Take our Jobs

TAKE OUR JOBS There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related. Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers. Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States. We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the "Take Our Jobs" campaign. Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field, we will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

I want to be a farm worker: First Name: Last Name: E-mail: Zip Code:            ** Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis. http://www.takeourjobs.org/

Donkeygate! Bush Officials Banned the Democrat Mascot

by Randall Lane Info

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress approved a magazine designed to win over Arab hearts and minds. In an excerpt from his new book, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, Randall Lane describes how Bush officials forbade using photographs of a donkey, in order to avoid any positive reflection of Democrats.

Those of us who were in New York on 9/11—in fact, everyone who was in America—can attest to the overwhelming feeling of needing to do something, anything, to pitch in. In the days and weeks following that awful day, I spent all night feeding rescue workers at Ground Zero, volunteered to give blood that wasn't needed and wrote stories about the heroes and victims. It didn't seem enough. So I put forward the sharpest skill set I had, starting magazines, which put me smack in the middle of the one of the uglier, untold stories of the Bush administration.

As part of a public diplomacy program similar to Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, the State Department had allocated more than $4 million a year to launch a magazine about American culture, which would be translated into Arabic and sold across the Arab world. (A TV station, Al Hurra, and Radio Sawa were launched around the same time.) Other than a corny name, Hi!, the one English word everyone on the planet knows, it was an empty vessel.

The Bush official held up the offending photo, as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting, and pointed to a pack mule that, by other names, might be known as a donkey.

To fill it, the State Department hired a highly regarded Washington-based custom media company, TMG, which in turn hired me. Working with a squad of Arab-born Americans, including a smart, opinionated Libyan, a poetic Syrian, and a diligent Palestinian, I would craft America's public face for the part of the world that hated us most, as translated via the cover and substance of a glossy magazine.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-06/donkeygate-bush-officials-barred-democrat-mascot-according-to-randall-lanes-the-zeroes/?cid=bs:featured3

Why We Must Reduce Military Spending

by Rep. Barney Frank and Rep. Ron Paul

As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion -- more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our servicemembers have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September 11, 2001.

Immediately after World War II, with much of the world devastated and the Soviet Union becoming increasingly aggressive, America took on the responsibility of protecting virtually every country that asked for it. Sixty-five years later, we continue to play that role long after there is any justification for it, and currently American military spending makes up approximately 44% of all such expenditures worldwide. The nations of Western Europe now collectively have greater resources at their command than we do, yet they continue to depend overwhelmingly on American taxpayers to provide for their defense. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella."

When our democratic allies are menaced by larger, hostile powers, there is a strong argument to be made for supporting them. But the notion that American taxpayers get some benefit from extending our military might worldwide is deeply flawed. And the idea that as a superpower it is our duty to maintain stability by intervening in civil disorders virtually anywhere in the world often generates anger directed at us and may in the end do more harm than good.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/why-we-must-reduce-milita_b_636051.html

Wrongly citing New York law, NBC’s Today rejects same-sex couples from wedding contest

by Karl Frisch

Once again, NBC is holding a wedding contest in which the winning couple will be awarded a wedding aired live on the network's highly-rated Today morning show and an all-expense paid honeymoon.

Unfortunately, Today's "Modern Day Wedding Contest" isn't open to same-sex couples.

In a statement from NBC given to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the network said:

For the TODAY show wedding, the couple must be able to be legally married in New York, which is where the wedding will take place.

But, as GLAAD noted in response:

This is not a valid argument since New York State legally recognizes same-sex marriages licensed in other states. Same-sex couples can now legally obtain marriage licenses in Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington D.C. NBC is mistakenly equating the marriage license with the wedding celebration. Same-sex weddings are entirely legal in New York State.  As long as the marriage license is conferred upon the same-sex couple by another state, New York State recognizes the marriage as a fully valid and legal one. NBC's exclusion of same-sex couples from its contest is not motivated by the law, but bias against these couples.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007060026

Separating Church and Hate: Irrationality and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping

by Cynthia Boaz

(Photo: Beth Rankin)

"Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding."

