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In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Theodore Dalrymple

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

John discusses his recent book, Words on the Move, in the following podcast: John McWhorter on the Evolution of Language — August 2017

There are words like "behoove" that are in trouble. You do hear it every once in a while. "Ruthless" is a word, but "ruth", which used to be a word, isn't. So, that kind of thing, that words catch on and other words die out—I was aware of that. But, your book just opened my eyes in an incredible way. Especially, since I have to confess, I'm a bit of a language snob.

So, too, can 'crypto' be dismembered.

The podcast wasn't my favourite episode. It was a bit too strawman for me, perhaps because I already know this material fairly well.

We just finished watching an older Coen film, A Serious Man. For a quantum physicist who can infallibly fill chalkboards with bra–ket notation without hardly blinking, he sure does gape like a clueless fish when he discovers his wife is capable of forming alternate plans.

Words are like wives. Just when you think you've got it all sorted out ... change happens.

About that.

There is a book with the not-at-all-pretentious title Games for the Superintelligent that contains various brain-teasers and such. In the introduction, a guy explained that he calculated how many calories it would take to bring a glass full of icy cold drink up to body temperature (which would happen after drinking it); then he got a diet book and looked up how many Calories were in one glass of the drink (gin and tonic or whatever his preferred booze drink was). He found the diet book number was lower than the number from his calculations, and therefore claimed that he ought to be able to lie on a hammock drinking his favorite drink and shedding Calories like mad. Easiest diet plan ever. He ended this with something like "P.S. I tried it and it didn't work."

I was just a kid when I read this and it bugged me for a long time. If he did the math right, why didn't it work? Eventually I figured out that the diet book was giving him numbers in Calories, and he did his temperature change calculation in calories. So there was a factor of 1000 difference between the two numbers, and the food value of his booze was significantly more Calories than his body used to warm the drink. No wonder "it didn't work".

Isn't that what happened to Damore? He made a bunch of arguments, the left claimed they were 'offensive'. And by 'offensive' they mean 'we can't come up with a coherent counter argument, we must stop him speaking'.

It's weaponized offense really. Back in the old days of course this sort of thing was the tactic used by religious fundamentalist types and was denounced by people like Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

Now it seems like the social justice left think that 'What you said is offensive' means 'You must be silenced/fired/beaten up'. In fact they've invented a whole new term - speech they don't like isn't just offensive, it's 'oppressive' to the oppressed groups they claim to speak for.

Normally they'll say something like 'silencing this sort of speech doesn't violate the First Amendment because it's not the government doing it'. Which is true in a narrow, legalistic American sense, but completely irrelevant. It's perfectly possible for freedom of speech to be violated by non governmental entities - e.g. the KKK was not a governmental organisation and was able to shut down speech they didn't like. Right now AntiFa is non governmental and does the same thing. Mobs can be incited online to get people fired or banned. All of these things violate free speech but probably not the First Amendment.

Of course a lot of people on the US have argued for Europe style hate speech laws as well, which would violate the First Amendment. E.g.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Countries throughout Europe have seen the danger in certain hate speech and have created laws that punish racist incitement without compromising their democratic values on free speech. These laws protect Jewish and other minority residents and show that societies clearly value their safety and security in their countries. These laws have not prevented all acts of racism and violence from occurring, as the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France remind us, but they send the right message to vulnerable minorities and galvanize public and police support to prevent future atrocities.

If the Oklahoma chant happened in, say, Germany and the n-word was replaced with a derogatory epithet for the Jewish people, and the method of murder was changed from lynching to something employed by the Nazis, the perpetrators would be in jail right now and few outside the extremist right would argue that an injustice was done. How can so many in American society condone this incitement as youthful indiscretion and even redirect blame away from the perpetrators to the people who have had to suffer the oppression inflicted by those who spew these vile words?

America can learn something from the international community, where the legacy and dangers of certain types of speech are better understood. We too must find an effective way to monitor and forbid dangerous speech, without unjustly infringing upon freedom of speech. We should have started the discussion long ago.

