A big shout out to all the Homies:The Second Annual E3 Hype Massacre
This week, Zero Punctuation shares some thoughts on games hyped at e3 2009.
Plotting the Salary of Politicians versus their Effectiveness
What World MPs Really Make [shakeupmedia.com] consists of a minimalistic, full-screen scatter plot that maps the base pay of the world's parliamentarians, ranked by country and expressed as a multiple of per capita GDP, versus a "Good Governance Index", which itself is a combination of the Democracy Index, the UN's Human Development Index and the Perception of Corruption Index.
In short, the further away the country dot is removed from the yellow cross, the more their MPs are being paid. The larger the (counter-clockwise) angle from the yellow line, the worse their corresponding governance.
Via jvetrau.
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NASA To Trigger Massive Explosion On the Moon In Search of Ice
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Hackers Find Remote iPhone Crack
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Money that is truly earned
Fruits of Poison
Yesterday a man said to harbor extremist views opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, killing one security guard and wounding another person, still unidentified. Addressing this tragedy, Joan Walsh of Salon asks, "Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?"
In Buddhism, the answer, clearly, is yes. Violent actions begin with violent thoughts. Violent words spread violent thoughts like a virus. Through mass media and the Internet, violence can become pandemic.
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha said,
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow. [Acharya Buddharakkhita translation]
The Buddhist approach to morality is not to follow a list of moral rules but to discipline mind, and thereby thoughts, words and actions. Essential to this discipline is not harboring the Three Poisons -- greed, hate and ignorance.
In western culture we tend to think that feeling hate, thinking hate, even speaking hate, is not that big a deal as long as we don't commit violent acts. People have a right to say what they think, after all, and as a civil matter of course they do. And I have a right to cover myself in maple syrup and sit on an anthill, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
It's useful to think of hate as a poison. In "Right Speech" I described a cab ride with a driver who appeared to spend his workdays listening to talk radio. The man literally was squirming with hate; he wriggled in his seat, barking responses to the radio chatter and pounding the dashboard with his hand for emphasis. It was obvious that listening to hateful speech hour after hour had poisoned him. I never saw the man again and do not know if he acted out his hate, but certainly he was primed to do so.
Reporters for the New York Daily News interviewed the ex-wife of the man accused of the Holocaust Museum shooting.
When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred. "[It] ate him alive like a cancer," said the 69-year-old woman, who did not want her name used. "It's all he would talk about. When I questioned him, he would get angry and abusive.
This is precisely what Buddhism teaches that hate will do to us, if we harbor it.
We must not assume that hate is a problem only for some people and not for others. In America angry speech comes from all parts of the political spectrum. But as my friend David Neiwert documents in his book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, currently speech coming from the Right is much more likely to be eliminationist -- that is, expressing the desire to eliminate one's opponents.
He also documents that in other times in American history, an epidemic of eliminationist rhetoric has been followed by actual violence. To some people, hateful rhetoric gives permission to commit violence. And today we are finding that people who commit violent acts because of hate first engaged in hateful, violent speech.
The word culture is very appropriate here. Zealots spewing hateful speech culture hate, and this creates a culture in which cruelty and violence, even murder, become permissible. People with a head full of hate are genuine hotheads, fevered with passions that burn away reason. They are poisoned.
I see the connection between hateful speech and violent acts as clearly as I see my hands on the keyboard right now. And it seems to me that speech in mass media and the Internet is growing more extreme. The speakers, consciously or unconsciously, are encouraging each other to push their rhetoric further and further into a red zone.
What can we do? As individuals we can keep our cool and not give in to the temptation to answer hate with hate. We can practice the Four Immeasurables and cultivate loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. We can hope that, eventually, more people will understand that thoughts and speech really are connected to violence. In the short term, however, I don't know what can be done to persuade people that their rhetoric really is causing violence.
See also: "Dealing With Anger" and a Shambhala Sun interview with Charles Johnson.
Access to Insight
A New Renaissance?
James Thornton, an environmental lawyer/activist, has an essay in the Sydney Morning Herald called "Our World Needs a New Renaissance." Although it only mentions Buddhism, it presents ideas harmonious, in many ways, with Buddhism.
It's a rich essay that can't be done justice in a couple of paragraphs, but his thesis is that societies are shaped and driven by narratives -- the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we value, what is "normal." These narratives are always evolving and changing. And now we are tottering on the precipice of environmental and fiscal disaster, and humanity is in dire need of significant change.
Thornton says that what we need is nothing short of a new Renaissance. "I believe we can make up a new story to suit our needs," he writes. "That is what happened in the Renaissance. The flowering of art and finance, science and philosophy did not just happen." Great scholars met in drawing rooms to invent a new culture. People "talked, wrote, painted, experimented and financed the new culture into being."
However, my understanding is that the Renaissance was triggered when Europeans were exposed to Middle East culture through the Crusades. Europeans were exposed to new arts, new perspectives, and algebra. Minds were opened to new possibilities. The Renaissance might be explained as a kind of cultural hybrid vigor.
It is my hope that as westerners become more intimately familiar with Buddhism and the other religions and philosophies of Asia, this will open many minds to new perspectives and ways of understanding. This is not a wish that everyone convert to Buddhism; just that people go beyond their conventional ways of seeing; view the world with fresh eyes, so to speak.
I think many of our seemingly intractable problems wouldn't be so intractable if so many weren't stuck in rigid ideologies about what is "normal" and how the world is supposed to be.
GSC: Senator Ben Nelson is angry (second in a series)
Change Congress launched its second "good souls corruption" attack today, this time against Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. (Two Dems in a row; we'll be more balanced next time.) The attack has excited an hysterical response from the Senator's office. Read about the charge (here) and the response (below), and then please sign our petition to Senator Nelson.
