"Humberto strengthened from a tropical depression with 55 km/h winds to a hurricane with 135 km/h winds in just 18 hours" NOAA says. That's a 2.45 times increase in less than a day. This pales in comparison to anything, even the most massive F5 tornado, which can drop out of the sky with barely an hour's warning.
Two days ago there *was no* Humberto. In just over 48 hours, we had nothing, and two days later we have a hurricane slamming the coast, travelling completely across the Gulf of Mexico. That puppy was moving. From 11AM Wednesday where it first gathered together as a tropical depression, to Eastern Texas where it finally lost steam and dropped back down to a depression, Humberto wasn't just a fall storm.
The earliest traces of it were only scattered clouds Saturday afternoon. Four days later it has 55km/h winds and becomes a depression. Just hours later it's a Hurricane hitting the US coast. We've already had two Cat-Fives in just over a week. Humberto apparently spent more time on land as a Hurricane than it did over water. Should anyone worry? I'd think so.
Not that I'd live in Florida, but everyone from Texas to New York has reason to be concerned about 150MPH winds that hurricanes can bring, and sustain. These are killing winds. Any airborn item becomes a projectile that can kill. Anything not bolted down becomes airborn. Cars and buildings can be tossed. Huge yaghts can wind up miles inland from the wind-blown surge waters. What the wind doesn't break, the water does.
People saw what Katrina did, and now we know what havoc a category five hurricane can bear. Even inland states are not entirely safe from the hard weather, with torrential rains, sustained high winds, and damage to services. If there was ever a category six, it's easy to see that it could travel right up the mississippi and hit Canada, but we don't need to imagine as-yet unmaterialized hazards. There are record-setting hazards appearing already.
They're coming in faster, the season is longer, they're hitting land more frequently, they're growing faster, and the winds are higher speed. All the data points to an increase in the strength and chaotic nature of weather. I don't think people should gamble that their house can take 200+km/h winds, or that no windblown semi trailers won't come through their roof. The weather has changed, and now we have to build accordingly.
I think that economically depressed housing should be shifted and distributed across largely empty midwest states. Offer them new homes and build a few new colleges to drive industry. Make all new homes in hurricane zones meet stringent Cat-Five requirements just like California homes which have to meet earthquake codes up to 7.5 Richter. In other words, concrete and steel construction, elevated floorplans above surge levels, and no more building cheap condos on the beaches.
Anything less is just darwinian in stupidity.
Science:
http://www.hurricane.com/hurricane-radar-satellite.php
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
General Betrayus, Another GOP Shill.
From the coolest advertisement this year:
http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html
Comes this review, and take on America:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-baitz/pack-up-the-moon-and-dism_b_64053.html
With which, I wholeheartedly agree, but have an additional point to make. He states, with stunning clarity that "There is tremendous overlap between neo cons and liberals in consciousness development so the lines are blurred. " Touche'.
I usually feel like the author James Burke of "Connections" fame when presented with such material, and today is no exception to this sensation. Why will become self evident. I need to explain my reasoning to the uninitiated before continuing with my point.
America, land of the Free and home of the brave, has always been based upon the rule of power. We [The national "we"- This used to confuse my literal-minded girlfriend MJ.] fought, stole, bribed or bought the land from various natives and countries. We then installed a government of equity for a reserved class of people, which at the time was rich white landowners. The government is self-correcting, because the representatives directly elected then choose the President from a qualified pool of applicants. A populist Hitler-type can't get elected. Or, couldn't, originally. But, I digress.
The people with the power, at the time, were the smartest, hardest-working, most educated people in the world. They had to be, anything less and America would have failed in the revolution, and we'd all be speaking French now. Let's leave that as an assumption, that they were smart and powerful.
As time went by, the push to a more literal Democracy occurred, a thing which the founders feared but believed that the best people would move forward and triumph. Logically, the smartest should always lead. It used to be true, then. Unexpectedly, in the late 1700s technology began to accellerate, and the iron age was born shortly afterwards. People without a great deal of brains, and often zero education, found historically unprecedented opportunities for wealth. In some cases, extreme wealth, as documented in "The Robber Barons."
Money became a goal unto itself, without morality or reason, and without limitations. Corporations sprang up which quickly began to gobble up local businesses. Macy's was the Walmart of the day. But, back then, a corporation had to sign a charter with the State promising to abide by "all laws" in order to exist. Failure to comply with regulations meant the dissolution of a corporation. Also, the now extremely wealthy Neuvo Riche had unpredictable power within local governments, such as the States and cities. There were little dicatorships, race riots, extermination of minorities, deportation of the poor, and many other sudden problems in cities that were simultaneously growing at astonishing rates.
People came to view this as the cost of Freedom and Democracy, a point pushed upon them by Media owners, IE the Newspapers. Even then the media were corporate owned and controlled. News in the USA has never been unbiased, not since the first moveable-type press went into service, and not since the telegraph first pinged-out codes over wire. The people as a whole thought, as they sank into record poverty, that this was "good business."
Then came the world wars, with the Great Depression between them, and all the evils of capitalism came home to roost, much to the chagrin of Ayn Rand. A "New Deal" was offered the public, one which swept aside some of the ills of capitalism with temporary reprieves, and the government embarked on a surprisingly wise productivity boosting program of self-investment. The quality of life in America rose until it surpassed all the known world, or so we thought.
