Quote of the day

Happy birthday, old girl

Grand Canyon was "born" a National Park this day in 1919 (coincidentally, the year my Father was born). If you've not been, you owe it to yourself. No picture could ever do it justice. Links: http://worldfamoustourism.com/beauty-and-wonders-of-grand-canyon; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon_National_Park

In case you don't know or can't tell--because really, it's not that great a picture on the left--that's Julian Assange of "Wikileaks" on the left.

Remember when GM's Onstar seemed like a good and innocent idea?

Yeah, me too. That's how old I am. Now? Did you see this? "OnStar to sell customer location and other data" “'Big Brother' is not only watching, but may soon be selling what he sees. Wired magazine’s “Threat Level” blog says OnStar, a vehicle tracking service owned by General Motors, emailed subscribers this week alerting them to a change in policy that allows the company to sell customer data to anyone they choose, even after the service is canceled."It seems everyone, everyone, from the government to Facebook to Onstar and who knows who all, is bound and determined to get information on us and sell it to the highest bidder. Links: http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2011/09/21/onstar-to-sell-customer-location-and-other-data/; http://www.bing.com/search?q=onstar+selling+data&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC

Interactive, online newspaper map

I got this in an email today.  Perhaps you've already seen it:

Go to this site, you just put your mouse on a city anywhere in the world and the newspaper headlines pop up:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

Double click and the page gets larger...you can read the entire paper on some if you click on the right place. You can spend forever here.

Also, if you look at the European papers, for instance, the far left side of Germany will pop up as The Stars & Stripes (European edition, of course). Additionally, this site changes each day with the publication of new editions of the paper.

Pretty cool, really, isn't it?

The things they come up with.

It seems we have all the information in the world, nearly, but we still don’t know much or we just aren’t very bright.  We have all this information about our world but we don't seem to be able to solve our problems.

We have data but not solutions.  Data but not wisdom.

The House vote on de-funding NPR today

 Congress is rather famously--infamously, to me and a lot of us--today voting on whether to de-fund NPR (originally National Public Radio).

This drives me nearly crazy.

We fund churches and religions and all kinds of goofy institutions that merely call themselves "church", by way of insane tax breaks, then we give federal tax dollars to some nonsensical things called "faith-based institutions" (thanks very much, Dubya) but we want to de-fund this huge source of more logical, calm, clear-minded, rational news gatherers that serve this country so bloody well?

And for that matter, what they do for the arts and so, for all Americans, shouldn't be overlooked, either.

Today, on that very same NPR, there was a story about American soldiers who aren't getting Purple Heart medals even though they've gotten concussions from front-line wars and explosions.  The military is denying them.

If NPR weren't around, if this funding goes away, who is going to report on this kind of thing?  This information wouldn't exist but for NPR and the CPB and this federal funding.

There's another report out right now by and from NPR on "How Offshore Tax Havens Save Corporations Billions".  And you know what?  As citizens of this country, we need to know this stuff.  Does anyone think ABC, NBC, CBS or--laughably--Fox "News" is going to report on such a thing?

Hell no they wouldn't.

So you and I wouldn't know how this part of our tax laws and government is working.  Or, rather, not working, in this case.

Sure, corporate Amerika hates this high-brow information source because they don't want the likes of Bill Moyers and his reporting or the new "Need to Know" television program.  The less we know about corporations and what corporations do within our government and so, to us and the country, the happier the corporations are and the more tax breaks and cozy deals they get from their pals inside the government, whom they buy with "campaign contributions."

No NPR?  What's next?  No Corporation for Public Broadcasting?  No PBS?

Allow me to post some quotes here:

Jefferson, Education and the Franchise, by Professor Thomas Jewett 

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)

". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)


From that same Professor Thomas Jewett, writing in Jefferson, Education and the Franchise:

The preparation of the voter so that he might express his opinion by means of the ballot, thus insuring political liberty, was one of the main goals of Jefferson's plan for education which asserted four basic principles:

1. "that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment.
2. that it cannot function without wise and honest officials.
3. that talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition.
4. that the children of the poor must be thus educated at common expense." (as cited in Padover, 1952, p. 43)

Here, conversely, is but one example why corporations and their Republican lackeys don't want you and I to have the CPB, PBS, NPR or knowledge and information about what they're doing to, with and in our government:


"You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for."  --David Attenborough 


The more we know and so, the more we vote and act, regardless of the topic, the less the corporations can get away with, ladies and gentlemen.


And they'll be only too happy to do just that--get away with all they can.


Keeping you and I ignorant suits them very nicely, thank you very much.


Links: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/npr-funding-vote_n_837014.html
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/jefferson.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2313338
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/17/134619750/how-offshore-tax-havens-save-companies-billions?ft=1&f=1001
Click here to access C-SPAN's live video stream. 

170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting

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Quote of the day II--who doesn't feel this?

"Here's the thing with this new technology. I think it's incredibly effective. I just don't think it's made anyone much happier. If anything, we are now always connected but we don't know what we're connected to. It's just an endless stream of information." --Gary Shteyngart, author Super Sad True Love Story Link to original post: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128872279

Calm, lucid and intelligent analysis of both sides of issues

It seems that PBS is one of the last bastions of what I describe above--calm, lucid and intelligent--truly "fair and ballanced"--reporting and information.

And with health care reform being prposed right now and debated nearly ad infinitum, it also seems true the we, as Americans, need good information sources on what's happening and being proposed.

With that in mind, I feel it important to get word out that the local PBS station, KCPT, is broadcasting a formal "Special Report on Health Care" this Thursday evening at 8:30 pm.

We all need to know what's going on, as I said.

I don't even think the average American knows how bad our current health care system is, really. This should be able to help.

Let's all have a good week.

Link: http://kcpt.org/

"Did you know?": A presentation given to an executive conference for Sony

Moving on

We are in such a huge era of change, financially and technologically and people just have little idea, it seems, about what's going on and where we're headed.

I've felt that one of the great things that's happening to us, concerning the environment, is the elimination of newspapers.

Delivering news daily on sheets of new, virgin paper simply makes no good sense. It's antiquated and destructive.

We should get our news online as soon as possible and then power all those computers with solar energy from photovoltaic cells and do away with the power companies.

That's fodder for another entry.

What's really unfortunate about eliminating newspapers is that it does away with the Fourth Estate.

Hell, we almost don't have anyone now, to inform us of what our government is doing nationally and internationally.

With all that this, Bush Administration has gotten away with in these last 8 years, it seems more likely than ever that governments could and would, possibly, in nightmarish form, get away with whatever they want since no one would be there, in strength, to report their actions and activities.

Would the Nixon administration have fallen even as late as it did if not for 2 reporters at the Washington Post, doing research and digging and persevering?

The conclusion of almost everyone is no.

Besides the somewhat "universal experience" and information that we all get as a culture, this is a very real issue and problem for us, culturally, nationally.

I think the consensus is, too, that, even with a proliferation of blogs, they don't--and won't--have the power of The New York Times or other media.

And sure, maybe this will change and some other reporting structure will come into being but it seems the collapse of a great deal of print journalism is going to fail before these other organizations come into being.

In short order, things are changing and going to change a great deal more.

The "man on the street" isn't too much aware of what's going on, too, I believe.


More on change soon...