No Favicon

I noticed today that the "favicon" I've used on this blog for a while is missing. I'd forgotten that I was hosting it on Geocities which shut down the other day.

If I get around to it, I may create a new one. Till then, enjoy the blogger "B."

How to Gauge Teachers: Correlation

Standardized tests are one of the worst things to ever happen to the Western world. Inhumane, uncreative, and stressful, they force teachers to teach to a test instead of creatively envisioning and practicing new teaching techniques. They fail to analyze the thought process of the student and reward rote memorization.

They aren't going away either. It's the only technique anyone has come up with to measure the performance of students effectively and cheaply. Non-multiple choice tests are expensive and slow to grade.

Action has to be taken to ensure that schools are improving. One of the central proposals to do this is to get rid of teachers whose students fail standardized tests.

Such a proposal isn't fair to teachers. What if their students just don't give a shit? Teaching is easier than inspiring. They're both difficult, but a student who doesn't give a damn is destined to fail no matter how good a teacher is.

Instead of firing teachers whose students fail, why not fire teachers whose students' grades do not correspond to their standardized test grades? Grades are an indicator of student performance provided by a teacher. Standardized tests should verify this indicator. If the indicator is off, then a teacher is too harsh, forgiving, or ineffective.

This system verifies that a teacher is teaching in the way that the state requests. After all, this ought to be the goal of a standardized test. State-mandated standards are at heart horseshit, but a world without them is a pipe dream.

The Media Sucks

The media sucks.

If you don't believe me, go watch CNN right now. Turn it on. It looks like a circus; there's holograms and panic and emotion and screaming and death flu this, president/war that.

What a waste of time. Give me the news and shut up. We don't need strobe lights, we need information.

YouTube just Doesn't Provide Raw Footage, It Provides All of the Camera Angles

Check out this CNN footage of the G20 protests:


Not a good enough view? Check out this guy who was closer half way through this video:


Isn't that cool? At the beginning of the first video, you can see the cameraman of the second video. That's how much information is available on youTube.

The Right Word(s) in the Right Place Can Change Everything

This cracks me up.

Mental Mentality! Healthcare Hysteria!

Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare



You may or may not have heard of this woman. If you haven't, then this is an instance where using the word "cunt" is appropriate. I know that it's strong language, but it's adequate here.

People who stand in her position are an oxymoron--her husband is working three jobs and still can't afford health insurance, but she remains opposed to universal healthcare. Another anti-health activist was injured and solicited donations to pay his medical bills. Yet these people remain completely opposed to universal healthcare despite the potential benefits to themselves.

Some how, someone has convinced these people to act in a manner that is detrimental to themselves. In a mixture of abstract concepts, loud mouths, and flat-out falsehoods, either a brilliant designer or a mob mentality has driven these people like lemmings. It's done so well that over half of Americans believe that there will be "death panels" in a universal healthcare system.

An aside, there already are death panels--to a degree--of just a frightening nature. Actuaries assess the risk of future events in a person life. With the likelihood of particular risks, they determine insurance rates for individuals. There already are people in private insurance firms whose job is to determine how expensive it is for you to stay alive.

To understand what's going on, consider cui bono. The uninsured protesters do not benefit, and there's no real effect to the insured because they'll get to keep their plans. Likely, the parties with the greatest loss in a system with universal healthcare are private insurance firms. Of course, their lobbyists get the big bucks to push politicians in big directions.

Money can push politicians, but there's not enough to push the people. The people move by means of abstract concepts: pride, morals, values, patriotism, freedom, hope, etc. In this case, it's about protecting American values--in particular, American capitalist values. They've been convinced that the free market will be destroyed if healthcare is socialized and, once that is done, that the entire country will fall under fascist control.

If the country were capable of falling under such a regime, it already would have. Social security and drivers licenses already make a pseudo-national ID system, and that's one of the great fears deriving from the existence of socialized healthcare. Between the patriot act and mob mentality of the modern United States, if there were to be a fascist regime in the United States, it would already exist.

