moodboom » Chatter

Easy to destroy, hard to build

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:45:05 +0000

My brother Dan and I had a spirited debate as I drove back from Winston-Salem today. He started off with a conspiracy theory (here we go…) that Obama was “briefed” for two days shortly after being elected, and was somehow influenced to do a 180 on all his campaign promises. I was lit and ready to go at it…
Dan: OK, name something that Obama has done since he was elected.
Mike: He started off broadsided by the bank and automaker bailouts for one…
Dan: He was done with that in 3 months!
Mike: No way, that was major stuff, and is still having to be carefully managed.
Dan: He has others to do that. What else?
Mike: Off the top of my head, health care reform and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Dan: Health care was so watered down that it’s useless, and will be repealed by Republicans. They had full Democratic control for two years and got nothing done! He promised real health care reform and we didn’t get it. Every time in the past when one party controlled, they got lots done!
Mike: They tried, even tried to force through a vote, but couldn’t get 2/3 majority. Remember them courting Olympia Snowe, etc. etc.
Dan: They don’t need 2/3, only half, which they had.
Mike: No that’s not good enough.
(research…)
Dan: They only need 50% but the Republicans can filibuster without 2/3 majority.
Mike: There you go.
Dan: They should have done it! The American people would have been outraged by Republicans dragging out slow readings for 3 days!
Mike: No it wouldn’t have worked.
Dan: and the reinvestment act, I’ll give you that one little thing…
Mike: It wasn’t little, it was huge! Progress Energy got $200 million to invest in improving the electric grid. Etc etc.
Dan: He didn’t get us out of Iraq, he didn’t close Gitmo, he didn’t pass substantial healthcare… and the Republicans got lots of stuff done!
Mike: He switched to Afghanistan as he said he would, he promised to close Gitmo, and they DID pass healthcare reform.
Dan: He didn’t close Gitmo when the time came. How come Republicans can get so much done?
Mike: They’re not getting anything done, they are just dismantling. It’s easy to destroy. Obama has been working hard since day 1. Look at his accomplishments… wikipedia covers every day, they are filled with progress.
(research on first few days’ accomplishments)
Dan: George Bush didn’t let Democrats stop him. “I’m the decider”. He just passed executive orders and did whatever he wanted! Obama should do the same! He needs to stop trying to cross the aisle.
Mike: That’s the difference! Legislators used to work together. We don’t want to give up on that. There are some good Republican fiscal-conservative ideologies. There are lots of good reasons to use a free market approach. Debt is bad. Etc etc.
Dan: Democrats should just work together to get stuff done.
Mike: Everyone who wants to build has to carefully prioritize and balance all needs. Every person that does it will come up with a slightly different prioritization. It isn’t easy. It’s so easy to destroy, create fear, criticize, find fault.
Dan: Republicans are so good at creating slogans to do that.
Mike: Yeah and modern Republicans have one strong shared agenda: dismantle government. It’s easy to work together – dismantle my issue this week, yours next. If it doesn’t go perfectly, so what, we’ll just move on to the next thing… it’s so simplistic. When you are trying to create progress, any mistake is going to be easily called out as massive waste by your critics. You always have to do things right every time, or you’ll get shredded.
Dan: And it’s so easy to fool most people. There was an email with quotes from Obama’s book saying he didn’t love his mother. I researched it, all lies. I sent a reply but they probably didn’t read that. Everyone just buys right into that crap…
Mike: I agree with you that Obama could be more aggressive. We need a leader who is willing to get out the machette when needed to cut through the blockades that will always be there. But it’s hard work to build. What we need to do is show people truth, slowly convince them that voting Republican is not what they think it is, not in their best interest. But it’s hard when it’s hidden in so much noise and fear/uncertainty/doubt…

I’m paraphrasing… I was pretty agitated, I hope I wasn’t too belligerent and got my point across, what do you think, good people…

I’m off to read more of the day-by-day Obama wikipedia entries, good stuff…

Dan Miller, Sara Sowa, Andrea Behrns-Miller liked this post

A specific example of broadband frustration in North Carolina

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:17:18 +0000

Governor Perdue,

My newly-purchased house is 700′ from the road where Time Warner’s cable runs. Because they have a virtual monopoly, they want me to pay $3250 to run cable to my house before they will ALLOW me to pay for service on top of that.

I would like to express my outrage that you did not veto the recent bill that restricts municipalities’ ability to develop broadband solutions. It is abominable that you vocalized your disapproval of the bill but did not find the backbone to veto it. Many of us contacted you with our concerns but were not heard. Special interests have taken further root as a result, and our state will pay the price and lose further technological footing. I am now directly, severely impacted – along with many others. The Time Warner rep claimed that they are getting many people to actually pay these kind of extortionist fees to fund the build out of their own network – further increasing their monopoly.

Broadband service is of such fundamental importance to our communities that we must find a way to do better. Not vetoing the municipality restriction bill was a major step backwards for us all. I hope you can find a way to move us forward again.

I’ll be posting this to my blog, facebook, etc. and getting the word out wherever and whenever possible.

Thanks for listening,
Michael

Addendum: Yes I am using Time Warner services to host this blog. Yes they have provided me with great service for 11 years. But some corollary of Murphy’s Law applies to broadband access. It should be getting better and cheaper at a faster rate than their monopoly allows.

Would I be writing this if I happened to get an easy service hookup? Probably not. But I did send a previous note to the Governor when I heard about the ridiculous bill.

