Sunday, May 25, 2008
" Indiana Jones makes Russian communists see red" - via Reuters
Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.At least they're allowing the movie to be shown, though some Party members want to ban it.In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.
"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.
Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda."I HATE totalitarian socialists, slightly more than I hate fake capitalism verging on socialism.
Labels: censorship, Communist censorship, Indiana Jones, Russia
"Buffett sees long, deep U.S. recession" - via Reuters
"But the people are already feeling the effects," said Buffett, the world's richest man. "It will be deeper and last longer than many think."
"...You can't get the genie back in the bottle."
"...You can't get the genie back in the bottle."
Labels: economic regulation, recession, Warren Buffett
Thursday, May 22, 2008
"Rampaging Kenyan Mob Burns 15 Women to Death on Witchcraft Suspicions" - via NTV Kenya
Wow. I know people perpetrate this kind of justice on each other all the time, and have forever. It's true that these witches are not well intentioned shamans, but there's something about lynch mobs...watch the whole video, good gore.
Labels: Kenya, lynch mobs, witchcraft
'Clerical error' gets in the way of handouts - via AP
Bush vetoes a large farm bill, which a large majority of Congress then tries to override.
About two-thirds of the bill would pay for nutrition programs such as food stamps; about $40 billion is for farm subsidies; and additional $30 billion would go to farmers to idle their land and to other environmental programs. (Associated Press)First of all, two-thirds of what they call a "farm bill" pays for food stamps? Nice disguise. I think that only children and the accidentally or permanently handicapped should be allowed nutrition from govt food, but that's a case in itself.
Second, Congress sent the wrong copy to Bush for review, so he never vetoed the correct bill. Emergency session! Haha, bringin' home the bacon didn't work this time, huh? Oink, oink.
Labels: Congressional override, farm subsidies, pork spending
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
"Orphan of the Storm" by Mudcrutch
My mom put together her clients' pictures of the huge tree that fell on their house. All their friends used to have big awesome parties there.
Labels: fallen trees, Mudcrutch, roof damage, Tom Petty
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
"Over time, our bodies lose their ability to cope with toxic chemicals, and each exposure has a more severe effect." - via alternet
"Toxic Chemicals Are Maiming Thousands Around the World," by Aquene Freechild, Enviornmental Health Fund
Robert Anton Wilson
One of my new favorites. Quotes that I love from The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson..."It is no accident that Lenin could not bear to listen to Beethoven (the music made him want to weep and treat people gently, he said); nor that Ludwig's music was banned in Communist China...All Marxists, basically, are reactionaries, yearning for the Oriental despots of pre-Hellenic times, the neolithic culture that preceded the rise of self consciousness and egoism...Some of [Beethoven's] neighbors said he was crazy. But what was going on in his head was the creation of the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the late quartets, the greatest artistic expressions in all history of the DNA script of evolution...from unicellular dance to the struggles and sufferings of complex organisms to the ixtraterrestrial perspective of the Cosmic Immortals we are becoming."
"Every decade is important now: we can choose utopia or oblivion by means of only a few decisions. We cannot evade or escape for much longer. We have to take responsibility and stop laying it all on the other guy. We are being faced to understand. John Donne's deathless metaphor: 'Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.'""Any single act of hope and love may be the grain that tips the scale toward survival, and, conversely, any single act of cruelty or injustice may be the grain that tips the scale the other way."
"Polititics consists of demands, disguised or rationalized by dubious philosophy (ideologies). The disguise is an absurdity and should be removed. Make your demands explicit."
"My emphasis is on whatever will make extraterrestrial migration possible in the generation."
"The bureaucratic state, whether American, Russian, or Chinese, has all the clout on the planet for the foreseeable future."
"The individualist must fulfill his or her genetic predisposition to be a pioneer..."
"...but this probably happens in the evolution from mammalhood to true intelligence on every life-supporting planet."
"We're only halfway through the evolutionary cycle of our star, and the more advanced forms are just beginning to appear in random mutants during the past few thousand years."
"In Herbert's cosmic glue theory, every quantum event is here because of another quantum event, which is here because of the first cosmic event. At this level, causality is meaningless, and Herbert prefers to speak of 'influence,' whih acts every way in time."
"All of us - past, present, and future - are bound non locally by the COSMIC GLUE."
"Humanity is trapped (temporarily) in static, repititious neural circuits that creat misery, conflict, prejudice, war, stupidity. There is no longer any need for this sad situation to continue."
"It is easy to reprogram the nervous system and thus to remove these static, mechanistic circuits (conditioned reactions). You can be anything you want to be, the next time around."
"...current Western elites do encourage their subjects to believe that there is no elite, that is that the increasingly totalitarian state of affairs is just and inevitable accident, the unavoidable vector sum of impersonal societal forces, even the will of the people!"
"The acquired portion of stupidity is the result of "enculturation," whih is the process by which the flexible, multivalued human nervous system is brainwashed into surrendering its flexibility and repeating the stereotyped behaviors, beliefs, values, etc. of the tribe into whih it is born."
"We should all be a little more nervous than we are right now. The world as we know it is quickly changing."
Labels: futurism, Illuminati Papers, libertarianism, Robert Anton Willson
"(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: Just Being Middle Class Is Becoming out of Reach" - via alternet
Economic realities have undergone seismic shifts since our parents' and grandparents' generations. Education and housing cost more. Incomes have leveled off for all but a small minority. Employers and the government supply few social safety nets, cutting health insurance and pensions and replacing them with new "benefits" like 401(k)s and health savings plans that benefit only those with income to set aside. But many of those middle class expectations set in place back in the '50s still hold.
This is a great article. I think the trends Nan Mooney identifies are good for our society. When first becoming prosperous and convenienced, Americans should have used their extra income to better the rest of the world, rather than to conspicuously consume luxuries for self-gratification. If we had chosen to prove that free trade was good for the world, rather than revel in greed, capitalism might have prevailed. But it looks like we're heading in the other direction.
Labels: American middle class, class division, luxury consumption, shrinking middle class
"Spanish firm offers $12.8 billion to lease Pa. Turnpike" - via philly.com
Citigroup and their Spanish counterpart make money off of Americans who use their own roads. Brilliant.
Labels: foreign investment, Pennsylvania, Spain, toll roads
Monday, May 19, 2008
"US begins to break foreign oil ‘addiction’" - Financial Times
"The US is starting to break its “addiction” to foreign oil as high prices, more efficient cars, and the use of ethanol significantly cut the share of its oil imports for the first time since 1977."
This is great, but the popularity of ethanol also raises the price of corn, contributing to the food crises.
This is great, but the popularity of ethanol also raises the price of corn, contributing to the food crises.