These absurd statements have put Obama on the defensive--the worst place in the world to be. Defense exists to deter defeat. Offense exists to win. Deterring defeat will never yield victory, and a player on the defensive is bound to lose. Obama's response to the death panel rumors was denial--completely defensive. Instead, he ought to have gone on the offense. He should have used the transparency he promised to call out the lobbyists. Instead of saying, "there's no deathpanels," he should have said, "there are people who don't care if you're sick so they can make money."

After all, this is about Obama himself. Obama's opponents want him to fail. They want to break the hope and to stop the change. Breaking the healthcare promises will surely leave Obama a lame duck. Don't let it happen.

Five Years of Logorrhea

My lab partner just pointed that this is the fifth anniversary of this blog. I've missed the anniversary every year, so this is just a damn lucky day.

I don't know where the logorrhea banner went. I had it on imageshack, I think, and it vanished. Since another year has passed, it's time for a new one.

If you're on Facebook, you might not be able to see the many internal links on the syndication of this post. Go to the original site.

To celebrate, I'm going to drink alone and brag about my huge repertoire of posts from the last five years... jesus fucking christ, five fucking years. I was in high school when I started this blog, and I knew everything. Now, the end of college is on the horizon, and I know nothing.

Let's have a retrospective:

+ I used to write rants on my DeviantART page. Someone on DeviantART said I needed a blog. I haven't posted on DeviantART since then. Well, I have, but not really.

+ I started the blog on August 17, 2004. Holy shit. That was a long time ago. I don't think Bush had even been reelected yet. In fact, I complained about it here.

+ The Vacuum Suckers post was great. It was the first post I wrote that had some essence of quality.

+ At some point, I added little features. These include the cycling subtitle, the n years of logorrhea banner, and the cool blue background.

+ RIAA Terror in Brief: For a while, I attempted to sum up events in the RIAA lawsuits thinking that they would someday end. I quit after a while because re-reporting shit is incredibly boring. I can't even find all the posts, though it looks like I wrote 6 of them. I'm not sure; the search tool is acting funny.

+ I've posted nearly at least one post per month, except for a brief hiatus after September 2006. This is because I was a college freshman, and drinking heavily was more exciting than having an opinion on the Internet.

+ Some posts were subtle. They still make me laugh. Others were blunt. They make me shake my head in shame. Yet some were so blunt that they still make me laugh. However bad, I refuse to delete old posts. They're there. At some point, I thought posting them was clever, so they will stay. Deleting them defeats the point of this blog.

Some questions and statements, as to the future:
+ How many of the 6,400 visitors to this blog, how many were simply bots searching for e-mail addresses to spam and websites to catalog into search engines?

+ Will posting quality improve? Will reader counts increase? Will I actually make money off this blog? (Answers: quality cycles, doubt it, doubt it even more because it depends on the result of the last question)

+ There will be more funny pictures. In fact, I might make one for every post I do. This is because I like eye candy, and my posts have grown longer over the years. A few pictures might help make those long blocks of angry text more bearable even to me.

+ The logorrhea banner will return. I didn't realize it was broken.

A reminder to the readers and myself--this blog is intended as nothing more than practice. Practice writing, practice ranting, practice web...siting. You're reading what's on my mind, barely revised, unreserved, apathetically produced.

I could do better, but I'm lazy. This is for fun. I'm not going to write a piece, sit on it for a week, and perfect it. That is not as much fun. This has no attachment (I hope) to my career, and I sure as shit don't make money off of it. It's a firing range for my literary skills and the rubbish that comes out of angry gun. It is a brain refuse depository. Nothing more. Enjoy my scraps.

The Consequences: Ending Social Networks

In the last four years, social networking exploded into a multi-million dollar industry and is now looking at a dangerous decline. While experts ask why, their balding heads fail to understand the youthful minds fleeing the networks.

I still regularly use Facebook. MySpace I've avoided like the plague for years, and only occasionally drop by to say hello to some people I can't reach otherwise. Facebook is still useful, but there are reasons people are leaving, and I seek to address that here.

