What happens when you mix horror pop culture with classic paintings and photoshop? Only bad things.
I really like the David with the alien on his face. :)
Monday, October 31, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The last straw always comes at the weirdest moments
Ok, anyone not still convinced Bush is an utter tool, please, read on.
My favorite quote:
"'I'm surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion,' Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, wrote to Mr. Dixton. He suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists."
Also, in case you weren't convinced that the Bush administration has zero trouble with cognitive dissonance:
How...wha? How does that work? "HAHahahaha...whoo....hehe...that's some funny shit. Ok, now, seriously, go sue them, Jenkins." Is that the same sense in which Stalin had a sense of humor? "Your satire of me...it is very amusing. Now you die."
My favorite quote:
"'I'm surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion,' Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, wrote to Mr. Dixton. He suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists."
Also, in case you weren't convinced that the Bush administration has zero trouble with cognitive dissonance:
"O.K. But just between us, Mr. Duffy, how did they find out about it?"
'Despite the seriousness of the Bush White House, more than one Bush staffer reads The Onion and enjoys it thoroughly,' he said. 'We do have a sense of humor, believe it or not.'"
How...wha? How does that work? "HAHahahaha...whoo....hehe...that's some funny shit. Ok, now, seriously, go sue them, Jenkins." Is that the same sense in which Stalin had a sense of humor? "Your satire of me...it is very amusing. Now you die."
Monday, October 24, 2005
My latest way to amuse myself
Reading Amazon.com reviews of the Bible (at the suggestion of Something Positive)
Some choice reviews:
File under "fairy tales", October 2, 2005
This is an interesting wee book, but it could have used a car chase to liven it up a bit, perhaps a few more sex scenes and all the best "religion" books have at least some aliens.
I thought the whole "He's Dead!!!" , "No He's not!!" ending was a bit weak and the "Deus ex machina" thing really had been done before...
The main character "Jesub" has a few good (almost god like) one liners, but Harry Potter would kick his skinny ass.
Looking forward to the follow up!
An Exceptional Work On The Nature of Human Delusions and Violent Psycopathy, October 10, 2005
This book is the product of a severely diseased mind. Every human perversion and psychosis is analyzed in depth. From all shades of prejudice, to sadism and incest, the worst of the human condition is proudly on display, married to a forceful ignorance which concludes that
1. All homosexuals should be executed
2. Blacks are merely slightly evolved monkeys
3. Women are responsible for all human sin and weakness
4. The world is a 6000 year old floating disk around which sea monsters patrol. (Various copies of this book omit this statement, as it was proven wrong in the late 15th Century. Unfortunately for the faithful, this book is the inspired word of their invisble friend who lives in the sky, whom they call "God". This God is incapable of speaking anything but the truth. Thus to omit or change any statement from the original bible is to move against God, and imply that he is capable of being wrong, which throws the whole text out the window.)
5. A man named Moses was given a tablet listing ten commandments, which govern human morality. Sadly, God is plagarizing the ancient Egyptians and their Book of the Dead here, which had essentially the same list, and was created much earlier than this Judeo-Christian work. A decidedly low blow by God there, as the ancient Egyptians never had the Book of the Dead copyrighted, and cannot sue him.
Please do the right thing and burn any copies of this book which you encounter, to inhibit the spread of this idealogical cancer. And if you ever encounter someone who actually believes the depravities and impossibilities listed in this text, please beat them about the head with a large, blunt instrument repeatedly until they come to their senses. Think of it as your Christian duty.
A good price, October 19, 2005
The price was right. The imitation leather looks like imitation leather. A good book.
Overrated, October 21, 2005
People have gone through alot worse than what Jesus Christ has gone through. For example this morning I was out of milk and could not have a bowl of cereal. Turns out I forgot that I had to use the rest of the milk last night for my dinner. Which was cereal. All I eat is cereal. So it was a really big deal when I found that I was out of milk. Some people are crucified and others have to skip breakfast. The point is everybody has a really bad life. Jesus was the son of God. So what? You should meet my father. I'm sure he has put me through alot worse. He always makes me listen to Baby Boomer music and made me play sports like basketball and baseball when I was a little kid.
Some choice reviews:
File under "fairy tales", October 2, 2005| Reviewer: | James A. Cairney (Brighton, England) - See all my reviews |
I thought the whole "He's Dead!!!" , "No He's not!!" ending was a bit weak and the "Deus ex machina" thing really had been done before...
The main character "Jesub" has a few good (almost god like) one liners, but Harry Potter would kick his skinny ass.
Looking forward to the follow up!
An Exceptional Work On The Nature of Human Delusions and Violent Psycopathy, October 10, 2005| Reviewer: | Ruthless (New York) - See all my reviews |
1. All homosexuals should be executed
2. Blacks are merely slightly evolved monkeys
3. Women are responsible for all human sin and weakness
4. The world is a 6000 year old floating disk around which sea monsters patrol. (Various copies of this book omit this statement, as it was proven wrong in the late 15th Century. Unfortunately for the faithful, this book is the inspired word of their invisble friend who lives in the sky, whom they call "God". This God is incapable of speaking anything but the truth. Thus to omit or change any statement from the original bible is to move against God, and imply that he is capable of being wrong, which throws the whole text out the window.)
5. A man named Moses was given a tablet listing ten commandments, which govern human morality. Sadly, God is plagarizing the ancient Egyptians and their Book of the Dead here, which had essentially the same list, and was created much earlier than this Judeo-Christian work. A decidedly low blow by God there, as the ancient Egyptians never had the Book of the Dead copyrighted, and cannot sue him.
Please do the right thing and burn any copies of this book which you encounter, to inhibit the spread of this idealogical cancer. And if you ever encounter someone who actually believes the depravities and impossibilities listed in this text, please beat them about the head with a large, blunt instrument repeatedly until they come to their senses. Think of it as your Christian duty.
A good price, October 19, 2005| Reviewer: | Michelle Goodrich (west sacrmento, ca United States) - See all my reviews |
Overrated, October 21, 2005| Reviewer: | Aids Vs. Cancer - See all my reviews |
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Conservative pundits are batshit insane
Case in point.
You know, a politically savvy associate once suggested to me that people like Coulter really do know that they sound like crazy, feces-tossing controversy monkeys. I increasingly am inclined to believe this, particularly in the case of Coulter. Tucker Carlson may just be that stupid. I mean, the man wears a bowtie. Granted, its the visual equivalent of a catch phrase, but it's still a fucking bowtie.
I think Coulter just makes her living off saying stuff that pisses people off. I mean, take a minute to review her prior statements. Canada is lucky we allow them to exist. We should invade the middle east and convert them to Christianity. Liberals eat puppies. (Ok, I made up the last one, but it was disturbingly plausible, wasn't it?). No, I think she knows damn well that she sounds batshit insane. She just enjoys making lots of money off all the people who are dumb enough to take her seriously.
You know, a politically savvy associate once suggested to me that people like Coulter really do know that they sound like crazy, feces-tossing controversy monkeys. I increasingly am inclined to believe this, particularly in the case of Coulter. Tucker Carlson may just be that stupid. I mean, the man wears a bowtie. Granted, its the visual equivalent of a catch phrase, but it's still a fucking bowtie.
I think Coulter just makes her living off saying stuff that pisses people off. I mean, take a minute to review her prior statements. Canada is lucky we allow them to exist. We should invade the middle east and convert them to Christianity. Liberals eat puppies. (Ok, I made up the last one, but it was disturbingly plausible, wasn't it?). No, I think she knows damn well that she sounds batshit insane. She just enjoys making lots of money off all the people who are dumb enough to take her seriously.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
BuyBlue proposition analysis
Interesting analysis of who is backing each of the propositions in the California special election.
If nothing else, a quick look at the backers of prop 78 and prop 79 should tell you which you should be voting for.
If nothing else, a quick look at the backers of prop 78 and prop 79 should tell you which you should be voting for.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Unicef bombs smurfs
You heard me.
You know, it's funny...just this morning I was thinking, "Why hasn't anyone bombed the smurfs lately?"
God bless you UNICEF.
You know, it's funny...just this morning I was thinking, "Why hasn't anyone bombed the smurfs lately?"
God bless you UNICEF.
Balls!
You know, sometimes I wonder what it's like to see the world through the eyes of an evil, corrupt fuck. I'm thinking, ok, you're a world-class sleazebag, everyone knows it, and now there's court admissable evidence that your behavior is actually illegal. Basically, you're caught red handed. Sure, put up a token fight. Proclaim your innocence. Whatever.
But DeLay had the audacity to turn around and subpoena the prosecutor. The god. damn. prosecutor.
Wow. I did _not_ see that one coming. Kudos, DeLay! Truly, your douchebaggery knows no bounds.
But DeLay had the audacity to turn around and subpoena the prosecutor. The god. damn. prosecutor.
Wow. I did _not_ see that one coming. Kudos, DeLay! Truly, your douchebaggery knows no bounds.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Special Election propositions
(Update: link to all the propositions: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_j.htm#2005Special)
All right, you fuckers, let's do this (be sure to vote November 8th). Incidentally, let me take a moment to remind everyone that letting every nitwit vote on every complicated social and budgetary issue was, is, and always will be a terrible idea. There was a reason the Framers decided not to create a system where every inbred redneck got to come and vote on intellectual property statutes. Anyway, onward:
73 (Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy): No.
A no-brainer. You are retarded if you vote for this, and that's all there is to it. Put a waiting period on the treatment of that cancer you have while you consider the moral implications of killing a defenseless tumor, and then we'll talk.
74 (Public School Teachers. Waiting Period for Permanent Status. Dismissal.): No.
You're honestly trying to "get tough" on public school teachers when there's already a major shortage of these underpaid, underappreciated state workers? I'm sure some of them do suck...so what? Until you can figure out a more effective way to improve the public school system, take 'em where you can get 'em. It's not like ivy-leaguers are pounding down the doors to get these jobs.
75 (Public Employee Union Dues. Restrictions on Political Contributions. Employee Consent Requirement.): No.
Partisan attempt to gut a Democratic power base. Demand that corporations get consent from their employees to give money to particular political parties, then we'll talk.
76 (State Spending and School Funding Limits): No.
Why are Californians retarded? I'm serious. They have this idiotic penchant for hard-wiring the state constitution with very specific spending limits, and it's utterly ridiculous. If you don't like government, fine. Let's live in an anarchist state where I can finally go ahead and shoot you for being an idiot and be done with it. Short of that, let the normal political process do its work and reach a compromise omnibus budget that can reflect all the budgetary tradeoffs, and stop trying to impose childish, draconian, and arbitrary rules on them. If you don't like the result, vote the fuckers out of office like a normal democracy.
77 (Redistricting): No.
