a scientific approach to why we keep doing this "lets fight a war every 4 years in the middle east" baloney. Some have speculated its a doctrine incepted by the former president carter, others say its driven simply by the military industrial complex, but im really curious to see if anyone can come up with a reason why we have to erect a punching bag like clockwork each presidency. both sides might bicker on finances and the budget, but both bob their heads in agreeance each time an expensive protracted excursion into war comes along without much dissonance.
The fact that the united states needlessly and violently attacks the middle east whenever it sees fit was something that Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki touched upon. OBL actually had the nerve to insist we stop doing it as a condition upon which he would stop attacking america. It was a very reasonable request; a negotiated ceasefire.
Nothing doing so it seems. We partner up with the only nation in the region that seems to vitriolically hate iran and start coming up with the same clever chicanery we used to sabotage gas well computer control systems in soviet russia. Israel is a state sponsor of terrorism and hasnt signed any of the nuclear treaties we're shoving toward iran, but they havent made it into anyones axis of evil. Why do they get to have nuclear power and iran, a much larger state by population alone, doesnt?
why states enact these laws other than pandering to their geriatric neoconservative constituents and ginning up a scapegoat for high unemployment rates.
address the greater issue of biblical retribution as drug policy i dont see science being able to contribute anything meaningful. Occams razor would suggest the simple solution to whatever the hell OP means by "synthetic marijuana" is just to legalize marijuana itself.
the 'war on drugs' is such an abject failure that that not even our presidents and congress comment upon unless to reinforce the consistently disproven negative myths and stereotypes. Until we apply a modicum of science to determining what vectors cause drug abuse in society, all we're doing is inventing new ways to fill prisons.
the worst. they either never compiled correctly or broke things horrendously when they did (my experience.) by comparison linux has open source drivers that competently handle 3d graphics for ATI/AMD, and they have for a while. That active development on such open source drivers was being considered at all, and not for NVidia, is a testament to Torvalds opinion on the matter. id like to think Intel screwed up once with their GMA500 chipset, which may or may not have been intentional to block linux from the hybrid tablet laptop market at the behest of microsoft, but even Intel works closely with the linux community in most cases to ensure their graphics chipsets work with linux, and work well.
the windows phone is that mainstream press exist for the food and liquor at the release events whereas commentators arent getting either. Anyone willing to purchase something like this uses the same mentality as they do when ingesting something from the film industry. avoid the major critics and hit rotten tomatoes or check the reviews somewhere obscure.
you could argue that where apple and google have succeeded is in UI and such. if E3 is any indication, its the fact they extend a few free pints of stella and some extra steak to the bloggers as well.
evidence in other fields as well...for example:
replacing the lightbulb in your refridgerator causes until catastrohpic damage to everything from the compressor motor to the frozen peas.
replacing the carpet in your living room will in fact cause your entire house untold amounts of damage to everything from the foundation to the chapstick wedged between the cushions of the couch
universal remote controls, while seemingly a good idea, can cause the television to stop working and the viewers to become incontinent parapalegics
replacing the gasoline in a new car with gasoline of a different brand, will cause the car to explode.
"He is home educated and doesn't read as well as schooled kids of his age. He hasn't had much science education and no chemistry at all. "
you have critical unmet dependencies that prohibit your child from learning anything considered at the lectern by public education, let alone its homeschool analog that as abrasive as this sounds appears to be failing miserably. Homeschool parents make the mistake of asserting they mustnt be experts in a field in order to teach it, which while true is a flawed logic at best. It reduces education to a commandment, not a healthy discussion. You'll be able to regurgutate the lecture certainly, however important questions your child may have about a topic or media will be relegated to the wayside whereas a public educator will undoubtedly have a specialization that permits them to afford the child greater understanding.
to dissect the aformentioned talking points from another poster: * Dramatically improved science curriculum over state requirements.
not if you have a cursory understanding of the topic and champion it as adequate. * Aggressive reading and mathematics programs.
see above. you're affording what amounts to aggressive indoctrination into the general structure and idea of mathematics. abstractions and permutations will not be a part of your lecture, unless you know maths as well as a public school teacher. * Enhanced educational environment (a quiet, well equipped classroom).
much of modern society revolves around a team framework, to achieve success as a diverse group. homeschooling cannot possibly compare to a group of 6 or 12 children, unless you're mormon. * Teachers who really care, and want each child to be able to compete in a demanding global economy as adults. We love our students like parents should, because we are both.