- MK Gandhi

Within minutes of learning that last November's Fort Hood shooter had an Arab name and an Islamic background, commentators at the major media outlets were engaging in wild speculation that the killer's motive was "jihad" and that the murders fell into the category of political terrorism. For many Americans, these reflexive conclusions also confirmed what they'd decided long ago: that Muslims want to do them harm. Although it is more appropriate to try and understand perpetrators of terrorism by their political (rather than religious) identifications and grievances, the tenacity with which interchangeability of the concepts of Islam and terrorism holds on - and is perpetuated in mainstream discourse - is doing damage to the idea that the United States and its people represent the most open, tolerant society the world has to offer.

Awhile back, I attended a conference at Boulder's Naropa University on "Human and Women's Rights in Islam," at which we discussed the most persistent stereotypes about Islam and Muslims held by Westerners generally - and Americans particularly - that demand closer examination. Individually, these misconceptions are the source of grave misunderstandings between individuals. Collectively, they form the basis of a worldview so distorted that it drives some of its proponents to openly and brazenly call for the use of violence against their fellow citizens, including, in the most stunning cases, the president himself (who, although not Muslim, is regularly and pejoratively cast as such by his detractors.)

Let's just be frank. The demonization of Islam as a religion and of its adherents as individuals has reached the level of hysteria within the United States. Although the fear of Muslims is usually cloaked in condescension or indignation, the source of this most recent version of bigotry is transparent and utterly predictable. There must be a nameless, faceless, sinister "other" upon whom we can hang our deepest anxieties and frustrations as a people. This kind of paranoia is not unique, but as its perpetrators on right-wing radio, FOX "News" and the far-right blogosphere can attest, it still works like a charm.

I would offer to Americans that if you've come to believe that it's Islam that's the source of our problems, you might as well pack it up and go home because the terrorists have already won.

http://www.truth-out.org/separating-church-and-hate-a-plea-sanity60819

Nut? What Nut? The Squirrel Outwits to Survive

By NATALIE ANGIER

I was walking through the neighborhood one afternoon when, on turning a corner, I nearly tripped over a gray squirrel that was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, eating a nut. Startled by my sudden appearance, the squirrel dashed out to the road — right in front of an oncoming car.

Before I had time to scream, the squirrel had gotten caught in the car's front hubcap, had spun around once like a cartoon character in a clothes dryer, and was spat back off. When the car drove away, the squirrel picked itself up, wobbled for a moment or two, and then resolutely hopped across the street.

You don't get to be one of the most widely disseminated mammals in the world — equally at home in the woods, a suburban backyard or any city "green space" bigger than a mousepad — if you're crushed by every Acme anvil that happens to drop your way.

"When people call me squirrely," said John L. Koprowski, a squirrel expert and professor of wildlife conservation and management at the University of Arizona, "I am flattered by the term."

The Eastern gray tree squirrel, or Sciurus carolinensis, has been so spectacularly successful that it is often considered a pest. The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the squirrel on its list of the top 100 invasive species. The British and Italians hate gray squirrels for outcompeting their beloved native red squirrels. Manhattanites hate gray squirrels for reminding them of pigeons, and that goes for the black, brown and latte squirrel morphs, too.

Yet researchers who study gray squirrels argue that their subject is far more compelling than most people realize, and that behind the squirrel's success lies a phenomenal elasticity of body, brain and behavior. Squirrels can leap a span 10 times the length of their body, roughly double what the best human long jumper can manage. They can rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and so keep a grip while climbing no matter which way they're facing. Squirrels can learn by watching others — cross-phyletically, if need be. In their book "Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide," Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell of the Smithsonian Institution described the safe-pedestrian approach of a gray squirrel eager to traverse a busy avenue near the White House. The squirrel waited on the grass near a crosswalk until people began to cross the street, said the authors, "and then it crossed the street behind them."

In the acuity of their visual system, the sensitivity and deftness with which they can manipulate objects, their sociability, chattiness and willingness to deceive, squirrels turn out to be surprisingly similar to primates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/science/06angi.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

The Epic of America, Still

By Scott Burns

In his bathtub, Napoleon decided to sell the Louisiana Territory.