Actually, during both WW1 and WW2, America and our allies had trashed most of the production capacity of the rest of the planet. Corporate leaders were also military leaders, and it was pretty easy to drop a bomb or two on a competitors facilities during both wars, not to mention the way we have a documented habit of bombing "Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, and Government buildings." [-N. Chomsky, 2005] The truth is, the US military had also conveniently destroyed all national and corporate competition to the United States, worldwide.
During the Cold War years, the US Military complex of joint-corporate leadership and industrialized nationalism rose to the height of power, controlling all US secrets and technology. It also began to exercise political power, and began the slow process of dumbing-down all education systems not tied into the elite military industries. Texas A&M, MIT, and other Universities with close military ties got billions, while all others began to experience funding setbacks. Public K-12 was pared back so rapidly that the new 1950's schools had trouble obtaining supplies to stock the schools. Desks were often donated by local businesses.
The average American became less educated with each generation, while the lazy and quite stupid super-rich reserved the "best" education for themselves. Fortunately for our future selves, they made some pretty large mistakes, not the least of which is the complete lack of a mathematics requirement for an MBA degree from places like Harvard. [They claim such requirements now, but people who can't do basic addition have somehow passed these classes. Bush can't even add single digits correctly without paper and pencil.]
The Uber-rich screwed up by assuming that all knowlege apart from business and management was unimportant. Anything too hard for them to master or control was unimportant, and the role of "research scientist" was born. People who were singled out to do the "hard" work of mathematics, physics, and medicine. Math really isn't hard, it's just that you've NEVER been taught how to fully utilize it. In reality, Calculus is no harder than History of Philosophy or Art Appreciation.
By the 1960s a baby boom entered US colleges and began to fill many "hard" fields with genius people. It's not that it was a genius generation, but just a big one consisting of an unusual birth rate, and as such their numbers are actually quite weak. It's not the "Greatest Generation" but the Most Wasteful Generation. There should have been TEN TIMES more geniuses, based on general population averages from previous decades. They're also known fairly accurately as the "Me Generation" for their selfishness.
Anyway, there was a surge in research, funded by billion dollar corporations and the US military complex. Companies like AT&T invented everything from the mouse to the internet by the end of the 70s, even though much of it wasn't fully public or commonplace until the mid 90s. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was playing catch up. They had to borrow in US dollars to pay our US companies to REbuild their infrastructures. By the time most of our allies had rebuilt, they owed the US billions in US dollar debt. This made the $ the defacto world currency for decades to come, and was intentional. The US formed the UN [On US soil, ignoring multinational pleas for a neutral property] and NATO and the UN Security Council, with the US in roles as solid, immobile leader on all fronts. The world still has to contend with the US being the chair on world politics, even while we constantly violate every UN charter ever ratified.
It wasn't until a few decades later, the 90s, that other nations began to find specialized strength where America had failed to develop. This is due to the lack of mathematical and analytical ability of our elite ruling class. The Harvard and Yale grads have a long record of exemplary failures in world and national politics, science, civil rights, and many other fields. Yet, they continue to rule our nation, and most of the world. We are led not by the smartest, but by the inheritors of vast wealth, who enforce their privilege through corruption, murder, and even genocide.
The US government abolished Corporate obedience to common law in 1963. Now companies can kill or maim, aid the CIA, and do anything at all, but only a single person will be arrested and the company is free to continue violating the laws. The scapegoat salves the public without actually punishing the behavior. It's a perfect crime.
The CIA formed during the McCarthy years, and the Secret Service after Lincolns assassination, but expanded to cover almost any aspect of secrecy in our government. The SS, aptly named, resembles their Nazi Germany counterpart in too many ways. People who might become powerful, or embarass our government, suddenly turn up dead from overdoses the next day. There are over TEN THOUSAND unsolved, and uninvestigated, murders in the USA every year.
Today, the USA is rated #47 out of the best 50 nations for education. #18 for health. Nowhere, on any list, in any category, is the US number 1 except: military strength, number of people executed, % of population in prison, and per-capita poverty levels. In fact, we are only #1 in bad ways. The singulare measurement of wealth is the sole "non-bad" measurement of the USA where we are first, and that is Gross Domestic Product, which is a specially contrived number that includes speculation and other non-real income. In truth, we're probably second to China.
Japan has more internet access. Mongolia has more freedom of press. Ethiopia has better education. Madagascar has better medical. In all important measurements of civil life, or freedom, the USA is far from #1. We are a stone's throw from being imprisoned just for speaking out against our government, and that's not better than China.
Our ruling class is a moron class, much like Marie Antoinette and company, educated only in how to be filthy rich, and little else. It's time to be off with their heads.
D
http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html
Comes this review, and take on America:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-baitz/pack-up-the-moon-and-dism_b_64053.html
With which, I wholeheartedly agree, but have an additional point to make. He states, with stunning clarity that "There is tremendous overlap between neo cons and liberals in consciousness development so the lines are blurred. " Touche'.
I usually feel like the author James Burke of "Connections" fame when presented with such material, and today is no exception to this sensation. Why will become self evident. I need to explain my reasoning to the uninitiated before continuing with my point.