Now you know why it's irritating when people try to silence your arguments rather than trying to address them. Congratulations. You know why people despise the left.

Maybe he read Paolo Bacigalupi's novel

[the Japanese] don't seem to be spending any time shooting people at music festivals, churches or schools every other week.

I'm not sure if you are trolling but I think this is in fact a valid point, and it's one of the reasons why I and others are opposed to banning firearms.

I recommend a book called The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy which analyzes gun control and gun violence in Japan, Canada, and the USA. The conclusion of the book: gun misuse is overwhelmingly a cultural thing. Japan may have gun control laws, but it's not the laws that keeps gun violence low there, it's the culture.

I believe that even if the USA adopted the exact same laws that Japan has, gun violence in the USA wouldn't change very much. Changing the culture is much harder but also much more likely to have an effect.

BTW Japan has a whole lot of suicides. Someone who is really super upset there is more likely to kill himself rather than trying to kill a bunch of others.

P.S. Mass murder events do happen in Japan: http://time.com/4423216/mass-killings-japan-tsukui/

Japan doesn't have as many as the USA. Japan has a smaller population, so one would expect fewer events, but even after adjusting for population it's less. However, it's not zero.

I read a lot while travelling - on planes and so on.
I borrow paper books from a next-door library.

Currently reading: "Hunting Eichmann"
https://www.goodreads.com/book...

The last book finished: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves"
https://www.goodreads.com/book...

I read a lot while travelling - on planes and so on.
I borrow paper books from a next-door library.

Currently reading: "Hunting Eichmann"
https://www.goodreads.com/book...

The last book finished: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves"
https://www.goodreads.com/book...

"The planet isn't f-ed... we are!" https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

https://www.hoover.org/researc...

Hal_Porter, thanks for an inspiring article. Beyond its value as a history reminder, it's interesting as a lesson in psychology, because reading about other people's motivation is always fun.

That said, I take some issues with that article. First is the ease with which Schmemann connects the dots between the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia:

The sad truth is that the collapse of the Soviet state, which seemed to vindicate everything the dissidents fought for, did not lead to the democratic state they presumed would follow. ... Sakharov would be ninety-three now, and I presume he would be enormously active, writing letters and statements...

... He did not, alas, leave behind a Russia democratic and free. That may take generations.

There is a lapse in that logic and it is failing to account for Russia's 1990s. If you wish to get a better insight into contemporary Russia (than Schemann and his likes might offer), I advise you to read Paul Klebnikov's "Godfather of the Kremlin". It's a mainstream book, perhaps somewhat out of fashion now, but still legit.

My second criticism, somewhat related to the first point, is conflating economy with human rights:

Sakharov, though he declined to join the party, was an uncritical believer in the merits of socialism over capitalism until his eyes opened to the violations of human rights.

It's an understandable mistake for a Soviet dissident, but a Western journalist — or us today for that matter — shouldn't uncritically repeat it.

...who has nothing but distain for his fellow workers. Huh, never seen that in an anti-union story before.

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

lolwut. So you hate unions and think they are unnecessary, but at the same time hate them for not being more powerful because they couldn't force the company to better fund their pensions?

No, I'm faulting them because they didn't TRY. The focus wasn't on funding the pension fund, but garnering more retirement benefits that the company obviously couldn't' afford. Don't try and tell me otherwise, I went to the union meetings with my parents, I remember what the Union bosses were telling the crowds and I remember my Dad complaining about this very thing way back then.

You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.

If the company can't exist without wage slavery, it doesn't deserve to exist. And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?

How's this relevant to what the Unions did or didn't do? Why is this class envy thing always seen as justification for making people who get paid more somehow bad actors? But to answer your question, I've heard of CEO's taking huge pay cuts in struggling companies, but this is all PR with zero substance anyway. I've not seen a company go bankrupt because they paid a CEO too much money. Have you? Citation please?

