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I started riding my bicycle again this week for the first time in a long time. You’ve probably seen me on the road; I’m that guy you pass that you look at for a couple seconds, then say, “Well, good for him!”

I used to be the guy you passed on the road and said “Jesus, I’ve got to get in shape!” I’m not that guy anymore. It’s been a few years now since I was that guy. Maybe I’ll be that guy again, it’s hard to say.

At least I’m not the guy you pass and say “I hope he talked with his doctor before doing that” or even the “My God! Somebody call an ambulance!” guy. Nope, I’m not either one of them.

I’m hoping to go in the other direction, back upstream. Upstream was a nice place as I recall. I think the “Jesus” guy is the sweet spot (or, for this metaphor, the slickest rock in the creek). I liked being him, if only for a little while. It takes a little maintenance to be that guy (which is why he isn’t me right now), but I think it’s still possible. Sure; why not?

There is a guy who’s fitter than that guy: the guy you see riding along the side of the road, perfect form, even breather, lightning quick. The guy other people, as they pass him in their cars, prayerfully urge to eat shit and then immediately get to dying. Now that’s a guy!

But he’s not the slickest rock in the creek. That title goes to the guy who can eat a slice of pizza or have a beer whenever he wants to.

David Attenborough – Wikipedia

Is there a more excellent 83 year old man out there?

Check out the “Favourite Attenborough moments” on the wikipedia page, and this:

I tried to get my little pickup truck an inspection the other day, but the guy at Snowball & Sons & Daughter–it may have been Snowball–told me the window tinting was too dark. I figured it might be, even though I bought it last year with a valid sticker on it. I guess I don’t know the right inspection guy to go to. So I’ve been driving it around for the last few weeks with an expired sticker, steeling myself to either get a professional tint remover to charge me a couple hundred bucks to remove the tinting, or set aside an entire day to do a bitter, half-assed job of it myself with a scraper and some razor blades. Then I remembered about the Google thing you kids have on the internets today, and typed in “how to remove tinting from a car window,” which returned this, which in turn saved me a bucket of time and money and made me feel very good about myself and the world for a few hours.

In sum, the Google you kids have today is substantially better than the card catalog system at Long Beach Public Library ca. 1979, which is worth remembering from time to time.

I believe that in the future we’ll come together, liberals and conservatives alike under President Obama, and work toward making the country’s future a bright one. But in the meantime, all y’all Old Man Blinky/Sarah Palin voters can suck my dick.

CNN: Barack Obama wins presidential election – CNN.com

It’s a fuckin golden day!

Goodnight, sleepyheads! Tomorrow’s Christmas!

Given Old Man Blinky’s creepy performance last night, I think every American whose last name is not McCain or Palin can agree that we have entered the time when Obama cannot fail to win the presidency unless he is filmed eating a basketful of live puppies. I think most of us can agree that’s where we stand today.

(ABC on McCain links to a .flv version if & when youtube takes this down)

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent

“This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day”

I think every democrat whose last name is not Clinton can agree that we have entered the time when Obama cannot fail to win the nomination unless he is filmed eating a basketful of live puppies. I think most of us can agree that’s where we stand today.

Imagine if your job were set up in such a way that your value within the company rose over time, yet that value could not be extracted and put to work at any other company. For example, you’ve been working for IBM for 15 years, but now IBM does something that really pisses you off. Yet you can’t pack up and leave for Google, because they will not recognize your 15 years at IBM. They will only recognize your several minutes (and counting) of time at Google, and pay you accordingly. Imagine that.

You could respond by saying “I’d never go into a field that was set up in such a way; I’d do something different.” But say you really liked doing what only IBM does. Or say your natural progression through life led you down this path, almost unbeknownst to you, until you finally had a chance to look back to see where you came from. In other words, your tenure at IBM is a kind of fait accompli. And if for whatever idle reason you ended up at General Motors or Best Buy or Barney, Barney, and Tate instead, other people, people you know, just like you, ended up working at IBM through the magic of statistical probability. It’s like this: some people are blue-eyed, some people have a recessive gene for dwarfism, some people work for IBM. There is a certain amount of choice involved in working for IBM, but some bodies, many bodies, work for it, and that is ineluctable. Try to remember how you fell into the job you have now, and remember how serendipitous that was. Remember?

