from nbc:
the US has 5% of the world's population and has 25% of the prisoners
oddly enough this is very similar to oil consumption
we use 25% of the world's oil
A forward:
MURPHY'S LAW
"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."
MURPHY'S LAW EXTENDED
"If a series of events can go wrong, it will do so in the worst possible sequence."
MURPHY'S PARADOX
"Doing it the hard way is always easier."
MURPHY'S FIRST COROLLARY
"Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first."
MURPHY'S SECOND COROLLARY
"Nature always sides with the hidden flaw."
MURPHY'S THIRD COROLLARY
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious."
MURPHY'S LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
"Things get worse under pressure."
O'TOOLE'S COMMENTARY ON MURPHY'S LAW
"Murphy was an optimist."
SILVERMAN'S PARADOX
"If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will."
GATUSSO'S EXTENSION OF MURPHY'S LAW
"Nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse."
FIRST POSTULATE OF ISO-MURPHISM
"Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other."
BEAGLE'S QUANTUM ADJUSTMENT TO MURPHY
"Everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong already. It just hasn't happened yet."
BEAGLE'S LAW OF MATERNAL PRECOGNITION
"Why tell your mother what you did? She already knows."
BEAGLE'S FIRST LAW OF MATERIAL COEXISTENCE
"A square peg will fit into any round hole if traveling at sufficient velocity."
BEAGLE'S FOURTH IDEOLOGICAL INSIGHT
"Size does matter. The bigger your education, the deeper your paradigm."
BEAGLE'S PARADIGM SHIFT NUMBER ONE (with apologies to Newton)
"A belief in motion tends to stay in motion, in a straight line, at a uniform rate of acceptance, unless acted upon by outside facts."
BEAGLE'S FIRST LAW OF GOVERNANCE
"Tyranny expands to fill the amount of passivity available for its implementation."
BEAGLE'S SECOND LAW OF GOVERNANCE
"Tyranny is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes suits."
BEAGLE'S THIRD LAW OF GOVERNANCE
"The result of an irresistible freedom force meeting an immovable tyrannical object is, well, revolution."
BEAGLE'S FOURTH LAW OF GOVERNANCE
"The desire for freedom varies inversely with the number of cable channels available."
FINAGLE'S FOURTH LAW
"Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse."
FELSON'S LAW
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
SOULDER'S LAW
"Repetition does not establish validity."
HECHT'S FOURTH LAW
"There's no time like the present for postponing what you don't want to do."
MAYNE'S LAW
"Nobody notices the big errors."
WRIGHT'S FIRST LAW OF QUALITY
"Quality is inversely proportional to the time left for completion of the project."
STEINER'S MAXIM
"The fact that you do not know the answer does not mean that someone else does."
GUMMIDGE'S LAW
"The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the general public."
DOOLEY'S LAW
"Trust everybody, but cut the cards."
BRALEK'S RULE FOR SUCCESS
"Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you do when things go wrong."
SCHMIDT'S LAW
"If you mess with a thing long enough, it will break."
HOARE'S LAW OF LARGE PROBLEMS
"Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out."
CAPTAIN PENNY'S LAW
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool MOM."
DISMONI'S RULE OF COGNITION
"Believing is seeing."
HANE'S LAW
"There is no limit to how bad things can get."
PERUSSEL'S LAW
"There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong."
LOFTUS' FIFTH LAW OF MANAGEMENT
"Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book."
SWEENEY'S LAW
"The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress."
RUDNICKI'S NOBEL PRINCIPLE
"Only someone who understands something absolutely can explain it so no one else can understand it."
JACOBSON'S LAW
"The less work an organization produces, the more frequently it reorganizes."
FIRST LAW OF LIVING
"As soon as you're doing what you wanted to be doing, you want to be doing something else."
BARUCH'S ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLE
"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
FOX ON PROBLEMATICS
"When a problem goes away, the people working to solve it do not."
