Cup Of Joe Powell

The True Origins of Cat Videos Revealed!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Thanks to a recent discussion of cinema and history by filmmaker Martin Scorsese, I learned that the gigantic presence of cat videos on the Internet has origins dating back to the days of Thomas Edison and vaudeville.

The feline fascinations still perplexes me however. Perhaps the recording and sharing of pet hijinks point to a simple truth: We humans spend many hours playing with our pets in pursuit of utter cuteness.

Records indicate that in mid-July of 1894, filmmakers employed at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, N.J. studio filmed a vaudeville act of Professor Welton's Boxing Cats. A 20-second silent movie clip shows Prof. Welton hoisting a pair of wee boxing glove wearing cats via harnesses and slamming them together to make it appear that the cats are boxing in a tiny boxing ring.

Animal acts were a staple of the vaudeville circuit, with dancing dogs and other often painfully exploited critters. Note for instance Edison's decision to film an elephant being electrocuted in an act of sheer cruelty.

Anyway - cats boxing each other in the year 1894.

Stuck in the Non-Digital World

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:04:00 +0000

It's true, dear reader, I have been for some weeks now breathing non-digital air, treading non-digital paths, and been absent from this humble and lovable blog.

Constant readers here know I have endless passion for the theatrical world, and since April that is the world and the work dominating my days and nights. Note I am not complaining.

In April work began on a live improv comedy show, a fundraising launch for the Morristown Theatre Guild as we strive to renovate and reopen their historic home. Crazed comedy made up live while the audience watches does take much preparation and I am pleased to say the cast put on a very funny show.

(pictures of this event and others are below)

Next up was the just-completed production of high school students for the Guild's annual Books Alive! program. I was only a producing partner for this show, directed by a local Hamblen County teacher. Still, it consumed my time.

The show, titled "Fairy Tales" presented the stories of Snow White, Red Riding Hood and more. The audiences were made of elementary students who arrived in large groups for shows thru the day. Not only was the cast excellent at their work the audiences of youngsters cheered and howled with great delight as they had their first experiences in theatre.

All thru the two shows above and continuing now are preparations and set building for the Guild's production of the amazing Neil Simon's play "California Suite". This production will play at Walters State Community College, opening May 16.

In all of these endeavors, there exist no online arguments of politics, of social constructs, or other digitalized concerns. Instead, these efforts are linked to the human history of storytelling, of shared experience, of basic communications achieved in person.

It is most refreshing. And it makes all involved, I hope, quite happy.

And now, some photos.

The troupe of Improv comedians.

The student cast of "Fairy Tales", and below, some of the elementary kids pretending to be trees helping to keep Snow White safe.

Freedom Lost: Life In Top Secret America

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:19:00 +0000

For more than a decade now, too many lives and too many freedoms have been lost in a battle against terrorism. Policies and strategies created in the frenzied and angry months which followed the attacks on 9-11 chase after an elusive sense of security, transforming our world.

The nature of this astonishing transformation was at the heart of a recent discussion between Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald via Moyers' show on PBS:

"GLENN GREENWALD: There is a Washington Post series in 2010 called Top Secret America, three-part series by Dana Priest and William Arkin. And one of the facts that reported was that the National Security Agency, every day, collects and stores 1.7 billion, that's with a B, billion, emails, telephone calls, and other form of electronic communications by and between American citizens.

And what's amazing is, is that if you look at the case in Boston, the surveillance state, this massive apparatus of monitoring and storing information about us that we've constructed over the last decade that's extremely expensive and invasive really didn't do much. It didn't detect the attack before it started. The attempted Times Square attack in 2010 wasn't stopped because of eavesdropping or government surveillance but because a hot dog vendor noticed something amiss with the bomb that had been left.

So again, the surveillance state doesn't really do much in terms of giving us lots of security. But what it does do, is it destroys the notion of privacy, which is the area in which human creativity and dissent and challenges to orthodoxy all reside. The way things are supposed to work is we're supposed to know everything that the government does with rare exception, that's why they're called the public sector.

