what is Caesar's and God to God, If you want to have marriage between a man and a woman only, fine, but you lose all government supported benefits: tax breaks, health care coverage, next of kin rights, Special 5th amendment powers (cannot be forced to testify against spouse), etc.

Or you could give a few "perverts" a break and let them help reduce the divorce rate. :)
No on 8. Separation of church and state.

Columbus Daze

2008-10-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, Columbus Day is coming up a week from Monday. And since I always forget to do this on time, I'm doing it early. (kinda like those stores that are schlepping out the Xmas stuff already).

Back in 5th grade, we got fed the propaganda about this most beloved of early US figures: the man who "discovered" America...

Yeah, right. If that were true, there wouldn't be North American Natives with Viking Blood in them. Also, the Inca wouldn't have had anything made of jade. You see, Jade is found only one place in the world: China. And let's not forget the "Indians" he found... somebody had to cross the land bridge...

**AARRGH**

Okay, so, for the record, here we go.
1) People -knew- the world was round long before Columbus. In fact, the size of the earth was known in ancient Greece, accurate to within a couple hundred miles. Columbus wasn't out to "prove" the world was round, and even if he was, he did not succeed, Magellan did.
2) He wasn't looking for a new land. Ancient Ottoman maps, that he may have seen, depict South America and a snow-free Antarctica. Plus viking lore of new lands were well known at that time.
3) He WAS looking for a shorter ocean route to Asia. Going around African and India to get to China was a real drag. And despite the ancient greek figures showing a direct sea route from england to China being four times as long, with no place to land, he thought he'd try anyway.
4) He WAS looking for drugs. The primary import from China, even more valuable than silk, was opium.
5) The THOUGHT he'd landed at India. That's why they call the natives here, "Indians". Dots, not feathers. Columbus didn't know the difference.
6) This meant that he actually sailed on an expedition to a land he knew almost nothing about. If he actually had someone who knew anything about India on board, he would not have made the mistake. But since no one on board spoke either the language of the natives, nor the primary languages of the orient, he could not distinguish the two. And if he actually wanted to reach China, why didn't he sail north from the Caribbean's?
7) Nevertheless, he pressed the new "friends" into slavery. Okay, so, he thought he had sailed 'round the other way to Asia, landed in India, and since he couldn't speak the language, he brought a whip.
8) The rest of his "friends" died of polio and other diseases. Not really his fault, but one of those diseases was syphilis. Some folks got no respect.
9) Since he couldn't secure opium, he brought back what drugs they had: tobacco.

So, celebrate "columbus day" the way it should be done:
Get lost, looking for drugs
Make new friends wherever you end up
Kill and enslave them.
Steal their stuff (don't forget the medicine cabinet)
Claim their land as your own
Kill anyone who disagrees.

... it's the American Way.

The 10% fallacy

2008-09-25T22:54:00.000-07:00

Hollywood is very fond of dragging out one of the oldest fallacies in biological research: the 10% brain thing. The oldest fallacy is, of course, that EACH drink you take kills 50,00 brain cells. That's just not true, they came up with that number by estimating the number of dead cells in chronic drinker's brains and dividing by the estimated number of drinks a chronic drinker has in a lifetime. Turns out that you can swill a LOT of alcohol before you deplete your B6 levels down enough to take brain damage. THEN that one drink starts killing off millions of brain cells.

A similar amount of scientific fortitude went into the 10% fallacy. Here's how it went. Take a rat or a mouse, run it through a maze and clock it's time. Then take out a small portion of the brain and run it again. Keep doing this until you get a noticeable drop in time. Repeat. Average the results. And they were: 90% of a rats brain needed to be removed to get a noticeable drop in time. Conclusion: we only use 10% of our brains.

Let's put this in different terms, we're gonna take parts off your car until we get a noticeable drop in SPEED. We'll start with the steering wheel, radio, gauges, body panels, interior, air filter, power steering, radiator, THEN engine... in that order. We only see a marginal drop in speed when the radiator goes. And in fact we see a small increase in speed as various parts come off. But if we stop before the engine, is it still a car?

The answer is NO. About 15 seconds after the 10% paper was released, someone else shook off the old idea that the brain wasn't just a big mass of smart jello, but a multi-layered mass of compartmentalized processes. We now know there's a visual center, a cognitive center, the reptilian brain, etc. Only about half of our brain mass is even used for "thinking", the rest goes to maintain the body, and support the senses. So, anyone who's ever jogged or took a walk, with their eyes open, listening to a walkman has, at some point, used at least 50% of their brain... without the "thinking" part.

But some of the new-ish technology out there (MRIs PET scans, etc) show, by tracking blood flow, that the average person uses approximately 100% of their brains, EVERY SINGLE DAY. See it turns out that different tasks use different part of your brain. Listening to music, uses part A of the "thinking" area, but singing uses part B (both use the sensory areas, too, and singing requires activity in the reptilian brain). Playing an instrument uses part C of the brain, dancing part D. So if you happen to be singing along with the music, playing air-guitar or dashboard-drum while shaking your booty, it turns our you're using about 80% of your brain all at once.

They've even gone so far as to develop technology that helps you to make use of all the various parts of your brain as much as possible and to coordinate the efforts to create interesting internal effects. If you've ever seen a "relaxation" machine with sunglasses and earphones that flash red lights at your closed eyes, that's the one. They're trying to make use of the brains natural pleasure response from activating as many parts as possible all at once. Primitive tribes did this by drumming and dancing around a fire. Modern tribes do it with glow sticks and speakers. Oh, and sitting there, reading all of this?
... about 20-30 percent, assuming the room is dead quiet and there's nothing but the screen to look at.

You may have heard that Einstein used 30% of His brain... That's an estimation based on his IQ (in excess of 200), using the 10% fallacy to illustrate the point. Einstein never took and IQ test, so we don't really know. Naturally, because we don't know, we have no idea how much of his brain he actually used. But I'm willing to bet that it's pretty close to 100%, just like everyone else.

On a more Platonic wave. Think about the rest of your body. Is there ANY part of your body where there's 10 times more of anything than what's needed? Even large amounts of stored fat are a survival remnant that help a lot of people in cold climates (I grew up in Michigan, so I still carry a lot of "Detroit"). But really, think .... hair? nope, keeps the sun off you while running. Nails? nope, good for digging and self defense. Sweat? nope keeps you cool. Appendix? Nope, recent studies show that important digestive bacteria grow there. Why on earth would we develop ... and maintain... a huge chunk of Very Expensive tissue that served no purpose at all? It's ridiculous...
It's asinine.

It's Hollywood...

Tribe "final days" news...

2008-09-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

All you chicken-little's out there crying about how tribe is going down because of this that or another thing. Please take some of the following into account:
1) Yes, the lead programmer has left. However, he's the guy that was keeping it running these last few months of crashes, problems, and outages. Maybe losing him was a good thing. Not saying he was a bad guy, but he can be replaced, and maybe fresh eyes will get things running smoother.
2) The Tribe blog has had nothing but good to say about the Premium membership program. This has netted much needed funds that have allowed new equipment purchases and such. Now, one nay-sayer claims that the early sept colocation change was a fraud and that Tribe isn't allowed to move because of colo debts. Ummm, first, colos hold the light switch. If you get behind, they have no problem limiting your bandwidth, or just shutting you down... but an extended debt? I doubt it. But lets entertain the idea. If Tribes owner is siphoning money out then there's little to do and most likely, the attempted colo move would have brought tribe down permanently. I'm gonna call shenanigans on that nay-sayer.
3) Tribe is currently running smoother than ever. This could be from rats jumping ship, and it could be that the promised changes on the Tribe blog have happened and the site is now more bullet-proof.

I'm not against finding alternate resources and such, but posting your email address on a public server is a fast way to GB of spam mail a day. I'm down below 1300 a week, and I think I'll keep it that way. In the mean time, I hate Facebook, I won't use a Fox News owned service (My Space), so right now, if I gotta go, I'll probably revert to the first, the oldest and still the best bbs out there... arbornet
http://www.arbornet.org/

Post Burn Blah Blah

2008-09-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Post Burn Report:
Shelter (Pictured):
/ Double length monkey hut worked famously. It was so stable that it helped form part of a larger structure.
/ Dome designed to fit inside Monkey Hut ... fit. The combination of the two make for a formidably cool shelter. The zippered cover kept out the dust nicely.
/ Shower Curtain suspended from one end of Monkey hut worked quite well, and placement near the dome meant there was a convenient shelf to put stuff.
/ Battery powered shower gave up the ghost (despite new batteries). Fuck it. I grabbed a cup and poured water over myself. It was entirely sufficient, greener, leaner, and it made me happy. That's my new shower.... no disappointments, no batteries.
/ Covered evaporator needed more room to work. Once I put a couple of boards to support the lid, it worked great. Still thinking of a kiddie pool next time.
/ Rope bed for dome was larger than expected but worked incredibly well. It needed several tightenings, but was the most comfortable sleep I've had on the Playa.