Personally I'm tired of the arguments born out of class envy

There it is. You sir, are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

Wow, that's a leap! So now I'm embarrassed by rich people? Seriously? I'm not embarrassed by them, I don't envy them and I would like to be rich like them. I have some very wealthy friends, they got their money by working hard for it, most rich people do just that. There is NOTHING to be ashamed about if you are rich and you didn't cheat or steal your way into the money. If you think I'm embarrassed by rich people, or would be embarrassed to be one of them is stupid.

Like it or not, this country has EQUAL opportunity codified in our laws but we DON'T have equal outcome guarantees.

If you don't have equal opportunity.

And there it is, marxism in all it's glory. Having an equal chance, equal opportunity does NOT produce equal outcomes.

Have you ever watched the 100 yard dash? All the runners start at the same distance from the finish line, run on the same track and must start at the same time. Only one wins. They all run the same distance, the one that gets to the finish line first, wins. Why does only one win when all were afforded the same opportunity? Because each runner had varying skills, training drive and ability and so one could run faster. It's the same in life. Opportunity is by law, equal, skill, drive and ability vary, so outcome varies.

In your world, you think equal opportunity means everybody should get a participation trophy, just for entering the race. They don't have to run a step, train, have any ability or develop any skills, they get the same trophy as everybody else. I ask you, why run? Why Train? Why try? If you get the same thing as everybody else, who cares. But that's what Marx says we should do, that's what socialism says should happen.... AND exactly why those systems fail... Nobody tries..

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

lolwut. So you hate unions and think they are unnecessary, but at the same time hate them for not being more powerful because they couldn't force the company to better fund their pensions?

You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.

If the company can't exist without wage slavery, it doesn't deserve to exist. And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?

That management gets paid what they do has little to do with the survival or failure of a business. Usually a CEO's salary amounts to pennies on the dollar to the in the trenches worker, yet your ilk want to make some kind of moral argument about how unfair it is that one person gets so much and the new guy gets so little of the company's revenue.

If you think that was an explanation for why CEO's get increased pay even as their decisions drive the company into the ground, you are sadly mistaken.

Personally I'm tired of the arguments born out of class envy

There it is. You sir, are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

Like it or not, this country has EQUAL opportunity codified in our laws but we DON'T have equal outcome guarantees.

If you don't have equal outcomes statistically then by definition you do not have equal opportunity.

Otherwise your Starbucks barista would have an equal chance of having a last name of Rockefellar as your Fortune 500 CEO has a chance of growing up in a double-wide. But of course that's not the case.

I would much, much prefer John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider if I wanted to cite a novel that preshadows.

And Brunner is a real full-time Science Fiction writer who anybody who reads SF would recognize. Not an 'honorable mention' type who people say writes 'literature' like Gibson.

If you haven't' read The Shockwave Rider, what are you waiting for? Go out and find a copy.

I read a lot of SF and Fantasy, so I feel little shame in saying I've read no Gibson outside of Neuromancer.

It was OK I suppose. But I wasn't really fond of his protagonist. Dude wasn't sympathetic at all, and in the end I just did not like him. I think I would have enjoyed it more if he'd written it from the point of view of his female bodyguard. Also his universe was dystopian and ugly. I already have one ugly dystopia narrated by people I don't like, I don't need more when I go to read.

OTOH, if that is your kind of thing, I'd suggest picking up Charlie Human's Apocolypse Now Now. Human can at least write a bastard narrator that I still somehow want to follow.

Let's hear from the crowd, who like to pay taxes — because that's how they buy civilization .

They seem kind of quiet today for some reason...

This completely explains the people I know whose lives revolve around hourly outrage against injustice on social media.

They have a personality flaw which causes them to over-empathize, which makes them prone to depression and emotional instability.

Waking up every day and logging on to deliberately find something to be outraged about temporarily resolves their depression by way of providing a strong countervailing emotion -- righteous anger. This also explains why President Trump is the best thing to happen to them and why our culture created him and why TV ratings for certain shows are up this year: his early morning tweets ARE the morning dose the over-empathizers need to push their depression back for a few hours. But of course, once you hop on the SJW cycle, once the outrage wears off you are faced with the sadness of how impotent you are to fix the thing you were insanely upset about, which sets up the depression cycle for the evening, which then requires late night fake-comedy/fake-news shows like Fallon and Kimmel and SNL which act as the evening dose to make people laugh and smooth it over and shake their heads at the world but feel the salve of shared humor.