--
Here's cause for the exodus:

+ Society does not differentiate weekends from weekdays.
The weekends are separate from weekdays, and it doesn't really matter what the hell you do on the weekend, so long you remain productive and uncompromisable during the week. Society does not share this opinion, particularly employers, parents, coaches, and school administrators.

The strongest reason users leave social networks is for employment. There's a common fear amongst job-seeking students that their future employers are perusing through their Facebook pictures looking for--god forbid--red cups. Facing the dire consequence of starving, students have left Facebook and MySpace altogether.

For those not looking to jobs, risks remain, particular those of Facebook pictures leaving and wandering into the eyes of parents and coaches. Generally, parents aren't too pleased seeing their children drinking, vomiting into a toilet after drinking, and drinking after vomiting into a toilet after drinking. After all, if Steve's mom is friends with someone who was tagged in an album with Steve in it, and that someone did not put up the privacy settings, Steve's mom can see the album. Steve is now grounded. Students who fear such repercussions fled social networks completely.

Additionally, school administrators have somehow acquired the right to punish students for things they do while not in school. No clue how that works, but just the same, if the school gets its hands on pictures of its students drinking, they will be punished.

The social networks can not stop these pictures from getting to unwanted eyes. No matter what safety nets social networks allow you to put up, it doesn't make a difference. It was once said when some encryption code for hacking DVDs or something was leaked that "getting something off the internet is like getting pee out of a pool." Pictures are the same way. Once something's on the Internet, it easily ends up everywhere and cannot be taken down. The best way to stop it is to keep it off the Internet in the first place, and the equivalent of holding one's bladder is staying off Facebook.

+ Petty Drama
Who cares if Janelle and Davey broke up and got together five or six times this week? Facebook will let you know, immediately. Stacey cut her toe on a rusty nail and is dying because of tetanus. Great. People use Facebook--myself included--to complain about shit that nobody cares about. Since there's nothing there but worthless bickering, who's going to be there at all?

+ You've Been Bitten! Join the Fight: Vampires vs. Zombies
Facebook introduced "applications" a year or so back. This was done to compete with MySpace--completely unnecessary--and draw in revenue--equivalent to selling-out to the man. The result of the development of applications was a large number of apps who's entire goal was get people to invite more people to the app. This produced a large number of "games" that aren't really games at all, but manual spam bots. Of course, each of these had a series of banner ads or were selling upgraded versions that did nothing new.

Not only did the games suck, but if you didn't accept, you'd likely find 60+ invitations in your user inbox telling you that you have pokemon or a secret waiting for you. If you did accept, your user page would be trashed with tacky, worthless boxes of rubbish no one cared about. Continually still, the games flood the newsfeed with "MICHAEL GOT A CHICEKN IN FARMVILLE. JOIN THE FARM FUN WIN BLUE RIBBINZ."

At least "Stacey is dying from tetanus" is entertaining.

+ Creepers
More afflicting women, Facebook--like any social network--is full of creepers. This risk was significantly lower when Facebook was an elitist student club, but since Facebook is available to the public, creepers run amok looking for women with whom they hope to couple. This doesn't even involve dinner and a movie, but centers around flat-out solicitations.
--

I've considered MySpace dead for years, but a lot of these forces are new to Facebook, pushing a lot of users out with their novelty, and making the decline a series of business decisions by Facebook. Instead of relying on the solid product they had developed, they sought to expand earnings. It turns out that empathy for the users is a useful force in business after all.

Besides declining product quality, the very nature of social networks makes them vulnerable. No matter how elitist, all groups have creepers in them, being that the world has creepers, and any group is just a subgroup of the world. Additionally, the "pee-in-the-pool theory" of the Internet makes any information put on it impossible to take off, including pictures of yourself in the fetal position, covered in your own vomit.

