In my late night jaunt around Ether Universe, I found some other news to draw me away from all that madness of last week.  I thought I'd share my finds as a word, picture and music diary. 

Last week seemed to me to be particularly insane with regard to news.  It seemed that every time we turned around we had fresh hurls  from AIG/CITI.  Geithner-Geithner-Geithner/Krugman-Krugman-Krugman. Oy. Financial sector's ups and downs, TARPS, Joseph Cassano. And of course Dick Cheney in Israel with his lopsided smile and runaway mouth, scaremongering.

Please, can't he be kept out of politics now.  His brand of politics has caused enough  wreckage.  And lets not forget the strange and unforgettable way that Revolutionary Michelle Bachman did Marx. Or perhaps she's smoking what kept Bushco-Cheney in style the last 8 years, along with all the hate and vitriol of Limbaugh and Hannity and others.  What -- they did not get enough?  

Here's to them --


1) VOTE EARTH at Earth Hour:  --  did you switch off your lights for one hour -- 8:30 - 9:30 on Saturday?  I was not home for that event, but when I got home late Saturday night, I found some friends at my house, laughing and telling stories by candle-light.  No TV, no radio, no lights, no computer.  Lots of candles, food, drink and my battery operated Travelsound Zen-stone putting out some music, laughter and story telling.  And of course cat petting.



2) Some people believe that the world was created in 7 days and it is 6000 years old. Really, it is, Bill Maher told me so in Religulous. Dubai is now in the process of making The World and it's going to take a little longer than Biblical Time, and it will destroy corals and other habitats to do it.  The real question is who will live there?  Who can afford it? Seriously, how far away from the madding crowd do some people have to get to feel well and safe?



Choose your Dubai created island... Yeah, right.  Oh, and it will have an African game preserves which recreates the Serengeti?  Jeez.  How about helping the relevant game preserves, the relevant people and preserving the Serengeti in real time instead of building billionaires private island system called "The World" which is also endowed with its own private "Serengeti."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SofOfVYiRI 

3)  I hope these doctors understand what they are doing.  Seriously.  Worse than cannibalism.  And where are these harvested organs and tissues being sold?   Do the buyers care? What a horrible choice, really, for the person with that failing organ and their only way to life is through getting one of these harvested organs. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2y5LyhnMAU


4) Online dating not just for humans anymore.  Very cute.


5) The next new cheap car but the world will have to wait for more than a Nano second.  Hopefully, their roads will begin to look different.



6) They went diving off the Bahamas looking for big-eyed glowing animals, adapted to the dark and instead found oceanic balls that move and leave tracks and are in fact protoza.  Reading that made me think of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley.

7)  Virus hunters, I love this tribe.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/499

8) Ok --  It's now official in my book -- Ross Douthat is a full sized cretin! And that's on the passable level.  He is assuredly no gentleman.  Why, oh why, did the NYT take him?


What stories did you encounter that you thought were interesting and any vids?

--------------------------
UPDATE:  some of the links had not attached properly.  I fixed it. Sorry about that.

Rush to hold a Summit to hear from women.  Whaa?

They do polls.  And suddenly Rushbo wants to woo women and find out what women want.  Ewww!  I need a shower with a large bottle of lavender soap!

Where will you be during Rush's Summit For Women? I'm rushing out to do some shoe shopping.  Umm, not!  I have an addiction for slutty shoes but I'm not paying that.  I think I'll curl up on the sofa and watch a Bollywood classic.  I sometimes need to feast my eyes on those.

Do you feel special to be so necessary to his Republican Gaze?

Have a look at him.  Caption it:-- 



[pic from TPM's slides]


My caption -- The horror!  The horror!

What are five things you would tell Rush Limbaugh to help him bridge the gender gap?

My suggestions:

1) Stop being so assiduous in demeaning women and learn to see women as people. 

2) Stop verbally assaulting women and get a makeover inside your head.

3) We demand assythment for past craptacular performances.


Damn.  I could only come up with three ways he could stop being an ass and I have a headache. Also, I cannot find the other pages on my ass-word collection binder.

And can I just ask ---  whats up with the 37% of the female population who view Rush with approval?  Seriously.

Furthermore,  I want to know how the questions were framed.