FARNSDICK'S COROLLARY
"After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself."
DUCHARM'S AXIOM
"If one views his problem closely enough, he will recognize himself as part of the problem."
HALDANE'S LAW
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we CAN suppose."
MRS. WEILER'S LAW
"Anything is edible if chopped finely enough."
SIMON'S LAW
"Everything put together falls apart sooner or later."
LIPPPMAN'S LEMMA
"People specialize in their area of greatest weakness."
AIGNER'S AXIOM
"No matter how well you perform your job, a superior will seek to modify the results."
RUCKERT'S LAW
There is nothing so small that it can't be blown out of proportion."
JENKIN'S CONUNDRUM
"The unaware are unaware of being unaware."
Super fab article from Counterpunch
"I think the reason for this is that Latin America was used as a laboratory by the United States for a long, long time. Everything the US wanted was experimented in Latin America first. When they wanted military—on the political level—when they wanted to crush popular movements by unleashing military dictatorships they did it in Latin America first: Brazil, Argentina, Chile; three of the most brutal dictatorships we have seen. Then, after the collapse of the communist enemy, they relaxed on the political front but they got Latin America in a grip economically, and they said ‘this is the only way forward.’ The laboratory of the American Empire is the first to rebel against the Empire. "
"they [the US] don’t feel threatened is because there is an idealistic slogan within the social movements, which goes like this: ‘We can change the world without taking power.’ This slogan doesn’t threaten anyone; it’s a moral slogan. The Zapatistas—who I admire—you know, when they marched from Chiapas to Mexico City, what did they think was going to happen? Nothing happened. It was a moral symbol, it was not even a moral victory because nothing happened. .. But I think, from that point of view, the Venezuelan example is the most interesting one. It says: ‘in order to change the world you have to take power, and you have to begin to implement change—in small doses if necessary—but you have to do it. Without it nothing will change.’
This is a great interview between Michael Moore and Bill O'Rielly.
This is an in teresting article on the history of populism and how the Democrats lost the South.
And below is a great forward to send to that republican uncle of yours:
Things you have to believe to be a Republican today:
* Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
* Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
* A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
* Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
* The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
* If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
* Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
* HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
* Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
* A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
* Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
* The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's cocaine conviction is none of our business.
* Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.
* You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.
* What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.
* Feel free to pass this on. If you don't send it to at least 10 other people, we're likely to be stuck with Bush for 4 more years.
Friends don't let friends vote Republican.
Apparently the US is trading fake AK-47s on in the international weapons market. Russia is pissed.
"Russia is suffering losses in income, jobs and damage to the Kalashnikov name, the officials say, and would like the United States to shop for the weapons directly from here."
"Sometimes the weapons have been transferred ... via the solicitation of donations from friendly states as a gesture of cooperation with the Bush administration's war and reconstruction efforts." How nice of us.
Better get used to the AK, the Automatic Assault Weapons Ban expires September 13th! Neat AK factoid: they were named for Russian inventor Mikhail T. Kalashnikov. The article also goes into the global uses of the AK, very neat.
July 26, 2004
Who's a Pirate? Russia Points Back at the U.S.
By C. J. CHIVERS
ZHEVSK, Russia, July 24 - The bazaar in this industrial city shows why Western companies regard Russia as a land of piracy.
Bootlegged copies of new American movies - "King Arthur,'' "Troy'' and "Spider-Man 2'' - sell for $3. Photoshop CS, a $600 program in Western stores, fetches $2.75.
Markets like this, found throughout Russia, have been a longstanding subject of diplomatic complaint. Washington contends Russian intellectual-property pirates cost the United States more than $1 billion a year.
Now Russia is striking back. A Russian industry and product designer are asserting that the United States has been abetting intellectual-property pirates to suit its own needs, by directing copies of Russian merchandise around the world.
The complaint is not about software or music. It makes no mention of movies or video games. It is about the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the most prolific firearm ever made.
