Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
iTunes Plus is launched!
You can now upgrade all your EMI songs in iTunes to better quality and Digital Rights Management free!
Thanks EMI!
Brain Download anyone?
Information can now be stored on live neurons in a dish. When can I download?
Military Industrial Complex
"....$100 million a year, or about what the Defence Department spends every two hours."
- The Economist May 26th, 2007 edition.
- The Economist May 26th, 2007 edition.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Ghandi Guns
A five year old boy runs into the house very excited as he just got to try out the neighbor's "Mercenary" game and describes the mayhem and killing of the game, complete with explosion sound effects.
Dad replies (sarcastically) "We're going to get you a new game, it's called Ghandi"
Boy responds excitedly:
"Does it have any cool guns?!!!!"
My kind of kid.
Dad replies (sarcastically) "We're going to get you a new game, it's called Ghandi"
Boy responds excitedly:
"Does it have any cool guns?!!!!"
My kind of kid.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
300: The movie
Saw 300 over the weekend. After enough brain cleansing time has passed the verdict was that it was a really cool movie done after a comic book. If that genre sounds interesting to you, go see it. If you are not at all interested in comic books/graphic novels and are not into extreme examples of hand to hand combat with all the gore therein, skip it. It is most definitely a Testosteronefest with the requisite T&A scenes, plus all the violence you can eat. Mind thumping out and out combat from hell.
Rating - One Movie with a double Testosteronefest modifier.
Rating - One Movie with a double Testosteronefest modifier.
The Movie Scale
In the interest of movie reviews I want to put out for public consumption The Movie Scale. I want it in the public domain so that it can hopefully be assimilated by the masses and embraced with verve.
2 Movies – Willing to see it twice or more (can add more Movie numbers as required) eg Fellowship of the Ring, The Matrix.
1 Movie – See it in on the big screen. eg The Matrix Reloaded
DVD – Worth seeing but wait for the DVD. eg The Matrix Revolutions
Worst Enemy DVD – Buy it and give it to someone you hate. Battlefield Earth. Waterworld.
Special subCategories:
Campy – Rent it to mock it and/or look at the T&A/swingin' dicks. Rocky Horror Picture Show, Showgirls, Porky's
Chick Flick - Enuff Said. Steel Magnolias, Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.
Testosteronefest - Movies to engage your inner caveman. Die Hard. 300.
When in doubt go for the lower rating so you don’t piss off your friends.
2 Movies – Willing to see it twice or more (can add more Movie numbers as required) eg Fellowship of the Ring, The Matrix.
1 Movie – See it in on the big screen. eg The Matrix Reloaded
DVD – Worth seeing but wait for the DVD. eg The Matrix Revolutions
Worst Enemy DVD – Buy it and give it to someone you hate. Battlefield Earth. Waterworld.
Special subCategories:
Campy – Rent it to mock it and/or look at the T&A/swingin' dicks. Rocky Horror Picture Show, Showgirls, Porky's
Chick Flick - Enuff Said. Steel Magnolias, Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.
Testosteronefest - Movies to engage your inner caveman. Die Hard. 300.
When in doubt go for the lower rating so you don’t piss off your friends.
Word of the day.
Grok:
"To understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science — and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man."
- Robert A. Heinlein from "Stranger in a Strange Land"
"To understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science — and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man."
- Robert A. Heinlein from "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Call the cops!
BERLIN (Reuters) - A nine-year-old German girl was so upset about having to tidy her room she put up a sign in her window urging passers-by to call police for help....[Click link above]
Monday, May 21, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
LifeLogging.
Lifelogging, a.k.a. a Memex is recording every moment or of your life in a retrievable format. Or as much as is practical anyway. I took an interest in Lifelogging after reading an article onGordon Bell. Gordon and Microsoft have been experimenting with their
Sensecam and MyLifeBits
projects. The Sensecam is a digital camera that you wear around your neck that snaps pictures on a certain time interval, or when it sense changes in the environment due to acceleration or heat changes, like someone standing in front of you. From a fashion perspective it is so fugly that only an engineer, or true geek, would wear it, I can imagine a time where it would be a lot smaller, clip on, and perhaps even fashionable enough for say, a Japanese Schoolgirl. Zeus help us all.
The possibilities for this are endless, as are the problems. Imagine a world where you do not have to forget anything. You would easily know where you lost something, just scroll back through your recorded life. You would always be able to find a scrap of paper (or at least an image of it). If someone quotes you, like the media, or a spouse (eek) you could show them how they screwed it up, with a recording or transcript. I wouldn't recommend this with the spoouse by the way.
You would know which porn sites you visited on Tuesday. You would know what your significant other said at your babies birth and on 9-11.
Speaking of babies, one robot/artificial intelligence engineer is recording nearly every moment of his child’s life on 11 cameras and 14 mikes in order to document how we learn language. This may be helpful in training a robot to learn and communicate. Psychologists, philosophers, and a whole host of other sciences will benefit from the program as well. They have already recorded 120,000 hours of footage. His lab will contain 1.4 Petabytes of storage. That is 1.4 quadrillion bytes of information a.k.a. a shit load of data.
The baby boy and his family have significant privacy protections in place. There is a panic button in every room, in case a parent wants to have a serious discussion, or whatever, they can turn it off. Transcribers are given the data in random order and out of context, and so on. But that is because he's a child and has concerned parents, but what if you are a consenting adult and want to document everything?
With apologies to Gordon Bell, much younger people are already overtaking his lifelogging project in many ways with their cell phones acting as a form of lifelogger. I send blog updates from my cell phone now an apparently I am old because I should have been doing that years ago to be young and hip (or whatever word they use for hip nowadays). Young people often live their lives online, or at least document their lives heavily online. Twitter and MySpace are basically a low tech version of MyLifeBits, where your friends get to see your every thought and pictures of where you are at any given time. Young people put all manner of stuff on MySpace, including stuff that they later regret when the companies they want to work for Google them.
