Last evening we gathered to discuss the question:
Should there be a maximum wage limit; is making too much money immoral?
If you’d like add your voice, please join the conversation by writing a comment.
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
POUNDING TACKS WITH A SLEDGE HAMMER… In discussing Walmart, Chicago and that city”s food deserts, the conversation has moved to alternate routes of providing healthy food to residents and part of the focus is on small, resident-farmed plots and farmers” markets that could grow and sell locally. Keep reading…
WHY DOES WALMART HATE AMERICA SO MUCH…? I”ve written before about Walmart”s anti-greeters demanding the papers of private citizens simply trying to get the merchandise they just paid for out to their cars so they can get home and put their feet up. It still seems it”s not really yours until then. Keep reading…
ARE WE FINALLY LEARNING THAT BIG IS BAD…? For most of my lifetime, the primary economic mantra for growth and the creation of wealth has been economies of scale. Company A buys Company B and lays off redundant employees and churns the no-longer-paid wages, salaries and benefits into profits. Keep reading…
MOTHER WOULD APPROVE… There is a school of attitude that seeks to seek the sunny side of life, to embrace the half-full glass, to emulate their goddess Pollyanna. I”m not a member. But neither am I a pessimist. On balance I think the world is a good place with a lot of bad actors. Keep reading…
MORE ON HOW TAX INCENTIVES GO WRONG… Tax incentives are back in the news, this time in Oregon where Walmart has managed to buy a multi-million dollar tax break because its accountants are smarter than the politicians in Oregon. Once again, Al Norman has jumped in.
Keep reading…
DYING FOR FASHION CHEAP PLASTIC CRAP… I imagine that we could do a blog just about the recalls of merchandise from Walmart, and the shoes recall has been in the back of my mind for a few days as I contemplated whether or not it was worth posting the story. Frank made my decision easier. Keep reading…
WALMART”S TWO-CENTS WORTH… The blogger at Durango Texas noticed a two-cent difference between the post price of milk ($1.98/gallon) and the price at the check-out ($2/gallon). Two cents isn”t enough to make you hassle with customer service, but how much is it worth to Walmart?
Keep reading…
Susan [Boyle] is a reminder that it’s time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It’s people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. They make this country civilised and they deserve acknowledgement and respect.
Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character.
Dear Fellow Texans:
Here’s the way I see it: Democrats + Independents = Victory
I was serious when I ran for governor in 2006 and I’m serious now. I am a humorist, but I know these are not humorous times for a lot of us. Part of the reason is the pathetic lack of leadership at the state level. The last governor, I believe, who was truly on the side of the people of Texas, was Ann Richards. She was a very funny lady – she was also a great governor. I’ll take my cues from Ann Richards
I also draw inspiration from Ann Richards’ mentor, Barbara Jordan. Barbara believed that if one is attacked personally, one should never counterattack personally. During the 2006 campaign I was attacked personally. However, like Barbara Jordan, I have no desire to attack anyone personally. Instead, like Barbara, I will merely relegate them to my “forgive and remember list.”
But I do not wish to fight yesterday’s campaign again. Today, I have taken the first step toward running for Governor in 2010 by forming “Texans for Kinky,” a committee to help with research and raising the funds necessary to launch a successful campaign. Now is the time to Continue Reading »
James Renner writes:
Since last November, I have been working on a story about state senator Kevin Coughlin, who is now running for governor. When Coughlin learned of the story, he threatened several of my sources-some with violence-and then had his lawyer send Scene”s management a number of letters threatening lawsuits. In February, I took part in a conference call during which I was asked to confirm an affair. I confirmed the affair but the story was still spiked.
As Scene has had a long history of publishing similar stories, I believe this story was spiked solely because Coughlin threatened to sue. I was told we “cannot afford a lawsuit right now”.
I certainly hope it is not because Coughlin is a Republican, because we recently published cover stories on democrats including Marc Dann and Bill Mason, which were just as hard-hitting.