Camp (InCompeCare):
/ Set up took longer than I'd hoped. We didn't have actual shade and stuff until Tuesday.
/ The sign for our camp was a complete success. We're totally doing something like it in the future.
/ The function of having everyone pull office hours was weak. I would have liked to see a little more participation from the residents.
/ The fact that we were closed most of the time was not lost on outsiders. That played nicely.
/ The M&Ms, toys costumes and such were quite the hit.
/ However, far too many of our visitors saw the red cross and assumed we were a legitimate first aide station.
/ A couple of camps left a lot of detritus behind. Clean up was kind of aggravating.

Plans
Keep in mind this was a particularly dusty year. And i don't mean "wear a face mask" dusty, or "get some goggles" dusty, but I mean foot high mounds of dust in piles all over the playa. Hit one with a bike and you come to a gentle but abrupt stop. Made bikes useless at night, and everyone's lungs got filled up reducing energy levels across the board.
/ Ocean of fire - like 6 people showed up. The weather was beautiful, the sound system was faltering the dust was tame. No records broken this year, but we had fun with the brass balls competition anyway. Disheartening, though.
/ Temple of Community - I was supposed to run the show before the burn, but while trying to gather more performers, Crimson stepped on my announcement and gave bad information. No one showed.
/ Burn Night - High winds and lots of all-day dust meant that the pyro team had to find a "window" for which they could burn the man (with fireworks). However, because of the critical timing, they decided to cancel the rest of the burn night ritual, including the Fire conclave. Funny, not once did I ever hear anyone tinker with the idea of not having fireworks.... grr.
/ Temple Basura - The main temple burn was delayed for some time because they realized that they had nothing to light it with. This is the position I always filled with the main temple crew, but unfortunately, the Basura crew decided that the Temple crew's help would not be needed. *smirk*

People
I saw a lot of old friends this year. None of the ones I expected, all the ones I needed, I guess. My playa love this year ended up being another shin. We email to each other but I don't think either of us are ready for an LD thang. *sigh*

Tech
/ My iPod Touch has now fully completed it's original mission. First it gave me a music player to walk with. Then a sales tool for Red Swan and Bearclaw. And finally, on the playa, the WiFi access allowed me to do enough work to be certain that I'd have enough money to make it home. This is the first year I've come back from the playa with no new debts. Happy.
/ battery powered shower - dead. Replaced. Happy
/ Genny - Both camp generators failed to emit a single volt this year. And not for lack of trying. First, I have to fix the starter cord, then I think I have to get mine un-flooded. Finally, I want to buy a muffler for it. Now if I can just remember all that when I have both time and money.
/ Pocket Fisherman. Yup, the original Ron Popeil gadget. This turned out to be the most gratifying part of the burn for me. since New moon was thursday, it was a very dark year. I went Raver Fishin and gave away blinky lights to whomever I caught. This was the single most gratifying part of the year for me. I even bought a couple of lures so that I could do some stream fishing if I get the call. This thing lives in my car from now on.

In the end, this was a particularly hard year. One of those years that make it very hard to say, confidently, that I'll be back next year. I burned the bed, but I can always make another one cheaply. I still have the dome and Hut and the rest of my camp. Time will tell on the rest. The biggest worry I have is if I'll have a conclave next year. A LOT of my folks are pissed off about burn night, and taking crap from people who perform all year round isn't helping their mood.

Pale-In

2008-09-09T22:45:00.000-07:00

Everybody is up in arms about Sarah Palin. She's not the first woman on an executive ticket. Geraldine Ferraro had that honor. She's not the dumbest or least experienced VP, that one goes to Dan Quayle.

She's a clear attempt at locking in the Hillary vote that threatened to go to McCain after the primaries. That's all. Simple pandering. Nothing else. Please stop calling it "historic". It's not.

...unless she gets elected.

Back from the burn

2008-09-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Dust, sweat, dust, tears, dust, shelter, dust, ice, dust, dust, dust, dust......

No conclave this year...
6 people at Ocean of fire...
Temple of community confusion...
AAARRRGH....

On the other hand, I was swept off my feet by the Shin of the Santa Cruz fire conclave. A new face, sweet, talented and a good hugger. She gave me sweet affirmations when I think I needed them most.

It was a strange year. I feel empty. Usually, I'm tired but brimming with creativity. But the Burn night debacle has left me utterly spent.

Best... Birthday... Ever!

2008-07-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Granted, there's not a whole lot of competition in this field. And most of the high points are fairly recent: cakes at Burn Club, etc. But I've had some serious low points.
10th - Parents tried to surprise me. I nearly get attacked by a pet Crow, then get sick during the surprise party.
18th - in the army. Letter arrives from the girlfriend with a note to "sarge" on the back. 100s of pushups that day. Then, we went through gas mask training and spend the afternoon in the gas chamber
22nd - finalize my divorce
You get the idea.
It took about 10 years of messy divorce nonsense for me to get ready to get serious again, but by then I'd kinda lost the knack. So, I started a habit of taking out the most beautiful, desirable and available woman I knew for my birthday. That way, I at least get in one date a year.

But this year, THIS year, a hot, blonde, ex-model, current stage performer asked ME out. So what if she's engaged. It was awesome. Plus, I have a new favorite restaurant. It's called Le petit Greek, in this cute little cluster on Larchmont. It's a little pricey, but sooo worth it. And no harm being seen with a cutie like Starburst. :)

Anyway, it was fun getting out of the house, and out of the scene, acting like a normal person and not dealing with fire for a few hours.

On Death and Choices

2008-07-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

I want to thank everyone for their kind words regarding my mother's recent death. As i said to many of you, it was sudden but not unexpected.

My family seems to have a slightly different view on death than most. We do not fear it. We feel it's a choice. The only time we see it as a tragedy is when there is no choice. Like the victims of Hiroshima, the ones at point blank range had no choice in the matter, their bodies were dissembled at the atomic level.

Short of that, though, pretty much anything you've ever heard of happening to someone and killing them has been survived by someone else. Be it shot, run over by a car, electrocuted, frozen, fried, drowned or by disease, someone somewhere has survived it. As it happens, *I* have survived all of those. Guess I only have two lives left... :o)

Any way, consider James Brady. He was Reagan's body guard that got half his head shot off. People have survived jumping out of a plane, walking through lava, eaten by sharks, etc. Really, Seriously, almost anything at all has been survived by someone.

We believe that every time you go through trauma, any trauma, you get a choice. Sometimes you recognize it, sometimes you don't. When I was electrocuted as a child, I was thrown 30 feet by the juice and was down for about 5 minutes. Then, suddenly, I restarted. No choice, no tunnels, no angels, just a moment of black and I was shaking uncontrollably on the ground.

The first time I knew about the choice, I was in my teens. My "arthritis" was so bad that I was walking with a cane. I was told I'd be in a wheelchair by 18. I bent down to pick something up and my joints popped (think of the size difference between you hand knuckles and your knees... it was LOUD). A friend asked if that hurt and the choice hit me. On the one hand, I could go for the sympathy, say "yeah, it hurts" and get them to help me up. But that way lead to the chair. On the other hand, I could dig deep inside, figure out the truth and let sympathy be damned. I did, and answered 'no, it feels kinda cool actually". And my life started to turn around.

Since then, I've had one or two more choice moments, and of course, I started recognizing the choices when deep trauma stopped my heart and breathing. I know every day I spend on this planet is because I've chosen to be here.

Same for my mother. She's had a pacemaker made by Microsoft for years. At this point, she's about 20-30% artificial parts: heart valves, hips, leg bones, eyebrows, etc. Bits and pieces she was less and less .... her. It bugged her. She hated being a burden. And most importantly, she wanted to go out like her mother did.

My grandmother made the choice to go and gave herself two weeks to say goodbye. One day, I was taking her to the phone company and watching her one-arm a counter rep in an argument about her bill. A week later I get a call that she's in the hospital and going fast. Everyone got the same speech: "she's not very lucid, don't be surprised if she doesn't recognize you." Well, she recognized me... from across the room and through the door. We shared a few moments that were too personal to blog and then, Poof, she was out like a light; completely unfocused and non lucid. Two days later, she wrote a little note saying, "thank you for the wonderful service" and went to sleep for the last time.

I know my mother fussed around for almost a year getting things straight. Made sure everyone was all good. Then tried to go out with the same grace as Her mother. I guess she was hanging on to hold that red-headed grandchild or something. Whatever it was, she decided she'd had enough. I've never known her mind well enough to even begin to guess her motives. But I do know that she chose to go.

Watch for those choices. They happen to everyone. I have a friend who recovered from Lupus because she caught a choice and was ready for it. And the next time you run into something you fear, stop and think. Is this fear based in the fear of Death? Knowing that you have a choice over the moment of your death can unravel all your other fears.

