What… Another Album?

What… Another Album?

Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I announced the release of Um… Uh… Gum Eh?, my first album of circuit-bent music? Yeah, it’s true. Just last month I released a studio album containing over an hour of original music composed on homemade instruments and circuit-bent electronic toys. Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sounds great, and I encourage you to get a copy and listen to it, especially if you’ve got nothing better to do than read this blog. It’s a great album if I do say so myself, but you will probably never hear the music on it performed live, because Um… Uh… Gum Eh? involved many overdubs and a lot of audio editing that make the music hard to reproduce in concert.

However, I do, on occasion, perform live as a musician, and today I announce the release of a new live album, recorded at three gigs I played at The Hemp Connection in Garberville over the past year or so. The album is called Live Electric Didgeridoo, so called because when I perform live, I play the accordion.

Really, I love the sound of the didgeridoo, and I’ve played didgeridoo for over a decade now. In that time I’ve developed my own unique sound which involves a fair amount of electronic processing, but I do it all in real time, while I perform. My electric didgeridoo performances have been well received, and I love the sound of this new album.

You owe it to yourself to give it a listen, and to hear me play live. You’ll have a great opportunity to do both of those things this weekend. I’ll perform on electric didgeridoo at the Summer Solstice Gathering at Heartwood on June 21-23. I’ll play on Friday afternoon, June 21 and again on Sunday morning June 23, and I’ll have a booth there all weekend where you can get a copy of Live Electric Didgeridoo, Um… Uh… Gum Eh?, or some of my older albums likeHand Made, Never Turn Your Back on the Sea, 1-G707+FX, Hallucigenia Sparsa, Space Didge and A Pink Pair.

I’ll also have copies of my partner Amy Gustin’s radio series Living Earth Connection. I co-produce this radio series with Amy which explores the root causes of the environmental crisis and seeks to change our vision of our place in the world. It’s a great show that currently airs on KMUD on the fifth Sunday of the month, in months that have five Sundays, at 9:30 am.

We want to encourage other radio stations to air this provocative series, and make it available to listeners beyond the KMUD listening area. Sales of CD versions of the program will help offset the cost of distributing the show, and we welcome your support to help share these ideas with a wider audience. You can download the Living Earth Connection radio programs in mp3 format by visiting the Living Earth Connection blog at www.livingearthconnection.wordpress.com. CD versions of the show are available by mail order, or you can come by the booth at Heartwood and get CD copies of every program. June happens to be one of the four months this year that has five Sundays, and you can look forward to a brand new episode of Living Earth Connection on Sunday June 30 at 9:30 am on KMUD.

I’ll also have a very limited selection of lanterns made from recycled tin cans. In years past I have sold these lanterns at festivals all over the Pacific Northwest from The Whole Earth Festival in Davis to Oregon Country Fair near Eugene, OR and they are always a big hit. I stopped making them about five years ago, and only have a few left, but they will be available at Heartwood this weekend.

The Heartwood Summer Solstice Gathering looks like it will be a good time, with camping on site, organic vegetarian food, music and workshops all weekend. I hope I see you there!

On The Money; What’s My Objection To Objective Science?

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

The Method To My Madness pt 2

What’s My Objection To Objective Science?

For centuries now, objective science has ruled the world. About 500 years ago, objective science overthrew God, and replaced religion as the chief source of human knowledge about the world, during a period known as The Renaissance, or “The Enlightenment”. Sure, religion was ripe for an overthrow. Religion had become incredibly corrupt, violent and oppressive, and did little for the millions of poor people who served it so, well, religiously, but today, objective science has failed, and the seeds of it’s failure were there from the beginning.

For a while, objective science seemed like a wonderful thing. The freedom to study the world, and publish your findings without fear of being condemned to death as a heretic must have been quite refreshing. In its early years, objective science made great strides in understanding how the world worked, especially in the field of physics.

Sir Isaac Newton, besides earning himself a knighthood, and a distinguished place in history, remains a household word to this day for his groundbreaking work in describing the mathematical relationship between objects in motion. This was such a big deal, they even named a cookie after him. Newton’s way of looking at the world, as a collection of objects, in motion or at rest, falling and bumping into each other, became the foundation of “objective science”. Suddenly, science, specifically physics, was all about objects, and the transfer of energy between them.

Lots of people jumped on the “objective science” bandwagon, and soon, the “scientific method” was born. Science teachers all over the world, in all kinds of fields, from chemistry to sociology still teach this scientific method. The scientific method is a way of designing experiments, and scientists all over the world use it religiously.

Using the scientific method, the scientist tries to isolate one particular variable in a complex system, and then looks for something that determines change in that variable. For instance, a scientist might start a number of identical plants, raising them in exactly the same soil and nutrients, and then vary the amount of light the plants receive, to see how that effects the plant’s growth rate. Ideally, the scientist finds a cause and effect relationship, that can be expressed in the form of a mathematical equation, x hours of sunlight produces y amount of new growth, for instance.

While physical objects yield very easily to this kind of experiment, producing mathematically predictable results, complex systems, specifically organisms, like plants, animals, people, families, cities, or the economy, do not yield such cut and dried results. Organisms teem with variables, and scientists find it difficult, if not impossible, to control all of them, as well as they do the variables of objects, like chemicals, rocks, or metal parts.

Objective science taught us a lot about organisms, but never with the kind of mathematical accuracy and predictability of physics, and the more complex the organism, the less predictable the results, and the harder it was for scientists to find these mechanical cause and effect relationships. That didn’t stop them from trying, though. In the mean time, the objective science of physics really took off.

Thanks to “objective science”, physics gave birth to modern technology. From the steam locomotive and the cotton gin, to the ipad and the X-Box, the world of applied objective science, commonly called technology, transformed the world, and our lives. Not only did theses new things change our lives, objective science itself, made us feel smarter and more powerful.

We began to believe that through objective science, we could unlock all of the secrets of the universe and know the mind of God. This was the goal of “The Enlightenment”, to explain how the universe worked, in scientific equations, rather than religious terms. When we saw the first nuclear explosion, and learned the equation E=MCsquared, a lot of people thought we were getting close to that goal.

