The Tyranny of the Majority: If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority [...]
READ MORE »Ah, capitalism! What depths you won’t go to to make a buck! Child-safety software sells your kids’ IM conversations to market-research companies …”Turns out that these same sleazeballs also monitor your kids’ IM sessions and sell the info to market-research companies that want to fine-tune how they sell sugar and explosions to kids.”…
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Ah, that ol’ “liberal media,” avoiding the truth and spreading lies. Well, part of that statement is correct. (Feel free to skip the following introductory diatribe and go right to the featured link at the end of this essay. What it has to say is certainly more interesting and coherent than my ramblings.) Until I [...]
READ MORE »Here’s a question I’d love to get some feedback here, or where it gets cross-posted to Facebook and Twitter: Let’s say it’s a post-apocalypse situation where whatever happened caused crops to stop growing and all herbivores (i.e.: the animals we farm and eat) to die off, like in the years leading up to Cormac McCarthy’s [...]
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Facebook readers: this post came from my official blog; the auto-transfer to FB tends to strip any embedded images.) This will be a quick post by me; I can discuss my thoughts on this at great length, but I think it’s more important that one just simply read this fantastic article: Canadian Perspectives 2009: The [...]
READ MORE »Last week, on Earth Day, during my university’s day-long thingie on “social development” and environmental concerns, SF author Kim Stanley Robinson spoke for a bit on social responsibility for humanity’s future. He said some great things, I took notes, he signed a book of mine and we had a very brief conversation. Here’s a summary [...]
READ MORE »I’m listening to multi-award winning SF author Robert J. Sawyer on the SciFiDimensions podcast (I’m on my iPhone so you’ll have to google for a link), and he’s asked why so many award winning and critically aclaimed SF writers come out of Canada and the U.K. His answer: socialized health care. There’s an addage that [...]
READ MORE »(OK, last post for tonight…) I have a love/hate relationship with the blog “Classically Liberal“. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis on the failed War on Drugs, the criticisms of institutional education, his disgust for the encroaching police state, police abuse of power, face-palming frustration at the destructive and absolutely absurd criminalization of sexuality, [...]
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(OK, only a couple more of blog posts in this surge.) BoingBoing has an article: “Marx was right!” in which the author discusses his move from being a dot-com capitalist to a return to a respect for Marx’s criticism of capitalism. (His wife, who said of his return to Marxist studies that it’s “worse than [...]
READ MORE »Am I talking about the Crips and the Bloods? Nope. A better armed, better funded gang but with all the bravado, arrogance, power-lust, of any street gang. Posted on BoingBoing: 15-year-old girl beaten by sheriff’s deputy You tell me, “lippy” shoe-kicking disrespect or no, does a teenage girl need to be body-slammed, punched in the [...]
READ MORE »There are many significant difference between the conservative and the liberal mindset, outlook, approach on life, society, and government. That’s an obvious statement. But I think a way in which the main difference is realized is in exactly how the think of the role of government. The conservative (general Republican) will shout the battle-cry “smaller [...]
READ MORE »Now that the Democrats have won, how do those of us who have been called traitors and unpatriotic for being patriotic by expressing our freedom of dissent, behave? Wil Wheaton says, “Don’t be a dick!” “…or else we didn’t win anything at all.” Wise words.
READ MORE »…the year after nothing happens. Hooray for CNN.com! Usually I tear my metaphorical hair (it’s the only hair I have left) at CNN.com for their almost consistently credulous “reporting” of “unexplained” events. UFO sightings, ghosts caught on film, angels, psychics to the CEOs….all met with not just an open mind but heads with brains that [...]
READ MORE »I just listened to the latest episode of Point of Inquiry: Christopher Burns- Deadly Decisions At risk of being hyperbolic, it was by far one of the most interesting, important, vital interviews I have listened to. In this interview with D.J. Grothe, Christopher Burns talks about the biology of the brain, the behavior of groups, [...]
READ MORE »If you know me you know that I have a love/hate relationship with conspiracy theories. On the one hand, they’re really entertaining! They make for great “X-Files” plotlines, and extra bonus points if they can work in The Illuminati! (And keep a straight face.) fnord But on the other hand, they’re almost always complete bunk. [...]
READ MORE »Cryptography and e-security expert, Bruce Schneier, has a good article featured on BoingBoing today arguing to either let people bring liquids back on planes, or take the ban seriously and actually treat the supposed threatening liquids like a threat: Why people who try to bring toothpaste on a plane should be arrested
READ MORE »I came upon the subject through a blog entry on Skepchick: Creationist Comeuppance on YouTube I started watching the video apology the creationist is “forced” to give for unethically and possibly illegally invoking DMCA to try to extort a critic of his to remove his critical videos. I got bored and stopped watching it. While [...]
READ MORE »I can’t believe I missed this. In researching information on my last post regarding the addition of peaceful opponents to capital punishment being added by police to terrorist watch lists, I found this news item from last year about the FBI and CIA’s programs to recruit and pay for citizen informants (thus spreading fear and [...]
READ MORE »It’s easy to find countless articles on the appearant rise of police brutality and fascist, militarized mindset, and are gleefully proud of their testasterone overdosed abuses, and stories in which the police are used as political weapons. Well, here’s one more story of overreaching abuse of power and damage to civil liberties: Top Maryland cops [...]
READ MORE »Hilarious story for you; be sure to hold onto your side for this rib-tickler: As the nearly 160 year old bank, Lehman Brother’s, failed, funneling toward bankruptcy, it was handing millions of dollars in compensation over to its CEO. Lehman Bros. chief executive faces lawmakers “Your company is now bankrupt, our economy is now in [...]
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