Last post we wrote about candidates for representative to the U.S. Congress from Washington’s 7th District. I want to give a tip of the hat to Nisi Shawl here, as it was her interpretative reading of candidate profiles that inspired us to speak out.
Indeed, I want to instigate a write-in campaign: Nisi in the 7th on the Punctuation Party ticket. Anyone who can’t write a candidate statement with proper punctuation and without excessive use of capitals gets a vote of NO CONFIDENCE. As Nisi says, “Punctuation is sexy. People who can punctuate are sexier.”
Although he immediately gets a NO CONFIDENCE vote for numerous and glaring errors in punctuation, Washington gubernatorial candidate Javier O. Lopez makes an interesting claim:
“I have invented an air engine that has the power to operate an automobile while relying on air as its fuel source. Adoption of this technology would mean an end to reliance on fossil fuels, stopping carbon-monoxide emissions, pollution and global warming.” Sweet. How’s that work again?
Nisi thinks cynically that Mr. J-Lo’s air engine will prove to be nothing more newfangled than a sail affixed to the roof of your favorite hoopty. But she is aching to be proven wrong. Continue Reading »
As devout readers of just about everything that dares pass before our eyeballs, Nisi Shawl and I were talking about the recently arrived Washington Voters’ Guide. Surely a favorite of Puckleberry Houndsters nationwide for its audacious irrepressibility, this political season’s Voters’ Guide is blessed by candidates who write a finely deliquescent prose that, as perennially, includes ALL CAPS, abundant exclamation points, and a complete; disregard for the niceties of punctuation!
Indeed, as regards the latter, Nisi and I have established a bar over which any candidate must pass in order to win our support, to whit: an individual running for office sure as fuck better be able to punctuate a sentence. Or at least have the sense to consult a friend who does. And if the candidate doesn’t have such a friend, then we don’t want any part of him or her.
This season there are several candidates willing to serve as representative from Washington’s 7th District in the U.S. Congress. For sheer Nick Bottomish naiveté and go-forthness, it’s hard to beat Goodspaceguy Nelson. Continue Reading »
USA Hemp Museum presents great pictures of live cannabis plants over Willie and Amy Nelson’s song, “A Peaceful Solution,” performed by Amy Nelson and Rattlesnake Annie. The bill was introduced by Cong. Barney Frank. H.R. 5842 is the 2008 version of the medical marijuana bill. Support the congresspeople who support cannabis.
Related: The Lotus Eco Elise uses a host of sustainable materials to make up the body and trim, including hemp, “eco wool,” sisal and a new high-tech, water-based paint that can be applied by hand. It’s fitted with a set of flexible solar panels on the hard top to help power the electrical systems, reducing the drain on the engine and improving efficiency. There is a new green shift light on the instrument panel that assists drivers in maximizing fuel efficiency.
All of these elements reduce the Eco Elise’s footprint throughout its lifecycle, limit the amount of energy used during production. Lotus looked to reduce the car’s environmental impact by focusing on how it is made as well as how it performs. Link.
So I was reading the Bay Area Guardian, something I do exactly as regularly as I vote, and I ran across something that I thought might interest you. It seems San Francisco has a Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force to explore life after fossil fuels. Of course few take them seriously.
And I replied:
Do you mean that people locally don’t take the task force in SF seriously? Or don’t take post-oil seriously?
The peak oilers are sometimes hard to listen to because they’re so apocalyptically pessimistic. They see the energy packed into a hydrocarbon molecule and moan, What can possibly replace this? They don’t see anything on the shelf that can replace oil, so assume we’re all doomed. I do admire their historical analysis, tho, and I think Hubbert was right; well, he was right, US production peaked right when he said it would. A year or so ago the Saudi Minister of Energy said the planet was running out of oil and had to get ready. And now the King of Saudi Arabia has created a $10-billion endowment for a new university, sci and tech research, that will be a mini-kingdom unto itself in order to free it (and thus attract students and faculty) of Sharia, the heinous religious law of fundamentalist Islam. The king’s reasoning was explicit: Saudi Arabia won’t be an energy economy for much longer and needs to transform itself into a knowledge economy. Amen, brother. At last we agree on something. Continue Reading »
Pete Guither has a great Salon-affiliated blog which aggregates and comments on drug war news. Americans’ weird and deeply twisted propensity to treat each other as guilty until proven innocent has resulted in the highest incarceration rate among “developed” countries. Fact: the U.S. is home to about five percent of the world’s population, and 25 percent of the world’s prison population. (Fat America: those figures are about the same for U.S. consumption of oil.)
In regulated markets, disputes are handled by lawyers. In the black market, disputes are handled by guns. I have no love for lawyers, but I’d rather get hit by a stray brief than a stray bullet.
As anyone who has tried to quit smoking knows, dependence is hardest to overcome during difficult or stressful times. That must be why, when the government helps drug abusers quit, they arrest them and take away their job, possessions, and children.
And the line-drive question:
When a government uses military personnel, equipment, and tactics against its own citizens, is it time to call it a Civil War rather than a Drug War?
The percentage of Americans who regularly smoke cannabis has fluctuated, but it hasn’t significantly changed in years. Yet, again, it isn’t a political issue of any importance. At best, it gets tapped in as an invisible plank in Democratic health care policy. Cannabis continues to be the plant that dare not speak its name.
Yesterday, Viviane Reding, European Union commissioner for information society and media, issued a report sanctioning a “transparent” DRM framework for the EU. This irresponsible and senseless report comes just a day before Sony BMG announced that they would join Warner Music Group, EMI, and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group in selling DRM-free music downloads in the United States.
Help us take action now by reading and signing our open letter. Our signed letter will be sent to the commission’s office, and will add weight to the dozens of phone calls that will be made next week to her office demanding that she retract her statement and letting her know that we oppose any attempt by the EU to sanction, promote, or endorse DRM technology platforms.
And this heartbreak from Kathy at Olympic Cellars. Readers from away should know that a certain micro-continent some millions of years ago slammed into the bulk of what is now Washington state to form what we call the Olympic Peninsula. Beautiful place, and I can’t wait to get over there to sample some wine from Olympic Cellars. Continue Reading »
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.
“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”
No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.
The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs — camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.
You can type your own message into the placards from Pennebroker’s famous 1966 film of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” You can read Puck’s message or make your own. This is — obviously, I guess — a marketing thang, so let me help out by suggesting you buy six or seven Bob Dylan CDs. Puck could use the lunch money.
Since this Dylan thing plays on the edge of the Creative Commons (in a strictly controlled way, of course — there’s really nothing being placed in the Commons there), let me point you to the pirates over at Torrentfreak, who have leaked something like 700 megs of email from MediaDefender, a group that is playing the BitTorrent field like undercover cops. Are they collaborators, hitmen, or what for the record and movie industry? In any case, one way to keep the Commons open is to make like a hydra and propagate.
Fox is using intimidation tactics on its affiliates to get them to run pro-war in Iran (read it again: Iran) programming. Fox’s “political experts” (AKA poli-spurts) cite a build up of nuclear weapons as a good reason to start the bombing in five minutes. Read all about it here and sign the networx open letter here. And then go watch some videos over at the Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute.
Although he immediately gets a NO CONFIDENCE vote for numerous and glaring errors in punctuation, Washington gubernatorial candidate Javier O. Lopez makes an interesting claim:
Snips from 
You can type your own message into the placards from Pennebroker’s famous 1966 film of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” You can read 
CDs. Puck could use the lunch money.