netphemera - The official Blog of Seth Wolf

I thought I had a bad dentist

Aparently there are some dentists out there that are worse then the ones I've encounted over the years.

posted by Netphemera @ 1:51 PM 1 comments

Hurricanes and Global Warming

Boy, they sure have the ducks in a row. I haven't really been following the news recently, but a thought occured to me, "is there a link between hurricanes and global warming." So I did a quick Google search and looked what poped up. It's like a freakin' who's who of anti-environmental, coporate funded, "junk science" think tanks.

We've got opinion papers from JunkScience.com, co2science.org, The New Republic, The Greening Earth Society, Rush, Cato, and lots more. So this begs the question "why are these folks so obsessed with deflecting the connection between hurricans and global warming." The answer is simple, there are people dying out there and millions of dollars in property damage happening. People are freaking out. They're houses are destroyed, their communties desimated, their life's savings wiped out.

The last thing these groups want is serious attention being directed at the possiblity of this connection.

Even more critical, there is an election at stake here boys, and the key, once again, is Florida. If those poor Floridians ever considered for a moment that the environmental policies of the Bush & Co. was to blame for the havoc these huricans caused thier lives, they would switch thier party affiliation, permanetly.

posted by Netphemera @ 4:05 PM 0 comments

Grover Norquist is "fuckin' Crazy"

If you question Colin Powell description of neo-cons as "fucking crazies" perhaps you should read this essay from Grover Norquist.

posted by Netphemera @ 10:17 AM 0 comments

OED Back Door

This can't last long, but while it's open you should perform all you OED searches for free.

posted by Netphemera @ 11:30 AM 1 comments

Score!

We went to the California Academy of Sciences garage sale. Got there really late, but still picked up a few things, including this calculator. Last one sold on ebay for $150. This is probably my best thrift score.

posted by Netphemera @ 3:55 PM 0 comments

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

A very informative web site that maps all the states, indicating which are battleground states, which are going to Kerry and which are going to Bush. It's updated daily so you can always get the most current numbers.

posted by Netphemera @ 10:38 AM 0 comments

Kerry's taking a dive

A while back I was telling people this commentary: You see, everyone’s been talking about how the Democratic Party is controlled by corporate interests. What they don’t realize is that while the Democrats are controlled by the corporations, the Republican Party is a multinational corporation. Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and all the others are corporate heads, running the Republican Party and the U.S. Government on behalf of their clients.

Everyone’s complaining that Kerry's not doing a very good job of running his campaign. But the way I see it, Kerry is just taking a dive. His bosses on the other side said “look son, it’s just night your night. You’re takin’ a dive. You go down in the fifth.”

But then it occurred to me, Kerry's job is not to lose the election, he’s trying to completely take down the entire Democratic Party and create massive disillusionment amongst its members. Look at things objectively, you’ve got an incumbent President with one of the lowest approval rating ever, a quagmire of a war that the majority of the citizens are against, over a thousand U.S. troops killed in battle, a stagnant economy, and an exploding national debt and deficit. Anyone, and I mean anyone, could have galvanize the opposition and steal the election (in an honest way this time). This thing should be a slam-dunk. I don’t think anyone could have done a better job of taking the election, which has been handed over on a silver platter, and muddling it up so badly that things are still up for grabs.

Now I’m not saying that a Kerry Presidency would be any different from a Bush Presidency. What’s at stake here is the future of the Democratic Party. This election would have been a golden opportunity to unify the Party, increase its membership, bring the left wing back into the Party, regain the support of the youth, poor, working people, minorities, and others who have abandoned the Party over the years. That’s the one thing the corporations did not what to happen this year, and that is exactly what they got with Kerry.

posted by Netphemera @ 4:17 PM 0 comments

Guide: Walnut Creek

Walnut Creek is a really wacky town. Its downtown area is like one big open-air outdoor mall. For a while, we spent a lot of time visiting the shopping malls scattered about the Bay Area on weekends. After living in New York City for five years and San Francisco for ten, the shopping mall possessed a certain mystique and novelty. A very foreign concept to the urban dweller, the suburban shopping mall offered a peek inside the world of temperature controlled, TV-advertised chain stores, piped-in music, teen fashions, and bizarre themed-stores. Soon we became proficient in the various types of malls and mall terminology but after a while all the malls seemed the same, and it got pretty tiring.

We abandoned the whole mall scene until we found Walnut Creek. A very wealthy community, Walnut Creek transformed their downtown to a huge open-air upscale shopping mall. Now, it’s not unusual for a community to have a downtown shopping area, that’s precisely the point of building healthy communities, but Walnut Creek’s downtown shopping area is so creepily like an indoor shopping mall, except it’s in the downtown area of a residential community and the roof seems to be missing. There are fountains, curvy walkways, even streets, but walking along you feel just like you are in a controlled mall-like environment. I’m sure it’s entirely by design. I’m sure the entire area is owned, managed, and leased by a mall management corporation. I bet even the streets, which you can drive and park your car on, are outsourced. You almost feel like you are driving right into a mall and parking your car right by the big fountain in the middle of it. (The Bay Street Emeryville mall is another example, offering a similar open-air mall that mimics the traditional urban downtown.)

Adjacent to the mall is the old part of the city, where the streets are straight and connect at right angles to each other, the bubble gum splotched sidewalks have larger trees and you’ll find fewer chain stores. Some noteworthy shops in the alt town are Bonanza Street Books, Leonidas Belgian Chocolates, and the great pizza joint Tomatina.

Another thing that stands out is the wealth and opulence of the community. You’ll find all the trademark shops that your typically find in the more upscale shopping centers; Tiffany, Nordstrom, Coach, and an Apple store. Being so far removed from The City, Walnut Creek is comfortable in its demographic, racial profile, and lifestyle. I highly recommend a visit to those more used to the Lower Haight or East Village.

posted by Netphemera @ 11:57 AM 0 comments

Michale Moore has removed 9/11 from Oscar consideration

Have you seen this? Michael Moore has intentionally removed Fahrenheit 9/11 from Oscar consideration. Apparently there's some obscure rule that if a film is shown on broadcast TV within nine months of its theatrical debut then it's ineligible for Best Documentary consideration. Moore is pushing to get his film shown on TV very close to election day but naturally his distributors are none too pleased with that scenario. So he's already pulled 9/11 from consideration by not submitting it to the Academy. I think that that's a pretty cool move. It really sounds like that in the unlikely event that the film is shown on TV the night before the election that it would swing the election to the Democrats. If you haven't seen the film yet, let me know and I can hook you up. I can also hook you up with Outfoxed if you haven't seen that.

posted by Netphemera @ 10:04 AM 0 comments

Fun piece about the NYC RNC

I really liked this piece. I know I would have very mixed feelings if I was still living in New York City. I'm so glad The New York Press is not owned by New Times so it doesn't have that really lame New Times style of political satire.

posted by Netphemera @ 1:24 PM 0 comments

Gilligan's Island, the Iraq war, and monetary theory

It's amazing how when you take someting as simple and familar as Gilligan's Island, you can understand complex monetary theory about occupied nations.

posted by Netphemera @ 12:50 PM 0 comments

Project Censored 2004

I'm not usually one to toot my own horn (I hope) but I've been folowing the work of Project Censored long before I started working at the BG. Here is this year's crop of stories. I'm proably going to go through the page and try to add some links to it. Let me know if you have any ideas for links.

posted by Netphemera @ 12:38 PM 0 comments