Is that Leger, as in the artist? Visually very interesting: the juxtaposition of woman and industry seems to make a statement about production.

Musically, wtf? It strikes me as extremely excessive, and fair enough maybe excess is the expression of industrial culture, but why would I want to listen to/be confronted by it?

Alright, maybe I'm starting to understand this whole serialist bit: its similar to analytic cubism, in that analytic cubism discovered new forms of representation, while serialism discovered new forms of...new points of reference? Looking at what was lost in traditional musical structures? I understand one of the points of Schoenberg--a la Adorno, 'he predicted the sorrows of the holocaust through music'--is that it isn't particularly pleasant to be confronted by modernity. Still, I don't really want to listen to too much of it at this point in my life.

Apropos last night's episode: I must be the last person on earth who thinks there will ever be an explanation on the show for the Doctor's granddaughter. Disappointment, every time. Sigh.

The perfect pitch bit is quite interesting. Both myself and my mum before me learned to play classical music from a young age, and we joke about being practically tone deaf. I have a pretty good ear for the relation between notes, but have no sense of absolute value whatsoever. So once I know the key, I can transcribe something pretty well, but until then, I randomly play along, hoping to stumble onto the correct scale. Alternatively, a friend of mine has perfect pitch despite not only a complete ignorance of music, but really horrible taste as well.

There is a stack of classical lps in the corner of my bedroom I salvaged from a friend, and among them is a harry partch album I haven't got round to listening to yet. Maybe its time to learn some new theory.

Lets have none of that. Even after a nights rest I have very limited movement in my left thumb. I think its just strain.

Note to self: never complain on internet. never ends well.

haha. Wisdom teeth is it? I had that done last winter. It was bril. I took a day out of life to drool blood all over myself while hopped up on the funny gas and watching every film based on a comic I could think of. For some reason, I think of watching films based on comics as research, and so not a complete waste of time. Totally drank before and after as well. Eh.

I wouldn't have put it past Harry Partch to make an instrument out of d12s. But surely you're well off by a couple of decades whether your talking about him or Schoenberg, who is another example of something I should like but cant possibly get my head round. I mean if you read Adorno or Thomas Mann its like 12 tone 4 eva, but when you listen to it, you sort of just want to destroy the stereo. At least Stravinsky had a sense of humour, even if he was a music whore.

buddy66,

If you look at Stephen Pinker, for instance, he says language is this this and this, and you reply animals can do this this or this, he tends to say, that's not what he meant. Who can say what a dog means when it barks? Or what behaviour of a chimp is intended as communication? Just because these acts are unintelligible to people doesn't make them devoid of meaning. As a very easily bored person, Ive paid close attention to vocalisations my cat makes and the context, and I cant figure anything out. I once regrettably pointed out to a linguistic professor at my university that animals don't talk, to which she replied her dog talks to her, which sounds crazy, but I take her point. She would add that instead of trying to teach animals human language, people should better try to understand animal language, since clearly animals are doing 'social' things that have some sort of 'social' meaning. Language isn't compatible with previous versions, apparently.

It's a very very interesting debate, and I regret I haven't kept up to date on it. I think what can be said definitively is that no other species has as efficient a way of conveying information. But this is not the only, or even primary, use of language. It may as you say be a case of a quantitative change becoming a qualitative change, since it is clear that animals certainly have some degree of all uses of symbols, except Engels was talking out his arse when he said nature was dialectical. I would laugh so hard if that turned out to be the case.

I've never heard 'symbol' used as a verb. The OED has 'symbol' in verb form as a Victorian nonce word, but it simply means to make a sign. 'Symbolise', maybe, you're thinking of.

At least my wrist is making a very funny noise when i rotate it. Was playing Isaac Albeniz on guitar while absent mindedly perusing BB. Not cool.

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus, I think i just got carpal tunnel. ow ow ow ow ow.

buddy66

I think I object to that, as a 'Gorilla groupie'. I think there is ample evidence that chimpanzees and gorillas understand symbols, including parts of speech other then nouns; dogs understand how to spell W-A-L-K, for christ sake, the meaning, not the thing or event [the fact that they /expect/ the event indicates an understanding of meaning]. It is no so far evident they understand grammar. A chimp stops learning at about the stage of language acquisition of a five year old person. It is arguable but not generally accepted that chimps understand grammar as well. I would really like to see these experiments done with dolphins; i bet the results would be /awesome/, and would contribute to my dream of one day becoming Aquaman.

But as far as the sleep debate is concerned, we /know/ for a fact that sleep is vital to survival, and I doubt it would be a matter of one mutation, but several. Brains are insanely complicated, and I bet it would be like fairy lihts: if one goes out, they all will go out; change or rearrange two neurons, and you got a dead baby. Since sleep is in all probably multi-functional, I think it would take too many mutations to happen all in one go; which isn't to say that it couldn't be a matter of a few mutations happening every generation in his family, but that it is very very very very very very unlikely. It is much more likely, in my opinion the child is achieving stage one or stage two sleep, but you wouldn't be able to tell from the data available. If it really wasn't sleeping at all, a sure sign would be its diet: active for an extra third of the day would equal an extra third of calorie intake. Also, I wonder what the possibilities of infantile somnambulism are. That would be pretty cool.

I have hallucinations after just one sleepless night, as I regularly suffer from insomnia for a few days at a time, especially before traveling. Not sleeping = not fun.

Does anyone remember a very weird comic that was almost exactly like this, except with a bear instead of a head? It was from an anthology that showed up in my house one day, and just as mysteriously vanished later. Ill be thinking about this...

Um...but...is anyone else excited we finally see the doctors, presumably half human, offspring this week?

Ive thought very seriously about requesting recordings of my image to document a really good day. Like so as to watch it over and over again.

The stock response when you make a Data Protection request FYI is that other people are in the image, so you don't have a right to it. Ive always interpreted that to mean they're pretty lazy down government way.

I had dream once that was similar to this: the idea was the record would basically work as a film projector, with a light underneath to project pictures from the disc. I don't think it would take much work to make it cool.

In other news, the investigation into terrorists using flying drones to recky targets was called off: those were just birds; the investigation of terrorists using small submarines to recky ships called off: they were just fish; and experts now believe those bright points you see at night aren't terrorists firing guns from space; they are stars.

Film at 11.

#7

It certainly seems like something Jeff Lewis would say.

