Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Maybe it's just because I somehow never heard him talk, but I'm genuinely sad that anyone, even a Murdoch/Bush sycophant and professional liar like Tony Snow, would die at 53.

[File this under 'why care' and 'what we need to do']

Michael Pollan on the Cornification of Food (AR, Boulder Colorado)

One farmer can feed 129 of us with corn.

Rather than 12, before the munitions factory converted from bombs to fertilizer in 1947.

We're putting away 200 extra calories, to take up 30 to 40 percent of

the way we're feeding the world with corn makes it harder for the world

we can sell it so cheaply because our government subsidizes the cost of production of corn

1.5 million Mexican farmers left the land

"Israel and the Diaspora: A Growing, Difficult Bridge to Gap"
Yes, read that last part of the headline again, and know that's the way it's printed in the magazine. Poor Uriel Heilman has a right to major grievances against his editors.

"A state monopoly on religion in Israel is emerging as a major impedient for Diaspora-Israel relations, the Jewish identity of Israelis, and aliyah," [president of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, Stephen] Hoffman says.

Keywords

like capitalism so much everyone a capitalist Texas
want everyone to own capital
Sam Rayburn want everyone to own capital
Sam Rayburn everyone private property
Everyone should have private property
texas politician believe in private property some
texas politician believe in private property everyone have some

Private Property

UPDATE: Apparently the answer, if this web page and the cited Mr. Galbraith can be believed:

Douglas Rushkoff at the Personal Democracy Forum: Second day invocation speech video.

Some notes. Paraphrasings, not exact quotations, so I'm just putting the whole thing in brackets.

[
Personal democracy is an oxymoron.

I'm on the here comes everybody side of this discussion. But it's the everybody that matters.

It's not the network.

It's the people.

The network is just a tool for people to be people again.

The problem with branding, the problem for top-down communication, all these Renaissance era ideas

Thoughts from David Cohn's Representative Journalism: Funding Beats or Stories (cross-posted from a comment left there, with a couple typos corrected).

Key point, that people don't have to believe in "journalism" to contribute to its practice through spot.us.

This will bring many more people to get involved, which will make the funding of individual stories more independent of pressure from concentrated interests than beat-covering institutions.

Important counter-intuitive (for some of us) math in Seth Godin's latest, "The Magic of Low-Hanging Fruit:

Imagine that half the cars in the US get 10 miles per gallon. And half get 40 miles per gallon. Further stipulate that all cars are driven the same number of miles per year.

So, throwing on an extra $10 for express delivery, in addition to the previously disclosed $10 for Saturday delivery (pardon me, I exaggerate: $9.99 for each)— that I can live with.

The vaguely weird partnership with something offering free delivery, fine.

But the $10 off -- no, no, $15 off -- gift code it excitedly tells you about, with the fact that a monthly fee will be added to the credit card you thought you had used and done with-- that's just being creeps.

This was in fine print in a long skinny sidebar low on the left-hand side:

OFFER DETAILS

It is the general thought that Amazing Things is doing well and - although we are doing pretty well, we're only making it because of your support. Some of you are members - and that helps a lot - even at the lowest level. But it is our membership - especially at the higher levels and our auction that keeps us alive.

— Michael Moran, Amazing Things Arts Center

http://agaricdesign.com/amazing-auction-enhancements
http://agaric.chipin.com/amazing-auction

Nick did a great job. My last two experiences have been very good at the Genius Bar, both times I've been in Natick.

My previous experiences with Apple support have not been so great, which is why the recommendation of the Apple Store is only at 7 right now, and I do have to say this--

Spotted on a discussion thread that turned to questions of government spying (FISA), in a comment by the inimitable Bill Conroy:

(For the record, I assume this communication is now being monitored since it likely crossed international lines over the Internet -- wish the monitors would weigh in, as long as it doesn't show up on my phone bill ... make it more interesting.)

Saul Alinsky on the radical:

In the end he has one conviction—a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions. The alternative to this would be rule by the elite—either a dictatorship or some form of political aristocracy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/11/195520/045/275/493981

I have nothing against the people of the nuclear industry. In fact, I think they've done a very good job not killing many of us, certainly fewer then even natural gas drilling, and despite not building a power plant in well over 30 years, still provides 20 percent of U.S. electricity.

What if community scaled better than corporations?

I've been drafted to help Indymedia Boson complete their transition to
Drupal, so what I'd like to do now is steal your knowledge. But I am in a
web development collective specializing in Drupal and we're doing some
pretty cool thing regarding building community and letting a network of
people share control of a site, so we're excited to become part of the
larger Indymedia-Drupal tech movement as a supporting part of a larger
movement for horizontal communication and real democracy.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/080521niles-copyright/

http://www.citmedialaw.org/

Explaining PWGD in the context of Daniel Pepper's proposed trans-national branded organization of experienced freelance journalists:

Suppose your organization grows from 100 to 1,000 journalists. You want everyone in the network to be able to communicate with everyone else, but now you have ten times the chance that one member may be off topic, unproductively combative, overly enthusiastic, or disruptive in any other way toward the group goals of social justice and journalistic excellence in the public service.

Some kind of depiction of an escape from a cubicle, a break from a retail store.

I'm thinking an empty cubicle seen from a non-door side with hand indents on the wall and a footprint on the paper in the next cube.

And of course the line:

"Free your body and the mind will follow"

(in response to an inquiry on Couchsurfing.com)

UPDATE: I completely forgot the Wellfleet drive-in theater! Can't miss that either!

Hello C____,

Drop me a line with some contact info if you want me to let you know when I'm in the area- http://mlncn.com/

My grandfather lives in Wellfleet and I should be visiting a fair amount.

Things to do?

Go to a performance at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors' Theater (WHAT)

Marconi Beach for the historical first radio transmission stuff.

Old red potatoes, sprouts cut off, cut thin
Baby carrots, cut in thin rounds
Strong onion, more or less diced
One zucchini, quartered and sliced in centimeter or so wedges
One yellow squash (or the thing that's shaped approximately like a zucchini), quartered and sliced in centimeter or so wedges
Tempeh, sliced thinner than usual and then cut in half (destined to be mashed up in the dish anyway)
Nutritional yeast
Turmeric
Curry powder (fenugreek, turmeric, whatever yours puts in)
Soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge)
Light salt (half potassium chloride)
Szechuan pepper
White wine