killing in the name of (electrical modernity)

I'm firmly in support of thermo-nuclear power. Dangerous? Not nearly so much as people believe, and it doesn't even hold a candle to coal.

China has the world's most dangerous mines, and the government has closed thousands of small mines since 2006 in an effort to reduce fatalities by consolidating the industry into larger, more efficient operations. Last year, the number of mining fatalities dropped by one-fifth to 3,786 deaths, still the highest figure in the world. [according to the IHT]

Granted, China is pretty bad from all safety aspects (if I had to bet money on the next nuclear plant disaster, "somewhere in China" would be my first choice).

What? Athletes complaining about steroids in Chinese food? Heck, I won't even touch chicken unless it's been irradiated and has at least 3 head-like growths! I think in the 2008 Olympics, what the world will see is a 2^nd-world country trying desperately (and mostly superficially) to be considered part of the traditional First World.

That's not a knock against China per se, I think they have every right to get there, but I think the speed at which they are trying is going to leave the internal workings of the country as hollow as the old Soviet attempt (and current Russian attempt) to do the same. These things take time to be done right, and even the West still has hiccups similar to the recent cold-weather-induced transportation fiasco this Lunar New Year.

Then again, how can China succeed when the crazy, left-wing, liberal, pinko-commie Western Media^TM is hell-bent on destroying their propaganda? Heck, even Adolf never had it this bad. Poor Rupert - it seems all his travails to placate the Chinese just keep falling up short - damn that villainous Grey Lady! Damn her straight to hell!

Double-duh

Captain Obvious has struck again!


When was the last time real median incomes increased? Not for a long, long time now, during an administration far, far away ...

(PS - I know the above graphic from the Detroit Free Press is not entirely correct, but it's just meant to be a visual illustration)

Duh-vos

I'm continually amazed at how idiotic arguments are not only respected, they actually carry intellectual weight!

His proposed remedy: a code of conduct. "I'm baffled by why SWFs don't get together and put an end to all this discussion by agreeing on some piece of paper that says: We're under no circumstances going to speculate in currencies; we're always going to be a long-term investor; we're never going to use our SWF to pursue any political objective."

The SWF managers protested, as one, that since they had never engaged in any of the activities that Summers expressed concern about, there was no reason to try to regulate them so. "You're talking about how to pre-emptively regulate something that may happen," said Muhammad Al Jasser of Saudi Arabia.

Yes, we are talking about pre-emptive regulation - you don't wait for sovereign fund to exercise political control and then try to legislate, that's just retarded (even if it is the status quo). What's even more amusing is that if these funds already are not engaging in these activities, they they're already compliant with the proposed code of conduct! Oh, wait ...

"We've had a lot of resistance to regulating the hedge funds, and the rating agencies, even though there were failures galore. So, let's be a little bit more balanced." Touché! Kristin Halvorson of Norway responded that while Norway would appreciate having some common rules, the hypothetical examples Summers cited "would never be possible in Norway."

Summers responded with an anecdote about how the Norwegian fund had sold short the shares of Icelandic banks, and the potential political complications those actions raised.

Yes, capitalism in the end does mean we're all just greedy fucks making a beast with [green]backs.

the crux of my problem with capitalism

It's like that Al Pacino quote in The Devil's Advocate,

Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch - he's a prankster. Think about it. He give man instinct. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear for His own amusement, His own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off! He's a tight-ass! He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!

In order for capitalism to work, you have to weight the incentives appropriately with respect to the outcomes. You don't want rogue traders? Penalize them so they are ruined, no the company (e.g., Barings). Although I am heartened to see that the dehumanizing corporate machine can still be damaged/destroyed by the actions of a single human being, for it signifies that all is not yet lost, it doesn't have to be like this. (That the dehumanizing corporate machine played a role in motivating them to hide their losses longer, and probably also tinged their feelings with more maliciousness than the news media will report, is a debate for a much longer entry.)

There is a very simple reason why corporate types never "learn": you want companies in dangerous industries to be safe and stop killing people? Set the financial incentives such that death carries such an unwieldy burden that companies will avoid it at literally any cost. Want people to stop polluting? Make it financially inconvenient. Since corporations are legally bound to seek profit, only those incentives that damage their profits (existing, or the ability to generate more) will be heeded. Stop treating inconveniences as "externalities" or think that lifecycle analyses are attempts to boil the ocean - if you penalize for noncompliance, it shall be done!

It is that simple.

complaint department, ground floor

I can't imagine what the denizens of an autocratic island paradise could possibly have complained about. Actually, the complaints sound like something out of high school, which might actually be a pretty good argument for the style of life there.

we heart Pakistan

Does this article ever give me confidence in our "allies" in Pakistan:

Kidwai said any decision on using a nuclear weapon would rest with the 10-member National Command Authority chaired by the president, "hopefully by consensus but at least by majority." The decision would be conveyed to the Strategic Plans Division and then through the military chain of command.

Kidwai acknowledged that two Pakistani nuclear scientists had met with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, during the rule of the Taliban regime. But a three-month investigation held after the Sept. 11 attacks on America had cleared the two men and established "nothing dangerous had happened."

So not only does it only take six (6) Pakistani officials to decide to launch a nuke, these same officials don't believe that meeting with Osama bin Laden constitutes danger! Seriously, what the fuck?

was it all slimy when it arrived?

snail mail earns its nickname!

So they can take the time to calculate a snail's trek, but they can also die flying to an air safety meeting? Does not compute!

Fans of information conveyance methodologies, rejoice!

awesome!

Awesome: redux! (this is also cool - another take on the below)

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

Hemingway quotes.

Agree: "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened."

Yes! "That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way."

Me too: "All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time."

Concur: "All our words from loose using have lost their edge."

Disagree: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."

weeping

I felt extremely sympathetic to the plight of our nation's insurers when I read how they've struggled in the wake of 9/11 and Katrina. I mean, how terrible is this?

The loss ratio for property-casualty insurance companies, or the percentage of premiums paid out to policyholders as benefits, was 54.6 percent last year, according to the study, up from 53.3 percent in 2006 but far below the 75 percent level of the late 1980s.

The study — based on insurance industry data and companies' financial reports — estimates that the insurance industry's net income after taxes in 2007 will be $65 billion, down from the record $67.6 billion set in 2006 but above 2005's $48.8 billion.

I can understand how emotional someone can get over those numbers.

"The absence of any major storm or earthquake has allowed insurers to post two modestly profitable years. But it wasn't long ago, 2004 and 2005, when our industry suffered record natural-catastrophe losses," Marc Racicot, president of the American Insurance Association, said in a statement.

Certainly our incompetent government is partly to blame for this travesty.

Insurace companies have received about $4 billion in subsidies, the report says, since the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act took effect in November 2002 after insurers' costs from the Sept. 11 attacks hit $32 billion. The backstop under the act, in which the government agrees to reimburse insurers up to $100 billion in the event of another attack by foreign terrorists, was extended for another seven years under legislation enacted by Congress last month and signed into law by President Bush.

I mean, on top of all of this you have completely frivolous claims - how is one to cope? I'm surprised the insurers even stay in business.

No Wonder They Hate Us: Part 151,000 (and counting)

This is definitely a lowball estimate. I mean, some of the people trying to count the death toll ended up in the morgue!

