every sunday a guy shows up with 20 bags of flour. the townspeople line up and buy the flour from the guy, $2/ a bag
one sunday, this asshole shows up really early, buys all 20 bags for $40, turns around and faces the townsfolk and says "ok, that will be $5 a bag from each of you"
understand the illegality yet?
incidentally, this puts the lie to libertarians and free market fundamentalists who believe the market is healthiest when left alone. a healthy market needs to be heavily policed by the government to be healthy, solid fact. because of exactly this sort of market manipulation, of which there are thousand such slimy schemes. there will always be assholes who find natural market imperfections and insert themselves as artificial middle men and gouge the marketplace. they add no value. they parasitically insert themselves in the marketplace and suck it dry
anyone can appreciate how they hurt our economy and hurt the marketplace and the free flow of goods. its a form of robbery what they do, but its diffuse, not specific, and so some people like you can't appreciate their evil up front. i hope you appreciate it now
there are breakers all over the electrical system, but everything in the system is calculated to protect from a lightning strike or equipment failure, NOT the entire network beginning to hum from a massive alien magnetic field frying all wires at the same time. the transformers in question are simply not protected from a carrington effect spike. they CAN be, but the cost associated with that is poopooed, and so they now sit, today, naked and unprotected and ready to be fried by the sun
there will be plenty of jury rigged communication solutions that will make up for the failure of mass media. ham radio hobbyists will become the backbone of society. however, in the meantime, and even during, due to simple issues concerning lack of community and lack of trust, and flat out fearmongering and hysteria, all sorts of insane rumors will spread, people will act unwisely on these falsehoods, and tragedy will result, time and again, in a number of places
the majority will ride the extended hemisphere-wide power outage just fine. but significant social deterioration, resulting in mass casualties, is inevitable and worrisome. its not armageddeon, but its an unacceptable amount of suffering and needless death
all because some power company bean counters blanche at the cost of the breakers
you are extremely complacent on the issue, and this complacency is dangerous
"at that massive scale I think you completely underestimate just what we are capable of"
what? we hold hands and sing kumbaya and use our magical karma to telekinetically rewind blown transformers? what are we capable of exactly in a major urban area descending into confusion, hysteria, and chaos?
sure, plenty, the MAJORITY will ride out the extended period of no electricity just fine. i'm not painting you a picture of armageddeon itself, i'm painting a picture for you of significant societal deterioration across the northern hemisphere for weeks. only a minority will suffer, but the size of that minority will be significant, will include mass casualties due to a number of effects, and that should genuinely concern you
"Breakers do protect against this sort of thing"
but we DON'T HAVE THEM. because some power company blanched at the cost when considering the threat is too small
but yes, all we have to do is invest in the breakers. so why don't we? BECAUSE OF THE FALSE COMPLACENCY YOU SPOUT
so just admit your complacency on the issue is false. maybe you don't have to be as alarmed as i am, but you most certainly should be much more alarmed at the prospect of a carrington effect than you are now
third world/ rural areas would do fine: they are used to no power, and their lives have been set up to function just fine without power
but an entire modern large city? the entire northern hemisphere? without power on the scale of weeks?
you can't possibly be trying to honestly compare the occasional power outages of some sleepy prairie town that is used to it, to a weeks long power outage in a modern major city
nevermind the entire northern hemisphere. you honestly can't imagine that the scale, length of time, and various dependencies we have taken for granted in modern life in a modern city on electricity has meaning that renders your complacency completely wrong on the topic?