And they're supposed to know almost nothing about us, which is why we're private individuals, unless there's evidence that we've committed a crime. This has been completely reversed, so that we know almost nothing about what the government does.

It operates behind this impenetrable wall of secrecy, while they know everything about what it is we're doing, with whom we're speaking and communicating, what we're reading. And this imbalance, this reversal of transparency and secrecy and the way things are supposed to work, has really altered the relationship between the citizenry and the government in very profound ways.

BILL MOYERS: Is it conceivable to you that-- that giving up our privacy and even much of our liberty becomes a way of life in exchange, a trade for security? Tom Brokaw suggested as much the other day. Here he is.

TOM BROKAW on NBC News: Everyone has to understand tonight however that beginning tomorrow morning, early, there are going to be much tougher security considerations all across the country. However exhausted we may be by them, we're going to have to learn to live with them and get along and go forward and not let them bring us to our knees. You'll remember last summer how unhappy we were with all the security at the Democratic and Republican convention. Now I don't think that we could raise those complaints after what happened today in Boston.

GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, I think that is, first of all, it's extraordinary that journalists lead the way in encouraging people to accept greater government intrusion into their lives. The media, journalists, are supposed to be adversarial to the government, not encouraging people to submit to greater government authority.

But I think the broader point is that it's that false dichotomy, that the more the government learns about us, the safer we'll be. In part because what history shows is that when governments are able to surveil people in the dark, generally the greatest outcome is that they abuse that power and it becomes tyrannical. If you talk to anybody who came from Eastern Europe, they'll tell you that the reason we left is because society's become deadened and soulless, when citizens have no privacy. And it's a difficult concept to understand, why privacy is so crucial, but people understand it instinctively. They put locks on their bedroom doors, not for security, but for privacy."

Sen. Rand Paul Reverses Stand On Drones

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:59:00 +0000

"I will ask anyone who values liberty to stand with me.”. Sen. Rand Paul

In March Sen. Paul took the Drama Award in the Senate for a chunk of 13 hour performance art, pretending to be deeply worried over use of armed unmanned drones on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens. Classic fear-mongering presented as policy debate.

And his words were 13 hours worth of nothing.

Now, he says even a theft of 50 dollars is enough to have a drone blast the thief to pieces:

"Here’s the distinction, I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat an act of crime going on,” Paul said. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him, but it’s different if they want to come fly over your hot tub, or your yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone, and they want to watch your activities.”

Not that the thief is an imminent threat, just that he may be a thief is enough to draw a death penalty.

Idiocy, ignorance, and a profound lack of understanding of law, crime, technology - that's Kentucky Senator Paul, a verbal stuntman, rebel without a clue.

Tennesseans Get 'Pennies From Haslam'

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:52:00 +0000

Today's "Memphis Flyer" editorial is a must read:

"A single piece of progressive legislation, the lowering of the sales tax on food by a quarter of 1 percent, was originally opposed by the administration before its passage in the final days of last year's session. This year, an additional .25 percent cut in sales tax on food is a part of the governor's legislative agenda and on track to pass.

So, while corporations and the wealthy saw their state taxes and potential liabilities drop by thousands of dollars a year, average Tennesseans saw a tax cut of a mere $3.65 annually — which will buy a burrito at your local Pilot Travel Center.

Last year, the governor touted his "Tennessee Economic Miracle" to the chattering classes on cable TV. Since the beginning of Haslam's term, poverty in Tennessee has increased to nearly 17 percent, wages have remained stagnant, and unemployment has tracked national averages. Some miracle.

None of the bills supported by the governor increases job creation or wages, nor do they extend the buying power of regular Tennesseans. Instead, all help wealthier people save money, which is an inefficient, if not downright chimerical, job-creation strategy."