People could take the existence of this information as a demonstration of the facts of life, but old people aren't ready to hear that and like to pretend that half their generation didn't smoke weed 40 years ago. Instead, we'll get to hear about how the youth are corrupt and how social networks "ruin lives."

Hollywood

I was watching Terminator II the other day. I hadn't seen it in a while, and if you haven't, remember that it's very good. It was also one of the first movies to use computerized effects, and it did so effectively. It did so in small, subtle places, such as whenever the liquid metal guy changes forms. They were peppered on for where creating the effect with real life materials would have been impossible.

The film features one shot of a helicopter going under a bridge. I doubt that someone actually flew a helicopter under a bridge, but the helicopter was definitely a real one. Perhaps it was on a track, but the shot looked great. This is something that Hollywood alone has the resources to do: smash-up cars, construct elaborate sets, blow-up buildings, and shoot miniatures, or, in short, do expensive things in real life. They have the capital to do massive scale productions.

Or at least, they did. The use of real life effects has slowly transitioned to computerized effects. Take, for example, the film "I am Legend." Most of the film's budget likely went to Will Smith's salary. The film utilized computerized effects to create zombies that look like they came out of an enhanced version of Poser. It was quite pathetic, really. With all of the capital available and all their resources, they used the computer to create villains which, at the time, were beyond the computer's ability to capture.

The use of the computer allows one to do things that traditional effects did not permit, but it has a restriction. Unless you're creating something far beyond the imagination, that thing will look fake. Humanoid zombies are not far beyond the imagination, leaving the zombies in "I am Legend" to be visibly computer generated and unrealistic. I can't even tell you what it was about them--perhaps a smoothness, something often the downfall of computer effects. I'm not sure.

When watching Terminator II, I put the pieces from "I am Legend" together. Hollywood is trying to use the computer to cheat us. Instead of trying to make the best films possible with the best effects, they're cutting costs. It also reveals their weakness; anybody nearly has the resources at their disposal to do what Hollywood is doing now.

With a good camera, a decent computer, and the right software, one can make a video production with effects on par with "I am Legend," or better. These only cost a couple thousand dollars, unlike multimillion dollar Hollywood budgets of films past. What one lacks is the visual effects experience--by dicking around with the software tools or taking a few classes, one can obtain that--and the acting talent--which is present everywhere, if you look hard enough.

It's ironic that the tools that make Hollywood become obsolete also destroy the traditional distribution scheme. Piracy through the Internet is rising and looks to completely undermine the whole system. The future of film is in your basement, on the computer, and digital.

The Truth

This man says it: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/lax/483318927.html

Gates Caller Just Wants Free Beer with Obama

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/911_caller_in_g.html

Why is this woman having press conferences? Who cares why she called the police? The cop was an asshole--like most cops--and the professor was being an asshole because cops are assholes--like I would. If all I need to do to have beer with the president is get a PhD and get arrested, I'm down with that.

Subscribe via SMS

Facebook has a feature where you can subscribe to your friends via SMS. Everytime they do something on FB, you get a text message.

That's just creepy.

Joe Biden's Job is to Say Stupid Shit

It seems that everything that comes out of Joe Biden's mouth is fucking stupid. It's a trend that started with Swine Flu. If you can't remember--when interviewed about Swine Flu--Joe Biden said something along the lines of "I wouldn't go on an airplane right now; hell, I wouldn't put my family on a plane."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I don't want him to shut up though. Sure, he says stupid things, but he makes Obama look better. After 8 years of a president that made us look bad, it's about time we had a president that looks good.

Lady Gaga, and Why Music Lost Its Magic

I recently acquired a taste for Lady Gaga. Four years ago, I would have rather beaten my head against a cement curb, but my tastes have grown as I've aged, and now I'll listen to just about anything, whether or not I even like it. Lady Gaga infected my soul quickly, and Pokerface became a habit.

