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Radiation Mitigation – Miiu.org

28 Jul

This is about how to deal with radiation if your world gets irradiated.

In a globally connected world, the bad news is that we cannot “opt out” of radiation poisoning that comes to us via nuclear plant meltdowns or other means. So the question is not how to avoid radiation exposure but how to mitigate it. The good news is that there are some ways to mitigate radiation exposure and by learning about them and adopting some of them into our lifestyle we may find ourselves living more healthy lives even when we do have to ward off the damages of radiation. First, let’s consider the problem.

via Radiation Mitigation – Miiu.org.

While you’re there, check out the whole site. Good stuff there on resilience, localizing, and creating a whole new world “under the radar,” so to speak.

Frank Foster in Buffalo

28 Jul

Frank Foster in Buffalo

At first glance this wouldn’t seem to be about politics. It’s about a musician who was also my teacher. Which is to say, it is very much about politics in the deepest sense. Music is about community, and so is politics. Teaching is about passing knowledge from one generation  to the next, as politics requires. Like politics at its best, it’s about truth and tradition. One of my teachers just died. A great musician, Frank Foster. This is about, and for, him. He knew truth, respected tradition, and made beautiful music, of his time and for the future.

I headed off to the State University of NY at Buffalo (aka UB) in the Fall of 1973. While I was going for my Ph.D. in English Literature, I was also interested in their music offerings—the school’s, not the English Department’s. I’d just gotten my trumpet out of “storage,” as it were, a year or so ago and I decided I wanted to sharpen my jazz chops. So, I looked through the UB catalogue and noticed they had some guy named Frank Foster teaching jazz improv. I’d never heard of him. But, hey, I looked him up anyhow, you never know—played and arranged with Basie, Elvin Jones, Sarah Vaughan, “hmmm,” says I to my little-too-smart self, “maybe he’ll do.”

He did.

I forget just how I made my way into his improv workshop. While I was registered in the English Department and took courses there, there was no problem about showing up in Frank’s class and just hanging out. I didn’t even register for credit. Just showed up. (Maybe I officially audited the course, as it’s called, but I don’t really remember the arrangement.)

Frank had no problem with that. Neither did anyone else.

So, anyhow, I show up in the room. Other folks came in. We got out our horns and warmed up in that “checkin’ everyone out” way that musicians have. Then Frank comes in—he must’ve, because that’s how it had to be, no? But I don’t actually remember that first day. I remember other days, but not that one. So I’m just makin’ it up about that first day.

Improvising, you might say.

Frank comes in, says ‘hi’ to folks he recognizes. Does some administrative crap, and gets down to business. He goes to the chalk board, writes out the head and changes to a tune, say, “Blue Bossa,” explains a thing or two about “harmonic relevance” (his term) and we’re blowing. The rhythm section has it, we all play the head with Frank. Then Frank takes a chorus or two and then sends it around the room. Everyone took a turn. Continue reading →

How America Could Collapse, No Resilience

27 Jul

US corporations have been “de-localizing” everything, making  the US vulnerable supply chain “shocks” in countries around the world and leaving us bereft of local resilience.

US corporate leaders now see the idea of making things as a cost of doing business, one best left to others. What has happened as a result is that much of the production for critical products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a patchwork global network of suppliers all over the world in unstable regions, over which we have very little control. An accident or political problem in any number of countries may deny us not just iPhones but food, medicine or critical machinery.

Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, has made the case that America needs to be building things here, investing here and manufacturing here. We need the know-how and the ecosystem of innovation. The more corporate America seeks to push production risk off the balance sheet onto an increasingly fragile global supply chain, the more it seeks to wound the state so there is no body that can constrain its worst impulses, the more likely we will see a truly devastating Lehman-style industrial supply shock.

via How America Could Collapse | The Nation.

That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner

26 Jul

We can get more food out of the plants we raise as food crops, thereby making better use out of the biomass.

If home cooks reconsidered what should go into the pot, and what into the trash, what would they find? What new flavors might emerge, what old techniques? Pre-industrial cooks, for whom thrift was a necessity as well as a virtue, once knew many ways to put the entire garden to work. Fried green tomatoes and pickled watermelon rind are examples of dishes that preserved a bumper crop before rot set in.

“Some people these days are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their natural state, they don’t even know that a broccoli stalk is just as edible as the florets,” said Julia Wylie, an organic farmer in Watsonville, Calif.

via That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner – NYTimes.com.

Change the World

26 Jul

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.