His goal wasn't lofty. He just needed cash for his various wars. Fortunately, President Thomas Jefferson did have a lofty goal— a vision of a coast-to-coast America. So he made the Louisiana Purchase.

The bathtub tidbit comes from "The Epic of America," historian James Truslow Adams' 1931 history of the United States. "The character of our new acquisition to the west of "the river" was not yet well known, but the exploring expeditions of Lewis and Clark in the Northwest and of Zebulon M. Pike in the Southwest had indicated that the prairies and plains were not of much use to settlers, and thus the western half of the country was to retain its reputation as the great American desert until after the Civil War," Adams wrote.

Today, the population center of the United States is well west of "the river." It continues to move further west with each census report, as it has since 1790. Back then it took the Lewis and Clark expedition two years and much hazard to get to the Pacific Ocean from Pittsburgh.

Today, Southwest Airlines flies from Pittsburgh to Seattle three times a day. Each flight covers the 2,483 miles in about 7 hours, including time to change planes in Chicago. And the flight will set you back as little as $244. The average American worker earns that much in two days.

The fare figures to about 10 cents a mile. According to the American Automobile Association that's a bit less than it costs per mile to buy gasoline for the typical American car.

We've come a long way, and gone a great distance.

Today, the greatest hardship on a trip to the Pacific Ocean is the lack of food or a seat that is a tad narrow, but that is hard to complain about when you have a full cash bar, free snacks and flight attendants with a sense of humor.

Steve Penner, a friend in La Jolla, sums it up nicely: "I'll go anywhere Southwest goes. I won't go anywhere else." I share that preference. I only fly other airlines when absolutely necessary.

http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2010/07/02/the-epic-of-america-still.aspx

Arizona GOP candidate calls for cutting off illegal immigrants’ utilities

By Stephen C. Webster

Arizona's campaign against Mexican immigrants seems to intensify with every passing week. This latest round of escalation, however, has even some proponents of getting tough on illegal immigrants wondering if it's just gone a bit too far.

The state has been at the very epicenter of America's immigration debate ever since the passage of Senate Bill 1070, which allows police the right to detain anyone suspected of being undocumented. In spite of the rapid, loud backlash against the move, from all appearances the laws have only sparked greater emphasis on -- and increased hatred of -- immigrants in public life.

Enter former Republican State Representative Barry Wong, who hopes to win a job atop the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees the state's utilities.

His plan to get elected: promise to cut off electricity, water and gas to all illegal immigrants, even though his idea is completely unenforceable.

"I'm sure there will be criticism about human-rights violations," Wong said, according to the New York Daily News. "Is power or natural gas or any type of utility we regulate, is that a right that people have? It is not a right. It is a service."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0705/arizona-gop-candidate-calls-cutting-illegal-immigrants-utilities/

Clay Shirky: 'Paywall will underperform – the numbers don't add up'

The internet guru on the death of newspapers, why paywall will fail and how the internet has brought out our creativity – and generosity

by Decca Aitkenhead

Clay Shirky. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

If you are reading this article on a printed copy of the Guardian, what you have in your hand will, just 15 years from now, look as archaic as a Western Union telegram does today. In less than 50 years, according to Clay Shirky, it won't exist at all. The reason, he says, is very simple, and very obvious: if you are 25 or younger, you're probably already reading this on your computer screen. "And to put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds."

You have probably never even heard of Shirky, and until this interview I hadn't either. When I ask him to define what he does, he laughs, and admits that often when he's leaving a party someone will say to him, "What exactly is it you do?" His standard reply – "I work on the theory and practice of social media"– is not just wilfully opaque, but crushingly dreary, which is funny, because he is one of the most illuminating people I've ever met.

