September 13, 2009 archive

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution

crossposted from The Hillbilly Report, also available in orange

From some online dictionary somewhere:

Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance

So: (1) Public Choice

“No Taxation without Representation”. Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing UHC into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.

A Social Flycatcher

One possibility is that I make up stories. I dream them up, I fantasize them up, I just make them up. They come from me, from my brain or my mind or my heart. If that’s where the come from, that’s ok with me. I’m convinced that dreams, fantasies, stories are really important, often more important than physical objects and things you can see, so if they spontaneously arise from somewhere inside me, and I write them down, that’s fine with me.

But there’s another possibility. One that’s more exciting. I like this other possibility a lot better.

I spent two weeks in Mexico, north of Tulum, Quintana Roo, writing every day. I was trying to finish the first draft of my second novel, working title “Tulum.” Where did the ideas in that draft come from? Did they come from me? Or did they come from somewhere else?

When I first arrived at Bahia Soliman, where I was going to write, I noticed a particular kind of bird that was very pretty, very unusual for me. It’s unusual for me because it only lives in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. It’s called a “social flycatcher.” I don’t know why it’s called that. Its Wiki explains all kinds of things but not its name.

I think it’s called “social” because it doesn’t immediately fly away when it’s near people. Or other birds and animals. That’s just what I think. Anyway, I was wondering about this beautiful bird, and whether it might be near me because it was carrying stories for me and wanted to give some of them to me.

Whenever I got to the point in writing when I couldn’t sit at the computer any longer, whenever I got stuck, whenever I had to figure something out about what I was writing, whenever I needed new ideas, whenever I needed inspiration or endurance, I’d go out for a walk. And maybe I’d see one of the social flycatchers.

I liked looking at this very pretty bird. Maybe, I thought, it was carrying the information, the story I needed to write down. And sure enough, after I went for my walk, I would find that I was able to continue to write, that I was able to go on with my writing, that I knew what to type.

This process went on for about two weeks. For about 15,000 words (I had a lot of words before I got to Mexico). And then one day, I thought, “Ah hah. That is the finish line, that is the end of this book, that is how it ends. I will finish this up tomorrow or the next day or the day after. I can see the conclusion, the last paragraph. Finally it has appeared. That’s where and how this book ends.”

After that I didn’t see any of these birds again. No more social flycatchers. Not a one.

There are a lot of possibilities here. Maybe it was time for them to move on to another place to feed. Maybe it was time for them to move west or north on their migration. Maybe they ate all of the bugs where I was. Maybe having passed on whatever information they had for me, they decided to go and help somebody else, somebody else who was dreaming something up. Maybe somebody who was writing, or painting, or writing music, or making something.

I prefer that they went on to help somebody else.

Wherever they might now be, I want to thank them for all of their help. But, I’m sorry to say, I don’t know how to thank them except to write about what a wonderful assistance they were to me and to acknowledge their help.

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cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

The U.S. News will never ask these basic questions to which there remains no sufficient answers for, even 8 years after the September 11 event.

Thanks to the Asian Times, someone still cares about reality: Fifty Questions On 9/11

(Previously posted at DailyKos and Get Energy Smart Now)

The road between Kampala and Entebbe

Larry Rhodes joined Rotary International four years ago after visiting Tororo, Uganda, where Rotarians were meeting to discuss their rocket stove project.

“One of the enduring images from my first trip four years ago was the huge amount of plastic “grocery” bags discarded along the road and in particularly at the trading centers,” says Rhodes. “The multi-nationals had introduced them in Uganda only a few years before. As they have no infrastructure for hiding their waste, it was just dumped alongside the road.

“The impression I had was that there was no recycling of the plastic bags–with the exception that children would wrap them tightly into a ball and use them as a soccer ball. To its credit, the Government outlawed the use of these plastic bags about two years ago.”

Kampala and Environmental Justice

Travel with me to Kampala and its environs to examine the issues confronting east African communities as they battle towards attaining environmental justice.

Throughout this virtual journey, I will be incorporating a few of the  17 principles of environmental justice authored by Robert Bullard, who is recognized by many as the “Father of Environmental Justice.”