Jack of All Trades, Master of None. Oh, and I Write Sometimes.

23
Dec

Guerrilla Grafters and Green Rappers

By Daniel Bingham|Art, Gardening, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Sustainability|Be the first to comment!

I love the myriad of ways in which people are working to change American culture and move towards sustainability.  Today, reading Grist, I came across two completely different efforts to tackle the problem.

One is using music to reach out to people who might not be aware of the sustainability movement, or are maybe skeptical of it.

 

Not only does DJ Cavem make music, he teaches classes at the high school and middle school level on sustainability.  The classes teach kids the why, what and how of living sustainably and give them the tools to start working on their own.

 


The other is a form of really clever guerrilla gardening, guerrilla grafting.  Rather than fighting to get the city to replace it’s ornamental trees with fruit producing ones, this group of sustainability advocates are simply using the ornamental ones as a canvas on which to graft fruit producing limbs.  Brilliant!

 

This is what I really love about the sustainability movement, and why I’ve found it far more enticing and uplifting than almost any other social or political movement today.  It is truly grassroots.  And not only that, but it is a movement that can succeed, that can win, with out ever having to really fight.

It can happen quietly, in the background, from autonomous action.  A community garden here, music maker there, guerrilla gardening, free classes, free food, reclaiming what is ours.  We don’t have to change Washington for this one to work.  We can change our local communities, one at a time.  The change is empowering and liberating.

As cultural change spreads it will undermine the very foundations of the current global powers that be.  We can bring them down with out ever having to fight them.  When they no longer control our food.  When they no longer control our access to shelter.  When they can no longer convince us to fight amongst ourselves or buy shit we don’t need.  They will no longer control us.

21
Nov

Some Days, You’ve Just Got To Express It

By Daniel Bingham|Art, Philosophy, Politics|Be the first to comment!

It seems so easy
just stand aside
and watch them die
out of sight out of mind
it’s their own damned fault
you worked so hard
to get where you are
they must be lazy
or maybe they’re crazy
couldn’t happen to you
because you play by the rules
you do what you’re told
buy up all the gold
now sell it again
get some money to spend
take a trip to go shopping
buy all of this shit
you don’t really need it
it’s made by a child
paid 3 cents a shirt
he has to eat dirt
he’s chained to a chair
works his bones till they’re bare
you bought for it twenty
where’d the rest of it go
into the pockets of the fucking CEO

man, wake up
you’re just being played
it’s people’s lives they’re throwing away

06
Sep

I’ll Just Leave This Here

By Daniel Bingham|General|Be the first to comment!

Two visits to the walk in clinic had the doctor tell me, “No idea what that is.” I got to speak with her for 15 minutes or less each visit. Total medical staff’s time I took was probably less than 30 minutes each visit.

Insurance covers half the bill — I’m lucky to have that much insurance.

Final bill for the two visits and no answers? $111.51

You want to try to tell me that our medical system is the best in the world? I call bullshit.

11
Aug

A Patent Too Far

By Daniel Bingham|Computers, Politics|1 Comment

Someone attempted to patent a doubly linked list, and named the patent “linked list”.  In 2002.  There’s no way they’d get that patent right?  Linked lists have been around since the dawn of Computer Science.  If anyone in the patent office has even been through a CS101 course, they will know what linked lists are and they will throw any moron who tries to patent them out on his ass.

Well, apparently no one in the patent office has taken a CS101 course.

Which begs the question, what the hell are they doing granting software patents at all?

For those of you not familiar with software development, this is roughly equivalent to a poet trying to copyright and charge royalties on iambic pentameter or hiaku.  Or a film director trying to patent “a shot that zooms in on the face of one character and holds on their facial expression for several seconds”. Or an inventor trying to patent “a hammer with two prongs coming out of the back for pulling nails.”

This is obscene.

06
Jun

Wait, that can’t be true…

By Daniel Bingham|Life, Politics|Be the first to comment!

Except that it is.  In the age of the internet the world is full of rumors and conspiracy theories.  Many of them seem pretty outlandish.  It’s hard to sort out the truth from the fiction.  And since most of them are largely ignored by the media, we tend to ignore them.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that many things I’d written off as conspiracy were not.  They were true.  There had been court cases surrounding them.  Government documents dealing with them had been declassified and released, or, in some cases, stolen and leaked.  Learning these things has slowly, but steadily, changed my perception of the world and our society.  And I’m ready to believe things now, that I wasn’t before.  Someone out there feels the same way I do, that if everyone knew these things, maybe the world would be different.  And he made a site to spread the knowledge of them.  It’s called:

If Everyone Knew

Right now it only lists five items.

