crisis?

It's very probable that the current "crisis/disaster" in the world's economic system, in addition to not really being a crisis (a crisis is when we run out of air or water, not money!) was caused by the World Wide Web.

As we shrink transaction costs and latency, we discover that the efficiencies and savings generated therefrom are based on getting rid of redundant labor: jobs.

The laying off of millions of "workers" is how these savings get banked, albeit probably in the wrong bank accounts!

This new society has already destroyed the "phone company" and the "banking industry" and will shortly do the same for "insurance" and many other familiar institutions, including charities and even religions and governments with their borders and armies.

We are not addressing how best to benefit from the elimination of pointless "jobs". So long as we subsidize employment rather than people, this will continue.

Love.

New Year's Resolutions?

Last year I staged some of my favorite notions as Prophecies. Progress towards their fulfillment was strongly felt and even participated in at TPAC 2008, which was a triumph of its kind.

This year's entry is more of a "Wish List" than a set of resolutions/prophecies. I hope to be able to, in however small a way, take part in the Web Foundation's effort to do major Webspread.

I found out how individuals without company connections can join telecompioneers.org and did so. I expect there to be a "Web Pioneers" group with somewhat similar aims.

I guess the most striking thing at Mandelieu is how very young most of the participants are - they're like my surrogate grandchildren (or perhaps even great-grandchildren). What a treat!

Love.

BNP

The subject acronym refers to a chemical that the heart emits when it is undergoing congestive heart failure and it serves to notify you that your edema (swelling ankles and a bit of fluid in the lungs) is telling you that your heart is being stretched beyond its normal limits and, except for sensible intercession, you're quite mortal.

So Fillmore drove me in to the ER and I stayed for two nights being dosed with lasix, which makes one pee like a race horse, but then it clears up and you go home with instructions to drink less fluids, so I feel about like I felt but with the certain knowledge that these wonderful times won't last forever.

But my pacemaker batteries are good for another seven years and either my mind is clear or I harbor the delusion that it is!

Good to be back where the food is edible (the hospital's is worse than the airline's!) and I have my "precious email" and like that.

Love.

Come on, man!

From today's NY Times:

"When a Congressional investigation revealed in June that Dr. Joseph
Biederman, a world-renowned child psychiatrist, had earned far more
money from drug makers than he had reported to his university, he
said that his interests were "solely in the advancement of medical
treatment through rigorous and objective study."

Court documents reveal that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child
psychiatrist, pushed Johnson & Johnson to fund a research center
whose goal was "to move forward the commercial goals of J&J."

I wonder when just one of these mother-fuckers will give us just a little tiny bit of mea culpa. Wouldn't it be refreshing to have some unctious/self-righteous "authority" cop out that he was simply a greed-head that didn't give a shit about his oath, etc.

Oh, well, one han wish.

Love.