GREEK LEADER CAUSES TURBULENCE

GREEK ‘RADICAL LEFT’ LEADER CAUSES WORLDWIDE STOCK MARKET TURBULENCE
Richard Metzger
05.08.2012
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/greek_radical_left_leader_causes_worldwide_stock_market_turbulence

No one seems to be able to say with any real certainty whether or not Greece will stay in the EU, try to negotiate an orderly exit from the eurozone or be pushed out of the monetary union. Sunday’s unprecedented election saw the political establishment that has dominated the country for four decades nearly wiped out. No surprise, extreme volatility in the stock markets was one of the knock-on effects. Greek markets dropped 8% today.

37-year-old Greek politician, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the socialist Coalition for the Radical Left (S?????), who has been charged with forming a coalition government, is being blamed for much of today’s market selloff for some of his more incendiary remarks. Mr. Tsipras wasted no time announcing his opinion that the “barbarous” Greek bailout agreement is “null and void” and should be torn up and abandoned for the sake of the Greek working class. Global markets went on a roller coaster ride as Tsipras’s words threatened to cause a domino effect that could force the country to quit the euro. Besides his opposition to the terms of the bailout, Tsipras wants to nationalize the banks, restore all cut salaries and pensions to their former levels and to bring back union bargaining.

Bad idea from the point of view of the markets, true. The Germans will most certainly be pissed, as well. But it’s probably the best outcome for the lives of the citizens of Greece, who are feeling squeezed to pay off what is widely seen to be the mess caused by the elites. If the revolt against the EU-mandated austerity doesn’t come from the left, it will certainly come from the far right.

As Tsipras has repeatedly asked: “The main question is who will pay for the crisis? The rich or the poor?”

Last September in an interview with CNBC anchorwoman Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Mr. Tsipras said that the austerity measures inflicted upon the Greek population via the “troika” of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU were counter-productive and couldn’t be allowed to stand:

“The solution is to be able to get out of the memorandum (the troika plan) and to be able to get rid of the destructive policy that is being implemented right now… I think the medicine they have given us is worse than the disease itself and I think it’s going to kill us.”

In order to receive more than 200 billion euros in long-term, low-interest loans, the troika has demanded that the Greece reduce its spending. The Greek government has responded by laying off thousands of government workers, cutting the salaries of those who are left, and cutting pensions to retirees. They’ve nullified collective bargaining agreements in an effort to get wages lower so that Greeks will be more competitive in the world economy.

Additionally they’ve raised taxes and fees on everything under the Greek sun. The moves have angered Greeks, and they demonstrated this in last weekend elections by punishing the parties that agreed to the troika’s requirements, and giving many more votes to Tsipra’s Coalition for the Radical Left.

Tsipra told CNBC: “I think this will totally destroy the middle class. So I think that what is really needed is a plan which involves growth and I think fiscal consolidation can be achieved through other means. I think the rich should pay and not just the poor and middle class.”

If Greece ditches the harsh bailout terms, the money flow will stop, so the country would probably be forced to “print money” to pay salaries, pensions and the military or else resort to massive layoffs. Bet on the former, not the latter.

Sensibly, Tsipras is calling for something like the New Deal’s WPA or the Marshall plan, governmental efforts, he says, “which would lead to investment opportunities in Greece and this of course would create jobs which are much needed in the country.” Additionally, Tsipras told CNBC last year that he was of the opinion that the financial sector should be placed under government control..

“Do you know what (Warren) Buffett said? He said come on, “let me pay.” Why did he say that? He said that because he could understand the danger, the danger for his class if everything is burned.”

Smart man. He obviously gets what’s at stake. Refreshing in a politician, isn’t it?

Many Greek and European political observers don’t think Mr. Tsipras will be able to form a coalition government in just three days (the time set by Greek law). A new round of elections seems likely in June, but for the next 48-hours, the financial world has its attention directed towards Greece and the rising political star of “Radical Leftist” leader Alexis Tsipras.

Richard Metzger: How I became an accidental spokesperson for gay rights

Richard Metzger: How I, a married, middle-aged man, became an accidental spokesperson for gay rights overnight
Xeni Jardin
Tuesday, Apr 19, 2011
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/19/richard-metzger-how.html

Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds (you may know him as founder of Disinformation, or as a BB guestblogger, or as the counterculture "Charlie Rose"), writes in with the odd story of a Facebook photo ban, and the media misinfo frenzy that followed.
Since just last Friday, the above photo, a publicity still from the popular BBC soap opera "EastEnders" has become the emblem of an utterly unnecessary Facebook scandal. One that's already gone international and one that I, personally, I am tangentially involved in. I say unnecessary because it never should have happened in the first place, but let me state this at the beginning of this for those of you--you know who you are-- who'll just read the first two paragraphs before zipping off to write something snarky in the comments: I do not personally believe that the Facebook corporation is in any way homophobic. Not even in the slightest. Okay?

Now that I've got that out of the way, here is what happened and why some people might think that they are:

On Friday afternoon, one of my fellow bloggers at Dangerous Minds, Niall O'Conghaile did a quickie cut-n-paste blog post about a "kiss-in" protest scheduled for that night in London at a pub where two young men had been asked to leave earlier in the week because they were kissing. You can read Niall's post here. He decided to use the above photo because he felt that it was inoffensive (Some outlets have reported that this photo came from the London "kiss-in" page on Facebook, but this is not true, it was Niall's choice and he found it on Google Images).

I posted this to my own Facebook wall as a matter of course. I put up all of the Dangerous Minds content on my wall. Sometime mid-day is when this would have gone up.

I didn't really pay that much attention to the matter, but before we went to sleep that night, my wife Tara McGinley, who also blogs at Dangerous Minds, mentioned that this heavy metal kinda guy "Jerry" had written a bunch of childish and homophobic things about this picture on my Facebook wall, saying that he found it "disgusting." Predictably, a bunch of people jumped all over him and right around 10:30pm Tara noticed that "Jerry" had deleted all of his comments and vamoosed.

The next morning I woke up around 6am to find a note from Facebook waiting for me with the ominous subject "Facebook Warning" informing me that I had posted "abusive material" which they had removed. Here's what it said:

"Hello: Content that you shared on Facebook has been removed because it violated Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.

This message serves as a warning. Additional violations may result in the termination of your account. Please read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully and refrain from posting abusive material in the future. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

--The Facebook Team"

I assumed that the item in question was a post that had legitimately risqué footage of 1960s strippers in an embedded video and shrugged it off. I didn't even look. When my wife Tara woke up, I told her about the Facebook warning and she also assumed that it came as a result of the stripper footage.

Five minutes later she came into my office and said "You won't believe this. The thing Facebook cited you over? It was the thing about the kiss-in at the London pub that Niall posted."

