It Will Take a Miracle

It should come as no surprise to those of you who read this page that I am a supporter of the little guy. I champion the cause of those who are perpetually victims of the powerful and the privileged.

Such is this case.

Meet Tom Szaky. He is 25 and CEO of a company that had 1.5 million dollars in sales last year. Aha! You may think - who did this rascal, this Ivy League entrepreneur take advantage of? Well, I’ll tell you …. He’s the victim.

Tom dropped out of Princeton in 2003 and started TerraCycle, an eco-friendly maker of organic fertilizer. So environmentally friendly is his company, that all of its products come in recycled soda bottles. He takes garbage - waste and feeds it to worms, the worms poop, he takes the poop, puts it in used soda bottles and sells it. The entire operation is taking waste, that would otherwise end up in a landfill and reusing it in an environmentally friendly way. Heck, the fertilizer it makes is even better for the environment than chemical fertilizer. Who could have a problem with that?

Oh.

TerraCycle is being sued by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a 7 billion dollar juggernaut that racks up an impressive 59 percent share of the global fertilizer market. Their claim? Read on -

in its complaint, Scotts claims TerraCycle willfully infringed on Miracle-Gro's "distinctive and famous" look, mimicking its yellow and green packaging and including a picture of flowers and vegetables on its label. Miracle-Gro claims that the packaging similarities could lead to consumer confusion between the two companies' products.
"TerraCycle has passed off its goods as those of Scotts," the suit alleges.
The plant-food giant also accuses TerraCycle of making false and misleading advertising claims on its Web site and at point-of-purchase displays.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Let’s take a look.

Here is Scott’s product –


Here is TerraCycle –


Gee real confusing huh?

This is a classic case of the monopoly bully on the block trying to money whip the competition out of business. It disgusts me.

I must confess, I have used Scott’s product for years. I do some organic gardening, and I try very hard to avoid most pesticides, I prefer Garden’sAlive products to Scott's, but the Scott’s is cheaper and much more available, but no more. . I don’t know yet if TerraCycle is available in my area, but I am going to look for it this weekend.
Here is a company selling a viable, needed product in a very environmentally friendly way, and they are being money whipped out of business by these ass-holes at Scott’s.

I plan on running out and buying TerraCycle product immediately. Please do the same. Even if you don’t garden, it is made out of worm poop, it won't hurt anything, buy a bottle and pour it on a shrub on your way to work.

TerraCycle has set up a web page explaining the suit with excellent David vs. Goliath pictures and numbers. Please, go read it. They also have a defense fund set up. This is a company that has yet to turn a profit. Please go to their defense site and read it to the bottom.
You will be glad you did, I promise.

Let the people at Scott’s know how you feel. Don’t buy their product. And -

If you don't think Scotts should be suing TerraCycle, please write to the Scotts Board of Directors and tell them why. Separate letters should be sent to each director. The envelope should be marked "INTERESTED PARTY/SHAREHOLDER - DIRECTOR COMMUNICATION - PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL" and should be sent to each director c/o Corporate Secretary,The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, 14111 Scottslawn Road, Marysville, Ohio 43041. The Scotts directors are: Mark R. Baker, Gordon F. Brunner, Arnold W. Donald, Joseph P. Flannery, James Hagedorn, Thomas N. Kelly, Jr., Katherine Hagedorn Littlefield, Karen G. Mills, Patrick J. Norton, Stephanie M. Shern, and John J. Shiely. Please send a copy to your local newspaper and to TerraCycle at 121 New York Ave, Trenton, NJ 08638.

My letter(s) will be going out in the morning mail. I needed to use up my stamps anyway right?

Fucking Assholes.

Tomato - Better Boy

I got a really late start on my garden this year, but it is doing its best to catch up.

I took this picture last Friday (April 27).

So far I have tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, sweet corn, radishes, basil (three kinds), mint (two kinds), marjoram, sage, thyme and rosemary.

I'll for sure add okra, and most likely bush beans.

What do you grow?

Security or Engagement?

I found this little nugget over at Candide's Notebooks. It is one of the most reasonable, compelling discussions of the school violence problem I have ever read.

