Chicken Teriyaki Bowl #7

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

This passage, read recently, brought to mind a collage of images: earthquakes in China, typhoons in Burma, flooding in the American midwest, and the American lack of fiscal responsibility which we call the mortgage ‘crisis’.

That last item seems incongruous, doesn’t it?  You wouldn’t know it by the media.

What kind of government forces people to make gasoline out of food, artificially boosts the price of corn to $6 a bushel, guarantees that inflated price as the “base” for higher federal subsidies to corn farmers in the future, and then tries to hide its own depredations by excluding high food prices from its measure of “core” inflation?

ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN and GARY A. ROBBINS, Stupidity and the State, Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2008

My dog, Roxie, is a slow starter in the morning.  I’ll ask her if she wants to go outside and she’ll sit down and avoid looking at me, which is her way of saying “No”.  However, if I jump up and down, act excited, and let my voice go up a couple of octaves while saying “Ooh, let’s go outside!  We want to go outside, don’t we?” like some kind of maniac, Roxie will be so excited to go outside she can barely stand herself.

I feel like I’m the dog and the Presidential candidates are trying to get me to go outside.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. ~ Thomas Jefferson

There is no mortgage crisis. What there is, is a set of incorrect beliefs. Here are mine:

• A personal home is not an investment. It never has been and the the past decade is an anomaly.
• Everybody deserves a place to live, however:
  • Not everybody can afford to own a house.
  • Nobody deserves to own a house.
• Live within your means.  Buying a $300K house when you make $30K a year is NOT living within your means (real-life couple I saw on new the other night).
• Don’t enter into contracts you don’t understand.
• Don’t blame your stupidity on entering into a contract you didn’t understand on the other party.
• The only person looking out for you is you.  Hello! The mortgage company, bank and realtor are all making money off of you!  Why should you give them your unquestioning trust?
• People who make bad decisions should receive the consequences that those bad bring.
• The government should not interfere in contractual transactions.  If there is a question of facts, the courts can handle it.  In other words - no bailout!

How to Save the World pointed me at this text document by a schoolteacher John Taylor Gatto.  He basically says that the US educational system teaches:

• Confusion, incoherence and disconnection (by teaching without context),
• Know and stay in your place,
• Don’t care too much,
• How to be emotionally dependent,
• How to be intellectually dependent (wait to be told what to do and think),
• Your self-esteem is provisional on what others think of you,
• You can’t hide, even long enough to think for yourself.

He further says that “the system was designed to produce compliant industrial workers, but now operates on its own momentum”.

This is what I learned in K-12 which I use in my daily life:

• How to multiply and add in my head
• How to sound out words
• I before E except after C
• How to use a library
• How to type
• What a devil’s advocate is (thanks to a fabulous civics teacher my senior year)
• Boolean logic (I learned to program in Basic)

School is basically a place to send kids to grow up, where incidentally they are taught a few things they need to know.

tags: education, school

Does the Web Deserve The Power It Gained To Influence Politics?

I’ll make the obvious WTF comment here.  You might as well ask does the mainstream media deserve the power?

Those enlessly played clips showing Rev. Jeremiah Wright making controversial racial statements, Sen. Obama told an interviewer, aren’t representative of the man. “I don’t want to suggest that somehow, the loops you have been seeing typifies the services all the time,” Sen. Obama said. “That is the danger of the YouTube era. It doesn’t excuse what he said. But it gives it some perspective.”

I’d submit that a majority of Americans don’t even know what YouTube is.  Take the people who do know about YouTube, subtract all of the people who haven’t seen the video and then subtract the non-voters.  You’ve got a very, very small number of people who have seen the video and care.

Contrast this with, say, Fox.  How many people have see the tiny soundbite of the Rev. Wright on Fox or another mainstream media outlet?  Now tell me who has the power.

The web does have power, I’ll give you that.  But MSM is being disingenuous when it questions that power without looking at their own.

tags: obama, rev. wright, wright, WSJ

Take the test

You Score as a Transhumanist-Biotech Transhumanists believe that humanity can and should strive to attain higher levels of physical, mental, and social achievement through the use of technology. They seek to extend human capabilities and improve the human condition through technology- supporting the quest for immortality, the conquering of death and disease, the amplification of human intelligence, and the capabilities of the human body. Transhumanists recognize that over time and with technological advancements, man will realize new possibilities for society and human nature and achieve a posthuman condition (becoming more than human). Societal change is an important consequence of technological progress. Because of this passionate trust in technological advancement, transhumanists generally see all technologies, as long as they don’t jeopardize the non-corporeal consciousness of a person, as being beneficial both to society and to the happiness and advancement of the person. Transhumanists see benefit not only in technologies that address medical necessities, but also aesthetic or recreational demands. They support advances in cybernetics, genetic engineering in clinical settings, embryo design, and other technologies that allow individuals to take control of their biology, and the human species to take control of evolution. Transhumanists can be either hard-technology oriented–more inclined to add microchips and machines to their lifestyle–or bio-technology oriented–preferring the softer, more natural advancements and modifications that are made available. [ See All Results ]

Your Results You scored as a TB 72% of people also scored as TB Other Results8.2% of people scored as BC1.2% of people scored as BL 0.1% of people scored as LU 0.5% of people scored as TC 18% of people scored as TP