In the context of notes for a potential sci-fi project…
If I were 8 or 9 feet tall and using an advanced adaptive optical camouflage suit, what would be the best way to compensate for the inability to completely camouflage the wearer when moving? Maybe fake fur?
Maybe it’s just me, but this sort of stuff looks like, potentially, the very earliest days of the bitchun society.
Pity the poor comedy writer these days. Globally, satire is becoming increasingly difficult to produce as ruling classes and social institutions descend further and further into what could be described as a collective psychosis. The humor in The Onion, for example, is supposed to be all about the ironic juxtaposition of the absurd described in a dry, journalistic style. But when real world events are becoming more and more absurd…
Via fourth generation warfare scholar, and throughly interesting fellow, John Robb’s weblog we learn that Robert Deniro’s agorist repairman character from the movie Brazil, Harry Tuttle, has real world counterparts in Paris: the UnterGunther.
From the Guardian news article:
“We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent,” said Klausmann. “But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There’s so much to do in Paris that we won’t manage in our lifetime.”
Might I suggest that there wouldn’t be a water crisis in Georgia if Georgia wasn’t the sort of place where it’s unremarkable that the state Governor’s response to a water crisis is to lead en masse public prayers for rain?
That’s not to say that secularism somehow magically makes government policy wise. There are inherent systemic reasons why coercive governments of any stripe ultimately fail to properly provide the services and oversight they attempt to monopolize.
Rather, what I mean to say is that unreasoning faith in targets of veneration crowds out problem-solving from human minds. It matters not whether the human minds in question are held in thrall to a supernatural cult or the cult of secular bureaucracy.
Also, please don’t take that as a declaration of assured atheism on my part. If God exists at all, s/he surely exists in the human mind at the very least. Thus, if you believe God gave you your human faculty of reason, you bloody well ought to use it.
“God helps those who help themselves.”
Of course, it should be noted that this sort of public prayer is against the Christian faith anyway, as real Christians are supposed to pray in private out of modesty according to Matthew 6:5 & 6:
“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
UPDATE: OTOH, a correspondent writes:
It wasn’t that Jesus was bringing in to question all public Prayer…it is the motive behind the actions. Heartfelt or Hypocritical prayer… Meaning when praying in public focus on addressing God and not how you come across to others .. So to say that “real” Christians only pray in private is well a bold statement. I have participated in very public prayer and I believe that I am still a real Christian. I have been known to praise God in the highest at the top of my lungs and I am not feeling one ounce of shame about that. I guess maybe you are saying the people of Georgia or the “government” of Georgia should work using their minds to solve a drought I agree with that. I even agree that Ol Sony shouldnt call a mandatory prayer to every person in the state. I agree with the statement from Ed Buckner, who is organizing the protest. “The governor can pray when he wants to. What he can’t do is lead prayers in the name of the people of Georgia.” But for you to put a label on what a “real” christian should or shouldn’t do is something else. I am really annoyed with that comment but only that. Otherwise the point of post seemed to make sense to me. I will always be a real Christian, that may be a problem for you but that is the way it is.
Point taken. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so rash in making blanket statements like that, especially about religion. I was just going by the Bible verse as I understood it, though.
UPDATE 2: And, of course, the weather forecast for this evening in Atlanta, Georgia is rain. [LOL]
An old friend that I haven’t heard from in several years contacted me after discovering this site. Apparently, he likes my quotes page as he passed along a favorite of his that I like…
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Rather than choosing to explain why a fifth of Americans can’t find the US on a world map, Miss South Carolina apparently chose to demonstrate why.
This is a perfect example of the sort of person who goes on to a bright future in government or corporate communications departments. They string overtly intelligent-sounding but vapid catch-phrases together regardless of actual semantic content (or lack thereof). Expressing a coherent thought is at best optional and often to risky within the context of jockeying for status within hierarchies.
This is what the US education/indoctrination system produces because this is what the authoritarian US political system demands. We are fast approaching what the late Robert Anton Wilson (Goddess rest his soul) referred to as “Optimum Fuckup” in his discussions of communications theory.
