Changing Places

Via boing boing….

Gummi Lighthouses: When Candy Design Goes Terribly, Hilariously Wrong

We saw WALL-E yesterday and I had much the same reaction — it’s a great movie and will really affect you if you let it. We also got the soundtrack, and I am listening to the Peter Gabriel song as I write this. (go to the link to hear the song)

We’re comin’ down to the ground….

Jesse Kornbluth: WALL-E: Why Pixar is More Valuable Than General Motors – Entertainment on The Huffington Post

I have seen — time after time — how marketing departments and senior executives can’t stop themselves from “improving” programming. They smooth the edges, make the message general, find the inoffensive middle. In the process, they remove surprise and originality.

And not just in Hollywood.

So it strikes me as no accident that the best commercial I’ve seen this year is will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” video for Barack Obama, which was made on no budget by a passionate amateur. Or that the best film is WALL-E, created by a cadre of fiercely independent filmmakers at a studio that values independence.

And I don’t think it’s coincidental that Disney paid $7.4 billion for Pixar in 2006 and that the stock-market value of General Motors is now about $6.5 billion. Pixar challenges and delights, and those ingredients, plus a bit of luck, are the recipe for creating value. General Motors plays it safe and bets on old formulas — and erodes its value. Perhaps a pundit might like to chew on that.

At the end of WALL-E, I didn’t want to leave. The Peter Gabriel song was part of it, and maybe the tears of joy streaming down my cheeks had something to do with me staying in my seat. And then there’s the fact that the creativity didn’t end when the credits began— there was a lot to watch after the movie was over.

Because I stayed, I saw something many may have missed — the film’s dedication to Justin Wright (1981-2007).

I googled Wright as soon I got home. I learned that he was born with a badly defective heart, and, at 12, got a transplant. His doctor saw he loved to draw and took him to visit Pixar. And there, he saw his destiny. After college, he got in as an intern. Later, he scored his dream job: storyboard artist. “People might get mad at me if they knew how good we have it here,” he wrote on his blog. Sadly, not for long: In March, he had a heart attack and died.

I thought it was sweet of Stanton and Pixar chief John Lasseter to dedicate the film to Justin Wright. Then I saw it another way — that this 27-year-old kid was much like WALL-E. Resourceful. Imaginative. Courageous. And totally fulfilled when he could express himself.

Lot of kids like that out there. Lot of grown-ups like that too. In a dark time, Pixar has given all of them a shaft of light.

I am so happy Obama has the good economists on his team. I really hope he’ll be able to get the right programs in place to get us out of this mess.

McCain takes us to depression, Obama might keep us going and get us moving again. That’s the choice, people. This time, it truly IS the economy, stupid….

Bloomberg.com:
Worldwide

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for a second round of stimulus checks to spur consumer spending and give the Federal Reserve more leeway to fight inflation amid skyrocketing oil prices.

“The Fed is in a tough situation because it wants to control the inflation being caused by energy while at the same time trying to restore the economy,” Obama said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today in Pittsburgh.

Obama, who is wrapping up a three-week campaign tour focused on economic issues, said consumers are in need of financial relief. He is proposing another set of tax rebates from the government and a permanent tax cut for most middle-income Americans. His comments come a day after the Fed left its benchmark interest rate at 2 percent while sounding an alarm about the risk of inflation picking up.

The Fed’s Open Market Committee stopped short of specifying that inflation was a greater concern than growth. It reiterated language from its April meeting that the Fed will “act as needed” to promote both economic expansion and stable prices.

“If Congress and the presidency are implementing smart plans, that will take some pressure off the Fed so they can focus on fighting inflation and they aren’t carrying the entire burden in terms of stimulating the economy,” said Obama, who declined to comment directly on the Fed’s decision.

Higher Costs

Obama said the U.S. will continue dealing with “short-term pain” from an economic slowdown. “We have to give people some sense that they could absorb the rising costs in gas, food and medical care,” he said.