Imagine that IBM is old, its industry is hoary. Generations of workers have imagined it as their goal, and a great press of workers is ready to do IBM’s work for almost any amount of money, because they don’t know any better. But IBM cannot hire these workers for any amount of money; they can only hire them for a contractually certain amount of money. A union-bargained amount of money.

Imagine that Unionism caused the devaluation of your work at comparable companies at the same time it caused your value to increase at IBM, but that this is not ipso facto a consequence of unionism itself. One can point to other industries where this did not happen, because a union was nascently and presciently fashioned to include all companies in the industry, not each company individually. But for IBM the time of nascence is long passed; the union is what it is, and too many people would be economically hurt to change its charter now. So from a worker’s standpoint, there are better and worse ways for a union to have come about. An industry-wide union will exist and bargain and allow its workers to prosper for as long as the industry exists; a company-specific union will exist and bargain and allow its workers to prosper for only as long as the company exists and prospers. Imagine there were political reasons that the latter was the only initial path to Unionism for IBM’s workers.

Imagine all that; now tell me how distaste for unions and Unionism can arise in workers without a concerted political effort to undermine unions and Unionism by powers that would rather hire workers for any amount of money, and fire workers for any reason. “But my distaste for Unionism comes from my personal, considered distaste for unions’ excesses and corruption;” but what unregulated or poorly regulated social or political agency ever maintained its original aims? And now that unions are better regulated, and have been better regulated for decades now–much the same way that some industries (oil, mortgage, health insurance) and the management of those industries have not– now that this is true, from where does the distaste arise? From considered thought? Or from politically-managed perception?

“I’m a manager at IBM. I can tell you that the unionized workers here are lazy, that they hide their laziness behind their contract, and that they feel entitled to that laziness.” With all due respect, Mr Manager, there are inefficiencies on both sides of the managerial divide. Inefficiencies are what make a job bearable. Inefficiencies are what keep one from being forced to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The difference between managerial and worker inefficiencies is that the workers bargained for theirs, and you take yours when you think the Board isn’t looking or doesn’t care. That’s the difference. And if by some chance the Board does glance your way and sees you taking a little personal time in between moaning about the workers’ sense of entitlement, and fires your ass, you have the opportunity to pack up and start over at Google at a comparable salary, because that is the way your job was set up long before you took it.

I have no idea how I ended up working in a unionized industry. I look back, and all I can say is that it just sort of happened that way. But now that I’m here, now that my life is intertwined with the well-being of my union (and the well-being of my company, since that is how the Unionism ball bounced in my industry), now that all that is true, I find myself paying attention to how Unionism is portrayed in the media. It’s not a good portrayal; the public does not view Unionism in a good light. Perceptions have been managed.

Imagine that this kind of perception management happens all the time, in other ways, for other movements. Liberalism, for example. That’s not hard to imagine, is it? How else can we reconcile the way many citizens vote against the very people and things that would help them most? Or vote for the very people and things that help them the least; that, in fact, willfully cause great misery in their lives?

There is no way.

And how can we justify the actions of the worker who votes against fellow workers because raising their standards of living will be an inconvenience?

There is no way.

“First they came for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then they came for me;
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

I saw some a couple days ago coming back from somewhere down South. Apparent ingredients needed: one sun, mist, rainbows. I win!

I comment on two blogs/bboards. I used to comment on more. I don’t comment on the two that I still comment on nearly as often as I used to. The reason, I think, is that the lively conversations that attracted me to these bboards in the first place have devolved into predictable kneejerk bloodbaths, with certain prolific parties on the left and right treating most new threads like they were WWI battlefields, fighting over every square inch of dirt whether it makes sense or not. The threads degrade into exercises in name-calling in the blink of an eye. So now, most times, I read a comment I want to reply to, I write a reply to it, then I erase it before posting. I think “why bother?” Sometimes I have an insight into something because of what I do or have done or where I’ve been. It usually doesn’t get posted anymore. Why bother? These people don’t need or want to know what I know. It’ll be just another square inch of dirt in Verdun.

These people aren’t interested in conversation. I know that’s a pretty broad brush, and not true for many, but it seems that way. It seems that way because those who do want to have a conversation, who want to learn or teach something, don’t anymore because they see the same battlefield I do.

It’s amazing: it’s almost as if there is a natural lifespan to a good bboard. Because eventually the Tribes find it and squash it and leave it when it’s dried and dead, and then they look for the next one to kill.

So here’s to the good bboards. May they spring eternally from the ashes of those that came before.

