Hugo Black & The Right to Know

Hugo Black, associate justice on the Supreme Court, was a judge who got it, particularly when it came to the role of the press and why having competition in the fourth estate was vital to the proper maintenance of democracy, something under attack as giant multinational corporations do the merger game in order to attain even more power at the expense of a viable press, a process essential if a democracy is to survive. 

The much-admired Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black may be rolling in his grave at the prospect of a merger between 21st Century Fox and Time Warner Inc., which would reduce control of the major Hollywood studios to five owners, from six, and major television producers to four, from five.

“The widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public,” he wrote in the majority opinion that decided a 1945 antitrust case involving major newspaper publishers and The Associated Press. “The First Amendment affords not the slightest support for the contention that a combination to restrain trade in news and views has any constitutional immunity.”

As seen below, 6 corporations own 90+% of all news and media organizations.

This infographic created by Jason at Frugal Dad shows that almost all media comes from the same six sources.

That's consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983. 

NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them.

But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year.

As George Carlin famously said, "You have no choice". Food for thought, don't you think?

Recursive to the Max :)

The Mandelbrot Set is digital recursion to the max as seen by this very cool video showing why this is true. Chaos rules and, when you get a chance, read about how Mandelbrot discovered fractals, thus opening up, in conjunction with Lorenz and the Butterfly Effect, the amazing science of chaos and how it applies to the real world. :)

The Butterfly Effect

Unconscious

Seeing a video like this knocks me out. Namibia, barrel waves and intensity. 

Nature never disappoints. :)

Mid Summer

Mid Summer, the best time in CT to see how nature works at small scale, something that never disappoints though the only butterflies seen to date is a tough old codger able to survive numerous attacks by denizens of the avian world and another who hugs the ground whenever possible. :) Enjoy

Zeno's Paradox :)

Writing is hard because there's no filter. It's from brain to device/paper etc, etc., so making one's thoughts comprehensible enough for another person to understand is difficult at best. It's similar to a high-wire act without the net, something requiring courage, or foolishness to do, a notion that probably describes yours truly when writing "wonderful" missives for all to read on good old BRT. :)

Evolution - writ large :)

Birds of Paradise are simply astounding as you will see in both these videos. 

The long version is seen below. Enjoy.

Web Electric

The web as public utility is, to BRT, the best way to save net neutrality. The web connect, provided by a public utility, i.e.your "friendly" electric company, could be the way to make it happen, something that terrifies the Comcasts of the world to no end.

The business lobby often demands that government get out of the way of private corporations, so that competition can flourish and high-quality services can be efficiently delivered to as many consumers as possible. Yet, in an epic fight over telecommunications policy, the paradigm is now being flipped on its head, with corporate forces demanding the government squelch competition and halt the expansion of those high-quality services. Whether and how federal officials act may ultimately shape the future of America’s information economy.

The front line in this fight is Chattanooga, Tennessee, where officials at the city’s public electric utility, EPB, realized that smart-grid energy infrastructure could also provide consumers super-fast Internet speeds at competitive prices. A few years ago, those officials decided to act on that revelation. Like a publicly traded corporation, the utility issued bonds to raise resources to invest in the new broadband project. Similarly, just as many private corporations ended up receiving federal stimulus dollars, so did EPB, which put those monies into its new network.

The result is a system that now provides the nation’s fastest broadband speeds at prices often cheaper than the private competition. As the Chattanooga Times Free Press noted a few years back, “EPB offers faster Internet speeds for the money, and shows equal pep in both uploading and downloading content, with Comcast and AT&T trailing on quickness.” Meanwhile, EPB officials tell the Washington Post that the utility’s telecom services have become “a great profit center” — an assertion confirmed by a Standard & Poor credit upgrade notice pointing out that the utility “is now covering all costs from telephone, video and Internet revenue, as well as providing significant financial benefit to the electric system.”

Needless to say, this is an elegant solution to maintaining NN from the tech perspective but the gotcha in all of this is...you guessed it, DC.