this is a bullshit talking point that serves to demonize public educators and whitewash homeschooling. your demanding global economy expects your child to understand how to work in groups, ask questions and perform critical thinking that is stymied by homeschool at the expense of the "dont need to be an expert" mantra. every minority coworker and dissenting opinion afforded your child in the future will only appear as a landmine, not a competitive rung, by which your child will lay eviscerated as their public counterparts outpace them. All this at the insistance that students be loved?
we're just plugging a product name in place of a common procedure the government has decided is wholly acceptable. Anwar Al Awlaki exercised his freedom of speech in a way america didnt exactly like, and under the guise of nothing more than a precognitive assertion that he's obviously a killer, the united states tried, sentence, and convicted him to death based entirely on the actions of other people and the youtube videos of his sermons.
Anwar is to islam as jerry fallwell is to Christianity. His sermons center around conservative religious practices and family values, peppered with the occasional irritating demand for war or call to crusade against some mainstream itinerary of the culture war. the difference however being when Robertson or Fallwell call for the death of an abortion clinic or gay bar and one of their insane followers actually goes and pulls it off, drones never neave the tarmac and raze the 13 million dollar california mansions these assholes own.
if the track record of drones is to be validated on any level, and its future potential understood, we must look at the applications pursued thus far. Sure, Anwar al-Awlaki for example was blown up by a drone flying high in the skies above him. But just think about how much more we would win the war on terror if the next american citizen to speak freely against his country were blown up...from space. Clearly the mission served only one purpose: to stop Neil DeGrasse Tyson from making any more disparaging remarks about the state of NASA budget cuts.
are you western? considered the military industrial complex? its all the lucrative pay of the private sector and none of the hassle of applying for grants each year to study silly things the government doesnt fund anyway, like climate change research. As an added bonus, the employment is based on unjustified, uncodifiable fears and uncertainties that simply exist without premise, so youre guaranteed a job in perpetuity!
but in all seriousness yeah, I asked myself the same question after i got the Computer Science degree and math minor. the only people willing to hire a mathematician are nasa or raytheon, and nasa ain't payin my student loans down so the devil it is.
that should such a button ever come into existence, its largest affect would be upon the RIAA and MPAA themselves.
why do i pirate? because hollywood has a track record of terrible films. it used to be critics would help me decide if a movie were worth the $12 theatre admission but now that hollywood owns them all, its impossible to decide what film ill like and what film i wont. trailers are designed to hype the films premise by any means; whatever it takes for the dog to bite. I pirate because its more reasonable to delete the movie i hate, than to expect a refund after having sat through it at a theater. I also pirate the film because its a more usable format than a DVD or blu-ray, which require me to purchase needless accessory players and cables to do that which im perfectly capable of with a computer.
I pirate music much less rarely; no thanks to the RIAA. the bands i like let me give them money directly. I recently bought a box-set from the band red-flag. it came on a USB drive in the format i can use, and even included cool remix tracks. as for the artists with catchy riffs and melodies but no real characteristic to appreciate, i can justify pirating from them for a few reasons. The artist Drake for example is a greedy and despicable person, i relish each blow to his earnings. his lyrics, his engineering, melody and the like are all manufactured to generate profit for clearinghouses and industry executives at the pittance he is afforded. None of it is authentic, thus none of it is art. without art, there is no artist to defend.
cynisism in this thread but its true. Memorial Day has been perverted by the government over time to enforce blind patriotic obedience. A sizeable number of service members have come home missing limbs, or rocked by bomb blasts to the full scale IQ of about 85. No one can remember what it was we fought for in iraq, and if they can they dont feel very accomplished or proud about it unless they were told to by a superior officer. We finally accomplished the goal of killing a "six foot tall diabetic" in afghanistan and whle that was supposed to usher in the end of the war on terror; it didnt. We have warrantless searches near borders, warrantless wiretaps, and we cant get on a plane or train without a physically degrading pat down or full-body x-ray that has begun to show potential as a cancer suspect agent. Our country beats a war drum every four years like clockwork, and every four years we're lulled into a state of cringing terror as the next theatre is prepared. we havent anything to commemorate today but the striking effectiveness by which private think tanks and policy centers incense us in favour of war.
On the other spectrum we have private corporations that are trying their goddamned best to make sure you forget the consequences of war like economic depression, poverty, mental illness, death, and the never ending destruction of the constitutional rights by which every american lives freely. So long as you buy your budweiser and 1200 pack of hamburgers from walmart, and dont forget to let the kids wash down their potato chips and hot dogs with a 2 liter of your favorite black bubbly sodapop, most multinational corporations will openly and warmly continue gifting you an alternate reality from that of americas recent wars from viet-nam onward. its one of flags and fireworks, proud bipedal service members and smiling families celebrating whatever the exact opposite of this holiday commemorates.
