I’m actually pretty pro-nuclear energy, having lived next to (less than 40 feet away) two nuclear reactors and 16 nuclear-armed missiles for four years on board the USS Bainbridge (CGN 25), but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the very real hazads.

Artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger has found a way to make those hazards startling.

I collected Heteroptera leaf bugs and Cicada Homoptera around the Three Mile Island plant, in Governor”s Stable, Goldsboro, New Cumberland, Swatara, Oberlin, Londonderry and Royalton. I found the worst deformities five miles away from the Three Mile Island plant.

Sometimes Matt Groening’s three-eyed fish is all too real.

This is what Robert Reich had to say:

The best thing to have occurred during the Bush administration is something that did not happen. We did not privatize Social Security.

Had we done so, boomers facing retirement over the next few years would be even worse off than they are today. Now they”re struggling with pension plans worth less than they counted on, and home values that are tanking. At least they can rely on a monthly Social Security check.

But had we privatized, they”d be totally reliant on the stock market. And look what”s happened to the market: Compared to stock values ten years ago, the S&P 500 has risen a little over 1 percent a year, adjusted for inflation. Even Treasury bonds have done better. Go back nine years and there”s been no gain at all. Go back eight years and the market has been off an average of 1.4 percent a year.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

We are born to work, to make and do things. The businessman in Cancun is understandably as miserable as a Border collie trapped in a Manhattan apartment, dreaming of chasing sheep. p. 58

From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain. by Alice W. Flaherty.

Today has been a day of rest so no decluttering, but I’m re-reading Leo Babauta’s zenhabits and thought I’d share with you the core posts that I’m focusing my attention on in this journey out from Egypt.

First, in honor of Michael’s nod to this series, I thought I’d add an additional bit about why my Passover journey is appropriate. In Hebrew, the word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which translate as narrow place. It makes sense since ancient Egypt was essentially a narrow strip of land along the banks of the Nile River.

Getting out of slavery is to escape the narrow, restricted place. And as I look around my apartment to imagine all the space I’m going to widening, that’s exactly how it feels.

The posts from zenhabits that I’ve got permanently open on FoxFire tabs are: The Minimalist”s Guide to Fighting (and Beating) Clutter Entropy; A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home; The Minimalist”s Guide to Simple Housework and 13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits.

I’m in wonder at the cumulative effects of all this. I still haven’t turned on a radio and I find myself just staring at the little islands of uncluttered I’ve created.

It’s a good feeling.

As this advertisement from the New Light Of Myanmar above illustrates, the generals in Myanmar are pushing hard to accomplish two contradictory tasks: to convince the world that it is holding a free and open referendum on their sham constitution and to control the vote so that they’re not embarrassed as they were in 1990.

From AFP:

Myanmar’s junta has barred domestic media from reporting on opposition to next month’s referendum on a new constitution, media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said Thursday.

RSF and the Burma Media Association said they were “outraged” by the methods used by the junta to prevent reporting on opposition to the charter, which pro-democracy activists say will allow the generals to entrench their rule.

“The military government is stopping at nothing to rig a referendum that looks as though it is going to be a sham rather than a free and transparent election,” the two organisations said in a joint statement. Continue Reading »

1414 We were all beautiful and tragic once…

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Earth: The Sequel-The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog brain bump I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

While strong intrinsic motivation increases creativity, surprisingly, adding extrinsic motivations – even positive ones – can actually decrease creativity…. Reward may encourage the writer to stop work as soon as he or she has completed the minimal amount necessary for the reward, resulting in what the economist Herbert Simon calls satisficing. Extrinsic motivation may also have a negative effect on creativity by distracting the subject”s attention from the task to thoughts of reward and punishment. p. 55

From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain. by Alice W. Flaherty.

I know that the British are our staunchest allies (mostly because we pulled saved their butts twice in the last century), but every time I look at its former colonies, mandates, protectorates and possessions, I have to wonder could they have created a bigger geo-political nightmare if they’d tried?

From the Asian Tribune:

When exploring the probable solution for the Union of Burma”s problems, any analysis based exclusively on the present political development is inconclusive. Burma has never been an ethnically and politically unified country since independence from the British in January 1948.

The history of Union of Burma starts at Panglong in southern Shan state on February 12, 1947, when 23 representatives from the Burman government, Chin hills, Kachin hills and Shan states signed an agreement in the presence of representatives from the Executive Council of the governor of Burma, to form an interim government.

Prior to the birth of Union Day, all ethnic nationalities were separate entities, and therefore, there was no question of minority or majority issues. Even today, ethnic nationalities of the seven states are majority in their respective states.

The successive Burman-dominated military regimes have been using Burmanization policy and forced assimilation to marginalize other ethnic groups. The concept of minority-majority is a deliberate move by the military to undermine the non-Burman ethnic nationalities. Continue Reading »

Getting up this morning felt really good. I can feel the energy returning as I reduce the clutter that has drained me for so many months.

