spydersden

Moving On to Wordpress

2010-08-10T16:20:00.002-04:00

I'm posting at Wordpress now. If it works, there will be no further posts here due to Google's evil empire plan with Verizon to control and manipulate the internet. If it doesn't work, or I can't figure it out, I'll look for another alternative.

So please, if you follow this blog, or if you simply stumbled in and want to see what it's all about from this point on, go to: spydersden.wordpress.com and keep coming back. Leave me a comment so I'll know that you found it. Thanks and hope to see you over at the new site.

Possible Changes Coming

2010-08-10T07:56:00.004-04:00

I am considering moving my blog to another server, probably WordPress, due to Google's selling out of their position on net neutrality. I will also be ending my Gmail account, and will begin using other search engines other than Google.

Google and Verizon went public yesterday with their "policy framework" -- better known as the pact to end the Internet as we know it.

I quit with Verizon several years ago when it became known that they had aided and facilitated the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap program, even innovating some of the technology necessary to read millions of emails and listen in on millions of phone calls of American citizens and turn that information over to the Big Brother government types.

News of this deal broke last week, sparking a public outcry that's seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its "Don't Be Evil" pledge.

But cut through the platitudes the two companies offered in yesterday's press call, and you'll find this deal is even worse than advertised.

The proposal is one massive loophole that sets the stage for the corporate takeover of the Internet.

Real Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers can't discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. It's what makes sure the next Google, out there in a garage somewhere, has just as good a chance as any giant corporate behemoth to find its audience and thrive online.

What Google and Verizon are proposing is fake Net Neutrality.Here are the basics of what the two companies are proposing:

1. Under their proposal, there would be no Net Neutrality on wireless networks -- meaning anything goes, from blocking websites and applications to pay-for-priority treatment.

2. Their proposed standard for "non-discrimination" on wired networks is so weak that actions like Comcast's widely denounced blocking of BitTorrent would be allowed.

3. The deal would let ISPs like Verizon -- instead of Internet users like you -- decide which applications deserve the best quality of service. That's not the way the Internet has ever worked, and it threatens to close the door on tomorrow's innovative applications. (If RealPlayer had been favored a few years ago, would we ever have gotten YouTube?)

4. The deal would allow ISPs to effectively split the Internet into "two pipes" -- one of which would be reserved for "managed services," a pay-for-play platform for content and applications. This is the proverbial toll road on the information superhighway, a fast lane reserved for the select few, while the rest of us are stuck on the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.

5. The pact proposes to turn the Federal Communications Commission into a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing consumer complaints but unable to make rules of its own. Instead, it would leave it up to unaccountable (and almost surely industry-controlled) third parties to decide what the rules should be.

If there's a silver lining in this whole fiasco it's that it isn't up to Google and Verizon to write the rules. That's why we have Congress and the FCC.

Certainly by now we should have learned -- from AIG, Massey Energy, BP, you name it -- what happens when we let big companies regulate themselves or hope they'll do the right thing.

We need the FCC -- with the backing of Congress and President Obama -- to step up and do the hard work of governing. That means restoring the FCC's authority to protect Internet users and safeguarding real Net Neutrality once and for all.

Such a move might not be popular on Wall Street or even in certain corners of Silicon Valley, but it's the kind of leadership the public needs right now.

In the meantime I'm going to be trying to figure out how to transfer my blog to another server and will stop using Google, just as I have refused to use Verizon in the past. If they don't believe in fairness and honesty, why should we support them? If they don't believe in our right, as the consumers who fuel the entire internet experience, to have fair and free access to every part of the internet, why should we support them? I will not be a dupe and a stooge for Google, Verizon, or any other corporate master out there who wants to subjugate the public to bending to their will while they profit even more than they have from the free system of the internet that they joined in on and by which they made their ungodly fortunes.

Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, About Her Atheism

2010-08-10T07:42:00.000-04:00

How to Be Alone

2010-08-10T07:33:00.001-04:00

This is such a gentle and cathartic video about being alone and being happy. A lot of people need to see and understand this. I hope a few may see it here and understand.

Bacon

2010-08-10T07:21:00.000-04:00

Funny Commercials

2010-08-10T07:02:00.001-04:00

Ferret Noises and Training

2010-08-10T06:49:00.002-04:00

Ferrets are one of the most lovable pets to own. They are high energy creatures and their enthusiasm and spirit is sure to rub off on you. They will provide you the much needed fillip when you are down and depressed.

Ferrets spend a large portion of the day sleeping but when they are awake they are a bundle of energy. In contrast to the high-spirited show that they put up during their waking hours ferret noises are rather very uncommon.

Ferrets are highly emotional and sensitive. They tend to understand human emotions very easily and respond accordingly. You have to train your pet from a young age to respond in a manner that you want to. Ferrets are best trained by positive reinforcement. They have to be constantly encouraged. They need a smile or a pat on the back from you.

Never beat or scruff the ferret. It might retaliate and end up biting you. Gesticulate and show your approval or disapproval as is appropriate when he does something. Ferret noises along with body movements are the language for communication.

Dook is a very common noise made by ferrets which indicates happiness, excitement and joy. It resembles the clacking sound made by hens. Hissing is another sound made by ferrets that indicates annoyance, anguish and anger. It is better to stay away from the ferret when it is making hissing noises.

Whining is another noise made by ferrets. A whine resembles the cry of an infant. It means that your ferret is in danger. It could also be that he is trying to attract attention. Be sure to check out whether your ferret is in trouble when you hear this sound.

Screeching is another noise made by a ferret when it is hurt or frightened. Look out for your ferret when he makes this noise as he might have landed himself in trouble.

Ferrets are very agile and active and their body language and noises are tools of communication. You should be patient and persistent in training them to communicate their emotions appropriately.

Why is It Called the John?

2010-08-09T17:05:00.002-04:00

Why is the toilet sometimes called a “John”?

The term is thought to derive from Sir John Harrington or, at the least, to have been popularized due to Harrington. (There are a few references of the toilet being called “Cousin John”, as well as many references to it being called “Jake” and other such generic names, before Harrington was born; but it is generally agreed that why we now call it “John” is because of Harrington and not from the older “Cousin John”).

Sir John Harrington lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Harrington was one of the 102 god-children of Queen Elizabeth I, known as the “Saucy Godson”, for his proclivity to write somewhat risqué poetry and other writings, which often got him banished only to be allowed to return again sometime later.

Along with writing several notable works, Harrington also devised Britain’s first flushing toilet, which he called the “Ajax”. This derived from the term “Jakes”, which was a slang term for what we now call a toilet.

Shortly thereafter, Harrington wrote one of his more famous and popular works titled “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax”. This, on the surface, was about his new invention, but more to the point was a political allegory on the “stercus” (excrement) that was poisoning the state. The book itself got him banished from the court for a time due to its allusions to the Earl of Leicester. However, the actual flushing toilet device itself was real and was installed in his home and later one was made for the queen around 1596. The device worked by pulling a cord that would allow water to rush in from the “water closet”, which would flush away the waste.

Although Harrington wasn’t by any means the first to invent a flushing toilet (there are references to flushing toilets going all the way back to around 2600 BC), his invention was an innovation in Britain at the time and it was commonly thought that he was the inventor of the flushing toilet, which is why it is thought the flushing toilet today is often also called a “John”.

Bonus Facts:

The British word for the toilet, “loo”, derives from the French “guardez l’eau”, meaning “watch out for the water”. This comes from the fact that, in medieval Europe, people simply threw the contents of their chamber pots out the window onto the streets. Before throwing the waste out the window, they’d yell “Guardez l’eau!” The term “guardez l’eau” first came to English as “gardy-loo” and then shortened to “loo”, which eventually came to mean the toilet itself.

The toilet is also sometimes known as the “head”. This was originally a maritime euphemism. This came from the fact that, classically, the toilet on a marine vessel was located at the front of the ship (the head). This was so that water from the sea that splashed up on the front of the boat would wash the waste away. This term is thought to have been used as early as the 17th century. The first known documented occurrence of the term, however, was from 1708 by Woodes Rogers, Governor of the Bahamas; he used the word to refer to a ship’s toilet in the book “Cruising Voyage Around the World.”

The term “toilet” itself comes from the French “toilette”, which meant “dressing room”. This “toilette” in turn derived from the French “toile”, meaning “cloth”; specifically, referring to the cloth draped over someone’s shoulders while their hair was being groomed. During the 17th century, the toilet was simply the process of getting dressed, fixing your hair, and applying make-up and the like, more or less grooming one’s self. This gradually began to refer to the items around where someone was groomed, such as the table, powder bottles, and other items. Around the 1800s in America, this term began being used to refer to both the room itself where people got dressed and ready for the day, as well as the device itself now most commonly known as the toilet.

The term “latrine” comes from the Latin “lavare”, which means “to wash”. The earliest references to this term being used in English go all the way back to the mid-17th century.

The term “restroom” has American roots, first appearing in the early 20th century. It comes from the notion of “rest” referring to “refreshing” one’s self. Around the same time “restroom” began popping up, the British term “retiring room”, deriving from more or less the same notion, began being used among the upper class in Great Britain.

The term “lavatory” also derives from the Latin “lavare”, although this time through the Middle Latin variation “lavatorium”, meaning “washbasin”. This popped up in English around the late 19th century.

The term “crapper” derives from the company name “Thomas Crapper & Co Ltd”, which made toilets in Britain. American soldiers in WWI stationed in England found this humorous because of the play on words with the previously existing term “crap” and so began calling the toilet “the crapper”.

Unlike the English, Americans, and many other peoples around the world, who prefer a variety of euphemisms to refer to the toilet, the French often simply call it the “pissoir”, which just means “place to piss”. The English and Americans have a similar term, “shit house”, but it is obviously not a term typically found in polite conversation.

The 1960 movie “Pyscho” is thought to be the first movie where a toilet is shown being flushed. The momentous flushing took place just before Janet Leigh’s character takes a shower and subsequently gets stabbed to death.

The first toilet shown on a TV show appeared on the pilot episode of Leave it to Beaver in 1957, titled “Captain Jack”. In this episode, Wally and Beave hide a mail order baby alligator in the toilet tank. Special care was taken in the filming to only show the tank and never the seat, so as not to offend people.

What hemisphere you are in does not affect the way the water spins down your toilet. Which way it spins is entirely determined by which way the jets are pointed.

Sir John Harrington is also remembered for his political epigram: “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

Don't Judge Too Quickly

2010-08-09T07:40:00.001-04:00

Our Personalities Pretty Much Set by First Grade

2010-08-09T07:35:00.000-04:00

Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we're over the hill, according to a new study.

The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.
"We remain recognizably the same person," said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. "This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts."

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

They examined four personality attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one's importance).

Among the findings:
Talkative youngsters tended to show interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control situations, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence as adults. Children who rated low in verbal fluency were observed as adults to seek advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Children rated as highly adaptable tended, as middle-age adults, to behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Students rated as impulsive were inclined to speak loudly, display a wide range of interests and be talkative as adults. Less impulsive kids tended to be fearful or timid, kept others at a distance and expressed insecurity as adults.

Children characterized as self-minimizing were likely to express guilt, seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express insecurity as adults. Those who were ranked low on a self-minimizing scale tended to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and exhibit condescending behavior as adults.

Previous research has suggested that while our personalities can change, it's not an easy undertaking.

Personality is "a part of us, a part of our biology," Nave said. "Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well."

Future research will "help us understand how personality is related to behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change our personality," Nave said.

HOW HOT IS IT?

2010-08-09T07:24:00.001-04:00

* the birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.

* the potatoes cook underground, and all you have to do to have lunch is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.

* farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.

* the cows are giving evaporated milk.

* the trees are whistling for the dogs.

* you no longer associate bridges (or rivers) with water.

* you eat hot chilies to cool your mouth off.

* you can make instant sun tea.

* you learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

* the temperature drops below 95, you feel a bit chilly.

* you've experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl.

* you would give anything to be able to splash cold water on your face.

* you can attend any function wearing shorts and a tank top.

* you discover that in August, it takes only 2 fingers to drive your car.

* you discover that you can get a sunburn through your car window.

* you notice the best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.

* hot water now comes out of both taps.

* it's noon in August, kids are on summer vacation, and not one person is out on the streets.

* you actually burn your hand opening the car door.

* you break a sweat the instant you step outside at 7:30 a.m. before work.

* no one would dream of putting vinyl upholstery in a car or not having air conditioning.

* your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, "What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?"

* you realize that asphalt has a liquid state.

Photo

2010-08-08T19:20:00.002-04:00

A photo I took recently that I like because of its minimalism. Stark, simple, but with more going on than you might see at first. Notice the bee exiting the frame at the upper right, and the insect in the center of the flower at the lower left.

My View

2010-08-08T16:09:00.002-04:00

From time to time I weigh in on political issues that are driving me to distraction. I do so for the benefit of any politician who happens across this blog, outlining simple steps that can be taken to help create a better America.

Today, I tackle the issue of gay marriage.

This is a bit of a foreign topic for me. Back in the 1950s, when I was growing up, there were only about 3 dozen homosexuals worldwide and they were largely dancers, florists, or Republican congressmen. I don't know what caused the sudden increase in homosexuality we have experienced since the 1960s, but surmise it might have something to do with the hippie movement, brassiere burning, and the smoking of LSD.

Regardless of the cause, it seems nowadays you can’t swing a Louis Vuitton handbag without knocking over a homosexualist on his way to the Jamba Juice for a banana smoothie before he goes to his feng shui class. It’s a bigger fad than poodle skirts, whiffle balls, or post modernism, for crying out loud.

I didn’t mind when we gave homosexuals the right to vote, own property or allowed them basic human rights, but I have to draw the line at gay marriage. It’s not that I’m concerned about issues of morality. And I sure don't care what the Bible says about it. I mean, I eat pork and wear clothes made of two or more types of cloth. Those too are banned by the Bible, but nobody gives a damn.

My opposition is just because I think gay marriage is damned preposterous. Marriage is designed to slowly drain the life out of couples. Oh, we dress it up like it's all great and stuff, trying to make it more palatable to idealistic young people until such time as age and experience can beat the hopeless optimism out of them.

Marriage is about putting on weight and losing your hair without fear of ending up alone. It’s an institution – like churches, schools and prisons.

Besides, nowadays the whole concept of matrimony has been butchered beyond recognition. No one stays married anymore. Any disagreement over pizza toppings or paint colors becomes an irreconcilable difference and grounds for immediate divorce.

It seems to me that we need to put our own house in order before we start selling our faltering institutions to others. In business, most things with a 50 per cent failure rate are pulled from the shelves, not marketed to a larger audience.

I mean, we've foisted this charade on heterosexuals for eons, and they still haven't learned their lesson. Why would we want to try to pull this over on the gay population? It could only be so that we could watch them be as miserable as the rest of us, and I just don't think that's fair. I mean, I never tortured kittens when I was a kid. I don't like to watch any kind suffering, especially if I feel that I've helped to make it happen.

The gay community will eventually figure out that we gave them this right just so we could we watch them suffer. And when they do, they'll sue the bejesus out of the rest of us for cruel and unusual punishment. They'll figure out that marriage is the ultimate hate crime and they'll sue us for that too. So what this whole thing comes out to is that it'll be a big pay day for the lawyers, but it won't do a damn positive thing for anybody else.

So I’m sorry but I have to give a straight out “NO” to gay marriage. It’s regrettable, but in my opinion homosexuals will just have to find some other damned way to make each other miserable.

Faith

2010-08-08T07:46:00.000-04:00

Buried Alive

2010-08-07T07:17:00.002-04:00

The irrational fear of being buried alive is called Taphophobia, also occasionally spelled Tephephobia, which means the same thing. Taphophobia derives from the Greek “taphos” meaning “grave”.

Today, this would be considered a somewhat irrational fear. However, it wasn’t too long ago that this wasn’t irrational at all. Taphophobia hit it’s peak in the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, in 1896 T.M. Montgomery, who was supervising the disinterment of remains at the Fort Randall Cemetery, reported that a little over 2% of those bodies exhumed were definitely victims of being accidentally buried alive. In other words, about 2% woke up, tried to claw their way out, and were unable to do so. Given the oxygen supply in a coffin doesn’t last that long, it is likely the actual percentage of people buried alive was higher, when you include the ones who didn’t wake, but were still technically alive when buried.

The reason the rate of being buried alive was quite high in the 17th and 18th centuries was primarily due to the high number of people dieing of various diseases like cholera, smallpox, etc. These people tended to not get a close investigation to make sure they were really dead, rather than just passed out, and they also tended to be buried quickly to prevent the spread of whatever disease they were thought to have died from. In the 17th century, William Tebb compiled 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial; 149 cases of actual premature burial; 10 cases in which bodies were accidentally dissected before death; and 2 cases in which embalming was started on the still living.

Buck up though, these days getting accidentally buried alive in “civilized” nations should be exceptionally rare, due to medical advances and the simple fact that most people opt to have the bodies of their deceased loved ones embalmed before burial. The embalming process involves first double checking the person is really dead, then a somewhat lengthy process of injecting embalming fluids into your body, which is sure to kill you if you weren’t dead already.

One famous case of an embalming death in 1837 was of Cardinal Somglia, who had taken ill and passed out. Because he was a very important church official, preparations to embalm him were made. When the surgeon cut into his chest to instill embalming materials, he saw that the cardinals heart was still beating. At this point, the Cardinal himself woke up, but died shortly thereafter from the incision in his chest.

If you are still worried about being buried alive, despite modern advances to be able to detect when someone is dead and having to live through the embalming process, then a ‘safety coffin’ is for you. These coffins are specifically designed to either allow the person in the coffin to get out, if they are still alive, or, more commonly, are designed to give the person in the coffin the ability to alert the outside world of the fact that they are still alive.

One of the first of these Safety Coffins was designed by Count Karnice-Kacrnicki. He was inspired to design a coffin like this when he was thoroughly shaken up upon attending the funeral of a certain little Belgian girl. Upon being lowered into the dug hole and dirt starting to be placed on her coffin, the little girl apparently woke up and starting screaming. She was taken out of the coffin and found to be completely fine.