Despite the fact that physics had left biology, psychology, sociology, economics and other sciences that study organisms in the dust, many scientists in those fields, and most laypeople, still assume that objective science will eventually unlock all of the secrets of the universe, and so they continue to pursue objective science, believing that only the vast number of variables inherent in the study of organisms, prevents scientists from completely grasping the mechanics of life, but they think they are getting close too.

These scientists think that unraveling the mysteries of the universe is a good thing, in and of itself, but more importantly, they believe that we can use this knowledge to make the world a better place to live. This idea has guided our culture for the last 500 years. These were the assumptions behind the rise of objective science: That objective science would unlock the mysteries of the universe, and that we could use that knowledge to engineer a better world.

That’s why they overthrew God and religion to begin with. Not that God and religion didn’t deserve to be overthrown, but now objective science has led us into a system more corrupt, violent and oppressive than even the sickest ambitions of the most sadistic Cardinals of the Spanish Inquisition. Objective science has become a scam, a way to make money, and a political tool to bamboozle the public, and instead of helping us to engineer a better world, it has unleashed hell on Earth.

Fans of objective science, and there are many, usually see the mysteries of the universe as falling into two broad categories: The stuff we already understand, and the stuff scientists are studying right now, so that we will understand it pretty soon. Most of them still believe that we will someday unravel the mysteries of the universe through objective science, and that we will use that knowledge to make the world a better place to live, but they couldn’t be more wrong, and the further we pursue objective science, the more obvious that fact becomes.

The truth is, We don’t have a freakin’ clue! We are no closer to unraveling the mysteries of the universe that we have ever been. The mythology of the Big Bang has no more truth in it than the story of Adam’s rib, or the story that the whole world sits on the back of a turtle. These stories all provide convenient ways to explain what we see around us, but I wouldn’t take any of them too seriously. Before you call me a heretic for renouncing the Big Bang, you should consider a few things.

First, almost all of the scientists in the world are working on projects aimed at developing new products. They’re developing new drugs to treat depression, finding ways to make weapons more lethal, figuring out how to make computers smaller and faster. Sure, some of them are staring out at the universe and trying to make sense of it, but more of them are creating dangerous new life forms that they can patent and unleash on the world, to make money.

They aren’t unraveling the mysteries of the universe, so much as they are unraveling the fabric of life itself, because that’s where the research funds come from. The companies that fund science, expect to turn a profit from it. The same people who drive scientific research, also drive our economy, the scientists working for them care more about their paycheck, than uncovering the ultimate truth of the universe. The Big Bang is not really a big deal to most of them, it is just how the universe looks to them.

Second, and this is the important part. Even though the world looks to us like its made of objects, some living, like plants and animals, some not, like rocks and ice cubes, the world only looks this way to us because this is what we need to see in order to survive. Our brains don’t have anywhere near the capacity to understand the universe. We only see what we need to know to get ourselves fed and laid. In other words, how the universe looks to us, has almost nothing to do with how the universe is. What we don’t comprehend, and doesn’t help us survive, we simply don’t see at all.

Objective scientists themselves have provided plenty of evidence to prove it. According to astrophysicists, everything we have managed to detect in the universe, only accounts for about 2% of what they suspect is really there. They don’t mean that beyond the reach of our telescopes there is more stuff, they mean that all around us, there is more stuff, like dark matter, dark energy etc. We simply have no way of detecting it.

Einstein’s theory of relativity showed us, quite dramatically, with the first nuclear explosion, that the world is not made of objects, however tiny. Instead, the universe is made of energy, and that space and time aren’t nearly as real as we, or Newton, imagined, at least not outside of the observer who experiences them.

Even though the universe appears as though it sprang into existence out of nothingness, from one single point, no one was outside of the universe to observe it. There is no such thing as absolute space and time. Instead, space and time only exist in relation to an observer, that’s what Einstein meant by relativity. Since there were no observers, outside of the universe, before the big bang, there wasn’t any space or time in which that mythical event took place. What would the Big Bang be without any time to expand, or any space to expand into?

I know its hard to imagine anything outside of space and time. It’s impossible really. That’s what I mean by incomprehensible. Looking at the universe as something that exists in space and time is kind of like looking at a pie chart. When you see data expressed in a pie chart, you can make some sense of it, but when you only see pages and pages of raw data, it doesn’t make any sense at all, so you don’t bother. Everyone knows that a pie chart is not a real pie, and that data does not become sweet gooey filling when you make one. This is not a perfect analogy, but nothing is, really. It’s incomprehensible, that’s the whole problem, and that’s my point.

Does all of that seem incomprehensible to you? Good! It should, because it is. It’s time we faced that fact. The universe is simply beyond our comprehension. We don’t really know any more about the universe than an orangutan, or a chimp or a hamster for that matter. None of us in this world really knows any more than we really need to know to get ourselves fed and to get ourselves laid, and some of us don’t even know that much.

By the way, what I’m telling you here, is called a phenomenological analysis of objective science. Phenomenologists don’t make discoveries that capitalists can turn into products, and so they don’t make much money, outside of the philosophy departments of some colleges and universities, where they occasionally find work as professors. If this stuff sounds interesting to you, I suggest you find a college or university who employs one, and take a few classes in phenomenology.

Alright, now that we’ve gone over the deep end, you are probably asking yourself, “What’s all of this got to do with economics?” The short answer is that while objective science taught us a lot about objects in space and time, it never really told us much about organisms. Phenomenology, on the other hand, can tell us a lot about organisms, not everything, but more than objective science. Again, if phenomenology sounds interesting to you, find yourself a good phenomenologist, and take a few classes.

One basic principle of phenomenology is that organisms are always more than the sum of their parts, unlike machines, which are simply the sum of their parts. Plants, animals and people are organisms, and they are also part of a larger organism called the ecosystem, which is part of a larger organism called the world, which is undoubtedly part of a larger organism we call “The Universe”. . There’s much more to us than meets the eye, and that’s why objective science never really told us as much about us, as it did about objects. The economy is also an organism, and it’s part of a larger organism called “society” which is also part of the ecosystem, etc. This means that there is more to how we feed each other, trade with each other, and compete with each other than meets the eye.

