Sunday Morning Reading Material Third Sunday in October 2011- Getting the Pumpkin Patched Edition
No, 1% do please go Gault.
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for retracing the steps of the Beatles career, from the comfort of your couch. Sundays are for installing games on your new windows partition. Sundays are for walking with vigorous strides– or at least remembering to send out a copy. Sundays might be for rediscovering your love of music festivals. Or Sundays might just be for furiously tapping out a post so that people can snuggle in bed and read.
This week, protesters continued to Occupy [a park near] Wall Street. Scientists are still vigorously trying to prove that faster than light travel is still impossible. Also this week: Slovenia’s government fell when it failed a confidence vote. Also also: The Italian government failed to fall. Depressingly this week: debt-easing inflation failed to occur.
One of the more interesting reactions to the death of Steve Jobs has been high lighting the deaths of other people. I will not play the a game where I try and explain who’s life was more worthy of celebration. I will point out that humanity has been blessed with some truly fine specimens.
I pay very little attention to the media. It has much less to do with my own ideological biases (which, granted, are far to the left of what the media is comfortable talking about), and more to do with the fact that the media is incompetent. I honestly do believe that many of the problems the US finds itself in would be solvable if we had a media capable of reporting a fact in the most relevant way possible. Since they cannot, American democracy is asked to exist within an information vacuum. Lacking information with which to make good decisions, we make very bad ones indeed.
Despite bizarre insistence to the contrary, vaccines are a useful tool for making humanity better off. As an interesting side note to the story: Windows users can know that their money was reinvested in helping eliminate polio from India. Win/Win? Indeed.
Apparently the US government has decided to arbitrarily shut down certain websites. I say “apparently” because this is the first I’ve heard of it. And I say “arbitrarily” because the accused are not allowed to defend themselves.
Imagine if you had a phone. And imagine if that phone could be used to track your physical location and every place you visit on the internet. Now imagine if someone wanted to collect and sell that information without so much as giving you any of the money. It is this sort of thing, I think- more than the banking system itself- which so inflames the Occupy Wall Street folk. It’s the basic sense that corporate life has seeped into every corner of America, and left democracy a pale, sickly, shadow of what it had been.
I remember the way the press hounded President Clinton over the Lewinsky affair. The press was literally jumping out of bushes in hopes of startling Gary Condit into admitting that he murdered his lover. Imagine for a moment that the media treated the presidential assassination scandal with the same level of intensity. What if President Obama were unable to do walk his dog without being asked the circumstances under which he were able to murder Americans at will? The press does not care. And so America slumbers on.
The government does good and useful work. Anyone who says otherwise is objectively pro-domestic abuse.
Let’s fix the tax code. Let’s restore the inflation rate to the historic average. Let’s never again bail out a company and keep its management team afloat. Let’s stop pretending that everything in America is just fine. It isn’t fine. It hasn’t been fine for 10 years.
Matthew 6 is one of the most interesting chapters of the Christian Bible. In it, the Christian Messiah attacks the very foundations of his society by telling his followers not to be douchebags. Seriously. I’m going to quote a bit: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Oh, he goes on for a while. He also tells people-his followers- not to pray in public. In this middle of this epic anti-douchebag PSA, the Christian Messiah delivers what has come to be called “the lord’s prayer”.
When someone buys stock in a company, they’re buying a small piece of that company. People do this because they expect to make money from owing a piece of that company. That company is legally required to provide an accurate accounting of its activities. It seems that there is some interesting and strange evidence that they aren’t. Who the fuck do Wall Street tycoons think they are? They lie to the American public, they lie to the American government, and they seem to be lying to the people who own their companies.
Two of the most pretentious things in the world: cheese and fonts.
One of the best things that Occupy Wall street has done is point out the contradictions at the heart of American society. One one side, you have a dream of democracy. On the other side, you’ve got the simple fact that the parasitic 1% of America looks down on the rest of us, knowing they can buy and sell us at their whim. This is what the revolution was fought against. Never let it be said, however, that it’s no laughing matter.
Victor: You bought two dead animals – killing each other – because renting them is a bad investment?
The American political system is deeply, deeply flawed. Of the two major parties, one has a variety of solutions to America’s various ills. Some of these are right, and some wrong. The other party’s most credible attempt at fixing the economy is to fire more people.
If you read just one link:
The failure of Digital Rights Management.
This week’s theme has been the death of the American dream. In the comments section, let me know whether you prefer cheesy pretense, or pretentious cheese.
D’oh!
