Author: Brian

Great little movie of a small plane that takes off and lands in less than 100 feet. Small crowd elated. Though private aviation is hampered by extremely high liability insurance coverage, many dedicated experimenters continue to innovate.

http://www.flixxy.com/short-field-takeoff-landing-airplane.htm

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Wanting to reduce remote and tribal poverty without huge industrial cost or impact, more than 15 years ago I set up a program to fabricate 10,000 Short Take Off & Landing (STOL) airplanes in the Philippines. Some components were European, some American, with fabrication planned near Manila.

Because of isolation due to a lack of roads or other access to income, indigenous and artisan regions are hampered, youth run to city slums and locals become suspicious and angry – a permanent challenge for island nations.

Even with a cargo of only 500-1000lbs, for many regions a STOL freight infrastructure is a smart policy.

(But o’ woe, it seemed that somebody big in PI was against the idea. There’s always somebody big in PI. We learned the containerized shipment of our sample plane was held in Philippine Customs and we were unable to release it after more than two years….!

Gamers and e-tailers also quake learning Intel’s production stopped at its chip facility just 55 miles from the epicenter of the massive earthquake that rattled Sichuan, China.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. – Doris Lessing

U.S. Soldiers Launch Campaign to Convert Iraqis to Christianity

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080609/sharlet

as broad-minded, rigorous and fair as Roger Williams

liberty of conscience–the term she prefers to religion–as Locke and all the founders who followed. “We should not focus only on the eighteenth-century arguments of the framers,” she writes, “ignoring this prior, and distinctly American, tradition, quintessentially embodied in Williams’ The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution,” a 1644 text that was remarkable for the empathy it extended to persecutors and persecuted alike and its call for government to refrain from enforcing orthodoxy. Recognition of good-faith differences of conviction, he believed, revealed a surer path to civil peace and liberty of conscience. The two values, so often seen as pitted against each other, were in Williams’s account intertwined.

Williams, Nussbaum argues, is not only undervalued but also misunderstood, remembered, if at all, for “one (uncharacteristic) phrase he used once in a letter, the ‘wall of separation’ between religion and state.” He’s hardly remembered for even that; the phrase is most commonly attributed to Jefferson, who deployed it a century and a half later in his famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, a text that is such a scourge of Christian nationalism that a group of fundamentalist pastors from around the country recently sought to exorcise the spirit of Jefferson from the church’s foundation stones. It was Williams, as devout as Jefferson was skeptical but just as heretical according to the standards of his time, who coined the phrase along with another still in use, and far more important to understanding his thought: “soule rape.”

By this, Williams meant the imposition of beliefs or practices on another’s conscience, another’s ability to seek truth. Seeking truth, he believed, mattered as much–more, for the purposes of governance–than finding it.

Holy warriors in the US Armed Forces Separation of church and state being dissolved within the military, May 18, 2008

Active-duty military personnel are prohibited from taking part in partisan politics.

“The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times,” wrote Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.”

Mullen’s essay appears in the coming issue of Joint Force Quarterly. Veteran officers said they could not remember when a similar “all-hands” letter had been issued to remind military personnel to remain outside, if not above, contentious political debate.eteran officers said they could not remember when a similar “all-hands” letter had been issued to remind military personnel to remain outside, if not above, contentious political debate.

“As the nation prepares to elect a new president,” Mullen wrote, “we would all do well to remember the promises we made: to obey civilian authority, to support and defend the Constitution and to do our duty at all times.”

“Keeping our politics private is a good first step,” he added. “The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia.” [story at IHT]

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff noted that “part of the deal we made when we joined up was to willingly subordinate our individual interests to the greater good of protecting vital national interests.”

Bill Moyers ponders judicial activism, better called a red herring methinks to fold the RNC into local electioneering. He asks, “How Strictly Should The Constitution Be Followed?“

Although I’m not sure strict or followed are words to attach to The Constitution, I answered with my tiny bit,

I have come to treasure any activism: All Activism. Noise so loud may better us. Inactivism? Now that’s annoying.

I like Judith’s view:

The constitution is open to interpretation – ALL judges are political activists – that’s why we need judges who interpret the constitution’s original purpose – to protect the people from KINGS – Today’s KINGS wear corporate dress and flag pins.

And then Jaden reminds us we are merely a cacophony we call human:

Judges must base all their decisions on the exact wording of the law. That’s the law. The problem is people have different interpretations of exact words. Remember Bill Clinton saying that it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

Of course it would benefit us to win a future without agony. With more than 70% of us soon only living in coastal cities, it’s hard to see a world ahead of greenish communities, organic harvests and sustainable fuel.

