Open Thread TOP Edition - Friday, April 8, 2016

I love word play double entendre, puns, limericks or any type of word mischief is appreciated.

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
—Ogden Nash

I think the fly would flee through the flaw in the flue, but the flea can't flee with the fly through the flaw in the flue, because the flea can't fly.

Welcome to the TOP edition of Funk Friday, it is a special funkin' day, for today we muster with Tower Of Power.

Welcome to the DFH scene, I hope everyone is smoking only the best weed. I would like to remind everyone this incongruous stream of prattle turns into a lucid and cogent essay for those under the influence.

I was a bit intrepid about last week's public service announcement. In a bit of serendipity, some of our other denizens were noticing the chaos and several people took on organizing and posting beneficial material. I encourage everyone to check out the sight meta threads. I only have one thing to add, and the person I am talking to knows who they are, TOP Funk Friday is not an excuse to post disco!

I think TOP may have missed the boat.

The anxiety over the chaos reminded me of when my wife and I first set up household. It was a Saturday afternoon and she had left me home alone. I was doing something that required scissors, but could not find a pair. I looked in the junk drawer. I looked in tool boxes. I looked where we kept the stationary and paper supplies. I looked everywhere I thought scissor might be stashed. By the time my wife returned home I was exasperated and met her in the driveway with scissors on my mind. I asked, "Where are the scissors?". Her answer, "The silverware drawer, where they belong.".


Let's remind ourselves about our information age, while TOP keeps funking it up.

10 Modern Methods Of Mind Control

The more one researches mind control, the more one will come to the conclusion that there is a coordinated script that has been in place for a very long time with the goal to turn the human race into non-thinking automatons. For as long as man has pursued power over the masses, mind control has been orchestrated by those who study human behavior in order to bend large populations to the will of a small “elite” group.

Today, we have entered a perilous phase where mind control has taken on a physical, scientific dimension that threatens to become a permanent state if we do not become aware of the tools at the disposal of the technocratic dictatorship unfolding on a worldwide scale.

Modern mind control is both technological and psychological. Tests show that simply by exposing the methods of mind control, the effects can be reduced or eliminated, at least for mind control advertising and propaganda. More difficult to counter are the physical intrusions, which the military-industrial complex continues to develop and improve upon.

NOAM CHOMSKY - TOP 10 MEDIA MANIPULATION STRATEGIES

Noam Chomsky, the distinguished American philosopher, political activist and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has compiled a list of the ten most powerful and efficacious strategies used by “masters of the world” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media.

The strategies are so well-elaborated that even the countries with the best educational systems, succumb to the power and terror of those mafias. Many things are reported in the news but few are explained.

The Dumbing Down of America – By Design

This presentation focuses on the myriad ways in which the powers-that-be in the United States have been systematically dumbing down Americans as a society for a very long time – all by meticulously calculated design. Originally the term dumbing down was used as a slang expression in 1933 by film screenwriters to mean “revising [the script] so as to appeal to those of lower education or intelligence.”

The most obvious example of how Americans have been dumbed down is through this nation’s failed public education system. At one time not that long ago America reigned supreme as a leading model for the rest of the world providing the best quality free public K-12 education system on the planet. But over the last many decades while much of the rest of the world has been passing us by, it seems an insidious federal agenda has been implemented to condition and brainwash a population of mindless, robotic citizenry that simply does what it’s told, and of course the brainwashing commences early in America’s schools.

Media Deception: You Are Not Getting The Truth

Let me begin by stating that all in the world is not as you have been told. The old saying that "truth is stranger than fiction" couldn't be more accurate, for we have been deceived on such a grand scale that most would have a difficult time in comprehending the full extent.

The behind the scenes machinations of big money and politics are so well hidden from most of the population, that if people actually knew how things were really run, we would quite literally have a second revolution overnight. Henry Ford knew this well when he said, "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Most people who read this might have a hard time fathoming how an entire nation could be so well deceived, but it's really not that hard when you understand the inner workings and hierarchy of an overly revered media in which we place our blind trust.

The truth is not as you know it. Our faith in the media myth has been our Achilles heel.

Many have realized long ago that our politicians will lie to us at the drop of a hat, but most have no clue that our news media lies and deceives us just as much, if not more so.

We have been deceived by our media to such an extent, mostly because people are too trusting of our news system. They very naively believe that broadcasters and journalists would never lie to us. This trust has worked against us with devastating consequences which are unknown to most.

To understand how badly you have been misled, you first need to learn about how our news organizations have been infiltrated. Once you learn this undeniable historical fact, it is far easier to understand that life is not as you know it.

