Ugh

I really need to pick a happier theme for this blog. Photography? Nature? BC recreation? What do people think?

Soap box time

Lane’s Law:
People are stupid and form their world-view by what their equally stupid friends say. People will ignore an obvious fact if it interferes with their stupid beliefs. People would rather be told a comforting lie than an uncomfortable truth, which means they can be led and controlled like sheep by anyone willing to provide a suitable lie.
Abe Lincoln was wrong. You can fool all of the people all of the time – they’ll do it for you, with the slightest push at the right moment.

Lane’s Corollary:
All it requires to be a good human being is to remain open to new facts, willing to rigorously research their validity, and adjust your world-view accordingly.

Arizona outlaws accents

Oh boy. Now Arizona is banning teachers with accents. Because anyone without a whitebread accent is just not an American. Next up - surgically-adapted blue eyes for everyone!
Canning teachers with bad grammar = brilliant idea. Canning accents = so profoundly ignorant as to be incomprehensible. The US is the least multiculturally-capable nation I've ever seen. With the possible exception of Japan.

In a happier vein

I'm looking forward to being back with my family, but also having the chance to shoot photos for me, not for a newspaper. The difference in what you capture is immense, as newspaper photography is largely a formulaic, boring matter of "get face, show blood, must print on 12% grey paper" that sucks the life out of what should be an art.

Also Canada smells better. Except during the forest fires. Or in Montreal.

Oh, please stop it.

More cops killing people because they can. This time, on video. Watch for the court case. I smell a 90-day suspension without pay and 20 hours of community service for blowing off a 7-YO's head. Ain't freedom grand?

Piccies

I was pondering doing a series called American Apocalypta focusing on the current end-times mentality amongst some in the US, but I think it might be a bit esoteric and self indulgent. Anyway, something moody for you today.

The white rose of Texas

Okay, Texas remains insane. Can the US give it to Mexico, maybe?

This sort of blind, politically-driven rewrite of history is the absolute sign of despotism. Congrats, United States, you're turning into Iran - complete with a militant theocracy.

Seriously, "triangular trade" rather than "slave trade"? So the Holocaust was "alternative baking"? Fucking redneck retards.

An atheist’s creedo

I denounce god, in all his or her myriad, lying, deceitful forms. I denounce superstition and the belief in things that not only cannot be proven, but cannot be rationally discussed by those professing faith and understanding of them.
I denounce and will oppose anything that sets imaginary beings higher than rational, loving human beings.
I denounce the concept of a blissful afterlife as a sort of booby-prize for the suffering of life inflicted by hateful humans, many of whom cleave tightly to a religion.
I accuse you of being blind and self-deluded, who truly believe that imaginary forces rule our “spiritual” lives.
I accuse you of being hateful, who demand others bend to the strictures of your imaginary gods and demons.
I find you nothing but contemptible, inhuman, and unloving.
I respect those who help their fellows because a reduction is suffering is every ethical person’s clearly understood goal. It benefits the whole of the population of the world in measurable ways. It pays dividends as those helped help other.
I respect those who teach others to think, rather than regurgitate “wisdom” by rote.
I most respect those who can admit they are wrong, and never stop seeking the truth, knowing full well that no ultimate truth is capable of apprehension.
I respect those who love, rather than hate; who open their arms, rather than point accusing fingers; those who think, rather than believe.

Your reading gem for the month

Here's a wonderfully weird an overlooked novel by a truly insane author, MP Shiel. It's one of those I stumbled across after reading his short story "The House of Sounds" and it's just .... well, read it.

MP Shiel was an interesting sort of loon.

How to get away with murder

First, make sure the shoplifter is black. Then, be in Chicago.

Come get some

So, made the Starcraft 2 Beta. I will try to review it in a sensible way (i.e. vaguely) so as to not reveal anything too damaging or spoilerish. Besides the single player campaign isn't part of the beta, so this will be nuts and bolts.

edit: Well, snazzy looking - Beta is strictly the Bnet stuff, so no idea if the game is balanced. At present I simply get annihilated by Battlecruiser rushes, which is boring. Annoying that the game still defaults to build-tree contests in multiplayer, but I never much cared for multiplayer.
As far as looks and controls, very snazzy. Controls are familiar and smooth, the look is slick, good voices on the units, nice animations. Units are bigger and easier to see, as well. Will probably have to wait for the real release to review this, though. Getting stomped by 14-YO malnourished Korean SC savants is not really my thing

LANGUAGE WARNING

No, seriously. Also brilliant.