If the future is vague, the present is clear. Jim Kunstler struck a fitting phrase in his essay on Localism. He reports our leaders are offering only “a terrible grandiose inertia”.

Tips a’hearty to JP for webbing these:

literary makeovers
http://literarymakeovers.blogspot.com

wittist LOL
http://lolmanuscripts.blogspot.com/

It’s good to be good, important to separate right from wrong and if the world makes it so, kick ass. It’s better to bring love to the mundane, break its reluctance with all your effort.

I caught a comment sent to Bill Moyers you’ll enjoy too, because it says,

Dear friend,
I feel we’ve grown old together so forgive me if I use the familiar form of communication. Your programs have always been a blithe light in the otherwise drear gloom of broadcast TV. I’ve experienced so many emotions while watching and listening. I’ve often been angry, frustrated and disappointed with my government, myself and my fellow Americans. But, never have I been indifferent. Tonight, as I listened to Melody Petersen I found an inconsolable sense of sadness sweep over me. What has become of the land of my forebears that we have allowed ourselves to devolve to such a state? I do not enjoy the emotions you have caused me to experience over the years but I thank you from the depth of my being for each and every one of them.

Good night and be well, my friend.

To join our splendid mystery…

A steering heart can give novice citizens their break & their talent.

Young ago, I was picked up by a silver lady because she saw me sweating up a hill with a steel toolbox. Turns out she was a top architect smart enough to see a good young man. A bit later I was fixing planter boxes for politicians and peeling wallpaper for lawyers and erecting museum exhibits for all to see. A little trust made me real.

Years go by, and 50 times I take a stranger, but 40 times I’ve been stupid and wrong and hurt and cheated, choosing idiots I couldn’t imagine were so horrid.

Nevertheless, I am not here to please me, but better every chance.

[As I cannot stand celebrity, I cannot bear ideology.]

When I told my father, who was a lawyer, that I was thinking of studying philosophy, he responded with an ironic, “Now, that’s really something. I see you’re not going to be happy with any kind of work that isn’t in direct connection with the truth.”

I was discomfited by his observation. He knew what he was talking about. Then again, there was my enthusiasm for football.
…
In the early 1970s you were taught at the universities of Harvard and Berkeley. Could you tell us what the atmosphere was like?

Yes

Voice never television…

“Then, all of a sudden, events were occurring that were very real but which we hadn’t dared to imagine.’

“…social-democratic goodwill in search of a credible-pragmatic formulation”.

“As if values were something that might exist or not!”

“I’m imagining a son, who has his own family, visiting his elderly mother in hospital where she lies in an irreversible coma. The doctor asks if he’d prefer them to pull out the plugs before or after the holidays. Here, the traditional response of “we’ll abide by the judgement of science” doesn’t hold. We are the ones who have to make the decision. If somebody has to kill her it must be us, the people who love her most.”

“…there are no pure facts that are independent of values.”

What I don’t like is four dollars on the way to seven.

What turns me on is finding a way to live here.

What I don’t like is silly men with nothing to do but applause.

What I do like is wherever Jefferson turns up others.

[link]

“Strong arms and strongmen cannot mask America’s relative decline, since they are the chief symbols of it.” – Parag Khanna

Khanna also says we’re not very smart at using the power we still have.

From New World Order at the Washington Post,

America’s impact is less in evidence almost everywhere, partly because our foreign aid budget is relatively small; as a result, the United States can still punish adversaries militarily, but its ability or willingness to reward allies and thus shape their behavior is rather limited. Our main flaw, however, is that we have not adjusted our mindset to the post-Cold War era. While we pursue a “global war” on terror, for example, the leaders of many other nations think we face a terrorist “challenge” that calls for a carefully calibrated economic and diplomatic — as well as military — response.

Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country.

At PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal, Melody Petersen says:

“A very powerful technique that the drug companies spend millions and millions of dollars on is hiring physicians to give lectures to other physicians on their drugs. It looks like the physician is up there giving his independent position on this drug, but often he’s been trained by an advertising agency. His slide presentation has been created by an ad agency. It looks like independent science, but it’s not….”

As a result of this corruption, more than 50% of insured Americans are buying prescriptions for chronic conditions.

Medco’s data show that last year, 51 percent of American children and adults were taking one or more prescription drugs for a chronic condition, up from 50 percent the previous four years and 47 percent in 2001. Most of the drugs are taken daily, although some are needed less often.

