Habs out.

They played well. Honestly I didn't think they'd have gotten this far (I thought Boston would win that last series).

But losing Price was the key - nothing against the rookie; he was good and kept them in - that and the lack of offense really hurt.

Sigh - maybe next year?

Skin Cancer on the rise in Canada

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/melanoma-a-fast-rising-cancer-in-canada-1.2656293

Eek!

"A single, blistering sunburn before the age of 20 can double a person’s chance of developing melanoma. Research also suggests that people who first start using indoor tanning beds before the age of 65 are also at higher risk."

45 days for a corporation to post a tweet? What twats!

But then again, it's all about advertising and branding.

http://www.businessinsider.com/huge-social-media-manager-does-all-day-2014-5

Of course, what does it say about technology and people and the genuineness of it all? Not a whole lot there.

Something about Memorial Day I wasn't aware of.

The first widely publicized observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves.^[12] Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, "Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly ten thousand people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is used as Hampton Park.^[13] Years later, the celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration Day" in the North.

David W. Blight described the day:

"This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”^[14]

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day#History_of_the_holiday}

Why I don't trust just anyone with a weapon.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179924/when-guns-are-everywhere-only-people-guns-will-have-guns?_r=hpyr

Think it's only satire?

I know people who think this way - which is why I stay far away from them. It's also why I steer clear of national parks, since these idiots are allowed to carry their weapons there apparently.

Resource Concentration

Apparently that's the key -

"... resource concentration is a key factor in explaining inequality among both farmers and the ancient salmon fishers. “Those societies had in a natural state exactly the same kind of concentration of resources that farming made possible everywhere,” Bowles says. “Farming vastly increased the productivity of small patches of land and a small number of animals.” People who owned particularly fertile patches of farmland had a good shot at becoming wealthy and passing on that wealth, in part because the land was defendable against others.

As agricultural societies developed, so did more elaborate hierarchies, evolving into hereditary chiefdoms and eventually kingdoms. In these complex societies, chiefs and kings came up with new strategies for amassing surpluses and concentrating wealth and power. Many chiefs created economic bottlenecks in trade routes, noted economic anthropologist Timothy Earle of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in a 2011 paper in Social Evolution & History. These leaders then collected payments from merchants for safe passage and used the surplus to finance specialized warriors to defend and extend their rule. Material culture also became ever more sophisticated, multiplying into innumerable kinds of highly concentrated and easily transmitted forms of wealth, from copper ingots to gold jewelry. All of these trends led to ever greater levels of inequality. "

Context here - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/822.full

RIP Gordon Willis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Willis

The look of film and what we see changed for the better because of him.

On my list of things to read online.

That is, before corporations in this country create multiple Internet lanes of traffic - one fast one for the have's, and one slow one for the rest of us.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

Suddenly I find myself distrusting certain 'Progressive-minded' people.

Not because they are 'Progressive', mind you.

But rather because of who I find they tend to partner with to oppose an issue.

Think that's being paranoid? Well this much I can say - I trust David Neiwert to be a lot more honest about an issue than say Diane Ravitch; regardless of what I really think of Common Core -

See for yourself -  http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-progressives-have-botched-fight.html#disqus_thread

The Great Boycott: Monsanto and the GMA - can a family really do it?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_30039.cfm

7 ways they say -

(1)    Stop buying all non-organic processed foods. Even if they are certified organic, don’t buy any Traitor Brand processed foods or beverages. Ninety percent of the foods Americans buy or consume are heavily processed, deliberately laced with sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, contaminated with dyes, preservatives, pesticides, GMOs, and drug residues. If you want to be healthy, if you want to avoid cancer, heart attacks, or obesity, build your diet around whole foods, especially raw fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, (coconut oil, avocadoes, pastured meat, dairy, and eggs, nuts, and whole grains) and nuts.

(2)    Patronize grocers, coops and community restaurants that serve organic, cooked-from-scratch, local food.
Many restaurants, especially chain restaurants (Chipotlé is a rare exception), sell many of the brands owned by GMA members.

(3)    Cook at home with healthy organic ingredients.