I'm torn on this one. Gerry-mandering is a pet peeve of mine, but nonetheless I don't think this is the way to solve the problem. I don't think you're helping anything by giving preference to the biases of a panel of aging, prune-like judges with questionable remaining mental faculties over the biases of the legislature. Theoretically, Scalia has a life-appointment and therefore should have no personal a priori stake in the outcome of any given decision he makes, but he nonetheless seems to persist in being a right-wing douchebag who happily hands the Republican party most of the opinions they want. Just because their job isn't on the line doesn't mean people can't still be opinionated wackos.
Personally, I think you should let a computer draw the districting lines randomly, and, moreover, let it redraw them every few years. That's the only way to make line drawing truly unbiased.
78 (Prescription Drug Discounts): No.
I am thoroughly unimpressed when any piece of legislation contains the term "voluntary." This is vaporware legislation so that drug companies can pretend they're actually being good citizens and not gouging people.
79 (Prescription Drug Discounts. State-Negotiated Rebates.): Yes.
Collective bargaining for the state's old and poor. Novel idea. Might just work. Also, any time you invoke mythical, paranoid ramblings about the giant conspiracy on the part of lawyers to create laws that will incite lawsuits to argue against something, that's a really good way to get me to vote for it.
80 (Electric Service Providers Regulation): Yes.
How'd that whole energy deregulation thing work out? Right...that's what I thought.
All right, you fuckers, let's do this (be sure to vote November 8th). Incidentally, let me take a moment to remind everyone that letting every nitwit vote on every complicated social and budgetary issue was, is, and always will be a terrible idea. There was a reason the Framers decided not to create a system where every inbred redneck got to come and vote on intellectual property statutes. Anyway, onward:
73 (Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy): No.
A no-brainer. You are retarded if you vote for this, and that's all there is to it. Put a waiting period on the treatment of that cancer you have while you consider the moral implications of killing a defenseless tumor, and then we'll talk.
74 (Public School Teachers. Waiting Period for Permanent Status. Dismissal.): No.
You're honestly trying to "get tough" on public school teachers when there's already a major shortage of these underpaid, underappreciated state workers? I'm sure some of them do suck...so what? Until you can figure out a more effective way to improve the public school system, take 'em where you can get 'em. It's not like ivy-leaguers are pounding down the doors to get these jobs.
75 (Public Employee Union Dues. Restrictions on Political Contributions. Employee Consent Requirement.): No.
Partisan attempt to gut a Democratic power base. Demand that corporations get consent from their employees to give money to particular political parties, then we'll talk.
76 (State Spending and School Funding Limits): No.
Why are Californians retarded? I'm serious. They have this idiotic penchant for hard-wiring the state constitution with very specific spending limits, and it's utterly ridiculous. If you don't like government, fine. Let's live in an anarchist state where I can finally go ahead and shoot you for being an idiot and be done with it. Short of that, let the normal political process do its work and reach a compromise omnibus budget that can reflect all the budgetary tradeoffs, and stop trying to impose childish, draconian, and arbitrary rules on them. If you don't like the result, vote the fuckers out of office like a normal democracy.
77 (Redistricting): No.
I'm torn on this one. Gerry-mandering is a pet peeve of mine, but nonetheless I don't think this is the way to solve the problem. I don't think you're helping anything by giving preference to the biases of a panel of aging, prune-like judges with questionable remaining mental faculties over the biases of the legislature. Theoretically, Scalia has a life-appointment and therefore should have no personal a priori stake in the outcome of any given decision he makes, but he nonetheless seems to persist in being a right-wing douchebag who happily hands the Republican party most of the opinions they want. Just because their job isn't on the line doesn't mean people can't still be opinionated wackos.
Personally, I think you should let a computer draw the districting lines randomly, and, moreover, let it redraw them every few years. That's the only way to make line drawing truly unbiased.
78 (Prescription Drug Discounts): No.
I am thoroughly unimpressed when any piece of legislation contains the term "voluntary." This is vaporware legislation so that drug companies can pretend they're actually being good citizens and not gouging people.
79 (Prescription Drug Discounts. State-Negotiated Rebates.): Yes.
Collective bargaining for the state's old and poor. Novel idea. Might just work. Also, any time you invoke mythical, paranoid ramblings about the giant conspiracy on the part of lawyers to create laws that will incite lawsuits to argue against something, that's a really good way to get me to vote for it.
80 (Electric Service Providers Regulation): Yes.
How'd that whole energy deregulation thing work out? Right...that's what I thought.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Providing stuff for free doesn't make you money?!
Shocking!
Seriously though...being able to look at the source of something you're trying to build off of or inter-operate with is a Good Thing(tm). On the other hand, giving something you worked very hard on to your competition for free is a Bad Thing(tm). And unfortunately, in the current world, you can't really separate those two.
Personally, I think it should be perfectly legal to look at anyone's code and even mandatory that such code be released by companies, but it should be illegal to actually build it. Look but don't touch! Just like boobies. In fact, let's call it the Boob-Respecting Archetype (BRA) model.
(I am a genius, incidentally.)
Seriously though...being able to look at the source of something you're trying to build off of or inter-operate with is a Good Thing(tm). On the other hand, giving something you worked very hard on to your competition for free is a Bad Thing(tm). And unfortunately, in the current world, you can't really separate those two.
Personally, I think it should be perfectly legal to look at anyone's code and even mandatory that such code be released by companies, but it should be illegal to actually build it. Look but don't touch! Just like boobies. In fact, let's call it the Boob-Respecting Archetype (BRA) model.
(I am a genius, incidentally.)
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Do they read this stuff before they print it?
"He rejected charges that he picked a White House crony when many other candidates were available. He said he has known her a long time and believes she shares his conservative philosophy and will do so for decades to come on the high court if confirmed by the U.S. Senate."
Okay, do you want to run _your_ definition of "crony" by me then?
Okay, do you want to run _your_ definition of "crony" by me then?
See? I told you so.
Children don't make people happy, and neither does money.
"Public surveys measure what makes us happy. Marriage does, pets do, but children don't seem to (despite what we think). Youth and old age are the happiest times. Money does not add much to happiness; in Britain, incomes have trebled since 1950, but happiness has not increased at all. The happiness of lottery winners returns to former levels within a year. People disabled in an accident are likely to become almost as happy again. For happiness levels are probably genetic: identical twins are usually equally bubbly or grumpy."
You hear that people?! Children don't induce happiness! Your genes are telling you to reproduce because of their own selfish fucking desires! They don't give a shit about you except insofar as you help them propagate!
I've been saying this for years. Don't blow your money on annoying and ungrateful children. Spend it on yourself. Enjoy your life. Tell your genes to kiss your evolutionarily designed ass.
"Public surveys measure what makes us happy. Marriage does, pets do, but children don't seem to (despite what we think). Youth and old age are the happiest times. Money does not add much to happiness; in Britain, incomes have trebled since 1950, but happiness has not increased at all. The happiness of lottery winners returns to former levels within a year. People disabled in an accident are likely to become almost as happy again. For happiness levels are probably genetic: identical twins are usually equally bubbly or grumpy."
You hear that people?! Children don't induce happiness! Your genes are telling you to reproduce because of their own selfish fucking desires! They don't give a shit about you except insofar as you help them propagate!
I've been saying this for years. Don't blow your money on annoying and ungrateful children. Spend it on yourself. Enjoy your life. Tell your genes to kiss your evolutionarily designed ass.
Monday, October 03, 2005
...and the browser wars begin again!
You thought the browser wars were over? Apparently not.
Of course, I exaggerate. IE won. No one is going to displace it any time soon. But it's still amusing to see Netscape installed by default by a major PC vendor.
I actually had not heard that Netscape had been revived. I was even more intrigued to learn that the (ostensible) reason HP made the move was because Netscape 8 can use either the Firefox or the IE rendering engine. So even if you use Netscape, you may still be using IE. How entertaining.
(anybody played with it? I'm deeply suspicious of anything AOL creates, but I gotta admit the ability to render pages either as IE or as Firefox is alluring...)
Of course, I exaggerate. IE won. No one is going to displace it any time soon. But it's still amusing to see Netscape installed by default by a major PC vendor.
I actually had not heard that Netscape had been revived. I was even more intrigued to learn that the (ostensible) reason HP made the move was because Netscape 8 can use either the Firefox or the IE rendering engine. So even if you use Netscape, you may still be using IE. How entertaining.
(anybody played with it? I'm deeply suspicious of anything AOL creates, but I gotta admit the ability to render pages either as IE or as Firefox is alluring...)
Another reason to distrust Linux
...and remember, Linux has the final say about any submissions against the Linux kernel. And he thinks specs are a bad idea? Wow...no wonder the quality of Linux is so crappy. The problem with specs is not that they're inherently bad...it's that people aren't forced to write complete ones and aren't forced to maintain them. A complete, high-level spec is a very, very good thing. It's trying to piece together incomprehensible pieces of code that leads to components that don't bloody work together.
For fuck's sake...if software designers don't start going through much more rigorous, formal processes, software is always going to be a buggy piece of shit.
For fuck's sake...if software designers don't start going through much more rigorous, formal processes, software is always going to be a buggy piece of shit.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
More on Google Print
Couldn't help but point out Tim O'Reilly's op-ed in the New York Times on Google Print.
He's missing the point, intentionally or not. This is not about whether Google Print is good or bad for authors...I have no doubt it is, on par, a good thing (though not as good as he implies...I'll get to that in a minute). The intellectual property laws don't care whether your infringing use is good for the right holder or not. They don't say, "Don't copy stuff! Unless you think it would be good for the author, in which case, hey, go ahead!" You have the god-given right to mismanage your own protected works to your heart's content, and that's exactly what the Author's Guild is doing. Yay for them.
The issue here is control over the material. Google essentially went behind the copyrighters' backs, and that's why they're pissed off. This is a lawsuit about deterrence, not damages. It's a similar issue to audio/video filesharing. It doesn't matter whether P2P networks increase record sales or not. Much as it may be a racket and suck in general, the RIAA owns the copyrights, and they, not you, get to determine what's good marketing and what's not.
I mentioned Google Print not being as good as it seems for authors. This is my general complaint about hype over internet technologies, be it blogs, online shopping, or what-have-you. Some ADHD mental midget inevitably jumps up and exclaims how Technology X is going to change everything for every X you can think of. Now it's Google Print. All those obscure books will become popular suddenly! Lilly Jerkmeoff's book on humane kitten catapulting for rural Iowans will suddenly get the attention it deserves! Yay!
Dude. There are a fixed number of avenues through which people find stuff. The fact that some of them are now web sites doesn't change that. Why do you think everybody's so damn excited about Google? It's because people are lazy and only search for stuff in Google. I don't care if your kitten catapulting literature is available on the web somewhere. If it doesn't come up in the first few links on Google, it might as well not exist.
He's missing the point, intentionally or not. This is not about whether Google Print is good or bad for authors...I have no doubt it is, on par, a good thing (though not as good as he implies...I'll get to that in a minute). The intellectual property laws don't care whether your infringing use is good for the right holder or not. They don't say, "Don't copy stuff! Unless you think it would be good for the author, in which case, hey, go ahead!" You have the god-given right to mismanage your own protected works to your heart's content, and that's exactly what the Author's Guild is doing. Yay for them.