The Count then set out to design a coffin that allowed a person accidentally buried alive to summon help. The coffin had a tube 3.5 inches in diameter extending to a box on the surface. The tube was attached to a spring loaded ball sitting on the corpses chest. Any movement of the chest would release the spring, opening the box lid and admitting light and air into the coffin. A flag would then spring up on the surface and a bell would ring continually for a half an hour; in addition to this, a lamp would light and stay lit for about a half hour in the case of the movement happening at night.

Loads of other such safety coffins have been designed since then and the practice still goes on today, even though to date there has not been one record of any safety coffin being used successfully, in terms of a person being buried alive in one and eventually using it to survive the ordeal. Although, one of the inventors of a safety coffin was buried alive after a motorcycle accident. He was exhumed a few days later due to an insurance investigation. When he was dug up, his body was found to still be warm. He was later revived and went on to invent his own safety coffin equipped with a toilet, radio transmitter/receiver, food locker, a few books, and a light, as well as enough room for the buried to sit up.

Bonus Facts:

One inventor of a safety coffin, known as the “Bateson’s Belfry” that had a rope attached to a bell on the surface and attached to the deceased hand, was so scared of being buried alive that he eventually committed suicide by dousing himself with linseed oil and setting himself on fire, just to be sure he would die before being buried.

Among some famous taphophobics were: the first president of the United States, George Washington. Upon his death bed he told his attendants “I am just going. Have me decently buried and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do you understand?”; another famous taphophobic was Frederic Chopin, who upon his death bed said “The earth is suffocating… swear to make them cut me open, so that I won’t be buried alive.”; yet another famous taphophobe was Hans Christian Anderson who would always lay a card on his dresser before he went to sleep, even while traveling, that said “I am not really dead.” He also requested that his arteries be slashed before burial.

In 1896 there was even a group called the “Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive” started by Victorian Americans. Among other things they attempted to this end was trying to get a law established making it so you could only bury someone after strong smell and putrefaction were evident.

History is literally littered with confirmed cases of people being buried alive, some surviving, some not. In the cases where the people survived, they tended to have grave robbers to thank. In one such case, Marjorie Elphinstone “died” and was buried in Ardtannies, Scotland. When grave robbers attempted to steal the jewelry buried with her, she woke up. The robbers fled and she proceeded to walk home and ended up outliving her husband who had buried her by six years.

Another lucky one, was the case of Matthew Wall in the 16th century. One of his pallbearers tripped, causing the other pallbearers to drop the coffin. This revived Wall inside the coffin; he signaled for help and he went on to live for several more years. Note to self: request clumsy pallbearers.

Among the more heartbreaking of these tales is an instance in the 1850s where a young girl was buried in South Carolina, supposedly dieing from diphtheria. She was buried in the family’s mausoleum. When the family’s son died later in the civil war, the tomb was opened to admit him. They found the skeleton of the little girl, not where they had placed her body, but rather just behind the locked door on the floor.

On a lighter note, Sipho William Mdletshe of South Africa in 1993 was thought to be dead after a car accident at the age of 24. He spent two days in the mortuary before his cries alerted workers who rescued him. Unfortunately for him, his fiance was not so convinced he was in fact alive; she refused to ever see him again because she thought he was a zombie who had returned from the dead to haunt her.

For those of you who are taphophobes, here’s a pro tip to make sure you don’t get buried alive: register yourself as an organ donor. When the doctors are through with your remains, all that is left that they can’t use will literally fit in a manila envelope. And of course, you’ll likely be helping somebody else out in the process. It’s win/win.

George Washington Carver

2010-08-06T07:03:00.002-04:00

George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter, contrary to the popular story. The earliest reference to peanut butter being made goes all the way back to around 1000 BC where the Ancient Incas were known to have made a paste out of peanuts. Since then, peanut butter has been “invented” numerous times by various individuals throughout history.

Although Carver didn’t invent peanut butter, he did play a significant role in popularizing it and his 1880 “invention” of peanut butter preceded most of the other modern “inventors” of peanut butter. Carver was one of the greatest inventors in American history, discovering over 300 hundred uses for peanuts with100 or so of those not being related to one another in terms of the end product produced; he also discovered hundreds of uses for soybeans, pecans, and sweet potatoes.

Among the various products he created from peanuts, pecans, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and a few other types of plants were:

Antiseptic soaps
Face bleach and tanning lotions
Various other cosmetic products such as face powders and creams
Shaving cream
Shampoo
Dyes
Paints
Wood stains
Chicken food specialized to increase egg production in hens
Milk substitute from soybeans and peanuts
Emulsion for Bronchitis
Laxatives
Goiter treatments
Axle grease
Charcoal from peanut shells
Diesel fuel
Gasoline fuel
Lamp oil
Insecticide
Linoleum
Lubricating oil
Nitroglycerin
Colored paper
Printer’s ink
Plastics from soybeans
Synthetic Rubber
Laundry soap
Synthetic marble
Paving blocks from cotton

Among his peanut inventions were:

19 types of leather dyes
18 types of insulating boards
11 types of wall boards
17 types of wood stains
11 types of peanut flours
30 types of cloth dyes
50 types of food products

Among his sweet potato related inventions were:

73 types of dye
17 types of wood fillers
14 types of candy
5 types of library paste
5 types of breakfast foods
4 types of starches
4 types of flour
3 types of molasses

Bonus Facts:

Some of the more interesting food related products Carver was able to make from peanuts were: cocoa substitute; mayonnaise; dehydrated milk flakes; cheese; instant coffee; asparagus substitute; pepper; meat substitutes including Mock Goose, Mock Chicken, Mock Oyster, Mock Pig, and Mock Veal.

Joseph L. Rosenfield in 1928 invented the churning process that gives peanut butter the smooth texture we have today. He originally licensed this process to Pond Company, who makes Peter Pan peanut butter. In 1932, he started his own peanut butter company which he named Skippy.

Carver did not patent the vast majority of his inventions; in fact, he only patented three. He believed his discoveries with food products were all gifts from God. “God gave them to me.” He would say about his ideas, “How can I sell them to someone else?”

In 1940, three years before his death, Carver donated his life savings of $60,000 to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, which is an organization dedicated to continuing research in agriculture.

The epitaph on the grave of Carver reads as follows: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

Not only did he not patent most of his discoveries, Carver once turned down a job to work for Thomas Edison for an annual salary of $100,000 (in today’s currency that would be around 1 million dollars a year), because Edison would have not made the inventions Carver came up with, while he worked there, free to the public. Carver wanted his inventions available for anyone to use at no cost.

Carver also liked to make his discoveries easy for other people to reproduce, including farmers, many of whom were barely literate. He published many pamphlets giving instructions for farmers to make such things as adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, instant coffee, inks, meat tenderizers, metal polish, paper, plastics, pavement, synthetic rubber, wood stain, etc.

The three patents Carver did apply for were #1,522,176, 1/6/1925, Cosmetics & Plant Products; #1,541,478, 6/9/1925, Paints & Stains; #1,632,365, 6/14/1927, Paints & Stains

Over 50% of all peanuts grown in the United States are used for making peanut butter and other peanut spreads.

Carver played a huge role in the recovery of the South’s economy, which had formerly been based primarily on the production of cotton and tobacco, which depleted soils and had the secondary side effect of having near the entire southern economy based on just two crops; one of which was being threatened by weevils in Carver’s time.

It was Carver who developed a system for rotating specific crops in the South which would allow for the fields to be used in a sustainable fashion and provided a more diverse income source for farmers. This rotation included alternating nitrate producing legumes, such as peanuts and peas, with cotton. He later discovered that pecans and sweet potatoes also enriched the depleted soils and so proceeded to recommend those in the rotation. *note: crop rotation methods have been around for thousands of years. Carver simply put forth a specific system which would allow the South to still grow cotton and tobacco in large quantities, while at the same time be able to grow other crops to sell that would replenish the soil with the nutrients the cotton and tobacco used up.

He then successfully campaigned to get the farmers to use this system. After that, he invented numerous ways for these crops to be used to make them valuable things to grow; such as with peanuts, which previously were not a valuable crop outside of being used for feed for livestock. With the South now producing significantly more peanuts than was needed at the time, it created a massive surplus and the prices plummeted. Not to be deterred, Carver then proceeded to discover over 300 uses of peanuts that made the crops valuable once again. He did the same thing for sweet potatoes and pecans; this all then created a huge market for these products that the southern farmers were now growing in larger quantities. By the time of Carver’s death, peanuts alone had gone from a rarely grown crop, to one of the six largest crops produced in America.

Carver also developed many cures and preventative measures for stopping various fungi from killing plants, such as cherry plants. In the process, he discovered two new types of fungus that now bear his name.

Carver’s significant aid to the country didn’t stop there. During WWI, when textile dyes that had previously been imported from Europe were in short supply, he managed to produce over 500 shades of dye from products such as soybeans and peanuts, which were readily available in America. This didn’t just help the textile companies, but also diverted cash that used to go to Europe from America, but now went to American farmers.

Also during WWI, his method for creating synthetic rubber from goldenrod, which is a weed, was a huge boon to the United States Army. Carver had developed this method with Henry Ford, with whom he was close friends.

When Carver’s health declined in 1937, Henry Ford had an elevator installed for Carver in his home as Carver could no longer use stairs.

The area in Diamond Grove, Missouri, where George Washington Carver grew up, is now preserved as a park. It was the first national monument in the United States dedicated to an American with black skin.

Carver compiled a list of eight cardinal virtues for all his students to try to emulate. These were:
Be clean both inside and out.
Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
Lose, if need be, without squealing.
Win without bragging.
Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
Be too brave to lie.
Be too generous to cheat.
Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.

George Washington Carver was born in 1864, near the end of the Civil War, in Missouri, at the farm of Moses Carver, who owned George’s mother Mary and father Giles. Moses Carver had purchased Mary and Giles for $700 in 1855. His mother and he were kidnapped by Civil War raiders and sent to Arkansas. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find George and reclaimed him by swapping a racehorse for him, but his mother was never found. George was raised by Moses and Susan Carver as if he were their own son. George struggled to get a proper education, owing to the color of his skin, but eventually found a schoolhouse and later, at the age of 30, a University that would take him. He was the first black man at Iowa State University.

Carver earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1897 from Iowa State University and a Master of Botany and Agriculture in 1897. He then became a member of the faculty at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanics and later at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, where he remained until his death in 1943.

Christoper Hitchens on Cancer

2010-08-06T06:56:00.000-04:00

New Geico Ad

2010-08-06T06:34:00.002-04:00

Do Warren Buffet a favor. Watch this cute commercial and consider switching your insurance to Geico. Yeah...right...like we need to help out one of the richest men on the planet. Regardless, it's a cute commercial.

Madison Violet - Laura Lee

2010-08-06T06:27:00.002-04:00

Another KFOG submission of a song by Madison Violet. This is one of my favorite duos working in the Americana genre right now. This is a short clip, but well worth the time to watch and listen to

Butterfly

2010-08-05T18:33:00.001-04:00

A photo I took today in the woods not far from my house. I almost missed the shot. I had finished shooting for the day and was putting equipment away when this butterfly happened along. I tried two other shots of him, but this is the best one.

Gay Marriage and the Bible

2010-08-05T07:36:00.001-04:00

WWJD?

2010-08-05T07:24:00.000-04:00

Most people assume WWJD is for “What would Jesus do?” But the initials really stand for “What would Jesus drive?”

One theory is that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because “the Bible says God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury.”

But in Psalm 83, the Almighty clearly owns a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the Lord to “pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm.”

Perhaps God favors Dodge pickup trucks, because Moses' followers are warned not to go up a mountain “until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast.”

Some scholars insist that Jesus drove a Honda but didn't like to talk about it. As proof, they cite a verse in St. John's gospel where Christ tells the crowd, “For I did not speak of my own Accord.”

Meanwhile, Moses rode an old British motorcycle, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring, “the roar of Moses' Triumph is heard in the hills.”

Joshua drove a Triumph sports car with a hole in its muffler: “Joshua's Triumph was heard throughout the land.” And, following the Master's lead, the Apostles car-pooled in a Honda: “The Apostles were in one Accord.”

Bristol Palin's Homecoming

2010-08-05T07:12:00.002-04:00

Now that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston's on-again, off-again romance is off, this is a nice parody on that topic and the entire Palin soap opera, melodrama.

Real Names of Some Celebrities

2010-08-05T06:59:00.002-04:00

Twiggy - Leslie Hornby

Wynonna Judd - Christina Claire Ciminella

Whoopi Goldberg - Caryn Elaine Johnson

Kirk Douglas - Issur Danielovitch

Lady GaGa - Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta

Ben Kingsley - Krishna Pandit Banji

Larry King - Lawrence Ziegler

Barry Manilow - Barry Alan Pincus

Carrot Top - Scott Thompson

Anna Nicole Smith - Vickie Lynn Hogan

Janis Joplin - Work Me Lord

2010-08-05T06:42:00.003-04:00

Janis Joplin at Woodstock doing Nick Gravenites' song, "Work Me Lord." A quintessential blues number, by the premier female voal interpreter of the blues in the '60s. A year later Janis would be dead. But she lives on in the heart and soul that she put into songs like this.

Fun at the Waterpark

2010-08-04T16:04:00.001-04:00

Lets Pee on people at water park - watch more funny videos

Circular Logic and Government Bureaucracy

2010-08-04T11:48:00.004-04:00

Property taxes are the most regressive, egregious, disingenuous, and senseless taxes that we pay to live in a “free society.” Hardly free when you have to come up with a significant portion of the value of your property each year just to be able to think that you own it. You never own it. Try missing a property tax payment or two. You'll find out pretty quickly that you are only renting that illusion from the state, for they will take it from you and put it up for auction in search of a new owner who will pay them their rent in the form of property taxes.

Property taxes have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to pay, your generation of income, or lack of same, from that property, or anything else, other than that the county or state send you a bill assessing a payment from you. If you own your property free and clear, with no mortgage or other encumbrance, you still have to pay this annual or semi-annual fee in order to pretend that you own it.

To say that I am a die hard opponent of property taxes, the idea of property taxes, or the very thought that you can own something that you never truly own, is, or should be obvious. Nonetheless, like all good, dutiful minions of government bureaucracy, I have always paid these taxes, even while protesting them.

Just recently I was made aware of an exemption about which my taxing unit had never informed me, that would significantly reduce my property tax payment each year. I guess it is sort of a special secret tax exemption, since you are not informed of its existence in any obvious way, and I guess if you never hear of it and file for it, you just go on paying more than you have to pay. This is well and good for those in the know who have been told about the exemption. It kind of sucks for those of who have not been made cognizant of its existence.

It sort of seems like to me that any and all exemptions should be factored in to the basic bill, assuming that anyone would want to make use of the cost savings built into such exemptions. These exemptions should be, in essence, the default, saving taxpayers state wide millions of dollars a year. I guess I understand why they want to bill us the higher amount and keep us in the dark to any lower tax potential. More money for the government. They get to make the rules and keep the money too. What a deal.

Well, the day we found out about the exemption, my wife went to the county auditor and filed for the exemption. She had to give them her Social Security number and her state driver's license number in order to file for it. She called me for this same information. At the time I was unable to provide her with the driver's license number, but things proceeded without it.

Today I received a letter from the auditor informing me that unless I provided them with this number, the exemption would not be finalized. I guess they were afraid that someone other than me would be trying to save me money by filing an exemption. That's what the lady at the auditor's office told me when I asked about why, since I do not drive my house, I had to provide a driver's license number. What one thing has to do with another, I still am not sure. I was merely told it was “a government requirement.”

I also asked the very nice lady, “So if I didn't have a driver's license, I could not get this exemption?” Well, then the requirement changed. Now she told me that I could supply a birth certificate, or if I was Amish, a family Bible showing my birthdate. Wait a minute. The driver's license is a “government requirement?” Yet there are exclusions? Then it is not a requirement. Which is it? It's to my discredit that I wasn't born at home to an Amish family. Then all I'd have to do is show up at the court house with a Bible with my name and birthdate penciled in. Curious to say the least.

I also requested written confirmation from the auditor's office that had supplied this requisite piece of information and that my exemption would be calculated into my next property tax billing. The lady to whom I spoke said that this would not be necessary, that she would enter this number into the proper form and it would be processed accordingly. I told her, "No. I really would like a written confirmation that the exemption requirements have been met. You don't trust that I am who I say I am, so why should I trust you and that you will do what you say you will do?" She acquiesced and agreed to send me a written confirmation.

I know it never does any good trying to decipher the strange workings of government, and how they impact our lives. It just seems curious to me that government is supposed to be our servant and we are the masters, and yet they furnish us with Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, birth certificates, etc., and then we spend the rest of our lives proving to them that we are who we say we are by using those self-same pieces of information. Unless we're Amish, or mayber some other cultural or ethnic group that is, or could be, exempted due to circumstances.

I guess it's a good thing that Barack Obama isn't an Indiana resident, and that he most likely has a driver's license. Otherwise he couldn't get this exemption since, according to some, he doesn't have a birth certificate. And he sure isn't Amish.

Unbelievable!

2010-08-04T07:09:00.000-04:00

Alpha Dog of the Week - David H. Brooks

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

Some Interesting Info About eBay:

2010-08-03T18:57:00.000-04:00

The founder, Pierre Omidyar, wanted to name it echobay.com, but that domain name was already taken, so he settled on eBay.com.

The first item sold on eBay in 1995 was a broken laser pointer which sold for $14.83.

In 1996 eBay hosted a total of 250,000 items for sale. In 1997 that number ballooned to 24 million, a growth rate of 9600%.

Total annual sales on eBay now top $60 billion a year. If it were a country, it would have the 65th largest economy on earth.

There are currently 89 million active users on eBay.

The largest category by unique individual visitors is clothing with 5.4 million shoppers per month. Next is computer and technology with 4 million.

In the U.S. alone, there is a cell phone sold on eBay every 6 seconds, a pair of shoes every 8 seconds, a video game system every 17 seconds, a bedding item every 25 seconds, a men's necktie every 45 seconds, and major appliance every minute.

Profits for eBay in 2009 topped $4.4 billion.

PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2008. In 2009 they made almost $3 billion profit in PayPal fees.