Next morning the depression has returned and they wake up once again depressed a.f. and need to hop onto Facebook/twitter to get the morning dose.

It also fits with the logic of this brilliant treatise ( https://www.goodreads.com/book... ) on how most of our actions taken as a result of empathy are often really just symptomatic relief for their own anxiety induced by empathy. That is, empathizers do Stand UP! and Take Action! but their actions mostly just help THEMSELVES feel better, while not helping and often hurting the people who are the putative targets of the empathy.

I read alot.
Hard Luck Hank 1, 2, & 3.
'The Warmth of Other Suns' by Isabelle Wilkerson
'Half Way Home' by Hugh Howey
'Empire of the Summer Moon' by S. C. Gwynne
The Passage series by Justin Cronin
The MadAddam series by Margaret Atwood
'1491: New Revelations of Americas before Columbus' by Charles C. Mann
'Underground Airlines' by Ben Winters
'White Trash: The 400 year untold story of class in America' by Nancy Isenberg
'Lovecraft Country' by Matt Ruff

-email me for ebooks

imo, well worth a read. I bought the book when it first came out, and have reread it a couple of times.

The SCUM Manifesto

It's a drug resistant variant of a deadly fungus we've seen before. There have been no deaths from this outbreak, but that doesn't change that the fungus is deadly.

Yikes, you mean this is actually prescient fiction?

Good book, haven't seen the film.

You should check out this book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book...

It's fascinating and pretty much every point he makes is backed by studies (the text is crammed with references). He explains very well the liver thing, it's not a disease, it's a nasty side-effect. When the liver is full of glucose, sugar remains in the bloodstream, which prevents the liver from releasing glucose, etc.

For those too lazy to read, here's the tl;dr: eat less often (low frequency matters more than low calorie), include more dietary fiber and cut down on carbs and proteins.

Same guy on the youtubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Like all great works of art... you should read the book first.

“AI is an algorithm in a clown suit. It’s less predictable, it’s more fun, and it comes without a 30-day, money-back guarantee.”

Sorry, but what is being touted as AI ain't either. What is being pushed today as AI is little more than an unbaked solution to a badly under-determined system of linear equations.

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

Good read.

Well first of all, the communist manifesto was listed on his favorite books among others such as Animal Farm and Mein Kampf (source), and his videos he posted talked about using the gold standard and anti-government statements. (source). Yes he was nuts, but I think the shooting people is more indicative than this claim.

Suck it, moron.

For a background on how bad it's gotten (and by extension how bad it can get), this is about the best, most engaging history of the last time I've come across.

“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could LOWER that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

By the way, scare mongering isn't really necessary, as Hans Rosling argues that

In developed countries, a ratio near 2 parents to 2 children mostly exists and developing nations are getting closer and closer as their childhood health outcomes continue to improve.

which brings him to the conclusion that

Population growth should hit a limit around 11 billion within the next hundred years, as the world equalizes in health outcomes.

What could go wrong? - Louis Wu

Well... The plastic-eating microbes could get loose and destroy everything made of plastic - like electrical insulation, etc.... like in the book, Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters. But, that's just science fiction.

So 1970 called, they want their crisis back. This is actually not an issue in the sense of uncontrollable population growth any more, if current trends continue we'll slowly peak around double or triple where we are now and then population will begin to plummet. http://www.goodreads.com/book/...

It's called a joke. Possibly inspired by this: http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

Ability to alter people's minds? Like the news posting lies or half-truths? Like our leaders telling us half-truths/lies? Like talking to anyone that is expressing their view on something? We already have this capability thru speech, and that will still be the easiest way to influence people.

With even the most advanced version of this it would be next to impossible to "rewrite" a brain... Would most likely be easier to do brainwashing the same way as cults do it..