The issue here is control over the material. Google essentially went behind the copyrighters' backs, and that's why they're pissed off. This is a lawsuit about deterrence, not damages. It's a similar issue to audio/video filesharing. It doesn't matter whether P2P networks increase record sales or not. Much as it may be a racket and suck in general, the RIAA owns the copyrights, and they, not you, get to determine what's good marketing and what's not.
I mentioned Google Print not being as good as it seems for authors. This is my general complaint about hype over internet technologies, be it blogs, online shopping, or what-have-you. Some ADHD mental midget inevitably jumps up and exclaims how Technology X is going to change everything for every X you can think of. Now it's Google Print. All those obscure books will become popular suddenly! Lilly Jerkmeoff's book on humane kitten catapulting for rural Iowans will suddenly get the attention it deserves! Yay!
Dude. There are a fixed number of avenues through which people find stuff. The fact that some of them are now web sites doesn't change that. Why do you think everybody's so damn excited about Google? It's because people are lazy and only search for stuff in Google. I don't care if your kitten catapulting literature is available on the web somewhere. If it doesn't come up in the first few links on Google, it might as well not exist.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Wheeeeeee!!!
Mmm...Scott Tennerman's tears...mmmmm...
It's gonna be a good day, Tater.
(kudos if you caught both those references)
It's gonna be a good day, Tater.
(kudos if you caught both those references)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Whatever you do, don't take responsibility
God, Brown, you really are a douchebag. Most people would look at the situation and say, "My god...why was a man whose only qualification was that he was a horse judge running FEMA?" But you...you had the balls to suggest that the disaster response failure in Louisiana was because the governor was a Democrat.
Wow.
Other douchebags can only look up to you and proclaim, with utmost admiration, that, wow, that guy is a fucking _douchebag_...
Wow.
Other douchebags can only look up to you and proclaim, with utmost admiration, that, wow, that guy is a fucking _douchebag_...
Monday, September 26, 2005
Does their evil know no bounds?
Hmm...if only there were a way to blame high gas prices on environmental protections, and if only there were a prominent political figure we could count on to make such an assinine argument right after two catastrophic hurricanes...
Hot girls...but why?
First things first: I nominate the saluting chick in the Israeli military section as the hottest picture of women in the military, though admittedly she's a bit jail bait-y. But also, of course, the Croatian hottie. Rowr.
Okay, that said, I've poked around a bit, and I still don't understand this. First of all, it's nominally a discussion board about the Iranian military. Okay. But is it serious? Who created it? Why did they misspell defense? Why is there a thread about hot chicks in the military? Not that you need a reason, necessarily, but still...
Okay, that said, I've poked around a bit, and I still don't understand this. First of all, it's nominally a discussion board about the Iranian military. Okay. But is it serious? Who created it? Why did they misspell defense? Why is there a thread about hot chicks in the military? Not that you need a reason, necessarily, but still...
I _do_ have unsightly snakes!
Penny Arcade continues to show their genius.
According to the news post, this here comic was born of similar ancestry.
According to the news post, this here comic was born of similar ancestry.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Stupid joke
Stupid joke my roommate told me:
A man walks in carrying a sheep. He says, "So, here's the pig I've been fucking."
"That's not a pig! It's a sheep!" his wife says.
"I wasn't talking to you," the man replies.
Just thought I'd share that.
A man walks in carrying a sheep. He says, "So, here's the pig I've been fucking."
"That's not a pig! It's a sheep!" his wife says.
"I wasn't talking to you," the man replies.
Just thought I'd share that.
Run that by me again?
On this list of things I worry about when swimming in the ocean, I have to say that armed dolphins never made it that high up on the list...
Saturday, September 24, 2005
A moment for nerdery
Couldn't help but comment on the top 50 sci-fi shows of all time. Yes, I went through all of them.
Clearly the list was put together haphazardly. Among other things, Sliders appears twice. I hope the higher spot was meant to go to DS9, which didn't even appear on the list. DS9, at least the latter seasons (four and five) is definitely top ten, well ahead of Voyager which consistently sucked and was a profound disappointment. Personally, I would have put Voyager much farther down the list. DS9, on the other hand, had very good writing (again, at least at the end), and some of those shows were watchable even to those who aren't sci-fi inclined.
I'm glad to see Babylon 5 given an appropriate nod. Other than the new Battlestar Galactica, which is amazing and will be very difficult to top, it's the best sci-fi show I've ever seen. I was very sorry it ended, and I keep waiting for them to make a decent movie based on it. There keep being rumors, but they never quite pan out. They made a movie out of Firefly (Serenity)...why can't they make a Babylon 5 movie?
(Okwui will be glad to note that Quantum Leap was given an appropriate nod as well)
Clearly the list was put together haphazardly. Among other things, Sliders appears twice. I hope the higher spot was meant to go to DS9, which didn't even appear on the list. DS9, at least the latter seasons (four and five) is definitely top ten, well ahead of Voyager which consistently sucked and was a profound disappointment. Personally, I would have put Voyager much farther down the list. DS9, on the other hand, had very good writing (again, at least at the end), and some of those shows were watchable even to those who aren't sci-fi inclined.
I'm glad to see Babylon 5 given an appropriate nod. Other than the new Battlestar Galactica, which is amazing and will be very difficult to top, it's the best sci-fi show I've ever seen. I was very sorry it ended, and I keep waiting for them to make a decent movie based on it. There keep being rumors, but they never quite pan out. They made a movie out of Firefly (Serenity)...why can't they make a Babylon 5 movie?
(Okwui will be glad to note that Quantum Leap was given an appropriate nod as well)
Friday, September 23, 2005
Clearly I'm procrastinating
The graph [below] represents your place in Intuition 2-Space.
As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition. (Weirdly, your emotional and scientific intuitions are equally strong.)
Take the stupid test yourself.
As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition. (Weirdly, your emotional and scientific intuitions are equally strong.)
Take the stupid test yourself.
An important quandry
Jewmanji has raised the important question of what an appropriate term for hating white people is.
My two best suggestions so far are "mis-honkey" and "misachromy." Suggestions welcome.
My two best suggestions so far are "mis-honkey" and "misachromy." Suggestions welcome.
Just the two of us
I just got to play with an XBox 360.
*wistful sigh*
For a moment, we were together. It was just us. There was an instant connection. I pushed some buttons, and the big blue brute on the screen tossed an adversary in the air so that when the foe fell, he was impaled on the spines of said brute's back, and then he proceeded to pick another adversary up and use him to beat yet a third senseless. I was instantly in love.
Me rikey. Me rikey rots.
*wistful sigh*
For a moment, we were together. It was just us. There was an instant connection. I pushed some buttons, and the big blue brute on the screen tossed an adversary in the air so that when the foe fell, he was impaled on the spines of said brute's back, and then he proceeded to pick another adversary up and use him to beat yet a third senseless. I was instantly in love.
Me rikey. Me rikey rots.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Go get the ball!
Look, you dumb fuckers, I guarantee you the next terrorist attack will not be on a plane. Stop obsessing about it. It would be like robbing the same bank twice.
If these idiots had been in charge after Pearl Harbor, we would have spent our entire war budget on widening harbor openings.
If these idiots had been in charge after Pearl Harbor, we would have spent our entire war budget on widening harbor openings.
Irrational airlines
I once tried to get Okwui to explain to me why it is that people like GE continue to give loans to clearly failing airlines. I never quite got a satisfactory response, and the article I linked to does nothing more to enlighten me. Both mumble something about having lucrative engine-making contracts from those airlines, but that just amounts to lending yourself money as far as I can see. What's the rationale? Do they get all of the money the lent out back in contract work, and they reason that there's at least a small chance they'll actually make a return on the investment, so they theoretically come out ahead? Is it that they want to be able to continue to lease out their aircraft so that they can put the potentially indefinite lease payments on their balance sheet and make it look like their income is higher than it actually is? I really don't fucking get it. It's all a shell game, and it seems like someone should be noticing.
Rational markets my ass. The airline industry should be allowed to collapse in on itself, just like people like the RIAA should be allowed to drown in the shift to the internet as a distribution mechanism. The article seems to suggest the consumers benefit through low prices, but somebody has to be paying for it. Isn't it those same consumers who are paying for things like the United and imminent Delta pension bailout to the tune of several billion dollars? If you're going to subsidize air travel, fine, but let's call it that instead of dumping money into dead airlines.
Rational markets my ass. The airline industry should be allowed to collapse in on itself, just like people like the RIAA should be allowed to drown in the shift to the internet as a distribution mechanism. The article seems to suggest the consumers benefit through low prices, but somebody has to be paying for it. Isn't it those same consumers who are paying for things like the United and imminent Delta pension bailout to the tune of several billion dollars? If you're going to subsidize air travel, fine, but let's call it that instead of dumping money into dead airlines.
Google Print lawsuit
The more I read, the more I find the Google Print controversy interesting (Authors' Guild statement; Google statement).
I've been going back and forth on this issue. I don't think either side's argument is a priori tantamount, which just highlights how woefully inadequate our system of intellectual property is to cope with the information age.
As you no doubt know, copyright is a legal protection granted the author of a work to determine who is allowed to make copies of that work. Note that this is different from having control over any given copy of a particular work. Playboy has no right to tell you that you can't nuzzle the centerfold picture affectionately and whisper how the two of you will run away together if you purchased that copy of the magazine. You will, however, end up having a bunch of angry Bunnies show up at your door with baseball bats if you attempt to make a copy of said picture, particularly if you attempt to sell that copy. Or Hugh Heffner will kick your ass with his walker. Point being, something bad will happen.
Now, that said, certain kinds of copying are allowed regardless of how big of a dick the copyright holder wants to be about it. Reproducing excerpts of a text document, for example, is allowed. This is an example of "fair use," and you see it all over the place: news casts, book reviews, etc.
The crux of this dispute, then, is whether Google Print is covered by fair use. Google will tell you that all you can ever read are excerpts, and these are protected by fair use. I suspect the argument the Authors' Guild will be making, however, is that in order to construct the index Google uses to generate the excerpts, they had to make what amount to illegal digital copies of library books.
Conduct the following thought experiment though: Imagine a man named Google, a social outcast with OCD, goes to a bunch of libraries and individually checks out all the books one at a time. Using each book he has checked out, he constructs a massive index of their contents. By the time he's done, after roughly 80 bazillion years, you have the equivalent of Google Print without any illegal copies having been made.
You see the problem though. That scenario was utterly impossible before the information age. There was simply too much information to process "manually." Computers can easily process that much information, however. The problem is that you have to codify the books so that the computers can process them. Do you count that codification as a violation of copyright? Does just having the bytes-equivalent form of a book in a computer's memory a priori count as a copy? What if, in the process of processing the books, you had to copy those bytes to 1000 different machines (not as implausible as it sounds)? Have you violated copyright 1000 times?
