Bachmann-ia

Not that there was ever any danger of it, but I absolutely will not vote for a person who doesn't know the difference between "lie" and "lay."

Really, Ms. Bachmann? It's sixth grade English, and you're applying for the #1 speaking job in America. Unless every other candidate confuses your/you're and there/they're/their, you're not getting my vote.

Of course, I don't actually vote anyway. There is no point, and it pisses off the hippies when I revel in not doing shit on the first Tuesday in November.

Georgia has something surprisingly awesome.

A megalithic monument, of sorts.

Sarcos Exoskeleton

Tony Stark, it's not. Still, if it helps in our struggle against the machines, I'm down for it.  As long as it doesn't become simply another in a long line of things for the infantry to carry about on their back.

Different Rules for different people

Did your attorney fall asleep during your criminal trial?  Tough shit.

He raised several points of error, including a claim that his Sixth Amendment

right to counsel was violated because he received ineffective assistance of counsel when

his attorney fell asleep while Muniz was being cross-examined by the government.

Id.

at *4-5. The court rejected all of Muniz’s claims of error and affirmed the judgment.

Id.

at *5. It also declined to remand his ineffective assistance claim for an evidentiary

hearing, holding Muniz “ha[d] not established that an evidentiary hearing to substantiate

his position [was] warranted.”

Michigan Supreme Court. Id. Muniz subsequently was denied leave to appeal by thePeople v. Muniz, 726 N.W.2d 18 (Mich. 2007).

Caught with pot 5 years ago? Obviously you are now a felon.

Ohio has never been on my list of favorite places. Still, this is retarded.

Detroit: collapse case study

The city of Detroit is planning to focus city services on neighborhoods "with more people and a better chance of survival."  This is rational, and will probably be effective, and will undoubtedly cause the mayor to be killed by an angry mob of "youths."

Is this how a slow collapse would look?  While the article says that Fire/EMS and Police services will continue throughout the city, I would suppose that neighborhoods that have more of what little money Detroit is able to scrape up invested in them will receive priority.  It's not even that hard to do, simply close the outlying substations, and consolidate precincts.  That way police patrol is necesssarily centered in the areas that have "a better chance of survival" and if there are competing calls for Ambulance or Fire Services, the ones nearest the substations (and likely the hospitals) will be served first.

It's called triage.  No one likes it, but it's fairly often necessary, and it's why if the collapse of the western world were a band aid, I'd prefer to rip it off, rather than take it off slowly.  Either way, it's going to hurt, and there will be HUGE injustices, but the sooner it's done, the sooner we can rebuild.

Well, that's a relief

The NIJ has found that Tasers are safe in "healthy, normal, nonstressed, nonintoxicated persons."   Because, as we all know, those are the types of people they get used on most.

Informal polling

I forwarded this story to all the cops in my department.  Each one responded with something along the lines of "Fuck yeah!  That's what we need."  Not one thought it might be even a little questionable.

Also, due to my fuckup in sharing this, our department is creating one.  I tried to get the task, but I think they know I'm on the wrong side of this issue.

David Foster Wallace

I don't know who he is,  but he talks real pretty.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

CPIM = 666?

Is supply chain (mis)management going to be the thing that kills us all?  Considering some of the people (okay, just one) I used to work with, I'm betting yes.

Plausible deniability at it's best/worst.

The problem is, he shared the info with a "staffer."  Which means absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, across the border: whoops.

Get Bent, America

Dept. of Commerce
“The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, increased 3.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 4.0 percent in the first Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent in the first.”

Translation: Shit done got expensive. Like, real expensive.

“Real personal consumption expenditures increased 0.1 percent in the second quarter, comparedwith an increase of 2.1 percent in the first.”
Translation: You folks ain't buyin' enough stuff.

Add to this the fact that our "recovery," so called, from the first quarter was "readjusted" from 1.3% growth to a staggeringly low 0.4%.  This isn't a "readjustment" this is showing up a bald faced lie. A growth rate of 0.4% is retarded, and not in the making fun of douchebags way. This is "slow or limited progress" but taken to a FUCKING RETARDED conclusion.

If the boomers, oozing cankerous assholes that they are, had been able to say no to handouts from uncle sugar, we wouldn't be in this mess.  If they'd just gotten a job instead of turning into god damned smelly hippies, we'd be all right, the lazy fucking shits.

If the "greatest generation" had said "hell no" to the great society, we wouldn't be in this mess.  Way to go limp when you get home from war, guys.  The brits had an excuse, they were all dead.  What happened to you fuckers?