only americans are guilty of and prone to simple human weaknesses, like hysteria
"i can say people don't behave like that where i live"
i'm glad that you are ethnocentric. this blindness would perhaps be a wonderful way to describe your nationality, if i were to ascribe to this sort of prejudice, which i don't. but you do. and if this is how you inform your assumed sense of superiority, who am i to judge? after all, i'm just an asshole american
"And if you really don't have power for months. Why the frak wouldn't repair some transformers"
i'm glad your dad showed you how to wrap copper wire and build a rudimentary radio when you were seven years old. based on the vast technological and engineering and organizational acumen this experience invested you with as to declare the repair of thousands of power station transformers at the same time without functional communication or electricity source, please do us the favor of contacting your local power authority and instructing them as to how easy it is to do
but thank you for correcting me: i can see that your problem isn't a false sense of complacency. it is instead a smug sense of condescension and superiority, combined with simple ignorance of the factors involved
nobody is going to be rewinding transformers like macgyver. that's a serious buttload of skilled work, with equipment and supplies that is not easily at hand
furthermore, the canada disruption you are referring to is tiny in comparison to a carrington effect-level event. it won't be days at most, but weeks at a minimum. we simply haven't invested in the transformers protection or backup or the transformer repair skill/ capacity
and no one is saying people will just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. in fact, some will be emphatically looting. and the police cruisers will soon run out of gas since most stations use electric gas pumps. nevermind that after the generators die in a few days/ hours, communications will be down across radio, television, and internet, so the police, and the population, will be left to guess what is going on and when everything will be back to normal. throw in a little hysteria, and you can imagine the results in major cities
people WILL freeze to death, simply because they will NOT just sit around, but panic and venture out in the cold out of complete ignorance and fright
do you consider me alarmist? out of intellectual honesty, i will say it is possible i am straying too far into alarmism in my comments
however, to whatever degree i am straying into alarmism, you are straying much further and much more dangerously into complacency on this issue, that is for sure. in other words, your complacency here is far more dangerous than my alarmism
the problem is when the induction causes the transformers at the ends of high tensions wires to blow, with no replacement available
you can build circuit breakers into such transformers, but a cost-benefit-risk analysis hasn't sided yet on the side of caution, even though the cost is not great. and no, we don't have a ready supply of the right transformers sitting around
paradoxically, the poorest nations of the world will do fine, because they are less dependent on electricty and electronics, and are closer to the equator. while the electricity and electronics dependent northern hemisphere will experience severe long lasting societal shocks, involving the mass disruption of the internet, other communications, and all the vital uses the northern hemisphere has built into their electrical grid
so we're all screwed when (not if) the next carrington effect is observed, out of simple laziness and complacency. we have had plenty warning, and we have freely chosen not to protect ourselves from this threat with a simple low cost circuit breaker style set up
On September 2nd, 1859, the Earth went mad. Auroras lit up the sky over Australia, Japan, Colorado, and even as close to the equator as Venezuela. The worldwide telegraph system, which had gone from a laboratory curiosity to the wonder of the age in the previous twenty years, went haywire--sparking operators, scorching paper tapes, and mysteriously still transmitting messages between Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine although the batteries that ran the system had been disconnected out of self-defense. At Kew Gardens in London, a set of magnetometers designed to study the Earth's magnetic field started showing "disturbances of unusual violence and very wide extent" on August 27th; by September 2nd they were literally off the charts. No-one knew what was going on, with one possible exception....
So equipped, Carrington was in a good position to catch an odd sight on September 1st, 1859 at 11:18 in the morning (if that seems peculiarly exact, bear in mind that the likeliest people to have precise chronometers at the time were ship's masters and astronomers). He was engaged in his usual observation schedule, projecting the Sun onto a large darkened piece of glass and measuring sunspot positions. In particular he'd been interested in an enormous sunspot cluster north of the solar equator which had appeared on August 26th. It was large enough to be of interest to astronomers world-wide, so there is at least one photograph of it--if you're trying to match it up with the chart above, remember that images in reflecting telescopes are inverted top to bottom.
He happened to be looking at the cluster when four bright points of light suddenly appeared from within it. He took a moment to check that the full strength of the Sun hadn't somehow managed to come through some hole in his equipment then, satisfied that it was actually happening on the solar surface itself, called for someone to come confirm what he was seeing. As Carrington himself put it, then "on returning within 60 seconds, [he] was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled". It disappeared entirely within a few minutes.
but your choice to remove your freedom often affects me. then i get a say in what you choose, simply so you don't choose to harm me out of your irresponsibility
people are constantly asserting self-determination in situations where they impair themselves to the point where they hurt others. therefore, the issue is not self-determination, but lack of responsibility. when you make choices that hurt others, i have a right to decide what you do
and if you choose to take something like heroin, and you therefore to threaten to wind up an addict who cannot take care of himself, then i have a right to try to prevent you from becoming an addict. because who is going to have to pay to house and feed you when you are a zombie?
