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.

A “Crude Device” My Ass

A “Crude Device” My Ass

Just let me say, right up front, that I feel for the people of Boston. I lived there myself for a while, and used to jog along the Charles River every day. I never attended The Boston Marathon, but did run a marathon once. Had I been running in the race that day, I probably would have crossed the finish line just in time to have my legs blown off. My heart goes out to all of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. The bombing was a terrible thing, a terrible despicable act, and the people responsible should be punished severely.

However, the media, rather unfairly I think, kept describing the bombs themselves as “crude devices” or “crude explosive devices” or even “generic explosives”. The best they could manage was “crude, but effective”. I take exception to this characterization. How many broadcast journalists have the technical skills to test and fix a faulty microphone cable, let alone build a bomb?

Now, if I had heard Steve Inskeep say, “Compared to this great sounding condenser microphone I made out of a nine-volt battery, a piece of wire and some tape, or this mixing desk I designed and built, or the nice FM stereo multiplex transmitter I put together, that brings you this broadcast, the Boston Marathon bomb seems like a pretty crude device.”, I wouldn’t have any beef with his description, but I’ll bet Steve Inskeep never built anything more sophisticated than a compound, complex sentence.

Listening to journalists, English majors, poo-poo someones handiwork, by calling it a “crude device” really galls me. Writing and talking into a microphone is child’s play, compared to building a bomb and carrying out a terrorist attack. It takes nerves of steel to build a bomb. It takes skill, creativity, and brains to plan and execute an attack, and the Boston Marathon bombers proved that they had what it took to pull it off.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but it figures that the Boston Marathon bombers were foreigners, because most Americans simply lack the skills, know-how or imagination to build an effective explosive. It’s not that Americans don’t want to kill large numbers of people indiscriminately; we have more mass shootings in this country than anywhere on Earth, but Americans use guns when they want to kill people. Do you know why?

Americans use guns because any idiot can go to Walmart and buy a gun and ammunition; you don’t have to build them yourself. I guarantee that if Walmart sold bombs, we’d have a hell of a lot more bombings in America. We have no shortage of hate-filled lunatics in this country, but when it comes to practical knowledge, skills, and creativity, that’s where we come up short.

So cut the “crude device” crap. A Molotov Cocktail is a crude device. You fill a beer bottle with gasoline and cork it with a tampon. If you’re a pro, you add some bits of Styrofoam to make it stick. A pipe bomb, with a fuse that you light with a match could be called a “crude device”. The Boston Marathon bombs had electronic detonators that were remotely controlled, possibly by cell-phone. That’s sophisticated. The bombs contained nails, from which the heads had been painstakingly removed. That shows attention to detail and craftsmanship. Both of the bombs worked. That shows competence.

The accused kids lived in Boston. It wouldn’t have been easy to test their design without attracting a lot of attention. Thinking back to the Judi Bari bombing. That bomber was only 1 for 2, with one bomb that just fizzled. Out here in the sticks of northern California, it wouldn’t be that hard to test out a few bomb designs. With all of the gunfire around here, no one would notice a few muffled explosions in the distance.

Besides, there’s a pretty good chance that whoever bombed Judi Bari, attended, or led, the FBI bomb workshop held on land owned by Louisiana Pacific Lumber Company in the weeks prior to the bombings. Even with FBI training, and a big piece of private land to practice on, whoever bombed Judi Bari, wasn’t nearly as competent as the Boston Marathon bombers.

So give credit where credit is due. The Boston Marathon bombs were ingenious, well crafted and diabolically effective devices, and the people who made them, and carried out the attack were smart, resourceful and competent. It figures that they weren’t born and raised here.

On The Money; The Economics of Drug Prohibition

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

The Economics of Drug Prohibition

I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to you that dealers of illegal drugs enjoy large profit margins on the drugs they sell. American taxpayers insure these large profit margins through a massive government subsidy known as “The War on Drugs” which costs tens of billions of tax dollars annually. Prohibition is the generic term for the policy of using laws, and law enforcement, to keep certain drugs out of the open legal market. Despite over 70 years of drug prohibition, use of illegal drugs remains resilient, and demand remains, no pun intended, high.

 

The lion’s share of this massive subsidy, gets spent in efforts aimed at the nation’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana, and the plant it comes from, Cannabis Sativa. Government expenditures for the prohibition of marijuana alone include the cost of arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating over one-million Americans every year, far more than the total number of people arrested for all other illegal drugs combined. It also includes eradication efforts aimed at killing cannabis plants wherever they grow, often with chemical herbicides. Economically, this huge outlay of taxpayer dollars functions to artificially inflate the price of marijuana, or cannabis, a hardy weed that would otherwise grow wild in every state in the union.