Dear Socks, 

I remember you from before you were replaced by that upstart dog.  You were beautiful.  I hope you had a happy life and now that you have gone and crossed the road, I hope you are comfortable and safe.  Wherever you are, I hope you have lots of toys to play with and friends to hang with and that you get to enjoy chasing dogs.  I hope you are happy in your new environment.  Sayonara, Socks.

Love, Yvie.

Last night I dreamed
The strangest dream

Assuredly, February is the wasteland and the cruelest month, not April.  Not just for them whose love lies over the ocean,  but for the many laborers who grow these floral tokens of love that people exchange on Valentine's  Day -- designated as Cupid's, celebrating couplehood, union and romantic love.

I dreamed, of you
Wrapping hyacinth chain
Around my heart  

I write of the cut-flower trade.  How much will you pay for those flowers you will buy to give to your love?  Will you think of the growers when your love smiles into your eyes?  Will you ask your florist for fair trade or certified/labeled flowers?  Will you know enough to do so? Will you ask that your florist provide a certificate of farming practices and look for the Fairtrade or VeriFlora labeling?  If you don't ask, the change won't be incorporated.

Calling me
Their flower child,
Your flower girl

The cut-flower trade is economically indispensable to the national economies of Kenya, Colombia, Netherlands and Israel, Ecuador, Uganda. All of them feed the increasing demands of markets in Japan, USA and Europe.   More countries are joining the cut-flower growing association of nations. Cut-flower production has environmental, social and economic consequences on the nations involved in the trade.  Growers move into areas where host nations are giving tax incentives for them to establish flower growing farms.  Most of the labor is female and many abuses have been documented.  The corporations who grow cut-flowers pollute the water and the land with the use of pesticides inside greenhouses which results in deteriorating health of people and their ecology.

Hyacinth girl

In Kenya, Lake Naivasha is literally being polluted and drained dry.    More insidiously, the growers are selling their flowers at the flower auctions in the Amsterdam so as to bypass the labeling.  This way, people buying the flowers think they are buy flowers from the Netherlands instead of Lake Naivasha.

Hued
Petal skinned
Smooth and scented

So this is how it works:  a country wanting to attract a cut-flower growing company will offer strong tax incentives. The neighboring nation, also wanting said growers in their home turf will offer another deal which undercuts the tax incentive offered by the first country.  A race to the bottom.  Once they get to the bottom, they skirmish with each other to see who can offer even more.  The growers take the one who offered the most. In the mean time, the govt of the selected nation is unable, in the long run, to provide basic human and infrastructural support for its own people.

Unfurling, from a bud
By your breath
in a word

Further considerations for growers to move the industry to the southern nations include a warmer climate which provides a longer growing season and more flower production.  Another reason to move to these areas  -- cheap land - readily available in that the acreage was once used for growing food has been converted into growing flowers exclusively.  The hard work is done mostly by a female labor pool.  Furthermore, governmental tax incentives to entice/invite the cut-flower industry into a country  has facilitated not only a race to the bottom but also produced a strong skirmish at the bottom with each country vying to outdo the other in terms of nation-bleeding tax incentives to woo the flower.  Nations give more and more in tax incentives and do so at a loss to their national economies and the growers don't invest in the localities where they have based their flower growing business and instead sell abroad and never share profits by improving the lives of the people who toiled the labor.

Hyacinth

Added to that, swaths of acreage has been taken away from agriculture and food cultivation and being switched to growing blooms for the European/Japanese/US market. Also, more people are moving to the flower growing regions in search of employment.  So, areas - like, around Bogota and Lake Naivasha, which once had locally owned farms for growing food, villages and communities are being disrupted, uprooted and overrun beyond capacity and food is no longer being grown there.

My skin tattooed,
With your finger whorls.
Mouth shaped.
Imprinting
My flower self


On top of that.  Agricultural chemicals and pesticides are sprayed by local workers who have not been trained in proper usage of such chemicals and don't have the appropriate protective gear.  They develop health issues as do their children.    Most flower workers are women and they are discouraged from joining unions, are discriminated against if they get pregnant, have to take a pregnancy test before they are hired, and employers will not pay for maternity leave.  Pesticides are sprayed inside the greenhouses.  The work is very hard.

I feel Hyacinth.
Am.

Growing flowers in East Africa and Latin America have made flowers available and inexpensive for the European/American/Japanese  consumer.  There are more flower outlets now  ---  flowers are available in every grocery store, big departments stores and at the florists.  Flower growers and sellers  in the US have been hurt.  As evidenced by occurrences like the planned downsizing of the San Francisco Flower Market.