Oh, and no matter the tactics, remember: Iraq isn't just a pure numbers game, it's about winning the hearts and minds of the broader Muslim community. We can achieve that simply by our disregard for international treaties and conventions, which illustrates that we have bigger guns (dicks) than any other nation and we are more willing (gay) to shove said weaponry down any opposition's throats (die, sandniggaz, die!).

My favorite tidbits:

To Jordan's offense [um - shouldn't that be "defense"?]
Maj. Kris Poppe, Jordan's attorney, said he argued that Jordan "faced these very serious charges for a long period of time, that he had been found not guilty of any offense related to the abuse of detainees, and that he had a stellar record."

Yes, that is significant because as we all know the statue of limitations is a very important matter in torture - just ask those 80-something Nazi war criminals how grateful they are that the minds of the world have forgotten their acts.

Rowe agreed. [no shit] "In light of the nature of the offense that Jordan had been found guilty of committing and the substantial evidence in mitigation at trial and in post-trial matters submitted by defense counsel, Rowe determined that an administrative reprimand was a fair and appropriate disposition of the matter," Joanna P. Hawkins, a military spokeswoman, said in a statement.

I mean, how serious of an offense is offending a suspected terrorist? It ranks right below a raspberry and just above giving someone's tongue a paper cut if I recall my CIA world torture guidebook correctly ...

Jordan: 'I'm gratified and glad'
"I'm still a little bit shocked by it all, but I'm gratified and glad that Gen. Rowe saw it for what it really is," he said. "I don't know if any officer needed to be held accountable, but I obviously don't believe it should have been me."

Obviously, since the accountability of decision-makers for horrible decisions is what makes Bush so popular in the US. Why shouldn't it be the same for the rest of the world - being so envious of our 'freedoms' after all, they should be ecstatic! Aren't all mens hearts and minds created equal in the eyes of our vengeful Christian God?

I've got yer ABM treaty right here!

Any wonder why Putin's anti-Western posturing is so popular among the majority of Russians? To wit:

Clinton did not venture into the Middle East to bring his stature to bear on negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians until his second term. His administration refused to submit the UN Kyoto Protocol on climate change for ratification and did not support the new International Criminal Court. But Clinton's charm and persuasion helped to shield America from criticism.

The Bush administration continued these policies, using a much blunter tone. It unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty it signed with the former Soviet Union in 1972, which forbade the testing and deployment of a ballistic missile defense system. It signed a pact with India, supporting its nuclear weapons program, which further undermined the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

Yet when President Vladimir Putin of Russia suspended participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe last month, there was an outcry by the United States and the Europeans. They cast Putin as a potential spoiler of the post-Cold War order, ignoring what Washington had done earlier.

So far, neither Republican nor Democrat candidates have suggested returning to the ABM treaty.

holy tubs of lard, Batman!

How can people be so dumb? We're not sheep, we're cud-chewing cows. A couple highlights.

"Many obesity studies have shown that, in developed countries, the less educated you are, the more likely you are to become obese." = you're dumb

"She couldn't explain why her weight had got to this extreme point, but suggested to me that being born premature may have been a factor." = you're fucking stupid. Here's an explanation: you consumed more calories than you expended. It ain't yo momma's fault, it's fucking YOURS!

it's all downhill from there

LMFAO!

Lip service to South Africa’s new kissing law:
Teens express outrage with public displays of affection

"We're young. We need to experiment," Natalie Winston, 12, said before the protest here. "When you're 21, you're old already, and ugly."

Obviously this naive young lady has never seen a porn film (and should, post-haste!). Or underwear models. Or women in general, lol. I love the added insult of "and ugly," at the end, that's really high class!

bredia mainwashing

What are the odds? How can people be so seriously paranoid?

again, the myth of the liberal media

I could go on for many pages, but this example sums up the argument nicely:

Thus, in 1994, Time celebrated the Republican victory in the midterm elections by putting a herd of charging elephants on its cover. But its response to the Democratic victory of 2006—a victory in which House Democrats achieved a larger majority, both in seats and in the popular vote, than the Republicans ever did in their 12-year reign—was a pair of overlapping red and blue circles, with the headline "The center is the place to be."

Remember George W. and his "mandate"? Bush won essentially by one state (Ohio, which I believe could have easily been rigged). In contrast, when Clinton was unquestionably demolished Dole in 1996 for re-election (supposedly as the Republicans were surging in popularity), he never made the same type of grandiose statement about the power vested in him.

This is why I always feel like the Democrats play nicer/more humbly at politics than (and get burned harder for it by) the Republicans. I also find it ironic that Republican candidates of extremely dubious experience (Reagan) are touted as heroes, yet candidates like Clinton (and Obama especially) are consistently questioned about their experience. Why isn't the same standard applied to the likes of Mitt Romney - what experiences make him any better suited for President than Clinton? Than Obama? Because he wants to 'double' Guantanamo? Morons.

Of course, the conservative counter-argument is that the ones in power shouldn't gloat, lest they reveal their power and suffer the wrath of the misled public. But wait, do the Reps take their own advice? See above.

Managers can innovate

and this proves it!

Another example, possib leavin' fun near.

No further proof needed - this discussion is closed.

A dead mouse is a joke!

Seriously! Just laugh it off. What is wrong with people?

Apparently a lot more than I ever would've imagined, lol!

Putin as 2007 Man of the Year? Indefensible!

I think that Time's choice is not entirely indefensible in principle, but it is as a choice for this year. The choice is supposed to represent the person who's made the most impact this year. Putin has done absolutely nothing this year to distinguish himself as a leader (besides be a prig at the G8). Maybe next year, if he hands over the reigns of power smoothly and Russia's recovery continues, then maybe he'd be deserving. But the award is supposed to be about the most impactful person of 2007, and the longer you stretch out the analysis of Putin's reign to support the choice, the less impressive the evidence for this year becomes.

That being said, I think the reason he was chosen is that the Times decision was more superficial than the article makes it appear. For starters, 2005's selection was "you" (pandering) and 2006's was philanthropists (ooh, tough one). To the mass-market audience that reads Time, selecting Gore would've been too similar a theme to 2006's do-gooder winners. Nevermind the fact he made an Oscar-winning documentary about temperature and also won the Nobel prize - that's sooo, like, summertime. Hello! Nobody thinks about melting ice caps in wintertime - it's too cold!

Also, in choosing two positive groups, Time felt it was, well, time for something new, something a bit racy, something that would make its readers feel politically aware ("boy, I've been hearing a lot of things, you know, here and there about Russia recently, but I never knew how big the changes inside really were!") and, at the same time, appeal to the readers who were tired of all the easily-justified choices. Because Putin's Russian has been in the press a lot this year (not as much in the US, but enough to leave that faint impression in people's minds), it was the simplest calculated, just-controversial-enough, choice.

What Would Dennis Miller Pun?

Sir,

I dare say that I nearly did soil myself reading this.

So true it's sad.

The Onion did this one for the Dennis Millulz!

(apparently, a lot of Onion readers would understand his jokes!)

what's next, the royal reality show?

It could be titled "touched by a monarch." Er, wait a tick ...

stewpeed munkeez!

Ha! But I challenge thee, ape, to write the collected works of Shakespeare ... in the original dialect! Mwuahahaha! Speaking of petty, Pavlov-esque experimentations with primates ...

Holiday Incentives
Bah-humbug! Instead of giving to a worthy cause, wouldn't it be more of an incentive if non-comliance meant you funded Al Qaeda instead? I guess in a way a certain type of non-compliance already would - if you chose to drive instead of walk, carpool, or take some other, less-GHG-intensive form of transit (haha, the writer of that site is from Michigan!)