Incidentally, /that/ Jeffrey Lewis is a babe magnet. Ive never met the man, but he dated two of my friends, which seems like a really weird coincidence. I highly recommend his 12 Crass Songs album. Its Crass for people who are angry, but not that angry.

As seen in the Ministry of Magic!

Really? Somebody watched and liked “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”? Say it ain't so.

Terry,

Ive a lot of time for subtleties about this sort of thing, especially since I know from first hand experience the armed forces aren't particularly composed of psycho killers.

Interrogation seems like a very difficult issue. I know from dealing with police, just don't say anything. If you're being interrogated it means they don't have enough evidence to press charges, so keep your mouth shut and you'll probably be home in a while. Of course the game changes when it comes to the military. On the one hand some objective or other theoretically depends on the prisoner talking, so from a military perspective, 'enhanced techniques' become necessary; and on the other hand, guilt is presumed from capture, there are very few effective rights for the prisoner to depend on, and even cooperation only seems to win a release after several years, if, as expected, it turns out that the capture was entirely erroneous. In other words, there is a reason why many tactics employed by the US armed forces [and contractors] are illegal in most other industrialised nations: there is no mediating factor to the remedy. The rights of the institution are privileged without any respect to the rights of the individual. That isn't exactly the sort of philosophy I would want kids to learn.

I remember meeting a Swedish communist once, consumed by self-hatred because he worked as a screw. Dont do it kids. You'll never live with yourselves.

But at any rate, the school trains firemen too. Nobody better be hating on the firemen.

On this evidence, one rather wonders why they don't build cities out of crockery, since it would look so much cooler. It would probably get too hot in the sun, tho...thats about the only problem with that I can think of.

The CIA has always maintained that they don't particularly have access to superior information, they simply apply superior analysis. It sort of works to cross purposes to say that, of course, since the case for war in Iraq didn't make any sense on the information available to the public. It will be interesting to see what kind of superior analysis goes into these policy reports.

#3

Exactly.

I for one object to Jeremy Forsbergs depiction of the people who watch speed cameras as children. Just because they are stuck with a shite job does not mean that their intelligence is any less than the average adult.

Either that or I call for Jeremy to be subpoenaed in an investigation into child labour in the UK.

In any event, a clarification is in order.

Scottfree
Treasurer
International You Not Use Words Wrong Committee

ah, fair play to you, sir.

I'll tell you something. I once lived in a social centre. I'd be sat in the kitchen trying to have breakfast and read the paper, and some random stranger would wander in off the street and start banging on about this or that. It gets old pretty fast.

I guess it must be similar to have a popular blog. Except it's harder to tell when someones being snarky. :p

Does Mark sound angry above? I cant tell.

Jeez, has noone ever worked on a farm? Probably only 75% of vegetables look like the ones in supermarkets. Theres nothing wrong with them, its just people freak out if it doesn't look like on tv. The rest of vegetables wind up in the dinner pots of hard working, hungry farm hands.

Looks like I just found a new job [maniacle cackle]

yes, but you could totally /make/ a steel cube, and I guarantee you can afford it. Or alternatively, get a job in construction where you play with tools all day, then you probably could afford a proper one, only it wont seem as cool.

Ben Stein:

Darwinism explains so little. It doesn’t explain how life began. It doesn’t explain how gravity works to keep the planets in their orbits. It doesn’t explain how thermodynamics works. It doesn’t explain how physics or the laws of motion work. – interview on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, March 17, 2008

Ben Stein is an effin genius, as the above amply demonstrates. Evolution wont solve world peace or tidy up your house either, if you were wondering.

lulz, helpfully tying all things together, a bug evolved in the London underground:

http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v82/n1/full/6884120a.html

'As for Charles, he's a socialist too, as is the Queen.'

Thats a laugh. have you ever heard Robb Johnson? he does a very funny version of God Save Our Queen called She Lives in Slough, which is of course a staunch Labour district and home to Windsor castle.

But when they published some of Charles diaries a few years back, it came out that he planned to use obscure laws everyone seems to haven forgotten to start a court at Windsor, and assume the powers the Monarch had at about the turn of last century. Knowing his position on environmentalism, this led me to all sorts of fantasies of being dubbed Sir Scott of the Black Order of Knights, True Champion of the People. Probably wont happen tho :(

J.K. Rowlin definitely strikes me as a Tony Benn style old Labour supporter. I couldn't cite places off hand, but I distinctly remember interpreting a few parts as jibes at the Conservatives and New Labour.

As its popular to say, Blair was the first Thatcherite. There simply is no difference between Labour and Tory on a nationwide level. So it doesn't surprise me that Cameron doesn't particularly have a position; if he was honest, he would have to say he would be doing the same as Labour. Of course, all the plates Blair was so good at spinning seem to be toppling down on poor old Brown, who was so careful to distance himself from the war and cash for peers. So Cameron probably reckons he can ride public disapproval of Brown into number ten, without needing to outline a coherent opposition. /Could/ work for him, as well. Then, wait for the ultimate evil to show up: John Reid. Thats if Prince Charles doesn't take over like his diary said he would, of course.

David Cameron is a bit of a joke, isn't he? Everyone knows hes a posh public school twat, but its sort of cute that he tries. The fact is, Tories try to win on economic conservatism, with a splattering of whatevers popular, in this case the environment. Not that there's any decent environmental policy, but David Cameron is seen as green because he cycles...followed by security in SUVs. But I just don't think anyone cares about the environment, and I think people who do certainly wont trust the Tories with it.

I expect very small turnout at the general election, because there's no political party anyone trusts. These local elections, of course Conservatives won, because labour is completely discredited, and Conservatives have a strong grass roots activist system who all turn out to vote. What could a labour candidate say except, sorry, I dont like what my party stands for but I dont actually have any power to stop it either?

Particularly worrying is a BNP gain. I saw they won two seats in Nuneaton, and probably more in East London. On one hand, they'll just resign in a few weeks anyway, because they're totally incompetent, and on the other, what are people thinking? Scary times.

I suppose I was for Ken, on the basis of not Boris. But you need a microscope to tell the difference between labour and tory these days. Libdems are no great shakes either. If I ever vote again I'll just write in Paul Breitner for every position. he will lead us.