Here is what I wrote back to Facebook:

Hello,

Can you please tell me exactly what this objectionable post was? My FB profile is an extension of the Dangerous Minds.net blog which gets around 200,000 daily readers and over 5 million a month. We post tons of content there, so it would be helpful to find out what this material was.

Does this mean that you got a specific complaint?


The more I thought about it, the more this minor act of censorship bothered me. It seemed so small-minded.

I wondered why Facebook would remove this rather innocuous photo and I was also pissed off that this "Jerry" fellow, this supposed "friend" of mine (someone I've never met of course) should be able to get something taken down from my wall simply because he's a whiner. I mean... look at that picture. They are both fully-clothed. It's a still from a popular prime-time (or "pre-watershed" as they say in the UK) BBC TV show, not a porn film! Why should this ridiculous homophobe heavy metal guy get to call the tune?

The stupidity of this situation really bugged me, so I sat down and wrote up a quick blog post because I was in such a snit about it. When I was adding HTML links I realized that the link in Niall O'Conghaile's original post to the Facebook page organizing the London pub "kiss-in" was now gone. I worked this in also, but only in the sense of asking IF there was a connection (I now know there wasn't, but I'll get to that part later). I put up the post, titled "Hey Facebook: What's SO wrong about a pic of two men kissing?" and went about my day.

Within a matter of minutes, that blog post was getting hundreds upon hundreds of shares. And then thousands and then tens of thousands. There are currently, as I type this, over 75,000 shares and over 1100 tweets. In just two days, considerably more than a million people have read that post. Without trying to, I wrote a blog post that was heard round the world. Had I known so many people would be reading it, I'd have spent more time polishing my prose.

The post I wrote is still being read by many hundreds more people every hour who come to the (I think false) conclusion that Facebook is a homophobic, evil company. As I stated at the beginning of this, I don't believe that is true. My beef with them was about "Jerry" as I think I make clear in my post, but other people, and I can't say I blame them, are jumping to different conclusions.

What pissed me off is that they let a knucklehead like my "friend" get away with this and allowed a dummy--the turd in the punchbowl-- to get the better of my nearly 5000 other "friends" who were laying into his dumbass with knives drawn! The group/tribe there wished to oust "Jerry" and his lowbrow homophobia from their midst. Why did Facebook side with him and not the vast majority of my "friends"? It was obvious that he was the irritant to the group at large, not the photograph! Him!

According to Facebook's FAQ on matters like this, EVERY claim of "abusive" posts is investigated by an actual live human being. If we take them at their word, it wasn't automatically deleted.

My assumption is that "Jerry" complained and that perhaps a conservative or religious person working for Facebook --maybe it was an outsourced worker in another country, I can't say--got that case number, looked at it for a split second, vaguely (or wholeheartedly, who can say?) agreed with "Jerry" (or it was just "easier" to "agree" with him as a matter of corporate policy) dinged it and moved on. I doubt that there was very, very little thought given to the matter. "Delete" and move on to the next item of "abusive material" on the list.

THAT'S ALL I THINK HAPPENED.

There is little else to report. How people reacted to it is in evidence all over Facebook now with thousands of people changing their photo to one of a same sex smooch. There are protests planned all over the world now. It has a life of its own now, but one that resulted from a mistake, ultimately.

The real problem here is certainly not that Facebook is a homophobic company. It's that their terrible corporate policy on censorship needs to stop siding with the idiots, the complainers and the least-enlightened and evolved amongst us as a matter of business expediency! That ill-advised policy can cause huge --and otherwise avoidable-- international public relations problems for them. Why just give that power to dummies and homophobes to use like a caveman club on the rest of us? It makes no rational sense (certainly not from a legal standpoint) and is anything BUT expedient when you consider the damage to their brand which can occur in a situation, ahem, exactly like this one.

They're a young company, but this is something that they've GOT to get right. If Facebook adopted new guidelines that would put the "burden of proof," so to speak, on the complaining party, this would have an undeniably positive effect on society at large because of the supremely high leverage point an entity like Facebook holds in cultures all over the world.

On Monday morning, I was contacted by a woman working with a foundation in New York that aims to accelerate full equality and acceptance for lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, about advising them on an advertising campaign hitting Facebook hard over this policy. This seems like an especially good idea to me. If Facebook can be persuaded to modify their censorship criteria, and PREVENT the stupids, the jerks, the blue-noses and the idiots from always having the advantage, the LGBT community will have won a very important battle FOR free speech and AGAINST hate speech and bullying.

It's a win-win situation all the way around for everyone except for the assholes. What do you say, Facebook?

[When I get a reply from Facebook, with an explanation which they owe not just to me, but everyone using their contraption I'll update this post. I still haven't gotten one. They know how to reach me, obviously.]

Addendum: I also wanted to mention that it turns out that the Facebook event for the "kiss-in" was not, in fact, blocked by Facebook, as I questioned on Saturday morning in my original post. The page was made private by the creator of the event itself, Paul Shetler, due to the"abusive material" that he was having to deal with himself left by homophobes and Internet trolls. Come Saturday morning it was a dead link. Paul Shetler wrote this in the comments of the post at Dangerous Minds to clear the matter up:

Paul Shetler says: Hey I just saw this. Before it goes too far, I just want people to know that FB have NOT removed the kiss-in event page; it's still there, but _I made the event private after the event_ was over and only visible to those who had been invited as there were starting to be trolls posting abusive nonsense on it.

Other people, seem to be confused about what exactly was taken down from my Facebook page, it was a link to the Dangerous Minds post that Niall wrote, not, as some seem to think, the link Paul refers to above.

Once more with feeling: They were two separate things, my speculation did not really assume they were conjoined matters, but I think I did confuse some readers. I noticed both things at the same time. My speculation in the first post was pretty clearly just that, speculation.

I'm not walking back what I wrote Saturday morning, I'm just reporting what subsequently came to light with Paul's note. Niall tried to clear up some of the confusion that we could see was happing in the comment with this follow-up post. It's worth mentioning that aside from this ZDnet article, almost everything I've been reading about this on Perez Hilton, The Advocate's blog and elsewhere, outlets both pro and con, even when they are trying to be supportive, are often really factually incorrect, or simply inept in their reporting, sometimes to a idiotic degree. It's been very odd to see all of this transpire. I've been accused of all kinds of nefarious things.

What still remains to be seen is why Facebook removed the original Dangerous Minds post from my personal profile with the warning that I had posted "abusive" material. Still waiting on that.