America, land of the Free and home of the brave, has always been based upon the rule of power. We [The national "we"- This used to confuse my literal-minded girlfriend MJ.] fought, stole, bribed or bought the land from various natives and countries. We then installed a government of equity for a reserved class of people, which at the time was rich white landowners. The government is self-correcting, because the representatives directly elected then choose the President from a qualified pool of applicants. A populist Hitler-type can't get elected. Or, couldn't, originally. But, I digress.
The people with the power, at the time, were the smartest, hardest-working, most educated people in the world. They had to be, anything less and America would have failed in the revolution, and we'd all be speaking French now. Let's leave that as an assumption, that they were smart and powerful.
As time went by, the push to a more literal Democracy occurred, a thing which the founders feared but believed that the best people would move forward and triumph. Logically, the smartest should always lead. It used to be true, then. Unexpectedly, in the late 1700s technology began to accellerate, and the iron age was born shortly afterwards. People without a great deal of brains, and often zero education, found historically unprecedented opportunities for wealth. In some cases, extreme wealth, as documented in "The Robber Barons."
Money became a goal unto itself, without morality or reason, and without limitations. Corporations sprang up which quickly began to gobble up local businesses. Macy's was the Walmart of the day. But, back then, a corporation had to sign a charter with the State promising to abide by "all laws" in order to exist. Failure to comply with regulations meant the dissolution of a corporation. Also, the now extremely wealthy Neuvo Riche had unpredictable power within local governments, such as the States and cities. There were little dicatorships, race riots, extermination of minorities, deportation of the poor, and many other sudden problems in cities that were simultaneously growing at astonishing rates.
People came to view this as the cost of Freedom and Democracy, a point pushed upon them by Media owners, IE the Newspapers. Even then the media were corporate owned and controlled. News in the USA has never been unbiased, not since the first moveable-type press went into service, and not since the telegraph first pinged-out codes over wire. The people as a whole thought, as they sank into record poverty, that this was "good business."
Then came the world wars, with the Great Depression between them, and all the evils of capitalism came home to roost, much to the chagrin of Ayn Rand. A "New Deal" was offered the public, one which swept aside some of the ills of capitalism with temporary reprieves, and the government embarked on a surprisingly wise productivity boosting program of self-investment. The quality of life in America rose until it surpassed all the known world, or so we thought.
Actually, during both WW1 and WW2, America and our allies had trashed most of the production capacity of the rest of the planet. Corporate leaders were also military leaders, and it was pretty easy to drop a bomb or two on a competitors facilities during both wars, not to mention the way we have a documented habit of bombing "Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, and Government buildings." [-N. Chomsky, 2005] The truth is, the US military had also conveniently destroyed all national and corporate competition to the United States, worldwide.
During the Cold War years, the US Military complex of joint-corporate leadership and industrialized nationalism rose to the height of power, controlling all US secrets and technology. It also began to exercise political power, and began the slow process of dumbing-down all education systems not tied into the elite military industries. Texas A&M, MIT, and other Universities with close military ties got billions, while all others began to experience funding setbacks. Public K-12 was pared back so rapidly that the new 1950's schools had trouble obtaining supplies to stock the schools. Desks were often donated by local businesses.
The average American became less educated with each generation, while the lazy and quite stupid super-rich reserved the "best" education for themselves. Fortunately for our future selves, they made some pretty large mistakes, not the least of which is the complete lack of a mathematics requirement for an MBA degree from places like Harvard. [They claim such requirements now, but people who can't do basic addition have somehow passed these classes. Bush can't even add single digits correctly without paper and pencil.]
The Uber-rich screwed up by assuming that all knowlege apart from business and management was unimportant. Anything too hard for them to master or control was unimportant, and the role of "research scientist" was born. People who were singled out to do the "hard" work of mathematics, physics, and medicine. Math really isn't hard, it's just that you've NEVER been taught how to fully utilize it. In reality, Calculus is no harder than History of Philosophy or Art Appreciation.
By the 1960s a baby boom entered US colleges and began to fill many "hard" fields with genius people. It's not that it was a genius generation, but just a big one consisting of an unusual birth rate, and as such their numbers are actually quite weak. It's not the "Greatest Generation" but the Most Wasteful Generation. There should have been TEN TIMES more geniuses, based on general population averages from previous decades. They're also known fairly accurately as the "Me Generation" for their selfishness.
Anyway, there was a surge in research, funded by billion dollar corporations and the US military complex. Companies like AT&T invented everything from the mouse to the internet by the end of the 70s, even though much of it wasn't fully public or commonplace until the mid 90s. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was playing catch up. They had to borrow in US dollars to pay our US companies to REbuild their infrastructures. By the time most of our allies had rebuilt, they owed the US billions in US dollar debt. This made the $ the defacto world currency for decades to come, and was intentional. The US formed the UN [On US soil, ignoring multinational pleas for a neutral property] and NATO and the UN Security Council, with the US in roles as solid, immobile leader on all fronts. The world still has to contend with the US being the chair on world politics, even while we constantly violate every UN charter ever ratified.
