Is she a good witch, or a bad witch?

Invent your own titles. Fun for the family*!

*Cannablog has been rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.

Some material may not be suitable for children

Hat-tip Bryan @ Why Now?

Time to end “Most Favored Nation” status yet?

Children’s toys, above, poisoned with lead paint.

(Article from the Consumerist forwarded by my wife.)

For my parents’ generation

Related posts:

• My grandparents’ generation
• System of music

Pictures of beautiful women

Don Imus is more despicable than anyone I can think of. Not only does he have the need to be insulting and rude to his audience and guests, he thinks that in the life of a young woman who has achieved some accomplishment deserving praise, she ought to be cussed at with racist and sexually offensive terms. Don is a wealthy, wealthy man. He’s got everything money can buy, doesn’t he? And all he’s got for it is hatred and disgust for himself and everyone on the planet.

Yeah, I’m big pimpin’ alright. I’m telling you. These are women who deserve respect.

But you gotta go read the General, so you know what this is about. Inform yourself about the people you see on television and listen to on the radio, see the victims of their hatred, and be disgusted. I won’t demand anyone be fired, no. If his employers intend to convey the message he conveys, they should keep him on, and they should wear him as a badge of pride, such as cometh before the fall.

Update: MSNBC has reportedly fired Don Imus. No word on CBS yet.

Update 2: CBS has also canceled his contract. Hat-tip Waveflux.

Eurocentric, but good.

My generation remembers, and we do not forget the terrible price inflicted. We need a time to heal.

The times in which this was made and broadcast, we were children, they could say no more than this much. We can say more now. We need to learn to live in peace with one another and to respect our different traditions, while allowing our children to go outside our old traditions. We need to acknowledge that the sins of our forefathers are visited upon their victims, and make our own apologies for having the fruits of injustice. Yet the good that our fathers did may outweigh any incidental harm if we can all find a way to share the fruits of joy and love with one another.

I ask forgiveness of all who may think I have done them a harm by existing, or by accepting any gift which helps to sustain my life, if it ever occurred at your expense and without permission. I do not wish to be led astray from the truth by hopes of wealth, but I wish to preserve and protect that which is valuable to all of humankind.

If you feel I have done a greater harm, or if I have done one that could not be avoided that requires more explanation, I will ask that I be told. This is not the place for putting personal grievances which require knowledge of who I am, but to what you see before you. If you feel I am unjust or wrong, tell me so.

Taxonomy

It is because we were hunters, because
we killed for a living, because we matched
wits against the whole of the animal world,
that we have the wit to survive even in a
world of our own creation.
—Ardrey

Homo domesticus.

Please help

I need some advice on how to continue to blog as I have been and still make a little bit more than nothing with two clients across the country one of whom may soon cease to be able to afford me due to the financial condition of his main client. I am in no risk of starving, between my wife’s graduate stipend and a bit we got for our condo when we moved we are okay, but we’re thinking we might want to have kids sometime and it can’t happen if we’re already running a small deficit every month.

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

Pirates are the ones that steal the gold, not the kids listening to the music

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are a bunch of music pirates that extort money to line their own pockets from people who cannot afford to defend themselves from barratry and who are accused of the awful sin of unauthorized listening to music.

Not that I have a strong opinion about them or anything.

Chuck Dupree has more.

Update: Xeni Jardin writes about the RIAA going after a ten-year-old girl (seven when she’s alleged to have done the dirty downloading deed).

The little ones understand, and laugh

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Social Anxiety- A common thread?

Hypothesis: Anxiety disorders play a key role behind the immense popularity of internet interactions.

Disclaimer: This observation isn’t backed by Harvard studies (as far as I know), I didn’t read up on it or seek supporting statistics; Im working from simple observation.

Basis: First a reference here or there: A favorite blogger will mention a bout of agoraphobia, a reader comments on ‘being shy’. A friend links to a friend who has just endured a terrible panic attack.

Skip to a thread forum where one person admits to crippling anxiety disorder. First one, then three, then nine people come out of the woodwork with words of encouragement and similar confessions.

Overthink: Doesn’t it make sense that the internet would provide the best socializing alternative for those with acute shyness, agoraphobia or crippling anxiety? We all need to socialize. Trends in westernized cultures actually exacerbate feelings of isolation, both through social stigmas toward people with mental health hang-ups, and a general movement toward solitary activities, independent pursuits, and families that are supposed to be ‘self-sufficient’ rather than integral members of cohesive societies that rely upon, and provide for others in their community.

Solutions: Hm. Do you approach the individual or the society? I don’t know how to cure societal ailments, but on the individual anxiety issue, maybe ask whig.

