The Defense Industry attempts social media

Now that the Super-committee has failed, billions of automatic cuts to the federal budget will soon go into effect.

What does this mean for the world's most powerful military you ask? Well, if  Congress does nothing it means $450 billion in cuts...over 10 years. Yes, over 10 years. Most of the mainstream media coverage of this story leaves out that last little detail.

A $45 billion cut in what is estimated to be a total defense / homeland security / intelligence / veterans affairs budget of somewhere near $1.2 TRILLION a year (not the $750 billion official appropriation) is probably not that big of a deal. But the defense industry has put aside their parochial concerns for their own individual weapons systems and are working together to oppose these cuts.

"Astroturf" is the term for when a corporation needs to make it look like they have popular support, and boy is Second to none an AstroTurf operation if I have ever seen one. A dead giveaway is the full color glossy posters these defense industry workers are holding up:

To be honest though, I expected more from the combined resources of Boeing, BAE, Northup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics to name just a few.

They don't even have a Facebook page, and only 373 people have "liked" the page, including me. Pretty pathetic.

They did however suggest that I use a specific hashtag when "supporting" their campaign: #secondtonone

But without anyway to engage with people, how do they expect these social media efforts to pay off?

Moreover, when the official figure for how much we collectively spend on drones, aircraft carriers, tanks, satellites and nuclear weapons dwarfs all the other major countries in the world combined, do we really have anything to worry about?

I do feel bad for these workers. I don't want anyone to have to lose their job. But if just some of the trillions of dollars we spend on the military could be used to ween the United States off oil we wouldn't need to maintain the global military force we have today.

The greatest irony of this AstroTurf campaign is that even if the budget was cut by almost $100 billion a year, the United States still wouldn't be second to anyone. Second to the rest of the world combined maybe, but I think that is probably good enough don't you think?

Erik and Ty at the Dog Park or Will the dirth of poop bags wake people up?

I was lucky enough to escort the illustrious and popular Ty Guenther to the Magnuson Park off leash area last week. As you can tell we both had a blast:



While leaving the park I saw this sign:

Is this what it is going to take for people to realize the extent and severity of the budget cuts that been enacted at all levels of government? Most middle class tax payers have yet to feel the real impacts of state, local and federal budget cuts. In contrast poor and working class families already know the strains that budget cuts have put on their already struggling families. But when will the middle class wake up to the reality that we are selling Washington's future up the river?

I know this seems trivial compared to the cut backs in programs like The Basic Health Plan here in Washington, but not having poop bags at the dog park might finally wake some people up to the impacts of rejecting common sense tax measures like last year's I-1098 and I-1107.

What is Foursquare good for anyway? or Hey, how did “they” get us to carry tracking devices with us anyway?

Huxley rolls in his grave

George Orwell would be proud of Foursquare. It makes being tracked and analyzed constantly by a faceless corporate bureaucracy fun and easy!

Well, to be true to established dystopian visions, Aldous Huxley would be proud. For anyone out there who hasn’t read Brave New World, stop reading my inane dribble and go read it... NOW!

Okay now that you are back, you can see how a world based around strict social classes, powerful drugs, ubiquitous sex and cheap consumer technology might look a little bit like modern America. Huxley and Orwell would probably be shocked at how little we learned from their novels and how we actually seemed to have emulated the societies that they created to serve as warnings for us.

Foursquare is clearly building up a massive profile of all their users with plans to monetize that information anyway they can. So maybe the goals of Foursquare and the Telescreen in 1984 aren’t exactly the same, but both the pursuit of totalitarian control and unadulterated corporate profits seem to be shaping similar passive and civically illiterate societies.

Foursquare sends you a window cling!

Despite my philosophical objections to this willing abdication of privacy, I do use Foursquare. I have heard stories from friends flying into cities where they thought they didn’t know anyone, only to look at their smartphone and see that someone they knew happened to be in the same city on business. Score one for Foursquare.

Another advantage of using Foursquare: Free drinks! If I become mayor of The Blue Star Cafe (across the street) I get a free drink. w00t.

Isn’t it hilarious that small and symbolic prizes we can brag to our friends about on the internet are now motivating us to go out and spend money when according to conventional economic theory, my desire for food and the money in my wallet should be the only factors I consider? Again, score one for Foursquare.

Who knows, maybe the next time you “check in” at the Magnuson home (yes I really did create a venue for our apartment) you might win a prize.

Not bloody likely.

The Northwest in the wake of the Japan quake or how megaquakes caused me to prepare for the Apocalypse.

The tragedy in Japan is heart breaking. If Japan, a country that prides itself on its earthquake preparedness suffered so much, what would happen here in the Northwest?

In the Northwest we are at similar risk for major quakes and many of us remember the 6.8 Nisqually quake in 2001.

Like Japan, we are at risk for what scientists call megathrust earthquakes, a phenomenon that occurs along subduction zones like our Juan De Fuca plate that is sliding underneath the North American plate. A megathrust quake caused the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These events happen every several hundred years and scientists think the last one occurred in 1700 in the Northwest which means we are due.

What makes these quakes different is their intensity and duration. A 9.0 megathrust quake along the Cascadia subduction zone would likely cause massive tremors that would last for 3 to 5 minutes. The japan quake lasted about 6 minutes.

In response to this possibility I have created a disaster kit that goes beyond what the government suggests you have in case of emergency.

The only question now is whether to keep it in the car or in the apartment.

What do you think? Anything I forgot?