Search Episodes (The Good Old Days)

Undress to Impress: The Jeans

Added 01/12/12
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Episode 089: Dingri, Old Tingri

Added 01/11/12
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Italians Celebrate Festival of La Befana

Added 01/10/12
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Episode 026: Trouble By The Foot

Added 01/07/12
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Episode 026: Trouble By The Foot

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 04:48:53 01/07/12
My Meat Foot. Ok, Ok, Ok, so maybe I shouldn?t have gone all the way to ABC at 21,000 feet. The funny thing is that the altitude wasn?t a problem. Only in the morning. I?d wake up and would have my vision be somewhat spotty, strobing and tracing. After I?d stumble down the path to the ?bathroom? and nearly careen down the slope into the Romanian tents (ABC has no ground, it?s all a glacial moraine which means it?s all loose rock like a scree slope) my vision would clear up. Usually just as I was pulling down my pants to do my business in the open air toilet I?d look over and see a member of the British Royal Navy Team squatting on his open air toilet and we?d wave to each other. Friendship in misery. After a time at ABC, I realized it was beautiful but it sucked up there. You just can?t rest. The entire time you can feel your body deteriorating. So, it was time to climb down. I made the 22km in one very long day but it was very painful. In fact I totally messed up my left foot. I?ve never had a problem with my boots, but leave it to Everest to change that. The trail is only loose rock and every step I took pounded my toenail into the front of the boot. By the time I made it back to BC, I knew it was a bad situation. I had a terrible pain in that Big Toe, but I was just too tired to deal with it that evening. I slept and the next morning inspected the damage. My toe didn?t look like a toe anymore. In fact, one of my French friends, Bertrand, described it as a sausage floating in water. It was really surreal to look at my toe and think it was an alien. Luckily, my Russian friends have a doctor here at Base Camp. I?m really good friends with him, Dmitri. I hobbled over to the camp and went into their Comm tent. He wasn?t there but some other friends were. Vova said he thought I looked in pain. I took off my sock and they all yelped in Russian. Vova jumped up, slapped me on the shoulder and ran out to find Dr. Dima. Minutes later my foot was in this huge surgeon?s fleeced lap. He said it would take a small operation and that I would be fine. He said something in Russian to Vova who immediately jumped up and disappeared from the tent. Seconds later he returned with a bottle of whiskey. Dima handed the bottle and suggested I drink up.?For pain.? I grabbed the bottle and thought of every Old West movie I?d ever seen, looking around for a wooden spoon or something to put between my teeth and bite down on. I raised the bottle to my lips and was about to drink when Dima grabbed the bottle. The joke was on me. The whiskey was actually rubbing alcohol and he was only kidding about me needing to drink up. Apparently Russian airlines do not allow the passengers to transport running alcohol in their luggage, yet they DO allow unbelievably high proof liquor. Dima simply fills an empty whiskey bottle with rubbing alcohol and can easily sneak it through security! I washed my foot, then Dima shot my toe up with novocain and sterilized his tools with the alcohol and cut here and there releasing pressure, then cut away the nail. It was gross, but I was fascinated! Afterwards, he put a ton of Russian antibiotic cream on it and wrapped it in sterile gauze his wife had carefully prepared in St Petersburg (she?s apparently an anesthesiologist). In 30 minutes it was all taken care of and only hurt a lot for a minute. That was 3 days ago and every morning Dima comes over and gently changes my dressing. These people are so great. I offered to pay since I have some cash on me but Dima just raised his finger to his head and twirled his finger to say I was crazy. I almost cried. I would be totally in trouble of infection without him. But he really cares about my well being and I?m being taken care of with immaculate care. He said I was his first American patient and I said he was my first Russian doctor. All in broken English, of course. I?ll never forget the generosity I?ve experienced here. I?m sitting in their Comm tent right now using their generator since mine is busted again. Everyone is glad I?m here and it?s wonderful. Everest North Side would be a totally dead landscape if it weren?t for all of the great people. They?re what I?m going to remember, not the Mountain. Jon Miller Total Running Time: 23:28

Twin Polar Bear Cubs Debut in China's Liaoning Province

Added 01/03/12
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Rep. JC Watts Endorses Newt Gingrich for President

Added 12/21/11
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AFL-CIO Launches 'Share Your Story' To Document Unemployment C...