The stickiness of internet and email lifelogging information is, of course, getting to be a serious problem. I recently interviewed a recent graduate with no work experience whatsoever. I thought that was odd and inquired as to what all he had done while in school, etc. No real good answers, so I Googled him. After Googling pretty hard I hit the human resources jackpot. He had been president of the “Hemp Society” at his campus and was featured prominently in their newsletter. Fortunately for him, I just found that amusing, and didn’t mention it or hold it against him, but I always wonder who else had found that on him.
Charlie Stross (SciFi writer) wrote an interesting futurist speech
that included lifelogging and it’s effects. Stross pointed out that for around $25 one can buy a 1 Gigabyte of Flash Memory to carry around with you. Fast-forward a decade and that'll be 100Gb. Two decades and we'll be up to 10 terrabytes.
10 Tb is an interesting number. 10 Tb is enough to
store a live video stream compressed more than a DVD, but basically the same overall resolution. That would include everything you see for a year, 24-7. Add multiplexing, and you could put in three or four video channels, a sound channel, a heart monitor, a GPS signal of where you are at all times, everything you type, and every mouse event you click while awake. All the time.$25 a year in 2027, or maybe a $1500 a year in 2017. It's about $7000 if we want to do this right now. Stross goes on to ask, Why would anyone want to do this? “I can think of several reasons. Initially, it'll be edge cases. Police officers on duty: it'd be great to record everything they see, as evidence. Folks with early stage neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimers: with voice tagging and some sophisticated searching, it's a memory prosthesis. Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. "What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?"
Think of it as Google for real life.”
Google for real life. That has fascinating implications. What if you are asked to do something at work that is quasi-legal or outright illegal? It’s all video recorded and documented. How about privacy of the people that you meet and greet and go through your day? As Stross put it, “if you dig hard enough, everyone is a criminal”. Are we going to blog our way into a police state? Or maybe we can pass some laws that restrict the use of lifelogs to the benefit of the person being recorded. Lifelog Privilege.
Do we need to forget? Frank Knack sure seems to think so, “forgetting is the ability to alter memories or forget them altogether”. It’s hard to forgive someone, if you have the injustice preserved for eternity.
One of the advantages discovered during the Sensecam research is that if you ran thorough your pictures at the end of the day, it actually enhanced your long term memory. Or you could not review them and ruin your memory through atrophy, since it’s all logged……
Eyetap is a system that has been 30 years in the making by Steve Mann. He apparently has been some form of cyborg for that long. One of the coolest features of his Eyetap camera is that it records and transmits on the same plane as the eye. It can therefore alter the picture going into that eye and/or overlap information over the real world you are seeing. So if you want to alter the visual to psychedelic colors, you can do that. Lifelogging as performance art.
See at night? No problem. Not only will it correct visual deficiencies, it could add digital zoom “eagle eyes”.
You can have the attached computer flag any visual you want, or delete things you don’t want. Say you want to see no advertising on the street, ever. Buh Bye.
Or you could transmit to you partner what you are seeing and vice versa. Dual realtime experiences. The mother can see what the father is seeing during baby's birth.
The biggest technical problem with lifelogging currently is the sheer volume, sorting, and labeling of the information in order to find a memory. Of course this is already being worked on, a Googlish search technology would probably help a lot. The brina uses keywords such as major events, faces, even phone calls. Link off of those key events or key people, and away you go.
In Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" a dystopian science fiction novel there was the following analysis of lifelogging:
"It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long."
As they say, we are entering a Brave New World. Or at least a strange one.
More conversation on this can be found here
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Don't know is this is true, but it should be....
"Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands what's happened here will never happen there."
- Man that died at Tiananmen Square
- Man that died at Tiananmen Square
Friday, May 11, 2007
Steve Jobs quote at the Shareholders Meeting....
"A few of us have been using the iPhone a lot and if you wanted it back, you would have to pry it from our dead hands."
Write a blog, go to jail.
Yesterday I drove by a Del Taco I regularly frequent and saw that the drive-through had been blocked off by police tape and the place was swarming with cops. As I neared and could see what was going on I noticed they had a white sheet over a body and the bathroom door was open. A lot of homeless people hang out around that Del Taco. I wondered if one of them passed away in the bathroom, who knows?
I thought very seriously about snapping a picture of the scene and blogging it, I now wish I had. There is no news of it in the mainstream news that I can find. What stopped me was the thought of dealing with the cops. I really don’t like cops. Lesson learned, I will shoot the picture next time.
This experience has got me to thinking about the line between journalism and bloggers. Am I now a form of journalist? Journalist-lite? An editorialist?
Josh Wolf is a blogger that was jailed longer than any other journalist in America, because he wouldn’t fork over some video he shot of an anarchist event in San Francisco. Wolf's Blog.
Wolf was jailed for 226 days by the Fed for refusing to release the unedited footage showing the people participating in the anarchist action. It turns out that while California has a law protecting journalists, the Feds invoked a police car that was paid for in federal dollars to allow the federal law to throw him in jail. Unbelievable.
An Egyptian blogger has also been jailed for four years for insulting Islam and the Egyptian president. Let's hear it for the U.S. Consitution. Oh wait.....
Story
In his blog Wolf discusses whether bloggers are journalists. To his credit he gives the complexity of the issue the airing it deserved (like a true Journalist ironically). Wolf says that “some are, some aren’t"
He goes on, “If we can establish that it is not the form but the function that defines journalism then we must determine what criterion are necessary to establish something as such. Once again, Bill Moyers and Rosentiel come through with a description that I find hard to argue against: “A journalist tries to get the facts right,’ tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth–not to help one side win or lose but to ‘inspire public discussion.’ Neutrality … is not a core principle of journalism, ‘but the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.’””
Works for me.
I thought very seriously about snapping a picture of the scene and blogging it, I now wish I had. There is no news of it in the mainstream news that I can find. What stopped me was the thought of dealing with the cops. I really don’t like cops. Lesson learned, I will shoot the picture next time.
This experience has got me to thinking about the line between journalism and bloggers. Am I now a form of journalist? Journalist-lite? An editorialist?
Josh Wolf is a blogger that was jailed longer than any other journalist in America, because he wouldn’t fork over some video he shot of an anarchist event in San Francisco. Wolf's Blog.
