Thursday, October 14, 2010

how to lose respect for Bill O'Reilly

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Watch this.



Monday, September 20, 2010

outsourcing: the irony of it all

? by LaChaBenn for LaChaBenn.com

Today the end of the United States "recession" was announced. The exact date is said to be sometime last summer though for millions of American's particularly those in the middle class there is no end in sight.NPR ran a story today on India's growing economy. More specially, India's need to tailor their professionals for the growing international economy.  
It is true, in fact, that India has seen the biggest boom in its country's independent history and it can very well thank America. The trend of job loss in America is almost identical to job growth in Bharat. 7even times out of ten, when you call customer service you are speaking to someone overseas, India are otherwise. In March 2004 The Economic Times reported "While the U.S. lost 234,000 IT jobs in 2003, for Indian techies 152,000 new jobs were created."  The trend without a doubt continues as 15 million American's continue to look for jobs, many who are qualified to sit at a desk and administer services such as  Technical Assistance, Customer Service or Consignee Services. But American companies find that you can pay Indians less, provided less benefits and job security. So instead of protecting the consumers that make it possible for companies to stay afloat, companies flock off shore drying its consumer pool of its lively hood.
The U.S Government has done little to stop off shore trends. Ohio announced a ban on outsource for its companies. As a part of  Obama's $818 million Stimulus program GE has agreed to fund $600 million  to return of  jobs from China to the U.S.




Mean while Hollywood  brings humor to the subject of outsourcing. This week ABC launches its new show "Outsourced," sitcom highlighting the everyday fun times at an India Call Center. Even Discover card has called attention to the issues of the inconvenience of an outsourced call center. Its ironic, the same disaster that has helped bring America to its knees, the same disaster we laugh at, is the same disaster that helps millions of "others" obtain their goals and dreams. Instead of laughing our asses all the way to the unemployment lines we should be boycotting companies who neglect American workers and celebrating those stay loyal to them. We should be more vocal and not lay down as our middle class shrinks, students graduate with high dept and zero job market, and money is hoarded into "national defense."
Or we can just sit on our couches and laugh about it...til the power gets cut due to lack of payment.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

b. Perhaps the best restaurant in Baltimore?

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by LaChaBenn for LaChaBenn.com 


I asked, "so what kind of food do they serve?" My question was answered by Silence.

I'd answer the question by saying neighborhood fine dinning.
Under appetizer's yellowfin tuna tarter with capers, chopped egg and avocado caught my eye by i ordered the eggplant dig served with fire toasted Cubata bread, olives, and pickled vegetables.
I didn't reach for salt or pepper (good thing because it was not until late into the meal that i noticed that neither was available on the table.)
I could not decide what to get for my entree, everything looked SO Good. P.E.I. Mussels with green curry and coconut milk, Pear and Gorgonzola Sachette, Ahi Tuna Nisoice salad with Potatoes not pasta, Crispy Duck...i could go on, but it does little justice.
I ordered the P.E.I. Mussels with Green Curry, Coconut Milk, coriander leaf, and i'd argue lemongrass. And a small order of the roasted vegetable mozzarella Ravioli.
I rue not ordering their Ceaser salad. If you can do a ceaser salad right you are clutch in my eyes.
Everything, everything, from the atmosphere, to the regulars, to the veteran wait staff is on point and fabulous.
The Food, the food, is another story. Amazing to say the lease, perfect portions, the mussels are served in a heaping bowl. Plating and aesthetics of the food show exhibit the Art in culinary art.
I have one side note, there was a little to much oil in my ravioli. Honestly, Who cares.
Go, Go, Go.
Washingtonians-Escape to this place
and bring your A game, average person, with drinks and apps, $40.
Also, their micro brew and important Beer list is well constructed featuring Victory and Trogg, i can say the same for their wine list.

Roommates by Justin Neal

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

shirt speaks the truth

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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Help Abused Women, it takes 60 seconds a day, one month! (do it by text!)

? by LaChaBenn for LaChaBenn.com


R.ape, A.buse and I.ncest N.ational N.etwork
 


A friend of mine is a full time member of RAINN's (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) Speakers Bureau and also serves as a volunteer doing crisis intervention on their Online Hotline. It would mean the world if you could take just a minute or less of your day each day this month to vote for RAINN in Pepsi's Refresh Everything challenge to expand the Online Hotline to Spanish-speaking visitors.


RAINN needs your vote to win a $250,000 grant from Pepsi in order to expand the Online Hotline and help more victims of sexual violence...may I have 60 seconds of your time? 

How you can help:

First of all, please take a minute to vote for RAINN. The winner is determined by the number of votes, and RAINN needs your vote to win a $250,000 grant from Pepsi. The organization/idea with the most votes by September 30 wins, so please vote for us once a day, every day. And please start voting as soon as you can - the contest is only through September 30th, and if we fall behind, it will be difficult to catch up!

What will the grant be used for?