"We see a great number of products which are named after Kalashnikov, my name,'' said Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the weapon's original designer. "They are buying Kalashnikovs from other countries,'' he added.
Since the collapses of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq, the United States has been purchasing or arranging the transfer of thousands of knockoffs of Kalashnikovs commonly referred to as AK-47's, to outfit new military and security forces in Kabul and Baghdad.
These rifles have not been made in Russia, where the arms industry holds patents for the weapon in several nations. Instead they have originated in weapons plants controlled by Eastern European states, each of which was a partner of Moscow's in Soviet days.
So begins an argument at once curious, impassioned and bizarre, involving the legacy of cold war influence jockeying, secretive arms deals, recent efforts to defeat modern Islamic insurgencies, and international business and patent law.
The automatic Kalashnikov, made in a factory here, is in many ways Moscow's Ford. It is a quintessential national product: extraordinarily successful, widespread, a name closely connected to the identity of a state.
It was designed by Mr. Kalashnikov, a former Russian tank sergeant, in classified Soviet weapons trials shortly after World War II, and was promptly embraced by Soviet soldiers for its simplicity and reliability under almost any condition. It is regarded as a weapon that rarely, if ever, fails.
Russian arms officials say that no other nation has a valid license to make the AK-47 and its many derivatives and clones, and that to defeat insurgents and terrorists, Washington has been encouraging violations of intellectual property rights. Russia is suffering losses in income, jobs and damage to the Kalashnikov name, the officials say, and would like the United States to shop for the weapons directly from here.
"We would like to inform everybody in the world that many countries, including the United States, have unfortunately violated recognized norms," said Igor Sevastyanov, who leads a division of Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-controlled arms export company. American officials confirm that non-Russian Kalashnikov rifles have been provided with American assistance to Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes the weapons have been transferred via purchases on international arms markets, they say, other times via the solicitation of donations from friendly states as a gesture of cooperation with the Bush administration's war and reconstruction efforts.
The officials also say that they are aware of the Russian complaints, which raise questions of provenance that remain unresolved.
"We have taken the position that there are important issues with respect to the production, intellectual property rights and conditions of export of these weapons, and it is important that we strengthen controls in all of these areas," a State Department official said. Officials from Rosoboronexport and Izhmash, the Russian company holding patents on the rifle, say American-coordinated transfers include Kalashnikov clones made in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian plants that have continued to be sold despite Russian complaints.
Another transfer, arranged by the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq last year, involved the purchase of Kalashnikovs from Jordan. The weapons were believed to be excess stock from the Jordanian army, and to have been manufactured years ago by the former East Germany, another State Department official said.
The transfers have been diplomatically delicate; the Jordanian deal drew complaints from across the political spectrum.
American business representatives have said that American-made rifles should be bought to preserve American jobs. Others questioned the wisdom of shipping more automatic rifles to countries already awash in such guns.
Congressman have asked why American forces did not save money by reissuing to friendly forces the thousands of Kalashnikov rifles confiscated in both wars.
(Last spring, journalists from The New York Times watched United States marines collect tens of thousands of mint-condition Kalashnikovs in a cache in a hospital in Tikrit. The weapons were still in their original packing crates.)
In spite of complaints, the transfers continued, American officials say, in part because the automatic Kalashnikov is inexpensive and requires less training to master than modern American rifles. Several officials noted that many young Iraqi and Afghan men already know how to use it.
Izhmash and Rosoboronexport agree with this position; their officials are even proud that the Pentagon prefers the Kalashnikov for its new allies.
But they say Washington's deals have come at the expense of Izhmash and Izhevsk, where mass production of the rifles began in 1949, and where orders and the work force have shrunk since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
More than 12,000 people worked on the gun lines then; roughly 7,000 work there today, and at fewer shifts, said Andrei Vishnyakov, an Izhmash official.