====================================================================

Tower Of Power - So I Got To Groove

Tower Of Power - Down To The Nightclub

Tower Of Power - Soul Vaccination

Tower Of Power - Squib Cakes

Tower of Power - Pocketful Of Soul

Tower Of Power - Spank-A-Dang

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shaharazade's picture

in the spring buried under a pile leaves. I need a garden tool box with a lock.

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burnt out's picture

Shall we just say that she made very sure that I understood that there were scissors and then there were her "sewing" scissors and I needed to understand the difference. ( :

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All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth. John Lennon

gulfgal98's picture

will dull scissors faster than anything else. Sewing scissors are off limits for anything other than sewing. Wink

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

and has never forgotten it. He keeps a wide berth around the sewing basket, these last few decades...

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NCTim's picture

Use my cooking knives on a plastic cutting board or the counter, grrrr!

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Gerrit's picture

is everywhere. The only way to become more free is by leading an intentional counter-culture lifestyle, practicing daily conscientization in one's own being and using every single opportunity to conscientize one's children.

The single best place to conscientize one's immediate family, especially the children, is the FAMILY DINNER TABLE. When our oldest was about to enter kindergarten, we instituted the family dinner as the non-negotiable centre-piece of our family's daily life.

At our dinner table, we parents ask every child this, the most important of all parental questions:
"How was your day?"
And everyone had to listen to and discuss with that child/parent's day and it's triumphs, boredom, disasters. We had a policy of total acceptance and total honesty. We discuss everything with compassion, support, and laughter. A lot of laughter.

Each kid was assigned two days of the week. On their day, that child spoke first and assigned the dinner cleanup chores to those who did not help cook. Two-and-a-half decades we still do it and always will.

Talking about every family member's day over the non-negotiable family dinner table is the only, only way to conscientize a family into a counterculture life that promotes personal honesty, family fealty, and creates a firm foundation to negotiate the human world of lies.

TY for the topic, Tim. It's crucial for us progressives to grasp how to free our minds.

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

burnt out's picture

The local tea-nuttery run newspaper paper is bragging with it's front page story that voters in the neighboring county "soundly rejected the proposed school tax levy increase" Tuesday with 79.1 % of voters rejecting it. Everyone actually involved in the education system there, the school superintendent, teachers, school board members, etc. had been talking recently about the dire need for it but apparently their opinions are irrelevant to the voters in that school district. What it basically boils down to is that the parents of those kids simply don't believe the education of their children is of much importance, at least not enough to warrant a small tax increase. And thus the cycle of ignorance continues........

Have a good day all!

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All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth. John Lennon

NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

And it's easy.
Last night I was reading an article in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert. The issue was dated 12/2015 (I can't keep up with all the reading either). Anyway, the article, titled 'The Siege Of Miami' blew me away for a number of reasons. The first reason of course is that Miami and much of Florida is already experiencing repeated and dramatic inundation by water from ocean rising. The second reason this article blew me away is that this whole issue of what is happening in Miami is barely ever mentioned in our news.

Not only is this issue rarely mentioned in our national MSM news, but Miami is a prime example of what happens with climate change and ocean rising. Of course that is precisely why it is not mentioned. It is the perfect example that could help many Americans see what happens with you know what (the great unmentionable, i.e. climate change).

To make matters even more interesting, Florida's governor, Rick Scott, wanted to ban talk of sea-level rise and state employees were supposed to refer to the problem as "nuisance flooding".

Ha.....these huge disruptions that are coming down the pike for all of us can be minimized and made to appear insignificant by categorizing them as mere nuisances. Are we that dumb?

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Gerrit's picture

than that of termite ants, as the South African Eugene Marais discovered back in 1915. See his book based on long years of scientific field observation, called in English, The Soul Of The White Ant. By "soul" he describes what we today would call "distributive intelligence."

Our primary task, now that the climate horse has long bolted the stable, is to work hard for our personal and local community resilience. Cheers mate,

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3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

Bernie Sanders Just Picked Up Support from America’s Greatest Folk Singer

“Can a true political revolution ever start from within the party system? It does seem like an insurmountable contradiction. And to imagine that more than a fraction of Bernie’s agenda could ever come to fruition is probably setting expectations too high. Yet Bernie has won my heart. He supports causes in which I have been personally involved for decades. I take great strength from his firm stance against the death penalty, (amazing!) his belief that Palestinians should have a place at the bargaining table, (unheard of!) his understanding that the prison system must transform its agenda from punishment to rehabilitation, his desire to treat immigrants as human beings, and of course by his grass roots funding and astonishing refusal to sell himself to the devil on Wall Street, or anywhere else for that matter.”