To be honest I don't even know what the mayor does, apart from shill for the Olympics and enact/retract the congestion charge [which I don't care about because I don't drive]. Mainly I'm worried because Boris said he wants to get rid of the bendy buses.

And he's on record as hating gays.

And he's just about the biggest twat I've ever seen.

Boris won. London is officially a US colony. At least it will be underwater by 2012.

If that's the strangest example of animal sex you can come up with, human win out the sexual bizarro award by a long shot.

On the language note the issue isn't semantics, the issue is grammar. Evolutionary psychologists tend to define language strictly by its use of grammar, which is arguably absent, even in chimps using their little pictogram pad. Sign language experiments are ruled out because primates lack the dexterity to even make signs; exactly as their mouths and throats lacks the structure needed to form the human phonetic alphabet. Animals can communicate even quite complex information, but it does not necessarily follow that they use language to do so, and while it is quite clear that the ability to speak is indeed an evolutionarily recent innovation, it is less clear, to me, that the mental capacity to use and understand language is also new. But the foremost evolutionary psychologists think it is.

Homo Homini Lupus Est, I suppose. But it is /some/ stretch to say humans behave similarly to other mammals. Animals, for instance, fail to have the same degree of deviance in sexual behaviour, for instance. humans have sex in every way imaginable, whereas even for bonobos and dolphins, sex is pretty straight forward, without approaching anything like the same level of creativity.

#63

This's an apostrophe. 'These' are inverted commas used to denote a direct quotation. If that's good enough for the Queen, it's bloody good enough for you ;p

Antinous,

Evolutionary psychology is a bit tricky, and I tend to deviate to its understanding of evolution, but as it happens it makes a point to support the argument I'm about to make, which is that animals do not have language, the defining element of the human mind, and so are qualitatively different in psychology. The highest mark I ever received at University was for an essay arguing exactly that animals /do/ have language, in the form of grooming, but that's a whole other debate. Anyway, the human tendency toward authoritarianism can be amply explained by nurture, without needing to resort to speculative evolutionary psychology. It makes sense, for instance, that a child with an unresolved Oedipal issue will seek to replicate the structure from which it was born in a futile attempt to resolve it. Now is that more empirical then I like to play it? Yes, but it derives from a study of the adult human psyche; scratch the surface of someone's problem and you find the same problem buried underneath.

When you say 'we' engage in internecine warfare, what do you mean by we, white man? Clearly there is a distinction between the behaviour of pack leaders and pack followers. I cant begin to explain, but Lacan posits that the only way to successfully resolve an Oedipal conflict is by admitting ones own primary castration, which people don't, as a rule, do. So Reich, again, says that the difference between a leader and a follower is a leader knows he is a follower [I'm simplifying because it is a pain to type] whereas a follower deceives himself to be in charge; or a leader admits of his [or her] castration, while a follower repudiates it, and replicates the circumstances previous to castration by positioning his or herself as an adult in the same position he or she was in as an infant in relation to the phallus.

Does that make any sense?

weeeeeeeeeell, Freud argued that the family model tends to replicate itself socially, so groups will tend to form around a central strong phallic figure.

Reich argued that the violent aspects of fascism, the hyper-masculinity, was an overcompensation for repressed homoerotic urges. hence, for instance, all that leather and nice tight fitting uniforms. And indeed, it doesn't take much imagination to look at a swastika and see two people bumping nasties. In other words, by repressin the sexual drive, people under fascism must sublimate that enery into other activities, so the ideoloy tends to present labour, for instance, as an expression of love for the leader.

And interstin quotation for discussion:

'Tyrants are never born out of anarchy. One only ever sees them rise up in the shadows of laws; they derive their authority from laws. The rein of law is, therefore, evil; it is inferior to anarchy. The greatest proof of this position is the obligation of any government to plunge back into anarchy whenever it wants to remake its constitution. In order to abrogate its ancient laws, it is obliged to establish a revolutionary regime in which there are no laws. Under this regime new laws are eventually born, but the second is less pure than the first since it derives from it, since the first good, anarchy had to occur if one wanted to achieve the second good, the States constitution. '

---De Sade

Point being, fascist hysteria isn't /just/ something that happens to other people.

have you ever seen Triumph of the Will? There is something seriously weird about it. I'm a Jewish bisexual communist, and after watching it I was totally Aryan ho. I mean it wears off, but it's a very strange experience.

The only time I had to argue about this in rl was my first year of university, when I lived in halls with several Christians of the uncompromising variety. One of them was really quite decent actually, and only pushed her views so far as to lend me a book on ID. I read most of it, told her it was absurd, and she dropped the subject. Still receive an email from her every now and then.

So maybe Ill never meet another hard core Christian, but appreciate the science lesson all the same.

I'm bored. Can someone troll or something until five o'clock?

honest to goodness, i have never owned a piece of furniture that didn't come with the flat or come from the side of the road. Probably about the same chance of contracting tetanus, tho.

hmmm...so it wasnt at all like in Ghost? I wonder if spectral date rape drugs were involved.

'And in this world being original trumps mindless copycats every time.'

Did Bill 'I-can't-be-arsed-to-write-my-own-programme-so-buy/
sell-you-someone-else's-and-now-I'm-teh-win' Gates tell you that? In this world creation is not rewarded; marketing is rewarded.

I think what is being sold here is the illusion of having a real job.

That sounds like about the most evil person on Earth.

I think people confuse art with commodity.

In Soviet Russia, people pay /you/ to work with sledgehammers.

Damn the US. I started working out the cost of the chair in scrap but got bogged down converting everything to metric.

Still, I think the word 'designed' in the description is a bit rich.

In other news, look:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2008/may/02/wildlife?picture=333868122

its baby gollum!

hippie.

not to be pedantic, but it was woody guthrie, not Pete Seeger who wrote this machine kills fascists on his guitar.

http://usuarios.lycos.es/alavora/_guthrie.gif

fightcopyright,

In the above post Ben Stein does not make an argument. he draws a speculative line between holocaust and science, culminating in the science leads you to kill people line, which, lets all agree, is a bit mad.

To say Evolution only allows the strongest to survive is a misconception; the best adapted to its environment will tend to reproduce more prolifically would be more accurate. There is nothing mysterious about that, unlike ID which leaves everything up to mystery. And if you look at the evolution of mankind, no other mammal is capable of living in such large groups. I personally go against the prevalent grain when I posit that it is that ability which sets people apart; there is a fossil record that suggests the ability to speak gradually took the place of social grooming in early primates, and in doing so facilitated larger and larger group size. But yes, in other words, there is an evolutionary imperative in humans to feel compassion; man evolved to live in groups because the species would not survive as independent people.

