The Future Un-Inc'd

"Future Unincorporated is a consulting company created by Cassie [Thornton]. The mission of The Future Unincorporated was to create an office where very important meetings can take place. To consult is to give and take advice. Cassie developed an interrogation system that created a reason for conversation with each individual client. The goal of the interrogation is to amass information about individuals in order to discover the perfect corporation inside every person. The Future Unincorporated understands the future starts in only 5 minutes, and it goes on forever. The company would like to ask you what you will be doing then. It believes the consultations will change the future just by talking about it." Read more here.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Company of Colours, 2009, Shadow Box 9, hi-res interactive display with built-in computerized tracking system. "This piece shows the live surveillance camera view constructed out of a variety of culturally significant color swatches and palettes, from the 4 shades of green of the original Nintendo Gameboy to the X11 CSS3web browser palettes."

From bitforms, at Pulse NY.

UR Union of the Unemployed

. . . a.k.a. "UCubed":

. . . The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

Joining a Cube is as simple as it is important. (Please check the union web site: www.unionofunemployed.com). Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that contains 162 activists. Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks, nor can merchants avoid them.

The union is built from the ground up. Cube activists will select their own leadership in each cube, neighborhood, block and higher group as well.

More at DailyKos.

Mystery Money

Per WaPo,

A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan – often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport – as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin.

The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal.

But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving opium trade. And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some of the cash leaving Kabul has been smuggled overland from Pakistan.

"All this money magically appears from nowhere," said a U.S. official who monitors Afghanistan's growing role as a hub for cash transfers to Dubai, which has six flights a day to and from Kabul.

More at the link.

Dramatic Reading of a Break-Up Letter

(Thanks, snarky!)

More Happy Weekend

To replace Georgia State Rep. Glenn Richardson, a family-values Republican who stepped down after he was accused of having an affair with a lobbyist while he was married, voters elected another family-values conservative, Rep. Daniel Stout, who admitted to an affair with his first wife's mother while his first wife was pregnant with their daughter.

So when he yelled, "Who's your daddy?" did she say, "Your wife's mother's father"?

Have a Good Weekend

(Thanks, Ben!)

Healthcare: You Want Ideas?

Why not make a rule that says, each insurance co. must offer the same plans, for the same premiums, to everyone?

Why should your access to healthcare depend on, e.g., whether you happen to work for a large corporation? How does it benefit society to allow insurance companies to just screw all the people who don't have the smarts or the leverage or the whatever to negotiate a better deal – e.g., free-lancers, or people working three part-time jobs to make ends meet, or children?

Do we really think healthcare should be a perq, like a company car, that people get only if they land the right job?

There are lots of reasons why an insurance company might want to charge one person more than another; and as a society, we might or might not decide to legitimate some of those reasons (e.g., whether or not you smoke). But why shouldn't we have more say as to which bases for charging higher premiums are appropriate?