On The Money, Economics for the 99% offers a phenomenological analysis of economics. You’ll notice that I include my personal perspective, as well as an environmental perspective, a workers perspective, a consumers perspective, a political perspective and a social perspective on the subject of economics, instead of just looking at the mechanical flow of money around the globe.

The phenomenological method of study, involves observing phenomena from many perspectives, rather than trying to describe it as an object or a machine. The world is more than resources, people are more than consumers and the economy is more than a machine that feeds one to the other. I also include a bit of humor, because readers are more than just digesters of information. Call me crazy, but there’s a phenomenological critique of objective science that’s On The Money.

On The Money; The Method To My Madness pt 1

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

The Method to My Madness pt 1

The Black Hole Swallowing The Earth

Every year economists write more fat impenetrable books, and every year their theories get further and further from reality. Money itself has become completely unhinged from the real world, as increasingly abstract mathematical concepts get transformed into incomprehensible financial instruments. Derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, high-frequency trading algorithms, etc have so little to do with real economics that I won’t even dignify them with discussion, except to say that they have become a huge part of the financial services sector of the economy, and financial services have become a huge part of total global economic activity. Financial services, now account for about 1% of our national GDP, even though this gigantic industry makes nothing at all.

The Financial Services Sector has become a black hole, from which nothing escapes, and into which everything is drawn and destroyed in the process. This black hole has become the central focus of the science of economics. In this rarefied world, money masturbates, knocks itself up, and multiplies without any contact with the real world at all. The more this happens, the more central the Financial Services Sector becomes to the global economy, and the less everything that really does happen in the real world matters to economists. The Financial Services Sector spawned the recent housing bubble, and economists all over the world praised its transcendent genius, even though any idiot, and I’m talking about myself here, could see that it would inevitably collapse.

Economists find all of this monetary masturbation incredibly fascinating. They find the process of making money out of nothing irresistible, and they seek ways to understand and perpetuate it, much the way theoretical physicists feel about their equally insane quest to discover the Higgs-Boson particle, the so-called “God Particle”.

No doubt you’ve heard of the recently built, 17mile wide, Large Hadron Super-Collider that straddles the border between France and Switzerland, designed largely to search for this astoundingly tiny particle. Perhaps you even heard the warnings of some physicists, that this enormous device just might, accidentally, produce a black hole, that might then proceed to swallow the entire Earth, destroying the planet and every living thing that inhabits it. On the other hand, there’s an equally small chance that we might learn something useful from the experiments at the large Hadron Super-Collider.

Similarly, economists concoct increasingly dangerous, and pointless ways to study the behavior of pure greed, in a vacuum at very near the speed of light. These experiments require enormous amounts of resources and energy. The Financial Services Sector sucks these resources and energy from the real world, threatening whole stock exchanges, global markets and national currencies with instantaneous collapse.

Accelerating purified greed to near-light velocity within the vacuum of the Financial Services Sector generates enormous heat. This heat triggers expansion. As the Financial Services Sector expands, it draws the real world into the direct path of this superheated high-velocity greed, with which, it inevitably collides, as happened most recently in 2008.

In this collision, we saw greed shatter into its constituent components: dishonesty, fraud, violence, error and theft, which we can then trace by examining the damage they inflict on community, culture, and environment. However, as the Financial Services Sector becomes more central to the economy, economists study these high-velocity, purified greed experiments with little regard for their effects on the real world, our lives or the environment. They simply seek to understand how a system based on unbridled greed, functions at its highest level. That’s their job. That’s what they get paid to do.

Like the unbelievably expensive and inordinately risky experiments at the Large Hadron Super-Collider, designed to answer misdirected questions about the imperceptibly tiny, economic experiments involving purified high-speed greed do nothing to make the world a better place, or help us make sense of our lives. Instead, these experiments simply seek to expand the emptiness of finance, until it swallows the real world whole. These experiments exemplify our cultural insanity.

They have not solved humanity’s problems. They have only created more of them. They have not unraveled the mysteries of the universe. They have driven themselves insane, and taken a lot of us with them. They do not bring us closer to understanding the mind of God. They have created hell on Earth, while they try to tell us how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Economists, like those nuclear physicists at the Large Hadron Super-Collider, have lost their minds. They’ve lost their grip on reality as they reach further and further into nothingness. They have reached the limits of objective science, and economists have seen the end of capitalism, but they refuse to admit to themselves that it is over.

They have failed. Their endeavors were doomed from the start, and now, they have proven it. They failed because of flawed assumptions, which date back 500 years to “The Enlightenment”. These flawed assumptions led them to adopt a flawed methodology.. We call that flawed methodology, “objective science”. Mark it well. While objective science produced great leaps forward in the science of physics, it never did much for the science of economics, and it never delivered on its original promise to unlock the mysteries of the universe. The time has come to face the real limitations of objective science.

Next week, part two

The Humboldt Broadbandit

 

The Humboldt Broadbandit

Five times in recent months, someone has cut the fiber-optic cable that brings the internet and phone service to thousands of Suddenlink subscribers in Humboldt County. Currently, the company is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the joker responsible for this vandalism. Every time he, or she I suppose, snips the light pipe, it costs Suddenlink at least $10, 000 to repair it, so the Humboldt Broadbandit has set the company back at least $50,000 so far, and they’re willing to put up half again that much just to put him, or her, out of commission for a while.

Reward has since been raised to $25,000

Considering how full our jail system is these days, however, it’s kind of doubtful that the Humboldt Broadbandit would do much time. We have too many murderers, wife beaters, and armed robbers here in Humboldt County, and thanks to prison overcrowding at the state level, the county jail is too full of them to keep someone locked up for some late night cable pruning. Be that as it may, Suddenlink wants the Humboldt Broadbandit stopped.