Matriarch RIP

2008-07-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

My mother died last night in her sleep. She was 86 years old (oh, the irony of that), birthed 7 children and held over a dozen grand children. She is survived by all her children and her husband of nearly 70 years. Her mother was the undisputed matriarch of our family, and upon her death, she tried to maintain order by stepping into that role. But like so many nuclear families these days, her progeny cast themselves to the 4 winds .... uprooted and unlinked from their past. Like her mother, her two daughters stayed close by and kept watch on her. And like her mother she fought death to the end, but eventually gave in with grace, in her sleep.

It is her wish to be cremated, and I might have to perform the cremation.. ;o)

If you read this, eat a warm, chocolate chip cookie and call someone you love.

Lets get Excited!!!

2008-07-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have my reasons. They're solid. You know I was a Clinton supporter. This crap about switching to McCain is unwarranted and unfounded. Here's to VP Clinton, and a nice enthusiastic presidential race.

My perfect car Stereo

2008-07-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Fifty watts per channel, an auxiliary jack, and a volume knob. That's all I want. No AM, FM, Cassette, or CD. I don't need "iPod Compatibility" or a "satellite ready' unit. I just want to plug in my damn iPod and play music crisp and loud. Is that so wrong?

Why do I have to get bells and flashing lights, and removable faceplates, and cd changers, and gawd knows what else just to get a damn auxiliary jack? And when I do find something minimal (am, fm, cassette, aux), it only has 2 watts per channel.

Why can't I get power and simplicity? Fine... AM, FM Aux, and two channels of at least 40 watts per. That's my final offer...

Anyone know where I could get something like this?

Phones, Phones on the range....

2008-07-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so as of today, California has a "no handset' policy while driving. Mind you, you can still TEXT while driving, but you can't use the handset for talking. ARRGH! Oh well, it's a start.

But I have other phone stuff for you. If you have the right kind of home phone, you can turn it into a speakerphone on the cheap. Here's how. First, you need a cheapie cordless phone from, say, Radio shack. The crucial component is that the handset needs to have a headset jack. Your basic cell-phones could work this way too. Next, you need one of these:
http://shop.crackberry.com/seidio-audio-adaptor-wbuilt-in-mic-and-answer-button/12A45A1557A.htm
It's a headset jack adaptor designed to allow you to use real headphones instead of the crappy headset phones that come with the mic. So, you plug this in, but instead of adding headphones, you add a small speaker setup like anything designed for the ipod. I used one of these:
http://www.shopping.com/xPO-JVC-CD-Case-with-Built-in-Speakers
Total price, not including the basic phone, about $30 with tax and shipping. Compare that to a bottom of the line speaker phone, that starts at $100, and you got yourself a deal.

and finally, the coolest phone ever is about to become about 1000 times cooler (assuming you don't get into "Jail breaking") The iphone (and iPod Touch) are about to get downloadable apps. Soon I hope. They promised that the App Store would be open for business "late June" in a speech at the beginning of the year. But it seams that we may have to wait until the new iPhone 3G gets released on the 11th for this to become a reality. *sigh* I hate waiting.

OOF 08

2008-06-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Okay folks, back at Shiva Vista this year. And we have three events planned... dust storm or not.

1) Flame pass. We're gonna try another flame pass. The first half of this video displays the five skills that breathers should practice for flame passing: Breath, sustain without torch, hit torch (with someone else waving the source torch), two torch (carry the flame from one lit torch to another soaked one about a meter away), hit-two torch (someone waves the source and you light a soaked torch)/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7895407968074807928&hl=en

2) Breather's box. The second half of that video shows the skills needed for the breather's box, a scary idea I came up with that's never been successfully done.

3) Best stunt. As determined by the fire breathers entering the contest, best breathing stunt wins the coveted Brass Balls award.

And if we get more than 100 people, we still need to Crush the dutch.
http://www.geocities.com/burningbreathers/

7 words George Carlin can't say on television...

2008-06-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Mister Conductor is still fucking alive bitches.
Sigh, the angriest comedian and one of the smartest verbal comedians EVER died after 71 years of snarky sarcasm.

Poo

So, one last time
"rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat!
69 assholes tied in a knot
Yaay, lizardshit, FUCK!"

G'by George. We loved ya. We'll miss ya.

I'm sold

2008-06-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

So, after much debate and thought, I think I'm finally sold on a sustainable technology: Hydrogen.

After seeing the various types of hydrogen vehicles, I'm impressed. There's one that is just a modification of a standard Internal Combustion, petrol burner. Plus, there's a new "solid H" way of storing hydrogen without pressure, that can even be used as crash resistant padding. These solid cells could be charged up anywhere (like Kramer Junction) and transported anywhere where a H genny happens to be. But there's more. Through small electrolysis combined with solid-H tech, small, home solar units could be used for long-term fuel creation and storage. No more battery waste or short lifespan issues. ANY electric source can be used for electrolysis (byproduct: breathable oxygen), with the electricity stored onsite in the form of Hydrogen, nearly permanently, and now, safely with the solid H tech.

On the flip side of the coin, I have an enemy, too.

First and foremost pollution problem seems to be [drumroll please]
Single serving plastic containers. Not just bottled water, but plastic iced coffee, shakes, drink boxes, cigarette wrappers, bottles, disposable lighters, jars, toilet paper wrappers, tissue box seams, magazine wrappers, and so much more. My favorite quote on the subject is:
"We've created a substance that will last almost forever and instead of using it for things we want to last, we use it in things we throw away after a single use."
This goes WAY beyond the "paper or plastic" issue, but digs into nearly everything you do. All of this stuff is ending up in landfills and in the oceans. They block light, kill animals, dampen sound, etc.

I've kicked the daily petroleum habit. Though I go through shoes faster because of it. My office is nearly paperless and both businesses produce less waste than my home. My home produces about 1/3rd the average american home, and I'm working ion taking that down to 1/4. SS plastic is next. No more plastic cups for shakes. No more disposable lighters, canvas shopping bags (already there), etc.

That's not very knife....

2008-06-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

So, a few of you may know about Angry Guy. He's the fellow that lives downstairs and sounds like he has tourettes syndrome. He throws things, screams obscenities; a real piece of work. But despite all this, we've managed to stay civil ... until recently. He's been much worse the last few days.

The other day, I was coming back from a walk and he was coming out of his apartment. I gave him a nod, and he shouted something back that i didn't hear through the headphones. I pulled them off and said "sorry, didn't catch that.."
"I called you a Bitch!" he snapped.
So I casually replied, "well, you're a loud-mouth off his meds, Whatcha gonna do?"
"I'm gonna fuggin KILL you, Bitch"
Fortunately, I have a couple of inches on him, so I'm able to do the moove where you move in real fast, tall and wide; then stare down at him menacingly. I did so and added something like "you don't wanna try that with me"

This was pretty novel to me. Later I'd realize that move was the very first time I'd done it. Normally on a death threat, even with someone I wasn't too worried about, I'd try to be getting out of it as fast as possible. I'd have butterflies and the shakes pretty bad. But this time I was completely in control. Essentially, for the first time, I was the Alpha, not a big talking Beta, but fully Alpha.

Instead of keeping the shakes under control, I watched time stretch out and examined the situation and my options. He oh so slowly reached into his pocket (from my perspective) and fumbled for his knife. I knew what was coming based on other neighbor's reports. I knew I could trap his arm in his pocket and disable him, but I didn't want to make the first strike. I knew I could dodge this guys best strike, or even use a little judo to redirect him if need be.

So he finally gets the knife out (probably took a whole second, but it was clumsy, even from a normal time perspective), then he had to fumble some more to get it open. While he was at this, the manager popped out of the apartment across the hallway (still putting on his shirt, too... busted!) and got between us. Well it was pretty much over at that point.

Not really a fight. Not really a problem. But definitely a change in me. I can't explain it. I mean, part of it is the 5htp, I'm sure. If I had had this happen before I adjusted my serotonin, I would have been in a dark spiral for a month. But none of that either. I can't believe that serotonin is linked to Alpha/Beta behaviors. Weird...

I'm sooo in trouble

2008-06-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

So, my all-time favorite cookie has always been the nestle tollhouse. I've never been able to get enough of them.

Recently, I discovered that they have pre-made tollhouse dough in a tube. Yeah, I know, 'bout time. Give me a break, my mom always made them from scratch. My only way to keep from gorging on them all the time was the fuss it took to make them.

Well, now I've managed to figure out how to make them (well) in my toaster oven (4 at a time). And I can just roll up the tube and keep some in the fridge. I can have my favorite warm melty cookies any time I want.

So much for losing weight... :o/

Handsfree is the way to be.

2008-05-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's one thing to be on the cell and distracted enough that your driving gets impaired. I've even seen people trying to jot things down while on the phone in heavy traffic. But, TEXTING???!?!?

