In this article, which appeared on MSNBC’s website this morning:

In the 1990s, during the “Lost Decade” that followed the bursting of a real estate bubble, Japan’s government spent more than $2 trillion on public works. In so doing, it dug itself the deepest public-debt hole in the history of the developed world, totaling more than 175 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Japan did what the US government is now attempting to do: stave off depression be borrowing trillions of dollars to fund public works. Richard C. Koo, one of the economic advisers to Japan’s Prime minister, who is also chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute, also said:

… while public works spending in the 1990s saddled the government with an onerous debt, it also prevented the economy from slipping into a depression, despite an 80 percent collapse in asset prices after the bubble burst. Our unemployment rate never went above 5.5 percent …

Low unemployment is good, but at what price? Japan has amassed the largest debt in the developed world in order to pay the wages for today’s workers. So, what about paying the wages for tomorrow’s workers? They are borrowing money to fund a lifestyle that they cannot afford. They can’t continue to borrow money forever. No one can. Not even the USA.

This video is fantastic! The British are in much worse shape than the USA, because they are several months down the road that we have just started to travel. In six months time, we may be where they are now. The description for this video reads, “Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for the South East of England and author of The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain.” My favorite quote:

Prime Minister, you cannot carry on, forever, squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession, or borrow your way out of debt.

Amen, brother! I keep hearing the Obama administration talk about stimulating the economy by creating jobs through public works projects. The Obama administration is spending hundreds of trillions of dollars to bail out the banking system and assume toxic assets in order to prop up a failed financial system. But I haven’t heard anyone talk about cutting spending! As Mr. Hannan said, “You cannot spend your way out of recession, you cannot borrow your way out of debt.” Any household that spends more than it makes will eventually reach a place where the interest on their debt exceeds their income. At that point, they only pay interest and cannot pay on the principle, which means that they will never, ever be able to pay off that loan. A nation is no different. If we spend more than we make we’re dooming our own nation to collapse. This is a very serious time for our country. We’re amassing debt so profoundly huge that our ability to produce and earn cannot match it. We need to cut government spending.

Many people in America are aware of this truth, which is why so many are fearful of a societal collapse and are preparing for a time of lawlessness and lack of resources. Having extra supplies and an alternative means of power and heat are practical solutions. I sincerely hope that things turn around, but in case they don’t I’m buying supplies and preparing for a time when I may not be able to rely on the multitude of delicate systems that enable me to have food, water, heat, and power in my home. I’m also preparing for the reality that more than 90% of people are completely unprepared for a disruption in the services and systems that keep them fed, warm, and safe. Many of those people will be willing to kill you or your family to get what they want. I believe we should, “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”. If the worst doesn’t happen, then we will just have some extra food and other supplies on hand. No big deal. However, what would happen to you and your family if things do go poorly? Imagine that gasoline is sold out, store shelves are empty, police are overwhelmed with emergency calls, and you’re left as the sole, unaided defender and provider for your family in a dangerous and disrupted world. Daniel Hannan, and many others like him, see the danger in how our government is handling this crisis. Can you? Are you hoping that someone else will take care of you and your family if there is a societal collapse? If not, then what steps are you taking to protect and provide for your loved ones? How long will it take you to complete your preparations? How long do we have before crime starts to surge and prices start to rise? How long before more companies fail, and the unemployment statistics include you and your family?

I’ve known this to be true for months because I’ve had extreme difficulty finding ammo or spare magazines for my own firearms, but MSNBC is reporting this as if it’s new news. The article may be late, but the content is interesting: Changes in D.C. prompt run on guns and ammo

If you Google the name, Gerald Celente, you’ll probably find what I found; references that note him as a “trends researcher” that is best known for predicting the fall of the Soviet Union and the Stock Market crash of 1987. By following trends in business and economics he accurately predicted the dot-com collapse, the sub-prime mortgage collapse, and the current financial crisis. Now, based on his analysis of consumer, business, political, economic, and social trends, he’s predicting total economic collapse, unemployment near 25%, a commercial real estate collapse, food riots, and a dramatic increase in crime … all within the next four years. He predicts that America will become the world’s first “undeveloped” country. I’m concerned that, once again, he may be right. American currency was originally based on gold. Today, it’s not based on anything. It’s just paper to which the government assigns value. This month the government began printing more money as part of their stimulus plan. Printing bills of a fiat currency merely reduces the value of that currency. The Obama administration has announced that they intend to increase the amount of paper currency in this nation by a factor of 15 within the next nine months. It is my understanding that will most likely result in hyperinflation.