Tempus II

2010-08-03T14:48:00.000-04:00

Some amazing videography. Watch it at full screen for the maximum enjoyment.

Tempus II from Philip Heron on Vimeo.

Jamba Juice's Newest Smoothie

2010-08-03T14:34:00.000-04:00

For more information about this taste treat, go here:

Some amazing facts about the Internet:

2010-08-03T14:14:00.000-04:00

There are currently 1.8 billion users of the Internet, worldwide. That's a little more than one out of every four people on the planet.

The United States has the most Internet service providers, with 7,000. Next is Canada with 760, Australia with 571, the U.K. with 400, on down to North Korea, Iraq, and Yemen with one each.

The United States has 316 million web and server hosts, the most of any country. Japan is second with 39.9 million.

The United States sends 971,000 megabits of information, internationally, every second. The U.K. sends 781,000 megabits per second.

The fastest average individual Internet connections in the world are in South Korea, with an average of 11.7 megabits per second. Hong Kong is second with 8.6 megabits per second. The United States is 22nd in the world with an average of just 3.8 megabits per second.

The Internet got its first 50 million users in just five years. By comparison, it took television 13 years, and radio 38 years to each achieve that milestone.

More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last two months than if ABC, CBS, and NBC had all been airing new content 24/7 since 1948. That's 62 years of content in just two months.

Google announced in July of 2008 that they had indexed one trillion unique URLs on the Internet.

384.5 million domain names have expired, been deleted, or transferred to a new owner.

Internet data centers often consume 40 megawatts of electricity, enough to run 35,000 homes. And yet, the amount of energy, worldwide, needed to run the Internet represents only about 1% of all available electricity. Half of that power is used storing, transferring, and manipulating the data. The other half is used cooling the data centers.

Colbert on Tax Cuts and Trickle Down Economics

2010-08-03T05:21:00.000-04:00

The Word - Ownership Society

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

Most Prolific Woman Murderer in History

2010-08-02T18:53:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Bathory was born into one of the most well known families of Transylvania. Istvan, one of her relatives, was prince of Transylvania and king of Poland from 1575-86. It is widely believed that at around the age of 5, Elizabeth had violent seizures. These may have been caused by epilepsy or another neurological disorder and may have had something to do with her “psychotic” behavior later in life.

Her story starts from her marriage. At the age 15 she married Count Ferenc and most of the time the Count stayed away from home fighting wars, which eventually led to his death. Her husband’s death triggered Elizabeth’s period of atrocities. Elizabeth started attending rituals that included the sacrificing of horses and other animals. She was afraid of aging and losing her beauty. One day a servant girl accidentally pulled her hair while combing it. Elizabeth slapped the girl’s hand so hard she drew blood. The girl's blood fell into Elizabeth’s hand and she immediately thought that her skin took on the freshness of her young maid. She believed that she had found the secret of eternal youth. Elizabeth had her major-domo, Thorko, strip the maid and then cut her and drain her blood into a huge vat. Elizabeth bathed in it to beautify her entire body.

Elizabeth’s henchmen continued to provide her with new girls for the blood-draining ritual and her blood baths. Her Ignorant belief took the lives of 610 women.

One day one of her intended victims escaped and told the authorities about what was happening at Elizabeth’s castle. King Mátyás of Hungary ordered Elizabeth’s own cousin, Count Thurzo, governor of the province, to raid the castle. On December 30, 1610 they raided the castle and they were horrified by the terrible sights. There was one dead girl in the main room, drained of blood, and another alive whose body had been pierced with holes. In the dungeon they discovered several living girls, some of whose bodies had been pierced several times. Below the castle, they exhumed the bodies of some 50 girls.

Elizabeth was arrested and was sentenced to life imprisonment in her torture chamber. Stonemasons were brought to wall up the windows and doors of the chamber with the Countess inside. They left a small hole through which food could be passed.

The king wanted the death penalty for Elizabeth, but because of her cousin, the prime minister, he agreed to an indefinitely delayed sentence, which really meant solitary confinement for life. She died in 1614.

Nature is not Your Friend

2010-08-02T07:27:00.001-04:00

Dumbass Quote of the Day

2010-08-02T07:17:00.002-04:00

From Phyllis Schlafly, speaking in Michigan last week:

"Do you know what the second-biggest demographic group that voted for Obama -- obviously the blacks were the biggest demographic group. But do you all know what was the second-biggest?" she asked the crowd attending the fund-raiser in Troy. "Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider."

Uh. Except those unmarried women don't have husbands to kick out. That's what unmarried means. And they aren't all unmarried because they "kicked their husbands out." Moron.

This the same Phyllis Schlafly who once stated that women who go jogging in shorts and tank tops deserve to be raped.

I'm sorry, but wouldn't "Democrat" be the largest demographic that voted for Obama?

And considering Blacks are only 12-15% of the population, if they were the largest demographic voting for Obama, where'd he get all those other winning votes? Something about her math and her logic just doesn't make sense. Silly woman.

How Republicans Have Destroyed America's Economy

2010-08-01T16:33:00.000-04:00

The Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts amounts to national bankruptcy. The nation’s public debt, if honestly figured to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits projected through 2015, will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s 120 percent of gross domestic product, and screams out for action. It is therefore idealogical folly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetary and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts, in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance. Vulgar Keynesianism designed to shift more wealth and power to the prosperous classes.

This approach has made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit, the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income, has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s prosperity borrowed on an epic scale.

Milton Friedman said that outcome could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.

Nearly forty years later, we cannot absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors. And that attitude ran rampant, while at the same time, manufacturing countries shifted the making of their goods to cheaper wage countries, thus hollowing out their own abilities to create income and wealth.

When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed corrections, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain, from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from the alleged big spending of Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces of the warfare state that drives the federal spending machine.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. At the same time it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republican's fiscal religion.

Through the 1984 election, the old guard seemed as if they wanted to control the deficit, rolling back about 40 percent of the original Reagan tax cuts. But when, in the following years, the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, finally crushed inflation, enabling a solid economic rebound, the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if coupled with enough tax cuts.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus shamelessly embraced a free-lunch fiscal policy.

The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans, paid mainly from the Wall Street casino, received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent, mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy, got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing, as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach, balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline, is needed more than ever.

When the Government Poisoned Its Citizens

2010-08-01T07:57:00.003-04:00

The American government once poisoned certain alcohol supplies; this resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 American Citizens.

This, of course, was during Prohibition. The government became frustrated with the fact that despite the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol being banned, the number of people drinking alcoholic beverages was markedly higher than it was before Prohibition. So to try to get people to stop drinking, the government decided to try a scare tactic.

One way bootleggers of this time made alcoholic beverages was to use denatured, industrial alcohol as the base. Denaturing the alcohol is simply a process to make it undrinkable, usually by adding something that makes it taste or smell disgusting or will induce vomiting. This was originally done (and is still done to this day) in order to allow companies to get around having to pay the high taxes associated with the manufacturing and sale of alcohol meant to be drunk. Alcohol used industrially, for non-beverage applications, are denatured and thus, they don’t have to pay these taxes and so it is significantly cheaper, gallon for gallon. Without this tax break, literally thousands of industrial products would become drastically more expensive than they currently are.

During prohibition, this denatured alcohol was often stolen from companies that made industrial alcohol used in various paints and solvents and the like. The bootleggers would then have their own chemists whose job it was to make the alcohol palatable again, basically undoing the denaturing process or to “renature” the alcohol.

With an estimated 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol stolen annually in the 1920s to be later renatured and sold as drinkable alcohol, the government, under President Coolidge, decided to up the stakes and make some of the denaturing formulas lethal, instead of just designed to make the alcohol unpalatable. To do this, they’d generally add things like methyl alcohol (the main denaturing chemical at 10% added, even today); other chemicals added are things such as kerosene, brucine, gasoline, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, chloroform, carbolic acid, acetone, and many others that were difficult for the bootlegger’s chemists to get out when they’d renature the alcohol.

After the first 100 or so people died shortly after the new denaturing process was released around Christmas, health officials were outraged and the news media picked up the story as intended. Unfortunately, the government’s plan didn’t quite work from that point on. It didn’t scare people away from drinking and rather had little to no effect on people’s consumption of alcohol; instead, the estimates are that it resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 people with a much larger number severely sickened and many blinded by the poisoning.

As New York City’s medical examiner Charles Norris stated: “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol. Yet it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.” (Chuck Norris fighting the man even back then)

People at the time, though, were split on the poisoning program, even with the deaths that were happening because of it. One side felt that the people who were drinking the illegal alcohol got what they deserved, particularly because they knew the risks and broke the law anyways; the other side felt it was a national experiment on exterminating members of society that the government felt were undesirable as American citizens. As one Chicago Tribune article in 1927 stated: “Normally, no American government would engage in such business. … It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified.”

Now, to be clear, the various governments of the world still require denaturing of alcohol that is not for oral consumption and the standard requirement of 10% methyl alcohol is still in effect in most countries. This isn’t really a problem anymore because people have much better ways to get their alcohol than trying to deal with denatured alcohol. The problem at the time was that the government knew full well that people would be drinking this poisoned alcohol and they hoped the deaths that resulted from this would scare other people away from drinking. Further, when it was clear that it wasn’t scaring anyone away from drinking and literally thousands were dying per year with significantly more than that severely sickened, they kept the program going anyways, though it was hotly debated in Congress.

So next time you start thinking the U.S. government is impossibly screwed up today; headed down the tubes; and beyond fixing, well, if you study American history much at all, it’s pretty clear it used to be a lot more screwed up than it is today, not just concerning this issue, but many, many others. And yet, we’re still here.

Bonus Facts:

The term “The Real McCoy” originated in the prohibition era. Captain William S. McCoy was a rum runner who coordinated most rum transported by ship during prohibition. He was known for never watering down his imports; thus, his product was “The Real McCoy”.

This wasn’t the only time the U.S. Government decided to poison the supply of some illegal substance in order to try to scare people away from using it. In the 1970s the government sprayed marijuana fields with Paraquat, which is an herbicide. They thought this had the dual benefit of killing large portions of the crop and also scaring people away from buying marijuana in those areas because the surviving plants would essentially be laced with a mild toxin. Public outcry at the time however, forced the government to stop doing this.

It was the 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States (note: it didn’t ban the consumption of alcohol). The Volstead Act, officially the “National Prohibition Act”, then laid out the rules for this ban and was passed on October 28, 1919, despite President Wilson’s veto; prohibition itself began on January 1st, 1920. Only 1,520 Federal Prohibition agents were hired to enforce this act, nationwide.

The Volstead Act was amended on March 22, 1933 by the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the manufacturing and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. The 18th Amendment itself was repealed in December of 1933. When President Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, he made the now famous remark, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.” A mere one day after the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect on April 7, 1933, Anheuser-Busch, Inc, sent a case of Budweiser to the White House as a gift to President Roosevelt.

As happens quite often when people are told they can’t do something, the banning of alcohol resulted in alcoholic beverages being consumed at an estimated three times the rate it was before the banning took effect.

Prohibition was widely supported by diverse groups across the nation when it first was made law, even among the heavy drinkers. It was widely thought that a ban on alcohol would drastically improve society as a whole (many of society’s problems of the day were thought to be a result of rampant alcohol use; some were even actually valid points, though many were not).

Thus, sacrificing alcoholic drinks was a little thing compared to creating a better society. Will Rogers often joked about the southern prohibitionists: “The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls.”

One of the chief controversies of the day among medical professionals was that alcohol was prescribed by physicians for medicinal purposes. As such, medical professionals across the nation lobbied for the repeal of prohibition as it applied to medicinal liquors, such as beer, which was often prescribed.

While the Volstead Act banned the manufacturing, sale, and transport of alcohol, it did allow home brewing of wine and cider from fruit. An individual home was allowed to produce up to 200 gallons per year.

Grape growers of the day began selling “bricks of wine”, which were primarily blocks of “Rhine Wine”. These often included the following instructions: “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.”

Also because the Volstead Act did not ban the consumption or storage of alcohol, before the act went into effect, many people stockpiled various alcoholic beverages.

Notorious gangster Al Capone, Bugs Moran, and many others made their riches primarily through illegal alcohol sales and distribution. Capone controlled over 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago alone. Speakeasies were basically places that discreetly served liquor. They often also served food and had live bands to make themselves look like credible institutions. Others were simply regular businesses that kept alcohol on hand to sell to patrons who knew of their side-business.

The term “speakeasy” comes from bartenders telling patrons to “speak easy” when ordering, so as not to be overheard.
The repeal of the Volstead Act not only took the primary funding away from numerous gangsters, but also created thousands of new jobs at a time when they were desperately needed in the United States.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF) maintains a list of approved formulas by which to render the ethanol undrinkable. These range from formulas to make it taste gross all the way to being very lethal.

The total for all alcohol related deaths per year in the United States is around 85,000 deaths a year. For comparison, the number of deaths associated with Tobacco annually is around 400,000-500,000; poor diet at around 365,000; prescription drug related deaths around 32,000; suicide around 30,600; homicide around 20,000; gun-related deaths around 29,000; all illicit drug use at around 17,000; and Marijuana deaths around 7.

The word “prohibition” comes from the Latin “prohibitionem”, meaning “hindering or forbidding”. It was used to mean “forced alcohol abstinence” as early as 1851.

Gurf Morlix - Voice of Midnight

2010-08-01T06:57:00.002-04:00

Thanks to KFOG again for another fine Gurf Morlix video. A deep, poignant, and beautiful song from one of the most underrated guys in the business of songwriting and performing.

Nerd Wins

2010-07-31T19:07:00.001-04:00

Basil Marceaux - Next Governor of Tennessee

2010-07-31T07:31:00.002-04:00

Oh man, I hope this guy wins. I say that because, number one, I don't live in Tennessee. Number two, maybe people will finally see what the Republican Party is actually all about. Number three, we all need a few more laughs in our lives to keep us young.

8 Ball Aitken - Refugee

2010-07-31T06:37:00.003-04:00

There are way too many for rent and for sale signs out here in the America we know and see every day. Something's happening in this land, and there's way too much suffering to go around.

There are too many storefronts and warehouses and factories abandoned in too many towns, even in places you would not expect. Outsourcing and unemployment is taking its toll on America. It is not healthy for a democracy. It's even harder on the less fortunate in our society.

People just like us are losing their homes, and they have no place to go. No work, no hope. Too many people are only a paycheck or two away from crisis. Too many no longer have paychecks, and have been forced to scramble in the last couple of years to make ends meet, often without a safety net.

I don't know what it will take to set the ship of America back on course. To get us back to work. To get America manufacturing again. To allow the American Dream to be revived from its doldrums. Or we will, once again, all be refugees in search of better lives.

8 Ball Aitken comes from Australia with a National Resonator guitar on his knee. "Refugee" comes from his 2004 CD Behind The 8 Ball. It rings true worldwide, no matter who you are or where you are.

The Shame of the American Penal System

2010-07-31T05:05:00.003-04:00

I recently read an article in The Economist about America's out-of-control prison system, which locks up more of our own citizens than any other nation on earth, including Russia and China. It has given me a lot to think about. I'd like to share the article and some of my thoughts below.

Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3 million and 2.4 million Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under "correctional" supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed.

And some of the reasons why:

The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them.

In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400, compared with today's one in 100. Since then, the voters, alarmed at a surge in violent crime, have demanded fiercer sentences. Politicians have obliged. New laws have removed from judges much of their discretion to set a sentence that takes full account of the circumstances of the offence. Since no politician wants to be tarred as soft on crime, such laws, mandating minimum sentences, are seldom softened. On the contrary, they tend to get harder.

The solution is obvious and logical, according to the Economist article -- legalize drugs and treat drug abuse as a public health problem instead of a criminal problem. The population in most state prisons would drop in half, saving state budgets and solving a host of other problems at the same time. We could start by legalizing marijuana, which would be a big help by itself.

I believe that another reason could be that we have law enforcement officials who are encouraged to have high arrests numbers in order to gain advancement in their departments, and prosecuting attorneys whose high conviction rates can lead to political advancement. I know that in my own county, our prosecuting attorney every year writes a letter to the public in which he cites the statistics relating to arrests, convictions, fines collected, and years of incarceration handed down. It's little else than a self-aggrandizing productivity sheet, much like a piece rate factory worker would turn in to justify his job and prove his value at turning out more pieces of product.

Another possible reason can be seen in the trend toward privatized prisons. Each person incarcerated has a dollar value placed on them in the private prison operator's budget. More prisoners equal more money. I believe that prosecutors and judges, wittingly or unwittingly, are predisposed to send more people to prison in order to bump up the profit structure for these private industries, possibly in return for campaign funds, or other lucrative opportunities within the private sector of jurisprudence.

Life and Reminiscence

2010-07-30T19:19:00.000-04:00

Butterfly

2010-07-30T19:18:00.000-04:00

Old Man and the Police

2010-07-30T19:13:00.000-04:00

The LaHayes on Huckabee

2010-07-30T06:40:00.003-04:00

All I can say is, "cuckoo." Obama bringing on the "end times," as if there is such a thing. The biblical prophecies fulfilled, as if they are real. And all the rest of the claptrap that evangelical Christians pump out of their grand illusion. Wow, and this stuff made it onto primetime Fox News. Kind of reiterates how much Fox News is worth, doesn't it?

