1 December 2011
30 November 2011
OPINIONS AND ASSHOLES, BOTH WORTHLESS…
1612 by Jeff HessYour opinion does not matter. Politicians are almost entirely in the thrall of a neo-liberal ideology, and are almost entirely the bought and paid servants of the very rich. If a politician does what the oligarchy wants, he or she will be taken care of, even if thrown out of office. If they don’t, money and influence will be used against them, and once out of office they will be on their own.
Politicians do not work for you. Neither, just to be clear, do the police. Nothing is more pathetic than watching folks at Occupy who seem to genuinely believe the cops are on their side.
Our elites will do what they will do regardless of what public opinion is.
What matters is not “opinion”, but action. So with regards to Occupy, all I cared about is how many people were being radicalized—whether a cadre was being formed; and how much of the population supported them in real terms. People who would donate goods, would donate money, would spread the message actively, would go down during the day.
30 November 2011
FANATICISM AND IGNORANCE IS FOREVER BUSY…
1557 by Jeff HessClarence Darrow is one of my personal heroes and his biography, Clarence Darrow for the Defense is on my list of Eighteen Books That Have Shaped My World.
30 November 2011
THEY REALLY DON’T CARE WHAT WE THINK, YET…
1528 by Jeff HessOnce upon a time, a man informed George Bush Jr. that he didn’t like the President’s policies. Bush then said “who cares what you think?”
Bloomberg and Wall Street may not like Occupy Wall Street, but they aren’t going to negotiate in any meaningful sense.
Why should they?
What are the consequences, for them, of not cooperating? They have to see some noisy people. Does it appreciably reduce their income? No. The men or women they get to sleep with? No. The amount of power they have over DC? No. Their actual physical safety, or the safety of those they care about? No.
For Occupy to be successful, on its own terms, will require shutting down Wall Street and probably all of NYC. There must be so many people on the street that it is impossible to arrest them all or to get rid of them without resorting to a lot more than a whiff of grapeshot. The elites must be be faced with a decision tree “negotiate or lose a ton of money and be massively inconvenienced or shoot hundreds of thousands of people and build mass detention camps.” That will require two or three million people occupying New York City.
Remember, modern elites are trained to think in terms of cost-benefit analyses. If the cost to them of not giving in is less than the cost of not giving in, they won’t give in. It took trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street. They take home billions of dollars in personal bonuses. You must cost them, personally, more than that, for them to want to give in.
30 November 2011
DYING WITH THE MOST TOYS LEAVES YOU DEAD…
1458 by Jeff HessAll kinds of people turned up. Not just garden shed hobbyists, but children and graduates, women and men, from all kinds of backgrounds. There were crafters and hackers, working with everything from coloured pieces of felt to complicated little circuit boards.
At that point I hadn’t picked up a soldering iron since I was at engineering school. When I was a student, our first-year project was to build an entire radio from scratch – not just the circuit but even bending sheets of metal to make the case. I hadn’t done anything like that for ages, and I was swept away by the atmosphere at the Maker Faire.
I sat down and spent an hour building a tiny circuit of my own. I stitched thin wires together to build a pretty rough-looking device – it was an LED that changed colour when you waved your hand over it. I soldered for the first time since I was a student. And I can’t even explain how proud I was of myself – I still have that light-changing circuit somewhere in a box, even though the battery stopped working a long time ago.
Continue reading the main storyThere’s something about creating an object, however small, that’s satisfying in a way that’s almost impossible to explain. It’s the way artists must feel. A bit of you goes into the object. If it’s a wooden bench, it becomes your wooden bench. Even if it’s a tiny, scrappy circuit that flashes a set of lights on and off when you wave your hand over it, it’s your circuit. Your personality becomes woven into the way you made it.
But in the West at least, we seem to have lost this in favour of buying things new and ready-made. Politicians have made us believe that buying new things is good – that we shouldn’t be miserly and hang on to our old possessions, our old appliances and our old clothes, but that we should toss them out the second they get worn and buy new ones – to keep the economy going.
