Whole Wheat Radio Wiki From Talkeetna, Alaska

Palin's Historical Ignorance

(author unknown) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:30:46 -0500

You have to love this vapid answer to a question about the pledge of allegiance during Palin's campaign for governor:

11. Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?
SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Uh, Sarah....the pledge of allegiance has absolutely nothing to do with the founding fathers. It was written decades after they all died. And "under God" was not added to the pledge until 1954. This ranks up there with the Texas politician who said, "If English was good enough for our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me."

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Labor Pains

Walter Brasch — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:02:05 -0500

Once a year, I and a few dozen other reporters and columnists write a Labor Day story. And, like most Americans we don’t remember our history.

We don’t remember that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.

Almost none of us will write about the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant “angel of the coal fields” for more than six decades. About “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition to fight for the rights of all labor. About cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years.

We won’t be seeing any stories about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the workweek to 48 hours, from the standard 54–60 hours, and then helped create the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration. Missing will be remembrances of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), known as the “father of grassroots political campaigns” who worked alongside Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) who used Alinsky’s tactics to organize the United Farm Workers.

Hardly any of us remember Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation’s best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to create The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. Most reporters never heard about him or the history of the Guild. After all, we may believe that unions are acceptable for factory line workers, but we’re “professionals,” and mistakenly believe we don’t need unions; we’ll just continue to get assigned unpaid overtime and split shifts, while working for low wages, minimal benefits, and without a minimally-acceptable recourse for our grievances. Besides, if workers mattered, our newspapers would have a Labor page in addition to the daily Business pages.

Also missing from the news media will be stories about Eugene Debs (1855-1926), Joe Hill (1879-1915), and thousands of others who went to prison defending the rights of the workers not only to organize, but to demand better working conditions. We won’t become involved in the struggle, risk our jobs and futures. That’s someone else’s responsibility. We’ll just follow inane rules and complain privately.

We will make the effort to find a couple of current labor leaders, both of whom will say organized labor is having a tough time but is still strong and vital, the only recourse against poor working conditions and unfair labor practices. We’ll report that fewer than 13 percent of all workers are now in unions, down from a peak of 35 percent in 1954, but won’t dig into myriad ways of intimidation by Management.

We may interview the workers. An elderly man’s remembrance of his life in the coalmines or breakers, and what Black Lung did not only to his own health but to his family and friends. We might chat with an elderly woman who worked 12-hour days six days a week for $3–$4 a day in the heat and humidity of a garment factory. We may talk with a few current workers who will tell us they don’t have it great, but it could be worse and overall, on the record of course, they work hard and are pleased with their jobs. And we probably won’t be too shocked to learn that most readers seem to think that Labor Day seems not to be a remembrance of the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions, but of self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, and a pool party.

Some of us may write about the statistics of labor that show a retreat from the robust economy of the Clinton era. It doesn’t take much research to learn that the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, is 5.5 percent higher than a year ago, the sharpest increase since the last year of the George H.W. Bush administration. Factoring in inflation and recession, even with minimal raises, the rank-and-file workers are making about 3.1 percent less than a year ago, according to the Department of Labor. We’ll quote the most recent data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that “Employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and several service-providing industries, while health care and mining continued to add jobs.”

We’ll point out that unemployment in a depressed economy is now 8.8 million, an increase of 1.6 million over the past year. We’ll note that “non-farm payroll employment continued to decline” and that payroll employment is down by 463,000 since the beginning of this year.

Business euphemistically claims it is “downsizing” or “rightsizing.” The “bottom line” is improved; corporate investors are being “optimally compensated.” About 550,000 Americans were part of mass layoffs last year. Recent Department of Labor studies report that American workers are “the most productive” ever. That’s because not only are they are doing so much more to compensate for their fellow workers having been laid off, but because they live with the fear if they don’t work even harder they, too, may be laid off, or lose promotions, in an economy that is going as far south as our manufacturing plants.

We’ll report the cold statistics that among the unemployed are about 461,000 “discouraged” Americans, about 90,000 more than a year ago, who “wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job” but are not counted as unemployed because “they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey,” according to the BLS. These Americans are not only discouraged by the labor economy, they have undoubtedly been absorbed by a long-term depression.

