Indignant Desert Birds

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for getting up and going to work because someone has to make a living around here. Sundays are for celebrating the birthdays of you and your partner. Sundays are for celebrating the life of your parents. Sundays are for wrestling Photoshop into a semblance of normalcy. Or Sundays might be for making friends with your kitties once more.

This week the Occupy Wall Street movement continued to strengthen– Mea Culpa: I thought it would die. This week the world mourned as visionary technologist Steve Jobs passed on. Also this week: California signed a version of the Dream Act- a bill which would allow children born to undocumented workers some of the same rights granted to any child who grew up in California. Also also: the EU has been declining to fix their economic woes as the world tumbles ever closer to economic devastation.

Saturn is so much bigger than Earth that my mind literally cannot wrap around the concept. It is quite literally not operating at human scale. Nevertheless, artifacts of the human mind have traveled to Saturn and sent us back pictures.

Speaking of artifacts of the human mind…

Earlier this week, my shrink casually mentioned that I had been (until quite recently) clinically depressed. Well obviously. In retrospect, this makes my lifelong commitment to not drinking look really fucking prescient. I’m fortunate that I spotted the tenancy toward alcoholism early enough in my life that never had to stop myself. I can only imagine the difficulty someone would have trying to quit. For the record: I don’t mind if other people drink around me, either.

My two earliest memories involve Lego. I am something of a Lego maniac. I can’t even imagine the skill it would take to build the sort of Gothic Victorian masterpiece linked to above.

Most women in the public eye would like to wear the “Feminist” label. The Feminist tent is fairly broad, capable of being worn by people of sharply contrasting views. It might be possible that the label would stretch far enough to include people who would like to return women to a subservient place in society. At the very least, we should be aware of who those self-proclaimed feminists are.

An awful lot of software asks if it may collect “anonymous usage statistics”. I almost always allow companies to do so- it makes products better. I’m amazed the Microsoft saw such a fundamental shift in the way users were interacting with the Operating system.

It has been standard practice for a long while for companies to declare that all their employees are of above average ability, and thus merit above average pay. This has lead to a situation in which the pay of line workers has been spiraling out of control, threatening to flood the economy with too much money. Wait. Sorry. It seems that only CEOs are thought to be of above-average ability for their responsibilities. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the people who hire CEOs can’t contemplate the idea that they, themselves would make a merely mediocre hiring decision. And so the 1% get richer. The rest of us have to make do with crumbs.

In lieu of flowers, those who desire may make memorial gifts to the charity of their choice.

Members of the various police forces are more concerned with keeping order than protecting the legal integrity of a society. This means that, yes, they will absolutely break the law in an attempt to get their own way. One of the reasons they get away with that (other than being armed) is that people don’t often know that their rights are being violated. Fix that. And then thank the ACLU.

Protip: don’t teach your cat to use your computer.

On the occasion of the death of Steve Jobs, it’s worth pondering why the Macintosh never made much headway in the desktop world. Those same things do seem to be making it a natural fit for the mobile computing world.

I didn’t know that a “Janus cat” was a real thing when I named my kitty.

For most of us, getting in shape is relatively simple (maybe not easy): exercise more and eat less. The design of a city can help us get more exercise. When walking is easy, and accomplishes something other than exercise, people are more willing to do it. When people walk more, they tend to be healthier. It’s not a panacea, but every bit helps.

I blame Carmen Sandiego.

The Democratic party has problems. The party has severe problems. Nonetheless, I’m a straight-line Democratic party voter. Given the math created by our current institutional structure, we have a two party system. Full stop. Given that math etc, it’s as important to vote against a party as it is to vote for a party. If Occupy Wall Street does anything, I hope they change that math.

People in the PR business have a weird time of things. On the one wrist, people wanting to make friends with them so that PR people will show them cool things. On the other wrist, PR people have to be friends with people in order to convince them to say nice things about their clients. So, you know Epic Fail.

Gr. Arrg.

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When the internet attacks.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for introducing your Girlfriend to your friends. Sundays are for celebrating a life well lived. Sundays are for plotting revenge. Or Sundays might just be for playing video games and eating good food.

This week, the US president took advantage of his self-declared power to murder Americans without warning or oversight. This week, Facebook rolled out new ways to gather personal data on their users. Also this week: Wall Street was “occupied” to protest greed.

Europe is falling apart. It’s going to take America with it. Here’s everything you need to know.

The US President declared that he had the power to assassinate any American citizen anywhere in the world for no better reason than his own say so. Perhaps the scariest part? He has claimed the right to do this in secret. For all we know, President Obama has ordered the murder of an American citizen for making a pass at his wife. That may sound far fetched– it is far fetched– but the president has asserted that it would be legal for him to do so, and legal for him to not tell us about it. Thus far, Congress has raised no outcry.