Below are two video news segments featuring Gerald Celente and his expectations for the coming four years. The first is from an ABC News affiliate and the second is from Fox News.

For the most part, I’ve appreciated Tim Burton’s movies. Some of them I truly enjoy, like “Nightmare Before Christmas”. However, Burton’s films tend to feature more unusual plot lines, peculiar characters, and visuals that are nearly as disturbing as they are whimsical. Personally, I think a Tim Burton Superman movie would be a complete disaster, and it seems that many others agree. Is it even possible to imagine a Superman film directed by Burton, written by Keven Smith, and starring Nic Cage? Would you really want to imagine that? Anyway, it’s been 15 years since this movie almost happened, and it’s unlikely to ever happen, but you can read a little more about the failed film on Superman’s Super Site. I was browsing websites belonging to some designer and illustrator colleagues when I discovered the website of James Carson. He was hired to create some concept illustrations for the film (I never knew things progressed that far). You can see several of his illustrations for this failed film on James Carson’s website.

Postmaster General John Potter before a House subcommittee:
“We are facing losses of historic proportion. Our situation is critical.”
“Without a change we will exhaust our cash resources. We can no longer afford business as usual.”

William Young, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers:
“At this moment, the survival of the Postal Service — a venerable institution that is literally older than our country — hangs in the balance.”

Read the full article on MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29877702/

My friend, Ben, just sent me this story (thanks, Ben!):

Monty Python Replica Causes an Evacuation
March 24, 2009 by Michael Hickerson || Category: Bizarre News

It’s the best defense against killer rabbits and this past weekend, a prop replica of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch led to an English pub being evacuated according to the Daily Telegraph. Water company engineers found the suspicious looking object when they lifted up fire hydrant cover during work on a street in Shoreditch, east London. The road was cordoned off and a nearby pub was evacuated amid fears that the “grenade” could explode. Bomb experts were called in and spent an hour examining the device before determining it was a harmless replica of the prop from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Replicas can be purchased on e-bay according to reports. The spokeswoman for Islington police confirmed that the device was a toy and that had been no danger to the public. Local businesses criticized the police for taking so long to realise there was no threat. Alberto Romanelli, owner of the Windmill pub that was evacuated, said: “I lost a good hour’s worth of business.”

Original story from: http://www.sliceofscifi.com

I’ve been to Union Terminal in Cincinnati a couple of dozen times (see some of my photos), and I’ve always thought it looked like the Hall of Justice from the Superfriends cartoon. Well, an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer brings the truth to light … it ACTUALLY IS the Hall of Justice! The creators of the cartoon, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, made many trips to Cincinnati because their animation company was sold to Taft Broadcasting, which was based in Cincinnati. Taft broadcasting made the purchase of their studio several years before the SuperFriends cartoon debuted on television. About the same time that SuperFriends was appearing on television, Taft also opened the Kings Island amusement park in Cincinnati, which originally was populated with Hanna Barbera characters and themes. It’s a very interesting article, and the additional fun facts related to the comic book/graphic novel world at the end of the article are worth reading too (DC Comics series, “Terminal City” featured Union Terminal). Check it out!

I often get questions from friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers that would be most easily answered with a trip to Google. Well, now there’s a solution! The next time someone asks me a question that they should have typed into Google, I can send them a link that will do it for them. For instance, let’s say someone asks me, “How do you degauss a monitor”? Well, now I can visit lmgtfy.com where I can get a link that will answer their question. Here’s an example of the reply I could send: “That’s a good question, Bob. Follow this link to find out how to degauss a monitor“.

Now … was that so hard?

After watching the video in my previous post, I started clicking around and discovered the video above from the same person. It’s the “making of” video for another stop-motion video he’s created involving a dance-off between Batman and the Joker. Very nice stuff!

Nice stop motion animation!

I visited my own Blog this evening to discover that my latest post had disappeared. I went looking for it and found it in my admin panel, but it was disabled. Hmmmm? “That’s really weird”, I thought. It turns out that some spammer had hacked my Blog and inserted HUNDREDS of links into the content of that post! Because WordPress automatically hides any post that contains any words on my “blacklist”, the post instantly became disabled as soon as the spammer added content to my post. I went looking around and found several other disabled posts, all of them had been appended with the same multi-hundreds of lines of spam content. So, I’ve spent the last couple of hours trying to determine how it happened, but I can’t seem to find any info on the Internet about this type of hack. Really annoying. So, since I’ve re-enabled a few posts, scroll down to see if there’s anything you’ve missed.