Space, the final frontier

Watch this from NASA via Carnacki.

A song of seeds, the food of love

“She’s trying to stop me from helping you!” Click the video to watch it elsewhere, it won’t embed.

4:20 of Woodstock ’99

Try tempting me with a carrot.

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?

Watching my recent visitors compared to those who have been reading this blog for awhile, we are becoming more of a musical tribe and less of a political one. Unfortunately for my desire to abstain from national politics, I cannot put out of my mind the pictures of torture that have been committed. And it is not the actual photographs, which I would not care to see more than I must, but the knowledge that it is going on even now and worse.

This is still a political blog, until the administration and those who continue to dehumanize the world with such foulness are removed from power. We must restore civilization now.

What kind of shameful regime puts an innocent 9-year old child in a prison for two years?

Ask yourself.

First they hurt our children, then deny them medicine

Yesterday, Shakes wrote,

I missed it last night, but watched the whole thing in six pieces on ABC’s website: In an Instant: The IED Explosion, Bob Woodruff’s 36-Day Coma, Wounded Warriors, Are We Ready for Our Injured?, The Human Cost of War, and Woodruff’s Closing Thoughts. It’s absolutely staggering, and I highly recommend it, with the warning that it is deeply upsetting, so be prepared. But it’s a must-see. Truly.

I finally finished watching it today, and recommend you watch the whole thing from beginning to end.

Incidentally, I read that veterans overwhelmingly support medical marijuana. For the pain and suffering that it can relieve those suffering traumatic brain injuries, nothing else in the world would help more.

I’m very happy for Bob Woodruff and his family, and glad that he received the best quality medical care in the world. But people not so visible in the public eye are more likely to fall through the cracks, and those with internal brain damage are hard to treat with any technique; often the risks in trying to correct it with surgery are higher than the damage could possibly justify if we even had the diagnostic capability to know precisely what was wrong in all cases. Cannabis helps the neurons in the brain that still work.

For GenX, this is Woodstock.

I just cried, listening.

Awesome-o

Thanks to Skippy, who has more.

A penalogical approach to family values?

Please read an update on the unAmerican concentration camps by Peterr.

I’m Spartacus

Also Spartacus: Driftglass, If I Ran the Zoo, Blue Gal, and Evil Mommy, to whom the hat-tip goes.

Update: The Heretik writes,

And these people are too: Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus.

That Spartacus dude? He’s everywhere: Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus.

Update 2: More Spartaci,

Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus. Spartacus.

I’m not linking to the hate

If you’ve been following the news, you might know that my friend Melissa McEwan, also known as Shakespeare’s Sister, was caught up in a manufactured scandal by a hateful man who claims to speak for the Romans, and who called her anti-Catholic.

This story was covered on many of the major news programs, including on CNN and MSNBC.

Melissa replied,

I’m not going to say a lot about this right now, but suffice it to say that the fact I cast a vote, without hesitation, for a Catholic during the last presidential election might suggest I’m not anti-Catholic.

My degree from Loyola University might also suggest the same.

John Edwards has done the right thing in keeping her on.

Related post:

• John Edwards for president

How does someone live to be 120 years old?

Fulla Nayak, 120. With her family, on the right. Her 92 year old daugher lives with her, as does her 72 year old grandson.

“Please don’t sue me. I’m just a fan.”

Blogging isn’t a bad life

Lee Rosenberg (thehim) is looking for a way to blog while keeping his bills paid. Our situation is similar, but in our case the insurance and everything are in place and we have just enough to pay our bills and tread water now. It would be nice if we could plan to have a family but we cannot even imagine it financially now. I cannot complain; we are not starving unless we try to live beyond our means. Once in a blue moon we might even go out to see a movie. (I highly recommend Pan’s Labyrinth.)

Oh, also I blog semi-anonymously. It’s not hard for people to figure out who I am if they care enough, but I have no desire for personal publicity outside those who know me by introduction. I’d love to have a larger readership but I don’t want to write for hire. I wouldn’t mind it if I could find a way to support myself on donations but it would have to be done in a way that would be kept away from me, lest I be corrupted by seeing what I can say that brings in more dollars.

I want to speak from my heart and tell you what seems right to me, so that if I make a mistake it was one not made with a gain in mind. I could choose to become wealthy, it would be easy enough if I had the will to subjugate myself to that end, to put aside my childish blogging. I could be a capitalist like the Goldman family, and I love them very much.