Hell, if the generation x losers hadn't been such sissified pansies, more interested in pretending to be wall street tycoon rugged individual industrialist sorts while in reality using government handouts to rob the rest of the world blind, we might still have pulled out of this shit.  I may hate you guys worst of all.  Pretending to be all "reality bites" and disaffected and shit when you're the most pampered lazy fucks ever spawned.  I hope you choke on the bile you've fed the world.

Fuck them all.  Fuck Generation Y, whatever the hell that is, fuck the boomers, fuck the x-er shitheads, too.  I hate you all.

For your own fucking good.

Won't someone please think of the children?

Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activities loses its Fourth Amendment protection when it’s held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider.  As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process.  Step one:  The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone—anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all.  No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it!  Step two:  The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge.  No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records.  It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to.  Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects—including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses—to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order.  But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet?  Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans—every one a potential criminal…

i admit it...

it was me.

I have been accused of using this stuff

but I don't.  I just like really strong coffee.

Fear the Future

I know, I know, I haven't got to the monkey thing yet, but sweet jeebus, what the hell is wrong with evil mad scientists? 

Apple inc. now selling muskets, or something.

CEO Jobs said last fall. "We'd like to continue to keep our powder dry because we think there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future."

Right, because why should they?

Clueless middle aged authors struggle to understand young men's natural pessimism in the face of a gaping maw of a future.

What exactly is the benefit to these guys growing up? There is almost no future for beta males.

Fear the Future

This means nothing.  Just because a robot prefers "slightly better" beer doesn't mean he shouldn't have been smashed with a large mallet.  Get them when they're small enough to fuck up easily.

Global (not quite so) warming

Apparently data has been contradicting predictions.  I always knew that android was an asshole.

I've said it before, so I'll type it here: "computer modelling" is nothing more than playing video games. You feed assumptions into a machine that uses models you made up to cover something that is too complex by a factor of thousands for you to even get a handle on, let alone understand.

Data is the only usable source of information.  If you haven't actually observed it, you've made it the fuck up.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty...

This is a bad idea waiting to happen.  Not for honest to goodness disfigured people who need it, but for the college crowd, who are going to disfigure themselves with it.

I mean, you've seen these idiots, right?

Steaky-wake and Eggy-weggs

We seem to be approaching a Clockwork Orange, and they'll tell us it's for our own motherfucking good, too.

Finally, Anderson and his team turned to the question of whether the VMHvl cells are necessary for aggression to occur. Using a different technique, they genetically “silenced” VMHvl cells, turning them effectively off for days at a time. This silencing significantly reduced the chances of an aggressive encounter and lengthened the time it took to initiate an attack

shitshitshit

The Singularity Approaches

Let's hope this produces something more like Mike and Athene than Nomad, who has scared the shit out of me since I don't remember when.

The Crazy Years

Here's what Father Heinlein had to say about juvenile delinquency.

+++++++++++
Stolen from Starship Troopers, a parenting manual disguised as cheap Sci-Fi adventure.

Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the XXth century. According to him, there was a time just before they went down the drain when such crimes as Dillinger’s [Dillinger murdered a young girl] were as common as dogfights. The Terror had not been just in North America — Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.

"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably — or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places — these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."

I had tried to imagine such things happening in our schools. I simply couldn’t. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one — "Mr. Dubois, didn’t they have police? Or courts?"

"They had many more police than we have. And more courts. All overworked."

"I guess I don’t get it." If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad . . . well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such things just didn’t happen.

Mr. Dubois then demanded of me, "Define a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ "

"Uh, one of those kids — the ones who used to beat up people."

"Wrong."

"Huh? But the book said — "

"My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit ‘Juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it. Have you ever raised a puppy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you housebreak him?"

"Err . . . yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.

"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"

"What? Why, he didn’t know any better; he was just a puppy.

"What did you do?"

"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."

"Surely he could not understand your words?"

"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"

"But you just said that you were not angry."

Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think I was. He had to learn, didn’t he?"

"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn’t know that he was doing wrong. Yet you indicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"

I didn’t then know what a sadist was — but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he’s in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again — and you have to do it right away! It doesn’t do a bit of good to punish him later; you’ll just confuse him. Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him."

Then I added, "I guess you’ve never raised pups."

"Many. I’m raising a dachshund now — by your methods. Let’s get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class . . . and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it? Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret — in many places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."

(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)

"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment — and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.

"As for ‘unusual,’ punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"

"Uh . . . probably drive him crazy!"

"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of this school last had to switch a pupil?"

"Uh, I’m not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped — "

"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals — They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning — a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished — and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation — ‘paroled’ in the jargon of the times.