Meanwhile, corporate executives are taking multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the “cash flow.” Even if executive management makes a few mistakes along the way, and the “return on investment” isn’t what the Board of Directors expects, almost all CEOs and their immediate underlings have the “golden parachute” that allows a soft drop from employment, yielding termination packages that amount to millions of dollars and considerable benefits that no working class person will ever receive.

Of course, there are some industries that have gained in the past year’s plunging economy. Retail sales, which the Department of Labor reports as having the lowest average wages, is gaining workers. But, that’s because it’s just “good business sense” to hire 100 low-paid part-timers and save the cost of benefits than to hire 50 full-time clerks. About 5.7 million Americans work part-time, up from 1.4 million the previous year. This category, according to the BLS, “includes persons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or they were unable to find jobs.”

To the 50-year-old who worked hard for one company half of his life, showed up for work on time, left on time, and tolerated the company’s banal preaching about everyone is “part of our happy family,” and then is laid off as an “economy measure,” the numbers don’t matter. To the worker who put in 20 years in one job, and then is fired for reasons that would be questionable under any circumstance, the numbers don’t matter. To the $20,000-a-year worker who is told that her raise can only be 2 percent this year because “we’re having a bad year,” but sees upper management not only get raises and more stock options, but also hire other managers, all of them making five times or more than her salary, the other numbers don’t matter.

This year, I’m writing a Labor Day column. With all the layoffs and unemployment, with the blatant anti-labor biases of the current administration and the decisions by the pro-corporate National Labor Relations Board that will linger long into the next administration, next year there may not be much American labor to write about.

* Among Dr. Brasch’s 17 books is With Just Cause, a look at the historical and social issues in American labor. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2nd ed.), available at amazon.com and other bookstores.

Amy Goodman, ‘Democracy Now!’ Producers Arrested at RNC

(author unknown) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:49:01 -0500

According to the “Democracy Now!” Web site, producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested Monday afternoon “while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention,” and host Amy Goodman was arrested for “defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.”

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David Wilcox - Airstream

(author unknown) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:25:16 -0500

David Wilcox is simply one of the best artists to pick up a guitar and write songs. His ability to write beautifully nuanced, personal music from the heart has...

David Bromberg Quartet - Live New York City 1982

(author unknown) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:25:13 -0500

Strange as it may sound giving a truly successful career spanning over thirty-five years, "Live New York City 1982" represents the first and only live recording of Bromberg's masterful quartet...

Michael Moore's Letter to God About Gustav

Crockhead — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:17:16 -0500

Michael Moore has a great open letter to God that is too good not to be shared.

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson's ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be cancelled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!"

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God's fellow children who are reading this, the city New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately.

Not A Good Day For The Ex Beauty Queen

(author unknown) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:29:57 -0500

Shared by Whole Wheat Radio
A thought I had is...

"You mean McCain and his staff, already taking a huge chance on Palin, weren't able to get this not so private bit of Wasilla, Alaska intelligence and ANNOUNCE IT OPENLY at the time he named her? And I'm supposed to trust this guy's ability to run a country and deal with international politics? I guess the same idiots who provided George Bush with his WMD "intelligence" are working for McCain..."

My blogging friend, Patry Francis (if you've never visited her site, by all means follow the link and do so; she has some of the best writing on the internet, and also, buy her book) worries in a comment to my August 30 blog entry that McCain seems to have gotten a bounce in the polls with his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. In a response to her comment, I predicted that the bounce will soon disappear when the facts about Palin start coming out.

Seldom do my predictions come true so quickly, but as Josh Marshall points out, today was a very bad day for Sarah Palin. First, in order to knock down rumors that her four-month old baby is really her daughter, Bristol's baby, she had to announce that the 17-year-old Bristol is pregnant with her own baby. Obviously, Bristol's decision to have unprotected premarital sex has nothing to do with Governor's Palin's qualifications to be vice president, but it does reinforce the point that maybe Governor Palin's family needs her more right now than the country needs her. With her husband working on the North Slope of Alaska as an oil production worker, who exactly is looking after the family, not only the 17-year-old and five-year-old daughters, but the baby with Downs Syndrome?

Then, the main stream media is finally getting on the story that Governor Palin flatly lied at the speech in Ohio after she was introduced by McCain in claiming she had opposed the famous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

And, it turns out that her claim to have fought corruption in Alaska by taking on politicians like the recently indicted Senator Ted Stephens is another lie. Far from opposing Senator Stephens, she was a director of his fund raising group.