But to do this I would have to turn my back on injustice, to stop looking in the dark corners where people are being tortured in our names. To let the problems of the world be someone else’s problem, I cannot do this. To the extent I can integrate what I do with helping people, I will do it. While the current crisis is ongoing, the most helpful thing I can do is communicate a way that I see through the danger. I could be non-essential, maybe my own thoughts are not as good as someone else’s, but I don’t know that. For the want of a nail, the horse, the battle and finally the war were lost.

We are the ’80s

A few days late

NTodd has an interesting perspective on the issue of birth control, of which abortion is only one component. I tend not to write about this issue often because it is so deeply a matter of personal conscience what determines the relative value of a given human life over another. I also take a Monty Pythonesque view on the issue of contraception, which is to say their true view and not the view they satirize by their famous song.

Let me take a moment to point out the obvious hypocrisy of anyone with a purportedly pro-human life outlook being advocates of war. Obviously they value some lives more than others, and some are entirely dispensable to them.

No sane person wants there to be unwanted children or abortions, if it were possible to avoid having them without doing violence to women (or men). We should not want to mutilate people’s genitals, we should not want there to be any harm done to the innocent.

We don’t often enough stop to consider that the cause of violence is usually violence. Stop non-consensual sex and you will stop most or all of the abortions that occur. Stop adultery and you will stop the rest.

Oh, but you don’t want to stop adultery, going by what I see.

Except to punish the woman, because she is the one who is subject to violence from her spouse if she is caught with child.

We have to end the violence done to women, and you know that divorce must be a right for that very reason. But what many of you don’t know or publicly admit due to the risk of persecution is that violence can be tamed by cannabis — marijuana. It is a lie and an obvious one at that when prohibitionists associate cannabis with violence, when the only violence is involved in the criminal aspects of prohibition itself.

End cannabis prohibition and you will see that the very thing you criticize about “hippies” is their non-violence.

End cannabis prohibition and you will end the war in Iraq and in the rest of the middle east. Cannabis can be grown to fuel our economy. Cars and trucks can run on clean biological oils. Paints and chemicals can be made from it. Cannabis may be sacred but she is also profane. We have a petroleum economy today but we cannot have a petroleum economy forever.

Mensch

Russell Feingold is not running for president.

Unlike Joseph Lieberman, he is a mensch.

I want to take this morning’s post for a moment to discuss what we expect the senate to do. What do the members stand for and what will they stand for?

Will the Republicans follow their own base instincts? Yes, and not one of them now in the senate voted against the military commissions act of 20072006 — the act of abominations.

Why do I bring up Joe Lieberman? Because he is emblematic of what we face, a then-democrat he also voted for this monstrous war crime.

Why did Joe vote for torture? People have a lot of reasons they do things, but they come back to a fundamental question of whose interests they serve. Joe is accused of being the senator from Israel. It’s an unfair accusation, and assumes as well that Israel speaks with one voice. If America were held to the same standard it would be the tyrant’s voice the world would hear.

We have many voices, every country and nation. We have those within our number who pervert our desires for peace and turn it to warfare. Why do they do this?

Of course, as soon as I begin to explore the landscape of what motivates others, it becomes self-analysis very quickly, as it should. So I can only really speak to what thoughts are imaginable, conceivable to me.

Hubris is a possibility. Maybe Joe Lieberman sees this as his ticket to the presidency somehow?

At least for now, we know that Russ Feingold is not seeking the presidency. He is trying to preserve what is left of our nation before the tyrant destroys it and turns us into a banana republic.

Russ Feingold is the conscience of the senate.

Love to all

Imagine

Hope writes,

Some plants, if not all, contain some amazing healing properties for human beings and animals. There are discoveries to be made…horizons to reach.

Imagine if a chemical company, like Dow or Monsanto, could “engineer” a plant that could actually treat and cure some illness, ease pain and inflammation, and make a person feel better. Talk about money growing on trees…or bushes or grasses! Would that not be the discovery of the age? A plant that prevents, eases, and cures some of the misery of human kind! That is so exciting!

Mankind has already been given this plant and others. This amazing plant has already been discovered, although somewhat barely. Yet….and this is the big question….Why won’t the authorities and the powers that be let you have it?

Why?

Why this great insult and injustice to humanity? Why is it kept from us, the people, and even scientists are hard pressed to even consider studying it?

Why exactly is this prohibition being done and on such a large and dramatic scale?

Be kind

Update: replacement video:

The man who fell to earth

Peace Mom

Hat-tip maha.

The White House on Drugs

If you did not see this on the Daily Show, you missed quite a show.