Next year in Maui,
I will be your Plumeria girl. 

However, change is upon  the horizon as more and more green cut-flower growers join the trade, changing practices.  Local, independent growers who have roots in the area and are adopting eco/labor friendly ways of growing  cut-flowers. Be sure to watch the viddie!

Or a Rose
Jasmin d'Espagne
Jonquill or Iris
Fleur d'oranger
Alysse or Immortelle

Change, being the operative word has also made inroads into the lexicon of flower growers in Kenya.  They are starting to phase out certain practices and the use of such vile chemicals as methyl-bromide which is a fumigant and has the added bite of ozone depletion.

Honeysuckle
Pomegranate Flower
Belle de Jour
Forsythia

Hey, you could buy your Valentine a Fairtrade bouquet and take them out for beer!!  What a novel idea, combining two food groups! 

Flower language for
Their flower child.
A flower girl,
Yours.




[Valentine's Day is for bad poetry. Like, seriously bad poetry.  Come on!   ;)  Give yours too!!]

Wow.  On inauguration day, Obama will be riding around in The Beast, parading up Pennsylvania Ave.  The Beast can withstand chemical and rocket attacks. 

Get a look at The Beast! 

There will be a three mile security perimeter and The Beast will be the only vehicle allowed to operate in it.  Two million visitors are expected and everyone has to be in place three hours before the swearing in ceremony.  The Beast appears to be a representation of the very real cocooning that the Obamas are going to experience in the next 4 years. 

I hope that while living in The Great White Jail/The Beast, our president-elect will not become a distant figure, an arid, bloodless, cardboard template of a real person as so many before him have done.  Almost as if The Beast of DC swallowed them and all we got left with was the cut-out shell to see and talk to.  That's what is so sad about many of the people who preceded him into that office.  Their loss of touch with real people affected many of the past residents of The Great White Jail - as if The Beast ate them and then we the people got all these policies and agreements they signed and wars they waged.  And yes, I am thinking specifically of the last 9 years. 

In interviews Obama has asserted that he wants to remain real and engaged.    In an interview he said --

And I've got to look for every opportunity to do that - ways that aren't scripted, ways that aren't controlled, ways where.. people aren't just complimenting you or standing up when you enter into a room, ways of staying grounded.

'And if I can manage that over the next four years, I think that will help me serve the American people better because I'm going to be hearing their voices.

I hope he will break the mold.  I really do.  So far he has done exactly that and I hope he continues to do so.  I hope he will serve the country and hear our voices.  In the mean time, I wish him safety, and real life in The Beast.

Shorter Dick Cheney -->  Regret? No, no, agh!  Quelle horreur!

or

Shortest Dick Cheney --> Regret? Wha-? HellNO!


What is it with the concept/emotion of regret and people thinking it's a bad idea?  I should perhaps clarify -- it may be an emotion for some people but not for most.  Regret appears to be an emotion people regret or shirk away from.  Take for example --  Richard Cheney, (mostly known as Lynn's Dick, amongst my friends...) to whom regret is more a concept and one to which he gives a wide berth. 

Feeling a normal emotion, like regret,  may be too complicated for Dick Cheney, outgoing VP, who played a central role in promulgating controversial policies such as domestic wiretapping, using tactics of torture on detainees, and who came out of the Cheney Bunker proclaiming, in recent interviews, that this outgoing administration would have gone to war with Iraq, even if there had been no erroneous intelligence attaching Saddam Hussein to possession of weapons of mass destruction.  Now that's a tough man, no? 

Umn, no.

Not even when he waxes nostalgic about the fact that the current president is always accompanied with a --  

"football" which carries nuclear codes which could "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress; he doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in. It's unfortunate, but I think we're perfectly appropriate to take the steps we have."  

Mr. VP really wishes someone would follow him with that nuclear football.

But the really good news, this night before the eve of Christmas is that Darth Vader and Dick Cheney are not related!  I know Darth Vader (so do you - go to your nearest Blockbuster) and Dick Cheney is no Darth Vader.   I reject, renounce and denounce the use of the later as his nickname.  Darth Vader, at the end,  found his humanity, felt love and regret and turned away from the dark side. 

