Isilion

The ability to raise wages lies in the hands of both consumers and companies. Suppose consumers began tipping a dollar to every employee who works for a business. A checkout clerk at Wal-Mart would make $20 to $30 an hour from this form of exchange.

Yet I have never heard any defenders of the poor advocate such a system. This consumer behavior would raise wages for the poor ten times more than the few cents or dollars suggested by minimum wage laws. Consumers would have the ability to improve the welfare of low-skilled workers directly.

Read it all here

Though I’m not aware of any actual examples, I could easily imagine some non-western “primitive” society where they had the local equivalent of tip jars at the Wal-Mart and people actually used them. Not only would it create a vibrant economy, with a lot of little rivers of money flowing where they will, but it would also be indicative of a caring loving people. I hesitate to think how most people I know would respond to the same thing.

Among other things the Sepher Yetzirah groups the Hebrew letters by a simple but effective phonetic system based on how and where in the mouth the sounds are formed: in the throat, against the palate, tongue on the of the mouth, tongue against the teeth and with the lips. The first letters of each group–Aleph, Gimel, Daleth, Zain, Beth [ אגדזב ]–are pronounced ah-ga-dah-zah-bah. If you say it as a word, even silently, you can feel the progression from within your throat out to and through your lips. It works like a subtle mouth yoga if you say it repeatedly.

ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah

It works best at a moderate pace, but you can play around with it, varying the speed. It gets more interesting if you ponder the symbolic meanings and association with the letters. Doing it backwards is an out-to-innish sort of thing. It doesn’t work that well with bah-zah-dah-ga-ah, but other combinations do.

If I figured right, given that there are four throat letters, four palate letters, five tongue to roof, five tongue to teeth and four lip letters, there are sixteen-hundred combinations. Quite enough to build a Golem if one goes in for that sort of thing. At any rate it is an interesting exercise in neurophysiology from the inside out.

I’m off Gian Mind in the morning… but it is mostly just to do yard work around my camp site for Drum ‘n Splash next week. I love summer.

What exactly do anti-Americanists dislike? There are several possible candidates: the people, the culture, the tradition of freedom, the commercial spirit, the U.S. government’s foreign policies.

The evidence is strong that non-Americans for the most part do not hate individual Americans or their culture, freedom, and commercial spirit. On the contrary, people in other most places seem to have a warm affection for Americans in their private capacity. Polls repeatedly show this, including polls done in Arab countries.

That leaves only one real object of foreign hostility, U.S. foreign policy. And let’s face it, what’s not to dislike?
www.fff.org/comment/com0606i.asp

Should I say I walk through a goodly chunk of Imperial City each morning on my way to my post by a telephone servicing customers? I pass street musicians, especially around the Metro stop. A fellow in with long dreads, a drum machine, a battery powered amp, an effects peddle and beautifully baroque chorusing flanged guitar sparks drifting around the arched ceiling and bouncing off the shining morning walls. An old Chinese man playing what almost seems to be washtub bass, but with high mournful warbles as he drags his long bow over its one string. Sometime I drop a buck or two or twenty. Some days I’m just in too much of a hurry to even notice.

Anyway, I was just listening to this song.

FOR FREE
Artist: Joni Mitchell
Album: Ladies of The Canyon

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools
I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking on green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet, for free

Now me I play for fortunes
And those velvet curtain calls
I’ve got a black limousine
And two gentlemen
Escorting me to the halls
And I play if you have the money
Or if you’re a friend to me
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never
Been on their T.V.
So they passed his music by
I meant to go over and ask for a song
Maybe put on a harmony…
I heard his refrain
As the signal changed
He was playing real good, for free

…this one is out there. It always makes me feel a little better.

HJ0125 LRB094 20306 RLC 58347 r

1 HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

2 WHEREAS, Section 603 of Jefferson’s Manual of the Rules of
3 the United States House of Representatives allows federal
4 impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of
5 a state legislature; and

6 WHEREAS, President Bush has publicly admitted to ordering
7 the National Security Agency to violate provisions of the 1978
8 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a felony, specifically
9 authorizing the Agency to spy on American citizens without
10 warrant; and

11 WHEREAS, Evidence suggests that President Bush authorized
12 violation of the Torture Convention of the Geneva Conventions,
13 a treaty regarded a supreme law by the United States
14 Constitution; and

15 WHEREAS, The Bush Administration has held American
16 citizens and citizens of other nations as prisoners of war
17 without charge or trial; and

18 WHEREAS, Evidence suggests that the Bush Administration
19 has manipulated intelligence for the purpose of initiating a
20 war against the sovereign nation of Iraq, resulting in the
21 deaths of large numbers of Iraqi civilians and causing the
22 United States to incur loss of life, diminished security and
23 billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses; and

24 WHEREAS, The Bush Administration leaked classified
25 national secrets to further a political agenda, exposing an
26 unknown number of covert U. S. intelligence agents to potential
27 harm and retribution while simultaneously refusing to
28 investigate the matter; and

29 WHEREAS, The Republican-controlled Congress has declined

HJ0125 - 2 - LRB094 20306 RLC 58347 r

1 to fully investigate these charges to date; therefore, be it

2 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
3 NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE
4 SENATE CONCURRING HEREIN, that the General Assembly of the
5 State of Illinois has good cause to submit charges to the U. S.
6 House of Representatives under Section 603 that the President
7 of the United States has willfully violated his Oath of Office
8 to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
9 States; and be it further

10 RESOLVED, That George W. Bush, if found guilty of the
11 charges contained herein, should be removed from office and
12 disqualified to hold any other office in the United States.

www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp

You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math.

To see them produce a ninny and then follow him loyally into the swamp for five years is disconcerting, like seeing the Rolling Stones take up lite jazz. So here we are at an uneasy point in our history, mired in a costly war and getting nowhere, a supine Congress granting absolute power to a president who seems to get smaller and dimmer, and the best the GOP can offer is San Franciscophobia? This is beyond pitiful. This is violently stupid.

It came from here

If there’s another major terrorist attack on American soil, here’s my prediction: Congress will again wake up from its slumber and respond positively to the president’s call for PATRIOT Acts 2, 3, and 4, followed by new rounds of indefinite military detentions, illegal wiretapping, kidnappings and renditions, censorship, and more.

And U.S. officials will again tell us that the suspension of our rights and freedom is only temporary and that it will protect us from the terrorists who hate America because of our freedom and values, not because of the homicides at Haditha, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the torture and sex abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi deaths from the sanctions, the destruction of Iraq, and the other aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

After all, they’ll remind us, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have brought love, peace, freedom, and democracy to the Iraqi people – well, at least to those who are not dead.

Do Hadithans Hate Us for Our Freedoms?