Michael Holloway's FilterBlogs

OpenMedia.ca's Stop Online Spying Campaign Video

2012-01-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

This video lays out the issue really well - as a citizen in a liberal democratic state you owe it to yourself and your children to get informed - and then act to stop this legislation.

(Un)Lawful Access: Experts Line Up Against Online Spying

OpenMedia's Stop Online Spying Petition - http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

More video's on this - http://openmedia.ca/educate

mh

OpenMedia's "Stop The Cell Phone Squeeze" Campaign

2012-01-29T12:32:00.000-05:00

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Diver's video footage from inside capsized Costa Concordia

2012-01-28T10:31:00.000-05:00

Video from Diver's head-cam as search for bodies continues off the Tuscan Island of Giglio - inside capsized Mega Cruise Ship, Costa Concordia.

Via The Telegraph UK - "Cruise disaster: new rescue diver video shows inside Costa Concordia" - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9024774/Cruise-disaster-new-rescue-diver-video-shows-inside-Costa-Concordia.html

Also from The Telegraph UK, " Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino 'under intense pressure to sail close to Giglio' " - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9037602/Costa-Concordia-captain-Francesco-Schettino-under-intense-pressure-to-sail-close-to-Giglio.html

mh

Making "Mega" Cruise Ships Safer

2012-01-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

In the Costa Concordia disaster lauching lifeboats from the badly listing ship turned out to be almost impossible - half the lifeboats were never even launched. Hundreds of passengers were stuck for an hour or more in dangerously tipping lifeboats stuck half way down the Port side of the ship. Eventually rope ladders had to be flung down the side of the ship to evacuate passengers from stuck life boats - as well as hundreds of the passengers and crew waiting at their Muster Stations. Boats from shore were stationed under the ladders eventually, and passengers - including ambulatory challenged seniors, very young children and parents with babies, had to climb down these precarious ladders to evacuate the ship.

In the future, if any one of the 100 Mega Ships Carnival Corp runs around the world needs to be evacuated far out at sea, lifeboats from shore won't be there. A Ship's lifeboats need to work or people will die. See Reuters - "Analysis: Italy disaster shows Titanic lifeboat issues linger" - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-italy-ship-lifeboats-idUSTRE80J1UR20120120.

The Costa Concordia sinking is gift from Neptune to all of us. Ship line owners need to learn from this and implement changes that official investigations will high-light in a sinking just metres from land, in calm and in relatively warm seas.

Mark Dickinson the head of the Nautilus International - a union of maritime professionals - has already proposed that some sort of system for lauching lifeboats off badly listing ships is desperately needed.

"Attention needs to be paid to existing evacuation systems and more innovative systems for abandonment," said union general secretary Mark Dickinson in a statement. Dickinson said the magnitude of modern cruise ships may be the problem. "The sheer size and scale of such ships presents massive challenges for emergency services, evacuation, rescue, and salvage -- and we should not have to wait for a major disaster until these concerns are addressed,"

(From Cruise Critic's "After Concordia: What's Next for the Cruise Industry?" (January 23, 2012) under the sub-heading "Safety Toll: What Happens to Industry Regulations?" http://www.cruisecritic.com/news/news.cfm?ID=4721#safety)

Here's a statement from Nautilus International, published on there site:

UNION URGES INVESTIGATION BEFORE BLAME

The rush to judge the actions of the master and crew before a proper investigation into the grounding of the Italian-flagged cruiseship Costa Concordia, may obscure serious and profound safety lessons, warns Nautilus International.

Nautilus general secretary Mark Dickinson, said while the union was shocked and saddened at the tragic incident and loss of life, it was also extremely disturbed to see the rush to judgement over the action of the crew – and the master in particular.

‘It is highly regrettable that the master is being singled out for blame before the results of the maritime and criminal investigations are available,’ he said. ‘In this the centenary year of the loss of Titanic, there is a danger that just blaming individuals will obscure the serious and profound safety lessons that may need to be learned, as well as the matter of justice and a right to a fair trial.’

Nautilus believes that as well as determining the causes of the accident, the investigation should also focus on how cruise ships are designed, managed, regulated and run.

Senior national secretary, Allan Graveson, said ‘We should not just look at narrowness of human error, but do a full scientific investigation and apply any lessons to future ship building and operation.’

‘We have moved to economy of scale. There is nothing wrong with that, we do need a sustainable and vibrant cruise industry. There are many good ships being operated extremely well, but there are some elements that do need to improve.’

Nautilus had been expressing concern for a number of years about the operation, construction, design of cruise ships – some of which have doubled in size in the last ten years. The technology of evacuation likewise needs looking at because of the acknowledged shortcomings of lifeboats and liferafts.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), also urged caution until the causes of the accident are established.

‘IMO must not take this accident lightly,’ said general secretary Koji Sekimizu. ‘We should seriously consider the lessons to be learnt and, if necessary, re-examine the regulations on the safety of large passenger ships in the light of the findings of the casualty investigation.’

Nautilus International's newspaper, "Telegraph" has a full report on the capsized cruiseship in their February issue - which is available online on the first busines day of the month - http://www.nautilusint.org/Resources/pages/Telegraph.aspx.

Below is a quick sketch I made that shows how one might design a reliable lifeboat launching system for these 'floating city' or 'Apartment Building' Mega Ships.

Each lifeboat sits in a holding 'cup' which pivots on an axis and is carried by a chassis with wheels that follow a track down the side of the ship to below the waterline - to under the ship. As the lifeboat reaches the water it floats out of it's 'cup' - which lowers well below any conceivable water line on a badly listing ship.

At this publishing 16 bodies have been recovered from the Costa Concordia - 20 passengers and crew are still unaccounted for, including Americans, French and Italians.
(Telegraph UK - "Costa Concordia: 16th body found" - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9035691/Costa-Concordia-16th-body-found.html.)

More than a week after the sinking, divers are still searching the submerged parts of the ship cabin by cabin in THE MOST DANGEROUS diving conditions there are. At a certain point officials may decide recovering bodies is too dangerous and wait until the ship is re-floated to check the rest of the ship.

Listen to an interview with the Deputy Mayor of Giglio who boarded the capsized ship soon after it beached and before it started listing dangerously - from BBC radio show "Outlook", 19 January 2012 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00mwbld

"Rocker-Bogie" suspension developed by Don Bickler
and later patented by JPL in June 1989
Via - www.brickvista.com/techNotes/MecTherMobTemp.html

1:45pm - 24 January 2012 - Thinking again ... what about a boat which is sinking for example, to the stern - and pitching the bow high? Or a combination of pitches? Perhaps a similar lifeboat lowering system but without wheels in tracks - but rather with a Mars Rover "Rocker-Bogie" suspension system which can descend at any angle and bridge any gap it might encounter.

Here's a clearer image of a "Rocker-Bogie" suspension system. This is built to be as light as possible because it costs a lot to launch things out of earth's gravity well. As well it is highly articulated.

Via - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/lofiversion/index.php/t3143.html

On a Cruise Ship those are not important, they would travel in a straight line and encounter bumps and gaps. Weathering and salt corrosion are important on a sea going vessel - so plastic, aluminum or stainless steel.

mh

Costa Concordia - First Sinking of 'Apartment Building' type Ship

2012-01-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

In a blog I posted on January 14th and 15th on the Costa Concordia sinking - the first sinking of these 'Apartment Building Ships' - I warned people that these ships are dangerously top heavy and that the extreme listing that the Costa Concordia experienced immediately after hitting a sunmerged reef made abandoning the ship extremely difficult.

In another incident in Feburary 2010, the captain of another Costa Cruise Lines ship, the Costa Europa, used the ships ballast tanks to list the ship in order to lift a breach above the water line.

Costa Europa lists to port while docked at Sharm el-Sheikh - 26 Feb 2010. The Captain listed the ship to port in order to keep 20 metre starboard breach above the water line.
Image coutsesy The Sun UK - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2869843/Brits-hurt-in-Egyptian-boat-crash.html http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2869843/Brits-hurt-in-Egyptian-boat-crash.html http://www.cruisejunkie.com/

By some accounts the Costa Concordia listed to port immediately upon impact with the submerged rock - which sliced into the hull to the stern of midships. The impact caused the bow of the ship to turn to port and caused the coincident list to port. As the ship stopped turning on the reef it became apparent to the Captain that the ship was taking on water. I think, as per normal procedure on Costa Cruise ships, the Captain ordered the starboard ballasts filled to right the ship -- but by the time this was done there was already so much water in the lower decks that the maneuver basically sunk the ship.

Here's a radio conversation between the Captain of the Italian Coast Guard at Livorno, Captain Del Falco, and the Captain of the Costa Concordia, Captain Francesco Schettino - about 2 hours into the sinking, at approximately 11:00PM local time Friday 13 January 2012.

During the conversation he tries to deflect criticism of why he is not on board directing the the evacuation of the Costa Concordia, by revealing that the ship’s 2nd officer Dimitri Christidis, and 3rd officer Silvia Coronia are also with him on the same life boat. ???

Question: How does a 14 year old get to be the Captain of one of the biggest passenger ships in the world?

Next question: We now know Captain Francesco Schettino has taken this bravado route between the Island of Giglio and the rock outcrop just outside the Port of Giglio at least 4 times (see video). Was Costa Cruise Lines aware of this? If so, what steps did they take to make the Captain stick to the programmed route? And as well, was the Captain and/or Costa Cruise Lines taking this dangerous route in order to sell cruise tickets to wealthy tourists that frequent this elite Tuscan coast island?

Via "daiquiri" at "Boat Design Forum" - http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/last-voyage-costa-concordia-cruise-ship-41313.html

daiquiri

Engineering and Design

Join Date: May 2004Rep: 2261 Posts: 2,426

Location: Northern Italy (lake Garda) and Croatia (Istria)

It turns out that it was a deliberate passage of the ship close to the Giglio island, and it has been done several times in the past for the joy of islanders. This is video shows the same ship doing the same thing last summer: http://video.corriere.it/nave-concor...2-5f77182bc574

Excess of confidence?

Video via "CorriereTV" - http://video.corriere.it/nave-concordia-al-giglio-/9dfa5ea6-3e9b-11e1-8b52-5f77182bc574

mh

'Apartment Building' Ship "Costa Concordia" Sinks off Italy

2012-01-14T15:58:00.000-05:00

Update 15 Jan 2012 11:49AM - Map of AIS-tracked course data pings laid over map of intended coarse may show turn made 15 minutes late took Costa Concordia into reef.

Update - 15 Jan 2012 3AM: Statement from Carnival Cruise Lines (owner of Costa Cruise Lines) below.

Via www.boatdesign.net/forums - http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/last-voyage-costa-concordia-cruise-ship-41313.html#post518059

In comments I wrote:

Nice Video.

Apartment Building Boats.

A warning to all those who love the spectacle of vacationing on these hedonistic, money machines.The hull on one of the lowest decks is opened and it lists immediately. So quickly they couldn't get life boats off either side.

They are top heavy and rely on massive ballast tanks keep them up-right in heavy weather. As well they have huge thrusters that shoot massive amounts of water a right angles to the keel to help keep them into the wind.

(Youtube: I ran out of room)

The ship is 3 football fields long with 10 passenger decks - room for 3,700 passengers and 1,100 crew.

Passengers who made it off the ship early in the disaster indicated the crew weren't able to tell passengers how to exit (language barrier? Ignorance?), ~~and that the Captain made no call to abandon ship troughout the entire ordeal~~. (edit mh 15 Jan 2012)

That emergency preparations were so badly executed, and that passengers had no idea what they were supposed to do in case they had to abandon ship, tells me that there were no emergency drills held. On such ships these should happen with-in 24 hours after each and every departure from a port where new passengers have been boarded.

Tourists on near-by island check out re-arranged deck chairs...
(Image from Global News slideshow (4 of 7) - http://www.globalnews.ca/6442559698/story.html?utm_source=facebook-twitter&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=community)

Update 15 Jan 2012

Some reports said the cuise was in it's final leg (The Independent's travel editor, Simon Calder in BBC interview - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16560617) Cardinal Cruise Lines said the Ship was two hours out of port on it's initial leg. No emergency drills had been done as the general protocol these days seems to be the, with-in 24 hours of departure meme I guessed at, above. Many thinkthe drills should be done before the ship leaves port ("Costa Concordia: Are ship evacuation drills too lax?" by Dave Monk - Metro News - 14th January, 2012).

After this incident, pre-departure drills sound right to me. Also better training of ALL crew (including entertainers, service personnel etc.) need to be made a priority. There should be a military precision meme around these protocols.

Carnival Corporation & plc Statement Regarding Costa Concordia

MIAMI (January 14, 2012, 3:45pm EST)
This statement is from Carnival Corporation & plc in Miami, FL. Carnival Corporation & plc is the parent company of Costa Cruises.
On January 13, 2012, Costa Cruises’ vessel, the Costa Concordia, departed from Civitavecchia, Italy with approximately 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members on a seven-day voyage. At approximately 10:00pm CET, the vessel struck rock off the coast of Isola del Giglio, Italy and sustained significant damage causing the ship to list severely. The order was given to abandon ship and deploy the lifeboats.
Tragically, there are reports of some deaths and injuries. This is a terrible tragedy and we are deeply saddened. Carnival Corporation & plc offers our sympathies and heartfelt condolences to all of the Costa Concordia guests, crew members and their families. Carnival Corporation & plc and Costa Cruises are committing our full resources to provide assistance and ensure that all guests and crew are looked after.
We want to express our deep gratitude to the Italian Coast Guard and local authorities and community members who have gone to extraordinary lengths to assist in the evacuation of the ship and provide support for our guests and crew.We are working to fully understand the cause of what occurred. The safety of our guests and crew members remains the number one priority of Carnival Corporation & plc and all of our cruise lines.
Costa Concordia was sailing on a Mediterranean cruise from Civitavecchia (Rome) with scheduled calls at Savona, Italy; Marseille, France; Barcelona, Spain; Palma de Mallorca; Cagliari and Palermo, Italy.
Friends and family members may use the following country-specific contact numbers to reach Costa Cruises:
Italy        848505050
U.S.         800-462-6782
Austria      00438109006565
Germany      +4940570121314
France       +33155475554
Spain        +34934875685
Portugal     +34914185951
UK           08453510552
Carnival Corporation & plc is the parent company of ten cruise lines including Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Ibero Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and P&O Cruises (Australia).
###

http://www.carnival.com/Core/FAQ.aspx?faq=costa

mh

Legal Domestic Spying Revealed in Facebook

2012-01-09T23:03:00.001-05:00

Apparently* using the words below in search will get you on a watch list.

"Muslim Brotherhood, Islam, Obama, The White House, Illuminati, E. Holder, The New World Order, Muslim, Barack Obama, Satan, Lucifer, FEMA, Antichrist, CIA, Bilderberger, Homeland Security"

One way to defeat the list is to publish them and ask you contacts to distribute them, search and share them in posts like this. In the spirit of the rights of freedom of speech and free association I publish them here to defeat the algorithm's usefulness to domestic spying organizations.

As stupid and broad brushed as this list is, it's not the end to defeat this one algorithm by sharing it and publishing it in the first 25 words of a post or searching it randomly - what we need to do in the long run is apply the rule of law to the internet --- add safe guards, checks and balances that protect the civil society --- so innocents don't get caught in a growing and extremely invasive, dangerous, unregulated national spying colossus that is growing inside governments around the world as we speak.

*A discussion in Facebook - reprinted here with the video embed from the original post explains all:

Michael Holloway via Amy MacPherson

Amy MacPherson shared a post about the reveiling of a Online Spying search algorithm someone is running on Facebook:

"COMPUTER GURUS: Can you please view this clip and either confirm or deny the noted security/privacy holes on Facebook? It claims our personal posts are being filtered & redirected to other's group pages, without our knowledge or consent."

I replied:

"Sounds like someone is trying to screw with a Homeland Security's search algorithm that's targeting insane right wing people that are likely they think to go 'postal' as the Republic fades to Empire.
"Solution: EVERYBODY search those words in Facebook. Apparently you'll be helping extreme groups - but at the same time you'd also be protecting yourself.
"Someone should write in html all those search words and post them - to make them easy to copy and paste.
"OK I'll do it.
"Muslim Brotherhood, Islam, Obama, The White House, Illuminati, E. Holder, The New World Order, Muslim, Barack Obama, Satan, Lucifer, FEMA, Antichrist, CIA, Bilderberger, Homeland Security, I'll omit the last one (Lady Gaga,) as it's a control marker that flags this list.
" 'They' will adjust the algorithm to account for this and re-apply a new one to the www. So as well as posting the list and sharing it as widely as possible - you should also ask your memeber of Parliament to Stop the Online Spying legislation now making it's way into law in many countries right now (under different names in each country). In the US it's called, ironically, Stop Online Piracy. In Canada your friends are OpenMedia.ca - http://stopspying.ca/ and Professor Michael Geist University of Ottawa Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Lawhttp://www.michaelgeist.ca/ "

Amy MacPherson's post from my Facebook 'Wall' (my feed stream) - http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=208059365950381&id=728231001

mh

Harper trying to kill CBC - OpenMedia.ca Petition

2012-01-03T16:56:00.001-05:00

Received this in email from OpenMedia.ca today. Here's one of the videos that goes with the pitch. Below is the petion mentioned - embedded here for your convenience.