The lesson here, as if you haven't heard me say it before, is that IP law needs an overhaul. Trying to retrofit archaic notions of what constitutes an invention or a copy is utterly hopeless. Without an entirely new system that acknowledges a world where "copies" are irrelevent (having been supplanted by an extremely volatile system of links between pieces of information) and where "inventions" are highly ephemeral creatures that can be easily both created and destroyed, we're going to have a myriad of court cases asking judges to try to cram complex modern situations into an archaic framework that is fundamentally incompatible with them.
Of course, in a system where you can buy such legislation, any kind of overhaul would end up being geared towards the profit margins of large IP holders and not anywhere near a socially beneficial ideal.
But hey, I can still bitch about it.
I've been going back and forth on this issue. I don't think either side's argument is a priori tantamount, which just highlights how woefully inadequate our system of intellectual property is to cope with the information age.
As you no doubt know, copyright is a legal protection granted the author of a work to determine who is allowed to make copies of that work. Note that this is different from having control over any given copy of a particular work. Playboy has no right to tell you that you can't nuzzle the centerfold picture affectionately and whisper how the two of you will run away together if you purchased that copy of the magazine. You will, however, end up having a bunch of angry Bunnies show up at your door with baseball bats if you attempt to make a copy of said picture, particularly if you attempt to sell that copy. Or Hugh Heffner will kick your ass with his walker. Point being, something bad will happen.
Now, that said, certain kinds of copying are allowed regardless of how big of a dick the copyright holder wants to be about it. Reproducing excerpts of a text document, for example, is allowed. This is an example of "fair use," and you see it all over the place: news casts, book reviews, etc.
The crux of this dispute, then, is whether Google Print is covered by fair use. Google will tell you that all you can ever read are excerpts, and these are protected by fair use. I suspect the argument the Authors' Guild will be making, however, is that in order to construct the index Google uses to generate the excerpts, they had to make what amount to illegal digital copies of library books.
Conduct the following thought experiment though: Imagine a man named Google, a social outcast with OCD, goes to a bunch of libraries and individually checks out all the books one at a time. Using each book he has checked out, he constructs a massive index of their contents. By the time he's done, after roughly 80 bazillion years, you have the equivalent of Google Print without any illegal copies having been made.
You see the problem though. That scenario was utterly impossible before the information age. There was simply too much information to process "manually." Computers can easily process that much information, however. The problem is that you have to codify the books so that the computers can process them. Do you count that codification as a violation of copyright? Does just having the bytes-equivalent form of a book in a computer's memory a priori count as a copy? What if, in the process of processing the books, you had to copy those bytes to 1000 different machines (not as implausible as it sounds)? Have you violated copyright 1000 times?
The lesson here, as if you haven't heard me say it before, is that IP law needs an overhaul. Trying to retrofit archaic notions of what constitutes an invention or a copy is utterly hopeless. Without an entirely new system that acknowledges a world where "copies" are irrelevent (having been supplanted by an extremely volatile system of links between pieces of information) and where "inventions" are highly ephemeral creatures that can be easily both created and destroyed, we're going to have a myriad of court cases asking judges to try to cram complex modern situations into an archaic framework that is fundamentally incompatible with them.
Of course, in a system where you can buy such legislation, any kind of overhaul would end up being geared towards the profit margins of large IP holders and not anywhere near a socially beneficial ideal.
But hey, I can still bitch about it.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The anatomy of swearing
No comment, really. Just thought the New York Times article on swearing was interesting.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Total lack of imagination
How fucking unimaginative is NASA's latest "big project" proposal? The universe is a big place. Can you people honestly not come up with anything better than, "Hey! That moon thing was cool! Let's do that again! Only, you know, _more_. Eh? Eh?"
The Mars thing was at least a good idea. Too bad it was a) a cynical political move to try to divert attention from Bush's myriad other failings, and b) hard to take seriously from a man whose eloquence rivals an 8-year-old Down's kid and whose grasp of and respect for science is that of a late-night televangelist.
The Mars thing was at least a good idea. Too bad it was a) a cynical political move to try to divert attention from Bush's myriad other failings, and b) hard to take seriously from a man whose eloquence rivals an 8-year-old Down's kid and whose grasp of and respect for science is that of a late-night televangelist.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Friday, September 16, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Blessed are the cheese-makers
Watch Vonnegut on Daily Show if you haven't already. Then go out and read all his books.
Best entry in Vonnegut's "Liberal Crap I Never Want To Hear Again":
"'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' The hell I can't! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in shit."
Best entry in Vonnegut's "Liberal Crap I Never Want To Hear Again":
"'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' The hell I can't! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in shit."
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Correct me if I'm wrong
Isn't this, on some level, a rather ironic headline? How can one "mull" a "decisive" anything? Isn't mulling kind of definitionally indecisive?
Republican logic
Why would you think that a major natural disaster that destroyed huge amounts of the South would actually require federal spending for recovery? Why, funding programs _less_ will actually help! See, if we collect fewer taxes from Trent Lott, he'll actually have _more_ money to spend on reconstructing his house, and it will make him so happy that he might give some of his moving boxes to others who had their houses and life savings destroyed! You know how much poor people seem to like living in boxes. See? Everybody wins!
Sigh. And the scary thing is that there are people in the world that actually buy this shit. Oh, and also loved the clips on the Daily Show where Republican pundits were blaming New Orleans for, you know, existing.
Sigh. And the scary thing is that there are people in the world that actually buy this shit. Oh, and also loved the clips on the Daily Show where Republican pundits were blaming New Orleans for, you know, existing.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Further proof I am a bad person
======================
Email received from roommate:
======================
From: Michelle Butte
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 2:29 PM
To: Nick Murphy
Subject: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!
Nick, Every 18 minutes in the U.S., someone dies by suicide. This fall thousands of men and women will walk in over 40 communities across the United States, each contributing their voices to break the silence surrounding suicide. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community.
By supporting me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walks to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), you will be helping me raise money for AFSP's vital programs to prevent suicide and save lives, increase national awareness about depression and suicide, and assist survivors of suicide loss.
Sponsoring me is simple-- just click on the link at the bottom of this page and follow the prompts to make a donation.
(Michelle's probably-inappropriate side comment: if you only can or want to make a small donation, please consider the victims of Katrina instead. You can support me with a smile and a "good luck!")
Thank you!
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
=======
My reply:
=======
From: Nick Murphy
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 3:54 PM
To: Michelle Butte
Subject: RE: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!
Michelle,
Every 3 minutes in this country, someone takes a tragically unsatisfying crap. These sad, irregular souls walk the earth in a tormented, constipated haze, desperately trying to remember the simple joy of a good bowel movement. This fall thousands of men and women will travel thousands of miles to cheap mexican restaurants and lentil distributors in an attempt to dislodge the intractable, dehydrated mass that has accumulated in their abdomen, each contributing their own squeaking ripper to break the silence surrounding constipation. The silence...of their ass. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community. The darkness...of their ass.
By supporting me as I walk in search of the ultimate Bowel-Buster Burrito, you will be helping me raise money for my vital program to prevent me from not raising money, not to mention raising awareness of Obstinate Turd Syndrome (OTS), depression surrounding OTD, and continuing conspiracy of the United Cheese and Gummy Candy Makers of America. Please...every little bit counts.
Sponsoring me is simple. Just give me a bunch of money. Or a burrito. Or a burrito filled with money. Either way, you're making a difference.
God bless,
Nick
Email received from roommate:
======================
From: Michelle Butte
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 2:29 PM
To: Nick Murphy
Subject: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!
Nick, Every 18 minutes in the U.S., someone dies by suicide. This fall thousands of men and women will walk in over 40 communities across the United States, each contributing their voices to break the silence surrounding suicide. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community.
By supporting me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walks to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), you will be helping me raise money for AFSP's vital programs to prevent suicide and save lives, increase national awareness about depression and suicide, and assist survivors of suicide loss.
Sponsoring me is simple-- just click on the link at the bottom of this page and follow the prompts to make a donation.
(Michelle's probably-inappropriate side comment: if you only can or want to make a small donation, please consider the victims of Katrina instead. You can support me with a smile and a "good luck!")
Thank you!
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
=======
My reply:
=======
From: Nick Murphy
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 3:54 PM
To: Michelle Butte
Subject: RE: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!
Michelle,
Every 3 minutes in this country, someone takes a tragically unsatisfying crap. These sad, irregular souls walk the earth in a tormented, constipated haze, desperately trying to remember the simple joy of a good bowel movement. This fall thousands of men and women will travel thousands of miles to cheap mexican restaurants and lentil distributors in an attempt to dislodge the intractable, dehydrated mass that has accumulated in their abdomen, each contributing their own squeaking ripper to break the silence surrounding constipation. The silence...of their ass. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community. The darkness...of their ass.
By supporting me as I walk in search of the ultimate Bowel-Buster Burrito, you will be helping me raise money for my vital program to prevent me from not raising money, not to mention raising awareness of Obstinate Turd Syndrome (OTS), depression surrounding OTD, and continuing conspiracy of the United Cheese and Gummy Candy Makers of America. Please...every little bit counts.
Sponsoring me is simple. Just give me a bunch of money. Or a burrito. Or a burrito filled with money. Either way, you're making a difference.
God bless,
Nick
Stallman rides again
Yet Another Idiotic Idea by Stallman. Software patents are not a menace. _Stupid_ software patents (like one-click) are a menace. Just because our patent system is broken doesn't mean patents aren't a good idea in principle.
Moreover, it you make the license even more viral than it already is (and yes, boys and girls, it is viral...Microsoft employees are generally not even allowed to touch GPL'd software because it would force all kinds of restrictions on whatever they're working on...it's so wonderfully ironic that free software people rail against shrink-wrap licenses [rightly] when the GPL is the most egregious and aggressive shrink-wrap license there is...anyway...), then companies will avoid it. There are other open source licenses out there, and they will be adopted.
When is Stallman going to get over his messiah complex?
Moreover, it you make the license even more viral than it already is (and yes, boys and girls, it is viral...Microsoft employees are generally not even allowed to touch GPL'd software because it would force all kinds of restrictions on whatever they're working on...it's so wonderfully ironic that free software people rail against shrink-wrap licenses [rightly] when the GPL is the most egregious and aggressive shrink-wrap license there is...anyway...), then companies will avoid it. There are other open source licenses out there, and they will be adopted.
When is Stallman going to get over his messiah complex?
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Rice and race
You know, much as I despise Rice for being an utter sellout, I believe that the Katrina debacle didn't really have anything to do with race. It had to do with money plain and simple. Do you honestly believe that if the residents had been a bunch of poor white rednecks the outcome would have been any different? The problem here is that a) Republicans don't like spending money on anything except the military and corporate welfare, and b) the two FEMA heads Bush appointed are totally inexperienced managing disaster relief because they were simply Bush cronies being rewarded for their loyalty.
Don't make it racial when it isn't and doesn't need to be.
Don't make it racial when it isn't and doesn't need to be.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Renquist dead
This is going to be the fun replacement nomination. Roberts was just a warmup.