I once heard a professor describe Unions as (something like) a method by which labor is rationed. I blanched at that, and he assured me that in economic terms he was correct. Once I gave it a few moments’ thought, I had to agree. How else can a union maintain it’s strength save by limiting the monopoly power of employers.

When individuals form organizations with the purpose of pooling money to own (and derive profit from owning) the means of production, (corporations) those groups are allowed to bargain as one unit. That “collective bargaining unit” derives enormous power from the solidarity of the capitalists. Their ability to speak with a single voice; lobby local, state, and federal lawmakers on their own behalf; etc is uncontroversial. When workers join together looking to band together to enjoy that same power, the law is called out to stop them. And this is why the 1% have it much better than the rest of us.

Occupy Wall Street is a fantastic idea. I would not at all have minded seeing actual barricades thrown up in front of each of the banks and brokerages with revenues of $1 billion or more. It would have kept those people from working, and thus saved untold billions of dollars worth of mischief. The actuality of Occupy Wall Street left much to be desired. I don’t know what the protesters wanted, or what interests they served. I have a vague idea that the protesters were lefties, but the Tea Partiers claim to be speaking for the exact same constituency. This lack of communications skills is why progressive policies have a difficult time passing.

Household incomes are down. Spending is (naturally) therefore: down. And the economy? If people aren’t spending money they haven’t got, the economy is… down. From this it is easy to understand that our economy suffers from a demand-side depression, not a supply side downturn. Good news: we know how to solve demand-side economic disasters. Bad news? In 2010, we elected people who don’t want to raise money to fight for a better economy.

I’m not sure why anyone hates English lawyers this much, but the sign is awesome.

There is only one proof of manhood I, or anyone else, need: our own say-so. Anyone who defines their manhood in terms of branding or outside considerations is holding their manhood cheap. Manhood is much like womanhood: it’s all about having the confidence to be who you are. “Real” men can buy tampons for the ladies in their lives. “Real” men know that- if they want- they can paint their damned toenails bright pink. And “real” men stand up to the bullies who tell them otherwise. “Real” ladies do the same thing.

Most of us, most of the time, are going to fit easily into our socially assigned gender roles. It is 100% ok to fit easily into those roles. The important thing is to remember that those roles are arbitrary. Until 60 years ago, little boys wore pink skirts. Arbitrary distinctions may not be penalized or punished. I think this is the rule that separates the civilized from the uncivilized.

Last week held international coffee week. here are some coffee facts.

I’m pretty sure I don’t want penis coffee.

I grew up deep in the suburbs. In college, I commuted an hour each way to work. When I moved to San Francisco, I gleefully gave up my car. Living in a city where I could get anywhere at any time without needing to drive was a new sort of freedom. Not having to drive means that my commute can be spent reading, playing games, or watching a video. Commuting turns from a chore into a part of my leisure time.

In 1980, the US had a population of 226 million people. In 2011, the population is 308 million. That’s an increase of 36%. Between 1980 and 2011, there has been a zero percent increase in the number of Medical Doctorates awarded each year. Assuming doctors do not have longer careers now than they did 30 years ago, that points to a radically lower doctor/patient ratio. Why does medicine cost so much more now than it did 30 years ago? I’d say a good place to look is supply and demand.

I admit to being something of a dandy. Sunday afternoon, when meeting up with my friends, I plan on wearing a cravat. No real reason. Because I can. So yes. I go to far for fashion. Other nerds can learn how to dress better. I’m a dandy because I enjoy it. Dressing well helps people be taken more seriously.

One of the more disturbing trends in gaming is that graphics have long overshadowed gameplay for AAA productions. That’s what has been so nice about the stagnation of this console generation: the plateau in visual fidelity has turned into easy tools for reaching acceptable levels of graphics. This has led to an explosion of “indie” games, built around novel mechanics and zany ideas.

As I understand what the police are claiming happened here: the police erected mesh barriers to infringe on the rights of the people to peaceably assemble. For the crime of petitioning for a redress of grievances, the officers on hand indiscriminately used a non-lethal chemical weapon. When called to account for these actions, the police described them as “appropriate”. I call bullshit.

I can’t help but note that the movement against “frivolous” lawsuits have the net effect of making it harder for humans to protect ourselves against corporations. The best part? We’re spreading untrue anti-human propaganda ourselves.

It seems DC did a huge redesign of their entire lineup. Refreshing a comic every decade or so would seem to give the creators the chance to keep the books healthy and relevant. unless they pull shit like this. This 7 year old girl can’t articulate the phrase “male gaze”, but she does intuit that the books are not designed for her. I wonder if DC realizes that they are creating for themselves a huge problem.

A shot by shot analysis of what makes the 1978 Superman movie’s opening sequence work.

