Cool stuff found on the Interwebs

[Roy Hunter]

Tripadvisaargh!

[AFTERGLOW]

Bacon wrapped onion rings:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/ ... fa898d2303

[bonsaiherb]

7 Practical Ideas for Compassionate Communities, From Free College to Debt Relief
It's not hard to bring a little more equality into each others' lives.
by Shannan Stoll
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/7-practical-ideas-for-compassionate-communities

When so much is printed about what is wrong in this world, it was a delight and true eye-opener to see so many angels out there. Thank you Shannan for this wonderful eye opener. The on-line yesmagazine is AWESOME! Please check it out.

[Cardinal Fang]

7 Practical Ideas for Compassionate Communities, From Free College to Debt Relief
It's not hard to bring a little more equality into each others' lives.
by Shannan Stoll
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/7-practical-ideas-for-compassionate-communities

When so much is printed about what is wrong in this world, it was a delight and true eye-opener to see so many angels out there. Thank you Shannan for this wonderful eye opener. The on-line yesmagazine is AWESOME! Please check it out.

Thanks for sharing the article.

Interesting addition to one of them - in 2005, the state of Utah started a strategy called Housing First, which basically involved just giving the homeless homes. As it turned out, the program saved Utah a boat load of cash - supporting the homeless costs a lot: the cost of shelters,ER visits, ambulances, police etc all add up. Utah’s Homeless Task Force estimated that the average chronically homeless person, when handled the traditional way (into shelters, then halfway houses etc) cost Salt Lake City more than $20, 000 per year. Putting them in permanent housing costs Utah just $8,000 a year, including the cost of the case managers help those homeless people get used to their new state. A study in Colorado estimated that the average homeless person cost the state $43,000 a year, whilst housing that person would cost just $17,000.
(New Yorker article)

CF

[bonsaiherb]

Cardinal Fang, you must indeed be a 'pinko, commie liberal.' :-)

The very idea that pro-active reforms might save communities money must make the conservatives cringe. Dealing in a reactive manner is always more expensive, but that is the direction most of the States have taken. I wish more of them would do a cost analysis valuation on the issue, never mind a moral one.

I watched the bullying tape on your other thread and I don't really want to get into it, as I am still dealing with old angers from my Boy Scout days. Will post it on the bullying thread.

[gronank]

I wish more of them would do a cost analysis valuation on the issue, never mind a moral one.

Who says they aren't? they did the analysis and decided letting people suffer like they deserve (you know, for being homeless and a burden for society) is more important than anything else.

See, I always assumed that the main driving force of the american right was greed, not only by the ones who actually making money but everyone. But I have failed to substantiate that hypothesis and the new working theory is that all of them basically hates human beings, they're a party of misanthropes.

[Cardinal Fang]

Cardinal Fang, you must indeed be a 'pinko, commie liberal.' :-)

The very idea that pro-active reforms might save communities money must make the conservatives cringe. Dealing in a reactive manner is always more expensive, but that is the direction most of the States have taken. I wish more of them would do a cost analysis valuation on the issue, never mind a moral one.

Utah is a conservative state. I think this is good old-fashioned (i.e. before the sheer nutjobbery of the Tea Party) conservatism - helping people to be self-sufficient (i.e. stopping making them dependent on the merry-go-round of shelters, police, ambulance etc), whilst saving money for John Q. Taxpayer. It just does to show how much the loons (and I'm trying to be polite) of the Tea Party and hard right of the the Rupublican Party, have utterly distorted and corrupted the idea of conservatism for their own ideological ends.

CF


(With regards to the 'pinko, commie liberal' - Sibling says that I'm idologically bipolar. I'm liberal on some things, conservative on others. Averages out overall to something slightly left of centre I'd guess - but that's left of centre in the UK, which would make it pretty damn liberal in the US, where the politics is much more right wing).

