NASCAR Patches for Congressmen

I heard one new idea in last night's State of the Union. In response to the Supreme Court deciding that multi-national corporations should have all the rights of individual breathing citizens -- allowing them to spend whatever they want to influence elections (as reported here) -- Obama suggested that all contacts between lobbyists and public servants be publicly documented. This includes the identity of the client corporations and amounts of money and time involved. The applause were uneven. This morning a new FaceBook group appeared: 'Our Corporate Congress': Make NASCAR-type patches mandatory Congress-wear. I'm not much of a joiner, but I like this idea. Allow the Congressman from Exxon to proudly wear the oil patch right next to his Monsanto and Pfizer badges. Let the senator who filibusters public transit bills proudly show his AAA patch and Ford logo.

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Right to Link

We all know how nearly fastidious Erich has been about making sure that we don't violate any copyrights with the images we use on this blog. One way we manage this is by linking to content that we cannot properly copy or post. But now the issue of whether one can violate a copyright merely by linking to another web site is making legal rounds. I found out about the Right to Link movement via my WebProNews subscription. There is more information at www.right2link.org. What's stirring this up is Rupert Murdock blocking access to his content coming from certain legitimate url's. Here's a link to the story.

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Local Economic Activism on the Rise

Last night someone let a breeze into my house. When we got home, the furnace was at redline as it vainly tried to keep the thermostat warm. The radiators were dangerously hot. And I was pretty sure that I didn't leave my cookbooks strewn across the pantry floor on a layer of shattered Victorian art glass. The responding officer mentioned that the holiday season is a hot time for those who use this method to encourage people to buy more stuff. Our neighborhood email newsgroup has had more buzz than usual about burglaries and car theft. One sign of a weak economy is a rise in material crimes. The poor become more desperate while the rich take shorter tropical vacations and drive last year's Lexus. These guys were in a studied hurry. They opened and dumped drawers, flipped mattresses, and opened every door. As near as I can tell, my super-zoom camera and new laptop computer were the only really significant items taken. Plus several hundred dollars, mostly in state quarters and other change. They found and collected the power supply and carry case for my laptop, each in a different location. I miss my vintage laptop bag more than the much pricier laptop. It was a classic Targus backpack that has been getting favorable comments for 14 years. I haven't seen another quite like it since the year I bought it. Fortunately, we were away with all our credit cards and my smaller (but now favored) camera. It appears that some jewelry of little economic value is also missing, and an older camera. And a set of house keys. Changing the locks is easy. But not having keys didn't seem to slow them last night.

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Mean Phoneme Meme

During a bout of insomnia, I pondered an underrepresented phoneme. I first learned about these essential quanta of spoken words while I was earning my degree in psychology back in the early 1980's, and researching computer speech synthesis for fun. What popped into my head these wee hours was the word, "vacuum". Say it aloud with me, "Vacuum". Listen to yourself say it. Vacuum. Break it down. It starts with the vee, a vocalized eff. Then "a" as in "can". And a full-stop kay. No surprises, so far. Did you just utter "Ee"? As in "Keep"? We will get back to that. Next it depends on your dialect. Maybe you said "oo" as in "broom", or maybe oo-uh as in "you-uns". And end with a nice vocalized "mm". This is the only case that I can think of where a double-U really is. But, what was that in the middle? Ee? Vakeeoom? Part of the institutional mis-education in our country is that even teachers are unaware of a double standard in teaching the relationship between spoken and written English. We have "silent-E" drilled into us... (Digression for mathematician Tom Lehrer's version on The Electric Company) ... but what about all those hidden, non-silent "E"s? They are everywhere in our spoken words, but not in the written ones. Even many words with silent E have unwritten spoken long-E's embedded. Take "lake", for example. Listen to yourself say it. There is no hint of the written E on the end. But in the middle? L-eh-ee-k. Long "A" is really short-E-long-E. Always. (Ah-l-oo-eh-ee-z) Take a cue from "cue". K-ee-oo. Do you, like, like "like"? L-ah-ee-k? So my obscure title simply means that I mean to bring attention to the essential idea of a troublesome yet common (mean, mean) spoken sound. I'm usually easy to amuse, but sleep deprivation stunts my self-censorship.

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Fundamentalism, Fox, and … Scientology?

I was recently chatting with a friend who has been a Scientologist for several decades. He was attacking the White House for its conspiracy with other networks to censor and muzzle Fox News. He later sent me this screed on the Campaign for Liberty blog under the Subject "Fox News is Right". The CfL is one of the political arms of Scientology. Check out their mission and board if you want. The introduction to the post is (in part, go read it yourself):

Why is America under such a vicious and prolonged [internal] attack against its basic beliefs? Why are some Americans attacking the hand that feeds them? Why tear down a working system? None of the attacks make sense. It is as though we are living in a looking glass world. I am looking backwards and it seems left is right and wrong is right and right is wrong. Politically correct speak replaced plain speak and the silent Christian majority are called domestic terrorists.

Okay, I paused at this point and replied (in part):

Lost me at "silent Christian majority". An iconic building in every neighborhood, billboards every mile, ads every hour on radio and TV channels not already owned outright by Christian networks, and their creed printed on money and embedded in children's daily oath to the flag does not fit my definition of "silent".

I didn't mention the wholesome Christian activities of blockading health clinics, continuous protests with gory signs on streets and campuses, bombing clinics and shooting doctors. But the actual point of the article is that the KGB is alive and well and still trying to take over America via a conspiracy with the Psychiatric Industrial Complex. They have (the article claims) powerful mind control methods that are being used on the public. If so, I asked in reply, how did we ever manage to get rid of CheneyBush? Today, my friend sent me (among other Scientology political pieces) a YouTube video attacking Obama's plan to sign the latest international emissions control treaty. It took a while of watching to figure this out, among the doomsayer speech of One World Government, global warming denialism, and the demise of America and such. Many of the positive comments to the video seem to be from garden variety End Days Christians, but the platform is quite visibly Scientology. The point of all this is, Why are the Scientologists aligning with Fox and Christian Fundamentalists? For recruitment? For political palatability? To hijack a powerful propaganda machine? Read and listen to what they actually say, and get back to me.

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