 

Because of prohibition, this prolific annual weed has become tremendously expensive for marijuana users and taxpayers, as well as hugely profitable for black-market dealers. Despite the high prices and risk of arrest, an estimated 10-20% of all Americans use marijuana regularly, creating a tremendous demand for it. This demand, in turn, fuels a multi-billion dollar black-market industry that operates in every state, county and locality in the US, insuring that every state, county and locality spends even more taxpayer money to battle this black-market activity.

 

Thanks to grassroots organizing by marijuana consumers and advocates, several states have passed laws legalizing the use and distribution of marijuana, mostly for medical use. As more states pass these laws, both the price of marijuana, and the subsidies, at least in the states that have passed these laws, decline as well. Since the passage of California’s landmark medical marijuana law in 1996, the first of these laws, the price of marijuana has declined by more than half, nationwide. As more states pass these anti-prohibition laws, we can expect the price of marijuana to drop still further.

 

As police make fewer marijuana arrests, courts try fewer marijuana cases, and prisons hold fewer marijuana prisoners, taxpayers pay less for marijuana subsidies. While the Federal government has not budged on marijuana prohibition, and still spends billions on cannabis prohibition annually, many cash strapped states, counties and localities, even those that have not passed legalization laws, have de-prioritized marijuana prohibition to save money.

 

As these marijuana price-support subsidies decline, marijuana prices continue to slump. This comes as welcome relief to the millions of Americans who use marijuana regularly, and to taxpayers who have grown tired of subsidizing untaxed black-market profits. Still, thanks to vigorous Federal enforcement, and backlash from law enforcement, who stand to lose a tremendous amount of funding, marijuana prices, taxpayer subsidies and black-market profits remain high.

 

Although those who argue for marijuana prohibition argue that marijuana is a dangerous drug that no one should ever touch, very little evidence supports these claims. On the contrary, tens of millions of Americans use marijuana regularly, and like it. Not one person, in the history of humanity, has suffered a fatal overdose of it, nor has much evidence been found that marijuana causes long term health problems. Marijuana does not produce physical addiction symptoms, unlike alcohol, nicotine, opiates, many prescription drugs or even caffeine which all produce strong physical addictions that can be very difficult to quit. Even long-term chronic marijuana users can kick the habit without much difficulty, if they genuinely want to. This, I tell you from personal experience.

 

Clearly, the reasons for continuing marijuana prohibition are completely economic. Without the massive taxpayer subsidies involved in prohibition, the marijuana black-market would collapse, eliminating a multi-billion dollar industry. Governments would reallocate tax revenue away from law enforcement, and prisons, eliminating thousands of high-paying jobs in those fields. While, no one really likes black-market drug dealers or narco-cops, or would miss them if they learned to do something productive with their lives, they form a significant part of our national economy.

 

The pharmaceutical industry would soon feel the pinch as well. 100 years ago, half of all medicines sold in the US contained marijuana. Plenty of evidence shows that cannabis, or marijuana still works better than many prescription and over-the-counter medications for a host of conditions ranging from glaucoma and chronic pain, to epilepsy, asthma and nausea, especially nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy. Some estimate that legal cannabis, or marijuana, could immediately replace 20-40% of all prescription drugs, working as effectively, with fewer side-effects, than the drugs it would replace.

 

Since marijuana, or cannabis, is a natural plant, it cannot be patented. Because cannabis cannot be patented, patients who need it, would get it from farmers, not pharmaceutical companies. This would cut deeply into the profits of pharmaceutical companies, but drastically reduce health-care costs for patients. Farmers wouldn’t complain either.

 

Further, recent medical research suggests that humans have had a very long, and symbiotic relationship with the cannabis plant. The presence of “cannabinoid receptors” in the human nervous system seem to indicate that the cannabis plant played a role in human evolution, and that our ancestors have ingested cannabis for millions of years.

 

While it remains unclear exactly how these cannabinoid receptors contribute to human health, they clearly play an important role. Many, now common, ailments may stem from a lack of cannabis in our modern diet. Currently, doctors prescribe prescription drugs to treat these maladies, but the addition of a few green cannabis leaves into the diet, as other doctors recommend, might eliminate these diseases completely.

 

Beyond that, hemp, a high-fiber, non psychoactive, but also prohibited, species of cannabis, has a whole range of industrial uses from textiles and cordage to paper, plastics and building materials. Hemp, an agricultural commodity widely grown in the US before prohibition, could spawn a whole new hemp products industry. This new hemp industry might generate tens of thousands of new jobs in the long run.

