Earth People!
I was born on Jupiter
| Neologisticklish (adj): Describing one who is especially amused by made-up words. |
| "So far, Google has scanned more than 11 percent of the entire corpus of published books" (NY Times, 12/17/2010). Wow. |
| Right-left compromise: trade corporate tax for a carbon tax. Megan McArdle has a good piece at the Atlantic arguing the progressive case for trading the corporate tax for more and steeper top income tax brackets. I figure swapping it for a carbon tax could be an even bigger boon, and maybe a viable compromise for the less extreme Republicans. |
| My theory on the Velvet Underground's Mo Tucker supporting the Tea Party: A real punk supports system collapse over slow, sensible reforms. |
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As I understand it the card-check vs secret ballot argument is a technology problem. The problem with the current system is that you have to have a vote to decide to have a vote to form a union, giving the management plenty of points of failure to target for sabotage. The problem with card check is its susceptibility to pressure. Could this be solved by a system with either a permanently open and permanently revisable secret ballot (problem: how to preserve secrecy of single new employee's vote? Can't if they're the deciding vote...) or a regular schedule of union votes? What about any employee has the right to call a vote up to X times per year? Todo: Make a cell phone app that takes insta-polls around the office/store on popular reality shows/sports teams and show the result to all concerned, reporting to associated jobsite-specific social-networky site. Once it catches on, make 'unionize?' polls available periodically. |
| Go give journalist Greg Palast some money. He and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just uncovered more undemocratic voter-roll purging in a swath of battleground states. |
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While all you crowdfollowers add the Wall Street Journal to your friends list, I'm gonna go lick Sumner Redstone's boots at net radio site last.fm, which seems to have grown a social network since I last looked. Their software is open source, and they offer a winamp plugin to continuously update your profile with every track you listen to. Now I can disgust my music snob friends ALL THE TIME! |
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Protest tactic to deal with free speech zones: "My phone is recording us. I have blank paper and a marker. Are you going to impose prior restraint on what I write when the cameras are out?" |
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Did you know? Scientology is a dangerous cult with influence over the IRS and the London Police. Scienntologists, there is life after the Church! Stop paying for the RTC's lawyers and if you like the technology get it from the freezone, without the fascist control and constant demands for your time and money. |
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We have the technology! I've been waiting since '98 for the day we can obsolete the cell phone companies with a truly competitive system. Now SIP phones and ubiquitous wireless access points can make it a reality. With the hardware getting cheaper (Hop-On's $39 handset) and more stylish (Sony Mylo), all that's needed for perfect competition is a set of standards for handoffs, and for price negotiation between the caller's handset, the base station operator, and the local call connector in the target area code. The payments themselves could be handled by independent clearinghouses. For a still-proprietary preview of the system, check out the La Fonera + Skype combo deal from Spanish company Fon. The sell a subsidized dual-subnet (private & shared) wifi router, optionally bundled with the SMC Skype 802.11 phone. Imagine tens of access points competing for your call, offering service at all sorts of price points and quality levels. The current operators of cell towers would own the market in the boonies, but the more inhabited the location, the more competition we'd see. And cell phone co's really deserve the smackdown they'll get at the hands of the consumers they've screwed for the last decade. |
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