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Lookout's picture

I was fortunate to go to her concert a couple of weeks ago in B'ham. Not only did she endorse Bernie, but her drummer did a solo where he started messing with his hat and then swapped it out for a Bernie hat while drumming.

She also told the story of being in the 16st church with Dr King while the white citizens council was marching outside. He said, "if you can't love those people out there too, then we don't have a movement". I've thought about that several times in the last couple of weeks. I've learned not to hate, but I still have a ways to go to love my enemy.

Her side man is an old acquaintance Dirk Powell http://www.dirkpowell.org/ Apologies to the drummer, I don't know him.

Glad more and more folks are supporting Benie!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

gulfgal98's picture

that her drummer is her son, Gabriel, whom she had with David Harris.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Gerrit's picture

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

petral's picture

or: 100, 1000, 10000

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NCTim's picture

That's El's schtick. I have a computer science background and basically think in powers of two. Did you know that the each power of two is the sum of the previous powers of two plus one. The proof is pretty simple.

111111 +1 = 1000000

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Can I hope that she might perform at a rally or two?

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He is not only a narcissistic POS courtier-he's an IGNORANT one too, now with ANOTHER Sanders-slamming piece. (the surrogates in NY are streaming out of the castle windows) Some really good pushback in comments, sprinkled with R talking points from the Clinton crowd:
"This essay is breathtaking in its dishonesty. Orwell could have used it as an example of the hack genre in his classic "Politics and the English Language."

PK sets up the fraud by citing "many if not most... wonks." He names not a single name; doing so might out them as campaign surrogates or advisers. If he were honest, he would have cited the 170 economists sttesting to the soundness of Sanders's proposals.

There's more weasel-wording: "some" Sanders supporters are angry cult members. This is not only ridiculous, it's a lazy and shameful way to categorize the millions of people I would assume Hillary needs should she win the nomination.

And how about that over-hyped editorial board meeting? The News is owned by billionaire Mort Zuckerman, a Neocon war hawk who's given hundreds of millions to the Clinton foundation. Robert Reich has already made short work of the media "going bonkers" over Bernie's answers, which were essentially correct.

PK fails to note that Sanders let off his steam based upon reading a provocative misleading headline in the Washington Post -- another big media contributor to the Clinton foundation.

No surprise that the consolidated corporate-owned media are actually the ones going over the edge here, with their identical talking points coming straight from the Clinton campaign. Not one original thought among the slew of sponsored content propagandists with the nerve to call themselves pundits and journalists."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/opinion/sanders-over-the-edge.html?ref...

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Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

From BuzzFeed

And since this is the TOP Open Thread, it fits quite nicely here....

I Got Banned From Daily Kos – And You Won’t Believe Why

I joined Daily Kos to get the word out about my favorite candidate, Bernie Sanders; but it only took one diary post on Hillary to get me banned - forever.

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Haikukitty's picture

and their "evolution" to a totalitarian, non-progressive blog space.

Ha!

Thanks for sharing - your link has made my morning.

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Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

Funny how many people have not ever even HEARD of DKOS... not quite the center of the Progressive universe some would have us believe....eh?

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The Buzzfeed demographic is what Markos dreams he could reach!

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Lookout's picture

They use the internet for their info and don't rely on the corporate narrative. I heard one young man say, "I think we know how to google that."

If older voters would actually take the time watch a speech by Bernie, or visit some web sites like feelthebern.org then I think we could win them as well. It is amazing that we've come so far against the big media head winds. To anyone who bothers to look the bias is obvious...even (maybe especially) on public broadcasting.

Onward!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

hecate's picture

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I enjoyed that clip.....Shantel DISKO BOY I think. Very cute.

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Bisbonian's picture

Excellent.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

Hillary Goldwater Arrow.jpg

Everything old is new again, eh? Wink

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Haikukitty's picture

Isn't it odd that arrows pointing to the right signify to us moving "forward" and arrows to the left "backwards" and yet the ideology of what is called the "Right" is to move backwards or stand still, while the Ideology of progress and moving forwards is called the "Left"

I wonder why that is? I'm sure someone knows, but its just never occurred to me before until I realized that Hills arrow pointing right was apropos despite its usual symbolic meaning.

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NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Alison Wunderland's picture

and it's been going for centuries.

And it has to STOP, dammit!

We're people too!