—Margaret Mead

Murdoch’s 12 ‘Gifts’ to the World

25 Jul

Salon has an article on 12 things the Murdoch has done to make the world a poorer place for you and me:

  1. He has transformed world politics for the worse: It was George W. Bush’s first cousin (John Ellis), working as head of Murdoch’s Fox News election night “decision desk,” who, during the Florida voting uncertainties, called the election for Bush and set off a chain reaction from other media.
  2. He has ridiculed and raised doubts about global catastrophes, and about science itself, while elevating absurd theories and hyping minor matters.
  3. He has undermined liberty: His outlets led the drumbeat for restriction or elimination of certain fundamental rights, … while at the same time … fueling panic justifying the buildup of the national surveillance state.
  4. He has turned the public against the press.
  5. He has simultaneously propagandized for “the law” and compromised it.
  6. He has undermined essential rules about propriety in the news business, degrading ethical walls put in place through long tradition.
  7. He has propagandized for many of society’s worst instincts.
  8. He has until now effectively neutralized many would-be critics in journalism.
  9. He has relentlessly applied a double standard: Long a vilifier of others as communist sympathizers, he has created a pragmatic, but cynical partnership with the Chinese communist party dictators that has benefited him financially without helping (in fact, in some ways hindering) the prospects of democracy and freedom in that country.
  10. He has dumbed down the news business and hence the public.
  11. He has used his wealth regularly to stave off businesses and individuals that his company has illegally damaged.
  12. His campaign contributions and the public support of his media organizations have persuaded politicians to override laws against media monopolies. And with each successive step, his growing dominance made the following step in building an empire easier to achieve

10 Steps Toward Democracy

25 Jul

Juan Cole has a piece on 10 Ways Arab Democracies Can Avoid American Mistakes. Here they are in brief.

1. Contemporary political campaigns in the US depend heavily on television commercials. In the UK these ads are restricted, and in Norway they are banned. Consider banning them.

2. Do not hold your elections on work days. America’s robber barons put elections on Tuesdays in order to discourage workers, including the working poor, from voting.

3. Have compulsory, government-run voter registration at age 18 or whatever the voting age is. … Compulsory voter registration is correlated with high electoral turnout.

4. About 32 countries in the world have enforced compulsory voting. In Australia, for instance, you have to pay a small fine if you do not vote in certain elections.

5. Make a bill of rights central to your new constitutions, and be specific about what rights people have and what actions infringe against those rights. Include electronic rights to privacy, such as freedom from snooping in private emails or warrantless GPS tracking.

6. Put separation of religion and state in your national constitutions and make it hard to amend the constitution. … If we did not have our First Amendment, our fundamentalists would long since have passed blasphemy and other laws and deprived us of freedom of speech (which they consider a ‘provocation’ just as your fundamentalists do).

7. Keep your defense ministry spending as low as possible consistent with being able to defend your borders. Tunisia, you get this one right.

8. Avoid allowing your judiciaries to become politicized. Having party-dominated executives and legislatures approve judicial appointments has real drawbacks. … Never, ever, ever recognize your corporations as persons under the law.

9. Protect your workers’ unions. Make it illegal to fire workers for trying to unionize. Remove obstacles to unionization.

10. Find a way to fight monopoly practices with strong antitrust legislation and enforcement. … Laws against legislators and regulators being hired by the companies they used to regulate would help tell against the entrenchment of the monopolies.

Jobs Policy, Not

20 Jul

The Tables Are Turned on Rupert Murdoch – NYTimes.com

20 Jul

Although I generally admire entrepreneurs who build giant companies, Rupert Murdoch, despite giving us Homer Simpson, generally has not been a force for good over the course of his long career. His Bill O’Reilly-ed, Glenn Beck-ed Fox News has done a great deal to coarsen the political discourse. His tabloids have lowered the standards of journalism on three continents — and routinely broken the law on at least one of them. He had dumbed down his prestige papers, like The Times of London. He has run roughshod over cross-ownership rules meant to prevent one man or company from having too much power — and then used his lobbying might to get those rules diluted. He has put kowtowing to China ahead of freedom of the press, even killing a book set to be published by his HarperCollins unit that the Chinese authorities objected to. He has consistently used his media properties to reward allies and punish enemies. It’s a long list.

via The Tables Are Turned on Rupert Murdoch – NYTimes.com.

How 1 MILLION Pounds Of Organic Food Can Be Produced On 3 Acres | Wake Up World

17 Jul

I came across this video of a man who has figured out a system to grow 1 million pounds of food on 3 acres each and every year. How are they doing this?

* By producing 10,000 fish

* Using 300 to 500 yards of worm compost

* By utilizing vertical space

* Having 3 acres of land in green houses

* Using 1 simple aquaponic pump

* Food is grown all year by using heat from the compost piles

via How 1 MILLION Pounds Of Organic Food Can Be Produced On 3 Acres | Wake Up World.

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