The computer-brain-interface would most likely be to output things.. Typing text.. Sending over a visual representation of what you are thinking about to the other person's visual cortex (or maybe just a display over the eye since that would probably be easier to implement)

I do not claim or know what will come from this.. But i don't see it as a problematic technology anytime soon..

Just some food for thought. Imagine if you could actually "write" to someone's mind.. Imagine if you could dump all the experiences from a 70 year old professor and write all that knowledge into a 20 year old person, all without having the person spending a day in school... Imagine if you could dump all the experiences from a hundred 70 year old professors and write that into a 20 year old person's mind...Imagine a world where you could apply for a job, and all the needed information could simply be downloaded into your mind in a few minutes..
Imagine a world where everyone would have instance access to knowledge (with hundreds of years of experience) in any field they wanted.
In a world like this we would not have poverty in the same way we do today.. All countries would be on the same level of development and possibilities in producing goods. Just imagine.. if you Indian support-guy would actually know what they were talking about. (sorry, could not resist :)
In a world like this we could all make decisions based on facts instead of basing it on the filtered down versions our leaders/news-outlets tells us.

I do think that something like this would far outweigh the downsides, and it would probably be a lot of pushback during the emergence of the technology. But it's all probably a quite long way there (50-100 years?) before we start seeing anything close to the above.

And as a recommendation.. Read the 3 books in the Nexus series ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/... ).. They take it a step further with nanobots that you inject into your brain to allow you to communicate with others and then plays on how the world reacts to these things..

I recently saw a talk about the upcoming "Clean Disruption" which is right around the corner. He looks at secular trends, such as the falling price per watt of solar PV or the price per kwh of Li-Ion batteries, and concludes that our current modes of energy and transportation will be obsolete by 2030.

To portray the speed with which such 'disruptions' can occur, he begins the talk with a photo of 5th Ave., NYC, Easter Sunday, 1900. The street is packed with horse-drawn vehicles, but there is one car ("horseless carriage") in view, if you squint... Then he shows a photo from the same spot, same day, in 1913. The street is packed with Model-T Fords, and there is one horse in view, if you squint even harder.

He claims that we are on the threshold of a similar tipping point right now. By 2030, that same photo of 5th Ave. will show an ocean of EV's with only one ICE vehicle in view.

"Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" by Michael A. Hiltzik https://www.goodreads.com/book...

I would think the next step is to voice print yourself and train google/alexa to respond to only a specific voice or group of voices. It would seem to make sense to change the name google/alexa responded to, to something personalized as well, say Oscar, like the system developed by a character in the following books...

http://www.goodreads.com/serie...

Yep. Eventually we will go all electric - or electric in some form from some kind of energy cell.

The adoption of EVs may go faster than most of us expect. I recommend folks take a look at Clean Disruption by Tony Seba. (Watch his lecture here if you prefer video.) He begins with a photo of 5th Avenue in NYC, Easter Sunday, 1900. The street is packed with horse drawn vehicles, but there is one "horseless carriage" visible (if you squint really hard). Next he shows a photo of the same spot, same day, in 1913. The street is packed with Model-T Fords, with only one horse visible (if you squint even harder).

Then he shows some data on the falling price of battery storage, solar PV panels, computing power, etc., and predicts where these secular trends will lead in the next several years. Though the book was published in 2014, his prediction that mid-range, "affordale" EVs ($35k) would come to market around 2017-18 has already come true, ahead of schedule. He then predicts that low-range ($20k) EVs will become available by 2022. At that point, there is no economic reason to buy a gasoline car. (EVs are a fraction of the cost per mile, and their "regular maintenance" is little more than fresh tires and wiper blades.)

In a nutshell, he says the current energy and transportation system will be obsolete by 2030.

Tesla doesn't make a profit and hasn't.

Tesla earns a 25% markup on every car they sell. The only reason they don't "make a profit" is because they reinvest all that revenue into new infrastructure. When CNBC talking heads whine about Tesla not posting profits, what they really mean is that Tesla is not paying dividends yet.

Well, boo-hoo... If you want a stock that pays good dividends, there are plenty on the market. Go buy some. If you want to make a long-term investment in the future, and are not looking for a quick ROI, then Tesla makes more sense.