 

New industrial hemp products would replace or reduce the need for synthetic fiber and forest products, thus eliminating the toxic pollution from manufacturing synthetics, and the habitat destruction that results from deforestation. While this potential new industry could create thousands of new jobs and spur growth in the economy, it also threatens the profits of some well established, and very influential corporations.

 

You can see that marijuana prohibition has much more to do with controlling “the economy”, than it does with dissuading people from smoking pot. If we could end marijuana prohibition today, black-market drug dealers, narco-cops, prison guards, pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and forest products companies would all lose revenue. However, the rest of us would enjoy less expensive marijuana, better medicine, lower health-care costs, nicer clothes, cheaper paper and lower taxes, with less pollution or habitat loss. In other words, it would dramatically improve our quality of life. As Freewheelin’ Franklin of Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers famously said, “Dope  will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”

And Now… A Musical Interlude; Falling by Tin Can Luminary

And Now… A Musical Interlude

I’m proud to present the first video single from my upcoming album of circuit-bent music:

Falling

by

Amy Gustin: vocals

John Hardin: didgeridoo and circuit-bent toys

The working title for the album is:

Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

Not that anyone buys albums anymore, or cares at all about them, or even has an hour to kill to listen to one, but that’s still how I think about my music projects. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that I’ve been working on this album of music made with hacked electronic toys,

and home-made electro-acoustic instruments,

for just about a year now.  It took me most of the summer to build the instruments,

and I spent most of the winter recording the music.

I hope to finish the entire project in perhaps a month.  In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this video single and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Growing Marijuana is A Labor of Love in Humboldt County

Growing Marijuana is A Labor of Love in Humboldt County

Well Spring is almost here, which means that all over Humboldt County, marijuana farmers are incredibly busy preparing to grow even more marijuana than they did last year. Even as you read this piece, most of them are hard at work building new greenhouses, clearing more forest land, putting in new water tanks and digging gigantic holes all over the countryside.

This process involves hundreds of thousands of man-hours of backbreaking labor and requires millions of dollars in capital investment.

 

This capital comes almost entirely from the sale of last year’s record setting marijuana harvest. Since most of last year’s marijuana harvest has not sold yet, this investment cuts deeply into the grower’s disposable income. Few feel the pinch however, as they will have little time or energy to do anything else for a few months, but prepare for this year’s grow.

 

Why do they do it? So they don’t have to get a job, of course. Who wants to work for a living when you can grow marijuana, right? You’d think, but you’d be wrong. In Humboldt County, growing marijuana is a labor of love, crazy love.

 

Soon thousands of tractor trailers full of potting soil will clog our roads as they make their way into the hills to fill the millions of holes these growers have so diligently dug.

Every year, Humboldt County’s garden supply stores comb the nation for another sparsely populated and poorly guarded county that they can steal. They then dig up the entire county in the dead of night, pack it into bags labeled “Potting Soil” and smuggle it back to Humboldt County where they quickly sell it off on a strictly cash basis to Humboldt County marijuana farmers.

 

Somewhere in Wyoming, or perhaps North Dakota, one morning soon, the citizens of this unfortunate county will step off their front porch on their way to work, only to fall several feet, smack into the bedrock below. They will look up to see their home delicately balanced on jacks and cinder blocks, and realize that their entire lawn, and the soil which once supported the foundation of their homes, has been stolen overnight while they slept.

 

For them, it will already be too late. Their county has already been sold, distributed, and secreted away behind locked gates, where it will remain, protected by a constitutionally guaranteed right of privacy. Besides, few of them could positively identify the soil from under their own homes, especially now that it has been thoroughly sifted and blended with a myriad of exotic amendments.

 

If you visit any of Humboldt County’s garden supply stores, you will find an amazing array of colorfully packaged, and even more colorfully named, fertilizers and soil amendments ranging from liquified fish guts from Alaska’s salmon canneries to ancient fossilized bat guano from caves deep within the jungles of Peru. Most Humboldt County garden shops also offer their own brands of fertilizers that they make on site, mostly from composted US currency.

 

Many of these fertilizers and soil amendments feature cheeky pin-up girls on the labels. This feature, along with the fact that these products sell for more per pound than fresh organic strawberries in January, indicate that these products are intended for use on marijuana plants. Only female marijuana plants produce marijuana, and marijuana growers often refer to their plants as “their ladies”.

 

You’ll often hear marijuana farmers say things like: “My ladies are lookin’ fine.” or “I take care of my ladies, and my ladies take care of me.” or “I need to to get home and hoe my ladies.” This makes them sound more like pimps than farmers, and greatly contributes to the general classiness of Humboldt County.