The economy is the issue most cited by voters as their top concern before the November election. A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found that by 49 percent to 28 percent, registered voters say they favor Obama over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, 71, when it comes to handling the economy.

Earlier today, the Illinois senator, 46, held a summit with research and business leaders including General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Office Richard Wagoner and U.S. Steel Corp. CEO John Surma. He told the panel that he will be an advocate for a permanent research and development tax credit, lower energy and health-care costs, more educational opportunities and investments in infrastructure.

`Building Blocks’

An overhaul of energy policy, the health system and schools will be “the building blocks” of long-term U.S. competitiveness, Obama said in the interview.

Along with business leaders, Obama has been wooing labor groups and working-class voters. Today he won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s biggest labor organization. In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said Obama is “a champion for working families.”

So tonight I dropped a slab of piping hot meatloaf on my OTHER foot…

I give up.

Rain, being cool

TIME GOES BY | Quarterstaff Revolution

Imagine a scene: an older woman using a bent-top walking cane crosses a building lobby, trying to reach the elevator before the doors roll closed. Now imagine the same scene with the older woman striding across the lobby with the aid of a seven-foot, oak quarterstaff. People hold the door open not because of chivalry, not out of a desire to help little old ladies, but rather because she just looks so damned cool.

Elders are obligated to give younger people clues about how deep and mysterious elderhood can be.

Stubbed my little toe this morning, at least sprained and maybe a hairline fracture. So not much going on today except lots of Intertubing.

Sigh.

Poway, California 92064 Conditions & Forecast : Weather Underground
Western Poway, Poway, California PWS
Updated: 4 sec ago

107.2 °F / 41.8 °C
Clear

Record temps today for sure. Our backyard thermometer reads 110 right now…..

Stay cool, kids…..

My kids are gaming here with friends today. They have water in the fridge, fans, air set at 80, and will set up coolers with ice for their drinks. Hubby and I are off to the Fair, which will still be hot, but at least by the coast. Geez, what a day!

¡The AntiCraft!

Technically, a henge is actually an oval or circular earthwork, with a surrounding bank built up of the earth excavated from a ditch inside the bank. By this definition, Stonehenge is not truly a henge in any sense, as its ditch lies outside the bank.

There have been many theories as to the intended purpose of Stonehenge and other standing stones. The most likely seems to be, at least in part, that of seasonal calendar, as the sun aligns with particular stones at the solstices. This phenomenon, coupled with the mystery of the henges’ origins, has made the henges into sites of pagan ritual in recent centuries, if not throughout their histories. Some of those ancient rites are rumored to have included ritual sacrifice.

Let Baconhenge be the site of your seasonal celebration! Let bacon stand in for the sacrificed Year King, French toast for the Grain Goddess, the eggs in the frittata for the Cosmic Egg, and the vegetables for the bountiful Earth on which we live.

MMMMM, bacon!!

Maya’s Granny is no longer with us.

Sadness…..

Go read some of her stories there if you hadn’t. She was an amazing storyteller, and will be deeply missed….

Tears…

Goodbye, beautiful lady, and fabulous blogger….

Joycelyn Ward
April 23, 1942 – June 15, 2008

We mourn the loss of Lilith Joycelyn Ward. She leaves behind her daughter, Julie Asregadoo, her son, Richard Ward, her brother, Forrest Ward, her sister Loretta Beaver, her mother, Virginia Ward, her Aunt Florence, and her many nieces and nephews, and their children. And of course, she was Maya’s Granny.

Joycelyn was born in Oakland, CA, and moved a great deal in her lifetime. She lived in California for much of her life, most recently in Sacramento and Citrus Heights, but also spent many years in Stockton and Berkeley. She lived in Juneau, Alaska from 1993 until February of this year.

She devoted much of her life to helping children, from her early days as a Montessori teacher, to her days teaching parenting classes and working one-on-one to help parents who were at risk of losing their children. She also worked as a volunteer coordinator, as a research analyst, as a secretary, and at an organization working to prevent teen alcoholism.