My dad, who is a Maker from way back shared a story with me over the Thanksgiving holiday about model trains. He builds his models in HO scale (1/87) and has a layout in our basement. He told me about how American manufacturers produce the parts for the locomotives and cars and ship them to China where they are assembled and then shipped back to the United States to be sold to enthusiasts.
“Here’s an idea,” he told me, “how about selling the kits here to modelers to assemble themselves?” My dad, he has such crazy ideas. But then this is a guy whose first model kits consisted of blocks of wood that he turned into beautiful models of WW II aircraft as fine as anything sold in any plastic kit.
30 November 2011
30 November 2011
29 November 2011
28 November 2011
BEST LORD OF THE RING TWEET…
1544 by Jeff Hess28 November 2011
MY NAME IS JEFF HESS AND I’M AN INTROVERT…
1344 by Jeff HessI’m not sure when I first realized that I was an introvert, but I’ve never thought that being an introvert was somehow a handicap. Carl King is also an introvert and gives dispelling 10 myths about our clan a shot.
In short form, the 10 myths are:
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.
Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public.
Myth #6 – Introverts always want to be alone.
Myth #7 – Introverts are weird.
Myth #8 – Introverts are aloof nerds.
Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun.
Myth #10 – Introverts can fix themselves and become Extroverts.
My favorite is No. 8.
28 November 2011
28 November 2011
28 November 2011
28 November 2011
REQUIEM FOR OAKWOOD…
0930 by Jeff HessFran Mentch writes:
I am finally able to write something about Oakwood.
I have been struggling to come to grips with the loss of the referendum which will lead to the destruction of the last large green space in our community; this generation will leave no Metropark.
If you only want to hear positive and comfortable things about our community, it is best if you stop reading now. I want to tell you the truth as I see it.
First Interstate’s shock and awe political campaign was something to behold. In my imagination I saw First Interstate say to Melamed Communications, “I don’t care what it costs, money is no obstacle, win the campaign. If we lose Oakwood it will be because you failed.” When faced with the unlimited resources of a global capitalist, to quote Melville, “I saw the opening maw of hell.” First Interstate’s campaign was personified by the aggressive and bullying demeanor of the managers and workers paid to counter-demonstrate at our No on 96 rally at Mayfield and Green; fortunately they left promptly one hour after arrival, but not until one of them made a racially incendiary remark.
The First Interstate campaign probably used 13 mailings, including a DVD and an 8 page glossy brochure, endorsements from mayors of other cities who have First Interstate developments (would any of them have the courage to refuse a requested endorsement when the First Interstate development in their city Continue Reading »
27 November 2011
CONCISION: SEE SOUND BITE…
0833 by Jeff HessJeff Greenfield was spot on with his comment. Americans, in general, would not listen to Noam Chomsky. That is sad, disturbing and a flaw we ought to work to correct, but it is not the fault of Jeff Greenfield or television, there is just no mass audience for intellectual discussion. Full stop.
Via Mano Singham…
27 November 2011
WHEN ONLY LATIN WILL DO…
0806 by Jeff HessFrom The Guardian:
Back in the early 80s, approaching the end of Vendetta’s epic 38-part cycle, [Alan] Moore [– author of V For Vendetta –] was struggling to think of another “V” word with which to title a closing chapter. He’d already used Victims, Vaudeville and Vengeance; the Villain, the Voice, the Vanishing; even Vicissitude and Verwirrung (the German word for confusion). “I was getting pretty desperate,” he says.
He eventually settled on Vox populi. “Voice of the people. And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people.”
26 November 2011
LOPPING OFF HEADS BRANCHES IS NOT EFFECTIVE…
1125 by Jeff Hess
24 November 2011
FOR YOUR THANKSGIVING DINNER CONVERSATION…
0834 by Jeff HessMichael Moore writes:
This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement’s “vision statement” to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street.
We Envision…
[1] a truly free, democratic, and just society;
[2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus;
[3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making;
[4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others;
[5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments;
[6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few;
[7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings;
[8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible;
[9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.
What do you hate about this vision?