  1. The prison system in the United States is a profit-making industry. Private corporations operate over 200 facilities nationwide and are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
  2. Six corporations control virtually all American media. News Corp. owns over 27 television stations and over 150 newspapers. Time Warner has over 100 subsidaries including CNN, Time Magazine, and The CW.
  3. The FBI admits to infiltrating & disrupting peaceful political groups in the United States. The Women’s and Civil Rights movements were among those targeted, with their members being beaten, imprisoned, and assassinated.
  4. In 1977 it was revealed that random American citizens were abducted & tortured for research by the CIA. Project MK Ultra was the code name for a series of covert activities in the early 1950’s.
  5. A plan to attack American cities to justify war with Cuba was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. Rejected by President Kennedy, Operation Northwoods remained classified for 35 years.

He’s planning on adding more.  All of the items are very well backed up by multiple sources.  Sources like Wikipedia and the New York Times.  Many of these things I’d already heard about or known about.  But it’s still pretty powerful to see them together and detailed like this site has them.  There are many more pieces of knowledge – incidents and facts – that belong on that list.  It could easily get pretty long.  If only everyone knew…

27
May

In the Event of a Revolution, Please Check Your Weapons at the Door

By Daniel Bingham|Politics|2 Comments

‎A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

That’s how the amendment reads. A well regulated militia. At the time, the most powerful gun was a musket. It could take as much as minute or more to reload. And it was ridiculously inaccurate. It took a very skilled musketman to hit shots at 100 yards consistently.

The most “easily” concealed pistols were not really easily concealed at all. They could fire a single shot and reloading took forever.

Duels with pistols or swords to the death were considered a perfectly acceptable way of solving disputes.

Weapons were necessary on the frontier where the threat of bandit or Indian raids was ever present. And most people needed them for hunting besides.

There was no standing army.  There was no United States Army.  The founders were terrified of a standing army. They were convinced that if any such army ever came to be it would be used to oppress the people.  There were, instead,  losely ordered state militias that would be called upon in times of war. Each militia man supplied his own weapon and ammunition. And was ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Notice how the amendment reads “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…”

Compare this to today.

Hunting happens pretty much only for sport. There are no bandits to fight off. Nor maurading Indians.

There are no more state militias. Citizens are never called upon to fight unless drafted into the Army, at which point they are supplied weapons.

And, oh yeah, we have a standing army now. It is the biggest in the world,  with millions of soldiers armed to the teeth .   It is armed with high tech weaponry that is not available to the citizenry at large. They have tanks, helicopters, strike fighters, bombers, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles, satellites and nukes.

If it ever comes to a fight of the American people vs the government, we sure as hell better hope the army is on our side. Otherwise, we’re screwed. It doesn’t matter how many citizens have automatic weapons or semiautomatic weapons.  We’ll get our ass kicked.

Given that the goal is to get the military on the side of the revolution, how do you think we’re most likely to do that?  By arming ourselves and coming after them?  Or by peacefully protesting?   By rearming and reloading? Or through non-violent resistance?

If we aim and fire, you can sure as hell bet that those soldiers will fire back.  Their commanders will say “Kill them or they’ll kill you.”  And so ends the revolution.

If we don’t, those soldiers will be having serious second thoughts about listening to their commanders. They’ll be asking themselves if they can really gun down unarmed, peaceful opponents.  Many, hopefully most, will throw down their guns and join the revolution.

We’ve seen it happen in the Middle East.  And the effect will be even more powerful in a place like America, where the values of freedom and government of and by the people are even more ingrained.

Think about it.  Today, an armed citizenry is more likely to harm a successful overthrow of the government than to help it.

So, what do you need those guns for?

25
May

Life Goes On

By Daniel Bingham|Gardening, Life, Projects|1 Comment

Well, hello there, blog.  It’s been a while.  It’s been a while for Twitter and Fridge to Food as well.  In fact, I’ve kind of fallen off the internet of late.  With good reason, a lot of stuff has happened.

