My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

The Clearest Joy

The clearest joy
is the ceasing of great pain.

From Living In The Open, Poems Of The Early Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Persimmon Tree by Midnight Movies on WOXY.

On Friday, 14 July, Pee Dee tech writer Henry Gomez moved on. In his closing Tech Link blog post Henry wrote about his promotion: This doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore technology. Breaking news will be covered, for now on a by-committee basis. Since then there have been a total of zero posts. Guess nothing’s breaking in Cleveland. Yawn.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

2046 All that Hair Gel tossed for Nothing…
2013 How much time exists between…?
2003 Lamont voters switching to Lieberman
1054 U.N. Resolution 1701: Would you sign this?
0812 Catch-22 for Jewish Democrats

My Soundtrack: Jungle Trail by The Roman on WOXY.

What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

From Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Women Of Letters

When we had finished typing, we too got drunk
and still there were more boxes carried up
in the morning, boxes singing
like mad linnets of pain”s needle.

From The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, Poems Of The Middle Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Hang Wire by Pixies on WOXY.

Peddlers have fine tuned their message and method since their days of pushing a cart through the streets calling Rags! or Apples! But just as Gerber had a problem in the ’60s when it tried to enter markets in Africa (think, what picture is on a can of tomatoes or peaches?) so too can peddlers’ efforts go wrong here.

The new Supermarket near our house has an automatic water meter to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of a thunderstorm and the smell of fresh rain.

When you approach the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and witness the scent of fresh butter fat.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cackle and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of eggs frying.

So far I have been too afraid to go down the toilet paper aisle.

From my dad, of course.

My Soundtrack: Thunder Road by Tortoise/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

The New Novel

the best part of me
locked in those
strange paper boxes.

From The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, Poems Of The Middle Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Enuff by DJ Shadow on WOXY.

I admit, I’m not as reasonable and even toned as she who Writes Like She Talks. But then I’m not the mother of three children. I don’t have to watch my mouth so closely. Jill posted this morning about her experience with garage sales in Pepper Pike and I wanted to blow a gasket. What’s so important about a garage sale? Just keep reading:

Here’s what happened:

In the spring of 2005, we wanted to have a garage sale. Pepper Pike rules stated that you can’t have it on Sundays.

We are Jewish. We observe Friday night Shabbat and my husband and kids go to services all morning on Saturdays. We’re not shomer shabbas (with the skullcap on all the time), we don’t keep kosher, we’re not Green Road observant or anything close. We light candles, say prayers and go to services.

So, first two issues: 1. We really do not want to have the sale on Saturday. It (conducting business in particular, but many other Shabbat related prohibitions) goes against what we normally do on that day. 2. There’s no time to set up for a Saturday sale because my husband works all week, we have Shabbat Friday night, and he’s in synagogue until about 12:15pm on Saturday.

As usual, the entire piece is superbly crafted and makes a much bigger point than the one I’m focusing on here.

And Robert Goldberg? He still doesn’t have anything to apologize for.

My Soundtrack: Sing Me Spanish Techno by The New Pornographers on WOXY.

Aish Ha Torah is a conservative religious educational organization responsible, in part, for many of the settlers on the West Bank. I’ve studied with its rabbis and, while sometimes disagreeing with them, found them intelligent and unusually reasonable. This two-minute video clearly makes the case against several more of the myths lies.

The ice that covers Greenland is melting. A lot. And it’s melting at a faster than previously estimated. There is enough fresh water locked up in the Greenland ice sheet to stall the Gulf Stream by changing the salinity levels and create catastropic weather changes in North America and Europe.

And coastlines? There’s enough water there to raise sea level 21 feet.

From the BBC:

Most of the ice is being lost from eastern Greenland, a US team writes in Science journal.

Jianli Chen of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues studied monthly changes in the Earth’s gravity between April 2002 and November 2005.

These measurements came from the US space agency’s Grace (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite, launched in 2002.

Acceleration of mass loss over Greenland, if confirmed, would be consistent with proposed increased global warming in recent years Dr Chen and colleagues

From these data, they were able to estimate changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet.

A number of factors contribute to fluctuations in the Earth’s gravity field.

But once the influence of the atmosphere and the oceans is removed, the variations mostly reflect changes in the mass of ice sheets and of water stored in the ground.

Estimated monthly changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year.

This figure is about three times higher than an earlier estimate of the mass loss from Greenland made using the first two years of Grace measurements.

My Soundtrack: In Soviet Union by Serious Weapon on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

What Is Permitted

… My friend, of course
I will dance with you, how beautiful
that so much is permitted
when so much is feared.