[bonsaiherb]

Cardinal Fang,

(With regards to the 'pinko, commie liberal' - Sibling says that I'm idologically bipolar. I'm liberal on some things, conservative on others. Averages out overall to something slightly left of centre I'd guess - but that's left of centre in the UK, which would make it pretty damn liberal in the US, where the politics is much more right wing).

I hope you understood I was being tongue in cheek here. I suppose I would fit your own self
description quite well. Somehow, I managed to entrench myself into one of the most conservative counties of this State. Commentaries as to what I was and where I could emigrate to have often gone far beyond my jesting words. Usually an F. word preceded them.

What do I care. I will simply go out on my yacht and continue my diet.

[Cardinal Fang]

Cardinal Fang,

(With regards to the 'pinko, commie liberal' - Sibling says that I'm idologically bipolar. I'm liberal on some things, conservative on others. Averages out overall to something slightly left of centre I'd guess - but that's left of centre in the UK, which would make it pretty damn liberal in the US, where the politics is much more right wing).

I hope you understood I was being tongue in cheek here. I suppose I would fit your own self
description quite well. Somehow, I managed to entrench myself into one of the most conservative counties of this State. Commentaries as to what I was and where I could emigrate to have often gone far beyond my jesting words. Usually an F. word preceded them.

I know you were being tongue in cheek. Also know that to a chunk of the US population I would be considered a "pinko, commie liberal". IMHO, I think it's time we reclaimed those words as a point of pride.

CF

[bonsaiherb]

IMHO, I think it's time we reclaimed those words as a point of pride.

I don't usually want to post a link to a website of mine (esp. when it is screwed up) but Wayne Ostlund was such a person and I followed or walked in the same footsteps.

I hope some of you will accept my Memorial tribute to him.
http://sweetgeodes.com/senft/?page_id=3085

The wine glass of friends is now nearly empty here in Sequim.

[daftbeaker]

A video I was shown recently about literacy

It's powerful stuff.

[bonsaiherb]

Thank you Daftbeaker,

This was a pretty depressing video until the end. Ten minutes a day or night are a MUCH needed giving and some REAL Books for Christmas might be a beginning. Don't know the statistics but I think Finland, Norway and GREENLAND have the highest literacy rates in the world.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Yeats, Kipling, Tolkien, James Joyce etc. In America we had Hemingway, Pearl S. Buck, Steinbeck, Samuel Clemens and a forgotten expatriate named Lafcadio Hearn.

OMG. when I did a search on him, my own page came up first. Sadly I only own five of his books and they are hard to find.
http://sweetgeodes.com/senft/?page_id=3328

Now regarding James Joyce, 10 minutes might get you through a few paragraphs but the idea to READ and STORY TELLING is great. I failed on that book!

Support your local bookstores, not the box stores or Internet ones. Get into a relationship with the owners and staff and they will give you great ideas for books for your significant other, kids or grand kids. Screw the Kindles, BUY BOOKS!
BTW I used to read Kafka and many of the German and Russian novelists to my kids. One small ad plug might be for an American cartoonist/poet by the name of Shel Silverstein. Some of his books were GREAT.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... 659AAxPJlS

Mama I lost my head" are some of the tales I read to my kids.

I also loved one 'old folk singer" Tom Lehrer, "Bright College Days" "Sliding down the razor blade of life." http://www.inthe00s.com/archive/parodie ... 2237.shtml

Yah from Kafka to such tunes, my kids learned literacy. BTW, I sat in on some of Tom Lehrer's classes. Some of his lectures were really like his songs. So brilliant!

[Roy Hunter]

Adam West and Leonard Nimoy playing the drums. It is cool, and I found it on the Interwebs (in between all the pictures of cats).

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

Adam West and Leonard Nimoy playing the drums. It is cool, and I found it on the Interwebs (in between all the pictures of cats).

You should probably be knighted for this.

[Roy Hunter]

You should probably be knighted for this.

No, not really.

I am (in UK terms) a Republican. Betty and Phil can fuck off (although I have met Betty, and Phil too). They are nice people, but hardly qualified to run a country.