(Got sidetracked when a friend came over to use my table saw. He's thinks he's a die-hard Trumpie, but AB got to working him over with facts and figures [Yuuuge thanks for those charts. D/Led them just in time] and I think I'm making headway guiding him to the Berning Light.)

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NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Alison Wunderland's picture

competent kazoo tuner.

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gulfgal98's picture

Okay, Dog, I love your comments. Too funny! Lol

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Gerrit's picture

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

MarilynW's picture

I have two left-handed children. I was trained to use my right hand as a child. My aunt told me they slapped my left hand until it was red and swollen. I am right-handed all right.

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To thine own self be true.

Gerrit's picture

parliamentary seating plan in 1789 during the French revolution.

In 1789, in the Assembly, the increasingly alarmed partisans of the ancien régime sat on the right-hand side (Côté Droit) of the president, the revolutionaries on his left-hand side (Côté Gauche).

from the telegraph somewhere

hope that helps :=)

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

probably because most people are right-handed.

The left/right designations for politics derive from the seating arrangements of deputies in the National Assembly of the French Revolution. The royalists and the revolutionaries started gravitating to their own kind, with the revolutionaries arbitrarily ending up on the left of the assembly's president.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Bisbonian's picture

a number of times. That bottom one is a real eye opener.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

smiley7's picture

Thinking of you, two; winter has made a few day return here; worried about the fruit tree blossoms.

You good OT brings to mind the great documentary, The Century of Self; most readers here are probably aware of the four-part series, but if not, I highly recommend watching.

Synopsis:

Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? "Century of the Self" tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund's devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru and Sigmund's great grandson, Matthew Freud.

Sigmund Freud's work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man's ultimate goal.

Episode One: Happiness Machines

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticizing the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.

https://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/bbc-the-century-of-the-self-ha...

Have a great day and weekend, everyone. I'm so thrilled that Bernie and the Pope are joining hands in fighting economic injustice; a good news morning.

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NCTim's picture

I hope all is well. Things are rough around here. I think we are counting in months.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

smiley7's picture

i would like to come down mid-summer, after Knoxville. I think your home is with-in 75 miles of my Mother's. {{{{{{Hugs}}}}}}}.

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Azazello's picture

Don't blame K-12 education. I've been watching The Great Dumbing Down all my life and I'm here to tell ya', it ain't the schools. It's the Picture-Box. The dumbing down starts in the cradle, when the parents plant the kid in front of the box. Then they send them to school without ever having seen a book and expect a miracle from the teachers. Education starts in the home and the "failed schools" meme just serves Neoliberals' privatization campaign.
Have a nice day.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

NCTim's picture

I would put more blame on the entertainment complex and news media. Direct marketing of pharma, propaganda and disinformation are all root causes.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Haikukitty's picture

The difference between what is taught now in K-12 schools and what people learned back in the last century or two and even into this past mid-century is vast. People used to learn other languages, as well as Greek or Latin. A large store of literature. Mathematics.

Now, you can complete your education with only a shaky knowledge of the English language (they don't teach Grammar anymore), only basic handwriting skills (no more cursive either) and no second language at all. And the Bush-era teaching to the test removes actual learning in favor of memorizing answers out of context.

And of course, we have states like Texas trying to take the teaching of any critical thinking skills out of K-12 education, too. And teaching someone how to think and learn is really the ONE thing you need to teach, because the person is then able to educate themselves with a little initiative.

Its not the teachers that are at fault, but the education system itself is certainly part of the problem.

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Azazello's picture

that's an all Republican, all ALEC outfit, tried to pass a law mandating the teaching of cursive. I didn't pass. In the olden days, every home had a least one book in it, the Bible, and most people read a newspaper. That's not the case now. The school system is a product of the Dumbing-Down, not the cause.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Lookout's picture

A decade or so ago, this part of NE Alabama was "the sock capital of the world". It is almost a ghost town now. I spent a couple of decades teaching in the community. I always felt like the schools and our approach to education was to provide fodder for the sock mills. In fact schools in general with their straight rows are about setting a factory line mentality, or as a mid western colleague said "like rows of corn".

The most inspiring reform I know of was the progressive movement a 100 years ago. There was "The Ten Year Study" where 100s of similar schools were paired - one school allowed to self design their own curriculum, the other continued with the standard studies. No brainer, the schools where the teachers designed their school out preforms the other every time in large and long lasting ways.

