Kowabunga, douche.

Education For Extinction:
American Indians and the Boarding School Experience
by David Wallace Adams

Classroom

"Probably more significant than the specific content of the science curriculum was the deeper message being transmitted. Traditionally, Indian children had been taught to look upon nature in ecological and spiritual terms. To know nature was to recognize one's dependence on the earth and its creatures. The world of nature was inseparable from the world of the supernatural; gods and spirits inhabited the earth, sky and lakes just as every living creature--the deer, the eagle, the mountain lion--possessed its own distinctive spiritual essence, which, through rights and ceremonies, might be incorporated into one's being as a sustaining source of personal identity and power..."

Sounds like Halloween to me.

"...In the end, the Indian's knowledge of the physical and natural environment was inseparable from how they approached it--intimately, harmoniously, and with reverential respect for the mysterious. Whites, on the other hand, objectified nature. Western science was ultimately the search for "laws of nature" and scientific principles that, once established, could be put to the service of technological progress. Nature was to be controlled, conquered and, finally, exploited."

Kind of like how the Indians themselves were to be: controlled, conquered and exploited.

"Science too was an expression of the white man's power."

The Sum of Man by Norah Pollard

In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings--
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws--
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.

One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.

Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.

The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.

One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.

He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.


"The Sum of Man" by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. (c) Antrim House, 2009.

Aww, that's too bad (or: One step foward, two... um, I forgot what I was saying because I'm really high right now.)

After the buzz wore off from the Obama administration's decision for the Justice Department to back up off a state for gettin' down, those damn Yankees go and thwart the will of the people. Or at least of pot smokers.

I've recently started getting these updates to keep up with all the different fronts of the War on the War on Drugs, or at least the war on pot, from theses guys at the Marijuana Policy Project. Now that things are truly, seemingly, in the hands of states, let's hope for a wave of different types of legalization/decriminalization to sweep the land. Okay, maybe not sweeping, that seems like a lot of work; maybe just, like, by osmosis...

Marijuana Policy Project Alert:

...New Hampshire legislature came just shy of voting to override Gov. John Lynch (D)'s veto of the state's proposed medical marijuana law. Two-thirds of the votes were needed. Although we cleared the House with 67.6% of the vote (240-115), it lost in the Senate, 14-10.

The bill had passed the legislature in June, by 232-108 in the House and 14-10 in the Senate. But on July 10, Gov. Lynch vetoed the bill, after refusing to meet with 15 patients and after failing to give input to the legislative conference committee, which amended the bill to address each of the eight concerns he had voiced in April.

...To override the veto and pass the bill into law, we needed supportive votes from two-thirds of voting members of the House and 16 votes in the Senate.

But the bill faced strong opposition from the state's attorney general and chiefs of police.

...71% of New Hampshire voters support allowing seriously and terminally ill patients to use and grow medical marijuana for personal use if their doctors recommend it, according to a 2008 Mason-Dixon poll.

The above is an infographic depicting the percentage breakdown of all crimes in the U.S. for last year. Any guess what's the #1 single most-arrestable offense? Gettin' mean with a little weed (or other drugs).

It seems the attorney general and the chief's of police wouldn't have much to do anymore if their were no drug users (mostly pot smokers) or sellers (who would vanish upon changing the laws) to bust. Do you know what it's like in winter up there? No, me neither, but for some reason The Shining comes to mind.

Though, if pot was legal, they could all just sit around and get stoned. Then, maybe there'd be less hunting accidents. Because there'd probably be a lot less hunting. And less drinking and fighting and car accidents and road rage and child abuse and spousal abuse and bullying and reduce a whole lot of the other crimes on the graphic--wait, why is pot smoking still illegal, still considered a bad thing?

Once was douche, but now he's found.

At least he knows how to give props when deserved.

The administration's recovery efforts [for hurricane Katrina] have drawn praise from Republicans, too, including Gov. Bobby Jindal. Jindal has credited Obama's team with bringing a more practical and flexible approach to the process. "There's a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done," he said in August.

So, it looks like he decided to play nice and except some help from the federal government, after all. I gave Bobby a hard time back when he gave us all a laugh at a dorky looking Indian-dude with a Louisiana accent and cheesy smile (see below) trying to out-pimp Obama, after the president's speech. Well, Bobby, I know how to give props too. Enjoy it, though, I doubt there'll be much more.

Columbus, what a prince.

"They...brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawk's bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... But they were well built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make the do whatever we want."

--from A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

Charming.

The Odds on Obama (or: Things that creep me out)

Weren't very good, but then again he was as safe a bet as Bill Clinton. Regardless, both were better off than MJ or W, as well they should have been--if only because Obama would be hard-pressed to fuck up as royally as George Jr. But, that's also why it was a stupid move (in the words of some diplo-type "Absolutely stupid"--thanks M.) to give Barack the award: he hasn't really done anything yet, and the few things he has done aren't worth the approbation. And, perhaps not as importantly but more annoyingly, this is just the kind of thing the Right will use to support their horror that the world is sucking at the teat of Obama-nation.


Still, what's most disturbing about the whole affair is this creepy graphic The Economist used in their reaction piece about the award.


Heard George Packer (of The New Yorker) on the radio say Obama should not accept it (didn't know it was an option), that they should put it on hold, so to speak, until he has accomplished something. I completely agree.



Otherwise, I've mostly been creeped-out by science. Like the oncoming war of man versus machine ala Terminator. There's the singularity that Ray Kurzweil talks about, explained on this podcast from Future Tense, a weekly science/tech show. Basically, the rate of technological advance will increase so much that soon we'll be able to live indefinitely, if only virtually. But first computers are just going to get smarter than we are, hence the possible catastrophe. According to The Economist, it will be here soon.

"How soon before evolvable machines become cleverer than people? Little over a decade is the current consensus. One such machine has already been awarded a patent for something it quietly invented on its own."

Crap.



Alongside the computers outsmarting us, not only will medical technology increase, but we'll be incorporating computers into our biology, like some of us already (or soon will) have. Though for now technology only tacks on a few years, eventually it will allow us to live a really, really long time. Ready for that?

"'Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations -- very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries,' Kaare Christensen of the Danish Aging Research Center wrote on Friday in a study in the Lancet medical journal.

Many governments in developed nations are already making moves toward raising the typical age of retirement to try to cope with aging populations."

What? As soon as people start living a little longer they talk about making us work more? Screw you Reuters.



"The researchers said this was an important strategy, and added that if part-time work was considered for more of the workforce, that could have yet more benefits.

"If people in their 60s and early 70s worked much more than they do nowadays, then most people could work fewer hours per week.... Preliminary evidence suggests that shortened working weeks over extended working lives might further contribute to increases in life expectancy and health."

Oh, okay, I like the sound of that. But still:

"'People younger than 85 years are living longer and, on the whole, are able to manage their daily activities for longer.'

But for people older than 85, the situation is less clear, the researchers said. Data are sparse, and there is widespread concern that exceptional longevity -- with ever larger numbers living to 100 and more -- could be grim for the people themselves and the societies they live in."

Crap.