If you click just one link:

America has long had a policy of Affirmative Action. We only wanted to curtail it once it started helping black folks.

This week’s theme was work, jobs, and gender. In the comments section, tell me about your favorite board game.

Just because the southern Civil Warriors were overwhelmingly the heirs of slave-owners doesn’t mean the rebellion was fought over slavery!

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It’s Sunday Morning afternoon. Sundays are for taking care of a sick Girlfriend. Sundays are for celebrating a birthday. Sundays are for being semi-naked on Folsom street– despite the weather. Sundays are for working…

This week the states of Georgia and Texas murdered people in the name of their citizens. The man Georgia executed seems to have been innocent. The United States began allowing gay soliders to serve openly in the military. Saudi Arabia began the first steps towards allowing women to vote. And this week CERN proved that there is value to pure research.

In case the links I’ve provided this week aren’t to your taste, GameSpy has their best-of list. I’ve read most of the articles listed. They’re damned good.

The Republican party is the party of the rich and the white. The Democratic party is for people who are less rich and less white. Since Americans who are less rich and less white also tend to be less engaged with American civil society (being more likely to lack things like drivers licences or State IDs), voter ID laws make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote. Which is why we ought not be surprised that such laws are being passed in the absence of voter fraud. The problem being solved isn’t voter fraud, but Democratic Voting.

This was as far as I got before we went to the hospital. It’s now Monday evening, and I’m heading back there (again) to keep her company.

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I just went in on a 4 pack of Dead Island with a friend of mine, using a video games download service. She mentioned that “after tax it’s 40 bucks per”. I was thrown a bit– I’ve never been charged tax on a Steam game.

Then I remembered that both she and VALVe live in Washington State. So I offered to be the buyer for the games, thus “cheating” the State of Washington out of roughly $10. Now the State will have to find some other way of paying the salary of a friend up there who specializes in fixing internet shenanigans.

That last bit is somewhat flip, but only somewhat. If you use the internet, Jake- in his official capacity- has made your life at least a tiny bit better. Residents of the 49 non-Washington states are free riding on his efforts.

You may have philosophical objections to taxes, equating them with slavery. That’s certainly an argument worth having. But if you believe (as I do) that taxes are simply the price citizens pay for the privilege of using common infrastructure, then it’s clear that evading them is even more akin to theft than bittorrent.

So: The answer is becoming more clear. Congress needs to enact a national internet sales tax. The money can be handed over to the state in which the item is shipped, or it can be divvied equally among various states. But free riding is becoming a serious issue. Let’s fix this problem.

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Style and dance.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for laboring, that others might celebrate the decline of organized labor. Sunday is for introducing her to your family. Sunday is for enjoying a last few hours with a sister is who is off to visit Europe indefinitely. Sundays might perhaps be for unpacking, playing video games and having potential visit with your in-law’s apparent.

This week: The Libyan war continued. The US congress got into a pissing match with the US President. Also this week: Japan held elections and found itself a new Prime Minister. Also Also: The US asked Palestinians to delay a vote in the UN over Palestinian statehood- We’ll see how that goes next month.

Perhaps growing up watching Star Trek made me into a one-world guy at heart. One of the things I’ve never really understood is the right-wing fear of the United Nations. Their mission is nothing less than solving common human problems for the betterment of human society. Yes, it’s a flawed organization- we’re a flawed species. Perhaps it’s time the UN got some muscle.

What if you wanted to drink coffee, but absolutely could not stomach the sugar needed to make it palatable? What if you were a mad scientist? Fortunatly, that happened to Funranium, and we can all enjoy the flavor of his grind. For right now, there’s a coupon. Enjoy it!

I’ve written a bit before about Gramsci’s bi-level approach to propaganda. On one level, you need someone speaking to the masses. On the other level, you need the elite talking to themselves. When the elite start contradicting themselves, useful memes die a painful death. And so does America.

The point of science is to form a better picture of reality by creating testable predictions and discovering whether they’re falsifiable. This means that a good scientist will question everything. Sometimes, the pursuit of knowledge can be a bit undignified. Society ought not scoff at the people working diligently to figure out how dirty we can make water before the food supply dies. No matter how silly their testing methods might sound.

Consider this your weekly reminder that “race” is a social construction. At this point in human history, it is a dangerous one. Let’s work hard to get past it.

Back in 2009, Barack Obama took office, and had almost enough votes to get bills past the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate isn’t a game of horseshoes, and so the stimulus bill that Democrats were able to pass wasn’t nearly big enough. It was, however, a smashing success. Now, however, it has run out. And the economy is beginning to falter.

