THE STEEL DEAL

Other worldly ...

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Mickey Mouse - Spawn of Satan

 

  A leading Catholic cleric has launched a fierce attack on Disney, claiming it has corrupted children and encouraged greed. Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth in West Sussex, has accused the corporation of "exploiting spirituality" to sell its products and of turning Disneyland into a modern day pilgrimage site. He argues that it pretends to provide stories with a moral message, but has actually helped to create a more materialistic culture.

  In a guide to helping people find happiness, the abbot, who starred in the hit-BBC series The Monastery, warns that society is in danger of losing its soul because of growing consumerism and the decline of religion. He suggests that many people have become obsessed with work, sex and eating in an attempt to ignore their underlying unhappiness, and criticizes corporations and industries that have benefited from promoting false notions of fulfillment. Fr Jamison, who has been tipped as a contender to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor as the next Archbishop of Westminster, targets the behavior of Disney in particular, which he says is "a classic example" of how consumerism is being sold as an alternative to finding happiness in traditional morality.

  While he acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues this is part of a ploy to persuade people that they should buy Disney products in order to be "a good and happy family". He cites films such as Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians that feature moral battles, but get into children's imaginations and make them greedy for the merchandise that goes with them. "The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and & T-shirt is that our children's world needs Disney," he says. "So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we'll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present. "They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland."

  He continues: "This is the new pilgrimage that children desire, a rite of passage into the meaning of life according to Disney. "Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products." Fr Jamison, who is one of Britain's most prominent Catholic clerics, claims that brands such as Disney market themselves to be about more than mere materialism to create an addiction to consumption. "This is basically the commercial exploitation of spirituality," he says, adding that as a result Disney and other corporations "inhabit our imagination". "Once planted there they can make us endlessly greedy. And that is exactly what they are doing." Link

   I've mentioned before that there's a theory suggesting Walt Disney was a primary cause of the 60s' and it's attendant drug abuse. It's a well-known fact that Disney used recreational drugs starting in the 40's and his vision regarding animation may have originated from those drug experiences. It's difficult to argue against that when one considers such classics as Fantasia or Sleeping Beauty - the drug-like special effects are all too apparent. So perhaps, Walt Disney did play some part in leading some people astray.

   I take exception to the notion that the Church - any church - is the sole arbiter of morality or ethics. Being a lifelong atheist, I find goodness, kindness and selflessness functions of logic and comfort - natural extensions of a desire to be well-treated - all things being equal. I suspect the good Father is simply trying to garner some attention. He should very careful - pissing off Mickey Mouse & Company can be costly on several levels. That'd be an interesting lawsuit wouldn't it ...

... Disney vs The Catholic Church?
... Mickey Mouse vs The Pope?
   
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How do you let go of a tiger's tail and not get bit?

From the London Telegraph ...
  The People's Bank of China cut interest rates by more than 1pc point as the economy crumbles and millions of jobs are predicted to go ahead of Christmas.The move came just one day after the World Bank predicted that China would grow by 7.5pc next year. The level of growth may appear robust by Western standards, but it would represent the slowest economic expansion in China for the last two decades.

  It is also perilously close to the 7pc minimum level of growth that Chinese economists believe is necessary in order to create enough jobs for the 6 million university graduates who will enter the jobs market next year. It is the fourth interest rate cut from the Chinese central bank in the last ten weeks as the government desperately battles an evident economic collapse. "China is out to save itself here," said Patrick Bennett, an analyst with Societe Generale in Hong Kong.

From the Asia/Pacific Action website ...
  Wang Denggui, father of three, arrived more than a year ago in the palm-lined streets of this southern Chinese town with a single goal: toil in a factory to save for his children's school tuition. But the plans of Wang and thousands of co-workers unraveled at noon on Nov. 1, when the Taiwan chairman of their ailing shoe factory climbed over a factory wall to flee the country and his debts. That left several U.S. shoe companies with unfilled orders and 2,000 workers without jobs. "He just ran without telling anyone," Wang said.

  For decades, the Pearl River Delta that includes southern Guangdong Province served as a primary engine for China's astounding economic growth. But an export slowdown that began this year and that has been magnified by the global financial crisis of recent months is contributing to the closure of tens of thousands of small and midsize factories here and in other coastal regions, forcing laborers to scramble for other jobs or return home to the countryside.