Added 12/07/11
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AFL-CIO Launches 'Share Your Story' To Document Unemployment Crisis

[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:23 12/07/11
The AFL-CIO launched a new website on Tuesday designed to capture the stories of the unemployed in their own words. The website, Share Your Story allows site visitors to upload their stories and pictures to the site, providing a human face to the issue of unemployment, which politicians talk a lot about, but don't seem nearly as interested in doing something about. Many of the stories on the site are like those of Pat from San Jose: > I was a Communications worker for just under 20 years. After I was "surplused" in 1995 I went to work at a non-union job in the same industry which later became Worldcom followed by positions in two other companies. After the dot com bust in 2001, finding a full time job was hopeless. Apparently the rules had changed and I did not have the education to continue doing the work I had done for 25 years. The past 10 1/2 years have held sporadic, temporary and part time positions, most in retail which paid very little and I have now been unemployed for about a year. This track record, along with the fact that I am now 61 years old doesn't offer much for a resume. My thought is to apply for Social Security (a real oxymoron) if the powers that be will allow it. My retirement fund has all but vanished in the wake of what has happened. I don't know what plan the 1% has for us--maybe they expect that we will simply vanish the way our money did on Wall Street. Janet from Texas questions the whole system: > I have two masters degree and am all but dissertation for a doctrate in social work. I worked, consistently for the first 30 years of my adulthood and am now unemployed. I am living with friends because I cannot get unemployment. I cannot get unemployment because I quit my last job. I quit my last job because they were not paying me. I am suffering, in chronic pain, because I have no health care coverage. I am substitute teaching to try to cover my expenses so if a permanent job comes through, I will still have a car to get there. My question to you, as I stand in front of a classroom of young people: I am supposed to tell them to get a high school degree and go on to college because...............why? She is far from alone in being a hard-working person who played by the rules and was still left out in the cold by the system. Even more heartbreaking are stories like that of Marge from Illinois: > I am writing to say what a profound negative impact joblessness has on a family. My son in law is in the building trades industry. Due to lack of activity he has been laid off for the last two years almost as much as he has worked. This has placed much stress on their young family and marriage. In fact the stress has gotten to the point where my son in law is back to drinking heavily which has led to their separation. I might add that they have two young sons. One is six weeks old. So I have a very strong opinion that we need to do what it takes to extend unemployment benefits. What will families do if they have absolutely NO income? And more than that we need to get the economy back on track. What is wrong with Congress that they are more concerned about seeing someone fail or getting their way than to look out for the good of the people who elected them? I am still hopeful that those members of Congress who have real values will stand firm and do what's right! AFL-CIO's release urges everyone to participate: > You need to check out this website, right now. It’s a powerful reminder of the real faces behind America’s sobering unemployment statistics. It has real pictures and stories from job-hunters and impacted people from all walks of life—from your state and from every state. I hope you’ll take a minute to look at these powerful stories, share them and add your own. If Congress fails to act by Dec. 31, extended unemployment insurance will expire for millions. We never forget these are real people who face the prospect of going hungry and getting thrown out of their homes soon after the holidays if Congress fails to act. Many of us have been there before—or have friends and family who have. Even though obstructionists in Congress are willing to ignore our joblessness crisis, we refuse to let these stories get brushed under the rug. Click here to see and share the stories and faces behind America’s joblessness crisis. Then, share our website on Facebook and Twitter and forward this message to all your friends. These stories and pictures won’t just live on a website. We’ll share them with the media, hand-deliver them to Congress during our massive day of action on Dec. 8 and promote them widely on the Internet. If callous members of Congress think they can sit back and allow unemployment aid to expire while they play political games, they’re wrong. With your help we’re going to force them to see this crisis head-on—with real faces of real people who are jobless and struggling in this brutal economy. See these stories, share them and add your voice. In Solidarity, Manny Herrmann Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO P.S. It’s not just people who are unemployed right now who have stories to tell. Millions of others do, too. Maybe you’ve been jobless in the past and relied on unemployment benefits to get through. Or you’ve seen firsthand how much unemployment hurts your community and America—and how much unemployment aid helps. Or maybe you can write a brief statement of support for the jobless or urge Congress to act—even in just one to two sentences. Together, we’re creating a visual display of the impact of unemployment that will be too powerful to ignore. See and share stories and statements in your state and across America. Then, add your own.