Tennessee Lawmakers OK Drones

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:22:00 +0000

"As approved by the Senate, the bill (SB796) says that drones can only be used to search for a fugitive or a missing person, in monitoring a hostage situation or when a judge issues a search warrant authorizing them. Any information gathered otherwise by a drone cannot be used in court and must be destroyed within 24 hours, the bill says.

The House added an amendment saying they can also be used "to protect life and property during crowd monitoring situations." In debate, crowds and traffic during University of Tennessee football games was cited as an example of where drone monitoring might be desirable."

The bill's sponsors project the use of "thousands" of drones over Tennessee.

How Roger Ebert Changed The World

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:32:00 +0000

Like so many in the nation and the world, I paused this week to mark the passing of film critic Roger Ebert. He was one of a few writers who shaped how and why I write.

I am a full-blown movie addict, and have been since I was but a wee child. Unless I am working chances are I'm watching movies - and I'm talking about days going past as I watch one after another. There are hundreds of films I've seen hundreds of times. Growing up it was very hard to find writings about movies - not celebrity stories but about the art of making them.

Roger was one of the first people I discovered who championed movies as The Art of our times. His Sneak Previews show which arrived in the late 1970s on PBS with Gene Siskel was a pure marvel - his passion for movies was vivid and endless and through his entire career he was able to manage the tricky task of simply watching a movie and critically exploring it and not letting the critic to overwhelm the simple viewer that most folks are. He often took Siskel to task for reviewing a movie for what it was not rather than what it was.

Prior to Ebert the only critics I had found were Knoxville's own James Agee's collected film writings and back issues of the New Yorker with Pauline Kael's reviews. But her insights lacked that quality Roger had of simply being able to watch a film and be entertained without the film be Something Important to Cinema. He saw and expressed all the layers a movie could have and eagerly shared them.

He had the fortune of being in the right time and place to bridge the movies of the old Hollywood studio system and the emerging auteur viewpoints of visionary directors and writers and chronicled that change as filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorcese rose to be the powers of Hollywood.

Roger met Kael in 1967 and after she read some of his work told him it was the best film criticism appearing in newspapers. By 1969 Reader's Digest published his review of Night of the Living Dead and he was on his way to international fame.

He confessed to being a fan of director Russ Meyer's sexploitation movies and wrote the script for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a purely ridiculous project, yet it showed how, like the best movies, Roger had many layers too.

What I took notice of thru the 80s and 90s was how film criticism had been broken free from publishers or academia and everyone began to talk and debate the merits of movies just like Roger did. He had a masterful knowledge of films but he also understood the value of subjective views.

And while this has spread among us all, there really aren't many paid critics today who write as simply and with as much style, who can surprise us with what a movie - old or new - can reveal to us about ourselves and our world.

But I am so very grateful to have lived and learned from him. He helped show the world how powerful a movie can be, how we have been exposed to great art which is not contained in a museum - it's a living thing we all share.

N.C. Lawmakers Seek To Establish State Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:11:00 +0000

The good thing is that a horrible plan by a state legislature is not from Tennessee. It's from North Carolina - a new bill seeks to establish a single religion statewide.

"The proposed law, introduced earlier this week, states that the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment—which prohibits Congress from passing laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in America—simply does not apply to the states. The bill goes on to proclaim the sovereignty of the states in this matter while proclaiming that each state is free to make its own laws respecting an establishment of an official religion and that such an establishment cannot be blocked by either Congress or the judiciary.

"Joining in the fun, as a co-sponsor of the bill allowing North Carolina to establish an official state religion, is one of the most powerful members of the North Carolina General Assembly, GOP Majority Leader Edgar Starnes. Apparently, expecting a leader in so important a role to show some fealty to the law and the legal underpinnings of the nation is asking a bit too much when compared to the opportunity provided that elected official to score a few political points."

On The Upcoming War Between Tennessee and Georgia

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:57:00 +0000

Since the Senate in Georgia is suing Tennessee to claim water and land, what battles will soon take shape?

One writer lays out the likely events in this must read article:

"An insurgency stands the best chance of success of convincing Georgia of its error. Invading Tennessee is easy enough, militarily. Occupying and governing Tennessee is vastly more difficult.