Sometime in February, I decided that I wasn’t going to succeed in making money from Fridge to Food soon enough.  So, I went out onto the job market.  I was expecting a modest challenge in finding a job,  this being the middle of a recession with fairly high unemployment and all.  I didn’t find much in the way of a programming gigs in Bloomington, no surprise.  However, after a quick jaunt around the internet, I found some jobs to apply to.  To my shock and pleasure, I had a job with in three weeks.  A work from home, telecommute position no less.  Brilliant!

I started working full time pretty much immediately and as a result put Fridge to Food on a back burner.  Work takes up a solid 40 hours a week.  And much of the rest of my time has been spent getting settled back in Bloomington and plugging into the local sustainable living and agriculture communities.  Most of my old high school buddies have long since moved away.  A few of them are still hanging around.  But it hasn’t taken me too long to meet awesome new people through the sustainability communities.  My weekends have often been very busy volunteering at the Bloomington Community Orchard or at my friend Salem’s Bread and Roses Homestead.  Salem knows a lot about permaculture and I’ve been doing a work for knowledge trade with him when I have time.  His homestead is amazing and it’s incredible what he’s accomplished in a mere 4 months.

I’ve been living at home during this time. And up until two weeks ago or so, was living with my mom.  Apparently, it isn’t that uncommon for my generation to live at home for a while after graduating college.  But knowing that more and more of my peers are doing the same thing didn’t make it any easier.  It’s very difficult to give up hard won independence to live at home again.  And there were definitely some clashes.  Luckily, my mom was away almost every weekend on one trip or another.  And even more luckily, she was in need of a house sitter for the next year.  So now here I am.  Still living at home, but with the house to myself.  For the year.  It’s just about perfect.  I can work and pay off my student loans and she doesn’t have to worry about the house.

I’m lucky to have a very progressive family.  I’ve been given permission by my mom to have my way with the yard while I’m house sitting for her.  And, in fact, she’s very much looking forward to coming home to established gardens.  So, I’ve begun my first experiment in organic gardening.  It’s been quite a project, and is probably enough to deserve it’s own post.  So I’ll come back to that, but that has been another place my time has gone.

Finally, I’ve been playing a ton of Ultimate and doing a lot of Rock Climbing at Hoosier Heights Climbing Gym.  Getting back into shape has felt wonderful and the Bloomington Ultimate community is very welcoming.  Aside from the leagues there are two different pick up games that, between them, cover 5 days of the week.  It’s possible to play pickup Ultimate in Bloomington nearly every day if you want.  Which is wonderful.  Also, exhausting.  I managed to overwork myself to the point of catching a pathogen.  So the last week or two I’ve been sticking to home.  And, perhaps as a result, have made a — maybe temporary?  — return to the internet.  Hi all!  Good to see you again.

25
Feb

One of Many Failures

By Daniel Bingham|Computers, Life, Politics|Be the first to comment!

I recently spent some time in the job market.  My experience has gotten me thinking back to my years in the American public education system.  I think it is best summed up on the following way.

During a time of great recession, when the underemployment rate is near 20% and the unemployment rate is around 10%, my experience in the job market was thus:

  • Number of applications sent out: 6
  • Number of interviews offered: 3
  • Number of jobs accepted: 1
  • Total time spent on job search: 3 weeks

That’s a pretty ideal job search.  In fact, I cannot imagine it being any better!  With in a matter of weeks of sending out my first application, I had a job.  I’m not even two years out from earning my Bachelors.  I’ve had about a year, maybe two, of real “industry experience”.

Now compare this to my experience in the Public education system.

  • Number of Middle School classes in my field: 0
  • Number of High School classes in my field: 0
  • Hours of homework ignored to teach myself my field: several thousand
  • Grade point average in high school due to missed homework: B
  • Grade point average in high school w/0 weights for honors and AP: C

I ignored my middle and high school classes to gradually teach myself the skills that can now land me a job at the drop of the hat.  My grades suffered for it.  But apparently, that doesn’t matter, because no one looks at them.  I still managed to get into a very good college. My grades suffered there too, because I continued to pursue projects and skills that weren’t being taught by my major — which was in my field.  But that also seems to be irrelevant.  No one looks at those either.

I’m a computer programmer.  They look at the code I can write now and the programming projects I wrote while ignoring my classes.

What does this say about our education system?

1 2 3 … 13