Ok, its not a UFO, but it certainly looks eerily like what I’d expect such a landing to look like. Strange light source? Check. Semicircle of shadowy governmental vehicles? Check.
Imagine being in a Soyuz capsule, which I understand is pretty harrowing to begin with, and the parachute doesn’t open in time. Longest five seconds ever!
Pareidolia is when you think you see patterns in random, everyday things. Saying a cloud looks like a teapot? That’s pareidolia. Seeing the Virgin Mary and Baby in the rings of a tree trunk? That’s pareidolia. And pretty awesome! But what you see says more about you than it does about the object. God didn’t put it there. You did. With your mind!
This episode of Stupid Things Libertarians Say™ is brought to you by Ron Paul’s farewell address. In it, he says:
Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
Rand Paul must have heard his dad say this thousands of times growing up because he’s repeated it in Energy Committee Hearings:
The scary thing is there are millions of people in the United States that applaud this. First off, who actually has ever had a toilet that didn’t work? You do realize that you can hold down the plunger for a little while longer to allow more water to flush your massive dookie, right? And really, should we be sending people to Congress that don’t know how to use a freaking toilet?
“But none of that matters!”, you say? “Government shouldn’t be telling me what kind of toilet I should buy!”, you say? Listen, this is not difficult. Potable water is a limited natural resource. It doesn’t obey state boundaries. It doesn’t obey national boundaries. It needs to be preserved. Governmental regulations are all about preserving that water. That’s it. Flushing a toilet is an unfortunate, but necessary waste of water. You shouldn’t be able to decide how much water you waste. It is too precious.
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate even though I’ll try to keep the spoilers to what can be seen in the trailers.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 5/5 stars
Paul Krugman points us to the fact that the U.S., despite still not doing well, is doing better than all other first world nations. The most obvious answer is that other countries have hopped full on the austerity bandwagon. As Mr. Krugman is fond of saying again and again, it turns out that contractionary fiscal policy is contractionary.
National economics is a strange creature. It generally behaves almost the exact opposite of what a family economic plan would look like. In the middle of a familial recession (someone gets laid off, etc.), it makes complete sense to cut back on the cable bill, go on a diet, maybe even (god forbid!) cut the internet. You also try to keep paying the things that matter for daily life; food, housing, health etc. This is an experience almost every adult alive has faced at one time or another. It also makes complete sense to try to apply what we know to something that, on the surface, looks like the exact same problem. In this case, though, it ends up being a matter of knowing just enough to be dangerous.
At the national level, calling for austerity during a recession is like calling for a family to stop feeding itself. In some instances, quite literally. Republicans like Newt Gingrich are fond of calling Obama the “food stamp President” and it is true that the amount of money put towards food stamps has skyrocketed under Obama’s watch. In a time of massive unemployment, Republicans criticize Obama for the government feeding its citizens who can’t afford food! It’s mind boggling. Especially because President Obama did absolutely nothing to cause the increase. Eligibility rules haven’t changed, only the number of eligible citizens has.
But beyond feeding its citizens, there’s a whole lot the government can and should do to help people get back on their feet. Where this would give the most bang for the buck is repairing our crumbling infrastructure. The government should be borrowing as heavily as possible right now to fund that.
I know what you’re thinking, “But…but…but, what about the debt! It’s a very high number!” It’s true. But in the situation we’re in, it’s a meaningless high number. Say someone came up to you and offered you money. All you have to do is give it back in ten years. In fact, they’ll actually let you keep a little bit of it without paying it back. That is the situation the federal government finds itself in now. The government should be taking as much of that offered money as possible and invest it in our infrastructure. This will provide jobs to a segment of the population that needs it most and give them money to spend which will immediately give the nation economic returns. Our improved infrastructure will facilitate economic movement. Which will, in turn, grow the economy. This is a no brainer!
Then, when the economy is back on its feet and we are close to full employment once again, we look to the debt. When times are tough, the government should be spending money like a sailor on shore leave, when times are good, the government should be pinching every penny to save for the next rainy day. That’s not an easy thing to wrap your head around. Economic models show that it works, though.
I’m new to this whole writing things for the whole world (all fifty of you!) to see. Writing a blog is something that I’ve been talking about for a long time. Like years. That’s just how I roll; talk about something forever and then dive in like I have any clue what I’m doing.
With that in mind, it’s interesting to hear how other people relate to creation. A few things have crossed my radar this week that are worth sharing. The first is from my friend Katie who writes about the need to explore our creative abilities. She calls that need “The Nudge“. It’s well worth reading and we would all be wise to heed her advice. Then go and buy her art because the world needs people like Katie to create more awesome stuff.