"As a soldier, I fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan; as a scholar, I performed most of the fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation in southern Lebanon. Nowhere in the world, though, have I ever encountered a more brutal, tribal and violent race of people than the Scots-Irish of East Tennessee. Any Georgian occupation force would inevitably get sucked into our petty politics and family vendettas. We might share a language, but Georgia would struggle to relate to its new foreign subjects, let alone entrench its authority over us."

Public Education Getting Hijacked?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:40:00 +0000

Talking with friends recently I was reminded again that I'm all alone when it comes to following the actions of the state legislators in Nashville. Not surprising when in years past thousands of bills are introduced. Efforts are underway to limit each member to 15 bills seems to hit their goal, with less than 1500 introduced this session.

But awareness of those 1500 is mighty small outside of political junkies such as I. And what I'm seeing is quite perplexing - actions to privatize public education alone should be getting attention statewide but the actions are swaddled in language that defies simple explanations. The rapid changes of recent years are also seldom understood by residents in general despite the massive alterations to how education systems work in the state.

One major change getting pushed is the "voucher" program, which aims to steadily allow education tax funds to get shifted to private schools though these schools ultimately will decide which students to take in.

A stark and plain rebuke of this plan was made recently by Rep. Joe Pitts, which you can see here.

He also speaks plainly in a recent interview:

"If you think about it, we made significant changes to public policy in education in 2010 as a part of our First to the Top agenda proposed by Gov Bredesen – a Democrat, followed by nightmarish changes to the teachers’ environment in 2011 by eliminating collective bargaining, tenure, and removing TEA from their seat at the table, all in the name of “reform.”

"On top of all that we approved virtual schools, unlimited charter schools, put undue pressure on teachers and principals by adopting an assessment tool that is unnecessarily bureaucratic, adopted the Common Core, and are preparing to implement a new assessment called PARRC. Now, we are attacking our teacher preparation programs by looking at putting artificial thresholds on ACT and SAT scores for students who wish to go through their respective College of Education. I’ve said it before; we are giving our education system whiplash with these rapid-fire changes and creating massive confusion. Who can blame more seasoned teachers from deciding to retire instead of continuing in a system that does not appreciate their significant achievement and experience in the classroom and will subject them to the latest reform experiment?

"Perhaps the corporate robber barons of the reform movement need to be asked to leave the room and let the education professionals do their jobs. I have complete faith in our school districts across our state if we can offer our help instead of the cram down policies that have little to no basis in fact or success."

Mash-Up of Odd Legislation Flows In Tennessee

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:50:00 +0000

Taking taxpayer funds from struggling schools and giving them as tuition fees to private schools seems a poorly thought idea. Republicans in the Tennessee legislature continue to push the idea anyway on a very fast track.

Also moving quickly into law, the state is restricting the decisions of city and county governments in a wide range of areas: setting wages, naming local parks, school boards, etc etc.

Also there are efforts underway to require dog owners in Tennessee to purchase $25000 in liability insurance, or worse, to make the law apply only to certain breeds.

Another bill would bar teachers from talking to students about the problems or issues they might have and talk instead to clinical therapists who would be obligated to share the student's thoughts with parents ... But there are no plans to fund the cost of adding clinical professionals to a school's payroll.

Already approved is a law allowing gun permit holders to keep their guns in their cars - which certainly alerts criminals that they might be able to steal a gun by merely breaking into a vehicle.

Bad ideas and odd restrictions are flowing freely.

Secrecy, Paranoia and Daily Life

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:57:00 +0000

Last year a spy movie franchise based on Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series hit movie watchers with a cornucopia of paranoia and high tech fears. Was it all fiction or perhaps just the edge of how vast and responsive surveillance and security can be?