Fixing a fiber-optic cable is a major headache. It takes a lot of specialized equipment, and the whole operation takes place in a dust-free “clean room”. Basically, they have to take something like a mobile operating room out to the site, and it takes hours of “surgery” in that super-clean environment to repair the cable. Apparently, there’s only one of these mobile light-pipe repair trucks in our area, and the Humboldt Broadbandit has kept it pretty busy this year.

At first, the cops thought the Humboldt Broadbandit wanted copper wire, an easily marketed commodity, but picked the wrong cable to cut. After the second or third attack, however, it became pretty obvious that the Humboldt Broadbandit was targeting light-pipe specifically. Today, after five attacks, and with a $25,000 price on his head, the Humboldt Broadbandit remains at large, and who knows when or where he, or she, will strike again.

So I wonder who the Humboldt Broadbandit really is, and what is his or her motivation. What do they get out of it? Why Suddenlink? Why Humboldt County? Why not cut a light-pipe that will cause millions of customers to lose their connection, instead of just a couple thousand?

Is it a disgruntled employee? I don’t know what it’s like to work for Suddenlink, but I know that most jobs suck and most bosses are assholes. I doubt it’s any different at Suddenlink. Suddenlink employees probably lack union representation, don’t get paid nearly enough, and have to put up with a lot of bullshit from customers, as well as supervisors, so I wouldn’t blame them for getting a little snippy, if you catch my drift.

Maybe cutting the cable disables some web-based security system that allows the Humboldt Broadbandit unfettered access to some other facility, so cutting the light-pipe is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Maybe they cut the fiber-optic cable, to disarm the alarm system at the Ferndale CalTrans yard so they can steal gasoline during the outage.

Maybe the folks who run the light-pipe repair business just needed some more work. Every year, it seems, we get a few intentionally set wildfires. Often we find out that the fires were deliberately set by firefighters hoping to pick up some extra hours. Maybe things are a little slow in the fiber-optic cable repair business these days and they need the money, or maybe they need an excuse to come to Humboldt to pick up some weed.

Of course, they’d have to come here anyway, to cut the cable in the first place, so that doesn’t make much sense, unless they have a local accomplice who cuts the cable, and then sells them weed when they arrive to fix it. I guess that kind of borders on a “conspiracy theory”, but it’s pretty odd behavior, however you look at it.

Unless of course, it’s a radical Luddite. Personally, I hope it really is a radical Luddite. I don’t really want to know for sure, because that would mean the Humboldt Broadbandit got caught. I suppose he or she could deliver a manifesto to the press, but that’s how the Unibomber got caught, so that seems unnecessarily risky.

No, I don’t want the Humboldt Broadbandit to get caught. I want him or her to inspire copycats. I hope chopping light-pipe becomes as popular as graffiti, and every kid in America starts doing it. They could turn the World Wide Web into a pile of useless glass spaghetti if they set their minds to it, and I hope they do.

Besides, you can have a lot of fun with a two or three foot length of fiber-optic cable. If you duct tape one end to a flashlight, and then peel back the jacket from the other end to reveal all of the glass fibers, you’ve got yourself a really trippy light toy that will last a long time and make glow-sticks look totally lame, which they are.

I can’t believe that so many people like to play with those stupid disposable glow sticks when they trip. I mean, I understand the appeal of things that glow in the dark, but glow-sticks are the light-toy equivalent of Wonder Bread. I don’t understand why people who eat organic food, wear natural fibers and support environmental causes during the day, become infatuated with plastic disposable non-biodegradable corporate death toys after dark, especially when they are really high on mushrooms or LSD.

Don’t get me wrong. I like mushrooms and LSD, and I like light-toys, but seeing hippie kids play with disposable plastic tubes filled with a chemical named after the devil (luciferine), made by one of the biggest producers of poison in the world (American Cyanamid) kind of bums my trip.

I still like black lights and florescent posters. I think EL (electro-luminescent) wire is pretty cool, and I love LEDs, especially when I can recycle them from dead electronic devices. I’ve made pretty cool light-toys out of all of them, and for a while I made my living by turning recycled tin cans into very trippy candle holders.

Despite the fire hazard, I still think my candle holders are pretty awesome, but I had to stop making them because my partner suffers from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and the scent of smoke that clung to me when I made them caused her a lot of distress. MCS is really a drag. We can’t attend most festivals anymore because of cigarette smoke. We can’t even do our laundry at the laundromat because the smell of other people’s dryer sheets clings to everything, and then our clothes make her sick, but that’s another story.

I guess no light-toy is completely environmentally benign, but I think a fountain of glowing optical fiber liberated from the World Wide Web would be hella cool, even if it caused phone and internet outages all over the state. In fact, that would make it even cooler in my book, so I encourage everyone to forget all about the $25,000 reward, and instead, join the Humboldt Broadbandit, and liberate some light-pipe for your own Luddite light-toy this festival season.

Take Your Kids to the Beach

Take Your Kids to the Beach

In recent weeks, beach-goers from Santa Barbara to San Diego have discovered over 1,000 dead and dying sea lion pups on the beach. Apparently undernourished from birth, these pups did not put on enough blubber from mother’s milk, and once weaned, failed to find enough to eat on their own.

Without an adequate layer of blubber, sea lions cannot maintain the body temperature that a warm blooded mammal needs to survive in the cold water, so they come up on the beach to sun themselves, and warm up. Unfortunately they don’t find anything to eat on the beach either, and eventually they expire from starvation.

Wildlife rescuers in Southern CA have been overwhelmed with calls about these poor pups, but there’s little they can do. No one has the facilities to care for hundreds of starving sea lion pups. Everyone equipped to handle sea lions, has their hands full right now. Sometimes they relocate the pups to more secluded beaches, in hopes that they will find more food. Sometimes they euthanize the animals.

Last year, persistent readers will recall, I wrote about starving pelicans here on the Northern CA coast. Pelicans and sea lions both eat fish, or at least they would, if they could find them. These deaths are not the result of some exotic new disease spreading through the ecosystem. These deaths indicate a precipitous drop in the ocean’s fecundity. It’s a very bad sign. I don’t want to call it a “wake-up call”, because so many so called “wake-up calls” have gone unheeded, so I’ll simply call it another ghastly, heartbreaking consequence of deliberate human indifference to the natural world.