There's more. She was a member of the Alaska Independent Party, a far right political group in Alaska (the John Birch Society is too liberal for its tastes)that wants Alaska to secede from the United States (treason anyone?) Here's a video of their recent convention in which the party's president says she was a member of the party and they were hoping she would be elected as governor.

And here's a video of Governor Palin welcoming people to the Alaska Independent Party's convention in June, 2008.

And then there's the simmering scandal of Governor Palin lying about not having placed pressure on the head of the Alaska State Police to fire her ex-brother-in-law. The main stream media still hasn't gotten on that one, but it is going to come out because there is an on-going investigation about which there is supposed to be a report in October.

All of the fun stuff about Governor Palin only highlights the fact that Senator McCain apparently picked her impulsively, without doing any extensive vetting. Only now are the Republicans sending a team of lawyers to Alaska to check her out.

Finally, the latest polls show Obama up by eight points, according to CBS and seven points according to USA/Today. I'm still not as sanguine as Debra Hope, but I'm optimistic that Obama is going to win and that Palin is going to be a drag on McCain.

The system is the problem, it's rigged

bageant — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:00:54 -0500

I find that I must tone down the truth into something that fits into the consensus reality, even when speaking to lefty crowds. I have to pretend more or less that I think it can be fixed.

Less Than Underwhelmed By The Ex-Beauty Queen

Crockhead — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:11:32 -0500

I think all Obama supporters should send John McCain a "thank you" note. What a gift, his selection of Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor, to be the Republican vice presidential nominee. In one stroke, he has just given away the biggest argument against Obama, his inexperience. I don't think Democrats need to argue any more that Obama is ready to lead; I don't think they will have to, McCain would be an idiot to keep running ads claiming Obama lacks the experience to be president when his own vice presidential nominee has even less.

Alaskans are shocked. Republican Alaska State Senate president said, she thought it was a joke when someone called her to give her the news. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Another joke is McCain's apparent belief that the selection of a vice presidential candidate with a vagina will get disappointed Hillary supporters to vote for him. It's an insult to the intelligence of the "PUMA's" to think they're going to support a right-wing, home-schooling, anti-choice ex-beauty queen, just because she's a woman. Gail Collins has a hilarious column here about how the pick of Palin couldn't have been because she is a woman.

For more on what the people who know Palin best are thinking, read this blog from Alaska, Mudflats with its picture of downtown Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor briefly.

Thank you, John McCain, you've cheered me up about Joe Biden.

Misty Mountain Morning

Annette — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:23:23 -0500

Digital photo.

Clouds rolled into the Upper Valley last week painting the blue sky with shades of gray and bringing rain to help quench local wildfires.

Published in print and web in The Leavenworth Echo. (It will be replaced by another photo next week. Click here to see it.)

Obama to the GOP: "Go Fuck Yourselves":
In February of 2007,

Rude One — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:55:21 -0500

Obama to the GOP: "Go Fuck Yourselves":
In February of 2007, the Rude Pundit wrote that Republicans were shitting blood over an Obama candidacy. Expect toilet sales to go through the roof this morning.

The face of Alex Castellanos, Republican stooge for Romney and CNN "analyst," really said it all. When he appeared after Barack Obama's DNC acceptance speech, he looked like a man who was about to vomit from being kicked so hard in the balls. "Whoever didn’t get picked for Republican VP today may be a lucky Republican," Castellanos said, although he may as well have said, "Oh, man, my nutsack."

Who could've figured out that Obama's strategy these last couple of months was to play rope-a-dope with John McCain? Let the GOP throw all the shit they can at him, the "celebrity" nonsense, the experience canard, all the lies about Obama's beliefs and plans: he took each blow. And then, in front of a Rolling Stones concert-sized crowd with millions of people watching at home, the man let loose.

For surely, beyond the "holy fuck, we nominated a black man" historic part of things, the most healing part of Obama's speech was not the muted version of his soaring rhetoric. Nor was it the infinitely ordinary and mostly safe laundry list of "shit what I wanna do." No, for Democrats, we needed to see a candidate directly and passionately tell the GOP and John McCain, in no uncertain terms, "Go fuck yourselves." When he looked out onto that ocean of support and said, "Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land — enough!" it was like a long-delayed orgasm finally shuddering through the entire body of the Democratic Party.