Thousands of tragedies take place on a weekly basis in American schools—suicides, rapes, students cutting themselves or starving themselves, and countless other acts of intense bullying and harassment—that are all more or less preventable. Fortress mentalities don’t build security. Knowing and engaging students before they become a threat to themselves and others does.

Read the article, share the link, get people talking about it.

Grampa, Why Did You Ruin Our Country?

In two weeks, I will be 45 years old.

My oldest child just turned 16.

If his life follows the usual route I will be between 55 and 58 by the time I have a grandchild, and by the time that child will be able to rationally discuss economics I will most likely be in or close to my 70’s. I seriously doubt I will live long enough to meet my great grandchildren, much less discuss economics. I suppose I should be thankful for small blessings.

I don’t know what I would be able to tell them. What would I say when asked how my generation could leave them so saddled with debt. How can I explain the collapse of the way of life we as Americans know today? It is surely coming, and we as Americans are allowing it to happen.

As I have asked over, and over, and over, where is the outrage?

Pierre Tristam, over at Smirking Chimp, has posted an unbelievably disturbing article outlining the Bush majority’s raping of the budget. From surpluses under the Clinton administration to deficits that would make Reagan blush, he asserts that even at this point, balancing the budget isn’t enough. The problem is the mounting national debt.

[….debt depends on people willing to finance it. As of today, $5 trillion of the debt is held by the public -- individual Americans, banks and, increasingly, governments like China, Saudi Arabia, the European Union. At any point those governments could choose to invest elsewhere. If that happens, Americans, already the biggest debtors on the planet, have to make up the difference. Simply put, when Bush spends $2 billion a week on his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he's borrowing that money not only from China or Saudi Arabia, but from future Social Security and Medicare recipients, too. The Social Security trust fund, which is generating a surplus, literally lends the money to the Treasury. Government-to-government loans like that have added up to $3.8 trillion.


Balancing the budget will fix none of that any more than a household can stave off bankruptcy just by paying the interest on a mass of debt: Sooner or later a small interest rate rise or a mild economic shock collapses the arrangement. Only vast surpluses in the $200 to $300 billion range over several decades can pay down the national debt and stave off a flight of investors that would collapse the domestic economy. That's why the Clinton administration never proposed massive tax cuts when it reversed previous Republican administrations' Decade of Debt and started running surpluses in the late 1990s. Clinton knew that if the country was to meet its obligations to coming retirees and stay fiscally sound enough for investors to keep their money here, modest surpluses alone wouldn't do. Debts had to be paid. That means big budget surpluses year after year. …]

I know that with all of the other outrages the regressives have given us, the budget deficit and National debt may seem small potatoes. I know that talk of surplus and deficit isn’t as sexy as, well, sex scandals or Attorney-gate, or the pillaging of the constitution, or the war, etc….but I urge you to go read the article.

It may give you time to come up with an answer when your grandchildren or great grandchildren ask you how you could let this happen.

Random Flickr Blogging IMG_3847

Random Flickr Blogging Explained.

Even at a young age, Jim Jones displayed a certain "charisma."

Sigh

I saw her awhile ago. I was on my way home from the grocery store and stopped at a light. She passed by and pulled into the convenience store right near my house.

She never saw me. She got out and went into the store.

Where her legs really that impossibly long? Was her hair always that blond and shiny?

le sigh

I did the right thing. My children must have their father. Why can't she see that?

I Love This Lady!

Today is the 74th birthday of one of my favorite comedienne/actresses, Carol Burnett.

I loved her show as a kid. We watched it every week, and then again for years in syndication. Do you have a favorite Carol Burnett Show memory? I loved her take off on Sunset Boulevard and Gone With the Wind, but Mrs. Wiggins may have been my favorite. That show had such a cast!







She is also an accomplished stage actress. She was the original Winifred in Once upon a Mattress way back in 1959. I love that show. I played King Sextimus back in college. If you don't know the show it is a take off on the Princess and the Pea story.



She was also the original Charlotte Hayes in Ken Ludwig’s Moon over Buffalo. I directed this show back in 1998, and it is still one of my all time favorites. If you've never seen it - SHAME ON YOU! You owe it to yourself to find a production and go see it! I will warn you, it is a bit racy, so don't bother with a high school production because the Drama Police will make them cut out all the good parts. I promise, you will laugh hard and often.

She is talented, tough and classy.

Happy birthday Carol!!!