At least people see them. People should have to see this kind of thing. Take your kids to the beach. Show them a dying sea lion pup, starving to death on the sand. Explain to them that because we’ve replaced most of the phytoplankton in the ocean with pulverized plastic from soda bottles, shrink wrap, plastic bags, toys, medical equipment, electronic gadgets, car parts etc etc, the ocean can’t provide enough oxygen or food to support as much life as it did fifty years ago, or even ten years ago.

Remember that famous scene in The Graduate, where the older businessman whispers to Dustin Hoffman one word of advice for his future? “Plastics”, he says. Around the same time Andy Warhol predicted “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable”. With the ubiquity of plastic today, it’s hard to remember a time when soda came in returnable, not recyclable, glass bottles, when they made car bumpers out of chrome plated steel instead of easily shattered plastic, and when electronic devices had metal or wood cabinets, and lasted for decades.

Fifty years later, an island the size of Texas, newly recognized by the United Nations as “Garbage Island”, composed almost entirely of plastic, has formed in the Pacific Ocean. Today, plastic has its own homeland, and it grows every day. Every day, tons of plastic debris finds its way into the Pacific Ocean to make the pilgrimage to Garbage Island. Over the course of decades, endless churning, salt water and sunlight slowly pulverize it into microscopic bits.

These microscopic bits of inorganic, non-biodegradable plastic absorb sunlight, preventing it from penetrating the ocean’s depths and choke off phytoplankton, the foundation of the ocean food chain, and the source of most of the world’s atmospheric oxygen. In less than half a century, about half of all the phytoplankton in the Pacific Ocean has been replaced by these microscopic bits of plastic.

Oddly, considering how long plastic lasts, plastic has become the foundation of our disposable economy. Almost nothing lasts longer than plastic, and almost nothing can digest it. Yet, we produce billions of one-time-use products from it, every year. When burned, plastic produces deadly bio-accumulative carcinogenic poison, in landfills it lasts almost forever, and in the ocean, it gets ground into fine floating particles that choke out life.

No, it’s not a wake-up call. It’s too late for that. Go to the beach. Look those pups in the eye as they die of starvation, and explain to your children what has happened in your lifetime. Tell your kids that fifty years ago, they would have seen thousands of healthy sea lions, as well as seals and otters, and that there was plenty of fish for all of them to eat. Tell them that for every bird they see, there were once twenty or forty, but that they all died so that you could live a high-consumption, middle-class fantasy, and now, even that fantasy is dying.

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

Tin Can Luminary’s New Album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

This Friday, May 3 at the Hemp Connection in Garberville, I’ll debut my new album of Circuit-bent music titled Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

For younger readers, and others who might miss the rather obscure musical reference, the title and cover parody what is widely regarded as the worst (at least excluding the post-Roger dreck) Pink Floyd album, titled Ummagumma, a double album originally released in 1970.

A careful observer, or anyone with nothing better to do, can spot many parallels between Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and my new album Um… Uh… Gum Eh? For instance:

Both albums contain a song about a guy who cuts people up with a sharp object:

Ummagumma has Careful With That Axe, Eugene

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Mr. Whisker.

Both albums include songs about outer space:

Ummagumma has Astronomy Domine

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Saucer People Speak

Both albums have songs about knowledgeable beings:

Ummagumma has The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Orb of Omniscience

Both albums have long, spacy pieces where the only lyrics are “Oooh, Aaahh, and Ohhh”

Ummagumma has A Saucerful of Secrets

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Interzone Transit Authority

Both albums have collections of unrecognizable sounds, combined with spoken words:

Ummagumma has Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has I Made A Collage

Both albums have song titles that reference Greek mythology

Ummagumma has Sysyphus

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Sirens of Space, and here’s what it sounds like:

While Pink Floyd is famous for using gobs of state-of-the-art music equipment, I recorded Um… Uh… Gum Eh? With instruments I made out of tin cans, cigar boxes and second-hand childrens toys. That’s the state of my art, extremely low-budget and uniquely homemade. Even though Ummagumma is probably the worst Pink Floyd album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is undoubtedly my best album to date.  Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is my seventh solo album, btw.

Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sound better than Pink Floyd at their worst? Yeah, I think so. Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? Sound like Pink Floyd? Not really, but like Pink Floyd, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sounds great when you are really high. It’s a trip!

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? will make you smile, take you on a tour of the cosmos and bring you to the brink of insanity, before safely returning you to Earth.  Here’s the first video single from Um… Uh… Gum Eh? titled: Falling

So come out to The Hemp Connection in Garberville

on Friday, May 3rd to hear more from Um… Uh… Gum Eh?, see and hear my homemade circuit-bent instruments, and to hear me play electric didgeridoo, for free, as part of Arts Alive.  Also on the bill will be Patchy Fogg, playing musical saw.

An Open Letter to Humboldt County 2nd District Supervisor, Estelle Fennel

I sent the following letter to my County Supervisor Estelle Fennel after hearing her make some disparaging remarks about some of her constituents.  I also submitted it to both of our local newspapers.  The Independent ran the letter, while The Redwood Times refused to print it on the grounds that they don’t print third party letters.

The real issue is that the business owners downtown, especially the real estate agents, don’t want their customers to see poor people hanging around town.  Of course, they don’t want to admit that the real problem is declining wages and rising housing prices.  Instead, they want to blame the victims, and use taxpayer resources to drive poor people out of town, even though they constantly complain about paying too much in taxes.

Dear Supervisor Fennel,

As the county considers what to do with the area formerly known as “The Jim Demulling Memorial Grove”, I urge you to consider a few facts about Southern Humboldt that you seem to have forgotten:

1. Everyone in Southern Humboldt, without exception, urinates and defecates. Many, if not most of them, do it in a fashion that does not comply with county codes. As the former executive director of Hum-CPR, you actively lobbied to protect the rights of land-owners who choose to use non-standard and unapproved sanitation.