That’s where Washington comes in. With Census figures showing more than 1 in 5 Tennessee residents having no Internet connection, EPB is now proposing to offer its ultra-fast services to new communities. But it needs the Federal Communications Commission to preempt the Tennessee statute prohibiting the utility from competing with private telecom companies outside its current market.

For EPB, the good news is that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly pledged that in the name of competition and broadband access, he will support preempting state laws like Tennessee’s. However, in a capital run by money, EPB may still be politically overpowered. After all, as a community-owned utility in a midsized city, EPB does not have the lobbyists and campaign cash to match those of behemoths like Comcast and AT&T. What the utility does have is a solid track record and a pro-consumer, pro-competition argument.

The question is: Will that be enough to prevent Wheeler from backing down or being blocked by Congress? The future of the Internet may be at stake in the answer.

"Well do ya?" - Dirty Harry

Barcelona a Go Go :)

Both my wife and son have been to Barcelona and both were absolutely taken by the city. This amazing time lapse by Rob Whitworth gives a glimpse of just how amazing Barcelona truly is. :)

Eminent Domain

Fracking, the tech BRT truly loves, has overrun PA, thanks to government collusion, greed and now, the increasing abuse of eminent domain on the part of Sunoco Logistics Partners, the largest fracking entity in the state.

“This is my house, it’s my safe zone; nobody’s going to bother me,” he says. “It was worth it for the peace of mind.”

But in late 2012, someone bothered the Coxes. A representative of oil and gas transporter Sunoco Logistics Partners — a “landsman” sent by the company to scout and buy access to their property — came to their front door and told them that Sunoco was going to dig a pipeline under their woods.

“And I went: ‘No you’re not,’” Cox says.

I kind of thought, ‘If we resist enough, they’re going to go away.’ But they didn’t.
Ronald Cox Pennsylvania homeowner

After he refused, a lawyer for Sunoco sent a letter that said the company had the power of eminent domain, including the right to survey their property and condemn it to build their pipeline. Sunoco hired a realty company to appraise the land, valuing the 23 acres at $352,000 and estimating the damage of constructing a pipeline at $2,700.

Representatives offered the Coxes $6,000. They said it was better to sign an agreement immediately, since the company would gain the right to the property anyway.

“I kind of thought, ‘If we resist enough, they’re going to go away.’ But they didn’t,” Cox says.

The Coxes didn’t know it then, but their dream home lay in the path of a metastasizing controversy that involves not only Sunoco’s bid for eminent domain but an attempt by the company to circumvent local zoning laws, all aimed at swiftly completing a sprawling, multi-year project to exploit a boom in the byproducts of the Marcellus Shale.

Read the article to see how people are starting to fight back against a company trying to game the system with cooperation of politicos like Tom Corbett, a leading advocate of fracking and PA's sitting govenor. Interesting to say the least.

Honest Gil

Honest Gill rules. Just like Bulworth, he tells the truth with humor and style. Honest Gil is a creation of Represent Us, a site dedicated to getting $$ out of politics with KY as the target state. :)

Sounds like a good idea to me.

"Same as it ever was" - Talking Heads

Earthquakes "R" Us

The new earthquake center of the world is...Oklahoma!

Oklahoma, which will heretofore be referred to as “the new California,” is continuing to undergo a spike in earthquake activity, experiencing another swarm of tremors in an incredibly short period of time.

The state’s already broken annual records for 3.0 magnitude or higher earthquakes, reaching 135 by May of this year, as compared to the two such quakes it experienced, on average, between 1978 and 2008. Many of the earthquakes experienced since 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey noted, occurred near injection wells, which are used to dispose of wastewater from fracking. Earlier this month, a study published in the journal Science supported the connection, linking over 100 earthquakes experienced in the state to just four wells.