Alas, we can't explicitly link oil money to terrorism, that'd be a discussion too long for our fragile little minds, not to mention wholly unpatriotic!

curr - iculum
On a related note, I should've attended college here! Apparently their entire academic life revolves around Orwell's classic, 1984.

?tekram eerf

Appears to be more effective than a fence!

However, Pearce is quite wrong in ascribing Arizona's potential recovery to the existence of a "free market" system. If it were truly free, you wouldn't need reactive labor laws specifically targeting illegal immigrants - you'd allow anyone who could work to work and let the wages dictate who belongs here and who doesn't. That'd be closer to a free market solution, but we Americans are too free of intelligent thought to actually implement such a solution, even though it'd likely have the same result.

step 3: profit!

I laughed, I cried, I sold many of my shareholdings! haha J/K

don't drink the wa-ater

Heck, don't drink anything, ever out of a hotel glass when you travel. Or, take it as George Carlin would - an opportunity to give your white blood cells some target practice!

34t m3!

What can I say? w00t! Though dictionaries are a bit slow on the uptake there, that word is so 2005! lol

You know what the most surprising thing about this article is? That he wasn't quoted as saying "w00t, I totally pwn'd the fuckin' WH. GW is such a noob. NOOB! lmfao!"

Next month, a 43-year-old man in adult diapers will hack a Department of Defense server to host a game of Starcraft II. From his mother's basement in South Dakota.

Eat At Paul's

I have to admit, this is a creative way to get attention. It could backfire though. Other candidates could mock him for resorting to gimmicks just to get name recognition.

"He had to resort to a blimp, a blimp people! A dirigible! ... May as well have been the Hindenburg because Ron Paul is a closet Nazi! Did I say Nazi? I meant Mormon! No, that's Mitt Romney ... dammit, I can never keep these ass-faced Republican douches in mind. Who sent up the blimp again? Ru Paul? Is Ru Paul running this year? Damn I miss the 80's ... all that blow. All those hook - " [aide cuts mic]

milking the consumer

1 Competition is supposed to drive down prices, unless, of course, firms are competing against each other as to who can screw the consumer the hardest through collusion! Hooray for free markets!

2 BBC's anatomy of what appears to be a disasterously American idiocy.

3 Who says that Americans are largely desensitized to violence? Certainly not the VT victims!

4 Save the environment, eat a kangaroo!

Why do people complain that solutions to being environmentally responsible are costly and all that jazz when they come up with even more convoluted, potentially disastrous solutions? Bacteria in livestock? Yeah, like that's a system we can fully control. Not, you know, the highly mechanized, extremely precise industrial and transportation machinery that is responsible for nearly half of the remaining GHG emissions globally. Also, the solution should not necessarily be just make the livestock flatulate less, but to grow them in an environment that's more conducive to health - also known as eliminating industrialized, "factory" farms. That would help a lot, not that anyone appears to be proposing such a solution with any real vigor.

5 This could've been a straight Onion article, lol. Had they published it in 2006, many people would've laughed at its blatant absurdity.

6 110% dude, WTF? Not a single person needed to use the lavatory OR thought to clean said lavatory in FOUR DAYS? Yeah, mark that on my list as the 1001^th place I need to see before I croak.

7 I'm surprised he didn't just say "E.T. phone home" and cackle at his wit.

hypocrisy, crystallized

Finally - this is exactly my problem with American crony capitalism. When the poor or underprivileged are hurting, it's their own damn fault for not being smarter (reading the fine print, understanding what exactly a variable-rate mortgage entails, etc.). If a business "happens" to profit off that ignorance, well, that's just social Darwinism.

But when it's the mighty who are being screwed, oh how quickly the tables turn. It's not just the big profits of big business that are evil, but the entire insurance industry! What blazing rhetoric! What unbridled hypocrisy! lol

What's not to love about the American system? People wonder why we're so quick to litigate, but my belief is that it's simply because our corporate antagonists have so much greater an upper hand in American than anywhere else that we are more often forced to resort to extreme measures simply to gain some basic injunctions against abuse - injunctions which are commonplace in many other developed nations.

all your fault

So, let me get this straight. A woman educator in Sudan lets her students name a teddy bear 'Mohammed', and she's jailed, convicted, and deported?

A woman is raped, and she's sentenced to jail time because it's her 'fault'?

Why can't logic and religion reside together, in harmony, inside more people's heads? Why do we let such things get in the way of getting along? I know to many people issues of religion are paramount ... but until everyone can manage getting along, can't we leave religion out of the equation? I mean, wouldn't a just and loving almighty deity respect us more for trying to fix our world and enhance our relationships with one another, for mutual gain and respect, than if we just jump right to religious disputes? Shouldn't we save the afterlife and our views of the spiritual realm for the time after we've mastered this corporeal realm?

One would think ...

and now for something totally different!
On a final note, which is the greater tragedy: being murdered by your father, or having your entire life summed up in the following eulogy?

Dunaway said Loebsack, 36, who lived in Gastonia, North Carolina, was married and had two children, ages 8 and 10. "It's a real tragedy. She was a beautiful soccer mom," he said.

all your fault

So, let me get this straight. A woman educator in Sudan lets her students name a teddy bear 'Mohammed', and she's jailed, convicted, and deported?

A woman is raped, and she's sentenced to jail time because it's her 'fault'?

Why can't logic and religion reside together, in harmony, inside more people's heads? Why do we let such things get in the way of getting along? I know to many people issues of religion are paramount ... but until everyone can manage getting along, can't we leave religion out of the equation? I mean, wouldn't a just and loving almighty deity respect us more for trying to fix our world and enhance our relationships with one another, for mutual gain and respect, than if we just jump right to religious disputes? Shouldn't we save the afterlife and our views of the spiritual realm for the time after we've mastered this corporeal realm?

One would think ...

How much is that goose in the window?

The one with the so-o-oft down? haha! Hungary in the news!

Et tu, Truth?
Only Republicans could possibly deride someone for being "too" truthful. I mean, who are they to talk about truthiness when they have so little experience with it themselves? Maybe they lie about how experienced they are in their dealings with, and telling of, the truth? A good lie is better than a bad truth, eh? Well, I find your nonchalant acceptance and implicit promotion of censorship offensive in its own right.

Besides, who but tweaked-out, druggie, high-school kids having gay premarital bestiality sex would honestly look to Bush as a role model? Lawd knows that's all our secular schools are filled with these days - dirty Jesus hating little demons!!

Funny, I don't feel more appreciated
Must be one of those initiatives that pass like a slow burn - you know, like a big fat (legal) Dutch roach! lol

The Dutch Don't Learn
Time to get out the riot gear! I wonder if any of the disenfranchised Parisians will trek over here just to firebomb something?

business model

I'm all too familiar with businesses that have a similar MO.

Wriking Striters Unite!

If Heaven has a web-based, streaming media-content provider based on a popular cable channel show of the same name, then it must be Jon Stewart guarding the pearly gates of that ... I don't know what, lol.