The people who know about Shirky call him an "internet guru". He winces when I say so – "Oh, I hate that!" – and it's easy to see why, for he is the very opposite of the techie stereotype. Now 46, his first career was in the theatre in New York, and he didn't even own a computer until the age of 28, when he had to be introduced to the internet by his mother. Arrestingly self-assured and charismatic, his conversation is warm and discursive, intently engaged yet relaxed – but it's his rhetorical fluency which bowls you over. The architecture of his argument is a Malcolm Gladwell-esque structure of psychological and sociological insight, analysing contemporary technology with the clarity of a historian's perspective and such authority that were he to tell you the sun actually sets in the east, you might almost believe him. At the very least, you'd probably want to – and if a guru is defined by the credulous deference he commands from others, then Shirky unquestionably qualifies. Within minutes I found myself hanging on his every word – despite being temperamentally hostile to almost everything he believes.

Shirky has been writing about the internet since 1996. As the chief technological officer for several web design companies during the 90s, he was quickly hired as a consultant by major media companies – News Corporation, Time Warner, Hearst – all curious about this new thing called the world wide web. In 2000, following "an intuition that the internet was turning social", Shirky turned to the fledgling phenomenon of online social networking – an obscure concept back then, but which has since evolved into MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, to become the web's primary purpose for billions of people all over the world. Shirky now teaches new media at New York University, and in 2008 published his first book, Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together, which celebrated individuals' new power to communicate, organise and change the world via the web.

His predictions for the fate of print media organisations have proved unnervingly accurate; 2009 would be a bloodbath for newspapers, he warned – and so it came to pass. Dozens of American newspapers closed last year, while several others, such as the Christian Science Monitor, moved their entire operation online. The business model of the traditional print newspaper, according to Shirky, is doomed; the monopoly on news it has enjoyed ever since the invention of the printing press has become an industrial dodo. Rupert Murdoch has just begun charging for online access to the Times – and Shirky is confident the experiment will fail.

"Everyone's waiting to see what will happen with the paywall – it's the big question. But I think it will underperform. On a purely financial calculation, I don't think the numbers add up." But then, interestingly, he goes on, "Here's what worries me about the paywall. When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they're critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn't want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/05/clay-shirky-internet-television-newspapers

Police: Conn. priest stole $1M for male escorts

 

This July 6, 2010 booking photo released by the Waterbury, Conn., police department shows the Rev. Kevin Gray, 64, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, who has been charged with stealing more than $1 million in parish funds to use for male escorts, expensive clothing and luxury hotels and restaurants. (AP Photo/Waterbury Police Department) (Anonymous - AP)

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The Rev. Kevin J. Gray was a popular priest who appeared to live humbly, forgoing a car and walking to Mass from another parish where he lived so that a Catholic charity could use his space at the rectory. Parishioners thought he had cancer and admired how he helped immigrants in his largely poor parish in Connecticut.

But after a routine audit of the church's finances turned up discrepancies, authorities began a criminal investigation that they say unraveled a secret double life of male escorts, strip bars and lavish spending on the finest restaurants, luxury hotels and expensive clothing, financed with money stolen from the parish.

"About a million," Gray told authorities without hesitation when asked how much he took from the church account, according to his arrest affidavit.

Gray, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, was arrested and charged with first-degree larceny, accused of stealing $1.3 million over seven years from the church, police said. He was arraigned Tuesday in Waterbury Superior Court and was being held on $750,000 bond, court officials said.

"Up until this investigation he had an excellent reputation," police Capt. Christopher Corbett said. "The life he was leading in New York City was much different than the life he was leading in Waterbury as a priest. He's certainly an example of someone who was leading a double life."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070601918.html?hpid=moreheadlines

The Facebook Economy

Don't stop me

© Tom Toles

Ridiculous America

by William Rivers Pitt

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t;

Adapted: rbanks, Elisabeth Moore, roserevolution)

I worked five shifts at the bar between Saturday and Saturday this week, and saw some things that really got me thinking about the nature of this nation. I knew this already, but my week on the sidewalk really brought it home: this is a truly ridiculous country, in every positive and negative sense of the word.

