It takes 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of human food. And 40% of that food will go into
the garbage, which means that it really takes 17 calories to produce 1 calorie
of human energy.
On average American drink 35 gallons of bottled water a
year. Consumption of bottled water is expected to exceed that of soda in
2017. It takes as much oil per year to manufacture single serving disposable
water bottles as it would to fuel one million cars for a year.
In this age of pervasive media, the
primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives
delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones
and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise
to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as
possible. Robert Parry, 2015
The killer is serene
Death is supreme
This murder is sublime
His demise is extreme
63,000 Tons of antibiotics a year are feed to livestock. In
fifteen years that consumption is expected to grow to over 100,000 Ton a year
Wind from Mt. Fuji - / carrying it
in my fan, / a souvenir for those in Edo – Basho
To know the code is to be authorized. We become the codes.
We don’t want a commander-in-chief.
We want a narrator-in-chief. - Marty Kaplan, 2015
The luxury baby market, which didn’t exist before the
1990s, now brings in $10.6 billion a year.
Well – nothing’s happened / and
yesterday’s come and gone! / blowfish
soup – Basho, 1679
In a recent poll half the Republicans in Iowa believe that
Islam could not be a ‘legal’ religion
Is it possible for journalists to
move from objective journalism, as practiced, to the more difficult task of
reporting objective reality? - Larry Beinhart
The first Jewish community to settle in the Unted States came
from Brazil
The smell of heliotrope
Crayon –
pale blue wax
The big yellow and green box
Flip top –
set of forty-eight
Marlboro man – big man
Dead of
cancer. What a sight
Big Chief – tablets for our sins
Cheap Japanese tin toys in big bins
At the Five
and Dime
Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Where did you go
Do you have Prince Albert
In a can?
Shouldn’t you
Let him out then
Still looking for a word
That rhymes with orange
Man is not a rational animal, he is
a rationalizing animal. - Robert Heinlein
Africans alraeady constituted 20 to 25% of the population of
New York City in 1655 before the first slave ship called at the city.
In a world where genuine sense of
mastery is elusive, and feelings of impotency abound, the well-designed product
can provide a symbolism of autonomous proficiency and power – Stuart Ewen – All
Consuming Images
5,066 bystanders
and passengers have been killed in police chases in the US since 1979.
Knowing is giving oneself to a
phenomenon rather than thinking about it from above – Michael Taussig – The
Nervous System, 1992
Only useful facts are included in the historical narrative
There is only one party in the
United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and
Democrat. – Gore Vidal
And the fog lifts
Everything is suspended
Times comes to a halt
The cop on the corner
Yells,
Stop!
In the name
Of love
Stop, love’s a thief
Ninety days of bread
And water
Please don’t go
I want you
so
A dozen red roses
Fog nurtured
Frog serenaded
On a clear day you can
Sense forever
In the seven states that drug test welfare recipients, they have now
spent about $1 million on the tests. Each state has found drug usage rates
among welfare applicants to be far below the national average of 9.4 percent
for all Americans.
We live in such an interminable
state of disaster, we barely see the locusts for the plague. - Steven W Thrasher
In terms of emissions, agriculture is worse for the climate than deforestation
There were more arrests in the U.S. for marijuana possession
than for all violent crimes combined.
By their forties, Nobel laureates
are first authors on only 26 percent of their papers, as compared to their less
accomplished contemporaries, who are first authors 56 percent of the time.
Nicer people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even more likely to
win Nobel prizes. Samuel Arbesman – The
Half Life of Facts p.18
56% of federal and state dollars spent between 2009 and 2011
on welfare programs — including Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax
Credit — flowed to working families and individuals with jobs. In some
industries, about half the workforce relies on welfare.
When I open a book, it almost always
works - N Katherine Hayles – How We Became Posthuman, 1997 p48
I hit a milestone
But not too hard
It was only a scrape
A little mecurichrome
And a
bandaide
With a smily face on it
Fixed right up
Fixed right up
The 500 largest American companies hold more than $2.1
trillion in accumulated profits offshore to avoid U.S. taxes and would
collectively owe an estimated $620 billion in U.S. taxes if they repatriated
the funds. Apple is holding $181.1 billion offshore, more than any other U.S.
company, and would owe an estimated $59.2 billion in U.S. taxes if it tried to
bring the money back to the United States from its three overseas tax havens
The things we call ‘technologies’
are ways of building order in our world - Langdon Winner - The Whale and the
Reactor, 1986
The old totalitarian regimes are being replaced by
authoritarian regimes, which operate with free markets and greater personal
freedom, but continue to apply just enough power to stave off threats
In summer rains / the crane’s legs
/ become short – Basho, 1681
In a recent poll more than a third of Republicans said that
Islam should be illegal in the United States.
44 percent said that Christianity should be our official religion. But
only one in five actually want to eliminate freedom of religon, even though most of them espouse positions
that would do exactly that. Smaller numbers of both Democrats and independents
also admitted to wanting to outlaw Islam (15 percent of Democrats, 20 percent
of independents) and make Christianity our official religion
If we can dose kids with Ritalin,
and adults with Oxycontin, and have a $400 billion liquor industry, and sell
cancer sticks in convenience stores, we as a society surely take a relaxed
attitude about putting harmful substances into the public considered as a
collective body - Lambert Strether
For every lethal shooting in defense of life or
property—guns are used to commit 34 murders and 78 suicides, and are the cause
of two accidental deaths, according to an analysis of FBI data
Holding the fabric together is our
master illusion, the notion that somehow what we see around us today is
‘normal’. – Richard Heinberg – Peak Everything: waking u to a century of
declines, 2007 p.23
The Secret Service has never fired a weapon in defense of a
President during an assassination attempt
It takes 50 years to get a wrong
idea out of medicine, and 100 years a right one into medicine – John Hughlings Jackson
Lying in bed I mark
My menu
options
Juice,
fruit cup, dry cereal
No tea or
coffee allowed
It’s what keeps me going
This
anticipation
Trying to catch them making
A mistake – no, no
This is the wrong tray
I wanted bacon, not sausage
And it’s the routine nature of it
That breaks up the monotony of it
Medications,
then my tray
Housekeeping
and the rounds
They are all so goddamn cheery
The bile is bitter and must be
Re-swallowed.
And how
Are you
doing today
As she raises the blinds and the
Sun streams
in
I could just scream
87 percent of Americans say that they think candidates
running for Congress or president should have a basic understanding of the
science that informs public policy decisions. That opinion holds true across
the political spectrum, with 92 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of
Republicans, and 79 percent of Independents saying that it’s important to them
that candidates have a baseline understanding of science. So how many actuality do have such a baseline understanding?