It wasn't until a few decades later, the 90s, that other nations began to find specialized strength where America had failed to develop. This is due to the lack of mathematical and analytical ability of our elite ruling class. The Harvard and Yale grads have a long record of exemplary failures in world and national politics, science, civil rights, and many other fields. Yet, they continue to rule our nation, and most of the world. We are led not by the smartest, but by the inheritors of vast wealth, who enforce their privilege through corruption, murder, and even genocide.
The US government abolished Corporate obedience to common law in 1963. Now companies can kill or maim, aid the CIA, and do anything at all, but only a single person will be arrested and the company is free to continue violating the laws. The scapegoat salves the public without actually punishing the behavior. It's a perfect crime.
The CIA formed during the McCarthy years, and the Secret Service after Lincolns assassination, but expanded to cover almost any aspect of secrecy in our government. The SS, aptly named, resembles their Nazi Germany counterpart in too many ways. People who might become powerful, or embarass our government, suddenly turn up dead from overdoses the next day. There are over TEN THOUSAND unsolved, and uninvestigated, murders in the USA every year.
Today, the USA is rated #47 out of the best 50 nations for education. #18 for health. Nowhere, on any list, in any category, is the US number 1 except: military strength, number of people executed, % of population in prison, and per-capita poverty levels. In fact, we are only #1 in bad ways. The singulare measurement of wealth is the sole "non-bad" measurement of the USA where we are first, and that is Gross Domestic Product, which is a specially contrived number that includes speculation and other non-real income. In truth, we're probably second to China.
Japan has more internet access. Mongolia has more freedom of press. Ethiopia has better education. Madagascar has better medical. In all important measurements of civil life, or freedom, the USA is far from #1. We are a stone's throw from being imprisoned just for speaking out against our government, and that's not better than China.
Our ruling class is a moron class, much like Marie Antoinette and company, educated only in how to be filthy rich, and little else. It's time to be off with their heads.
D
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Freegans, Vegans, and the Privileged Class
I read articles every day, sometimes hundreds a day, and one thing that has floated to the top of my consciousness is the fact that nearly all these freegan/vegan/othergan new-age hippie types originate, self-declaredly, from upper-middle-class "establishment." Their freedom to preach to us about the wages of sin originates from the very sin that they are preaching against.
In other words, Vegans are typically extremely hypocritical. It's neither free nor easy to be a vegan, and requires extensive high-level networking to be a freegan on top of that. It's something that only a college-educated person could really pull off. The average street kids rummaging through garbage and begging for change, many of whom I'm close friends with, come from very upscale neighborhoods. One of the dirtiest "kids" I know who's 22, bruised, aggressive, vegan, and loves drugs, has parents on Camano Island. He begs for change in Seattle, and he's in many ways a pretty nice guy, apart from the routine drug problems.
I say routine because I'm talking about pot and cheap pills. Another product of a largely affluent middle-class is our war on drugs, which like most wars has been a horrible failure. You can declare a winner by killing someone, but the problems that started the conflict are not resolved. America is so spoiled that the rich kids float around intentionally living on the streets. But, that's not the full story.
We'll call him Paul. His very wealthy parents live on an island that requires a substantial income. He goes home whenever he needs medical, more pot, or just gets tired of sleeping in a blanket under a bridge. His parents think he's "creative." He beats up people who owe him money and abuses drugs heavily. He is the typical kid on a corner in hip areas like Capitol Hill and "the U" Ave. This is no work of fiction, and I see him at games on UW campus.
They tell us to live without gas, meat, oil, and whatnot, but Paul's parents own stocks in large corporations, and he's got a trust fund. Eventually he'll inherit a small company, and at least one property, for which he has never worked a day in his life. What does Paul know?
Mommy and daddy's lawyers prevent most wastrel kids from blowing the wad by feeding them an allowance from an endless trust, one that is based on the economy of American power, and upon the destruction of wildlife, forests, oceans, and HUMANS. Yet, these same privileged new-agers, also known as Trust Fund Hippies or trippies, are well-named. "They be tripping."
The most resonant expose' I've ever seen was Penn and Teller's Bullshit show about Vegans, where they exposed the wealthy roots and ironic privileges that these same people exploit in the act of going to DC to lobby for veganism. They're blind stupid, liberal in the sense that embarasses even me (an uberliberal myself,) and give health food a bad name.
At work they've created an ultra-sensitive lobby group that has entire sections of the kitchen segregated so that none of the impliments, grills, or pots have ever touched meat. Because you know, dense stainless steel retains so much grease when it's heated and washed. Not. There's MORE GREASE IN THE AIR of any restaurant with a grill, than on a washed spatula that once flipped a burger. These IDIOT Vegans are forming a new religion, where they have the right to dictate nonsense to every one else.
I smile as I watch them inhaling the greasy meat fumes from the open grill nearby as they loudly order a spirulina and soy patty, cooked specially on a green grill section and touched only with green colored utensils. Morons. There is no evidence, zero, that living without any meat is actually more healthy or even desirable. We are omnivores and require a small amount of meat to survive. We still have large Canines. You know, the kind of teeth that have one purpose: Tearing meat.
They grab for media attention, write books, influence politics, and infect our workplace. If it were based on any field of science I'd be all behind it, but it's not. It's a religion. A blind faith that eating meat is somehow bad, amoral, immoral, or otherwise wrong. The belief is based on a puritanical view of the world and actually denies significant scientific fact to the contrary. In short, a religion, as I have said.