"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called ‘juvenile delinquent’ becomes an adult criminal — and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder. You — "

He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house . . . and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"

"Why . . . that’s the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"

"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"

"Uh . . . why, mine, I guess."

"Again I agree. But I’m not guessing."

"Mr. Dubois," a girl blurted out, "but why? Why didn’t they spank little kids when they needed it and use a good dose of the strap on any older ones who deserved it — the sort of lesson they wouldn’t forget! I mean ones who did things really bad. Why not?"

"I don’t know," he had answered grimly, "except that the time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves ‘social workers’ or sometimes ‘child psychologists.’ It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder — but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives’ no matter what their behavior."

"But — good heavens!" the girl answered. "I didn’t like being spanked any more than any kid does, but when I needed it, my mama delivered. The only time I ever got a switching in school I got another one when I got home and that was years and years ago. I don’t ever expect to be hauled up in front of a judge and sentenced to a flogging; you behave yourself and such things don’t happen. I don’t see anything wrong with our system; it’s a lot better than not being able to walk outdoors for fear of your life — why, that’s horrible!"

"I agree. Young lady, the tragic wrongness of what those well-meaning people did, contrasted with what they thought they were doing, goes very deep. They had no scientific theory of morals. They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives) but their theory was wrong — half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry. The more earnest they were, the farther it led them astray. You see, they assumed that Man has a moral instinct."

"Sir? But I thought — But he does! I have."

"No, my dear, you have a cultivated conscience, a most carefully trained one. Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not — and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind. These unfortunate juvenile criminals were born with none, even as you and I, and they had no chance to acquire any; their experiences did not permit it. What is ‘moral sense’? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, everywhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do."

"But the instinct to survive," he had gone on, "can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. Young lady, what you miscalled your ‘moral instinct’ was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale. And so on up. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual’s instinct to survive — and nowhere else! — and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts."

"We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race — we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations. But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: ‘Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.’ Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.

"These juvenile criminals hit a low level. Born with only the instinct for survival, the highest morality they achieved was a shaky loyalty to a peer group, a street gang. But the do-gooders attempted to ‘appeal to their better natures,’ to ‘reach them,’ to ‘spark their moral sense.’ Tosh! They had no ‘better natures’; experience taught them that what they were doing was the way to survive. The puppy never got his spanking; therefore what he did with pleasure and success must be ‘moral.’

"The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand — that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their ‘rights.’ "

"The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature."

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?"

"Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called ‘natural human rights’ that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

"The third ‘right’? — the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."

Mr. Dubois then turned to me. "I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."

"And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’ . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure."

Creeping death

And not the sort that Metallica sang about, either.

Paging Hank Reardon

Would Mr. Reardon or Ms. Taggart call the front desk please?

“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”

Fear the Future

They're learning.  Every day that we wait, is one closer to the day they kill us all, and a day closer to our children living as slaves, or "bio-fuel."

Fear the Future (what? Robots? Tres Vintage!)

It's been a while since I've panicked about robots killing and/or enslaving us all.  Volkswagen has re-ignited the fires of my hatred.  Why does this strike anyone as a good idea?  How bad is the first lawsuit going to be when one of these monsters does a Toyota?

I can't tell...

I can't tell if this site is reputable or not.  If it is, then holy shit.  If not, then well, not a big deal, right?

Except for the fact that there was a change to his facebook page after he was arrested.  Typically, the po-po won't allow you to go on the intertubes while you're under arrest.  Especially so if you're under arrest for terror charges.

The reason I'm sceptical about this story, is that it dovetails too nicely with my own brand of paranoia.  I'm paranoid enough to doubt things that line up with my paranoia.

One of two things...

Either the size of the debt we're in, or one mediocre weekend tab at the bar for Charlie Section.

It was Col. Mustard, in the parlour, with an asteroid...

Looks like it was probably the giant killer asteroid that did it.  I love how paleontologists keep steadily grinding away at at stuff until they come up with something.  Regular as clockwork, they are.

I do, I do!

Fear the Future (short term edition)

What the hell?  Has anyone inventoried our nuclear subs, recently?

"They've found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era," Plumlee said. Other weapons found include grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor.
"The information about the arms trafficking was provided to our U.S. authorities long before the 'Columbus 11' investigation began," said Plumlee, referring to recent indictments accusing several Columbus city officials of arms trafficking in conjunction with alleged accomplices in El Paso and Chaparral, N.M.

Worse the the Gun Walker and Castaway scandals, even. 

Over Time

A surprisingly touching little movie.

False flag?

Old news, but Panetta has said that the next "Pearl Harbor" will probably be a cyber-attack.   This wouldn't really bother me, as it really is the State Department's place to anticipate this sort of thing.