The only way to see exactly what this holiday is commemorating is to put down the remote, pull yourself off the couch and drive down to the VA hospital. I firmly believe if every american made the trip once, just once, then the next president to even mutter a sentiment about potentially starting war would find himself amidst impeachment.
using a military website whos advisory board includes two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to downplay the fact that
iran so far, just as russia had in the cold war, has outstriped our laughably conservative estimates of its military capability. After all, we've been banging this war drum for far too long to see its support base dwindle in the sight of things like the ability to capture, disable, and reverse engineer americas newest drone. http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-building-copy-captured-us-drone-083944692.html
investors like lockheed and boeing need politicians, and the american public to maintain the hardline opinion that iran could and should be easily crushed by the US military. The boogeyman must remain frightening enough to win the hearts and minds of constituents, but not so frightening as to make them reconsider the cause and effect of another real war without drones that sends kids home with missing limbs or a full scale IQ of 85.
some sort of markup language designed to enable my mother to harass me about the seder and keeping kosher my packets for the sabbath. I'll have to reformat regularly a portion of my disk after passover as it will be riddled with gallons of leftover streits and manischewitz wines.
new versions of the 3.x kernel can also be expected to deprecate/dev/random in favor of four additional devices /dev/nun /dev/gimel /dev/hei /dev/shin
does the article make it sound like the AARP is approaching death as a 'preventable disease' that can easily be combatted by doing something most old people already do. Im not sure what the AARP hopes to achieve other than to perhaps convince a segment of gullible elderly that a lobbying group has found a cure for death.
it should be noted that coffee also shares about 11 of the same chemicals as rat poison...which wither serves as a word of caution or an explaination as to why the rats in jersey seem to get bigger every year.
has been caught and global payments hasnt been charged with any crime, nor have their executives or management.
meanwhile Jeremy Hammond is being held without bail for leaking stratfor credit card numbers, and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
to him as a "lieutenant" at all makes me think we're decorating a scapegoat. to my knowledge anonymous has haver had any structure similar to the military. what use is it to prescribe an american military title to a hacker? its as though we're trying to make him sound like a bond villain out to rape grandmothers and burn houses. the guy leaked credit card numbers that austensibly belonged to corporations. corporations are not people, therefore this is a victimless crime. corporations have insurance to protect against this kind of stuff.
its as if we're so desparate to insist things like anonymous, wikileaks, and occupy arent "real" things, we're willing to paint each one we manage to "capture" as some antichrist hellbent on destroying the world as we know it.
comparatively, if someone at my grocery store stole my credit card and used it to its most nefarious purpose, buying random crap, id not only never get charged for it but they would likely be convicted of a minor crime or petty theft, and sentenced to community service.
fox news is touring this old factory is because it helps further their agenda of demonizing the president and the democratic party. Nevermind the fact that during the housing crisis thousands of cities, states, and even the federal government were burned on taxpayer-backed loans and grants for housing developments. forget about the fact that the automotive bailout and the banking bailout were both passed carte-blanc by a a republican president that spent more than any other president in modern history. This investment, solyindra, is a double whammy for the republican party. Not only did it seek to pioneer alternative energy, it used tax dollars to do it and failed spectacularly.
it didnt fail because the technology didnt work, or the management ran over budget, or the government was overbilled as in the case of so many halliburton and other defense industry contracts. the project failed, ironically in part, because of a mixture of economic policies that began with reagan and saught to chisel apart the manufacturing foundation that made america a land of equality and prosperity. Each president elected in succession more a corporate shill than a representative of the people. Bill enacted NAFTA, George fought to keep the cheap chinese merch flowing, and obama now has the audacity to act shocked when a fledgling american industry is crushed in the face of foreign industry to which we've all but outsourced our very souls.
instead of blaming our suckling reliance on china, or our completely broken 2 party system, we just bitch that obama is wasting our tax dollars, and pretend the other guy up for election wouldnt do the exact same fucking thing because we forget solyindra was a project that got its start with "the other party."
its the same shit sandwich, just different bread. cap and trade? republican idea. private healthcare mandate? republican idea. its just my opinion, but im getting pretty convinced this is all just its a house of old white people who just want to make it to retirement and die the richest. theyre willing to lie, cheat, and steal to make that happen. Thanks to cable tv stations like fox news we're taught to look only at the other party as a viable alternative, whereas 250 years ago if any member of government tried some of the blatantly treasonous shit we routinely see they would be crucified until no more than their bleached bones decorated the countryside.
