Sunday Morning Reading Material: Fourth Sunday in March 2011
It’s Sunday morning. Sundays are for working the brunch shift and being happy you’ve got a job. Sundays are for sleeping in and being happy that your job gives you weekends off. Sundays are for kittens and rainbows and ribbons. Those, at least, are a few of my favorite things.
This week the first female major-party candidate for the American executive branch died. Also: the Canadian government collapsed in a wave of anti-authoritarian anger. There will be new elections soon, which the incumbent party is scheduled to win handily. Also: we continued our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
One of the reasons that many in the West were wiling to consider going to war in Libya acceptable was that we were asked by the Arab League to do so. The Arab League has backed out.
Civilization might be “three meals away from collapse”, but it turns out actual human beings are surprisingly willing to help one another out during times of emergency. This makes sense: our species is one which uses cooperation and meme sharing in as it’s primary survival strategy.
Years ago when I was dumber and more full of myself, I was devoted to Atlas Shrugged. I think I read that book three or four times in my senior year of high school. This, yes, says nothing good about me. There was a passage in the book where one of the tunnels collapsed and the newscasters called (quoting from memory) “A feat never to be equaled in our time” Basically: by making government so large, liberals had made the smart people remove their intellect. It turns out that in the real world, government is the organizing force behind huge projects. By shrinking government to a size wherein it can be “drowned in a bathtub”, we are actually seeing projects which cannot be contemplated in our time. In their zeal to preserve America from communists, conservatives may well have destroyed us.
The British Government categorically denies unleashing killer badgers in Iraq.
Since Iraq is such a swimming success, we decided to get involved in Libya also. If the Libyan rebels that we’re supporting seem like unusually good soldiers, capable of more than they ought to be, it’s because they got their training in Iraq, fighting against the US. Turns out that you can be both with us and against us.
XKCD on one of my least-favorite memes
20 billion is a lot of birds. I wonder how much they weigh? I wonder how much they eat? I wish I had something more insightful to say, but I thought you’d want to know: there are about 20 billion birds in the US.
This might be the perfect crime. I mean that quite literally. The GOP disenfranchises people who would vote against them, and keep themselves safe from retribution because… those who have been hurt have been rendered powerless.
So imagine that you have a job which pays so poorly that your family ends up on food stamps. Of course you go on strike. Gods be good! If your job can’t afford to pay you enough to eat, they’re not solvent enough to have hired you at all. Since the owners of capital hate the idea of parting with their money, they want to prevent that strike. So what do they do? They get their allies in the GOP to revoke food stamps from striking workers. I guess the Republican party would rather have people on the government dole than supporting themselves at the expense of an employer.
The F22 is a boondoggle. It requires between 30 and 34 hours of maintenance for every hour spent flying. It’s an expensive craft that is designed and built for one reason only: to destroy enemy aircraft in the sky. The Libyans don’t have aircraft worth speaking about. as a result, we’re not using the F22 Raptor in this latest war. The Canadian government is seriously considering cutting back their military as a deficit reducing “austerity measure”. Maybe we can think about doing the same. I know where to start.
possible reason we’re in Libya at all.
One of the reasons I worked so hard to elect Obama is that John McCain is a warmongering ass. I’m not really sure what a “monger” is, but I’ll bet that a quick Google search could tell me. Nevertheless, life is full of these little mysteries and I’m not sure I’m sad to see this one stick around. Also: the lack of a “President McCain” didn’t seem to keep the US from intervening in Libya. So who knows?
I’ve said again and again and again: there is dignity in labor. Labor has the right to bargain for a fair compensation. Capital does not have the right to violate a contract that has been agreed to. Do I support the Dorchester boycott? Of course I do! If you’re a fan the authors being screwed over by this publisher, you should also. The authors being represented by this publisher ought to consider a class action suit. And the various writer’s guilds ought to help them out.
Two things you ought to know: 1) there’s a website called “bad ass of the week”, and 2) this week’s bad ass is pretty damned bad ass.
I’m going to keep writing about Dragon Age 2. I swear! I’ve just been too busy playing it to write about it. Recently, my character was able to “romance” another. The scene was less titillating than it was creepy. All the emotional beats were correct, but the actual character models were off. Romance in the uncanny valley is a well understood phenomenon. I wonder what’s next?
The Federal government sent billions of dollars to stimulate the economy. The recession didn’t end. Turns out that State governments were cutting back on spending at the exact same time. The net result was fewer dollars in the economy, rather than more. The stimulus didn’t fail: it was never tried.
Unions: they make the world a better, safer, more awesome place. Unless you want to die in a fire because your boss would rather not spend the money to keep you safe.
How much does war cost? We don’t know, and don’t want to find out. That sort of worries me. I’d like to think that our government is accounting for things like 3 ongoing conflicts, and budgeting them into our national books every year. Turns out? Not so much.
If you have a Facebook account, Facebook will track you on every website with a “like” button. It doesn’t matter if you interact with that button or not– Facebook will see you and note your presence. Facebook’s business model is to learn as much about you as they can and sell that information to as many people as will buy. This sort of scares me, to be honest. So I’ve installed this little extension to keep that from happening. Sadly, I also have the “like” button on my site. Because I want the traffic that comes from people “liking” this on Facebook.
Kind small selection of links this week. Sorry about that: was too busy playing Dragon Age. This week’s theme? Flipping Capitalists 20 billion birds. In the comments, please let me know what you think the word “monger” means.