From The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, Poems Of The Middle Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Vapour Trail by Ride on WOXY.

Listen to John Edwards and President Jimmy Carter discuss
the former president’s book: Our Endangered Values.
From the One America Committee. Hat tip to the Guerrilla Vlogger.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1611 This could be a problem

My Soundtrack: Deus Ibi Est by Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan on WOXY.

Everybody. Listen up. Get over yourselves. It’s not about you. It’s not even about you and your friends. We have a country to run here folks. And if we don’t pay attention, we take it up the feckin’ arse. I know that not everyone can pay attention to every aspect of government, but we need to atleast give riding the beast a shot.

We need to stop being so focused on single issues that when the issue is settled we dust off our hands and go back to American Idol. From this morning’s New York Times:

Even with all the attention devoted to Connecticut”s Democratic primary, in which Ned Lamont upset Senator Joseph Lieberman, turnout was an anemic 43 percent. It was arguably the most important race in the nation and not even half of registered Democrats bothered to vote. This group in turn made up barely 15 percent of the voting-age population of the state.

The unhappy effects of low turnout are clear: ever-greater polarization in the country and in Washington, which in turn has led to ever-more rancor and ever-less legislative progress.

Here”s why. With participation rates of about 10 percent or less of the eligible electorate in many primaries to 35 percent or so in midterm general elections to 50 percent or 60 percent in presidential contests, the name of the game for parties is turnout – and the key to success is turning out one”s ideological base. Whichever party does a better job getting its base to the polls reaps the rewards of majority status.

And what”s the best way to get your base to show up at the polls? Focus on divisive issues that underscore the differences between the parties.

Not surprisingly, the partisan divide keeps increasing. Just look at Tuesday”s results: Mr. Lieberman, a centrist, was unseated by Mr. Lamont, a darling of the left; in Michigan, Joe Schwarz, a moderate Republican congressman, was beaten by Tim Walberg, a bedrock conservative. It”s no wonder that when Republicans and Democrats finally arrive in Washington, there”s little incentive for them to do the nation”s business.

Pay attention to those numbers folks.

I’m having difficulty finding the raw (actual vote tallies) numbers for the primary, but I did find one news story that said Lieberman lost by 10,000 votes which translates into 1 percentage point equals 2,500 votes cast.

Lamont”s total (52 percent) becomes 130,000 (126,924 according to the Secretary of State’s Office)and Lieberman’s total (48 percent) becomes 120,000 (114,494). That means that a quarter million voters turned out on Tuesday. If that voter turn out represent 43 percent of the registered Democrats, that means that 331,400 Democrats stayed home.

[Update — 1005, Jill provided me the link to the Secretary of State’s page (Duh! Why didn’t I think of that) for the actual vote tallie. My estimates were close enough that I’m not going to redo the numbers. Feel free to do so yourself.]

I recognize that the numbers are skewed by Republicans and Independents who voted as Democrats in the primary, but I can’t find numbers for them yet.

Taking Ornstein”s numbers one more step, he writes that the 250,000 voters represent only 15 percent of the voting age population of the state. That works out to 1 percent equals approximately 17,000 (16,667) voters or a total voter population of 1.7 million.

Even if we randomly decide that the split of registered voters is 45 percent Democrat (581,400 voters), 45 percent Republican (581,400 voters) and 10 percent Independent (129,200 voters) in the state, that gives us a total registered vote population of 1,292,000. That leaves nearly half a million (408,000) voters, or 24 percent, not even registered.

I’ve made a number of assumptions here that could be wrong, but in the absence of precise figures these are the numbers that I come up with and they’re disgusting.

Why would 1-in-4 citizens of Connecticut (and I have no reason to believe this is not true in every other state) not even bother to register to vote?

There was a time, not so long ago, that people died in this country for the right to exercise the franchise.

We really do deserve the government we get.

My Soundtrack: Sour Shores by Portastatic on WOXY.

I was actually around for a good part of the beginnings of the Internet (NTDS, 1976; CompuServe, 1980; Prodigy, 1985 and APK, 1992). I remember crawling along at 300 feckin’ baud. So, I get a laugh out of pieces like this that seem to make out that it was all about the Silicone Valley bubble. Those guys need to get over themselves.

The True Origin of the Internet

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com. And she said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why doth thou travel afar, from town to town, with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?”

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddlebags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, dear?”

And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).”

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success.

Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.

But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abraham’s drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young men did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drum sticks. And Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.”