Hypocrisy on tap at Toyota
In unrelated news, fuck Toyota. These shitheads want to talk the talk without walking it now that they've got a #1 auto manufacturer dick to swing that's all but guaranteed them in the next year or so. How can you read this bullshit and not realize the hypocrisy inherent in these statements, namely:

a) Toyota is stalling on CAFE standards as well, which are, um, NATIONAL!

b) Toyota's reluctance to introduce more diesel cars, on the grounds of higher sulfur emissions. Fair enough, but what are the benefits of the greater fuel economy versus something like requiring their vehicles to use low sulfur diesel?

They talk about recycling paper and water at their plants, about all the "options" they're giving consumers to go green (like the new hybrid Lexus that actually burns more fuel on the highway than its regular counterpart), but whereas Toyota used to be the leader, they are fast slipping from that position. Honda already touts that it has the most fuel-efficient fleet in the US (overall), and GM and others are ready to one-up Toyota with things like the Volt - assuming vehicles like that make it to production, which is a big hurdle in the auto industry. Still, Toyota could be doing a lot more, and it's not.

Girls Who Game
If you were ever wondering what a male's concept of a Gamers' Heaven looks like, I believe this is it.

Hell comes later, after you realize the girls can kick your ass! :oP

mad borals

I firmly believe that most of the people who fall for neo-conservative tripe simply cannot read.

No rational person can believe that cutting emissions will not spur American business and innovation. Republicans campaign as "hard-working," but they're intellectually lazy. If you forced Detroit to adhere to higher CAFE standards, how would that put people out of work? That's insane, you'd need to hire more engineers, consultants, and skilled labor to comply with the regulations, not less. Leaving them the same would be the case for corporations (which are supposedly marching relentlessly towards ever more efficient, profitable, and leaner operations) to cut jobs because the processes are well-established and understood.

eat shit OR die

Small difference, but it could enhance your life in the long run. Apparently, there is much truth in jest:



God I love George Carlin. He's actually quite right about germs to "practice on" - of what do you think most vaccines are comprised? There never is any magic bullet in human technology, just deviously clever, one-step-ahead-of-the-curve quick fixes.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed the Dutch police sometimes randomly set up checkpoints to check motor vehicles. Not like, check for drunk drivers check, but check the tires, under the hood, etc. They also set up checkpoints every so often and search everyone coming off the tram (usually the #17 by Hollandspoor in Den Haag). I'm not sure how such searches jive with personal freedoms. I can understand if someone's called in a threat, but I suspect it's more banal than that. I think it's a "random" routine because a lot of expats use that particular tram, so it may either be a target, a former target, or a tactic the police use to keep people feeling safe. Not sure if the latter is a valid reason any longer, because if I am to believe some recent news articles, the Dutch aren't as adamant about all the freedoms (for which they've garnered quite the reputation) as they used to be.

I am your Farker ...

I hereby claim the title Son of Fark: the cultural unlearnings of a man for make great the glorious Internets surface roads.

financial literacy training

People are complaining that credit card companies are poaching college students. I disagree with the proposed remedy, that people need "financial literacy training&qout;. What people need are anti-stupid pills, which would not only allow them to become credit card deadbeats, but also avoid such unnecessarily idiotic statements as:

They should put warnings on credit cards like they do on cigarettes," Rhoades says, "to make sure people know how dangerous the cards are.

Someone help, I used my credit card twice a day for 4 years without having enough income to cover my expenditures. Now I am in debt, and it's all the company's fault. Why did they give me easy access to credit? Why?! Think about that suggestion - the students are already ignoring the writing on the credit card applications, how much more likely are they to read another warning instead of just, um, ignoring it also?

I'm not defending the credit card companies when they are being evil (which, incidentally, they are quite talented at), what I am saying is that children who are attending college should not be so dumb. Shame on them. Just signing up for a card doesn't make you liable for what you do with it, and roughly half of the people who do own credit cards not only manage, they carry little to no debt month-to-month.

the clothes make the corporation after all ...

Wow.

Wow.

So if I wore a shirt that said "cunning stunts," I had better watch out? Maybe I just won't travel. Maybe I should buy the most offensive t-shirt I possibly can for my upcoming trips.

WHY ARE YOU ALL SUCH SHEEP!?!? Toughen the fuck up.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if he downloaded Team America: World Police ...

the information superparkinglot

I make the following claims.

1) When you visit such an establishment, dead chickens are not a primary concern for you.

2) Nowhere on the "Information Superhighway" is it stated you have to have a wheelchair ramp like a Target parking lot.

I'm not saying companies shouldn't make the effort, but how much can you expect when you cannot see the visual interface? Are there verbal commands, like "click at the link at the bottom of the page for more results." How would one execute such a command? How does this jive with advertisements and other audio content - does the software displace the original audio of the website?

This case seems akin to saying that movies need to release a DVD that is like an audiobook - someone reads the script that describes the action on-screen. I think that's a bit absurd. Are you going to have BlindTV too? If the screenplay was adapted from the book, just get the audiobook (it'll be better anyway). You can't have equal everything. The deaf have subtitles, but there are no requirements that a movie theatre has to have screenings with subtitles for people who are deaf. I am not saying they couldn't, I'm just saying there is a massive difference between being accomodating and making something mandatory.

gone nukin'

Actually, I happen to agree: nuclear power is one option to mitigate global emissions. I can't believe anyone can seriously levy the argument "you emit when building the plant." Are you retarded? You emit to build a COAL-FIRED PLANT AS WELL! Talk about grasping at straws ...

Associative Proof

How NBC's new television show, Heroes exemplifies the design argument central to Alan Cooper's book, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum," and, subsequently, the design theory for his company, Cooper.

You don't please the masses by catering to the masses, you please the masses by catering to one facet of societal norms. That is the secret to success of things like M*A*S*H (Korean/Vietnam war vets), Seinfeld (yuppie Jews), Friends (yuppies), House (cynical people), Law & Order (those with OCD and those who wish their lives were better organized), CSI (OCDs who are closet voyeurists, lol), etc.

It all goes back to that old adage, "do one thing and do it well."


... or was that "Jack of all trades, master of none; oftimes better than master of one?" :o)


... just so long as the trade's not humor I guess, because then you get a fat slice of oppression from the political machine! Be careful now Romney, or you might wind up in Putin's cabinet! haha

how to lose "yous guys" in 7 days

I give you: Trumpia! If you think about it like I did, it's like the anti-social social networking/communication tool.

With further ado, I give you: the comment I left them! (which I wonder if they will answer):

Dear Trumpia,

Let's say a friend of mine is using your service and I get contacted via all my devices until I respond to one. I feel included, and I didn't miss the change of venue for our club meeting. Now let's say I want to sign up for Trumpia. What are the odds that I will want other people to "blast" me on all my devices when, say, I carry my phone with me "all the time?" Close to zero. So I will set my own personal settings to the "path of least annoyance" - the device I have most frequently with me. Odds are also that the person who contacted me originally will have done the same thing. And so on.

Everyone is going to tend toward that setting, especially after the first time they happen not to have their most convenient device with them and they get blasted on all channels. So your service only works well until people either sign up (and change the permissions) or opt out. In the former case you end up back where you were before Trumpia, with everyone being no more connected than the days of just e-mail or chat or text, all of which were supposed to connect people (and did, until they got used to the tech). In the latter case, you aren't using Trumpia, so it's no longer relevant.

I'm not trying to knock your company, because I think it's a move in the right direction, but to me this is a downside that says "fad" rather than "game-changer." Everyone wants to be connected yet no one wants to be annoyed, and I believe people are going to opt for, as I said, the path of least annoyance to them. This will result in the sum of all their communication devices bringing no additional benefit beyond their most commonly-used device.