 

Can you imagine other kinds of farmers talking this way about their crops? Picture a dairy farmer saying “My ladies give me the sweetest cream.” or a broccoli farmer saying “This heat is gonna make my ladies bolt.” or a cabbage farmer saying “My ladies are full of horn-worms.” Creepy, huh?

 

All of this talk about their “ladies” belies the fact that most marijuana farmers are single and live alone. Growing marijuana in a remote, sparsely populated rural area like Humboldt County is a very lonely and isolating profession that tends to attract social misfits and people with self-alienating personalities.

 

The more lonely and isolated the marijuana farmer becomes, the more they tend to talk to, get naked around, and masturbate in front of, their “ladies”, often while looking at the pictures on boxes of fertilizer. This kind of “intimacy” with “their ladies”, coupled with an otherwise isolated existence builds a special kind of relationship between the cultivator and the cultivated that most other farmers, or sane people would not understand.

Original Artwork by Mykol Blackwell

Soon, the marijuana farmer no longer grows marijuana to make money, and instead, makes money to grow marijuana. For these people, nothing is too good for “their ladies”, and they cannot have enough of them. They work harder, and spend more money to pamper “their ladies” than any sane farmer. This is the real reason why Humboldt County marijuana growers produce the best marijuana in the world, and more of it than any place else on Earth.

 

Over the years, because of their extreme devotion and isolation, many Humboldt County marijuana growers have gone totally bat-shit crazy, and fallen in love with “their ladies” in this way. This is why they work so hard, and spend so much money on, “their ladies”.  Every year, more of them go “over the edge”, and every year this “crazy love” impacts our forest habitat more intensely.

 

Personally, I enjoy smoking marijuana, and strongly believe it should be legalized, so that sane farmers, with tractors, and flat land to till, can grow it economically.

I also know that marijuana provides relief for millions of sick people who should have unfettered access to it, at the lowest price possible, but I also care about this community.

That’s why I feel that something must be done to stop Humboldt County’s marijuana farmers before it’s too late. It has become clear to me, that nothing short of intervention, can save these poor souls, and our natural environment from this serious mental disorder.

The Real Apocalypse Continues on KMUD, Sunday at 9:30am

The Real Apocalypse Continues on KMUD Sunday at 9:30am

 

I’ve heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Clearly, whoever said that has not spent much time around the mentally ill. No, doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, is the definition of stupidity.

As we systematically wipe out the biodiversity of the planet, overheat the atmosphere, and pollute, poison and contaminate every ecosystem and organism on Earth, a wretched and miserable cast, more than seven-billion strong, reenacts, recreates and reinforces a ten-thousand-year-old pattern of stupidity that has brought us to the brink of global destruction.

For an exploration of the roots of this juggernaut of cultural stupidity that has given us tyranny, war, starvation and disease on a biblical scale, and lies at the heart of our current global environmental crisis, listen to (my partner) Amy Gustin’s radio show, The Living Earth Connection, on KMUD at 9:30 am this coming Sunday.

Amy has put together an exceptional program. You will find it eye-opening and entertaining. The show examines the agricultural revolution, which gave rise to Western Civilization, through the prism of the biblical story of Revelations. To represent Revelations, Amy has chosen selections from Aphrodite’s Child’s classic album, 666 (which I reviewed here about a year ago). Through an examination of historical records and archeological evidence, Amy reveals the tectonic shift in human consciousness that triggered the tsunami of stupidity that now threatens to drown us all. Tune in to The Living Earth Connection this Sunday, Dec, 30 at 9:30 am on KMUD.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Humboldt County

Not a creature was stirring, not even Sheriff Mike Downey

The herb was all trimmed up and packed into bags

For smokers of taste, who will not smoke swag

Me in bed naked, my wife in her panties

It’s that time of month, so it’s the ones that are ratty

When out at the gate there arose such a racket

I got out of bed and put on my jacket

Threw on some pants and picked up my rifle

So they’d know I was serious and not to trifle

I stepped out of the door and into the rain

“To be out in this shit, this guy must be insane”

I thought to myself as I trudged up the path,

“This better be good or he’ll feel my wrath”

What did my dumb struck eyes then behold

But a bearded old man in a late model Olds

I yelled “It’s Christmas Eve, are you out of your mind?”

He said “I’m Jewish, you’re Pagan, why’s this a bad time?

My friends all need weed, and I’ve plenty of cash,

At $3,000 a pound, I’ll take your whole stash”

I thought to myself, “Well that’s quite a laugh,

These days I’d a probably sold it for half.”

He showed me a bag that was packed full of bills

I opened the gate and we drove down the hill

I made up some coffee, and rolled up a jay

And showed him a few of the buds on the tray

“Oh, this is the stuff that my friends all love.