Sarah Palin chose (B): Ten questions for mothers

2010-07-29T17:03:00.000-04:00

Ten Questions for Sarah Palin's supporters who are also mothers:

1. If you were a state governor who was eight months pregnant--and remember, Sarah Palin already knew hers was a high-risk pregnancy because of her age (44) and, according to her book, her baby having been diagnosed via amniocentesis as having Down syndrome--and you were scheduled to fly some 4,000 miles from home to give a speech at a conference, would you (a) give your speech from home via teleconferencing, using modern real-time technology, and explain to your hosts that the high-risk nature and advanced stage of your pregnancy made you reluctant to fly; or, alternatively, send the deputy governor to give your speech or (b) dismiss any staff or security slated to fly with you and insist on flying 4,000 miles to the conference yourself?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

2. If, while attending this conference, you experienced leaking amniotic fluid and felt early contractions on the morning before you were scheduled to speak, would you (a) hand the speech to someone else, ask him or her to give it on your behalf, and go straight to the nearest hospital--one that was equipped for handling high-risk mothers, premature births, and special-needs infants--and get yourself checked out by a doctor or (b) continue with your day and give the speech anyway?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

3. After giving the speech, would you then, immediately afterward, (a) go directly to the nearest suitably-equipped hospital or (b) insist on going to the airport and proceed to get on the first of two several-hours-long commercial flights--airplanes on board which there would be no lifesaving equipment or stored blood should you go into hard labor and experience pre-eclampsia or hemorrhage, no sterile environment, and no high-risk obstetrician attending you--in order to be able to say the baby was born in your home state?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

4. At the conclusion of that first flight, would you then, upon landing and deplaning, (a) go directly to the nearest hospital in the connecting city as fast as possible, even commandeering MediVac transport if necessary or (b) take another flight lasting several hours, in order to continue heading home?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

5. At the conclusion of the second flight, would you (a) go immediately to either of two nearby hospitals with fully equipped NICU's (neonatal intensive care units), or (b) embark on a one-hour drive through dark, snowy, and winding roads in order to get to your hometown regional hospital--a facility that is not equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies, special needs or premature babies, or even twins?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

6. If you were the governor of a state and the mother of two teenage daughters--and you were well-known and widely regarded for your espousing of conservative Christian family values--would you (a) make a special effort to impress upon your daughters the responsibilities they had as members of the state's "First Family" or (b) allow one of your underage daughters to have her boyfriend "practically living in the house", fully aware they were having sexual relations, which fact would eventually be established in no uncertain terms when the two teens conceived a pregnancy?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

7. If, in addition to your to your seventeen-year-old and thirteen-year-old daughters, your household also included a seven-year-old daughter, and both girls would certainly be aware of their older sister's boyfriend's routine overnight stays--the elder one undoubtedly knowing the reason for same--would your answer to the last question (a) change or (b) remain the same.

Sarah Palin chose (b).

8. Upon your return to the office, when your premature infant is three days old, would you (a) keep him at home in the care of a baby nurse, where he can receive UV light treatment for his jaundice along with careful monitoring, should he develop any complications due his congenital heart defect; and as your staff will be excited for you, take some family baby pictures to work, thus avoiding the dangers of exposing such a vulnerable baby to the germ-filled environment of your office or (b) bring him with you to the office so you can show him off for photo opportunities?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

9. If, when your infant with special needs was a few months old, you were to be offered a high-ranking position--say, the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket--which would entail your being away from home for a few months and place you squarely in the limelight of a high-profile campaign; and at approximately the same time as this offer was made, you were to discover that your minor daughter was pregnant, would you (a) politely decline the position, citing 'family reasons', and set about protecting your daughter's privacy as your family worked through the situation and planned the best course of action for your child and future grandchild, doing your best to deflect unwanted press attention all the while or (b) accept the position "without blinking", and then parade your entire family--including your obviouly pregnant minor daughter and her boyfriend--into the bright lights and onto the international stage of the Republican Convention?

Sarah Palin chose (b).

10. Does Sarah Palin embody your definition of "Family Values?"

(a) yes or (b) no. And you choose..?

* All particulars reflect on-the-record occurrences, ages, timelines, and events, and specific details as reported by Sarah Palin herself are taken from her own autobiography and/or interviews.

Another Reason Why I Hate the Movie Industry

2010-07-29T07:04:00.001-04:00

Quotes from the Dalai Lama

2010-07-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

Sleep is the best meditation.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Porky Pig Blooper

2010-07-28T07:26:00.001-04:00

Red Molly - Jezebel

2010-07-28T06:59:00.002-04:00

A video of Red Molly performing "Jezebel" at last week's WoodyFest in Albuquerque, NM. This was the last appearance of Carolann with the group she helped form and make popular. Carolann, the one on the extreme left in the video, is leaving so she can stay home with her family and not have to travel so much. Best of luck to her and she will be missed.

Red Molly's newest CD, "James" was the top selling CD from among all of those being sold at WoodyFest this year. The song offered up here is from that CD, a recent number one album in the Americana genre, worldwide.

The Demise of Great Lakes Chocolate and Coffee, Part one

2010-07-27T19:23:00.003-04:00

For Jaime and Brian's last day at Great Lakes Chocolate and Coffee. They have been let go due to a change in ownership, in spite of the fact that Great Lakes owes its success to this dynamic duo. I never will understand how so-called "business people" think.

Anyway, to Jaime and Brian: So long and thanks for all the bean juice. Your fans will catch up with you in the other place. Wink, wink.

Vote Against Jefferson in 1800

2010-07-27T17:47:00.002-04:00

If they had television ads in 1800, this might have run during the presidential election campaign. These charges and allegations were all made against Jefferson in the print media. How much more powerful would they have been in the broadcast media?

Where We Are

2010-07-27T05:41:00.002-04:00

No one could ever delineate things the way George Carlin could do. I miss him more with each passing year, each passing scandal on Wall Street and Washington. Here he is at his best. The language is a little raw, but it is George Carlin. We could expect no less

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Notes on My Reunion

2010-07-26T19:09:00.003-04:00

I've been struggling as to how to write this, and finally figured I'd just do it in a stream-of-consciousness mode built around this central premise.

What I've been trying to write since Saturday night is my impression my 45th high school reunion that we attended. There are so many feelings and emotions that it's difficult to know where to start or how to focus the event into some degree of cogency.

For me the entire event was defined by one loud comment and the person who made it. The comment was, "Where's Bob?" It was made by one of my best high school friends, and most important people in my life, Midge Biggerstaff, now Allen.

Midge and her husband Don, another of our classmates, and a good friend, had driven to Northeast Indiana from North Carolina where they now live, and the first words out of Midge's mouth when she swept into the old 19th century hotel where we were holding the reunion was that succinct question given above.

Few things in my life have made me feel so special as the realization that came from that heartfelt question. The realization that I was as important to Midge as she has always been to me. Forty five plus years ago we became fast friends, nearly brother and sister close without the familial baggage that often accompanies real relationship. We've seen each other exactly once since graduation, and that was 25 years ago. And yet there's that bond. That special feeling and that special need to embrace, to interact, to reconnect in ways that no one else probably understands.

Midge and I were always brutally, yet delicately, honest with one another. We never dated. Certainly never were intimate in any way, even holding hands, and yet our hearts connected in a way that then transcended any sort of physicality, and still are connected in the same way. If I was dating someone Midge disapproved of, she told me. Not to hurt me or to denigrate my choices of dates, but to save me the hurt that could come in the form of teenage angst when things didn't work out. There was more than one girl that Midge told me was beneath my dignity or would lead me to a less than satisfying end.

I gave Midge advice, and played cupid, between her and Don Allen, the guy she was meant to marry, and to whom she has been wed for over forty years. But all those years ago she wasn't always sure of what his intentions or feelings were, or how to deal with certain emotions or facts in their relationship. I acted as a go-between in their courtship and reassured her that his intentions were as he expressed them.

Midge and I spent a lot of time together, talking over relationships, beliefs, values, and all the rest. We let down our guard with one another and talked about our innermost feelings, our dreams, our hopes and desires. We were the two sides of the same coin.

And it has touched me like few other things in my life to now realize, 45 years later, that what was wrought then, and what has been barely touched on since, is very, very much integral to who each of us is today, and will be tomorrow.

Thank you Midge. You are one of the most special people in my life, and after Saturday, I believe I may be in the same category in your life. I can't wait until the next reunion and one more chance to connect to this special bond.

Monday

2010-07-26T19:07:00.000-04:00

Most Expensive Hot Dog

2010-07-26T17:07:00.001-04:00

The most expensive hot dogs in history weren’t exactly special. Sure, they were limited items available for only a few days in Stockholm. Sure, it cost 999 Swedish kronor ($130 USD at the time) to get one. The pricey hot dogs, however, were no better than your average street vendor may sell you.

The expensive hot dogs were part of a United Nations initiative to highlight global poverty. The idea was that, for one of the billion people worldwide who live on less than a dollar a day, paying the standard price of a hot dog would be like your average, comfortably living individual paying $130. These expensive hot dogs were available from in September, 2005, from the United Nations Development Programme’s Nordic Office. They were sold by a number of Swedish celebrities and politicos.

The most expensive hot dog currently available, however, is a different story entirely. The Guinness-certified sausages are sold by Serindipity 3 in New York City’s Upper East Side. The Serendipity Foot-Long Haute Dog was launched on National Hot Dog Day on July 23rd, 2010. The fancy frankfurter is made of beef and grilled in white truffle oil. The bun is salted pretzel bread that has been toasted in white truffle butter. The hot dog is topped with duck foie gras, caramelized Vidalia onions, heirloom tomato ketchup and Dijon mustard. Black truffles are included in both the foie gras and the Dijon mustard.

The most expensive hot dog in the world is priced at a staggering $69 and must be ordered 24 hours in advance.

Pat Condell: a God of Life

2010-07-26T16:48:00.000-04:00

What We See in the Mirror

2010-07-26T16:21:00.002-04:00

Emotional photo collection made by photographer Tom Hussey.

Inside of the old person I'm in the process of becoming, that vital, young person still exists. And at times I can almost still see him in the mirror.

A couple of chuckles

2010-07-26T08:17:00.000-04:00

A Real Explanation on an Insurance Company Claim Form

2010-07-25T06:53:00.001-04:00

S.C. Anderson
PO Box 1302
Minnetonka, MN 55345

Superior Health Insurance
ATTN: Claims Review
1423 W. 90th St.
New York, NY 05016

Dear Sir:

This letter is in response to your recent letter requesting a more detailed explanation concerning my recent internment at Methodist Hospital.

Specifically, you asked for an expansion in reference to Block 21(a)(3) of the claim form (reason for hospital visit). On the original form, I put ``Stupidity''. I realize now that this answer was somewhat vague and so I will attempt to more fully explain the circumstances leading up to my hospitalization.

I had needed to use the restroom and had just finished a quick bite to eat at the local burger joint. I entered the bathroom, took care of my business, and just prior to the moment in which I had planned to raise my trousers, the locked case that prevents theft of the toilet paper in such places came undone and, feeling it striking my knee, unthinkingly, I immediately, and with unnecessary force, returned the lid back to its normal position.

Unfortunately, as I did this I also turned and certain parts of my body, which were still exposed, were trapped between the device's lid and its main body. Feeling such intense and immediate pain caused me to jump back. It quickly came to my attention that, when one's privates are firmly attached to an immovable object, it is not a good idea to jump in the opposite direction.

Upon recovering some of my senses, I attempted to reopen the lid. However, my slamming of it had been sufficient to allow the locking mechanism to engage. I then proceeded to get a hold on my pants and subsequently removed my keys from them. I intended to try to force the lock of the device open with one of my keys; thus extricating myself.

Unfortunately, when I attempted this, my key broke in the lock. Embarrassment of someone seeing me in this unique position became a minor concern, and I began to call for help in as much of a calm and rational manner as I could. An employee from the restaurant quickly arrived and decided that this was a problem requiring the attention of the store manager.

Betty, the manager, came quickly. She attempted to unlock the device with her keys. Since I had broken my key off in the device, she could not get her key in. Seeing no other solution, she called the EMS (as indicated on your form in block 21(b)(1)).

After approximately 15 minutes, the EMS arrived, along with two police officers, a fire-rescue squad, and the channel 4 ``On-the-Spot'' news team. The guys from the fire department quickly took charge, as this was obviously a rescue operation. The senior member of the team discovered that the device was attached with bolts to the cement wall that could only be reached once the device was unlocked. His discovery was by means of tearing apart the device located in the stall next to the one that I was in. (Since the value of the property destroyed in his examination was less than $50 - my deductible - I did not include it in my claim.) His partner, who seemed like an intelligent fellow at the time, came up with the idea of cutting the device from the wall with the propane torch that was in the rescue truck.

The fireman went to his truck, retrieved the torch, and commenced to attempt to cut the device from the wall. Had I been in a state to think of such things, I might have realized that in cutting the device from the wall several things would also inevitably happen. First, the air inside of the device would quickly heat up, causing items inside the device to suffer the same effects that are normally achieved by placing things in an oven. Second, the metal in the device is a good conductor of heat causing items that are in contact with the device to react as if thrown into a hot skillet. And, third, molten metal would shower the inside of the device as the torch cut through.

The one bright note of the propane torch was that it did manage to cut, in the brief time that I allowed them to use it, a hole big enough for a small pry bar to be placed inside of the device. The EMS team then loaded me, along with the device, into the waiting ambulance as stated on your form.

Due the small area of your block 21(a)(3), I was unable to give a full explanation of these events, and thus used the word which I thought best described my actions that led to my hospitalization.

Sincerely,
S. Anderson

New Mexico's Mystery Stone

2010-07-25T06:24:00.002-04:00

The Mystery Stone, also known as the Decalogue Stone, is located on a mountain in the remote desert of West-Central New Mexico, near Los Lunas, 30 miles south of Albuquerque. The stone face bears an inscription written in what some believe to be an extinct language, alternately identified as a form of Paleo-Hebrew or as Cypriotic Greek.

The stone was first acknowledged in literature in 1933 by famous New Mexico archaeologist Frank Hibben, who wrote of encountering the stone on a guided tour by an individual who claimed to have first discovered the stone in the 1880's. The inscription's alleged existence in the late 1800's would place the inscribing before the modern scientific rediscovery of both Paleo-Hebrew and Cypriotic Greek. However, the inscription may well be Phoenician, a script well known at the time.

In 1979, a University of New Mexico epigrapher named Dixie Perkins put forth the theory of the inscription as Cypriotic Greek, used around 500 BC in the Mediterranean region. In Perkins' translation, the stone reads as a report from an explorer or warrior named Zakyneros, who has become isolated in the wilderness and now struggles to survive.

No facts about the stone have ever been established, though conjecture abounds.

The stone can be accessed via a short hike from the highway. No interpretative materials are featured at the site.

Expensive Beers

2010-07-24T07:09:00.002-04:00

Beer is one of the oldest drinks known to man—and one of this writer’s favorites. While many people enjoy drinking light and less expensive beer, there are still some beer connoisseurs out there. If you don’t believe it, then check out the proof–the world’s most expensive beers.

Tutankhamun Ale – $52 per bottle

This expensive beer has a peculiar history. It’s brewed in a Cambridge laboratory from a recipe discovered in the Queen Nefertiti’s Temple of the Sun in Egypt. The beer is named after the queen’s stepson, more commonly known as King Tut. The temple, which housed a brewery, is believed to have been built by King Akenhaten, Tut’s predecessor and likely father. This beer is also limited and may be purchased for $52 per bottle.

Samuel Adams Utopias – $100 per bottle

Vintage No. 1 may be four times as expensive as Samuel Adams/Boston Beer Company’s Utopias, the former most expensive beer, but Utopias still holds a Guinness World Record for being the strongest beer at 50 proof.

Utopias was brewed with a blend of high-quality hops and sold in an ornate copper-plated brew kettle and offers a flavor unlike any other expensive beer or beverage in the world. The sweet flavor is richly highlighted with hints of vanilla, oak and caramel. The expensive beer is non-carbonated and should be served at room temperature.

Production of Utopias was limited to 8,000 bottles.

Carlsberg Vintage 3 – $348 per bottle

The Carlsberg Group, a brewing company founded in 1847 and named after founder J. C. Jacobson’s son Carl, is best known for their light-bodied lager, Carlsberg Pilsner (also known as Carlsberg Beer or Carlsberg Hof). In 2008, however, Carlsberg introduced another beer guaranteed to be linked to the Carlsberg name in the public consciousness, Vintage 1.

Vintage 3 is the third in the trilogy of beers created from 2008 to 2010. At the time of its launch, the “pale barley wine” was the only available beer to have been aged in French Côte d’Or oak barrels in the Carlsberg founder’s original cellar. Only 1,000 bottles of this exclusive beer were hand tapped and labeled with art by Kaspar Bonnén and two artists selected from the Radiant Copenhagen project.

The price of Vintage 1, 2,008 Danish kroner, reflected the year it was introduced. The brewer introduced Vintage 2 in 2009 and Vintage 3 in 2010, priced at 2,009 and 2,010 kroner respectively.

Brewdog’s “The End of History” – $765 per bottle

Well, PETA is going to have a field day with this one. Scottish brewery BrewDog has produced a beer served in bottles as shocking as the beer’s extremely high alcoholic content.

Only eleven bottles of this expensive beer, named after a book by philosopher Francis Fukuyama, were produced. The blond Belgian ale, infused with nettles from the Scottish Highlands and fresh juniper berries, is 55 percent alcohol and will be BrewDog’s final high ABV beer.

The bottles, however, are the beer’s most striking aspect–each one is encased in a squirrel or weasel stuffed by a gifted taxidermist. The four grey squirrels and seven weasels selected were all roadkill, however, so their immortalization as beer bottles may actually be considered more respectful than ignominious roadside decomposition.

Another Reason Why I Love Rachel Maddow So Much

2010-07-24T06:49:00.001-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Japanese Make the News So Entertaining

2010-07-24T06:41:00.001-04:00

Thank You, Drive Through

2010-07-24T06:32:00.001-04:00

Having people with contagious conditions like, say, swine flu siting in a crowded ER waiting room is not an ideal public health situation. So Stanford Hospital is testing a drive-through ER, where patients get treated in their cars. The idea is that during a pandemic or bioterrorist attack, when “social distancing” is needed, patients would drive up in their cars to be registered and triaged by nurses while still outside the hospital. People who show signs of a contagious condition would be asked to head over to the parking garage, where doctors would evaluate them further either inside the car or on cots. With timekeepers tracking the process, Weiss found that the drive-through reduced patients' length of stay by 1.5 hours compared to what would have been expected in a traditional ER

For the coffee nut, nothing beats a conveniently located, reasonably-priced, drive-thru coffee stand. Except, of course, one staffed with topless baristas. The residents of Washington State know all too well that nothing brightens a morning commute like a great cup of coffee, delivered by a really hot, bikini-clad barista. Since the introduction of the topless baristas last year, coffee and Washington State have never been so enticing. Savvy Washington drive-thru coffee stand owners have added one very popular item to their menu: flesh. With the introduction of the topless baristas, some coffee stands have taken the idea of a "morning jolt" to a whole new level. One coffee stand, Hot-Chick-a-Latte, claims that their bikini baristas can make up to $300 a day.