Listening to Pokerface on loop, I noticed something. The song had four distinct phases:
+ Introduction
+ Main Sequence
+ Breakdown
+ Conclusion
In fact, all of Lady Gaga's songs had this pattern. Each phase plays a particular role in the overall dynamic of the song:

+ The Introduction steadily introduces the main sequence of the song.
+ The Main Sequence is the main beat, chords, and refrain of the song. When one thinks of the song, this is what they remember.
+ The Breakdown conflicts the Main Sequence. It sounds strange and may be in a different key from the Main Sequence.
+ The Conclusion features elements of the Main Sequence, but with tones that make the song feel complete and concluded.

All of Lady Gaga's songs are patterned like this. But once I noticed this, I noticed it in nearly every song, ever. It's more subtle sometimes, but nearly every song has this pattern.

Take, for example, Beethoven's 9th. Oh yes, the 9th. It's in four parts. The third is distinctly different from the other three, and the fourth contains elements of the whole song to conclude it.

Listen for it. Listen to Lady Gaga first. Then put on your favorite songs. It's all over.

*Post script: This probably isn't new, and the musicians out there are going to tell me "yea, that's called X." Please, do tell. I'd like to do more research into this.

Sarcasm is Context

The Internet communicates quickly. It also drops a lot of data behind. Through this text, all that is communicated to you--the reader--is that which the writer chooses use. Good writing communicates exactly what I want to get across to you within the context of what is written. This blog rarely delves into sarcasm without some sort of obvious deviation from the usual style. Within the context, sarcasm is clear; a lot of data is transmitted with every post due to the context it is posted in, even if the amount of text is limited.

People on the internet think that sarcasm is transmitted automatically through the Internet. It is not. Particularly, on a message board, unless a poster's style is well know, it is unclear whether a poster is applying sarcasm. Even in real life, if a person is not well know, their tone communicates sarcasm, and therefore, in real life, people communicate sarcasm easily.* People who write poorly on the internet often attempt to communicate sarcasm and fail. They are bad writers because they think the internet communicates their tone. They fail because it does not, and their writing fails to as well.

By the way, the context of me writing this post, I'm shit-faced on my computer at four in the morning in my underwear. People on the Internet--I'm sure--have more surprises than that.


* Incredibly socially awkward people frequently do not communicate sarcasm through tone. This is why they are awkward.

Why Do People Listen To Celebrities?

Recently, Jenny McCarthy's drawn a lot of attention to herself by speaking out against autism and blaming the disease on the use of vaccines. I've never done any research on the topic, so I'm not going to draw an conclusions on her opinion. However, I'm still entitled to draw a conclusion on her; that is, I can clearly see she needs to shut the fuck up.

Celebrities running their mouths about topics they know very little about are not new. Take Tom Cruise for example. He's not a psychiatrist. I doubt his credentials or research experience in any way grant him any right to say what he says.

They're not doctors. They don't have PhDs. They may have not even finished school. Yet for some reason, the media magically grants celebrities time to talk about things they never spent any time studying. Sure, they spent perhaps three or four hours with one "expert" on the topic they come to endorse. Hey, they may have even read an article in Popular Science on their topic of choice. Somehow, by some means, the media still publishes their opinions.

How do celebrities even get into the business of running their mouth? They're good at it. That's how they became celebrities in the first place. When some organization wants someone to talk for them--someone who is damn good at talking--they weasel some celebrity into it, likely with linear combination of wads of cash, nice dinners, and tears for the children.

Once they've got them in hand, getting a celebrity to be a spokesperson is easy. All the celebrity has to do is regurgitate information along with some hint of emotion. That's no different from acting where they had to regurgitate lines along with some hint of emotion.

Celebrities don't know what they're talking about. When a celebrity runs their mouth about... anything, do research for yourself before listening to them. Unless, of course, it's a celebrity scientist.

The Pirate Bay Wins A Seat In European Parliament

I usually don't post news, but this is pretty awesome:
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=79094

Believe This

If you rely on the existence of God to establish and maintain the sanctity of human life, then you don't know what a human being even is.