At the beginning of May, Senator Nelson was reported to have said that including a "public option" (giving Americans a choice to opt into a public system) in a national health care proposal was a "deal breaker," and that he would "form a coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it."
On May 7, our friends at Public Campaign produced a report that showed that Senator Nelson has received more than "$2 million from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office."
These two facts together expose Senator Nelson to the charge of "Good Souls corruption" -- legal, even ethical acts that reasonably lead the public to wonder whether it is the merits or the money that is driving this Senator's decision.
Senator Nelson responded immediately to the attack by issuing the following press release. [Bracketed annotations are courtesy of me, not the Senator's staff.]
May 28, 2009 - The office of Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson today warned Nebraskans not to fall for a misleading fundraising gimmick by a special interest group called Change Congress. The group has issued a press release concerning Senator Nelson and said it was sending mailers to Nebraskans. NELSON: NEBRASKANS BEWARE OF MISLEADING FUNDRAISING GIMMICK
Senator Nelson's spokesman Jake Thompson issued this statement:
"There's no doubt Senator Nelson understands the insurance industry's important role providing health care for millions of Americans. After all, he's been an insurance executive [The ever effective, "I'm a former insurance exec!" defense], an insurance industry regulator, a governor who created a children's health insurance program, and today he represents Nebraska, arguably the insurance capital of the world. [And no doubt the insurance industry fundraising capital of the world.]But let's look at this group closely. They claim, 'Ben Nelson said he may not support Obama's plan.' Can they send us a copy of the plan? [Maybe not, but we can certainly send you again to the report indicating he opposed a key element of the President's plan] No, because President Obama hasn't offered a specific plan yet. Next, they ask if people are ready to change Congress and 'take on special interests' and 'only donate to politicians who prove they are willing to do that.' Then, they promote an election law proposal they're lobbying for.
So, let's get this straight: These people are endorsing something they haven't seen [No idea what this means: We're endorsing a bill introduced by Senators Durbin and Specter. We've seen this bill.], criticizing Senator Nelson for something he hasn't done [Interesting. Where is the press release denying the reports from the beginning of May?] and using health care as a fundraising gimmick [A "fundraising gimmick"? If he means we're fundraising around this issue, that's false. If he means our strike is a "gimmick," then what's he so upset about?] --to lobby for unrelated special interest legislation. ["UNRELATED"!?!! Are you kidding me? One can define corruption as unrelated to the objects corrupted, but that doesn't make it so.] These people have a political agenda that has nothing remotely [We have an agenda. It is to create a Congress where legislation is on the merits -- not, as it is today, guided by the implicit threat of large campaign contributors.] to do with helping Nebraskans get and keep affordable, high quality health care. Their effort is silly, sad and sophomoric. [Unlike this sort of name calling.]
Nebraskans are far too smart to fall for just another special interest group grabbing a hot issue and misrepresenting both the president [Um, where did we misrepresent the President?] and Senator Nelson [And where was Senator Nelson's letter to Ryan Grimm complaining he had misrepresented him -- before we raised this issue?] to raise money to lobby Congress [And where is our effort to raise money to lobby Congress -- we've asked people to STOP giving money to Congress.]"
Here are some facts about Senator Nelson and health care:
- During his presidential campaign and recently President Obama has said Americans who like their private insurance will get to keep it, or have the option to join another plan.
- Ben Nelson agrees and he's eager to see more details from the president, and he wants to make sure that the 85 percent of Nebraskans who have insurance today will continue to have the option of staying with their existing plans.
- Senator Nelson believes that all Americans should receive health insurance and agrees with President Obama that those who currently have health insurance should be assured that it won't be taken away from them.
- Senator Nelson is spending much of the congressional break in Nebraska this week meeting with Nebraskans, listening to them discuss health care and reform ideas. He's listening to patients, providers, employers and others. He looks forward to hearing from many more Nebraskans on ways to strengthen, broaden and provide stability in America's health care system."
- [But please notice, Senator Nelson has not indicated that he supports a central idea in Obama's plan -- that Nebraskans will also have the freedom to choose a public option if (and imagine this) the private options are too costly.]
As I said, this is only the second in a series. (The first was Representative Conyers.) We will continue to call out members of both parties -- and again, I promise, a Republican is coming soon -- who make it too easy for Americans to believe (as 88% in my district believe) that money buys results in Congress.
Congress could change this problem tomorrow -- by enacting the Trustworthy Government Now Act (aka, the "Fair Elections Now Act"). And of course Members can avoid the charge of "good souls corruption" by co-sponsoring that bill now.
But meanwhile, we'll be working hard to make more enemies, by making the status quo very uncomfortable. Nice was for the 90s. CHANGE was the promise for today.
Tell Ben Nelson to (be)come clean.
Join our Donor Strike -- promising not to support any candidate who doesn't co-sponsor the Trustworthy Government Now Act.
And finally, celebrate this good news just in: Senator Nelson now indicates that he has changed his view, and is now "open" to the public option.
Bravo, Senator. Now about the system of funding that makes people wonder?
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Mind Over Ship
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Letter to mister Fazio
Cognomen posted a photo:
I took a picture of this because of the penmanship. Despite their poor manual writing skills, the sender makes a spectacularly good sandwich.
City hall spiral
Cognomen posted a photo:
I was on the fourth floor of STL city hall, where the city collector of revenue has his payroll tax office... which is the bad news. The good news is that I wasn't in trouble when I left, and I got this cool picture on my way down.