I don't think it's because we're stupid. I think it's just because we're not super-smart. (And good thing we're not, because then we'd be up against some amazing liars!)

You are probably a bad-ass motherfucker at something, and possibly several things, the more Rennaissance-Man-like you are. But you can't be an expert at everything (you just can't). So you're going to fall back to less-impressive (but still .. sorta decent) heuristics, both when you try to do those things, and also when you try to figure out if someone else is good at those things.

Your heuristics can be deceived. You probably have some countermeasures against that, too, but just like the topics themselves, the meta-topic of judging other peoples' expertise, isn't something that everyone can be a bad-ass motherfucker at. And sometimes the person deceiving you can be a bad-ass motherfucker at deception.

An average leader candidate ought to be able to trick an average person about half the time. Now throw in a dynamic selection process, where more persuasive candidates move forward ahead of the less-persuasive ones, and well-vetted leader candidate ought to be able to deceive a majority of people.

We, average-skill deception-detectors, are faced with the some of the best deceivers.

• The Omega Point - Whitley Strieber

Due to my concerns that the American middle class is being decimated...

Currently reading:
The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
Review

Previously read (related):
Why Nations Fail
Review

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It
Review

Due to my concerns that the American middle class is being decimated...

Currently reading:
The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
Review

Previously read (related):
Why Nations Fail
Review

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It
Review

Due to my concerns that the American middle class is being decimated...

Currently reading:
The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
Review

Previously read (related):
Why Nations Fail
Review

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It
Review

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

The quote is "An armed society is a polite society." Well done getting it exactly backwards.

I'm basing it on observations. Is America known as a polite society? Is Canada known as a polite society?

The quote is "An armed society is a polite society." Well done getting it exactly backwards.

People should read the novel Surface Detail before getting a neural lace. The most terrify torture imaginable becomes possible with a sufficiently connected neural lace.

"The back 40 finds its own uses for things"
  -- William Gibson (sorta)

I invoke Dave Barry. http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

“The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club”

It turns out that in managing batteries and booting there are a ton of oddball cases that cause things like this to happen. For example, there may be enough power available from the battery to start the boot process with the CPU in a low power, but once some peripherals start turning on the power draw bec omes more than the battery can support, a voltage rail drops to low, and a reboot happens. Shameless plug: there's a chapter in my book on product development that covers some of these issues and solutions, http://www.goodreads.com/book/...

Look, drinking a soda every once in a while or eating a bag of chips isn't going to hurt me.
Maybe, just maybe, I have this magical thing called self-control.
Yes, it's this weird thing where I don't shove butter and sugar into my face until I puke.

But maybe that's what I want. Who are you to tell me or anyone else how to live and enjoy myself?
Admonish me that my behavior is self-destructive-- good!
Explain to me that what I'm doing is going to hurt me and possibly others (i.e. wasting my life on booze)-- good!
But take away my indulgences, my vices, my pleasure pills?! NO! I'm a free man, damn it!

Why not let people eat what they want and live and die how they want?
Why is it everyone else's fault if a fat person gorges themselves to death? Or a drunkard dies from cirrhosis? Or a druggie dies from an overdose?
Why not let us live like adults and take responsibility for our own lives and our own good and bad decisions?

Oh, right, it's because of socialized medicine and other thinly veiled enslavement schemes, isn't it? It's because we're all shackled together and those who make bad decisions are now going to drag down everyone else. It's because self-righteous tyrants are trying to force some kind of behavior on everyone else.
Oh, but it's not the wannabe tyrants' fault is it? No, it's the fault of all those rich people who have more money than I do isn't it?

Why can't we be free instead?
Why can't we take responsibility for ourselves instead?
Why can't we realize that no matter what we do or how we live or force others to live we are still going to die.
Why can't we live the life we want without self-righteous busy bodies or fear-mongers trying to ruin everything for us regardless of if we want something that is constructive or self-destructive?

Why is freedom always the very first enemy of so called "social" ideas?