As many of you know, large vertically integrated telecom companies dominate many different types of media markets. To name a few: Bell owns CTV, Shaw owns Global, Rogers owns Maclean’s, and Quebecor Media owns both big ISP Videotron and the Sun Media Corporation. The list goes on...As a member of the pro-Internet community, you know all about Big Telecom’s efforts to make the Internet more closed and expensive. They’re now lobbying politicians so they can protect their other businesses, from phone services to TV to media content. Big telecom companies want full spectrum dominance so they can price-gouge us at will and control our media choices.
The most immediate threat to media choice right now is to the only national TV network that is independent of Big Telecom: the CBC. Big Telecom lobbyists are trying to de-fund the CBC, so that they can limit media choice [1] and further dominate the media market [2]. We shouldn't let this sleazy policy manipulation succeed.
From your responses on the Pro-Internet Survey last year, we know that you care about the threat of media concentration, and about making sure Canadians have alternatives to big media corporations. Because of this, we want to let you know about a Friends of Canadian Broadcasting petition to defend the CBC from the potentially catastrophic budget cuts Big Telecom is pushing for.We don’t want Big Telecom to tighten its control of our media system.
Click here to sign the petition to keep CBC in the game.CBC plays a crucial role by providing Canadians with a media outlet that is independent of Big Telecom giants. Please join us in standing up against the command-and-control media model.Visit http://www.friends.ca/smackdown/OpenMedia/ to check out satirical campaign videos, and to sign the petition to save the CBC.
For an open media system,Reilly, Steve, and Shea, on behalf of the OpenMedia.ca TeamP.S. Occasionally we’ll invite you to help out other organizations like Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which tackle issues that relate to Internet openness and affordability. We haven’t shared any of your information with this group.
SOURCES:[1] War of words heats up between CBC, Quebecor | Toronto Starhttp://www.thestar.com/news/article/1076574[2] Kai Nagata: Warnings from Québec | The Tyeehttp://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/09/12/Nagata_Quebec_Warning/
Support OpenMedia.ca
OpenMedia.ca is a non-profit organization that relies on donations from people like you to operate. Our small but dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way to make your voice heard. Please donate today.

Professor Jordan B. Peterson On Virtue

2011-12-31T19:00:00.000-05:00

Updated: grammar ;)

TVO's "Big Ideas" series is currently showcasing an interesting talk from University of Toronto professor, Jordan Peterson - from his 2010 Hancock Lecture at Hart House, University of Toronto.

It ran twice last night; the first time through "The Necessity of Virtue" was enlightening - on the second listen I was enlightened all over again - I heard more layers and perceived more of the whole.

His multi-layered thinking is communicated clearly in a precise and sometimes amusing presentation. A great thinker AND a great communicator - a treasure to this world.

As such I'll be sure to listen to it again - so the embed here.

I think the practice method he lays out for connecting to your spiritual 'third eye' - through self-honesty, in order to "Be" in the world, and thus see it clearly, and act in it sensibly - is going to be very important as I continue to try to overcome Periodic Clinical Depression - with out medication via therapy and self learning.

Another element of the talk that has got me re-thinking some core beliefs is the idea that humans are as capable of 'evil' as they are of acting towards the common good. Professor Peterson says his evidence is the record of the last 100 years - two World Wars and two political leaders - Hitler and Stalin he high-lights, who convinced whole populations to tolerate genocide and mass political murder and torture.

Key to his argument are the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment - http://www.prisonexp.org/.

Somehow I have not thought through the evidence at at hand - I have erred in my world view. I have over emphasized the good in everyone with out looking very deeply at the instances of brutal savagery that we are capable of.

I think my error is that I have always felt it was important to emphasize that there is always a way to bring out the good in Anyone. I guess this comes from a great fear of the Mob that was instilled in me growing up by my parents who were greatly effected by the zeitgeist of the McCarthyist era anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950's. That's not to say that some people's behaviour is not on balance 'evil' - but that if the good in anyone is nurtured, it will over-come 'evil' behaviour. Thus it is the best defence against a return of such political movements.

I believe that the 18 years of nurturing which modern children require guarantees that the social is a powerful part of our nature. But Professor Peterson has made me reconsider the balance of my view - as it is also very true that that same social imperative can be twisted through organized human institutions to exploit great evil.

I've posted here at FilterBlogs on Professor Jordan B. Peterson before - "Jordan Peterson explains the ancient hard wired human brain in a material world" - http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/jordan-peterson-explains-ancient-hard.html.

mh

A Letter to Paul...

2011-12-24T05:07:00.000-05:00

I received this video link from Paul Young, Health Promoter at South Riverdale Commmunity Health Centre. I'm on one of his email lists.

The piece below started as a short thank you note back to Paul which got a 'little' out of hand; now it's an article that I hope helps those suffering from depression - a timely piece, importantly as at this time of year, when people need a positive take on this topic ( Unlike my last post on this - http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-hate-this.html ).

Paul,

Re: "23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?" - http://youtu.be/aUaInS6HIGo

Very well done!

I like those animated talks.

From my perspective, the content was also right on.

I've just recently become aware that I have suffered from bouts of clinical depression for most of my life. My behaviour patterns over that time can I think be linked to me trying to cope with the symptoms - but without understanding the whole.

I believe those behaviour patterns have included obsessive compulsive behaviours which lead to a variety of dysfunctional lifestyle choices - including addictions to a variety of drugs including alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, sugar (and a couple of others I won't mention here) - but also - long distance running, working too much, and reading obsessively, playing too much.
(one summer I played at a professional pace - in 4 Rec. Co-ed Baseball Leagues I attained over 400 AB's - the Major League minimum to be considered for the Batting Championship!).

Done in balance these are good things, but without an appreciation of the whole they can be very bad for your health - even deadly.

Recently an understanding of the whole has become revealed to me; though trial and tribulation, I was getting old - the end was nearer than the beginning - it was either find a balance though which I could attain my perceived potential - or end it.

I guess I found the truth less scary than the other way.

I've been taking steps to find that balance and battle that depression with out the use of prescription drugs ( which have all kinds of side effects, some of which are worse than what they 'cure' - or mask, is another perspective ).

These steps include writing daily ( researching, learning seems to be the kicker ), preparing meals at home from scratch ( thus healthy ingredients ), creating healthy social circles, and regular appointments with health professionals about my depression. I have noticed the single most important thing - that has the largest effect on my mental state when it is with-drawn from the regimen - is exercise.

I've always thought that doing exercise for exercise's sake was a strange way of living; I think it leads to a hedonism and - in this culture so full of advertising which temps us in that direction - that's the last thing I think I needed more of.

So I always try to get my exercise through doing something I love to do already; like playing baseball in a league once a week, or though cycling. The problem was where to 'go' in the winter months when one is unable to hold down a job, not to mention a little agoraphobic due to long term depression?

So, to use the doctor's analogy, I combined two of my medicines, into one. I ride my bike to daily activities designed to broaden my social networks!

I volunteer helping to off-load the Daily Bread food truck at the food bank where I receive food weekly. As well, everyday between 11am and 1pm I cycle to one of the Interfaith Committee Lunch programs held a various houses of worship around the East End of Toronto. Also I volunteer at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre's Bicycle Repair Clinic once a week.

All these activities require about a 30 minute ride to get to and fro. Unloading the Daily Bread Truck is an intensive 15 minute work-out - and the bike repair clinic is trades-person's work; it's physical by nature - so about 2 hours of low intensity exercise.

Added to these recently are some evening meetings towards social justice campaigns I'm interested in - most of which are quite close by and require about a 5 or 10 minute ride by bike.

As I said above, when events conspire against this regime, and I don't get this approximately 30 minutes per day of exercise - my depression symptoms roar to the fore.

Exercise is essential to the regime of "medicines" I'm taking.

:)

Michael Holloway

References:

Beach United - "Interfaith Lunch Program" - http://www.beachunitedchurch.com/ministry.aspx?site_id=10457&ministry_id=242517

FilterBlogs - November 8, 2010 - "Daily Lunch for the Hungry - Daily Table with Map thumbnails" - http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2010/11/daily-lunch-for-hungry-daily-table-with.html

South Riverdale Community Health Centre ( SRCHC ) - Bicycle Repair Clinic - http://www.srchc.ca/program/bicycle-repair-clinic

Interesting serendipity:
Inside Toronto just published an article on the Interfaith Lunch Program - "Food for lunch and the soul at Beach Interfaith program" - http://www.insidetoronto.com/news/local/article/1269842--food-for-lunch-and-the-soul-at-beach-interfaith-program

mh

Occupy Toronto "Mic Check Flash Mobs"

2011-12-20T09:05:00.001-05:00

" This afternoon at 3pm, Occupy Toronto plans to do another "Mic Check! Flash Mob" - this time at Toronto's Union Station - a conversation with Holiday Travelers.
Go and watch - or, Join the Chorus!
http://occupyto.org/calendar/event/mic-check-2/ "

On Saturday December 17th 2011 Occupy Toronto members gathered inside Toronto's Eaton Centre at the Queen Street West South Entrance Pavilion and held a "Mic Check! Flash Mob".

'What's that?' One may ask. Until you've seen one, it's hard to explain...

On Saturday a group of 13 activists meet at a pre determined location and gathered in a circle. At an appointed time one person spoke loudly, 'Mic Check!' Everyone in the circle called back 'Mic Check!'.

This is how an individual at a Occupy General Assembly indicates to a meeting that they wish to speak to the meeting. Now, at the Eaton Centre Flash Mob, the person who yelled 'Mic Check!' begins to say what they wanted to say - in short phrases that are sentence fragments, melodic in nature, and that are like lines of a poem or a song - easy to remember.

Essentially the group begins to talk to shoppers.

Oddly, as soon as a group of people start talking in unison everyone in the Shopping Complex stops what they are doing and looks - it's a production, a play, and event, a TV show. People want to know what's going on!

Occupy activist "R" reports on what happened:

Hi Everyone,

This Saturday, a group of us (there were about 12) met up at Nathan
Phillip Square and mic checked the Eaton Center with our holiday
wishlist - for more say in the decisions that affect us, for our
government to stop the tar sands, for everyone listening to take this
conversations back to their homes. It went over incredibly well - over
200 people stopped to listen, and over 20 security guards came out
(although we managed to stay for about 8 minutes after they came). We
were so excited about how well it went and started to do it all over -
the bay, the foodcourt in the AMC building, the subway, the Bay
Atrium, Forver 21, Adidas, and Canadian Tire - each time we got better
and better, and each time people listened with an open heart! Hitting
eight locations, I think at least 800 people heard our messages, and
to think of all the stories they'll tell! We brought out 10 police, 2
undercover police, and at least 25 security guards....really shows you
the power of our conversation. Not only was it a successful outreach
tool, but we all had a lot of fun doing it as well, each time one of
us say...."ok, just one more"!

....so we're going to do it again!

To change it up a little (we don't want to anger the Eaton Centre
Security Guards too much), we're going to flash Union Station with our
voices.
Tuesday, December 20th 3:30pm - meet at the big clock inside Union
Station. We'll decide specific locations once we are there.
- Dress in Costume! (please no scary costumes).

Once again the intro is (and I'll print off some copies again, maybe
we can hand them out to bystanders with instructions on how to join
in):
Attention Travellers!
I am from Occupy Toronto
I have decided
That this year
Instead of gifts filled with things, and stuff
I am going to occupy MY holiday season
With love
With the company of friends and family
And with meaningful conversation
I will take this opportunity of togetherness
To talk about the changes our world needs
Change is simple
It's as simple as a wishlist

Then we mic check one another's individual wishes!

Please spread this around,
It will be A LOT of fun!!!
Peace,
R

Interestingly, everyone listens!

Listen to a conversation about the Occupy between Mic Checkers Roxy and Greg at:

"A Collection of Conversations"
Occupy Holiday Season and Other Stories of Outreach

This afternoon at 3pm, Occupy Toronto plans to do another "Mic Check! Flash Mob" - this time at Toronto's Union Station - a conversation with Holiday Travelers.

Go and watch - or, Join the Chorus!
http://occupyto.org/calendar/event/mic-check-2/

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Everyone.

mh

I hate this...

2011-12-12T23:42:00.002-05:00

Today is a cold, dark day in my head.

There is a sense of foreboding in every moment. Every senory intake has an aura around it - with-in it - that threatens to swallow me whole. A walk down the street is normal except for the knowledge I own that I'm on the edge; and it scares the hell out me.

I'm older than I used to be, and at these times I cling to the knowledge that it will pass. I can remember feelings that weren't like this. I know there are tools I can empoly that will get me through.

Like writing it out.

Like this.

I know the full moon causes emotions to become extreme: a little sadness becomes a hole to centre of the earth, annoying everything can become a cancerous rage.

I keep it all in check; not too much up - not too much down. I'm my own chemical therapy pharmacy.

I can do this with out the drugs because of every minute of every day of every year I am aware of my condition.

The drugs are replaced with walks and bike rides, cooking for myself every day, writing, abstinence from uppers and downers with long periods (that's my one out; I can do coffee with sugar and cigarettes), regular visits to health professionals (conversation with a mental health expert is an amazing thing), the volunteering. All these together keep this ship on the ocean; it's all towards times like this.

Like this.

I hate this.

Minima IV Online Baseball Scorecard - Colour Menu on Top

2011-12-10T18:29:00.002-05:00

Minima_IV-Colour_Menu_on_Top.html

Originally published at Blogger Baseball Scorecard - http://internetbaseballscorecard.blogspot.com/2011/12/minima-iv-colour-menu-on-top.html.

Cross posted at Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs - http://baseball---blog.blogspot.com/2011/12/minima-iv-online-baseball-scorecard.html.

This is a new "Minima IV" at-bat box design which renders four Colour Notations Scoring Menus along the right side of the At-Bat box --- instead of in four pop-up menu, as in my last post on this latest version in the Internet Baseball Scorecard.
( http://internetbaseballscorecard.blogspot.com/2011/12/minima-iv.html )

'Minima IV' AB box Image - rendered in Google Chrome

The colour notation 'Selection Menus' open by clicking on the appropriate 'base' icon. When you click on the First Base icon ( the furthest right black triangle on the peach coloured, infield icon ), the First Base menu opens, indicated by the 1 in the bottom white box. In this coding the colour notation menu remains live until you choose another menu by clicking on a different Base icon. Click on any of the colours in the menu and an appropriately coloured triangle will appear on the chosen side of the infield.

In My scorekeeping universe: red means Out, pink means Error, yellow means Fielder's Choice, lime green means Base Hit, forest green means the runner advanced via ball put into play by another batter, blue means Stolen Base, navy blue indicates the route by which a Run was scored and RBI awarded. The bottom two boxes are field green and white - for fixing mistakes.

The Miima IV At-Bat (AB) box is less than half the size of the "Minima III" baseball scorecard AB box - but it has many hidden functions that provide for lots of customization for the individual user. Each quadrant of the AB box has text areas for recording scorekeeper notations - five lines high that allow for "Project Scoresheet" scoring notation protocols - but instead of room for 13 characters as in the Minima III scorecard, there are 7 in this sleek version. All text areas have hidden scroll bars which allow for any amount of text - but to keep the look of the card clean, I suggest limiting your notations to 5 lines. By clicking the button a "notepad" is available for any extra notations you wish, or for notes. The notepad closes by clicking on the "notepad" button again.

All the elements discussed above are Live in this example:

notes:

( reposted ) 9 Demands of the 99%

2011-12-05T18:26:00.001-05:00

Re-Posted from "Working America".
All fields feed to the original publisher - http://ninedemands.com/petitions/working-america

Tax Wall Street for gambling with our money. Pass the financial speculation tax.
Support education. Put teachers back in classrooms and ease the crippling burden of student debt.
Keep working families in their homes. Pass a mortgage relief plan that puts the needs of homeowners above the greed of mortgage bankers.
End too big to fail. Rein in the big banks NOW and hold the people who caused the financial crisis accountable.

Fair share of taxes from the 1%. End the Bush tax cuts for the 1% and close corporate tax loopholes.
Businesses should invest in jobs. Corporations must stop sitting on their profits and start hiring again here in America.
Extend unemployment insurance. Millions of Americans are still out of work, and unemployment insurance is a vital lifeline.

End corporate control of our democracy. Abolish "corporate personhood" and restore full voting rights to real people.

Re-Posted from "Working America".
All fields feed to the original publisher - http://ninedemands.com/petitions/working-america

mh

What does the "Occupy Wall Street" movement mean to you?

2011-11-24T16:33:00.014-05:00

This is a Google Docs widget. I will create a 'Word Cloud' from the one word answers everyone submits.