The officials noted that the low price of Kalashnikov knockoffs can make it impossible to sell the genuine item, a phenomenon resembling the underselling of software and DVD's, albeit on a different scale.
For example, the Jordanian rifles sold for about $60 each - less than one-fourth of the price of a new Kalashnikov from the Izhmash plant, according to Rosoboronexport data.
"They are selling these rifles at dump prices," said Alexander G. Likhachev, a former Izhmash director who is now an official with the state arms agency.
He added that Russia wants that business. "We are prepared to manufacture the genuine weapons, in big quantities, because we know there is a demand," he said.
The legal standing of Rosoboronexport's complaint is uncertain. American officials, analysts and trade representatives said issues surrounding each transfer would require intensive legal research to resolve.
The task would be daunting. In the 1950's, in a mix of collaborative revolutionary spirit and jockeying against the West, the Soviet Union began exporting the rifles and the technology to manufacture them to states in its sphere of influence. Ultimately, Moscow entered licensing agreements with 18 states, according to Rosoboronexport.
"We transferred and gave them all the technical documentation, all the know-how about the design," Mr. Kalashnikov, now 84, said in an interview at his dacha in the Russian woods. "Representatives of these countries came here. They studied our production line."
Moreover, once the rifle's utility became well known, another 11 countries began making derivatives and clones without Moscow's approval, the state agency said.
Russia says that all former licenses have expired. But to make this case, the old licenses would have to be studied, as would Izhmash's more recently acquired patents as well as intellectual property laws in each Kalashnikov-manufacturing state.
A third American official said several former Soviet-bloc countries that formerly made Kalashnikovs with Moscow's approval contend they retain rights to the weapon today. "There is a dispute among all the parties involved," the official said.
Still, whatever the legal merits, analysts agree: the complaint's symbolic power is great.
"I'm not a big fan of guns, but that said, if the creators of this intellectual property have rights to enforce, I really do hope they can get them enforced in every country," Eric Schwartz, a vice president of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, said in a telephone interview. "And I hope that the United States government would comply and set a good example."
The alliance represents American companies with products protected by copyright laws.
The complaint also faces the unrelenting realities of the market. After decades in production in plants in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, the automatic Kalashnikov has spread far beyond Izhevsk's reach.
Analysts estimate that 70 million to 105 million of the weapons have been made.
It has been used not only by more than 55 state armies, but also by the Viet Cong, militias in Beirut, Palestinian insurgents in Gaza City, guerrillas in Iraq and child soldiers in Asian and African states. A Kalashnikov is on the seal of Hezbollah and the flag of Mozambique. It features prominently in the symbolism of jihad.
Even the United States long ago entered in the Kalashnikov business, in the 1980's, when it surreptitiously bought Chinese and Egyptian Kalashnikovs for Islamic guerrillas battling the Red Army in Afghanistan.
American purchases of Kalashnikovs have continued intermittently since then. A few years ago, according to officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, Washington purchased Kalashnikovs for a Nigerian peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone.
With so many of the weapons in circulation, one analyst said Russia's complaint could prove to be an almost impossible fight.
Rosoboronexport's position is like "the Chinese saying they have a royalty right on every firearm, because that's where it all started with the invention of gunpowder 700 years ago," said Dr. Aaron Karp, a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia who specializes in weapon proliferation issues.
Mr. Kalashnikov, who said the Russian versions of his rifle are superior, and who expressed deep fondness to Russian workers who have long made them, recognized the difficulties in the state agency's complaint.
He remembered that years ago President Boris N. Yeltsin vowed to defend the weapon from market infringement, to no avail. "President Yeltsin said he would do everything," Mr. Kalashnikov said. "But it's not so easy."
"The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report that is being released today. "
"The growth in what the report termed the "correctional population" comes at a time when the crime rate nationwide has been relatively stable for several years. The report does not address why the number of men and women in jail and prison and on probation and parole has continued to increase. But experts say the most likely reason is the cumulative effect of the tougher sentencing laws passed in the 1990s. "
“CLARIFICATION: It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.”
