I Had A Visitor At Work Today

This guy came screaming out of nowhere, landed on my office window ledge, and proceeded to attack his reflection for over 20 minutes. Must be mating season and he’s getting defensive.

The Greatest Workplace Safety Training Video Of All Time And Don’t Even Try To Argue With Me That’s It’s Not Because You’re Wrong and That’s Final.

Without further ado, then, I present to you, dear readers, “Forklift Driver Klaus” (German with English subtitles - may not be appropriate for those who are easily squeamish)…

OK, yes, it’s not real. Whatever. “Gabelstapler” is a great word.

Ticket Of The Day: Atlanta Braves v. Philadelphia Phillies, Turner Field, 2000

The UGA2000 clan drove down from Athens for this game. Amy and I had been dating for a couple months at this point. I took a great picture of her in front of the Hank Aaron statue out front before the game. I wonder where that picture is.

Trapped

The New Yorker presents a condensed security camera video of Nicholas White, who spent 41 (!) hours trapped in a New York City elevator.

Of course, I would have John McClane’d outta there way before 41 hours.

The article the video accompanies, Up And Then Down by Nick Paumgarten, is a fascinating read… (seriously!)

The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment. The population of the earth would ooze out over its surface, like an oil slick, and we would spend even more time stuck in traffic or on trains, traversing a vast carapace of concrete. And the elevator is energy-efficient—the counterweight does a great deal of the work, and the new systems these days regenerate electricity. The elevator is a hybrid, by design.

Ticket Of The Day: Moby at The Tabernacle, 2005

Luci’s big moment, playing in front of tons of family and friends. I remember Amy crying with happiness when she and the rest of the band came out on stage. I remember going to a bar with Moby and Josh playing Fatboy Slim on the jukebox. I remember meeting him. I remember not having a good feeling about it. I remember telling myself to put the past away and not be so judgmental. I remember that being difficult. Some good memories are tainted with not-so-good ones.

Dennis Eats It

I’m only reposting this to show that Flickr now allows for video!! Wooooo doggiee!

Dennis Eats It

Originally uploaded by DAveA

Some Political Nuggets For Your Tuesday Evening…

Here are a few choice quotes with links to the full posts. Worth a read.

One thing I’ve always believed to a degree; that war is an effective means of rousing national patriotism, which rarely is accompanied by rational, intelligent, consideration…

One reason war is always associated with especially rapid growth of the government’s size, scope, and power is that it focuses people’s attention on what is seen as the most pressing item on the agenda, so they simply don’t notice what the government is doing in other regards. Another reason is that during wartime many people increase their broad support for the government, and hence they are less inclined to challenge its actions even when those actions have little or nothing to do with the war.

Hardly anyone was surprised that real defense spending (as measured in accordance with the government’s own narrow concept) increased by almost 60 percent between 2000 and 2007, while real GDP rose by only 18 percent. Note, however, that the government’s real nondefense outlays increased concurrently by more than 24 percent?an increase one-third greater than that of GDP. When people let down their guard because they “support the troops,” they permit the government to make greater headway in its ceaseless quest to enlarge its spending in a wide range of areas, many of them strictly civilian in nature. (at The Beacon Blog - Independent.org)

Corporation dominance? Military-industrial complex? Thank the liberal cripple whose head is on Mt. Rushmore (Oops. Thanks, Chip.)…

Indeed, the New Deal did not even work in rescuing capitalism, which was Roosevelt’s stated goal; it took the total militarization of the U.S. economy to accomplish that. However, even before entering the war, nearly every New Deal economic recovery and development program enriched already existing corporations, such as Bechtel and Brown and Root, as well as creating new ones. The ground was set for rapid militarization through contracts with these new corporate giants and massive employment through the military draft and wartime production. The military-industrial complex is the essential result of New Deal policies. (at Counterpunch.org)

Barack Obama clearly underlines the impact of his father in his book, Dreams For My Father, and more importantly, the impact of his dad’s socio-political ideals. But what were the ideals the Presidential candidate looked up to?

If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama’s Dreams For My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, “All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own.” (p. 220) And what was that image? It was “the father of my dreams, the man in my mother’s stories, full of high-blown ideals ..” (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, “It was into my father’s image .. that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.” And also that, “I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father” in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)

So we know that his father’s ideals were a driving force in his life, but the one thing that Obama does not give us are the contents of those ideals…*snip*

A bit of research at the library reveals the answers about Barack Obama’s father and his father’s convictions which Obama withholds from his readers. *snip*

1. Obama (here and below, the elder - DA) advocated the communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land, as part of a forced “development plan”, an important element of his attack on the government’s advocacy of private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)

2. Obama advocated the nationalization of “European” and “Asian” owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of these operations handed over to the “indigenous” black population. (pp. 32 -33)

3. Obama advocated dramatically increasing taxation on “the rich” even up to the 100% level, arguing that, “there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay” (p. 30) and that, “Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” (p. 31)

4. Obama contrasts the ill-defined and weak-tea notion of “African Socialism” negatively with the well-defined ideology of “scientific socialism”, i.e. communism. Obama views “African Socialism” pioneers like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only “a little” from the capitalist system. (p. 26)

5. Obama advocates an “active” rather than a “passive” program to achieve a classless society through the removal of economic disparities between black Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28) “While we welcome the idea of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others .. ” (pp. 29-30)

6. Obama advocates price controls on hotels and the tourist industry, so that the middle class and not only the rich can afford to come to Kenya as tourists. (p. 33)

7. Obama advocates government owned and operated “model farms” as a means of teaching modern farming techniques to farmers. (p. 33)

8. Obama strongly supports the governments assertion of a “non-aligned” status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations aligned with the Soviet Union and China. (p. 26) (at Mises Economics Blog)