Do the nasty

What do you want from life?

Someone to love ?

and somebody that you can trust ?

What do you want from life ?

To try and be happy ?

...while you do the nasty things you must ?

Just got done with another belt from the Sunday Morning Talking Heads on MTP, This Week, Face the Nation, et al and far worse, the Siemens, Boeing and other DoD-related ads.

http://www.thetubes.com/lyrics/life.htm

What Do You Want From Life, Tubes Lyrics
www.thetubes.com
What Do You Want From Life, Lyrics for The Tubes Song, What Do You Want From Life

Side effects may include having all your dreams come true (notes)

Side effects may include having all your dreams come true (true)

I am so glad to see the new Jude Law movie coming out presented as the unfortunate side effects risked from the new drug.

I just watched a commercial for a sleep drug that included the qualification, "depressed users may have increased thoughts of suicide".

We are the bright red lobsters in the pot. Doctors and pharma reps will tell you that these crazy addendums are mandated by a mega-restrictive legal environment that is parenthetically also responsible for greatly magnifying R&D costs in a rock and a hard place configuration effectively strangling these good companies from doing their good work and selling their good product. Whew.

I dunno. I am most moved by friends and close associates who (vast majority) suffer and muddle through following current medical advice, including taking whatever pills they are provided, AND THEN THE OTHER GROUP (much smaller) who have completely rejected all pills and invasive procedures and who have in large part greatly increased their quality of life if possibly forced to endure a condition of debilitating health.

The thing for me is this : who told these people they wouldn't get sick and die? What is it that scares the American public about ending this parade of confusion and pain?

As long as there is a profit available, business will figure out a way to attempt to gain it. But today during the Super Bowl there will be drugs shilled that include words that should scare the hell out of us. Let's ____________________, and do it NOW. Whadaya say?

Side effects may include having all your dreams come true (notes)

(notes) We are all GATE. All Special Ed, too. (notes)

We are all GATE. All Special Ed, too. (notes)

I was lucky to be placed in a good academic slot in my time in elementary school back with me and the dinosaurs. 

I guess I might have been in a GATE program, and I am glad that there are students and teachers celebrating hard work, learning, diligence, and excellence. 

When I was a young student it was called "XL." I was glad to be included. My parents liked how it looked on the card, and my siblings knew that not everyone got into these classes. But I hated much of it, because a lot of my friends weren't.

I think labeling students is a VERY dangerous and violent method of grouping that we do unconsciously. I know MANY adults who have convinced themselves that reading, writing, thinking and educational challenges are not for them based on bullshit they were taught when they were kids. Lay that next to a lot of untalented, unmotivated, inappropriate students who are in the pipeline only because they have been told that they can and should get a degree. 

Radical Inclusion is one of the most compelling components about Burning Man and I hope to learn much more of it along my path. I think that my natural inclination to categorize, classify and label fails to serve me and the society I live in and amongst. What if we are throwing out the best parts of our world when we tell a student through implicit and expressed communication that they 'can't?' When we tell one student 'this task is for you. You are Special Ed.' Or, 'this is not your room. You are NOT gifted and talented.' 

The governor just proposed hiking the fees for community colleges by 400%. This is only the latest in an endless parade of negative news coming from and through our California education system. 

I can imagine a lot, but nowhere in my consciousness is there anything that says that we have any more pressing concerns than education. We talk about budgets. We stage long elections. We fight like hell to make our place in the world safe for us and our kids. Educating ourselves, both on what has happened in the past as well as what might be possible in the near future is the number one task and challenge for our society. We have come to believe that money is enough. I am reminded of the Cree saying (translated) : Only when the last tree has been cut down, only when the last fish has been caught. only when the last buffalo has died will you truly understand what I mean when I say : money can not be eaten.

With love and respect for all, I really believe that when we are in school, we are ALL GATE, and we are ALL Special Ed, too. I think these labels are tossed around carelessly with lots of bad consequence. Whadaya think?

We are all GATE. All Special Ed, too. (notes)

slut walk notes

According to the IRC report, many women and girls spoke of being attacked in public or in their homes, mainly by armed men, with rapes - sometimes by multiple perpetrators - often occurring in front of family members. There have been attacks in which women and young girls were kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed, while roadblocks in Syria have become especially dangerous for females, it added.

http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/interview-scale-of-rape-in-syria-war-may-shock-irc/

War rape: The forgotten pandemic sweeping Syria

Rape has become a weapon almost as common as any other. Unfortunately, and despite a lack of media interest, the current conflict in Syria is no exception.

"...during the 13-year civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo...40 women were raped everyday"

We might not know the full scale of the abuse in Syria but we do know that rape was the main reason for more than 600,000 Syrians fleeing their home country according to the IRC. The 600,000 are the lucky ones - millions remain trapped in a rape zone. One female physician in Damascus treated 2,000 girls and women raped in Syria alone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/war-rape-the-forgotten-pandemic-sweeping-syria-8460566.html

more later...

VP Biden addresses Gun Control

Vice President Joe Biden will take questions on the issue tomorrow ala Philip DeFranco. My contribution:

Mr. Vice President, can we assume that the perpetrators who shoot children in schools are angry and hoping for some attention at any cost? They want to show their hurt and their middle finger to the world and they know that the media will blast the story all over if they are wild and brutal enough. Assuming this is part of the context, why not remove it? Why not try for a trial period of, say, five years, any school shooting is a local story only? The FCC is supposed to serve the public managing the public airwaves. Why not levy penalties just like are in place now for profane language? Less coverage may mean less violence. Thoughts?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/109092180987236182034?e

The Professor and the Wartorn

Wartorn (2010) and The Professor and The Madman are two great stories of the collateral costs of war. We have been at war for over a decade and are now looking at sending more U.S. soldiers to sites in Africa and West Asia. We should be talking the shit out of this. Enough about her haircut.

Was just reading another protest about the war.

Was just reading another protest about the war. This one quoting a $19.3 million cost per hour. All WWII veterans and old folks need to be consulted for future financing of everything. They will remind us that during WWII there was rationing and shortages of many things so that the military could afford to fight the war. Chocolate, meat, silk, rubber, sugar, and many other things were rationed and squeezed hard so we got the maximum benefit from every resource. Now our government just whips out the credit card and sends everybody out. Thank you very much, President George W. Bush.