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Create your own Google Doc form here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/newform?ref=submitpage

Here's the Word Cloud created at Worldle.net, from 70 entries I received by posting a link to here at the Facebook group "Occupy Toronto Market Exchange" - http://www.facebook.com/OccupyToronto/posts/282408355129019

(click to see the original size)

View the Word Cloud at Wordle.net archives - http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4492303/What_does_%22Occupy_Wall_Street%22_mean_to_YOU%3F

Or view the Word Cloud posted at "Occupy Toronto Market Exchange" - http://www.facebook.com/OccupyToronto/posts/209478872459490

mh

The modern, un-regulated Corporation "A cloud over civilisation"

2011-11-07T01:14:00.000-05:00

Orginally published as a comment in an OccupyToMedia space (fb).

-----------------

The modern, un-regulated, transnational corporation is "A cloud over civilisation"

OccupyEconomics

The neo-liberal economic model frees corporations from governments and national boundaries in order to create a 'level playing field' internationally for the world's transnational enterprises. It does this through de-regulation and reduction of corporate tax rates to near zero. The model also hamstrings individual nation's ability to govern their economy though free trade agreements which limit central bank's ability to create money - the main 'lever' of fiscal management.

But as many of these transnationals are bigger than some counties, and have great power and influence in most (and have aparently usurped democratic institutions in the most powerful one, the United States) - they have become 'Pirate Ships' on the Ocean of Civilization. They have no interest in any one nation, and are able to 'raid' any economy, rape it, and then move on to the next - playing one off the other as they go along.

Profit is the primary concern of the corporation, and systems have evolved in these institutions that parse out human error in descsion making (read, 'all human influence'), and as such the corporate entity - and especially 'combines', groups of these entities - become more and more, an amoral force. Parasites on communities and civilization in general. Not only just parasites, but carcinogens - they have the power and influence to lead us into a third world war,a nuclear war which civilization will not survive.

In other words, unless democratic power is brought to bear upon it, Pirate Capitalism is likely to destroy civilization itself. The all-powerful corporation is untenable with civilization, therefore the only modern institution large and powerful enough to do so, the Federal Government - especially with regard to foreign policy - must strictly regulate finance/capital.

Reference:
"A cloud over civilisation"
Corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy - and the slaughter in Iraq

by JK Galbraith
The Guardian, Thursday 15 July 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul/15/usa.iraq#article_continue

---------------------

(edited 11/07/11 ---1:14)

mh

An Occupy Manifesto?

2011-11-02T22:27:00.000-04:00

The following was written as part of a comment thread at,
"Bay Area Real Estate Trends"
under an article - "Occupy Oakland Jumps The Shark",
written by Greg Fielding, November 2, 2011

Greg,

I appreciate your point of view, and yes there are examples of people profiting at the expense of a long foreclosure process - playing the pirate game back at the pirate system I suppose.

But when your talking about the invisible super-poor it's not about that anymore - it's about real life, desperate, homeless, couch-surfing, slow starvation ... such that your brain can't function, you fall into hopelessness, depression and despair.

OWS certainly is about helping the homeless. By your question ("Is this now about helping the homeless?") you seem to separate the homeless into a sub category of those hurt by the economic crisis. Perhaps into that place in our consciousness's where the myth, that narrative thrives: 'Those people Want to be homeless' - exists. That view that writes-off those individuals - that inexplicable section of the population we will never understand, those 'Others' who do not deserve our caring any more. That (never said in so many words), sub human sub-culture among us who only perhaps (at a particular extreme) only understand a heel in the back, a club up the side of the head. Those "Bad Seeds", the un-reachable, the expendable. That slippery slope to extreme intolerance that waits down that road - yet it lurks just behind the thinking that created the homeless bi-laws that many cities passed in the 1990's. The out of view - out of mind, not in my back yard set of laws. Ironically, the same laws being used by the security obsessed Mayors and City Councils to evict the Occupy Protesters and suppress the right of free assembly and the right of free speech.

The beautiful thing about OWS is that it includes ALL this - and much more.

It rails against the whole neo-liberal package, the export of good jobs out of the country to places that have no unions that don't pay a living wage - that prey on hopelessness, despair and fear; the service sector jobs that replaced them - at low wags and in many cases, on a contract basis; a shrinking of the middle class - and now with this latest austerity, the entitlement programs - that are supposed to be a bridge to recovery, a safety new for everyone - are being cut like they are wasteful --- at the exact moment we all really need them. For the poor, a work week at 2 or 3 different, part time jobs; for the youth a future life of crappy McDonald's type jobs that barely make the rent each month is the panorama our children see out in front of them.

This reality that is, and has been developing for some time, is now becoming a part of people's consciousness. They see it for what it is - a slow dismantling of the liberal-democratic-state, the dismantling a set of laws that guaranteed the rights of man: security from the cold and rain, hunger - human decency - happiness. It is essentially - for the majority - the End of the Enlightenment.

And not just that, but at the same time, a seeming collapse of democracy exemplified by President Obama's seeming absolute impotence at influencing the direction of this collapse in Washington - a stark relief to his great narratives during the election.

A disconnect not only exists - but seems to be widening between the elected representatives and the people who elected them. No matter who, or from what party, the representatives dither and dodge, and then pass laws that are essentially a slap in the face to the majority!

Everyone out at these Occupies - from Toronto to Oakland, to Madrid Spain, to Athens Greece - understands these things at one level or another. This is the message the mass media complain is not being articulated by the movement - perhaps because of the whole movements inability to grasp at this point, the whole, awesome, over-whelming gravitas of the situation. This is after all a global economic meltdown - like nothing we've ever seen, and like nothing we know from history since the Great Depression of 1929-1939!

But in everyone's subconscious, there is a little bird tweeting - that this is a fight for the future - and perhaps, it's the only chance we get.

(Sorry about the length Greg - got on a roll there.
A manifesto perhaps? Going to cross-publish at my blog, and at www.Occupyto.org)

Michael

Cross posted at www.occupyto.org (tag: business)
http://occupyto.org/2011/10/31/the-canadian-manifesto-draft1/?replytocom=400#comment-400

As a comment under Greg Fielding's article - http://bayarearealestatetrends.com/2011/11/02/occupy-oakland-jumps-the-shark/#comment-2102

mh

Like "The Doors" - only Better - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

2011-11-01T21:00:00.002-04:00

Wow.

I did not know.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Red Right Hand"

mh

Can Dark Matter be the Energy Field created by the Orbiting of all Celestial Bodies?

2011-10-31T10:38:00.000-04:00

"So then I imagined speeding up the orbits of all the solar systems' planets to that of orbit rates of elections around the nucleus of an atom. At that mathematical extrapolation is there a slow wave particle - an X-ray for example - that compares to the speed of a spacecraft? Then, if one compares the calculated pioneer anomaly diffraction to the diffraction of an X-ray hitting a particular atoms' orbital field - would they be similar?"

I'm not an astrophysicist, or a mathematician. I'm an amateur cosmologist - I understand the standard model of the universe, Newtonian physics, Electromagnetic theory and Quantum theory; and I think I have a pretty good understanding of General Relativity. I keep up to date with the most recent theories and on the latest experiments being designed to test them - and I eagerly await the mathematicians and computer modeling experts pronouncements on what the new data means to the various theoretical models.

The mysterious dark matter that is necessary to complete a grand unified model of everything has been theorized to be subspace energy - an anti-universe, a harmonic resonance of the universe we experience. Other theories have attempted a way around the numbers that don't add up, by imagining 11 universes - the so called String Theory of everything.

I've always thought these were too complicated. Ockham's razor postulates that all things being equal, the simplest answer is probably the right one. Well, all of these theories are equal, in my opinion. They all attempt to unite our understanding of the subatomic universe, the electromagnetic universe and the the so called 'weak forces' governed by Newtons Laws of Gravity and the Laws of Thermodynamics with very complex conjectures, and bring into the calculation some unseen matter, force, or reality.

So I started down this path with the question, 'What if we kept it simple?'

One thing that I've discovered in researching for this article is that there is very little known about the combined energy of the functioning of a solar system.

I asked myself, what is the total inertia (mass + vector) of all the planets and the sun of our solar system? It's not as easy a calculation as one might think. At first I thought - well you just calculate the mass of all the planets and their moons, and the sun, then add in the various speeds at which they travel around the sun - and the moons around their planets, and the orbit of the sun - and presto - the inertia of the solar system.

But then I started to consider the combined spins and orbits of all these masses:

One must measure the shearing forces in play in this increasingly complex calculation - what fields do these forces create.
What about the spin of each body and the different spin of the different layers in those planetary bodies? Some are gaseous bodies that have no 'solid' surface as we know solid here on earth - thus more complex spin and field characteristics.
What measurements do we have of the complex machinations of the different density belts of those planets - the rings of Saturn for example? Each planet would all have different spins, and thus different field characteristics based on the relative densities.
For example Earth's atmosphere has spheres of different densities - they all spin at different rates, and those different rates of spin also have interface zones that have yet more spin characteristics including eddies and counter eddies that create fields, and inter-field machinations that effect the whole.
That's not even mentioning the magma under the crust of this planet that moves according to the spin of the whole and it's density.
And now add in the atomic forces, and how they behave under different pressures which change the closer you measure to the centre of the planet - and effect greatly their spin characteristics.
And what about the forces that come into play when all these bodies enter into the acute 'ends' of their elliptical orbits twice a year?
And do the interactions of this huge number of fields create harmonic fields?

A supercomputer would be needed to calculate all these vectors - but so, OK, now (theoretically) we have a number.

But what does it mean?

This question sent me to the Laws of Thermodynamics; 'Entropy' (laws 1 and 2) say that all systems will eventually lose all their entropy and move towards a stable state, as they do so they give off heat. So the solar system is - by the scale of the age of the universe - at a very low state of entropy. All through the life of this solar system - from gas clouds to the formation of solids and so on - the system as been giving off heat - as all thermodynamic systems do while they simplify down to their most stable state. Thus the temperature of the universe is a function of the continuing entropy of the universe. The entire mass of the universe was calculated, and a temperature that empty space should be at was determined - and tested - and found to be true.

But that very broad, macro-calculation is where we're at as far as this kind of calculation is concerned.

Can we do better?

NASA - artists' conception of the
Bow Wave of the Solar System

The Pioneer Anomaly brought to my attention the idea that - theoretically - the solar system has a Bow Wave. As the spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy thrusts this solar system through the matter of the universe (approximately 1 atom per cubic metre), the orbits of all the planets create a field that can move small, slow objects off their vector - diffract them. Just like an atom has a field around it created by orbiting electrons - that we can calculate by measuring the diffraction of x-rays bounced off of it - so too perhaps will a larger system of orbiting bodies like our solar system, have a field which can be measured.

So then I imagined speeding up the orbits of all the solar systems' planets to that of orbit rates of elections around the nucleus of an atom. At that mathematical extrapolation is there a slow wave particle - an X-ray for example - that compares to the speed of a spacecraft? If this is so, if one compares the calculated pioneer anomaly diffraction to the diffraction of an X-ray hitting a particular atoms' orbital field - are they simailar?

If so that force calculation determines a particle wave that forms from orbiting, spinning bodies of any size - then that calculates the properties of a Higgs-boson particle.

CERN won't like this.

You do the math - I can't.

mh

Everybody Loves @OccupyWallSt

2011-10-14T19:50:00.003-04:00

Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello nails it:

Rage Against The Machine - Bullet In The Head - 1993

@OccupyToronto

Occupyto.org

mh

OccupyToronto's 2nd General Assembly - Fun, Good-Natured, United

2011-10-13T23:17:00.000-04:00

Attended OccupyToronto's 2nd General Assembly (GA) tonight at O.I.S.I.E.

Fun, good-natured, united - and we got a lot done! Five 'committees' reported: food donations have been sourced, medical teams are established, media and IT committees are active, the legal committee has found lots of lawyers for bail and such, and a parade marshals committee is in training to keep us all safe - including tactics to passively prevent violence by trouble-makers!

Screenshot of OccupyToronto's 2nd General Assembly at O.I.S.I.E. - 13/10/11

LIVESTREAM embed of OccupyToronto's 2nd General Assembly (13/10/11)

Watch live streaming video from occupytoronto at livestream.com

We specifically had a vote on the peaceful, non-violent nature of this coming occupation - a resounding energetic both hands up jazz from everyone. On this we are absolutely as One. In this coming civil disobedience at the heart of the Canadian Financial sub-sulture, it is our lives we are putting on the line in two days time - and absolute non-violence is our only defense. On almost every other political tangent we remain respectively mute in a wonderful display of unity towards a real democracy from with-in this plutocracy we suddenly find ourselves aware of in this global economic crisis.

Made a shiver run up my spine.

Mass media out numbered Toronto Police Services - about 10 uniformed police there at 5:00PM - 3 bicycle police officers remained when I had to leave at 8:15 - making sure the sidewalk remained clear - traffic stuff.

About 300 organizers attended the last General Assembly meeting before @OccupyToronto starts - 10:00AM Saturday, October 15th - rallying at King and York. The logistics committee reported the location of occupation will be kept secret to avoid a possible disruption by the 1%.

The human amplifier - the practice of everyone repeating what a speaker is saying, one short sentence fragment at a time (invented at #OccupyWallStreet in New York because ordinances prohibit voice amplification with out a permit - which they weren't handing out), leads to a communal-ism that is catchy, joyous and Powerful. I had a great time - and even though I'm extremely shy, I found myself amplifying speakers when necessary - (you'll know when it's your sections' turn).

The Out Reach Committee reported that CUPW and CAW were messaging members to attend - and were sending demo stuff like a bus with sound gear and such. Everyone was ecstatic at the news. Good to see the Unions taking this gamble - the 1% media will be all over them if we can't keep this Gandhi-esque. But by the looks of it - from this old protesters point of view - this group is extremely dedicated to non-violent resistance to injustice.

After the GA, committees met around the O.I.S.I.E. parkette - also inside O.I.S.I.E., the legal committee and the Medic committee held classes. Later in the evening a Media education meeting was scheduled - but I couldn't stay. That's my baby - media :( Catch the next one though.

mh

Jeff Mangum plays #OcuppyWallSteet

2011-10-07T06:03:00.000-04:00

@OcuppyToronto's 1st General Assembly Tonight - 07/10/2011

Upadate: 12/10/2011
@OccupyToronto 2nd General Assembly Thursday October 13th 2011 @ O.I.S.I.E. (map)

The Gothamist found Jeff Mangum on the streets of lower Manhattan playing for #OcuppyWallSteetNY protesters on Tuesday night (October 4 - Day 18) - globalrevolution's LiveStream (the 'Occupy' movement's TV channel) had him hooked to the planet.

The next day was the student walk-out, and the day the Unions came out. The march attracted 50,000 people.

The next day Thursday, the number of 'Ocuppy' Cities listed on "Occupy Together" (the global site) jumped from 390 to 750. It's up to 837 at this posting.

Below the video is a map, details and links for OcuppyToronto.

Via The Gothamist - "Video: Surprise, Jeff Mangum Played Occupy Wall Street Last Night"

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

Song List:

1. Themselves (Minutemen cover)2. Holland, 19453. Ghost4. Song Against Sex5. Two-Headed Boy pt. 26. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea7. King of Carrot Flowers pt. 18. Oh Comely

I wanna go to New York City - but I can't - so I'm going to OccupyToronto instead.

The protest movement against corporate greed and for democratic representation and a sustainable, and fair economic system starts at 10:00 AM Saturday, October 15, 2011.

This Friday (tonight) the movements first General Assembly happens - where the details of what will happen Saturday, October 15th will be decided democratically:

17:00 General Assembly
Fri, 7 October, 17:00 – 20:00
Berczy Park, Toronto ON.
(the triangle behind the Flat Iron Building - Church St. and Front St. E./Wellington St. E.)
(map)

View Larger Map

OccupyToronto on FaceBook is called, "Occupy Toronto Market Exchange".

@OccupyToronto on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/occupytoronto

OccupyToronto Web: http://occupyto.webs.com/

Occupy Toronto Market Exchange - Events (at Facebook)

mh

Waterfont Toronto must speed Development - 'Big Mall' backroom deal dead

2011-09-21T04:48:00.003-04:00

" ..with a consolidated effort by progressives that targets Jaye Robinson, Michelle Berardinetti, Karen Stintz and John Parker's ward constituents - organizes those progressive majorities against the Core Service Review cuts - this nightmare mayoralty could turn to an enlightened spring by Christmas!"

Councillors Jaye Robinson, Michelle Berardinetti, Karen Stintz and John Parker, the Star says (Ford gives up goal of seizing Port Lands), we're ready to split ranks on the Waterfront Toronto / Biggest Shopping Mall Ever! issue.

The Mayor's Office reacted quickly, compromise happened and now the call out of City Hall tomorrow will apparently be: 'Hurry up the spending, let's get the Waterfront Toronto vision in place quicker!!'.

So we go from a neo-con power grab, an insider real estate deal - to a Keynesian Infrastructure spending program.

Way to go Councillor Paula Fletcher!

A great victory if this passes council. She got everything she could have hoped for - and found a way for the Fordites to save a little face too.

So, it turns out Doug and Rob Ford are secret bicycle riding, pinko-Communists - possibly closet gays?

Nope.

