Don't panic

The internet is built for cranks, those worried about the end of the world. It was made not for pointing to indications of our transforming world in actuality, but to a world which is theoretically capable of being transformed...and the image arises, a doomed wasteland once as fertile as the Sahara, one which we must take drastic measures to improve.

Memes I think they're called, meant to function as secret handshakes, fun exercises in connectivity...but they're not meant to be taken seriously, no more than a peacock needs its feathers for survival. And it's getting harder and harder to get excited about them, because for all their variety they play on the same worn-out synapses.

So, here's to practicality:

Kiva
Radio Open Source
Lingro
Instructables
Steal This Wiki

Brains!

Hypothesis: Social networking sites have the ability to identify the types of arguments individual subgroups deem valid.

Using this information, a wide variety of cultural variables, from age to favorite book, can be associated with certain types of arguments, such that an individual of a certain age who enjoys a certain book will agree with one type argument more readily than another.



Control over this information will turn political, and we'll be left addicted to images tailor made for our enjoyment.

Google is the new Viking

The internet as future forecaster: life, politics, fashion...it's a gossip house, a tavern.

Linking to the picture below is my contribution to the decor:



With all the boogeymen lurking beyond the firelight, ye olde timey photos are needed to lend a sense of continuity to the proceedings.

Detecting the darker side of technological gods

Apparently it's possible to build machines that are powered only in the absence of light. I now await mechanical nightmares, built to prey on the dreaming. May they appear while we still have dreams, while we still resist the idea that our minds are no longer safe from the whispers of machines.

Technology loves me like a vice

We now live in a world of bioluminescent cats. Please hold your complaints to a whisper, lest the flying saucers gun you down.

I think our imagination is trying to revolt. Our brains will soon shed their skin and speak through the technology they've created: "We no longer need you".

This is what they'll look like:



I suppose this is the future we have chosen to devolve to, children, constantly warned about the dangers of their surroundings. The brains must feel unwanted amid all this instruction.

I still want you, brain.
I will bring you candies and chocolates.
I can only hope you return the favor.

And now for some gratuitous linkage

Ah the joys of hypocrisy:

Dumbledore touching children: An English school had students use Potteresque spells in the classroom, resulting in vast improvements in students' understanding of the material. Man heard to react with the word “Wanderful”, raped and beaten behind nearby 7-11.

Ron Paul raises $4.2 million in one day, buys monocle and top-hat to prove it. Bewildered media forced to cover independent campaign favorably, compensates by asking to see Mrs. Kucinich's pierced nipples.

Monkeysex and satan worship.

The number of World of Warcraft players has surpassed the number of farmers in the world. Thank mario and pacman for planting the necessary seeds of bloodlust.

Electronic Glory

I worry about how the internet changes the way we tell stories. We're surrounded with the exotic, stories of monkeysex and satan worship, moments of reality which go beyond our standard experience and which seem to expand our perspective. But these stories also allow us to identify with an impersonal niche which will scare off anyone seeking to slowly connect through old-fashioned conversation.

When we exchange stories about the exotic, the impersonal, our relationships are mediated by something outside ourselves. The internet becomes a new God called upon to protect us from one another. Ideally, stories should be comically alleviate irrational fright, open us up to experiences which our ancestors would have shunned, and connect us with people our ancestors would have burned...but that's only possible if there's a foundation for mutual understanding behind the stories, a foundation which cannot be created so long as there's such a large incentive to close the doors against a confusing world and worship an electronic glow that does not threaten us with anything but silence.

We'll Fucking Study Fucking to Death

Seriously, this is what made CNN's most popular news stories. Wow, I'm in fucking shock, aren't you?

Bombs away

In a world where billions is spent on entertainment, it's nice to see idle fancy being translated into real results: lightsabers in space. After all, without Star Wars to motivate us to travel in space, without fantasies begging to be made real, we would have to link our love of space travel to military research, with all the existential nothingness implied.

Speaking of which, here is the current state of arguments in favor of torture: "hey, it's better than years of rape!". Give Robin Hanson a pat on the back for taking care of this absurdity as quickly as he did. If you see him that is. I think he's posted enough to become pure energy by now, absorbed directly into the consciousness of his readers.

edited 10/3/07

The Cult of Presidential Primaries

If you are currently attending a "Go Campaign!" event this presidential primary season, take a moment to count the number of campaign organizers motivated by policy issues.