Culture, Sex, Technology • Tags: BBC, Facebook, Gay, Homosexual, LGBT, Social Media

GE Returns Billions to Public, NOT

The Yes Men punk A.P.
04.15.2011
Richard Metzger
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/ge_to_donate_billions_to_the_federal_government_the_yes_men_punk_a.p

Once again the heroically funny Yes Men (along with the anti-Tea party patriots of “US Uncut”) have punk’d the establishment. This time their victim was the Associated Press. From the press release:

USA Today, AP fall for US Uncut ploy; GE stock loses billions
Contact: Blair Fitzgibbon 202-503-6141 blair@fitzgibbonmedia.com, Duncan Meisel 512-657-9124 duncan.meisel@gmail.com, Carl Gibson 601-454-6443 usuncut@gmail.com, The Yes Lab info@yeslab.org

Washington, DC - US Uncut, a burgeoning grassroots movement pressuring corporate tax cheats to pay their fair share, posted today a fake GE press release announcing that they would return their illegitimate (but legal) $3.2 billion tax refund, and that they would lobby to close the sort of corporate tax loopholes that had allowed them to skip taxes in the first place. Several major media outlets, including USA Today, ran the story as true. (Here is a link to the original USA Today story; here is the first article debunking the release.)

US Uncut quickly reacted with another release pretending to praise GE for this entirely unpredictable, unlikely, and in fact impossible act.

“At a time when working families are being asked to accept massive cuts nationwide, this action showed another way the world could work,” said US Uncut spokesperson Carl Gibson. “For a brief moment people believed that the biggest corporate tax dodger had a change of heart and actually did the right thing. But the only way anything like this is really going to happen is if we change the laws that allow corporate tax avoidance in the first place.”

In the period the hoax was believed, GE’s stock plunged by .6% (far more than the value of the supposed return), then quickly recovered as soon as it became apparent the press had been duped. “Obviously, GE can’t possibly be expected to do the right thing voluntarily; their stock would keep plunging,” noted Gibson. “That’s why we must change the law.”

“GE’s tax avoidance is unpatriotic, it’s undemocratic, it’s unfair,” said Andrew Boyd, a US Uncut spokesperson. “It might be legal, but that’s only because GE has used its money and lobbying influence to buy the loopholes they’re now taking advantage of.”

US Uncut developed the project with help from the Yes Lab.


US Uncut’s Andrew Boyd told MSNBC (partially owned by General Electric, of course): “It might be legal but it’s immoral.”

YES it is. The Yes Men guys are absolute geniuses. If you’re going to infiltrate capitalism, you have to do it all the way...

MarketWatch: ‘Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution’

Richard Metzger
03.29.2011
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/marketwatch_tax_the_super_rich_now_or_face_a_revolution/

When stock market advice websites like MarketWatch are running articles with tiltes like “Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution” I think it’s safe to assume that it’s probably time to tax the super rich now or, you guessed it, face a revolution. It’s been a long time coming and it’s going to be quite sweet, I think, as a result. Western civilization is on the cusp of something new and I, for one, can’t wait for it to get here.

Just the other day, I saw a young guy with a tee-shirt with Donald Trump’s severed head on the end of a lance. It’s in the air:

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2

Start preparing for the third meltdown of the 21st Century, and depression

Denial and lies. Remember, 93% of what you hear about markets, finance and the economy are guesses, wishful thinking and lies intended to manipulate you into making decisions that suck money from your pockets into Wall Street. They get rich telling lies about securities. They hate any SEC fiduciary rules forcing them to tell the truth.

But the fact is, on an inflation-adjusted basis, Wall Street lost 20% of your retirement money in the decade from 2000 to 2010, over $10 trillion. And “Irrational Exuberance’s” Robert Shiller warns of a third meltdown coming. You better start preparing now.

Before you start betting any more at Wall Street’s rigged casinos, think long and hard about these six megatoxins lurking in America’s Super-Rich Delusion, a mind-altering pandemic infecting our nation’s leadership in Washington, Corporate America and Wall Street … but also “trickling down,” infecting many Americans. Listen:

1. Warning: Super Rich want tax cuts, creating youth unemployment

Bloomberg warns: “The Kids Are Not Alright.” Worldwide, youth unemployment is fueling the revolution. In a New York Times column, Matthew Klein, a 24-year-old Council on Foreign Relations researcher, draws a parallel between the 25% unemployment among Egypt’s young revolutionaries and the 21% for young American workers: “The young will bear the brunt of the pain” as governments rebalance budgets. Taxes on workers will be raised and spending on education will be cut while mortgage subsidies and entitlements for the elderly are untouchable,” as will tax cuts for the rich. Opportunities lost. “How much longer until the rest of the rich world” explodes like Egypt?

2. Warning: rich get richer on commodity prices, poor get angrier

USA Today’s John Waggoner warns: “Soaring food prices send millions into poverty, hunger: Corn up 52% in 12 months. Sugar 60%. Soybeans 41%. Wheat 24%. For 44 million the “rise in food prices means a descent into extreme poverty and hunger, warns the World Bank.” Many causes: Speculators. Soaring oil prices. Trade policies. Population explosion. But altogether they expose “the underlying inequalities and issues related to the standard of living that boil beneath the surface,” says a Pimco manager.

3. Warning: Global poor ticking time bomb targeting Super Rich

A Time special report, “Poor vs. Rich: A New Global Conflict” warned that a “conflict between two worlds — one rich, one poor — is developing, and the battlefield is the globe itself.” Just 25 developed nations of 750 million citizens consume most of the world’s resources, produce most of its manufactured goods and enjoy history’s highest standard of living.” But they’re now facing 100 underdeveloped poor nations with 2 billion people with hundreds of millions living in poverty all demanding “an ever larger share of that wealth.” Think Egypt. British leader calls this a “time bomb for the human race.”

4. Warning: Next revolution coming across ‘Third World America’

We are ripe for one: In “Third World America” Arianna Huffington warns: “Washington rushed to the rescue of Wall Street but forgot about Main Street … One in five Americans unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families unable to make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans on food stamps. Upward mobility has always been at the center of the American Dream … that promise has been broken… The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.” Soon it will implode. a meltdown, revolution, depression.

5. Warning: Super Rich must be detoxed of their greed addiction

In “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill),” David Cay Johnston, warns that the rich are like addicts, and to “the addicted, money is like cocaine, too much is never enough.” A few years ago an elite 300,000 Americans in “the top tenth of 1% of income had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population.” The Super Rich Delusion is an addiction that requires a painful detox.

6. Warning: Politicians infected by Super-Rich Delusion, revolution

In “Washington’s Suicide Pact,” Newsweek’s Ezra Klein warns: “Congress is careening toward the worst of all worlds: massive job losses and an exploding deficit.” How bad? As many as 700,000 more jobs lost, says Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi. What a twist: Remember vice president Dick Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.” Today the GOP is so blinded by its obsession to destroy Obama’s presidency, deficits are now the only thing they say matters.