Imagine you’re standing around, and you notice that someone has just had a heart attack. Fortunately, there’s a defibrillator nearby. Obviously you grab it, shout “clear!”, and use the thing on the person. If the first shock doesn’t do the trick, you use it again- perhaps upping the amperage. What you most certainly do not do is claim that pushing a pillow over his face is the key to reviving him. This, of course, is an analogy for the US economy. Republicans are holding the pillow. We voted them into office…

One upon a time, there was a bill that would force lenders to accept lowering of interest rates. This was deemed too friendly to citizens, not not friendly at all to banks. And so it was written that the legislation did not pass. And so citizens are still left holding the entire burden of paying off a debt they’re not wholly responsible for creating. And so demand ceases to exist until that debt is paid off. And so the economy lags. And lags. And lags.

In order to create demand, people need money to spend. In order for people to spend money, they need jobs. The US has plenty of stuff that absolutely needs doing. What we lack is a political class willing to contemplate paying for it. Lack of demand caused by will, rather than ability.

Court was actually ok with this proposal, once they realized the defendant didn’t say wombat.

A customer yesterday asked if our company was unionized. This literally startled a laugh out of me. Our severs make minimum wage, and I’ve seen many instances of employees being told to work off the clock. When I mention to my coworkers that management is making illegal demands on them, they look horrified “I’d rather work off the clock than get fired”. But remember: management and individual workers are co-equal negotiators in the labor market.

This is a great argument in favor of a new, higher, tax bracket and increased marginal tax rates on the [new] top tiers.

One of the things that seems to make VALVe a great company is that they seem to hire people who actively enjoy their work. There is a whole lot of low-level grunt work involved in making a complex computer program, and it doesn’t sound like they hire anyone specifically to do it. I don’t think this is the sort thing that could be implemented at every company, but it does explain why VALVe products are fairly uniformly top notch.

Unlike “race”, gender and orientation do seem to be inherent factors in humans. The Boy Scouts don’t seem to care. Perhaps that’s why they’re increasingly irrelevant.

This is Facebook in a nutshell. They roll out a new privacy policy, which offers the illusion of privacy. In reality, it seems to strip even more privacy from their users. Fantastic.

The America right wing genuinely, honestly, totally believes that when the non-rich vote in their own interests, it’s unamerican. But It’s Only Class Warfare When the Poor Fight Back.

Keeping the non-rich from voting isn’t merely a belief held by the right– it’s a Republican strategy. It took me several months on the ground in Ohio to convince folks that their votes would actually be counted in 2008. And it’s taken the Republican party months more to undo my work. I guess if they believed in democracy, they’d be Democrats.

How bad is the disaster? This is a testament to the strength of Waffle House’s supply chain.

At one point Marvel was so badly mismanaged that they couldn’t turn a huge lead in market share into a better deal on printing and ink. From a consumer point of view, this is wonderful. From a stockholder perspective, this would be infuriating. It should also be cause to doubt the theory that the mega rich are just smarter than the average person.

Starz had a deal with Sony to kill it’s deal with Netflix if streaming got too popular. This deal makes total sense for a company hell-bent on self destruction. Shrink the audience for your product so that you can collect less revenue. Perhaps they think they can offset the costs by firing accountants? Obviously the winners in this deal are the pirates– a few more people seeding stolen Sony movies on Bittorent will make their downloads even faster.

Elephants.

As a straight, cis, white, dude; I might choose to be ashamed of George W. Bush. The former President and current douchebag fits all of those same descriptors. And yet most people look at the former President and choose not to blame his orientation, gender, gender presentation, or ethnicity for his many failings as a human being and President. Generally speaking, straight people, cis people, white people, and male people are allowed to succeed and fail without anyone really noting these descriptors. Which is why we can look at this letter as an artifact of a sexist society. These ladies certainly have their hearts in the right place, and I don’t mean to seem like I’m calling them out. But it’s worth noting that they needn’t have taken the on burden of speaking for 51% of the human species.

It wouldn’t be Sunday sans Comic.

If you read just one link:

Fred Clark reviews a book.

This week’s theme has been labor and it’s discontents. In the comments section, leave a note about when you first realized that something was happening, but you didn’t know what it was.

Nerd Alert!

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Rotate it!

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for Cleaning playing Batman as soon as you get home and can tear yourself away from Catan on your phone. Or Sundays might be for having brunch with a good friend sleeping in. Sundays are occasionally for looking forward to live-altering surgeries. Though perhaps Sundays are for recursively reflecting on the sentence you’re reading right now and wondering how I knew that you’d be recursively reading this sentence. And then cursing again.

This week: The US pushed back the clock on financial Armageddon by setting off a large nuclear warhead in it’s economy. Also this week: the American political world acted surprised by the fallout from this self-inflicted attack. Also: NASA sent some legos to Jupiter. Also also: tens of thousands of Verison workers went on strike.