What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

Added 12/06/11
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What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:01 12/06/11
Amy Goodman reports on "Occupy Our Homes" for Democracy Now This week 60 Minutes gave viewers a good look at some of the widespread criminality that created the Wall Street mortgage boom and led to our ongoing financial crisis. They also saw some of the overwhelming evidence of illegal activity on the part of big banks, and were reminded that none of those banks' executives have been prosecuted. As ugly as the situation is, there is some logic behind the government's actions - and its inactions. They're acting on a tragically incorrect (but internally coherent) set of assumptions that can be summed up in one sentence. It goes something like this: "To preserve the health of the American economy, banks must be allowed to keep preying on their consumers." That's it. That's the logic. But there are two exciting "Occupy" developments this week that could change the equation - "Take Back the Capitol" in the District of Columbia, and Tuesday's "Occupy Our Homes" events around the country. Think of them as complementary actions: One is taking place at the site of our greatest government power. The other is bringing the action to homes where people have been victimized by bankers. People may not realize it, but there's power in those homes, too. The Logic of Injustice Despite their destructive behavior, the people who bailed bankers out and are giving them a free pass for their crimes aren't necessarily evil or corrupt. Well, okay, people like this guy are. But others have merely been so infected by misguided economic thinking that they really believe that the only way to save the economy is to keep shafting consumers and pampering mega-bankers. The thinking goes something like this: Our largest banks are too big to fail, and since we lack the will or the motivation to break them up or regulate them we must protect them at all costs. We've propped them up with TARP, quantitative easing, and $7.7 trillion in secret Federal Reserve loans, but they're still shaky as hell. If we prosecute any of their executives, their stock prices will fall and they'll collapse again. And they'll take the entire economic system with them. That leads to some grotesque miscarriages of justice. Nobody at Wells Fargo has been indicted for money laundering, for example, despite the fact that the bank has paid millions to settle charges of laundering cash for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered more than 35,000 people. As an experienced bank investigator working for the Senate observed, "There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure." The Bailout Nobody Knows And banks don't just need protection from their own criminality. They also need protection from their own lousy management. Their balance sheets are filled with toxic risks from their long run of incompetence, negligence, and greed. That's where you and I come in. Some powerful folks are afraid the banks will fail if they're forced to write off the bad loans on their books, or to stop profiting from loans sold deceptively or irresponsibly. TARP may be over, but there's another massive bank rescue going on. Who's funding it? We are. Every time we pay a usurious interest fee on a credit card, we're propping up the banks. Every time we make another month's payment on an underwater mortgage, we're propping them up too. Every time we pay an overpriced consumer loan of any kind, we're making another payment into the consumer-funded bailout that's keeping the big banks afloat. It would be great if politicians in Washington stopped using American consumers to subsidize banks that shouldn't even exist. But they haven't. That's where "Occupy Our Homes" comes in. Occupy Our Homes Tuesday, December 6, has been declared a National Day of Action to Occupy Our Homes . Its goal is to focus attention on the corrupt banking practices that led to the mortgage boom and today's ongoing economic misery for most of the 99 percent. It's also a day for helping people in our communities who have been victimized by predatory lending, criminal bank forgery, unfair or illegal foreclosure practices, and other bank abuses that victimize the public. Occupy Minnesota has already occupied an illegally-foreclosed