this is getting off topic. i dont care im not a ron paul supporter but its change. its not left, its not right, and some of the ideas are frightening, but its a form of change that obviously frightens the right people, because you never see him on television in an honest interview. Ron Paul is to the presidental race each year as the blooper real is to the horror film, or the comedy relief is to the action flick, and theres an entire system in place to ensure each and every ron paul remains this way.
id be willing to give him a shot. i might not like everything i get, but the big points about the fed and the military, i think i could work with just getting those.
socializing with my friends, but the truth is after two jobs and 14 hours of work im too tired. my second job, customer service, makes me cranky and irritable by the time i get home and honestly ive spent so much time sitting under fluorescent lights and talking to people about their medical bills id rather stay in anyway.
on the weekends i normally get stuck with TPS reporting, and its not like i can duck out of that because im a salaried employee. besides, this is building equity. i hope.
sometimes on holidays i get off, christmas or the occasional tuesday morning im not working at the baltimization plant, i go to this cafe down the street.
the cafe i go to has lots of people in it, but the unspoken rule is that we all have to be quiet and we have to drink their coffee to use the wireless for exactly one hour. I mean, nobody is doing any meaningful work at a cafe its all mostly facebook and minecraft but the possibility still exists that someone is working out a spreadsheet on their ipad and so we're all quiet.
wednesday when i go back to work and realize i also picked up a bartending shift to help pay down my college loans and the loan for the dental work i had done, i get a chance to socialize with people that are drunk. so i guess that counts. by 4 am though im still tired.
ive tried planning things with my friends, but they spend most of their time at work too.
stop saying throwback. throwback is a marketing term coined by cola companies and snack food conglomerates to gin up their respective markets and attract new customers to the same unhealthy vapid product theyve sold for 50 years. you can use big boy words like "homage" and no one will think the lesser of you on slashdot
second, until makerbots start employing millions of people in well paid, safe factory conditions with competitive pay and honest retirement options, theres absolutely zero equivalent measure between a CnC factory that gets a building permit and a tax break from the city of brooklyn and the 1960's manufacturing explosion that dominated the northeast and ushered in american prosperity for hundreds of millions of people.
makerbot is cool technology in its own right, but to even mention it in the same context as the industrial era that spawned an entire middle class america is almost an insult.
is simple.
1. find current affair or topic of notice or interest to customers
2. find a vector for product placement
3. profit.
the article is perfect, it has no names or citations, no dates or other identifying information and cant have those used to refute it as it falls under the auspices of "well, its a war ya know." I wonder how many vodka tonics it took the guys at f-secure's marketing department before they came up with this crap.
the only thing this "report" serves to do is frighten the general public into purchasing anti virus software. on the bright side, it seems as though slashdot is getting better with slashvertisements!
the only objective congress tacidly has is to invent enough semi-plausible legislative events and topics to maintain the appearance of work, so as to avoid having to engage in solving challenging problems like homelessness or the national deficit. lately though, with such laughable moments as the senate investigation into shariah law, the men-only panel on womens health, and confirming "in god we trust" on the american currency, its starting to seem like the creative juices just arent flowing.
come on Boehner, we all know you guys are just dickin' around in business suits for slightly less than two-thirds of the year, pissing away my tax dollars on booze or insider trading. Sure, you're all-ears for the steak luncheons and lobster dinners but the minute you pour your fat arses back into those chamber seats its like nap time at shady pines. All im hearing is occasional get-off-my-lawn's crafted around the culture war while youre lining your pockets and planning your re-election.
At least try feigning interest in things like perpetual war as a foreign policy, or a reasonable moderated approach to the environment or financial market. im not asking for alot, just a sign. maybe while you're shifting that mountain of cholesterol you call a posterior around in that plush leather chair to excuse another blast of post-caviar flatulence from the hemorrhoid donut you could give a little nod as you wince. at least americans might be able to confirm youre paying attention to some of the day, if not the particular legislature discussed.
and please, we can as americans tolerate reruns. i mean, i sat through viet-raq part deux with king george and tried not to bitch too much. Just please, pick something that wasnt an abject failure with more than a decade of scientific research to attest its futility.