Let’s start this Sunday off with a Hymn. There’s only one that you ever need to know, and it goes like this Boom De Yata

I almost think this comic was written by someone who knows me.

Over the past several years, many of my fellow progressives have been demanding that President Obama stop being so damned nice, and start going on a left wing tear that will utterly transform America. He can’t. Much as I use the first person when speaking of progressives, most of the country– most of the Democratic party– doesn’t. The failure for this lays strictly with those of us in the progressive community. It is our job to convince people that we’re right. It’s Obama’s job to get away with as much as he can get away with.

The fastest way to piss me off is to express the view that humans are evil, stupid, or in some other way deficient. My general sense is that no matter how odd a tradition might look to an outsider, it’s probably got a very good reason to continue being celebrated.

One of the scarier parts of being an American at the dawn of the 21st century is how badly messed up our system of governance is. I honestly can’t think of a single piece of infrastructure that doesn’t need fixing. Our roads? In need of repair. Congress? People have been advocating that the president become a dictator because Congress is so bad. Our system of promoting the useful arts and science is doing the opposite.

One of the scarier parts of our Intellectual property laws is the way that it inhibits or prohibits anyone other than the Rights Holder from preserving shared cultural heritage. With the current version of IP laws, the Christian Bible couldn’t have been written. The paper would have literally rotted to nothing before anyone would have been allowed to hand copy it.

Tom Lehrer gave up satire because reality was outpacing his cynicism.

In some very real sense, I simply am Punning Pundit. It’s a name I use everywhere; I respond to it when shouted. I do use my own birth name– I have a small bit of bemused pride at having come from a line of men with my same name. Not everyone is so lucky. For some people the ability to hide their real names is a matter of life and death.

Spider man? He wears a mask because he catches criminals just like flies. Also: He’s a young black/Latino man. Or, rather, he will be going forward. The fact that superhero ethnicity is so plastic is a huge sign of how far things have come.

There are certain things that everyone “just knows” about how ridiculous certain events are. For instance: the lady who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonalds. Or Van Halen’s bowl of Brownless M&M. The thing that everyone “just knows” about both of those stories is wrong.

Epic headlines.

Congress passes a lot of laws. Most of them are actually fairly pointless, but every now and then they do important work. Sadly, though, congresspeople are human- and so laws have unintended consequences

In serious onion news, labor won the right to collectively bargain against capital- an entity that always bargains collectively in it’s own interests. Remember kids: you don’t have to write for free, work for cheep, or fight alone. Only your enemies want you to.

Maybe if DC writers were unionized, they’d have a better understanding of how to treat their female characters. Probably not. But the work environment for their female staff might be less hostile.

Bob Dylan once said that “Money Doesn’t Talk, it Swears“. More importantly, I think, is that money makes politicians swear fealty. This can actually be good- I feel very comfortable helping city council members swear that they’ll stand up for the iron worker’s union. And if a state legislator kneels before the Chamber of Commerce, I want to know that, too. This new ability for unlimited bribery where only the recipient and giver know who’s interests are being served, though, is scary.

This story line needs a small amendment: 2009: progressives give up on Obama.

Sometime before humanity settled down into villages, we traded genetic evolution for memetic evolution. We humans haven’t reached the top of the food pyramid by being fast, strong, or sharp-clawed. Instead, we’re smart and inventive. Memetic evolution, though is as path-dependent as it’s meat-based counterpart. I wonder what sorts of advancements we would have made had we taken a very small left turn down some other technological path?

My argument is invalid

I’m not merely a gamer, I’m a PC gamer. Not for any reasons of snobbery, but I simply spend most of my time in front of the PC and so it makes sense that I’d game there as well. For some reason, big lable game developers hate me. Which is a weird way to try and get my money.

To summarize points 1-4: Don’t be a dick. Which reminds me: I need to write a post about how to insult people.

If you click just one link:

Beta Earth.

This week’s theme was a short prayer for the zombie Apocalypse. It might actually be the only thing that saves the economy. In the comments, let me know if you read this weekly missive for my writing, or for the links themselves.

Maybe you’re a shitty cameraman, I don’t know!

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Classes about International Relations are mostly theory. Lacking a TARDIS, or similar device, it’s impossible to run a statistically valid study on occasions when nuclear war did not break out, and contrast them against times when it did. Science can still be done; mostly by constructing elaborate models (called “games”) and seeing how they can approximate real-world conditions. All of which explains why I know how to win a game of chicken: the winning player is the one who throws away their steering wheel.

Seriously. that’s what I was taught in class. The professor was talking about nuclear conflict, telling us that if both sides knew they were both equally trigger happy (ie: neither side could move their own car), neither would let things get bad enough to press buttons. In practice, this worked- spectacularly- once (the Cold War) and failed- spectacularly- once (The Great War).