home, and plans to do the same thing with another home tomorrow. Here in Los Angeles, where an inspiring victory has already taken place, OccupyLA will help two brave families re-occupy their illegally foreclosed homes . One of those homes belongs to a three-earner family that includes a gainfully employed woman with cerebral palsy named Ana Wison. Ana's household clearly seems capable of making its mortgage payments, but her bank's foreclosing anyway. And in one of ironies that have become all too common, the bank in quesion is none other than that Mexican drug cartel money-laundering outfit, Wells Fargo. The Occupy movement hopes to focus the public's attention on people like Ana Wison. In the words of the Dylan song : "Things should start to get interesting right around now." Demonizing the Victim Resisting illegal foreclosures is a good first step. It brings attention to Wall Street's criminality, venality, and plain old inhumanity toward the people they call their"customers" - but treat like serfs. It does something else important: It counteracts the brainwashing, driven by Wall Street and dutifully echoed by the media, which has demonized the victims of bank misbehavior. (We were trying to fight that brainwashing back in 2008, without much luck.) The Occupy movement has already won several battles in that war. If the public's attention can now be focused on people like Ana Wison, that can be a powerful blow against the Wall Street/corporate media "they deserve it" hype. What about the millions of people who have suffered because of the banks' predatory mortgage lending but aren't behind in payments or in the foreclosure process? We need to re-open the debate about the fairness of forcing any underwater homeowners to pay underwater principal on homes that their banks knew, or should have known, were going to decrease in value. After all, the same conglomeration of banks and corporate media that demonize homeowners as "greedy" and "irresponsible" spent most of the last twenty years convincing people that real estate was a sure-fire investment. Banks made an extraordinary amount of money off the bubble they created. The total mortgage amount outstanding in this country went from $6.2 trillion in 2002 to $11.9 trillion in 2009, a meteoric rise. And while banks feed off the Federal Reserve's unusually low rates, they've renegotiating very few home loans. Consumers also owe nearly three quarter of a trillion dollars in credit card debt, much of it being paid at unconscionable rates of 12 percent to 29 percent - while their banks enjoy rates from 0 percent to 3 percent, thanks to the government institutions created by those same consumers. Occupy Our Homes. Occupy Our Credit Cards. Occupy Our Payday Lending ... What will happen if consumers stopped blaming themselves? What if they demanded that the banks take responsibility for their irresponsible and/or predatory lending? What if they refused to stop this country's perverse economic role reversal, where customers have become the ATMs while banks keep making the withdrawals? If 10% of America's homeowners declared a mortgage strike it would rock the banking world. If everybody paying exorbitant credit card interest declared a moratorium on payments all at once, Wall Street would change forever. Think about it: "Occupy ALL Our Homes." "Occupy Our Credit Cards ... Our Payday Loans ... Our Buy-and-Drive Loans ..." I'm not saying these are necessarily the right tactics, although they very well may be. But what's most important is that we understand that consumers have far more power than we usually realize - provided we act together. Many of Washington's leaders will cringe at the thought, of course. "That could hurt our biggest banks," they say. It would be tempting to reply, You say that like it's a bad thing. Here's a better response: Then start planning to break them up in an orderly fashion. We're done living a life of indentured servitude just so we can subsidize their greed. Those are the discussions that we should be having. If powerful people on Wall Street and in Washington aren't worried about Occupy Our Homes , they're not paying attention. But with any luck, they soon will. ______________________ (If you've been a victim of mortgage abuse you can tell your story here . If you want to find an Occupy Our Homes event near you, you can look for one here .)