Any questions as to why fracking is bad tech to the max, particularly if done near any operation requiring stable ground like nuclear reactors, hospitals or other endeavors like driving, living in a house or working in a high rise, etc., ect., ect., that cannot handle the kind of damage said tech has done to Oklahoma, a state that never experienced earthquakes of any magnitude prior to 2009. As for California, fracking plays a role in generating earthquakes as per Oklahoma as seen by On Shaky Ground, a report depicting the additional "benefits" brought forth by the one trick pony known as fracking.

Bon Appetit

 One of my favorite sites, Why Evolution is True, posted this gem as a paean to the World Cup. :)

Synergies

Everything is connected, nothing happens in isolation as seen through the lens of quantum theory, a universal condition that readily applies to the plight of the honey bee and what is being done to this wonderful insect through a synergistic set of atrocities. 

The real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more. A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides. Alone, each represents a benign dose. But together they form a toxic soup of chemicals whose interplay can substantially reduce the effectiveness of bees’ immune systems, making them more susceptible to diseases.

In reading Our Bees, Ourselves, one readily sees commonality with the honey bee problem with our own in terns of  our continued existence on this planet as we are doing the same thing to earth as to the bee. In addition to poison, we plunder the seas, pollute the environment and push the resource overshoot ever closer to June, the point of no return in terms of earth being able to sustain us as our population grows ever larger while earth's resources diminish ever faster. 

Our survival depends on conservation, bio diversity and the complete transition to sustainables while, at the same time, finally abandoning the notion of unlimited growth based on the false premise that earth's treasures are infinite while in fact, they are anything but.

Creativity Is...

Fast Company posted a blurb titled Secrets from the brains of 13 creative geniuses. The gist of the piece includes the following:

• Creative people like to teach themselves rather then be taught by others.
• Many creative people love both the arts and the sciences.
• Creative people persist against skepticism and rejection.
• Creative geniuses have crappy ideas too.

To get a better take on creativity, the masterwork by Arthur Koestler titled The Act of Creation comes to mind, a book quoted numerous times in BRT as Koestler gets to the heart of the creative process in a fashion unmatched, IMHO, by any other writer brave enough to take on a subject as vast as this.

What's even more amazing about Koestler is the fact he was largely self taught in genetics, which forms the second part of Act. Amazingly prescient regarding how life works at the molecular level, it's somewhat akin to Alan Turing's take on Chaos back in the early 50s. 

As for yours truly dealing with creativity...

• Teaching oneself is incredibly rewarding.
• The arts/science equation are hand and glove glories without limitation.
• Persistence, in the face of skepticism and rejection, are conditions known all too well to this writer of BRT but one preservers because all creative people do, without reservation, because to bring anything new and of value to the world is scary, fun and hard to do even if's a joke of the most salacious kind. :)
• Crappy work is an old friend of mine that I try to eliminate as best as possible. Hopefully none of that nonsense appears in BRT but, as Fat Waller said, No one knows, do one? :)

False Alarm :)

Yours truly thought this was one of the Tetrad of lunar eclipses coming this way in 2014/15 but I was wrong. The atmosphere played tricks while shooting the full moon on a hot, mosquito laden July 12th. The pix below was taken on the 11th. Less mosquitoes but much sharper image due to the clearer atmosphere allowing luna to reflect her glory without restriction. Oh well, Sept 15th looms. :)

12/12/12

A very good friend of mine and I did a video on 12/12/12 taping the Guinness world record for carolers going door to door to 14 houses to raise money for a family in Stamford, CT. Not only was it for a good cause, it also was the absolute best in having fun and sharing something special with a lot of people in CT. Enjoy. It was one of the best things Doug & I have ever done for good old CT. :)

In closing, it's a great honor to be included in the 12/12/12 One Day on Earth project. Maybe we can do another in 2014/15. One never knows, do one?

Mayday.us

Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer who gets it, creative commons, has founded Mayday.us , a "SuperPac to end all SuperPacs", an entity designed to "Take our Democracy Back", something BRT has talked about on numerous occasions. Pacs are a turn off to yours truly without question but Lessig's is different. Check it out, it's worth a look.