She was a voracious reader, loved to write and tell stories, and found great joy and satisfaction in her blog, Maya’s Granny.

Her wisdom and wicked humor will be greatly missed.

Donations can be made in her memory to her favorite charity, Heifer International.

“I make this look GOOD!!!”

FT.com / Columnists / Clive Crook – Orthodox responses to taxing issues
Orthodox responses to taxing issues

By Clive Crook

Barack Obama and John McCain both expect the ailing US economy to work to their advantage in November. Mr Obama promises to make things better. Mr McCain says they will get better by themselves and he will not make them worse in the meantime. These are the customary postures of the two parties. For a fight between an insurgent Democrat and a maverick Republican, the economics in this election is sadly orthodox.

Mr Obama offers the usual Democratic remedies for middle-class anxieties and grievances: new tax breaks and spending programmes, higher taxes for the rich, sabre-rattling on trade, calls for stricter regulation of finance and so forth. Mr McCain, likewise sticking to his party’s script, says that with the economy in a hole, this is no time to be raising anybody’s taxes, restricting trade or doing anything else to get in the way of American enterprise.

Aside from being predictable, the two have something else in common: fiscal myopia. Their tax plans differ in their distributional effects, but less than you might think in overall burden. Mr McCain opposed President George W. Bush’s tax cuts as unfair and inefficient; now he wants to make them permanent. Mr Obama deplores them still, of course, and says he will let them expire – but only for the sliver of the population that earns more than $250,000 (€163,000, £128,000) a year.

Measured against current law (ie, against a baseline that assumes the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule in 2011) and excluding healthcare (which involves some additional tax changes) Mr McCain wants to cut taxes by $3,700bn over the next 10 years. Mr Obama wants to cut them by $2,700bn. That amounts to a 10 per cent cut in revenue for Mr McCain and a 7 per cent cut for Mr Obama. (The estimates are from the non-partisan Tax Policy Centre of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.)

If either man gets his way, the larger part of the Bush tax cuts would thus remain on the books. At the same time, both have ambitious plans for new spending – Mr Obama especially. The budget is in structural deficit and the shortfall is bound to worsen as the cost of the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare programmes rises. Neither candidate addresses the issue. Politically, they are doubtless correct: voters would rather not think about it….

No One But Us
by Annie Dillard

There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
Nor a clean hand,
Nor a pure heart
On the face of the earth,
Nor in the earth
But only us,
A generation comforting ourselves
With the notion
That we have come at an awkward time,
That our innocent fathers are all dead –
As if innocence has ever been –
And our children busy and troubled,
And we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
Having each of us chosen wrongly,
Made a false start, failed,
Yielded to impulse
And the tangled comfort of pleasures,
And grown exhausted,
Unable to seek the thread,
Weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.

From the book Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

When embracing the unity
Of mind, body, emotions, and spiritual being
Can we transcend our fragmentations
Without leaving a trace?

When Qi Gong sculpts new suppleness,
Can our flesh become soft as a new born babe?

Can we cleanse the inner vision,
leaving mind in spiritual purity?

Can our affairs of the heart,
and our affairs of state
be so unconditional
that we grant unqualified permissibility?

Can the gate to Yin be opened
Without inviting Yang?

Can our reasoning be purged of coercion,
allowing our heart its unfettered joy?

Can we act like every other species
Seeking no reward,
Taking no pride,
Guiding without enslaving?

Such is our vision of the Great Integrity
On whose path we have at last planted both feet,
Ready to Move, step by step,
Until we arrive at the great unfettered gate.

(Tao Te Ching 10, translation by Ralph Alan Dale)

Something to bear in my nmind when you see McCain referred to as a “Maverick”:

Post Post post post post – Paul Krugman – Op-Ed Columnist – New York Times Blog

I went and actually looked up “maverick” today. It is fairly new, named after Samuel A. Maverick (died 1870) American pioneer who did not brand his calves. Date: 1867. “1: an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf”. That was Merriam-Webster. Another online dictionary (WordNet) says “(an unbranded range animal (especially a stray calf); belongs to the first person who puts a brand on it)”.

