March 2009
1 post
3 tags
Does fear/caution serve a purpose?
People who have become slaves to their fear will tell you yes. If you surrender it is easy to rationalize, to tell yourself that this is to some extent reasonable. Let me be clear what I am not talking about here: I do not mean the fear you feel when you walk in the door and see your three year-old playing with a loaded gun, or the fear that motivates you to get your prostate examined. Such fears...
February 2009
12 posts
3 tags
Heroes=propaganda
By redacting all the details that make a man human you can turn him into a hero. You simply make the conscious decision to forget all the bad, messy things about him, erase them from history, and highlight only the things that you want remembered. Sentiment and the desire to have a hero will take you the rest of the way. People want heroes. They want to believe anything that makes them feel good...
3 tags
No, this never happened to us back in the day... →
Teacher facing jail over sex text to boy, 14 It’s been said time and time again that this kind of thing never happened when we were young. It is said by people 30 years old and up. Every comment on every message-board by people somewhat younger (early to mid 20s) that I have read, seems to indicate that this is a recent phenomena. That in the last 5 or so years, female teachers aged 25 and...
2 tags
An alternative explanation of why Blag is...
(Now Former) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, originally uploaded by Taekwonweirdo. I am quite probably not the first person to come up with this, but I have an alternate explanation for Rod Blagojevich’s attention-whoring antics: I think that somebody believes that he is desperate enough to spill some beans. I have no idea what kinds of beans, but bad beans. Beans worth killing for. So...
2 tags
Hypocrites and "the greater good"
If you believe that somebody can rationalize sending their fellow-citizens to their deaths so as to get cheaper oil by which they can personally profit, then it should not be a problem believing that they could bankrupt their own country and plunge everybody into a dark age of poverty that the First World has never seen before. I am not saying that this is what is happening or has happened, I am...
3 tags
Why you will be useless in a genuine disaster
1. You cannot live without the Internet Most of you reading this cannot yet conceive of how big a deal this is. It’s one thing to know that you are going to be away from it for a few hours or a few days, or even, possibly, weeks. The idea of a future where it does not exist for you at all is unthinkable. Technology has become a substitute for having big things in your life, a diversion that...
4 tags
The fools and their money
Hummer H2 HDR (II), originally uploaded by GTM Photography (M. Alreshaid.).
It would seem to me that prosperity always comes at somebody else’s expense. The fool and his money are soon parted, what happens when this fool-money gets into the hands of the people who are smarter? Obviously, they become the wealthy members of society. The more fools with money you have the more money there is...
2 tags
Talking to strange girls
The big deal is that you don’t know her and she might reject you. She might do so in a mocking manner, or worse, with pity, thus causing you to hateyourself even more than you already do. The memory of this rejection will haunt you for weeks, her face, that expression of amused loathing along with a dullness that you had not seen before (or you would not have bothered). You will regret doing...
3 tags
Why you need a posse
If you are wealthy and famous then you are going to need someone to protect you from the autograph-seeking masses. To drive you where you need to go so that you avoid accidents and lawsuits, to pave the way by handling all the little details of going outdoors that people of your caliber should not be expected to do.
If you were once poor you want to find people who knew you back then so that...
“Sure, the 48-year-old is on death row for fatally bludgeoning and strangling two...”
– Death row inmate wants seat on state supreme court
3 tags
“Some liberals are beginning to suspect Bush loyalists in career government...”
– Suspicion mounts about ‘burrowing’ Bush appointees
4 tags
“Inside a plastic bag were a woman’s arms, legs and breasts. Hours later, a...”
– Mother of three dismembered, dumped in bags : Cold Cases Colorado This is where you find out if you are as badass as you think. It’s one thing to kill somebody, to shoot them and run, or to hit them with your car and leave town, it’s another thing entirely to to cut the body up....