Slashdot Mirror
a scientific approach to why we keep doing this "lets fight a war every 4 years in the middle east" baloney. Some have speculated its a doctrine incepted by the former president carter, others say its driven simply by the military industrial complex, but im really curious to see if anyone can come up with a reason why we have to erect a punching bag like clockwork each presidency. both sides might bicker on finances and the budget, but both bob their heads in agreeance each time an expensive protracted excursion into war comes along without much dissonance.
The fact that the united states needlessly and violently attacks the middle east whenever it sees fit was something that Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki touched upon. OBL actually had the nerve to insist we stop doing it as a condition upon which he would stop attacking america. It was a very reasonable request; a negotiated ceasefire.
Nothing doing so it seems. We partner up with the only nation in the region that seems to vitriolically hate iran and start coming up with the same clever chicanery we used to sabotage gas well computer control systems in soviet russia. Israel is a state sponsor of terrorism and hasnt signed any of the nuclear treaties we're shoving toward iran, but they havent made it into anyones axis of evil. Why do they get to have nuclear power and iran, a much larger state by population alone, doesnt?
why states enact these laws other than pandering to their geriatric neoconservative constituents and ginning up a scapegoat for high unemployment rates.
the disabled and mentally ill have no place in a livable city.
heres hoping these tubes are retrofitted to transport BMW driving I-Pad thumping yuppie garbage like OP.
address the greater issue of biblical retribution as drug policy i dont see science being able to contribute anything meaningful. Occams razor would suggest the simple solution to whatever the hell OP means by "synthetic marijuana" is just to legalize marijuana itself.
the 'war on drugs' is such an abject failure that that not even our presidents and congress comment upon unless to reinforce the consistently disproven negative myths and stereotypes. Until we apply a modicum of science to determining what vectors cause drug abuse in society, all we're doing is inventing new ways to fill prisons.
the worst. they either never compiled correctly or broke things horrendously when they did (my experience.) by comparison linux has open source drivers that competently handle 3d graphics for ATI/AMD, and they have for a while. That active development on such open source drivers was being considered at all, and not for NVidia, is a testament to Torvalds opinion on the matter. id like to think Intel screwed up once with their GMA500 chipset, which may or may not have been intentional to block linux from the hybrid tablet laptop market at the behest of microsoft, but even Intel works closely with the linux community in most cases to ensure their graphics chipsets work with linux, and work well.
the windows phone is that mainstream press exist for the food and liquor at the release events whereas commentators arent getting either. Anyone willing to purchase something like this uses the same mentality as they do when ingesting something from the film industry. avoid the major critics and hit rotten tomatoes or check the reviews somewhere obscure.
you could argue that where apple and google have succeeded is in UI and such. if E3 is any indication, its the fact they extend a few free pints of stella and some extra steak to the bloggers as well.
evidence in other fields as well...for example:
replacing the lightbulb in your refridgerator causes until catastrohpic damage to everything from the compressor motor to the frozen peas.
replacing the carpet in your living room will in fact cause your entire house untold amounts of damage to everything from the foundation to the chapstick wedged between the cushions of the couch
universal remote controls, while seemingly a good idea, can cause the television to stop working and the viewers to become incontinent parapalegics
replacing the gasoline in a new car with gasoline of a different brand, will cause the car to explode.
"He is home educated and doesn't read as well as schooled kids of his age. He hasn't had much science education and no chemistry at all. "
you have critical unmet dependencies that prohibit your child from learning anything considered at the lectern by public education, let alone its homeschool analog that as abrasive as this sounds appears to be failing miserably. Homeschool parents make the mistake of asserting they mustnt be experts in a field in order to teach it, which while true is a flawed logic at best. It reduces education to a commandment, not a healthy discussion. You'll be able to regurgutate the lecture certainly, however important questions your child may have about a topic or media will be relegated to the wayside whereas a public educator will undoubtedly have a specialization that permits them to afford the child greater understanding.
to dissect the aformentioned talking points from another poster:
* Dramatically improved science curriculum over state requirements.
not if you have a cursory understanding of the topic and champion it as adequate.
* Aggressive reading and mathematics programs.
see above. you're affording what amounts to aggressive indoctrination into the general structure and idea of mathematics. abstractions and permutations will not be a part of your lecture, unless you know maths as well as a public school teacher.
* Enhanced educational environment (a quiet, well equipped classroom).
much of modern society revolves around a team framework, to achieve success as a diverse group. homeschooling cannot possibly compare to a group of 6 or 12 children, unless you're mormon.
