via tweeters @openculture @courosa and @sergeymirzoian

And Sergey's son is quite a creative lad, who has an interest in chess and movie making...I love the sound effects.

Another piece of the puzzle is Karst Management areas being proposed for the eastern side of the state. The incidents of contaminated wells are well documented in Brown, Door, Calumet, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc counties. The proposed bill establishes management areas in these 5 counties based upon criteria to be established by DNR according to the relative risk of land spreading waste in the area.

One of the provisions of the new bill is to allow other parts of the state to petition DNR to be designated a management area. If counties can show evidence of groundwater contamination due to land spreading waste over carbonate bedrock DNR would have to consider the petition.

At this point we need to keep our legislators informed of our risks here, and help them understand the need for every protection available for our fragile landscape.

So get out the pen and paper, pick up the telephone, because there is no better time than now to make a difference to the future of our groundwater resources.

If you need the addresses and numbers...think Kickapedia.

Indeed, "corporate personhood"--and the state's upholding corporate interests over those of "the people"--is but an expected extension of America's founding ideological fantasies. The US Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United" was not some break with American "democracy". It was not some kind of "take over", in which "We the people" should get "our nation back"--we never "had" a nation to begin with. It was always John Jay's nation, Alexander Hamilton's nation. It was always the "minority of the opulent" who owned the country, and ran it as they saw fit, while distracting the "Great Beast" with political rhetoric and propaganda.

But we should note that every gain in civil rights history, every extension of liberty, has been made when "the people" see through the state's ideological fantasies, when the people civilly-disobey until the state acts according to the people's demands for justice. Only then does "Change" become more than just rhetoric, spouted by US presidents.

from BeginBeing

And if video speaks to you more potently, try this link to a work by Jonas Mekas "As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty". All these links were from @mhsteger on Twitter. Tomorrow's music will also be via this interesting person's work.

On the future of Democracy, which seems in peril to some, the writing of Zizek (my latest passion, although I see his limits in vision with his seeming anti-Semitism, sexism so I hear, and vulgarity that is readily apparent and could never be contested) points to deeper, older issues that might point us to a different framing of our situation.  This snip is from a piece on Haiti...

Noam Chomsky once noted that "it is only when the threat of popular participation is overcome that democratic forms can be safely contemplated". He thereby pointed at the "passivising" core of parliamentary democracy, which makes it incompatible with the direct political self-organisation and self-empowerment of the people. Direct colonial aggression or military assault are not the only ways of pacifying a "hostile" population: so long as they are backed up by sufficient levels of coercive force, international "stabilisation" missions can overcome the threat of popular participation through the apparently less abrasive tactics of "democracy promotion", "humanitarian intervention" and the "protection of human rights".

And the "dumbing down" of our society certainly makes for an un-threatening democratic form--one any hegemonic system would be comfortable presiding over.   If you feel at a loss about how to resist, there is this movement called Move To Amend that has a petition asking we amend the constitution to push back the Supreme Court decision. Go ahead, sign the petition, lots of smart people are on board.

First is a reaction to the Obama Administration's decision to tax some of the banks that had fed at the public trough a year ago.  Some feel Obama is missing a chance to put the squeeze on these folks, and taking matters into their own hands (by using their feet) are committed to moving their money to local banks and community credit unions.  The founder of this action made the case this morning on Joy Cardine's WPR program, also via Huffington Post and at their website.

Below is another important view--the video presents (at about 5 minutes) a woman recounting her family's bank that was bought (after the father was fired) because they were running it ethically and had quality assets. This suggests a strong case for credit unions, that stay local and are owned by depositors. 

The commentary in the video is provided by Slavoj Zizek, who is not someone to agree with all the time, but he will make you think...

The whole 6-part series with Zizek is presented on Mariborchan website and it loads all the eight minute sections automatically.

And finally Jay Smooth speaking in an inspired and surprising way on Haiti--a country in need of so much from the world right now....