   China is poised for a major crisis, dwarfing our own. Estimates range from several tens of millions to perhaps more than 200 million 'migrant laborers', faced with plant and factory closures due to dramatically decreased demand, are soon to return home. During China's robust growth of the last three decades, rural citizens moved into coastal regions to make all the goods for export. Historically, they returned home once a year for a few weeks with fat paychecks to spend, but this year that will not be the case.

   The wages in the manufacturing areas are typically 30-70% higher than they could earn at home. China's currency manipulations kept that additional cost well under that of their competitors. The current global economic crisis has so lowered demand in the West that the entire manufacturing infrastructure in China is in peril. As the factories close and workers return home - often without those fat paychecks - all the support infrastructure - housing, restaurants, stores and shops are also being forced to close. Any prolonged period of dormancy will take a heavy toll on those facilities - looting, frozen plumbing, arson, neglect - all common in abandoned structures.

   Coupled with the fact that there are now emerging nations eager to step in and replace what is a relatively expensive Chinese labor force by Asian standards - Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh all suddenly look very attractive to Chinese corporations. In short - China will begin 'outsourcing' their manufacturing needs into less prosperous countries. This will remove the possibility of all those tens of millions of rural Chinese from someday reclaiming their jobs in the coastal cities and surrounding areas.

   Imagine if the entire populations of California, New York, Texas, Michigan and Florida were to suddenly leave and move back to the farms in Kansas and Nebraska and once gone - their high paying jobs vanished. That is exactly what is going to happen in China over the next few years - the duration of the global economic downturn. China also has another even more disturbing problem - the localized specialization of manufacturing. Cheap shoes are made in a few towns, cheap toys in others. Each town is dependent on one specific product. So the decreasing demand cannot be spread out and absorbed - like in the United States. The only analogous situation would be Detroit. We are more able to distribute the misery.

   We are talking about at least 15% to perhaps 25% of the entire population of China. While concentrated in high density manufacturing areas and totally dependent on the well-oiled machine that Chinese export has become - those millions upon millions of Chinese were easily controlled. Once out in the hinterlands, jobless and growing hungry, it will be nearly impossible for the central government to maintain the necessary control over the Chinese people. And those people are not going to take the loss of all the benefits of their newly discovered 'middle class' status and its consumer-based economy without some serious upheaval - if not outright rebellion.

   China is scrambling to find jobs for all those migrants - building new highways, bridges, airports etc. But to what end? There will no longer be the great demand for those things because few Chinese will be able to afford the things which necessitate that sort of infrastructure - cars, vacations, rural-to-urban commerce. In other words, the Chinese plan is to spend what money they can on things of little or no immediate value to keep its citizens busy - 'busy work'. And it's likely, once large portions of Chinese manufacturing have been outsourced, the demand for such things will be very slow in returning - if ever - just like the migrant laborers they'd support.

   There are some alternatives to what appears to be very dire circumstances - China could greatly expand its military - killing two birds with one stone. Employing huge numbers of able-bodied males and using that expanded military to maintain control over the outlying rural provinces. They could also fabricate a national crisis - Taiwan comes to mind, as does a battle for natural resources in neighboring Siberia with a newly aggressive Russia. Either scenario would seem to bode well for the United States. Anything that might distract China from focusing on us as 'the enemy' would be welcome. The same can be said of Russia.

   And because I know Carl will ask - No, China cannot simply call in their loans. Especially not in the current economic climate. In fact, any move to do so would undoubtedly result in the nationalization and elimination of our debts to them - something much more likely given a historically protectionist Democratic Congress and a willing President Obama. If any Western nation made such a move - the rest would quickly follow suit - leaving China truly at the mercy of their uncertain fate. There will be no Chinese demands in that direction for that reason alone.

   This is, after all, survival of the fittest and displaying that sort of weakness would encourage Western debtor nations to renege just to kick China back into the last century and remove, or at least reduce, it as a potential economic or military threat. No, China is going to be very preoccupied with internal stresses for some time to come and even in the event of a speedy economic recovery in the West - there is a lag time between that and an increase in demand for Chinese products of at least a year. And once China begins to outsource production - the lion's share of rewards from any coming renewed increased demand for their wares will go to other emerging nations.