Wolf was jailed for 226 days by the Fed for refusing to release the unedited footage showing the people participating in the anarchist action. It turns out that while California has a law protecting journalists, the Feds invoked a police car that was paid for in federal dollars to allow the federal law to throw him in jail. Unbelievable.
An Egyptian blogger has also been jailed for four years for insulting Islam and the Egyptian president. Let's hear it for the U.S. Consitution. Oh wait.....
Story
In his blog Wolf discusses whether bloggers are journalists. To his credit he gives the complexity of the issue the airing it deserved (like a true Journalist ironically). Wolf says that “some are, some aren’t"
He goes on, “If we can establish that it is not the form but the function that defines journalism then we must determine what criterion are necessary to establish something as such. Once again, Bill Moyers and Rosentiel come through with a description that I find hard to argue against: “A journalist tries to get the facts right,’ tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth–not to help one side win or lose but to ‘inspire public discussion.’ Neutrality … is not a core principle of journalism, ‘but the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.’””
Works for me.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Lobbying
"The one thing any politician must do, no matter how powerful, is stay bought."
- Spider Robinson
- Spider Robinson
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
FU 09 F9 11 FU 9D 74 E3 FU 41 56 C5 63 56 88 FU
FU 09 F9 11 FU 9D 74 E3 FU 41 56 C5 63 56 88 FU
(Number changed to protect my ass.)
So a week has passed since Martin Luther nailed the encryption key to HD-DVD to the cathedral door, DIGG.com.
For those of you that may not be aware of the story, an article was posted to a community based website digg.com that gave out a sixteen digit hexadecimal number that could be used in software to crack the encryption that is placed on HD-DVDs. Not the hacking software itself, mind you, simply the hex key. A friggin number.
The group responsible to protect the encryption (AACS) sent an order to Digg to have it taken down, which Digg then did. The users of Digg (1 million and growing) then proceeded to place the Hex Number into nearly every post on the website somewhere. They would simply make a comment and add the number, or put it in the title etc. Eventually the owner of Digg decided that the interests of the community had spoken, to risk his business and placed the article back up. The Key was nailed to the Cathedral door.
People made shirts with the number on it. They got tattoos of it (eek) and posted the pictures to picture sites such as Flickr.com. The rebellion was on.
AACS, Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), you have been put on notice. You are the Catholic Church, it is October 31, 1517, and Martin Luther just changed your world. Your ideas that content should be protected is now over. Stick a fork in it. You’ve been Digged. Sure you can keep suing, you can keep selling brokeware and crippleware. We will defy you.
You do not own our content we purchase. We do.
I bought nearly 100 cassette tapes in the 1980s from you people. Many are now lost. So what if I download, for free, only the songs that I bought? Are you going to sue me for what I already paid you for? You think you own my songs? Screw you. I double dare you to sue me.
I buy a DVD. I deserve to put that content on my computer, on a backup disc, and even to loan it to a few friends. If you don’t think that’s right, well you’re ideas are antiquated. Grow up and realize that you exist because we consumers buy from you.
EMI figured it out, they have released their music unencrypted. I will happily fork over 50 cents more per song for that privilege. Took you long enough, but thanks EMI.
Like the Catholic Church, you have had a very nice run. You have collected your indulgences from me and other artists forever. Now it’s time for you to go back to your bars, your temples, your massage parlors, and figure out a new business model. The internet is the future of content. Wake up and smell the pixels.
(Number changed to protect my ass.)
So a week has passed since Martin Luther nailed the encryption key to HD-DVD to the cathedral door, DIGG.com.
For those of you that may not be aware of the story, an article was posted to a community based website digg.com that gave out a sixteen digit hexadecimal number that could be used in software to crack the encryption that is placed on HD-DVDs. Not the hacking software itself, mind you, simply the hex key. A friggin number.
The group responsible to protect the encryption (AACS) sent an order to Digg to have it taken down, which Digg then did. The users of Digg (1 million and growing) then proceeded to place the Hex Number into nearly every post on the website somewhere. They would simply make a comment and add the number, or put it in the title etc. Eventually the owner of Digg decided that the interests of the community had spoken, to risk his business and placed the article back up. The Key was nailed to the Cathedral door.
People made shirts with the number on it. They got tattoos of it (eek) and posted the pictures to picture sites such as Flickr.com. The rebellion was on.
AACS, Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), you have been put on notice. You are the Catholic Church, it is October 31, 1517, and Martin Luther just changed your world. Your ideas that content should be protected is now over. Stick a fork in it. You’ve been Digged. Sure you can keep suing, you can keep selling brokeware and crippleware. We will defy you.
You do not own our content we purchase. We do.
I bought nearly 100 cassette tapes in the 1980s from you people. Many are now lost. So what if I download, for free, only the songs that I bought? Are you going to sue me for what I already paid you for? You think you own my songs? Screw you. I double dare you to sue me.
I buy a DVD. I deserve to put that content on my computer, on a backup disc, and even to loan it to a few friends. If you don’t think that’s right, well you’re ideas are antiquated. Grow up and realize that you exist because we consumers buy from you.
EMI figured it out, they have released their music unencrypted. I will happily fork over 50 cents more per song for that privilege. Took you long enough, but thanks EMI.
Like the Catholic Church, you have had a very nice run. You have collected your indulgences from me and other artists forever. Now it’s time for you to go back to your bars, your temples, your massage parlors, and figure out a new business model. The internet is the future of content. Wake up and smell the pixels.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Sony. Gods of Goat in two Acts
Act 1.
I gotta give Sony complete credit for total ballsaciousness with their latest publicity stunt for God of War II, a game for the Playstation.
They had a publicity party and had a guy dressed as Kratos, the God of War in God of War, and a beheaded goat offering guests to taste of the goat intestinal tidbits. Yum! Rumors of gummy worms in the body of the goat being fed to guests were apparently untrue. More's the pity.
In addition, there were topless young lasses running around offering up grapes and drinks to guests. Now that's a party.