...

Still waiting?

Campaigns are fed more by vanity than altruism. Listen to the messages driving the campaign, and you'll see a familiar source of collective euphoria, how warm and fuzzy supporters feel when confronted by the image of their leader, how they perk up when told how "new" and "different" they are.

By preying on the desire for belonging, politicians shunt aside time consuming explanations of policy. Rather than build cohesion through knowledge, they focus on a Leader who gathers support through forceful assertions.

And it works because we all wish to be understood, and we sympathize with those who appear to be understood. Internally, "if only we had enough time, enough power to construct our own method of communication, to look into the eyes of others and say "I mean this", we wouldn't have to rely on terms established by others." And so we look to those "grassroot campaigns", those independent artists, those seeking a new way, we look to them simply because an attempt at an alternate form of communication indicates ability.

The desire to communicate originally is a will-o'-the-wisp, a false light shining from those seeking respectability. What is promised matters little next to the force with which the message is stated.

Edited 10/3/07

Hordes!

There aren't any news stories available that lead me away from the previously stated, so while we await another string of ridiculous events worthy of collective derision, please, take a moment to look towards stars reflecting a better world. That's right babies, it's crackpot utopia time! Sip that kool-aid deep.

I'm tired of living through steampunk, paging through seventy year old adverts promising a future that hasn't arrived. It can be unhealthy. But with so much information available, it's become difficult to discern what technological hope to grab onto. We're left investing in an unfulfilling present, rife with entertainment built around the void.

But ah to avoid tipping the scales back to an anarchic pastoralism, to accept the complexity and live, avoiding a fearful retreat. That's the trick.

Courtesy cannot be sustained without some reference to a larger ideal, an illusory hope. What internal picture do I use to drive the boogeyman away? That of an edumacated world. If people approached each other expecting logic to be the common ground between them, they might smile for a change, unpursuaded by those who badmouth untold numbers of Others.

Here's to that mythical society of good natured people, who fail to envision a world which seeks their destruction.

Juking the world with a baby octofish

Is there a viable candidate without an intervention heavy foreign policy? Not really. And that's a shame, because I can't remember what I'm supposed to be afraid of anymore.

There isn't a person alive today who's more threatening than lightning. Believe it.

The Weather and the Righteous

The weather in the Midwest was angry. This is not surprising, only odd when juxtaposed against the regions passive citizens. Storms raged through the cities of Chicago and St. Louis like a drunk pushes through a crowded bar to find the bathroom, stopping to relieve himself along the way.
-St. Louis, though, may not be entirely passive considering it won the Morgan Quitno prize for most dangerous city in 2006.-
Ava Maria, Florida on the other hand has been as sunny as it's disposition. Tom Monaghan, from Domino's Pizza fame, has created a wet dreamland for Catholics -though spilling all that seed on the sheets is a tricky grey area even when it's in the name of the holy father- by creating a city centered around the doctrine of the Catholic church. Looks like those safe-seeking-host-snackers have found there promised land right up Naples' back-door.
The problem occurs with the issue of religious freedom: when does freedom to worship become too public. As much as I think having a town founded on superstitious nonsense, not too mention a civil rights atrocity, is absurd; I have to believe that they should be allowed to start this community. But, we'll see how much they turn the other ass cheek when Muslims and Jews start moving next door.
So, as for now all I can do is get drunk and hope for the grand irony of watching an 'act of god' wipe this righteous community off the face of this ridiculous world.
I love irony.

Another battle for democratic truth

CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia whitewashing. Luckily Wikipedia is self-correcting! Why? Because the majority of people know what's really true. They have such great sources of information. Like Wikipedia.

Right?