I really, really, _really_ hope that Democrats can take advantage of how badly Bush has handled the Katrina debacle to build some sorely needed political capital. There's no historical evidence to suggest that they can, but hey, a guy can dream...
I really, really, _really_ hope that Democrats can take advantage of how badly Bush has handled the Katrina debacle to build some sorely needed political capital. There's no historical evidence to suggest that they can, but hey, a guy can dream...
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
scientific progress
1969: United States lands man on the surface of the moon.
2009: United States lands penguin on the surface of the moon.
2009: United States lands penguin on the surface of the moon.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Badass NASA movie
Amazingly, these are actual images captured by MESSENGER and not simply computer graphics.
A better representation of red vs. blue
We've all seen the red vs. blue political maps of the US, but this is a better representation that reflects percentages.
The sleaze keeps on comin'
Really, and I'm serious here, is there anything they won't do? At least wait for a decade or so before rewriting history for fuck's sake.
And can we at least restrict things to one major sleaze item per day? I can't keep up.
And can we at least restrict things to one major sleaze item per day? I can't keep up.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Men are more intelligent than women, but this isn't why
Hard to let a report finding that men score higher on IQ tests than women go by without comment. First of all, IQ tests are dumb. They don't tell you anything. It's like trying to assign a single numerical score to art. What would it mean to give Magritte a 92 and George Carlin a 94? There are so many dimensions to each artist that to condense them to a single number is next to meaningless. You can talk about more specific traits and compare them on those narrower qualities, but something like "intelligence" is so multi-faceted that it's profoundly retarded to even consider evaluating it using a single dimension. In fact, you should lose 20 points on your IQ test just for doing so.
Secondly, the dimensions IQ tests test you on are highly analytical aspects of cognition that it's not surprising men are slightly better at on average. It's well established that men inherently have a better sense of spatial reasoning than women, for instance. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Male humans had to go hunt and gather, so they needed to be able to navigate. Why would it be at all surprising that a metric that tests these kinds of abilities (which the IQ test does...I've taken one [long ago]) gives men a (very) slight advantage?
Now, lest anyone jump all over me, note this is very different from saying the reason for a gender gap in academics is a biological disadvantage (thank you Douchebag Summers). Among other things, I've said nothing about the distribution of analytical abilities in the set of people with the best minds. Just because the average is slightly lower doesn't mean that the upper tier of women couldn't deliver a hardcore academic ass-whooping to the upper tier of men. And it may well be the best woman would beat the best man.
More importantly, however, is the fact that on that particular issue, other factors inevitably dominate to a degree that any tiny biological differences would vanish in the noise. There's such a social aspect to becoming a tenured professor that any minute statistical disadvantage with regard to analytical ability by gender (if in fact it exists) would be vastly overshadowed by gender discrimination, male-centric power dynamics, cliqing, etc.
All that said, women are of course still dumb. Or, perhaps more accurately, crazy. It just happens to be the case that the above article doesn't address why.
Secondly, the dimensions IQ tests test you on are highly analytical aspects of cognition that it's not surprising men are slightly better at on average. It's well established that men inherently have a better sense of spatial reasoning than women, for instance. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Male humans had to go hunt and gather, so they needed to be able to navigate. Why would it be at all surprising that a metric that tests these kinds of abilities (which the IQ test does...I've taken one [long ago]) gives men a (very) slight advantage?
Now, lest anyone jump all over me, note this is very different from saying the reason for a gender gap in academics is a biological disadvantage (thank you Douchebag Summers). Among other things, I've said nothing about the distribution of analytical abilities in the set of people with the best minds. Just because the average is slightly lower doesn't mean that the upper tier of women couldn't deliver a hardcore academic ass-whooping to the upper tier of men. And it may well be the best woman would beat the best man.
More importantly, however, is the fact that on that particular issue, other factors inevitably dominate to a degree that any tiny biological differences would vanish in the noise. There's such a social aspect to becoming a tenured professor that any minute statistical disadvantage with regard to analytical ability by gender (if in fact it exists) would be vastly overshadowed by gender discrimination, male-centric power dynamics, cliqing, etc.
All that said, women are of course still dumb. Or, perhaps more accurately, crazy. It just happens to be the case that the above article doesn't address why.
Spam poetry
Anti-Baysian filter fodder at the bottom of a spam I just received:
"fraction me dextrous you pitiful me dexterity you baseboard me waldo you proline me allele you cluj me conqueror you handlebar me grownup you leprosy me prison you embalm me datum you"
That's fucking poetic.
"fraction me dextrous you pitiful me dexterity you baseboard me waldo you proline me allele you cluj me conqueror you handlebar me grownup you leprosy me prison you embalm me datum you"
That's fucking poetic.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Stupid obstinate bastards
Sony and Toshiba are retarded, and it's going to affect my ability to watch movies, and that pisses me off. Why can't they fucking agree on a format?! They're not all that different. Both just store lots of data. If both formats come out, we're going to have a format war, and any reasonably intelligent person is just going to avoid getting either until one or another wins the war. Which means the rest of us have to wait to get decent hi-def movies. Meanwhile, both companies are going to lose billions to an easily avoidable war.
Personally, knowing very little about the respective formats, I would say go with Blu-Ray since I believe it stores more. Cost arguments are stupid since as time goes on, it will just become cheaper and cheaper to produce. Similarly, any argument saying that it carries "too much" data is almost too retarded to bother refuting. How big was your hard drive five years ago? I rest my case.
Personally, knowing very little about the respective formats, I would say go with Blu-Ray since I believe it stores more. Cost arguments are stupid since as time goes on, it will just become cheaper and cheaper to produce. Similarly, any argument saying that it carries "too much" data is almost too retarded to bother refuting. How big was your hard drive five years ago? I rest my case.
Monday, August 22, 2005
The Gaza pullout
I've wanted to comment on the Gaza pullout for a while. It's a truly remarkable phenomenon, and it's remarkable in several different ways. First and foremost, I find it personally satisfying to see crazy religious extremists forced to confront reality. Every time I see pictures of the raging, zealotous settlers being dragged away by the Israeli army, I get fucking pissed off. Why don't those idiots understand that they're responsible in large part for the continued hostilities and deaths of innocent people on both sides? Do they not know how criminally insane they sound when they claim to have a Biblical right to the land of Israel?
At the same time, I gotta say it's reassuring to know that other religions besides Christianity have their nutjobs. Fundamentalism is not particular to Christian dogma. Any time you have a reliance on an invisible, magical authority whose will is purportedly divined by people who claim to have a special understanding of the will of said invisible, magical authority, you're going to end up with a group of people who have so completely defined their existence in terms of the arbitrary but reassuring moral system that inevitably develops that they will fight tooth and nail defending that moral system even in the face of the corresponding inevitable encroachment of reality. And it's been happening for millenia. And people are still too stupid not to let it happen.
The other really fascinating phenomenon, however, is the behavior of the Israeli soldiers. I have been absolutely astounded by the many reports on the Israeli soldiers' poise and composure through this whole thing. They've calmly negotiated with settlers screaming at them. They've comforted the settlers who have complied with the orders that they themselves doubtlessly have some reservations about. No soldiers that I've heard about have refused to obey the orders. Moreover, they've restrained themselves from employing an unnecessary and vengeful amount of force in response to settler attacks. They've done quite simply an amazing job, one that I don't have 100% faith that American soldiers could match.
At the same time, I gotta say it's reassuring to know that other religions besides Christianity have their nutjobs. Fundamentalism is not particular to Christian dogma. Any time you have a reliance on an invisible, magical authority whose will is purportedly divined by people who claim to have a special understanding of the will of said invisible, magical authority, you're going to end up with a group of people who have so completely defined their existence in terms of the arbitrary but reassuring moral system that inevitably develops that they will fight tooth and nail defending that moral system even in the face of the corresponding inevitable encroachment of reality. And it's been happening for millenia. And people are still too stupid not to let it happen.
The other really fascinating phenomenon, however, is the behavior of the Israeli soldiers. I have been absolutely astounded by the many reports on the Israeli soldiers' poise and composure through this whole thing. They've calmly negotiated with settlers screaming at them. They've comforted the settlers who have complied with the orders that they themselves doubtlessly have some reservations about. No soldiers that I've heard about have refused to obey the orders. Moreover, they've restrained themselves from employing an unnecessary and vengeful amount of force in response to settler attacks. They've done quite simply an amazing job, one that I don't have 100% faith that American soldiers could match.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Corporate psychopaths
Not really news since I learned of this phenomenon in intro psych, but nonetheless interesting. If you think about it, it really shouldn't be all that surprising that top CEOs could probably often be considered clinical psychopaths.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Stupidity marches on
This is a profoundly pointless controversy. It's just a fucking name for chrissakes. What the hell does it matter whether a porn site ends in ".com" or ".xxx"? At least in the latter case it's easily identifiable.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Nerd candy
Kind of an interesting article on how modern-day NASA plots courses for spacecraft. Interesting, of course, in the "how does the warp drive on the Enterprise work?" kinda way.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Global warming caused by decline in pirate population
Also, the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Don't be evil...unless it's in your own best interest
I knew something like this would happen eventually. Google is a company just like any other. They'll be evil when it's in their interest to be so, corporate mantras to the contrary.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Fun with ragdoll physics
Ever wondered what it would be like to watch a bikini-clad woman's limp body bounce haphazardly off miscellaneous and randomly placed white spheres? Well, wonder no more!
Monday, August 08, 2005
Yes, the Religious Right really are Nazis
Well, ok, so that's stretching it a bit. I think this says less about any direct comparison between Fundamentalists and Nazis and more about the tactics involved in demonizing a(ny) scapegoat for your own political ends, but still...an interesting comparison.
And yes I know any comparison to Nazis is immediately suspect, but still...at least these guys try to actually back up their assertion with some amount of quotational evidence.
And yes I know any comparison to Nazis is immediately suspect, but still...at least these guys try to actually back up their assertion with some amount of quotational evidence.
I've finally found the meaning of life
A simple quote in a seemingly unrelated article:
"Every time I reach a Starbucks I feel like I've accomplished something," Winter said, "when actually I have accomplished nothing."
There you go. That's existence in as small a nutshell as you can fit it. Profound, huh?
"Every time I reach a Starbucks I feel like I've accomplished something," Winter said, "when actually I have accomplished nothing."
There you go. That's existence in as small a nutshell as you can fit it. Profound, huh?
That sound you just heard was my brain exploding
_You_ try wrapping your head around the concept of "negative information."
Such profound delusion
We really do live in the land of retards, don't we?
Folks, I know I say this a lot, but that seriously has to fall in the top ten stupidest things I have ever heard. Read it again and try not to have an aneurism.
"It is important to many creationists that man and dinosaur lived simultaneously because they believe there was no death in the world until Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. If the Genesis story is false, they say, then there would be no need for Jesus Christ to redeem the sins of the world.
