TampaBLAB

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Over at Forbes Joel Kotkin suggests that Tampa and the cities along the I-4 corridor focus on “medical services, business services and light manufacturing” as a substitute for tourism and development.

That sounds like pretty weak sauce to me. I’d like to see a huge hobbyist culture develop around the arduino, which leads to some innovative entrepreneurship. I’d like to see Tampa become a mecca for retiring bohemians. Maybe we can lead the nation in some BCI game design. Or, how about developing some independent businesses devoted to cloud computing?

If I were recreating Tampa I’d be working to put it at the crossroads of technology and culture. I’d be building a center for post-industrial design, and a government that’s so meta-networked it makes the rest of the nation look like it’s still relying on the telegraph. More than just techies and geeks, I’d be putting all those bohemians who have retired to our blossoming urban core to work on making the next generation of smart, cuddly tools. After doing that, I suppose some medical and business services, and light manufacturing would be OK.

Through the 1950s and 1960s a loosely associated group of African American artists became known as the Florida Highwaymen. Selling paintings door-to-door and out of the trunks of their cars, these artists produced approximately 200,000 paintings.

Many of these naive works portray a paradisiacal, dream-like Florida. They are in great demand today by collectors (but collectors should be wary of the many forgeries online).

In 2004, 26 of these artists were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

PBS did a documentary about the Highwaymen last year.

You can see more of their art here.

More images here.

Info about Bob Beatty’s book here.

Here is a site dealing in Highwaymen art.

"LMRM: The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter's retirement."

Erick Erickson, on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

This is the same Erickson that was ready to go into a gun-toting rage. What earned Erickson's rage was a ban on sales of dish washing detergent with heavy contents of phosphate in Spokane County, Washington. Erickson would rather a dangerous product be on the market than have a government recall.

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

TO ATTEND THE

SOUTH ST. PETERSBURG DEMOCRATIC CLUB’S

First annual

BREAKFAST MEET AND GREET

topic of discussion:

urban life and culture in today’s economic crisis

featuring:

Professor Jay sokolovsky

University of South Florida

ON

MAY 2, 2009

AT THE

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2335 22^ND AVENUE SOUTH

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

9:30 A.M.-11:30 A.M.

Breakfast catered by Alvin miller catering services

(cost per person:$8.00)

Box Score | Game Recap

Apr 30	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Lakeland	0	0	1	0	0	2	1	0	0	4	11	0
Tampa	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	6	1

Post from: Lakeland Local

Originally Published as April 30 Lakeland 4 - Tampa 2

Former Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections created controversy for using tax dollars to place his name and image on material. Michelle Patty was a former critic of Johnson. The Supervisor used tax dollars to pay Patty more than $16,000. Patty went around the Tampa black community handing out "Vote for Buddy" yard signs. All these actions were seen as an election official using tax dollars to get re-elected.

Sen. Charlie Justice sponsored SB 216. The bill would help put an end to such practices.

Campaign Financing/Local Government Expenditures [GPSC]; Defines the terms "local government" and "public funds." Prohibits a local government from expending, and a person or group from accepting, public funds for a political advertisement or electioneering communication concerning an issue, referendum, or amendment that is subject to the vote of the electors. Provides an exception for certain electioneering communications. Clarifies restrictions with respect to local officials.

Republican Sen. Steve Wise attempted to sneak in an amendment to restart the defunct Leadership fund. This would allow party leaders in the House and Senate increase their power by holding money over the caucus. Wise choose his words poorly. Leadership funds were banned. Wise striked "Leadership" from the record. The new term was Caucus accountability fund.

Caucus accountability Leadership fund.—

(1) For purposes of this section:
(a) “Caucus accountability Leadership fund” means accounts comprised of any moneys contributed to a political party, directly or indirectly, which are designated to be used at the partial or total discretion of a leader.
(b) “Leader” means the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the majority leader and the minority leader of each house, and any person designated by a political caucus of members of either house to succeed to any such position.

(2) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, caucus accountability leadership funds are authorized prohibited in this state. No leader shall accept any leadership funds.

(3) This section applies to leadership funds in existence on or after January 1, 1990.

Justice was able to defeat Wise's amendment. It's hysterical Wise would put this into a reform bill. The current legislature is doing some wacky stuff in the closing days.

Correction: the leadership funds would not come from tax dollars. The money would be from contributions. I used Buddy Johnson as an example. I have heard that Johnson was the inspiration for Justice's bill. The leadership funds would work like PAC money. The Majority and Minority leaders in the Senate and House would decide who receives these funds. This was seen as Wise attempting to increase his influence for when he became the Republican Senate leader.