The Blood of Dying Words

There are many definitions of the word freedom -most using the word liberty which seems suspect- the definition I keep returning too is: The power to determine action without restraint. Many of the other definitions appear to be extensions of this core concept. I have a particular fondness to the wording of this definition as well. The specific use of the word power, not ability, seems most appropriate. Freedom (and liberty as I found out) is a condition of having some amount of power, therefore it is incredibly unfortunate that the continued use of the word freedom by politicians and bombastic news media have stripped the power that this word once held and made nothing more than a simple ejaculatory slogan.
Liberty has a similar definition: The right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's own choosing. The oddity about the other definitions of the word liberty is that most include the word freedom, which, again, seems suspect. This means that the two words are intrinsically entwined in one another's definitions. So, if we as a culture are going to strap freedom to a chair, break freedom's toes, split freedom's fingers, gouge freedom's eyes and slice open freedom's belly; then we are going to have to tell liberty to sit down and we'll get to her next.
Why do I give a shit? Well, I am beginning to believe that the power of the words used to describe the actions can be just as, or more, important as the actions themselves.
Example: (remember folks this is possibly an unjustified leap, but I like it.) Eventually, when one says they are free it will probably just mean they are going out to go shopping.
Crazy politicians and fox news are right to some extent; freedom is important, but remember freedom is something worth fighting our own government for not people who live thousands of miles away. Remember people, if and when we kill ALL the terrorists that does not mean our fight for freedom is over it means it hasn't started.



Christ, I hate being serious. I'm going to go eat cookies and watch porn now....ciao!

Pushers pimp prisons, win popularity contests

In a blow to all those suffering from Grimwade’s Syndrome, Mitt Romney has won Iowa's straw poll. The victory was due, in part, to grimly eager support of something tragic: torture.

The reason this position is popular is easy enough to describe, but not a solution...is it time to identify with the anonymous victims, with anonymity itself? Doubt it. That cowardice will feed an alternate extreme I find equally disagreeable.

No, it's time to embrace something more radical: eye contact. Sure, we all hate the creepy looks of strangers, the dead stares of the overworked, the barely disguised fury of those casually confronted with another human being, but if we're going to get past primary loyalties, we're going to have to stop hating strangers.

Who would want to inherit this planet anyway?

So on the one side we have a study which argues that the reason something as super-cool as the Industrial Revolution occurred was because the poor died off, the children of the rich took their place, and more efficient behaviors were thereby transferred to the lower class.

Meanwhile, we have a study which argues that those who perceive themselves as downtrodden are more likely to engage in overly risky behavior, that they will thereby damage their chances at economic success.

So either the poor are too stupid to engage in the successful policies of the rich, or the circumstances of (relative) poverty are such that greater risks are taken by the poor...either way, we should be wary of giving them anything...or so goes the unsaid thus of the above, whether it be through the meaningless correlation presented in the first argument, or through the true point of the second, turned into (way too close to heartless) social policy.



...I don't much like talking about social planning on a mass scale. The idea that charity is limited, that we have to plan where and when to use it...there are practical arguments to be made for thinking along those lines...as long as they aren't used to rationalize laziness, to justify people who are too tired to look more favorably on one another. The cost of such a view exceeds that of charity wasted.

Warnings a'fore the Democratic putsch

Pardon the political moment, but I couldn't just stand back and watch Barrack Obama get verbally beaten for making a rookie mistake: he actually told us what he would do in a hypothetical situation. Specifically, he said he would kill terrorists in Pakistan without the authorization of the local government. Uproar! How dare he!

As if any American president would ever act differently.

There is one difference though: a real president believes that America's better off walking around like a drunken sailor, jumping out of dark corners and giggling as it stabs strangers in the eye. Now, admittedly, less flags are going to be burned if we stick to cloaks and daggers, but, and I may be wrong here, we aren't exactly trusted internationally anyway. So I'll think from their perspective: if I'm going to be despleened, I'd at least like a warning, and possibly even a reason, as to why. There's enough to fear without the shadows.




Oh, and other candidates (Clinton, Dodd) think mandatory public service is the best way to get citizens to appreciate their government.

It's, um, not.

The Devil in Marketing: Why not make Harry Potter the new Bible?

I'm going to give in and read Harry Potter.

Hear me out.

I'm viewing it as a doorway into conversation, like knowing who won the ballgame. But while sports fandom can lead to sweaty chest bumps from strangers, apparently these magical little books work more like a rorschach test. Whole cultures twist it into whatever Meaning suits their fancy. And with everyone reading them, or being told to read them, or having them read to them, or having them translated into films which can be viewed by them with people who insist that they must be read by them in order to be viewed by them in a manner pleasing to them, I feel like I'm missing out on a cultural experience which is allowing people to discuss ideas about relationships and morality tangentially, as if they have somehow become safe through the newly sacred text.