China has had a tiger by the tail for decades - they are being forced to let go. There's no telling what that tiger will do now.

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And today's victim is ...

  First came Red Bull and Monster Energy, giving a high-octane boost to late-night parties and study sessions. Now the anti-energy drinks have arrived, carbonated beverages that promise to help you "slow your roll" or "lean with it."But with their hip-hop-inspired advertising campaigns, Drank and Purple Stuff are generating a buzz that is anything but chill. "I am very concerned about the marketing," said Ronald Peters, a University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health professor. Peters has researched the phenomenon of mixing codeine syrup with soft drinks or alcohol, a concoction that is believed to have factored in the deaths of three local rap stars.

  "Sippin' syrup" is believed to have originated in Houston and it remains a common topic for Southern rappers. "Drank," "purple stuff" and "lean" are street terms for the illicit mixture. Peters said he worries the new canned beverages could be a gateway for youth who want to experience the slowed-down effect of cough-syrup abuse. He called the products a step in the wrong direction and criticized them as "one of the most asinine things I have ever seen."

  The Rev. Michael P. Williams, pastor of Joy Baptist Tabernacle Church in the Third Ward, said the Drank and Purple Stuff ad campaigns recall a troubling history of marketing such products as cigarettes and malt liquor in African-American communities. He said the companies that promote products like this shun "moral responsibility" and perpetuate harmful caricatures."These products are deliberately marketed in inner-city communities, where there is already some form of pathology that exists to begin with," Williams said. "Crime, poverty ... these things are exacerbated by these kind of investments."

  Drank's creator, Peter Bianchi of Houston, defended his product and denied targeting consumers in specific neighborhoods."We have been doing well in white, middle-class neighborhoods, too," Bianchi said, citing strong sales in suburban Friendswood. He said Drank, which launched in Houston and was made available online in October, is now sold in Austin and Dallas, as well as communities in Missouri, New York and Connecticut.Drank's Web site says those using the product include rappers, professionals, students and insomniacs. A MySpace page dedicated to the beverage shows smiling black youth brandishing the bottle and plays a tune by rapper Lil Wayne: Me and My Drank. Urp...ahhh

   

   Sooo, as long as black rappers are making money from it - it's okay. But as soon as 'whitey' starts to profit - it's racism. Gawd, this hypocrisy gets so tedious after awhile. When will these people take responsibility for their own actions and the upbringing of their own children? And if the advertisers just happened to not show or portray blacks in the ads? They'd scream exclusion and the lawsuits would be flying in.

Victimhood - it's a full time job.
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Smokey the Bear sez ...

 

  Grants Pass, OR - In the years after World War II Americans packed up their young families and Army surplus camping gear and headed into the national forests to hunt, fish, and hike. Going to the woods was part of what it meant to be an American. Today, however, visits to the national forests are off 13 percent. Top officials at the U.S. Forest Service blame it on circumstances outside their control-rising gas prices, the popularity of video games and the Internet, and an increasingly urban and aging population less inclined to camp out. Critics focus on fees charged for hiking trails and visitor centers, a proliferation of noisy off-road vehicles and the declining proportion of the Forest Service budget dedicated to recreation.

   James Johnston, a policy analyst with Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics in Eugene, spent the last year camping out in 67 national forests and talking to 400 people. He concluded that while fewer people may be using the woods, fewer trails and campgrounds are open and there are more people riding noisy off-road vehicles. "They think that it's harder to find solitude," he said of the people he talked to.

  Coupled with the decline in visits to national parks, the trend makes nature lovers nervous at a time when the growing global population and climate change pose huge threats to wild places."We only value what we know and what we love," said Richard Louv, author of "The Last Child in the Woods." "Where is the political constituency going to come from if all those trends continue—disinvestment in facilities, lack of diversity, the disconnect between children and nature?"

  If young people and the growing Hispanic population don't fill in for the aging white Baby Boomers who have long made up the vast majority of national forest visitors, what will that mean for the future?"That is the big question," said Thomas More, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station in Burlington, Vt. "Is it going to be a future of hiking or is it fancy cafes and city kinds of things? That's what we're trying to evaluate right now. And the information is mixed, frankly."