The week began with a swarm of union delegates arriving at the hotels down the street. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) was holding its 39th International Convention at the hall down the way. For those not in the know, AFSCME is part of the AFL-CIO, and is one of the largest unions in the country. It represents some 1.4 million workers through 3,600 locals in 46 states. On the table at their convention were a variety of resolutions, but none more significant than the election of a Secretary-Treasurer, an incredibly important position in any union. Two main candidates were in the running - Lee Saunders and Danny Donohue - and at the outset of the week, the conventional wisdom had Saunders winning in a walk.

Supporters of Donohue, however, had other ideas. The election was slated for Thursday morning, and starting on the Saturday before, Donohue's people turned my bar into a makeshift headquarters/decompression chamber while they plotted an insurgent campaign to get their man in. A great many of them smoked, so the sidewalk where I stand post became a very small, butt-littered public square, and I was able to gather exactly what was going on. By Tuesday, the excrement had hit the wind machine after a tense confrontation on the convention floor, and by Wednesday, all available data suggested the race was tied. Only a few of Dohonue's people came in Wednesday night; they all had to be sharp for the vote in the morning, but the few I did see told me there was absolutely no way to tell how the thing was going to shake out.

When I got to work Thursday afternoon, a clutch of my new regulars were gathered at the corner of the bar staring quietly into their beers. I asked what happened, and they shook their heads; Lee Saunders had defeated Danny Donohue 652,660 to 648,356, a margin of 4,304 votes. Some 3,900 blank ballots had been turned in, several more had been double-marked and were therefore invalid, and a third minor candidate named Mark Foley had pulled 1,489 votes for himself.

The margin was excruciating, but as the evening progressed, I watched those guys slowly but steadily shake it off. None of them had ever done anything like this, never organized a campaign of any kind, and certainly had never made a run at a well-entrenched and heavily-favored opponent. Coming within 4,000 votes of victory was, they realized, a tremendous accomplishment. Now they had an organization, willing volunteers, and a very viable candidate, and the next election for Secretary-Treasurer was only two years away. They would be ready next time, and I wouldn't bet against them. Later that night, one of them came back to the bar and gave me a little green pin representing his local. I've been wearing it ever since.

http://www.truth-out.org/ridiculous-america61048

Dalai Lama: 75th Birthday Global Tribute

The Dalai Lama celebrates his 75th birthday on July 6th.

His message of peace and justice needs a big public jolt of support in these challenging times to demonstrate to those who oppose it that the world is united in hope for a peaceful and fair world.

Avaaz is organising a global tribute that will be delivered personally to the Dalai Lama -- signers and messages will be posted on a "wall of warm wishes" just outside the main Temple in Dharamsala, India and will be broadcast across the region.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/dalai_lamas_birthday/?cl=647839978&v=6740

More than one-quarter don’t know who US gained independence from

 

 

Every Fourth of July, Americans gather to celebrate the country's declaration of independence from ... um, what country was that again?

If you answered the above question with the word "England" or "Britain," you would be obviously correct. But a new Marist poll finds that more than a quarter -- 26 percent -- of Americans polled couldn't bring to mind the name of the country from whom the original 13 colonies gained independence.

Results were especially poor among the young: Of respondents aged 18 to 29, only 60 percent correctly identified Great Britain. A full one-third were unsure.

Maybe history class was too long ago. Or maybe, as the New York Daily News would have it, Americans are "pretty dumb."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0703/onequarter-gained-independence/

RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism

Military plans hummingbird-sized spies

Nano Aerial Vehicle will help soldiers fighting in crowded urban areas

A prototype of the Samurai, a remote-controlled, battery-powered Nano Aerial Vehicle with two flapping wings that weighs about as much as two nickels and is just slightly longer than three inches.

 

by Ned Smith

Soldiers fighting future battles in crowded urban areas will be able to launch hummingbird-sized unmanned nano aerial vehicles — or NAVs — capable of carrying sophisticated sensors and flying through open windows in buildings to report back on enemy positions.

A new project partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) called the Nano Aerial Vehicle (NAV) program aims to develop an extremely small, ultra-lightweight aerial vehicle for urban military missions that can fly both indoors and outdoors and that is capable of climbing and descending vertically as well as flying sideways left and right.