I got on the 101 the other day, got to the bottom of the ramp and had to slam on the brakes. Why? Two cars ahead, a blinged-out SUV had failed to merge and panic-stopped. Needless to say, I made sure to get up next to them (or at least get a good view of their plate) to give them a serious scowling. It didn't work. When I got up next to the craft, I saw the driver fully engaged in an SMS transaction as pictured above. She was even leaning in to get a better view of the device.

Chilling.

So, you nearly miss an accident, anger several people behind you (evidence by horn honking), drive above the speed limit, WHILE texting, on a device that you can't even see properly (can you see well enough to drive??), and are too busy to notice other vehicles around you???? AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!

Thank goodness for the new laws coming in July 1st.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/09/15/BAG75L6BJC1.DTL
But $20/$50 is not enough for these violations. sure that might be enough for cell phone use, but Texting should have it's own special fee schedule. Something in the reckless driving range.

I think I figured...

2008-05-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

think I figured it out.

I got laid so much as a kid because I was too stupid to realize I wasn't going to get any.

I'm smarter now....

dammit

NAFAA 2008 membership drive

2008-04-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

NAFAA 2008 membership drive
As an information society, NAFAA only occasionally makes any kind of major change. Typically any activity is involved in updating the regional codes sections. However, on occasion, updates to our codes are needed. And when this happens, we need to first insure that we represent the largest cross section of the North American fire artists as possible. So, we need to start up a membership drive.

In anticipation of this, we have added a new page to the NAFAA site. http://www.nafaa.org/join.html

The join page explains the two current levels of membership with NAFAA. (regular member, and supporting members with links in the regional pages) It also includes a number of buttons that members can add to their website. This will give new prospects easy access to NAFAA site, the regs page, and the join page. Please take a few minutes and drop the cut-and-paste codes into your performance website(s) and encourage members in your community to join.

We'll monitor new memberships carefully and begin the process of the codes update (3.0) shortly after the membership plateaus. We think that fall 2008 is a fairly reasonable estimate for this to happen.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Please forward this to anyone even vaguely related to fire.

Check that one off...

2008-04-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

So, after the 6 million dollar man went off the air, there wasn't a lot of good, kid-friendly action going on. Not until Lee returned in "The Fall Guy" did we see the good stuff. For those not in the know, TFG was a story about a hollywood stuntman who doubled as Bounty hunter working for a bail bondsman. The Title of the show was a double entendre for both jobs. Anyway, that show represented my first peek into the inner workings of the movie industry. And, as a fully functioning teen male, I was /sure/ that I could make it as a stuntman. It was the "Jackass" of my time: inciting many a stupid kid to attempt dangerous stunts like drag racing by the local police department. *sigh* Those were the days.

Well, Today, I picked up the footage from our shoot in Feb, and it so happens that the staff jackets came out today. And they gave a pair to Michelle and I. The picture above is me in mine. :) I guess I can check "become Hollywood stuntman" of my Things To Do list... :)

I got my DTV

2008-04-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

Woo Hoo!!!!
It's everything promised. I got my DTV converter box in the mail today, plugged it in and Bang, it's like having basic cable. I get all the analog channels plus another dozen or two more. And their all crystal clear, widescreen, etc. if you watch Tv, DO NOT DRAG YOUR FEET ON THIS! Get a converter box NOW!. If you go to https://www.dtv2009.gov you can get information on getting your coupons (yes, get two) and how to redeem them for a box.

I got the RCA from http://dtv.BSAT.net which has a couple more features for $8, but they have models for $4 ... delivered!

And, as I thought, all v-chipped and such. So, come next Feb, I predict we'll start seeing more baudy programming on broadcast TV, since there will be no excuse for not having a Vchip.

NAFAA new stuff

2008-04-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, active readers of my blog will remember this
http://people.tribe.net/tedward/blog/59fe27d4-edef-47ff-8dd8-d18445a45ae3
where I mentioned that the original purpose of NAFAA has been accomplished. We raised safety awareness amongst the community. If you have spun with a spotter, duvetyn, extinguishers, etc.; the odds are good that NAFAA has influenced you in some way.

Our only insurance carrier has cited the NAFAA codes as the preferred code of conduct in their safety page:
http://www.specialtyinsuranceagency.com/docs/performer/safety/Safety%20Requirements%20for%20Fire%20Performers.pdf

Several cities have adopted our codes as law, many more use them as the defacto code, and so many people have taken some part of them to heart, incorporating them into their own safety regime.

But now, I think it may be time to update NAFAA and it's codes entirely. Many cities are developing local groups to address concerns of performers in that area. If a bit of that energy could be applied to a national conference regarding the NAFAA regs, all groups would benefit. NAFAA could use a resurgence in it's internal energy, but also, local groups would have the backing of a nationally agreed upon set of standards.

To accomplish this, i'd like to start with a membership drive. We have many performers on the main list, but so many new groups have popped up. After a little while, we'll start to poll members for ideas regarding the current regs and what to do with them. Personally, I'd like to put to the floor a split in the codes: one set for proximal fire in front of an audience, and a second, minimal set of codes to cover rehearsals and such. If possible, the minimal set of codes could be put on a handy card that could be distributed by NAFAA members.

Once I get a chance, I'll work up a button page for NAFAA to assist in the awareness drive.

DTV Update

2008-03-31T21:48:00.001-07:00

Okie dokie. So, this is an update of the first DTV post:
http://people.tribe.net/tedward/blog/66a9babe-ee71-43d6-a108-1df4280cfff9
I FINALLY got my converter box coupons ($40 off governmentally approved digital boxes)
And after looking around, I've decided that this is being used to make some sweeping reforms in broadcast TV. It sure looks like all the boxes on the coupon program have the V-chip installed, and the FCC is actually killing analog broadcasting as of next Feb. SO. What that means is that after Feb '09, no one will have an excuse for not having a V-chip. The older, non-digital TVs simply will not work without a converter box, and the newer stuff all have one installed. But, if you manage to find a digital converter box without the v-chip, you won't get $40 off from the government, PLUS, you will likely spend more than the $50-$90 range we're seeing right now.

What does this mean to you? How about uncut movies to your TV? No more funny sounds when people dare to utter the 7 words you can't say on TV. Maybe even uncut cable shows like Sex and the City, Weeds, or South Park. Heck, we might even see something like PBS porn (and no more money-raising efforts).

V Day!

2008-03-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

Thursday the 27th of March 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the FDA approval of Viagra as an impotence pill. Since it's introduction, men over 40 now have hope of getting it up after doing too much Coke in the 80s. It's given us Saddam Hussein, who was reportedly addicted to the little blue pill. It gave us a 60 year old mother (hey Someone had hit that, and my guess is it wasn't the paperboy). And it's radically reduced spending on mid-life crisis sports cars.

So, this Thursday, get a nice woodie going, stick it out the window and yell "It's my cock and I want it Hard!" Or better yet, stick it somewhere where it can do some good... :o)

More Power!

2008-03-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been doing some thinking.

Kramer Junction is the largest solar power plant in the nation. Instead of inefficient solar panels, it uses reflectors to heat up synthetic oil which is then pumped to a closed water container, causing it to boil, and the steam pressure turns a turbine. The "waste" product is steam. The only down side is the resources and energy loss in transmission to where it's needed.

This got me thinking. We could use this technology in the city. Hear me out....

First, place the reflectors over any sunken highway, like the 10 in Santa Monica. Put the plant near the reflectors. Pump in Sea Water for boiling.

Okay, So, now, instead of sending the waste steam to the air, use it to pre-heat the incoming seawater, making steam production more efficient, AND condensing the waste steam into.... Distilled WATER!!!! At night, the plant continues to pump ocean water through the system to desalinate the reaction chambers. The pumps can be powered by battery reserves at the plants.

So, we get Power... lots of it, right where we need it; it can be plugged right into the existing grid. We partially eliminate a driving hazard during certain parts of the year: specifically morning and sunset sun glare on East-west roads. We gain a source of distilled water that can be used to bolster fresh water supplies.

I'm just not seeing a down side beyond the initial cost.

My other Blog

2008-03-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

I have a second passion. I hate TV commercials. Some more than others. So much so that I made a whole tribe for this passion....
http://tribes.tribe.net/headon

An Homage to the Great Gax

2008-03-08T21:32:00.000-08:00

Gary Gygax died this week at age 69. So what? Well, you might only know him from D&D fame, but his reach was far and broad.
Pull up a chair, lemme tells ya a story.
Gygax was first involved in the creation of 3 games: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry. These were modifications to the first game he helped build called Chainmail.

Chainmail was a series of rules for large scale battle simulation. It became the default set of rules for all combat recreations, including live civil war reenactments, Risk, Starfleet battles, Warcraft, Diablo, and a hundred classified military simulations. Yes, even the movie Wargames had a toe in Chainmail. Though the simulations were all calculated by a group of scientists, they used a derivative of the Chainmail rules to insure their accuracy. So basically, if you're playing any kind of game or simulation with 20 or more possible troups, you're probably playing a child of Chainmail.