The bottom line is that broadband internet access is too fundamental a need of the people to be left to a few corporations and a bought-off government. Just like with other basic utilities, the people’s government should ensure that everything is in place, including free market competition as well as government oversight, to provide the people with the best-possible service over shared resources like easements and lines. Municipal broadband, where the people come together to create something good, is an excellent means to that end.

Dan Miller, Jinyoung Park, Jeremy Sutton liked this post

9.5 Beastie Boys: Make Some Noise

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:01:40 +0000

Yes I am a Beastie Boys fanboy. As Johnny Cash said so well, “until you know my shame you really don’t know me”. I grew up on New Jersey playgrounds, cursing (not “cussing”, that’s what rednecks in FL did) my head off since I was ten. To me, my brother’s actual name was jerk-off. I just didn’t know any better. I hit punk right on the mark around the age of 12 – I remember my dad walking into my room and hearing someone on my favorite NY radio station say something rude and what in the world was I listening to and me replying “I don’t listen to the words, just the music”. New wave was next and swept us all up, smashing molds and bringing sweet melodies and new sonic fabrics. And then came hip hop in the form of Run DMC and Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, and it was loud and strong, and continued to rip the fabric of everything that came before it – literally in this case. The industrial music of Ministry and Meat Beat Manifesto was the last great one for me. From then on, everything else was just recycling – Grunge, Shoegaze, LoFi, whatever – I’d heard it all before.

I guess this is the definition of being old. I have become one of those “classic rock” fanatics that I never understood during my youth. But when we were young, each of those early changes meant something to us, ripping off the lid on something brand new and knocking us to the floor, winded.

And I could feel my roots when I turned up the Beastie Boys. They are smart-ass New Yorkers with ADD. Like FAMILY.

If your sophomoric sense of humor remains intact, you may continue to enjoy their craft. This album went through extra refinement (due to MCA’s cancer battle, keep on good man) like a fine wine. Peace out to life-lovin’ cancer-fightin’ vegan-tryin’ Yauch, who directed this joint… WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT, this is not for women or children or anyone else with any sense or maturity whatsoever. Self-parody at its finest. And check the crew they brought for this one, stellar.

Big Weekend

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:59:09 +0000

Had a great weekend, starting a little early on Thursday with dinner with Sammy at the Raleigh Times. A great veggie burger with great toppings (avacado, grilled mushrooms and onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup and mustard, mmm), and the beer list is to die for. I had a Belgian triple – three times the hops and barley of a normal brew. It was delicious and effective, one beer was plenty. Then we went to Escazu, the chocolatier I’ve been obsessing over for a year or more. They have the best bars at Whole Foods (out of 200 or so, it seems), and the actual shop, on Glenwood Avenue, is adorable – a converted house with a display case full of painstakingly handcrafted chocolate delights. Then it was time for Halloween, and we partied like twentysomethings. You’ll have to hook up on Facebook to see all the good semi-clean fun we had. :> Except for this one blurry picture I found on my iPhone…

Bareback!

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:08:45 +0000

This past weekend soccer was rained out by a tropical storm, so we switched to blueberry pancakes and board games. After a game of Carcasonne (with Andrea as the sneaky victor), the weather cleared up. The girls took me to the stable and I got a turn on Sundance, bareback! Takes a lot of balance! I stuck to trotting. Maybe next time I’ll put a little more speed on. :>

Solar-to-hydrogen and 4G biofuels

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:23:25 +0000

A couple recent Popular Mechanics articles on my two favorite alternative energy subjects:

New Old Pictures

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 02:02:00 +0000

I cleaned up the header of the blog a little, stuffed a little thumbnail of a random bit of artwork from the girls in the upper left corner. The art’s really old and there’s only a few to start. I will add more over time…

Eurotrip

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:19:00 +0000

meloncully writes “YO unc, here are my euro trip pictures for andrea

and whoever else would like to see em. only about 30 of them , i didnt have enough space to put up all 100.

so here ya go

http://homepage.mac.com/meloncully/PhotoAlbum2.html“

Helpless in Asheville

Mon, 09 Feb 2004 03:52:00 +0000

Ken posted to my site! Ken, that means you can do no wrong! Get posting to your OWN site, you madman!!! :> Gimme a buzz if you need help…

Ken Etterman writes “Mike, nice job keeping up you blog, I notice you’ve been very regular (with the blog I mean). I would like to jump start mine again, you as always motivate me in that direction. Hope you guys are well – lets get connected soon.”

My Vegas Angle

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:35:00 +0000

I’ve been to Vegas once or twice. It’s fun to play, but I would never bet more than I expected to lose. You can see how people get addicted to it though – it’s easy to start fantasizing and lose track of reality. Case in point…

I thought I had perfected my gambling angle to the point where it couldn’t fail. The idea is to shift the long odds to shorter by decreasing the payout. Here’s the details, it’s pretty simple.

First, some basic Roulette. You can play red (or black) with a 2:1 payout. What this means is that if you bet $1 on red, and the little ball lands on a red number, you win $1. If it lands on black, you lose. All the numbers are either red or black, so it’s pretty good odds – the only down side is the 00 number – if that comes up, EVERYONE loses. OK, now for the angle.

If you lose, double your bet and play again. Keep doing this until you win. Once you win, if you do the math, you will see that you have won $1 since beginning the round of betting. You ALWAYS WIN $1!

OK, one bad assumption has ruined many a scheme, and the same is true here: you can’t double your bet indefinitely. Therefore, it’s just a matter of time until you lose several times in a row, doubling your bet each time, until you hit the betting limit and you’ve lost your shirt. Losing your shirt is typically seen as a BAD gambling strategy.

It’s still not too bad though, if you look at the numbers… UPDATE: yes it is… move on, nothing to see here…