I have a good friend who objects to the pejorative use of the phrases, that sucks!, and you suck! because of their association with oral sex, an intimate act she considers not only pleasurable but also affectionate and positive. And many people use those, and similar terms, in that vein.

But when I think of anything sucking, I have this vision of a black hole draining all the energy of the space near it; when someone (or something) sucks, it drags the very joy from the air.

That’s what my clutter has been doing.

This morning I stacked more books and picked up paper strays all over my apartment. Some people have dust bunnies, I have paper gophers. I also liberated another horizontal surface: the counter top to the right of my kitchen sink.

This process of decluttering has a dark side, it’s making me think of more stuff I should buy to help me deal with my stuff (I call this the Real Simple syndrome. There is a special place in hell for the marketing person who thought of the idea for a magazine to sell people more stuff to simplify their lives). I’ve already bought hard drive cases. And upon reflection, that was a good purchase.

However, there are already two more items I’m thinking about (a laptop lunch box and some kind of storages system that will hold my albums, cassette tapes and CDs in one unit) to which I’m going to apply my version of Leo’s 30-day rule. I’m not going to make either purchase for the next 28 days. If after that time I still think they’re good purchase ideas, I’ll place the orders.

Until then, maybe I’ll create a want book.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is S & M and tea.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog brain bump I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

…of about 250 Western composers, three alone – Mozart, Beethoven and Bach – are responsible for almost one-fifth of the standard repertoire. p. 53

From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain. by Alice W. Flaherty.

Today I filled 14 banker boxes, removed one horizontal surface and liberated three others; placing them under the New Rule Regime. I also found time to order four external hard drive boxes for the stack of hard drives I have from previous lap tops.

The boxes look to be a good deal and with four drives to play with (plus my present installed drive) I’ll finally be able to configure the totally anal backup system I’ve been dreaming about. Yes I do regular backups, but I want to create a system of backups and archives that will allow we to better organize my data.

The horizontal surface that I eliminated was my French easel. It had been sitting, legs extended and the surface flat, next to my CD rack with art supplies and other clutter stacked on top. Now that’s gone, never to return.

The surfaces liberated included the stove top and the counter next to it. Only my frying pan, omelet pan and my salt and pepper shakers are allowed on my stove top now. The biggest clutter zone in my kitchen is the top of the refrigerator. But that will come later, after I’ve reduced the 14 boxes to seven.

The one category of clutter that I did not pack into the banker boxes is books. They are now stacked to the right of my bench (the boxes are to the left) and by rough eye-ball calculation, there is at least 13 feet of books there.

In my apartment I have a 17-foot long, floor-to-ceiling, seven shelf, bookshelf on my West wall. To accommodate all of the books I would have to clear nearly an entire shelf. That isn’t going to happen.

I’ve decided to adopt a modification of Leo Babauta’s one-in, two-out rule. For every book in that stack that I decide to keep, two other books have to go into the Bookcrossing pile.

As I work my way through the boxes I’ll be using a three-sort — toss/recycle, act or file — process. I’m fortunate in that I do have a four drawer file cabinet I bought when I created Hyphen-ated Communications in the early ’90s. I picked it up used for $10. It’s one of the best purchased I ever made. All of the papers that don’t get tossed/recycled will go that route.

The act part is more difficult. There, again, I’ll have three choices: first, I can put an item where it belongs, if it already has a home; second, I can drop an item in to another box to be part of the 2:1 reduction; or third, I can plop it on the table, take a picture and put it into the rummage sale box.

Molly let me know a couple of days ago that a friend of hers was planning on taking part in a block-club rummage/garage/sidewalk sale. I’m not sure exactly what is involved, but I imagine the sale involves neighbors along a street setting up tables on the same Saturday to clean out their own clutter.

Who knows, I might actually make some beer money.

As voting on the general’s sham constitution has already started in Myanmar’s embassies around the world, the United States is pushing for even stiffer United Nation’s sanctions on the generals and their cronies. The question has to be: is it possible to turn up the heat before the 10 May vote?

From Reuters:

The United States on Wednesday circulated a new and tougher draft statement to the U.N. Security Council scolding Myanmar for ignoring U.N. demands to free prisoners and deal fairly with the opposition.

Washington hopes the U.N. Security Council will unanimously agree to issue the non-binding statement very soon, so that Myanmar’s military junta can reflect on its message before a key constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10.

A draft of the statement, obtained by Reuters, says it regrets slow progress by the junta in meeting previous council demands for political dialogue and release of political prisoners and calls for planned elections to be open to all candidates.

The draft was similar to an earlier version circulated two weeks ago, though it included tougher language in at least one key section — telling Myanmar that it expects the council’s demands to be met “on an urgent basis”. Continue Reading »

1544 Creative Liberty In The Studio With…me

1111 89%? WTF?

0903 Hate speech met w/more speech equals university action

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Navy officer testifies she worked for ‘D.C. Madam.’