so if it were five feet away (on your windowsill), i'd perhaps do a doubletake. but 20 feet away, and the power you are actually getting is much lower than first impression dictates
at this rate, i expect a story on slashdot next month (after 5 such stories of this subject matter in the interim) about solar panels that function at 375% efficiency, make you coffee in the morning, and solve the israeli-palestinian conflict on its days off
drug addicts lose the ability to support themselves and maintain relationships. they begin to thieve, as their cravings don't go away. this the way in which your life is harmed by drug addicts. and if not directly like that, then via support programs and the need for a beefy police department to simply secure you from the drug zombies in your community
drug addiction requires one variable: exposure. expose more people to more of a highly addictive substance, more of them become addicts. so you need to minimize their exposure to certain drugs. this creates all of the negatives of the drug war you allude to:: stronger mafia, dodgy supply, increased marginalization of users, etc. negatives i agree with you completely
and for some drugs, like marijuana or alcohol, nicotine, even lsd (nonaddictive), the negatives of the war itself is worse than the negatives of the drug itself, since those drugs aren't particularly life destroying. but some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, simply making these products more widely and freely available makes more addicts with basketcase lives. makes worse negatives than the war itself
"In a free society the person who takes the risks should suffer the consequences of their actions not punish everyone because a few people can't control themselves."
yes, that's a lovely fiction isn't it
as if the legions of those who are zombies now who can't maintain a job or a relationship, out on the streets, have no effect on your life. you suffer the consequences of other people's actions, especially in regards to them becoming drug addicts. so you need to understand and accept that simple truth: you need to minimize the availability of some substances themselves to minimize the creation of legions of addicts, since simple exposure is the overriding variable. you need to control the drugs themselves, with all the negatives of the drug wars that come with that, simply because for some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, the effects of the drugs itself are worse than the effects of the war
and what are you really doing in the end? preventing some people from becoming addicts, ie, increasing their free will, and your free will: less addicts for you to navigate your life around. there's a cost, either in legions of addicts, or a war on drugs. pick your cost, but there is no such thing as no cost at all, in the real world
a drug has to be inebriating AND addictive to destroy lives. if its only addictive, like nicotine, you can still work/ have a relationship. if its only inebriating, like LSD, you can still work/ have a relationship. but if something combines a craving with an ability to blot out hours of your life, you no longer can keep a job/ relationship, you can no longer support yourself. at this point, damage is done. so you're talking about meth, cocaine, heroin. alcohol and marijuana are borderline: they have the capacity to destroy lives, but their addictive potential is much lower than say heroin, so they should be legal
but something like heroin, you can strap someone down in a room (anyone, this is about basic human biochemistry), drip it into their veins over a period of time, and release them later. and you tell them they can have that drip again, just go do "xyz": they'll go do it. they need that fix. you've created a slave. you create a biochemical need that usurps your free will: you spend all of your time craving that drug, you'd do anything for your next fix. you're a zombie, a shell of your former needs and wants and desires and dreams
this is why i say drugs are the greatest destroyer of freewill the world has known. where a mind might have done something useful, constructive, you instead have a pointless echo chamber that interrupts all other driving forces: "where's my next fix, my next fix, my next fix..."