Greayhaw, Blackmoor and Eldritch wizardy got combined and refined into Dungeons and Dragons. And while it's true that much of the fantasy was "borrowed" from existing sources, The game system itself led in many directions. First, D&D was the origin root of all role playing games: Champions, Cyberpunk, Traveler, etc. So, if you've ever rolled dice with anything but 6 sides, that's probably due to the Gax.

Second, D&D was such a fast and dirty system that it was stripped of it's fantasy and utilized in clinical Psychiatric environments. Later, I would write a variation of D&D called Blaster Sword and Shield (never released publicly), specifically intended for utilization in these environs. With the fine tuning of later Role playing environs, clinical psychologists could achieve never before dreamed-of manipulations of a patient's psyche.

Third, D&D jumped to computers as an early unix game called Dungeon! which lead to Zork which lead to Castle Wolfenstein. CW was the first animated first-person shooter. It gave birth to Doom, Marathon, Halo, and abut a third of all video games on the market. Most recently World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc.

Fourth, D&D was purchased (briefly) by Wizards of the Coast, the company responsible for Magic - The Gathering. Most collectible card games are based on that system which was based on D&D in the first place.

On a social level, D&D has served to keep social rejects out of social situations where they could possibly thin the chances of mate selection for those people not smart enough to fully engage their brain. :P

And oddly enough, it was the popularity of D&D, not Tolkein that lead to the decision to green light the Lord of the Rings again. The Rank and Bass version very nearly killed the series for Hollywood, but the surge of D&D children, like Everquest, WoW, Magic, etc was the intended targeted market.

In a strange way, D&D is partially responsible for Ren Fairs and SCA. SCA being the medieval recreation society that started as a live action D&D guild, Ren Fair being the renaissance variant of SCA (for those people who wanted to go beyond 1500).

Still not impressed? The fraternity built by Gamers is so far reaching that D&D is like a low hum in every high-tech environment: NASA, IT, Physics (Carl Saga, Steve Hawking and Asimov were all gamers), Sci Fi of all kinds. The Geeks that rolled dice in their basements and watched Star Trek as kids make direct connections to: IPhone, Quick Time, VTOL, Ion Drive engines, The Space shuttle, many comouter programs, CDs/DVDs, and so much more.

The hippies may have had the 60s (thanks, by the way). But the Geeks had the 70s. While all the pretty, hairy people were wearing polyester and gold chains, the geeks were building a fraternity that changed the world. BTW, when they weren't rolling dice they were building the technology to make it possible for you to read this. Tip a d4 to Gary the next time you shoot, stab, blow up, heal, or connect with anyone in any way other than FTF. :)

SOFB2 update

2008-03-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

So, as part of the footage for this project, i wanted to film all the steps needed to get to the Box, plus the four basic box skills.
here's the raw footage:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7895407968074807928&hl=en
1) Pop
2) Sustain without torch
3) Hit-Torch
4) Two Torch
5) Hit two-torch

And the four box skills:
Sweep left to right
Sweep right to left
Kneel vertical to standing horizontal
standing horizontal to kneeling vertical.

For those who have forgotten their box training, or would like to try, you should be able to do all 5 basic skills cleanly and at least one of the four box skills cleanly.

State of Fire Breathing

2008-03-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I made a little video (with a controversial name) 'The State of Fire Breathing #1'
I intend these to be an ongoing series that keeps breathers up to date with trends and such in fire breathing.

I'd like to do a second video now featuring the Breather's box and the various skills needed to perform it.
What this means is that I'll need 9 box-trained breathers to commit to a single day (wednesday at the park?) where we can take about an hour out to catch this all on a camera.

I've selected March 19th as the first tentative date, 9pm at the Burn Club park. Please let me know if you can join us....

LA Fire Guild / SAFFE

2008-02-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the quarterly SAFFE meeting has come around (I missed the last one). And we have a whole lot of new stuff to report.

First, I've been looking back over the last couple of years. I've seen show after show with fire extinguishers and spotters. I've been asked "Where's your spotter?" at Burning Man rather than "What's a spotter?". And, in general, I think that there is at least a base level of safety pervasive through the fire arts community, and fewer superstitions. These changes are the very heart of what we really wanted to accomplish with NAFAA back in 2002. So, for a mere 5 years of dedication and cooperation, I think we've done well.

This makes me wonder. Is it time for NAFAA to take a new direction now? Or should we stay that first, best place for info, geared mostly at the new and uniformed. One option to taking a new direction is our second report.

For those who don't know, or don't remember, there is a new guild forming in LA. As far as I know, they haven't officiated a name, but are going by the LA Fire Performer Safety Council. This group formed in response to the request we filled last year for a bullet point list for the SAFFE council. They're new and they're eager.

Most importantly, they've been working with the CA State Fire Marshall and an LA county inspector to develop their own set of codes for local insertion. The county fire marshal has endorsed these documents for broad spectrum community review. I mention this to everyone as these codes could receive statewide or even national attention, particularly wherever filming is done.

The first is an extension of the effort NAFAA made for it's bullet point list. This safety checklist is a DRAFT for peer review. Please send me any comments you have regarding them and I will put them in digest form (anonymously if you like) and forward them to the review members (state, county and guild). You can download them from:
www.nafaa.org/checklist.v1.0a.pdf

The second is a proposed, standardized, fire performance permit application. In short, this is what the fire marshal would give to us in order to get the information they need to write a permit. It might be worth the effort to buzz this by the local fire department.
www.nafaa.org/permit.app.v1.0a.pdf

And finally, this guild has come up with their own NFPA plug-in set of safety standards. I don't thing the FMs care as much about this, but I'll forward comments to the appropriate council as offered.
www.nafaa.org/standards.v1.0a.pdf

As our final point, I have been approached to open a new research project. It seems as though it's time to start digging into the proximate audience issue. Many permits are written with specific audience separations, but the reasons for them are widely varied. One possible source of this separation may be the radiant heat separation rules from the NFPA. So, we're going to take a serious look into audience separation. But we could use any useful ideas regarding hypothesese or approaches. So let me know.

That's all for now. Please send your comments soon.

Hacking billboards

2008-02-14T01:26:00.000-08:00

So, I finally saw my first digital billboard. this is something a little different than the plasma screens on top of the MGM Grand in Vegas, or whatever. This is an actual, Remote, billboard location that's receiving city power to not only illuminate the board, but to run the controller, AND the radio receiver.

So, we know it's child's play to mess with a DTV dish, it can't be much worse to mess with these signs. But, once you've disconnected it from home, wouldn't it be interesting to provide a custom signal of your own? You could build the signal and transmitter into the size of an ipod, get a pool cleaning pole (the kind that expands), use it to knock the dish out of alignment, then tape the transmitter to it. Broadcast your custom signal and you've just hijacked a billboard.

15 minutes to upload a new signal from park to drive. The board keeps blasting the message until they realize it's off the grid AND get someone out there to fix it. Could be quite fun.... especially once these catch on. Imagine a Burma Shave effect of digital signs blasting grafitti, political rhetoric, or erotic art. Plus, I'm not sure of the capabilities of the controllers, but they might be able to play movies as well as switch scenes. I like the idea of turning ugly advertisements into trip toys... :)

Bearclaw Valentines Sale

2008-02-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Has it been a long.... hard.... winter? Looking to give that someone special something hot and stiff?
:)
Well look no further. Bearclaw has all of its long, hard, hot, and stiff items on sale. Staves and torches are all 20% off for Valentine's week. Slide on over and get great pricing on basic staves, torches, multi-part staves, countach torches, and tethered models.

While you're there, check out some new items for February;
Demonia shoes - a whole new line of industrial/gothic sneakers, some with hard toes.
Parasols - as promised, they're finally for sale. Perfect for Singeing in the Rain.
Dip and Drain - smallest dip and spin-out system yet, works with mot poi and torches.
Collapsible hoops - you can now replace the basic hoop connectors with quick connects and have a hoop that packs into a backpack.

So, please check us out...
www.bearclawfire.com/catalog/
and don't get the shaft anywhere else....

Quite a hike

2008-02-09T01:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I've been taking little walks. It all started in October when I was running around like crazy at Knotts making sure everything ran smoothly and safely for the 25 out of 27 shows I made. By the end of it, my libido was through the roof, I was 2 inches smaller around and generally feeling pretty good about life.

So, when I managed to manifest a new ipod, I promised myself that I'd use it not just as a marketing tool, but also to eliminate the last excuse I had for not exercising: boredom. Let's face it, treadmills are boring. And I feel there's also something unwholesome about a bicycle that doesn't go anywhere.

So, I started walking. No monthly fees, the ipod charges off the computer that's always up to something. I download DJ mixes from the internet for fresh music. I try to take a different route each time I walk so I always get a new view. It works.