Launched May 1, the first-round goal was to raise $1 million from ordinary Americans in one month. Nearly 13,000 individuals contributed more than $1 million in 13 days. That was matched, dollar-for-dollar, by a small group of millionaires — Democrat, Republican and Libertarian. With $2 Million in the bank, the results startled the critics. Cable news and the blogosphere crackled with excitement – even if mixed with some “wait-and-see” skepticism about the next turn.

The second MayDay campaign began on June 1. That’s when Lessig and his small army of volunteers launched the next round with the goal to raise $5 million by July 4. That too would be matched, dollar-for-dollar. Supporters with name recognition, like Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak and Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, aired You Tube videos urging every day citizens to pledge donations in any amount. Results did occur but modestly against a bar set so high. The numbers increased gradually approaching $3 Million, but June was winding down. Time was running out.

That’s when the full effect of this political earthquake became apparent. A crowd-funding phenomenon kicked in, networked through the Internet and social media. Where 13,000 people contributed and won pledges from others in May, these numbers grew to more than 50,000 by the first days of July. With the days turning into hours, the tallies began to mount. 

The MayDay PAC raised $1 Million in 13 days during the month of May. In Round Two, more than $1 Million was raised on one day alone -- July 4th. On that day, the MayDay PAC reached its goal of $5 Million. 

Now with $12 Million, the PAC will seek to win five congressional races in 2014 as a test. The bar will then again be raised with bigger goals aimed at fundamental campaign reform in 2016. MayDay, a volunteer effort without lobbyists or consultants, seeks to make “government by the people” a national reality. The Washington establishment and Big Money people are on alert. Watch for the next tremor.

Interesting to say the least.

The right to know

Seen above is organic corn, courtesy Mother Earth News; delicious, no additives, no GMO, something you can enjoy without issuer. Now, compare this with Monsanto's.

A highly controversial paper by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues has been republished after a stringent peer review process.

The chronic toxicity study examines the health impacts on rats of eating  a commercialized genetically modified (GM) maize, Monsanto's NK603 glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup.

The original study, published in Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) in September 2012, found severe liver and kidney damage and hormonal disturbances in rats fed the GM maize and low levels of Roundup that are below those permitted in drinking water in the EU.

However it was retracted by the editor-in-chief of the Journal in November 2013 after a sustained campaign of criticism and defamation by pro-GMO scientists.

Click here for the complete report.

Question, don't we have the right to know what's in our food? Monsanto and significant others don't, something most disquieting don't you think?

Disruptive @ 16

Seems a 16 year old has done something truly disruptive, Nicholas Rubin has built a web app tallying up monies our so called "representatives" take in order to stay in power. Nicholas' plug in works with Safari, Chrome and Firefox on Mac, Linux and Windows. Get it to become informed, our democracy needs this to the max.

This is how it works.

Open source rules!

The art of camouflage :)

Nightjars are mysterious, they nest on the ground, have tiny feet and catch prey with their mouth. Seldom seen, they make their presence known through eerie calls starting at dusk and lasting throughout the night. Their camouflage is something else, as seen by this pix and another seen below.

Factoid: Owls are nighjar relatives. :)

The rise of digital

3D CG is everywhere in film, especially in blockbusters like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where motion capture and composting has become simply astounding in terms of just how seamless this tech has become with live action, something totally different from Tron, the first film that implemented serious 3D back in the day.  This featurette, depicting how special effects are used in Dawn, is most illuminating. To read more, go to Red Shark for detailed info on the process. 

As for reality, the number of apes vs the number of humans, with weapons, on planet earth, please.

