Saturday, June 23, 2007

And thus is demonstrated the insane perversity of government confiscating its citizens' wealth to produce entertainment (or, even, news, but no matter). Boing Boing wouldn't see that as the problem, however, but rather efforts to use DRM to protect that government-funded material from being copied against the governm...

Oh, Hell, it's not worth trying to figure out. Just suffice it to say that Boing Boing has no problem with government's involvement in this sort of thing, but rather the story just elicits their usual kneejerk reaction to DRM.
My definition of American-Iranian normalization? Iran as a parking lot and, after the glow is gone, us parked right on top of them.
I have a seven-year-old son. This story almost brought me to tears.

Literally.

And these "Freedom Fighters," as Michael Moore would like us to think of them, are fighting not for freedom from an oppressive regime, but rather the freedom to oppress.

I hold to my position that we should only fight wars that are in our direct interests. But as long as we're fighting people like this, I say we turn each and every last one of them inside out.

Literally.
Courtesy of Little Green Footballs, a story that should turn your stomach. Hamas is not our friend, and yet we give them money that they turn into weapons (of course; I almost feel silly simply writing that sentence).

To me, it's tantamount to treason.
I doubt that video games are actually more popular than music. They're just more expensive per unit, and they're harder to pirate. I admit to not reading the linked story that closely, and I might be missing their point entirely. But, that was my first reaction, and I went with it.
And here, I'd say, is the real power and value of the Internet. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, del.icio.us, and for God's sake, Digg, etc., mean nothing--and, actually, less than nothing--in the face of instantaneously accessing the works of Leonardo Da Vinci.
In this age of digital photography and video, why, oh why, can't anyone EVER get a clear picture of a UFO? I mean, seriously, how will we EVER prove this stuff with nothing but grainy photos of non-descript shining blobs?

And, please tell me: why are airline pilots supposed to necessarily make such credible witnesses?
This may save your life someday.
I love Mythbusters. If only there were more of them.
Note to federal authorities: I'm not calling for a revolution here. But, the Founders were right, I think, in thinking that a little revolution is good for a nation every now and then. Because this stinks to high heaven, and as I stated earlier, I have no doubt that others, including Clinton, have been guilty of precisely the same sort of things. They're just not publicized so, ahem, often.

Now's a good time for my obligatory "I hate politics" statement...
I'd say, this is the brightest Digg yet. And, it doesn't just describe the average Diggster, it describes Digg itself.

Dugg!!!
Uh, yeah, this site's credible. But I will say: I hope it's true that we plan to use nukes against Iran. I can think of no simpler way to resolve the tension in the Middle East than to show the radical Islamists that we really, really, really mean business, and that even if they get one or two nuclear weapons--well, golly, we have thousands.

They could possibly hurt us, maybe even badly, but we could make it as if they never even existed. Except for the glow, of course.
I have a unique idea: if you tell your boss you're going to work from home, how about actually, well, working?
I highly doubt that this is the only area where Noam Chomsky is dead wrong.
Our government has become so large, so bloated, so powerful, and so corrupt that the layman cannot possibly make heads nor tales of this sort of thing. I fear that our media can't, either, and so they draw their conclusions based on whatever their political leanings might happen to be. Since they tend to be Leftist (and I'd require a significant treatise to convince me otherwise), this sort of this will be ascribed to Bushitler and Cheney far more quickly than it ever was to Clinton. And in my mind, Clinton was by far the more treacherous.

Ultimately, who can really blame the average American, with families to take care of, bills to pay, and, yes, in general, lives to live, for not spending the hours, days, weeks, or months it would require to unravel even a single issue like this one. In writing this blog, I spend far more time than most people on such issues, and I often (almost always, really) feel like I'm just getting sucked farther down the rabbit hole.
I have no idea of the veracity of this, and it's a helluva long read for someone who might want to quickly compare it to other Jefferson writings, but if you want to see what Jefferson (might have) thought about Jesus and the New Testament, take a quick read here. Or not so quick, maybe.
Get some Creationist propaganda with your kid's grilled cheese sandwich.
It's good to know that the up-and-coming generation has at least some ingenuity. Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
And here might be the only case where I can imagine intellectual property piracy being a good thing. The less money that goes to Michael Moore, the better.