Lately, though, as my distance increases, I've found that I can incorporate minor errands into the daily (ish) walk. Today was my biggest one, yet. A confirmed 4.6 miles. But that's not all, I stopped to get soda so I had 16 lbs on my back for the entire 1.5 mile final leg. *sigh* I'm bushed.

Much Ado About Nothing...

2008-02-02T01:20:00.000-08:00

If you watch any TV at all, you're probably inundated with advertisements about the prop 94, 95, 96, and 97 expansions of indian gaming.

But, here's the real deal. These agreements have already been ratified by the federal gaming commission. Plus, the state of CA has no fiscal powers over the happenings on sovereign tribal lands. Once CA allows gaming to happen within state boarders, if gives up much of the rest of it's rights. Only as a courtesy is the governor of that state included in further negotiations.

So, vote yes, vote no. It really does not matter. The 17,000 machines will be installed, CA will get more money, and only the Supreme court can stop it now.

XM complete setup for sale

2008-02-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

Roady XM radio in very good condition for sale. New price around $60-$100.

Includes
Roady XT radio for XM (and soon Sirius) reception
Portable boom box by Belkin (very scuffed but in good working order and reliable)
- Belkin comes with AC household and DC car adaptors
Home unit stand and antenna
Car adaptor
Extra antenna.

Often seen providing the music for Burn Club on a weekly basis.
Picks up 100s of stations by satellite, includes Black Rock City and intervening areas.

Total package (retail value about $200), used, for $50.

Hacking notification

2008-01-18T01:02:00.000-08:00

Two of my sites, both with a PHBB installations on them, have been hacked. We just got everything back in working order, but I thought I should spread the news: there's a pretty serious looking wave of attacks that depend of the PHPBB setup to disguise the PHP files necessary to do things like spoof a paypal site. If you have a website with a lot of PHP in it, please check for complete function and maybe change the passwords, just in case.

As the guild spins....

2008-01-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

So, I've been offered a seat on the code development council for the local fire guild.
I've turned it down.
And I think some folks will want to know why.

First, I feel that this is an ill conceived attempt to patch things up with NAFAA as suggested by the State Fire Marshall at the last meeting. I say 'ill conceived' because my presence on this council could be interpreted as an endorsement of the group's actions. And, let's face it, this guild was formed as a reaction to NAFAA actions and built in a specific attempt to contradict them. A NAFAA endorsement at this point would be confusing at best, damaging to both at worst.

Second, I have always made myself available to any questions anyone has had regarding NAFAA info, or local codes. When this guild was formed, I reiterated that offer and it was ignored. I'm thinking that this guild needs to begin the process of extending beyond itself, and tapping other resources, like state fire codes, local laws, etc before I can consider being a part of it.

Finally, I still maintain that my absence in the guild actions has, is and will continue to encourage average performers to take some more direct action in the process than looking my way. Once the nickname "safety nazi" began to fade a bit, people started relying on me a little to frequently and too heavily in their safety concerns. For several years, it seemed that anytime someone wanted a permit, my phone rang. And when anyone asked a fire safety question in my presence, all eyes turned to me. Hopefully, after that last guild meeting there's a few people reading the NAFAA wiki, and reviewing the performer safety guidelines to get answers of their own.

Keep in mind that all these decisions are personal. My decision to keep a distance from the guild should not deter other people from joining it. It is not an endorsement for, or against, the guild.

Digital TV

2008-01-05T00:59:00.000-08:00

Okay folks. Sometimes it pays to watch PBS news. I have some interesting news about DTV.

Background
If you watch broadcast TV, not on a cable box, but actually with an antenna, your TV receiver (TV's, many VCRs, some DVD-Rs and Tivos) will no longer receive a signal as of February 2009. The current bandwidth will be converted into digital signals to free up space for emergency broadcasting. Digital transmission offers many advances including:
-more than 4x more efficient use of bandwidth
-increased reception clarity
-high def
-enhanced V-chip functionality (all digital programs can be forced to comply with v-chip standards)

If you have satellite or cable, you're done. They'll be converted over to DTV in a month or so. However, if you don't, you will need a digital receiver or converter box. Many new TVs and recorders are ATSC compliant (ie digital), but a lot of them out there bear that cute little waring that says it will no longer work after feb 17th, 09.

Fortunately, the Government actually thought ahead on this one. If you have recently purchased one of these labeled devices, or just have old equipment that you'd planned to keep running as long as physically possible, then you can get an approved convertor box at a discounted rate. Basically, you get a $40 coupon that you can apply to an approved converter box.
This is the current list of qualifying converter boxes:
* DigitalSTREAM D2A1D10
* DigitalSTREAM D2A1D20
* Zenith DTT900
* Magnavox TB100MW9
* Philco TB150HH9
* MicroGEM MG2000
* Sansonic FT300RT
* MaxMedia MMDTVB03
* Apex DT1001
* ECHOSTAR TR-40
* AMTC AT-2016

Average expected price for approved boxes is about $50-60. Meaning that you may only need to shell out $20 to get up to date.

So, you just go to this website
dtv2009.gov/
and apply for a coupon, or two. The site will handle everything, and let you know what's to come.

Pulp verification

2007-12-29T00:58:00.000-08:00

I remember watching Pulp fiction for the very first time and thinking to myself that I'd seen the Heroine overdose scene before. I knew EXACTLY what was going to happen every moment, I even nailed the timing on Mia popping up back to life. But, for the life of me, I could not place the other film. Well, on a whim, I tripped across this on IMDB:

"The storyline involving Mia's overdose and her revival by an injection of adrenaline into her heart is transcribed word for word from a story told in American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince (1978), a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese."

*sigh* I feel so much better.....

Worth it....

2007-12-24T00:57:00.000-08:00

What the History channel has to say about Xmas

Y'all come back now... [again]

2007-12-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

Dictionary [oxford]
y'all |yôl|
contraction of
you-all.

you-all |ˈyoō ˌôl; yôl| (also y'all)
pronoun dialect
(in the southern U.S.) you (used to refer to more than one person) : how are you-all?

One of the things that started bugging me about the English language was the inconsistent plural "you". Other languages differentiate between the singular and plural forms of you, why don't we? For example, the famous song "voulez-vous couchez avec moi c'est soire" is actually a reasonably gross misuse of the french language. 'Vous' is the french formal or plural form of the word You, and one would never use it to propose sex. However, I imagine that "Veux-tu couchez avec moi" just didn't have the same bounce. You see, "Tu" is the singular or informal method of using You. The formal and informal seems to stem from the Royal "We", where royalty speaking in a formal sense would refer to themselves as the representative of their fiefdom, and therefor spoke as the entire realm "We". The formal You (or Vous) responded to the plural first person with a plural second person.

But english doesn't have anything like this. So we're stuck saying stupid repetitions of the same word and trying to parse things our contextually. For Example, say you're talking to Bob, who's with his family, and they're all wearing Raider's hats at a football game. You might find your self saying "You and I should get a beer, but not until you come over and meet my family, then we can watch you loose to the Cowboys." Without some gestures, such a sentence is a bit confusing.

So, I have adopted the word: y'all. It's the only current, modern english form of the plural You. It's a contraction of you-all, and a strange one at that. Some people mistakenly try to contract it as ya'll, like you would with he'll (he will). But that's not it. In fact if you were going to contract that way, it would be at least yo'll, which is a bit too close to you'll (you will). Nope, it's y'all , the second person plural pronoun for me. So, let's take it back to Bob: "You and I should get a beer, but not until y'all come over and meet my family, then we can watch y'all loose to the Cowboys." It still falls short differentiating between plural inclusive and plural exclusive, But it at least clears one thing up:
"[Do] y'all want to sleep with me tonight?"
Clearly the song is a proposal for group sex ... :)

So, formally
y'all |yôl|
contraction of you-all.
pronoun [ second person singular ]
used to refer to the people that the speaker is addressing : Y'all come back now.

Have fun with it y'all, but don't you even think of over using it... :)

Xmas List

2007-12-14T00:54:00.000-08:00

So, despite shaking off the last remnants of Catholicism, I still feel something for Xmas. And as I look at my calendar, I notice that it's a national holiday. Yes, that's right, it's a Secular, non-religious, government approved holiday. And if you look at the history of christmas, you'll see that it pretty much is an american concoction.

The term "Christ- mass" was applied to the Saturnalia/Yule/Solstice celebrations, despite the overwhelming biblical evidence indicating that it wasn't the time of year that Jesus was supposedly born. Clearly this time of year was borrowed. Also, the various christian churches have disavowed the holiday several times. But don't take my word, look it up...

*sigh* So, this makes Xmas essentially a Hallmark Holiday. It may have started as a way to ethically find a way to spoil the kids a little, during creatively oppressive times. But now, marketing has taken it to a very dark place.