Have you done user testing to see if the above is an issue?

freedom of information

NYTimes and IHT abandon Times Select. "It was a success." What a terrible, bullshit argument. No business, especially not the struggling newspaper dailies, would dare shelve an idea that was actually making them money.

I'm also glad that a bespeckled geriatric is one of the few people in America with the testicular fortitude to state plainly that the war in Iraq is over OIL and that Bush is a nitwit. Christ, people, W A K E U P!

mmm ... Orwellian

Couldn't have said it better myself:

"After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Bush was clear on Thursday night - as he was when he addressed the nation in January, in September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 - that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started."

Thanks for that concise and scathing summary of our failures, International Herald Tribune!

lunatic lottery-winner

In stunningly vivid irony. What a greedy son-of-a-bitch. Why is it so hard for society to call a spade a spade? This is greed, exemplified, and yet we'd prefer to make all sorts of excuses for our behavior.

He's beset by sob stories? Here he is on CNN, another sob story. Here is a modest business proposal: if you want to be remembered, be like Buffett. I'll found your non-profit donation (and make sure to funnel 40% of the profits to myself, so that the organization generates no net profit).

Men are from Mars ...

If there were Martians, their preferred method of transport would be second-hand motorcycles.

these are a few of some interesting things

1) Random Mastadon-ness!

2) Just plain cool. (hint: it's a trick of the mind)

3) not cool ... not cool at all. A warning label would add what, $0.04 to the cost of manufacture? It may be a ridiculously small percentage of lives saved from injury, but it's undue injury. And if you merely think about how many teens ride with severely reclined seats, even when driving (not that teens would heed the warning labels). Also, even if you don't heed the warning, you do retain some of the information (like advertising). The potential for an airbag to deploy improperly and unduly injure you is very slight, but vehicles still carry warnings about those.

And given the yearly stories of dogs and babies killed in overly hot cars, maybe there should be a warning on the windows. Stupid individualistic sheep need constant reminders in order to maintain their vigilance of their fragile, ignorant little lives (and the lives of their pets - children included).

meal rusiness beetings

They're run absolutely nothing like this. I mean, come on - no one that old knows wtf "pwnd" means!

RIAA = asymmetric profit structure

Yeah, where was this support when Apple launched? Nowhere. Now that it's actually a successful business model, the corporate drones want a bigger slice of the theoretical pie. Theoretical because I sure as hell am not going to pay more than about $1 per song.

The artists are the ones who deserve a larger percentage of my dollar, not these fat-cat executives!

They aren't getting it - they get TEN PERCENT OR LESS of the revenue from each song sold on iTunes! That's not Apple's fault, it's the fucking bullshit industry. Why do you think artists are quick to open their own sites and tour so heavily? That's their only chance to make a decent profit from their work.

Also, if you think about it, how exactly are NBC and its cohorts going to undermine Apple? They can't promote another service that charges more for media, so they'll subsidize some cheap knock-off in order to gain market share, then jack the prices sky-high. Sounds fun, I can't wait until you help them do it! Yes, you, you fucking ingrates - where are the how-to articles on getting real music back on the radio and break the recording industry's stifling grip on artistic talent? That'd be too "subersive" for the mainstream media (and against the media conglomerate's interests, since Universal owns NBC, which owns MSNBC, and the whole thing is owned by GE).

some people can do no right

I don't normally read Forbes because I think it's tripe, but this "welcome screen" (a.k.a., welcome to unwanted advertising interfering with your reading experience) really caught my eye:



On a somewhat related note (involving reading, President Bush's current lack thereof, and the outsourcing of the illegal reading of your private electronic or voice conversations as American citizens), READ THIS.

To some, it's just the same old song and dance, just as when the US government embraced the idea of the "military-congressional-industrial complex" not as loony conspiracy theory but as a business plan and outsourced the building of military hardware to private defense contractors. They then outsourced the military advisors, and now they're looking at the intelligence. It's one thing to outsource the people who follow your orders or give advice, but it's another to outsource the people that actually provide you the data, faulty, politically-motivated, or otherwise, that actually leads to war.

So get this, here's a likely scenario in our future Uneducated State of Ameri-duh: a private contractor, hired by the government to decode intelligence and under pressure to "cut costs" (so to charge only 1.9x what a government employee makes, instead of double), decides its "core competency" is not really intelligence analysis per se, but the delivery of analytical services. And since they need some sort of developing-world interpreters to decode the intelligence, because all of the people at the contractor are American-educated businessmen with little to no knowledge of any language besides English (and a tenuous grasp of that language to boot), they outsource the analysis right to the source.

So imagine having a Chinese analyst, probably in China, decoding intelligence that helps the US determine whether or not we go to war with China over Taiwan. Or, alternately, selling their knowledge to the highest bidder in the Chinese government (not that they don't already, but why make it even easier for them to do so?).

Arguing Against Renewables is like ...

... arguing for a hole in your head when you don't believe in trepanation. Check it out:



Ruining the "view"? Why do we vote for new coal-fired electrical plants - how does doing so enhance one's view?

It only enhances the view because we put the site on unwanted or cheap land, and then fence it off so you can't get too close to actually see how ugly the giant, smoke-billowing towers wreak havoc on you and yours. Oh, and if you are no longer able to see the horizon due to smog and such, because your precious cheap/convenient electricity has pumped too much particulate matter into the atmosphere, how will that haze impact your view, you short-sighted, greedy, selfish, pathetic excuses for a sentient being?

There's only one quasi-logical argument against wind power: migratory birds.

If your argument is that "big" wind is evil because it disrupts migratory birds and/or kills them, what do you think the particulate matter from a coal-fired generator does to their lungs if it can cause asthma and cancer in humans? Isn't a long, drawn-out death from illness worse than a spontaneous, near-instant death? Nature is red in tooth and claw - I recently watched 2 larger birds force a smaller bird into a pond, from which the smaller bird could not get out b/c his feathers got wet and it could not fly. It kept bobbing up and down, trying to get to the edge, but it drowned before it could get there. It took something like two minutes to play out, and it was gut-wrenching to watch. The bird that was forced into the water had recently flown into a glass window of a nearby buiding - it was obviously no threat to the 2 larger birds and in no shape to defend itself properly, but that's just survival of the fittest, isn't it? I guess how you view it depends on whether you believe in social darwinism or you find it ironic that it takes some of mankind's greatest intellectual capacity to understand the most brutal, possibly immutable, laws of the natural world.

Or you could view birds as deserving of the exact same rights as people, in which case do you also think that birds, if they were endowed en masse positions of relative power and a sentience at (or above) our level, would not hesitate to kill a few humans if it meant they could all have labor-free nests or access to practically inexhaustable supplies of food?

thought

all our fantasies are faded by routine ...

There's no other Cheney quite like this Dick

I found it! Score!



After which came the Cheney apologist (from the WSJ no less, I'm sure Murdoch is salivating):



Where is the answer to Stewart's simple question? Why does it take a Comedy Central to air these types of serious questions? History will mark Haye's silence, due to the utter lack of rational justification for the administration's actions, and treat the Bush administration with the contempt it deserves.

The only thing that "changed" after 9/11 was that the administration knew it could get away with lying because people were single-mindedly fixated on swift revenge. Since they (the political elite) often see the general population as uneducated baboons, they knew people would take dubious pronouncements at face value (and that those who did not would be out-shouted by the war-mongers).