And then he took Karl Rove out to the woodshed, pulled out a switch, and smacked that big ass bloody. After talking about his life, he said, "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine." After talking about the stupidity of America's strategy against terrorism, he said, "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell — but he won't even go to the cave where he lives." He mocked the Atwater/Rove reduction of politics to bullshit things that don't affect anyone's lives: "You make a big election about small things." And he fuckin' addressed McCain directly, taking on the digs at his patriotism, "So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first." When's the last time you heard a candidate call out another candidate like that?

The other major accomplishment of Obama's speech was that he didn't run away from the real role of government. In saying that Washington can be a force of positive change and progress in people's lives, he started to set fire to crazed pagan altars to Ronald Reagan that have been erected by both parties over the last three decades. He said that the good government can do "is the only reason I am standing here tonight." Citing the GI Bill, food stamps, and student loans, he made a case for liberalism as the transformative force it is supposed to be.

We can complain, and we should, about his failure to mention the damage to the Constitution, the Supreme Court, torture, and so many other major issues. We can say, and we should, that his promises of bipartisanship are another version of Clintonesque triangulation, progress, yes, but not progressive. Still, it's politics, man. Hell, at this point, we'll be lucky to get back to moderate-right in the White House. But it's good to know that Obama understands that you get nothing done if you don't get there.

After watching Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and, to a large extent, Clinton act like they were supposed to turn the other cheek again and again, it was goddamn cathartic to see a Democratic candidate reach up and grab the hand that was slapping him and say, "No, not this time around, motherfucker." No wonder the right didn't know how to react. It was like seeing a prison bitch grab his rapist and beat his head on the side of the bunk. Rove won't die easily, though. When they weren't being attacked, Republicans mocked John Kerry's military service, medals, and wounds. Imagine what they'll do when they're cornered.

Gird yer loins, motherfuckers, and break out the axes. We've joined the battle.

Workahol and the Healing Power of Rest

Christine Kane — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:03:41 -0500

“Alcoholics are addicted to alcohol. Are workaholics addicted to workahol?”
- my friend Suzi

It has been a busy year for me so far. An amazing year. Things are moving forward at a fast pace as I make another record, continue performing, speaking and teaching, and begin some new projects in other arenas.

One of the great things about being self-employed and entrepreneurial is that you get to be your own boss. That can also be one of the bad things – cuz your boss never goes away! In other words, before you know it - you can’t put the workahol down.

So, my boss is making me take a vacation. And I’ll be taking the next week off from blogging so that I can rest and restore my energy and chill out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

In the meantime, you can hear the next song on my upcoming record in its first round in the studio… click here to go to BeMyRecordLabel.com and listen to my song “I’ll be Your Angel.”

Also – I’d love to get some suggestions for topics you’d like to read about in the coming months! Leave them in the comments below or email them to me at christine@christinekane.com!

See you soon and thanks for reading!

Workahol and the Healing Power of Rest

(author unknown) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:29:04 -0500

Shared by Whole Wheat Radio
This "vacation" thing seems to be catching on...

“Alcoholics are addicted to alcohol. Are workaholics addicted to workahol?”
- my friend Suzi

So, my boss is making me take a vacation. And I’ll be taking the next week off from blogging so that I can rest and restore my energy and chill out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

In the meantime, you can hear the next song on my upcoming record in its first round in the studio… click here to go to BeMyRecordLabel.com and listen to my song “I’ll be Your Angel.”

Also – I’d love to get some suggestions for topics you’d like to read about in the coming months! Leave them in the comments below or email them to me at christine@christinekane.com!

See you soon and thanks for reading!

Another beautiful pumpkin

(author unknown) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:54:30 -0500

Shared by Whole Wheat Radio
Definitely not my cup of tea to raise (it strikes me the same as *trying* to have a freakily deformed child) but something made me click "Share with note" cuz so many people apparently are thrilled to stare at freaks... :-)

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J. D. Megchelsen arrives at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer with his pumpkin in the back of his pickup. I bet he held his breath all the way to the Fair! Photo by Bob Hallinen/ADN

Lloyd's staff shoot down man's 'Lloyd's is pants' password

(author unknown) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:06:25 -0500

A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password found it had been changed to "no it's not".