The movie boasted scenes of drone attacks sending missiles at single individuals, embedded tracking chips, secret drug controlled assassins, a secret room with the tech crews to combine and search every camera on the planet, and on and on. And just last week the paranoia hit the US Senate as Senator Rand Paul took the floor and for 13 hours worried aloud about the abilities of drone programs run by the federal government.

Both Ludlum and Rand however are sadly out of date. Our nation has pushed past surveillance and civil liberty standards 12 years ago. Let's look at some basics of where we really are --

-- Right now it is county sheriffs and state police which are working to deploy drone surveillance, which easily by-passes federal laws or protections. The military-industrial research on Smart Dust is approaching reality and reduces the size of a drone to dust motes.

-- The creepy invasion of laptops and more by deviants who want to spy on girls and raid their personal files is surely shocking. And that same software was used by Syria recently to spy and oppose rebel forces' communications and battle plans.

-- A rise in commercial research into data acquisition in the last few decades now operates at stunning levels, and information is the endless edge of weaponry and surveillance, and many folks are happy to pay for the devices and apps that track them. Combine the info we are fairly sure we provide without thought with the info secretly acquired, and most details about you are easily found.

Returning to some previous world of less surveillance will simply not happen. The software that might be looking at you, though, can also look at the lookers.

Sen. Rand Paul Ignores 30 U.S. States Wanting Drones of their Own

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:17:00 +0000

Some faux drama brought out by Sen. Rand Paul wailing about the use of surveillance or armed drones ignored a basic fact - U.S. states want their own drone systems. That includes Tennessee.

"It's a race to see which state will be the first to pass legislation governing domestic drone use. Coming out of the gate first was Florida, which passed a bill through several committees in the Senate back in January. This is notable since the Florida legislature didn’t officially convene until March 5—they thought this issue was so important that they moved the bill during their committee organizing sessions. Then Montana pulled up from behind, passing two drones bills all the way through their Senate by mid-February. But, Virginia raced ahead, sending two bills to their governor’s desk by the beginning of March, where they currently await signature.

"Drone legislation has been proposed in at least 30 states so far. As part of my job working with ACLU affiliates nationwide to analyze and respond to the various proposals, I have read every single one of these bills, and I thought it would be useful to summarize what we’re seeing in this legislation.

The good news is that the vast majority of the bills require a probable cause warrant in order for law enforcement to use drones to collect information to use against someone in court."

The status of all such legislative action is here.

As for Sen. Paul, given that the Senate and House cannot even agree on creating the basic budgetary needs of the nation, perhaps other issues should prompt filibusters first.

Vouchers for Public School: Who Benefits?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:01:00 +0000

Taking Tennessee taxpayer funds away from public schools and giving those funds to private schools - whether you call it "vouchers" or Opportunity Scholarships" - doesn't add up.

A good overview of the plans can be found here at Metropulse.

Other phrases being used in debates include "reform" and "choice" but the bottom line is - does this voucher plan aid students or private schools most?

State Democrats, via Roy Herron, offered the following this week:

"Tennessee is making gains in graduating high school students. Between 2002 and 2010, the state graduation rate went from 59.6 to 80.4 percent, gaining an average of 2.45 percent a year between 2006 and 2010. [Commercial Appeal, 2/25/13]

"And what are these “good schools” they’re talking about giving (with our tax dollars) “scholarships” to? They are private schools.

"Now, if it’s “school choice” you want, we’ve already got that in Tennessee. Nancy and I had the “choice” to send our children to any number of schools, including any number of public and private schools. That’s legal in Tennessee right now.

"We’ve got Governor’s Schools, Magnet Schools, STEM schools, public charters, private schools, and regular public schools like our three sons attended. And I know something about the quality of education they got—and so do their college professors."

TN House Leader Says No Debate for Legislation

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:03:00 +0000

Business owners in TN are facing new orders via the State - employees with handgun conceal permits are allowed to use their vehicles to store weapons on business property.

Any merits aside, TN House Speaker, Republican Beth Harwell banned comments on the bill from any who might be opposed.