Also, is that the meek will inherit the Earth sermon on the mount you're talking about? You really think the English speaking world seems seeped in those values? If you like to talk about philosophy, perhaps compare the Christian right in the US to what Freud describes in Civilisation and its Discontents. It is quite interesting. Or discuss ID in relation to Marx's theory of ideology. ID, cui bono?

Or why not

http://www.cthulhu.com/?p=15

Interesting also that the ADL has criticised the film. They sort of try to play nice with the Christian Right, so good to see they aren't too happy about people throwing around the holocaust every time someone disagrees.

May I just say the skips out the back of Trader Joes are among the most bountiful I've ever come across.

thumbs down, ben stein, thumbs down.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

no /mopes and shuffles feet dejectedly/.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh. Tories look set to sweep and the BNP are gaining round! DO NOT WANT.

Sorry, just throwing that out there.

jitrobug,

here is where it fits into it, a la Booster gold:

http://www.the-isb.com/?p=310

Evidence, re: your questions at #624

1&3:

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

2:

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

---from Scientific America article

I don't know about border controls, but if you check your luggage, then surely the best trick is entering security as your flight is boarding. The plane /will not/ take off without you, and security just has to accept it isn't worth it. I discovered this purely by accident when a mate of mine helped me bring my stuff to the airport and we lost track of time playing some video game in the arcade.

Even people who thought the USSR was a force of good in the world tend to call it a 'degenerated workers state', whatever that's supposed to mean, and leftists who don't, tend to call it state centred capitalism. Stalin was all about the 'socialist imperialism' in which Ukranians had to suffer for the benefit of the mother country. But that is simply the idea behind Western imperialism.

Socialism /is/ the banding together of demographic groups to the detriment of others, in a sense, since it comes to pass throuh the appropriation of the means of production by the workers from the owners. Of course this is done with a mind toward abolishing class, or the demographic distinction which set the forces in motion in the first place, but still.

If you look at the nazis, surely quintessential fascism, they were as democratic as you like. People loved hitler. What made them fundamentally different from what came before wasn't genocide, that had gone on for centuries, but the degree of production achieved with minimum compensation. You wouldn't call the 19th century US fascism, but that was a time when ethnicities were at an opposition rarely matched in history. i think.

And so is fascism qualitatively different from capitalism? I don't know. much cleverer folks than me argue about it. But at the end of the day, economic classes oppose each other; political systems do not oppose each other. If there are distinctions relevant to the operation of the withering state apart from relationship to the means of production under socialism, then it isn't socialism, surely.

my-ai-ai-ai whoo Sharona? If you listen to Television, who the Knack were ripping off, I don't think you can go back. Its one thing to rip off established artists, [I briefly played drums in a band where we unabashedly copied richard hell tracks and just changed the words a bit] its quite another to rip off a band still looking for its break.

I think they only force the point in so much as its easy to do so. my lap box was confused with a bomb once flying out of Chicago. They tested and tested and tested with the weird wand thing and it kept coming up positive. Eventually my plane started boarding, and the security guard just sort of shrugged and let me be. That was a few years back, but still post 911.

Antinous, Like the wizard Shazam, I come running to a thread at the mention of a few magic words.

/assumes position at lectern/ The relationship between Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism is the subject of much debate, centred particularly on Adorno and hockheimers seminal Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which it is argued that Fascism, not socialism as Marx posits, is the logical extension of capitalism. to understand this we must first define Fascism as an economic system, rather than a political one. The media tends to define fascism according to a set of social criteria: surveillance, arbitrary enforcement of the law, rule by the few etc, but fascism is probably best properly understood as an economic system in which the state exists merely to facilitate the flow of capital from the not wealthy to the wealthy. So if we look at Capitalism, socialism and fascism from a class conscious perspective, capitalism is owners vs workers, fascism is owners win, socialism is workers win. At any rate, a dialectical understanding of history will reveal that these three systems are not in opposition, but that each contain the ingredients of the others./steps down from lectern, absent-mindedly muttering to himself that it all isn't at all as simple as he would like it to be/

Not that i am specifically reminding you, so much as i just like to see my thoughts posted on the intarnet.

#28

I think Canadian health care already covers that.

Every time I look for 'bad' music, I end up developing a weird taste for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ipaXgwfBnM&feature=related

Mrs Miller: not lol, /awesome/.

Too specialised, I think. I would argue My Sharona, on the basis of not only is it a crap song, it also rips off any number of good bands, who afterwards were thought of as Knack derivatives.

the sun is burning by simon and Garfunkel? example of a song that just doesnt work.

Also, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5kMiYrWsXY

should probably never happen.

evil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RssIN3ustUw

how about anything by Cabaret Voltaire? I know I /should/ like them, demographically speaking, but really it makes me want to extract my own brain throuh my nostrils with a flat head screwdriver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkfzXq0tA3c

Because a sixteen year old can buy a fake id, but not terrorists. they don't got the hook up.

But also, what are they telling these airline employees to make them so zealous?

Does this mean there might be a version of Mario 3D Tennis coming out that wont be all red and sucky?

actually Im watching it now and i cant help think merlin would have thought it kick ass. Take that, harry potter fans. it was cool to dress up as a wizard way before j.k. rowling rocked up.

see, I don't think a bad song can be camp. I thoroughly enjoy many songs which appear bad, but are really just a bit camp, like David Bowies pin-ups album. Bad sons aren't fun; they're boring, which is why i would nominate many Phil Collins tracks [in the news today for announcing he wont be returning to the su-su-studio ever again.] Whoever put down tiny tim as bad should really reflect on that.

Rick Wakemans legends of kin arthur. FTW. I swear, you cant watch Spinal tap after listening to that because it isn't funny any more. So bad, they staged a version /on ice/.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyoLSGt1hvI&feature=related

he does pull some awesome faces tho.

sweeeeeeeeeeeet. Is it only for babies?

FWIW:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

That's emphatically an /ex/girlfriend, who I inexplicably keep in touch with. She's also a lesbian now, which leads me to all sorts of questions about my self. I wasn't invited to the wedding BTW, which i'm a bit sore about.