The company examined prescription records from 2001 to 2007 of a representative sample of 2.5 million customers, from newborns to the elderly.

Medication use for chronic problems was seen in all demographic groups:

– Almost two-thirds of women 20 and older.

– One in four children and teenagers.

– 52 percent of adult men.

– Three out of four people 65 or older.

“Unless we do things to change the way we’re managing health in this country … things will get worse instead of getting better,” predicted Jones, a heart specialist and dean of the University of Mississippi’s medical school. [story]

McBush lists his goals to 2013:

1. less violence in Iraq and Afghanistan,
2. Osama bin Laden dead or captured,
3. spending curbed by veto,
4. flat tax,
5. temporary worker program,
6. British-style question periods in Congress [!],
7. end of mindless, paralyzing partisan rancor [!],
8. end of permanent campaigning [!],
9. a “League of Democracies” to replace the UN [!],
10. halt ‘signing statements’,
11. charter schools,
12. more commercial health care,
13. 20 new nuclear reactors.

McCain said: “The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy…” and also denied the war would be won by 2013 because there’s no timetable.

“Campaigns and the media collaborated as architects of the modern presidential campaign, and we deserve equal blame for the regret we feel from time to time over its less-than-inspirational features,” he said.

Sums it up I think.

And oh yes, he announced his campaign for a second term. [story]

Anything and everything for the only friends he has left, Bush slipped a “controversial ingredient into his $770 million aid package to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.”

The value or detriment of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms… [story]

Alone in the House, the man fails to see the world.

The U.S. music industry issued nearly 80,000 new albums, of which 54,500 were in the physical format while 25,200 were in the digital format only. That represents a 5.2% increase over the 75,744 issued in 2006.

Of the nearly 80,000 releases issued in 2007, roughly 60 titles accounted for 30% of all new release sales, which totaled 70 million units. Meanwhile, nearly 62,000 new releases each sold less than 100 units.

Of the total new releases, nearly 11,000 albums were issued by the majors. Those albums sold nearly 151 million units, or 80% of total sales, which were about 180 million units last year.

While 4 million different tracks were downloaded last year, only 303 tracks scanned over 250,000 units while nearly 3.5 million tracks sold less than 100 units.

Less than 100 units??
More music being released, the majority of which doesn’t sell. [story]

Actor Danny Glover has joined with Colorblind to produce video games that will not promote hate.

“Many existing games feature Western soldiers shooting Arabs, Afghans and other ethnic ‘enemies,’ as well as bad guys who are consistently of African descent, Latino, Arab or Muslim in general,”

“We think that only reinforces negative stereotypes.

“We’re introducing different types of heroes …to fight corruption, not people of another race.”

Glover said, “I am also excited to be involved in creating heroes for other regions like South Asia and Africa that have been ignored or handled insensitively by the existing game developers.”

Most Americans who will not vote will say a vote is meaningless. Voting for McBush is meaningless.

He’s merely arranging chairs, such as reappointing former CIA director James Woolsey and reigniting the Committee on the Present Danger. Loose and unrestrained, Woolsey asks us to support the idea we are in World War IV.

Founded in 1950 to combat the “red menace” of communism, revived in the 70s, McBush brings back the same lawmakers, academics, and business people into his fight with “Islamic terrorism”. Among this post-Wolfowitz cadre, most seek to include Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Too satisfied raising themselves to take America along their potted rhetoric, the Committee is cited in 2004 in The Washington Post saying that Islamic terrorism had become the greatest danger to American freedom.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks awoke all Americans to the capabilities and brutality of our new enemy, but today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy’s evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and re-establishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East. The past struggle against communism differed in some ways from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But America’s freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same.

I don’t argue that militants truly endanger us, nor that we must sustain alert and emboldened action, but these pirates fail to help us.

Gas & bread prices, ominous portents of extinction, rising sea, volatile weather, staccato poverty, jets into buildings, war, insolvent leaders, argument, missive, moan, must scare our children.

A sofa of kids vaunt to say, No, How dare you? Severn Suzuki speaking at UN Earth Summit 1992.

I recommend this short video. A million+ have watched it, but still too few. Time Magazine updates her activity a few years later.

The 7.8 quake that shook China is a shift of the Tibetan plateau [wiki].