The Justice bill would forbid tax dollars to be used to benefit a local candidate or voter amendment. The Wise amendment attempted to allow House and Senate leaders to set up leadership funds. These funds would be considered political contributions.

Of course, once I start thinking about brain-computer interface (BCI) it starts popping up everywhere.

Joel Garreau writes about toys controlled by the mind for the Washington Post.

“Steve Koenig, director of industry analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association, has little doubt about the high-end, professional possibilities of the mind-over-matter market. He sees the opportunities for military robot wrangling, say, or mastering space or undersea exploration, or allowing the profoundly ill or disabled to control their surroundings.

“He is, however, a skeptic about how eagerly we will embrace the toys.”

Koenig echoes the point I was making the other day that got me started on this BCI tangent.

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life took a survey about torture and divvied up the results according to religion.

Guess who is least likely to support torture?

White, non-Hispanic Catholics? C’mon, these are the folks that invented the Inquisition. More than half thought torture can often or sometimes be justified.

White evangelical Protestants? You mean the group that has been most consistently pro-torture in the government and public debate? Nope, three out of every five believes torture can often or sometimes be justified.

So, who hates torture the most? White mainline Protestants and those with no religious affiliation.

And who hates torture the most within that group? Those who do not regularly attend religious services.

So, atheists, agnostics, and the religiously disinterested are the ones most likely to think torturing people is wrong.

Charlie Crist hasn't officially announced his intention to run for Mel Martinez's seat. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is assuming Crist is running. The DSCC has launched an attack ad.

"Florida faces tough times and the budget mess could mean cuts in police, schools and health care, but instead of working to fix it, Charlie Crist wants to quit to go to Washington," an announcer says in the ad. "Crist enjoys being governor when he attends basketball games and Super Bowl activities, and when he takes over 60 days off with no schedule, but now the job's getting tough, and Crist wants out, leaving Floridians with the mess."

My take is Crist will run for the Senate and President in 2016. 2010 is not a good time to be Florida's governor.

The CSX deal absorbed a giant defeat on the floor of the Florida Senate this evening. See story here. How big? Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer declared: “The forces of evil have won.”

Now, this isn’t done. There’s one more day. Anything can happen. But just think about that line from Dyer for a second. “The forces of evil.” Really? Dude, it’s single crappy rail line made possible by a massive, destructive corporate giveaway to CSX that would harm everybody else. We are not talking about waterboarding here. Get a grip.

Post from: Lakeland Local

Originally Published as Orlando Mayor: “The Forces of Evil [That's Us] Have Won” in CSX Deal

This thing has been going around the internet....

Matthew Yglesias asks if conservatives understand torture. Judging by comments from my blog they haven't bothered to read the memos. I wrote the post "Why We Should Care About Torture." A commenter named James argued deprivation is not torture. A memo by Steven Bradbury of the Office of Legal Council argued sleep deprivation would not inflict pain. Bradbury cited Prof. James Horne's book "Why We Sleep: The Functions of Sleep in Humans and Other Mammals." The memo admits the paticipants of Horne's sleep experiments were "free to move about and engage in normal activities." Horne's experiments were being used as a defensive cover for torture. The memos admits "important differences" between Horne's study and CIA interrogations.

We understand from OMS, and from our review of the literature on the physiology of sleep, that even very extended sleep deprivation does not cause physical pain, let alone severe. physical pain." "The longest studies of sleep deprivation in humans, .. [involved) volunteers [who were deprived of sleep for g to 11 days" .. Surprisingly, tittle seemed to go wrong with the subjects physically. The main effects lay with sleepiness and impaired brain functioning, but even these were no great cause for concern." James Horne, "Why We Sleep: The Functions of Sleep in Humans and Other Mammals" 23-24 (1988) ("Why We Sleep") (footnote omitted).. We note that there are important differences between steep deprivation as an interrogation technique used by the CIA and the controlled experiments documented in the literature. The subjects of the experiments were free to move about and engage in normal activities and often led a "tranquil existence" with "plenty of time for relaxation," See iii. at 24,

Blogger Hizroy contacted Horne. The Professor remarks extended sleep deprivation during interrogation "possible trauma, even blood loss." Horne expresses doubt that sleep deprivation could produce useful information from detainees.