At the end of the MSNBC news I saw a tiny little advertisement for GE’s SmartGrid technology. The website GE has created to promote that technology is really wonderful. It’s beautifully designed and appears to utilize several of the new features of CS4 (the latest version of Flash). Check it out: www.plugintothesmartgrid.com

Honestly, I haven’t been very happy with Google Chrome. I tried using it to write this post, and none of my quicktags were visible in Wordpress, so I abandoned Chrome in favor of Firefox … again. However, Google created a little experiment to show it off a bit, and it’s kinda fun. It’s not Earth shattering or anything, just kinda fun. If you have Chrome installed, you can click this link to see the experiment. If you don’t have Google Chrome installed, then the site won’t work properly because apparently only Google Chrome can display the new functionality. Without Chrome you’ll need to visit this link to watch a video and see what it looks like.

When a normal person defaults on their car or home loan, the bank repossesses the car or home because the property is the collateral for the loan. What would happen if the United States, the nation that previously had the largest and most powerful economy on the planet, defaulted on loans large enough to buy and re-sell itself? What happens when large portions of that loan are held by China, the largest, most populated, and most rapidly growing nation on the planet?

Earlier this week China expressed worries that America may default on our debt. More than 40% of American debt is owned by foreign investors, and China owns a very large portion of that percentage. In Jim Rawles’ book, “Patiots: Surviving the Coming Collapse“, the United States experiences a horrible economic and societal collapse which is preceded by America’s default on loans from foreign investors.

Today, I read this article, “U.S. sovereign-credit spreads rise sevenfold in year“, which contained the following header:

The cost of buying protection against the risk that the United States will default on its mounting debt has surged in the past months, outpacing the rise in corporate-credit costs, now that the government has absorbed more private-sector debt.

I haven’t posted much lately because my mind hasn’t been much on design or pop-culture. My mind has been preoccupied with being prepared for hard times. People I know have lost their jobs and cannot find work. Large and popular companies, in which I’ve spent my own money, have gone bankrupt, sold everything, fired their employees, and closed their doors forever. Recent events have shown me the precarious and delicate nature of the systems that make up our society. Situations can quickly turn dangerous when one or more of those intertwined and mutually supported systems breaks down. People become animals when those systems fail them. The speed with which things deteriorated in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina is a perfect example. The recent wind, ice, and snow storms here in the north east helped me to realize that I’m far too dependent on those delicate and mutually dependent systems for my food and safety. I’m now aware that, in the event of a common natural disaster (tornado, flood, etc), a service disruption, or an economic collapse, the level of societal breakdown experienced in New Orleans could happen where I live.

Most people don’t plan or prepare, so when a problem does arise the highways, gas stations, and grocery stores are packed with desperate people. I see this every time the weatherman reports an approaching snow storm. The grocery stores are insane, filled with crazy people trying to stock up for the three-days they may be snow bound. Shelves are emptied and it’s nearly impossible to find bread, milk, or other common food items. If the rush is that bad before a snow storm, a greater crisis would throw people into complete anarchy. That’s what happened in the two days before Katrina hit. No one took any preparations. The businesses and public services that supply any area are only successful because their demand is spread out over a large population and over a seven day business week. If everyone in an area were to try to get gas at once, the pumps quickly run dry. I’ve seen it happen. If everyone tries to buy groceries at the same time, the shelves are quickly emptied. If everyone tries to travel the highways at the same time, the roads are quickly gridlocked.

The words in the title of this post were sung decades ago by Bob Dylan, indicating the social changes that were evident in American culture. Now, those words indicate a far greater and more extensive set of changes taking place in America, and indeed, the world. The changes are political, social, cultural, personal, and certainly economical. The decline of the nation’s economy has destroyed savings accounts, opportunities, and middle income lifestyles for millions of Americans. The family unit is in jeopardy when jobs are lost, cars are repossessed, and homes are foreclosed. Men and women who worked for 20 and 30 years, earning a good income, have discovered their savings is gone and their job along with it. They’re left with virtually nothing to show for their life’s hard work and diligent effort. It’s happening to more and more people, and things are predicted to get much worse before they get better. So, to prevent my Blog from being abandonded, my posts may be a little more diverse in the future.