Sunday Morning Reading Material Third Sunday in July 2011- Harry Potter is Dancing with Dragons Edition
I want to play this.
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for playing wizarding games with Legos on your TV. Or Sundays might be for reading the most anticipated fantasy novel of the past 6 years. Or Sundays might be for swimming. Perhaps, though, just perhaps, Sundays are for feeding the hungry masses. Sundays are certainly for watching the US become the best Soccer playing nation on Earth.
This week was a sort of holding pattern in world history. The various wars continued, and in many cases worsened. The US’s ongoing Constitutional crisis failed to be resolved. The world’s most evil media mogul had some of his more nefarious deeds exposed. Oh, and for added pessimism, the birthplace and only home of the human species continued to get less habitable.
Was all that too depressing? Help fight back against entropy of the human spirit
I think I’m wired differently from most folks. If I asked a woman to be my partner, to have and to hold, etc and so forth, and she told me that I couldn’t help plan the ceremony because “it’s her day… I don’t even think I could begin to be involved with someone who might have that attitude. Simillarly, it would never occur to me to call a small child “pretty”. Talking about books? I can do that all day long…
The women of our species have been engaged in a fearsome match to lay claim to the title of World’s Best Soccer players. America looks set to win the whole thing this year, in large part because we have tried to implement some form of equality between our genders.
I’ve said it before: I love sports. Humans perfecting their physical and mental skills and showing them off before the world. One of the problems with sports, however, is that athletes tend to shorten their lives– literally spending their health in the pursuit of excellence. Which is a reason why I enjoy esports. All the drama and excellence of physical sports, with none of the life-threatening injury.
The economy is terrible. It’s not simply bad because we’re not making as much money. An awful lot of us are sitting around doing nothing. 2 years ago, I was happily working 50-60 hours a week. Currently I’m begging for 30. The economy is keeping me from being able to contribute as much as I am capable of. This is true for a lot of people.
In 2010, the American healthcare system had 2 major problems. First? It woefully underserved the American public. Secondly: it was wildly overpriced. In 2014, America is set to correct the first of these problems. Unfortunately, the price for fixing the first problem was to not touch the second problem– overcharging the American people for healthcare puts money into someone’s pocket. So that’s the next struggle.
During the darkest hours of 2 November 2004, there were two conversations held between myself and the other Orwellians. Firstly: I was berating them for voting for Ralph motherfucking Nader. Secondly, I was trying to explain to them why California Succession wouldn’t really work.Our current borders are very defensible– but we wouldn’t keep half the State.
Perhaps I should have been lecturing Robb Stark about securing his borders. If so, there might still have been a King of the North.
Google has done some amazing things. They revolutionized email by turning it into a profit center, rather than a loss leader. They have pioneered efforts to make data centers as energy efficient as possible. They also make science fair awards out of Lego brick.
True story: Once upon a time, I was meeting a dear friend in Ohio. I borrowed a car and met her at the airport. “Something you need to know– they don’t have Burritos here.” My friend was shocked. The lady I’d borrowed the car from piped up “Yes we do! There’s a Chipotle on the way back to the office!” My friend Howled her displeasure. “THEY DON’T HAVE BURRITOS IN THIS STATE?!” Burritos would be the national food of California, if we were a nation.
English, like any good comic, steals shamelessly from it’s betters. I yammer a great deal on this bog about the prescitpionist/descriptionist divide. No one, however, questions the need for the language to grow, evolve, and maim it’s memetic competition.
I once tried to explain to one of my sisters how (7+1) * (7+1) can equal 100. I was eventually able to, but the concept that our number system can be somewhat arbitrary is a mindbending one. Similarly, it has only been one year since Neptune was discovered.
When Grover Norquist decided to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub, the last week of American history is what he has been hoping for. The “beast” has been starved metaphorically. Soon, many Americans who rely on government assistance shall be literally starving. We need to prevent this.
One easy solution to the problem? run the printing presses. This isn’t quite as dangerous as it sounds. Historically, America has run ~4% inflation. Currently, America is running about 0% inflation (gas has gone up. Everything else has gone down). Getting inflation back to historic norms would put a lot of cash into the hands of Americans. Things could be bought. Demand would spike. Business would recover. People would be making taxable income once more!
Gold is incredibly valuable. Why, we can make jewelry and computer parts from it. If we were still using it as money, every computer in the world would cost a lot more–and the information revolution might never have happened.
The internet justifies its existence.
By creating these words that you are reading right now, I am laying claim to a copyright of them. The problem is that in order to read them, a person has to copy them onto their local machine. This is done without my express permission, and is therefore arguably illegal under copyright law. The entire electronic age is built on copying; this makes copyright protections a weird, untenable beast. Some other form of intellectual property protection must be found, and quickly.
Every now and then I read something like this and wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without IP laws at all.
10 simple fashion rules for men.
San Diego has Legoland, Aircraft Carriers, and a board game museum. Sounds like a place I need to visit.
If you read just one thing:
Phone companies are letting people scam you, because they make money when it happens. When credit card companies were engaged in the same sorts of sordid practices, the government set out strict rules preventing it. When it started up with phone companies, government took them at their word that they’d take care of it. Expecting any industry to regulate against its financial interest is simply absurd.
This week’s theme has been gender roles and my own inability to think of anything clever to say. In the comments section, tell me how useful 8hrs of sleep might be.
Related posts:
- Sunday Morning Reading Material Second Sunday in July 2011- The dream is alive but sleeping Edition
- Sunday On Monday Morning Reading Material First Monday in July 2011- America’s goin’ Indie edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material: First Sunday in March 2011– Day After My Birthday Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material: Second Sunday in June 2011: The legend of Laura Secord Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material: Third Sunday in June 2011: That’s An Important Distinction Edition
“because Neptune’s year lasts 164.8 Earth years, each of its four seasons lasts about 40 years.”
So, Westeros is on Neptune?