short notes:<br> will brady's ruminations: 2005/03/06

short notes:
will brady's ruminations

2005-03-10

WINTER WEATHER

PIX CREDITS: Connie Michaud

Northern Maine poudrerie

Connie reports that there was 29" [73.6 cm] of snow in Fort Kent last weekend | They are still digging out... and just in time for this next snow storm |

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BIG PHARMA

PIX CREDITS: Consumers' Union

Click on the image for the latest miracle drug available
to the unsuspecting public

and Fight those bad old Generics!
Big Pharma needs your money so their corporate executives can live in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed | Or, if you live in New London, Connecticut [like Pfizer does] so you can behind the scenes work with corrupt politicans to steal private residential properties via Eminent Domain

TALKING THROUGH THEIR HATS: Pfizer Corp's website says, of its committment to community: "Our commitment to being an exemplary corporate citizen is reflected in our extensive efforts to improve access to healthcare, the core focus of our philanthropic initiatives. Through our support of both local and global initiatives, and by the generosity and compassion of our employees, we strive to make every country and community in which we operate a better place to live and work." Unless, that is, you happen to be a small, residential property holder living in a multi-generation owned house that might not be congruent with Pfizer Research Division's vision of what a "...better place to live" ought to be | SCOTUS is suppoed to weigh in on this important land grab case by June 2005 |

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CONSTRUCTION | RECYCLING

Building a new wood shed | Don't know why I hadn't thought of this | John and Sharon live in Summerville, Nova Scotia | If you heat with wood [and they do] a place where you had better plan for next year's fuel source this time of year | This mean's having a place to store it, protected from winter's

snow and ice build-up | They've found an ingenious and inexpensive way to do this, using the ubiquitous wood pallet and a bit of their own time |
They've also provided an easy to use, step-by-step guide on how to build pallet sheds | First they gather the pallets, modify them as shown in the picture sequence to the left, and build them in what configuration they wish |
When completed, it's an elegant solution to a variety of problems; they've saved space at the town dump [oops! That's Landfill Site, apologies to all the "post-consumer recycling technicians" out there] At any rate, Using wood pallets has many advantages, including that pallets are themselves made of dense hardwoods and hence slow to rot | The construction technique allows for plenty of air passage keeping the wood dry, but slowing down the rot process of the firewood being stored | Using a little extra effort, one can make a simple board and batten style structure that appeals to the more refined neighbors as well |

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OTHERS' ART

Nick Santoro has an exhibition of his work at the Azoth / York Square Gallery in New Haven | Better known for his work as a sculptor, this show is comprised on photographs of the materials he uses to produce his sculptures |

"I hope the elemental beauty of stone and by extension some of the ineffable joy I've experienced working it daily reaches out from these 2D images. I've derived great satisfaction over the years looking at, touching, and sculpting all kinds of natural, cut and uniquely shaped stones. This calling has been a direct, tactile, demanding, mysterious, and noble pursuit."

The York Square Gallery is located in the York Square Cinema, 61 Broadway, New Haven, Connecticut, USA | Santoro's display is on exhibit until 22 March 2005 | Gallery Hours: Saturday, Sunday, & Wednesday: 1 to 10 PM | Daily: 5 to 10 PM (Admission free to view exhibit.) |

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2005-03-08

NEWS BLIPS

Peak Oil | Truthout writes an opinion piece on the belief "...that global consumption of oil is surpassing not only the amount of oil being pulled from the ground, not only the amount of oil left to be found, but is also surpassing the ability of technology to compensate for what he sees as an inevitable and looming shortfall." | FROM YAHOO"S Renewable Energy Discussion Group

Taxation without Representation | The World Bank is conducting a search for a new President | Will you have a say in this? | I doubt it | FROM Alternet

Sun's Temper Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
By Robert Roy Britt | The thinning of the Arctic ozone layer continues, owing in part to cold temperatures in the stratosphere, according to a separate recent study that suggests a northern hole could develop as a twin to the southern one | FROM Live Science