Since roughly 1980, America has been going slightly crazy. We call it the culture war; most Americans hate it. We hate it so much that in 2008, we elected a guy President on the basis of a four year old speech in which he agreed with us that he, too, hated it.

In 2008, America elected a steering wheel. Watch that speech. Barack Obama is promising to be a steering wheel. In 2010, progressives stayed home on election day. Because of that, a whole hell of a lot crazy people got in office. The Republican party took the House with a specific promise to throw away the steering wheel.

There is, in my mind, no question why the last month of American politics played out the way it did. Both sides showed up ready to do the job they were elected to do. The deal that Congress reached was the inevitable result of those dynamics.

The damnable part is that a different president couldn’t have gotten a much better deal through Congress. That’s a different post.

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This is the greatest thing

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for laying about. Or working on layouts. Or selling brunch to the post-church, pre-rapture crowd. Sundays are for music, good and bad. Or Sundays are for blowing raspberries at the last bits of a head injury.

This week: The US House of Representatives passed a debt deal that will not pass the US Senate. A major labor action came to a semi-successful conclusion, and there will be a football season after all. Also this week: Spain called for elections- possibly as a result of the Spanish “indignant” movement. How did no one tell me about these wonderful protesters? Also also: Wars, rumors of wars.

Before we begin in earnest, I want to apologize to any of my customers who I may have gotten sick. See: without health insurance, or paid time off, I’m heavily penalized for staying home from work. As a result, if I get sick, so do a lot of other people. Other countries have mandatory sick leave, but some many of our citizens feel that creating laws about that would be a step towards government tyranny.

My life needs more boardgames. But so many of them are expensive! Cheapass games does exactly what their name implies- gives you a high-quality game as cheaply as possible. Some of them are even free.

I’ve said before, possibly even last week, that most people only think they hate board games. Most people have only played Monopoly and Risk, and those are both very bad games. Turns out that Monopoly is much better than I’d thought- I’d simply been playing it wrong.

One of the awesome things about video games is the way they can be a power fantasy. In real life, I’ve got to be a living part of the economy. If I fail to show for work, I’m probably going to start starving eventually. In a game, I can save the universe and build a civilization. Even when I’ve done government work, I’ve enjoyed playing Sim City- the problems are at the very least solvable. The problem with games is an extension of this- your character really is the center of the universe. This wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal if we didn’t live in a patriarchal society. However, with games being yet another media telling people that women have no sexual agency save that granted by men, it becomes problematic.

The Smurfs movie. Oh, the Smurfs movie. I can’t even begin to understand who thought it might be a good idea. Honestly, I had no idea that it started as a comic in 1958. Given it’s origins, it makes sense that it would have some archaic notions of gender dichotomy. None of which explains why, in 2011, there is only one female Smurf. That’s kind of unSmurfing believable.

A very small, thumbnail history of India. Because gaming, at it’s best, tells us about the society we live in, and the one we think we live in.

The second best press release of all time.

I can’t find the specific quote, but Antonio Gramsci once made the observation that for propaganda to be effective, it needs to operate at two levels. The first is aimed at the elite, the little lies they tell themselves with the psudosophistication of unknowingly regurgitated thought. The second is aimed at the masses, the unsubtle lies endlessly repeated. This is why the Right has both Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza. The Left lacks this sort of institution. It also lacks governing power.

We lefties keep trying to explains that the stimulus worked, but it wasn’t big enough. If we had every morning DJ in America explaining this simple fact, there is no way that congress would be more worried about debt than about joblessness. Debt is the line the Right is pushing, and so it’s what Washington thinks is important.

One of the weirder aspects of American public policy is the public blindspot regarding the link between taxes and spending. Americans love getting government services. We don’t always realize we are getting those services, but we’ll notice when they’re gone.

Gravity is a universal constant, right? Nope! Yup! Kinda!. I do love finding out that not only are we wrong about something, but that we’ve always been wrong about it. Not only that: there’s no guarantee that we’re right about it now.

I used to do “musical interludes”, but my main sources for new music seem to have dried up. If anyone wants to point out some music blogs, please do so in the comments. In the mean time: that contradicts Mark 12:17. The point of being a secular society is specifically to keep the various religions and sects from tearing America apart with their different notions of “the good”.

Some prayers, though, can only be heeded by government action. Some prayers should be unnecessary, but have been made so by our continued refusal to understand how to properly invest. The prayer, in other words, isn’t so much aimed at a deity, but at Washington DC.

Everything you need to know about the patriarchy, you can learn from slave-Leia.

I’ve got a weakness for hats. One of the reasons I am looking forward to getting a haircut is so that I can wear my fedora the way it’s meant to be worn. But in the mean time, I have a couple of hats which are specifically for when my hair is too long.