Funny how the original usage of the word implies not stubborn independence, but vulnerability to being branded and claimed by the first person to do so.

Via Bob Cesca’s Goddamn Awesome Blog! Go!: McCain Fever!

Maybe McCain vetoed their beer….

Barack won’t veto your beer!

I couldn’t get through this whole article, but you might enjoy it….

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle….

Actually, yes, I have this problem a lot lately. I have stacks and stacks of books I’ve been meaning to read, that I can’t get through. Some of them I’ve had for a couple of years now. The only time I really read seems to be when I get totally absorbed in a certain writer’s work, which is rare these days for me.

I used to read voraciously, several books a week. Now I’m lucky to get through one a month.

Sigh.

Hotline On Call: “It’s A Google”

John McCain stumping and raising cash today in Richmond joked about his method for vetting prospective veep candidates. Per pool press …

“We’re going through a process where you get a whole bunch of names, and ya … Well, basically, it’s a Google,” McCain said. “You just, you know, what you can find out now on the Internet. It’s remarkable, you know.”

Hmm. Google “McCain” “wet start” for some fun reading. Or “Cindy McCain” “drug charges”. Or “Real McCain”…..

Yeah, you can lots of fun with teh Google….

Grapefruit
Bathing suit
Chew a little Juicy Fruit
Wash away the night…

Jimmy Buffet

I never used to like grapefruit as a kid. Now, with these organic “Oro Blanco” and “Melo Gold” types, I find I like them. But I neglected to grab my mom’s old grapefruit spoons and grapefruit wedger, so I’m reduced to using a titanium spork to eat them. It works, but not too well…

Anyone know where to find those old-style grapefruit wedgers? You know, the plow-shaped ones that sliced sections so you could eat them easily? I can find the spoons online, but the old-fashioned wedgers seem to have been replaced with new gadgets I don’t really care for. If you know where to find the old ones, or have one you might part with, please leave me a comment and let me know!!

Go read Frank Rich’s whole piece — it’s very insightful. The better half is here, though — it’s a good summary of the choice we face.

Op-Ed Columnist – Frank Rich – One Historic Night, Two Americas – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up.

On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.

Given the dividing line separating the two Americas of 2008, a ticket uniting Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton might actually be a better fit than the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket,” despite their differences on the issues. Never was this more evident than Tuesday night, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain both completely misread a one-of-a-kind historical moment as they tried to cling to the prerogatives of the 20th century’s old guard.

All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.

Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.

Yet even as the two establishment candidates huffed and puffed to assert their authority, they seemed terrified by Mr. Obama’s insurgency, as if it were the plague in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” Mrs. Clinton held her nonconcession speech in a Manhattan bunker, banishing cellphone reception and television monitors carrying the news of Mr. Obama’s clinching of the nomination. Mr. McCain, laboring under the misapprehension that he was wittily skewering his opponent, compulsively invoked the Obama-patented mantra of “change” 33 times in his speech.

Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. “No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically,” he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking “to the 1960s and ’70s for answers.”

Mr. Obama is a liberal, but it’s not your boomer parents’ liberalism that is at the heart of his appeal. He never rattles off a Clinton laundry list of big federal programs; he supports abortion rights and gay civil rights with a sunny bonhomie that makes the right’s cultural scolds look like rabid mastodons. He is not refighting either side of the domestic civil war over Vietnam that exploded in his hometown of Chicago 40 years ago this summer, long before he arrived there.

He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to rip it off.

The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.

Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naïveté do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.

The Obama forces out-organized the most ruthless machine in Democratic politics because the medium of their campaign mirrored its inclusive message. They empowered adherents in every state rather than depending on a Beltway campaign hierarchy whose mercenary chief strategist kept his day job as chief executive for a corporate P.R. giant. Such viral organization and fund-raising is a seamless fit with bottom-up democracy as it is increasingly practiced in the Facebook-YouTube era, not merely by Americans and not merely by the young….

(hat tip to Hoffmania..)