A few years ago the “Main Place Christian Fellowship", an evangelical church located in Tustin outside Los Angeles, converted a former photo booth in a nearby parking lot into a drive-thru prayer booth. Any driver in need of a prayer can drive through and remain in his car while a pastor on duty prays for him through a window. In addition to free prayers, the booth also gives away free Bibles, bottled water and sometimes flowers.

Junior Funeral Home in Pensacola (Florida) offers "an optional drive -thru viewing window". The drive-through service with cameras and a sound system is used to let on-the-go visitors pay their respects, sign the funeral register and view the remains of the loved one round the clock without ever leaving the car. The former owner, Lafayette Gatling, a former construction worker who said he used to feel uncomfortable himself paying his respects in soiled work clothes, added the drive-through service in 1986.

The drive-thru window at the Climax Gentlemen's Club offers the novelty of a drive-thru with the I'll-do-it-in-my-car convenience of a drive-thru McDonald's. A special gravel driveway leads to a cinder block carport at the back of the building, where patrons can watch the indoor activity from their vehicles, through a diamond-shaped window. A ‘pay here' booth takes credit cards, and displays an autographed photo of Fred ‘The Honzman' Honsburger, a right-wing radio talk show host on Pittsburgh's KDKA. Current rates are $20 a minute for two or more people; $10 a minute for solo customers. If there's someone in front of you, you just have to wait in your car.

Funny Things Overheard in the Bookstore

2010-07-24T05:16:00.003-04:00

"Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?"

"I'm looking for a book, but only know the title, not the author's name. It's called Dante's Inferno."

"This is the only bookstore I've been in that didn't have a popcorn machine."

"Do you have Shakespeare in English?"

"I definitely don't want any non-fiction. I only read autobiographies and history."

"Do you have (pause, consult reading list)...Hamlet, by (pause, consults reading list again)...Shakespeare?"

Unconditional Love Versus Reality

2010-07-23T07:51:00.000-04:00

Unconditional love is one of the mantras of our modern society, but it either means very little or is carried to unrealistic extremes if it is actually practiced. Everything in our lives is conditional whether we realize it,or admit it, or not.

Our careers are conditional on our job performance. Our educational opportunities are conditional on our ability to study and apply ourselves. Our ability to get a mortgage is conditional on our credit scores.

Conditional love, or what passes for it, is no different. If Jeffrey Dahmer's parents loved him unconditionally they would have accepted, if not embraced, his deviant behavior, or at least have accepted him as wholeheartedly as if he were Boy Scout, squeaky clean. There are things that we just can't accept without condition from those we love, if we indeed truly love them. Actions have consequences, and consequences are predicated on conditions.

I expect my actions to be held to account by those who love me, for it is only through their honest appraisal of those actions that I can modify those things that are not acceptable and better develop and affirm those that are acceptable. These conditions placed on me can be life affirming or life changing, but only through honest feedback based on comments and conditions offered by those people who I respect and love, and who I know love me.

The basic idea behind unconditional love seems quite reasonable. You should love your children just for who they are, regardless of what they do. Children shouldn't have to worry whether their actions will cause you to love them less. They should be able to count on your love no matter what.

But unconditional love is a rather new phenomenon. As recently as the 1950s, conditional love was the dominant parenting approach. It was a way to maintain control, foster conformity, and instill certain values and beliefs held by parents and society at large.

But something happened in the sixties. Perhaps it was a reaction to the rigidity of the post-World-War-II era. It was as if the children of the forties and fifties said, "That's enough. We want to be loved regardless of what we do." So they decided to raise their children with unconditional love. Within a short time, America went from "Love if you obey and behave" to "Love without limits." Instead of
figuring out what kinds of conditional love work and what kinds don't, many parents cut all of the strings and made love conditional on nothing.

Unfortunately, the pendulum swung too far. If you look at unconditional love carefully you see why this grand experiment failed. By taking away conditional love, parents lost their ability to influence their children. Parents gave their children carte blanche in the misguided belief that this freedom would build their self-esteem, foster maturity and independence, and allow them to become successful and happy people. But what it actually did was hurt self-esteem, encourage immaturity, and ill prepare children for life in the adult world.

Rewarding children -- love is really the ultimate form of reward -- regardless of their behavior robs children of one of their most important
lessons-that their actions have consequences. What more powerful inducement to good action is there for your child than the threat of losing
your love? I think we should give up on our belief that unconditional love exists. Most things in life have strings attached and love is no different.

In reality, you constantly use love to reward or punish your children's behavior. When you show disapproval toward your children, you are
actually showing them that your love can be momentarily withheld, that your love is, in fact, conditional. For example, you probably do not act lovingly when your children are disobedient, selfish, whiny, or are cruel to their siblings. Or when your adult children make choices that are not in their best interest, such as who they date or marry, what career path they choose, or what educational opportunities they turn their backs on. Are you truly withholding your love in these situations?

Probably not; you still love them. But children, even adult chidren, are often not sophisticated enough to tell the difference between "We disapprove of your behavior" and "Because of what you did, we are taking away our love." Your child's perception is that love has been temporarily suspended. To your child, it feels like, "I did something wrong and my parents think less of me now."

Why do you think parenting experts tell you that, after you have given your children a time-out, you must tell them how much you love them? When they err, the need to know that they have erred, or that our perception is that they have erred. That's just as important as letting them know our feelings when they have succeeded in meeting or exceeding our hopes and expectations.

At some point many parents saw that the pendulum had swung too far and they realized that unconditional love wasn't working. Many children were lazy, disinterested, and out of control. These children weren't good people and they weren't successful or happy. Clearly, a change needed to be made. So, many parents decided to return to conditional love. Unfortunately, many parents reinstated the wrong kind of conditional love.

Perhaps because of the economic uncertainty in recent decades, parents decided to direct their conditional love toward their children's achievement activities, believing that this approach would motivate their children to work hard, become successful, and overcome the difficult economic times. Parents began to make their love conditional on how their children performed in school. If Johnny got an A, his parents heaped love, attention, and gifts on him. When he received a D, they withdrew their love by expressing disappointment, hurt, embarrassment, or anger. As a result, children's self-esteem became overly connected to their achievement efforts. This conditional love caused achievement to become threatening to children because success and failure was too intimately linked with whether their parents would love them.

At the same time, parents maintained their unconditional love for their children's behavior. Parents gave their children unfettered freedom, few responsibilities, didn't hold them accountable for their actions, provided no consequences, and continued to love them not matter how they behaved - as long as they did well in school, it didn't matter if the children were spoiled brats!

Parents must reverse their use of unconditional and conditional love. You need to give your children unconditional love for their achievements so that they will be free from the fear that you will not love them if they fail to meet your expectations. This unconditional love will liberate your children from the specter of lost love and encourage them to give their best effort and achieve the highest level of which they are capable.

At the same time, you can encourage your children's achievement efforts by using conditional love for the values and attributes that will help them succeed, for example, in school, career, or personal relationships. When you use conditional love to instill essential qualities, such hard work, discipline, patience, persistence, honesty, integrity, and perseverance, you then give them the tools to achieve their goals.

Similarly, you should make your love conditional on whether your children behave like decent human beings, namely, they act on healthy values such as honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility. If your children behave poorly, they know that you will withdraw your love-at least temporarily. If they behave well, they know that you will give your love. In time, your children will learn to internalize this healthy conditional love and it will guide them in acting in ethical ways and make better choices in their lives, both personally and vocationally.

Portion Size Increases

2010-07-23T06:26:00.003-04:00

Over the past few decades, portion sizes of everything from muffins to sandwiches have grown considerably. Unfortunately, America’s waistbands have reacted accordingly. In the 1970s, around 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent of us are. In addition, the number of just obese people has doubled, from 15 percent of our population to 30 percent.

While increased sizes haven’t been the sole contributor to our obesity epidemic, large quantities of cheap food have distorted our perceptions of what a typical meal is supposed to look like. These portion comparisons, adapted from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Portion Distortion Quiz, give a visual representation of what sizes used to be compared to what they are today.

We don’t have to eat those extra 360 calories in the tub of popcorn, but that’s easier said than (not) done. Studies indicate that when given food in larger containers, people will consume more. In a 1996 Cornell University study, people in a movie theater ate from either medium (120g) or large (240g) buckets of popcorn, then divided into two groups based on whether they liked the taste of the popcorn. The results: people with the large size ate more than those with the medium size, regardless of how participants rated the taste of the popcorn.

Pizza portion sizes have increased right along with other foods. The average pizza that is bought by Americans today is nearly 40% bigger than that purchased in 1970, with the resultant increase in calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and other things that are bad for our health.

When our parents ordered a coffee two decades ago, they weren’t given as many size options—a standard cup of joe was eight ounces, the size of a small coffee cup. Nowadays, most of us feel like we don’t get our money’s worth unless the cup is at least twelve ounces; it’s not unusual to see thirty-two ounce coffee cups, four times the size they used to be. When made into a mocha, the morning coffee has as many calories as a full meal.

According to a 2007 paper published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, portion sizes offered by fast food chains are two to five times larger than when first introduced. When McDonald’s first started in 1955, its only hamburger weighed around 1.6 ounces; now, the largest hamburger patty weighs 8 ounces, an increase of 500 percent. And while a Big Mac used to be considered big, it’s on the smaller side of many burger options. At Burger King, you can get the Triple Whopper; at Ruby Tuesday’s there’s the Colossal Burger; and Carl’s Junior has the Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger.

Because portions are now so large, it’s hard to understand what a “serving size” is supposed to be. Today’s bagel counts for three servings of bread, but many of us would consider it one serving. Larger sizes at restaurants have also contributed to larger sizes when eating at home. A study comparing eating habits today with twenty years ago found that participants poured themselves about 20 percent more cornflakes and 30 percent more milk than twenty years ago.

We Americans love to get the most bang for our buck. When confronted with a 32-ounce drink for 99 cents versus a 44-ounce drink for ten cents more, the decision is easy. You’d have to be a sucker not to go big. But our ability to get the most out of our dollar doesn’t always serve us well. Value pricing, which gets us a lot more food or drink for just a little increase in price, makes sense from an economic standpoint, but is sabotage from a health standpoint. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Americans consume around 10 percent more calories than they did in the 1970s. Given no change in physical activity, this equates to around 200 extra calories per day, or 20 pounds a year.
What is normal?

Increased portion sizes give us more calories, encourage us to eat more, distort perceptions of appropriate food quantities, and along with sedentary lifestyles, have contributed to our national bulge. Unless you’re trying to gain weight, it might help to reacquaint yourself with serving sizes. The NHLBI tells us that a serving of meat should be the size of a deck of cards while one pancake should be the size of a CD. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a scaling down of food to these sizes anytime soon, so perhaps we should all become familiar with another image: the doggy bag.

While the 12-ounce can used to be the most common soda option, many stores now carry only the 20-ounce plastic bottle, which contains 2.5 servings of soda. When presented with these larger sizes, humans have a hard time regulating our intake or figuring out what a serving size is supposed to be. A 2004 study, published in Appetite, gave people potato chips packaged in bags that looked the same, but increased in size. As package size increased, so did consumption; subjects ate up to 37 percent more with the bigger bags. Furthermore, when they ate dinner later that day, they did not reduce their food consumption to compensate for increased snack calories—a recipe for weight gain.

Geography According to Sarah Palin

2010-07-23T05:01:00.000-04:00

Everyday Toxins

2010-07-22T13:37:00.002-04:00

A lot of everyday products in our society today contain toxins, carcinogens, irritants, and other harmful things. We tend to trust the regulatory agencies who are supposed to be looking out for us, but they are clearly not doing their jobs. It is incumbent on each of us to become informed and then to become proactive in avoiding these and other products until manufacturers get the idea that we don't to pollute our planet, our bodies, and our children because of their harmful practices. Here are a few examples that may surprise you.

I’m Not A Guinea Pig is a comprehensive website, from the Environmental Defense Fund, that lists unsafe chemicals, untested chemicals, and solutions to avoid harmful ingredients. As Congress reexamines the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, a law that was meant to require companies to examine the safety of chemicals used, the site is a valuable resource. Since the law’s inception, over 62,000 chemicals are untested that are currently on the market and 20,000 new commercial chemicals have been created since 1976. Since the end of World War II, over 85,000 chemicals have been integrated into American products, 70% are in everyday household cleaners.

The FDA is currently examining the effects of Triclosan, the chemical behind the anti-bacterial craze. Triclosan is in everything from toothpaste to body lotion, the foam inside shoe insoles and plastic cutting boards. It is responsible for altering hormone regulation, by disrupting thyroid function, and even makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Triclosan contaminates water, which damages ecosystems and wildlife.

Pseudonyms: don’t be fooled by Triclosan’s many pseudonyms- Irgasan DP-300, Lexol 300, Ster-Zac, Cloxifenolum, BioFresh, Microban.

DIY Green: Read Planet Green’s suggestions on how to rid your life of triclosan. Suggestions include using basic hand soap, natural hand sanitizers (made from tea-tree based or vinegar-based products), and finding triclosan-free toothpaste.

Phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA) are endocrine disruptors, also called gender benders, that can cause breast and prostate cancer, infertility, metabolic disorders, disrupt thyroid function and even low birth weight. They are found in everything from fragrances, nail polish, food can linings, flooring and windows. Phthalates are employed as plasticizers in the production of packaging, which clogs landfills and leaks these toxic chemicals into the groundwater. The NRDC is currently investigating phthalates in air freshners.

More: Although the European Union already has laws in effect to ban the use of many phthalates, in the United States companies are not required to list the chemicals in product ingredients as they are considered "trade secrets."

Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs): This endocrine disruptor is present in pizza boxes, fast food containers, paints, roof treatments, floor protectants, and even nonstick cookware. PFCs linger in lakes and streams once released into the environment as the do not easily degrade into the environment. The NRDC describes the effect of PFCs on the environment.

PFCs are often emitted into air and water and even circulate to the Artic from the sewers of major cities such as Cleveland and Chicago. The PFCs carry through the food chain as animals consume: in the fish that seals eat, and in the seals that polar bears consume. Waste water contaminated with PFCs has moved from Chicago's River into the Gulf of Mexico, thus infecting the dolphin population in the Gulf of Mexico.

In Sarasota Bay, Florida, one scientist concluded that 80% of PFCs were found in one mother dolphin's fatty tissue, which filtered into the milk for her newborn dolphins causing a toxic chain of contamination. In humans, PFCs can cause liver, pancreatic, testicular and breast cancers and developmental and reproductive issues.

Mercury, arsenic, lead, aluminum and cadmium are neurotoxins found in fish, lipstick, old paint, batteries, microwaves and lightbulbs. Heavy metals are responsible for environmental contamination in our food and water supply and can be released into the air through the presence of coal ash. The heavy metals cause Alzheimer's, neurological disorders, arrhythmia, developmental and learning disabilities in children, low birth weight, and decreased white and red blood cell production.

Celebrity fragrances are packed with toxic chemicals such as ethanol, acetone and ethyl acetate, which are all chemicals cited by the EPA as hazardous waste. Ninety-five percent of chemicals in perfumes are derived from petroleum. Fragrances have even been detected in the fatty tissue of fish and shellfish. These drastically dangerous scents can cause central nervous system disorders, kidney damage, respiratory failure and mucous membrane irritation. Ecorazzi cites J.Lo (by Jennifer Lopez), Acqua di Gio (Georgio Armani’s signature scent) and Halle (Halle Berry’s scent) as harmful perfumes.

Flowers of Saugatuck

2010-07-22T07:09:00.000-04:00

My Daughter, My Hero

2010-07-22T06:40:00.003-04:00

I'll admit it. One of my heroes is my daughter. At the age of 28 she has more chutzpah, presence, grace, and style than I've achieved in more than twice that many years. And I admire that. I can't be that or do that, but I do admire it.

This doesn't diminish the fact that my son is also my hero. He is the most dependable, stable, and responsible person I know. No matter what life throws at him he keeps his bearings and keeps on plugging away. I hate the old cliched statement about when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. It's been done to death, but that does explain and describe him and how he handles his life. He not only makes lemonade, he even sweetens it and makes it better than just regular old lemonade.

But this post is about my daughter and why I am honoring her as my hero of the moment.

She has spent the past four years toiling in a retail service job, putting in lots of 50 and 60 hour weeks with the implied and expressed promise of being able to buy the business. When the business was recently sold out from under her to another buyer she took the high road. She didn't grouse and complain that the current owner for whom she has been working increased the asking price to her and only gave her 45 days to come up with the money. She didn't make a big deal about it when he sold out his business and his intregity, such as it was, to the other party in less than 15 days after making her the 45 day offer. She hasn't even complained about the fact that the new owners, when they take control of the business, don't want her to work there, probably because of the fact that she intimidates them. She just moved on.

When her last day at this place, Great Lakes Chocolate and Coffee in Sturgis, Michigan, ends next week, she will start on a new adventure in a new place that hired her because of her value. Because of her dedication, and her reputation, and her atttitude. She won't look back and she won't make a big deal out of being mistreated and used by an unscrupulous employer who has lied his way through this whole process and who used her and her sense of loyalty and honor for his benefit and self-aggrandizement.

If I had endured the same situation that she just went through, I would have eviscerated this bastard with a dull soup spoon, filleted him with a piece of broken glass, and staked his rotting corpse on top of a hill of fire ants. I would be screaming to the rooftops about the injustice of being used, lied to, and betrayed. But that's me. And that's why my daughter is one of my heroes.

Her way is better. Even though the idea of gutting this guy with a soup spoon is sure appealing. She can move on with a better attitude, knowing that at some point she can crack the slightest smile in the darkness of her own bedroom just before sleep comes to her, after hearing that this unscrupulous asshole has just had to file bankruptcy a year or two down the road. And that little secret smile and the sense of righteousness that it portends may just be more satisfying than my more immediate and visceral methodology would give to me.