This is a great article on two Kentucky newspapers' recent apology for never covering the Civil Rights movemnt in the 60's. All the protests were never mentioned so as to "make the problem go away." Of course, there are paralells and of course, he highlights them.
A friend who works in media had some interesting information about ways that corporations get their messages presented in a news format. Yes, this is prime, DL type shit:
There are 2 levels of deceipt involved in this lucrative business. First: The companies make slick "news style" pieces that the news shows run as though it was news. This is partly due to the fact that many of these local news stations do not have the budget, equipment, or trained personnel to make a slick piece - so they are happy to have something to spice up their show - or just look professional. These video companies hire former news employees and pay them twice as much, so the pieces look and sound like the something you would see on the network news-they are very well crafted.
But then here's the really interesting part. These corporations want to know how often their pieces are actually making air, so they encode the footage and hire Nielson who does the ratings for the networks to track how often the footage shows up on any News broadcast. Then another company puts together a reel of all the times the pieces aired and gives it to the corporation. Now even though the news companies often air these pieces in their entirety the one thing they often don't do is name the company who is providing the spokesperson. But that is the what these companies really crave more than anything - they go through the whole process so that their company will receive name recognition and validity from being in a news environment. So the video company who made the piece originally then puts the name of the company into the piece in the same style as the rest of the news show, and gives it back to the corporation as though that was how it aired on National TV. Basically the person that you hire to fool the public is also fooling you.
The other thing that makes it even more complicated is that often these pieces are really helpful, informative pieces. They might be about various ways to protect yourself and your home from fire, or how to lower the chances of an elderly person having an automobile accident. The news stations don't make these pieces because they are too busy making pieces about the latest double homicide or the color of the terror alert. So in some ways these are helpful, informative pieces which because of the media bias toward sensationalism would not ordinarily be produced. This wouldn't be the case if the media had not abdicated their role as a source of information in our society. But since the media to a certain extent has given up that role, there is a way in which these companies are filling a void. Keep in mind however that they are always filling this void from their own point of view, and there are subtle ways this comes out. For example a Pfizer spokesperson talking about medication problems will not say,
"Perhaps the medication should be discontinued." He will say,"Perhaps this medication should be switched to a different medication."
"By 2002, one of every four black men in the U.S. was idle all year long. This idleness rate was twice as high as that of white and Hispanic males."
"The study did not consider homeless men or those in jail or prison. It is believed that up to 10 percent of the black male population under age 40 is incarcerated."
"This does not even begin to address the very serious problems of underemployment, such as part-time or temporary jobs, and extremely low-wage work."
"Finally, it's just wrong to allow so many Americans to remain in a state of social and economic degradation without attempting to alter the conditions responsible for their suffering.
Education is one of the keys here. As Professor Sum found, 44 percent of black men with no high school diploma were idle year-round versus 26 percent of those with a diploma, and 13 percent of those with a bachelor's (or higher) degree."
Apparently the foreskin replacment industry is thriving.
I wonder how it comapres to the hymen replacment industry....
According to this article, the birth control pill Provera has been shown to inhibit sexual desire and increse anxiety and aggression in female macaques.
--> So fake estrogen makes women angry, anxious and not want sex.
According to this article, progesterone, the "female" hormone promts male mice to be excessively aggressive and threaton their pups. In a natural setting, male mice generally committ infanticide, but when progesterone receptors were blocked, they started acting like "good dads."
--> So real progesterone can make men want to kill their offspring.
This is a fascinating article on how nature and nurturing work together. Apparently there was a study done in New Zealand starting in 1972, which showed that children were much more likely to grow up to be aggressive and antisocial if they had inherited a "short" version of a gene called MAOA. This short version is worse at breaking down neurotransmitters like serotonin than the long version.