I want to be clear that Scene”s editor Frank Lewis and Publisher Matt Fabyan tried very hard over the past few days to save my job. This was not their decision. [Times Shammrock CEO Matt] Haggerty was unrelenting. “It”s a bell that cannot be unrung” he said. It”s a shame we did not know Times Shamrock lacked courage before Fabyan brought them in on the merger. I fear for the future of that paper.
You can read the story Times Shamrock CEO Matt Haggerty was afraid to publish at Blogger Interrupted.
Via Daily Dish, which also linked to Julian Sanchez’s excellent discussion of agrumentative fallacies yesterday.
The defense establishment and its boss, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, act as though they represent some organization not part of the Israeli economy. The economic crisis doesn’t interest them and they continue to demand bigger budgets; this year’s will be the largest ever.
In the West, 1 to 3 percent of gross domestic product is allocated to defense. In Israel this number is more than 10 percent. In 2009, Olmert’s government allotted NIS 48.8 billion to defense, but shortly afterward, Barak managed to get another NIS 1.3 billion from the prime minister.
Now the defense establishment claims Barak received NIS 3 billion in guarantees, and another NIS 2.45 billion will cover Operation Cast Lead. In all, Israel will spend no less than NIS 55.55 billion on defense, or NIS 66.55 billion including the NIS 11 billion in U.S. aid. But the army wants more. A request for another NIS 3 billion to NIS 4 billion is in the pipeline.
We must admit that this society has rather dark religious aspects. Foreigners landing in Israel might ask themselves what country they’re in: Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia? In any case, it’s not the liberal, secular and enlightened society it purports to be. Thieves’ hands do not have to be hacked off or women’s faces covered to be a religious country.
Just as an occupying state, which controls 3.5 million people lacking basic civil rights, cannot call itself “the only democracy in the Middle East,” so a country that has no bread for a week because of its religion cannot call itself secular and liberal.
Actually, there has been increased openness in recent years. More entertainment venues and supermarkets are open on Saturday in some of our cities than ever before, like before the Heichal movie theater riots in Petah Tikva. The dead can finally be buried in a civil ceremony in exchange for a fistful of shekels.
But that’s not enough to be able to call ourselves a secular society. We must not delude ourselves: From the cradle to the grave, from marriage to divorce, almost everything is still religious.
It makes me crazy when good writers get stupid.
Take Anne LeClaire for instance. I first read about LeClaire’s book Listening Below The Noise, A Meditation On The Practice Of Silence on my friend Johh Ettorre’s Working With Words back on 27 February.
(John hasn’t posted — although he continues to respond to comments — since writing about LeClaire’s book. I suspect he may have given up blogging for Lent, a concept I whole heartedly applaud.)
Because I trust John’s literary radar, and because this is a topic I have some interest in, I ordered LeClaire’s book from the library and read it. I found 99 percent of it to be thoughtful, insightful and enjoyable.
But the 1 percent of bullshit ruined it for me.
Why?
Because when I read I look to educate myself about that which I am ignorant. But when I spot bullshit touted as fact it inevitably leads to me question the information of which I know nothing. For me it’s like an author taking a dump on their own manuscript and then delighting in the ignorant reader packing it in with a large spoon.
So, what set off my bullshit meter?
First, there was this bit on page 28:
One summer while I was teaching a creative writing workshop in Kenmare, Ireland, I learned an Irish phrase, tuning the five-string harp., which means opening the five senses and bringing them into alignment so they work in consonance.
That may be true. I checked with an Irish friend who makes regular trip back home to see if they were aware of the phrase. They weren’t. Granted, that’s not a representative sample and the phrase may indeed be true. But the new-agey artificialness of it still set my teeth on edge.
But when I got to page 64, I knew I was dealing with bullshit.
I once read that the Inuit and Igoolik have more than two hundred words for snow, and I envy them a language that can encompass that many subtleties of a single idea.
This is one of those urban legendesque facts that has been repeated (and embellished) so many times that people just assume it’s true. It’s not. Anyone doing a minimum of research quickly discovers this. That LeClaire didn’t bother (or that her editor didn’t fact check the manuscript) is a mark against her.
After reading page 109, I was no longer willing to give LeClaire the benefit of doubt or just subscribe her factual slip to laziness because there she cites a bit of scammery with no basis in reality.