"They were speeding so we shot them!" | Was the killing of an Italian negotiator and the injury of a Lefty woman journalist a sinister act to silence a critical voice? Or was the National Guard unit on duty merely incompetent, and bad shots at that? | Dubya says an investigation is warranted | We maynever know the truth | FROM Steve Gilliard's News Blog

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2005-03-07

CASTE SYSTEMS

Poor, White and Pissed, A Guide to the White Trash Planet for Urban Liberals by Joe Bageant at Dissident Voice is an essay well worth reading | Forget about high-brow ponitfications from affluent lefties excoriating WalMart while buying their IAMS pet food there on sale | This is the real thing |
     Bagent is one of the few I've read since Studs Terkel who speaks as if he actually knows working class folks | More of us need to speak directly about the read concerns and fears of ordinary people |
     And we can't afford to wait until the bottom falls out of the market | Hell, the market's bottom fell out long ago if you just learned that the state won't fund your kids' health care because they are cutting HUSKY funds [we're not even thinking about adult heath care needs] or the fact that, as a newly disabled veteran home from Iraq that you'll have to pay $250 per year to get VA medical care and that your smartest kid can't be the first to go to college since the Pell Grants have been cut, the hypothetical status of the Market's Butt is inconsequential |
     Gee Molly, we haven't even talked about the idea that it's the RENT on the double-wide we can't afford, to hell with talk about mortgage rates being anywhere near prime | Then again, there's the 29% ursury fee that banks graciously call "interest" that one pays on the credit card used to pay for stuff to run the househould |
     Simply put, the tree-hugging soccer mom in her SUV, along with the hubby busy maneouvering his Social-Conscience Stock Portfolio to help finance the time share in Cancun, do not have a clue how the much larger proportionate half of the population lives, yet they have the potential clout to do something about it beyond wringing their hands while listening to Silvia Porgoley carefully cite foreign news bits on NPR |
     No, the folks who shy away from taking BushCheney to task for whining about class wars are, sometimes, too close to the same caste as Dick and Dubya anyway | They don't want their sacred cows gored | And they don't socialize with the riff raff either |
     Howard Dean has a point | The Dems are way past due for beginning to talk to the great unwashed | Maybe too far past due |
     I only hope not |

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2005-03-06

CONTROVERSY | FREE SPEECH

Freedom of Speech is not just hearing the things we find comforting | You may not agree with him, but as a thinking individual, it is vital you hear what he actually has to say, not what his detractors want you to think he said |
     University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, who made comment that the events of Spetember 11, 2001, was an event that resulted in this era's spiritual descendants of Adolf Eichmann ~ profit managers and policy bureaucrats ~ being eliminated in one fell swoop | By analogy, he was saying that "...the technical corps of [financial] Empire..." were summarily executed |      He was not endorsing mass murder | He was arguing that there was a purpose behind the attacks on the twin towers | It was not, as pundits are fond of parroting, a "senseless" action | No,it was an intentional attack against the corporate elite who run the economic interests of the United States and of global capitalism |
     For being honest in his speaking his perspective, pundits and politicians who have their own agenda to promote, are now calling for him to be fired from his job, to have his views censored, to be added to this decade's McCarthyite Blacklist |
     When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case of "chickens coming home to roost."
     What was it that keeps the 9/11 attack from being "Senseless"? | If anyone were actually listening, Prof. Churchill noted that in press reseases issued days after the attack by Al Qaeda, the action was ~ most immediately, tha cts of desparate people against a power they felt incapable of listening in any conventional manner | Al Qaeda was explicit in making the gesture a symbolic [albeit bloody] response to the murder of 12 Palestinian children |
     The response in the mainstream media, amongst right-wing pundits, and pro-Iraqi war politicians and bureaucrats, was to first accuse [inaccurately] that Professor Churchill was advocating terrorism, and then to demand he be dismissed and next silenced |
     He has been interviewed with American Indian activist Russell Means, both speaking carefully and thoughtfully about Professor Churchill's controversial speech | Hear what Ward Churchill has to say | Dark Night Press also has a number of links to Professor Churchill's comments |

THANKS TO: Free Speech TV for the courage to give Professor Churchill voice | Ward Churchill's essay is also reprinted [as it were] online |

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ARCHITECTURE