Now, I don't have the right to force all my coworkers to bow to Buddha, my own favorite, nor do the mormons or catholics have the right or the gall to force all of us to say prayers or get rid of the caffeine in the workplace, but Vegans actually want to stop OTHER PEOPLE from practicing their own beliefs. The friends I have at work are college educated, and some of them are cooks, and what they have to say about the Vegans is disturbing. The cooks complain to me about being bitched out publicly, in very poor form, by any level employee who is offended by what is offered on the menu.
Every cafeteria I've ever been inside, in my entire life, has had a salad bar. Diversity is offered to suit hindu, jewish, and non-food-biased people, et al. There's something for everyone to eat. Nobody tries to force Jews to eat pork, but the Vegans want to force everyone else to stop eating anything but what the Vegans approve of. It's gone so far that the cafeterian manager in one building is complaining about the horrific expense of having to construct not one, not two, but three different cooking facilities in each cafe.
When an industrial dishwasher cleans dishes, including pots and knives that may have "touched meat", they reach a temperature in excess of 400 degrees. They clean with steam. The utensils all have to be able to withstand direct contact with red hot metal, and steam. No molecular remnant of living tissue could possibly remain. I know the staff and some of the cooks, and those kitches are extremely clean, because they are often randomly-inspected by the state.
But, back to my point about privilege, it's apparent that logic and hypocrisy are alien concepts to these new-agers. Those who've never worked a day of labor feel free to tell the world's poor how to live their lives. This despite the fact that in most other nations, the very act of eating every day is a challenge, and choices are slim. I'm more concerned that the world eat, have medicine, housing, and education.
Being poor is expensive. This has been proven over and over again, so much that I'm surprised anyone fails to understand it. Rich people get things for free. Rich people deduct expenses. Rich people buy in bulk, Rich people can order from far away. The poor, even in America, do not have these options. They eat the cheapest local food, which is higher in fats and starches, and have small refrigerators which generally allow fresh produce to spoil within 3 days. Thus, to eat a simple vegetarian diet, a poor person has to shop frequently, at least once every three days, and throw away a lot of food.
Guess what? They can't afford to do that.
Vegetarianism is too expensive for most people to afford. The middle class morons will stand up and say "But I can do it, so can they." No, they can't, you idiot. The simplest of all neo-fundie new-ager religions is vegetarianism, in which people eat meat occasionally but feel bad about it. Even this form of food-religion is too costly for someone living on 650.00 a month fixed income, or minimum wage. I grew up poor. I know. I used to get upset about how fast things went bad and how often I had to shop to keep veggies in the fridge. I couldn't do it, and I switched to canned goods.
Canned vegetables have very little nutritional value compared to fresh. You eat, and still feel hungry. The taste is second rate. Foods that require little preparation and are dirt cheap are what I had to get. I only had 50.00 a month I could eat on, and I worked full time. As a college student I once lived for months on ramen and baloney.
I'm not saying that poor people are forced to eat McDonalds. That's insipid. I ate pretty well. I also live in the most wealthy nation on Earth where I can eat 24 hours a day. Food is such a low denominator that it's become a religion, whereas in Africa it's more like a gift from God.
I'm sick of reading about how some rich skinny bitch gave up her BMW to eat healthier and "live green." That's nice for you, you lazy stupid bimbo who'se already prostituted herself to a major corporation. How hypocritical of you. How many stocks do you still own, by the way? Did you ever actually lift anything yourself in your entire life besides your own ego?
D
In other words, Vegans are typically extremely hypocritical. It's neither free nor easy to be a vegan, and requires extensive high-level networking to be a freegan on top of that. It's something that only a college-educated person could really pull off. The average street kids rummaging through garbage and begging for change, many of whom I'm close friends with, come from very upscale neighborhoods. One of the dirtiest "kids" I know who's 22, bruised, aggressive, vegan, and loves drugs, has parents on Camano Island. He begs for change in Seattle, and he's in many ways a pretty nice guy, apart from the routine drug problems.
I say routine because I'm talking about pot and cheap pills. Another product of a largely affluent middle-class is our war on drugs, which like most wars has been a horrible failure. You can declare a winner by killing someone, but the problems that started the conflict are not resolved. America is so spoiled that the rich kids float around intentionally living on the streets. But, that's not the full story.
We'll call him Paul. His very wealthy parents live on an island that requires a substantial income. He goes home whenever he needs medical, more pot, or just gets tired of sleeping in a blanket under a bridge. His parents think he's "creative." He beats up people who owe him money and abuses drugs heavily. He is the typical kid on a corner in hip areas like Capitol Hill and "the U" Ave. This is no work of fiction, and I see him at games on UW campus.
They tell us to live without gas, meat, oil, and whatnot, but Paul's parents own stocks in large corporations, and he's got a trust fund. Eventually he'll inherit a small company, and at least one property, for which he has never worked a day in his life. What does Paul know?
Mommy and daddy's lawyers prevent most wastrel kids from blowing the wad by feeding them an allowance from an endless trust, one that is based on the economy of American power, and upon the destruction of wildlife, forests, oceans, and HUMANS. Yet, these same privileged new-agers, also known as Trust Fund Hippies or trippies, are well-named. "They be tripping."