Wake up folks. The Super-Rich Delusion is destroying the American Dream for the rest of us. The Super Rich don’t care about you. They’re already stockpiling for the economic time bomb dead ahead. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Time for you to plan ahead for the coming revolution, for another depression.

Johnny Cash performs ‘San Quentin’ at San Quentin State Prison

03.18.2011
Richard Metzger
http://www.dangerousminds.net/johnny_cash_performs_san_quentin_at_at_san_quentin_state_prison

Every picture tells a story and here is the story behind one of the most iconic rebel images of all, photographer Jim Marshall’s classic shot of Johnny Cash flippin’ the bird during his famous concert at San Quentin State Prison:

Some of Marshall’s most arresting photographs of Cash were taken at two California prisons, Folsom (1968) and San Quentin (1969). These were not Cash’s first performances for prison inmates—indeed, his song “Folsom Prison Blues” had been released more than a decade earlier, in 1955, as a 45 and 78 by Sun Records. But the trip to Folsom would be recorded for a live album, and Jim Marshall was invited along by Cash’s label, Columbia, to document the event.

On the SFAE website, Jim Marshall recalls the day, January 13, 1968, when Cash and his band, the Tennessee Three, with the great Carl Perkins on guitar, entered the prison (see the pensive portrait of Cash, above). “The granite walls in Folsom are about eight feet thick, and we had just gotten off the bus and gone through one giant gate into a holding area. Then we went through a second gate, and, when it clanked shut, John said, ‘Jim, there’s a feeling of permanence in that sound.’ After that, I started wondering when we were going to get out of there.”

The success of “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison,” with a Marshall close-up of Cash on its cover, sweat dripping down his face from the bottom of his sideburns, sent Cash to San Quentin a year later for another live album. That recording, which made it to No. 1 on both the country and pop charts in the U.S., is famous for its black-and-blue cover, with Cash’s head silhouetted from behind by a harsh spotlight.

The most famous image from the day, though, is unquestionably the candid shot of Cash taken during a rehearsal before the show. Again from the SFAE website, Marshall recalls the origins of what he believed was “probably the most ripped off photograph in the history of the world. There was a TV crew behind me and John was on the side of the stage. I said ‘John, let’s do a shot for the warden.’” Apparently, that’s all the prompting Cash needed to look straight into Marshall’s lens and flip him the bird.

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, the soundtrack

Richard Metzger
03.15.2011
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/lipstick_traces_a_secret_history_of_the_20th_century_the_soundtrack/

If I had to sit down and compile a list of my top favorite books—which would be difficult for me to do—there would most assuredly be a spot in the top fifty for Greil Marcus’s sprawling, idiosyncratic and essential, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.

This book is about a single serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called Anarchy in the U.K. was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. Made by a four-man rock ‘n’ roll band called the Sex Pistols, and written by singer Johnny Rotten, the song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris-based intellectuals.

Lipstick Traces, well, traces the critique of capitalism from the Dada art movement through the Situationist International and the May 1968 uprisings in Paris, through to the Sex Pistols and the punk rock explosion. In other words, it is the hidden history of the artistic opposition to capitalist society. It was heavily influenced by the revolutionary avant-garde punk zine “Vague” (a parody of Vogue, if that’s not obvious). I was reading “Vague” from my late teens—I still have most issues—and it had a great deal to do with shaping how I see the world. Marcus cribbed a lot from Tom Vague for Lipstick Traces, which is not to take anything away from Greil Marcus at all, but to simply give credit where its due.

Although I can recall a lot of criticism that was leveled at Lipstick Traces by reviewers when it first came out, the book’s thesis was, in my opinion, on pretty firm ground. It has certainly stood the test of time and has remained in print to this day. I’m told that it’s often used in college courses, which is unsurprising. A twentieth anniversary edition of Lipstick Traces was published by Harvard Press in 2009

But what many ardent admirers of the book don’t know, it that Rough Trade released a companion “soundtrack” CD to Lipstick Traces that came out in 1993. Like the book, it’s always had pride of place in my vast collection of “stuff.” The CD was rarely encountered in a world prior to Amazon.com (there’s not even a listing for it on Amazon today, either) but now, thanks to the fine folks at Ubuweb, these rare audio documents, lovingly assembled by Marcus, can be heard again. The selection runs the gamut of weird old hillbilly folk, doo-wop, to punk rock from the Slits, Buzzcocks. Gang of Four, The Adverts, Kleenex/Liliput, The Raincoats, The Mekons, a recording of the audience at a Clash gig, and best of all, the blistering mutant be-bop of Essential Logic’s “Wake Up.” Interspersed between the music is spoken word material from French philosopher Guy Debord, Triatan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and even Marie Osmond reciting a brain-damaged version of Hugo Ball’s nonsense poem “Karawane” that must be heard to be believed.

Mexican Coke: A Taste Test

Robert Sterling
Konformist.com
http://robalini.blogspot.com/

The times, they are a changin'. Less than two years ago, an article with the above title would immediately conjure up visions of Al Pacino in Scarface or Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice. Thanks to modern soda fads, however, most people would correctly deem this a review of Coca-Cola bottled in Mexico.

It was only a year and a half ago my pal Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net wrote an article titled "I Am a (Mexican) Coke Fiend" that signified the rising trend. As usual, Metzger knew the next big thing before the average bear, and soon drinking bottled Coke from south of the border became a hipster staple like skinny jeans or being ironic.

Of course, hoodie-wearing Silver Lakers aren't the only ones drinking the sweet brew. Indeed, the Mexican Coke market has become pretty big business that is part of a larger trend. PepsiCo has been selling versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew that are "Throwback" and Dr. Pepper has a "Heritage" label. Meanwhile, Sierra Mist, tired of being Cliff Barnes to Sprite's J.R. Ewing in the lemon-lime soda war, has changed its formula to have sugar as the sweetener. There's even a bottled version of Mexican Pepsi. Still, Mexican Coke is the Big Kahuna of the movement, in no small part due to the cult-like following Coca Cola has to its adherents. Way before iPods, iPads and iPhones gave iOrgasms to worshippers of Apple and their deity Steve Jobs, Coke has had devotees to its magical potion, made all the more mystical due to its secret formula. (The formula, incidentally, was reputedly uncovered recently on public radio, something you dear readers may not heard about due to the fact nobody listens to public radio.)