We don't need for profit charters, we need to free teachers and communities to design their own schools to fit their unique situations. Creative schools, creative people, creative communities. It happens and could happen more often.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

we'd spend the first couple of minutes rearranging the chairs into a circle, to make it easier to communicate with each other. (I also appreciated it because I got a better view of the cutest guy in class that way, but that's another story.) And in the "hash sessions" in alternative school (where I took English, Social Studies and a few other classes) you'd have people sitting on the couches, chairs, lounging on the floors, wherever they could find a comfy seat to hash out current events and talk about how to make the world a better place. This was in the 1970s -- how many of those idealists ended up getting co-opted by the establishment, I wonder?

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most Americans left school after 8th grade. It wasn't until the mid-60s that even a majority finished high school.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

gulfgal98's picture

humanities, and critical thinking have been sacrificed at the alter of math, science, and testing. The problem is that the liberal arts are what make us more human and creative instead of just technocrats.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Gerrit's picture

oh shit - today?.jpg
Bad news on the climate change front, again. An extract from the NYT story below. Also, a plug for a post I'm working on for tomorrow. It's about resources on growing food: a bit of a link harvest. I'd like to make it a request for your favourite links, books, magazines, local resources, on growing food. We could build a bit of a resource base here for folks who would like to know how to grow more food at home, and how to find local food around them.

From the NYT yesterday
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/science/climate-models-may-overstate-c...

The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. If the findings are borne out by further research, it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder.

The new paper, in the journal Science, focuses on what are known as mixed-phase clouds, which are found around the world and contain both cooled water and ice crystals.

The balance of water and ice in clouds affects the impact that carbon dioxide levels have on atmospheric temperatures, a factor known as equilibrium climate sensitivity. A higher sensitivity would mean that carbon dioxide levels would cause more warming than previously thought.

Using data from instruments aboard the Calipso satellite, which monitors clouds and particles suspended in the atmosphere, the researchers determined that mixed-phase clouds contain more water and less ice than expected.

Water droplets reflect more solar radiation back into the sky than ice crystals do. As the atmosphere warms, clouds tend to have more water and less ice in them, and the more watery clouds prevent solar radiation from reaching the earth. Warming is slowed.

With less ice in the mix to start, however, there is less capacity for water to replace ice, said Ivy Tan, an author of the paper and a graduate student at the department of geology and geophysics at Yale University. The result, she said, is more warming.

In more precise, technical language, it means the human biosphere today is even more fucked than it was last week.

Let's not shout at the darkness, but light a candle. Please bring your favourite links on growing food tomorrow. Look for the little dynos :=)

Peace be with us, if we build personal and local resilience, (Working on it!!! :=)
gerrit

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

Bisbonian's picture

I think you already have that, but will bring it again.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

NCTim's picture

Gary Larson quit doing Farside to play guitar. Kudos to him.

Hey Johnny ->

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Gerrit's picture

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

Bisbonian's picture

by this banjo cartoon.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

NCTim's picture

Wink

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

NCTim's picture

This morning's paper. Tedeshi-Trucks, Los Lobos and North Mississipi Allstars tour! It soesn't get much better than that.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

FreakFlagFly's picture

http://www.dabday.com/index.html

Put a bird on it...

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orlbucfan's picture

Have some of their stuff on vinyl, and caught a live performance a few years back. The band was smokin' tight! Rec'd for the tunes and conversation. Smile

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

enhydra lutris's picture

We decided to drop literature, classics and the arts in order to focus on math, science & history. Then we dropped science because god, creature comforts and profits, and replaced history with a propaganda narrative. Not so much dumb as ignorant.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

NCTim's picture

discouraged critical thinking
demanded fealty to imaginary beings
refused to teach children about the human reproductive system

Aurgh!

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Bisbonian's picture

TOP isn't really my style...but after I posted that link to a video, above, I let the YouTube sequence keep playing, and it quickly morphed into a bunch of Soul. I could listen to that, all day. Still am.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xItIxyykXk&ebc=ANyPxKqUtu586iFY2juMcmyE...

When I was a little kid, a slightly older kid named Cedric Eugene Walker (I always had a thing for middle names) lived across the street. I got exposed to a different menu, first, but soon discovered his parents extensive music collection. Stevie Wonder, AL Green, Ike & Tina Turner, EW&F, any and all Motown. I was in heaven.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

NCTim's picture

Soul, oh yeah! We can swing that way. Stay tuned.

I assume you are already used to banjo abuse. At least you are not a drummer. Wink

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Bisbonian's picture

Did you hear about the drummer that actually had a job interview?
He came in late.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

NCTim's picture

The knocking gets softer and slower and he doesn't know when to stop.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

hecate's picture

call a drummer who has broken up with his girlfriend?

Homeless.

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