The most resonant expose' I've ever seen was Penn and Teller's Bullshit show about Vegans, where they exposed the wealthy roots and ironic privileges that these same people exploit in the act of going to DC to lobby for veganism. They're blind stupid, liberal in the sense that embarasses even me (an uberliberal myself,) and give health food a bad name.
At work they've created an ultra-sensitive lobby group that has entire sections of the kitchen segregated so that none of the impliments, grills, or pots have ever touched meat. Because you know, dense stainless steel retains so much grease when it's heated and washed. Not. There's MORE GREASE IN THE AIR of any restaurant with a grill, than on a washed spatula that once flipped a burger. These IDIOT Vegans are forming a new religion, where they have the right to dictate nonsense to every one else.
I smile as I watch them inhaling the greasy meat fumes from the open grill nearby as they loudly order a spirulina and soy patty, cooked specially on a green grill section and touched only with green colored utensils. Morons. There is no evidence, zero, that living without any meat is actually more healthy or even desirable. We are omnivores and require a small amount of meat to survive. We still have large Canines. You know, the kind of teeth that have one purpose: Tearing meat.
They grab for media attention, write books, influence politics, and infect our workplace. If it were based on any field of science I'd be all behind it, but it's not. It's a religion. A blind faith that eating meat is somehow bad, amoral, immoral, or otherwise wrong. The belief is based on a puritanical view of the world and actually denies significant scientific fact to the contrary. In short, a religion, as I have said.
Now, I don't have the right to force all my coworkers to bow to Buddha, my own favorite, nor do the mormons or catholics have the right or the gall to force all of us to say prayers or get rid of the caffeine in the workplace, but Vegans actually want to stop OTHER PEOPLE from practicing their own beliefs. The friends I have at work are college educated, and some of them are cooks, and what they have to say about the Vegans is disturbing. The cooks complain to me about being bitched out publicly, in very poor form, by any level employee who is offended by what is offered on the menu.
Every cafeteria I've ever been inside, in my entire life, has had a salad bar. Diversity is offered to suit hindu, jewish, and non-food-biased people, et al. There's something for everyone to eat. Nobody tries to force Jews to eat pork, but the Vegans want to force everyone else to stop eating anything but what the Vegans approve of. It's gone so far that the cafeterian manager in one building is complaining about the horrific expense of having to construct not one, not two, but three different cooking facilities in each cafe.
When an industrial dishwasher cleans dishes, including pots and knives that may have "touched meat", they reach a temperature in excess of 400 degrees. They clean with steam. The utensils all have to be able to withstand direct contact with red hot metal, and steam. No molecular remnant of living tissue could possibly remain. I know the staff and some of the cooks, and those kitches are extremely clean, because they are often randomly-inspected by the state.
But, back to my point about privilege, it's apparent that logic and hypocrisy are alien concepts to these new-agers. Those who've never worked a day of labor feel free to tell the world's poor how to live their lives. This despite the fact that in most other nations, the very act of eating every day is a challenge, and choices are slim. I'm more concerned that the world eat, have medicine, housing, and education.
Being poor is expensive. This has been proven over and over again, so much that I'm surprised anyone fails to understand it. Rich people get things for free. Rich people deduct expenses. Rich people buy in bulk, Rich people can order from far away. The poor, even in America, do not have these options. They eat the cheapest local food, which is higher in fats and starches, and have small refrigerators which generally allow fresh produce to spoil within 3 days. Thus, to eat a simple vegetarian diet, a poor person has to shop frequently, at least once every three days, and throw away a lot of food.
Guess what? They can't afford to do that.
Vegetarianism is too expensive for most people to afford. The middle class morons will stand up and say "But I can do it, so can they." No, they can't, you idiot. The simplest of all neo-fundie new-ager religions is vegetarianism, in which people eat meat occasionally but feel bad about it. Even this form of food-religion is too costly for someone living on 650.00 a month fixed income, or minimum wage. I grew up poor. I know. I used to get upset about how fast things went bad and how often I had to shop to keep veggies in the fridge. I couldn't do it, and I switched to canned goods.
Canned vegetables have very little nutritional value compared to fresh. You eat, and still feel hungry. The taste is second rate. Foods that require little preparation and are dirt cheap are what I had to get. I only had 50.00 a month I could eat on, and I worked full time. As a college student I once lived for months on ramen and baloney.
I'm not saying that poor people are forced to eat McDonalds. That's insipid. I ate pretty well. I also live in the most wealthy nation on Earth where I can eat 24 hours a day. Food is such a low denominator that it's become a religion, whereas in Africa it's more like a gift from God.
I'm sick of reading about how some rich skinny bitch gave up her BMW to eat healthier and "live green." That's nice for you, you lazy stupid bimbo who'se already prostituted herself to a major corporation. How hypocritical of you. How many stocks do you still own, by the way? Did you ever actually lift anything yourself in your entire life besides your own ego?
D
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Amazingly Bad News
It's never any shock to me that astonishing bad grammar, flawed reporting of everything from inaccurate data to raw speculation, and the presentation of political and moral views as fact continue to be the very essence of Big Media News.