Thus, at the Museum of Earth History, Genesis dictates gentle, vegetarian dinosaurs sharing Eden with Adam and Eve, whose vaguely Polynesian appearance represents all races, according to a guide. Another exhibit confirms that dinosaurs, like all land creatures created on Day 6, were on Noah's Ark. The exhibit maintains that the ark could accommodate them because it was huge--450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high--and only smaller, adolescent dinosaurs were put on board."
Folks, I know I say this a lot, but that seriously has to fall in the top ten stupidest things I have ever heard. Read it again and try not to have an aneurism.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Bulwer-Lytton
They're up! The 2005 Bulwer-Lytton contest results are up! O sweet purposefully awful prose...
Friday, July 29, 2005
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Tracable documents
You know, I always wondered whether they did this...I guess now I have my answer.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Another plug for universal health care
Inspired by this Krugman piece.
It is quite simply retarded that we don't have universal healthcare. And when I say retarded, I don't mean retarded in an abstract liberal sense of justice sense of the word, though certainly that applies. I mean retarded in the very practical and economic sense of the word. First, a little background:
In the beginning, America had an awesome health care system. Doctors were well paid and respected, and American hospitals were the best in the world. Unfortunately, due to increases in the sophistication of treatments (and therefore cost) as well as an ever-aging population (proportionally), health care costs started to climb. Enter the HMOs. The HMOs were created by fucktard MBAs who saw an opportunity to make a buck. They said to the world, "Hey! You know what? The reason your health care costs so much is those greedy doctors are purposefully overcharging you, are needlessly administering unnecessary procedures, and are generally responsible for all that is wrong with health care! If you give us your money, we'll make sure you pay less for your health care, and we'll deal with those mean old doctors by strictly regulating what they can and can't do to treat you, and thereby we'll trim all the fat off of the health care system and everyone will live happily ever after!"
So we did. Except the problem was that the premise is and was totally and utterly false. The problem was never the doctors, and even if it had been, it turned out that the administrative overhead of figuring out what kind of treatment was covered for each and every patient and negotiating with doctors about it and so on and so on and so on created such a massive beaurocracy that any savings that might have existed were utterly overshadowed. To give you some perspective, in the current American health insurance world, about 30% of every health care dollar goes to administration. Also remember these are businesses, so they want about 25% of every dollar to be profit. So you're left with less than half of every dollar actually going towards your care. In comparison, places like France and Canada spend only about 10% on administration, and the rest goes to care. Don't we have an awesome system?
Enter universal health care. Why is this a good idea? First of all, we live in a society where you get treated even if you can't pay for it. So despite healthcare becoming too expensive for a lot of people, those people still get sick, they still go to the hospital at the last possible moment, and they still get treatment. Which you pay for. And, in fact, if they had gotten proper preventative treatment, they might not have needed that expensive ER visit which, again, you paid for. So there's one win for universal healthcare: supplanting last-minute drastic treatment for cheaper preventative treatment.
But more important than that is cutting out all the goddamn administrative overhead. Since each HMO has to maintain its own administrative army to handle the load, there's a huge amount of duplicated administrative effort. If you consolidate everything into one entity, you cut out the duplication, which is a huge savings. You also save by allowing an entity like the state of California to negotiate drug prices en masse for reasons similar to how your employer can get lower health insurance rates than you can as an individual. And finally, you can trade in the profit margin for, at worst, some governmental inefficiency. So you save money. Do you hear me people? YOU SAVE MONEY. AND YOUR EMPLOYER SAVES MONEY. WHICH HELPS THE ECONOMY GROW. YOU GODDAMN FUCKING IDIOTS.
Opponents will tell you one or both of two things: a) that you're increasing the size of government and that government is inherently evil and does nothing good for anybody, and b) that the system will drastically increase taxes. With regard to a), you only believe that if you're stupid and listen to Republican rhetoric. Certain things work better when the government runs them or at least regulates them. Certain things don't. Sometimes you can get a better result if you hand the problem to the markets and let the equilibrium fall where it may. Other times you can't. The current fucked up system is what we got when we let the markets play their little game. That experiment ostensibly failed, among other reasons because at core we aren't a completely morally corrupt people and place all kinds of restrictions on the nature of health care that have weird (and usually negative) effects in the free market (as in the last-ditch ER visits mentioned above). Let's talk about better solutions now, m'kay?
With regard to b), the argument is specious. Technically, yes, taxes would increase. But the overall cost would actually decrease. Why? Because you're already paying for health care in a different form. Right now your employer pays a premium directly to (likely) an HMO on your behalf. Economics will tell you that, on par, you basically split that cost with your employer. All we're talking about here is shifting that premium to a tax that would go to the state. And, per the reasons mentioned above, making that shift in the system would actually save everyone a fuckload of money.
How much? Roughtly $8 billion for the state of California alone.
So why don't we have centralized healthcare? Two basic reasons:
So write your representatives. Or, you know, don't, because money talks in Washington and you don't have any. So be like me and be silently pissed off at the utter stupidity and gullibility of the human race.
It is quite simply retarded that we don't have universal healthcare. And when I say retarded, I don't mean retarded in an abstract liberal sense of justice sense of the word, though certainly that applies. I mean retarded in the very practical and economic sense of the word. First, a little background:
In the beginning, America had an awesome health care system. Doctors were well paid and respected, and American hospitals were the best in the world. Unfortunately, due to increases in the sophistication of treatments (and therefore cost) as well as an ever-aging population (proportionally), health care costs started to climb. Enter the HMOs. The HMOs were created by fucktard MBAs who saw an opportunity to make a buck. They said to the world, "Hey! You know what? The reason your health care costs so much is those greedy doctors are purposefully overcharging you, are needlessly administering unnecessary procedures, and are generally responsible for all that is wrong with health care! If you give us your money, we'll make sure you pay less for your health care, and we'll deal with those mean old doctors by strictly regulating what they can and can't do to treat you, and thereby we'll trim all the fat off of the health care system and everyone will live happily ever after!"
So we did. Except the problem was that the premise is and was totally and utterly false. The problem was never the doctors, and even if it had been, it turned out that the administrative overhead of figuring out what kind of treatment was covered for each and every patient and negotiating with doctors about it and so on and so on and so on created such a massive beaurocracy that any savings that might have existed were utterly overshadowed. To give you some perspective, in the current American health insurance world, about 30% of every health care dollar goes to administration. Also remember these are businesses, so they want about 25% of every dollar to be profit. So you're left with less than half of every dollar actually going towards your care. In comparison, places like France and Canada spend only about 10% on administration, and the rest goes to care. Don't we have an awesome system?
Enter universal health care. Why is this a good idea? First of all, we live in a society where you get treated even if you can't pay for it. So despite healthcare becoming too expensive for a lot of people, those people still get sick, they still go to the hospital at the last possible moment, and they still get treatment. Which you pay for. And, in fact, if they had gotten proper preventative treatment, they might not have needed that expensive ER visit which, again, you paid for. So there's one win for universal healthcare: supplanting last-minute drastic treatment for cheaper preventative treatment.
But more important than that is cutting out all the goddamn administrative overhead. Since each HMO has to maintain its own administrative army to handle the load, there's a huge amount of duplicated administrative effort. If you consolidate everything into one entity, you cut out the duplication, which is a huge savings. You also save by allowing an entity like the state of California to negotiate drug prices en masse for reasons similar to how your employer can get lower health insurance rates than you can as an individual. And finally, you can trade in the profit margin for, at worst, some governmental inefficiency. So you save money. Do you hear me people? YOU SAVE MONEY. AND YOUR EMPLOYER SAVES MONEY. WHICH HELPS THE ECONOMY GROW. YOU GODDAMN FUCKING IDIOTS.
Opponents will tell you one or both of two things: a) that you're increasing the size of government and that government is inherently evil and does nothing good for anybody, and b) that the system will drastically increase taxes. With regard to a), you only believe that if you're stupid and listen to Republican rhetoric. Certain things work better when the government runs them or at least regulates them. Certain things don't. Sometimes you can get a better result if you hand the problem to the markets and let the equilibrium fall where it may. Other times you can't. The current fucked up system is what we got when we let the markets play their little game. That experiment ostensibly failed, among other reasons because at core we aren't a completely morally corrupt people and place all kinds of restrictions on the nature of health care that have weird (and usually negative) effects in the free market (as in the last-ditch ER visits mentioned above). Let's talk about better solutions now, m'kay?
With regard to b), the argument is specious. Technically, yes, taxes would increase. But the overall cost would actually decrease. Why? Because you're already paying for health care in a different form. Right now your employer pays a premium directly to (likely) an HMO on your behalf. Economics will tell you that, on par, you basically split that cost with your employer. All we're talking about here is shifting that premium to a tax that would go to the state. And, per the reasons mentioned above, making that shift in the system would actually save everyone a fuckload of money.
How much? Roughtly $8 billion for the state of California alone.
So why don't we have centralized healthcare? Two basic reasons:
- Republicans have convinced everyone that any government program is a priori a bad idea, and
- The HMOs have so much money that they are a significant force in governmental lobbying, and damn wouldn't you know it? They were the 9th highest donors in the 2004 election cycle and gave 68% of their money to Republicans. Funny that Republicans think HMOs are just fine, huh?
So write your representatives. Or, you know, don't, because money talks in Washington and you don't have any. So be like me and be silently pissed off at the utter stupidity and gullibility of the human race.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
The true cost of software
This is what I hate about free software apologists.
First, let's assume that the analysis is correct and that most of the value of software is in the creation of derivative revenue sources (e.g., support, maintenance, etc.) and that the intrinsic value of the software itself is relatively minimal. Fine. Great. Wonderful. All software is free (as in beer) and the software world makes money off support and service. But wait...what do the financial incentives in that system suggest for software makers? That's right, boys and girls: in that system it makes the most sense for the producers to make the absolute shittiest software they can get away with and then make a mint on the "support." And when I say shitty, I explicitly mean _shitty_. I _don't_ just mean mostly cheaply made, though usually cheaply made does imply shitty. In this case, the economic model in fact _demands_ shitty software even if it costs _more_ to make shitty software than it does good software, because if the software isn't shitty then there's really no room to make money off the support and maintenance. It also suggests that consumers won't mind that the software is shitty so long as the support is _fantastic_. The software itself isn't worth anything but the support is, remember? So why would you care if the software is crap so long as the support is stellar? Doesn't this sound like a fantastic business model?
Now, to the Linux community's credit, they do indeed seem to be following exactly this model. Why do you think IBM is so in love with Linux? They take an OS/platform that is basically an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit (note that I'm not saying Windows isn't also an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit), and they make money off of trying to fix it to do something useful.