Tonight I'm checking out "#codeblueTO", the Twitter list tag that has evolved as an information clearing house on the Port Lands issue in Twitter. At 2:00 AM it was refreshing with 20 new hits every 5 minutes. Check it tomorrow as this news item hits the front porches and the broadcast morning news shows.

What this shows I think, is that this so called Mayor Ford City Council is really a centre dominated house of cards. On the Port Lands issue The Mayor's Office has chosen to fight one battle at a time - they've put out this fire with-in their ranks with this 'compromise'.

And the result is a complete victory for the process, and for the progressive agenda that is Waterfront Toronto - and Councillor Paula Fletcher who's Ward 30 includes the Port Lands.

The Ford brain-trust must consider that they will be lucky if the Core Services Review doesn't split them again. With out this 'step back' by The Mayor's Office the Core Service Review would be in danger. Cuts to services are more likely to pass with out a revolt because everyone's getting gored at the same time instead of everyone focused on one issue like The Portlands. The Core Service Review on the other hand, is about thousands of issues - perfect divide and rule ground for the Mayors Office and their corporate masters.. This is a likely scenario I think, and the strategic brillance of the Ford plan is that a raucous, divided council - each Councillor fighting to save services for their wards - would never find a common voice - and call the kettle black. The Mayor Office must hope that Council would never unite around the progessive idea that spending on infrastructure - with money already approved from the Federal and Provincial levels (for Transit City and the Port Lands) will increase the cities tax base and negate the on-going deficient problem. - with NO cuts in services.

You know - Keynesian economics, rather that neo-con slash and burn reactionary policies designed to appeal to the ignorant, guilt ridden, knee-jerk, first time electors who voted for this idiot.

My point being, with a consolidated effort by progressives that targets Jaye Robinson, Michelle Berardinetti, Karen Stintz and John Parker's ward constituents - organizes those progressive majorities against the Core Service Review cuts --- this nightmare mayoralty could turn to an enlightened spring by Christmas!

Ya think?. Are there other 'tippy' canoes out there?

mh

A Real Time Graphic of Micro Loans and Repayment Rendered on a Map of Earth.

2011-09-11T17:00:00.002-04:00

$25.00 Kiva loan transactions. 620,000 lenders - 615,000 entrepreneurs, from 2005 to 2011

Big this up to full screen, sit back and prepare to be amazed!!

I'd like to see this kind of transparency in the general global economy.

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva on Vimeo.

Via 'Todd Tyrtle' at fb.

mh

Minima III Baseball Scorecard - Build 4 (3 X 3 TEST)

2011-09-04T03:16:00.104-04:00

This was originally published at one of my other blogs, the extra wide Blogger Baseball Scorecard. The image below shows the new scorecard's lay out in build 4, to experience the interactivity of the new coding you should go to the site.

Had to take a break from coding for a while - the last time I published on the Minima III Baseball Scorecard project was on July 7th 2011.

Publishing code inside of the Blogger Interface poses tricky problems - everything can be working perfectly when one checks one's work in one's browser - taking the code into Blogger creates some default issues that need to be solved.

Back on July 7th I presented a 2 row, by 2 column example of the Minima III Scorecard that inexplicably stretched the table at certain points. That has been fixed. As well, only Microsoft IE 9 and newer support the Base Icon buttons (if you're in an earlier MS browser you see "&" instead of diamonds).

I have been unable so far, to fix the way MS renders the green Field Icon over-top of the 2nd Base and 3rd Base text areas - despite 'z-index' attributes. As a stop-gap, I created space between each row of AB boxes to remind Internet Explorer users that they have to click above the 2nd Base and 3rd Base text areas to get a prompt cursor in them.

Image of the Minima III Baseball Scorecard example coding - rendered with the HTML5 compliant browser, Firefox 5. Via Blogger Baseball Scorecard

This coding is working great! All the sides of the diamond can be coloured 9 different ways via pop-up menu that open with a click on any of the 4 Bases.

Every space on the scorecard is live, ready for text. In all of the text areas, scroll bars open automatically when you create more lines than there is space for in each area - so you can write as much as you like. As many game-notes as you need - positioned where they belong, at the precise point in the time-line schematic where the action is happening!

mh

Properties of the Minima III Baseball Scorecard

2011-09-04T02:00:00.021-04:00

This article was originally published at my other blog, the Blogger Baseball Scorecard blog, on Thursday, July 7, 2011.

Updated: July 25th 2011

The Minima III Baseball Scorecard works in all Browsers. At my last post on this development ("Javascript Functions enable push-button colour notation Baseball Scorekeeping": http://internetbaseballscorecard.blogspot.com/2011/06/javascript-functions-enable-push-button.html), I had some troubles with Microsoft compatibility - those issues have been resolved. But now there is a new one, and with some sense of relief, I'm happy to report it's not particularly about Microsoft compatibility this time!.

A Screen-shot of the Minima example coding, rendered by an HTML5 compliant browser (Firefox5)

The Minima III Baseball Scorecard requires HTML5 compliant Browsers. The reason for this is that the little squares which indicate the Bases around the Infield icon diamond, are only available in HTML5. (Who'da-thunk - a simple box on it's ear - hither-to not in the HTML symbol list?) If your using an older Browser, the square renders instead as an "&" - the first character of the code that produces the symbol in HTML5 (⋄). The other characters are hidden by the container box I put around it. No worries, the "&" character functions as the button key, it just looks like crap.

Browsers that are HTML5 compliant are IE9, FireFox 5, Google Chrome 5. At this publishing I haven't found out whether Safari has an HTML5 Browser out yet, the Safari Browser that I downloaded last month, renders the Bases like IE8 does. I haven't checked out the Opera Browser yet.

Update: July 25th 2011
Apple released their Safari 5 Browser today, it supports the html5 90 degree corners diamond symbol.

For all you folks who haven't got the latest browser (especially you Microsoft patrons who need to BUY a new Operating System to run IE9), I've included a screen shot to the right of what the example scorecard looks like in an HTML5 compliant Browser (in this case, a free download, Firefox 5 Browser running on a MS-XP 2003 OS)

These Base icons - squares with 90 degree corners, rotated 45 degrees - are much more than just perfectly suited Base icons - they are the Buttons that make appear, pop-up Colour Scoring Menus. Each at-bat box has four Scoring Menus that open when a user clicks on the First Base, Second Base, Third Base or Home Plate icon. They are at the heart of this scorecard's 'Colour Scoring' functionality.

In the example lower right, in order to show the functionality of all the elements of the new scorecard, I've laied out 2 player's at-bat (AB) box rows, 2 innings long, their game stat tables, and a Team Pitching Table.

(mh - this blogis too narrow to accomadate even the 2 player by 2 inning example to see what I'm talking about head over to the extra-wide Blogger Baseball Scorecard Blog -, this article was originally published there.)

The reason for the abridged scorecard is that the complete Minima III Scorecard - for 2 Teams, 11 Innings wide, Box Score Table, Pitching Tables - is over 2.5 MB big. That's too large for Blogger, which has a 1 MB/post limit. So you won't see this scorecard used to score games here - The Minima III will require my own web site. (Or is there a free web site application that can handle it? I've noticed a few around - but I haven't done the research yet.)

Check out the functionality yourself!

When clicked, all the buttons make appear a pop-up menu. In the menu, click on any of the coloured words like "Out", for example - and the first base side of the infield icon turns red - indicating the batter is out at first. Change the colour by clicking on another word; close the menu with the "X" in the box, bottom right. Click on the teaxtarea box associated with the 1B side of the AB box and type in some baseball scoring notations - like FO7, for example (meaning the batter flied out to left field).

The empty, long, thin box - top left - is where one types in the Team name, right under that, the large rectangle is for the batter's position in the batting order, the player's name and fielding position.

The totals tables at the end of each row of AB boxes are fully functional textareas - there are 4 rows so you can total up possible substitutions AB's as well as the starting fielder's stats.

The Lower table has a space to type in the Team name, and a place for 6 Pitcher's names and stats. All the data boxes are live textareas.

mh

Explained: The Gobal Economic Depression of 2012 - 2022

2011-09-03T13:33:00.003-04:00

In 2008 NPR's 'This American Life' co-produced with NPR News a radio essay that breaks down the financial collapse of 2007/2008 called, "The Giant Pool of Money".

This one hour radio show - along with the large number of interviews I've embedded here (many from The Real News Network), under the label "Econmics" - is a good layman's guide to why you're likely to loose your pension, and perhaps even your house over the next few years of this continuing unregulated boom/bust, pirate economy.

Originally aired 05.09.2008 on This American Life.

"The Giant Pool of Money"

The Decemberists, 'Calamity Song'

2011-08-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

Via - Joy of Sox: In The Year Of The Chewable Ambien Tab
.

Via - NPR: All Songs Considered

mh

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on the War against the Middle Class

2011-08-18T19:50:00.005-04:00

From the page at Youtube:

On June 18, 2011 artists Ligorano/Reese presented a temporary monument in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in NYC called "Morning In America." The installation was witnessed by hundreds and lasted a total of 8 hours throughout the hot day....A THOUSAND CUTS is a timelapse video of the event. The soundtrack was inspired by an excerpt from Senator Bernie Sanders 8 hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor against the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the effects on the middle class. It is orchestrated to music by composer/violinist Michael Galasso.

Morning In America - A Temporary Monument to the Reagan Revolution

The Artists: Ligorano / Reese -http://ligoranoreese.net/

The project page at Ligorano / Reese: Morning in America.

Ligorano / Reese at Youtube: Ligorano/Reese Videos

Senator Bernie Sanders (.senate.gov)

mh

Parasitical Trading in a De-regulated, Boom/Bust Economy

2011-08-16T10:54:00.007-04:00

The Real News Network is running a series of interviews with Obama's 're-regulation' Czar Bart Chilton, that reveals some of the players in this new, unregulated Boom/Bust market who are leaching off with our pensions - and other capitalizations of the liberal democratic state.

Chilton is one of five commissioners on the "Commodity Futures Trading Commission" (CFTC), which has been tasked by Congress to anaylise the landscape of the new Boom/Bust market place - and find some appropriate regulation strategy to over-see the hither-to invisible machinations in this 'Pirate Market' (notably the electronic milli-second traders, and the over-the-counter derivatives traders). The same entities that packaged sub-prime mortgages into bundles and then - via the ratings companies who were playing along in this lawless unregulated market (Standard and Poor's deserves a prominent mention) - rated them as high yield vehicles and then sold them around the planet.

Looking at the volumes of trades in the two years leading up to the 2007 collapse one might guesstimate that there are 10's of Trillions of these so called, 'toxic assets' still looking for a moment to come home to roost. Just ask the Greek Government - or the Irish, Iceland, Spain, or Italy.

CFTC Commissioner: "A Hair Trigger Away from Economic Calamity" - Home Page

Part 1 - CFTC Commissioner: "A Hair Trigger Away from Economic Calamity"

Part 2 - Food, Speculation and Parasitical Trading

(This series may continue - bookmark the Home Page linked in the title above.)

One of the results of deregulation of the financial sector, and trading sector has been extreme market fluctuations, otherwise known as a Boom-Bust economy.

Back in 1995 when neo-con governments introduced a qualitatively different government revenue stream through the introduction of regressive goods and services taxes - they at the same time forced a portion of people's income into the speculative markets by increasing income taxes to unthinkable levels while at the same time opening loop-holes in the tax law that would enable people to avoid paying income tax by investing a portion of the yearly income in speculation - this created the funds we know well today. Trillions of dollars of our retirement savings tied up in the stock markets, forced there through a change in government tax policy.

Essentially what the neo-con governments did was privatize pensions. Now with deregulation and a institutionalized Boom/Bust economy, these trillions of dollars of retirement savings are vulnerable to the machinations of a volatile market. So far retirement savings have taken 3 hard hits which causing the collapse of several major funds and the loss of 1/2 a Trillion in retirement savings.

Through a handy, time line of the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis at Credit Crisis Timeline - I found this Financial Times article from 8 April 2008, "IMF puts cost of credit crisis at $945bn":

"The IMF said total losses and writedowns would reach about $945bn, based on market prices in mid-March. Banks would suffer slightly more than half the total losses, with the rest falling on insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and other investors."

'..insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and other investors.'

All the money is coming from people forced by their governments tax policy into the gamble. It's the Trillions that this is all about. So by the IMF estimate our pensions took a 500 Billion dollar hit in this one Bust - admittedly the biggest Bust since 1929, but the biggest bust since the Great Depression comes within a no regulation Meme - just like that which was in force (or not in force) in the 1920's and '30's.

The kicker is even though the market always regains it's points totals over time - in the correction your fund, or your neighbour's fund gets slaughtered. And the boom/bust cycle goes on and on. And more and more investors in this volotile market are betting against it, shorting down and in many cases these are huge player with both lots of cash and lots of the physical commodity they are hedging. They can depress prices by selling physical commodities in the market, hedge down and down which adds to the momentum of the depression of the commodities price - then withdraw the physical supply, let the normal demand take up the slack in the market and then sell as the market corrects up.

How in the hell do we get to a place where everyones in - but it births a predatory entity - the hedging down shorters who - with enough practice at their wizardry - could wipe out Trillions more in the nations retirement fund? And perhaps the Empire itself!

I've been watching national retailers, like Canada's Loblaws - a food retail chain, part of the Weston Empire that owns wholesale food production enterprises as well as a chain of Hotels. I think they've been trying to even out their retail pricing in these volatile conditions. I assume they're doing it by hedging a price they think is the projected normal over the long average - but once in a while they get caught having to sell long options at prices lower than they had projected. Thus prices begin to spike periodically as they pass on the loses.

The pain has begun. In a labour market where wages have remained level or falling for 2 decades, we have never seen this kind of inflation in food prices, 39% over the last year.

Is this good public policy - to have the future public good in a Pirate Bay with no way out? Seniors will die quietly in poverty and with out access to good medical care - but what of their sons and daughters? Will they not hold government to account?

One is reminded of the storming of the Bastille.

Let them eat cake indeed.

Inflation chart via StatsCan.

mh

SMBC Theater's $76,000 worth of Comedy Entertainment

2011-08-15T02:58:00.001-04:00

These people used Kickstarter.com to fund this first DVD. I've been following them on Youtube for about a year - 2 to 3 minutes at a time.

These people have a lot of jokes. Here's an hour and fourteen minutes of never before seen skits.

www.smbc-theater.com

mh

Obama White House must Act Now to Stimulate Economy

2011-08-13T11:15:00.007-04:00

Update - 18Aug2011: Common Dreams 17Aug2011

"Need Concrete Plans to Rebuild Infrastructure; Focus of Efforts should be to Get Back to Work"
Kucinich Building Support for the National Emergency Employment Defense Act; "Time to Get Real about Creating Jobs"

Kucinich to introduce bill in the House this fall - "National Emergency Employment Defense Act" ("NEED" HR__ pdf).

The Real News Network's "Banks to Cash-In Again on New Fed Plan" video series of interviews with Yves Smith - from November 2010.

In this 9 month old interview, Paul Jay, Executive Producer of The Real News Network, talks to Yves Smith, author of the book, ECONned, and owner of the economics website, Naked Capitalism, about what has turned out to be the Fed's last Quantitative Easing (spending to stimulate growth in the economy) - back in November of 2009.

The first two rounds of stimulus spending, the so called, QE1 and QE2 packages were funnelled to the financial sector and the banks - who instead of loaning it out to create primary investments in plant and equipment, have thrown all the free money (0% interest) into financial instruments - trying to make as much return as possible, as quickly as possible to shore up their books - which are full of toxic derivatives which aren't worth the paper their written on - second and third mortgages packaged to hide their real value. And which - ironically - with the downgrading of US debt last week, were fraudulently labelled AAA by Standard and Poor's (+ others) in the lead up to the 2008 financial meltdown.

It's interesting to see how little the situation has changed in 9 months. The economy is not growing, the stock market is volatile and jobs haven't happened. We're tracking sideways - only now - the stakes are even higher.

The European Central Bank is now on the verge of collapse as countries in the regional free trade agreement struggle against huge financial players who are shorting down their currencies - well aware as they are, that with-in the Euro-zone rules these nations don't have the tools they need to fend off such attacks (the ability to adjust their sovereign's value through interest rate adjustment). Essentially the trade zone is on the verge of collapse, as is the economic co-operation conference of leading industrial economies, the so called G-20. Meanwhile the political austerity insanity in Washington moves forward despite all economic indicators pointing in the opposite direction.

So one assumes the White House must be (hopefully ... they have to be, they've got to be - mustn't they?) on the cusp of using some extraordinary mechanisms and financial ingenuity to find a way to stimulate the economy - despite the austerity agreement - to stabilize the situation. Like through the issue of long term Treasury Bonds specifically attached to a delivery mechanism, National Enterprise Corporations, for example - the sole purpose of which would be to build some actual real world infrastructure - roads, bridges, high speed rail, schools, sewers, a smart electrical grid, ... .

The Office of the President have the tools, but will Obama use them?

So, with no further ranting ...

Just like it was yesterday:..

Part 1 - Banks to Cash-In Again on New Fed Plan

November 9, 2010 More at The Real News

Part 2 - The Turkey Votes for Thanksgiving

November 10, 2010 More at The Real News

Yves Smith is the creator of the influential financial blog Naked Capitalism, author of "ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism".