Seen below is the original Tron Trailer, circa 1982. Enjoy. :)

The Corporate Veil

Definition:

A legal concept that separates the personality of a corporation from the personalities of its shareholders, and protects them from being personally liable for the company's debts and other obligations. This protection is not ironclad or impenetrable. Where a court determines that a company's business was not conducted in accordance with the provisions of corporate legislation (or that it was just a façade for illegal activities) it may hold the shareholders personally liable for the company's obligations under the legal concept of lifting the corporate veil.

In a terrific piece from Mother Jones, the Hobby Lobby decision is deemed Pyrrhic without question.

That separation is what legal and business scholars call the "corporate veil," and it's fundamental to the entire operation. Now, thanks to the Hobby Lobby case, it's in question. By letting Hobby Lobby's owners assert their personal religious rights over an entire corporation, the Supreme Court has poked a major hole in the veil. In other words, if a company is not truly separate from its owners, the owners could be made responsible for its debts and other burdens.

And so a corporation is a person eh? Seems Blowback applies in this case, don't you think?

"And so it goes." - K. Vonnegut

The Public's Trust

The Supreme Court is losing the only thing it really has to maintain it’s power, the trust of the American public. No mater what side you’re on, if you are patriotic American, that’s scary. The court that was established by the Founding Fathers was expected to be fair and impartial, and honest. That the people no longer believe it is, and that some of its own members share that view, is truly frightening news for our country on this July Fourth holiday.

Seems BRT is not the only one who feels the Robert's SC is the worst in history.

The Big 4

BRT has written often about surveillance as my loyal readers know as this is a topic both fascinating and scary, particularly after revelations about just how pervasive it truly is courtesy Edward Snowden.  What's interesting about this has also been the relative lack of analysis regarding how surveillance impacts the economy. something that has been rectified in an excellent piece from Washington's Blog titled 4 Ways that Mass Surveillance Destroys the Economy.

To whit:

1. Creativity - A Prime Drive of Prosperity - Requires Privacy
2. The Free Flow of Information Requires Privacy
3. Mass Surveillance Hurts Productivity
4. Trust and the Rule of Law – Two Main determinants of Prosperity – Are Undermined By Surveillance

While reading this, a BRT post titled Panopticon comes to mind. Chilling to say the least. Seen below is the full realization of The Theory of Surveillance: The PANOPTICON the masterwork of  Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian philosopher and theorist of British legal reform.

Why?

Question, why don't we have free access to our medical records along the lines of this graphic, something we take for granted when getting a receipt describing what we purchased when buying a computer, a car or even groceries at the local supermarket. Makes one think, doesn't it, in terms of just how bad our healthcare system truly is because our medical records are ours, we bought them legitimately but, in most cases, the receipt for services rendered is missing in action. so what gives, why do we tolerate this nonsense? We don't when buying said computer or car or anything else requiring a receipt so why do we accept this lack of service when it comes to our medical records, the most important data we must have in order to continue living on planet earth with any degree of success. Makes no sense to me as to why, does this to you?  

End of rant.

Hopefully Not :)

At this point in time, Google does know what BRT is all about, for now. :)

The Great Game - ME Edition

T. E. Lawrence was prescient in warning about the great powers and their true intent regarding the Middle East after WW 1.  

“So far as Syria is concerned, it is France and not Turkey that is the enemy.” – T. E. Lawrence, February 1915.

It was a curious comment by the oddball but unarguably brilliant British agent and scholar, Thomas Edward Lawrence. The time was World War I, and England and France were locked in a death match with the Triple Alliance, of which Ottoman Turkey was a prominent member. But it was nonetheless true, and no less now than then. In the Middle East, to paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not the past; it’s the present.

In his 1915 letter, Lawrence was describing French machinations over Syria, but he could just as well have been commenting on England’s designs in the region, which Allied leaders in World War I came to call “The Great Loot”—the imperial vivisection of the Middle East.

As Iraq tumbles into a yet another civil war, it is important to remember how all this came about, and why adding yet more warfare to the current crisis will perpetuate exactly what the “Great Loot” set out to do: tear an entire region of the world asunder.