What worries me is stuff like this. 1 in 4 hackers are apparently FBI stooges.

If Anonymous has "declared war" on Orlando, and apparently now on the FBI, and the FBI is a large and growing part of the operation, how soon until an internet version of the Gulf of Tonkin happens? Has it already?

So what would be the end game for this?  What will the the reaction be? How about grabbing hold of the internet? (Yes it's old, but still important, and a False Flag Incident would likely make it moreso.) Impossible, right? Not so much.

Good news? Maybe. Probably not.

China appears to be in at least as much trouble as the rest of us.  Does this signal good news in that they won't be able to buy us out entirely?  To my mind, it says they'll be far more belligerent when we default.

Fear the Future (non-robotic edition)

Remember that whole fourth amendment thing? May as well forget about it now.  I had never considered that it didn't cover third party info, but can now see that was a GLARING oversight on my part.

The problem, at least constitutionally speaking, is that the Fourth Amendment protects only what we reasonably expect to keep private. One facet of this rule, known as the third party doctrine, is that we don’t have reasonable expectations of privacy in things we’ve already revealed to other people or the public…

With so little left private, the Fourth Amendment is all but obsolete. Where police officers once needed a warrant to search your bookshelf for “Atlas Shrugged,” they can now simply ask Amazon.com if you bought it. Where police needed probable cause before seizing your day planner, they can now piece together your whereabouts from your purchases, cellphone data and car’s GPS. Someday soon we’ll realize that we’ve lost everything we once cherished as private.

Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck. Shit-damn-balls.

The more you know...

Lufkin cops arrest a retarded guy for being at home.

Having spent some time in East Texas, this really comes as no surprise.

Lufkin police officers responding to a call about a black male kicking in the door to a home, broke in, terrorized a hispanic male, who retreated to the bathroom to hide.  This guy is retarded, and not in the rude sense of the word.  It's not like he wears pink polo shirts with popped collars.  This guy "doesn't think like you and I do. He has a child’s mind. He operates on a lower level thinking than you and I do. Number two, he doesn’t speak this language.”

Get that?  A spanish speaking retarded guy fled from big scary rednecks kicking in his door and trying (successfully) to beat, spray and arrest him, and the court gives HIM 30 days and a $500 fine.

This ought to be interesting

In response to the FBI's hall-monitoring, the online group "Anonymous," those who were so entertaining in their work on Scientology over the last few years, have now turned their attention to the FBI.

What started it all was the city of Orlando arrested food terrorists who were handing out food to some homeless folks.  Anonymous got pissed and declared war.  Maybe a bit grand, but I like the idea of governments being held accountable for their actions.

Fear the Future

Our Overlords just got an order of complexity more, uh... complex. Seems like it would be simple enough to break by poking a stick in the blades, though.  Not impressed.

Here's the real scary link for today.  Three words: Robot Nurses.  So scary they use up an extra word.

Fear the Future

Shit. Landmines were our first line of defense. Now, though, they are no longer an option.  This freaky ass robot swings a barrell full of tungsten hammers up to a quarter meter into the earth to deactive and then EAT land mines.

It's bad when your first line of defense is down before the fight even starts.

You can't see me!

Seriously. I am awesome at hiding.

Fear the Future

You want to know why no one likes engineers? This. This is why.  This is bullshit.

Really? Wow.

The whole gist of this article is about the same thing as saying "the sky is blue."  Manhattan is full of leftists?  Those lefties don't listen when you disagree?  Shocking.

The only useful response to lefties is the same response to crazy people.  Don't engage, don't debate, don't try to convince.  It doesn't necessarily help the crazy person, but you look a damn sight less ridiculous for your efforts.

Fear the Future (Non-electronic edition)

Is this how the Zombie apocalypse begins?  There's a new virus in town that jumped from monkeys to humans.  No big deal, until we find out that scientists want to use this virus in "gene therapy."

What do you bet they mean "killing all the people named Gene?"

Fear the Future

WHAT THE FUCK, MIT?  Seriously, you couldn't think of any other games to teach it, like maybe Mario, or Donkey Kong? Something with a slightly lower chance of the Robots killing us all?

Quisling bastards.

Also, one of the complaints about jello is that it's not vegetarian, so some food scientist comes up with this fucking gem of an idea.  You ever get the feeling that scientists are just messing with us?