but that's already happening: when the real estate market tanked, it was found that the further a house was from mass transportation, the more value it lost
and obama is finally the first president in decades to have the balls and the wisdom to invest in high speed rail, god bless him for that
i think this nations retarded obsession with the automobile and gasoline is finally waning. the hummer finally died last week. hallelujah. there was no greater symbol of the waste arrogance and aggressive isolation of an age i hope is now finally passing. and with that goes the need to secure petroleum production in other parts of the world and all the problems that go with that
hate the us invasion of iraq? hate al qaeda's good funding? stop driving your damn car
you can whine about the world all you want, and how helpless you are about it all, but you're not so helpless. vote with your damn feet, literally. limiting your own contribution to the problems in this world is still well within your control, and driving a car is your contribution to the hellish problems we see in the world today
fuck the age of the automobile. it killed the cores of our cities, it killed our countryside with suburban sprawl and strip malls, it polluted our air, and it isolated us in little metal pods yelling at each other in gridlock on the highway
fuck the automobile, i wish to see the death of the car by my old age. i toast the death of gm, i relish the next oil price shock. death to the automobile age
by government, religion, etc. please note one small detail:
there is no greater destruction of freedom in the history of mankind than drug addiction
you take a mind that contemplates history or philosophy or art and replace it with one that is only concerned where its next fix comes from
so the most autocratic fascist fundamentalist brutal regime you can possible imagine is but a wall flower in comparison to the bars of the mind that represents the freedom destruction done by drugs
which makes two ironic points possible: government declares a war on drugs perhaps out of professional jealousy. and some people fight the government telling them what to do... so they can choose themselves to be slaves
either way, what i fear the most is the government that ACTIVELY PROMOTES the use of drugs, for example, heroin. when some evil mastermind figures out he doesn't have to fight drugs, but actually use them to supplicate and dominate, as a LITERAL opiate of the masses... at that point, mankind is genuinely screwed
actually drugs have already been used with this effect in warfare: the british forcing the chinese to take opium, the settlers of north america neutralizing the red man with "fire water", etc.
all i'm asking is that while y'all busy demonizing the freedom destruction of government and religion, that you don't forget the most successful freedom destroyer of them all: drugs
has degraded into the usual paranoid schizoprenic drivel
perhaps your worst intellectual insult is that you're boring. you can't even provide me with a more entertaining narrative at least (an intelligent one is of course beyond possibility). just the typical b-grade hollywood movie plot about top secret cabals in control, the tired idiotic noam chomsky "manufactured consent" meme, and you even throw in the bankrupt chestnut "1984", the go to fantasy of every low iq paranoid like yourself. typical, boring, pathetic. a garden variety unintelligent paranoid asshole
you guys are boring, really
come on losers, at least be entertaining in your alternofantasy life!
if i'm going to have to wade through your insipid derivative common thoughts, at least show some creative spark
i hereby require the paranoid schizophrenic losers i encounter on slashdot to have more entertaining fantasy lives from now on. the steven seagal movie plots mistaken as reality just isn't cutting it anymore
Slashdot Mirror
every sunday a guy shows up with 20 bags of flour. the townspeople line up and buy the flour from the guy, $2/ a bag
one sunday, this asshole shows up really early, buys all 20 bags for $40, turns around and faces the townsfolk and says "ok, that will be $5 a bag from each of you"
understand the illegality yet?
incidentally, this puts the lie to libertarians and free market fundamentalists who believe the market is healthiest when left alone. a healthy market needs to be heavily policed by the government to be healthy, solid fact. because of exactly this sort of market manipulation, of which there are thousand such slimy schemes. there will always be assholes who find natural market imperfections and insert themselves as artificial middle men and gouge the marketplace. they add no value. they parasitically insert themselves in the marketplace and suck it dry
anyone can appreciate how they hurt our economy and hurt the marketplace and the free flow of goods. its a form of robbery what they do, but its diffuse, not specific, and so some people like you can't appreciate their evil up front. i hope you appreciate it now
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1566312&cid=31318102
http://spaceweather.gc.ca/se-pow-eng.php
there are breakers all over the electrical system, but everything in the system is calculated to protect from a lightning strike or equipment failure, NOT the entire network beginning to hum from a massive alien magnetic field frying all wires at the same time. the transformers in question are simply not protected from a carrington effect spike. they CAN be, but the cost associated with that is poopooed, and so they now sit, today, naked and unprotected and ready to be fried by the sun
there will be plenty of jury rigged communication solutions that will make up for the failure of mass media. ham radio hobbyists will become the backbone of society. however, in the meantime, and even during, due to simple issues concerning lack of community and lack of trust, and flat out fearmongering and hysteria, all sorts of insane rumors will spread, people will act unwisely on these falsehoods, and tragedy will result, time and again, in a number of places
the majority will ride the extended hemisphere-wide power outage just fine. but significant social deterioration, resulting in mass casualties, is inevitable and worrisome. its not armageddeon, but its an unacceptable amount of suffering and needless death
all because some power company bean counters blanche at the cost of the breakers
you are extremely complacent on the issue, and this complacency is dangerous
"at that massive scale I think you completely underestimate just what we are capable of"
what? we hold hands and sing kumbaya and use our magical karma to telekinetically rewind blown transformers? what are we capable of exactly in a major urban area descending into confusion, hysteria, and chaos?