So, I'm gonna take things in a [hopefully] new direction. Here's my Xmas list this year.
#1 Give a bum a dollar.
#2 Give a bum more than a dollar and send me a card saying so.
#3 Give your car a thorough tune-up and make sure the tires are filled.
#4 Start a carpool at work.
#5 Spend a day hugging everyone you see
#6 Toss someone a mercy fvck.
#7 Spend a day working to make the world a better place.
#8 Find someone you'd normally ignore and have an extended conversation with them.

Call or email me the results.
Thanks.

There's a new fire guild in town.

2007-12-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

For those of you who've seen this:
people.tribe.net/quin/blog
Yes, I know about it.

Yes, I know it could be taken as a back handed slap at me. Though I'm assured that wasn't the intention.

I'm not going to be participating in this and I think my local friends need to know why.

"Been there, done that"
Several years ago, I co-organized NAFAA and the local chapter guild 'Hearthfire'. It was torn apart. Probably for the same general reasons that almost every other fire organization has failed. And if I knew what those reasons are, I might try to help avoid them. I can point to the petty inter-personal politics that had nothing to do with the group, but in the end, I think it's just a matter of ego. Not really in a bad way, just that you need a strong ego to spin fire in the first place and when you get a room full of them, they often collide. But what may be the most important part is that I remember the years it took to write the nafaa code, the $1000s of dollars I spent researching and educating fire departments, and the difficulty I had keeping together over 500 active members of NAFAA. I don't want to start all over again. I'm way done with fire politics.

"Fact and fright"
If you glance over the invitation to the group, you'll see first that they're using scare tactics to get members to join. This is not a healthy way to start anything, Just look at the Bush Administration. But, also, they're working from snippets of reality without first getting the whole; getting the facts. I'm not sure I can, nor want to, work with people who will build from gossip as their foundation.

"Not enough time"
I'm falling behind on my personal schedule for Red Swan. There's a ton of work I haven't done on the website and 100 phone calls to make after I do. We're still getting jobs in, and we haven't really started on our planned programs. Now, Red Swan is something I completely believe in. I think it can go very far, but can also help place the fire community in much higher standing than back yard birthdays, and mistreated rave nuisances. Our goal is to provide the fire community with avenues that not only pay well, but pay regularly. We'd love to see people *making a living* at fire performance rather than just have it as a weekend gig-thing. So, if I don't have enough time for something I really believe in, I certainly don't have the time for something I'm dubious about.

"Convenience"
And, of course, They're holding this meeting on a Wednesday. While it's true that there are 3 people who can run the park, it still feels like an imposition to ask. But more importantly, I like going to burn club. Why would I want to give up Doing fire to Talk about fire? Seems counter-productive.

So, should this be taken as my suggestion to avoid this group? No. In the end of it all, I see one of two things happening. Either the forces that killed so many other fire guilds apart will do the same here. In which case, I will have wasted time and effort. Or something solid, factual and beneficial will happen. And if *I'm* part of it, people will probably look to me to make that happen. I've spend the time in research, I've attended quarterly 9am meetings on weekdays, I've distributed enough DVDs that my drive finally died on this very machine, I've talked city after city into using the NAFAA code so that it's easier to get permits in LA, possible to get them at all in Santa Monica, and easier to get them in Orange County. I have fought against the tides of bureaucratic red tape and the insipid fears of our community long enough. Time for other people to stand up. Maybe Ty and Rebecca will start showing up regularly at SAFFE meetings, maybe Fire Groove will get serious about fire safety, heck, maybe Josh will step up as a community leader, Who Knows? But the point is, it will be less likely for someone else to step up if I'm still active.

I'm stepping out of this guild in hopes that people will actually READ the NAFAA regs, even the annotated version. I'm hoping that other people will devote time and money to researching the deeper truths about fire performance. I'm hoping that in a large group, someone will grow a pair and bother to ask other people about the whole story instead of convenient little snippets. I'm hoping that the LA fire community won't continue to lean on me as the sole source of fire safety info and starts doing some of this work in an organized and distributed manner. And, of course, I'm hoping that they'll deliver this information to the NAFAA site for posing in the wiki. :)

So, If you've read this far, just sign your name at the top of your answer sheet and turn it in whistling. I thank you for putting up with my ramblings. Also, I might add that by getting this far, you have the makings for the kind of person I'm talking about here. Maybe you should join this guild just to help keep their facts straight for them. :) Don't worry, I don't have a problem with anyone else joining up.... ;)

[oh, and for the record, this definition:]
ego |ˈēgō|
noun ( pl. egos)
• Psychoanalysis: the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. Compare with id and superego .

An open letter to the fire community

2007-11-27T00:49:00.000-08:00

8 months ago, i was requested to build a bullet point list for fire marshals who would be inspecting fire performers in the So. Cal. area. I feel that I was VERY public in this notice as well as in the request for assistance in this endeavor. I posted it on the NAFAA list, and in my blog
and to anyone who would listen. But the response was still pretty minimal and we did the best that we could.

Here are the results.
Basically the NAFAA regs with a few points removed and worded from the other side of the permit.

An LA county fire marshal took notice of these and asked to have a meeting about them. I posted this too.

So, today, I get a call from... let's say, a 'concerned community member' ... asking if the was a way we could get the bullet point list on the NAFAA site annotated before the County marshall implements his version. *Sigh* i was torn between two forces.

First, yeah, that's the whole point of NAFAA and the intermediary position I've taken between the fire performance community and the fire suppression community.

On the other hand, NAFFA has been around for SEVEN YEARS, the performer safety guidelines have been in place for FIVE YEARS, the current version for TWO YEARS, the bullet points for EIGHT MONTHS, and it is now fully FOUR MONTHS *after* the meeting with this guy. ITS A LITTLE GODDAMN LATE.

What's worse is that the community started chittering about this, held secret meetings about it, and have been spreading rumors for four months WITHOUT EVER ONCE ASKING ME THE DETAILS!!!!!! People are "voicing concerns" about this line item or that one, without ever asking ANY of the following questions:
1) Will the bullet point list get implemented whole-cloth by the county? The answer is No. Several points were crossed off during the meeting and the ENTIRE thing will definitely be reworded. Honestly, I don't remember the details, but a lot of the items were not adopted. But i can say that he definitely wasn't interested in a lot of the performer-directed safety items like costuming.
2) Will this be law, or change the laws in cities that have their own fire departments? No, it's classified as training materials, its not code, nor law, but just a step down from policy. Individual departments will still write the permits, they'll just have a uniform guideline from which to start. And other county departments like LA City, Santa Monica, Culver City, etc won't be affected at all. This can only have an effect in these cities.
3) Was I pushing to have the whole thing implemented? No, I entered the meeting looking to keep the regulations down as much as possible. I went to explain things. For example, I clarified the audience separation items. And I think he got it. He really got it. In case no one remembers, I used to pull people into my act to display the safety of the sword. My audience separation was measured in millimeters. But, when we're talking about spinning tools, yeah, I think there should be -some- separation. Fire eating, not so much. Drunk wild crowds, yeah, separation, sitting at dinner tables, not so much. Etc.
4) Is the fire marshall still open to input about this matter? We covered a lot of ground, he took a lot of notes, he might be completely done with it. Besides, how is he gonna feel about a gaggle of 'fire artists' whining that they want to wear feathers or sit in the audience while they breathe fire? *sigh*

Is it really so hard to say, "Hey, what's up with that?" Drop an email, make a phone call, or just post it on Tribe.... sheesh. And how delusional do you have to be to hold a meeting, represent it as something I put together but couldn't attend, and then expect it not to get back to me? Heck I knew about it before it happened (though, it did take a couple of weeks before I was told that I was being represented as part of it).

Here's a couple of suggestions for our community of daredevils:
1) If someone is publicly taking action to make your life easier, and you're not willing to help in any way, don't be surprised when those actions affect you. In short, if you don't vote, don't bitch.
2) If you have a real problem with someone, do whatever your spineless little ass needs to do to sort it out with them privately before making public drama about it.
3) Get your fuggin facts straight. And not just about this. That's a NAFAA credo. Learn about your art, get interested in it, find out about other cities, states and countries. Take an hour out to ask someone from some very different place what they have to go through to perform, the fuels they use, move names, etc. Take a couple of minutes out of a weekday morning and call a fire department and ask if they know anything about fire arts. Offer to educate them if they don't. Get their permitting procedure if they do.

Come on folks. There's a whole system of fire prevention out there. It's legally sanctioned by the laws of the land, and have the full backing of the constitution. DO NOT treat them like an enemy. You really don't want them as an enemy. And if you don't work with them, they won't work with, or for, you.

-Grumpy Tedward
NAFAA.org webmaster

Mac-less

2007-11-19T00:48:00.000-08:00

I finally took my mac in for repair. It took me two tries to get someone to take my machine in for repair. The Grove is quite a bit deeper into the rampant consumerism than I'd like to see again.