"Republican leaders called a caucus meeting before this morning’s session to make sure lawmakers were with the program. Their basic message? Let’s do this fast before voters wake up and realize just how contemptible we are. Reporters, including Pith informant Andrea Zelinski, were allowed into the meeting and happily tweeted away as Speaker Beth Harwell made her case for minimizing media coverage and political fallout.

"The less you say the better. … Just stay quiet ..." Harwell told Republicans."

Rep. Harwell also limited this session the number of bills each member can introduced - though certainly keeping that number low seems laudable, it also limits business from state debate.

"Harwell's new 15-bill limit has reduced the number of bills filed this year, as compared to last, by about one-third. The speakers have set a goal of adjourning by April 19. Under the normal schedule of legislators working four days per week, there will be 28 more days to deal with almost 1,400 bills."

Mobile Apps Control Happiness?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:47:00 +0000

A company called Apigee, which makes mobile apps and other APIs (application program interface), conducted a recent survey which boasts that people rate having apps above having water.

Not surprising an app company claims apps are All Important. But the results of their 760 person survey in Europe and the U.S. seem rather odd indeed. Full story from Apigee here.

Some highlights:

When asked the age at which it’s appropriate for a child to receive their first smartphone, 75% say somewhere between the ages of 12 and 16. However, 2% of Germans say a one-year-old child should have a smartphone, 8% of Americans say the right age is 10, and 6% of people in the U.S. and Spain say parents should wait until kids reach the age of 18 before giving them their first smartphone."

Other results:

-- 85% of respondents would rather give up drinking water than delete all of their mobile apps.

-- 82% cannot go a day without their critical mobile apps. In Spain, 93% cannot go a day without their apps.

-- 50% of Americans claim they cannot go four hours without mobile apps.

-- 48% would not be able to check email without mobile apps.

-- 32% claim they cannot wake up in the morning without an app.

-- 23% say they cannot feel happy without their mobile apps.

-- 19% would not be able to maintain their relationships without mobile apps.

Hooked: The Science of Corporate Foods

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:26:00 +0000

For many years I have offered this joke about food - "Food is addictive. I started eating at a very young age and I still do it, sometimes three times a day."

Seems the joke is on me.

This weekend, Pulitzer prize winning reporter Michael Moss will share an excerpt from his forthcoming book "Sugar Salt Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us" in the NYTimes Magazine. The intense scientific effort to create foods which never satisfy yet create constant cravings is laid bare in the book. This link offers the excerpt now. It is a harrowing account of science turned against us.

A very brief sample of the type of research food corps rely on:

"This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating."

Curl Up and Dye; or, Washington's Hair Cliff

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:47:00 +0000

A recent outrage du jour: the fiscal meltdown of the Senate haircut emporium, promoted by email and 'news' reports:

"Since 1997, the Senate Hair Care shop has consistently run deficits of about $340,000 annually, a taxpayer subsidy that is growing rather than shrinking.

"The Senate hair salon provides about 509 services a week — a range of haircuts, shampooing, coloring and waves, nail services, hair removal and shoe shines. It costs about $900,000 annually to operate."

Some say the salons are getting bailouts.

Confusing this tonsorial dilemma, the House has their hair salon while the Senate has their own, too. Last year the one for the House was cheered, though the year before it was demonized.

Exclusive hair salons, gyms, cafes, car rentals ... It certainly is not easy to remain a pretty politician - even tougher to make a good business model.

Valentine's Day Sewage Plant Tours Return

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:07:00 +0000

Valentine's Day tours of a sewage treatment plant were a massive hit with visitors last year, so romantics get more of the same this year too.

OK then.

Montana Zombies and Fashionable Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:33:00 +0000

Someone hacked into local Emergency Broadcast Systems in Montana and Michigan to warn viewers that dead bodies were coming back to life as Zombies.

Not really surprising since Zombies are so fashionable these days. Not really surprising since Fear Itself is so fashionable these days too - we're pummeled with Fear at every turn.