Whitey was on the moon. A black lady was sewing his protective garments. To me, this is a perfect encapsulation of American history from about 1492 until roughly… I dunno: 1970? White (male) Americans doing extraordinary things, being backed up and assisted by Black Americans who were thrust into the (too oft uncredited) supporting role for no better reason than skin color.

American race relations bears a striking resemblance to this calculator.

Since I started taking the Adderall, my coffee intake has dramatically decreased. Turns out that caffeine activates almost the same mental pathways as the ones I needed activated. And so I drank too much coffee. Some days, though, you just need to wake up. Adderall can increase the mental bandwidth, but it can’t actually make you more alert. For that you need coffee. And if one cup won’t do there’s Black Blood of the Earth.

The state of the Internet: 2011 edition. Which ought to have been the name of this week’s post, really.

My childhood wasn’t this awesome.

Along those lines: this is the best argument for having children.

News media does a terrible job at presenting information. The inverted pyramid style of writing is designed for short attention spans, but basically guarantees that nothing worth reading will exist past the third paragraph. Headlines are written by people who have little familiarity with story. Whitespace is an oft-touted ideal, but one that is rarely achieved. Media’s online presentation is even worse.

If you read just one thing:

This story is essential reading for anyone wondering what “meta”, or “post modern” mean. Critical theorist Unite! You have nothing to lose but your identity selves!

This week’s theme has been… Damn if I know. In the comments section, sound off if you use an RSS reader.

I am your grandmother.

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
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It’s Monday morning. Monday mornings are usually about starting the work week. This Monday? If you’re an American, this Monday is for eating hot dogs and lighting stuff on fire to celebrate the day America signed the paperwork for Independence.

This week: NASA’s clever plan to stop sending shuttles into space was crucial to thwarting the asteroid which could have wiped out human life. Also: the fires that ravaged much of the Sonoran desert have begun to be brought under control. This week a governor in Syria was dismissed because he refused to imitate Bull Connor.

When I was unemployed and without income, I started looking for ways to spend as little money as I could. I unplugged my TV, and the electric bill plummeted. A great many modern conveniences drink power to save seconds. Shutting these things off can add a few dollars back into a wallet.

I make a point of reading contracts before I sign them. Never once been asked to give away my first born, but it could happen. Rule of thumb: if the contract is dense with legal verbiage, I assume that I’ll need a lawyer to get me out of it. If the contract as a mandatory arbitration clause, I assume I’m going to get screwed.

Immigration is a tricky thing. On the one wrist, we’re a nation full of tired, huddled masses yearning to breath free. On the other wrist ZOMG! People who speak languages I don’t know, and eat foods I’ve never had! Me? I like hot sauce on my pasta noodles. If the trade off for that is making it harder for me to eavesdrop on people I share a train with, so be it.

Humanity is amazing. If you put a person in society which has a different accent- or language- that person will adapt. Some of us better than others, but that language- or accent- will be incorporated to some extent. This would seem to indicate that we humans are very much used to moving around and mixing with one another. Migration is a survival trait. When lawmakers attempt to block migration, they attempt to dismiss what may be a fundamental human need. That’s never going to work well.

This wasn’t so much over scripted as it was performance art.

America is the third most populous nation on Earth. The first and second most populous nations have extremely impoverished infrastructure. As a result, the US is the richest nation on Earth. This does not mean that US citizens are better off than citizens of other first world nations. In fact, our refusal to pay more to the government means that our extra wealth is sucked away by non-governmental bureaucracies, making us much poorer than we have to be.

In America, we don’t tax the rich, and don’t give social services to the poor. The rich like to whine about their tax rates, but that’s a ploy to keep them low. The argument seems to be that rich people, by virtue of employing non-rich people, have fulfilled their social obligations. This does implicitly deny that the labor “market” isn’t really a market. So there’s that.

There is a reason that the immigrant community prefers to use the phrase “undocumented worker” rather than “illegal alien”. People come to America because it is the “Land of Opportunity”. Everyone knows that if you come to this country, you have to work. And if you work, you pay taxes. Labor pays taxes, but capital doesn’t. That’s why it’s called a “Capitalist” system.

Speaking of Capitalism

There is a reason why, in King Henry the 6th Part 2, the villain says “The First thing we’ll do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. Lawyers, like any tool, can be used for good or ill. In a civil society, they are the last line of defense against abuses by the powerful. There is little wonder, then, that the Republican party is trying so very hard to destroy the sorts of lawyers who sue companies that sell poison.