Central to the whole "throwback" soda movement is the usage of sugar over high-fructose corn syrup, a food substance that is now demonized (and probably deservedly so) on the level of trans fats, MSG and Nutrasweet. That's why the special Coke is made in Mexico: HFCS isn't used there like it is in the USA. That's because, thanks to the power of the corn producers lobby, corn syrup is heavily subsidized in the United States and is thus much cheaper than sugar. (That's the official explanation, anyway: the real reason is that HFCS is being used by the Illuminati to wipe out Americans as part of their plot to depopulate the planet.) In any case, sugar hasn't been used widely in American Coke since it returned from a brief hiatus in 1985 during the "New Coke" fiasco, even though many believe it's both tastier and healthier. The end result of the widespread usage of HFCS in America is doubly ironic: one, that now consumers seem to trust a food product made in Mexico more than one made in the United States, and two, sugar is now viewed as a healthy alternative in people's diet.

While most of the popularity of Mexican Coke can be traced to its lack of HFCS, there is another explanation that I have been a proponent of for its superior taste. It's not the sugar that makes bottled Coke better, but the bottle. Specifically, a glass bottle, unlike a aluminum can or a plastic bottle, doesn't leach chemicals that are both unappealing and dangerous into the drink. That has long been my theory, as I remember it tasted infinitely superior to Coke in any other form when glass botles were popular back in the day.

Of course, it's one thing to have a theory, and it's another thing to test it. I don't have a Mannlicher rifle and even if I did, the Dallas police probably wouldn't let me carry it to Dealey Plaza to fire it off. But I can buy a bottle of Mexican Coke and a plastic container of Coca-Cola made in the USA, and then compare them in taste. So damn it, that's why I did!

As it turns out, there seemed to be a bit of truth to both theories in my sampling. US Coke had a smoother, more refined taste than Mexican Coke did, but that worked against it, as it tasted more like syrup and less like a sweetened liquid. Likewise, there was a more metallic taste to US Coke, even though it was in plastic and not a can. All in all, Mexican Coke was the winner either way.

Or was it? Keep in mind, this was not a blind taste test, so I knew which was which. Certainly, I thought Mexican Coke tasted better, but was it a decisive advantage like I expected it to be? Definitely not. And while I think I'd probably pick the Mexican Coke in a blind taste test (actually doing such a test sounds like a little too much work for me) I can't be sure. Is it possible my mind was just playing tricks on me with my admitted biases? Definitely.

In many ways, the taste test reminds me of taking the Pepsi Challenge back in mid-80s at Vallco Fashion Park (the shopping mall haven in the tough streets of Cupertino.) I was then, as now, on team Coke (though I do not shun Pepsi) so I expected to know which was which and pick Coca-Cola with no problem. As it turns out, I did pick Coke, but it was in no way decisive or definite like I assumed it would be. Credit must be given to Pepsi: it's brew is a lot better than someone like me gives it credit for and far closer to The Real Thing than I believed. Likewise, credit must be given to Coca-Cola: sugar or HFCS, glass or plastic, this stuff tastes bitching any way you make it.

So what's the real explanation for the popularity of Mexican Coke? The corn syrup controversy can't explain it all: there are plenty of other products filled with HFCS doing fine. Perhaps it's just that my taste buds aren't as highfalutin as that snobby prick Richard Metzger? Possibly. Still, keep in mind, before I took the test, I too was a strong believer in the infinite superiority of the stuff.

I suspect the answer here isn't in the actual ingredients or the actual taste, but the process involved. Just as part of the appeal of absinthe is the elaborate ritual involved in drinking it, there is something to opening a container that's not made of industrial waste that seems pleasantly anachronistic. Personally, it reminds me of being on my grandpa's porch in Maryland as a child, having a drink on a hot summer day. Others may have their own associations. No matter the personal reason, my guess is that the psychological factor outweighs all other reasons behind the popularity of Mexican Coke.

But what do I know? My taste buds aren't the final judge of all things. I encourage you all to try this experiment yourself and give me your own report. For the record, I was not paid by Coca-Cola to write this, though I would be happy to accept a check from them...

For more on the Coke secret formula story:

Coca Cola Secret Formula!!!
Robert Sterling
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
http://robalini.blogspot.com/2011/02/coca-cola-secret-formula.html

The labor movement and wealth creation in America

The relationship between the labor movement and wealth creation in America
02.23.2011
Richard Metzger
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/the_relationship_between_the_labor_movement_and_wealth_creation_in_ame/


This is a guest editorial from Dangerous Minds reader Em, expanding on some pointed commentary he’s made elsewhere on this blog. Em—who’ll keep his last name to himself, thank you very much—works in the financial industry.

Many commentators have attempted to draw parallels between the Egyptian protestors in Tahriri square and the protestors in Wisconsin’s state capital, where the republican governer Walker has introduced legislation that would (among other things) remove the right of state workers to collectively bargain. Such commentators have done a better or worse job, but in any event didn’t appear all that convinced by what they had written, despite the feeling that there at least seemed to be similarities that could not be explained by coincidence alone. Of course, the protestors in Egypt are largely (but not exclusively) Muslim, and live in a developing economy that has never experienced first-world standards of living, while the Wisconsin protestors are predominantly white and hail from families that have experienced first-world standards of living for several generations. It would appear, therefore, that any similarities are superficial and any comparison between the two groups more poetic rather than substantive.

What the protestors in Tahriri Square as well as the public Union workers in Winsconsin have in common is the rejection of a commonly repeated narrative about how wealth is created. In this commonly repeated narrative, it is necessary to concentrate capital in the hands of a few, who will then use that capital to create businesses and generate wealth, which will trickle down to the many. In order to get this alleged wealth-pump moving, impediments to wealth concentration such as labor movements must be removed, and indeed (according to the common false narrative), the history of wealth generation in developed countries such as the USA is precisely the history of overcoming these pesky impediments. What the protestors in both Wisconsin as well as the Arab world have done is reject that narrative as well as the bogus and half-baked economic theory that is often sold as part of it.

A corrollary to this theory of wealth generation is that civil liberties such as free speech are a luxury, and should be suspended for the sake of the greater good, until wealth starts to flow and incomes rise significantly. This is a particularly pernicious part of the package, because no doubt countless men and women workers have resigned themselves to a life of incredible toil in order to (they believe) move their society forward. Inequities, injustices as well as the suspension of civil liberties were tolerated because they appeared necessary to move their country ahead into greater levels of wealth for everyone.

What the third world protestors in Tahriri Square and elsewhere in the Arab world have done, along with their compatriots in the Wisconsin State Capital, is reject this set of lies and the false either/or choice it presents of civil liberty versus economic progress. Though they may not be able to articulate it, the protestors have finally looked upon the general character of those that hold the levers of power and chose to regard the false choice they have proferred as a lie, which it is.