For my Republican friends, you can not say I always disagree with your party, but what I agreed was sound policy in 1994 was not so severely altered by faulty intelligence in 2003 that it justified what the administration did (and continues to do). For those of you that knew me then, you've known I've been a critic of Bush since he first lost the 2000 election. I've disagreed with nearly every policy decision by this White House, save attacking Afghanistan and the marine refuge created around Hawaii. Attacking Iraq opened up a second front in a war (essentially on Iran if you look at a map), which is already an extremely poor military strategy to begin with, Generalissimo NeoCon. Idiots.

What the war-mongers do not understand is how to fight an ideology, ironically despite the fact they themselves subscribe to a very similar, reactionist ideology that they subsequently demonize when referring to their enemies. As a result of 9/11, the terrorists are already winning. Your liberties have been restricted. You wring your hands about traveling abroad. You take out extra life insurance and fret about "what if", and Fox News and the like are right there, in your face, reminding you that we can never lapse in our vigilance (while our nation's ports and nuclear facilities go under-protected, and our airports remain insecure). Many of you think such measures are necessary, but a terrorist does not care about the reason people are frightened or have their freedoms restricted, they care only that it occurs. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

You are all less free. For what? For a few extra dollars? For a few extra corpses? For the business interests of the elite who control the U.S.'s military-congressional-industrial complex? (original term by another Republican, 2-term President Dwight D. Eisenhower) Where is the 'outrageous' conspiracy theory when you've got a Vice President, a public servant, who has closed-door sessions with industry on energy policy and who refuses to stop receiving payments from his former employer, who happens to be gouging the US military in Iraq? Here's a hunt that would make Waldo jealous - find the weak link in those logical implications! Basic capitalist theory supports aligning people's personal interests with their actions. The simplest way to profit off a war? Use your influence to start a war! Why deny that people are acting in accordance with the very theories used to justify cutthroat business practices on a daily basis? If it's good enough for our corporate elite, why not for the soldiers fighting for their profits?

If you want to provide the appropriate counter-incentive to the current sytsem of collusion, it's very simple: require every Congressperson to send their son(s) or daughter(s) to fight in whatever war or other military action they allow the President to undertake. It's like a draft-lite, just 535 possible families, not quite Vietnam-era enough. But it's a great step toward a system of true checks and balances.

If you wish to debate the point above don't talk to me - just call your representative (and hopefully ask to get the U.S. the fuck out of Iraq). Or, for a more personal response from the government, just call someone you know who's currently abroad so that your government can (il)legally listen in to the overseas call. If you don't know who to call, just dial me - lord knows I'm enough of a pinko commie liberal to pique the NSA's interests. I mean, Hungary's still Communist, isn't it?

our bestest friends

"China loves me, this I know, lead-tainted Sa-arge, told me so!"



Erin Burnett is a shining light of logic in these dark, lead-colored times. Keep your friends close, keep the tainted pinko Commies closer, Erin! haha

you are dust

... and to (space) dust you shall return.

Reminds me of the Bill Hicks sketch:

"Today young men on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one conciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves ... here's Tom with the weather."

vicarious irony

I walked into the break room and CNN International was showing a story on Paris Hilton's release from jail. I found the situation amusing because the reporter on scene was reading a viewer's statement, and that viewer was questioning why the media was there. The reporter, of course, treated it as the rhetorical question it was not.

Breaking News - You are the media! Why are you there?

Random stories that have caught my interest of late.

No one told me that the circus was coming to town! And here I am without any popcorn ...

So, how does international law work again? State-running tyrants are evil, but state-sanctioned tryanny is A-OK? To be fair, I am sure they were asking for it.

Things would be so much easier if only the same rules applied to everyone!

Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a RIM technician!

Does anyone really wonder why a lot of the world hates the U.S. and its brand of laissez-faire capitalism more generally? A lot of people claim to, but they seem to miss the more subtle, often cultural cues.

They do get part of it right, in that a large part of it has to do with envy — envy that something as frivolous as "Blackberry Thumb" can be a person's sole reason for visiting a doctor.

If there are any doctors to be had, that is. Because, you know, doctors live just around the street corner everywhere in the world, just like milk and apples come from your local supermarket conglomorate.

Behold, the ridiculously small-minded American excecutive. Your thumb hurts? Boo-hoo. Either work out or stop typing so many useless e-mails! You aren't providing leadership or clarity, you're cluttering the already-saturated information channels of your colleagues.

Also, for those of you that aren't aware, Research In Motion (RIM) are the makers of the Blackberry, which has become ubiquitous in the modern business environment. The title has nothing to do with rimming, though that would make for an extremely amusing title.

"What do you do?"

"Not much, just working as a RIM technician right now, looking to get into something a bit more advanced later on. You know, something that stretches my skills a bit."

" ... I'll bet you are!"

Though it is said that developing world countries are contracting our maladies, so I guess they are going to need a lot of RIM technicians after all.

All this text is making my fingers cramp ... medic!

Walking home from bowling I had a thought: the current Industrial Revolution (e.g., 'modern' society post 1700-ish) is experiencing a condensed form of resource abuse in the same style as agriculture did. The Middle East used to be quite habitable, and there is evidence to suggest intensive farming by humans is a large part of the reason it's so arid today (not universally). Until people thought of things like crop rotation or terraced farming, we were on a path to self-destruction (albeit over a much longer time horizon and with a lot lower public knowledge of the consequences). Industry finds itself in the same predicament today, whether it cares to admit it or not.

My hope/dream is that we can one day find new ways to fully make use of the land, in the same way modern farmers have been able to (and like native Americans used to in their hunting). If we could live in a "carbon neutral" society, whereby we exhausted only those emissions absorbed by plants through photosynthesis, or didn't emit anything beyond negligible emissions at all, that would truly be a great achievement for civilization.

To pay proper homage to our vanity, MySpace and Facebook should merge to become MyFace.

goddammit! (looks fake though)

Random thought: "no external being can do more than distract us from ourselves." Yup, that sounds just about right: the perfect philosophy for the angst-filled, single, and childless! w00t!

A human behavioral universal: "The surest path to failure is that of least communication."

I don't know if anyone's said it before me (Google agrees I'm the first to string that particular string of characters together in such an order in recent, technologically-documented history (lol, can we have BC, AD, and TD - technologically documented? or maybe DD - digitally documented or ADHD - All Documented on Hard Disk)).

Yes, I use nested parens, because my logic be so wicked thick the standard syntaxes wilt under its force. :oP

I think I'm becoming de-sensitized to stupidity.

I mean, I'm all for discrimination against fat people, but what are overweight people supposed to do? Avoid looking in the mirror? Become even more delusional? Skinny American girls will not only starve themselves whole-heartedly (now that they're going to be encouraged by their mothers to focus even more of their waking hours on their body image) but they're also going to be hit by buses more often as they recklessly swivel their heads away from fat people crossing intersections.

Personally, I say confront a caloric monster and either knock the food from their hand or run circles around them while poking them with a stick. They'll soon tire of trying to swat at you and since you're filling their vision they'll be even more motivated ("prodded" even) to envision themselves as being skinnier, lighter, and less prone to furniture collapse.

European attitudes toward sex, Part II:

prostitute monument!

(a nice complement to the Homomonument)

However, in a lame attempt to pre-emptively put Europe to shame, the US has its own, not nearly as nice, monument. However, it is only for a single prostitute.