The other interest thing to cross my path is the latest comic from The Oatmeal. The Oatmeal is always fun to read and this comic is no exception. Creating web content is both very freeing and very demanding but still gives you almost zero respect from society. Also, be sure to check out his book “How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.” It’s 130 pages of pure comic fun. Although, if he were being totally honest, the book would be only one page and it would say this: Is your cat alive? If you answered yes, your cat is plotting to kill you. The end.
Prior to 2004, I thought John McCain was a pretty stand-up guy. Reasonable politician. War hero. Sane.
Then, of course, the re-election campaign of George W. Bush happened and all those adjectives I once used to describe him fell, one by one, to the wayside. I have read many articles since then saying that John McCain was never the person that I once believed him to be and that his image was sculpted to make him look stand-up. I don’t know if I was just naive or if he actually did change since then, but boy is it disappointing.
The latest episode in “How is John McCain disappointing me now?” comes courtesy of the Benghazi non-troversy. He has been the most vocal member of the Senate on the need to get information about what happened in Benghazi this past September 11th. So what do you do when you want more information? You skip the classified briefing on the issue, of course! You see, if McCain actually went to the meeting he’d have to stop complaining that there isn’t enough information about Benghazi.
John McCain has become the archetypic Republican. White. Male. Old. Angry. Or maybe that should be stereotypical. He has turned into (or always has been) a man who doesn’t care about anything except hurting the man who, as far as McCain is concerned, usurped the presidency from the rightful heir. Him.
Back in 2000, I would have gladly voted for John McCain if he were the Republican candidate. Now, I’m glad that I never got that chance. I cannot think of anything worse than a vindictive man as President of the United States.
I have read a few articles about mysterious deaths in Thailand recently. All young women from other countries, all apparently poisoned, all died horribly. On top of this, authorities don’t really seem willing to get to the bottom of this. This is most likely because of the hit the tourism industry would take if it were publicized. Thailand looks to have a serial killer on its hands and the authorities are complicit. Stay away for now.
As the dust settles from the election, events are taking shape that give us a glimpse into what to expect for the next four years. I believe these will include the following:
All in all, not a bad eight years for a Kenyan anti-colonialist socialist.
No I don’t! I take it back! I still love you! Please don’t leave me!
This emotional freakout brought to you by the book “Reamde”, Neal Stephenson’s latest. Neal Stephenson is, arguably, my favorite author depending on whether I’ve reread a Vonnegut novel recently. Why? Because he writes sentences like this: “The young woman had turned toward him and thrust her pink gloves up in the air in a gesture that, from a man, meant ‘Touchdown!” and, from a woman, ‘I will hug you now!” Even his worst books have nuggets of gold like that.
So why am I so angry at Neal? Because he stole my idea. The main character in “Reamde” creates a new MMORPG where the world is based on advanced algorithms that actually mimic real life world creation with plate tectonics and continental drift, etc. instead of the human generated worlds with incongruous landscapes and massive creative liberties. In this world, called T’rain, players can actually dig into the terrain (T’rain, terrain, get it?) and mine for gold. The society is feudal and players pay based on how much fun their character is to play. Miners and farmers are free, wizards and warriors cost money, etc.
Reading about the world of T’rain was like reading my mind. It was freaky. Almost every aspect of the world has been floating in my mind for over a year now. I have been reading about how the Earth was formed and trying to come up with ways to mimic it for a computer generated world. I have been thinking about how to create a world that is actually round and not demarcated by server boundaries. I have been toying with simplistic economic models that would be usable as a stable MMORPG economy. For over a year now, I have been thinking about T’rain!
Then I start reading “Reamed” and find out that Neal Stephenson has beat me to it. I can only assume that Neal is a mind reader because there’s no way that hundreds of geeks the world over have thought of the same thing as me. No sir!
Of course, there’s a reason why the world of T’rain doesn’t exist yet. There are still lots of technological hurdles that Moore’s Law hasn’t quite allowed us to accomplish yet. But Neal Stephenson’s putting the idea of T’rain to paper means that not only are there hundreds of dorks that thought of this on their own, but now there are tens of thousands who are now thinking about it. Many of them are much smarter than me. So I doubt I’ll be getting rich the MMORPG route now.
There is a certain smug satisfaction, though, knowing that your favorite author thinks at least somewhat like you do. That little voice that is my id telling me, “Good job!” Then there is that littler voice that is my super-ego telling me, “Why didn’t you write ‘Reamde’?” I, like most people, spend far too long listening to my id.
I’ll have a review of ‘Reamde’ in the year 2214 when I finish reading it. Like most of Neal Stephenson’s books, it can be used as a murder weapon.