The series Home Page at TRNN: "Banks to Cash-In Again on New Fed Plan".

mh

I can't view anything on the www with the word BLOG in it

2011-08-12T09:38:00.004-04:00

* * *

UPDATE: Monday, August 15, 2011

I think I've figured out what happened. Over at my Blogger Baseball Scorecard I was having trouble uploading a page that includes a html file that is near 500,000 bytes. The page held the file in a text area to make it easy for non-coders to work with - but I was having trouble understanding the Post Settings language in the Blogger User Interface. As a result, the large file would be re-written to the long form, or interpreted html by the blogger interface - thus uploading gobbley-gook on Publish. When I realized the post had failed to render as I wanted it, I just reset the Post Option to a different setting with out reloading the file from my back-up, thus asking Blogger upload to accept what it intrepreted as a corrupted file. On the fifth try (I'm a little obstinate sometimes) a security algorithm kicked in and blocked my IP address from accessing sites where I had uploaded large files before. This included interestingly, a Word Press blog where at lot of blogger processed pictures reside - and even more interestingly, the security process also blocked me from searching the word 'blog' in Google Search.

How they did that is beyond me. Amazing power Google has.

* * *

I'm having internet access problems. Have YOU ever experienced anything like the following?

This is a strange one.

Yesterday I found I couldn't access any of my RSS feeds that are Blogger sites.

Then I see I can't access my Blogger account, and then I can't see one of my word press blogs (but another at the same service is viewable).

My Stat Counter tells me all the sites are up and getting page views - but if I even type the letters b-l-o-g into a google search engine I get a timed out page - with no waiting.

I hooked up an old computer and the same things were happening.

Then I went to cnet/download.com and got an IP masker. That is working (3 day trial), I can access everything now.

So some algorythm in the web has decided mine is not a trusted IP address?

I'm confused - has anyone experienced anything like this?

Yesterday I ran a ping and a tracert over the www to see where my connection to Blogger.com/ stops.

"Hell No" - Your Right to Dissent - Series from TRNN

2011-08-08T11:55:00.003-04:00

TRNN's Hell No" - Your Right to Dissent, Series looks at the increasing use by our governments of extra-legal means to suppress decent

As part of TRNN's commitment to provide us a 'Longview' - part of their promise to provide in-depth coverage and analysis of current events - on the 1st anniversary of the 2010 G20 Summit Toronto, The Real New Network, has produced several pieces on the extraordinary Police clamp down on lawful dissent that infamous weekend - and investigated what comeuppance, if any, authorities have had to face.

This Series is likely to continue. Bookmark the RSS feed, or whatever method you use to flag items - via the Series Home Page address: Hell No" - Your Right to Dissent Series Home Page at TRNN - here.

Below is a copy of the TRNN Home Page for the Series. Each headline links back to the TRNN video at the TRNN website.

"Hell No" - Your Right to Dissent

August 8, 2011:

HRW: Obama broke law not prosecuting Bush & Cheney
Michael Ratner: Prosecution of Bush Cheney and Rumsfeld will have to be done in other countries as Obama has refused to pursue it August 8, 2011

"Hell No" - Your Right to Dissent
Michael Ratner: There is a North America-wide strategy to take away the right to mass protest July 27, 2011

Toronto G-20: Denying Civil Rights is a Crime
Paul Jay: Responsibility for G-20 "Days of Infamy" mainly RCMP and Federal Gov. July 6, 2011

The Real News Network's Series "Address Unemployment, Then Debt"

2011-08-07T13:27:00.002-04:00

Five Part Video below the fold

The Real News Network just finished publishing a 5 Part Video Interview with noted Political Economist Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who says 'There is no Debt Crisis'.

The crisis he says, is continued high unemployment and a continuing and increasing political mindset about the economy that thinks cut backs are the solution. Cut backs and union busting measures at the Municipal State and Federal levels are removing Trillions of dollars of spending power from the economy - making a double dip recession inevitable - and a global depression likely.

I couldn't agree more. An invented crisis, flowing out of the real Financial Crisis of 2008, is creating a mind set that is then feeding the root of the problem, high unemployment, a shrinking middle class and tight household budgets - a catch-22 that could, in a worst case scenario, lead to a World War.

This austerity mind set is gaining steam as it feeds the rich and powerful's Lust and Greed for more and more - out of Fear at a time of inceasing uncertainty - in a world caulk full of change on many levels (many of which imho, are really cool!).

Pollin points out that this "politik" mirrors the reaction to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 - after which a series a austerity measures then lead to the global depression known in North America as the "Ten Lost Years" or "The Great Depression".

People who experienced this time (my father, my grandmother) referred to the experience as life altering - it informed everything they were and were to become, and it was a topic that was regularly referred to as I grew up. People displaced by a 10 year drought, as well as a 30% unemployment rate, and in addition, the complete absence of a social safety net, were forced to wander the country looking for work in a state of perpetual slow starvation. A crisis that lasted for a generation.

The global depression ended only after the United States 'spent forward' with massive public infrastructure spending over 10 years. This included the construction of a national electrical grid (and the power generation facilities to feed it, ie. The Hoover Dam, and others) which brought electricity to millions of American farms.

Many anti 'Welfare State' theorists say it was the Second World War that ended the Great Depression - I respectfully disagree. The view belittles the President Roosevelt, Keynesian "New Deal", and President Lyndon B Johnson's 1960's "Great Society" as part of an attempt to dismantle the liberal democratic state.

Here's the Home Page for the Series entitled, "There is no Debt Crisis".
(each headline is a link that takes you to the Part in question at the TRNN website)

The Home Page, "There is no Debt Crisis" at TRNN is here.

Why Austerity and Not Stimulus?
Bob Pollin Pt5: Main objective of austerity is to demolish the welfare state and public ownership
August 7, 2011

Address Unemployment, Then Debt
Bob Pollin Pt.4: Unemployment has evaporated in Washington policy discussions
August 5, 2011

The Real Danger is Deeper Recession
Bob Pollin Pt.3: None of the fundamentals that led to the crash in '08 have been corrected August 2, 2011

No Emergency, But Long-Term Debt is a Threat
Bob Pollin Pt.2: There is no debt crisis, but debt is a long-term danger to the economy July 31, 2011

Interest Payments at Historic Low - There is no Debt Crisis
Robert Pollin: Interest payments on US debt well below average, there is time to deal with long-term debt
July 29, 2011

Jones Avenue is Falling Down

2011-08-05T07:01:00.007-04:00

Chapter 1

The bus rumbles past the Jones Avenue Branch of the Toronto Public Library like Mayor Rob Ford on a bad hangover morning.

There's a sink hole that been developing in the road for the past two years that when the Jones Avenue Bus hits it the whole intersection shakes - a long rumble that pools out from the epicentre. As a matter of fact, just like, the earthquake we felt here just before the Clamp Down for the G20 - only not as long.

The fact is this whole neighbourhood is built on sand. If we had a real earthquake - like the 1989 California Loma Prieta earthquake - this place would be like the Marina District in San Francisco, the ground would basically liquify. This 2nd floor room I scribble in would end up on Jones Avenue as sure as I'm scribbling now.

You see it here and there. A cone, a set of cones marking a spot where the millions of trickles that make up a river delta have found a route of least resistance, a trickle became a torrent at last weekends storm - and the street begins to sag in on itself. All the basements along Jones are wet. All the storm sewer catch basins are full of sand.

Nova Scotia fishermen's House (via flickr)

The house on the northwest corner of Jones and Dundas is listing for $750,000. It's a two story wood frame thing with a small dormer room in the attic. It has that old wooden siding like you see on all the Nova Scotia fishermen's houses. Just a box with a peak roof, too long for aesthetic proposes - the result of one too many additions.

It's corner property looks a lot wider that it is - the property line actually runs five feet from the side of the house - the other twenty feet is city property. Property that the Debt-Crisis-Theatre Mayor, Rob Ford might sell one day soon.

This house rumbles with the bus too. And there's a new sink hole eating a parking spot just down the ally around the back. But that won't stop the owner from getting three quarters of million dollars for it - after all, Leslieville's got a brand new shopping complex down at Leslie and Lake Shore Boulevard.

...

I like "Graphics Interchange Format" (GIF) images

2011-08-01T06:00:00.001-04:00

3B Kyle Seager's swipe-tag too quick for Ump

Jeff Sullivan from Lookout Landing is making a habit of making .gif images out of clips from television baseball coverage. GIF images are a series of still graphic images, or 'bitmaps' that display at a set speed so they look like a video! I like them so much I've been adding them to the sidebar of my Baseball blog, Michael Holloways Baseball Blogs.. In this fast paced world full of 15 second sound bites and the fleeting of the famous and infamous - GIF's are perfect.

GIF has it's limitations, it doesn't support super high quality photographic colour sets. But as far as I'm concerned, that's good - this isn't supposed to be the original, above for example, is a re-purposed artifact of something the gretaer culture created - it's a parody, a comment. It is an icon of the televised game a memory if you will - and there it plays for poor Kyle Seager, like a nightmare - over and over and over... (Or perhaps for the Ump more so.)

The GIF format was invented by Steve Wilhite in 1987 while he worked for CompuServe. All the relevant patents on the software have since expired.

(Animation of "Newton's Cradle" via Wikipedia - also included in a article about the GIF format

(Rotating_earth_(large).gif‎ (400 × 480 pixels, file size: 1.36 MB, MIME type: image/gif, looped, 44 frames, 4.0s) - via Wikipedia)

When you click "copy image" and download one of these "images" all the bitmaps are downloaded; and then they're yours, and then you can put them anywhere you want - just like you would add an image from your computer to a blog post. (Always credit the source - then we'll still be friends.)

You can make your own GIF images in a couple of different ways:

There are Online GIF Maker Programs, (Google Search Page) where you upload your images to their server and then a program produces the GIF according to several parameter you're able to set...

- or -

..you can download the free open source GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) software package - which has a GIF production interface, for all your GIF-Y needs.

Here's a brief introduction to the software: "How to Make an Animated GIF Image with GIMP"
(from MakeUseOf website - one of those answers for everything advertising aggregation websites , but it's about GNU software - I never go to these sites because they about money not enlightenment, but it is a popular take on the product - and well written and has good graphics.)

This post was cross posted at Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs.

mh

The "Uber-App" - a multi-functional node that allows all interface technology in

2011-07-27T04:54:00.001-04:00

The following are the notes from a recent scorekeeping of a MLB baseball game at an online Baseball Scorecard I've developed that runs in a Blogger.com blog. The scorecard of the game, "Scorecard: July 26, 2011 Orioles at Blue Jays - Game 1 of 3" is at the Blogger Baseball Scorecard blog - at the link.

Ugly game.

But baseball's not what consumed me tonight. Tonight was about the tools that make the scorecard happen - the new craft of scorekeeping in the IT age...

A Review of Blogger.com's New Interface

This is my first scorecard using the new Blogger interface. It loads FAST, and comes back for another edit FAST.

I 'm using FireFox 3.6.17 Browser to score with this scorecard - because an error in the coding of that browser reads 'text background color' as, 'background color' - and that allows me to score with colour notations (the little coloured triangles). I'll bet it would be even faster in FireFox5.

I've asked the Blogger in Draft Team to add a background color widget - no response, and no indication that they're working on it. Don't know how much call there would be for it... . Do you want to change background colours all the time - and have to head into the html to do it? :) If so click the feedback button and let them know please.

Meanwhile the Minima II scorecard is moving furhter and further away from blogger combatablity, soon I'll be designing and coding a web site to hold it - and that has got me thinking...

Blogger could be SO much more...

All this has allowed me re-envision what I like to call, The Uber-App, an interface for the internet that allows all the interfaces and social tools to work together in one place, seamlessly.. (I've mused about the Uber-App (edit) here before (/edit) - link.)

As I'm imagining it now, the Uber-App would be a blogging interface, a code editing interface (like Notepad++), with video edit, chat, email, Skype, draw graphic design and so on - all on one page. As well, the Uber-App would be a programmable interface - so if I wanted a widget that changed background colours for example, I could build it and place it in my widget box in the form of a button.

So instead of going the Word Press route as Blogger in Draft Team has done - with more and more objects and JavaScript (which slows everything, and is quirky, and funnels users into a populist design that is constantly changing anyway) - rather, the new blog would be a multi-functional node that allows all interface technology in - configured the way the user chooses to lay it out - to fit the job they're doing with it.

Easier said than done - but I think we have to assume a better code literacy in the future than we are imagining right now. I see people being able to juggle several functioning elements in speech; I think this is going to develop - and not just in speaking and writing - but in the way we work with knowledge workers tools.

The craft of communication is going to specialize, the way carpenters, stone masons and plumbers crafts became magical to non-crafts-people over the 400 years of the industrial revolution. The Uber-App will be the hammer that all the trades use - but now specialized in each trade so that the "ball-pein" hammer that blacksmith's, engineer's or machinist's use is completely different from a carpenters hammer.

What do you think?

Michael

Reading Novels in Google Books

2011-07-18T16:25:00.002-04:00

As part of my ongoing project to read more classic writing - and to demonstrate how many of those classics there are available in full at Google Books - I've embedded a portal to a novel I've just begun to read: "Crime and Punishment" by the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

Note to Google: While 'in' the book, there doesn't seem to be a button to bookmark my place, or a way to send said novel, and the bookmark, to my Google Profile "Reading Now" list. I had to reverse back out of the book, back to the Google Books search of the novel, to find that button again. I think it would be of great value to civilization to have the button in the pages of the novel itself. ;)

Whoever owns the copyright of Dostoevsky's other great novel, "Notes from the Underground" - do you not see the irony in keeping the novel in only a 'Snippet View' at Google Books?

mh

Minima II Baseball Scorecard AB Box with JavaScript ChangeStyle & getElementById functions

2011-06-13T17:59:00.005-04:00

- change background colours via buttons in a pop-up menu

Try it yourself!

Below is the "Minima II" Blogger Baseball Scorecard at-bat (AB) box which has been made interactive with Javascript functions in the south-west quadrant (the 3rd base line). Each quadrant will get a button soon like the one just under the south-west side of the diamond infield icon. If you click on the 'B' button a menu appears to the right of the AB box - click on any of the scoring notations listed there and the colour along the 3rd base line changes to represent what happened on a play there.

Also, the pitching notation column (left), and each quadrant has a text area - try typing some scoring notations in them.

Unfortunately the JavaScript in my coding conflicts with the JavaScript in Blogger - so none of the buttons work in Blogger Compose. There may be a solution to this I don't know, if there is no work around this will be the first time in over a year of the development of this scorecard that I won't be able to use Blogger as a publisher - part of what makes the scorecard a "vox populi" project.

If there is no Blogger work around then this is the first step towards serving the Internet Scorecard to the web from a server - publishing it outside of Blogger. The result will a better interface - a full screen sized interactive scorecard, making it more accessible to folks who aren't Blogger experts - and who might want to give scoring live on the World Wide Web a try.

Click some buttons, write some notations - does this lay-out remind you of paper and pencil scoring? Feedback is appreciated.

This was cross-posted at:

Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs

and

Blogger Baseball Scorecard

mh

McClatchy says Wikileaks US Diplomatic Cables reveal Oil at the centre of Libyan War

2011-05-17T08:26:00.001-04:00

McClatchy Newspaper's investigative reporter, Kevin Hall has spent some time digging through some 25,000 Wikileaks Diplomatic cables that mention Italian, Libyan, Russian and US Oil companies. He says they reveal how Oil has played a central role in a gambit by the US and France to keep Russian and Italian government owned oil companies out of Libyan oil fields - a gambit that is in fact naked, terrible war - the NATO bombing and special operations intervention that is attempting to over-throw Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

From The Real News Network, May 16th 2011: "WikiLeaks Reveals US Wanted to Keep Russia out of Libyan Oil"

Kevin Hall in conversation with Paul Jay

http://therealnews.com/

So here we are again, Canadian Forces - through our NATO membership - fighting another war of aggression to control oil fields that as an oil exporting nation we have no interest in.

After the Conservative Majority was elected on May 2 2011, Bloomburg Press asked Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to reassure Bay Street about his plans for the next budget (June 2011). He said the Conservatives will stay the coarse. (Bloomburg Press May 11, 2011 - "Flaherty Vows to Use Parliament Majority to Erase Budget Deficit by 2014".)

Harper's pledge at the G-20 Summit in Toronto on June 26th, 2010 stands (see excerpt from G20 Summit, Final Declaration at the end of this essay), says Flaherty - all the stimulus spending will be re-coped with spending reductions of C$4.3 Billion/year over three years.

Added to this balance sheet though is a 6B/year corporate tax reduction that lowers the Canadian Corporate tax rate to the lowest of any developed country in the world. Added to that is a promised new income tax rule that allows spouces with children under 18 years to declare their incomes separately. Collectively these measures will reduce Federal income by 10B/year - so $4.3 Billion in reduced spending, coupled with the 10 Billion per year in reduced revenues, leaves $14.3 Billion per year over three years in spending reductions in order to balance Canada's year to year accounts by 2015.