Nothing to compare to an entire society for greater prostitution awareness!

I dub myself the Oracle of Cynicism. Check these extrapolations from a single news article:

1) Corporations don't give a shit about your average worker. What is GOOD FOR YOU IS BAD FOR THEM. Case in points:

"The average hourly wage jumped 8 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $17.04, versus forecasts for a 0.3 percent increase."

How does Wall Street respond?

"On Wall Street, stock and bond prices fell as the report raised inflation concerns and dashed hopes that the Fed might cut interest rates soon."

"Stock traders basically got a little bit of good news on employment front since they were worried about weakness, but they'll be concerned about the wages," said Anthony Chan, chief economist for JPMorgan Private Client Services.

They want workers to work more for less, DESPITE the US's consumer-driven economy:

"Chan said the report could show that consumers will keep spending at higher than expected levels, which could limit any expected slowdown in the economy this year. "Betting against consumers is like betting against the house at the casino," he said."

2) You may think that's hypocrisy, but this is even better:

""This is further evidence that the president's economic policies are working and producing strong wage gains for America's workers, and we should be cautious of future policies that would slow these gains," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement."

Ohhhmmmm ... ohhhhhmmmmm ... I'm seeing a vision ... it's ... it's President Bush and his minions ... they're opposing something vehemently ... the blue-blooded, overpaid failures of executives and felons within the administration are opposing ... RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE.

Wait, hold on ... the Democratss are being labeled as being just as bad as the bloodsucking Republicans for not both raising the minimum wage AND tying it to inflation, so that it'd actually be somewhat fair. Possibly even livable. The conservative pundits insinuate they're failing to push their agenda through due to lack of leadership, but the situation is a result of the Dems being forced to compromise with the unyielding Republicans, who'll allow a lower wage hike as long as they can piggyback something on the bill ... what is it ... I see numbers and ... oh it's another corporate kickback to make the "transition" more bearable for corporations. And also more 'competitive', at your expense.

Hard is Easy

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People often wonder how how I find so many odd links online. Today I searched 'ferrous' online just to be sure I had the definition correct. This was on the first page of the Google results. Check out 'filthy scum.'

Also hucking filarious, especially the karaoke version.

New corporate acronyms
Demonstrating an Understanding of Marginal Benefits - DUMB
usage - "Man, I remember when Ford bought a stake in Mazda. They were dumb."

Corporate take on poetry: Process-Oriented Emotive Mechanism - POEM

Finally, if you're wondering what the tone of my book will be like, this is a good indicator :-P

Random thoughts I had to purge from my mind:

1 Those who most worry about the afterlife are those who fear death most.

2 It's weird to think how much money has changed. Imagine it's 1800's America and you've got a few cents. You could buy quite a bit for less than a dollar. (I'll look up what the housing prices could have been like, but even recent examples illustrate the point.)

For the sake of argument, imagine a house in 1820 is $2000. Today, say a house of a similar size would run you say $200,000. Now, I'm not interested in the exact numbers and the inflation rates, currency adjustment, changes in technology, etc., but what's interesting to me is the principle. If you had 10 cents in 1820, the value of that was a lot more than today. The money was worth more relative to your house and also could buy you more in the store. Yet in both instances it may have been necessary to mortgage your home in order to be able to afford it. One would think that we'd be less attune today to things like those marginal sales at most retailers (10% off this, 30 cents off that - with coupon, etc.), yet if anything those types of minor discounts and disparities, in sales, loan rates, etc., are more prevalent than ever before. Who would have conceived of a second mortgage in 1820, let alone 1950? Yet they're happening today, with all sorts of minute differences in rates between various lenders.

Aside from all the formal (governmental and financial institutions) changes to currency, it's interesting that cents, such as they are today, are still valued. To a large extent, I believe this is a result of economies of scale. In 1820, your local tailor may gripe over a penny would have been because that penny had real purchasing power - not because it would or would not cost his shareholders (like he'd have any!) so many thousands of dollars. Today, we may not gripe over pennies, but we do gripe over all sorts of values under $1 - despite the fact that those cents are far less valuable to us than they possibly ever have been. Part of this is also because we're so hyper-aware of prices in our intense consumer atmosphere, but behind that intense consumerism looms the giant corporations who make or lose millions on our pennies. It's in their best interests to keep meticulous track of every penny to maximize their profits and offer consumers appropriate incentives to sell their products.

I'm not saying we should be frivolous with our money. This is a principle that very much cuts both ways. If anything, the focus on small denominations of money is a good thing in general, as it should foster much-needed fiscal responsibility on both the corporations' and consumers' parts.

I'm merely fascinated by the fluidity of our monetary construct.

3 As history progresses along its spiral, we seem to be heading (and all distopian novels echo this) toward a society in which "the state" (primarily government, but increasingly corporations) supersedes the family as the societal 'safety' net. Corporations are obviously reluctant to fill this role (and certainly don't do so out of any obligations to moral or altruistic constructs), but they still provide pensions so they do participate. The government is still primarily responsible for wealth distribution and this is the role which used to be played primarily by the extended 'family' - e.g., tribe - in more ancient Western cultures (or in some non-Western cultures even today).

I wonder how much this has to do with individualism - I won't take a handout from my dad (to prove my independence) but free money from the government? Bring it! I'm not sure I understand fully the motivations behind this shift, but it's there and I think it's not too difficult to extrapolate from it a future society in which people socialize in familial ways with non-relatives (obviously quite far in the future, since even in the most extreme examples Western culture has not yet totally eradicated the familial ties - though children divorcing parents is arguably at the cusp of such a reality). My idea (which is part of my coming novel, Aanthe) is further along the time line - a time when children don't know who their parents are, are raised communally according to genetic predispositions (possibly administered by the state/corporations), and where the random genetics that dictated who was born into what family are instead manipulated such that aptitudes dictate your place within the state/corporation (e.g., engineer, biologist, doctor, etc.). People of that time would look back on the randomness of the genetic ties that bind us today as an absurdity because they can much better control the genetic odds to group people into what they would presumably perceive to be much more rational groupings based on inherent aptitudes and temperament.

London can only be described as exactly like the time I ate a bowl of rabbits.

This is what I mean about American complacency and its relation to ignorance. The following is self-evident to nearly everyone not living in the U.S.:

"Beginning in 2000, newly elevated President Vladimir Putin restored Russian stability by concentrating political power in the Kremlin, curbing free expression in the country's media, and consolidating economic power in the hands of the state. (The tripling of oil prices over the last four years has made his work much easier.) This forceful reimposition of order has earned Putin a 70-plus-percent approval rating. Broadly speaking, Russians have chosen the order that flows from authoritarianism over the chaos they believe was generated by ill-considered attempts to impose Western-style democracy." (article)

Many people in the U.S. would argue with you until they were blue in the face that the Russians do have a democracy simply because they can vote. They cannot understand that you can freely choose authoritarianism (see: Hitler) just as easily as you can vote against it.

Wait, didn't Sir George say we were going to Mars? Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran - it's all the same as long as they don't have nukes. He must've figured Martian bacteria must have developed nukes by now, so it's safer to invade the moon.

What is most upsetting is that we're holding people to two different sets of standards for free speech based on age. How is it that a minor has any less right to voice an opinion, however controversial, than an adult? If anything like the situation at this high school occurred at the university level, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. That is unfair and hypocritical, and yet it is being seriously argued as appropriate by Ken Starr.