They say that your stuff is a cut above.

They’ll pay what I ask for all I can get.

Did you have a good year? Is it all trimmed up yet?”

“This year I grew more than ever before,

It’s weighed up in bags just behind that door.

You can inspect it while I count this cash,

Hand me that ashtray, and I’ll knock this ash.”

We packed all the weed in the trunk of his car.

I said, “You found me out here, you must know where you are”.

“Oh yes, he said, “I’ll find my way out from here,

And I’ve many more stops to make, far and near.”

He started the car, and then turned on the lights,

And I heard him say, as he drove out of sight,

“Marijuana to all, and to all a good night.”

The Limits of Objective Science

The Limits of Objective Science

The show happened a few months ago on KMUD, although it probably never should have happened at all. Really Eric, if you can’t be bothered to prepare a show, let someone else tickle the ether. Eric Kirk showed his respect for all of the grassroots organizers who did the work to put Proposition 37, the label GMOs proposition, on the ballot, not by inviting any of them onto his monthly talk show, not by bothering to research the issue himself, but instead, by asking listeners to call in with, and I quote “…the objective science that proves that genetically modified crops are safe.”

As you can imagine, the entire show was beneath contempt, and a tragic waste of the community’s airwaves, money, and time. Of course the election is long past, and Prop. 37 failed, but that insidious quote deserves closer scrutiny and discussion. Let’s look at it again:

“…the objective science that proves that genetically modified crops are safe.”

As if one phone call from Eric Kirk to Monsanto’s Public Relations Department wouldn’t have yielded a Phd guest for his show, if he could have been bothered, but that’s not my point here. While a PR Phd from Monsanto full of BS about GMOs on KMUD might have made for better radio, even Monsanto’s Phd would be hard pressed to find objective science that proves that GMOs are safe… extremely hard pressed.

I’m sure Monsanto’s PR flack would blather on about this or that study, and about his credentials. He’d have piles of evidence, and a good story to go along with it, but he couldn’t prove that GMOs are safe with objective science. Really, Monsato’s PR guy could hardly have done better than Eric Kirk, who simply insinuated that such a thing existed, but even if GMOs were actually safe, you couldn’t prove it with objective science, because organisms are not objects.

We really like this word “objective”, especially in front of the word “science”. By God “objective science” is the only science we trust, and we trust “objective science” precisely because it is so… objective. I give credit where credit is due. Objective science told us that the Earth revolves around the sun. Objective science gave us the atom bomb, and objective science helped us put a man on the moon. All impressive feats, I completely agree, and I can understand why people might put a lot of stock in “objective science”, but it has limits.

Objective science leaves many important questions unanswered. For instance, objective science told us how much rocket fuel we would need, and when we would have to launch the rocket, in order to put a man on the moon, but objective science could not tell us if space travel was safe for humans. We still don’t know if space travel is safe for humans, and we certainly don’t have objective science that proves it. So far, space travel seems safe enough, for very healthy people, for limited amounts of time, but we really don’t know enough about human physiology to say with certainty that space travel has no long term deleterious effects.

On the other hand, any 12 year old has enough experience with objects that they have a pretty solid working understanding of physics. By the time a child turns twelve, he/she has dropped thing, thrown things, launched water rockets, exploded firecrackers and spun a bucket of water around upside down without spilling it. By age twelve, most children have such a solid understanding of physics that they can play baseball, ride a bicycle, jump rope or play jacks, and they rely on this understanding instinctively for the rest of their lives. Only later, when they go to school, do they learn that there’s math involved.

Even though most people have a pretty good working understanding of physics, all of that math discourages many people from studying theoretical physics, at least past high school. Yet, a statistically significant number of people do pursue their interest in theoretical physics, and these people do a hell of a lot of math.

In fact, theoretical physicists have found applications in real life for damn near every kind of math that mathematicians can dream up. Physics is like that. It’s very mathematical and precise. You do a few experiments, figure out a few equations, and Boom, you can use those equations to predict the motions of objects all over the universe. We can predict how fast an object will fall on any planet anywhere in the universe, how much force it will exert when it hits the ground, and how much force it will take to throw it across the room etc etc.

As a species, we demonstrate an extremely accurate, working understanding of physics, one that allows us to, for instance, throw a spear accurately enough to hit a moving animal, conceive and build a bow and arrow, or atlatl, and to use them effectively. We find this working understanding of physics very satisfying, and even though we no longer hunt wild game for sustenance, in leisure activities like golf, bowling, surfing and in all ball sports, the pleasure of learning to manipulate objects in space and time more accurately, makes these activities fun and enjoyable.