Codding with Obscure Scrabble Words

The game Scrabble provides a unique opportunity to learn the back alleys of the English Language. Because the game forces the players to think of words out of a combination of letters, people think of just about any combination of vowels and consonants. Desperate attempts at forming words often results in stumbling upon obscure words.

To really demonstrate this, I'm going to play some Boggle. I'm going to pull everything that sounds like a word out of a few Boggle games. Then, I'll drop the words that aren't words, save the one's that are, and write a story out of the obscure ones. I expect it to be unintelligible.

Let's see where this goes. To start:

gone
dook
kooe
goost
dog
god
doss
cod
sed
dest
dests
mog
gode
doke
voke
kosoe
soke
moced
moce
noced
noce
nocs
noc
goes
tsen
good
soe
moe
codes
code
sod
good
goods
cods
gone
mone
voost
vooe
vook
ness
nedo

Second list:
foe
fou
fuo
fuse
her
ten
fet
teb
bet
hey
cey
nous
nouse
ben
hece
net
noet
foet
soet
son
hecy
hecn
hec
fen
nofe
nof

Let's cut down the words. These are the ones that are real words:
gone
dog
god
doss - to sleep in any convenient place
cod - to fool
mog - to move away
soke - a feudal right to administer justice within a certain territory
goes
good
goods
code
sod - to cover with sod
ness - a headland - a cliff
foe
fou - drunk
fuse
her
ten
fet - to fetch
bet
hey
nous - mind, reason, or intellect
ben - an inner room
net
son
fen

I'm going to get rid of the less obscure words, because they're not the reason I'm doing this exercise.

doss - to sleep in any convenient place
cod - to fool
mog - to move away
soke - a feudal right to administer justice within a certain territory
sod - to cover with sod
ness - a headland - a cliff
fou - drunk
fet - to fetch
nous - mind, reason, or intellect
ben - an inner room

So, from those:
A fou sodder once would always cod and doss through the soke of Judge Tamanar. Since he was always fou and acted without nous, his ill-disciplined ways landed him once in the ben of a rich aristocrat. Judge Tamanar ordered his sheriffs to fet the fou sodder, and Judge Tamanar told him to mog or he'd throw him from a ness. While the fou sodder mogged, he fell off a ness anyway.

Now, with the "translation:"
A drunk sodder once would always fool and sleep in any convenient location through the jurisdiction of Judge Tamanar. Since he always drunk and acted without reason, his ill-disciplined ways landed him once in the inner room of a rich aristocrat. Judge Tamanar ordered his sheriffs to fetch the drunk doffer, and Judge Tamanar ordered him to move away or he'd throw him from a cliff. While the drunk moved away, he fell off a cliff anyway.

Both paragraphs convey very precise information. The obscure words are beneficial in that they increase the concision of the paragraph. Yet despite the great value in this concision and precision, the words have their connotations, but since they're so obscure, I don't know them, nor does the reader likely know them. As a result, despite the precision of using such words, a lot of meaning seems missing even if the definition is known. In fact, the same ideas can be conveyed with greater precision and connotation by using more familiar words:
A drunk sodder never did his job and was a bum in the jurisdiction of Judge Tamanar. Since he was always did stupid things, his alcoholism led him to passing out in a rich aristocrat's house. Judge Tamanar had the drunk arrested and threatened to throw him from a cliff if he did not exhile himself. While leaving, the drunk sodder fell off a cliff anyway.

Of course, my attempt at using the words is forced, and the story I created to use the words is better conveyed with other words. It's likely that the content of the story was conceived with concepts--and therefore, words--that are more familiar to me. This forces me to wonder if learning the words would expand my imagination itself through the concepts they convey, increasing the possibilities of things I can imagine.

But before I expand my nous, I think I'll doss a bit.

Popular Articles

A couple of articles on the blog here have turned out to be rather popular. It looks like I might be the only wackjob on the Internet who wrote about them.