Fashionable Fears arrive in a steady stream: schools aren't safe, guns are everywhere, not enough guns are available, snowstorms are named like hurricanes, nuclear weapons are everywhere, asteroids are zooming overhead, the world economy is collapsing, gay people are taking over, illegal immigrants are taking over, government-by-Obama is taking over, Obama was re-elected, drone strikes are targeting everyone, giant soft drink servings are illegal, diet soft drinks give you diabetes, there's no jobs, robots run factories, banks will rob you, the church is full of pedophiles, all sports are fixed, all athletes cheat, the wealthy are under attack, the poor are under attack, prisons are full, prisons are being emptied, the planet is melting, the planet is freezing, food is full of secret genetic mutations, water is poison, your phone/computer/identity has been hacked, you're being stalked by your ex, there's too much information, there's no information being shared, bullies are taking over, space aliens are taking over, you're too fat, you're too skinny, your neighbor is a doomsday prepper, Truth is out of style, you can't afford healthcare, everyone is addicted to prescription pills, radioactive tsunamis and mega-storms are being created by secret military weather machines .... the Apocalypse has begun ...

Fear is the fashion. Fear is a customizable brand.

Remain calm.

Remember, all you have to fear is Fear Itself.

Baracula and Lincolnstein

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:36:00 +0000

Inevitable?

What happens when you create a mash up of toys, presidents, and Hollywood monsters ...

Fake Fakery or Bold Boldness?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:12:00 +0000

The daring legislature of Tennessee is pushing for a State Constitutional Amendment to ban a state income tax despite the fact the current constitution has a ban on a state income tax.

Call it pep rally legislation.

This is rather like the "bold" decision that Frito Lay, which created Doritos taco shells for Taco Bell, is now offering Taco Bell flavored chips which will taste like .... Doritos.

It's as if something were actually happening.

The Stench of He-Goats in Mtn. Dew

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:08:00 +0000

Some months ago I learned that food additives are beyond bizarre. And despite consumer labels on products we seldom know what we are actually ingesting.

My first surprise was Castoreum, which is a nice way to refer to the anal glands of beavers and is used to flavor cigarettes plus it is used to evoke the flavor of vanilla or other fruits. Products do not list Castoreum but merely say "natural flavoring".

Mmmmm. Tasty.

There's also shellac, which comes from crushed Indonesian beetles and is used to make candy, chocolate, and apples shiny.

The past week brought news that Gatorade was removing brominated vegetable oil as an ingredient. Bromine, a word whose Greek origins means "stench of he-goats", is used as a flame retardant and as a flavor enhancer for Mtn. Dew and orange sodas.

Thousands of additives are in use but items like crushed beetles and anal glands are typically called "natural flavors". Just wrap that odd item with bacon fat or sugar and happy eating!!

Go Hungry Says Sen. Campfield

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:31:00 +0000

Children in need are being threatened in legislation from Knoxville Senator Campfield. He wants to withhold food stamps from families if a child makes bad grades in school. Campfield wants kids in poverty to face more hardships, worse, face the prospect of going hungry, if they are also having problems with their studies.

Classy Campfield. Punishing kids is Ugly Government.

Another Tennessee government over-reach means lost jobs. The state wants to force private businesses to allow more weapons in the workplace. The massive investment and growth of the VW manufacturing complex in Chattanooga is in jeopardy thanks to this proposal.

More legislators, sadly including my new State Rep Tilman Goins, are refusing to allow funds for health care in the state from the Affordable Care Act go to those who might need it. Firstly, we've paid the taxes that create the funds and are obligated for the debt it creates too. The least we should expect in return is to receive the health care programs and expansions which would follow. Politics aside, even of the funds are turned away, other states will receive the funds, so why cut us out? The state's Federal representatives have made and are making calls for the repeal of the Act - but no go. Until or unless such a repeal takes place then don't let TN get less than their share. If the state refuses the money then residents will just have to find health insurance on their own.

U

Two Dogs Skype With Each Other

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Powell) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:29:00 +0000