I used to shoplift/steal a lot. Not exactly sure when I started, but by
the time I was 6 or 7 I was pretty good at it and doing it regularly.
Eventually I got caught (funny story, that) and got in lots of trouble.

I
was grounded from my friends for “the rest of my life” and, unlike most
parents who give such punishments, it was enforced. I was moved away
and haven’t seen that group of friends for a long time. I was also put
in the middle of the country where there wasn’t much to take.

So
it tailed off pretty significantly for a while. By the time I was 16 or
17, I was back into the swing of it. Stealing things left and right.
Mostly candy, pens – little things that I wanted and couldn’t afford.
Sometimes, just taking things for the sake of taking them.

Then,
for whatever reason, part way through college, I decided that this was
not a good thing to do any more so I stopped. I returned everything I
still had at the time (anonymously) and resolved not to take anything
else.

The most amazing thing – I went through withdrawl.
Literally getting the shakes when I’d see an easy mark. My adrenaline
would skyrocket, I’d get excited, but no release.

Over time, the symptoms diminished and eventually, they pretty much stopped.

I’m
not 100% clean. Several years ago, I was at a motorcycle show and found
a knife in my pocket that I’d been looking at a few hours earlier.
Didn’t even remember it happening. A couple years ago, I was at REI
spending way too much money and wore out a pair of thermals I couldn’t
justify paying the price for but still wanted. Definitely not perfect,
but MUCH better than I was. Less than once a year, if that.

But
why would it happen at all? Its not like I don’t have enough money to
get what I want (if I plan or budget for it). Its not like what I’m
getting is worth a fraction of the risk – a person of my age getting
caught would go through a very bad time for it. Frankly, its just dumb.

Which brings me to this article.
I know when I was first “quitting”, it felt like an addiction. There’s
some physiological proof that it might be. And, even more interesting,
they’re testing a “cure” for kleptomania.

I’ve always been a bit of a thrill junkie. Perhaps its connected.

Well, in any case, I’m not
signing up for the trial. Its been over a year since I’ve had a lapse,
and while its hard to quit, its not nearly as tough as, say, smoking.
But still, its an interesting thing.

From several locations (Indymedia, City politics list, mn anarchist mailing list):

On Saturday night, in downtown Minneapolis, a zombie themed
dance-party sporting homemade radios at the nicollet mall light rail
station was attacked by police. Six people that we know of have been
charged with “simlulation of a weapon of mass destruction,” including
one juvenile. Their bail is set at $30,000 each.

Their will be a jail solidarity event on Monday, July 23rd at 9am at
the hennepin county jail at 400 s. 5th st. in downtown Minneapolis.
The people that we know are arrested are Christian Utne, Raphi
Rechitski, Jaime Lee Jones, Kate Kibby, and her brother “bean” (Kyle),
and Jake. They are all still being held as of Sunday evening.

Please try to show up and make a sign or banner stating that dance
parties are not terrorism or something of the kind. This is an
explicitly non-violent event, avoiding confrontation with the police.
Please be prepared to respectfully support these people.

As of now the police have refused to release any information. Anyone
willing to help should try and meet at the jail solidarity event on
Monday to begin organizing a formal defense and more solidarity for
these people. Until Monday July 23rd information can be sent to
daybreak@tao.ca and will be passed on.

More on Indymedia.

Do you recall the Baghdad Blogger? If I remember correctly, he became a correspondent for the London Times. Anyway, it doesn’t look like things are good in Baghdad.

More locally, Hopefully all of you remember the article linked a few days ago regarding the amount of oil used to produce our food. Some of you may think that changing how you get your food or where your food comes from might be a wise thing to do.

Some of you may think that organic farms may be a healthy and more environmentally stable resource for good food.

If
so, you may be concerned about the oil pipeline to be routed through
four Minnesota organic farms including one of the major sources for
Minneapolis coops – the Gardens of Eagan.

Read all about it at the Twin Cities Daily Planet. (It is also a great read regarding organic farming practices. If you’ve got interest in doing it yourself, give it a read!)