Twelve

A one, two, a one, two, three, five

I’m going to try to teach an old type of music theory, in the hopes of communicating a way that we can think together without verbal language or in combination. I mentioned before the origin of language in the first two letters of the earliest alphabet, though it would be a substantial exercise to carry it forward to discover the rest. Also, language may have developed independently at different times and places, so my examples may not be literally accurate but I would prefer to keep my descriptions brief enough to convey the point. Language exists when two or more beings can reliably produce and recognize signals between themselves in both directions. We can entrain new protocols to learn new ways of expressing ourselves.

Suppose I generate a tone at 420 cycles per second (Hertz). Call this tone Alpha, or Α.

Α=420;

Now I can generate a second tone at half the value of Α. Call this tone Beta, or Β.

Β=210;

With only these two tones, we could learn to communicate. A one, a two, a one; ΑΒΑ.

ΑΒΑ=420,210,420;

If Α and Β are sounded at the same time, you will not be able to separate them very well, for physiological reasons related to the way you hear powers of two as the same “pitch.”

ΑΒ(Β+Α)=420,210,210+420;

Notice how that is roughly indistinguishable from this:

ΑΒΒ=420,210,210;

If we want to have a note that has a different perceived pitch, we need to multiply or divide Α by something other than two. Logically, we can use three. To keep things within our range of perception, divide first by three and then multiply by two, and call this tone Gamma, or Γ.

Γ=280;

We might at this point define a rest, a silent note, and call it Chi, or Χ for now.

Χ=0;

Anticipating our need for another pitch beyond Γ we can define it as Α divided by five and multiplied by four (remember powers of two maintain perceived pitch), and call it Epsilon, or Ε.

Ε=336;

I skipped Delta, because it is the fourth letter and it creates confusion if it is used to represent a divisor of five. Let’s define it as something that doubles the value of the associated notes.

(ΔΑ)=840;

Now we can start making interesting words.

ΑΒ(ΓΑ)ΧΑ(ΔΑ)(ΒΓ)Α=420,210,(280+420),0,420,840,(210+280),420;

Happily ever after?

How to make a starter

My tinctures of vert, azure, or. Knit together to form a unity.

A two-part invention

The first sound made by intelligent man was a vowel — A. Aleph. Alpha.

He and she said AAAA to one another until understanding came that this was language.

Then another sound was made — B. Beth. Beta.

This, the first consonant, allowed binary language. AAABBBBB or ABBA. Father, in Hebrew. The father of language.

No more bread nor wine from these

It is done, and a New Year.

Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Two angels

World Contact Day

Hat-tip.

Update: Boing Boing links to video.

Six days of creation

Related post:

• Five cups of wine

Games without frontiers

Olvlzl pointed me to a site with lots of good suggestions for non-competitive games for children, here’s an example:

Wizards: All close eyes while a wizard is chosen in secret. Open eyes and all move around or dance. Wizard tries to tig without being discovered by running hand down backs. Tigged freeze but can be untigged by a hug from the untigged..

Adults need to figure out our own versions of these games.

A poem that shows

The rose is a rose
and was always a rose;
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose,
but were always a rose.

– Robert Frost, “The Rose Family”.

No more war between the roses, I say.

Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Rosaceae, the order of which is called Rosales, of which it is said within,

In the APG classification, well-known members of Rosales include: roses; strawberries, blackberries and raspberries; apples and pears; plums, peaches and apricots; almonds; rowan and hawthorn; elms; figs; nettles; and hops and cannabis.

So there you have it, and enjoy them all.

From someone who goes, but comes in repose.

It’s log, it’s log, it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.

Everyone loves a log.

For Christmas.

Hat-tip Buck Batard.

We got ourselves a DVR for Christmas

My wife is having a great time watching her show and being able to pause and skip commercials. The nicest thing that I noticed right off is that it effectively upgraded our cable service to digital, because all the program listings are nicely organized into categories and can be selected with the remote control. So unlike having to manually channel surf we can find what we want to watch when we had nothing in particular we were looking for.

Cannabis is prohibited?

Oh, but this is good:

• Nine percent of 8th graders sniffed glue, spray paints, cleaning fluids or other inhalants, down slightly.

Um. Here’s the thing, parents. Your kids are going to alter their consciousness, and don’t you pretend to me that you don’t alter yours. Everyone does it. Choose your poison, or learn what is good for you.

Sniffing paint is using dope, and it’s not good for you or your kids. Nine percent of 8th graders is way too many kids that are being permanently injured by these dangerous things.

Cannabis is not dope.

Better you should eat or drink or vaporize or smoke cannabis than drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or take prescription mood altering substances. God knows what is good for you, and you will find no better medicine than what God made for you.

Hat-tip.