Those spending cuts could come through the cancellation of the contract to purchase 60 - F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets from Lockheed Martin - killing airplanes that bomb innocent civilians in the streets of countries chosen by powerful interests who's agenda remains hidden from view - chosen for reasons that will be spun down to us by our 'free press' with words like 'human rights' and 'despotic leader'.

But those kind of cuts won't happen. Instead we'll cut programs that help people, and we'll further embed our economy with the corporate horsemen of a peak oil apocalypse.

Now that's some forward thinking Mr Harper - coming soon to a Federally funded service near you.

* * *

From "The G20 Toronto Summit Final Declaration (June 26 – 27, 2010)" (my emphasis)

...

10. We are committed to taking concerted actions to sustain the recovery, create jobs and to achieve stronger, more sustainable and more balanced growth. These will be differentiated and tailored to national circumstances. We agreed today on:

* Following through on fiscal stimulus and communicating “growth friendly” fiscal consolidation plans in advanced countries that will be implemented going forward. Sound fiscal finances are essential to sustain recovery, provide flexibility to respond to new shocks, ensure the capacity to meet the challenges of aging populations, and avoid leaving future generations with a legacy of deficits and debt. The path of adjustment must be carefully calibrated to sustain the recovery in private demand. There is a risk that synchronized fiscal adjustment across several major economies could adversely impact the recovery. There is also a risk that the failure to implement consolidation where necessary would undermine confidence and hamper growth. Reflecting this balance, advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016. Recognizing the circumstances of Japan, we welcome the Japanese government’s fiscal consolidation plan announced recently with their growth strategy. Those with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation. Fiscal consolidation plans will be credible, clearly communicated, differentiated to national circumstances, and focused on measures to foster economic growth.
* Strengthening social safety nets, enhancing corporate governance reform, financial market development, infrastructure spending, and greater exchange rate flexibility in some emerging markets;
* Pursuing structural reforms across the entire G-20 membership to increase and sustain our growth prospects; and
* Making more progress on rebalancing global demand.
Monetary policy will continue to be appropriate to achieve price stability and thereby contribute to the recovery.
...

Youtube Portal not working via my ISP May 15, 2011 - 1:31 PM EST

2011-05-15T13:56:00.002-04:00

I'm following the spring floods on the Red River and on the Mississippi - so I wanna watch this. But Youtube is down! (A check of that search term found nothing.)

At about 1:00 PM EST, May 15th 2011, Youtube stopped rendering video. All the frames and related videos show, and all the links work - but the video just doesn't load, a black box is what you get.

But elsewhere, at other addresses, embeds are playing OK; so I thought I'd check see if an embed on my site would work.

Hey it works. :)

At 1:55 PM EST Youtube still won't play. And yes I checked that JavaScript is enabled.

mh

From tables to an better understanding of CSS - The 'Minima II Blogger Baesball Scorecard'

2011-04-24T22:35:00.013-04:00

Simultaneously posted at Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs - a culmination of three articles at The Blogger Baseball Scorecard

It's been a good week.

Monday, April 18, 2011

The 'Minima' Blogger Baseball Scorecard

Introducing an important milestone in the development of this html baseball scorecard

I began this html scorecard project to score baseball games in a blog about a year ago. I started with very little experience in coding - just a basic understanding of blog writing production coding; like how to write code to make a link, how to code for italics, bold, make a headline sized font - basically stuff I learned producing the style I wanted and fixing problems while blogging over seven years.

Last spring I hacked a table out of an ESPN page that had 10 columns; I figured I could create a 9 inning wide by nine batter deep table with it - and score a baseball game using notations I would invent on the keyboard. (See Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs - Thursday, May 6, 2010: "My HTML Baseball Score Card Hack".)

It worked fine, but it was pretty sprase looking - and the more data I added to each at-bat 'box' the more distorted the scorecard graph became ... so sometimes one couldn't quite follow what inning or what batter you were looking at. In the first go around I didn't know what 'cascading style sheets' were (they were those scary looking squiggly lines at the top that I never touched for fear of blowing up my computer), and I quickly threw out the CSS notation as they didn't do anything (I hadn't imported the style sheet). So I began by making boxes with html style tags - using width and height in almost every line of code. (Interestingly my development path followed the same path - ten years later - that led programmers to develop CSS.)

My learning curve in table making was all about stabilizing the scorecard graph while at the same time inventing a scoring notation that one could create with a keyboard, and creating a card that had enough room to score 'everything'.

The result is the table below which is made entirely of CSS boxes - 80% of them hidden from view now (thus the "Minima"). Those boxes are the 'skeleton' that keeps the thing stable. Below in the first player row of at-bat boxes, I've input some scoring notations that test every parameter of the scorecard and show some extreme scoring situations that test the size of the text areas - thanks to, for example, the Blue Jays vs. Mariners - April 11th, bottom of the 8th inning - 3 bases loaded walks. (See the 8th inning - April 11)

The places where text is input give you a clue to where the invisible or 'transparent' boxes are - the four quadrants around the diamond shape are the four - of Twenty boxes that make up One at-bat box - that can receive text; the rest hold the diamond shape in place, 'pressing' against the table that holds them, all the tables of all the rows constructed exactly the same so that when a reader zooms in and out, or resets their screen resolution - nothing moves relative to the rest. So anyone can learn to read it with out a jumble of distorting x, y axis making it difficult.

The next step in this project is to set up a web address, turn a computer into a server and rebuild the scorecard with position attributes, and use server-side includes (SSI) to lay in the tables (there are 333 of them in all - but only 13 different tables in all.)

Soon I'll need some programming help (and some financial backing - hint, hint), to produce a web site where people an come and score baseball games - a whole social networking thing with-in a baseball scorekeepers meme - anally retentive people like myself scorekeeping, saving scorecards to their personal accounts, printing copies, sharing them electronically, talking about scoring techniques in forums, developing the craft and the scorecard in wikis... .

Later still, and on the 'drawing board' (in my head) is an idea for a program that can 'lay in' data into these scorecards in real time, taking advantage of the work done at Retrosheet, to produce scorecards that update as the game progresses. Conversely a similar 'scraper' could extract data from html scorecards - written according to Project Scoresheet notations guidelines - to build an digital archive of baseball from across the culture - woman's leagues, children's leagues and even co-ed softball bar leagues.

If information is power then this much baseball information would be... well, confusing - and that ain't all bad.

Much thanks to:

* Kathryn Barrett, Sr. Publicist at O'Reilly Media, Inc who prized me Head First HTML, just for responding to a questionaire after an O'Reilly Web Cast.
* Also kudos to W3C school's CSS Tutorial pages and especially their neat-o "Try It Yourself" widget which I will continue to use extensively as I move forward.
* And thanks to Robert Brodrecht of "Robertdot" for being so clear and concise about "Triangles in CSS".
* And last but not least, my friend Chris F.A. Johnson who's timely tips and regular cues in direction have sped my learning - and who's vast knowledge of coding has helped make me aware of some of the best practices in this sub-culture of coding crafts-people.

Please note: I am self taught and don't follow the paths of teachers - rather the path of necessity (the mother of). Some may find my seemingly gargantuan gaps in knowledge unfathomable - and my blithe ignorance of well known CSS solutions worrisome ... so for those who's materials I have used as reference or who's advice I have sought, it should be noted that they are not to blame for the way I learn - I am. :)

mh

Monday, April 18, 2011 - The 'Minima' Blogger Baseball Scorecard

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

CSS Position at-bat Box - another milestone

Yesterday's milestone, the Minima Blogger Baseball Scorecard, sucks compared with today's milestone.

Below is a new AB box that is made with CSS position elements; the diamonds are where they are because of top and left absolute position elements with-in a relative parent element - rather than a series of boxes that are packed together so none of them move - as in the 'Minima' scorecard I finished yesterday. Yesterday I scored the New York Yankees at Toronto Blue Jays game with the Minima scorecard and I had a great deal of difficulty keeping up, every time I changed the position of the cursor in the graph, the blogger-create-interface would pause for about 2 or 3 seconds as the spider finished crawling the 604 KB file. I guess that might have something to do with my processor speed.

This is how CSS really shines - the code for this is only 64 four lines long as opposed to the Minima scorecard's AB box which took 130 lines to create - that's 66 lines saved X 162 AB boxes in a two team scorecard = 10,692 lines of code!

BBFS
BX

#9 1,2
BH7
#9 2,3

That's good because before I erased all the spacing tabs that make code easier to read, the Minima was at 1.15 MB and Blogger's per-page limit is 1MB - trimming all the indent tabs saved about 300,000 bytes! Like in the Shampoo commercial - wash rinse, repeat - coding is a lot of cut and paste and repeat, and repeat and repeat. I was astonished the other day when I looked at the size of the Minima scorecard; a million bytes?!? How did I create a million keystrokes?

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Minima II Blogger Baseball Scorecard - styling with position

In case you haven't been here before, or haven't been back in a while - the Blogger Baseball Scorecard Project is a ongoing development of an interactive baseball scoring form that you can use in a Blogger blog to score baseball games.

The 'Minima II' is the latest model in the project and I'm very excited about it! Today, April 23, 2011 at 1:00 PM EST I'm going to score my first game with it at this address.

In testing the 'Minima II' I am shocked at how fast and responsive it is - there's no delay from the moment one clicks in a particular text area to the time the blinking prompt is ready for keystrokes - this is surprising to me because although the previous incarnation in this project, the 'Minima I' has twice as many bytes, it was infinitely slower (a function not of size, but architecture).

The difference between the two scorecards in coding is qualitatively different. The first, the 'Minima I' represents the old way that websites were contructed in the 1980's and early 90's - the New Minima II is constructed with Cascading Style Sheet coding the way modern web pages are made today - the two scorecards represent two points on a learning curve which is me teaching myself to write code. Oddly, my epiphany from one style of coding to the other happened with out any thinking - as soon as the older card was done I started writing Minima II - and had it ready for scoring in 2 days.

Yesterday I was going to score Game 1 of the Tampa/Jays series (that's Game 2 that I'm scoring today) but blogger kept discarding the bottom pitching table - so last night I added an relative position outer wrapper CSS element and added absolute position wraps around the five tables, and gave them all top and left positions - now Blogger reads the whole scorecard correctly (and dosn't mistake repeating data for an error).

So below is a first attempt at adding some style with position - it looks at little less like a brick wall now I think. :)

Next, maybe some images here and there.

mh

Saturday, April 23, 2011 - Minima II Blogger Baseball Scorecard - styling with position

(All Images 'Rebigulate' on click)

mh

Click-on Radio - Where 2.0 - with-out all the business

2011-04-24T21:40:00.007-04:00

"The future of radio in part, is the experience of listening via a Multimedia Player that has on screen, pop up links that a mp3 producer adds to the stream - like a lower bit rate Youtube."

I like radio as a medium a lot.

In the breaking new world of New Media I have always thought that Radio is full of potential. It offers a flexibility that allows it to mesh it with other media - and as the world wide web is all about connecting things - it's only a matter of imagining the right combination until we realize a magical new mix of media that will mesmerize like movies, radio and television have done in the past.

This vision of the potential of radio is always in the back of my mind.

The history of radio has been not only the content coming out of it, but also Where we listened to it.

The vacuum-tube radio for the Home

Console vacuum-tube radio - 1930

Stromberg-Carlson 561 (1947, Toronto)

Then we tried to put radios Everywhere:

Huffy Bicycle radio - 1955

Nash-Healey Roadster with dashboard radio - 1952

Then came the pocket sized portable radio

Battery powered transistor radio

Now radios looks like this:

GOM Media Player

Apple iPod nano

Android Phone

Apple iPod Touch

Windows Media Player on a 'left-handed' desktop computer

I grew up with radio because my parents made the great sacrifice of permanently un-plugging our family television set after it became apparent I was hopelessly addicted to it. I would sit and stare - oblivious to all else. If someone spoke to me while I was watching I actually couldn't hear them - only shouting and jumping up and down could break the spell I was under. I spent every waking hour paying homage to that amazing piece of furniture.

One day, home from school sick, I found that I could connect with my cathode-ray god with-out the constant interruption of people. That was pretty well my last day of school for that school year - I quickly became an expert at faking cold symptoms and my parents, both of whom worked, didn't have the time to do battle with me each morning. They would almost always relent and let me stay home. After a week of this I don't believe they thought I was sick, but they knew I certainly didn't want to go to school. They took the long-view; they determined to address the problem 'going forward'. (It turned out my attachment to the 'boobtube' as my dad called it, was as much an inability to find an identity as I struggled to fit in to this, my third school, and third different community in my first ten years - and this new place, a rural farming community was extremely xenophobic compared to big city cultures like Vancouver's and Edmonton's. This change was a tough cultural acclimation for me.)

I failed grade four and but saw every episode of "Truth or Consequences", "The Saint" and "Gilligan's Island" - whatever was on during school hours, I watched it. I became an expert at positioning the TV-top antenna to pick up broadcasts from as far away as Erie Pennsylvania, Cleveland Ohio, and even Buffalo New York!

Après TV I became a big fan of radio. I turned my 'ability to focus' to multitasking (which the experts say doesn't exist). I've heard many people say the same thing, that they can do other things while listening to the radio - listening to radio leaves part of the mind free to do other things. For some reason radio allows this 'duel-tasking' - while TV engages every neuron of my brain - and if I don't manage my viewing turns me into a drooling moron.

On radio I no longer presented the symptoms of someone with the asocial personality disorder - instead I listened and wrote or drew - I was normal - and I attended school. (Also, I had discovered that playing sports during school lunch-hour helped me form an identity, make some friends and fit in a little.)

The role that lunch-hour pick-up soccer played in my life is, now in these next generations, filled in a huge way I think by mobile technology. Young people it occurs to me, must be marked by what technology they're using; what cell phone they have, what mp3 player they use - even to the extent that what is playing on the devices doesn't matter. Now the fact that you have those white ear pieces from Apple plugged into your ears is much more important than what you listen to with them. In my youth the 'what', the Dead Kennedys, Fleetwood Mac verses Donna Summer or Village People defined one much more than the brand of cassette player you used - in fact the device was completely irrelevant. I listened on a big bulky, book-sized cassette play/recorder with headphones.

But 'Where' was important. 'Where' one listens was as important then as it is now. It affects the 'experience' of the media you've chosen to play. A particular song can have a completely different meaning played on the beach for example, as opposed to hearing it on a home stereo in the basement rec-room.

Right now for example sitting at my desk writing this, I'm experiencing a weekly radio show called "Counter Spin" which is playing on my desktop GOM media player via an mp3 download. I've embedded an audio player below as another example of how "Where" shapes content.

I think is interesting that the flexibility of 'New Radio', allows someone to experience this writing in a simular audio-scape to that which I was immersed in when I wrote it.

Counter Spin Radio show for,
Friday, March 25, 2011
(in a "The Podcast Place" mp3 player)

Where you are - whether your reading on your phone while walking down the street or sitting at your desktop at home - is another element in a "cluster" of experiences that combine to create a unique time and place relevant experience. This all speaks to the Tim O'Reilly idea of the Internet Operating System - the idea that all the communications tools we use, where we use them, and how we are connecting them - are in the process of producing a global Internet Operating System - a globe-wide soft-wired consciousness, or usual way of doing if you will.

"Where" is not a new idea; it has been much talked about around the explosion of the smart phone usage in the last few years. Tim O'Reilly has a conference for that. The seventh "Where 2.0" Conference is titled, "The Business of Location" - and is happening Tuesdasy April 19th to Thursday April 21st 2011 in Santa Clara California. This year's major theme is marketing in the "Geospatial Web" - exploring the emerging characteristics and opportunities offered by a bazillion gigabytes per nano-second of new data.

But where doesn't just mean the physical position on the globe, what latitude and longitude. It can also mean, with-in what context. Like, listening while your riding the subway to a work; while bicycling on a nature trail or while writing an essay at your desk. Radio is a very common thread in the tapestry of our "Where" experience which is a cumulative mix of experiences that very often includes audio or the cultural audio construct, 'radio' which is extraordinarily flexible compared to any other media form.

Much of the Where Web data is created by technology people use, that they carry around with them. The Where 2.0 Conference meme is now more than ever, a focus on how to read this complex real-time data that is an extrodinarily intimate view of the daily routines, choices and connections of individuals. This data that can create telemetry of our behaviors in so many different ways. As such, an understanding of this data is thought to be the much sought-after 'Holy Grail' of Advertisers.

But not all Where Web ideas focus on the server side (the vendor) perspective and O'Reilly Media has not alays focus thusly on the marketing side of this. O'Reilly Media's recent preoccupation with monetization of all things web, I think, is a reflection of the amount of hurt caused by the on-going Great Recession and the fact that the technology has reached a point where it is maturing into marketable products that are in demand.

But the client side experience (the end user, the shopper, the sucker as W C Fields would say) is a much more interesting place I find; it's the current anthropology of technological progress.

Today I realized that a new experience of radio is not only about where one listens to it, but what the state of technological progress offers in the "shape" of the "box" that the person is able to experience, where.