How Email was invented

I stopped using Facebook a few weeks back. Unbeknownst to me, Google was planning on launching it’s own social network this week. So that’s a plus. Google and Facebook have very different attitudes. Google is like being at a party. And I ask my friend about sunglasses. And she takes me around to all my friends and gets their opinions and comes back tome. And then says “oh, BTW, Dude you don’t know paid me to let you know about his shop. I checked it out, and it seems alright.” Facebook, though, is like being at a party and asking about sunglasses, when a dude in a trench coat walks up and is all “You want sunglasses? I got sunglasses right here, in my pocket. What kind do you want? I’ll sell ‘em to you. Here’s a picture of your mom wearin’ ‘em.” Facebook and Google may do similar things with their social network, but style and intent are an important consideration.

The 21st century is seeing everything go digital. Even that most analog of media– books– have been digitized and put into the cloud. It should come as no surprise that signature gathering is going digital. Or would, if the law allowed for it. I do think the court is correct in it’s reasoning. There is no obvious injustice in the lack of electronic signature gathering, and so the court doesn’t need to intervene in a purely logistical question.

The police are armed. The police are public servants. They are, in the most literal and dangerous sense, your tax dollars at work. This suggests that they ought to be recorded at every possible (professional) moment. Any officer who says they don’t wish to be recorded ought to be held in the deepest suspicion.

In order to lose weight, he needed a pair of things. Firstly, he needed a government willing to tell companies to explain what food they were selling him. Secondly, he needed a government to create conditions whereby walking was a real possibility. Those were exactly the conditions which allowed me to lose 100 pounds.

The word of the week? Theodicy. Know it. Use it. Love it. Or bad things will happen to you.

We nerds and geeks are human. Therefore we need love and partnership. Being human, many of us are bad at finding it. Being geeks, our advice columns are awesome.

One of the deciding factors in the case “Brown Vs. the Board of Education” was that separate could inherently never be equal. One arbitrarily chosen group became the default, and the other inevitably becomes lesser. Data showed that black children were coming desire to play with white dolls instead of black ones– they had internalized the racism. How much easier would it be to internalize sexism when playing games from a first person perspective? As with most forms of institutional “isms”, the problem isn’t so much with any given decision, but the net impact of most decisions coming down the same way.

The Geek Girl Bill of Rights mostly boils down to one: Geek girls have the right to demand respect as both geeks and as girls. Interestingly, most of the attached Geek Girl Commandments would be unnecessary were the men to take the Bill of Rights seriously. So Geek boys: don’t be dicks.

Once upon a time I was a bookseller. A dad and his 8 years oldish son came up to me with a copy of American Gods. Dad asked me if it was a good book. I waxed enthusiastic for a while. He then asked if it was appropriate for someone his son’s age. I looked at him for a second and said that it might be a bit mature– not owing so much to sex or violence, but purely thematically. There are lots of things in that book that a child simply won’t have the life experience to understand. I have yet to see a ratings system which captures this distinction in any sensible way. Instead “mature” seems to be a synonym for “puerile”.

The social value of art is the way it can shape public opinion simply by being engaged with. Artists can create memetic conjunction, disjunction, and contrast to mold minds. All power may flow from the barrel of a gun, but art can determine who holds the gun, and there it is pointed. How much more powerful would an art form be if the creators literally determined every faucet of the world being explored? Millions of people have played Fallout: New Vegas. And all of them have experienced a world in which the LGBT spectrum may not always be respected, but is always present. No movie can possibly make a statement that powerful.

It has always struck me as odd when I’m told that women are less interested in sex than men are. I’ve known women. Many of them. I’ve known men. Many of them. And it seems that the reports I get from men and women cover the same spectrum. Seems that 400 years ago, society pretended that women were always horny and men never were.

I’ve been referring to video games as “art” for a very long time. The US Supreme Court agrees with me. As such, video games are covered under 1st Amendment protection’s protections for speech. The specific law being overturned involved selling violent games to children. The court found that violent games do not tend to make children more prone to violent behavior, and that by restricting access to this form of art to a segment of the population, certain political games might never be made. Indeed, Bioshock is Rated-M (mature), and an intensely political game which tends to demolish the idea of Libertarianism. I’m guessing Scalia hadn’t played it, or he might have ruled differently.

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/pregnesia-by-carla-cassidy-guest-review/”target=”_blank”>So without further ado, my top 26 reasons PREGNESIA by Carla Cassidy is the best book in the history of pregnant amnesiac romance.

If you read just one link:

Companies are doing credit checks before being willing to give people the jobs that will help cover their bills. Class warfare at it’s most raw.

Today’s theme was not being a dick. So let’s enjoy this clip from 1776.

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WordPress ate this post. I had about 1100 words written before it decided to log me out and not save anything. My heart simply isn’t in re-writing everything over the next two hours.

Fuck it. Link 1 Link 2, Link 3.

There’s some good stuff there. Monday is an American holiday, so it’s like a Sunday, right? I’ll do a Sunday-On-Monday post, then.

I have to be at work in a few hours. Have an otter juggling a stone.

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
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