I danced in the streets last night and I wished I could dance in the streets every night.   The revolution was indeed televised and it happened for real in the streets too.  We not only watched it but also were there as well, in the center of it, giving ourselves to the idea of change, heart, soul, body and wallet.   We watched it, argued about it, screamed about it, sighed and cried over it and nurtured it for a year and many worked hard to make it happen.  We contributed our love in all kinds of ways. Many went into places to spread the word of the revolution, many others gave money.  Revolutions of this kind cannot happen unless we contribute as we are able and as our passions drive us and as our lives allow us.  

I cannot seem to come down.  My feet are not touching the ground yet.  But I'm ok with that because I know eventually I will land as the real work of the Obama presidency begins.  In fact, it has already begun.  However, for right now, we are touching the arc of  history and like many, I cannot stop smiling.

Last night he delivered a speech which as usual did not disappoint.  I loved that he vowed to tell us the truth.  I loved that he said he would treat us as participators in his government. Here is his promise:

"But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

The truth. Finally.  A real president in my lifetime.  I felt the metaphorical presence of Guy Fawkes in my heart last night. The metaphoric parliament of tyrannical idiocy is overthrown and a new outlook has been sown.  An outlook of hope.  The man,again, in his own words: 

"There's new energy to harness, jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there."

So inclusive.

A slideshow : 

In continuously focusing on Palin, and getting an eyeful of that pict on Josh’s front page (Palin with a teasing grin on her face with her tongue stuck between her teeth… eeech!!), I have begun to think that we are in great danger of  Palin-envy.

Palin, Palin everywhere and not another thought to think?!! 

What of attacking McCain?

I thought to take it in a lighter direction.  Hence, what is your Palin name?  If we are to become Palin or even Palin nemesis, we should do so with elan and distinctive panache!!

Have at it.

I am Soup Landmine Palin.  ;)

What are you?

One of the things I like about TPM is the creativity of my fellow TPM-ers.  I enjoy how they go about presenting themselves and the topics they write about.  That was a big factor in my wanting to join the commenting community.  Before that, for the last six or seven years, I would read the front page and go off to my regular haunts. 

I like that there is a variety of voices and outlooks.  I like that there is real creative bedrock of personal lives from which people come.  I like that there are raucous and milder humor threads/posts along with serious ones.  I like that we all sort of "know" each other and have formed a level of bonding.  I like you all, very much.

Every now and then a new persona emerges and that too is fun.  Particularly those clearly fake personas like Mr. Crankypants or Mrs. No Pic or Pirate Peet and many others I don’t even know about, that are fakes.  But even in their obvious fakery, they are real in that they belong to some individual and is that person's expression.  They are fun (generally) and contribute to the richness which is TPM community.  I would not want to hinder any of these personas and their supporting actors in their activities.  That being said, I draw a clear line between a "fake" persona and a "real" one.  A clearly "fake" persona, in my opinion, would be Mr. Crankypants or idiotic or Pirate Peet.   The person(s) behind them I'm sure post regular comments and blogposts here at TPM and therefore are real individuals. 

I had wondered about Cypher and sure enough, he revealed himself as a multi-pseudonymous on a history related thread.  He has not appeared for a while.  Perhaps he's assumed yet another persona which is not a problem for me.  I define as a problem  when the multiple personas belonging to one individual begin to gang up on another lone individual on a thread.  A virtual mobbing I cannot abide along with personalized demolition and vitriol.  That said, I too have, alas, engaged in said vitriol myself in the heat of the moment.  I am attempting to mend myself.

Most of us are here under assumed names.  Most of us have assumed avatars which reflect our spirits or our interests or some facet of our insides.  Does this make us fake? I think not.  Suppose we were to post under our real names and our real picts were our avatars, would that make us more "real" or would there still be a facet of a "fake," because who's to know what we are like in the real time?  Who would confirm that "realness" for us as to whether a poster is "real" in his/her comments?  Will it require  for us to each make a "pilgrimage" to that room, the Little TPM away from TPM for us to be judged as "real" or "acceptable"  by a cadre of mutually defined "real" judges? I hope not. I don't know of any characters that are not "real," here at TPM.

I don't want to limit the personas people assume.  Neither am I willing to insist on binding  people  to one voice and one persona.  We are not that monodimensional or monovocal and to impose that constraint would be more essentialist than I am able to be.

What do you think?

PS: For some of the background on this, see this <a href="link'>http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/mandela-at-90-reconciliation-a.php">link for the previous discussion.</a>