(4)    Buy only heirloom, open-pollinated, and/or organic seeds.

(5)    Boycott all lawn and garden inputs (chemicals, fertilizers, etc.) unless they are “OMRI Approved,” which means they are allowed in organic production.

(6)    Read the labels on everything you buy. If a GMA member company owns the product, don’t buy it. Given the greed and reckless disregard for public health and the environment typical of GMA corporations, chances are these products aren’t good for you and the environment anyway.

(7)    Download the Buycott app for your smartphone and join OCA's new campaign, "Buy Organic Brands that Support Your Right to Know" so you can scan products before you buy them.


Easier said than done though. I mean seriously - how are families barely holding on - living paycheck-to-paycheck each month like mine - able to make this happen? The real challenges I see are twofold -

1. Most families often do not realize that they are buying a food product that can be traced back to Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft/Mondelez, General Mills, ConAgra, Kelloggs, Campbells, Smuckers, or McCormicks.
2. Most families do not know of viable alternate choices they can make, and even if they do, could afford it on a monthly basis.

Paul Robeson - what an interesting guy.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/long-overdue-paul-robeson-revival-talented-person-20th-century

I knew of him to some degree, but now I want to know more.

Quote of the day - 05-16-2014

Michael Copps:

“Let’s be clear ... Any proposal to allow fast lanes for the few is emphatically not net neutrality. The clear common-sense prerequisite for an Open Internet is Title II reclassification, guaranteeing the agency’s authority to protect consumers and ensure free speech online.

“The FCC should conduct public hearings on the matter outside of Washington, DC, so it can hear from the people who will have to live with the decisions it makes at this pivotal moment for the future of the Internet. It’s no exaggeration to say that every American has a stake in its deliberations.

“The presumptions in this item appear little different from what was reported about the initial draft. It opens a door to Title II classification but still tilts in favor of the weak legal framework that so far has gotten us nowhere. It opens a door to wireless being covered by net neutrality, but still retains the scope of the earlier rules which excluded wireless.

“And it still relies too much on porous metrics — like what is ‘commercially reasonable’ — that ISPs [Internet Service Providers] can drive an 18-wheeler through. Today should have been about adopting strong safeguards, enforceable rules, and sound legal footings. It wasn’t. So it will take lots of citizens speaking out now to tell the FCC it is headed in the wrong direction.”

Putting happiness first?

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23710-building-a-movement-for-happiness

What a novel idea!

You know why that doesn't happen? Because happiness isn't something a corporation can really accept. Happiness is something sentient thinking beings should aim for, something corporations aren't and never will ever do.

Because corporations are like software - neither is alive nor is capable of thinking.

They are tools aimed at aiding people - they themselves should not have any more rights to more profit than a person should have the right to pursue their dreams

So then, why are the world's finances and systems of governments and nations corrupted by these very institutions?

Now I'm not talking about hedonism, or getting lost in addiction. I mean having people really aim for genuine, meaningful sustainable happiness.

If I ever sound like I have a healthy distrust for both the CIA and Wall Street bankers/lawyers ...

... here's why.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/14/how-wall-st-bailed-out-the-nazis-2/

"These Wall-Street-lawyers-turned-spymasters brought their moral relativism and their ardor for aggressive capitalism to their World War II decision-making. Thus, they created an opening for Nazi war criminals who – after Germany’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943 – saw the writing on the wall regarding the future of the Third Reich and started hedging their bets."

Here's a tip for single straight guys.

Never ever pay any service or business for anything that women get to use for free.

It's a double-standard and is really nothing more than prostitution.

Not sure about holy, but abject shit indeed for us all,

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse (thanks Buzzflash)

No - this is not a 'the sky is falling' situation you idiots out there -

"Two new scientific papers, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, report that major glaciers that are part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appear to have become irrevocably destabilized. The whole process may still play out on the scale of centuries, but due to the particular dynamics of this ice sheet, the collapse of these major glaciers now "appears unstoppable," according to NASA (whose researchers are behind one of the two studies)."

Truly organic, no?

Not till you read this ...

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/NOPPetitionedSubstancesDatabase

The songs I could write with this thing!