sure, plenty, the MAJORITY will ride out the extended period of no electricity just fine. i'm not painting you a picture of armageddeon itself, i'm painting a picture for you of significant societal deterioration across the northern hemisphere for weeks. only a minority will suffer, but the size of that minority will be significant, will include mass casualties due to a number of effects, and that should genuinely concern you
"Breakers do protect against this sort of thing"
but we DON'T HAVE THEM. because some power company blanched at the cost when considering the threat is too small
but yes, all we have to do is invest in the breakers. so why don't we? BECAUSE OF THE FALSE COMPLACENCY YOU SPOUT
so just admit your complacency on the issue is false. maybe you don't have to be as alarmed as i am, but you most certainly should be much more alarmed at the prospect of a carrington effect than you are now
third world/ rural areas would do fine: they are used to no power, and their lives have been set up to function just fine without power
but an entire modern large city? the entire northern hemisphere? without power on the scale of weeks?
you can't possibly be trying to honestly compare the occasional power outages of some sleepy prairie town that is used to it, to a weeks long power outage in a modern major city
nevermind the entire northern hemisphere. you honestly can't imagine that the scale, length of time, and various dependencies we have taken for granted in modern life in a modern city on electricity has meaning that renders your complacency completely wrong on the topic?
only americans are guilty of and prone to simple human weaknesses, like hysteria
"i can say people don't behave like that where i live"
i'm glad that you are ethnocentric. this blindness would perhaps be a wonderful way to describe your nationality, if i were to ascribe to this sort of prejudice, which i don't. but you do. and if this is how you inform your assumed sense of superiority, who am i to judge? after all, i'm just an asshole american
"And if you really don't have power for months. Why the frak wouldn't repair some transformers"
i'm glad your dad showed you how to wrap copper wire and build a rudimentary radio when you were seven years old. based on the vast technological and engineering and organizational acumen this experience invested you with as to declare the repair of thousands of power station transformers at the same time without functional communication or electricity source, please do us the favor of contacting your local power authority and instructing them as to how easy it is to do
but thank you for correcting me: i can see that your problem isn't a false sense of complacency. it is instead a smug sense of condescension and superiority, combined with simple ignorance of the factors involved
nobody is going to be rewinding transformers like macgyver. that's a serious buttload of skilled work, with equipment and supplies that is not easily at hand
furthermore, the canada disruption you are referring to is tiny in comparison to a carrington effect-level event. it won't be days at most, but weeks at a minimum. we simply haven't invested in the transformers protection or backup or the transformer repair skill/ capacity
and no one is saying people will just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. in fact, some will be emphatically looting. and the police cruisers will soon run out of gas since most stations use electric gas pumps. nevermind that after the generators die in a few days/ hours, communications will be down across radio, television, and internet, so the police, and the population, will be left to guess what is going on and when everything will be back to normal. throw in a little hysteria, and you can imagine the results in major cities
people WILL freeze to death, simply because they will NOT just sit around, but panic and venture out in the cold out of complete ignorance and fright
do you consider me alarmist? out of intellectual honesty, i will say it is possible i am straying too far into alarmism in my comments
however, to whatever degree i am straying into alarmism, you are straying much further and much more dangerously into complacency on this issue, that is for sure. in other words, your complacency here is far more dangerous than my alarmism
the problem is when the induction causes the transformers at the ends of high tensions wires to blow, with no replacement available
you can build circuit breakers into such transformers, but a cost-benefit-risk analysis hasn't sided yet on the side of caution, even though the cost is not great. and no, we don't have a ready supply of the right transformers sitting around
paradoxically, the poorest nations of the world will do fine, because they are less dependent on electricty and electronics, and are closer to the equator. while the electricity and electronics dependent northern hemisphere will experience severe long lasting societal shocks, involving the mass disruption of the internet, other communications, and all the vital uses the northern hemisphere has built into their electrical grid
so we're all screwed when (not if) the next carrington effect is observed, out of simple laziness and complacency. we have had plenty warning, and we have freely chosen not to protect ourselves from this threat with a simple low cost circuit breaker style set up
http://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-carrington-flare/
that is, a moving magnetic field inducing an electric current on a length of conductive material, usually a metal wire
so unless your pacemaker features a lead which extends a couple of yards outside your chest, you'll be fine
the problem is when the induction causes the transformers at the ends of high tensions wires to blow, with no replacement available
sorry, you're right. i fail at physics
but your choice to remove your freedom often affects me. then i get a say in what you choose, simply so you don't choose to harm me out of your irresponsibility
people are constantly asserting self-determination in situations where they impair themselves to the point where they hurt others. therefore, the issue is not self-determination, but lack of responsibility. when you make choices that hurt others, i have a right to decide what you do
and if you choose to take something like heroin, and you therefore to threaten to wind up an addict who cannot take care of himself, then i have a right to try to prevent you from becoming an addict. because who is going to have to pay to house and feed you when you are a zombie?