To expand RAINN's award-winning Online Hotline to serve Spanish-speaking victims of sexual violence.
How to help:

1. First, vote online.
—Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/rainn.   You can create a Pepsi account or login with your Facebook account
—After you login, just click on  ‘Vote for this idea’

2. Then, vote again by text message: just text RAINN’s code 102552 to this number: 73774

You can vote once online and once by text each day, every day until September 30.

Friday, August 13, 2010

BLOWN: Ben Quayle for Congress

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some people are just crazy weird like this- don't get me wrong, i'm republican, but this is why people think republicans are racist idiots. 

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

the Ultimate Valedictorian Speech

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Erica Goldson's Valedictorian speech at NY's Coxsackie-Athens High School. It is a long one..lots of big words. I didn't bold the passages, they were like that when I found the article.
Hats off, awesome speech, Mazel Tov c/o 10!

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ." 
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" 
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."

This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, "We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that." Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."



[Comment: The full passage reads: "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else." ]


To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of "critical thinking." Is there really such a thing as "uncritically thinking?" To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, "You have to learn this for the test" is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a "see you later" when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

BS

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watch this




now read the some of the comments
@Lordof0blivion we hate Obama because he's purposefully made things WORSE and not better. 

Obama's the worst president we've ever had. 

and my comment

I get it and i like the commercial, but Obama did not "create" this BS, he is trying to fix the BS left over from the MF who dictated the previous 8ight years as president. Don't be Ignorant and believe that this BS happened over night or in the last 18 months. It was BUSH, if only you'd realized that in 2000 And 2004...
cheers

E.C.O. On NPR

Hey today on NPR check out Berwyn friend Vinnie as he is interviewed about Engage Community Offshoots composting projects in College Park, Md.
Mazel Tov Vinnie!

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Would you like a free frappe?

Over the weekend my household received the much coveted seasonal McDonalds coupon book.
I hate McDonalds, it is the perfect example of capitalism's darker side: every man for himself, despite who or what is sacrificed along the way.
Moving on. First page of the book, Free Frappe?
Hmm so this morning on my way out I stop by McDs and pick up my delicious Free Frappe.
This leads me to the subject, does anyone want a free frappe? It was painful once the chalky splendid flavouring set in. My entire throat is lined with sandy 'mocha,' and though I have another coupon for yet another fun flavour of a free frappe- I'm good. First come first serve.


Work calls, I'm in the woods and off the grid til friday. Time to unwind and settle loose ends. Back in town late friday, hope all have a wonderful week.


Dude and did you hear about the kid who stole a metro bus from the bus depot! 19 y/o crashed it into a tree. Go Metro!
(No proofread)

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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Samuel Adams Latitude 48

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I'm not a big fan of the Sam but when i saw that a new IPA was included in the mix I was sold. I was blown away by this beer from Samuel Adams. A smooth hoppy beer is always good for the summer but they really did it with this one. 
Low in IBUs this beer is great for a hop lover who seeks a smooth brew.
Its appearance and colour is light but its head is ever present when poured into a mug. With the smell you expect something a lot hoppier. Upon taste your mouth fills with heavy carbonation (a plus a minus) but at the end of the day the drink-ability is solid. I'll try and drink this all summer. 
not a bad brew from sam

Serving type: bottle


Sunday, June 27, 2010

Fell in love with a girl...

? by LaChaBenn for LaChaBenn.com 

....she's a 2D portrait that i saw on the wall.

Yesterday for those who missed it was the Charm City Craft Mafia forth annual Pile of Craft.
Fun times, probably a lot more fun if you have money to blow and since some of you do i want to call attention to some vendors that caught my eye.


JamieZollars.com 
(the girl i fell in love with)
Amazing work, featured in Illustration Now vol 3.  I can only beg you to see her work because i can't phantom a way to describe it in words.



Tengu

the garden

Marmalade (just sky)


Don't like art?
how about clay jewelry? Check out Yummyandcompany.etsy.com
the shop is closed until monday so i don't have any pictures, but i'll try to add some





Two more worth mentioning:
My man at Fuzzy Ink   stand has some awesome concepts for men and woman's clothing and a huge fuzzy mustache.
game over (men's crew)



Identity Crisis (men's crew)



Music in Flight (women's crew)

Okay last i want to call attention to the awesome trend that is art and recyclables. Talk about the ultimate way to ensure that you are staying green: turning your trash in to a treasure.

CottonMonster
check out the site. I can't share any shots because it is jpeg...though i did purchase some screen print patches for my jeans.  Jennifer Strunge (like most of these artist) is native to baltimore and hopes to start her own circus oneday.

last but not least

The Broken Plate Pendant Company

 Rachel ray loves this company so you knoooow i love it! The concept seems so simple. one day the artist broke a plate, she made a necklace out of the pieces next thing you know she is getting orders.



dont' be fooled by imitations- this is the real deal, the Original.


don't miss these artist again, check out CharmCityCraftMafia to stay in the know.

peace and love

Friday, June 25, 2010

park and north.jpg

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who are you






Barclay
 
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