But I'm still scouting out the local environs for a colony of fireants. I'm just saying....

Britney Spears Made HOW Much Money Last Year?

2010-07-22T05:53:00.003-04:00

Just to prove that fame and fortune don't always have anything to do with talent, I couldn't resist posting this example.

Britney Spears has made over $60 million in the past year

Somehow that chick in the picture to the left -- who didn't technically sing at all on her worldwide tour last year -- had the 5th highest grossing tour of the past year. Welcome Apocalypse. From Forbes:

No. 5: Britney Spears

$64 million

Not long ago, most of the entertainment world had written Britney Spears off as a celebrity flameout. But over the last year Spears logged the fifth highest-grossing tour in the world, bringing in $130 million in gross box office receipts by playing 98 dates. High-profile endorsement deals with Elizabeth Arden and Candies' prove that the public expects Spears to stay in the spotlight for good.

Who the hell is paying to see Britney Spears in concert? The only people that should be buying tickets to a Britney show are pre-teens and the registered sex offenders in loose sweatpants standing next to them. Besides, if people want to see an overweight singer whose only real talent used to be her body, they don't need to spend big bucks to go to a Britney Spears concert. They can pay $12.95 at Hometown Buffet and stand next to Jessica Simpson.

Beautiful Flowers on Poisonous Plants

2010-07-22T05:40:00.002-04:00

Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus)
Sweet Pea is native to the eastern Mediterranean region from Sicily east to Crete. Unlike most peas, the seeds of the sweet pea are poisonous. The seeds contain a neurotoxin, and should not be eaten. The illness caused by the ingestion of sweet peas is known as odoratism, or sweet pea lthyrism.

Oleander (Nerium Oleander)
Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants in the world and contains numerous toxic compounds, many of which can be deadly to people, especially young children. The toxicity of Oleander is considered extremely high and it has been reported that in some cases only a small amount had lethal or near lethal effects.

The most significant of these toxins are oleandrin and neriine, which are cardiac glycosides They are present in all parts of the plant, but are most concentrated in the sap, which can block out receptors in the skin causing numbness. It is thought that Oleander may contain many other unknown or un-researched compounds that may have dangerous effects.

Daffodil or Narcissus
All Narcissus varieties contain the alkaloid poison lycorine, mostly in the bulb but also in the leaves . The Narcissus flower is perceived quite differently in the east than in the west. Whereas in the west, the Narcissus flower is seen as a symbol of vanity, in China, the same flower is seen as a symbol of wealth and good fortune.

Monkshood (Aconitum variegatum)
Like other monkshoods, Columbian Monkshood is a poisonous plant. Columbian monkshood or Western Monkshood is a wildflower native to western North America where it grows in moist areas.

Flatpod Peavine (Lathyrus cicera)
Red Pea is the other common name of Flatpod Peavine is a poisonous plant native to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and it is known from other places as an introduced species. This is one pea species known to cause lathyrism.

Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis)
Chinese wisteria can displace native vegetation and kill trees and shrubs by girdling them. The vine has the ability to change the structure of a forest by killing trees and altering the light availability to the forest floor. A native of China, it was first introduced into the United States in 1816 for ornamental purposes. All parts of the plant contain a glycoside called wisterin which is toxic if ingested and may cause nausea, vomiting, stomach pains, and diarrhea. Wisterias have caused poisoning in children of many countries, producing mild to severe gastroenteritis.

Autumn crocus (Colchicum Autumnale)
The plant has been mistaken by foragers for ramsons, which it vaguely resembles, but is a deadly poison due to the presence of colchicine, a useful drug with a narrow therapeutic index. The symptoms of colchicine poisoning resemble those of arsenic and there is no antidote. Despite its toxicity, colchicine is an approved treatment for gout and is also used in plant breeding to produce polyploid strains.

Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia)
The show-stopping hanging trumpet-shaped flowers of angel’s trumpet make this a delight for any garden. It is tropical and grows best in gardens in Zone 9-11, but it certainly can be used as a container plant and brought inside when cool. Angel’s trumpet can be either a shrub or a small tree. Be careful – it’s poisonous!

Bizarre Burgers

2010-07-21T16:00:00.003-04:00

Hamburger has become the all-American food. In its many forms and manifestations, it has replaced real cuisine in the lives of maybe the majority of people. But a hamburger doesn't have to be the same old boring thing all the time. Here are a few examples of ways you can create some variety in your burger mania. If you don't mind mega calories and cholesterol numbers at the upper end of the scale.

The NutBurger
Hailing from Butte, Montana, this burger is nutty! Many profess that it’s like eating a sundae topping on a burger…if your sundae topping consists of mayo and nut clusters.

The CCC
The CCC stands for the Chili Cheeseburger of Champions. Yes, it’s a challenge even to look at it. Can your body easily metabolize over four thousand calories of chili-cheeseburger goodness?

The Scottish Deep Fried
Even in Scotland, deep frying is sacred. Sacred enough for a burger? Yes!

The “Rave” Burger
Who’s raving about it? Burger lovers in San Mateo. The “Rave” Burger towers enough fried onions to earn the distinction “culinary skyscraper!”

The Cheesescraper
And if “Rave” wasn’t tall enough or unhealthy enough for you, how about the cheesescraper! It’s like a meat surprise amidst miles of cheese and some bun thrown in for good measure. Save room for fries!

The LITERAL Baconburger
Though this burger might look standard, guess again. The patty is literally bacon ground up and re-fried to create the ultimate in bacon-tastic deliciousness. Throw on some pepperjack cheese and you have yourself a good ol’ fashion cardiac arrest.

The McSurf n’ Turf
Torn between processed fish and processed beef? Try this McDonalds fish sandwich and a Big Mac with extra tartar, cheese and a bun. It gives a new definition to the term “mystery meat.”

Boundary Waters Sturgis, Michigan

2010-07-21T14:36:00.001-04:00

I wrote a few weeks ago about the impending demise of the coffee shop in Sturgis, Michigan that has been part of my life for the past seven years and the loss of the sense of community and camaraderie that it indicated. The shop, Great Lakes Chocolate and Coffee has long been the anchor store of an endangered downtown shopping district. An all to common situation in modern America, where everyone shops the edges of town with their big box stores and the inevitable satellites that locate near to their proximity in order to have a chance at survival. Small towns are dying all over the place, particularly these downtown areas. Sturgis is no different.

I am happy to report that Sturgis still has a chance at a lively and viable downtown. In the last week we have visited many of the downtown shops and found them to be wonderful, peopled by friendly, helpful owners and staff who are genuinely happy to have you in their stores. Who want to share with you the joys and the angst of conducting business in this tough environment, but who, above all else, are tough, determined, and resilient. They are offering service, product, and ambiance that you simply can't find in the sterility endemic of the Wal Mart and similar big box culture.

Chief among the shops we have come to know and love is a great little cafe called “Boundary Waters.” It's only a block away from Great Lakes and we are upset that we didn't discover it before now.

Boundary Waters has coffee, tea, and assorted specialty drinks that are actually superior to those served at Great Lakes. Who knew? We had become such slaves to the Great Lakes culture, and so connected to the people and friendships that emanated from there, that we simply never tried Boundary Waters. We are certainly telling our friends and acquaintences about the place, and can see the possibility of reconstituting some of the circle we found ourselves to be part of at Great Lakes.

To make it even better, Boundary Waters doesn't sell packaged pastries. They make their own muffins, scones, cookies, cheesecake, and other tasty treats on premises. They also use only the best and freshest ingredients, using as much local fare as possible.

Boundary Waters serves a wonderful breakfast menu, as well as lunch and dinner items that are delicious, fairly priced, and very unique. Pizza, sandwiches, soups, and other fantastic choices that should please almost anyone who has a hunger for great food. Downtown Sturgis is alive and well at Boundary Waters, as well as other spccialty shops. I plan on bypassing the periphery of the town where all the boring stores and chain restuarants reside, as much and as often as possible. Make my choices those in downtown Sturgis, Michigan, starting with Boundary Waters.

My earlier post lamenting the incipient demise of Great Lakes was premature I guess. I can now watch it fail without remorse. My angst was a product of seeing an end rather than a beginning. Now, having discovered this even better alternative, I am hopeful, cheerful, and excited. It's about the beginning of something even greater, not the end of a chain that played itself out due to mismanagement of a short-sighted ownership and the changing of hands to a sterile and disconnected new franchisee.

A Couple of Photos from Saugatuck/Douglas, Michigan

2010-07-21T07:55:00.000-04:00

Anti-Glenn Beck Radio Ad

2010-07-21T07:42:00.003-04:00

Here is a radio advertisement being run by Faithful America, a Christian faith-based group, that illuminates how they and many other Christians feel about Glenn Beck. The ads will be running on radio stations around the country, wherever Glenn Beck is going to appear while on his upcoming promotional tour. I think it's about time that Christians call out somebody like this who pretends to be one of their own.

Krista Detor

2010-07-21T06:37:00.002-04:00

Here's a video of one of my favorite Krista Detor songs, "I'm Still Here," taken from an appearance she did on PBS. She performed this song Monday night when we saw her in Saugatuck and it sounded even better live than it does on the CD or this video. Her song writing and lyrical skills are amazing as evidenced by this song.

Krista also performed four songs from her newest CD, "Chocolate Paper Suites," released in Europe in May, but not releasing in the U.S. until September. Through contacts in Europe I was able to purchase the download of the CD a couple of months ago and have been listening to it a lot since then. It is a concept album, of sorts, being a song cycle of five suites, each containing three songs that are connected or intertwined in some way. This doesn't keep it from being a great listening experience outside of the concept, however, as each song is still well written, crafted, and performed, and perfectly able to stand on its own.

This CD, like her previous three, has been consistently rated with four and five stars on a five star rating scale. She has been hailed by every major music reviewer who has judged her work, and by music publications like "Rolling Stone" and "Billboard."

Indiana should be proud that Krista calls the Hoosier state home. She is highly regarded nationally and internationally, having charted two of her four albums at number one in the Americana music genre, though her music is much more diverse than this categorization would imply. She was also one of eight international songwriters chosen to participate in the Darwin Songhouse project which resulted in a collaborative CD and a PBS film documentary.

The Darwin Songhouse project placed the eight songwriters in the Charles Darwin home in Shrewsbury, England for one week where they lived, wrote, and fellowshipped. They wrote for five days, rehearsed each other's songs one day, and cut the CD and performed it live on the seventh day, all documented by the BBC.

Krista has also appeared on NPR numerous times, performing several of her songs, and being interviewed as well.

She deserves, and is beginning to achieve, wider recognition. While the critics and the people in the music business are well familiar with her and her work, the public is beginning to get the idea as well. She may never turn up on top forty radio, but that is a wasted genre in broadcasting these days anyway. What she is doing, however, is winning over one person at a time who is exposed to her music. And maybe that's the best way of being recognized for one's work anyway.

Report from Saugatuck

2010-07-20T06:06:00.003-04:00

This morning we're sitting in beautiful Saugatuck, Michigan, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo River and Lake Michigan. It's an overcast morning with dawn just breaking through the fog and it promises to be a cloudy, rainy day.

We arrived yesterday, which was a beautiful day in the 80s with intermittent sun and clouds.There was a little shower in the late evening, but otherwise, perfect summer weather on the lake shore.

We came, mostly, to attend a concert at the Saugatuck Community Art Center, but also to take in the wonderful ambiance of this region, often called the Cape Cod of the Midwest. And to shop in some of the most eclectic grouping of shops to be found in the region.

In concert we saw Krista Detor, one of our favorite singer/songwriters, and she did not disappoint. She put on a very tight, entertaining set of songs, performing for an hour and a half that sped by in what seemed like a third of that time. She regaled the audience with three new songs from her latest CD, not yet available in the US until September, three songs from a project of songs about Charles Darwin put together for the BBC last year, and several songs from her four previous CDs.

The shopping was fine, and the food was even better. There are so many nice restaurants here you just don't know where to eat. But we muddled through, picking a couple of places that served up wonderful fare for lunch and dinner.

This morning we are going to spend some time in nearby Douglas, Michigan, which is sort of like an annex to Saugatuck's things to see and do. More wonderful shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and other diversions. We hope the rain stays away for at least part of the day.

Well, it's on to some more exploration, food, and fun.

Will return to regular posting when we return home.

Welcome to this World

2010-07-19T06:32:00.001-04:00

Designer Cakes

2010-07-17T17:16:00.001-04:00

Sugary Treats and How They Got Their Names

2010-07-17T07:36:00.004-04:00

We reach for them when we need a sugar fix, but how well do we know the stories behind our favorite ice creams, cookies, and snack cakes? Here’s a look at the names behind some of your guilty pleasures.

Little Debbie
Yes, there’s a real little girl behind the irresistible line of snack cakes. When McKee Foods needed a name for its new snack cake business in 1960, founder O.D. McKee got a great suggestion from packaging supplier Bob Mosher: why not name the cakes after a family member? McKee decided to name the brand after his four-year-old granddaughter Debbie. The brand’s smiling logo even comes from a photo of the original little Debbie wearing her favorite straw hat.

Dolly Madison
Little Debbie’s snack-cake competitor does indeed draw its name from the former First Lady. Brand founder Roy Nafziger was allegedly a big fan of Dolley Madison, so when he introduced a line of cakes that were “fine enough to serve at the White House” in 1937, he tweaked the spelling of the First Lady’s name and slapped it on his marketing materials.

Häagen-Dazs
What does the upscale ice cream company’s name mean? Nothing! Polish American entrepreneur Reuben Mattus started making ice cream in New York during the 1920s, and by 1960 he was ready to launch a premium brand. Mattus thought that people would associate a Danish-sounding name with Denmark’s renowned dairies, so he made up the name Häagen-Dazs and slapped a drawing of Denmark on the ice cream’s carton. (Nobody bothered to tell Mattus that the Danish language doesn’t use the umlaut.)

Edy’s and Dreyer’s
Ever wonder why you can buy Edy’s ice cream on the East Coast and Dreyer’s on the West Coast? They’re the exact same products, but they’re sold under two separate brand names to honor the company’s two founders. William Dreyer was the original ice cream maker, while Joseph Edy was the team’s confectioner.

Fig Newtons
The actual inventor of the Fig Newton is hard to pin down. Some sources credit baker Charles Roser, while others give James Henry Mitchell the nod for inventing a machine that could fill a cookie with jam. What’s less controversial, though, is that the Kennedy Biscuit Company of Massachusetts began mass-producing the first Fig Newtons in 1891. The company liked to name its sweets after towns in the Boston area, so the new cookie got its name from Newton, MA.

Oreos
Nobody knows exactly where the Oreo name originated, but that doesn’t stop people from speculating. Some guess that the name comes from the “re” cream being nestled between two “O”-shaped chocolate cookies. Others credit the Greek word oros, which means “small mound or hill.” Still others credit the French word for gold, or, because the cookie’s original packaging was gold. One thing everyone agrees on: they are terrific with milk.

Eskimo Pie
According to company lore, Danish immigrant Christian Kent Nelson came up with the idea for the Eskimo Pie while working in his Iowa confectionery store in 1919. A young boy came into the store and kept waffling over whether he wanted to spend his allowance on a chocolate bar or ice cream, and Nelson became convinced that combining the two would create a sure-fire hit. Nelson spent the next year experimenting with the best way to get chocolate to adhere to ice cream, and when he finally perfected the process he began marketing the invention to his customers in 1920. He dubbed his popular creation the I-Scream Bar.

By 1921, Nelson realized that his product could probably make him some cash outside of his own little local shop, so he traveled to Omaha to patent the bar. While in Omaha, he met an ice cream plant superintendent named Russell Stover. Stover knew the ice cream business, so he and Nelson formed a partnership to contract with other companies to mass produce the I-Scream Bar. Stover didn’t like the ominous name, though, so he made up a list of cold-related words and had guests at a dinner party help pick the ones they liked the best. Before dessert was over the guests had settled on “Eskimo Pie.” Nelson and Stover were soon selling a million pies per day.

Famous Amos
Not many bakers can boast that they got their start as talent agents, but that’s where Wally Amos perfected his cookie recipe. After a stint in the Air Force, Amos rose to become the first black talent agent at the William Morris Agency, a job that put him in contact with celebs like Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. After leaving William Morris to start his own management company, Amos figured out what he really loved doing: tinkering with his family’s old cookie recipe. In 1975 he founded Famous Amos with a $25,000 loan from more famous chums Gaye and Helen Reddy, and by the early 1980s, his delicious snacks were raking in $12 million per year.

Baskin-Robbins
Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins had more than just ice cream in common; they were brothers-in-law. Robbins had grown up working in his dad’s ice cream shop, while Baskin had made a name for himself by whipping up ice cream for his fellow troops during World War II. When the war was over, both decided to go into the ice cream business, and Robbins’ father suggested they open separate shops in Southern California.

Robbins opened his first Snowbird Ice Cream outlet in 1945, and Baskin followed up with Burton’s Ice Cream shop in 1946. The two were naturals at the ice cream game, so they soon joined forces and bought a dairy in 1949 to supply their burgeoning chain of 40 stores. In 1953 they dropped the Burton’s and Snowbird names from their individual stores and rebranded themselves as Baskin-Robbins.

Keebler
Sadly, an elf didn’t found the delicious cookie company. Godfrey Keebler opened his first neighborhood bakery in Philadelphia in 1853, but his cookies and cakes were so tasty that the business quickly spread around the region. In 1926 Keebler’s business joined forces with the United Biscuit Company, and by 1936 it had become the official national baker of Girl Scout cookies.

Indiana's Unemployment Insurance Mess

2010-07-17T05:23:00.002-04:00

Indiana has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. This is a fact, even though the Daniels Administration is making unbelievable claims of phenomenal job growth. Most of the jobs they claim to have created simply aren't there but the claims are still being made, as though if they keep saying it no one will notice.

With the numbers of unemployed in the state, there is also a problem with the unemployment insurance program. Indiana's unemployment fund is broke. It's been broke since 2008, in the earliest days of the recession that has caused much of the job loss. And you might think that these numbers of people drawing from the funds caused the depletion of the funds available. This is only partially true. Much of the reason for it is gross negligence, gross mismanagement, and a sense of apathy by the Daniels Administration and their unemployment insurance management team at the Department of Workforce Development (DWD).