Err, What?

This is an actual letter. Sad thing is, she probably votes. To laugh or to cry? This is the republican base my friends. She and her ilk will never be won over with logic, or reason, or economic concerns.

Quickly, The Smelling Salts, I Feel a Swoon Coming On

In an announcement that should surprise exactly nobody, researchers on Monday said that abortions and miscarriages do not raise the risk of breast cancer.

Hmm, you .... gasp, choke, ....mean all those brochures, .... the ones printed with my tax dollars, .. gasp, are wrong!!!!!!?????

By the end of the day Dobson, Robertson, et all will be denouncing the scientific methods used in this research.

You know, the research done by actual scientist.

Look for an increase in the Jihad against science in our country after this announcement. This blows one of their favorite talking points.

Random Flickr blogging IMG_3318

IMG_3318
Originally uploaded by mikemunevar.

Kara recently started rethinking her decision to date only headless boys.

Happy Birthday (maybe) Bill!

Today is (maybe, we think) The 443 aniversary of the birth of the greatest English playwright ever. Ok, I will say the greatest playwright ever period, but that's just me.

That Shakespeare can continue to be relevant 391 years after his death speaks volumes as to his genius.

In his honor I offer the following sonnet. I can't really say it is my favorite, because that would be like choosing one of my children over the others, but this is the one that speaks to my current frame of mind.

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The 50's are like OVER!!!!

I don’t usually write about race issues. It isn’t that I don’t think they’re important, or that I think racism doesn’t exist, I am acutely aware of it. It is that I don’t feel that I have anything insightful or compelling to say about the subject.

Until now.

For the first time ever, the Turner County High School prom will be integrated.

I don’t know if I should be happy for these kids or appalled by what this means. It is 2007. I mean are you freaking kidding me? 60 years after Baseball is integrated, this Georgia town finally has a school dance that allows people of different pigments to co-mingle?

I choose to be appalled.

First of all, why were these kids allowed, year after year to have their own private segregated prom? Who was financing it? These parents are disgusting. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree you know. Is it any wonder that racism can thrive still in the South, when this kind of practice is allowed to thrive? Where was the school board, hell, where was the Governor?

I was going to say fuck these backward ass Rednecks, but that would make me as intolerant as them.

So instead I will say, fuck the people in a position to stop this who let it go on year after year after year.

And to this year’s prom attendee’s I say welcome to PostBellum America Hicks.

Avenue Q meets Fiddler on the Roof

Ok, this may well be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. If not the funniest, the damn cleverest! This is why I love Theatre people so much. If you are not a “Theatre Person”, or can’t figure out why I can’t spell T-H-E-A-T-E-R right, this may not be for you.

But trust me, this rocks!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dprUZL-QvQ


It's back up!!!!!

Yes, Exactly!

Wow, this is a must read.

It is long, and it does start just a little slow, but damn! I can't even really think of anything to add. It is a complete and utter demolition of "Compassionate Conservatism"

a few choice tidbits -

Matthew Dowd not only sold us a lying president and his prevarications about war just three years ago, but he built an entire campaign around an even more egregious lie - that his candidate was a war hero, and that the other candidate, an actual war hero, was a weak imposter. Now, as his own misdeeds loom up with the potential to bite him back hard, like some figure out of Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy, he finds doubt and regret. Doubt? Regret? I tell you what, man, you go drink down one percent of the blood you've spilled, first. You go apologize on your hands and knees to one percent of the families you've decimated. You go pay back one percent of the treasure you've wasted - money needed for healthcare and education. Then come tell us your self-serving tales of doubt and regret. Because, funny, somehow we never got that vibe from you in 2004.

And -

If it seems like conservatives are congenitally incapable of compassion until they've had to struggle with something themselves, that's because it's true. If you think the whole business of wealthy Americans demanding additional tax cuts for themselves to pay for their third yacht while others go to bed hungry is part of the same mentality, that's because it is. If you're horrified that people are capable of such rampant hypocrisy, you ought to be. This is truly a scary bunch, with the full intellectual firepower of adults, but with social ethics that could make the dynamics of a kindergarten sandbox seem positively Gandhian by comparison.