Shame about being sick. One of my favourite people in the world missed out on growing up because of some weird strain of arthritis. anyway, she's a megababe now, after bizarrely making a full recovery, so i assume that's what always happens.

alright, really off now.

Prom? Waaaaaaaaaaaaay [sorry, to translate, that's a crusty old English squatter expression of general approval.] Hope that goes well. Like in the romantic comedy films, not the horror films.

I'll tell you a funny thing, i'm 22 now, and my girlfriend from high school age is getting married next month, and it's freaking me the eff out. like i'm looking through the wrong end of a telescope all of a sudden. so do mind the time, i guess, is what i'm trying to get across here, because it effing flies.

alright, i'm off chappies. Condolences to any Liverpool supporters out there. after you knocked us out of the quarterfinals i was hoping you would do one over Chelsea. But disappointment.

Orwell was conscious of the 'scifi writers predict the present' aspect of writing. The title of 1984 comes from reversing 1948, the year he finished writing it, and it was intended as a critique of post wwii labour government. The technology has changed a bit, and the names of the players have changed, but the rules of the game are the same.

Incidentally, if anyone ever wondered, david bowie's diamond dogs album is the remnant of a failed attempt on his part of a 1984 musical, which would have been /awesome/. So that's why that album is especially sweet.

Animal Man is a must. It comes from the post first crisis in the DC universe when everything starts going a bit wacky. On one level, hes a superhero who just likes animals, and on another hes a regular guy, caught finding answers to questions he never asked. Sort of like the invisibles but dumbed down enough for my ickle brain.

Its been years since i read brave new world. apart from comics, i almost never touch fiction these days. After studying for an english degree, reading fiction feels too much like work, whereas, since I lack the interpretive tools to really get into nonfiction, i can read it and learn it and not have to think originally or too critically about it. i do have intentions to go back to orwell at some point, on the basis of, yeah, all that political stuff is cool, but he actually was an amazing writer.

We are the dead.

See, but congressmen and women receive complaints all the time. Why doesn't anyone ever phone just to talk? It isn't always about /you/, you know.

If a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters take a thousand years to reproduce the works of Shakespeare, how long before we do?

Or else, I just finished reading grant Morrisons run on Animal Man. I thought that was bril. So...uh...anyone else read that? Like it?

And 600 FTW

May I just say cheers, lads. i know I should probably crack a science book every now and then [i started reading the blind watchmaker once and was distracted], but apart from the basics never knew much about evolution. Shame it only comes up in opposition to religious beliefs these days, but do take comfort [not that I'm challenging the esteemed Evidence] that there are parts of the world where ID is summarily dismissed.

Public health would be too bureaucratic. The military, however, fairly straightforward...except you don't even know who's making the stuff you use to kill people!!!

They'll be telling us a senator twenty years ago ordered a clone army and forgot to tell anyone about it next.

The article deserves credit for pointing out that the interests of the label are not equivalent to the interests of the bands. In a perfect world, piracy would see to an end of record labels entirely; all they do is promote shite pop rubbish.

As a [very] small time musician, I think it would be nice if someone walked up to me and said here's a million USD and a bag of drugs, but I don't expect that to happen. I'm no 'real music' snob, but even I realise there's effectively no money in music; transport costs and some leftover beer money is a good night, and fair shakes, really. Few people can tell the difference between rock bands any more. If someday I recover costs for equipment Ill be happy...or I probably wont even realise. I don't know about bands on major labels, but everyone I know on DIY and indie labels understands this.

Takuan there is an internet site for every perversion. guaranteed. bet on it.

Why is moral outrage the default emotion for so many people? Did they hire Tipper Gore to do security or something? Plus, ambulance? A university professor probably has insurance, but still, those things aren't exactly cheap.

That's a pretty cheeky kid, tho, not mentioning the buzz. Mind you, I would've done the same.

Do I really need to be the first to ask who hasn't done this?

I realise I'm late to weigh in, but re: cops on CM in London, it's a bit rich to call that a good thing. They are there to nick the first cyclist to step out of line. CM is a complex animal. You've got the people who just genuinely enjoy cycling [if not always the majority, then at least the backbone], the couriers, the terminally bored, and, of course, the anarchists, although these latter only show up every six months or so when the 'man' tries and fail to make CM illegal. The prevailing attitude, and the argument which makes it a legal assembly, in line with SOCPA, is that CM is not a protest, it isn't about consciousness raising, it's simply a bit of fun to have on the way home once a month. It wouldn't surprise me if the Manhattan CM is a bit cliquish, because that, if nothing else, is the American way. Also, if the cops weren't there, everyone would probably go home a lot sooner.

In the US, speech is not protected if it advocates breaking the law, but it is protected if a reasonable man could interpret the speech or act in a way so as to not advocate breaking the law. So CM should be protected since it can be interpreted as simply an unpolitical gathering.

I was on the CM in London a few years ago after SOCPA was first introduced and a few thousand people showed up, and I have to say, it was amazing. Cops had threatened to arrest anyone who turned out, except they hadn't counted on that many people; plus there only were about a dozen bicyclist cops at the time [there's more now. Cheers, green Ken]. We used the fountain in front of Buckingham Palace as an impromptu stunt course. And people driving were generally cheering it on. Apart from cab drivers, but cab drivers are evil.

Finally, to shock and awe the traffic obedient amonst us:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HLzGj10fg2ge

The occasional London courier race. Universally hated, this video almost makes them seem cool.

It took me about four readings before I realised it wasn't talking about drug mules.

'Wot? Take /that/? Up the bum?'

People really do seem to snap around exam time.

Ah, mistake in above post, it was mescaline. Better clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e6GikOlQxE

Bless, Dr. Albert, death is just the next trip.

On a lighter note, I'm sure there's a better clip of this somewhere, but Baron Mayhew, an English MP, once experimented with acid for a Panorama episode:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mayhew+lsd&search_type=

It reminds me of the time I wouldn't go out for pizza because I insisted to my friends I wanted to see the rest of the circus, which was in reality of course, a blank wall. But then, what is reality?

Hasn't the Critical Mass been illegal on Manhattan for years? I seem to think Brooklyn carries on apace, but I definitely saw a video several years ago of police being dicks to cyclists on Critical Mass in Manhattan. Actually there was a very funny scene where about ten of them were lined up on scooters, all decked out in riot gear, as they do, you know. I defy even the most hard-nosed fascist to look dignified on a scooter.