DARPA says the NAV program pushes the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance and maneuverability for very small air vehicle systems.

The design the agency green lighted for further development actually will look and fly much like a hummingbird. The winning concept, developed by AeroVironment, is called Nano Scout (Nano Sensor Covert Observer in Urban Terrain). It is a remote-controlled, battery powered NAV with two flapping wings that weighs about two grams (about as heavy as two nickels) and is just slightly longer than three inches.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38062588/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

How Bank Accounts of the Future Will Cost You

by Terry Savage

Once upon a time, the banks wanted your business so badly they actually gave you a free toaster as an incentive to make a deposit. That's a time few remember — a tale told by elders to amuse the younger generation.

It's one thing to stop giving incentives; it's quite another to start charging you for the privilege of depositing your money. Yet that's just what's around the corner — the end of free checking, free cashier's checks and the pittance of interest you might be getting if you leave a balance in your checking account.

In its place, you could find yourself paying fees for everything from "inactivity" to debit transactions. You'll have to consider a complex series of tradeoffs in order to stash your money safely and conveniently in a checking account.

For example, you could be required to keep a significant balance in your checking account to avoid a $15 monthly fee. That means "hiding" your true balance from yourself with an extra $500 or more sitting in an account that doesn't earn interest.

Or you might have to have your paycheck or Social Security check direct-deposited to avoid a monthly fee. Or consolidate your bills by paying your utilities using your credit card — so you only have one or two large checks to write every month — in order to avoid fees for excess checks. Depending on your bank, direct debit of mortgage payments or car loan payments could keep you under the fee-paying transaction limit.

The point is that you'll have to pay attention and be creative to save money on something you used to take for granted.

The banks are just getting even for the recent laws that limit overdraft and late fees on checking and credit cards. It's been estimated that it costs from $250 to $300 a year for a banking institution to maintain your account. And if the spendthrifts aren't going to pay the extra costs they incur, then the charges will be spread to those who scrupulously avoid overdrafts, use debit cards and always pay their credit card bills on time — and even in full.

Credit-card issuers are seeing charge-offs in the double-digit range — and someone has to make up for the billions that are written off amidst soaring consumer bankruptcies. Now those substantial costs are being passed along to all of us.

The end of "free checking" is only the first step. The next step is to do away with paper completely — or pay a fee. I've long suspected that once they got all of us paying bills online, they'd start charging for that service, too! We're saving them money if they don't have to process paper checks, so we should actually be rewarded.

But this is not about reason — it's about recouping the costs of doing business.

 

http://www.creators.com/lifestylefeatures/business-and-finance/savage-truth-on-money/how-bank-accounts-of-the-future-will-cost-you.html

Hakone – Japan’s Amazing Open Air Museum

Image Credit Flickr User Bob Owen

Close to both Tokyo and Mount Fuji the small town of Hakone holds something of a revelation.  However, unless you are from Japan, you may well not have heard of it.  The town plays host to a large open air museum where the works of many famous artists are held - outdoors.  It is an attempt (and a successful one) to balance art and nature in harmony.  The artworks, combined with the beautiful views of the surrounding mountains give the visitor an unforgettable experience.

Image Credit Flickr User psd

There are surprises around every corner at this unique museum, sights which will provoke thought and sometimes even laughter.  This head on its side looks like some vast relic of a long vanished civilisation.

Image Credit Flickr User Or Hitch

Perhaps before you start to explore the massive grounds you should visit the extravagant stained glass tower which in the light of summer is like something from a fairy tale.  You can climb to the top and check out the rest of the museum from here, so you can plan which pieces to visit next (but the choice can be bewildering).

Image Credit JeHu68

From the top of the staircase you can take a look at what else is on offer - below is just one of the angles to be surveyed from its dizzy heights. The breathtaking beauty of the surrounding countryside is a marvellous environment for these fluid sculptures.  A far cry from a stuffy museum.