so if it were five feet away (on your windowsill), i'd perhaps do a doubletake. but 20 feet away, and the power you are actually getting is much lower than first impression dictates
at this rate, i expect a story on slashdot next month (after 5 such stories of this subject matter in the interim) about solar panels that function at 375% efficiency, make you coffee in the morning, and solve the israeli-palestinian conflict on its days off
it was really screwing up gravity in canada, so cern was nice enough to demure to the ioc's request and shut off the lhc during the winter olympics
now canadians will have to get used to floating around again
on the plus side their compasses should work again
it is not your free will that is doing that, but a biochemical compulsion. you are not choosing to do anything, a choice is being made for you
if you are a room trying to write a story, and your roommate is blaring music at maximum volume, are you free?
now you know what it is like in the mind of an addict to be "free"
how about a heroin junkie or a crack whore
and you're telling me the effort to stop people from becoming these things is worse than these states of being
drug addicts lose the ability to support themselves and maintain relationships. they begin to thieve, as their cravings don't go away. this the way in which your life is harmed by drug addicts. and if not directly like that, then via support programs and the need for a beefy police department to simply secure you from the drug zombies in your community
drug addiction requires one variable: exposure. expose more people to more of a highly addictive substance, more of them become addicts. so you need to minimize their exposure to certain drugs. this creates all of the negatives of the drug war you allude to:: stronger mafia, dodgy supply, increased marginalization of users, etc. negatives i agree with you completely
and for some drugs, like marijuana or alcohol, nicotine, even lsd (nonaddictive), the negatives of the war itself is worse than the negatives of the drug itself, since those drugs aren't particularly life destroying. but some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, simply making these products more widely and freely available makes more addicts with basketcase lives. makes worse negatives than the war itself
"In a free society the person who takes the risks should suffer the consequences of their actions not punish everyone because a few people can't control themselves."
yes, that's a lovely fiction isn't it
as if the legions of those who are zombies now who can't maintain a job or a relationship, out on the streets, have no effect on your life. you suffer the consequences of other people's actions, especially in regards to them becoming drug addicts. so you need to understand and accept that simple truth: you need to minimize the availability of some substances themselves to minimize the creation of legions of addicts, since simple exposure is the overriding variable. you need to control the drugs themselves, with all the negatives of the drug wars that come with that, simply because for some drugs: meth, cocaine, heroin, the effects of the drugs itself are worse than the effects of the war
and what are you really doing in the end? preventing some people from becoming addicts, ie, increasing their free will, and your free will: less addicts for you to navigate your life around. there's a cost, either in legions of addicts, or a war on drugs. pick your cost, but there is no such thing as no cost at all, in the real world
caffeine is not heroin
a drug has to be inebriating AND addictive to destroy lives. if its only addictive, like nicotine, you can still work/ have a relationship. if its only inebriating, like LSD, you can still work/ have a relationship. but if something combines a craving with an ability to blot out hours of your life, you no longer can keep a job/ relationship, you can no longer support yourself. at this point, damage is done. so you're talking about meth, cocaine, heroin. alcohol and marijuana are borderline: they have the capacity to destroy lives, but their addictive potential is much lower than say heroin, so they should be legal
but something like heroin, you can strap someone down in a room (anyone, this is about basic human biochemistry), drip it into their veins over a period of time, and release them later. and you tell them they can have that drip again, just go do "xyz": they'll go do it. they need that fix. you've created a slave. you create a biochemical need that usurps your free will: you spend all of your time craving that drug, you'd do anything for your next fix. you're a zombie, a shell of your former needs and wants and desires and dreams
this is why i say drugs are the greatest destroyer of freewill the world has known. where a mind might have done something useful, constructive, you instead have a pointless echo chamber that interrupts all other driving forces: "where's my next fix, my next fix, my next fix..."