If I'm feeling up to it, I may publish updated versions of these articles with more extensive research and with the aide of a greater chunk of college education. Some of the original posts were brief musings, and their popularity has re-invoked my thoughts a bit. The articles up for new editions are:
+ German Profanity
+ Integral of Position
+ Music and Calculus
+ Rock, Paper, Scissors, Penis, Anus, Vagina

If any of my regular readers (if you exist) have any requests, feel free to post a comment.

America: Maxing Out the Credit Cards

"Quick, send out an EMERGENCY STIMULUS PACKAGE. CUT TAXES. HOLY SHIT, we've gotta cut taxes, otherwise, we won't have as much money in our pockets. After all, I want that TV. The 60" plasma. Without a tax cut, I can't... have it. What kind of land of dreams is this without 60" plasma TVs?"

Politicians have been elected for years on the premise that they will cut taxes. Yet at the same time, the politicians can't cut spending for fear that the army won't get to buy any new tanks or that some advocacy group will shit themselves when they hear they won't get their entitlement funds. Therefore, politicians wave a magic wand and do the impossible--increase spending and cut taxes. It turns out that politicians are angels.

Angels perform miracles in one of two ways. The first option is to create more money. This sounds like a great idea until one considers that inflation would wreck the value of the dollar, and the only way to compensate at that point would be to print more money, causing hyperinflation. Therefore, angels perform miracles with a second option--they sell bonds.

Bonds are a way of getting money now and paying for it later. It's not that different from a credit card. You get money now and pay it back later... plus some more, you know, just to thank the lender for the favor.

So since there isn't enough money already, and the money needs to get paid back at some point--plus a little more--where does the money come from? And what about the little bit more? The angels perform the same miracle; they sell more bonds.

It's completely unbelievable. For years, our country has been pulling the same sad trick that has led thousands of Americans into bankruptcy. In essence, we're using credit cards to pay off our maxed out credit cards to continue a fucked up spending spree.

That's exactly what it is. It's fucked up. We're selling our country out and rewarding politicians who do it. Great job America, you've fulfilled the fears of our forefathers: "mob-ocracy."

When the Chinese get pissed off and foreclose, expect warm days in major cities and bulldozers at the Federal Reserve Bank.

Space Age? Pft

The Industrial Age had an attitude of "make it bigger" and "make more of it." No event epitomizes this attitude more than World War II, where we made bigger guns, bigger armies, and bigger bombs, all culminating with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II epitomized the Industrial Age, but the last series of events that really kept with the bigger/more of it attitude were the Apollo flights. Though it didn't match the quantity condition, the "make it bigger" concept lived very strong in the Apollo Program.

Thanks to the Apollo Program, its era has been named the Space Age. But other than a couple of men landing on the moon, there's not that much space in the space age. The name hangs around from a sense of optimism at the time--that in the near future, man would live in space, and that one could buy a ticket on a rocket on a daily basis.

This optimism did not prove to be true, or near true, and a man hasn't been on the moon since the 70's. This period in time really marks the end of the Industrial Age, not a piece of the Space Age. The Space Age simply hasn't happened yet. Instead, around this time, bigger/more segued into the beginning of movement of information for cheap and easy. The Internet had began development in the 50's; it's early development sets a beginning to a gradient between Industrial Age and Information Age.

"You Ain't My Bitch, Nigga. Buy Your Own Damn Fries."

Barack Obama is the greatest president who's ever lived. This is why:

http://www.aprilwinchell.com/wp-content/cache/supercache/www.aprilwinchell.com/2009/02/05/barack-obama-is-tired-of-your-motherfucking-shit//index.html

Lol 25 random facts

I'm kidding. I didn't participate in that Facebook meme. Instead, I'm complaining about it.

The whole thing reminds me of one of those bad icebreakers they force you to do at group events you don't want to attend. For example:
"Ok everybody, we're gonna stand in a circle. Everyone go around, say your name, then say (what animal you would want to be reincarnated as/one embarassing moment/your major/one fun fact...)."

Sure, and that can be great when you're new to a place, but the people that get tagged are the person's friends. They're supposed to already know the fun facts or learn them as friendship grows. People build friendships on trust, not telling each other cute anecdotes.