But the kids in the study only went ballistic (as they were genetically pre-disposed to do) when they had some crisis in their lives. The article is about a duplicate study done on monkeys.
Possible results of the study are "prenatal screening tests which ensure that infants at risk receive optimal mothering in their first two years of life." I can't imagine what they would have in mind.....
But I think this whole thing is fascinating because it is really making me think about the extent to which our state of mind controls our entire body on a very physical level.
I also think it's funny how they only look at the level to which the monkeys have been "mothered" as thought the presence or absense or potentially violent disposition of a father would have no effect...
An amazing quote from the the lovely voodoolulu:
"I spoke with a friend yesterday who happens to be an expert on suicide. He is writing a book on suicide. He confirmed something I had read years ago: the suicide rate is higher than the homicide rate in the US. Which means statistically you have a greater chance of killing yourself than of being killed by someone. "
I just read Notes from the Underground and have been thinking about suicide a lot. (not that anyone kills themselves in that book). But, my big realization is that I think people need to be given a reason to live or they will simply self destruct. Which makes sense from a social-darwinian perspective.
It seems like there are two types of suicide: revenge / reactionary suicide (like when your wife cheats and you write your last words on the wall in blood, or set yourself on fire outside the white house) and hopeless suicide. The latter *always* say "I have no reason to live." Far from Freud's Death Drive, I think humans will automatically kill themselves unless they are given explicit reasons not to. Reasons can be things we all take for granted, like the responsibility of going to work at Burger King every day, the knowledge that your mother would never be able to handle it, or giving life by watering your houseplants. I’ve never read it, but I would imagine that people without strong social bonds tend to kill themselves more often. I've also heard that people with cancer recover far better if they feel they have responsibilities to attend to.
Without a purpose, we jump off cliffs like we used to think lemmings did. Full body apoptosis. More self destruction that self sacrifice I guess, but still, weak links take care of themselves. Of course, someone could easily use the "not everyone" retort, but I think this theory covers a large enough percentage of the population to be significant.
In general (beware the tangent) I think responsibilities are a savior. The amount of choice in the life of the average american white girl can be suffocating and immobilizing. The social mobility of democracy and capitalism encourage us to find our purpose through profitable vocation, which, even if one succeeds, is rather superficial and trite compared to harvesting or sewing.
Sometimes it seems like life would be so much easier if I knew I was a coal miner’s daughter and knew I could count on spending my life in the dark and dying of black lung. Trying to figure out your purpose in life is a huge burden. (I know, you’re crying for me at this very moment). But it seems from here that in the past, one could just work as hard as they could on the path they were put on. Now we choose the path and spend so much time switching to other paths and wondering if we made the right decision.
We are taught to quest for power in this society. Climb up. That is what you should want, to succeed. But success is also such a burden. It's fucking hard work to tell someone else what to do! (I avoid it at all costs).
I'll never forget this dominatrix I met at Berkeley in 1999. She said that the vast majority of her clientele were all those guys who made massive fortunes when they were 25 in Silicon Valley before the bubble burst. Those men wanted to be dominated, treated like babies, chained to the wall, to *relieve* themselves of the burden of power, let her take it for a while.
Other societies, some Native American among them, feel that those who want power are the least deserving and trustworthy people to put in power. They look at power itself as an undesirable responsibility. Higher ups have to take on those positions because they would be best for it, not because they want to.
This has tons of implications for democracy. Rather than some slick guy sauntering in and wooing populations, trying to convince them he is going to vote for their interests so they should vote for him, the system should be designed so that communities pick members from within them, and tell that person what to say to speak for them directly. This, of course, is not my thought but has been written in the past. I don’t remember how that relates to suicide…But I think we need to work on making lives real again. I’m not even going to put quotes around the word real. Fie postmodernism!
The end.
(also could be called, "why i'm disenchanted with the left")
There are lots of "Tom's" in this article. Beware.