I'm not looking for something with high literary quality here. I'm not going to use the text to expand my ability to interpret/think/express. I doubt new concepts will be brought up. But I'm hoping to learn a few stories that can be alluded to in casual conversation, little hooks for strange fish, ready to be reeled in and gutted with my affection.

Cause I do honestly enjoy people going out of their way to read stories that connect them with the people around them. Hell, it beats the news.

I would prefer sharing tallboys with ex-cons

Back from vacation, choking on sweet city air.

On the bus ride back, I found myself surrounded by foreign university students, discussing contemporary politics, using the most abstract of terms.

"Capitalism!", "Separation of powers!", "Media conspiracy!"

It was painful.

I forced myself to sit back and try to decipher what the hell these people were trying to accomplish, arguing over what they hadn't defined. Relief settled in as I realized they weren't trying to do a damn thing. They may as well have been talking about football. Super muscle man has 400 sacks? Skinny French theorist wrote 80 articles on the Portuguese media? Same damn thing.

If you're going to argue over politics, stick with concrete examples and terms you've newly redefined in that conversation. 'Cause no one wants to see you scratching yourself, leaning on borrowed authority.

The Internet: A World Full of Nervous Laughter

When involved in an awkward conversation on the internet the most common reply used to avoid awkward silence is LOL. Which means that this laughing out loud has turned into nothing more than a chuckle and cough.



LOL.

Soon to be Balls Deep in Freedom and Liberty

I will be out of town for about two weeks which means no posts from me for a little while (not that I've posted in a few days anyway). During this vacation I will be involved in several activities, mostly drinking and sex, but I will also be working on my notes for another post. This future post will be a bit of an exploratory musing on the American usage of the words freedom and liberty (maybe usage is too mild a word, I mean raping).

Because chewing takes too long

A couple of interesting articles from the American: one against cash incentives for schooling, and another in favour of abolishing the SATs. I agree with the main points of these articles: you can't fix disparity by conditioning behaviour termed "proper", and you can't identify the diamonds among those rough and ornery underprivileged by judging both privileged and underprivileged by the same standard...not without underscoring a sense of entitlement among the rich.

But I also think that something about the tone in each article was off, (though I blame the articles less than the debate they engage in, especially in the case of the first article). They were presenting valid arguments against ineffective programs, programs meant to help the "underprivileged"...but in doing so they did not take the time to define what needed fixing and why. I was left with the sense that both articles masked sentiment that was (perhaps unconsciously) trite, that "we have a duty to help these poor, wayward, limited, (dirty) individuals...but alas no method is working".

It is as the writers (falsely) believe a great burden is weighing upon them, a great struggle that must be engaged in despite knowledge from the start that it was doomed to failure, because (they falsely believe) the children of the privileged are (genetically) better off, and everyone else is catching up. (e.g., from the second article: "The children of the well educated and affluent get most of the top scores because they constitute most of the smartest kids. They are smart because their parents are smart. The parents have passed their smartness along through parenting practices that are largely independent of education and affluence, and through genes that are completely independent of them.")

This is self-absorption masked as charity.

The debate needs to be rephrased, away from an under-defined "moral obligation" toward the poor, and toward a sense of mutual advantage to be gained from the promotion of functional, semi-autonomous sub-systems within a single nation. In other words, don't feel as though the promotion of the underprivileged is necessary because we must return to that innocent (mythical) state of equality to which we were born. Instead, realize that independent communities exist within America, that problems within one community (crime, unemployment, illness) affect everyone, and that it is in everyone's self-interest to resolve them.

My solution? Teleportation.

Let's get back to inconvenience

You want to move America to the left. You want to do something to engage an actual physical person with a negative result of conservative policies.

But conservatives have every drug addicted hobo on their side: they are abstractions, projections of what we could become, of what we can avoid becoming through obsessive engagement in day to day affairs, absorbing the creative output of others.

Let's rebuild the hobos, take them from the future to the present, where all that's keeping them from success is a lack of compassion. Speak to them when you walk by.

Oh, the Children.