2. Most of Southern Humboldt’s adult population consumes alcohol on a regular, if not daily basis, and at least half-a-dozen business establishments sell alcoholic beverages in Garberville alone, to accommodate Southern Humboldt’s alcohol consumers.

3. Illegal drug use is not only tolerated in Southern Humboldt, it is celebrated as a proud and cherished tradition, and it has become the main driver of our local economy.

4. Willits Towing and Recovery recently removed hundreds of thousands of pounds of of junk cars and other scrap metal from rural parcels in Southern Humboldt, cheerfully, and at no cost to rural land-owners, a quantity that dwarfs the amount of garbage begrudgingly, and disparagingly removed by Eel River Cleanup. As I recall, you yourself took advantage of a subsidized program to eliminate unsightly and hazardous waste from our rural environment, by bringing in over 100 discarded tires. Clearly this community tolerates people who do not take responsibility for their garbage.

Were Federal, State and County laws strictly enforced, especially on the rural properties in Southern Humboldt, law enforcement would find flagrant violations of the law on nearly every parcel. While most of Southern Humboldt is poorly suited to agriculture, it is remarkably well suited to concealing ugly and illegal activity, a fact that has contributed greatly to its economic vitality.

As a public servant who represents a lot of ethically-challenged, full-time criminals, talk of “intolerable behavior” rings especially hollow. We tolerate a lot of ugly behavior here in Southern Humboldt, and a lot of people around here have grown obscenely rich as a result of it. That’s what makes this community special. I don’t think it fair to condemn the same behavior, only for those who endure poverty and have no place to go.

If you have managed to find a way to speak respectfully with and about the rest of your constituents, you should be able to speak respectfully about the members of this community who lack the resources to secure for themselves, the privacy of a home in which to engage in the same kinds of activities as the rest of your constituents.

If you want the poor and the young to have any respect for county government, you must first demonstrate that the county has respect for them, and their needs. As their representative, I urge you to refrain from using terms like “vagrants” to describe any of your constituents in the future. Instead, I hope you will work for a compassionate solution to the problem of greedy people, who lack compassion, intent on pressing their economic advantage against the poor and the young.

Sincerely, John Hardin

P.O. Box 2301, Redway, CA 95560

Introducing: The lygsbtd Smart Phone App

 

Introducing: The lygsbtd Smart Phone App

(Thanks to Fanny Oakley for this brilliant idea)

I know that, these days, a lot of you do most of your web browsing on your smart-phone. I’ve never used a cell phone myself, smart or otherwise, but I see you out there, entranced by your little glowing slab, completely oblivious to anything else happening around you. Yes, I see all of you hot, sexy young people, obsessively fondling your little gadgets, and it occurred to me that you could be fondling me. That’s why I invented the Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do smart-phone app.

Now we can share the intimacy of the tiny touch screen. I can feel the gentle caress of your nimble fingertips as you zoom in and out, perusing my weekly posts, comforted by the soothing warmth of your body heat as you cradle me in your delicate hands. Tight against the supple curve of your hip as I ride around in your pocket, you’ll share all of the most intimate details of your life with me, your browsing habits, the phone numbers of all of your friends, your account numbers, passwords and PINs. I’m so eager to meet all of your friends, and to get to know you better.

Yes, I’m really looking forward to moving into this deeper phase of our relationship through your personal mobile device. For years now I’ve put myself out there for you. You can read what I have to say and enjoy free entertainment, but I’ve never asked you for anything in return before. Now, we have the opportunity for a little more give and take in the relationship, and I think you will find it a much more satisfying experience for both of us.

You just have to take the next step. Download the Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do app to your iphone or Android based smart-phone, and we can begin this new phase in our relationship. The Like You’ve Got Something Better to Do app only costs $1.99, but don’t hesitate at the price. It’s a mere pittance really, and I need to know that you really want to take the next step. Believe me, compared to what lies ahead for us together, $1.99 will seem like nothing at all.

Of course, you have to agree to the terms of the user agreement, but it’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’ve clicked through dozens of similar agreements without even reading them, and I encourage you to do the same with this one. It’s just a formality really, and the quicker you agree to it, the sooner we can get to the content you so passionately desire.

USER AGREEMENT

BY DOWNLOADING THE “LIKE YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING BATTER TO DO” APPLICATION FOR MOBIL DEVICES, YOU, HEREAFTER IN THIS DOCUMENT, REFERRED TO AS “THE USER” (IRONICALLY), AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING:

USER AGREES TO ALLOW THE PURVEYOR OF THIS APPLICATION, HEREAFTER REFERRED TO AS “THE PURVEYOR”, COMPLETE AND UNFETTERED ACCESS TO ANY AND ALL INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE MOBIL DEVICE ON WHICH THE APPLICATION RESIDES, AS WELL AS ANY AND ALL INFORMATION ON OTHER DEVICES, WEBSITES, SERVERS, ETC THAT THE PURVEYOR CAN ACCESS BY MEANS OF UTILIZING THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS DEVICE.

THE USER AGREES THAT ALL PHOTOS VIDEOS OR OTHER MEDIA STORED ON THE DEVICE ON WHICH THE APPLICATION RESIDES, OR ANY OTHER DEVICE THE PURVEYOR MAY ACCESS THROUGH THE DEVICE SHALL BE HENCEFORTH DEEMED THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF THE PURVEYOR. THE PURVEYOR MAY FREELY USE, COPY AND DISTRIBUTE SAID MEDIA IN IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, FOR ANY PURPOSE, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. THE USER HEREBY RELINQUISHES ANY AND ALL RIGHTS TO SAID MEDIA AND GRANTS EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE COPYRIGHT OF SAID MEDIA TO THE PURVEYOR.

IN SUCH CASE AS THE USER DID NOT PREVIOUSLY OWN THE EXCLUSIVE COPYRIGHT TO SAID MEDIA, THE USER ACCEPTS FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS, LIABILITY OR CLAIMS MADE BY THE RIGHTFUL OWNER OF THE COPYRIGHTS FOR ANY USE OF SAID MEDIA BY THE PURVEYOR.