We really like theoretical physics too. It makes us feel powerful to know so much about how objects move in space and time, and we’ve learned to do some pretty impressive tricks. Using theoretical physics, NASA was able to send a rocket-ship all the way to the moon, and back, on the first try. That’s a pretty good stunt, even I admit. Our working understanding of physics, which has since become our theoretical understanding of physics has served us well in so many ways throughout our history.

From helping us develop the tools and skills necessary to hunt mastodons, to helping us develop the tools and skills necessary to launch thermonuclear Armageddon, it’s our understanding of how objects move in space and time that makes us a successful species on this green Earth. As long as we’re talking about objects in space and time, be they baseballs, rocket-ships, or Higgs-Boson particles, we can thank “objective science” for enlightening us, with such astounding accuracy, about how they behave. That’s why we call it “objective” science. Objective science is the science of objects, and objects reside in space and time. Now you know why we call objective science, “objective”.

Fortunately, I think, for all of us, organisms are not objects. Organisms do not behave like objects. Organisms do not function like objects, and organisms do not give up their secrets easily to objective science. That is why, when it comes to medicine, biology, sociology, economics, or psychology, all of the sciences that study organisms, objectively, you’ll find them doing lots, and lots of experiments, and no matter how much math they use, their predictions remain woefully imprecise.

While we may calculate with accuracy the age and origin of the universe in space and time, life remains mostly a mystery. Sure, biologist, biochemists, and doctors now understand, on some level, the mechanics and the chemistry of some biological systems, but they do this by objectifying the organism. In other words, they kill it, and look at it under a microscope.

Organisms become objects to us, when they are dead. For most of our history, that was the whole point of understanding physics. We used physics to kill. We used it to hunt wild animals to feed ourselves. Our understanding of physics fed us, kept us dry and warm, but it didn’t tell us much about ourselves, except the limits of our own strength, and it still doesn’t.

Unfortunately, objective science doesn’t tell us much about ourselves, or any of the other organisms with which we share this planet. While physicists can tell us, with great confidence, about the origins of the universe, and routinely put machines on distant planets that send us pictures at the speed of light, medicine has wiped out what? One, almost two, diseases, mainly on a lucky shot.

If objective science is so great, why aren’t doctors explaining their grand theory of life, explaining its origin, and predicting its future, while they hunt down cures for the last few rare diseases. Really, we spend way, way, way, more money on medical research than we do unlocking the riddles of the cosmos. After all, people’s lives are at stake. Alas, cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, schizophrenia, autism and a host of other diseases continue to afflict people around the world. Even the commonest of diseases, the common cold, continues to mock all of our best efforts to tame its virulence.

No, organisms are not objects. Organisms are a different animal all together, and objective science really doesn’t tell us much about them. The organism keeps its secrets and life remains mysterious. Still, we’re so impressed with atom bombs, moonwalks and microcomputers that we’d like to believe that objective science can cure cancer, or open a window into the world of autism, but really, we’re out of luck.

Maybe a genetically modified organism looks like an impressive feat of objective science to you, but it’s not really. At best, a GMO represents a feat of objectified science. Geneticists have isolated a particular mechanism of life, and learned how to manipulate it, to produce modified organisms that lawyers can patent, and capitalists can then legally exploit.

Objective science tells us a lot about objects in space and time, but objectifying organisms does not enlighten us much at all, because organisms do not live in space and time. Space and time only exists within organisms. This is the crux of Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s also the crux of Emmanuel Kant’s, The Critique of Pure Reason, written about a century and a half before Einstein.

As incomprehensible as it seems, space and time only exist within organisms (or, perhaps more accurately, within an organism). In fact, as incomprehensible as it is, this is the only thing that objective science has ever proven about organisms. Think about this for a while. Objective science helps us survive in this beautiful world, not understand it. Not only are we far, far, far away from unlocking the secrets of life, we’re not even capable of comprehending them. That’s what objective science has proven.

So, when someone in a white lab coat tells you that “objective science has proven its safe”, while they try to sell you some new technology, don’t buy it, figuratively, or literally. Whether it’s GMOs, wireless smart meters, cell phone towers, food additives, flame retardants, vaccines, or TV, objective science can help us develop these things, but it doesn’t tell us much about how or if they effect us, because we are not objects. That is the limit of objective science.