   The Forest Service didn't conduct a statistically rigorous survey of visitation until 2000. That National Visitor Use Monitoring program found 204.8 million visitors annually in the period 2000-2003 and 178.6 million for 2003-2007 - a decline of 13 percent. When compared to the rising population, the proportion of Americans visiting national forests is falling even faster.More said the decline appears to have started in the 1980s, during the Reagan Administration when the Forest Service became much more interested in logging than recreation."Remember Reagan's famous quote about if you've seen one redwood you've seen them all?" More said.

  The Endangered Species Act slowed logging in the 1990s, demanding more habitat for the northern spotted owl and other wildlife. Without the revenue from timber, the Forest Service got Congress in 1996 to allow fees for trails and other amenities.Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness in Bend, sees a strong correlation between the imposition of fees and declining visits."They raised the fees, and people stopped coming," Silver said. "The theory of supply and demand, price and elasticity was proven. Now that they've seen demand drop, they're saying `Oh my goodness, we've got to figure out how to increase visitation.'"

   Top Forest Service officials reject Silver's assertion about fees. Although their surveys don't address the question, they attribute the decline primarily to the older and more urbanized population, and increasing popularity of electronic entertainment and to rising gas prices."For families of modest means with large vehicles who have got to travel large distances, even the prices of two and three years ago were starting to cut into the recreation opportunity," said Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the Forest Service."We are seeing less participation in overnight camping than the quick day trips," said Forest Service recreation director Jim Bedwell. Link

   

   As a kid and young adult I used to spend a lot of time camping out. It used to be an enjoyable experience. You could pull off where you wanted, build a small fire, catch a few fish and sleep under the stars. All that changed - but not the way it's portrayed in this article. The Forest Service started building 'campgrounds' - really just large parking lots, well-manicured, with hot showers and lots of RV spaces - some even had swimming pools and recreation centers. It was more like going to an amusement park than communing with nature. And yes, the fees went through the roof. Today, a 'tent space' will set you back the price of a cheap motel room.

   But all that was done to 'enhance' the 'outdoor experience' and was done at the behest of environmental groups keen on containing human damage and influence. Large sections of National Parks were off limits for one reason or another most of the season - fire danger, bears, lyme disease - they even rotated camping areas like crops to allow the forest to ' rebuild' in the wake of human habitation. In short, groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Mothers Against Boy Scouts sought to so restrict free and easy access that the whole experience became cumbersome and unpleasant.

   Now the groups lament the lack of participation in their wilderness visions. Screw that. Who wants to be contained like inmates in a fancy concentration camp - listening to that bozo next door in his 300K dollar RV trying to decide between 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' and reruns of the 'Love Boat' on his satellite TV? Or listen to groups of marauding brats chasing barking dogs around the godamned campground? Or watching big-butted old broads on minibikes whizzing down to the 'facilities' to take a whiz?  It's no wonder people don't want to endure that.

   Luckily, I did a lot of camping outside the box, as it were. I know lots of old roads where nobody goes and the camping is like it used to be. But now I'm old. I don't want to sleep on the ground and I can't live without 'the news' and this stupid little box. Baby boomers didn't work their whole lives just to go out and play 'Daniel Boone'. And truth be known, these idiots in the article don't REALLY want you out in their own special playground - no - they are just trying to portray themselves as inclusive. And they want YOUR money to maintain those abominations they call campgrounds. They got what they demanded and now they don't want to pay for it.

Let 'em start issuing 99 year leases in some nice spots at auction - that'll more than pay for everything.
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Whatever happened to free will and moderation?

 

  London - Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday. The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.

  "On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement. "We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."

  Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language. Want fries with that?

   They genetically redesign mice to be receptive to the research and arrive at the expected outcome. But they completely ignore the fact that any creature fed an abnormal diet rich with potentially harmful ingredients will suffer the inevitable consequences. For instance, I daresay any human who reads only comic books or tabloids will suffer mental atrophy. Any person who watches only mindless television will end up ... mindless. Children who play video games in lieu of actually engaging in physical activity - real games - will be obese and weak. Any fool can see that. What's troubling is the unnatural tendency of the Left and its adherents to abrogate all responsibility in these matters. Rather than assume control over their own choices to a better end - they demand those choices be regulated or restricted for all. I do not understand that leap of faith. Where do they come up with the notion that a government or some centrally-controlled seat of power will make better choices? Unless they are victims of their own excesses.