I think the articles misses some main points though. Mainly, that Democrats lake the "get the government out of my life" attitude that courts so many people who are not elite.
It's a great article, but if you don't want to read the whole thing, good excerpts are in "more."
"The DLC, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. "
"The way to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies, "New Democrats" think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as "class warfare" and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests. "
"Besides, what politician in this success-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where's the soft money in that? "
"Liberalism isn't a force of karmic nature that pushes back when the corporate world goes too far; it is a man-made contrivance as subject to setbacks and defeats as any other."
"Labor unions are on the wane today, as everyone knows, down to 9% of the private-sector workforce from a high-water mark of 38% in the 1950s.
American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world."
"Sociologists often warn against letting the nation's distribution of wealth become too polarized, as it clearly has in the last few decades. Societies that turn their backs on equality, the professors insist, inevitably meet with a terrible comeuppance. But those sociologists were thinking of an old world in which class anger was a phenomenon of the left. They weren't reckoning with Kansas, with the world we are becoming. "
"As a social system, the backlash works. The two adversaries feed off of each other in a kind of inverted symbiosis: one mocks the other, and the other heaps even more power on the one. This arrangement should be the envy of every ruling class in the world. Not only can it be pushed much, much farther, but it is fairly certain that it will be so pushed. All the incentives point that way, as do the never-examined cultural requirements of modern capitalism. Why shouldn't our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier? "
Apparently Hawking was sort of wrong about this theories on black holes. He says that when they stop radiating, there is somehow informaition one can extract from them...I don't get it. But apparently he'll explain it soon.
http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/english/article250240.ece
Excerpt: "The goal is to take over the entire commercial porn industry and transfer all the money to protection of the environment"
Yes, there are pictures.
Woo hoo! That anti-circumcision movement is growing! It really blows my mind that this continues to be an acceptable practice (beware, the pictures are totally graphic). Honestly, I've wondered in the past if it doesn't have anything to do with the penile obsession of so many men. I mean, if the first thing that happens to you is your parents chopping of part of your penis, you're GOING to be phallocentric for the rest of your life. I think it's pretty funny that Freud thought castration fear came from sex when there's such an obvious source in circumcision. Although I doubt Austrians were getting chopped in the 1920's....
There's even a documentarycoming out about it.
Give me a break, woman. Does she honestly think she is saying anything new with the rant about girls on film being way too porn? Is this news to anyone? And the whole part at the end about Uma being lame in Kill Bill because of her desire to be with her daughter is complete hypocrisy and totally anti-woman. I feel like the feminist movement has evolved beyond opinions like this and if people don't stop giving them air space, it's going to make the rest of us look bad.
38 million people world wide are infected with HIV according to a new UN study. That is larger than the size of all of Canada (about 35 million).
Apparently there's now a resturant in London where you can test to see if you're related to Genghis Khan while you eat.
This is a press release about this study a woman is doing at my school:
HARDER, FASTER, STRONGER: FEMALE ATHLETE PERFORMANCE MAY BE LINKED TO MENSTRUAL CYCLE: Women in the second half of their menstrual cycle may have a better chance of sinking a basket or beating a competitor to the finish line, according to research by UVic masters of science graduate Laura Middleton. The sport and exercise major conducted a three-month sprint-based study with six active women between the ages of 20 and 30 and found a significant difference in the average speed the women were able to achieve over a series of sprints. "The sprints simulated the accelerated bursts of speed that athletes perform during game-based sports like soccer, field hockey, ice hockey or basketball," says Middleton. "In a series of six second sprints, I found that the women could cover an average of a metre further during the second half of their cycle. That's a huge difference if you're going for a ball or a puck." Middleton's research led to her thesis, Effects of menstrual phase on performance and recovery in intense intermittent activity. She hopes her study will help women understand the effects of their menstrual cycle and potentially tailor their training schedules to achieve more powerful performances.