Here's my take FWIW. This was in Athens, folks. Dead goats are food. Sorry if you don't like it, but they are still food. They could have roasted it over a spit and no-one would have complained except maybe for the teats. Would it have made any difference if it had been a pig, or a cow? Pulleasse.
In addition, this was a classic case of no-such-thing-as-bad-advertising. I saw this picture in a lad mag before the media went apeshit over it. Apparently Sony pulled the Playstation magazine that had this photo (collectable anyone?). My Zeus, was this good advertising. All the sensitive types went ballistic and Sony scored a great PR victory for what is apparently a great game. Almost makes me want to own a Playstation. People that like violent games with sex in them are lining up now. Thanks PETA!
Why is it that censorship assholes never get that they are only promoting the thing they are trying to condemn? I swear that PETA has stock in Sony.
Act 2.
I completely despise Sony. What was once the most awesome purveyor of fine electronics (Walkman!) is now a bastardized lame-ass purveyor of fine electronics (BlueRay!).
Sony, oh how I hate thee, let me count the ways!
Adding spyware to CDs of music so that it infests computers and reports home to the mothership.
Putting out a propreitary format (BetaMax) and losing to VHS.
Putting out a propreitary format (BlueRay) and (gods I hope) loses to HD-DVD.
Putting out a propeitary "Memory Stick" format.
Sony Ericson Bluetooth headset that completely failed to work with my Treo.
Sony has come to represent all I despise in the music business. Brokeware, copy protection, proprietary equipment that doesn't cross platforms. Screw that. We want our music transferable, uploadable, lendable, and a bunch of other "ables".
Nike's ads are "Just Do It"
Sony. Yours should be "Just Stop It".
Bastards.
On Socialism
All political systems hinge on certain things:
Where is the free-choice?
Is force being applied somewhere?
In socialist systems free-choice is set aside and coercion (force) is applied somewhere to get money from one person and give it to another whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, some socialism is required in order to deal with the holes that the free market cannot or will not address. However, add too much socialism to the mix, and the bread falls. The bigger the bread, the more likely the falling.
Socialism requires capital to sustain it and yet strangles it to survive. Socialism is a leach that can kill the host. Or at least drive the host somewhere else for treatment.
Where is the free-choice?
Is force being applied somewhere?
In socialist systems free-choice is set aside and coercion (force) is applied somewhere to get money from one person and give it to another whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, some socialism is required in order to deal with the holes that the free market cannot or will not address. However, add too much socialism to the mix, and the bread falls. The bigger the bread, the more likely the falling.
Socialism requires capital to sustain it and yet strangles it to survive. Socialism is a leach that can kill the host. Or at least drive the host somewhere else for treatment.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Natural Bus
We LOVE the VW Bus.
Boing Boing had an article on the work of Lee Stoetzel (see link) and a picture of this VW Bus. What a nice piece.
I have very fond memories of a friend of mines 21 window bus dating back to college. The bus was missing its gigantic rag top and had a roof opening the size of Texas (just like in this picture). Made for really cold trips occasionally.
One day I discovered a fire exinguisher hidden under the dash as my friend was driving and I shot it out the roof opening at 60 miles an hour. The effect was as close to a whale spout as one could hope. That the bus was an oxidized light blue just kind of lent itself to the whole "Whale Experience". I nearly wet myself laughing and Yes, I am easily amused.
So a couple of weeks later, my friend has an engine fire in the bus. Yes, that's right an engine fire. Go figure. My friend grabs his fire exinguisher and Pthht. Just barely enough powder pissed out to put out the fire. The next thing I get a phone call that starts with the phrase "You Son of a Bitch!". My laughter probably didn't help. I had to mop the floor.
And just as a public service announcement, owners of VW busses need to carry multiple fire extinguishers. One with a "grenade pin" or switch and plumbing that shoots right into the engine compartment, and two for your asshole friends to shoot out the roof opening.
Sorry, it's a thing.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Pictures from my last visit to Frisco
Golden Gate Bridge on the right and Lombard Street (crookedest street in the world) is near center of picture).
Spencer Tunick Does It Again.
Spencer Tunick is an amazing photographer that shoots huge flash mobs of people in public.
Naked people that is (click link above, SFW).
They form flowing rivers or lakes of flesh. It is not meant to be prurient but to show the texture of all those bodies merged into one photograph. And he succeeds dramatically. His work was made into two HBO documentaries, Naked States, and Naked World, and they are defintiely worth netflixing.
Gallery of his work (Not Safe for Work)
Naked people that is (click link above, SFW).
They form flowing rivers or lakes of flesh. It is not meant to be prurient but to show the texture of all those bodies merged into one photograph. And he succeeds dramatically. His work was made into two HBO documentaries, Naked States, and Naked World, and they are defintiely worth netflixing.
Gallery of his work (Not Safe for Work)
On Secret Bullshit
Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit from BoingBoing.net
I’ve been alternating between reading The Secret and The Truth About Bullshit. Funny how complementary these two disparate books can be, which has led me to the concept of Secret Bullshit, based on a psychological notion that in order to deceive others you need to deceive yourself.
So, take the CBS lawyers who agreed to the stipulation in Don Imus’ contract that he be given a warning before being fired for doing what they hired him to do in the first place, known as the “dog has one bite” clause. Well, their secret bullshit--bound to become their defense in court--is that although Imus wasn’t warned after referring to Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz as a “boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy,” they still had the right to fire him for saying “nappy-headed hos.”
Now there’s Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam, who wants all those former clients to follow the lead of ex-Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias and testify that they also hired those gals only for a massage, never for sex. OK, everybody say, “Yeah, right.” Ironically, once they’re outed, won’t they gladly reinforce Palfrey’s secret bullshit with their own in order to correspond with what they must now tell their wives?
And finally, the spectacle of ten white male Republican presidential candidates all vying to become the leader of the western world by competing to see which one most disbelieves in evolution, has itself become the Dinosaur Follies. Their utter disdain for stem cell research and their unquestioning support of the invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq are two sides of that same secret bullshit.