* Teachers who really care, and want each child to be able to compete in a demanding global economy as adults. We love our students like parents should, because we are both.
this is a bullshit talking point that serves to demonize public educators and whitewash homeschooling. your demanding global economy expects your child to understand how to work in groups, ask questions and perform critical thinking that is stymied by homeschool at the expense of the "dont need to be an expert" mantra. every minority coworker and dissenting opinion afforded your child in the future will only appear as a landmine, not a competitive rung, by which your child will lay eviscerated as their public counterparts outpace them. All this at the insistance that students be loved?
we're just plugging a product name in place of a common procedure the government has decided is wholly acceptable. Anwar Al Awlaki exercised his freedom of speech in a way america didnt exactly like, and under the guise of nothing more than a precognitive assertion that he's obviously a killer, the united states tried, sentence, and convicted him to death based entirely on the actions of other people and the youtube videos of his sermons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7rUMrFv2us
Anwar is to islam as jerry fallwell is to Christianity. His sermons center around conservative religious practices and family values, peppered with the occasional irritating demand for war or call to crusade against some mainstream itinerary of the culture war. the difference however being when Robertson or Fallwell call for the death of an abortion clinic or gay bar and one of their insane followers actually goes and pulls it off, drones never neave the tarmac and raze the 13 million dollar california mansions these assholes own.
if the track record of drones is to be validated on any level, and its future potential understood, we must look at the applications pursued thus far. Sure, Anwar al-Awlaki for example was blown up by a drone flying high in the skies above him. But just think about how much more we would win the war on terror if the next american citizen to speak freely against his country were blown up...from space. Clearly the mission served only one purpose: to stop Neil DeGrasse Tyson from making any more disparaging remarks about the state of NASA budget cuts.
are you western? considered the military industrial complex? its all the lucrative pay of the private sector and none of the hassle of applying for grants each year to study silly things the government doesnt fund anyway, like climate change research. As an added bonus, the employment is based on unjustified, uncodifiable fears and uncertainties that simply exist without premise, so youre guaranteed a job in perpetuity!
but in all seriousness yeah, I asked myself the same question after i got the Computer Science degree and math minor. the only people willing to hire a mathematician are nasa or raytheon, and nasa ain't payin my student loans down so the devil it is.
that should such a button ever come into existence, its largest affect would be upon the RIAA and MPAA themselves.
why do i pirate? because hollywood has a track record of terrible films. it used to be critics would help me decide if a movie were worth the $12 theatre admission but now that hollywood owns them all, its impossible to decide what film ill like and what film i wont. trailers are designed to hype the films premise by any means; whatever it takes for the dog to bite. I pirate because its more reasonable to delete the movie i hate, than to expect a refund after having sat through it at a theater. I also pirate the film because its a more usable format than a DVD or blu-ray, which require me to purchase needless accessory players and cables to do that which im perfectly capable of with a computer.
I pirate music much less rarely; no thanks to the RIAA. the bands i like let me give them money directly. I recently bought a box-set from the band red-flag. it came on a USB drive in the format i can use, and even included cool remix tracks. as for the artists with catchy riffs and melodies but no real characteristic to appreciate, i can justify pirating from them for a few reasons. The artist Drake for example is a greedy and despicable person, i relish each blow to his earnings. his lyrics, his engineering, melody and the like are all manufactured to generate profit for clearinghouses and industry executives at the pittance he is afforded. None of it is authentic, thus none of it is art. without art, there is no artist to defend.
cynisism in this thread but its true. Memorial Day has been perverted by the government over time to enforce blind patriotic obedience. A sizeable number of service members have come home missing limbs, or rocked by bomb blasts to the full scale IQ of about 85. No one can remember what it was we fought for in iraq, and if they can they dont feel very accomplished or proud about it unless they were told to by a superior officer. We finally accomplished the goal of killing a "six foot tall diabetic" in afghanistan and whle that was supposed to usher in the end of the war on terror; it didnt. We have warrantless searches near borders, warrantless wiretaps, and we cant get on a plane or train without a physically degrading pat down or full-body x-ray that has begun to show potential as a cancer suspect agent. Our country beats a war drum every four years like clockwork, and every four years we're lulled into a state of cringing terror as the next theatre is prepared. we havent anything to commemorate today but the striking effectiveness by which private think tanks and policy centers incense us in favour of war.
On the other spectrum we have private corporations that are trying their goddamned best to make sure you forget the consequences of war like economic depression, poverty, mental illness, death, and the never ending destruction of the constitutional rights by which every american lives freely. So long as you buy your budweiser and 1200 pack of hamburgers from walmart, and dont forget to let the kids wash down their potato chips and hot dogs with a 2 liter of your favorite black bubbly sodapop, most multinational corporations will openly and warmly continue gifting you an alternate reality from that of americas recent wars from viet-nam onward. its one of flags and fireworks, proud bipedal service members and smiling families celebrating whatever the exact opposite of this holiday commemorates.