With additional stresses as in ‘coercive techniques’, the situation for the sleep deprived victim becomes deplorable, as the mind and brain under these circumstances trigger the body’s defences to create a physiological ‘alarm reaction’ whereby, for example, various stress coping hormones are mobilised and prepare the body for possible trauma, even blood loss. I emphasise that this alarm reaction is not present under ‘pure sleep loss’ as I have just described. Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defence mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses. We don’t know at what point this latter phase would be reached with ‘coercive techniques’, but to claim that 180 hours is safe in these respects, is nonsense. Moreover, whereas physical pain may not be particularly apparent even at this stage, the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain.

Even if one was to be pragmatic and claim that this form of sleep deprivation produced ‘desired results’, I would doubt whether the state of mind would be able to produce credible information, unaffected by delusion, fantasy or suggestibility.

Conservatives are willfully ignorant about the true implications of torture. Conservatives spents years denying the United States tortures. Now they say torture produces good intelligences. Even Dick Cheney is having problems citing instances where torture produced valuable intelligence. The only argument conservatives have left is an "eye-for-an-eye" justice.

The Lakeland City truck stolen the morning of April 28th was found approximately 12 hours later by a Lakeland Police Department officer. It was 3.2 miles South of the location of the theft. LPD reports the vehicle appeared ransacked, but drivable. The doors were unlocked, keys were left on the floor board, and personal property software were missing from the vehicle.

Post from: Lakeland Local

Originally Published as Stolen City Truck Recovered

Lindsay Beyerstein and Matthew Lawrence have questions about the nonprofit Faith In Teaching. Florida Sen. Ronda Storms sponsored an amendment to create the I Believe licence plate. A sample plate would feature an image of Jesus. Lindsay and I have researched FIT have questions if it is a legitimate nonprofit.

Lawrence:

Money from the other plate would go to Faith In Teaching, which purports to support faith-based education but which actually may not even be real, since their website is down and their official mailing address is the office of a workers’ comp lawyer.

Lindsay has concerns about the lack of oversight on how organization's, such as FIT, are awarded plates.

I'm less concerned about the religious imagery than I am about the fact that the state is creating revenue streams with minimal oversight for obscure non-profits. It's not inherently evil, but it's troubling. Basically, what seems to have happened in this case is that a clique of politically well-connected Republicans managed to get their state senator to introduce legislation adding their ad hoc non-profit to the program. The group, FIT, seems to exist only as a clearinghouse for the money. FIT says it will divide the money among faith-based groups, but it hasn't offered any details on which ones, or what kind of programs.

There's nothing inherently illegal or immoral about creating a non-profit to take advantage of the program as long as the money actually goes to legitimate charities. Still it is a golden opportunity for political patronage and a back door way of subsidizing religious activities. In this case the state is acting as a pass-through and the non-profit covers the costs of developing and marketing the plates, so public money isn't going to religious education--but they are getting a valuable assist. What qualifies these people to divvy up the money to other charities?

Carla A. Mallen and Catherine L. Wellen are the president and vice-president of FIT. Their husbands are David Mallen and Robert Wellen. All have given campaign contributions to Vern Buchanan. David Mallen has worked as a lobbyist.

This is where the cab drivers go to wait until they are called up to the terminal..

I’ve had “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in my mind lately, with the song wailing and images of the corpses throughout that military installation where the made-for-TV version of Stephen King’s epic, the Stand, starts.

That had nothing to do with the news that has been buzzing around lately. Odd coincidence, though…

I guess it was when a friend on Facebook posted this status that I really woke up to it:

looks like captain tripps does exist!!! awesome!!!

Ah yes, “Captain Tripps” — the nickname for King’s super-flu from The Stand. What’s next? Corin Nemic joining Fox News coverage, staking out the Center for Disease control and trying to insinuate this is all the Democratic Party’s fault? (Corin Nemic, for those who don’t understand the reference, played Harold Lauder: outcast-nerd-turned-turncoat; in the miniseries. He also used to be Parker Lewis. “Not a problem.”)

Anyway, forget The Stand for a minute and lets just go back to the sensationalism of the coverage of the Flu. From what reports would have you believe, death-rates are high (like 10%+) and we’re all screwed. Joe Biden didn’t help things this morning by stating public caution.

But really, I wish people would just stop watching TV coverage of this and just become aware of the facts and just go about their lives. The flu sucks and is known to be deadly… But unless people start showing severe symptoms and start dropping dead in mass in New York instead of showing only mild symptoms… Well, it’s a panic that seems straight out of a work of fiction.

…And to be honest, King’s work of fiction was a lot better than the news coverage we are seeing in reality.

Let me point to it again — read the articles here. If you only want to spend time reading a single article, read the fourth in that series. And calm the hell down!

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