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.