Divide and Conquer

There is a scorecard here filled with names, but they are not just George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice—though the latter helped mightily to fuel the latest explosion.

They are names most people have never heard of, like Sixth Baronet of Sledmere Mark Sykes and French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot. In 1915, these two mid-level diplomats created a secret plan to divvy up the Middle East. Almost a century later that imperial map not only defines the region and most of the players, but continues to spin out tragedy after tragedy, like some grotesque, historical Groundhog Day.

So, in hindsight, Mission Accomplished applies... and...

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” - Mark Twain

T. E Lawrence

With Bells & Whistles :)

Bells & whistles and awesome tech from Cassini-Hygens. enjoy. :)

Addendum - Had to add another.

The Estates of the Realm

A quick summary of the corporate owned SC is in order as seen by the New Republic. Concise, accurate and devastating, it's an article that should be read by every American concerned with what is happening to the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.

The Roberts Court is leading a free speech revolution of its own, but this time for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy.

This revolution is unfolding across a wide range of First Amendment provisions and doctrines, from Citizens United v. FEC, which protects political speech by corporations to Sorrell v. IMS, which makes it easier for corporations to challenge laws that regulate commercial speech. Today’s bitterly divided rulings in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn continue this trend by turning the First Amendment’s protection for the free exercise of religion and freedom of association into a sword to free corporations and other powerful interests from government regulation. More than the Court’s earlier First Amendment revolution, this series of deeply divided rulings resembles the aggressive, divisive, and now overturned rulings of the Lochner era, named after the infamous 1905 case Lochner v. New York, one of a number of cases in which the Supreme Court of the early twentieth century that struck down laws designed to prevent the exploitation of workers. During this era, the Supreme Court repeatedly expanded the constitutional rights of corporations and other businesses while dismissively treating the government’s interest in economic regulation. Today, we are seeing a revival of Lochner in the name of protecting free speech and free exercise of religion.    

Estates of the Realm - The Clergy, The Nobles, The Commoners.

The Age of Unreason

A firestorm is coming, unleashed by the supremes, first with Citizens United and McCutcheon, now with Greece NY and Hobby Lobby. Class war and the triumph of religion over science is  a recipe for disaster, enabled by a feckless court who values personal beliefs over the national interest. The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when establishing separation of church and state as a key component of the Constitution because of two reasons, one, sound governance as a government based on secular law can be applied to everyone without issue, something that has worked for America for well over 220+ years prior to the Roberts court, and two, reduce complexity as there are many religions other then christianity and when a government is skewed to one, belivers of these different faiths will resent and resist said government with ever mounting anger (Middle East anyone?), something Alito and company just don't seem to realize when pulling the trigger on Hobby Lobby.

Your's truly agrees with the excellent analysis by the Daily Beast regarding Hobby Lobby in terms of religion trumping science and the notion of the ruling becoming  a Pyrrhic victory  

because of the multiplicity of religions and the firestorm that is coming due to the supremes incredible stupidity when dealing with an issue as dangerous as this one truly is.

Well, under Hobby Lobby’s imaginative causal nexus, they morally responsible for it.  Thus photographers, bakers, hotel owners, restaurateurs, and retailers of any kind can object to “facilitating” gay weddings, or interracial ones, or interfaith ones.  Maybe Hobby Lobby can ban gays from their registry.

Moreover, with an increasingly multi-religious America, subsequent claims may not be as beloved to conservatives as this one.  May pious Muslims ban immodestly dressed women, or all women for that matter, from their company’s stores?  May they refuse to hire women as employees?

Or, as Justice Ginsberg noted, how about corporations owned by people who are religiously barred from blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses), antidepressants (Scientologists), and vaccinations (Christian Scientists)?  On its face, Hobby Lobby says it’s not about those cases.  But its logic certainly applies: if I believe that vaccinations are morally wrong, my company should not have to provide coverage for them.

The Triumph of Death - Pieter Brueghel

The Firestorm begins