Aug 20: Ben Taylor at Acoustic Long Island

Dave and Rob Dircks — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:11:53 -0500

Raised in a musical family (parents are Carly Simon and James Taylor), lead singer/songwriter Ben Taylor was immersed in music from an early age. Taylor explains, “My first memory’s of music blend in with the rest of my senses. I can remember attending the concerts and studio sessions of every one from Carol King to Foreigner by the time I was 7 years old. Nearly everyone I have ever looked up to and have ever known has been a professional musician.” Surprisingly, Taylor didn’t originally set his sights on a music career. Having traveled extensively all over the globe, from Tibet to the Darien Rain forest, he developed a fierce love for nature. “Up until that point I wanted to be a farmer or a gardener,” Ideally, what I want to write about are things that have relevance not just in my life but in a universal sense as well. That’s the power of music: to move, to motivate, to make you ask ‘What if?’ or ‘Why?’ I think that music should give voice to people’s emotions.” The Ben Taylor Band’s sound is genre defying as friend and drummer, Larry Ciancia explains, “It’s extremely difficult to categorize our sound: it’s part pop, part rock-and-roll, part folk. But honestly, it’s like nothing I’ve been hearing out there lately-which is either a very good or a very bad thing.” Taylor adds, “I couldn’t be more proud to sound like either of my parents, physically or stylistically, this is who I am. But I am a different guy and I write different music.” Find out more at www.myspace.com/bentaylorofficial. Acoustic Podcast recorded live at Acoustic Long Island, August 20, 2008.

The NSA incomplete sentences quiz

Ruben Schade — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:36:42 -0500

That’s a big hot dog! Why did I put this here?

Elliot C. Back clued me onto a NSA test which required people to finish a list of incomplete sentences. Looked like some fun, so here I go:

I always wanted to be as artistic as my mum
I can’t stop programming, living and drinking coffee
If my father would only take me on more of his business trips!
People think of me as an introvert who likes coffee
I suffer most from a lack of coffee
What upsets me most is decaf coffee
Most men can’t pick the difference between nail polishes, including me
My family treats me like a 24 technical support hotline!
My greatest worry is that I worry too much
Some members of the opposite sex don’t understand "nerd" is cute
Most women are more accepting of bear hugs
I regret that my Deutsch still isn’t very strong
The main thing in life is coffee, computers and comedy!
Secretly I like Barry White music
If my mother would only still be alive
I don’t like people who assume I paid the Asian girl walking next to me!
I wish I could forget the time I fell down two flights of stairs
When troubled I watch Japanese television shows
It bothers me that I worry too much
What angers me most is when people don’t laugh during my standup acts!

Here comes "Social Radio"

mramsey@mercradio.com (Mark Ramsey) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:08:37 -0500

While not a new concept, the idea of "social radio" is certainly not something we read about in the radio industry trades.

We know what "social networking" is, of course. And sharing playlists through iTunes and other sources has been around for a while.

But this is the first time I've seen a developer create the ability for you to tap into your entire music collection on your home PC via your iPhone - and the music collections of your friends, too - and stream all of the above to your phone, wherever you go.

The penetration of this product will be slowed by the fact that you have to download software to your PC (in addition to the phone app) - and, of course, your friends do, too. Further, the iPhone app is evidently no longer free.

Still, it's a pretty compelling package and a hot seller on the iPhone that adds another dimension radio stations have yet to provide: Playlists created by the listeners themselves.

You and I can create our own radio stations from our own content and share them with friends who are mobile.

Wireless networking and podcast musings

Ruben Schade — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:18:23 -0500

Well here we are once again with another useless (or at least somewhat useless) Rubenerd Blog Musings Post. As I’ve mentioned previously, the justification for this category of posts’ existence is that I don’t have my audio recording and production equipment with me to record my Rubenerd Show podcast, audio magazine new time radio show, or whatever it is the kids are calling them these days. I’ll be going to the city later today and purchasing a headset, a far cry from the mixers and other fancy riff raff I’ve got back in Singapore, but it’ll let me get on the airwaves again and possibly even get Skype up and working again to hopefully interview some people. If the audio quality is less than stellar, I’ll be able to encode it with LAME at a lower bitrate, saving space and upload time which here is a more important consideration now that we have usage quotas!

ASIDE: I’d better be careful, this is a Rubenerd Blog musings post but the previous paragraph had a sliver of substance to it.