You can watch secret bullshit becoming public bullshit as the language becomes increasingly perverted, ranging from the Bush doctrine that the new winning is not winning, to the cavalier morphing of the word debate to mean that candidates are not permitted to ask each other any questions--the very antithesis of what a debate originally meant.
“They should call it an AA meeting,” my wife Nancy observed. “No cross-talk allowed.” She is an instinctive detector of secret bullshit when expressed publicly, that transcends political correctness. As the pundits discuss the merits of stiffer sentences for hate crimes, Nancy wonders aloud, “And what are the others--love crimes?”
Zeus that was well said.....
I’ve been alternating between reading The Secret and The Truth About Bullshit. Funny how complementary these two disparate books can be, which has led me to the concept of Secret Bullshit, based on a psychological notion that in order to deceive others you need to deceive yourself.
So, take the CBS lawyers who agreed to the stipulation in Don Imus’ contract that he be given a warning before being fired for doing what they hired him to do in the first place, known as the “dog has one bite” clause. Well, their secret bullshit--bound to become their defense in court--is that although Imus wasn’t warned after referring to Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz as a “boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy,” they still had the right to fire him for saying “nappy-headed hos.”
Now there’s Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam, who wants all those former clients to follow the lead of ex-Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias and testify that they also hired those gals only for a massage, never for sex. OK, everybody say, “Yeah, right.” Ironically, once they’re outed, won’t they gladly reinforce Palfrey’s secret bullshit with their own in order to correspond with what they must now tell their wives?
And finally, the spectacle of ten white male Republican presidential candidates all vying to become the leader of the western world by competing to see which one most disbelieves in evolution, has itself become the Dinosaur Follies. Their utter disdain for stem cell research and their unquestioning support of the invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq are two sides of that same secret bullshit.
You can watch secret bullshit becoming public bullshit as the language becomes increasingly perverted, ranging from the Bush doctrine that the new winning is not winning, to the cavalier morphing of the word debate to mean that candidates are not permitted to ask each other any questions--the very antithesis of what a debate originally meant.
“They should call it an AA meeting,” my wife Nancy observed. “No cross-talk allowed.” She is an instinctive detector of secret bullshit when expressed publicly, that transcends political correctness. As the pundits discuss the merits of stiffer sentences for hate crimes, Nancy wonders aloud, “And what are the others--love crimes?”
Zeus that was well said.....
True Story.
As I was walking away from my car, a man slowly rode by on his bike and said to me:
"Loan me 90 million dollars. I'll give you an IOU."
What made him choose 90?
"Loan me 90 million dollars. I'll give you an IOU."
What made him choose 90?
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Movie Review "The Lives of Others"
Holy wow. We just got out of the movie "The lives of Others" (German with subtitles). What a collosal piece of movie making. Terrific.
It's the story of an artist/writer and his girlfriend in East Germany during the cold war. They are targetted by the Stasi (secret police) as the girlfriend is forced to have relations with one of the local Communist Party cheifs. I really don't want to spoil the plot and it is very hard to say almost anything without giving something away!
It was startling to see how bad it was under communism. I have vague recollections of horror stories in my Social Studies classes, and reading the papers at a young age, etc. but it was amazing to see it so well portrayed. The story is simply amazing to watch.
Go See It.
As we left the theater an older gentlemen approached us and just started talking. It was clear the movie had moved him as much as it had us and he had to talk to somebody. He chose the right people. We swapped stories of our recent visits to Germany and his, and his experiences of pre-Wall East Germany and Hungary. He said how sad it was to see the state of Hungary and how bleak it was even still.
As my wife, the Teutonic Goddess said "Just goes to prove that a fresh coat of paint can't eradicate 40 years of lost freedom."
It's the story of an artist/writer and his girlfriend in East Germany during the cold war. They are targetted by the Stasi (secret police) as the girlfriend is forced to have relations with one of the local Communist Party cheifs. I really don't want to spoil the plot and it is very hard to say almost anything without giving something away!
It was startling to see how bad it was under communism. I have vague recollections of horror stories in my Social Studies classes, and reading the papers at a young age, etc. but it was amazing to see it so well portrayed. The story is simply amazing to watch.
Go See It.
As we left the theater an older gentlemen approached us and just started talking. It was clear the movie had moved him as much as it had us and he had to talk to somebody. He chose the right people. We swapped stories of our recent visits to Germany and his, and his experiences of pre-Wall East Germany and Hungary. He said how sad it was to see the state of Hungary and how bleak it was even still.
As my wife, the Teutonic Goddess said "Just goes to prove that a fresh coat of paint can't eradicate 40 years of lost freedom."
Friday, May 4, 2007
What, is wrong, with this picture?
It's not in black and white. In fact there's not even a sepia tone to be found there.
Risk!
I have been thinking about the amount of risk we face in our lives quite a bit lately. This thought process evolved from a chart I saw while working on an environmental consulting project that involved me sticking my arms in Hazardous Nuclear Materials (it’s fun, but don’t try this at home kids). The chart looked something like this:
What’s the risk?
Average annual estimates of the risk of death for the U.S. population.
Heart disease 1 in 430
Cancer (all forms)1 in 550
Skin cancer from sun 1 in 4,200
Flu 1 in 8,300
West Nile virus 1 in 30,400
Suicide 1 in 9,000
Murder 1 in 13,500
Crash, motor vehicle 1 in 7,100
Crash, commercial aircraft 1 in 3.1 million
Falls 1 in 20,000
On the job 1 in 48,000
Accidental electrocution: 1 in 300,000
Lightning 1 in 3 million
Shark attack 1 in 300 million
Sources: Risk! A Practical Guide to What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You (Houghton Mifflin 2002) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The odds for a nuclear death from a power plant leaking are 1 in 10 million by the way.
A lot of my data I will use comes from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. They are a great source of ongoing risk information. http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/perspective.html
I have to evaluate risk occasionally as part of my career as an environmental consultant. As such, over the years I have developed a significant skepticism of what constitutes risk, how it is calculated, and what we really should be afraid of.
In my experience, the way you can tell that the media is lying about risk is that their lips are moving. Okay, sometimes they may have an actual risk factor to report, but often the numbers are skewed, or they are hyping it to sell news.
