Or not. Smell the fresh air. Just don't inhale it.
It is toxic. Multnomah and Washington counties fall within the top 10 in the country for air-borne cancer risk.
From the 2002 EPA Air Toxics Assesment
Jun 30, 2009
Jun 25, 2009
Usually I don't get too weepy for most celebrities passing. For some reason this one actually strikes me a little. Maybe it's the child connections (my whole family loved Michael. I remember watching the premieres of his videos all together). Maybe it's the fact that he's the only performer from my past that has an album (in his case two) on my Ipod. Anyway, here's to Michael.
If like me you feel you don't see enough of your fellow MvC bloggers than please attend the First Annual MvC Group Activity! It will be a learning experience that I feel we all can learn from.
Jun 21, 2009
Jun 18, 2009
You decide: was the gun helmet the best invention of all time? Before you make up your mind, notice that the gun's heat shield also doubles as a frying pan--what you got on that Johnny Appleseed?
--courtesy of My Favorite Blog
Jun 16, 2009
I finally watched this. It was, as I expected, completely one-sided and not very informative. It was edited very well, but it included cheap shots and low blows (e.g. text captions on top of Mahr's conversation with snarky stuff he forgot or wouldn't say in person, out-and-out fake translations, fish-barrel-shots at Tom Cruise even) that make Michael Moore look like a Erroll Morris. And while it was generally not very funny, Mahr did manage to catch a few people in some funny quotes.
Kirk Cameron: "learn to circumnavigate a person's intellect"
Some congressman (chuckling): "you don't have to pass an IQ test to be in congress"
These were the highlights. My opinion of Mahr is he is best on stage or on his TV show where he can react and riff with genuine energy. In a structured film format there is no improvement - I'm left thinking "thats all you got?" Wit and intelligence shouldn't be confused.
Speaking of Moore, I also watched Sicko recently and that was far better. Maybe its not a fair comparison, but, as an unabashed liberal, these are two people who I generally agree with on most everything. One made a stimulating documentary that informed me of a few things and made me feel a genuine frustration with our society. The other was Religulous, which just re-iterated the stereotypical position of educated liberals without adding any depth to the analysis in any way. If anything, Mahr undermines the position by examining the issue superficially when not just self-righteously mocking.
Jun 15, 2009
The decision to end the USD's role as worldwide reserve currency is imminent. Some are projecting it to have catastrophic outcomes for the US economy.
The sticking point with all these countries is the US ability to print unlimited amounts of dollars. Overspending by US consumers on imports in excess of exports, US buy-outs of foreign companies and real estate, and the dollars that the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These agencies then face a hard choice: either to recycle these dollars back to the United States by purchasing US Treasury bills, or to let the “free market” force up their currency relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets and hence creating domestic unemployment and business insolvency.
...
The United States is now the world’s largest debtor yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor economies. US interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.
Seems strange that is hardly being discussed. Perhaps its the inevitability of it all or the complexity. Maybe the world will keep thinking the U.S. Economy is "too big to fail". Best we stop antagonizing everyone so the mutually beneficial bailout goes down. Thats just one thing that Bill Mahr and every other "this isn't what I voted for" liberal needs to take time to appreciate about Obama. You can't solve the economy, fix healthcare, and address climate change in a few months as the bill for 30 years of bad decisions comes due.
Daphnis, 8 kilometers(5 miles)across, occupies an inclined orbit within the 42-kilometer (26-mile) wide Keeler Gap in Saturn's outer A ring. Recent analyses by imaging scientists published in the Astronomical Journal illustrate how the moon's gravitational pull perturbs the orbits of the particles forming the gap's edge and sculpts the edge into waves that have both horizontal and vertical components.
--http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
Jun 12, 2009
Jun 5, 2009
News broke this morning (to me at least) that was not surprising but yet another example of a trend that's been happening for a while now. Apparently during the building boom, and especially in areas rebuilding from hurricanes, supplies of domestically produced drywall ran low and a crap load was imported from, yep you guessed it, China. Turns out the Chinese drywall has strontium sulfite in it, which breaks down and releases sulfurous gas. Sounds, and I'm sure smells, great! Now people are having health problems, copper pipes are turning black, etc, etc, etc.
Now I know this is somewhat of a unique situation, since the domestic stock was used up first, but it's definitely a symptom of our country's drive for cheap ass crap. This drives me crazy (and I know I'm as guilty as the next person. I freak out when I have to pay more than $5 for a t-shirt). We try and save a buck. We buy the cheapest crap available, and throw it away when it inevitably breaks in a short time. And out we go to buy more crap. If we would just do what older generations did when things weren't so cheap and saved up to buy quality it would go a long way to solving some problems, both personal and global.