THE USER HEREBY GRANTS PERMISSION TO THE PURVEYOR TO UTILIZE THE DEVICE FOR COMMUNICATION PURPOSES, UTILIZING ANY AND ALL MODES THAT THE DEVICE IS CAPABLE OF, FOR WHATEVER PURPOSE THE PURVEYOR DEEMS APPROPRIATE, USEFUL, CONVENIENT, PROFITABLE, OR ENTERTAINING. THE USER FURTHER AGREES TO KEEP THE DEVICE CHARGED, WITH SUFFICIENT BATTERY POWER, OR DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO A POWER SOURCE AT ALL TIMES.

THE USER AGREES TO MAINTAIN AT LEAST 30GIGABYTE PER MONTH DATA PLAN AND RESERVE AT LEAST 25 GIGABYTE PER MONTH FOR USE BY THE PURVEYOR. THE USER AGREES TO KEEP THE DEVICE WITHIN STRONG SIGNAL RANGE AT ALL TIMES, AND NOT TO INTERFERE IN ANY WAY WITH THE PURVEYORS USE OF THE DEVICE.

THE USER AGREES TO ALLOW THE PURVEYOR ACCESS TO ANY AND ALL BANK ACCOUNTS, LINES OF CREDIT, EXPENSE ACCOUNTS, FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS, REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS AND OTHER INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS HELD BY THE USER OR JOINTLY BY THE USER AND ANY OTHER PERSONS, FOR ANY REASON. THE USER HEREBY GRANTS THE PURVEYOR PERMISSION TO MAKE ANY AND ALL TRANSACTIONS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO BALANCE INQUIRIES, DEPOSITS, WITHDRAWALS, OPENING OR CLOSING OF ACCOUNTS, PURCHASES OR SALES OF ITEMS OR ASSETS ON ANY AND ALL SAID ACCOUNTS AND HOLDINGS.

THE USER SHALL CREATE NO OBSTACLE TO PREVENT THE PURVEYOR’S ACCESS TO SAID ACCOUNTS AND HOLDINGS. THE USER SHALL NOT TRANSFER FUNDS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS, NOR MAKE CHANGES PIN NUMBERS OR PASSWORDS, WITHOUT PROVIDING THE PURVEYOR WITH ALL INFORMATION AND PERMISSIONS NECESSARY TO ACCESS ANY AND ALL ACCOUNTS AND HOLDINGS HELD BY THE USER, OR JOINTLY BY THE USER AND ANY OTHER PERSONS.

THE USER AGREES TO PROVIDE THE PURVEYOR WITH ENTHUSIASTIC SEXUAL GRATIFICATION AT ANY TIME, ON DEMAND OF THE PURVEYOR, AND TO PRESENT ANY AND ALL SEXUAL ORIFICES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE USERS MOUTH, VAGINA AND ANUS IN A LUBRICATED AND RECEPTIVE MANOR FOR SAID GRATIFICATION, ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT FOR THE NATURAL LIFE OF THE USER. FURTHER THE USER AGREES TO PROVIDE THE PURVEYOR WITH THE USERS COMPLETE SEXUAL HISTORY, AND TO ANSWER ANY AND ALL QUESTIONS REGARDING SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES TRUTHFULLY.

ANY OFFSPRING RESULTANT FROM SEXUAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE USER AND THE PURVEYOR, OR ANY OTHER PERSON SHALL BECOME, AT AGE 18, THE INDENTURED SERVANT OF THE PURVEYOR FOR THE NATURAL LIFE OF SAID OFFSPRING. THIS AGREEMENT EXEMPTS THE PURVEYOR FROM ANY OTHER LIABILITY OR OBLIGATION TO THE USER OR SAID OFFSPRING FOR ANY REASON.

THE USER AGREES TO HOLD THE PURVEYOR BLAMELESS, HARMLESS AND EXEMPT FROM ANY CLAIMS, CHARGES, LIABILITIES, OR LAWSUITS MADE BY THE USER, THE USER’S AGENTS, FRIENDS, CONTACTS, SPOUSES, BUSINESS PARTNERS, OR ANY OTHER PERSONS AGAINST THE PURVEYOR FOR ANY REASON, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO: DAMAGE TO THE DEVICE CAUSED BY THE APPLICATION, LOSS OF DATA, FAILURE OF THE APPLICATION TO MEET USER EXPECTATIONS, FINANCIAL LOSSES, PROPERTY LOSSES, ANY APPLICABLE FEES, LOSS OF CREDIT, PHYSICAL HARM, MENTAL ANGUISH, EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, LEGAL FEES, OR DEATH STEMMING FROM THE PURVEYORS USE OF THE DEVICE, THE INFORMATION OBTAINED THROUGH THE DEVICE, THE USER, THE USERS OFFSPRING OR FOR ANY OTHER REASON. FURTHER, THE USER AGREES TO REIMBURSE THE PURVEYOR FOR ANY AND ALL EXPENSES THE PURVEYOR MAY INCUR RESULTANT FROM ANY SUCH CLAIMS.

On the Money; Foie Gras

 

On The Money;

Economics For the 99%

Foie Gras

Edit

 

Despite their fat books, and complex economic models, economists fail to comprehend the nature of economic activity. They don’t realize that the economy is an organic part of a greater organism known as society, and an even greater organism known as the environment. In other words, the economy is not a thing in itself. Instead, it is a part of our lives, and our lives are part of life on Earth. Ideally, the economy should be a much smaller part of our lives, and much less of a burden to life on Earth.

 

 

To illustrate this relationship, you could think of the economy as the liver of a goose. The liver of a healthy goose is about the size of a human thumb, and at that size it serves the goose very well. In a healthy goose, this small organ helps the goose digest and process all of the seeds, plant material, bugs and small fish that a healthy goose eats, and turns that food into strong goose muscles, shiny warm goose feathers, healthy goose eggs, and gives the goose all of the energy that it needs to fly thousands of miles each year as part of its annual migration. That’s what a goose’s liver is supposed to do.