If Eric wanted to do a good show about how “safe” GMOs are, he could have interviewed a corporate attorney who knew something about product liability law. They could have talked about what exactly constitutes a “safe” product, from a legal perspective. I would find it interesting to hear two lawyers explain how corporations can produce inherently dangerous products, like automobiles, motorcycles, firearms, addictive psychoactive drugs, and thousands of other products that kill people directly, sicken and kill others through pollution or contamination, and also contribute to global climate change, ocean acidification, and sea level rise, problems that negatively effect everyone, and yet avoid liability for any of the damage these products cause. I think Eric could do a good job with that topic, because he knows the law. On the other hand, Eric doesn’t know enough about science to fill a gnats navel, and he should shut up about it.

Three Letters that Spell Success

Three Letters that Spell Success

 

I’ve noticed that two recently opened, and similarly themed, boutiques in Arcata and Garberville, have adopted cryptic, three-letter names. DTA, in Arcata and SHC in Garberville, both sport black walls, graffiti art, and prominently displayed sound equipment. Both shops look more like nightclubs than clothing stores, but they have no cover charge, and serve no drinks.

 

Can these places really pay the rent, from a few bins of silk screened T-Shirts, a couple racks of hoodies and a display case full of CDs by local artists? Maybe these shops exist simply to launder drug money, in which case, a lot of inventory might just get in the way. But maybe they noticed that guys who walk right past clothing stores, will walk into any shop that has a pile of sound equipment in the window, and will, if possible, buy their clothes there, even if they only sell one T-Shirt.

 

As a guy who’s lived most of his life in music store T-shirts, I guess they’ve got me pegged. I’ve been in both shops, and I almost never go into clothing stores, which you can easily tell by looking at me. Still, these places baffle me. I like big pubic-address speakers as much as the next guy, but I never really got on the “hoodie” bandwagon.

I’ve never worn a hoodie. A baja, sure, hooded shirt, yeah, but I just can’t picture myself looking good in a hoodie. I got nothing against hoodies. A lot of people seem to feel comfortable in them, and look really natural in them. I just think I look slouchy and disheveled enough, at my best, and I don’t really see myself as “thug” material.

 

Speaking of material, cotton knit hoodies, don’t keep you warm when they get wet. Cotton gets soggy and heavy, and at least one person around here has died of hypothermia, in 50 degree weather, wearing a really cool-looking, but wet, hoodie. Here in the woods of SoHum, whenever it’s cold enough to need clothes, its also raining, so I live in fleece. The squirrels and blue jays wouldn’t make fun of me any less, if I looked like I had more “street-cred”.

 

Despite what the squirrels say, cryptic three-letter monikers are clearly very edgy and hip right now. Two, three-letter clothing boutiques in Humboldt County, looks like a trend to me, so deal me in. My new boutique will have even bigger speakers, and fewer clothes than either DTA or SHC, and it will have actual cutting edges built into the architecture, so unless you’re very careful, you’ll need stitches before you leave.

 

I’ve also decided to launch my own line of urban street-wear, featuring my own bold, cutting edge, three-letter designs to go with my new boutique. (cue heavy hip-hop beat) Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Introducing:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD we grind up culture and spit out style, that aggressive, sub-literate, mean-spirited style that’s so popular with young people these days. We created these unbelievably crass and wildly inappropriate designs to suit today’s unbelievably crass consumers and their wildly inappropriate lifestyles. Here’s a sample:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD, we’re cool with feminism, and we’re hip to equality, but we know that sexiness is power, and we want to help women harness theirs, with our bold new designs. We know that all women are sexy, and no matter how stupid you feel wearing these designs, they’ll still look great on you, because you always look great, no matter how stupid your clothes look. So, check out these hot new designs for women in tight, titty-huggging tanks, and scoop neck tees that bounce your way.

 Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

You don’t have to wait for an LSD Industries boutique to open up in your town, you can get these hot, trendy new designs right now at http://www.zazzle.com/lygsbtd* Sure they’re expensive, but I’m worth it. Get your own LSD today!!

Bring Me the Head of “Heraldo”

Bring Me the Head of “Heraldo”

 

Well the North Coast Journal finally published its annual “Best of Humboldt” issue, and once again, this blog, “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” made the cut. This year, my blog tied for fourth place with the Humboldt Herald.

 

Frankly, I don’t have time for, or much interest in, reading a lot of other blogs, and I’ve never heard anything good about the Humboldt Herald. So, before today, I’d never even glanced at it. I’d heard that the Humboldt Herald was a cesspool of moronic political bickering, so I assumed that it was Eureka’s answer to Eric Kirk’s blog, SoHum Parlance.

 

Sure enough, who’s name do I see at the top of the page at Humboldt Herald? Eric Kirk’s, but apparently some anonymous joker, who calls himself “Heraldo”, runs the Humboldt Herald. I wouldn’t put my real name on that disease either, were I responsible for it.