But secondly, I don't think I buy the model to begin with. Nobody seems to take the open source contributors' time and energy into these financial calculations, and this is a huge part of the analysis. For the most part, nobody is paying these people. Sure, some of them do in fact collect salaries specifically for the open source work they do, but a lot of these guys are contributing in their free time. Or they made their dot-com millions and just do this to amuse themselves and not to support themselves. And indeed, that's the crux of this: for the rest of us, it's _free_ time. Nobody's paying them for it. They do it because they like fucking around with software. Which is great and all, except, guess what: that's not capitalism. People doing pro bono work generally does not fit into the capitalist model except insofar as other people take advantage of the fact they are providing something for nothing. Like, say, IBM. For us software developers, that's not an economic model, folks. People doing what I do for free has the net effect of lowering my salary, which frankly pisses me off. Imagine trying to bid for a contract in your job and having some shmuck come in and say, "Hey, you know what? I'll do that for free!" Would you admire his selflessness? No. You'd be fucking pissed off since you lost that contract. This is the part of the free software movement that pisses me off.
So what do I think should happen? Well, I don't know, to be frank. Because of the way source code and compilers and business models work right now, there's no way to decouple being able to look at source code from being able to build the software and run it. Being able to see the source for something you use and/or build off of is a good thing. It makes for more stable and transparent systems, which is good for producers of software and consumers of software alike. Hiding your source in that sense is a terrible and short-sighted idea. Closed-source companies always claim that if they have to reveal their source then competitors will easily be able to steal their ideas. The truth, however, is that trying to actually figure out someone else's source and then adapt it to your project is non-trivial, and moreover one would hope that you would have patent protection on any substantial idea in one of your products independent of its particular implementation. Patent protection as a general concept is a good thing, though certainly the current IP system is utterly fucked and needs to be rethought in the context of modern software.
But anyway, I still think you should need to pay to run a piece of software. You can look at the code all you like...that will foster an open research environment, allow others to build off the ideas in your work, etc. But building software is a complex enterprise, and there should be an economic model behind it that directly encourages good, working software and not derivative support contracts that encourage the production of crap. And again, you Linux morons, I'm not pointing to Microsoft as a model...Microsoft should not be the poster-child of proprietary software because a) they are annoyingly secretive about their source, and b) their revenue comes from a monopoly and not from market forces producing good software. In the U.S., we have never had a regulatory and intellectual property environment that actually fosters competition in the software world. It has yet to happen. And I think it would at the very least be an interesting experiment. But it never will until all the free software fucktards like Stallman stop demanding that all software should be given away like party favors thus fostering an entrenched support industry that will make damn sure computer systems are never manageable and reliable enough that they actually work out of the box and instead start demanding an even playing field.
If everyone would just listen to me, the world would be a better place. Because I'm always right.
First, let's assume that the analysis is correct and that most of the value of software is in the creation of derivative revenue sources (e.g., support, maintenance, etc.) and that the intrinsic value of the software itself is relatively minimal. Fine. Great. Wonderful. All software is free (as in beer) and the software world makes money off support and service. But wait...what do the financial incentives in that system suggest for software makers? That's right, boys and girls: in that system it makes the most sense for the producers to make the absolute shittiest software they can get away with and then make a mint on the "support." And when I say shitty, I explicitly mean _shitty_. I _don't_ just mean mostly cheaply made, though usually cheaply made does imply shitty. In this case, the economic model in fact _demands_ shitty software even if it costs _more_ to make shitty software than it does good software, because if the software isn't shitty then there's really no room to make money off the support and maintenance. It also suggests that consumers won't mind that the software is shitty so long as the support is _fantastic_. The software itself isn't worth anything but the support is, remember? So why would you care if the software is crap so long as the support is stellar? Doesn't this sound like a fantastic business model?
Now, to the Linux community's credit, they do indeed seem to be following exactly this model. Why do you think IBM is so in love with Linux? They take an OS/platform that is basically an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit (note that I'm not saying Windows isn't also an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit), and they make money off of trying to fix it to do something useful.
But secondly, I don't think I buy the model to begin with. Nobody seems to take the open source contributors' time and energy into these financial calculations, and this is a huge part of the analysis. For the most part, nobody is paying these people. Sure, some of them do in fact collect salaries specifically for the open source work they do, but a lot of these guys are contributing in their free time. Or they made their dot-com millions and just do this to amuse themselves and not to support themselves. And indeed, that's the crux of this: for the rest of us, it's _free_ time. Nobody's paying them for it. They do it because they like fucking around with software. Which is great and all, except, guess what: that's not capitalism. People doing pro bono work generally does not fit into the capitalist model except insofar as other people take advantage of the fact they are providing something for nothing. Like, say, IBM. For us software developers, that's not an economic model, folks. People doing what I do for free has the net effect of lowering my salary, which frankly pisses me off. Imagine trying to bid for a contract in your job and having some shmuck come in and say, "Hey, you know what? I'll do that for free!" Would you admire his selflessness? No. You'd be fucking pissed off since you lost that contract. This is the part of the free software movement that pisses me off.
So what do I think should happen? Well, I don't know, to be frank. Because of the way source code and compilers and business models work right now, there's no way to decouple being able to look at source code from being able to build the software and run it. Being able to see the source for something you use and/or build off of is a good thing. It makes for more stable and transparent systems, which is good for producers of software and consumers of software alike. Hiding your source in that sense is a terrible and short-sighted idea. Closed-source companies always claim that if they have to reveal their source then competitors will easily be able to steal their ideas. The truth, however, is that trying to actually figure out someone else's source and then adapt it to your project is non-trivial, and moreover one would hope that you would have patent protection on any substantial idea in one of your products independent of its particular implementation. Patent protection as a general concept is a good thing, though certainly the current IP system is utterly fucked and needs to be rethought in the context of modern software.
But anyway, I still think you should need to pay to run a piece of software. You can look at the code all you like...that will foster an open research environment, allow others to build off the ideas in your work, etc. But building software is a complex enterprise, and there should be an economic model behind it that directly encourages good, working software and not derivative support contracts that encourage the production of crap. And again, you Linux morons, I'm not pointing to Microsoft as a model...Microsoft should not be the poster-child of proprietary software because a) they are annoyingly secretive about their source, and b) their revenue comes from a monopoly and not from market forces producing good software. In the U.S., we have never had a regulatory and intellectual property environment that actually fosters competition in the software world. It has yet to happen. And I think it would at the very least be an interesting experiment. But it never will until all the free software fucktards like Stallman stop demanding that all software should be given away like party favors thus fostering an entrenched support industry that will make damn sure computer systems are never manageable and reliable enough that they actually work out of the box and instead start demanding an even playing field.
If everyone would just listen to me, the world would be a better place. Because I'm always right.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
On Carlinism
You'll forgive me...it's 1:30 am, and I'm in a melancholy mood...
I was discussing with a friend recently our relative views on, well, everything. Seeing as how she was talking to me, you can rightly assume that she shares at least some of my dark, jaded outlook on life. But she hasn't give up entirely on humanity. And I realized that I totally have.
It was kind of shocking to me, actually. It seems somehow anathema to liberalism to be fatalistic about the prospects for our species. And yet, I am also an empiricist, and the empirical evidence points inevitably to the fact we are, as a species, selfish and self-destructive. Maybe that's actually the core of liberalism anyway...the fundamental recognition that people are self-interested fucktards, and that that is, you know, bad. Conservatives either fail to recognize the dark nature of humanity (inexcusably idealistic naivete) or recognize it but just don't give a shit (understandable narcissistic apathy).
Anyway, back my main point. Think about it. Sure, you have friends you believe are good people and are trying to make the world a better place. But consider humanity as a whole. Look at history. The things we believe to have positive developments in human society were inevitably paid for with the blood and suffering of countless generations. People are entirely reactive. Nothing ever changes unless a critical mass of people are miserable.
Take a moment and wrap your brain around the implications of that simple fact. We are totally incapable of proactively working for the good of humanity. Self-governance, social welfare...none of them came about because it seemed like a good idea to the ruling class. It came about because enough people were being dicked over that they went and killed the fuckers collecting their taxes and tithes. And for a moment, things were good. But soon the revolutionaries (or more likely, their children) became decadent and apathetic. They stopped giving a shit about the people who had less than they did because they had what they wanted. And voila, you have a brand new ruling class. Repeat.
Every human society in history has followed this pattern. At least the ones who had enough resources and became efficient enough to allow for division of labor, an economy, and free time. Every goddamn one. Roman empire. Charlemagne. Byzantine empire. Kingdoms of the middle east. England. Spain. France. Portugal. And now, United States. And just look at the state of national politics to see that we've forgotten the dangers of an entrenched aristocracy and of an insurmountable class divide. This country has taught me that the only thing democracy buys you is a cheering section behind the tyrant.
It's fucking depressing. Every time I read about world events I get this profound sense of disappointment and infuration at humanity. And this, I think, is the fundamental aspect of Carlinism.
"What may sound like anger to some is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction." -- George Carlin, Brain Droppings
It's just so frustrating. It wouldn't be hard. We could do it. But we don't want to. We prefer to hoard, to demean, and to follow. We are fucktards. Absolute quintessential fucktards.
"...It's not so much individuals, it's about my contempt for the way [people] organize themselves and handle themselves. The contempt is because this species, including the American variety, had a great deal of potential. An incredible higher brain, able to do all these conceptual things beyond just food, eat, shit, fuck. I think that gift from nature has been completely wasted, and the pursuit of power, money, position and objects and possessions…all those things have pushed off the radar the more intelligent aspect of humans." -- George Carlin
I get pissed at people like Karl Rove, Bush, every retard in the Religious Right from Frist to Dobson to Falwell, all the sleazes in corporate America like the Ken Lays of the world, but you know, this last election taught me that it's all the other normal people that enable them to exist. To paraphrase Newton, if the world is ruled by assholes, it is because they stand on the shoulders of giant idiots. All those rat bastards are powerless without the throngs of braindead zombies that support them. All the money people voluntarily give up, money they could use to actually better their community, contribute to the knowledge of the universe, to warm somebody who's cold or feed someone who's hungry, and they fucking give it to Focus on the Family. No one holds a gun to their head. Nothing would happen to them if they didn't make the donation. But they do.
We thought that if we could get rid of the unelected monarchs and make the church more accountable to its congregation, if we could just give the downtrodden a voice, then we could fix it. We could make it better. We thought it was the upper eschelon standing in the way of our inevitable journey to Avalon. But look at what we've done with the world. We blithely poison ourselves and voluntarily give power to the unscrupulous and malevolent. And we fucking deserve the results.
So you know what? I'm just not going to feel guilty any more. I don't care. I'm going to enjoy the ride. I'm not going to feel guilty about not giving money to Second Harvest, not donating blood, not volunteering, none of it. It's a drop in the ocean of ignorance and apathy. Even if we were to make the world a better place, we are too shortsighted and petty not to fuck it all up again anyway. I have one shot at life, and every moment I waste worrying about a scourge of wasted intelligence that has done nothing to justify its viral existence is a tick off my internal clock. Fuck that. There are games to play, Go-Karts to ride, cotton candy to eat, and orgasms to have.
Call me when the world ends. With any luck I'll be laughing too hard to notice.
I was discussing with a friend recently our relative views on, well, everything. Seeing as how she was talking to me, you can rightly assume that she shares at least some of my dark, jaded outlook on life. But she hasn't give up entirely on humanity. And I realized that I totally have.