The stock market and the Greek fiasco

What does it take to stop a stock market recovery? Easy: One Mediterranean country in its usual shambles.
Why any investors should have been surprised by the paper tiger Greek economy swirling around the drain is unfathomable. What’s even less understandable is that computer-triggered selling on the far side of the Atlantic should have such primacy that limited runs in the wake of the fiasco could trigger a thousand-point plunge.
Even now the SEC is trying to research why the drop was as fast and far as it was. Because no one knows. Think about that – the SEC doesn’t know how this happened. That inspires confidence, yes?
Who thought computer-aided panic sales were a good idea? Does no one recall anything about previous stock crashes – fear feeding on fear to exacerbate economic woes into actual damage beyond the borders of the country that lent too easily, spent too much and then fiddled the books?
Ah well. It wouldn’t be a normal month without some nation in a meltdown and the rest of the world staggering about cluelessly.

FOLLOWUP: Oh well, lookit the jeeniuzes Christ on a crutch.

Progressive transnationalism

Interesting. I need to read this in depth. You do, too.

Serving and protecting

Umm, yeah. SWAT raid in Missouri. The cops pump 7 rounds into a caged corgi in front of a 7-year-old.

And get the parents for misdemeanor pot and child endangerment. Because pot is more dangerous than firing off seven rounds in the house.

Some days "fuck the police" makes perfect sense to me.

Looking in the crystal ball

Fun fun, the Times Square attempted bomber is a Pakistani. Forums are alight with glee from right wing posters. That people are actually excited and thrilled that it was a non-white, non-Timothy-McVeigh, non-teabagger is disturbing.
Why would you be happy about anything having to do with this lunatic?
Is the joy because this helps justify the hatred these people have for anyone of Middle Eastern descent? Is it simply that they need clear “bad guys” and fail to understand that terrorism will never give them that?
To put on my Carnack hat and try to foretell the future using these vox populi vomitings as a base, expect the US in the next decades to:

1) See states rights challenges result in state-base immigration and naturalization enforcement involvement. Expect harassment to cause some legal residents to flee to other states/countries.
2) Expect crime rates – especially drug-related and terrorism – to rise. Race-based crime, usually targeting minorities, increases.
3) See the US, with an ever-more-conservative Congress following elections, push to dismantle civil liberties and due process for anyone not native-born (and suitably white)
4) See a frustrated US invade Iran to “stop its nuclear program” and discover their program was at best laughable. Nevertheless, somewhere near 150,000 will be dead. (This one might be wrong - it’s just possible they have a low-yield Hiroshima-quality program)
5) Simultaneously, watch the US become isolationist, damaging its economy as international partners step back.
6) Watch other NATO members and much of the UN divorce itself from US policy. Watch the US be more and more marginalized in international affairs. As it becomes marginalized, expect it to use military operations to attempt to control areas of the world that should have been dealt with through diplomacy
7) In 50 years, the US will either reverse course and realize it has to be a member of a culture of internationalized nations, or it will fracture into hillbilly Balkans lookalike nation-states filled with meth and AK-47s, and a few progressive countries that will seek trading partners in Asia and Europe, and turn their back on their neighbors, except to buy pork and corn.

And yes, that’s hyperbole, but there’s a central truth to it that’s terrifying.

And this pinhead is the sort of "bad Arab" that makes even rationalists such as myself have vague war-porn dreams of the B-52s turning the Fertile Crescent into a glassy, glowing wasteland. (Yes, and Pakistan, too) - so imagine the traction this will get with the militant right.

On the plus side, if this is the best the Pashtun area (home to OBL) can offer, then the world has cut at least one ball off Al-Queda. They're still dangerous, obviously, but their sophistication would seem (and it's merely that; seem) to be reduced.

Followup –

Here’s a question – given that terrorists world-wide work through stealth and assassination, why is it that nations don’t respond in kind?

It’s not easy or quick to get agents in place, but intelligence, combined with operatives on the ground bombing, stabbing and sniping, would seem more likely to be able to remove the heads of organizations and their immediate planning staffs than banging off a Hellfire from a Predator drone at a mud-brick farmhouse that might or might not have a VIP in it.

Are nations doing that, I wonder? Russia in Chechnya; the US in the Middle East; Indonesia throughout the archipelago?

I suppose we wouldn’t hear about it if they were. One can just hope they’re doing so.

Leatherface ... or Faz de Cuero?

Oh, hrm, I know I've seen this movie

A May Day special

North Korea. Well, it's indescribable. Watch all the related bits.

Could be subtitled "why Marxism is a raging failure"
Part 13, with Arirang, is especially horrific.