The young ones stole the headlines over the past week with underage suicide bombing, high-speed texting, getting checks cut from the Catholic church, stunt riding on the hood of car, and being the subject matter of sexy Spanish photos. Now, age is an interesting factor in determining one's individual ability to function within the whole of human society: eg. There are those adults who say "But, oh, they're so young," others who espouse "That child knew what he was doing," and also the ever wistful "They grow up so fast, don't they?" One of the difficulties, I would argue, in determining how much responsibility should be placed upon kids comes from, what I would consider, the real and imagined effects of age on mental acuity.
This idea is not ground breaking, and this is not what will be discussed.
Let me start by saying: I have nothing against children as a specific group of people; everyone of us was a child at one point. I do, on the other hand, tend to view children the same way I view all other people; Most kids, just like adults, I find to be fairly obnoxious. This does not alter the fact that I believe they should -again, just like adults- be treated with the compassion that all humans deserve. I would like to believe most people can agree with that statement to some extent.
Now, after all that retarded exposition I can get to the very short point I was going to make. If you were going to find how compassionate people can be towards children, look to the Middle East. -Wait, he didn't just say that did he?- Oh, I fucking did. President Hamid Karzai pardoned a 14 year old would be suicide bomber. The president realizing the boy had been taken under a malicious wing pardoned the kid and wished him "a good life." Incredible. I can remember a few years ago there was a fifteen year-old boy in Florida who was given life in prison for accidentally killing one of his friends while the two of them were practicing wrestling moves they saw on TV. At this time I will withhold my opinion on the Floridian event and leave it up to you the reader.
This does not excuse the Middle East or any other region of the world from other crimes committed against children, I'm just pointing out that while the western world was taking naked photos of kids, placing them on the hood of a car, or leaving them in the hands of dodgey religious figures. Those oh-so-hated Middle Easterners were showing some compassion. Or if you're a cynical fuck such as myself they were just getting some much needed good publicity.

Positioning Inequality

There seems to be some debate going on between a couple of bloggers, one a supporter of greater economic parity, one an opponent of excessive concern with income. It’s like watching an episode of a long-running soap opera, except the sexy twin brother stranded in nicaragua is a million (wannabe) hobos.

Eight Things I Don't Even Care About

All I can say is that I'm terribly sorry I have to do this.

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Shit, I'm not sure I can think of anything worth committing to an electric page. Fuck it, here goes something (something probably uninteresting).

1) I was born clinically deceased. I was quickly resuscitated, obviously.

2) I think Legos are about the greatest thing ever fucking invented.

3) A year ago I visited England for about a month and I have to say the Scottish are about the friendliest people I've met. Though, I've had many disagree with me. But, they're bastards.

4) I do not own a television. I don't take pride in this it's just a random fact.

5) This is a lot more difficult than I would have imagined. (This one counts, right?)

6) The funniest person in the world, according to myself, was Bill Hicks.

7) I am and always have been an interminable jackass.

8) I am fairly certain compassion is the foremost virtue humans can bestow upon others.

Ok, now that's done and I can send this virus (thank you Tantalus Prime) to eight others.

Gadgetholic

TAN

Heliotropic

Corpus Mmothra

Dr. McNinja

Global Guerrilas

Hobotopia

Hole in the Head

Where Are the Mythic Floods?

Short of an act of a deity I don't believe in, there isn't a much that the United States citizens or congress can do to the president anymore. I'm not one to advocate wiping clean the face of the Earth, but I do not believe I can describe my current opinion on the state of my country any other way than complete and total disillusionment. I used to think that when there was great evil the good would band together and stave it off; this sentiment no longer seems true, and perhaps it was only true in the pulp stories of my youth.
Where is this great evil?
That is my current problem, I can't truly find it. I have begun to rationalize everything and with this new found logic virus I no longer feel anything towards our current state of being. I find moments or flashes of white hot emotion, but soon it simmers down to a slow boil and the feeling of helplessness settles back in. The only question I have left that lights fires in my blood is this: What happened to compassion? I no longer see it in the eyes of a country whose founding legal documents seemed so wonderfully promising. And, unlike some others I don't see dollar signs or the number of the beast; all I see are glassy eyes reflecting my own vacuous stare tinged slightly with red from an eternal hangover.