Indiana's fund went insolvent in Nov. 2008. Next year, Indiana will have an increased federal UI tax for employers, who will have to pay $21 more/per employee,undoubtedly causing more lay-offs and terminations.

How did Indiana's Trust Fund get so low so fast? Since 2000, as is known by now, benefits were increased. Our weekly amount is still not very high at $390/week, although Daniels said it was "Rolls Royce" high, but at the same time,the taxes on businesses that fund the insurance pool were severely reduced. In 2005, Indiana had a Trust Fund balance of $600,000,000. By November 2008, Indiana's fund was bankrupt. Currently, the federal government is bailing-out Indiana with $1.7 Billion, and that is expected to be over $2 Billion by the end of the year.

Did the recession cause this massive loss of money? Oh, surely it was a major factor; but, incompetence and corruption at DWD have also drained the fund of hundreds of millions from the fund with no oversight by Daniels at all. In 2008, DWD was responsible for OVER-paying $261 Million to claimants who did not deserve to be paid UI benefits. an error rate of 26% of the total amount of benefits for all of 2008. This amount was the highest in the US and $150 Million more than the next closest state, New York.

2009's numbers should be out soon, and I can guarantee the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Trust Fund due to incompetence and negligence at DWD will be to blame.

The people running DWD, none of whom have been with DWD more than 4 years and none of whom worked their way up, but were instead appointed by the governor, have been warned numerous times of problems by inside staff, who DO have unemployment insurance experience,, the US Department of Labor who oversees DWD, the US DOL's Inspector General who did an investigation of ethics problems, the Indiana State Board of Accounts who did an audit last year, and the Indiana Inspector General's office who completed an investigation in December last year and cited many ethics and accounting problems.

Indiana's DWD is being sued by the ACLU of Indiana because of poor UI Appeals backlogs (people waiting months for an appealed hearing). The backlogs are certainly caused because the initial-level "adjudication" is THE WORST in the country, and has been among the worst in the last 3 or 4 years. In the first quarter 2010, Indiana had the worst adjudication quality scores for separation cases (firings, voluntary quits, etc.) and non-separation cases (work searches, vacation pay, pensions, etc.). Out of 100 randomly-sampled issues, Indiana's "Adjudication Center" got only 18 correct.

So if you file for unemployment and receive a determination stating whether or not you should get UI, could be an 82% chance your determination is wrong!

There are many good lay-people working at DWD, but the training is poor (there is no standardized training program for claims adjudicators), claims deputies/adjudicators are still held to a de facto, very high quota to "take care of issues quickly", and the focus on quality has only somewhat recently come-up (but is still being done poorly). Nepotism and cronyism are big at DWD, which is impactful, and anybody with ideas or suggestions to improve the system (who are not sycophantic brown-nosers) are deemed radicals or troublemakers and are punished, harassed and terminated (there have been many people canned from DWD just to shut them up).

So if anyone out there buys the lines of "the recession caused the Trust Fund debt" or "we're doing better than other states", need to be told what I have provided above and educated about what the people running DWD have done to the UI program. Under Governor Daniels, DWD has developed one of the worst workforce development agencies in the country. The Governor has assigned friends from high places or good connections, not to mention former staff members, to run DWD, and they have run it into the ground.

When the Indiana UI program is this bad, businesses, claimants and taxpaying citizens are the ones punished for it with higher UI taxes, denying claimants who should have been paid UI, and costs that are passed on to taxpayers as well. Every Hoosier needs to remember this has happened SOLELY on Governor Daniels' watch. DWD's UI program is the antithesis of "fiscal conservatism" and is a disgrace to the laws and regulations of both the US government and State of Indiana.

Vegetable Race

2010-07-16T07:52:00.001-04:00

A broccoli, a tomato, and a yam were running in a race.  

The broccoli got off to a great start, but being a green runner, didn't have the strength to finish the race.  

The yam and the tomato were neck and neck for the first stretch, but the tomato quickly fell behind.  

The yam was about to reach the end of the track, but collapsed in exhaustion right before the finish line.  

In the course of an hour, the tomato ran the entire length of the race, and won.  

Why was the tomato so successful?  

The tomato paste itself.

From the Department of You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

2010-07-16T07:25:00.002-04:00

Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law...

Fowler headed up a team of 20-some Senate Finance Committee staffers who helped draft the bill in the Senate. She was Baucus' top health care aide from 2001-2005 and left that job in 2006 to become an executive at WellPoint, the nation's largest private insurer. She was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, helping develop public-policy positions for the company. In 2008, she rejoined Baucus to work on health reform legislation.

Watch Bill Moyers explain here how Fowler played an insidious role in killing the public option in the Obama Health Care Plan.

Clearly, this is a telling indictment of the health care law itself, strongly suggesting that it was constructed by the Obama administration -- as some progressives argued -- as a massive taxpayer-financed giveaway to private insurers like WellPoint. And let's be honest: In investment terms, Fowler has been a jackpot for the health industry. The industry maximized her public policy experience for their own uses when they plucked her out of the Senate. Then, having lined her pockets, they deposited her first into a key Senate committee to write the new health care law that they will operate under, and now into the administration that will implement said law. Any bets on how much Fowler will make when WellPoint (or another health insurer) inevitably rehires her in a few years?

Uncle Sam

2010-07-16T07:19:00.002-04:00

Did you know that ‘Uncle Sam’ was a real person? He is based on the real life Samuel Wilson, born September 13th, 1766 and died on July 31st, 1854.

In 1789, Wilson and his brother Ebeneezer moved to Troy New York where they set up a business, E. & S. Wilson which, among other things, dealt in meat packing.

By the war of 1812, the business was fairly prosperous. During the war, E. & S. Wilson obtained a contract with the U.S. government to provide the army with beef and pork. They shipped this beef in barrels and because the meat was now the property of the U.S. government, he marked them with “U.S.” on the barrels. The teamsters, and eventually soldiers, took to saying that the “U.S.” on the barrels stood for “Uncle Sam”, referring to the co-owner of the supplying company, Samuel Wilson.

Eventually, they took to referring to all U.S. branded property as “Uncle Sam’s”, even though E. & S. Wilson only had supplied the beef and pork. This eventually evolved into calling the federal government itself “Uncle Sam”. Widespread use of this anthropomorphic figure of the U.S. government later became popular among the masses through various political cartoons; often squaring off against the English equivalent “John Bull”.

Bonus Facts:

Uncle Sam was first mentioned in public print as early as 1813 and later was connected to Sam Wilson by the New York Gazette on May 12, 1830.

Uncle Sam was first portrayed in human form by cartoonist Frank Bellew in the March 13th, 1852 issue of the New York Lantern.
The “Abe Lincoln” look, along with the star spangled outfit, was the brain child of political cartoonist Thomas Nast in the late 1800s (aside: Nast was also the cartoonist who came up with the now popular image of Santa Claus, the Republican Elephant, and the Democratic Donkey)

The famous recruiting image of the Uncle Sam during WWI that depicted a stern Uncle Sam pointing his finger and saying “I want you” was drawn by artist James Montgomery Flagg in 1917. This was based on a famous series of British war recruitment posters featuring Lord Kitchener and is now the standard image used to depict Uncle Sam.

The Senate and the House of Representatives officially saluted Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America’s National symbol of Uncle Sam, including creating a national monument marking his birthplace in Arlington Massachusetts and his burial site in Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, New York.

Jobs You Didn't Hear About on Career Day

2010-07-16T05:36:00.002-04:00

Back when we were in preschool, there were only a handful of sensible options for the career-minded 4-year-old: doctor, plumber, fireman and cowboy. Clearly, had we heard about “sin-eating” or any of these other fine ways to make a living, we would have eaten more paste and focused a little less on our permanent records.

Here then are some careers that might have intrigued us if we'd only known about them.

1. Filibuster
Long before the term “filibuster” came to be associated with elected officials, it was actually associated with violence and trickery. In the 1600s, pirates known to the Dutch as vrijbuiters pillaged the West Indies, and eventually, the word was assimilated into the English language as “filibusters.”

Between 1850 and 1860, the name was used to refer to the American mercenaries who attempted to revolutionize Central America and the Spanish West Indies. The most famous of these filibusters was William Walker, a U.S. citizen who succeeded in gaining control of Nicaragua in 1856 by overthrowing the nation’s administration. Walker became president of Nicaragua, but only until May 1, 1857, when a coalition of Central American states ousted him.

Because filibusters of previous centuries strove to interfere with foreign regimes, the term evolved to refer to anyone who attempted to obstruct the government, as our legislators occasionally see fit to do when a particularly troublesome bill comes before them.

2. Lungs
Perhaps the cruelest case of naming irony in history, anyone employed to fan the fire in an alchemist’s workshop was known as a “lungs.” And because most alchemists were constantly trying to make gold out of lead and other such base metals, you can only imagine what kinds of dangerous materials were floating about in the labs. As a result, the actual lungs on a lungs gave out relatively quickly, leading to a profession with widespread early retirement.

3.Sin-Eater
No matter how much you loved Grandma and Grandpa, you can probably admit your forebears weren’t perfect. So, if you ever had a loved one that passed on before his or her last chance at absolution, it makes sense that you might want to call in reinforcements. Fortunately for the fretful and grieving of yore, there was the town sin-eater. For a small fee, the sin-eater would gladly scarf down a meal (usually bread and ale) that had been placed on the deceased’s chest. By letting the food lie atop the dearly departed for a while, it was believed the vittles would absorb the last transgressions. And, once the food was gobbled up by the sin-eater, Grandma or Grandpa could get into heaven without any major roadblocks.

4. Knocker-Up
In British towns of yore, particularly those with a mine or mill as the center of commercial activity, knocker-ups were responsible for going from house to house to wake workers in the mornings. The title, not surprisingly, came from the sound they made rapping on windows. As for the evolution of the term “knocking,” it also denoted a collision of sorts, and in the 17th century, it was used in reference to childbirth. Even poet John Keats wrote of “knocking out” children in some of his odes. It wasn’t until the 19th century, however, that Americans began using the phrase as slang for getting a woman pregnant.

5. Ratoner
Ain’t it grand to live in a world where the Black Death isn’t a daily concern? Fortunately, when it was an issue, a ratoner was there to lend a helping hand. A ratoner was a rat catcher, who served a vital role in maintaining the health of the villagers. Those of us accustomed to modern pest control techniques might be a bit surprised to learn about the disposal method employed by a typical Victorian-era ratoner, though. After capturing the rodents, he would set out for the town pub, where dogs made a sport of devouring the day’s catch. This earned extra cash for the ratoner and was considered great entertainment by saloon regulars.

The most famous ratoner, Jack Black, was appointed Royal Rat Catcher in the mid-19th century and bred some of his more interesting and colorful finds as household pets. In fact, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter is said to be dedicated to her personal rat, one of Jack Black’s progeny.

6. Alnager
In merry olde England, an alnager was a sworn officer of the court who garnered much esteem. He was responsible for ensuring that woolen goods were of the highest quality and that no one was being cheated on the amount of fabric ordered. The job was important not only because the king earned taxes from wool sales, but also because goods approved by the alnager carried the town’s seal of approval. But, as the textile trade grew, it became nearly impossible to hold all wool to the same standards of size and density, so the king abolished the position.

7. Badger
Odd as it may sound, badgers were part of the rat race in prior centuries, serving as intermediaries between the producers of goods and the consumer. Most often, they traded in corn and other foodstuffs, buying from farmers and reselling the goods at markets in town. And if you think the salespeople at Macy’s are tough, some historians think badgers were so persistent in pushing their products that the term came to be associated with an often annoying and forceful adamance—i.e., “badgering” anyone in sight to buy from you instead of another vendor.

8. Gong Farmer
Not unlike The Gong Show, a gong farmer was far from being the cream of the crop—and even that might be the understatement of the year. In Tudor England, a gong farmer’s job was to empty the town toilets. But the job did have its perks. Typically, a gong farmer would “mine” the waste for any items of value that might be found amongst the city’s excrement—a penny here, a button there—before it was used as manure or thrown into the river. For a while, it was falsely believed that gong farmers were immune to the plague, but you can’t help wonder if that was more of a pity belief, like the whole idea that being hit by bird droppings is good luck.

9. Fuller
Making textiles hasn’t always been such a streamlined process. Once upon a time, there were spinners to spin the thread, weavers to weave the cloth, and fullers to finish the goods once they came off the loom. Almost Lucy-and-Ethel style, fullers walked on the back side of the cloth to bind the fibers together and give cohesion to the newly woven fabric. But stomping alone wouldn’t accomplish this feat. Instead, fullers soaked the cloth in a mixture of clay (“fuller’s earth”) and urine while it was being trampled. In fact, medieval housewives often earned extra cash by saving the family’s urine and selling it to the fuller, and some schools even had children use one bucket as a toilet for the same purpose.

10. Bullocky
It sounds like Lewis Carroll came up with this word around the same time he was writing “Jabberwocky”, but a bullocky was actually a person who drove cattle to market. Yet, the bullocky and the Jabberwock might share something in common—nonsense. According to some historians, to say bullocks swore like sailors would be an insult to sailors. In fact, it was the bullocks’ foul mouths that led the term to be associated with bastardized speech. That, combined with the fact that they worked with “bull” (which had the same connotations we know today), could have helped bullocky evolve into a term for ridiculous or dispensable speech.

Story of Sauces

2010-07-16T05:22:00.002-04:00

Did you ever wonder how that favorite sauce or dressing originated? Some of the stories behind these staple food products are quite interesting. Here are a few that I hope you find entertaining and interesting

1. Thousand Island Dressing:

Is the delicious dressing that gives a Reuben its tanginess named after an actual chain of islands? You bet it is. The Thousand Islands are an archipelago that sits in the Saint Lawrence River on the U.S.-Canada border, and there are actually 1,793 of them, some of which are so small that they contain nothing more than a single home.

So why is the dressing named after an archipelago? No one’s quite sure. Some people claim that early film star and vaudevillian May Irwin, who summered on the Thousand Islands, named it, while others contend that George Boldt, the famed proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria, gave the dressing its name because of his own summer place in the region. No matter who named it, it’s tough to beat on a sandwich.

2. Ranch Dressing:

Yep, this beloved dressing and dipping sauce actually got its start on a real ranch. When Steve and Gayle Henson opened a dude ranch in Californiain 1954, they had an ace up their sleeves: a delicious dressing that Steve had concocted while the couple was living in Alaska.

The couple did a nice business at their Hidden Valley Ranch, but guests were always flipping out over just how tasty Steve’s dressing was. Eventually, the Hensons started bottling the stuff, and the popularity grew so quickly that they had to hire a twelve-man crew just to help mix up each batch. Steve’s culinary creativity turned out to be lucrative; in 1972 Clorox forked over $8 million for the recipe.

3. A1 Steak Sauce:

According to the brand’s website, A1 has been around for quite a while. Henderson William Brand worked as the personal chef for King George IV from 1824 to 1831, and at some point during this employment mixed up a new sauce for the king to use on his beef. George IV allegedly took one bite of Brand’s creation and declared that it was “A1.” Brand then left the king’s employ in order to go peddle his new sauce.

4. Worcestershire Sauce:

Worcestershire sauce was invented accidentally in England by Brits trying to ape what they thought was authentic Indian food. In this case, the demanding diner was one Lord Marcus Sandy, a former colonial governor of Bengal. Having grown attached to a particular flavor of Indian sauce, he recruited two drugstore owners, John Lea and William Perrins, in hopes that they could recreate it based on his descriptions. Lea and Perrins thought they’d make a profit by selling the leftovers in their store, but frankly, the sauce they created had a powerful stench – so they stashed it in the basement and forgot about it for two years while it aged into something that tasted much better.

Lea and Perrins sold the stuff to a boatload of customers, literally; they convinced British passenger ships to carry some aboard. Presumably they didn’t mention the way they’d come across their secret recipe since it probably would have made most people seasick.

5. Heinz 57:

Legend has it that Heinz 57 takes its name from H.J. Heinz’s company formerly marketing 57 products at once, and except for the number, the story holds up. Heinz’s website tells a story that Henry John Heinz was riding a train when he saw a billboard advertising 21 varieties of shoes. He so liked the idea he wanted to try it with his own condiment company. Thus, he started touting Heinz’s 57 varieties.

There was only one catch: Heinz marketed well over 60 products at the time. So where did the 57 come from? Heinz thought the number was lucky. Five was Heinz’s lucky number, and seven was his wife’s. He mashed the charmed digits together, got 57, and never looked back.

6. Tartar Sauce:

Fish’s best friend is named after an alternate spelling of the word “Tatar,” which was how Western Europeans once referred to almost anyone of Mongolian or Turkic descent. Many of these Tatars/Tartars ran roughshod over Europe in the time of Genghis Khan, but they knew how to cook. One of the dishes they left behind, beef tartare, came back into fashion in 19th-century France. These helpings of steak tartare came with a number of garnishes, including the creamy white stuff that eventually became generically known as tartar sauce.

7. Hollandaise Sauce:

Hollandaise, the lemon-butter-and-egg yumminess that Eggs Benedict can’t live without, isn’t actually Dutch. Instead, it’s one of the most well known French sauces. The sauce first appeared in French cooking in the 17th century, and is apparently named both because it somewhat resembles an old Dutch sauce and because the Dutch had such thriving butter and egg industries that provided two of the sauce’s main ingredients.

Is Fox News Just Factually Challenged or are They Trying to Invent News Out of Thin Air?

2010-07-15T06:45:00.003-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Finally, Preachers Who Make Some Sense

2010-07-15T06:33:00.000-04:00

Teaparty Spokesman Calls NAACP "Racist"

2010-07-15T05:39:00.000-04:00

This Glass...

2010-07-15T05:18:00.000-04:00

Odd Foods

2010-07-15T05:11:00.002-04:00

Roasted Guinea Pig - Peru and Bolivia
When I think of a guinea pig I think of the little critters people own as pets. I do not imagine eating domesticated guinea pigs from Peru and Bolivia. Sadly, in these areas guinea pigs are easier to keep and care for and are a major food source.