And, even better -

Right now, regressives are peddling a lovely mix of war, debt, environmental destruction, torture, division at home, hatred abroad, a tattered constitution, a shaky economy and a healthcare system in free-fall, as well as lies and corruption that could make Imelda herself blush. How is it these guys even exist? How is it they are even allowed within a hundred yards of government buildings? Is there a shortage of ankle bracelets? Even if they were Iraqi suicide bombers blowing up government they couldn't begin to equal the damage they've already done in government

This is good, good stuff. Please go read it all.

Seriously!!! WTF!!!!!!!

Have you seen this? Apparently the Federal Government has a database listing everyone who has ever been prescribed anti-depressants?

I love this observation the author makes:

We don't even have a list of gun owners, and we have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants?

Jeebuz, does anyone know anything about this? Has it always been this way, or is it a recent aka "war on Terrorism" development?

That must be a pretty damn big list.

Another Teenager!!!!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the 13th Birthday of my third and youngest son.

I know he occasionally looks at this blog, so happy birthday son!

On this day in History –

1775 – The American Revolution started.

1824 – Lord Byron died.

1897 – The first Boston Marathon was run.

1943 – The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began.

1993 – The Branch Davidian compound goes up in flames.

1994 – You were born!!! (And a Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.)

2001 - "The Producers" opened on Broadway.

People who share your birthday –

Maria Sharapova (20)

Tim Curry (61) – can he really be that old!!!!???

Kate Hudson (28)

Hayden Christensen(26)

Troy Polamalu(26)

When You're Living in America .........

“He was a loner.”

How many times do we hear this after a tragedy such as happened this week in Blacksburg Virginia? Didn’t you just know that was coming?

So you know what I wonder? Was he (or any of the loners who commit these heinous acts), driven to become a killer because of the inherent loneliness of his life, or was he a loner because he was already messed up and capable of such an act? In other words which came first?

It strikes me as ironic that in such a populous society, people can be so lonely. I understand loneliness very well. It is a daily part of my life as well. That is not to say I don’t have friends, I do and I see them often, yet in my day to day work/kids/housework/repeat cycle I go days at a time with no true meaningful adult conversation. I’m sure that is one of the reasons I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for so long. A less than perfect relationship is better than the loneliness of no relationship.

Do you know your neighbors? I speak at least weekly to the neighbors on either side of me. If you go more than a couple of houses in any direction, I don’t know them or speak to them. I live in a small town, and I have lived in this house for over ten years. I’m sure it must be worse in large cities. Is my situation typical? I suspect so.

Jonathan Larson hit on this concept so well in RENT.

Disparate individuals creating their own community. –

What Was It About That Night?

Connection-In An Isolating Age

For Once-The Shadows Gave Way To
Light

For Once I Didn't Disengage

Why is it so easy to isolate ourselves? Do we just have so many comforts and entertainments in our homes that we don’t need to seek out our neighbors?

Does the internet and comment threads help or hurt?

I don’t know.

I know one thing, Hillary was right when she said, “It takes a village.” Would a support group of close friends have stayed Cho Seung-Hui’s hand? Maybe not, but I strongly suspect that had he felt that he “fit in” and had a group of friends to vent to, he may never have gotten to this awful breaking point.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

As today is tax day, and no doubt the evening news reports will be awash in video of long lines at the post office hoping to beat the deadline, I thought it might be appropriate to take a look at what we are paying for.

The war in Iraq seems to have taken a backseat in the news lately. Things vastly more important have been filling the airwaves. Things like the DNA test of Anna Nicole’s baby, the Imus brouhaha, Angelina’s attempt to overtake Mia Farrow in adoptions, you know, important stuff.

Of course there is the other news also, the impending testimony of A.G. Weasel Gonzales, and sadly, yesterday’s chilling rampage at Virginia Tech. But in the midst of this real news, and fluff, let’s not forget that what Americans witnessed in Blacksburg Virginia yesterday is a daily occurrence in Baghdad.

In an outstanding article printed in the Niagara Falls Reporter, Bill Gallagher recounts the consequences of our involvement in Iraq.

This is heartbreaking stuff people.

When confronted with politicians in the media selling the progress being made, the Red Cross workers took a poll of their own. They asked several Iraqi women what was "their most pressing need". One woman's answer may well stick with me for the rest of my life.