The Good Old Days And The Glorious Coming Days

Added 12/04/11
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Reform School Vs. Justin Bieber - "Fa La La (ft. Boyz II Men)"

Added 12/02/11
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Reform School Vs. Justin Bieber - "Fa La La (ft. Boyz II Men)"

[LESS INFO] 21 VIEWS | ADDED 20:00:00 12/02/11
We start off the month of December with our first holiday Reform School. This week the girls take a look at the new video for the latest single of Justin Bieber's Christmas album "Under The Mistletoe". This is "Fa La La" featuring backing vocals from Boyz II Men. Martina loves this song. "This is probably one of my favorites off of his Christmas album, and his Christmas album is amazing." Under the Mistletoe includes a mix of some covers and some originals. This one is one of the originals. Fa La La is one of four songs from the album that will see video releases in the span of two weeks. But the quality of the music isn't the only attraction. Mr. Bieber has the look, according to the Reform School Girls. "Omigod, I'm in love already!" Jackie: "It's so cool that Boyz II Men are on this. They're so old school." The girls keep obsessing on Bieber's looks. "I don't understand how someone can be so beautiful. Like, how was he born this way?" "Our camera man is gagging right now..." Jackie, once again, affirms her disdain for black and white videos and movies. "I love his hair. He's definitely maturing so much." "We're allowed to say that he's sexy now, 'cause he's almost 18." Good looks don't carry the day though. Our reviewers find the video to be, in a word, boring. "Nothing's happening. Where's the Christmas trees and mistletoe and the girl he's supposed to be singing to?" "I'm so bored," says Jackie. "At least have a wreath or something. There's no sign that this is a holiday video." Though they clearly have Bieber fever, and generally like the other work of director Colin Tilley, this one gets a D or D+ at most. Sorry, Justin.

Kindle Fire, Robots, iPod, and Explosions

Added 11/26/11
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Lamb with Five Legs Born in Northwest China

Added 11/26/11
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Egyptian Military Apologizes For Deaths

Added 11/24/11
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Kindle Fire, Robots, iPod, and Explosions

Added 11/24/11
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Kindle Fire, Robots, iPod, and Explosions

[LESS INFO] 13 VIEWS | ADDED 09:28:14 11/24/11
http://chris.pirillo.com/kindle-fire-robots-ipod-and-explosions/ - How many robots does it take to make a playlist? Are you looking for a way to put that old iPod touch to good use? And how can melons make the Web a safer place? Top 10 Songs About Robots http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2011/11/19/top-ten-songs-about-robots/ Five Practical Uses for an iPod touch http://www.lockergnome.com/ios/2011/11/19/five-practical-uses-for-an-ipod-touch/ Three Must-Have Applications for Your Amazon Kindle Fire http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2011/11/19/three-must-have-applications-for-your-amazon-kindle-fire/ Kindle Fire unboxing video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqp0y74idRI Amazon Kindle Fire: How to Avoid the Three Mistakes I Made http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2011/11/18/amazon-kindle-fire-how-to-avoid-the-three-mistakes-i-made/ New Startup BrightNest is Like Mint for Your House http://www.lockergnome.com/social/2011/11/21/new-startup-brightnest-is-like-mint-for-your-house/ New Startup MelonCard Helps Prevent Identity Theft http://www.lockergnome.com/social/2011/11/21/new-startup-meloncard-helps-prevent-identity-theft/ Can GoVoluntr Help Better Connect Volunteers? http://www.lockergnome.com/social/2011/11/21/can-govoluntr-help-better-connect-volunteers/ interview with Protect IP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxPQ320jBLc GoToManage from Citrix http://go.tagjag.com/gotomanage App of the Day http://loopc.am/ Back Link of the Day http://www.apalon.com/press.html Question of the Day http://lockergnome.net/questions/172614/tech-project-for-high-school-senior Gnomie of the Day https://plus.google.com/115151945721234573086/posts Music: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/discography/by/mr_spastic http://twitter.com/ChrisPirillo http://facebook.com/ChrisPirillo