Appropriate Pessimism

Got a book in the mail today, that I've been meaning to get for a year or so now.  We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimmism is by one of my favorite typing heads (a newsie who doesn't have a t.v. show, obviously...), John Derbyshire.  A choice quote from Derb:

That's the core of a proper conservative pessimism: the recognition that there is little hope for improvement in this world; that such small hope as there is should be directed toward the actions of one, or a few; and that most of what governments do is wicked, when not merely pointless and counterproductive.

I've tried making this point to friends and family before, notably to Kay and Greg.  The problem is, I'm pretty much the only conservative in my circle.  Yes, sister and Chad are conservatives, but they're more in Lisa's circle than mine, and Dad's got some libertarian thing cooking last I looked, but he's not really in the circle either.  So, I'm stuck explaining why I have such a dim view of humanity to people who are fundamentally opposed to having a dim view of humanity.

I'd recommend this book to them, but they'd probably make reading it conditional upon my reading something about "hope" or "dreams of [someone's] father."  I'd rather not read for a year than read sappy claptrap. (slaptrap?)

Fear the Future (i'm going to stop numbering them...)

Why make the picture showing how "expressive" your robot can be look evil?  Are robot designers starting to realize "Oh shit, we're canoodling with the enemy..."

Losing what little grip on reality I had...

So, I started and finished the Hunger Games trilogy over the last four days.  I know hate humanity (more) and have an even grimmer outlook on its liklihood of surviving into the distant future.

We are all gonna die, and it's going to be horrible.

I think maybe for the next two books I should aim for something less gloomy.  Previous to these I read One Second After and the graphic novel Batman: The Long Halloween.  It's been a pretty rough week or so.

LINE 'EM UP!

Bob Lutz, the former Vice Chairman of General Motors, is the most famous also-ran in the auto business. In the course of his 47-year rampage through the industry, he's been within swiping range of the brass ring at Ford, BMW, Chrysler and, most recently, GM, but he's never landed the top gig. It's because he "made the cars too well," he says. It might also have something to do with the fact that Maximum Bob, who could double as a character on Mad Men, is less an éminence grise than a pithy self-promoter who has a tendency to go off corporate message. That said, his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, has a message worth hearing. To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show.To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let the engineers run the show.

I got wood.

Actually, I haven't, not for a long time. 

Apparently the FDA, those helpful people with the pyramid and plate and retarded advice on stuff, feel that companies who use cellulose (wood fibers) in their products are doing you no harm.

Thanks, guys.

The internets are making my head hurt.

Apparently, if you type the number 241543903 into google image search, it returns a bunch of dopes with their heads in a freezer.  I could look this up to find out why, but I'd rather just remain mystified by the hijinks of the intertubes.

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IEEE asks: Should we automate intimacy?  Answer: HELL NO!  Robots that love us before they kill us?  Maybe Robots that kill us in a jealous rage? Terrible idea.

Also, why is this a good idea?  Because soccer is for pansies.  Pansies that fall down and cry if you touch their shirt.  I am all for weakling robots.  Even better if they're European.  Unless they're from the part of Europe that produced Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones, because then we're all fucked.  Imagine Bullet Tooth Tony, but with functioning bullet teeth.

I love my dead gay son.

I don't actually have a dead gay son. Still, it  is an awesome movie line.  Like, a billion hotdogs awesome.

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Robots now make excuses for their failure.  We have apparently succeeded in replicating Americans.

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It seems that some Quisling scientists have designed a new way for our soon-to-be-masters to drive around.

Is it the future yet?

I think the money quote from this article is  "if everything goes to plan."  Also, this thing is still pug ugly.

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I assume that this robot seen here vacuuming up radioactive junk from the Fukushima plant will later regurgitate it at either a) a nursing home for war heroes, or b) a day care center.

Becase robots are jerks like that.

Fear the Future (18)

Doesn't look like a snail, but it sure as hell moves like one. Which is to say, creepy as hell.

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You know how our jobs are all going to be taken over by robots, just like what happened to car makers in the 80's?  Now, even the clergy and Elvis impersonators are endangered.

still not art

What in the blue eyed hell?

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What the hell is wrong with people?

"Just as in human relationships, this human-robot love is based on interactions. The robot can become bored, jealous, angry, affectionate, or flat-out happy, all based on how the human object of its desire interacts with it. Most of this interaction takes place through touching--another analog to affectionate human interaction. The robot isn’t so cuddly, but give it some puppy love and it will love you back"

Do engineers honestly think this is a good idea?

People are stupid...

... and should probably die.  You know what this is, right?  It is a ploy by the manufacturers of cokes (I'm from Texas, they're all "cokes") to make it easier to drink your coke faster than you meant, which means you'll go grab another.  You'll probably drink that one too damn fast, too, and later that day you have diabeetus.  And probably gonorrhea.