Or rather ... 'Thang' ...


http://www.zzounds.com/item--BETBEATTHANG

Americans conditioned to think by our media conglomerates - you doubt?

Why?


Because people simply assume what they're being told is fact, when the reality is, most of the time it isn't.

And ...

"Actually, there is nothing particularly unique about the self-censoring environment under which Americans live. All states and cultures, to one extent or another, practice this sort of manipulation of the information environment whereby reality is distorted.

Thus we can ask, is the United States the great defender of its own constitutional freedoms? It is when it suits the purposes of policy makers. When it doesn’t, hypocrisy prevails."


Context here -http://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/09/how-the-us-propaganda-system-works/

Nothing that earns money is too big to tax.

Even - no, Especially - if it's not alive.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23570-when-corporations-get-too-big-to-tax

There is an alternative: tax diplomacy. A new treaty could stop multinationals from pitting governments against one another in a never-ending hollowing-out of the global tax base.

Otherwise, we may just find ourselves taking the tax dollars we pay as individuals, which should be used to build schools, roads, and bridges, and handing them over to corporations on Tax Day instead.

Another idiotic driver.

They evidently cannot see the "NO PARKING" sign painted on the ground.

Paul Krugman asks - are you the solution, or part of the problem?

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23534-how-to-save-the-planet-at-minimal-expense

"In fact, we should be optimistic about the ability of a market economy to reduce emissions given incentives. And now we know something new: the technological prospects for a low-emission economy have gotten dramatically better. It's kind of odd how little attention the media gives to the solar revolution, but this is really huge stuff.

In fact, it's possible that solar will displace coal even without special incentives. But we can't count on that. What we do know is that it's no longer remotely true that we need to keep burning coal to satisfy demand for electricity. The way is open for a drastic reduction in emissions, at not very high cost.

And that should make us optimistic about the future, right? I mean, all that stands in our way is prejudice, ignorance and vested interests.

Oh, wait."

Then there's this - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/06

Movies and the viewing experience.

I'm trying hard not to be a curmudgeon.

I think as I get older, my views about things become more jaundiced. Or perhaps it's that I find I should compromise less when it comes dedicating my attention to something I don't care about, see no value in, or am convinced that giving something a second look has no merit.

This should not be confused with being conservative or less open-minded. I'm always interested in seeing new things, checking out some band I've not heard of, and so on and so forth. I admit I like to re-watch things that I've enjoyed over. I blame that on Star Wars and VHS.

On the other hand, I think I've always been of the mindset that if I know or confirm something in my mind to be crap and not worth my time, I shouldn't dedicate any more time to it.

Look - I liked and enjoyed watching the two trilogies - both the Original Trilogy (OT) and the Prequel Trilogy (PT). Yes they were different, and filmed in different times with different technologies, but as a cohesive whole, I think overall George Lucas did a good job telling a story. And back in the 1980's - like most kids - hearing about a Sequel Trilogy (ST) made wonder what story they could really tell. After all, the main villains were vanquished. Good had triumphed over Evil, and that was it.

I don't have a positive impression of what's to come though.

To begin with - no Lando? That's a pretty obvious character missed and the only non-white human from the OT, and they DON'T bring him back? But they brought back every other white person?

Of course, I could be very wrong about it all. Lucas is somehow still involved behind-the-scenes apparently, and Kasdan is behind the script - so something good might come out of it, yes?

To begin with, I don't respect the guy behind it (you can look him up yourself - you know who he is). None of his TV shows were interesting, and he fucked up one movie franchise. Yes Star Trek under his helm sucks now. So based on his track record I'm under no illusions that Star Wars is going to be any better with Mr. Remaker.  He's like Steven Spielberg without any substance, or Michael Bay - a guy who through the Transformers mess has proven he cannot distinquish a good script, story and plot beyond the ones he's filmed; all he sees are dollars.

And I get the impression that if people thought Lucas sacrificed story-telling and acting for CGI and marketing in the PT, they have no idea what's in store for them now.

Happy May Day!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

International Socialist Workers and Morris Dancers on the globe's Northern Hemisphere unite!