Image Credit Flickr User psd

Image Credit Flickr User Akira Yamada

The Japanese have a unique and sometimes impenetrable sense of humour (from the perspective of a Westerner).  However, they do have a sense of fun which is easy to understand, even when it comes to art.  The above is Shaun of the Dead, based on the famous zombie movie and created by its writer and star Simon Pegg and its director, Edgar Wright.  The movie has cult status in Japan probably everywhere to tell the truth).

Image Credit Wikimedia

Image Credit Flickr User Or Hiltch

Among the more thought provoking pieces is Man and Pagasus by Carl Milles. Milles was perhaps better known for his fountains but the Swedish sculptor excelled himself with this hugely powerful piece showing man's desire to tame nature.

 

http://www.kuriositas.com/2010/07/hakone-japans-amazing-open-air-museum.html

Iran declares war on mullets, ponytails for men; approves of hair gel and Elvis 'dos

by Xeni Jardin

Iran's ministry of culture has released a catalog of government-approved hair styles, in an effort to eliminate the menace of "decadent Western cuts." According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, forbidden 'dos include ponytails, mullets and spiky hair. But styles resembling those of Elvis Presley, Simon Cowell, or eighties-era floppy fringes are totally fine. Also, hair gel in moderation is acceptable. With the exception of goatees, facial hair is frowned upon.

Remember now, just months ago an Iranian cleric decreed: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes." Wonder what disasters the verboten hairdos for men cause?

More: France 24, Reuters (image: Reuters)

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/05/iran-declares-war-on.html

Bill Keller's self-defense on "torture"

In response to the Harvard study documenting how newspapers labeled waterboarding as "torture" for almost 100 years until the Bush administration told them not to, The New York Times issued a statement justifying this behavior on the ground that it did not want to take sides in the debate.  Andrew Sullivan, Greg Sargent and Adam Serwer all pointed out that "taking a side" is precisely what the NYT did:  by dutifully complying with the Bush script and ceasing to use the term (replacing it with cleansing euphemisms), it endorsed the demonstrably false proposition that waterboarding was something other than torture.  Yesterday, the NYT's own Brian Stelter examined this controversy and included a justifying quote from the paper's Executive Editor, Bill Keller, that is one of the more demented and reprehensible statements I've seen from a high-level media executive in some time (h/t Jay Rosen):

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said the newspaper has written so much about the issue of water-boarding that "I think this Kennedy School study -- by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories -- is somewhat misleading and tendentious."

Whether an interrogation technique constitutes "torture" is what determines whether it is prohibited by long-standing international treaties, subject to mandatory prosecution, criminalized under American law, and scorned by all civilized people as one of the few remaining absolute taboos.  But to The New York Times' Executive Editor, the demand that torture be so described, and the complaint that the NYT ceased using the term the minute the Bush administration commanded it to, is just tendentious political correctness:  nothing more than trivial semantic fixations on a "term of art" by effete leftists.  Rather obviously, it is the NYT itself which is guilty of extreme "political correctness" by referring to torture not as "torture" but with cleansing, normalizing, obfuscating euphemisms such as "the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks" and "intense interrogations."  Intense.  As Rosen puts it:  "So, Bill Keller, 'the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks' is plainspeak and 'torture' is PC?  Got it."

Worse, to justify his paper's conduct, Keller adds "that defenders of the practice of water-boarding, 'including senior officials of the Bush administration,' insisted that it did not constitute torture."  Kudos to Keller for admitting who dictates what his newspaper says and does not say (redolent of how Bush's summoning of NYT officials to the Oval Office caused the paper to refrain from reporting his illegal NSA program for a full year until after Bush was safely re-elected). 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/03/keller/index.html

A High-Risk Egg Race To Save The Sea Turtles

by NPR Staff

As the oil spill coats Gulf Coast beaches, rescuers are hatching a daring plan to save as many as 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the disaster.

Each year, thousands of newly hatched sea turtles scramble from their nests in the Florida Panhandle's sandy beaches and Alabama coasts into the water. With those waters fouled by oil and chemical dispersant, a whole generation of sea turtles could be harmed or even destroyed.