Anyway, I'mstuck with my laptop, so I won't be checking mail for a bit. I'll be keeping Bearclaw running, but I only need web access to do that, and the new iPADD takes care of most of that.

iPADD

2007-11-12T00:44:00.000-08:00

Star Trek the next generation introduced something they called the PADD, or personal access data device. Like most of the ST gadgets it was both cool and practical. Basically it was a 1/4" thick, plastic (looking) data reader with those fabulous dynamic touch screens so common on the Enterprise D. It could hold mountains of technical sheets, have research libraries uploaded to it, display graphics, music, whatever.

And Like so many of the star Trek ideas, this one has been brought to life by Apple. The iPod Touch/iPhone pretty much IS that device. Upload movies, music, perform web searches, dynamic resizing of the screen, touch screen, etc, etc, etc. I feel kinda sad for SF writers in the modern day. Back in the 50s, all the cool gadgets they could come up with took decades to arrive. Now, many of them are going into prototyping before the paperback is printed.

If you get the opportunity, watch a campy little discovery channel production called "How William Shatner Changed the World" It goes over the influence that Star Trek has had on a myriad of High Tech stuff, mostly though interviews with the people who invented the things.

Daylight shavings

2007-10-31T00:43:00.000-07:00

From Fox news:
"If you turned your clocks back one hour Sunday morning thinking it was the annual move back to Standard Time, all you succeeded in doing was moving into a new time zone. The move from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time doesn't happen this year until the first Sunday in November, instead of the usual last Sunday in October. That means computer software, cellphones and other electronic equipment that is programmed to automatically change will have to be manually reset Monday morning back to Daylight Saving Time, then changed back one hour next Sunday. President Bush in 2005 signed the Energy Conservation Act, which pushed back the time change in an effort to squeeze just a little more daylight — and a bit of energy savings — into the daily lives of Americans.

The legislation also changed the "spring forward" to Daylight Saving Time, which next year will be on March 9.
Government estimates place the overall energy savings at just over 1 percent."

LA County Fire Demo

2007-10-25T00:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, we finally have dates.
LA county will be holding a training seminar on Wed Nov 28th. At this seminar, Captain Penn, will be going over the new LA County bullet point list for permitting fire performances, and training one marshal from each of the various county stations. They'd like us to set up a fuel station, let them tour it, then put on a 20 minute show illustrating a variety of tools, then maybe a Q&A session. Since their new list is heavily based on the NAFAA regs, I'm looking for 6 rigidly-nafaa performers to do this demo.

So Cal wildfires

2007-10-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

Okay folks, we see socal burning again, and if the last big fire four years ago taught us anything, is that the fire departments will need some help.
Here's a few ideas:
If you have any experience fighting wildfires, traffic control, etc, offer your time.
If you have a massage table, fire fighting is tough work.
If you have some cash, cold beer, water, or soda on the fire line can go a long way.
Sandwiches, ice tea, vitamins, etc can help keep over-stretched firemen

Evacuees have it tough too. There's a growing number of families in the stadium there, who could use entertainment, good food, hugs, books, and other essentials.

Columbus Day

2007-10-07T00:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's that time of year again. That day when we get to celebrate a man who:
- is credited with "proving" the world is round, when that had been mathematically proven long before, and would not be physically accomplished until Magellan.
- is credited for "discovering" the Americas when it's known that the Vikings and Chinese had done so centuries before, and by Russian hunters millennia before that.
- was actually on an elaborate search for drugs. Opium from the East was hard to come by and a quick sea route would have been financially beneficial.
- supposedly made friends with the natives, but the tribes that welcomed him are all dead.
- had never been to his destination by normal methods which is why he thought he had landed in India, and summarily named the natives "Indians".
- delivered the scourge of alcohol to the native americans who had no such intoxicant.
- opened the door for tobacco to reach western culture.

So, when you go to the bank on Monday to find it closed, just do what columbus did: go on a search for drugs, get lost, "discover" any place that you happen across, make some friends, kill them, take all their stuff, and return home. :)

Yaaayyy! Does this explain the Iraq war a little better?

A quantum problem

2007-09-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

*sigh*
Okay, so Maxwell proves, through his equations, that light propagates at the same speed, regardless of the velocity of the source of emission. Basically he's saying that light is more like a rocket than a bullet. If a fighter jet shoots a bullet, the muzzle velocity compared to the earth is the velocity of the jet plus the projected velocity of the gun. So, if your gun shoots at the speed of sound and your jet is moving at the speed of sound, the velocity of the bullet as it leaves the gun will be twice the speed of sound.

Missiles on the other hand, are dropped from the jet, then kick in their own velocity system. It's possible that a plane could drop a missile that moves slower and thus move backwards in relation to the jet. Usually, however, missiles move faster than jets so we typically see the missile fall behind a few feet until it's own motor kicks in, then accelerates to it's cruising speed. So, once it hits cruising speed, it doesn't matter whether the missile was launched from a plane a train or tank, the cruise speed is constant.

Now, if we eliminate the necessity for missiles to accelerate to cruising speed, we have the basic idea of what maxwell is saying about light. It's emitted, not projected.

Now, on a strange mathematical exercise, I re-worked Einstein's relativity equations based on the speed of sound. And though I couldn't find documentation on tensors (the UM math department never taught tensors), I could follow the rest. And when I came out the other side, I had proven that E-ms^2 where s=the speed of sound. This gave me reason to suspect the premise. The wiki definition refers to tensors being handy for manipulating vectors bereft of a frame of reference.

This is where I start having problems with relativity: the frame of reference issue.

Einstein says that in any given frame of reference, the speed of light will be measured at the same velocity. In other words, if we're in a 747, above the cloud cover and observe 2 jets fighting, We'll measure the rocket moving at the same speed, regardless if it's shot in the same direction as us, the opposite direction, across the bow, or straight vertical. Well, I think the real issue is that i've never heard of a light ray every getting measured without including the source of emissions in the frame of reference. In other words, there's no aisle seat where you might only see the missile going by thee window, all measurements are don from the window seat, where both jets can be observed too.

And it's this frame of reference thing that bothers me [today]. Basically, I would first like to know how one might measure light without including the source in your measurements. First of all, the Heisenberg uncertainty principal says that this is impossible (by making the first measurement, you alter the light in some way). Second, the frame of reference must also always include the observer, that is, in actuality. All of our observations are from the POV of the earth in some way. We don't have anything fast enough in space to make accurate measurements at any other velocity than Earth's. Third, is the whole time thing. The only shred of proof on it is an atomic clock test that could have been physically altered by the stresses of space travel.

Points to ponder.

10 steps to tyranny

2007-09-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Seeking Connections

2007-09-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

We're stirring up an idea for a multi-city, perhaps multi-continental event. We would be trying to set a new world record for Fire Breathing and bring some awareness to global warming. We have organizers in several cities on two continents already. and the search hasn't really started for more.

However, I see some possible issues in coordination. This is where a symbiosis with a media venue could come in handy. They get a spectacular event that's very showy for ... sweeps week? .... and we get satellite coordination through an international broadcast agency.

I don't care who we work with. though I'm thinking that one of the sports networks might be best suited.

If you are, or have contacts with an agency that could help with this, please make the connection...

New Burn Resolutions

2007-09-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

As a burner, I resolve:
- To make one new costume each month
- To sort out shelter before June
- To save enough money that I don't need to borrow to make the burn happen
- Not to wait until mid-august to start looking for high-price ticket items.
- to get wifi
- - to not let it interfere with my burn.
- to get a new bladder for my camelpack
- to pack light next year

yeah, right.... :)

For The Record....

2007-09-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

I was right, last year at BurningMan when I said "next year was better", I was right.

Monkey Huts RULE. Best shade structure yet. Now I have to build a tent for it.

We came no where near the Guinness record this year in OOFIII

We did set a new Playa Record for flame passing: 21.

I think I like beach bikes.

And to the woman who cared enough to notice I was "here for: My Morticia Addams" lets set this straight. It's not that I'm looking for some super-goth, S&M beauty. Just watch Addam's Family again and notice that Gomez and Morticia REALLY get each other. They're wildly in love after 2 kids, and one could scarcely imagine a better match, initially or in crisis. That's what I'm looking for.

Hmmm

2007-08-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 35%
Visual : 64%
Left : 31%
Right : 68%

Tedward, you possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.

Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.

You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utitlize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.

In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."

All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.

You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.

It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account.

Tent For Sale

2007-08-08T00:19:00.000-07:00

This monstrous dome has only been used once and is everything it says it should be:
easy to set up, packs small, comes complete with rain-fly room divider, etc.
It has a 12'x17' footprint and is about 7' high in the center.

I'd be using it this year at BM except that I have a really small plot of land for our theme camp and I can fit 2 monkey huts in that area.

Retails on ebay at $140, will let it go for $100 OBO