 

 

However, some people who raise captive geese, don’t care about the health of their geese. They don’t want their geese to fly, or lay eggs, and they don’t care if the goose is strong or if it has shiny warm feathers. Instead, they want their geese to grow the biggest liver possible, in order that they might dine upon a French delicacy known as Foie Gras.

 

 

They’ve learned that if they nail the goose’s feet to the floor, so that it can’t get any exercise, and they put a tube down the goose’s throat, so that they can force feed it huge quantities of leftover pasta, bacon grease, and lots of other fatty, high carbohydrate food, they can make the goose’s liver grow until it is larger than a human fist. So, this is what they do to their geese.

 

 

As you can imagine, this doesn’t make the goose very happy at all. The goose shows many signs of distress, but the people who raise geese this way, simply ignore those signs. The goose then becomes very ill, but the people who raise geese this way ignore that too. Instead of the liver serving the needs of a healthy goose, the people who raise geese for foie gras, sacrifice the goose in order to produce the largest liver possible.

 

 

Before long, the goose is near death, and the goose’s liver, by this time about eight times as large as a healthy liver, has become so distended and diseased that it barely functions at all. At this point, the people who raise geese for foie gras, kill the goose, and remove the huge diseased organ, for which they have sacrificed what was once a beautiful, healthy bird. This is the ugly truth behind that popular French delicacy.

 

 

Unfortunately, this is also the ugly truth behind economics. For far too long, a small number of people who enjoy “the finer things in life”, have eagerly sacrificed the health of society and the environment in order to force economic expansion. For them, the quality of our lives, our health, our strength, and our culture only exist to deliver to them, the largest possible economy, so that they might enjoy the largest quantity of the richest possible delicacy.

 

 

Do not be fooled by fat books, sharp suits or white lab coats. Economists, businessmen and scientists generally do not have your best interest at heart. Instead, they seek to preserve, and improve their positions of authority and privilege, while they serve the interests of the 1%. Unless we overthrow the tyranny of objective science, escape the clutches of the 1%, and remember how to live our own lives, despite our fallibility, our goose is cooked. There’s an economic analogy that’s On The Money.

 

 

How to Tell if This New Drug is Right for You

How to Tell if This New Drug is Right for You

With the huge, and growing, variety of new drugs available today, you can’t possibly try them all. Information about drugs, always impenetrably technical, and mostly written in impossibly small type, dissuade most drug users from even trying to learn anything about the drugs they take, beyond the street name. So, how can you tell if a new drug is right for you?

 

Nearly everyone takes drugs of some kind, at least at times, and for many, drugs form a regular part of our daily routine. This is nothing new. You could argue, as I have in the past, that civilization itself, began as a dysfunctional adjustment to support an alcoholic lifestyle, that took hold some 10,000 years ago. Indigenous hunter/gatherer cultures have used hallucinogenic plants and other plant medicines ceremonially for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. Even animals, from songbirds to elephants imbibe from time to time, and some, like the koala, have cultivated their addictions for so long that evolution has shaped their bodies to accommodate their habits.

 

Economically, in the US alone, the pharmaceutical drug industry accounts for trillions of dollars in business activity annually, and forms a large portion of US GDP. Despite generally terrific profit margins, the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge government subsidies as well. Yet, despite downturns in the rest of the economy, and growing government debt, drug use, drug profits, and drug subsidies continue to grow at an alarming rate.

 

Paradoxically, we, as people, continue to get sicker and poorer. We cannot lay this epidemic of disease completely at the feet of the pharmaceutical industry. Other factors, like an environment increasingly polluted with persistent toxins, poor diet, dangerous food additives, and long hours at stressful, yet sedentary, jobs all contribute to our general poor health. However, the drug industry itself contributes greatly to the proliferation of disease in our modern society.

 

A single drug can have many dangerous side effects, which often trigger new and serious health conditions. The explosion of new drugs has created an exponential growth in side effects, and with them a host of new conditions, which in turn, require more medication. Toxic pollution, generated in the production of drugs, cause disease in humans as well as in the animal kingdom. Disposal of drugs, usually in the urine of drug users, take their toll on human health and aquatic wildlife as they inevitably find their way into our nations waterways and water supplies. Addiction and overdose only add to legacy of disease that we can attribute to our remarkably vibrant Health-Care industrial complex.

 

No amount of spending, public or otherwise, no amount of new drugs, and no number of new doctors will solve this looming crisis. You might find this fact very depressing, and it might make you anxious about the future. If so, the drug industry has many drugs specifically formulated to treat those conditions. Still, how do you know if a new drug is right for you?

 

Here, I offer few general guidelines that I, a layperson, use to determine if a new drug is right for me:

 

1. If I see a commercial on TV that includes the words, “Ask your Doctor if…is right for you.”, I assume that drug sucks. I assume that if a company has to advertize their drug on TV, it must be a waste of money, like everything else I see advertized on TV.

2. On the other hand, if I read a headline like: “Nude Man Who Hijacked City Bus and Crashed Into Downtown Restaurant, Claims He Was Under the Influence of New Drug” I will probably try that drug.

3. If I see the name of a drug on anything in a doctors office, like the pen he writes with, the pad of paper he writes on, the lanyard around his neck holding his ID, anatomical models, lamps, tissue boxes, drapes, posters, etc., I will definitely not ask for any of those drugs. If a doctor does recommend a drug, any drug, I always ask if he has any free samples on hand, and if he can recommend a generic alternative.

4. But, if I see someone babbling incoherently, while writhing in a puddle of their own vomit, I will definitely ask around to find out what drug they took, and probably try some myself.

5. Finally, if a beautiful young woman asks me if I have a particular drug, I will do everything I can to find that drug immediately.

 

Of course, these are only general guidelines that reflect my own personal predilections, but they are informed by this statistical fact: You are significantly more likely to die of an overdose from a prescription drug your doctor recommended, than you are from a recreational drug you bought from a street dealer.