MaSaRa

Guy filmed a G8 protest in 2005. Feds say they want his tape. Feds? Well, the SFPD car was partly paid for with fed funds, and if the video shows smoke around the car it might be arson and then it might be a fed offense.

Local cops are investigating three people in matters relating to the protest. None of hte matters have anything to do with a squad car.

posted by quash @ 4:55 PM 0 Comments

Give a Man a Fish

..and you feed him for a day. He gets a free meal, you paid for it. Teach a man to fish and you can charge him for access to the river.

As a general rule I'm in favor of free trade, NAFTA etc. But you have to play fair. Lately I've become concerned that our farm subsidies are doing more than propping up ADM and other agribusinesses. And making corn into a Cult of Monoculture.

NAFTA has had a devastating effect on small farmers in Mexico, among others. It has delivered a third strike at a crucial time: union corruption and federal government politics have lead to a serious deterioration of education.

The Mexican constitution guarantees a free public education to every citizen. Because of political unrest in Chiapas and Tampico etc. the government has stopped funding some public schools. In some instances the government bulldozed the dorm facilities and classrooms to limit public access. Teachers in Mexico have a long tradition of being leaders in popular social movements, thus the government crackdown.

Teachers work 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to support their families. Parents pay for school repairs, textbooks etc., effectively paying tuition. Meanwhile, the federal government is using standardized testing and defunding to force the increased privatization of Mexican education.

What little income farmers could get from excess corn (excess meaning after feeding their families) is now almost completely gone, as subsidized American corn floods the Mexican market.

I don't want my taxes to pay to keep a Mexican kid out of school. It's not fair to either of us.

posted by quash @ 12:29 PM 0 Comments

Attempt to get AI stuff on here...

posted by quash @ 9:15 AM 0 Comments

I was born at the beginning of The Space Age, a term you almost never hear anymore, a few weeks after Sputnik scared the shit out of all good anti-communists. Growing up in Houston with NASA just down the road and Astrodomes and Astroturf and Astro Arena, hell I played little league baseball on the Astros, you just had a sense of the adventure of space. Our elementary school classes would wheel in a black and white TV for launches, and when Apollo 1 burned we named schools for Grissom, White and Chaffey. Even in law school our Civil Procedure prof let us out early to watch the landing of the first Shuttle mission. I figure my kid is about the right age to be on the first manned mission to Mars. Last year I was at Oshkosh when Global Surveyor and Spaceship One were there, heard the announcement by Branson for Virgin Galactic. And when they announced that VG would build it's launch facility in New Mexico, well damn, I was born there.

There's not much chance I'll ever go for a ride on VG, but it is definitely on my post-Lotto win list....

posted by quash @ 9:13 AM 0 Comments