The first part of this larger-scale lie is that Labor has played no significant role in the generation of wealth in the developed world. In fact, empowering workers has been equated with command-driven soviet and communist models, which were arguably equitable by making everyone equally poor. In this narrative, the US has generated its unprecedented wealth precisely by defeating the evil specter of organized labor. Wealth, it is told, has been created by allowing capital to be concentrated into the hands of the wealthy, who best know how to wield it, thereby creating jobs and new wealth. What is not stated in this view is that the wealthy classes are regarded as almost a divine class, having been born (and not made) and appointed by God.

The reality, of course, is different. In developed economies, the vast majority of wealth has been created in the last hundred years or so. Scratch any millionare and you will see someone with fairly working-class roots, though perhaps it’s necessary to go back a generation or two. But the point is that wealthy individuals and families were not always wealthy, but got that way through a combination of risk-taking, hard work, capital investment, and luck. In other words, wealthy people were made and not born, and accumulated their wealth initially as members of the working class.

That wealthy people are the primary engine of job creation is demonstrably false, the evidence of which is readily found in the results of Bush’s tax cuts. The argument from the so-called right continues to be that, in placing more capital in the hands of the wealthy, jobs will be created and wealth will flow down and tax revenues will necessarily increase. However, the reality is the opposite: the fact that Bush’s tax cuts left Barack Obama with a significant deficit (even prior to the bank bailouts) is proof that this idea is at best flawed and at worst a lie: Jobs and wealth are not created by the few but, rather, by the many. This suggests that America’s Labor Union movement of the early 20th century may have been responsible for a large percentage of wealth generation, in that it placed an unprecedented abundance of capital into the hands of the middle class.

An interesting set of facts to examine is how certain pro-labor developed economies have performed during the 2008 fiscal crisis. Looking at two of Europe’s most labor-dominated economies, Sweden and Germany, we find that these two countries fared far better than most other european economies that had far less enrollment in labor unions. Although Germany (with 26% union enrollment) has taken on an approximately 4.5% deficit (compared to GDP), it has done so in order to come to the aid of Greece and other troubled economies in the EEU, while planning to return to the black by 2012. Sweden (at approximately 75% union enrollment), likewise, has deliberately taken on a temporary deficit in order to assist with the bailout of Iceland. It would appear, therefore, that the countries with some of the heaviest union pariticpation in the world sailed through the fiscal crisis with nary a scratch. The conclusion is that the working classes in these countries actually contributed significantly to economic stability and growth, and that the labor movements therein allowed capital to be placed into the hands of many, resulting in the generation of real economic growth and wealth.

Meanwhile, in the US, we have the opposite: Falling union enrollment and huge budgetary deficits incurred during the fiscal crisis. Given the budgetary deficits that existed as a result of the Bush tax cuts, is it still reasonable to conclude that placing more capital into the hands of the wealthy will actually result in additional job creation? The circumstantial evidence says no, but a deeper analysis reveals that such an assumption may have actually brought about the fiscal collapse itself.

As union enrollment collapsed in the US and real wages declined, capital fled the middle class which therefore also lost the ability to generate new small-to-medium-sized businesses. Partially as a result of weakened labor, both manufacturing as well as service jobs were moved overseas thus further depleting capital resources from the middle class along with job creation. As capital concentrated into the hands of the wealthy (who had no place to put it), they sought new opportunities and found them in the form of tthe American dream: Home ownership. Because real economic growth was rapidly draining out of the middle class, Wall Street stepped up to the plate and created new financial instruments designed to allow the wealthy to invest in what would have otherwise been very risky deals. Through the creation of a whole plethora of derivative securities (such as Collateralized Debt Obligations), the underlying riskiness of the ‘sub-prime’ housing market was in effect trapped and tamed, thereby allowing fund managers to invest in double-A rated securities magically derived from large groups of underlaying risky mortgages.

An obvious and inherent problem in this risky housing market was that it was essentially a big game of musical chairs: I would borrow money to buy your house, while you borrowed money to buy mine. We now had houses that were worth more than we bought them for, so we did it again. And again. And again. If this feels unreasonable and like a perpetual motion machine, you are correct: this couldn’t continue, and it didn’t. As for those AA-rated CDOs, they fell apart as they had not been stress-tested for scenarios like, well, reality. On Wall Street no one had wanted to know what the real risks were, because Basel II rules would have required the banks to hold far large amounts of capital in reserve, making the CDOs and other derivatives not worth the risk.

In a sense, then, it could be argued that the failure of the banking system was caused directly by the flight of capital away from the working and labor classes, and due to the overconcentration of capital in the hands of the wealthy few, who did not know what else to do with it. An unregulated Wall Street did exactly what it was supposed to do (create new investment vehicles that direct capital at new opportunities), and any dissenting CEO would be quickly replaced.

One important conclusion to draw from this is that, by empowering workers and trade unions, capital is placed into the hands of the many and, through this means, new wealth is generated. The idea that strong labor merely communistically disperses capital (thereby making everyone poor) is a lie. Of course, the demise of the Soviet Union and larger-scale failure of command economies tempts one to believe that labor is somehow an enemy to wealth, but this is simply untrue and is an untruth that has been weaved into a strategy of divide-and-conquer as well the suspension of civil liberties.

Wisconsin is similar to Tahriri Square in that the vast majority of working people have recognized that the commonly-chanted narrative of organized labor as enemy of wealth is a lie. In both cases, the People have recognized that the choices being offered are not the only choices, and that the suspension of civil liberties actually means the continued poverty of most, while a small number of extremely wealthy people look for ways to utilize their uselessly huge piles of capital. If this is the case, then why sacrifice freedom of speech or the right to assemble or collectively bargain? All this can do is needlessly continue suffering while strengthening the State, which gets drafted into serving a small minority. It is that minority that believes that wealth is a zero sum game, even though it isn’t, and that empowering others necessarily means a loss of wealth for ones’ self, even though it is precisely through the widespread availability of capital that new wealth is created.

About the author: Em was a founding member (with John Cale and others) of the New York punk band Doppler Effect in the early 1980s. After living in China in the late 80s, Em worked in the physics and electrical engineering space until 2002, at which time he moved into the financial world. In July, Em returned to the US after having lived in London since 2006 and is a member of the UMOUR art/event collective. He blogs at The Magic Lantern, his"litterbox of the soul.”

Raymond Chandler Meets Ian Fleming

Richard Metzger's DangerousMinds.net has a good story on one of the greatest literary mashup interviews in radio history:

Philip Marlowe and James Bond are two of the greatest fictional characters of the 20th century, and this is what happened when their authors, Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming met for a BBC radio program in July 1958.