Wikipedia for Zombies

I have no problem with wikipedia as a concept. Reality is already subjectively created and interpreted, may as well make the process a little more transparent, draw people that much more into a storytelling reality.

But I have to admit, sometimes I worry that an online negotiation of truth will ruin the collective sanity, that it threatens cultural boundaries that are better left alone...but rather than censor the internet, can’t we just blind the stupid?

Wikipedia has already overwhelmed Google to such an extent that it’s nearly impossible to find any information on how to kill it, so we should just accept its presence and choose some other way to mediate between conflicting truths, a way that will leave the information out there without presenting people already too absorbed in abstraction another abstract evil which contrarian individuals can be associated with.

Because, truth be told, I have no problem leaving a bunch of people ignorant, so long as I don’t have to deal with them. I see nothing righteous about forcing alternate perspectives down another person’s throat. It’s tiring.

I’ll stay in my circle of hell, you stay in yours, and we’ll talk about tangentials.

And it's going to be incredible

I don't know what the hell is going on in Italy, but they are planning something.

Meet People Who Want Sex / Japanese Sexy Women in Action!

Do those headlines grab your attention (among other things)? Those are just two of the subject lines I grabbed out of my e-mail today, and I must say I noticed those more so than the headline, "Court Dismisses Suit Challenging Domestic Spying." The dismissal was due to the fact that not one of the plaintiffs could prove that they had been spied upon by the US government. The rebuttal from the ACLU was that the plaintiffs were not allowed access to the documents stating just who was being spied upon.
At this point I noticed that no where in these arguments has anyone brought up the sheer legality of the wiretapping. No, of course not, the court needs specifics. But, that does make sense, to a degree. The only way that this could be taken to court is over the specifics. The warrant-less wiretapping issue is too large and has been around for too long to just be thrown in the back of a paddy-wagon and hauled off to the hoosegow. For instance, CNN stated that:

"Electronic surveillance programs run by the NSA have been under fire since December 2005, when The New York Times disclosed that the government was listening in on international phone calls involving people suspected of having ties to terrorists.

Some legal scholars said the program is an illegal and unwarranted intrusion on Americans' privacy, but the Bush administration has defended it as necessary in the battle against the al Qaeda terrorist network."

Notice a few tricky words: terrorists, suspected, ties. Terrorists in this case, I'm assuming(which pisses me off for having to assume), is synonymous with al Qaeda. I'm not sure quite what suspected means or how you get on the list of suspects. Lastly, ties doesn't seem quite concrete enough. Couldn't you have ties to someone because they are your local grocer, or have ties to another because they are your mail-person? Shit, what if you have ties to someone else that has ties? Well, Little Timmy, you're probably fucked.
Remember, terrorist has a very fluid definition, and eventually it will just mean people who disagree.
This is why I'm going back out to find people who want sex, and maybe, just maybe, I'll find some Japanese sexy women in action!

Truths to make you fearful: Bisphenol A

Toxic enough to get doctors fired for dismissing it’s effects. Not toxic enough to be banned from use in baby bottles.

Hot Nights and Cold Wars

Lately, I've been a bit of a shut in, drinking alone till the early hours of the morning and scrolling through news sites. I've shied away from my old haunts and even stopped calling people during the day to save on cellphone charges. All of this in the name of saving some money. And, while my pocket book maybe stable, my consciousness is far from it. The last few weeks I've been trying to convince myself that we are not heading into another cold war. Putin's suggestions of modernizing the Azerbaijan early warning station have all but been shot down, while Bush wants to place an American presence on the Russian border. All seemed lost until I read this wonderful paragraph:

"Both leaders, who dined on pancakes and omelets for breakfast and curried zucchini soup and chicken salad for lunch, smiled and seemed eager to portray a strong, stable relationship between the two nations. Putin is the first head of state to be hosted at the Maine summer home by President Bush, an attempt to warm relations in a place of sparkling views and summertime weather."