"The most important thing that anyone could do is to help collect the bodies that line the streets in front of our homes every morning. No one dares to touch them, but for us it is unbearable to have to expose our children to such images every day as we try to bring them to school."

Stop for a moment and imagine that. I am a single Dad. I worry about my kids eating right, I worry if they brush their teeth enough, I worry that are hanging out with the right crowd, but I don’t worry about them dodging corpses on the way to school. Let that sink in. She didn’t ask for electricity, or clean water, or security, she wants the corpses picked up a daily basis. This is a world I cannot fathom. This makes the worlds of Beckett and Pirandello seem safe and predictable. Yet that is what these people face every single day; Courtesy of the American Tax Payer.

Wait a minute you say, I don’t support the war, I didn’t even vote for the criminals running our country. Perhaps not, but it is our Government, our tax dollars committing these atrocities. Where are the protests? Where are the masses marching through the streets demanding an end to these crimes being done in our name?

They are at home wondering if tonight is the night Sanjaya finally gets voted off.

Wake up America, perception is reality, and the world perceives that Americans are responsible for the lives of untold thousands of civilians.

This article goes on and very adeptly summarizes the failures of our policy. Please go read it. I had meant to summarize the whole thing, but I find myself too disgusted to write rationally.

Random Flickr blogging IMG_4374

IMG_4374
Originally uploaded by stuart nolan.

The Glover family looks forward each year, to "set the baby on the snow penis day"

Sacrifice Isn't A Four Letter Word.

Via Shakes -

Do you have time to send a letter to your Senator/Representative?

Below is the letter written by Michael Dunford, whose wife is an Army Officer.

I will be sending one to my Senators and Rep. Please do the Same.

I am the husband of a currently deployed Army officer stationed in Hawaii, and with a home of record in New York. I'm writing today for two reasons: to thank you for your support of emergency war funding legislation that included a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and to ask you to take an additional step and require that any additional funding for the current conflict be paid for immediately, through a tax increase.

When my wife was deployed in Afghanistan two years ago, I found the deployment easier to deal with than her current Iraq tour, even though she was probably in more physical danger in Afghanistan. At that time, I at least had the comfort of believing in the cause that she was fighting for. Right now, I'm not sure I even know just why she - or the rest of our troops - are there. I'm a bit of a cynic by nature, and did not expect my view of the cause to make a difference in how easy it would be to face the separation. To my surprise, I've discovered that it's much easier to make sacrifices when you know why you are being asked to make them.

This brings me to one of the reasons that I am asking that you attach a tax increase to any further war spending - sacrifice. Last night, when my wife called from the FOB she's stationed at, I mentioned that I had learned about the decision to extend Army tours through the media instead of through Army channels, but that it was nowhere near the top story of the night. A radio DJ getting fired for making insensitive and racist comments, the (criminal) innocence of college athletes, and the implications of the Anna Nicole paternity test were all apparently much more newsworthy events. My wife was surprised that this surprised me. Her response was, "Of course it isn't. Why would most people care about this."

She's right. The vast majority of the American public has little at stake in this conflict. The sacrifices are being made by the military and by military families. As retired Major General John Batiste put it last year, "Most Americans only confront this issue by deciding what color of magnet [to put] on the back end of their SUV." I think that if more Americans were being asked to make sacrifices to support this war effort, more Americans would pay closer attention to what has been (and is) going on.

Sacrifice isn't the only reason to make sure that this war is funded through taxes now. We also have a responsibility to our descendants. Right now, our two children are already being asked to sacrifice a great deal for this war effort - their mother has been away during 18 of the last 33 months. It is unfair, unreasonable, and irresponsible to ask them, when they grow up, to also pay the financial costs of the war. The current policies, unfortunately, do just that.

Please consider taking these actions, both to support the troops who are deployed now and to support those who are being asked to pay for the war later.

In addition to emailing this letter to you, I am also posting it on my blog (http://scienceblogs.com/authority). I would encourage anyone who reads it there to send a similar letter to their Representatives and Congressmen.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
Michael Dunford

If every American had to bear the sacrifice equally, we would be out of Iraq by tomorrow evening. His point about asking our children to pay for the war is an especially poignant one. Not only are we killing (both directly and indirectly) civilians, women and children, we are passing the buck to the next generation to pay for it.

Wake up America!