The only way to see exactly what this holiday is commemorating is to put down the remote, pull yourself off the couch and drive down to the VA hospital. I firmly believe if every american made the trip once, just once, then the next president to even mutter a sentiment about potentially starting war would find himself amidst impeachment.
using a military website whos advisory board includes two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to downplay the fact that
iran so far, just as russia had in the cold war, has outstriped our laughably conservative estimates of its military capability. After all, we've been banging this war drum for far too long to see its support base dwindle in the sight of things like the ability to capture, disable, and reverse engineer americas newest drone.
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-building-copy-captured-us-drone-083944692.html
investors like lockheed and boeing need politicians, and the american public to maintain the hardline opinion that iran could and should be easily crushed by the US military. The boogeyman must remain frightening enough to win the hearts and minds of constituents, but not so frightening as to make them reconsider the cause and effect of another real war without drones that sends kids home with missing limbs or a full scale IQ of 85.
some sort of markup language designed to enable my mother to harass me about the seder and keeping kosher my packets for the sabbath. I'll have to reformat regularly a portion of my disk after passover as it will be riddled with gallons of leftover streits and manischewitz wines.
new versions of the 3.x kernel can also be expected to deprecate /dev/random in favor of four additional devices
/dev/nun
/dev/gimel
/dev/hei
/dev/shin
does the article make it sound like the AARP is approaching death as a 'preventable disease' that can easily be combatted by doing something most old people already do. Im not sure what the AARP hopes to achieve other than to perhaps convince a segment of gullible elderly that a lobbying group has found a cure for death.
it should be noted that coffee also shares about 11 of the same chemicals as rat poison...which wither serves as a word of caution or an explaination as to why the rats in jersey seem to get bigger every year.
has been caught and global payments hasnt been charged with any crime, nor have their executives or management.
meanwhile Jeremy Hammond is being held without bail for leaking stratfor credit card numbers, and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
global payments leak:
1,500,000
stratfor:
60,000
to him as a "lieutenant" at all makes me think we're decorating a scapegoat. to my knowledge anonymous has haver had any structure similar to the military. what use is it to prescribe an american military title to a hacker? its as though we're trying to make him sound like a bond villain out to rape grandmothers and burn houses. the guy leaked credit card numbers that austensibly belonged to corporations. corporations are not people, therefore this is a victimless crime. corporations have insurance to protect against this kind of stuff.
its as if we're so desparate to insist things like anonymous, wikileaks, and occupy arent "real" things, we're willing to paint each one we manage to "capture" as some antichrist hellbent on destroying the world as we know it.
comparatively, if someone at my grocery store stole my credit card and used it to its most nefarious purpose, buying random crap, id not only never get charged for it but they would likely be convicted of a minor crime or petty theft, and sentenced to community service.
fox news is touring this old factory is because it helps further their agenda of demonizing the president and the democratic party. Nevermind the fact that during the housing crisis thousands of cities, states, and even the federal government were burned on taxpayer-backed loans and grants for housing developments. forget about the fact that the automotive bailout and the banking bailout were both passed carte-blanc by a a republican president that spent more than any other president in modern history. This investment, solyindra, is a double whammy for the republican party. Not only did it seek to pioneer alternative energy, it used tax dollars to do it and failed spectacularly.
it didnt fail because the technology didnt work, or the management ran over budget, or the government was overbilled as in the case of so many halliburton and other defense industry contracts. the project failed, ironically in part, because of a mixture of economic policies that began with reagan and saught to chisel apart the manufacturing foundation that made america a land of equality and prosperity. Each president elected in succession more a corporate shill than a representative of the people. Bill enacted NAFTA, George fought to keep the cheap chinese merch flowing, and obama now has the audacity to act shocked when a fledgling american industry is crushed in the face of foreign industry to which we've all but outsourced our very souls.
instead of blaming our suckling reliance on china, or our completely broken 2 party system, we just bitch that obama is wasting our tax dollars, and pretend the other guy up for election wouldnt do the exact same fucking thing because we forget solyindra was a project that got its start with "the other party."
its the same shit sandwich, just different bread. cap and trade? republican idea. private healthcare mandate? republican idea. its just my opinion, but im getting pretty convinced this is all just its a house of old white people who just want to make it to retirement and die the richest. theyre willing to lie, cheat, and steal to make that happen. Thanks to cable tv stations like fox news we're taught to look only at the other party as a viable alternative, whereas 250 years ago if any member of government tried some of the blatantly treasonous shit we routinely see they would be crucified until no more than their bleached bones decorated the countryside.