There is a book called The Hidden Message Of Water by the Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto. When Dr. Emoto began experimenting with photographing ice crystals, he found that when the water be used for the experiments was exposed to words like love and gratitude and wisdom, it formed stunningly beautiful crystals. But when it was subjected to words like hate and You’re ugly, the crystals became dark, malformed and fragmented.
The quack Emoto became infamous after he was quoted in the silly movie, What the Bleep? There is nothing factual about Emoto’s findings. He made them up. Pure and simple. I imagine he took the idea that snowflakes are different, added a bit about positive and negative thoughts, stirred the mess with a large ladle worth of P.T. Barnum and set out to make a fortune from people who knew no better.
These three made me question this bit on page 115 that I thought was sensible and a good way of thinking, a kind of Sufi take on the Jewish concept of L’shon Hara.
The Sufis say that, if we are to speak well, our words must pass three gates. At the first gate we ask: are these words true? A the second: are they necessary? At the third: are they kind?
Do the Sufis say that? I don’t know. A check on Google found no primary sources and a pass through my Sufi texts also failed to find this saying. That doesn’t make it false, but now that I know that LeClaire is capable of bullshit, I’m less inclined to grant her a pass.
Two more places in the book that pegged my bullshit meter came on pages 146 and 165.
On the former LeClaire cites the frog-in-the-pot myth and on the latter she claims to have seen:
A blue box kite appeared overhead, it’s long tail trailing out like calligraphy inked on the sky
Box kites don’t have tails, although I suppose it is possible for someone ignorant of this to attack a useless tail to one.
Lest you think I’m all in LeClaire’s face this morning, here is her final list of suggestions for putting some silence back in your life, something I firmly believe we all need.
A few suggestions:
On the commute to work or while running errands, turn off the car radio.
When performing a routine chore –folding laundry, washing dishes, straightening a room, weeding the garden — make it a habit to do the task in silence.
When a task is completed, sit in restful awareness for several minutes before running to the next chore on the list.
After finishing a telephone conversation, sit quietly for a minute or two. Breathe.
Take a long walk without earbuds pouring noise into your head.
Proclaim one day a month, or one morning a month, a time of nonspeech. If an entire day or a half day feels too impossible, try an hour. Like a child learning to swim, wade in the waters of silence before swimming out.
Break the habit of automatically turning on the radio or television when you walk into a room.
Take the television our of your bedroom.
Unplug the phone or turn off the ringer.
Take a sabbatical from email.
When you are part of a group, experiment with just listening to the others converse, staying silent yourself. Observe your own inner dialogue.
There are, too, small gaps in our daily rounds where we can carve our moments of silence:
Waiting in line, in doctors’ offices, in the car, sit without activity or without talking.
Have a meal alone. Without distractions. Without a book or magazine.
Arrange a vacation alone. A weekend or a week. Spend part of the time without talking, checking email or text messaging.
Enroll for a weekend at a retreat where silence is practiced.
Wake an hour early and spend that hour in deliberate stillness.
End the day in silence, an hour that will bring you back to yourself.
Awaken to your senses.
Set aside a formal silence time for your family.
Go to a place in nature and experience the peace. Walk along the seashore, take a mountain hike. In the movie The Bucket List, the two characters attempt a trek to the top of Mount Everest and one them starts talking about how peacefully silent the summit is: how if you are quiet enough, you can hear the mountain.
Take five minutes and close your eyes, wherever you are.
Watch birds. Look at trees.
Watch the primrose or morning glory open. Be in awe.
For one day, do things manually. Rake leaves instead of using a blower. Wash dishes by hand. Hang clothes rather use the dryer.
Stroke the cat.
Keep a gratitude bowl of quotes about silence. Pick out one to meditate on for a day.
Like a candle. Notice the moment when the fire meets the wick.
Find a labyrinth to walk.
Select a place of worship to visit in the middle of the day and sit for fifteen minutes.
Go to the cemetery and clean the moss off your family’s stone.
Pack a picnic for one and lunch at a park or a garden where you have never been.
Now shhh.
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