Sunday, December 1, 2013

Belonging

The wars on drugs, gangs, terrorism are wars on race, class and poverty.  The more rules, the more rules beg to be challenged.  As we restrain both crime and caring, so will we limit our connectedness.  The challenge for too many is how to attach to a society that discriminates, how those on the edges can secure their own place.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Memory metaphors

As the mind slows … retrieval at the speed of an 8080 hard drive, first meta tag associations, later, often much later, full content.

I've transferred that information from my mind's short/term memory to my computer. I'll try to retrieve it later or I'll being it next time.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

An explanation of survival and success?

Everyone is required to read the sacred texts. Everyone. The language is based on a three (or two) consonant root system. And the texts are written in a script that only uses consonants. 

Discussion of meanings is encouraged and the discussions too are recorded and scholars read those too. So an embedded way of thinking and perceiving for everyone is general literacy and analysis of possibly encoded meaning – does PC mean PeaCe or Politically Correct or aPaCe or … might WLL mean WeLL or WiLL or WaLL or … 

What is the text saying about how to act towards each other today, here.

And is a mind/brain trained in an oral culture, adept in remembering, does that mind differ from a mind/brain trained to read, to believe the written text?  What kind of values and skills develop?

Keeping the sabbath

Well kept, shabbat is an instance of what a tikkun'd world would be.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Support us - text $10

Social and political participation is horizontal and brief - +1, thumb up, sign a petition, text $10 … - are today's ways of helping rise all boats. Counting how many likes, how much money donated, … depersonalizes, turns participation into a counting contest … The interface between caring and doing is not who, but how much.

Monday, September 30, 2013

+13% Part D increase for 2013

The price of my Medicare Part D prescription drug plan from United Health Care starting in January, 2014, has an effective increase of 13%. My actual cost will actually be even more as the “plan costs” passed on from the pharmaceutical company charges also increase. The monthly plan charge has increased 6%; the one-month quantity has decreased from 31 days to 30, +3%; and I reach the full pay tier $120 dollars sooner, +4%.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A restricted number displaying on Caller ID as Anonymous called..

Jul-06 01:46 PM - Saturday
Jul-30 11:00 AM - Tuesday
Aug-06 10:36 AM - Tuesday
Aug-22 10:06 AM - Thursday
Aug-24 03:00 PM  - Saturday
Aug-31 04:50 PM - Saturday
Sep-01 03:25 PM - Sunday
Sep-02 11:42 AM - Holiday
Sep-03 11:10 AM
Sep-03 04:30 PM
Sep-04 08:53 AM
Sep-04 06:15 PM
Sep-05 06:05 PM
Sep-06 09:49 AM - Friday
Sep-06 06:31 PM -
Sep-07 09:09 AM - Saturday
Sep-12 06:50 PM - Thursday

 It's actually interesting and not random ... different days, times, work days, ...  18 tries.  I wonder what it's like to program an auto-dialer ...
 

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

On blogging

The opportunity to reach more and different people has made me more willing to write, and more careful – I usually think, craft, revise before posting, which also helps me to shape and critique my own opinion.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Highway One - no widening

Highway 1 express bus connecting Watsonville and Santa Cruz with siren-like lane priority and shuttle/mini/taxi on demand last mile service at the few stops. Parking at access points.  Widening will be an expensive short-term fix and the traffic will only increase to fill and clog the new lanes.

No bombs; no boots.

Real leadership moves the world towards warm-heartedness and
civility. 

Instead of using fear and muscle, the US could encourage the UN to sanction with shunning.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Becoming a zealot

What I like to do is make an argument clear and incisive and simple.
         
Parity has me beat.  While it seems to me obvious that it is not at all equal for my insurance to pay out for treatments I refuse, I am not unable to communicate that simply and easily and well enough to get an "A Ha" of comprehension.
         
Every time I befuddle and don't convince, my formulation of the issue gets more strident.
         