In this article, http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5646058&ft=lg, an obscure professor from a notably liberal University presents an improbably bad, poorly worded, and questionably illegitimate bastard child of Faux News style. The data isn't given, one of those "I'll release it tomorrow" quotes are thrown out instead. Why not write the story tomorrow when you can check the data? The reason is that the data isn't ever going to be printed unless it reflects the bias of the reporter.
On a daily basis, I'm seeing news reporting quoting data that hasn't been released. In all cases, without exception, I've never seen the data the following day in any print media or BMN, anywhere.
This is raw histrionics. This is politics, scaremongering, and FUD. That ABC practices FUD is about as surprising as discovering that the Christian-leaning Disney corporation is one of the worst employers to work for. I have family and friends who do or have worked for various Disney companies and none of them have anything positive to say about their employers. In fact, most overtly religious companies that I've dealt with or conducted business with are decidedly unpleasant, reactionary, thoughtless, and greedy. They place their morality on a higher priority than accuracy or competitiveness or any other business acumen.
It should not be a surprise that a company which chooses to elevate individual morality to a higher plane that professionalism, that the quality of that business is less than desirable. Contracts are not honored, completed, filled, etc., and the company is likely to simply offer an apology and expect full payment.
Thus, it should also not be a surprise that BMN never print any critical news or anything which shines a less than glamorous light upon their monopolistic oligopoly of media corporations and the respective inter-corporate masters.
Of all [read: 100%] news media, it's well documented that only FOUR companies control ~96% of them. The uncontrolled news media?: Bloggers. Tiny local papers which are privately owned or do not issue stocks. Really REALLY small print runs like High School papers.
So, the only real unbiased news out in the world today is that FOUR PERCENT, which you'll have a hard time finding. Sites like Reddit, digg, and fark, among others, promote BMN over blogs or smaller papers almost exclusively, even though they are ostensibly fed news items by the general public. The reason for this is assumed to be a desire for popularity or eyeballs by bloggers who post links to traditional media just to get people to read their page, rather than writing original news articles. Even most original blog articles are just short stubs premiering a traditional BMN link.
Nobody seems to link to the local college paper, or some jane-jill [billy-bob] independent print media, or even a really good blog. The best blogs are not the most popular ones. Wil Wheaton, although very articulate, usually posts minor and personal minutiae on his blog, and is largely concerned with self-promotion. It's not a great blog for news, but passable. Yet, his blog is hugely popular, much more so than say, gnn.tv which actually publishes unique news articles, fresh news, and lengthy editorials.
Yes, I'm somewhat promoting gnn.tv by quoting it, but I get no reward for that. It's necessary to mention an example. I'm sure there are others. The point is that popularity is actually low quality. Pop = Crud on a 1 to 1 ONTO basis, mathematically speaking.
Just because lots of people read it doesn't mean it's good. The same rules which apply to Television apply to News. South Park remains very popular, but it's scatological humor, and intensely childish self-deprecation. It's not great comedy nor does it present edgy or interesting ideas like say, The Daily Show with John Stewart.
With news the problem is amplified by the fact that most of the highest priority news is bad news. People need to be alerted to human rights abuse, weather, disasters, elections, and other such disturbing information. Little of it is really very happy or uplifting. Only Friday, after weeks of negative press, is there a hopeful article about the dismissal of a large portion of the Patriot Act. People need to learn to accept and deal with life.
Life isn't all pretty roses and shopping at the mall for the latest fashions and electronics. Life is the good the bad and the ugly, the eventful, and the trivial. People get shot. Elections get rigged. People can't live their lives with their damn heads in the sand and ignore reality, or we wind up with a President like Bush.
"Reality is known to have a strong liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert.
D
In this article, http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5646058&ft=lg, an obscure professor from a notably liberal University presents an improbably bad, poorly worded, and questionably illegitimate bastard child of Faux News style. The data isn't given, one of those "I'll release it tomorrow" quotes are thrown out instead. Why not write the story tomorrow when you can check the data? The reason is that the data isn't ever going to be printed unless it reflects the bias of the reporter.
On a daily basis, I'm seeing news reporting quoting data that hasn't been released. In all cases, without exception, I've never seen the data the following day in any print media or BMN, anywhere.
This is raw histrionics. This is politics, scaremongering, and FUD. That ABC practices FUD is about as surprising as discovering that the Christian-leaning Disney corporation is one of the worst employers to work for. I have family and friends who do or have worked for various Disney companies and none of them have anything positive to say about their employers. In fact, most overtly religious companies that I've dealt with or conducted business with are decidedly unpleasant, reactionary, thoughtless, and greedy. They place their morality on a higher priority than accuracy or competitiveness or any other business acumen.
It should not be a surprise that a company which chooses to elevate individual morality to a higher plane that professionalism, that the quality of that business is less than desirable. Contracts are not honored, completed, filled, etc., and the company is likely to simply offer an apology and expect full payment.
Thus, it should also not be a surprise that BMN never print any critical news or anything which shines a less than glamorous light upon their monopolistic oligopoly of media corporations and the respective inter-corporate masters.
Of all [read: 100%] news media, it's well documented that only FOUR companies control ~96% of them. The uncontrolled news media?: Bloggers. Tiny local papers which are privately owned or do not issue stocks. Really REALLY small print runs like High School papers.