They’re typically larger than the furry guys we keep as pets, but it appears as though size does not matter when it comes time to prepare dinner.

Live Octopus - Korea
In Korea Sannakji is a raw dish consisting of live octopus. The octopus is cut into pieces whilst still alive, lightly seasoned with sesame oil and served immediately whilst the tentacles can still be seen squirming on the plate.

Eating live octopus is a challenge not only mentally trying to get your head round eating something that’s still alive, but physically, as the tentacles stick to any surface they touch. You actually have to fight with your food before you can devour it and savour its taste.

The first hurdle is to get the tentacles off your chopsticks, and once the octopus is in your mouth it will suction to your teeth, the roof of your mouth and your tongue essentially trying to preserve its own life. It is supposedly enjoyable to experience the party in your mouth as the tentacles wriggle around and stick to your mouth as you chew it. Special care should be taken to chew thoroughly, however, because if the suction cups stick to the mouth or throat, this can be a choking hazard.

Boerewors - South Africa
The main dish of the African tribes, this combination of barbecued cow and sheep intestines and served with herbs like aloe and cactus is a nasty piece of work.

Bird's Nest Soup - China
Bird’s nest soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. A few species of swift, the cave swifts, are renowned for building the saliva nests used to produce the unique texture of this soup.

The edible bird’s nests are among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans. The nests have been used in Chinese cooking for over 400 years, most often as bird’s nest soup.

Thoughts on the Economy

2010-07-15T04:36:00.002-04:00

Some food for thought about the financial hole we have been in for the last couple of years.

In 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation’s total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. Those programs demonstrated the distinct role that government can provide to lift up the masses and to build a viable, vibrant economy. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America’s total annual income, still a significant disparity when compared to the rest of the country. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America’s two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks—in 1929 and 2008.

This is not a coincidence. It is the result of a law of economics. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don’t have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. This reduces demand for products, which then in turn, reduces the need for labor, and the whole economic engine slows down.

Add this concentration of wealth to the fact that America’s median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades, and you have two of the catalysts for recession or worse.

When you also have unregulated financial markets, two other scenarios that 1929 and 2008 have in common, you have a vortex that sucks up all the money that is available and further channel more of it into the pockets of those privileged few at the top.

The demise of jobs due to reduced demand and the reduced amount of money available able to spur the demand for goods act as twin, interconnected brakes on economic growth. Then the job market is further reduced by outsourcing of our production to other cheaper labor countries and an influx of foreign workers willing to work cheaper in this country in the jobs that don't move offshore.

A great hollowing out has taken place in our country since the election of Ronald Reagan. Even given those relatively good years under Bill Clinton, we still have seen a steady decline in overall jobs, that reconcentration of wealth I mentioned, wage stagnation, trade treaties and agreements that put American labor into an uncompetitive position, and a lack of recapitalization and infrastructure spending that has further eroded our necessary social structures.

These problems exist, mostly because the American people bought into the lie that government was the problem. Take off the fetters of regulation and open wide the doors to the treasury, cut taxes, and the newly concentrated wealth that will result will trickle down to the wage earners in the middle class and below. That was the litany of mindless conservatism, and even the working class who stood to lose the most, bought into it, and still are buying in, as witnessed by the anger so still have toward government doing its due vigilance.

We have limited means to rebuild because so many industries whose materials we need for the process to happen are no longer here. Factories are boarded up, machinery is relocated to offshore locations, and trained, skilled, experienced workforces are disappearing into low wage service jobs or generational unemployment.

It took a long time for the privileged few to reclaim their mastery over the economy. With the political clout, the financial wherewithal, and the predatory practices they are allowed to practice, it will take a long time for the little folk to chip away at their control and to get the availability of capital flowing downward again. The first step is in knowing that this disparity exists, then getting regulations and programs in place through governmental intervention that can reverse the flow of capital, back into the pockets of those who will buy the homes, the automobiles, the appliances, and all the rest that made our economy flourish in the post-war era.

Largest Wine Collection in the World

2010-07-14T16:25:00.002-04:00

Milestii Mici in Moldova holds a collection of wine which is in the Guinness World Records for being the biggest wine collection in the world. The collection comprises 1.5 million bottles. Stretching for 250 kilometres (160 mi), of which only 120 kilometres (75 mi) are currently in use. The Milestii Mici cellar complex is also the largest in the world.

Overall, the complex holds nearly 2 million bottles. More than 70% of the stored wines are red, 20% are white and about 10% are dessert ones. The most valuable items of this collection, worth €480 a bottle, were produced in 1973-74; they are now exported only to Japan.The State Enterprise Quality Wines Industrial Complex “Milestii Mici” was found in 1969 as a mini-complex for storing, preserving and maturing high quality wines.

The wines stored here are made from crops of various years, beginning with 1969: “Pinot”, “Traminer”, “Muscat”, “Riesling”, “Feteasca”, “Dnestrovscoie”, “Milestscoie”, “Codru”, “Negru de Purcari”, “Trandafirul Moldovei”, “Auriu”, “Cahor-Ciumai”, and others.

Local ancient underground galleries, reach the Chisinau borders. The first parties of wine were brought into the galleries at the end of the 60s and the results exceeded all expectations. The limestone played the role of a natural accumulator of constant humidity (85-95%) and temperature (12 °C (54 °F) – 14 °C (57 °F)) throughout the year. The longer the wines are stored in such ideal conditions, the better their qualities are. The wines are being brought at the enterprise for many decades, only there becoming splendid collection and high quality wines.

This Land is Your Land

2010-07-14T13:14:00.002-04:00

My earlier post about the unknown lyrics to some of the best known children's songs got me to thinking about one of my all time favorite songs, "This Land is Your Land." Written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 as an answer to what he felt was the distorted and self-serving lyrics of "God Bless America," "This Land" has stood up well to the changing times.

Some think it should be the national anthem, and I actually agree with that. I this song in its entirety better expresses what America is and what America should be than any other song I've heard.

Here is Steve Earle, the great progressive social activist and singer/songwriter performing "This Land" with a couple of verses that you don't normally hear, but which add so much substance to what Woody Guthrie really felt and what he was trying to say with the song.

Steve Earle performs Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" Unabridged Version (1940) from Voices of a People's History on Vimeo.

An Inside Look at the Privatization of FSSA

2010-07-14T08:07:00.001-04:00

The fiasco of the privatization of Indiana's Family and Social Services Agency under the Daniels' Administration is one of the low lights of recent Hoosier politics.

Daniels came to office as Governor with some sort of unearned legendary business accumen, promising to put the state back on track, financially, and rescuing us from the ravages of “liberalism.” Like there had ever been, or would ever be, a liberal agenda afoot in Indiana.

Daniels, who had, as George W's Budget Director, overseen the demise of the quarter trillion dollar Clinton surplus and turned it into a hemorrage of red ink resulting in the greatest deficits in the country's history, promptly set about redefining the state in a decided pro-business, anti-citizen orgy of libertarian, conservative excesses. He changed our time zones, making a worse hodge podge of the state's divided time zone situation than even we opponents of the changes could imagine. He promptly privatized the prison system, the Indiana Toll Road, and the FSSA. He expressed interest in privatizing other state owned or managed entities, such as the State Park system, the South Shore Railroad, and basically any other agency that could be pitched to his cronies.

This post is about the boondoggle that happened at FSSA. There is some insider information that applies to the how and why the decisions were made to privatize the agency. Some of this is new information, and I have no doubt will be of interest to the the legal teams who are gearing up in the suit/countersuit between the State of Indiana and the private contractor hired to operate the FSSA by the Daniels' Administration.

Daniels had appointed Mitch Roob, a former aide to Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, and later an Illinois political hack, to head up the FSSA. Roob, between various jobs within Illinois state government and his appointment to head up Indiana's FSSA had been a vice president of Affiliated Computer Services. Their main business was in the arena of privatizing government computer services in state and local communities around the country.

Daniels also brought Carl Moldthan, a retired firefighter and then head of the Hoosier Taxpayers Association, aboard at FSSA as a $45,000 a year administrative assistant. He had also worked as a private business owner and was a consultant to local governmental agencies. Moldthan had worked hard to elect Daniels, and was genuinely interested in saving Indiana from governmental waste and excess taxation.

Because there had been so much talk about privatizing the services administered by the county welfare agencies, Moldthan was given the task to visit every single county welfare agency--all 105 of them. During the course of his visits, Moldthan made no fewer than 70 suggestions to Roob and his superiors on ways of improving the agency's operations, changes if implemented, he claims would have resulted in hundreds of millions in savings. Little did Moldthan know at the time that his common sense ideas would be met with scorn, laughter or otherwise summarily rejected by his superiors.

What Moldthan came to learn was that Roob was going to privatize the work done by those county welfare agencies come hell or high water. Anyone who didn't believe in privatization should leave, an offer Moldthan gladly accepted after less than a year on the job. Moldthan also learned that Roob had no intention of saving money from privatization. After all, the county welfare agencies comprised only $180 million of FSSA's multi-billion dollar budget, representing just 7% of the agency's entire budget.

Roob must not have shared his "no savings" comments about privatization with his boss. Gov. Daniels promised savings of more than $500 million over the first decade at the time he publicly proposed the privatization initiative in 2006. “Today, we act to clean up welfare waste, and to provide Indiana’s neediest people a better chance to escape welfare for the world of work and dignity,” Daniels said in his press release. “We will make America’s worst welfare system better for the people it serves, a much fairer deal for taxpayers, and for its own employees.”

Moldthan traces the privatization charade back to a KPMG report Roob had done on behalf of the agency in 2005, which merely listed known problems that had existed for over 20 years in FSSA and were never adequately addressed. It’s somewhat like telling someone that their roof leaks and they have known about it for 20 years.

Based on his visits and extensive interviews with the people in the trenches doing the work, Moldthan disagreed with Roob's plan to privatize the family services. He hastens to add that he is not opposed to privatization in general. "I have always been a supporter of privatization and still believe in it," he says. "However, I believe that when privatization is used its purpose should be to bring better service at a less expensive price but it should not be used as an end all tool for problems in government."

Moldthan warned Roob and his superiors that they had failed to check out the root of the problems at the county level before making a decision to privatize. "After reviewing the situation in FSSA it has become clear that no one has checked this out and in my opinion will be a very BIG mistake [to privatize]," he warned. "It is also clear that there was NO ONE who spoke against it and if they did, they were told as I was that, "Since you don’t believe in what we are going to do, maybe you shouldn’t work here'" "This cuts out all discussion in the negative and causes much of it to be canned or without truth," Moldthan says. "It also increases the chance of failure when the other side is kept quiet." How prophetic his warning to Roob and his superiors turned out to be.

Moldthan became very disturbed by the disparaging comments Roob was making about the county welfare workers as he was visiting their offices. “They are nothing but glorified order takers”, “They give away too much”, are just but a few of the disparaging remarks that Moldthan noted Roob had made about them.

Moldthan e-mailed Roob to express his concerns about privatization during the course of his fact-finding mission. He wrote:

“When I attended the meeting on July 1st you made two statements that surprised and confused me. One was that the part of the budget you were talking about (county offices at $180 million) was only 7% of DFR's total budget. The other is that privatization was not going to save any money. If both of these are true then why may I ask are we going to privatize? You need to keep them informed.

As I stated before these people are paid poorly, eat lunch at their desks and most are more conservative than you and I. They feel what needs to change are the rules and policies. I think if they were given a chance they could and would succeed at the task of saving money. Unfortunately they're not going to get that chance.”

Roob never responded to Moldthan's e-mail.

Moldthan to this day speaks about how surprised he was by the dedication of the more than 1,000 county welfare workers he met during his road trip. Many of them had worked in their jobs for more than 20 years, and had experienced first hand the fraud and abuse taking place in the system but found themselves completely frustrated by efforts to make changes by middle management folks at FSSA to whom they reported. Moldthan outlined some of the basic problems that these workers confronted on a day-to-day basis:

1. No new computers for over 9 years.

2. Many of the forms are still done in paper which takes many extra hours from caseworker’s days.

3. Many very simple problems that cause counties extra work have not been addressed and have been left to fester.

4. Contrary to current beliefs county caseworkers DO NOT make decisions, Indiana’s written polices must be followed. If changes are expected the rules need to be changed and this move would save millions in the cost of employees alone.

5. Present computer forms for various programs such as Medicaid and TANF are out dated and are not equipped with relational databases.

6. Counties DO NOT control or have any input into their yearly budgets.

7. No raises. According to some people, out of 25 years they have only received raises 11 times. These people eat their lunch at their desks, work over without extra pay, come in early without pay and many other things that most people would quit over. This being the case they deserve a chance to make it work.

8.Starting wage for a caseworker is $22,700 and most are college graduates and are NOT big supporters of the union. Most are also very dedicated, however, they are anything but liberals in their beliefs about whom and how much the State gives to clients.

Moldthan had a whole list of changes Roob and his superiors could make that would achieve real savings without actually privatizing. They included:

Closing 15 to 20 offices and combining them with other local county offices.
Reduce staffing at the offices by one-third.
Modernize the technology used by the workers to increase efficiency, including newer leased computers supported by relational databases instead of static information contained on outdated computers that are unable to communicate with other databases.
Employ independent medical review teams rather than relying on a client's physician exclusively. Moldthan noted that some offices experienced as many as 50% of the disability claims being based on a clients' claims that they suffered from bipolar disorder. Workers told Moldthan they believed that many of those claims would have and should have been disallowed if independent medical review teams were utilized instead of the client's physician.
Hire more fraud investigators. Moldthan learned that as much as 25% of the benefits may have been consumed by fraudulently-claimed benefits.
Allow clients access to computers placed in the office lobbies to fill out basic information in advance of meeting with welfare workers to aid the workers in assisting the clients more efficiently.
Provide incentive bonuses to county workers who come up with ideas that are implemented and save the agency money.

After Moldthan failed on numerous occasions to get Roob or his other superiors to listen to him and act on any of his suggestions, causing him to become increasingly frustrated, he hand-delivered his findings to Gov. Mitch Daniels, then-Senate President Robert Garton and then-House Speaker Brian Bosma. Moldthan's cover letter included a scathing indictment of Roob's administration of FSSA. Moldthan wrote in his October 31, 2005 letter, in part:

“My job with FSSA was to suggest methods to save money. To date, I have made over 70 suggestions with an estimated savings of many hundreds of millions of dollars. However, not one of these suggestions has been implemented and as far as I know have not even been studied. In fact, I have heard every obscure and ridiculous reason NOT to do them. I wish I could count the number of times I have heard, “that’s not our problem” or “that’s not our area”.

I have seen irresponsible management within the agencies and a total disregard for taxpayer’s dollars. I have also witnessed incompetence. The sad part is the only people who seem to give a damn about saving taxpayer money are those employees who work in the trenches and deal directly with the public. They see the waste and tell the appropriate people and then they are ignored.

It is this type of total disregard for taxpayer’s funds that concerns me and creates skeptics in the public sector. After careful thought and consideration I have come to the conclusion that the leaders of FSSA are so focused on privatization that they are disregarding numerous opportunities worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. I generally am in favor of privatization and I have made that known on many occasions, however, I have made known my reservations about moving too quickly and without studying this situation to insure success . . .”

Daniels never met with Moldthan, nor discussed his ideas and the problems he encountered at FSSA under Roob's leadership. His letter merely resulted in an angry Roob summoning him to his office for a verbal undressing and a demand that he recant the comments in his letter. As Moldthan recounts his meeting with Roob:

“On the morning of November 23rd I met with Mr. Roob and John Davis, General Counsel for FSSA and I apologized for not copying Mr. Roob in the original document. Mr. Roob then told me I should write him a letter recanting the entire document as "innuendos", “factually incorrect information" and merely “my opinion”. Roob stated that I was the "most disloyal person he had ever met." During the entire meeting I sat there quietly and NEVER said a word. I let Mr. Roob babble on.

After the meeting Mr. John Davis came running out of the meeting and stated that he had told me that Mr. Roob was angry. He handed me notes he had taken during the meeting and stated that I should write the letter. I never wrote the letter and NEVER will.”

Four years later it has become abundantly clear how right Moldthan was and how wrong Roob was. After spending $361 million on a privatization contract with IBM and its partner, ACS, who just happened to be Roob's former employer before joining the Daniels administration, even Daniels had to agree the effort had become an unmitigated disaster and had become a major embarrassment for him. Daniels cancelled the contract Roob executed on behalf of the state and sued IBM, which in turn has filed suit against the state.

The Daniels administration declined requests by the media to compare the cost of the old system run by county welfare workers to the costs under the IBM-ACS-led effort. Daniels' spokesperson said there were too many variables to make such a comparison beneficial. Before the privatization was undertaken, the administration claimed an internal modernization would cost $220 million a year compared to an annual cost of $150 million under the privatization plan.

Daniels has retained ACS's services after cancelling the contract with IBM under a new hybrid approach to delivering welfare services. The fallout from the ill-fated privatization plan continues, however.

The federal government has levied multi million dollar penalties against FSSA for miscalculating food stamp benefits. The federal Food and Nutrition Service said FSSA, who is running the food stamp program for USDA in Indiana has a combined error rate of 7.1 percent, or more than 1.5 times the national average of 4.36 percent. FNS also said Indiana erred in 13.69 percent of cases when it came to denying benefits or granting eligibility. The national average was 9.41 percent. FSSA blamed the problems on IBM and its partners, from whom it would seek to recover the financial penalty in its lawsuit against IBM.

So after this fiasco, filled with corporate cronyism and questionable ethical lapses, not to speak of the complete failure of the experiment, where do find Mitch Roob today? Oh he's left the FSSA after making a total shambles out of the system and costing Hoosier taxpayers billions of dollars now and into the future.

Never fear for Mr. Roob, however. Governor Daniels is taking good care of him. Immediately upon leaving FSSA in total disgrace, the Governor named him to be Indiana's Secretary of Commerce. In that job Roob is continuing his less than stellar ways. He is making claims of job creation and business relocations within the state that have, to date, no supporting evidence. In fact, to the contrary. But we are told to believe his claims all the while that he is cloaking the statistics, claiming confidentiality of information. Even though all of this information is legally within the public right to know.