Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Daily Archives: April 13, 2008

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 7 (The OMNINet: From Good Intentions …)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 7 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

The OMNINet is one of the world’s largest corporations – or group of corporations – that exist on the planet. It has a broad reach, easily touching the lives of every North American, with an enormous influence on most other continents of the world as well.

But the OMNINet had its origins in from humble intentions. Towards the end of the 1930s, as the Depression subsided, the OMNINet emerged out of two core services: spiritual guidance and transportation.

Grant Garamond, the father of Griffith, started the Univist Church with an intent to guide the scores of lost soles that had been tempted by the ills of the market and who had lost their homes, their farms and for some, even their families, mostly to starvation. For those latter groups of people, the Univist Church became the home for these lost souls. It provided for them, fed them and took care of them long enough to give them a chance to get their feet on the ground.

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Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 6 (Kite Resignation Letter)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 6 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

Mr. Kite always believed that it was important to quit before you got fired. Having been fired, many, many times, it caused problems. Not for morale or anything stupid like that, but because getting fired actually created significantly more paperwork than quitting. And more paperwork translated to a record that someone could track down one day and connect to him.

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Link with Net Neutrality? Mukasey Says Piracy is Funding Terror

All you downloaders and file sharers: are you terrorists?

You might be, if you listen to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who recently stated that terrorists are generating huge profits from online piracy and counterfitting.

Full Article Here.

I like this quote from SFGate:

Before Friday’s speech, Mukasey met privately with representatives from companies including Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc.

A day earlier, the attorney general also met with entertainment industry executives in Los Angeles during his three-day California trip.

I find it interesting that someone like Mukasey, with influence from the entertainment industry, is defining who’s a terrorist.

Is this yet another link that will be made in the case against folks that want to share information online, even it it’s free or part of a creative commons? Will this kind of rhetoric be used as the foundation to dump teens and grannies alike in jail because they’ve downloaded a copy of (insert new, favourite band here) latest tunes?

Big News: Media Frenzy or Fallout?

There are several ‘big news’ articles that are running the circuit these days. Here are a couple of examples:

  1. The Banking / Debt Crisis. Here’s an example.
  2. World Starvation and the Food Crisis.

I’ve ranted before about the need to understand the impact that the falling US dollar is having on international markets and I’m about to rant again.

Because most commodities are priced in US funds at some point or other, a tumbling US dollar results in an exaggerated global price. Oil. Wheat. Rice. Timber. Etc. Even if you’re in Bangladesh and you’re trying to eke out a subsistence with a pound or two of rice, that commodity becomes more and more expensive (and more scarce as a result) as the US dollar plummets. People can do their best to bypass the influence that the international market has on prices, but eventually, prices will catch up to everyone and snatch food from their mouths.

Now, I fully admit that there are more factors than the US dollar when it comes to pricing: supply chain issues, water supply, environmental challenges, etc.

However, I still sincerely believe that the rest of the world has to figure out a way to avoid getting caught in this pricing trap, regardless of some of the other external factors influencing commodity prices.

For examples, is there an international exchange that exists that bypasses the US marketplace completely? Is there an exchange that allows farmers in Brazil to supply goods to consumers in Bolivia without having to convert all of their work and product to US funds? If you know of examples, please provide them.

Tar Sands Exposed in the US

From Reality Sandwich: The War in the Mid-West.

For a few years, spin doctors have been trying to get us to call the Tar Sands the ‘Oil Sands’, but as the author suggests, ‘Mordor’ seems like a much more suitable title.

One day, kids will ask us what we did to oppose the Tar Sands project and I certainly hope the response is a little more than ‘we drove cars that starved the planet instead’.

Reality Sandwich: Transcending Possessiveness in Love and Music

Another Reality Sandwich article.

In the article, the author explores the relationship between ‘free love’ and ‘free music’ and introduces us to this business model:

When I imagine the future of artist-label relationship, the first company that comes to mind is Magnatune, out of Berkeley, California. Flying the motto, “We are not evil,” Magnatune signs nonexclusive distribution agreements with its artists – and allows customers to pay what they think the music is worth, rather than arbitrarily assigning a market price. The result is that they have two charts: the best-selling music, and the music that has sold for the most money. For people who trust the voice of the crowd, the most valuable music is sifted into visibility – motivating artists to craft something evocative and enduring. What’s more, Magnatune offers three free copies of each download to all of its buyers:

“While other record labels are busy suing their customers for introducing their friends to great music… At Magnatune, we want you to copy our music for your friends.”

At the very root, possessiveness is what is undoing most of the traditional leaders in the community, and we’re once again seeing how the music industry is the classic ‘canary in a coalmine’ as it relates to how the industry has died and how it can be built up again.