Mapping is an important part of the 'Where' explosion of understanding; it places the 'clients' (shoppers) on a map, and helps 'servers' (retailers) target customers based on their location. It changes everything when viewed from the server side of the client/server relationship. But Where also includes a view from the 'client' side of the experience the envisioning of the shape of the future web Operating System we are building with Web 2.0 tools.

The experience of listening to the radio anywhere is not new, the transistor created that experience in the 1954 - but now the web is creating a new kind of Where radio experience. Now, out of what construct one listens to radio is important. The idea that a radio can throw up a visual link window is an example of a brand new radio experience.

It is this new way to listen to radio that is at the heart of this article - while listing to the content plush radio program I found that I wanted to link to a news piece that was referenced by a host. It made me think of Youtube's on screen link capability. A Youtube user can add a link to a video that they post there, the link pops up on screen at a moment chosen by the user, in an on screen box that the user can define by size, position, shape and colour.

The future of radio, in one part, is the experience of listening in a Player on one's desktop. A Multimedia Player, like the GOM Player I use, should be enabled to allow on screen pop up links - like those in Youtube - that the mp3 producer can add to a stream.

References:

Counter Spin RSS feed (with mp3 addresses for past episodes):

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=29&rss_content=counterspin

Frontline - 02 Feb 2010 "Digital Nation" (ref. 'multitasking'):
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid)

Photo Credits

http://www.deadprogrammer.com/category/technology/vacuum-tube
http://www.audiodramatalk.com/showthread.php?t=301
http://www.etsy.com/listing/38649934/vintage-ge-transistor-radio
http://opusurbanista.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html
http://www.pushclicktouch.com/blog/?p=124
http://www.art.com/products/p13834686-sa-i2759556/1952-nash-healey-roadster.htm?sorig=cat&sorigid=20908&dimvals=20908&ui=1eab85842c6c49b7a51f81e7b20393f5http://www.cnet.com.au/apple-ipod-nano-4th-generation_images-339291900.htm
http://www.letsgomobile.org/en/review/0040/apple-ipod-touch/
(edited by author)
http://www.mobiletor.com/2009/05/25/driver-generated-live-map-platform-launched-by-waze/
(edited by author)
http://roguediamond.com/?p=34 | http://gom-player.en.softonic.com/
(edited together by author)
http://www.interweb.in/pc-news/6546-intex-desktop-pc.html | http://rocketdock.com/addon/icons/15110
(edited together by author)

mh

The Link is not the link - the Choice of words is the link

2011-03-25T14:28:00.001-04:00

In an article here - entitled, "Tending the Web 2.0 Garden: WebSquared, Popsicle Sticks and Glue", I talked about a need for a greater "human signature" on the "Where" "Automata "content Web 2.0 is creating through the emerging "always on", or smart phone technology that produces gobs of data that describe place, direction, temperature, speed, orientation (up/down/sideways) etc. . I was worried that all this automated data would drown out the personal, the human qualities of the web that act as a mirror for human civilization and called on developers to step back from the leading edge of new media capabilities, and as best we can, bring to new content production the old media tools, "pen and paper, the cassette player/recorder, popsicle sticks and glue".

It occurs to me today that people are starting to use one of the 'old' systems of the web to enable a "Spirit Commons" cornerstone of the web as operating system - they are personalizing the emerging web by using the good ol' Search Engine in a new way.

Not too many of us are aware of it yet, but I've seen several examples of this lately - a article quoted, but no link attached. Is it laziness? Or another example of someone lagging behind the technology, a Hack still in ignorance of the capabilities of the technology? Or just shoddy journalism? There's a lot of that around these days - I am not sure, but the places I've seen this are usually places where the proper practice of the art of journalism is practiced (like CBC.ca); so it has lead me to the following idea:

Search engines have reduced the need to use the link tag 'href' - the tag that allows an author to high-light text and attach a web address to it; so a reader can click on it and look at the document the author is referencing (see example below).

If an author uses an exact quote, A Search Engine will find the document quoted.

If the writer chooses the exact title of another writers article - the reader simply highlights the quoted phrase and runs it in search. The search engine will then find that page with out knowing the HTTP address, but by using the words, in the order high-lighted.

So it is the human selection of words in a piece of creative writing that is linked, not the HTTP address.

A bit of the "Spirit Commons" enabled by new media technology.

:)

mh

"Google 12th Anniversary Giveaway Pr ize Notification" is SPAM!

2011-03-17T15:12:00.000-04:00

Got this in my Gmail inbox today, March 17, 2011. I think it is SPAM.

Note the error in the headline, "Pr ize"

I didn't open this but I'm pretty sure this is Spam - and maybe evil, screw up your computer spam. It has the gall to use the Google trademark name - so it will probably be effective - if short-lived.

Here's a screen shot.

Mark as Spam.

mh

Charlie Sheen does his best Hunter S Thompson on Chuck Lorre, CBS - and the wide-eyed mob

2011-03-11T05:46:00.014-05:00

I haven't been following this spectacle story. It has nothing to do with anything I find important. Until now I was happily unaware and outside this meme. I watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, commercial free online. My consumption of media is a tool, a part of a creative process - not a titillation that makes me feel guilty and gleeful at the same time.

Today I heard CBS canceled the show (fired Sheen) - so I thought I'd use the tools of the Internet and find out what the man had to say - un-filtered, un-spun.

On my first and last stop on this glutinous, envious, spiteful train was this video by the man. Here was Charlie Sheen doing his best Hunter S Thompson - and well, in my opinion - and like the scene from Moby Dick he tears in...

"... Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! ..."

Here he is; Charlie Sheen doing, The Great Hunter S Thompson:

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

For my two cents, perfect buddy - fuck em all. Greedy, frightened, poor bastards; swimming with the sharks; they sell out their "friends" at the moment of truth. They're all going to hell Mr Sheen, don't spend another minute on it; clean up and create more bitch'n art - I know you will!

References:

http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/136/

Video via UStream user: Sheen's-Korner.

Sheen's-Korner

"You're either in Sheen's-Korner or you're with the trolls."

(sorry about the commercial, original source is important here - it's Sheen's fault - sans commercials at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVjglThBnD8).

mh

Have you ever seen the wind?

2011-03-10T11:25:00.000-05:00

Tornado in Pupping

Via BoingBoing - Mar 9, 2011:"Slow dust devil lifts plastic sheets off of a strawberry field" by Mark Frauenfelder.

Via Youtube user: etschi123.

mh

How the new "2011 Blogger Baseball Scorecard" works

2011-03-08T03:37:00.021-05:00

(This piece was simultaneously published at "Michael Holloway's Baseball Blogs".)

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser won't show certain properties of border tags which make up the diamond shape of the 'At Bat' boxes that are at the centre of the new 2011 Blogger Baseball Scorecard's design.

The two images below (side by side) show Microsoft's Internet Explorer's rendering of my code:

Internet Explorer Rendering

Below are images as above, from the same web page, this one rendered by Firefox 3.6.15 browser:

Firefox Browser Rendering

The code has been validated at W3C as HTML 4.01 Transitional - Passed. I'm working on finding out why Internet Explorer won't render the border tags properly, and fixing it. In the meantime if you want to read this years scorecards, you'll have to do it with a different browser.

Firefox browser is available here. I have found that I can have more than one browser on my Windows XP Operating System. In my experience even running both at the same time doesn't compromise performance on my machine.

On Sunday March 6th, I used the new scorecard to score-keep the Toronto Blue Jays at Pittsburgh Pirates spring training game in Bradenton Florida, which was on Rogers SNET-1 in this market. You can see it here - if you must, it's an awful mess of scoring. As I say at the Internet Baseball Scorecard Blog, "This is the new, never before used in-game, 2011 Internet Baseball Scorecard - bear with me." I scored all the runs, but missed a lot of outs, and substitutions and even the staring line-ups were incomplete - etc., etc., etc.. But you can see that it functions as it's supposed to. So far, I'm really happy with it.

How it Works

(Border: 30px height: 90px width: 260px)

Above is an example of a border tag used to make a simple two tone border - note the angles at the corners. In the scorecard, each quadrant of the diamond is actually the corner of a border (see Figure 1.) - it's the only way to make an angle with HTML!

At the top of this post - in the Firefox Browser Rendering, 2 image set - the left image has all four of the vertical border lines set to "solid black" - and the horizontal border lines set to match the background colour, thus they are invisible. In the image right next to that, the four horizontal border colours are set to a slightly darker colour than the background - so the appearance is of a frame around a diamond.

A scorekeeper can change the horizontal border's colour attributes on the fly, using the Blogger Compose mode "Text background color" widget. By selecting one of the four horizontal borders in each AB box, and changing it's colour with the "Text background color" button, one can indicate the progress of a runner around the bases:

The first box on the left, is how all the boxes in the entire scorecard appear before the game starts. The next box shows a runner on First Base, next one on Second Base, and so on. A solitary black diamond indicates a Run Scored - just like in pencil and paper scoring! :)

How to score with it

To change the attributes of the borders that make up the black diamond while scoring a baseball game is easy. Below I've taken a screen shot of me about to change the colour of the south-east quadrant - in order to indicate a runner is on First Base The colour indicated in the palette is the slightly darker peach. I'm about to change the colour of the horizontal border to the colour right above the one indicated - to the same colour as the background of the quadrant box:

First you highlight the border attribute by left clicking beside the diamond in the quadrant you wish to change. Next, left click on the "Text background color" button and choose the colour you want.

And Viola, a runner is on First Base:

Specifications

I think there's more than enough space in the 2011 Blogger Baseball Scorecard to score the game with any iconography you wish to invent.

Below (or above) each angle of the diamond there are four lines for text, room for 10 uppercase letters or 12 lower case letters on each line.

In the Pitches column there is again, more than enough room for the number of pitches in the best plate appearance (a great plate appearance is around 12 pitches).

Modern Project Scoresheet defensive notations and ball trajectory notations can be noted in the Pitches column as well.

Also note that if you have to, you can keep on writing outside of any of the boxes - the letters render where you put them - by hitting return you can create a block of script that extends into the next inning's AB box (which usually remains empty - unless the team bats around).

In a few days I will finish the new 2011 Blogger Baseball Scorecard. It still needs Per-Inning totals boxes; Pitchers Totals boxes and a Per-Inning Box Score table for across the top. When all that is done I will post the code for the 2011 Blogger Baseball Scorecard to a Google Document and you can run it in a special extra-wide Blogger blog.

The Extra-wide Blogger code is available below:

Blogger Code to make your Blog Wider

(to view the code, right click over the frame, highlight "This Frame")

To read an overview of how to install this code into a Blogger Blog go to, "2011 Scorecard: Bigger! Better!"

(Note the "2011 Scorecard Bigger! Better!" is an article about a simpler version I used in the 2010 MLB Postseason - it doesn't have the diamond feature - but the width of the blog you'll need for this, new version is the same.)

mh

Rome, and before that the Greeks, and before that... Ethiopia? - Who Knew?

2011-03-03T02:49:00.007-05:00

The BBC produced a 4 hour series on the pre-Roman and Greek history of Africa hosted by Dr Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford entitled, "The Lost Empires of Africa"

Each of the four, one hour films starts in part with this overview:

"The African continent is home to nearly a billion people. It has an incredible diversity of communities and cultures, yet we know less of its history than almost anywhere else on earth.

But that is beginning to change. In the last few decades researchers and archaeologists have begun to uncover a range of histories as impressive and extraordinary as anywhere else in the world."

Dr Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford takes us on a tour of ancient Africa guided by his understanding of the art and architecture of Christian and pre-Christian empires dating back 2,500 years.

Lost Kingdoms of Africa | Ethiopia

(part 2 of 4 of the series)

I think the good Doctor is leading the way in writing and popularizing a narrative of the history of civilization on the African continent that is, especially in the western historical canon, sorely lacking in detail and context.

Dr Casely-Hayford begins to put into context the history just before the Mediterranean centric history (Egypt, Greek, Roman) that you and I likely learned in school was the beginning of western civilization.

This one hour film focuses on the eastern side of the African continent in Ethiopia. In the first chapter of this series, "Lost Kingdoms of Africa | Nubia" Dr Casely-Hayford talks about old rivers that stretched across the North African Desert - the beds of which can be seen despite the shifting sands of the expanding North African Desert via new satellite imaging technology. From the Great Zimbabwe Empire and the associated kingdoms around it in the south, to the Great civilizations all along the Nile, we know that African civilization was much more wide spread and advanced than western scholars have given them credit for.

Is it too much to guess - as has always been my conjecture - that eventually we are going to find examples of great civilizations on the western side of the continent as well? Along the great Congo River Basin perhaps we will find evidence of kingdoms that were connected with these early African trading empires. May we discover that these Western African Empires disappeared at a time when the North African Desert began to expand about 3,000 years ago - forcing the Nubian migrations south and perhaps cutting trade routes to the west that had been used for 1,000's of years - leading to the collapse of great civilizations on the Atlantic coast?

The BBC has commissioned the Doctor to do a second series, due in 2012.

Stay tuned!

Dr Casely-Hayford completed a PhD in African History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University where he taught MA level classes in International Culture. His is the former Executive Director of Arts Strategy, Arts Council England, and Ex - Director of the Institute of International Contemporary Art (inIVA). Dr Casely-Hayford has offered leadership to some of the most high profile arts organisations in Britain. He has advised the United Nations and the Canadian, Dutch and Norwegian Arts Councils, commissioned to develop the future audience vision for the Tate family of galleries and has written widely including for papers like The Guardian and The Independent.

This bio is a compilation of biographies found at the Guardian online, the talent agency, "Peters, Fraser and Dunlop" (PFD), and from Wikipedia.

Lost Kingdoms of Africa

(My Youtube Playlists)

Part 1 (Playlist - 60 minutes) Lost Kingdoms of Africa | Nubia

Part 2 (Playlist - 60 minutes) Lost Kingdoms of Africa | Ethiopia

Part 3 (55 minutes) Lost Kingdoms of Africa | Great Zimbabwe
Looking for copies to embed.
See it now at TVO: http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?615688887001
(may be taken down at any time: )

Part 4 (50 minutes) Lost Kingdoms of Africa | West Africa
Looking for copies to embed.
See it now at TVO: http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?635593548001
(may be taken down at any time: )

mh

A Direct message from Karl Rove - Oh Noooo!

2011-03-02T02:20:00.005-05:00

Direct message from Karl Rove

When I saw this in my inbox, the first thing I thought was,

"Oh No!! He's found me!"

(I follow Karl Rove to keep up with the far right's plan to destroy the middle class.)

mh

Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" and Smashing Pumpkins "1979"

2011-02-28T03:59:00.003-05:00

I like this.

Buy Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" at their site: http://www.arcadefire.com/the-suburbs/

It reminds me of 1996 when the Smashing Pumpkins "1979" came out.

To me both entries are a dismal reality check - fifteen years apart.

Have we been moving sideways?

This cannot stand. Will not stand.

We are are the verge of something very profound I think.

Something wonderful.

Update: 11/12/11 - Pumkins taken down - Fuck EMI - highlight and search.

mh

Protests across U.S. against Wisconsin-like anti-union bills - with Video Google Map

2011-02-27T18:26:00.000-05:00

TheUpTake.org is aggregating video of the nation wide protests against Wisconsin-like anti-union bills - from people who were there to those of us who were not. They've integrated the social tools in this case by using Google maps to give us the big picture. Below is an embed of the Map; click on any of the blue Placemarks to see video embeds from that place of the Saturday, February 26th demonstrations.

Wisconsin Workers' Rights Rallies-Video Map

View Wisconsin Workers' Rights Rallies-Video Map in a larger map

If you were out demonstrating in your city and have media you'd like to contribute, go to TheUpTake.org contribute page for this story: http://theuptake.org/2011/02/25/national-day-of-workers-rights-support-rallies-send-us-your-videos-photos/.

mh

Encampment at the State Capitol at Madison Wisconsin

2011-02-27T03:36:00.005-05:00

Wisconsin Protests - Day 12

From: OneWisconsinNow: http://www.youtube.com/user/OneWisconsinNow#p/u

100,000 Strong

Looks like more than 100,000 to me...

Democracy Now! reporting from Wisconsin Friday. A nice tour of the 24 hours, now 13 day encampment in the State Capitol Building in Madison to defeat Governor Scott Walker Budget Repair Bill, and protect the rights of citizens to bargain collectively with their employers.

Also from "One Wisconsin Now": http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/

I really like this one - it's a montage of 11 days of protest, the song is real catchy.

("Kids" is the third single from MGMT's album "Oracular Spectacular": spiritual and enlightened; a beautiful melody with lots of synthesizers, the robotized sound is a haunting counterpoint to the lyrics: http://www.whoismgmt.com/ca/home.)

Madison Protests

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/
Friday Feb 25, 2011:

"Protesters Expect 100,000 in Madison as Assembly OKs Anti-Union Bill" http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/25/protesters_expect_100_000_in_madison

"Wisconsin’s Uprising: A Guided Tour of the 11-Day Protest Encampment Inside the State Capitol in Madison"
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/25/wisconsins_uprising_a_guided_tour_of

mh

Lee Camp is Gooood - Very good

2011-02-27T00:45:00.000-05:00

We're Losing A Game Of Solitaire! - by comedian Lee Camp

His Bio at "Lee Camp2"

"1-minute Moments of Clarity by comedian Lee Camp. Contributor to The Onion, Saboteur of Fox News, Raconteur on stage."