Mindless, mentally-atrophied weaklings without the strength to choose for themselves.
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YUM ! :}

 

Happy Fart Day!

   Sooo, for the last couple of weeks, I've been preparing another care package for the ever lovely Phoenix. Her request this time? Meat - No Vegetables! So I smoked some pork butts and chicken thighs and made some hand-cut pork chops in mushroom gravy. I had it all planned to arrive a day or two before Thanksgiving. But due to circumstances beyond my control - the package was late getting into the mail. Then I found out that poor Phoenix was spending Thanksgiving alone and counting on the BBQ getting there in time so she could have her own private Thanksgiving celebration with BBQ instead of turkey - which worked out because she doesn't like turkey and will NOT share her BBQ with anyone. But the package didn't arrive in time. However, in my last care package, I included all the fixin's for some excellent Mexican food. So last night she emailed me to let me know all is fine - she still hadn't made the Mexican food and she'd use that for her Thanksgiving dinner. Said she'd 'fart the day away'. So in solidarity with her, I am declaring today National Fart Day.

*I wonder how Fergus will deal with this?

Happy Fart Day!
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A Trillion here, a trillion there - pretty soon it adds up to real money

From the author of Bailout Nation ...

In doing the research, I needed a way to put the dollar amounts into proper historical perspective.

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.

People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined: Link 

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion
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What kind of car are YOU?

  Tallahassee, FL - No one needs to tell Disney, which brought the likes of Herbie the Love Bug and Lightning McQueen to the big screen, that cars have personality. Now a study co-authored by a Florida State University researcher has confirmed through a complex statistical analysis that many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars - a modern experience driven by our prehistoric psyches. Researchers, product designers and, of course, filmmakers have long toyed with the idea that cars have faces, but this study is the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically. The study will be published in the December issue of the journal Human Nature.

  "The study confirmed with some rigor what many people have already felt - that cars seem to have consistent personality traits associated with them, and that this is similar to the way people perceive facial expressions," said Dennis Slice, an associate professor in Florida State's Department of Scientific Computing. "The most unique aspect of the study was that we were able to quantitatively link the perception of cars to aspects of their physical structure in a way that allows us to generate a car that would project, say, aggression, anger or masculinity or the opposite traits."

  Slice collaborated with doctoral student Sonja Windhager, the study's lead author, and several colleagues to explore the link between perception and the geometry of a car front and its parts. The researchers asked 40 people to view high-resolution, 3-D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car models, representing 26 manufacturers from Ford to Mercedes.

  One-third of those participating in the experiment associated a human or an animal face with at least 90 percent of the cars. Generally, the headlights were marked as eyes; the nose tended to be the grill or emblem; the additional air intake slots, the mouth. Each participant in the experiment also was asked to rate each model on 19 traits, including dominance, maturity, gender and friendliness, and if they liked the car."In our study, people generally agreed in their ratings,'' Slice said, noting that 96 percent agreed on whether a car was dominant or submissive. "Thus, there must be some kind of consistent message that is being perceived in car fronts."

  For example, cars scoring high in the so-called power traits had horizontally elongated hoods, pronounced lower car bodies relative to the windshields and more angular headlights that seemed to suggest a frown. Conversely, cars on the other end of the power scale - that is, those perceived as childlike, submissive, female and friendly - had headlights with their upper edge relatively close to the midline and had an upward shift of the car's lateral-most points. "In this way, the car gives us a big smile," Slice said.

  In a finding that suggests perhaps there is a hidden road warrior in all of us, study participants liked power vehicles best - the most mature, masculine, arrogant and angry-looking ones. Although people do not necessarily buy the kind of car they say they like, Slice said the finding spurs some interesting questions for future studies about pedestrian and driver behavior. For example, do people extend the perception of the car to the person behind the wheel? And does that affect how drivers interact with other cars on the road? Honk

  The author goes on to suggest that looking in the rear view mirror might reveal something about the person driving  behind you - should make for some interesting thoughts next time you're out for a drive.

(Might need to crank this one)
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