I rail on the American people in general for being ignorant in general, but nothing is 100% applicable all of the time. If you wonder why a President who was impeached continued to remain popular, it's partly due to the obvious bias of the people doing the impeaching. That's why no matter how much Bush caters to his radical base, he'll never convince most Americans that stem cell research is morally reprehensible – it's just too large a hunk of horseshit for people to swallow.

These are exactly the types of paradoxes that stymie most American workers – perform better by working less.

This is why I like Taoism and love reading Lao Tzŭ's masterpiece, Tao Te Ching (particularly Stephen Mitchell's translation – absolutely brilliant).

Also, in case you hadn't notice, irony has been recently redefined.

This, however, is just damn funny.

What is most disturbing to you:

- the fact that Mormon underwear looks like something from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange,

- the fact that our constitutionally secular nation is hyper-fixated on candidate religion,

- or that the Mormons have an entire website devoted to their undergarments (I've left the link text for effect), http://www.mormon-underwear.com ?

PS - my favorite part of the Slate article linked above:

"Romney's faith is of particular concern to evangelical voters who make up the GOP's key voting bloc—some of whom believe Romney belongs to a cult."

The evangelicals think his religion smacks of cultish tendencies? Spectacular. I don't think I've had enough compassionate hypocrisy just yet today, let's go for one more.

How about righteous indignation at something which displays the degradation of morality within society. Yes, by golly, we are not going to stand idly by and just allow the truth to be told – these blasphemes must be censored for the greater good!

Wait, it's quite likely no evangelicals read that because Silicon Valley is the modern-day Gemorrah. Duh! Let's just blame the liberal media! Yeah, so liberal they failed to make an issue of the well-documented connections between this current unethical Bush administration and the Iran-Contra fiasco. Media bias is not defined as asking pointed questions at a press conference, no matter how much the inept Bush giggles or condescendingly tries to side-step the queries.

Does anyone else notice that? This so-called "average Joe" president is unbelievably smug whenever he talks to the press. I'm sure the idiots not watching at home are probably thinking "yeah, that's it Georgie, you stick it to those Blue-blooded liberal pansies!" Oh wait, these are the same geniuses that need to be told in excruciating detail how driving slower and less often can reduce America's oil dependency, advice which they promptly ignore because they're just one person.

Anyone can complain while in the U.S. – I'm thousands of miles away and it still gets my goat every day! I hope North Korea nukes you to your senses America! You're on notice!

Darwinism strikes again!

Awesome!

... on a related note, Iran has submarines? Not that I care about the excuse, but still, wtf, eh?

The following style is, in a nutshell, why I am such an avid fan of Slate:

"If we had wanted our country to be run by James Baker, we had our chance. He was interested in running for president in 1996 but discovered that his interest in a James Baker presidency was not widely shared." [article]

Oh, I'm sorry, your answer is incorrect. All answers must be stated in the form of an '-izzle'.

The only consolation after Michigan's loss to Ohio State: a 3-point margin of victory signifies domination like 2 percentage points give a "mandate."

It's like they work at my office!. They even published a handy guide to sexual harassment ethics in the workplace.

I feel like my nonsensical writing talent is in danger of being pwnd by spam poetry:

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Man, that is deep. It is so true that "yourself doing is void warranty problems," I've run into that situation many times before!

Many people say there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Yes, well, there are some minor ones I happen to like.

Also, some conservative sites keep railing on Rep. Joe Murtha. Granted, the guy made a pretty big mistake, but let's review what the arguments would be if he were a Republican:

- This happened 25 years ago, give it a rest! The fact that it's in the news proves the liberal bias of the media.

- He was never found guilty for any wrongdoing.

- It was a mistake he made early in his career; getting embarrassed like that would make him more ethical because he learned the hard way what a mistake like that can cost him.

And so on. Feel free to add any other excuses that would be used by the GOP were it one of their cronies.

In case there was any confusion over the definition of either "fair" or "balanced", leave it to that bastion of moral integrity, Fox News, to set the world straight. I guess they perceive their organization as being fair in dishing out anti-liberalism, thus balancing the "liberal" media.

Right.

The Dutch are officially nucking futs. Chess + boxing? Brilliant!

Not that this isn't whack either.

Wow ... let the brainwashing begin.

Wired News on e-Voting Paper Trails

I don't understand how anyone can claim that neglecting redundancy in something as critical as voting is a bad idea. This isn't even an argument:

"They're adamant that few voters will actually look at the paper record, negating its usefulness. During a test of paper trails last year in Nevada's primary and presidential elections, election observers estimated that fewer than 30 percent of voters bothered to examine the hard copy."

The usefulness of the paper trail does not lie with the individual voter, it's having the ability to verify the election results. Don't take it from me, take it from Kim Alexander, the founder of the California Voter Foundation:

"'It gives voters the opportunity to verify their vote, but it also gives election officials a meaningful audit trail to verify software vote tallies, and it's that latter purpose that has made the paper trail a no-brainer,' she said." [emphasis added]

This is an equally pathetic argument against paper ballots:

"Critics also say the printers will jam, break down or run out of paper, creating more labor for poll workers. And they argue that an election involving numerous races and candidates would produce an unwieldy paper trail that would be time-consuming for voters to review and difficult for election officials to recount -- especially if the thermal paper used in the printers is tightly curled."

. . .

Let me repeat that - we can't verify the results of the election because the voting machine's paper is just too tightly curled. Sorry. Better luck next election cycle!

These arguments are absurd. They didn't make these types of bullshit arguments when we had no other option but to use paper, why is it all of a sudden such a concern? How much was spent on electronic voting machines and how much labor goes into their technical support? Furthermore, who can honestly say they prefer an unproven technology that is demonstrably insecure with no backup or a backup? I guess scumbags like Diebold have no problem saying such things ...

So who says they're sucesptible to manipulation? Hell, even Fox News covered the topic (albeit with a ... well, believably biased headline).

Also consider Ars Technica's guide to stealing an election, the State of Florida's refusal to return to Diebold, and Princeton University's security analysis for electronic voting. But of course you, my dear John Q. Public, you alone are smarter than all of those ivory-tower types scattered across the internet and, um, at Fox News, and you know your vote will be counted correctly. Well, you sure can go home smug in your smartness, especially if you're one of the 18,000 or so Florida voters whose ballots were lost this election cycle. Brilliant.

I don't understand - just because our brains function as a collective "DEE-dee-dee!", that is no excuse for our elections to be less transparent than, say, Kyrgyzstan.

These security issues with electronic voting have been well-documented since the 1980s, and yet we are still have not implemented appropriate checks and balances two decades later.

What is wrong with people? What's next, voting through TiVo?

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Aha! Anecdotal support for my earlier missive on Fortune's oil article.

Also, Bush may not read newspapers (or online news, like the BBC), but maybe he watches The Simpsons. At any rate, I think I've discovered the secret of "cool".

Marge: I just don't understand what 'being cool' means. Kids, am I cool?
Bart and Lisa (look at each other, then simultaneously reply): No.
Marge: Well, I don't care. I don't care whether I'm cool or not ... and that makes me cool, right?
Bart and Lisa (bored, simultaneously): No.

You know what makes a nation cool? In how many ways it can subvert international treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as appears hell-bent on doing with India and Pakistan.

Actually, he probably never read the treaty because he used "new-cue-lar" in his Google search.