A most recent example of this fear mongering is the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scare in America, more commonly known as “mad cow disease”. A study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis concluded that “if BSE were introduced into the United States, its spread to other animals and the contamination of the human food supply would both be very limited. Indeed, even at present incomplete levels of compliance with government regulations, and based on current knowledge, we predict that the current measures would eventually eradicate the disease, whether an introduction has already occurred or occurs in the future.” In short, we have virtually no risk from Mad Cow. We also worry about Mad Cow while cholesterol ACTUALLY takes out 700,000 of us every year. How stupid is that?
Avian Flu has been a consistently horrifying news item for at least two or three years now. You would think that America must have a lot of cases and deaths from it, right? Avian Flu has killed exactly no one in the United States to date.
Another media scare has been the risks associated with driving while operating a cell phone. While it is getting understood that cell phone does decrease the drivers abilities, what other things might decrease a drivers abilities that are commonly practiced?
“Drivers involved in a distracted-related crash attribute their distraction to the following activities:
• Looking for something outside of the car (building, street sign, etc.) (23% of drivers in a distracted related crash; 0.8% of all drivers)
• Dealing with children or other passengers (19%; 0.7% of all drivers)
• Looking for something inside the car (14%; 0.5% of all drivers)
• Another driver (11%; 0.4% of all drivers)
• Personal thoughts/thinking (5%; 0.2% of all drivers)
• Looking at an animal outside of the car (3%; 0.1% of all drivers)
• Dealing with technology (primarily radio) (2%; 0.1% of all drivers)
• Other distractions (23%; 0.8% of all drivers)”
Source: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/drowsy_driving1/survey-distractive03/summary.htm
So yes, driving while operating a cell phone is dangerous. The risk for being hit by someone using a cell phone is the same risk of driving 60 miles once per year on a non-interstate rural roadway rather than on a rural interstate highway; 1.5 fatalities per 10 million drivers.
Much of the risk factors that are reported are not put in any kind of proper context whatsoever. This is slightly understandable as it is a complex subject, However, that does not excuse the rampant abuse of the statistics either.
For example Breast Cancer Awareness advocates often cite the 1 in 9 odds of getting breast cancer. As much of a fan as I am regarding the preservation of breasts and women's lives, here are the actual numbers:
Breast Cancer
Lifetime risk
1 in 1,000 at age 25
1 in 63 at age 50
1 in 15 at 75
The figure of 1 in 9 assumes a lifetime of 95 years! The average woman’s lifespan in the United States is around 80, and climbing. For a man, living to be 29 eliminates a huge number of risk factors. If you are 30, congratulations! Your testosterone didn’t kill you prematurely!
The best contributor to longevity is not moderate exercise. It is VIGOROUS exercise. Genetics they have now found actually plays a very small role in longevity.
In 1918, the influenza epidemic killed 600,000 Americans. In 1999, influenza killed about 36,000 Americans. By major measures, this is a far healthier, safer world than it has ever been. – source: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
Some more numbers:
U.S. deaths per year per 10 million people:
• 200,000 from heart disease (people over 64)
• 6,000 from lung cancer
• 3,000 from accidents
• 1,000 from homicides
• 400 from accidental poisoning
• 20 from train accidents
• 2 from lightning
British government numbers:
300,000,000/1 shark attack
300,000,000/1 fairground accident
250,000,000/1 falling coconut
11,000,000/1 plane crash
10,000,000/1 killed by lightning
10,000,000/1 killed by the escape of radiation from a nearby nuclear power station.
9,300,000/1 dying in terrorist attack
5,000,000/1 scalded by hot tap water.
4,400,000/1 left-handed people killed using a right-handed product.
3,500,000/1 dying of a snake bite
3,000,000/1 dying from food poisoning
2,300,000/1 dying from falling off a ladder
2,000,000/1 dying after falling out of bed
685,000/1 drowning in the bath
500,000/1 being killed in a train crash
43,500/1 being killed in an accident at work
8,000/1 killed in a road accident.
5/1 dying from cancer
2.5/1 dying from a heart attack or stroke
And then there is the stress itself:
“….chronic stress, by altering blood levels of adrenaline and cortisol, impairs the immune system. Worrying too much about getting sick may actually increase the likelihood that you will get sick, or sicker, or stay sick longer, or die, from any infectious disease. Chronic stress is also associated with the likelihood of type-II diabetes, accelerated osteoporosis, and causes decrements in learning and long term memory. Fear is, in itself, a risk.
Not enough fear can also be dangerous. People unafraid of natural risks like solar radiation, or risks they think they can control like driving, or risks that are associated with benefits, such as smoking or alcohol consumption or fat and calorie-rich diets, fail to take adequate precautions, and they too face a greater likelihood of premature death. Lack of appropriate caution can be dangerous too.” - Harvard Center for Risk Analysis
Now a lot of that stuff is fun to read. And yes, I have a sick sense of fun. But a story unfolds when you start to look at the statistics. The media is bullshitting us. We are nearly forced to worry about Avian Flu and Mad Cow while we drive like insane people, eat like hell, and don’t get me started on smokers. We are told to worry about heavy metals that get into our the fish we eat, while the benefits to our bodies from the Omega Fatty Acids in the fish for our bodies far outweigh any risks from the heavy metals.
So relax! But not TOO much. Stop eating like shit, get out and walk fast, drive conservatively, and stop smoking.
But do yourself the biggest favor of all. Stop reading the newspaper.
What’s the risk?
Average annual estimates of the risk of death for the U.S. population.
Heart disease 1 in 430
Cancer (all forms)1 in 550
Skin cancer from sun 1 in 4,200
Flu 1 in 8,300
West Nile virus 1 in 30,400
Suicide 1 in 9,000
Murder 1 in 13,500
Crash, motor vehicle 1 in 7,100
Crash, commercial aircraft 1 in 3.1 million
Falls 1 in 20,000
On the job 1 in 48,000
Accidental electrocution: 1 in 300,000
Lightning 1 in 3 million
Shark attack 1 in 300 million
Sources: Risk! A Practical Guide to What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You (Houghton Mifflin 2002) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The odds for a nuclear death from a power plant leaking are 1 in 10 million by the way.