Hundreds of turtles and birds have already died in the oil spill, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is determined that this year's hatchlings won't be among the casualties. Biologists plan to relocate all the nests from the Gulf Coast to Florida's eastern coast, agency spokesman Chuck Underwood tells NPR's Scott Simon.

"They'll be allowed to complete their incubation, and hopefully the turtles will emerge," Underwood says. Then "we can collect them and release them to the ocean."

In a couple of weeks, he says, the rescue team will dig up an estimated 700 to 800 nests, place them in foam containers and ship them overland to Florida's far side.

They don't make car seats for baby turtles, but it turns out some companies do specialize in transporting wildlife — like FedEx, which will be delivering the eggs. Another big name is offering luxury accommodations for the eggs when they reach their destination: the Kennedy Space Center.

"The space center's provided the opportunity for us to utilize one of their large, climate-controlled warehouses," Underwood says. It even has a wildlife contractor on staff.

"We have a lot of partners involved that normally would not all necessarily agree on something," Underwood says. "But the general consensus is this is at least an opportunity to try to do something in a situation that has been less than ideal for wildlife."

But playing with Mother Nature has its risks. There are some things the rescuers just don't know. "Once we get them there and they emerge, there's a lot of questions: Are they going to be put on the beach and released into the surf? And are they going to go into the ocean like they would normally do? Or are they going to do circles? We just honestly don't know."

Even if the little guys make it to the water, we won't know if they're OK for another 35 years.

"This is a very slow-maturing species," Underwood says. "Thirty-five years from now, they will reach their sexual maturity and begin coming back to the beaches." Only then might we find out whether the rescued turtles went back to the Gulf or not. Or if they even survived.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128276036

Housing Market

Whatever it costs, it's worth it! Independence Day poster, 1942

From the The U.S. National Archives' photostream: Independence D

Why Did It Take a Rock Magazine to Report the Military's Total Disaster in Afghanistan?

Anyone in the Pentagon press corps could have written the story that took down McChrystal. So why did it appear in Rolling Stone?

 

 By Peter Richardson

 

The controversial Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal didn't just expose poor judgment on the part of the U.S. military's key leader in Afghanistan. It also illustrates one of the most persistent shortcomings of American corporate journalism.

It's no surprise that a protracted and fruitless military conflict has produced backbiting at the highest levels. That's the expected result of a flawed policy. But it is -- or should be -- curious that Michael Hastings's piece appeared in a rock magazine whose cover photograph features a G-strung Lady Gaga with automatic rifles jutting out of her brassiere.

Anyone in the Pentagon press corps could have written Hastings' story. So why did it appear in Rolling Stone?

First, let's give Rolling Stone its due; it's not an ordinary music magazine. Before launching it in 1967, Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason worked at Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker that ran high-impact investigative stories on Vietnam and the CIA. Despite its healthy circulation, Ramparts lost money and closed its doors for good in 1975. Then as now, no "business model" (i.e., reliable advertising base) existed for political magazines, left or right.

Wenner focused instead on music and the counterculture, but he also hired Hunter S. Thompson as his national affairs correspondent. One result was Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, praised as the least factual and most accurate account of that year's presidential race.

In 2009, Rolling Stone revived the Gonzo tradition by running Matt Taibbi's critical profile of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm with close ties to the Treasury Department. This was another example of an RS irregular scooping beat writers on a huge story. Taibbi's piece drew heat, but most of his critics begrudgingly conceded that his main point was correct.

Hastings has likewise taken criticism from the Pentagon press corps. Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources this weekend to cast aspersions on his methods, to defend the Pentagon beat writers, and to lament the article's effect on General McChrystal's career. "Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has," she claimed (as if critical reporting isn't exactly the service journalists are supposed to provide). Responding to Hastings' point that beat writers wrote glowingly about McChrystal to ensure future access to him, Logan labeled that view "insulting and arrogant."

http://www.alternet.org/media/147398/why_did_it_take_a_rock_magazine_to_report_the_military%27s_total_disaster_in_afghanistan/