The World Question Center 2008

A collection of essays from people who know things about things they thought they knew but later figured out they didn’t. For instance, I like Martin Seligman’s essay about the probability of ET because he basically independently came to the same conclusion I came to, but with the added distraction of being Carl Sagan’s friend.

Nobody in the United States is untouchable by the law. Everyone has done something that could have resulted in fines or imprisonment. Everyone. It almost goes without saying, except that I had to say it in order for the next paragraph to make the right kind of sense.

The inculcation of patriotism into every one of us at a young age is identical in form to the inculcation of a sense of religion into church-goers. People have used processes of religion such as this one to set up this thing that behaves like a god: it demands reverence; it demands tithing. It has the power to make your existence miserable, should you incur its wrath.

And, again, everyone has given it cause. There is no one who obeys all the laws or scrupulously calculates his taxes. He does not drive 35 in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, nor does he come to a complete stop. The person who does that would be a saint: The Saint of Traffic By-laws. What kind of crappy saint is that? It’s the crappy saint of a crappy god.

Government and the government are constructs of human imagination and need. They are an attempt to make a real, live, actual god. A drunken, lurching, real, live, actual god, but a real one nonetheless.

Government is not now omnipresent or omnipotent, but we’re trying to improve this god by allowing it to learn how to keep better track of where everybody is, for example, by satellite tracking of our stuff. And if you know where our stuff is, you know where we are. That’s key for a god; You have to know where Your people are. And people are fine with that because they don’t really know what kind of power they’re giving this drunken thing. People aren’t ready (yet) to put computer chips in their bodies, so the chips are going into the cellphones for now.

We can almost pay 10 dollars online to find out where any person is within an error of fifty feet. And I see a day when we can almost pay 5 dollars.

Did the founding fathers know what they were doing? That they were replacing one god by another? I think so; I think the founding fathers knew that they were setting up a substitute god when they separated church from state. That’s practically a smoking gun. And I think they thought of it in just that way: that it was time to change gods. And they knew their new, stupid god would never work if the older gods were allowed to bind to it; without that separation the substitute god would never have taken hold.

And the fathers had reason to do what they did. The old gods hadn’t ever seemed to work out. Why not create a new one? Things couldn’t get much worse.

In reality, things got much better. For a long time. Because the substitute god was consciously made to be crappy, and was meant to stay that way. But now, because engineers–the priests of the crappy god–are able to build things with the potential to allow the government to know where we all are all the time, the god is becoming less stupid. It’s getting smarter, taking on more of the qualities of gods. This is not a good thing. This is not what the founding fathers wanted.

I’m not ready to watch the crappy god evolve and grow; to become less crappy. The reason this god is tolerable to me at all is precisely because it is so stupid. I’m not ready for the government to know where I am all the time. So the more ways I can keep actively bothering the record-keeping function of the government while keeping a low enough profile that I still adhere to the American Compact, the longer I can keep the lurching god off balance and dumb.

That’s the curmudgeon’s goal, even if he doesn’t know it.

Bush taps general to coordinate war efforts – CNN.com

It was a difficult job to fill, given the unpopularity of the war, now in its fifth year, and uncertainty about the clout the war coordinator would have. The search was complicated by demands from Congress to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and scant public support for the war. The White House tried for weeks to fill the position and approached numerous candidates before settling on Lute.

When your military isn’t that thrilled about fighting your war, you might want to rethink your war.

President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America

Q: … second is a personal question. What do you pray about, and how we can we pray for you?
A: … The fact that you would ask the question, how can I pray for you, speaks volumes about the United States of America. I have been amazed by the fact that millions of Americans of all faith, all political backgrounds, pray for me and Laura. And it is unbelievably sustaining. It is comforting. It is humbling to be prayed for. Wisdom and strength, and my family, is what I’d like for you to pray for.

My prayer is that you become a goddamn footnote in history.

Shorpy | The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog

I’d never seen this photoblog before recently, but now I see references for it everywhere. By “everywhere,” I mean in 3 different places.

Sign in the window says “Register here… Hop pickers… Picking starts Aug 29… Lakeside Hop Yards… Free tents, stoves, tables, wood, lights, camp.”

Here it is, in case your references aren’t my references.

Jury nullification – Wikipedia

Jury nullification is a de facto power of the jury, and is not normally disclosed to jurors by the system when they are instructed as to rights and duties.

This totally changes how I’ll behave if I’m ever on a jury. Not that I’d tell the judge that.