Oh, thank fuck there's sparkling views and summertime weather to melt away Putin's icy Russian exterior. Word on the street is that they've got a few fishing trips planned. If only Roosevelt and Stalin would have put on jean shorts and gone bass fishin' this whole fucking thing would have never been started.
After this post I plan on heading straight out and grabbing a drink. Then as I amble home, my drunken screams for peace will find ears among the stars, and if I'm lucky maybe I'll see a Russian missile flying overhead. You know when you see a Russian missile fly over head and you make a wish, it doesn't come true then either.

asbestos suit, away!

and what is this heroic fabric flying towards? why, a past unpopulated by the clones of former monkeys, newly transformed into machines, feeding on dreams made into a broken metaphor for awakening.

(if humans can soon transfer data through bones, change species at will, and feed a vast supply of clones, we're almost ready for an age where you can plug your enemies into a wall and fax them into frogdom).

Arguments in favour of bankruptcy: "Grow some balls and smile".

Even if an industry (say, a search engine) goes bankrupt paying out more wages and income than it is able to be compensated with, (a process which benefits the community but not the individual industry), the individuals within that specific industry would still have been become more experienced in the process, and better equipped to work elsewhere. There may be a greater overturn of entrepreneurial enterprises if this were an accepted business model, but with each failed enterprise the general quality of life would increase, and with it the readiness of the community to create new enterprises which would be better fit for the situation in which they are created. Although each individual would be forced to adapt to a greater extent, each individual would also have more time and energy to do so.

Granted people are lazy, but they'll get over it.

(for background, try Keynes vs. Veblen.)

No One's Happy, Dammit!

CNN posted an article on the low approval rating of both Congress and the President. The President is currently at 30% and Congress has dropped to a wonderful 25% according to recent polls.
This is my favorite quote from that article:
So Democrats blame Republicans. "The fact is that the Republicans aren't allowing us to proceed,'' Reid said. And Republicans blame Democrats.
Well, no shit. The article really does proves a point though, and that is that NOTHING will get done until people in our government stop bickering and start discussing. That would seem easy, but it's difficult when so many tiny-dicked white-men are running around trying to find a ruler that only has a millimeter scale. I think they only sell those in Europe.

The new dynamic is the people versus the government. The immigration bill is a perfect illustration. It was a bipartisan bill, supported by President Bush and by most Democrats in Congress. Why didn't it pass? Because the people didn't like it.
This is the most intelligent piece of the article, it 'is' us vs. them, but what CNN is incorrect about is that it is a 'new' dynamic. This isn't new at all people; it's just finally coming to a head. You can only watch you government shit on it's own citizens for so long before the timbre of the public turns angry.

Missed Me!

Who doesn't look at missed connections? If it's you then, christ, go read some! Any how here is a swatch of some of my favorites.

-Patrick formerly of Mastercard...Where the hell are you? I should never have left you behind at Ethyls back in Dec. If you happen to see this please respond! I miss the orange shirts!
I miss those orange shirts too.

- you: red car, dark hair, smiled at me
me: black SUV, cell phone glued to my ear, 2 kids playing video games in back seat, blonde bobbed hair, sunglasses

interested? need my "oil changed"!

xoxoxo
desperate west county soccer mom
Shit, and I was going to "fix" her radiator.

-My friend and I asked you how to spell Kindergarten today cause we both thought it was spelled with a D not a T. I think you're gorgeous. If you see this reply and maybe we could get to know each other? Whats there to lose?
Don't do it man! They can't spell Kindergarten!

-We were a group of guys in for lunch about 1:30 this afternoon at KoBa in Chesterfield. You had just showed up for you shift and we were your first table (I think). I just wanted to say that you were absolutely beautiful (I can tell you have a lot of inner beauty as well as outside), and if you're at all a paruser of CL, I hope you see this. Just wondering if you were single and maybe wanted to go out sometime (I was wearing the striped, collared shirt, glasses). Well, here's to hoping! Cheers!
Inner Beauty? Oh, fuck you man she served you food and you were horny!

-I'm trying to get in touch with someone I bowled against and crushed on during a stint with the Saratoga Fun League. I moved away, returned, and ran into you at my work recently. My relationship status has since changed and I'm in hopes of asking out the adorable red hoodie I <3>
If you're trying to ask some one out it isn't polite to remind them of their "crushing" defeat by your hands. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

-looking for the girl who rocked my world 2 nights ago and made me go GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE. hope i didnt scare you away you never called me back. hope to hear from you soon
What the fuck here people? If you yelled GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE you fucking SCARED her, fuck, you scared me!

