may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

ee cummings

Linda McQuaig talks about inequality and elitism in the US presidential election:

A fundamental problem in the last few decades – both in Canada and the United States – has been the relentless campaign waged by the financial elite to overturn postwar social and economic policies that provided significant gains for the middle and lower classes in the decades following World War II.

The campaign has been phenomenally successful. As a result, the poor have lost ground, while the middle class have barely held their own or made small advances – by working longer hours or having two-income families.

Only the rich have thrived.

The addiction to the arrogant religion of game theory is over. Now is the time. Profiteering will give way to our prosperity. Now is the time. Our civility returns.

But when it comes down to it, the line at Invesco is 3 miles long. Obama will have 75,000 people cheering tonight.

McCain is trying to counter that with 10,000 people in Ohio tomorrow to announce his VP pick. Only one problem. They can’t even get 10,000:

Tickets are still available for Sen. John McCain’s Friday, Aug. 29, rally at Wright State University’s Nutter Center in Fairborn. – Dayton Daily News

They’re giving away free tickets in several states and plan to bus in supporters.

This is a superb, if challenging, product already at the prototype stage.

I first thought, “Impossible”, but no.

Quote: “The SPEED-VEST is a bicycle safety device and advocacy tool which displays the wearer’s current speed on their back in easy-to-read lighted numerals. It improves rider conspicuity while legitimizing bicycle speeds on the roadway. Originally conceived by Brady Clark and engineered by Mykle Hansen.”

Advocacy tool? Conspicuity? But combined with tiny cameras and flash drives, an entire traffic ‘event’ can be recorded.

Courtspection.

We can say goodbye to centuries too.

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

“I have a dream”, Martin Luther King. Forty five years ago today. Complete text, audio recording and video here.

Maybe, just hopefully, this article is a sign of things to come, when as Jon Stewart says, media will get out of the spin room and write real info: msnbc.com writes a story on hotel hedonism, the world’s worst hotel guests.

   1. Amy Winehouse   2. Salvador Dali   3. Britney Spears   4. Axl Rose   5. Mariah Carey   6. Russell Crowe   7. Naomi Campbell   8. George Schultz   9. Mikhail Prokhorov  10. Brandon Davis  11. Nicole Kidman  12. Michael Jackson  13. Johnny Depp  14. 1998 U.S. Men's Hockey team  15. Keith Moon

Very interesting. A story that is both yuicky and enlightening.

BlueAnt Wireless’ new V1 – the first voice-controlled Bluetooth headset.

Sidestep buttons.

Control functions with phrases like “pair me,” “call home,” “call favorite,” “call Goog-411,” and “accept or ignore call.”

It’s beginning!

Soon, voice commands will pipe to the Cloud and through VPN to home/office. I set up a few workshops on this subject in ’84 so I’m glad to see it arrive – proposing tiny in-the-ear radio that were still illegal in the USA at the time.

Now everybody can be prompted, not just media and candidates and quarterbacks.

Next? Retina Monitors in 3D?

FuturePundit posted this:

Before you die of old age you will spend about the last 15 years of your life getting dumber

That’s living for ya.

They call it a ‘terminal decline phase’. Excuuuse me?

Your ability to compare figures will go before your spatial ability which in turn will go before your verbal ability. But it is all down, down, down until your whole body crashes.

The start of the decline is different for various cognitive abilities.

1. Perceptual speed, which measures how quickly people can compare figures, begins declining nearly 15 years before death.

2. Spatial ability starts declining nearly eight years before death.
3. And verbal ability starts declining about six-and-a-half years before death.

TIME published a short article based on an insider to Russian politics:

Russia’s leaders see a big distinction between the U.S. and Europe, and will be careful to make that clear. “We know there is a huge difference between the E.U. and the U.S.,” he says. “We know that the Bush administration is working for the election of John McCain. The real order to kill South Ossetians came from Dick Cheney. If Obama [becomes] President and investigates how the Iraq war started, Dick Cheney would be imprisoned. The Neocons believe Obama is a weak politician and they will stop him by any means.

The main idea is to create imitations of the Cold War between Russia and the West… We know that [to show Obama up] Neocons will carry out another provocation against Russia probably in Ukraine and we are ready for this.

“Russia’s interests coincide closely with the E.U. The E.U. is not interested in civil war in Ukraine… Russia will be very careful and not touch the pipelines because they influence many countries. Russia will be quite moderate on this issue. The most important issue is protecting human life, not pipelines. Pipeline politics is the tactic of the Neocons.”

That events in Georgia are timed for our election is being picked up by media in Europe as well:

Georgian crisis is US ploy
Putin says conflict planned to create neo-cold war climate that would boost John McCain.

Here’s seasoned journalists alone with John McCain. The title of this revealing article is

McCain’s Prickly TIME Interview

But with the press focused on Obama, McCain got attention only when he slipped up during one of his patented freewheeling encounters with reporters. And so in July, the campaign decided to clamp down on the candidate.

There is not a full man here.

Were he here to tear down another George!

Thomas Jefferson:

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… we will have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers…

And this is the tendency of all human governments.

A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]… ’til the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Here’s an unusually emotional article you’ll likely not see.

It’s written in the Daily Mail by J Randy Taraborrelli, who says, “As a journalist who has reported more on Jackson in the past 30 years than anyone else – including having written three best-selling books about him – I can’t help but be deeply saddened by the way his life has turned out.

…
From the time he was a teenager, Michael Jackson believed he would sell more records than anyone else – and, of course, he did.

He also knew he would have the biggest-grossing concert tours in history. But all of that is now in the past.

Today, he spends his time wandering around Las Vegas…”

The Mail hired an expert to make a graphic of what Michael Jackson should really look like.

Breakfast with Jon Stewart:

“I can’t believe that, as reporters, you would walk into a ‘spin room’,” he said, amazed at the journalists’ willingness to swallow the bullshit that the campaign and candidates spoon feed them.

“How can you keep talking to people who are lying to you?” he asked.

“This loveless marriage [between reporters and politicians] has to be unconsummated.”

One, Two.

Not on mainstream media.

• Dennis Kucinich lays it down and wakes’em up at the convention. Wake Up America!
• Dennis Kucinich at the DNC: Wake Up America! Fantastic!
• Dennis Kucinich *R-O-C-K-S* THE HOUSE! WAKE UP AMERICA
• Forget Hillary, Kucinich electrifies convention arena

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0smG7ptcM&hl=en&fs=1]