A lot of my data I will use comes from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. They are a great source of ongoing risk information. http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/perspective.html
I have to evaluate risk occasionally as part of my career as an environmental consultant. As such, over the years I have developed a significant skepticism of what constitutes risk, how it is calculated, and what we really should be afraid of.
In my experience, the way you can tell that the media is lying about risk is that their lips are moving. Okay, sometimes they may have an actual risk factor to report, but often the numbers are skewed, or they are hyping it to sell news.
A most recent example of this fear mongering is the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scare in America, more commonly known as “mad cow disease”. A study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis concluded that “if BSE were introduced into the United States, its spread to other animals and the contamination of the human food supply would both be very limited. Indeed, even at present incomplete levels of compliance with government regulations, and based on current knowledge, we predict that the current measures would eventually eradicate the disease, whether an introduction has already occurred or occurs in the future.” In short, we have virtually no risk from Mad Cow. We also worry about Mad Cow while cholesterol ACTUALLY takes out 700,000 of us every year. How stupid is that?
Avian Flu has been a consistently horrifying news item for at least two or three years now. You would think that America must have a lot of cases and deaths from it, right? Avian Flu has killed exactly no one in the United States to date.
Another media scare has been the risks associated with driving while operating a cell phone. While it is getting understood that cell phone does decrease the drivers abilities, what other things might decrease a drivers abilities that are commonly practiced?
“Drivers involved in a distracted-related crash attribute their distraction to the following activities:
• Looking for something outside of the car (building, street sign, etc.) (23% of drivers in a distracted related crash; 0.8% of all drivers)
• Dealing with children or other passengers (19%; 0.7% of all drivers)
• Looking for something inside the car (14%; 0.5% of all drivers)
• Another driver (11%; 0.4% of all drivers)
• Personal thoughts/thinking (5%; 0.2% of all drivers)
• Looking at an animal outside of the car (3%; 0.1% of all drivers)
• Dealing with technology (primarily radio) (2%; 0.1% of all drivers)
• Other distractions (23%; 0.8% of all drivers)”
Source: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/drowsy_driving1/survey-distractive03/summary.htm
So yes, driving while operating a cell phone is dangerous. The risk for being hit by someone using a cell phone is the same risk of driving 60 miles once per year on a non-interstate rural roadway rather than on a rural interstate highway; 1.5 fatalities per 10 million drivers.
Much of the risk factors that are reported are not put in any kind of proper context whatsoever. This is slightly understandable as it is a complex subject, However, that does not excuse the rampant abuse of the statistics either.
For example Breast Cancer Awareness advocates often cite the 1 in 9 odds of getting breast cancer. As much of a fan as I am regarding the preservation of breasts and women's lives, here are the actual numbers:
Breast Cancer
Lifetime risk
1 in 1,000 at age 25
1 in 63 at age 50
1 in 15 at 75
The figure of 1 in 9 assumes a lifetime of 95 years! The average woman’s lifespan in the United States is around 80, and climbing. For a man, living to be 29 eliminates a huge number of risk factors. If you are 30, congratulations! Your testosterone didn’t kill you prematurely!
The best contributor to longevity is not moderate exercise. It is VIGOROUS exercise. Genetics they have now found actually plays a very small role in longevity.
In 1918, the influenza epidemic killed 600,000 Americans. In 1999, influenza killed about 36,000 Americans. By major measures, this is a far healthier, safer world than it has ever been. – source: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
Some more numbers:
U.S. deaths per year per 10 million people:
• 200,000 from heart disease (people over 64)
• 6,000 from lung cancer
• 3,000 from accidents
• 1,000 from homicides
• 400 from accidental poisoning
• 20 from train accidents
• 2 from lightning
British government numbers:
300,000,000/1 shark attack
300,000,000/1 fairground accident
250,000,000/1 falling coconut
11,000,000/1 plane crash
10,000,000/1 killed by lightning
10,000,000/1 killed by the escape of radiation from a nearby nuclear power station.
9,300,000/1 dying in terrorist attack
5,000,000/1 scalded by hot tap water.
4,400,000/1 left-handed people killed using a right-handed product.
3,500,000/1 dying of a snake bite
3,000,000/1 dying from food poisoning
2,300,000/1 dying from falling off a ladder
2,000,000/1 dying after falling out of bed
685,000/1 drowning in the bath
500,000/1 being killed in a train crash
43,500/1 being killed in an accident at work
8,000/1 killed in a road accident.
5/1 dying from cancer
2.5/1 dying from a heart attack or stroke
And then there is the stress itself:
“….chronic stress, by altering blood levels of adrenaline and cortisol, impairs the immune system. Worrying too much about getting sick may actually increase the likelihood that you will get sick, or sicker, or stay sick longer, or die, from any infectious disease. Chronic stress is also associated with the likelihood of type-II diabetes, accelerated osteoporosis, and causes decrements in learning and long term memory. Fear is, in itself, a risk.
Not enough fear can also be dangerous. People unafraid of natural risks like solar radiation, or risks they think they can control like driving, or risks that are associated with benefits, such as smoking or alcohol consumption or fat and calorie-rich diets, fail to take adequate precautions, and they too face a greater likelihood of premature death. Lack of appropriate caution can be dangerous too.” - Harvard Center for Risk Analysis
Now a lot of that stuff is fun to read. And yes, I have a sick sense of fun. But a story unfolds when you start to look at the statistics. The media is bullshitting us. We are nearly forced to worry about Avian Flu and Mad Cow while we drive like insane people, eat like hell, and don’t get me started on smokers. We are told to worry about heavy metals that get into our the fish we eat, while the benefits to our bodies from the Omega Fatty Acids in the fish for our bodies far outweigh any risks from the heavy metals.
So relax! But not TOO much. Stop eating like shit, get out and walk fast, drive conservatively, and stop smoking.