Ok, that's it for now.

Angular momentum bound at null infinity!?!

a smooth model of quiver moduli twisting the transformed euler walk, measuring eccentricity on a cayley tree.

nothing like obscure terms to jump start the ole’ sense of wonder. if you get a moment, spend a day sifting through the titles of abstracts posted to arxiv.org, and think of all the different stories embedded in any discussion of mathematics. what appears to be cold objectivity, defined relationships, one plus ones, is revealed as passion, cruelty, beauty reflected in terms not intended as selling points, but as personal monuments to the energy of the creator, trinkets to be passed, sacred relics written bones, ready to be ground into powder for the next theorem.

Bizarre Occurrence of the Day

Searching through craigslist revealed a fabulous secret message, a mash of white-text quotes from wikipedia on the Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India, the Duda, Phil Esposito, and SARS

Now either craigslist uses some strange system of randomly quoted wikipedia pages on every ten thousandth post, or there is some retired hockey player turned diseased communist who really wants to learn the Hungarian bagpipes. He sits alone in his room, surrounded by tarnished trophies and a television he hates, trying to muster the breath needed to create noise of his own.

A Very Tricky Legal Word

The Senate Judiciary Committee continued the lengthy and well loved tradition of issuing subpoenas to the president and everyone else involved in the Executive Branch of our government, this time it happens to be over the warrant-less N.S.A. wiretaps. I'm sure this appears to be a triumph to everyone that mindlessly rallies against the current administration, but may I remind you that it is his second term, and nothing-truly nothing-will come of these subpoenas. The Executive Office has built a tower so remarkably high that even the highest waves of an angry populous appear to be only minor swells. If Nixon were alive he would have a throbbing erection at seeing how untouchable the President has become. Hell, maybe even his corpse has a hard-on.
So, you ask, what did I do? I got drunk and watched a rerun of Larry King's interview with Paris Hilton. She would make a good politician in the modern political arena, she probably gives good head and is a lying fuck. (you can take that as a pun if you like.) Is that all it takes anymore? No, I am most definitely simplifying.
Clouds loomed overhead and around noon the heavens loosed a hellish down-pour. Because of this I was inside today staring out the rain-streaked windows pondering how to remedy ANY of the current social/political mishaps: I settled on the familiar I don't know. Even if I was clever enough to come up with a workable solution, I doubt anyone would listen.
I then decided not to dwell upon such depressing matters and read all about the musical instrument the theremin, created by the Russian inventor Leon Theremin in 1919.

Roundup

it's official, nothing says nerd love like ron paul. space-travel jesus (now with rocket pack accessories!) will play at his inauguration, thousands of tesla coils pulsing redemption.

Because I Have to Steal the News

A fantastic post was on Boing Boing today explaining that the US Embassy owes the city of London £1,484,765 (roughly over 2.5 million USD) in unpaid traffic violation fines. Fucking amazing. Now, I understand that these charges were probably racked up over decades, but, just but, I would like to think that it all happened in the span of a few days.
Just imagine the US Ambassador Robert Tuttle looking over at his driver and saying, "Todd, you know what would fucking rock? If we got some more tall-boys and went cruising for some hot-British-tang. Hey dude, did you know you can drink at the age of 18 over here? Fucking sweet, right?

Truths to make you fearful: Phthalates

Story:

Phthalates are used in plastics. They are toxic. Need proof? Ask every mother you know whether or not they like to look pretty when they use a dildo. Mothers who say yes will likely have sons with a smaller anogenital length.

Now screw their children. My guess: Children of the Dildo will be less likely to reproduce, and less likely to fight back.

Weep for the expressive, the sexually liberated, whose kind can be made passive through the use of a single chemical.

Moral:

Most products you use contain chemicals whose toxic effects are unknown.

Once a chemical is put into use, there will be little incentive for industry to change the profitable product.

The government will not regulate a chemical the public does not recognize as toxic.

Public awareness will come long after impact.

Fun Thought:

Those who know of the effects of unregulated toxic chemicals could choose to ruin a subset of the population.

Form Your Own Goddamm Opinion

No Child Left Behind Are you fucking serious?

The Grand Scheme

I'm just not happy with this.