India crashes into Tibet, China is drawn under. The Indian plate moves north at speeds of around 150mm per year—much faster than any plate. [link] Because India is hitting head-on, the Tibetan plateau is developing splits, or rifts, that curve away from the axis of impact. The Indian subcontinent is sliding under Tibet and lifting the plateau, already the highest region on earth. [link]

Different parts of the Tibetan plateau were elevated at different times. Interestingly, the great Himalaya mountains uplifted significantly later and were below sea level at a time when the central plateau was already more than 4,500 meters (14,850 feet). [link]

Surface-wave tomography of southeastern Tibet reveal numerous east-west tectonic fractures as continents of Eurasia collide.

This quake struck from a depth of ten kilometres, says USGS. [story]

It’s silly to project trends, but few westerners know there have been several forceful earthquakes in Asia recently. “A 7.3 magnitude earthquake occurred in Japan not long ago. On the Chinese mainland, a 6.9 magnitude quake took place in Tibet in January, while March saw a 7.3 magnitude quake in Xinjiang and now a 7.8 magnitude quake in Wenchuan.” [link]

An astronaut’s pic of the Tibetan Plateau here.

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To remind us that San Francisco survives atop tectonic fractures, here’s a very impressive astronaut’s pic of California’s fault at Point Reyes.

The distinct blue line is the Tomales Bay over the rigorous San Andreas fault. The entire peninsula was once shifted 30 miles northward during one series of quakes – and may be remnant of lands near Australia as it’s circled the Pacific’s Ring of Fire.

Awarded top video from submissions to MoveOn:

“I’m a veteran, I served under President Ronald Reagan and under the first President Bush. I’ve been a Republican since before I could actually vote. We need somebody in the White House that is strong. We need somebody who’s gonna represent the left and the right, the Democrat and the Republican, everybody. I’m a lifelong Republican and I’m voting for Barack Obama.”

[youTube]

MoveOn selected ‘Your Brain on Hope’ as the Funniest Video too.

Around the world the number of democratic nations has slipped in the last years. Blaming the unattractive Bush Administration is the first thought, but more likely its growing tension under poverty and, not oddly, a weakening of organized protest while governments equip with militian suppression – much exported by the USA too oddly, really.

Russia should be a study in America. We wasted much of a Century on it and hoisted a living infrastructure of hierarchy over our democracy to knock down only a wall or two and sundry silo.

I enjoyed the earnest translation in this analysis of Putin:

More than …being a Stalin to oneself.

The right for committing a crime has become a part of privileges granted to the official. The state has become an instrument for satisfying needs of any of its public servants – from president to district police officer. Well, the needs are rather primitive: oil, impunity, and praising.

States are attractive posits.

This might lead to common chutzpah consulting but I agree that drive delivers disjointed people. Worse.

“By the time executives get married, take on a mortgage, raise kids, cope with the crabgrass, climb the corporate ladder, do their best to manage career pressures, build their net worth and get into their 40s, they’ve lost touch with what they believe in and care about most deeply.

This downward drift up the corporate ladder…

“If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.” – Bill Gates

Is it silly to say if the poor can help the rich and keep liars in office, the poor win?

So much to ponder here. This prince on his dais pleads we give ovens to pay diamonds for bread. Somehow cake is better.

Re-posting from 2007, I’m not yammering about greed and nonsense politics. I’m saying you and I did not crush our economy.

None of us laboring day to day in America did the horrid ruin we are. Unwatched crude and stupid folks we failed to teach, know little about, cannot find, let be rich; they screwed us, and repeatedly.

I’m reminding you not to blame poor folk nor the working all of us. Late payments are not housing’s slump. Rising wheat is not the price of bread.

The recent hurricane in the financial markets is blamed on mortgage loans to people unable to make their payments but is not blamed on people hiding these loans in Blue Ribbon packages while selling them offshore as top rated bonds.

I think the media failed miserably during the recent drop in global stock markets. Fear topped the headlines, editorials sent blame to all the wrong places, pundits invented diatribe that seldom identified the errors or the players.

Still details are lacking; we do not know the names or the divisions where our money has shrunk, but there are investigations underway in the offbalance sector of banks and financiers.

Banks and financial firms have two faces, core activity where activity is regulated and offsheet activity where activity is market driven – so-called free enterprise. Risk tolerance has been evolving in this area for several decades with most central regulators gradually inserting warning flags and balance sheet risk indicators rather than outright rules or constraints.

These gilt careers are seldom discussed in public. Ingenious packaging can make a quick fortune. Inventing financial products, not for the shopping center or the corner store but for the institutional trader, is one of the most promising careers on earth, until Ponzi shames us once again!

Foolish administration. Markets without regulation is license not nature.

If we’re stuck with bicycle transit, the fumes in our empty tank ought to flame our anger. If the French march for their holidays, let’s march for justice.