When I was a kid in early primary school I used to pronouce "silver" as "sliver". I also had trouble remembering which ones were elbows and which ones were shoulders. Good things I can pronounce silver now at least.

The front of the Boatdeck Cafe using Google Maps street view

I’m once again sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes once again (including this bracketed area, I’ve said once again three times) having some pancakes and a Betty Blue Sea of Espresso. If you live around Parafield or other areas around north Adelaide, make your way over to Mawson Lakes in the morning for brekkie here, the view of the lake out the huge windows and the food are just fantastic. I’m so poetic I could stanza myself. Stanza myself?

Unfortunately for me the WiFi doesn’t seem to be working today. If you’ve listened to any of my shows you’d know how much I loathe wireless networking for the simple reason that it’s even less reliable than regular networking! I can remember back to 1999 when we first got broadband interent (SingTel Magix, anyone from Singapore remember that?) and I had visions of 2010 where every coffee shop and cafe would have a wired Ethernet port and a power socket on every table. I guess I didn’t realise wireless was on the horizon!

Nagisa Furukawa with coffee and breakfast

Despite the WiFi revolution or whatever the kids are calling it thesedays, at home I refuse to use it: the computers in Singapore and here in Adelaide are connected through Category 6 cables to gigabit Ethernet switches. This means when a network connection fails (and it rarely does) I can figure out what the problem is much more quickly. I think it comes down to control: I’m more in control with cables because I have control over the transmission medium. I said control three times in that last sentence, four times including this sentence.

Until I have the capability to create micro-wormholes that my wireless networking beams can travel through without being interrupted by furniture, concrete walls and stale grilled cheese sandwiches, I feel more comfortable with wired Ethernet. Part of me also is concerned about security: the experts claim the WPA encryption standard is unbreakable, but as I recall the previous WEP (wired equivalent privacy!) standard was told to be just as secure. With cables, static IPs and a whitelist of approved MAC addresses, everything just works faster, more reliably and hopefully more securely.

View of the lake from the Boatdeck Cafe using Google Maps street view

ASIDE: I had no idea that this post would turn into a rant about why everyone should stop using WiFi at home. I mean, wired ethernet is the solution to everything: people only complain when they’re houses become jungles with tangled weaved cables running through every hallway and room. I love it, it makes our house look like a place where work gets done! Nothing says "I work my arse off on computers while you sit around doing nothing" than a tangled mess of cables running along every walkway.

On a more serious note, I’ve been thinking about mummy a lot more again lately. A few days ago I was at the Boatdeck Cafe enjoying a Betty Blue Sea of Espresso while doing some light programming and having a great conversation with a friendly woman about life the universe and everything. She was about the age of my mum and had gone through the rigamarole of breast cancer treatment herself. She couldn’t believe that mummy had gone through over a decade of almost non-stop chemotherapy and radiation treatment; most people call it quits and move on after the second course. Upon talking about it, I remember one of the things that stuck with me the most when she passed on that my dad told me: he said the reason why she went through all that pain and suffering for such a long time was that she wanted her kids to have memories of her. Had she passed on after the first round back when we still lived in Australia, Elke and I probably won’t have remembered much about her. I’ve been coping better with the colossal void in my life she’s left over the last half year, but talking about it brought back the emotions again. I really, really do miss her.

Another thing I know though, and it is cliche, but the last thing she would want would be for me to still be wallowing in sorrow now. Chin up, moving on! What is it that the gym owner from the Brittas Empire always used to say? I forget, never mind!

End of the Bethel Island road, by Varmint Al

I was originally going to talk about the Olympics finishing up and how grateful I am for the fact, but I’m going to save that for a separate post. I learned something about the Aussie Olympic team that just irritates the hell out of me, though in hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised.

This musings post will be ending now because it’s the end of the post, and the best place to end something is either when it’s finished, when you’ve worn out your welcome, or if you’ve lost the interest of the people who were reading your material. I think I qualify for all three in this circumstance.

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(author unknown) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:00:59 -0500

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atributed to

When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?

George Carlin

Sunday August 24 2008

it's another birthday

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you
When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you When I get older losing my hair
Many When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?

I first heard this song June 2, 1967. That would be a little over 41 years ago. I must say that it's not to big a surprise that I made it to 64. What is a surprise is how fast it happened.

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