So, the only real unbiased news out in the world today is that FOUR PERCENT, which you'll have a hard time finding. Sites like Reddit, digg, and fark, among others, promote BMN over blogs or smaller papers almost exclusively, even though they are ostensibly fed news items by the general public. The reason for this is assumed to be a desire for popularity or eyeballs by bloggers who post links to traditional media just to get people to read their page, rather than writing original news articles. Even most original blog articles are just short stubs premiering a traditional BMN link.
Nobody seems to link to the local college paper, or some jane-jill [billy-bob] independent print media, or even a really good blog. The best blogs are not the most popular ones. Wil Wheaton, although very articulate, usually posts minor and personal minutiae on his blog, and is largely concerned with self-promotion. It's not a great blog for news, but passable. Yet, his blog is hugely popular, much more so than say, gnn.tv which actually publishes unique news articles, fresh news, and lengthy editorials.
Yes, I'm somewhat promoting gnn.tv by quoting it, but I get no reward for that. It's necessary to mention an example. I'm sure there are others. The point is that popularity is actually low quality. Pop = Crud on a 1 to 1 ONTO basis, mathematically speaking.
Just because lots of people read it doesn't mean it's good. The same rules which apply to Television apply to News. South Park remains very popular, but it's scatological humor, and intensely childish self-deprecation. It's not great comedy nor does it present edgy or interesting ideas like say, The Daily Show with John Stewart.
With news the problem is amplified by the fact that most of the highest priority news is bad news. People need to be alerted to human rights abuse, weather, disasters, elections, and other such disturbing information. Little of it is really very happy or uplifting. Only Friday, after weeks of negative press, is there a hopeful article about the dismissal of a large portion of the Patriot Act. People need to learn to accept and deal with life.
Life isn't all pretty roses and shopping at the mall for the latest fashions and electronics. Life is the good the bad and the ugly, the eventful, and the trivial. People get shot. Elections get rigged. People can't live their lives with their damn heads in the sand and ignore reality, or we wind up with a President like Bush.
"Reality is known to have a strong liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert.
D
Thursday, September 6, 2007
No ads here, thanks.
Blogger now allows 'adsense'lessness. That's nice, but I don't allow it. I pay for the privilege to blog and I'm not interested in financial rewards for what amounts to my own opinions. If I want money I'll post links to my novels or a donation button.
So many bloggers are intent on "A listing" by getting linked by other bloggers, and it's a vicious circle not unlike the once-great US media corporations engaged in before their much deserved death of readership, the "approved sources." The very idea of an "A list" of bloggers is an insult to blogging. I reject it. I do not seek your approval and do not want your links. It is anathema.
I do not need to be validated by others.
The only possible validation is readership based on raw unique hits, not links to other media, which can and HAVE been contrived by spurrious and clique-ish groups of bloggers whom all link back to each other in the hopes of improving their ratings. That's like ABC quoting BBC and assuming that the quote is genuine and newsworthy, that the reference itself validates the story, or that ABC has in fact done anything at all.
On reddit.com, digg.com, fark.com, and countless other news lists I see the same stories reposted daily, weekly, and even months later by different bloggers, but also by other commercial news media. Alert! Danger Will Robinson! You're playing their game, and this is a game that the commercial entities know all too well, for they invented it.
The effort to promote old news or non-news items in order to get 'hits' is itself a sign of a weak, corrupt, and pointless system that was 'gamed' a long time ago. The A-list is a failure by design. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines also use the numbers of linkbacks and crosslinks as a methodology of "honestly" rating popularity of a page, but we've already revealed that this is a broken system which is easily manipulated. They should go back to simply revealing content, and stick to kill-filtering the abusers.
Damn them all, I might have to code a new search engine just to save the bloggers from themselves.
D
So many bloggers are intent on "A listing" by getting linked by other bloggers, and it's a vicious circle not unlike the once-great US media corporations engaged in before their much deserved death of readership, the "approved sources." The very idea of an "A list" of bloggers is an insult to blogging. I reject it. I do not seek your approval and do not want your links. It is anathema.
I do not need to be validated by others.
The only possible validation is readership based on raw unique hits, not links to other media, which can and HAVE been contrived by spurrious and clique-ish groups of bloggers whom all link back to each other in the hopes of improving their ratings. That's like ABC quoting BBC and assuming that the quote is genuine and newsworthy, that the reference itself validates the story, or that ABC has in fact done anything at all.
On reddit.com, digg.com, fark.com, and countless other news lists I see the same stories reposted daily, weekly, and even months later by different bloggers, but also by other commercial news media. Alert! Danger Will Robinson! You're playing their game, and this is a game that the commercial entities know all too well, for they invented it.
The effort to promote old news or non-news items in order to get 'hits' is itself a sign of a weak, corrupt, and pointless system that was 'gamed' a long time ago. The A-list is a failure by design. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines also use the numbers of linkbacks and crosslinks as a methodology of "honestly" rating popularity of a page, but we've already revealed that this is a broken system which is easily manipulated. They should go back to simply revealing content, and stick to kill-filtering the abusers.
Damn them all, I might have to code a new search engine just to save the bloggers from themselves.
D
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)