just move somewhere mass transportation friendly
but that's already happening: when the real estate market tanked, it was found that the further a house was from mass transportation, the more value it lost
and obama is finally the first president in decades to have the balls and the wisdom to invest in high speed rail, god bless him for that
i think this nations retarded obsession with the automobile and gasoline is finally waning. the hummer finally died last week. hallelujah. there was no greater symbol of the waste arrogance and aggressive isolation of an age i hope is now finally passing. and with that goes the need to secure petroleum production in other parts of the world and all the problems that go with that
hate the us invasion of iraq? hate al qaeda's good funding? stop driving your damn car
you can whine about the world all you want, and how helpless you are about it all, but you're not so helpless. vote with your damn feet, literally. limiting your own contribution to the problems in this world is still well within your control, and driving a car is your contribution to the hellish problems we see in the world today
fuck the age of the automobile. it killed the cores of our cities, it killed our countryside with suburban sprawl and strip malls, it polluted our air, and it isolated us in little metal pods yelling at each other in gridlock on the highway
fuck the automobile, i wish to see the death of the car by my old age. i toast the death of gm, i relish the next oil price shock. death to the automobile age
has nothing to do with recreational self-destruction
you are not self-medicating when you are an addict
i don't know how you can equate the two concepts
she was canadian
by government, religion, etc. please note one small detail:
there is no greater destruction of freedom in the history of mankind than drug addiction
you take a mind that contemplates history or philosophy or art and replace it with one that is only concerned where its next fix comes from
so the most autocratic fascist fundamentalist brutal regime you can possible imagine is but a wall flower in comparison to the bars of the mind that represents the freedom destruction done by drugs
which makes two ironic points possible: government declares a war on drugs perhaps out of professional jealousy. and some people fight the government telling them what to do... so they can choose themselves to be slaves
either way, what i fear the most is the government that ACTIVELY PROMOTES the use of drugs, for example, heroin. when some evil mastermind figures out he doesn't have to fight drugs, but actually use them to supplicate and dominate, as a LITERAL opiate of the masses... at that point, mankind is genuinely screwed
actually drugs have already been used with this effect in warfare: the british forcing the chinese to take opium, the settlers of north america neutralizing the red man with "fire water", etc.
all i'm asking is that while y'all busy demonizing the freedom destruction of government and religion, that you don't forget the most successful freedom destroyer of them all: drugs
has degraded into the usual paranoid schizoprenic drivel
perhaps your worst intellectual insult is that you're boring. you can't even provide me with a more entertaining narrative at least (an intelligent one is of course beyond possibility). just the typical b-grade hollywood movie plot about top secret cabals in control, the tired idiotic noam chomsky "manufactured consent" meme, and you even throw in the bankrupt chestnut "1984", the go to fantasy of every low iq paranoid like yourself. typical, boring, pathetic. a garden variety unintelligent paranoid asshole
you guys are boring, really
come on losers, at least be entertaining in your alternofantasy life!
if i'm going to have to wade through your insipid derivative common thoughts, at least show some creative spark
i hereby require the paranoid schizophrenic losers i encounter on slashdot to have more entertaining fantasy lives from now on. the steven seagal movie plots mistaken as reality just isn't cutting it anymore
from your other thread
and now i know you are a paranoid schizoprenic: top secret cabals run the world!
who is it? the j00s? the bank3rs? senator palpatine? agent smith?
so how big is your weapons stash?
go for it timothy mcveigh! do your worst dylan klebold! YOU CAN DO IT RETARD!
lol
fucking loser