It was kind of shocking to me, actually. It seems somehow anathema to liberalism to be fatalistic about the prospects for our species. And yet, I am also an empiricist, and the empirical evidence points inevitably to the fact we are, as a species, selfish and self-destructive. Maybe that's actually the core of liberalism anyway...the fundamental recognition that people are self-interested fucktards, and that that is, you know, bad. Conservatives either fail to recognize the dark nature of humanity (inexcusably idealistic naivete) or recognize it but just don't give a shit (understandable narcissistic apathy).
Anyway, back my main point. Think about it. Sure, you have friends you believe are good people and are trying to make the world a better place. But consider humanity as a whole. Look at history. The things we believe to have positive developments in human society were inevitably paid for with the blood and suffering of countless generations. People are entirely reactive. Nothing ever changes unless a critical mass of people are miserable.
Take a moment and wrap your brain around the implications of that simple fact. We are totally incapable of proactively working for the good of humanity. Self-governance, social welfare...none of them came about because it seemed like a good idea to the ruling class. It came about because enough people were being dicked over that they went and killed the fuckers collecting their taxes and tithes. And for a moment, things were good. But soon the revolutionaries (or more likely, their children) became decadent and apathetic. They stopped giving a shit about the people who had less than they did because they had what they wanted. And voila, you have a brand new ruling class. Repeat.
Every human society in history has followed this pattern. At least the ones who had enough resources and became efficient enough to allow for division of labor, an economy, and free time. Every goddamn one. Roman empire. Charlemagne. Byzantine empire. Kingdoms of the middle east. England. Spain. France. Portugal. And now, United States. And just look at the state of national politics to see that we've forgotten the dangers of an entrenched aristocracy and of an insurmountable class divide. This country has taught me that the only thing democracy buys you is a cheering section behind the tyrant.
It's fucking depressing. Every time I read about world events I get this profound sense of disappointment and infuration at humanity. And this, I think, is the fundamental aspect of Carlinism.
"What may sound like anger to some is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction." -- George Carlin, Brain Droppings
It's just so frustrating. It wouldn't be hard. We could do it. But we don't want to. We prefer to hoard, to demean, and to follow. We are fucktards. Absolute quintessential fucktards.
"...It's not so much individuals, it's about my contempt for the way [people] organize themselves and handle themselves. The contempt is because this species, including the American variety, had a great deal of potential. An incredible higher brain, able to do all these conceptual things beyond just food, eat, shit, fuck. I think that gift from nature has been completely wasted, and the pursuit of power, money, position and objects and possessions…all those things have pushed off the radar the more intelligent aspect of humans." -- George Carlin
I get pissed at people like Karl Rove, Bush, every retard in the Religious Right from Frist to Dobson to Falwell, all the sleazes in corporate America like the Ken Lays of the world, but you know, this last election taught me that it's all the other normal people that enable them to exist. To paraphrase Newton, if the world is ruled by assholes, it is because they stand on the shoulders of giant idiots. All those rat bastards are powerless without the throngs of braindead zombies that support them. All the money people voluntarily give up, money they could use to actually better their community, contribute to the knowledge of the universe, to warm somebody who's cold or feed someone who's hungry, and they fucking give it to Focus on the Family. No one holds a gun to their head. Nothing would happen to them if they didn't make the donation. But they do.
We thought that if we could get rid of the unelected monarchs and make the church more accountable to its congregation, if we could just give the downtrodden a voice, then we could fix it. We could make it better. We thought it was the upper eschelon standing in the way of our inevitable journey to Avalon. But look at what we've done with the world. We blithely poison ourselves and voluntarily give power to the unscrupulous and malevolent. And we fucking deserve the results.
So you know what? I'm just not going to feel guilty any more. I don't care. I'm going to enjoy the ride. I'm not going to feel guilty about not giving money to Second Harvest, not donating blood, not volunteering, none of it. It's a drop in the ocean of ignorance and apathy. Even if we were to make the world a better place, we are too shortsighted and petty not to fuck it all up again anyway. I have one shot at life, and every moment I waste worrying about a scourge of wasted intelligence that has done nothing to justify its viral existence is a tick off my internal clock. Fuck that. There are games to play, Go-Karts to ride, cotton candy to eat, and orgasms to have.
Call me when the world ends. With any luck I'll be laughing too hard to notice.
Monday, July 18, 2005
About that firing thing
Did I say fire? I meant not fire. Yeah, I can see how you might have been confused...
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Inspirational phrases for a baby shower
Feel free to add your own.
It wasn't that hard to spread your legs/Yet we're still amazed his sperm found the egg
You let a retard sleep in your bed/Hope the kid likes special ed
We're really sorry the condom broke/But at least now we get some rum and cokes
Perhaps one day you and your child will be walking all alone/And you can point and say, "Look! That's the bar bathroom where mommy answered the bone-a-phone!" (ok, a bit long, but I liked it)
We know this is hard so don't feel so bad/Some day the circus will come back and you can find the dad
When the kid realizes his dad is so ugly the mind just boggles/Just calmly explain, "Sweetheart, mommy had beer goggles"
We dearly hope you don't fuck up your kid/Quite as much as your parents did
We're all delighted and ever so pleased/You contracted the most joyful sexually transmitted disease
Just goes to show that with enough stout/You'll believe him when he says, "I'll pull out"
Congrats on the bundle of joy, and try not to think about/The fact it will be 10 times larger than the orifice it needs to come out
We're happy about the baby, but it's still kind of shitty/That its daddy could be any guy in the city
We loved putting together this stupid goddamn party, no really it's a thrill/But next time just remember to take the goddamn pill
We're sure the kid will be perfect and won't need a brother/But it's still good to know if you fuck this one up you can still make another
It wasn't that hard to spread your legs/Yet we're still amazed his sperm found the egg
You let a retard sleep in your bed/Hope the kid likes special ed
We're really sorry the condom broke/But at least now we get some rum and cokes
Perhaps one day you and your child will be walking all alone/And you can point and say, "Look! That's the bar bathroom where mommy answered the bone-a-phone!" (ok, a bit long, but I liked it)
We know this is hard so don't feel so bad/Some day the circus will come back and you can find the dad
When the kid realizes his dad is so ugly the mind just boggles/Just calmly explain, "Sweetheart, mommy had beer goggles"
We dearly hope you don't fuck up your kid/Quite as much as your parents did
We're all delighted and ever so pleased/You contracted the most joyful sexually transmitted disease
Just goes to show that with enough stout/You'll believe him when he says, "I'll pull out"
Congrats on the bundle of joy, and try not to think about/The fact it will be 10 times larger than the orifice it needs to come out
We're happy about the baby, but it's still kind of shitty/That its daddy could be any guy in the city
We loved putting together this stupid goddamn party, no really it's a thrill/But next time just remember to take the goddamn pill
We're sure the kid will be perfect and won't need a brother/But it's still good to know if you fuck this one up you can still make another
Friday, July 15, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Don't buy Google
I just read that Google has a price/earnings ratio of 119.
Let me say that again because it's important: Google's price/earnings ratio is 119.
That means that their stock is worth 119 times their earnings. Hypothetically, this means people expect Google to grow, in the long term, by doubling seven times. Seven times.
They need to double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
AND THEN FUCKING DOUBLE AGAIN.
Ok, so that's an oversimplification, but still...goddamn. It's like the beanie baby craze all over again.
Let me say that again because it's important: Google's price/earnings ratio is 119.
That means that their stock is worth 119 times their earnings. Hypothetically, this means people expect Google to grow, in the long term, by doubling seven times. Seven times.
They need to double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
AND THEN FUCKING DOUBLE AGAIN.
Ok, so that's an oversimplification, but still...goddamn. It's like the beanie baby craze all over again.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Why organized religion is a bad idea
Ah yes...of course the Church has traditionally been the defender of reason and truth in the face of hysterical "science." Just ask Galileo.
(Christ...at what point did these people completely lose touch with reality?)
Also, I couldn't help but post this.
(Christ...at what point did these people completely lose touch with reality?)
Also, I couldn't help but post this.
I got bored again
Unremarkable peon seeks independently wealthy braniac supermodel - 25 (san mateo)
Reply to: anon-83910102@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-07-12, 2:15AM PDT
I've tried these sites before, but I have yet to find that special straight-haired brunette, large-breasted, independently wealthy, sexually deprived braniac supermodel and her lonely extra ferrari that I just know is out there waiting for me. I'm really not a picky guy, but I have yet to find her.
I can see us together in my mind...
...her gently sloping nose exquisitely reconstructed after being bitten off at the age of 6 by a meth-crazed, gimpy Saluki...
...her hazy, vacant green eyes, one lazy like the two of us on a Saturday night cuddling on a tired bean-bag chair...
...her turgid yet surgically botched nipples that make her shirt look like it's hiding tic tacs rammed haphazardly onto the sides of gracefully curving turkeys...
...her hips two angelic parentheses surrounding the universe's warmest and most welcoming asterisk...
Oh, it could be so beautiful!
I don't know much about you, oh beautiful fantasy woman, but I know in my heart of hearts that you must...simply must!...meet the following criteria, for I cannot imagine you any other way:
- Be sexually aroused when the announcer of the Lea and Perrins commercial announces lustily that, "_You_ were dry, but _I_ made you juicy!"
- Enjoy as a token of your deep and everlasting affection the fact that you will need to stare intently at my stubbornly flacid manhood while clapping excitedly and exclaiming, "I believe, Tinkerbell, I believe!" in order for me to become sexually aroused
- Like pretty sunsets
- Enjoy fine dining, be an excellent cook, and yet inexplicably also maintain the totally unreasonable cultural standards of female body shape
- Have the heights of your already enflamed passions elevated inescapably by the fact that I like to sing "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" during my sexual partners' moments of climax
- Be brilliant, successful, enviably gorgeous, charming, loyal, and witty, except insofar as your expression of said qualities exceeds my own
- Will glow with loving admiration at the sensitivity and empathy of my gift when I send your emotionally unstable sister a wire hanger for her baby shower
- Defecate infrequently, and when you do, only emit the finest aloe vera-enriched bath soaps
- Appreciate me for who I am, accepting my physical and emotional flaws unquestioningly and without holding me to unrealistic and shallow standards
My sweet fantasy fungal spore of perfection, I hope this note finds you well. Your acceptably attractive, selectively courageous prince awaits you so that we may begin our idyllic life together! Please email me soon! Every moment we are not together is an unbearable eternity of emotional constipation! You are the enema that will release the thundering, fragrant torrent of my passions!
Write soon, my sweet!
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Friday, July 08, 2005
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Why is Microsoft retarded?
Why does Microsoft keep doing such stupid shit? Haven't they learned about bad PR yet? Christ...
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Anti-humor
I don't know why this is so funny, but it is. This ain't bad either.
...and while we're at it, baby jokes!
...and while we're at it, baby jokes!
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Friday, July 01, 2005
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