When simple language doesn't convince, I begin to speak in headlines:

          Board approves more dollars for force over user objection.

         
When I can't adequately rally my peers I speak in bolder terms:
         
          Civil rights denied. 
         
          Parity discriminates.
         
And I watch this in myself and see the beginnings of zealotry. 
         
And I wonder is this how it starts.  When rational discourse doesn't work, and when one believes strongly in a cause, does one then turn to the irrational, the yellow journalism and shrill language of a DJ Jaffe, the tyranny of the worst case that AMI uses so effectively.  Are AMI arguments so irrational and emotional and skewed because those families can't convince anyone that they are indeed innocent and their kids are indeed diseased.  So they turn to emotional evangelizing, and at that they are effective.  But their arguments are intellectually transparent.  Why are they so easily able to fool the legislators.  What need are they filling?

1997
         
         

Monday, June 10, 2013

Rights and Duties

Humans have rights; states have responsibilities. If humans had responsibilities, states could use non-performance to deprive citizens of rights. If states had rights protection could confiscation.

Monday, May 27, 2013

people who aren't housed have become a Santa Cruz focus.  I've been thinking about some vision/mission/goal language:


All Inevery county resident in a bed, under a roof

or Monica Martinez' words:

use Smart Solutions to end homelessness in our county

          Smart Solutions are evidence-based, cost effective, create measurable results while valuing the equity, dignity and respect of the person.

Monday, February 25, 2013


… the immense cost of responding to every challenge ...

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

A life is an asset


Aaron Swartz chose to hang himself two years after his felony indictments. He had exhausted his technical skills, his skills of persuasion, and his dollars. His life was his last asset. It is disrespectful and undermining to impose a more palatable world view on his action, to pathologize his hanging as illness, depression that could have been treated. And what might treatment have done? Still his passion; soothe his dismay. Let us not corrupt his last message.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

worldview


If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. 

Max Planck


A police officer testified to expectations of hostility, aggression, a superbowl-like atmosphere, that vandalism was inevitable. I wonder locally what events he based that on, what crowds, what rallies, what demonstrations at the Town Clock that turned negative. Even trained observers can see what they expect to see. Disorder was expected; police arrived in riot gear and had tear gas on call. Local activists were expected; police identified and charged one person – she was only on the grass. The judge believes vandalism is a 'natural and inevitable consequence' of trespass. 

Social change is about changing the historic consequences, setting new expectations and results. The police looked at the bandanna masks and saw attempts to evade identification. I saw the bandannas as symbols of cohesion and support, like the pink ribbons, yellow ribbons, other cause identifiers. Law enforcement seems to be looking for leaders, individuals to blame and punish -- a leaderless group doesn't fit the structure: the success or blame goes to the project. 


There had been federally orchestrated enforcement and suppression - this lens created the view. Santa Cruz Police Department was compliant --
 not only did it find what it expected, it helped create it. 

Assembly as Terrorism

Just as with Secure Communities, Santa Cruz is spending local dollars to implement another federal mandate. Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation positioned the Occupy movement as anarchist before the first gathering in New York in 2011, and mobilized local mayors and through them local law enforcement. Kamila Harris states that local enforcement of Secure Communities is optional and discretionary. Here in Santa Cruz, Bob Lee keeps prosecuting the 75 River St sleep-in. January 22 will be the 30th court date I've noted.

A lavish deployment of resources. Think judge, bailiff, reporter, district attorney, defense attorneys times 30 court dates ; add staff preparation time, hard drives and disks, Rebekah Young has been sanctioned for the delays, and fined. And add social costs to supporters and the weakening of social cohesion. 



Sunday, January 13, 2013

Oiling the hinges


As soon as the stuckedness of one body part works better, there's a compensation, and another connector begins to ask for ease …  

God is a totalitarian solution.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Warming and change

That weather is not acting as expected is creating great social and personal anxiety. More even than the anticipated impact of new weather patterns is that the sequence of seasons cannot be assuredly anticipated.