"One of the things discussed in the al-Qaeda manual is conducting surveillance of your target," added Eric Jackson with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "That could mean looking at a building to see how security is established."

He then reached to the base of his neck, tearing off his mask to reveal himself as Xeron the Unconquorable.

'Our logic from planet Zplatsen will not resemble your Earth logic, so it is to be expected that you question why you should be suspicious of people looking at buildings.

'However,' he said, tapping his laser, 'I believe you will learn in time to find it agreeable.'

Peacelove, By pranks do you mean innocent in intent or faked?

I just want to say that as a student of psychology, I find these letters to be fascinating. Maybe I've read a bit too much Grant Morrison lately, and I haven't worked with psychotics at all, but I would imagine their communication to make a great deal less sense then these letters. Given the difficulty of evaluating these cases, these letters are probably as good an insight into their minds as we are likely to find.

and the unibomber's response doesn't surprise me. I don't know why a government who found uses for ex-nazi scientists can't find use for him...except he hates the government, of course. Still, I sort of hope they let him write and researche.

O Great Untitled One, we comment on thy thread.

Calling attention to the spatial aspects of bloging. very good. We too often look at the substance and ignore the form.

the appendix does something like make white blood cells. in addition, it contains information pertinent but not directly relating to the main body.

Dr. who toys are the best. Some friends and myself reularly spend our free time wearing Cybermen helmets.

Also, i, uh, may have seen some dalek video on fleshbot a few weeks back. A simple search on their site may turn up something for those interested.

It's funnier if you consider the right hand to be using the back door.

And, I et to expend some useless knowledge: nobody ever thouht the Earth was flat, they thought it was shaped like a contact lens. cf. Dantes Divine Comedy.

Wait...Christians don't believe in Santa Claus?

Wait, and what's the deal [he asks the random internet people he doesn't know] on tunebit? Is that all above board?

I'm really starting to worry about this now my laptop is getting on a bit. She served me well, but her time is nearly up. What ticks me off is I use itunes, but my cd drive doesn't write any more. So to back up my files, I download the album on my laptop, put it on my ipod so i can listen to it, put it on my ipod as a data file [which counts as an additional computer, apparently], put it on a different computer with a working cd drive, and burn it on cd. that's all my authorised copies. So my music is effectively lost once I replace my computer. It will only exist on cds I will probably lose next time I move house.

Also, I will need to find more dinosaur stickers if I replace my laptop.

#79

Well, they say you should try to live what you believe...

We've all seen sex ed books for kids and they don't encourage kids to head out and scrug like their lives depend on it. Considering what is taught in schools [for instance kids should rat out their parents if they suspect them of smoking], I think it is important kids understand that it doesn't make their parents evil if they occasionally toke up. Children of hippies that I know have a tendency toward /awesome/; free thinking, fun and popular. So I don't particularly worry about it.

Also, I reckon taking the mystery out will substantially decrease drug use; in my experience, people who come to weed later in life tend to stick with it more, whereas if you grow up with it, it all seems a bit blase.

That looks like the end of round one. By the end of the working day, I would expect many more Evidencers to pop up. It ain't over yet.

I wonder if anyone bothered asking the traffic violating cop if he was 'just stirring up trouble' as well.

Fairly realistic portrayal of what happens when they introduce you to your secret clone while at work. At first, you just read off the Teleprompter, but then that whole throuh a mirror darkly thing takes over and your left having a breakdown on tv.

Please, consider in advance what you will do when you meet your secret clone. Can happen any time.

Another item for my list of 'Seemingly Rational Excuses For My Fear of Rodents'.

Started typing up a lengthy response, but I'm happy to leave it on your charming note.

I think if history has taught us anything it is that change is not very predictable. Well, /some/ changes are; it doesn't take Nostradamus [or indeed Marx!] to predict a continued decline in civil rights for the near future. But from experience, people tend not to be as daft as the t.v. would have us believe, and whatever the decline in democratic values, any government still needs to consolidate popular consent to survive. I will continue to believe there is more to life then a job and a romantic partner, nice as those things are, and write my cranky letters to newspapers. All the best.

Ok, I'll concede you Russian history, as i don't know enough to form an argument. Maybe another time :p. Never knew lenin had an older brother, tho. It must have been a bit like in godfather II.

The point I am trying to make vis Marxism is that action taken against the state of things out of a conscious sense of historical position /is itself/ the outcome of the process of history. It is not particularly applicable to the WU, granted, as their struggle reflects a bizarre Maoist tendency peculiar amongst Western nations to the US, and was not what one would call a working class movement [unless i misread you, as well, we share a disdain for the group]. But the struggles of the early part of the century in the US did achieve an awful lot, and were a reflection of working people's keenly felt common interest. The idea is that the quantitative changes effected [higher wages, fewer hours, better conditions] would compound into a qualitative change at the level of ownership of production.

And speaking of: how can a meritocracy exist in a system of private ownership? You can have the most democratic government in the world, if all that democracy does is privilege those who own over those who work, it still sucks. I would [and in fact, do] argue that meritocracy can only exist in a system in which a worker is entitled to the product of his or her labour, which is not the case in capitalism. When someone is in a position to sell the product of their labour, rather than forced to sell their labour for the benefit of their boss, then it can be said that the system rewards merit, rather then social status. Yes? No?

I just remembered my favourite comedy moment with cops and cameras: it was at a demo that started getting bit hairy. There were some raised voices and maybe a bit of push and shove between cops and protesters, then someone took out his phone [which wasn't even a camera phone], held it up to the cops and shouted: 'this is going out live on the internet!'

Needless to say, everything quieted down tout suite. The rumour also was he got an apology in the post. Can't vouch for that, though.

Citizens of New Jersey, enjoy your new hard earned year of privacy before the appeal!

Polomache, let's set things straight eh?

The Bolsheviks were against the Duma; Alexander III's abdication was the reason for Lenin's return from Switzerland in 1917. The Mensheviks were behind the first Russian revolution. Also Bolshevik revolution was arguably the work of the German secret service, who were working to undermine the Russians during the war. At any rate, the tactics employed were hardly original, and can be seen throughout the 19th century, a time when it seemed the revolutionary fire only needed a spark. But the story of the American west is littered with small scale uprisings against slave driving bosses.