this is getting off topic. i dont care
im not a ron paul supporter but its change. its not left, its not right, and some of the ideas are frightening, but its a form of change that obviously frightens the right people, because you never see him on television in an honest interview. Ron Paul is to the presidental race each year as the blooper real is to the horror film, or the comedy relief is to the action flick, and theres an entire system in place to ensure each and every ron paul remains this way.
id be willing to give him a shot. i might not like everything i get, but the big points about the fed and the military, i think i could work with just getting those.
socializing with my friends, but the truth is after two jobs and 14 hours of work im too tired. my second job, customer service, makes me cranky and irritable by the time i get home and honestly ive spent so much time sitting under fluorescent lights and talking to people about their medical bills id rather stay in anyway.
on the weekends i normally get stuck with TPS reporting, and its not like i can duck out of that because im a salaried employee. besides, this is building equity. i hope.
sometimes on holidays i get off, christmas or the occasional tuesday morning im not working at the baltimization plant, i go to this cafe down the street. the cafe i go to has lots of people in it, but the unspoken rule is that we all have to be quiet and we have to drink their coffee to use the wireless for exactly one hour. I mean, nobody is doing any meaningful work at a cafe its all mostly facebook and minecraft but the possibility still exists that someone is working out a spreadsheet on their ipad and so we're all quiet.
wednesday when i go back to work and realize i also picked up a bartending shift to help pay down my college loans and the loan for the dental work i had done, i get a chance to socialize with people that are drunk. so i guess that counts. by 4 am though im still tired.
ive tried planning things with my friends, but they spend most of their time at work too.
last i heard Darl Mcbride was rushed to hospital with an erection thats reportedly lasted well over an hour now.
stop saying throwback. throwback is a marketing term coined by cola companies and snack food conglomerates to gin up their respective markets and attract new customers to the same unhealthy vapid product theyve sold for 50 years. you can use big boy words like "homage" and no one will think the lesser of you on slashdot
second, until makerbots start employing millions of people in well paid, safe factory conditions with competitive pay and honest retirement options, theres absolutely zero equivalent measure between a CnC factory that gets a building permit and a tax break from the city of brooklyn and the 1960's manufacturing explosion that dominated the northeast and ushered in american prosperity for hundreds of millions of people.
makerbot is cool technology in its own right, but to even mention it in the same context as the industrial era that spawned an entire middle class america is almost an insult.
is simple.
1. find current affair or topic of notice or interest to customers
2. find a vector for product placement
3. profit.
the article is perfect, it has no names or citations, no dates or other identifying information and cant have those used to refute it as it falls under the auspices of "well, its a war ya know." I wonder how many vodka tonics it took the guys at f-secure's marketing department before they came up with this crap.
the only thing this "report" serves to do is frighten the general public into purchasing anti virus software. on the bright side, it seems as though slashdot is getting better with slashvertisements!
the only objective congress tacidly has is to invent enough semi-plausible legislative events and topics to maintain the appearance of work, so as to avoid having to engage in solving challenging problems like homelessness or the national deficit. lately though, with such laughable moments as the senate investigation into shariah law, the men-only panel on womens health, and confirming "in god we trust" on the american currency, its starting to seem like the creative juices just arent flowing.
come on Boehner, we all know you guys are just dickin' around in business suits for slightly less than two-thirds of the year, pissing away my tax dollars on booze or insider trading. Sure, you're all-ears for the steak luncheons and lobster dinners but the minute you pour your fat arses back into those chamber seats its like nap time at shady pines. All im hearing is occasional get-off-my-lawn's crafted around the culture war while youre lining your pockets and planning your re-election.
At least try feigning interest in things like perpetual war as a foreign policy, or a reasonable moderated approach to the environment or financial market. im not asking for alot, just a sign. maybe while you're shifting that mountain of cholesterol you call a posterior around in that plush leather chair to excuse another blast of post-caviar flatulence from the hemorrhoid donut you could give a little nod as you wince. at least americans might be able to confirm youre paying attention to some of the day, if not the particular legislature discussed.
and please, we can as americans tolerate reruns. i mean, i sat through viet-raq part deux with king george and tried not to bitch too much. Just please, pick something that wasnt an abject failure with more than a decade of scientific research to attest its futility.
I wish you good luck and godpseed.