But do yourself the biggest favor of all. Stop reading the newspaper.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Pictures from Peterson Ranch
Scenes from the lodge at Peterson Ranch. See the bio on Bob Peterson below.
The gatling gun on the left had just been returned from being on loan at the Smithsonian. It went up the hill in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt.
On the use of Force
I often use force as a measurement of whether something is “wrong”. How is force being applied and by whom? Is it direct? Or a consequence that was simply a byproduct of human interaction. Were we invited to help? Or was some government force used to bully our way in? Who are we screwing in order to experiment some idea out that may or may not work? Is the use of force against that individual, or a slew of individuals that may be innocent, justified in the experiment? Should we get involved at all if the slightest amount of force has to be applied?
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
On Good and Evil
If we remove the labels “good” and “evil”, does it stop the world?
Are the labels reality? Does the map match the geography?
Ten Scale:
Good, 10. Evil, Zero.
Murder’s a zero? Right?
Self-defense? Is that good, or evil? An 8? Or a 2?
Defense of innocents being slaughtered? Is that good, or evil? 7 or 3? 5 perhaps?
Assassinating Hitler? 10. Does that make Saddam an 8?
What if God told someone to kill? 2 for the Killer, 8 for God? Or is it 8 for God and 2 for the killer?
An invasion? Zero, right?
Every area of the earth except for the arctic and Antarctic have been fought over. Every area. Does that make invasion a 1?
Iinvaders were forced to join the army? 3 or 4 for the army? 8 for the soldier?
Defenders against the invasion? 9?
Grey areas everywhere…..
A criminal kills someone innocent. Evil, right? Zero his ass, baby!
He had a brain tumor that affected his brain and changed him from a nice person into a demon. Uh oh! 9 or a 2?
Born with a genetic condition that changed his personality? 7?
Or is he handicapped? 2?
Perhaps he’s a 5? Good person with a bad condition!
Don’t get tied up in what to DO about the criminal. Society has to take care of people like that. Society does a lot of that.
We are NOT society in THIS place. We are singularity.
Death. Evil, right?
In horrible pain? Having a miserable life? Death as mercy?
What if death leads to something better? Nirvana? Heaven? Many people think that….what if they are right?
Dying to save others? Take the bullet….
Dying for country? People actually CHOOSE to die? Really?
Evil seems awefully slippery.....
Good:
Food is good!
Fat yet?
Love is good!
Divorce is 50%
Helping others is good!
“No good deed goes unpunished”.
God is good!
“Anything said about God needs to be said over a pit of burning babies” Eli Weisel.
Youth is good?
Wouldn’t trade MY experience. Would you?
Age brings wisdom?
Ah the naïve innocence of youth….
Abortion?
Oh WAIT a MINUTE. Preachin AND meddlin!
A perfect 5. The Perfect Storm. That’s why people can’t decide if it’s right or wrong. Just my opinion. Move on.
Capital Punishment?
Perfect 5? Maybe, maybe not.
Move on.
A woman is raped and it ruins her life. Another becomes a force of nature.
A father dies and the daughter becomes president.
An entire village is destroyed by a volcano. Future generations farm the slopes.
If you look at the corners of your mind, do you see the dissonance?
SHOUT it down, if you must.
Or.
Play with the Jello in the corner.
Are the labels reality? Does the map match the geography?
Ten Scale:
Good, 10. Evil, Zero.
Murder’s a zero? Right?
Self-defense? Is that good, or evil? An 8? Or a 2?
Defense of innocents being slaughtered? Is that good, or evil? 7 or 3? 5 perhaps?
Assassinating Hitler? 10. Does that make Saddam an 8?
What if God told someone to kill? 2 for the Killer, 8 for God? Or is it 8 for God and 2 for the killer?
An invasion? Zero, right?
Every area of the earth except for the arctic and Antarctic have been fought over. Every area. Does that make invasion a 1?
Iinvaders were forced to join the army? 3 or 4 for the army? 8 for the soldier?
Defenders against the invasion? 9?
Grey areas everywhere…..
A criminal kills someone innocent. Evil, right? Zero his ass, baby!
He had a brain tumor that affected his brain and changed him from a nice person into a demon. Uh oh! 9 or a 2?
Born with a genetic condition that changed his personality? 7?
Or is he handicapped? 2?
Perhaps he’s a 5? Good person with a bad condition!
Don’t get tied up in what to DO about the criminal. Society has to take care of people like that. Society does a lot of that.
We are NOT society in THIS place. We are singularity.
Death. Evil, right?
In horrible pain? Having a miserable life? Death as mercy?
What if death leads to something better? Nirvana? Heaven? Many people think that….what if they are right?
Dying to save others? Take the bullet….
Dying for country? People actually CHOOSE to die? Really?
Evil seems awefully slippery.....
Good:
Food is good!
Fat yet?
Love is good!
Divorce is 50%
Helping others is good!
“No good deed goes unpunished”.
God is good!
“Anything said about God needs to be said over a pit of burning babies” Eli Weisel.
Youth is good?
Wouldn’t trade MY experience. Would you?
Age brings wisdom?
Ah the naïve innocence of youth….
Abortion?
Oh WAIT a MINUTE. Preachin AND meddlin!
A perfect 5. The Perfect Storm. That’s why people can’t decide if it’s right or wrong. Just my opinion. Move on.
Capital Punishment?
Perfect 5? Maybe, maybe not.
Move on.
A woman is raped and it ruins her life. Another becomes a force of nature.
A father dies and the daughter becomes president.
An entire village is destroyed by a volcano. Future generations farm the slopes.
If you look at the corners of your mind, do you see the dissonance?
SHOUT it down, if you must.
Or.
Play with the Jello in the corner.
Comrades! It's May Day!
In honor of May Day, I plan to go waste a sustantial chunk of change on a capitalist spending spree. I will eat at a very posh restaurant for lunch, I will buy something Completely Frivolous and of no necessity whatsoever, and pick up a copy of "The Wealth of Nations" preferably in hardback with leather binding. Lastly, I plan to buy a copy of "The Communist Manifesto" and burn it in secret so it gets no press at all, which is what it deserves.
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