And I don't think nepotism, of which there remains a fair share, is the problem, so much as privatised ownership of the means of production is the problem. People forget that.

And you misunderstand Marxism, in my opinion. Since all of history has been a conflict between those who work and those who own, it is inevitable that from time to time the conflict manifests in violence, usually resulting in some quantitative change, eg: the reason people in the US don't have to work sixteen hours a day is because good people fought, bled and died for that right...and because some poor kid in Malaysia will do it cheaper. In Marxism, the rising up is an expression of common cause, throuh which class consciousness is achieved, and theoretically, there is no force on Earth to stand against that.

Of all the uprisings of the 60s and 70s, the one in the US was probably the most tame. All of France was on strike in 68, and it carried on to Italy where it lasted a decade. I apologise if I come off as a European snob [and I will say all you like against the Red Brigade if it assuages that accusation], but you did it wrong. The SDS and WU worried a bit much about what the middle class would think, and too little about the man on the street.

Also, to cement my position as thread pedant, in order for a sentence to be a run on, independent clauses must not be joined by a conjunction or punctuation. Yours uses both.

The English courts have been reasonably sceptical of anti-terror charges, and as well the security guards are fairly clearly in the wrong here. The counter charge would be aggravated trespass, but I don't think it would stick. The big mistake was admitting to pushing one. Still, it will take years, but I think it would be worth it to press charges, as they have to know they cant push people around. There shouldn't be too much trouble finding people to do it pro bono.

I've got around many scrapes by putting on a posh accent and threatening to sic my solicitor on security guards, most commonly for assault. It can scare them because conviction on an assault charge will be enough to disqualify them from most security jobs; if it gets around, they'll be less willing to put themselves on the line for no reason.

call a drumstick!!! You heard that right Gd?

Wait...there were queers in Dune?...The Baron? Thats one. Is Pauls wife, not the desert one, the other one, is she a lesbian? I would read it for the first time since I was a kid, but I suspect my other books would get jealous.

My digestive track is full of bacteria and dangerous acid. Probably shouldn't have mentioned that on the intarnet...

Also, I'm done with this for tonight, but if anyone fancies a game of chess, I'm on the same username at the FICS.

Moon,

Who changed what now?

Moon is wearing a wire.

Dear oh dear, Brian, when will you stop? It's easy to get swept up in an argument, but do have a good reread, eh? For me?

Brian,

from the article in that untrustworthy liberal trashrag, the Wall Street Journal that Jessie M linked above:

Ayers: "Certainly flirting with the idea of terrorism was off the tracks and a mistake. The fact that we never executed that flirtation is important and significant and I think conveniently forgotten, but we never did."

And also, from Ayer's blog:

http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/episodic-notoriety-fact-and-fantasy/

Ayers explains his position, and [Spoiler Warning] he does not not think setting bombs was a mistake.

Jessie,

I read your link, and the legal part of my mind still isn't convinced. Of course he had a lawyer read over his memoir, so there would be no confession in it, yet still enough juicy details to merit reading, but I definitely read the we part of the quotation as we, the WU, not we, as in Ayers and a few mates, specifically. Also you wont have failed to notice a strong bias in that article as well.

There aren't many people who make themselves enemies of the state, put themselves at the mercy of the state by turning themselves in, and walk away, without so much as a fine or probation. Not even Roman Polanski. It simply wont do to look for an unambiguous confession in print; if there were real evidence I sincerely doubt he would be walking free right now. In my opinion, the likelihood is any bombing carried out by the WU probably was not centrally organised, but rather the work of a few people operating in secrecy; given the activities of the FBI at the time, of which the WU was aware, they would have had to assume infiltration. I doubt even Ayers would know for sure who did what.

Also, I agree with you on the clinic/pentagon issue. First of all, they take bomb threats seriously in the US. Nobody will be allowed near something suspected to explode. and second, I think the WU/SDS were theoretical imbeciles, and had no excuse not to know better, but their activity cannot be thought of as existing in a vacuum. It was a response to the devastating US bombing of Vietnam, which was wrong by any standard. Of course the anti abortion people argue they are preventing a holocaust, and there's the rub. One can only reply that closing clinics will not end abortion, only make it more dangerous.

In the turbulent early 1970s, Ayers helped set off bombs in two dozen places, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. Supposedly nobody was hurt--the Weatherpeople always issued agitprop-laden bomb threats in advance--though Chatterbox has never seen a scrupulous accounting. (Ayers never did jail time for the bombings because of prosecutorial misbehavior.)

--i only skimmed the article, but the above seems like the relevant section. And I note the scare word 'supposedly'. Sum mishtake, shurely, as that sort of thing is easily verifiable for a journalist?

Prosecutorial misbehaviour sounds like code for trying to frame someone. That isn't to say he didn't do it, as I think John Barker said, the police can still frame you for a crime you actually committed. But it is comparable to war veterans: those who brag most tend to be those who did least. I do think the article is a defamation piece, rather then serious journalism, not that I condone any kind of violence. I had not heard of Ayers until the BB thread about the debate a few days back, and I certainly haven't read his book, but it seems anything to be said about Obamas relationship with him can correspondingly be said of McCains relationship to some nutterbutter or other on the right.

What does it mean the authorities were able to intercept the manifestos? I find that potentially the most worrying aspect of the article.

Kev,

If you have information not known to the state of Illinois regarding unsolved bombings, you should probably alert the relevant authorities.

I recommend Jules Verne's from the earth to the moon for a very entertaining, albeit dated, European perspective of rampant American gun ownership. Jules Verne didn't think very much of Americans, apparently, to the point of stipulating that members of the American gun club averaged less then one arm each. You really have to laugh at the stereotype.

Kevitivity,

It would be more like if McCain campaigned with people militantly opposed to abortion despite never being convicted of abortion clinic bombing, and doesn't he already do that?

To be fair, I'm certainly not up on the news but I don't think this will exactly be a deciding issue for anyone, although I do like a candidate who vets all his acquaintances, me.

From what a friend who lived in Austin told me, its counter-intuitive, but the everyone owning a gun thing seems to work for them down there. Eh.