And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known “eBay” he said, “We need a name that reflects what we are.”

And Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.”

“YAHOO,” said Abraham. And that is how it all began. It wasn’t Al Gore after all.

Thanks to my dad for sending this my way. And for the record, Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. It’s just an cyberlegend that can’t be killed.

My Soundtrack: The Compromise by The Format on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Ask Me For Anything Else

Watson has patience and muddy
boots, not Holmes with his
cocaine needle. Old dogs
snore their patience.
Cats pace. Big cats
cut patience from the herd
and run it down panting
for hot breakfast.

[snip]

I am empty with wanting,
not like a box
but like a tiger”s belly.

From The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, Poems Of The Middle Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Ambulance Drive by Bunny on WOXY.

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.

THE GLORIOUS RED REVOLUTION… The irony of this is mind boogling. Wal Mart has successfully fought off unionization of its workers in the United States, Canada (where it closed the store when it looked like the unionizers might be successful) and in Europe. Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring Heartlesszero. Keep reading…

WAL MART SEEKS SECRET TALKS IN CHINA… The idea of a union, any union, scares the bejesus out of the Bentonvile Behemoth”s executives. So much so, accrording to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, Wal Mart wants to hold talks with no media presence. Wonder what they want to hide? I don”t. Keep reading…

WAL MART GETTING FUELISH…? There are some five million duel-fuel vehicles – cars and trucks that can run on either gasoline or E85 – on American roads. E85 is a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Automakers want to double their production of such vehicles to two million per year. Keep reading…

ON THE ROAD, DAY 10… 19 States, 35 Cities, 35 Days, 1 Mission. That”s the slogan riders on the bus nicknamed Smiley are traveling under from The Bronx to Seattle. Wake Up Wal Mart is sponsoring the journey of over-caffeinated Americans on one really big bus. Keep reading…

ON THE ROAD… Be sure to check out the whole trip. Keep reading…

My Soundtrack: Worry About It Later by The Futureheads on WOXY.

There are 14 Ohio class SSBN’s (submarines carrying Trident nuclear Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles). Each submarine is capable of launching 24 Trident II missiles. Each missile has up to eight independently targetable thermonuclear warheads, each with a destructive force of an estimated 475 kilotons (475,000 metric tons) of TNT.

Combined the fleet has as destructive force of 851.2 megatons (851,200,000 metric tons) of TNT.

For comparison purposes, Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was an aproximatley 13 kiloton weapon and Fat Boy, the bomb dropped on Nagasakai, was an approximately 20 kiloton weapon. The Ohio class SSBN’s then have a throw weight equivalent to 42,560 Fat Boys.

In the military reality of 21st century. where likely targets are terrorist camps and not entire nations, that is an unbelievable amount of overkill. And the Navy knows it.

That’s why the Navy wants to convert several of the Ohio class boats (submarines are called boats, not ships, regardless of their huge size) to carry conventional weapons so that Trident missiles can be used against those terrorist camps.

I can’t think of a worse idea.

The first and foremost reason, and the reason that some in Congress have latched onto, every nuclear power in the world knows what the signature of a Trident II missile looks like. And you can’t tell from the signature what kind of warhead it’s carrying. Does the United States want to even flirt with the idea of launching a conventionally armed Trident IIs and have everybody in the world take its word that it’s not a nuke?

The second reason is that cruise missiles and smart bombs do a much better job of hitting small targets that can flit about. And there a damn site cheaper. A single Trident II D-5, without warhead, costs a cool $31 million, just about the cost of nice shiney new F-18 Hornet.

And you get to use the Hornet more than once.

My Soundtrack: Incinerate by Sonic Youth on WOXY.

Voters made changes in the Kansas State Board of Education that have put the states schools back on the road to sanity after Christianists were removed from the board. The Christianist dominatd board had pushed through an irrational, superstition-based educational agenda last year.

Board Chairman Steve Abrams, who was the architect of the change, remains in office but will no longer enjoy a 6-4 majority.

From The Associated Press:

Moderates who will control the state Board of Education next year say it’s only a matter of time before they unravel the work of conservatives who had pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools.

“I imagine everybody is anxious to get the science standards changed back to the mainstream,” Democratic member Bill Wagnon said Tuesday.

[Snip]

Board Chairman Steve Abrams said he was disappointed with the switch but nevertheless plans to push his conservative agenda with the new board next year.

Perhaps Abrams should apply for a job at Pastor Becky Fischer’s Jesus Camp.

My Soundtrack: Hot Sluts by Robbers On High Street on WOXY.