Fleming and Chandler talk about protagonists James Bond and Philip Marlowe in this conversation between two masters of their genre. They discuss heroes and villains, the relationship between author and character and the differences between the English and American thriller. Fleming contrasts the domestic “tea and muffins” school of detective story with the American private eye tradition and Chandler guides Fleming through the modus operandi of a mafia hit while marvelling at the speed with which his fellow author turns out the latest Bond adventure...

When Raymond Chandler met Ian Fleming
2.02.2011
Paul Gallagher
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/when_raymond_chandler_met_ian_fleming

Classic Photo Break

Greg Bishop of The Excluded Middle & Robert Sterling in Laughlin, Nevada

Kenn Thomas of SteamshovelPress.com & Robalini in the 90's

Robalini, KT, and Greg Bishop wearing the hat & glasses of William S. Burroughs, owned by Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net

From left to right: Bishop, Robalini, Jim Martin of Flatland Books, The Christ Conspiracy author Acharya S and Kenn Thomas

From left to right at Barney's Beanery: Free Citizen zine editor Scott Sawyer, Acharya S, Robalini, KT & writer Skylaire Alfvegren. (Where is Acharya's foot in this photo?)

From left to right at LAX: Robalini, Acharya S, KT and Greg Bishop

Houses of the Holy: The backstory to the famous Led Zeppelin album cover

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/houses_of_the_holy

Houses of the Holy: The backstory to the famous Led Zeppelin album cover
12.07.2010
Richard Metzger

One of the most iconic record covers of the 1970s is Led Zeppelin’s fifth album, 1973’s Houses of the Holy and it’s also one of the most mysterious. Fans have long speculated about the “meaning” of this cryptic image of naked, golden-haired children crawling around an apocalyptic landscape towards… what? Was it a reference to the creepy 50s sci-fi film Village of the Damned? Or was there some “occult significance” to Jimmy Page there? I’m sure there must have been quite a lot of stoned, meandering conversations back then about this one.

The cover, produced by the legendary London-based design firm, Hipgnosis, was shot on the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Aubrey Powell, the Hipgnosis partner who actually designed the cover, told Q magazine in 2003 that the concept was based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, where hundreds of millions of Earth’s children gather together to be taken off into space.

But there’s an odd factoid or two about the Houses of the Holy album cover that might surprise you: First off, it was not a small army of naked children with wigs on, it was only two kids, a brother and sister, who were photographed over the course of ten days at dawn and at dusk. One of them went on to become a world famous TV presenter, Stefan Gates of the BBC’s popular Cooking in the Danger Zone show.

Gates said of the shoot, which he did at the age of five with his older sister Samantha:

“We only got a few quid for the modelling and the chance to travel to places we had never been before. Our family wasn’t well off, we certainly couldn’t afford holidays, so it worked out great for us.

“For the Zeppelin cover we went to Ireland during the Troubles. I remember arriving at the airport and seeing all these people with guns. We stayed in this little guest house near the Giant’s Causeway and to capture the so-called magic light of dawn and dusk we’d shoot first thing in the morning and at night.

I’ve heard people saying they put wigs on several children. But there was only me and my sister and that’s our real hair. I used to love being naked when I was that age so I didn’t mind. I’d whip off my clothes at the drop of a hat and run around having a great time, so I was in my element. My sister was older so she was probably a bit more self-conscious.”

Aubrey Powell said of the shoot: “It promptly rained for ten days straight. I shot the whole thing in black and white on a totally miserable morning pouring with rain. Originally, I’d intended the children to be gold and silver. Because I shot in black and white and it was a gray day, the children turned out very white. So when we hand-tinted it, the airbrush artist, by accident, put a kind of purple tinge onto them. When I first saw it, I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then we looked at it, and I said, ‘Hang on a minute, this has an otherworldly quality.’ So we left it as it was. Everybody was so cold, and so freaked out because it wasn’t working, that the only thing I could keep everybody together with was a bottle of Mandrax and a lot of whiskey.”

Oddly, in 2007 Stefan Gates claimed to have never listened to the album and that he felt there was something perhaps sinister about the cover image. “It carries too much significance for me,” he said at the time. “A part of me wants to go out to the Giant’s Causeway with a big pair of speakers, strip naked and play it just to see if I have some kind of great epiphany.”

The February 2010 BBC 4 radio show Stefan Gates’s Cover Story saw him return to the Giant’s Causeway to experience the album there for the first time, played on a boom box (but presumably clothed).

Samantha Gates, now living in South Africa, recalls “I remember the shoot really clearly, mainly because it was freezing cold and rained the whole time.

“We were naked in a lot of the modelling shoots we did, nothing was thought of it back then. You probably couldn’t get away with that now.”

Stefan Gates believes shooting the album at the age of five has a huge, but mostly subconscious, role in his life. “Although it’s just my naked behind you can see, perhaps being a part of something like that at a young age made me seek out more ambitious and adventurous experiences.”

Stanley Kubrick explains the plot of ‘2001’

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/stanley_kubrick_explains_what_2001/

Stanley Kubrick explains the plot of ‘2001’
11.27.2010
Richard Metzger

If you or anyone you know insists that they know what Stanley Kubrick’s classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey is all about, they are of course, bluffing, because no one really knows what that film is all about. There was, of course, one exception, and that would be the auteur himself. So what did Kubrick have to say about the “plot” and meaning behind his iconic film?

From a 1969 interview with Kubrick by Joseph Gelmis:

You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s first baby steps into the universe—a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.

That is what happens on the film’s simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.

Source: Kottke ( http://kottke.org/ )

Watch the entire final Sex Pistols concert, 1978

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/watch_the_entire_final_sex_pistols_concert_1978/

Watch the entire final Sex Pistols concert, 1978
11.06.2010
Richard Metzger

For your weekend viewing pleasure: The complete final Sex Pistols show at Bill Graham’s Winterland, in San Francisco, 1978. For years all I’d ever seen was the B&W Target Video-shot version of this show, then this improved color version popped up on a quasi-legit Chinese DVD about ten or so years ago. Everyone always rags on their supposed shitty last performance… au contraire, folks, they’re incendiary here.

After this show, the supernova that was the Pistols was no more. Say what you will about John Lydon’s later career, in his youth, the man changed the face of music twice, first with the Sex Pistols and later with Public Image, Ltd. Who else can something like that be said about? Miles Davis is the only person who comes to mind.

Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/tripping_cyborgs_and_organ_farms_the_fictions_of_cordwainer_smith

Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith
09.22.2010
Richard Metzger

When someone whose opinion you respect—in this case Steve Silberman of Wired News—sends you a link and the note “I promise you, the weirdest story you’ll read today (mine)” you take it seriously in my line of work. In this article for his new Neurotribes blog, Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith, Steve tells the unusual tale of Paul Linebarger, psychological-warfare expert and spy for the U.S. government. Writing under the pen name Cordwainer Smith, Linebarger wrote some unusually prescient science fiction tales that depicted bizarre advances in science and predicting dystopian futures as disturbing as anything in Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre:

After Scanners, Linebarger’s most unnerving creation was “A Planet Named Shayol.” (Sh’eol or ??????? — “the pit” or “the abyss” — was the ancient Hebrew name for the land of the dead.) The story is one of the most haunting visions of an utter hell outside of Dante, with plot points anticipating current developments in tissue engineering and the infamous Vacanti earmouse that caused a flap at M.I.T. in 1996.

Published in 1961, it’s even druggier than Scanners, with a hipster nurse who gets her patients stoned on the fictional equivalent of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and a cow-faced organ farmer proffering a synthetic opiate called super-condamine. Linebarger writes about strung-out states of mind so convincingly, it’s clear that his experiences in the hospital as a kid left an indelible impression. One might even say that these experiences — along with his perpetual dislocation as the son of a spy — made the body itself, and all of culture, seem like an elaborate prosthesis imposed on the essential man. Ich bin ein Scanners, waiting for the next cranch.

Read more of Tripping Cyborgs and Organ Farms: The Fictions of Cordwainer Smith (NeuroTribes):

http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/09/21/tripping-cyborgs-and-organ-farms-the-fictions-of-cordwainer-smith/

Christine O'Donnell Election Button

If a War on Terror or a War on Drugs is long, pointless and expensive, imagine a War on Masturbation...

Button courtesy of Richard Metzger and DangerousMinds.net

British Petroleum Kills Aquaman

http://www.nerdcore.de/wp/2010/06/01/bps-top-kill-erfolreich-aquaman-r-i-p/

Thanks to Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net for the pic...

Kool Website: Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber

http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/

Thanks to Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net

All Natural NyQuil

Thanks to Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net for the following...
http://www.urbanhonking.com/hotknives/2009/11/organic_nyquil.html

All Natural NyQuil
November 5, 2009

As much as you'll hear us brag that we never fall ill (largely due to copious amounts of garlic, onions and vitamin C) we do -- once in a blue moon -- get sick. And yes, we have chased the green dragon. NyQuil, DayQuil, other sorts of new fangled drugstore opiates in their generic versions. We will fess up. The stuff works!

But not this year. When one of us woke up last week with a throat tickle that blossomed into a gnarly case of the flu, we took it on with fresh produce, organic sweeteners and thimbles of liquor.

In place of Acetaminophen (pain and fever reliever), Dextromethorphan HBr (cough suppressant), and Doxylamine succinate (sleep aid) we used green chile, ginger, citric acid and booze -- all herbal, if subtler, forms of the chemical stuff. A couple shots, errr, doses, of the stuff is perfect for sitting on the couch in a sweatshirt and sweating out your germs. Take that Big Pharma!

Natural "KniQuil"
(One day's dose)

2 cups fresh mint leaves
1 cup water
1 cup agave nectar (sugar, honey work)
1 small ginger bulb
1 lemon
1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbs. roasted green chile
2 shots Pastis
2 shots Southern Comfort

1. Start off making a mint simple syrup. Pluck 35-40 mint leaves off their stems, this should yield about 2 cups of mint. Roughly chop half the mint (set half aside for later use) and add to a saucepot with 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 5-8 minutes. Remove from heat and strain the leaves out. Put just the mint tea back on a medium heat and wait until back to a full boil. Add agave nectar, mixing, and let cook 1 minute before removing. Set aside to cool.

2. Ready your other veggies for the blender. First peel the ginger and slice into matchsticks. Next, zest your lemon, place the zest into a small dish and cover with 1 tsp. of good quality olive oil.

3. Toss the ginger, green chile and remaining cup of fresh mint to the blender. Add lemon juice. Finally add half the mint syrup, setting the rest aside for garnish. Pulse thoroughly for up to a minute. (Note: If you do not have the luxury of having authentic green chile, try subbing in a roasted jalapeño. Remove the seeds and use half in place of green chile.)

4. Strain the mixture into a bowl. Use a spoon to slush it around, allowing it to pass through the sieve or fine mesh strainer. Now you have the fresh juice part of your elixer! Taste it with a spoon, if it seems too tart or spicy, add more mint syrup one teaspoon at a time.

5. Mix. The basic proportion is one-part juice to one-part pastis to one-part whiskey. For a single dose: measure out a tablespoon of each into a cocktail shaker. Add a teaspoon of lemon zest oil. Complete with 3 ice cubes and shake fervently. Pour into a shot glass or desert wine snifter.

Stickball by P-Vert

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Born to run… at the mouth: Glenn Beck calls The Boss un-American.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/born_to_run..._at_the_mouth_glenn_beck_calls_the_boss_un-american/

Born to run… at the mouth: Glenn Beck calls The Boss un-American.
03.12.2010
Richard Metzger

There are American icons and then there are American icons. And Bruce Springsteen is surely one of them. The kind you don’t mess with if you know what’s good for you. He’s the Boss and… you’re not, OK? Get it? Got it? Good.

Apparently Glenn Beck never got that memo because on his radio show Thursday, the Joseph McCarthy-loving, blubbering Fox News personality decided to read the lyrics to “Born in the U.S.A.” in a monotone voice similar to how William Shatner infamously declaimed Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” This is a tune Ronald Reagan tried to commandeer for his 1984 reelection campaign, a move rebuffed by Springsteen, the son of a union member.

According to Beck, the song is un-American.

“Born down in a dead man’s town,” read Beck to the listeners of his March 11 radio program. “The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much. ‘Til you spend half your life just covering up.”

Here’s what Beck had to say about the famous song afterward:

That’s what it’s all about. That’s what America’s all about, according to Springsteen…. It’s time for us to wake, wake up, out of our, um, dream state. Wake up out of the propaganda. The, you know, this is the thing that, people who come from the Soviet-bloc or Cuba, they’re all saying, “How do you guys not hear this? How do you not see this?” Well, that’s ‘cause we don’t ever expect it.

The Boss… un-American? Bruce Springsteen? Is that what Beck is trying to say? Now I could offer some snarky commentary—that’s my job, I’m a blogger after all—but it’s totally pointless when discussing Beck, someone I could call “nuts” and the copy desk at the Los Angeles Times will probably let it sail right past because it’s not like it’s an opinion!

And that’s not all. In January, Beck “analyzed” the Utopian lyrics of the Beatles’ “Revolution” and concluded that the song illustrated Liberal plans to slowly bring Marxism to America.

Glenn, wouldn’t that have been, uh, Lennonism? And I hate to remind you that Charles Manson saw hidden messages in Beatle songs too.