Since these lists are useless, why do people keep doing them? Vanity. The author of every list gets to present to the world how truly unique they are, yet they're following a trend everybody else is doing. Uniqueness by fashion--great, it's the Internet's incarnation of Hot Topic.

Limitless and Pure Awesome: Flying

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Service? My Ass

Reflecting on the campaign, John McCain repeatedly mentioned that he spent his life serving this country.

His military service I recognize as just that: service. He put his life on the line serving America. That is noble and significant.

His time in politics is not service. Political power is a privilege. He isn't doing us a favor, he's been granted sacred and important tools to lead us. It has burdens, sure, but above that, it's a privilege we've permitted our leaders to use.

Someone in service is a volunteer and taking a job no one wants to do. There's plenty of people in line for political power, and as soon as those in charge do something asinine, we can drop them and try on the next guy.

Never forget--politicians don't do us a favor by being in office; we do them a favor by putting them there. Don't let them tell you otherwise.

This Blog Needs Funny Pictures

The Flaw of the Law

If I wanna know the perihelion of Venus or Thomas Jefferson's birthday, I can find out in under a minute (to be exact: 107.48*10^6 km and April 13, 1743). If I want to know my legal rights, I'm in tough luck.

For example, let's try "am I required to produce ID upon request in Virginia." The best match I got was from a forum, but there were no authoritative matches on the matter. All of the posts on that forum were probably heard by means of grapevine, and in fact, most people get their legal knowledge by word of mouth. The majority of my legal rights and limitations I've heard from friends.

In fact, with no readily accessible source of information on the matter, to educate myself regarding the law, I have to pay a lawyer. Depending on how much I can afford to pay, I can pay to learn a sort of correct version of the law or a kind of somewhat more correct version of the law. Therefore, unless I can afford it, I will remain ignorant to the law.

Ignorance of the law is no defense against the law, but if the means to end that ignorance is limited--particularly, by how much money I have--the law is flawed. The government needs to provide some medium through which the public can read and know the law.

I Know Why You Get Spam

Spam is a big problem apparently. I never noticed.

I have two e-mail addresses. One of them I've had for about four years now. The other I've had about two. The second e-mail address I plan on switching to, eventually. I just haven't got around to it. Predominantly, I use the first.

The reason I plan on switching to the second is that it is my real life name. If I want to build a career and all that good stuff, I've gotta have an e-mail address that reflects me, professionally. The e-mail address I use predominantly now is not my name. Hell, it's not even in English, or any spoken language for that matter.

When I log in to my real name e-mail, I notice something everytime; there's spam in it. Every single time, hands down.

I started wondering why. After all, I've never used the thing. In fact, I've used my current e-mail WAY more than my real name one, and I haven't got a single bit of spam on it--well, that's not so true, but pretty close. Not a single bit has arrived in the inbox.

The only possibility I could think of was that my real name e-mail address is just that--my real name. It's a name a spambot that has an infinite amount of time to do everything at nearly zero cost would come up with randomly. However, my primary e-mail address is derived from a dead language, and it's spelled wrong. No machine would ever guess that e-mail address.

In short, if your name is John Smith, and you're e-mail is smithj4 or jsmith4 or johnsmith, you're fucked. If your name is Pokako Lemanko, and your e-mail address is lemanp or pleman or pokakolemanko, you're not going to get spam. You're just too original for a machine to conceive.

Days are Dead

The standard definition of the change of days is at midnight. Frequently, "tomorrow" has come up in conversation, wherein one person says "LOL u meen today."

But is it tomorrow yet? Not exactly. In fact, for a long time, I used a waking definiton of today. During a period of time where I'm awake, that is today and remains so till I sleep. Tomorrow is what happens after I've decided the sleep I had is a night's rest.

This definition, however, has its own problems. The clock read 11:00 pm when I rose from bed. The day of the week was Tuesday. So is it my Tuesday or my Wednesday?