Hat tip: Last Free Voice
UPDATE: We find a relevant factoid in this article that also happens to briefly mention a beauty queen (sort of…), but otherwise is not particularly relevant in toto…
“Miller’s routine is called “Incredible Feats of Stupidity” and highlights Pentagon programs such as the one that provided landlocked Zimbabwe with anti-submarine rockets.”
Not that stupid when you realize a fundamental purpose of the US defense budget is simply to act as an overt rationale to transfer wealth from the productive class to political class defense contractors.
Knowledge of geography is now fucking subversive…
Back in September of 2002, National Review Online published Frederica Mathewes-Green’s magnificently controversial “Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy“. The author persuasively argues that several social ills are derived from the delayed recognition of adulthood (a relatively recent development in historical terms).
The author then answers objections, perhaps the most common being the matter of ability/inability by young people to earn an adequate income:
“The age that a man, or woman, can earn a reasonable income has been steadily increasing as education has been dumbed down. The condition of basic employability that used to be demonstrated by a high school diploma now requires a Bachelor’s degree, and professional careers that used to be accessible with a Bachelor’s now require a Master’s degree or more. Years keep passing while kids keep trying to attain the credentials that adult earning requires.”
I would agree that the dysfunctional state education system shares a great deal of the blame for this. Furthermore, anti-state trends such as homeschooling and unschooling point the way toward a more effective educational system — a system that, depending on your preferred terminology, could be described as either an ecology of wholly voluntary educational systems or a “free market in education”. At the very least, true seperation of school and state are needed rather than corporate monopoly “privatization” schemes or religion subsidizing voucher programs. Of course, any anarchist worth her salt will tell you that the most effective way to seperate anything and state is to abolish the state.
Additionally, there’s the matter of bureaucracy and economic centralization. Large scale authoritarian social arrangements nearly always depend on the hollow credentialism college degrees often exemplify. Abolishing government will transform the provision of educational services for the better because people will only support what they perceive works — and that goes for voluntary communal arrangements just as well as profit-seeking (and therefore tending to be customer service oriented) education enterprises. It takes a coercive state to subsidize large-scale dysfunctional systems, such as the prisons that are called “schools” these days.
Let me add that I find the authors apparent traditionalist bias toward a heteronormative conception of marriage a tad unfortunate. The economic logic of strong and genuinely healthy family groups works just as well for queer couples, and more power to them when it does. Don’t let that shortcoming of the author distract from the logic of her overall argument.
People continue to speculate about the phrase “Ismail Ax” that Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, had written on his arm. Several go through various contortions of logic, which would otherwise be comical if not for the subject matter, in their aching hope to find a connection to Islam to feed their hungry lust for more pro-war hysteria.
What all of these Dick Tracy wannabes forget is that psychotic people are usually quite “rational” within the bounds of the premises set by their delusions. The most likely meaning of the phrase is a very simple and mundane one, in my opinion.
Mentally roleplay this…
You’re all set to “make them all pay” and go out in what you yourself perceive as a blaze of glory.
You’ve sent your public manifesto to the media.
You’re mentally prepared to die, after having convinced yourself it is right and necessary.
But what about tying up all of the loose ends of your life? What about those you leave behind? What about helping them with the various details of the MUNDANE but private things you’ve left undone? You’re going to die — so how can your next of kin or whoever settle up on your dry-cleaning bill or whatever?
They need to get into your personal, off-campus email account, of course, to see your saved messages and sent replies. And since you’re paranoid, you don’t want to email the password to them. Instead, you hide the password in plain sight with no context, so that it’s just gibberish to everyone except the people who might have a use for it.
I predict that if it ever becomes public knowledge why Cho wrote “Ismail Ax” on his arm, we’ll find that it was just the password for his stupid Hotmail (or whatever) account — put there for the benefit of a relative or friend. And like all decent passwords, it means nothing.
You’ve probably already heard that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. Eulogies by Jesse Walker and Anthony Gregory.