 

I didn’t spend a lot of time there, but it looks like the same kind of bland, self-important, rhetorical regurgitation you’d expect from Eric Kirk. I didn’t see one post that I really wanted to read, and what I did read, seemed to me the product of small, narrow minds, without much imagination, so I’m more than a little disappointed to have tied with them.

 

You’ll recall that last year we fought this campaign down to a tie, as well. In 2011, Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do tied with Chocolate Covered Xanax for 5^th place. Chocolate Covered Xanax rocks, at least it did then. Well written, with beautiful photographs, Chocolate Covered Xanax has style, humor and elegance. It’s a real class act. I was proud to tie with Chocolate Covered Xanax. Apparently Kristabel has better things to do these days. It’s been a while since she’s updated CCX, which, no doubt, hurt her in this year’s competition. We miss you Kristabel, but that was last year.

 

This year, NCJ readers cast more votes for Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do, and we took a bigger slice of the overall pie, up from 2.5% of the vote to 3.2%, which moved us up in the standings enough to tie for fourth. It’s just a shame that I had to tie with the artless, pointless, senseless idiocy of Eric Kirk, Heraldo and their ilk at the Humboldt Herald.

 

I’m better than that. I mean, I write drivel, but I don’t write that kind of drivel. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that vacuous political agita has a following around here, but the fact that the Humboldt Herald even placed in this contest speaks poorly of North Coast Journal readers.

 

Above us in the poll, no surprises. In first place: Lost Coast Outpost, the online hub of the Ferndale media empire, Lost Coast Communications. With four commercial radio stations feeding it traffic, former NCJ “Town Dandy”, and computer whiz Hank Sims aggressively building it into a local media powerhouse, and now with Redheaded Blackbelt Kym Kemp on the team, Lost Coast Outpost has become Humboldt County’s first source for news and information.

 

In the poll, Lost Coast Outpost took 34.4 percent of the vote, with Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt taking another 6.8%, and coming in third on her own. That’s over 41% of the vote for Lost Coast Outpost. Yes, the Lost Coast Outpost, and Lost Coast Communications casts a growing shadow over the media landscape here in Humboldt County.

 

LCC’s KHUM, “Radio Without the Rules” took first place in the “Best Radio Station” category, and another LCC station, KSLG finished second. Both of these commercial stations beat out both of our beloved community radio stations, KHSU and KMUD, which polled third and fourth respectively. As a blogger, I don’t generally consider myself in competition with local news media outlets like Lost Coast Outpost, and LCC, but KMUD is, and I hope that KMUD is up to it, because LCC is clearly growing, and hungry.

 

I couldn’t believe Lost Coast Outpost’s new feature, as hyped by the NCJ. They now have an automatic feed from law enforcement agencies that posts an entry every time a cop arrests someone in Humboldt County. Each post states who got arrested, and what they are charged with. Now, if you get arrested in Humboldt County, Lost Coast Outpost readers will know about it, hours before you even get to make a phone call. Is that creepy or what?

 

I promise you this: if you get arrested in Humboldt County, or anywhere, for that matter, your mother is not going to find out about it by reading my blog. Who wants to monitor a feed of arrests in Humboldt County? What does voting for a site like that, say about NCJ readers? Speaking of which…

 

Second place in the North Coast Journal readers poll, “best blog” category, went to the North Coast Journal’s own “blog thing” which took only 9.1% of the vote. If the North Coast Journal can’t get at least 10% of their own readers to vote for their blog, even though they put full page ads for it in their paper every week, how lame is that?

 

So that’s it, Lost Coast Communications, The North Coast Journal, Heraldo, and me, the best of the blogosphere in Humboldt County, at least according to readers of The North Coast Journal. Besides trending towards the petulant, petty and prying, North-Coast Journal readership tends to skew towards the northern part of the county. They don’t cover us much down here, so we tend to ignore The NCJ in SoHum.

 

Nothing from SoHum won “best of” anything in the NCJ readers poll, and only four SoHum based things even placed in the top five, in any category. I already mentioned Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt (third best blog), and KMUD (fourth best radio station). The Mateel Community Center placed fifth in the “best music venue” category, and this blog: Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do, placed fourth in the category of “best blog”, all proudly representing SoHum.

 

Thank you, dear readers, for voting for this blog, and supporting my work here. Enough of you believed in this blog enough, and stood up for what you believe in enough, to give Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do more votes than 99% of all of the blogs in Humboldt County, more votes than any other humor blog, more votes than any other personal blog, more votes than all but two local media outlets, and exactly as many votes as the single most popular political blog in the county.

 

That’s power, people. We went head-to-head against big-money media in cyberspace, and we made the cut. Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do is a player. So what if we tied with a sack of rancid troll bait.