And,
a bit of entertainment. Occasionally, those of us who are attracted to
the idea of trying to eat and live right can become a bit obsessed by
it. A bit fundamentalist, even. For those of you who share the trait
(or are friends/lovers of someone who shares the trait), you may enjoy
reading “Confessions of a food fundie”.

Incidentally, if you wish to support protecting the organic farms, the bottom of the article regarding the pipeline has some information on how to do so. As the article says, NOW is the time to voice your opinion.

Copied from an email:

Movement is afoot in DC to
strip a local authority’s ability to have stricter food labeling laws
than federal ones; the National Uniformity for Food Act.

In the
early 90s many of us lobbied in St. Paul to get the ability to purchase
milk that is produced without the use of bovine growth hormone. We were
one of only 5 states that got that labeling law passed. The National
Uniformity for Food Act would do what Monsanto and all their lobbist
could not do.

A Minnesotan’s ability to know if the wild rice we
are about to purchase is real native Wild Rice, grown in MN and hand
harvested rather than grown in the desert of California by a
multinational corporation is also in jeopardy.

Take a moment to tell Senator Colemand and Dayton no freakin’ way!

You can go here to send Senator Dayton and Coleman a message:
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2752

If
you care about this, please go sign it. I signed it, but on reflection,
I don’t know how much it would effect me as I’m moving more and more
towards getting as much food as I can from sources that don’t really
bother with labels – like farmers, gardeners, and wild animals.

Well now, isn’t this interesting.

And, two things to revel in my hypocrisy. First, an anti-oil parody of “Addicted to Love”. Kinda cheesy, but caught me in a weird mood.

And, from my mechanical guru and the motorcycle list:

20 rules of biker wisdom:

1. A good ride is one you can walk away from. A great ride is one you can walk away from and still be able to use the bike again.

2. Every ride is optional.

3. If you push the bars left, the bike goes left. If you push the bars right, the bike goes right. That is, unless you continue pushing the bars all the way, then the bike will go down.

4. Riding a motorcycle isn’t dangerous. Crashing one is.

5. It’s always better to be on the sidelines wishing you were on the track than on the track wishing you were on the sidelines.

6. The only time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.

7. The rear wheel is just a big fan on the back of the bike, used to keep the rider cool and his/her butt relaxed. Going into a corner too fast and slamming on the brakes causes the fan to abruptly stop. When this happens you can actually see the rider start sweating and his/her butt become tense.

8. When in doubt slow down. No one has ever hit anything too slowly.

9. Always learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

10. You’ll know you’ve left the sidestand down when all left turns are bad turns and you’ll know when you’ve left the centerstand down when you’re in 4th gear at 4000 RPM and doing nowhere.

11. Never let a motorcycle take you somewhere your brain didn’t get to three seconds earlier.

12. Always try to keep the number of times you put your sidestand down equal to the number of times you put your sidestand up.

13. There are two simple rules for riding smoothly and fast in snow and on ice. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

14. You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.

15. If all you can see in your mirrors is sparks and all you can hear is screaming from your passenger, things may not be as they should be.

16. In the ongoing battle between objects made of metal, rubber and fiberglass going 100 + miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose. (Draws don’t count.)

17. Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately experience usually comes from bad judgment.

18. Keep looking around, there’s always something you missed.

19. Remember gravity and centrifugal force are not just good ideas. They’re laws and are not subject to appeal.

20. The two most useless things to a rider are the braking distance behind you and nine tenths of a second ago.

Hard to say which is my favorite. There are a number of gems in there. Eleven strikes me as being especially wise.

Ran across this in an old file:

“If the country is
governed by public opinion, and public opinion is largely governed by
the newspapers,” Harvard professor Hugo Munsterberg wrote in 1911, “is
it not essential to understand who governs the newspapers?”

To bring things up to date, newspapers are still important, but even more so are television networks.

Something
to consider – if this was an issue in 1911, how much of an issue is it
now? There used to be many, many different organizations bringing the
news to people. Even in the 1960s and 1970s, there were many more news
providers than there are now.