See much, much more at his Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LeeCamp2#g/u

Like this here - an hilarious stand-up on the ironies that exist between our planet-destroying life style and our neurotic fetish for saving oil soaked birds and beached whales...

(And yes, the address is a live link --- and I see "Blogger-in-Draft" (http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/) has enabled the idea - the idea being, these blogger address's are transparent; you can see where the link is going before you click on it. I pasted the Youtube address into the blog intending to create a link out of it - a transparent link which is the standard around here from now on - but, I didn't have to open the widget and paste in the address again - all I had to do was hit the Link button and the address went live! Thus you will soon know - as Blogger roles this feature out in the blogosphere - that every Blogger link like this is legit.)

mh

Right to Collective Bargaining a foundation stone of Democracy

2011-02-23T15:45:00.002-05:00

Not some hedonistic 'entitlement' that 'spoiled' baby boomers are likely to give up easily.

Corporations and their neo-con representatives are hoping we'll forget who caused this "Great Recession" and start blaming our neighbours. More on that in this rather level headed discussion lead by Laura Flanders, founder & host of GRITtv - which is NetCasting yesterday and today, from the Wisconsin State Capitol.

Mary Bottari & Mark Pocan: National Implications in Wisconsin

Tuesday, February 22, 2011 by GRITtv

Mary Bottari is the Director of The Center for Media and Democracy's Real Economy Project and the Editor of the BanksterUSA site for bank busting activists. She is an experienced policy wonk and she previously served as a Senior Analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based consumer group Public Citizen in its Global Trade Watch division.

Mark Pocan is a Wisconsin State Assemblyman from the 78th District.

GRITtv - Mary Bottari & Mark Pocan: National Implications in Wisconsin

Via: CommonDreams.org

CommonDreams Video - link list.

mh

Madison, Wisconsin City Council pulls off 'end run' on Governor Scott Walker's 'Demolition Bill'

2011-02-21T05:52:00.007-05:00

The Madison, Wisconsin City Council has pulled off a sweet end run on extreme right wing Governor Scott Walker. Before the Republican majority at the State Legislature could pass the Governor's "Budget Repair Bill" - which would strip public employees of collective bargaining rights - the city has settled two year contracts with all their unions which will last until the end of 2012.

Here's City of Madison, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's blog post from last Thursday announcing Madison City Councils enlightened tactic.

Mayor Dave’s Blog

Special Meeting & a Special Walk
February 17, 2011 7:53 PM

It's just a question of simple fairness. The City of Madison has a dozen unions. Some have settled contracts to the end of 2011, some have contracts to the end of 2012 and others have not yet settled a contract at all. With Governor Walker's proposal to essentially wipe out any possibility of collective bargaining on the fast track, we had to act soon in order to treat all our unionized employees the same. If we wait until our next regularly scheduled Council meeting next Tuesday we might already be preempted from doing the right thing.

So, I've called a special Council meeting for tonight to settle all of our contracts through 2012. In addition, we'll try to help our non-represented employees as much as we can by eliminating a health insurance co-pay (they'll be forced to pay at least 12% of those premiums by the state anyway) and by trying to lock in the same modest pay increases that we'll give to our unionized employees over the next two years.

Because the Dane County Board has its meeting tonight in our usual chambers we had to relocate the Council meeting to the Overture Center where live video streaming is possible. Council members, union officials, leaders of non-represented employees and managers are invited to join me on the steps of the City County Building for some brief remarks. Then we'll walk together across the Capitol Square to the Overture Center for our meeting.

The point of that symbolic walk together is that labor and management are united on this. In fact, I'm not aware of a city in the state whose administration thinks that union busting is a good way to solve a budget problem. Collective bargaining has worked for better than four decades. My hope is that there's still some chance that sanity will reassert itself at the Capitol, but in case it doesn't we'll do our best to enforce Madison values in Madison.

The city is taking a risk - if Govenor Walkers bill is not defeated or amended the State Legislature will drastically reduce shared revenue transfers to Madison in 2012. (If the unthinkable happens - and at this point that seems VERY unlikely - this reporter would hazard a guess that the unions would remember the solidarity that this council is showing at this hour of need and agree to re-open the contracts.)

The Madison City Council move nicely highlights the conflict of visions between the radical right and everyone else: the extreme right wants to fix the recession by lowering peoples wages and laying off staff through service cuts - while everyone else thinks a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Great Depression style New Deal stimulus and financial reform effort is the only way to get America and the world, out of this 'Great Recession'.

Wikipedia's article on the New Deal says it all in the first paragraph:

"The New Deal is a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, from 1933 to 1936. The programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": relief, recovery, and reform. That is, relief for the unemployed and poor; recovery of the economy to normal levels; and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression."

1) Obama's stimulus spending is coming to an end, and the Republican dominated House has just passed a bill over to the Senate (which will not pass) that would cut $61 billion in discretionary spending.

2) Unemployment is still trending up. If you take into account all the people who have stopped looking for work the official unemployment rate of 10% is probably closer to 20%. The economy is not anywhere close to "normal".

3) No effective reform of the financial system has been achieved through an Act poplarly known as the Banking Reform Bill - the official title of which is "An Act to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end "too big to fail", to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes." I like the way Congress puts what we want to hear in the titles of bills (as that's all anyone reads), while the content of this bill leaves the toxic asset derivative vehicles in place, and Glass–Steagall (the 1930's bill to prevent economic instability) remains gutted.

The Great Depression of the 1930's had these same conservative voices that were willing to sacrifice the unemployed and the poor to fix the economy - people that thought giving more money and power to the institutions that caused the crisis in the first place was a good way to fix the crisis - vested interest, Pork Barrelers all.

It's amazing how fear makes people immediately go to their guilt impulse. I guess it's related to the hard winters our ancestors had to survive less than a hundred years ago - if you pigged out in autumn and over Christmas you might not live to see spring ( plus all the ads on TV today that play to those puritan values - the narrative goes: 'The recession is your fault because your greedy at the core of your nature [as you know], so buy this to make yourself feel better [because you're modern and know it's not real anyway]' ) - and while these are nice stories, they provide no real links to lessons learned in the history of economic crisis. They are ignorant knee jerk reactions that make good headlines and sound good coming out of talking heads mouths. They also represent the interests of the powerful and work against the interests of working people and the middle class.

Starving a recession leads to depression - that's the lesson of history - not the 'Little House on the Prairie' rhetoric that I hear coming from the corporate backed neo-con right.

Referencs:

The Capitol Times - Feb 17, 2011: "Laptop City Hall: "City Council approves all union contracts through 2012".

City of Madison - Mayor Dave's Blog - Feb 17, 2011: "Special Meeting & a Special Walk".

Bloomberg - Nov 18, 2010: "Prime U.S. Mortgage Foreclosures Hit Record as Unemployment Hurts Finances".

Wikipedia: "Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act"

Wikipedia: "New Deal"

Wikpedia: "Glass–Steagall Act"

mh

"The Uptake" Citizen Journalists covering Wisconsin Protests via "LiveStream" and networking via "Spot.Us"

2011-02-20T18:14:00.005-05:00

Wisconsin Protests - Day 6

100,000 people came out on Saturday (Day 5), the biggest demonstration in support of Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Rights yet.

This breaking story offers an opportunity to describe a New Media Model that is evolving.

Below is an embed of a live stream from Madison Wisconsin where The Uptake volunteer journalist/producers are creating content and streaming it through LiveStream.

Pro-Labor Demonstrations Continue In Madison Wisconsin

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

How does it all work?

1. Broadcasting

LiveStream is an application that aggregates live streaming video to viewers parceled via subject categories. The first time I saw LiveStream was during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico - where a live feed of the broken pipe at the bottom of the gulf streamed day after day, after day.

"Livestream is the leading live video destination and platform. Event organizers, content owners, celebrities and artists around the world use Livestream's social broadcasting tools to engage and grow their audiences on the web, mobile devices, and connected TVs. More than one billion video minutes are streamed each month to a growing community of 20 million monthly viewers (50,000 of whom will be watching right now)."

It's like a TV box with only live streaming channels, no spin, no talking heads - just live streaming video on any subject you can imagine.

2. Content Production

Will journalism be done by you or to you?

"The UpTake is a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization. Established July 2007."

The UpTake have volunteer journalist/producers feeding live streams from the Winsconsin Protests through LiveStream. The UpTake is gathering a community of volunteers, activists and donors via an innovative social networking site, Spot.Us.

3. Funding

Spot.Us
"Community-funded reporting"

"Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the "Center for Media Change" and funded by various groups like the Knight Foundation. We partner with various organizations including the Annenberg School of Communications in Los Angeles."

4. Spread the News

You can embed this LiveStream too.

mh

Aimee Mann and Sarah Mclachlan get jobs in Portlandia and Facebook is Weird

2011-02-18T19:18:00.004-05:00

I love longish short clips of Portlandia because I can't watch the whole show - because I don't get that channel.

From IFC:

See a longer short (?) at GawkerTV click --->! http://tv.gawker.com/#!5754009/portlandia-sorry-about-the-music-industrys-downfall-aimee-mann-and-sarah-mclachlan

The laudry scene, the shrunken sweater is about 12 inches long and the Aimee Mann domestic character says,

"I don't know how you can tell if it doesn't fit if you don't try it on."

Zing! Small. So small.

My favourite show I have never seen (I don't do cable TV).

Via Gord Cumming, via Steve Kane at Facebook, and IFC (the producers).

***

Postscript:

(Interesting, when I link Gord and Steve you can't see much on their profiles, and you can't see their content, unless you: sign up for an account; figure out which network their in; and (assuming you don't know them) 'fool' someone into friending you into that network, then 'fool' Gord or Steve into friending you . Then you can see the link to GawkerTV as it appeared a few minutes ago, there.

Facebook is a very neurotic place - you know? Apartheid Social Networking???)

The Real News Network on Wisconsin Protests

2011-02-18T17:38:00.003-05:00

AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon A. Silvers lays it all out rather succinctly in this interview with Paul Jay.

More at The Real News

More coverage of this budding national (hopefully international) movement - an updating Google search list: TRNN + Wisconsin + Protests.

TRNN Link list 02/18/2011:

Best of the Web: Wisconsin Videos

Wisconsin Workers Protest Anti-Union Bill
Wisconsin Protesters So Loud They Drowned Out FOX Reporter
Democratic Lawmakers In Wisconsin Go Into Hiding
Wisconsin Gov. Attacks Public Employees & Unions; Threatens to Use National Guard To Quell Protests
Unions Threatened Across US Featuring: In These Times' Mike Elk debate and Less Government's Seton Motley
Protesters & Unions In Wisconsin Threatened With National Guard!!
Wisconsin protests war on unions
Budget Repair Bill Protest! Madison WI 2 15 2011 Students Arrive
Governor Walker Discusses Budget Repair Bill with Greta Van Susteren (2.15.11)

mh

Wiretap's "Couples"

2011-02-18T06:33:00.002-05:00

The Story of Anne, the homeless dog.
(http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/wiretap_20110212_45209.mp3 - will cease to exist soon)

When at age five the understanding that life entails death becomes a certainty he realizes that if his parents really loved him - they never would have had him.

"Life support machine" takes on new inflections.

What a well crafted story (life?).

I guess if someone decided they should offer this fellow a writing job - they'd have to consider that he would probably sabotage the gig as the opportunity would entail the job ending at some point.

Perhaps a Never Ending Story rewrite?

A dread of our horrible future leads him to a fetish for an appreciation for the present. And there's a word for that, a Welsh word, "Hiraeth".

Wiretap episode "Couples".

Secrete Communist Content Portal: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/wiretap.xml

Dog Love story by S cott Kravitz.

mh

A revolution in Neuroscience, Youtube playlists, and an Internet Ad Model

2011-02-17T00:55:00.007-05:00

We live in interesting times, revolutionary times

This post is about several revolutionary things that I came across in the last 44 minutes...

First, I was happy to find this CBC production - "The Brain That Changes Itself" - available at Youtube. It concerns the fast advancing theory of Brain Plasticity, the idea that our brains are not mechanical devices but rather organisms that are incredibly flexible. Nothing about our brains, as I used to say, is "hard wired". All our behaviours, aptitudes and learning have specific patterns to them that scientists can now map in 3 dimensions and over time with very non-invasive scans. We now know that normal healthy individuals create specific and predictable electromagnetic patterns when they do similar things, and we can even measure the amount of empathy one subject feels for another (as noted in an earlier post here). Not only can we measure electromagnetic patterns but also specific and predictable physical patterns, changes in the robustness of certain parts of the brain. Our brains are so incredibly flexible that neurons delegated to do one thing can be reassigned by the brain itself - or through therapies designed by doctors - to do other functions as well! Old neurological patterns that are unhealthy (in the thinking sense) or un-helpful (in the motor function sense) can be 'un-trained' and 're-threaded' along existing or new, neuro pathways through therapies that use this three dimensional mapping as a guide and as a proof of concept, that is pushing forward our understanding of how the brain works and is giving therapists real time scientific feed back on the effectiveness of various therapies as well as helping them to devise new ones.

This is a revolution in our understanding of the brain, and I think, a moment in the history of the study that will re-balance our use of chemical solutions with talking and behavioral therapies that rely more on interaction with the patient, which can empower caring and understanding --- a return to the social interaction that began the study of the brain in the 1850's - but now with a scientific feed back that confirms or disputes the effectiveness of treatments. Now therapists can apply a relatively 'super understanding' of the way brains function to help them teach patients to un-learn bad brain functions (neurosis); or in physical rehabilitation re-gain lost brain function by rerouting data through still healthy parts of the brain.

***

Secondly, I wanted to find out if I could create a Playlist in Youtube and then embed it here so that it would play one after the other almost like a broadcast TV show - as that's how I've been watching much of the content I view of late.

The video below is part of a four part playlist that I created that encompasses the 44 minute production, "The Brain That Changes Itself". I named the playlist so it shows up properly in search, and credited to the CBC in the notes section that accompanies the playlist creation feature at Youtube.

It plays almost seamlessly.

***

Third, this Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) production that was first aired in Canada on a show called The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is now posted at CBC's Youtube Channel and has an advertisements placed where in the broadcast model ads would normally appear - in this case, when I watched the videos, a Google Ad about how to use a search engine effectively shows. This is a break though and hails the beginning of a model on the internet that will pay for production.

My question is, since this production is showing here, at Michael Holloway's FilterBlogs ... do I get a slice of the ad revenue too? And, on the other hand, if I were to allow advertisements at this blog would I then have to share that revenue with CBC based on the number of eyes that watched their productions here?

The future of broadcast is just coming into view; so I will not then end this idea with a, 'just kidding' - as I might have been tempted to in the very recent past. I'm serious, this is now a serious question.

As I grow my credibility over the years, and grow an audience that comes here because this blog has content that interests them, I become a 'local channel' - local in the WWW sense that FilterBlogs is a tiny web within the World Wide Web. A channel that might be viewed by people in Singapore, or at the South Pole, or people right around the corner here in Leslieville, Toronto, Canada.

Revolutionary times indeed.

The Brain That Changes Itself

Post Script:

Upon watching the entire program again, here, no Google ads showed.

Watch this program at CBC.ca.

"The Brain That Changes Itself" was produced by "90th Parallel Film & Television Productions Ltd."

mh

Jonathan Mann's "Song A Day" up to #766 !

2011-02-13T05:41:00.002-05:00

At Jonathan Mann's "SONGATRON" web site Mann's been posting an original composition - with a video - everyday for over TWO YEARS!

I found it via a search of playwright "Anton Piatigorsky" (who's play, ETERNAL HYDRA I'm going to see this afternoon) ... believe it or not ... (Google is magic).

At SONGATRON the magic of music and production is explained thusly:

"SONGATRON (noun): Mystery machine discovered by Jonathan Mann. SONGATRON makes videos and music daily. The results are posted here."

From Thursday, February 10th 2011,
Jonathan Mann and The Rock Cookie Bottom's

#766 Wren The Polyamourous Bear (LIVE!)

http://songatron.com/

Jonathan Mann's "Song A Day" at Youtube (all uploads).

Video: Jonathan Mann - A Brief History of Creative Work.

mh

Cartoon: A chance of snow... flake

2011-01-24T16:02:00.003-05:00

The weather guy said 50 percent chance of flurries - I wonder where the other one landed?

This week's The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest drawing by Christopher Weyant.

Enter the contest (Entry must be received by January 30, 2011).

mh

Great Cartoon from this week's slide show at The New Yorker

2011-01-24T15:34:00.004-05:00

A more poignant cartoon there could not be, so don't even try --- well OK, try...

Cartoon's URL: http://www.newyorker.com/images/2011/01/31/cartoons/110131_cartoon_045_a15510_p465.gif

Link to the cartoon in The New Yorker.

Watch a slide show of all the Cartoons from this issue (2011/01/31) of The New Yorker

mh