For example, I recently saved and splurged on a fancy vacuum for my shop. It's made by Fein, a Italian company, and not only is attractive it works incredibly well. It's quiet (far quieter than any vacuum I've heard before), it's powerful, and well engineered (since it's meant for woodworking there is an outer filter that catches the larger debris and keeps it from clogging up the inner HEPA filter. A simple but smart feature). I could have spent 5-10 times less and gone to some big box store and picked up some piece of junk that would have done it's job poorly for a time before it's preordained death. But this has become a personal effort for me, to save up and buy something well made and well designed.
All right, that's all pretty obvious and straight forward (kinda like my last post, sorry for wasting your time with obvious observations). Here's where I get into the half-baked theories. I would posit that the drive for cheap stuff has played a much bigger role in the current situation facing the lower and middle classes than it's given credit for. We have a situation where every person feels like they should be able to afford all this stuff that is considered essential but in truth is all luxury. After all, it wasn't that long ago that a car was considered a luxury, and perhaps it should be again. Now we have all this crap that's supposed to be cheap, how do you achieve that cheapness? You cut costs. You cut material costs, you cut design costs, and you cut labor costs. Those first two explain the quality issues, and I think the last one explains much of economic situation.
It's a two pronged attack on the working classes. The first being that many manufacturing jobs are out sourced to other countries where it's cheaper and the treatment standards are more lax. The effect is clear: Lost jobs. The second is if the company stays here. They still have to face the reality of reducing costs to be able to meet the prices consumers expect. They can only reduce labor costs so much, so the burden falls on other areas. The best current example of this is the auto industries. The unions have the industry pinned on the labor costs, so instead the cut quality and put out crappy cars. People learn not to buy these crappy cars and bye-bye companies.
How do you solve this? I say we look to coffee for a model (now I haven't done the research to see if the claims are true, but for sake of argument...). When I go and buy my coffee beans I always spend the extra money to get beans that are not only organic, but also come from fair trade sources. Supposedly, and I like to give these companies the benefit of the doubt, when they buy the beans from the growers they pay them what amounts to a sustainable and livable price. It enables these growers (many of whom live in areas where one of the few profitable crops are drugs) to live a legal, safe, and financially viable life. I say we need to do the same with all products. We need to end the glut of cheap crap. When on a whim you decide you need a new blender you don't go out to the nearest chain store and pick up the cheap 
plastic crap. Instead you save and buy a nice blender. One that was designed by a skilled designer and built buy a skilled worker who was paid a fair wage by a company that cared about there product enough to use quality materials.
Will this cost more? Hell yeah it will. But if we can make the adjustment I think it could make a huge difference. Can you imagine a world where you buy one toaster and use it the rest of your life? I for one can dream about it.
Jun 3, 2009
A thought occurred to me while listening to some music. Okay, it didn't just occur to me but like most ideas had been swimming around for some time and finally came to clarity. I was thinking about how it's such a disappointment when a band puts out an excellent album and then produces nothing on par with it again (in specific I am thinking of whole albums, not songs. Much easier to write a couple of good songs than it is to write a good album). My example (of course there are many) would be Cursive, though maybe not since I just looked at their discography and realized they have more albums than I knew about. Anyway, Domestica is a decent album which shows promise. Ugly Organ is a great album, and among my favorites of all time. Happy Hollow sucks and was utterly disappointing. You get the point. A pretty common story, common enough to get me thinking about why it happens (this of course applies to all things in life but music is just the example here).
What makes a good artist? Seems like there are two common paths. The first is natural talent. You are born with a proclivity to doing your art. The second is hard work. Perhaps the Gods didn't gift you with innate skill, instead you work your ass off and become skilled.
Where this two paths can end badly is pretty well established. For those born with it, success can and does often lead to distractions. They've never had to work hard to do their art well, and suddenly all this crap is thrown their way, be it groupies, money, drugs, whatever (In sports, injury can be a good example of this). Suddenly they do have to work hard just to maintain what they had been doing. Turns out hard work is hard, most end up succumbing to the distractions and their works falters.
For the hard workers, the problem is different but no less sad. To put it bluntly, there's a ceiling to their ability. Despite what many of us have been taught, not all of us are capable of the same things. So work as hard as you want, you're eventually going to max out your ability. After all, art, as with most things, is only partially about the physical skills needed to do it. There are always things that just can't be learned be it vision, aesthetics, insight, etc.
So then, how come there are great artists in all fields? Simply some people take both paths. They are gifted with the innate abilities and the drive to work hard. Distractions don't derail them. Their ceilings aren't as clear cut. They give themselves to their art and achieve greatness. Of course this isn't how artists are portrayed. The artist is often shown as a living frivolous lives, partying it up with drugs and women. While I won't deny the truth in this, what they miss is the artist devotion. They are married to their art. Only through the luck of genetics and the dedication of a devotee can an artist achieve greatness.
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