Now, the majority of the news you
see or read in any “mainstream” publication will be brought to you by
one of a handful of companies. More concentration == more control.

Who has more power, the 535 congress people we elect or the 6 companies that tell the vast majority of us what reality is?

Who rules here?

Light and quick post today, because if you haven’t yet, I want you to go and read the article from yesterday’s post.

Two movie trailers (Requires Quicktime):
“Lennon represented life and Mr Nixon and Mr Bush represent death.”

“The electric vehicle is not for everybody. It can only meet the need of 90% of the population.”

.. and A quick petition
for those who believe that “no taxation without representation” was a
good idea as well as for those who want to help those of us in Hennepin
county out a bit. It isn’t about having a publicly funded stadium or
not, its about how it happened. Sign It.

The problem with trying to be mindful is you realize things you maybe
didn’t want to know. The other day, I was wondering what the energy
cost of me eating an orange in February might be. I didn’t find the
answer to that question, but what I did find was so much more
significant.

The following article is of tremendous importance. Read it and think about what it means:
Eating Fossil Fuels

This
isn’t a meat versus veg thing. The only clean hands are on those who
eat only organically produced locally grown produce using natural
irrigation, traditional processing, and brought to market in something
other than a petro-fueled vehicle.

I always admit that my
motorcycle is a hypocrisy given my beliefs. The thing is, in the first
three years of ownership, I used 293.25 gallons of gas, plus probably
several gallons of oil and other fluids – lets just say roughly 300
gallons of gas in three years. (I’m not sure what that actually is in
oil equivalents)

The average American diet uses 400 gallons of
oil a YEAR – not including cooking, packaging, refrigeration, or
shopping. Ok, maybe I’m a bit better than that, but even if I am
consuming food that takes a quarter of average, I burn as much oil in
my diet as I do in my motorcycle. To tell the truth, I’d bet I consume
over a quarter of average. I do like those grapefruits.

I’m not
sure which is harder to justify morally. An off-season orange that’s
been shipped cross country or a short ride on my motorcycle. They both
make me happy to consume, I don’t truly need either, and the overall
footprint of both might be comparable. I’m starting to realize that
there is relatively little blood on my hand from the venison I eat even
though I had to drive to St. Cloud twice, share a ride to northern
Minnesota twice, and kill a deer in order to get it.

Some snips from the article:

In
the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually
to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994). Agricultural
energy consumption is broken down as follows:

• 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
• 19% for the operation of field machinery
• 16% for transportation
• 13% for irrigation
• 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
• 05% for crop drying
• 05% for pesticide production
• 08% miscellaneous

Energy
costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets,
and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

The article defines the following two types of energy:

Endosomatic energy : Produced within the body (food->body->motion)

Exosomatic energy : Produced outside the body (gas->engine->motion)

Prior
to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic and
exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of
the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed
countries. The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered
societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed
countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more
than 90 to 1.18 The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has
changed as well.

(I’m actually curious how we managed 4:1.
Is animal power being considered exo, or are we literally talking
wind-mills, water-mills, etc.)

Unfortunately, if you remove
fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours
of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet
would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce.

Consider the ramifications if we have
gotten anywhere near peak oil. How are you going to feed yourselves and
your loved ones? How are your choices today going to impact your
children’s and grandchildren’s ability to even eat?

Read the article. You’ll be “thrilled” to learn that it isn’t just oil, either. Its also water, land, and more.

On a lighter note, you may enjoy reading about this:
Squirrel Attacks Biker

If you don’t at least chuckle, I owe you a coffee/beer next time I see you.

Roughly two and a third centuries ago yesterday, a group of revolutionaries gathered to sign a document.

They
declared the British colonies in North America to be free of a
government that had committed too many sins and, in so doing, began
this country’s first war for independence.

They were traitors and revolutionaries. They were heros and freedom fighters.

If they lived today, would they be angry or content?

Anyway, celebrations or no, I hope you all had a good 4th of July.