But urinalpooper, you really don't have much of a chance of being mugged at gunpoint in Western Europe. Seemingly the only people who shoot people in the UK are the police. I was mugged once in my many years in London, by a bunch of unarmed kids, whilst drunkenly wandering down back alleys late at night in a bad part of town absent mindedly looking for my mate's house. They took my phone, and didn't even bother noticing I didn't have any money. Its the happy slapping you have to worry about.

May I be the first to say, with a change of clothes, this Ayers character could be real cutie.

And the media has a funny knack for making unsavoury characters out of normal people. Like re: the response to Manson, I've said much worse than that jokingly over a few drinks, amongst friends and etc., and I can assure you I don't approve of murder, at all.

Just saying, when it comes to men and dogs biting each other, the exception is the news; when it comes to defamation, they like to make things conform to stereotypes as far as is practicable, like here that people with radical politics are all middle class idealists completely out of touch with reality.

I'll mention as well, I wouldn't be too surprised if he was actually a nutjob, as nutjobs are also inexplicably attracted to radical politics, for some reason.

LOL, too true Antinous. I think if I had a blog I would have my CV on the front page, just on the off chance someone has an opening for a witty banterist.

As for life changing book? Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger has been like a teddy bear to me for as long as I care to remember.

/All/ gm is out, so even if they mixed a pig and a cow to make it chew its own cud [and not anyone else's], it still wouldn't be kosher.

Its a big deal because in the uS, gm food isn't labelled, so poor old grans are probably losing lots of mitzvah points right now.

I'm all about this. One of the only tv shows I ever bother watching is Bizarre Foods. After a half decade as a vegetarian/eventually vegan [which represents a substantial proportion of my young life], I cannot now look at an animal without wondering what it would taste like, and how I would prepare it. Domestic pets excluded...mostly.

As a general rule, also, the weirder the food, the more likely someone will tell you it will improve your potency. I don't know why.

Hey Metlin, don't knock psychologists. It's a proper science, don't worry about it.

But I'm not sure what a sociologist of science is. I'm pretty sure science equally applies to everyone [except possibly cartoon coyotes] so I'm not sure there's much to study there.

And incidentally, how is sentience determine? Because, turning to the back of my Tenach, I notice there is no quiz your friends are you sentient tear out yes or no test...

I'm a little surprised by the assertion that the Baku doesn't chew its cud. Who knows how a Baku would go about eating nightmares?

I win!! Yea!!

Near where I'm staying in Connecticut they recently outlawed a guy who ran a grill out of his truck. Not a very nice way of treating a man who dedicated his life to providing late night meals to those of us walking home after getting wasted at a bar.

I stumbled across these creepy disney comics the other day:

http://www.fortunecity.de/lindenpark/foto/597/03.html#

the last half dozen or so revolve around Mickey trying to off himself after Minney dumps him for his brother. I wouldn't know how to go about verifying their authenticity...

#60 Nick,

But I see you don't bother to enlighten me as to what the president actually does. What does that one [wo]man, the person every is so proud of voting for, do once [s]he gets elected? Ok, start wars is one, but in that case, what does a president do if he or she doesn't want to start a war? What does the president do to earn his room and board, other than volunteer to be a source of amusement for the general public, again, like the English royal family? I'll mention, of course, I am not one of those who thinks Europe is so superior, and also, as a point of interest, it might do to mention that the stock epithet for Blair and now Brown is 'Yankee Poodle'.

The sixties radical connexion is nothing new in Europe, however, particularly Germany, where everyone in the SPD seems to have been involved in someway or another in the Autonome movement. Gerhard Schroder, the former President, I seem to remember, defended the Baader Meinhof gang in court, which would've been something like Hilary Clinton defending Sadaam. And most of the English Labour party were involved in some sort of activism early on.

Look how high Cory's ceiling is.

But an adult tree emits more carbon then it absorbs, little known fact, and [from the same episode of QI] most of the world's oxygen comes from algae, not trees.

i remember reading somewhere that people typically enter Harvard law school with dreadlocks and dedicated to human rights law, then they get an internship on Wall st for some extra cash in the summer, and before you know it, they are the graduates of Harvard law we know and love today.

I imagine a similar sort of thing happens in politics. One day, a big fat cigar smoking capitalist takes the idealist young politician aside and asks if he wouldn't mind a round of golf, in which our hero sees no harm. Having accepted, the monocle wearing captain of industry proceeds to impress on the flannel shirt wearing man of the people how difficult it is to be a millionaire and wonders aloud whether it wouldn't be possible for the politician to do this or that small favour. And before you know it...

When you say three of the strongest candidates in years, it is tempting to answer, well that isn't saying much.

One of the interesting things in the American political system is that while the Israeli system, with no party ever taking a majority and the necessity to form coalitions in order to govern seems odd in comparison, in actual fact, the two parties are coalitions in themselves, so Del Miller [is that his name? The wack job from Georgia?] or Joseph Lieberman are democrats and Jack Reed, the former senator from Rhode Island, is a Republican, despite tending not to toe party lines. But in belonging to either party, and indeed between either party, there is a narrow consensus, in my opinion, on what seem to me the most important issues, namely economic ones.

The Roosevelt era dependency of Democrats on unions has not only withered, but the unions themselves are no longer asking for anything other than what industrial owners are willing to give them, so there is minimal surface level conflict between working class people and richer type people, or indeed, any demands of working class people are by and large deemed irrelevant to electoral politics. Economic concessions to working people are limited to the preservation of jobs, not improving the quality of jobs, as though the average job today reflects an adequate use of and reward for the average person's actually quite surprising ability.

Republicans, in my opinion, skirt economic issues entirely by appealing to social issues, which in actual fact are not as big of a deal as people tend to make of them. It isn't to say that something like abortion or prayer in schools aren't important [actually I don't honestly give a toss about prayer in schools; if it will shut them up, give it to them], but that it is not in principle the proper role of government to dictate social behaviour. McCain, it appears, is a subscriber to the patriotic aspect of the Republican party, where America is an absolute good, regardless of its actions, to which I am not sure there is an effective response, while the government continues to facilitate the flow of money from the poor to the rich.

And I don't think any candidate has significantly deviated from this consensus. you don't see anyone saying, for instance 'we have to begin rewarding people for working, not for owning' or that as long as government is subsidising industry anyway, it might as well be subsidising health care, rather than a ridiculously bureaucratic and ineffectual military.

i don't know. I'm not an expert on politics, and certainly haven't paid attention to the us campaign. Basically, i feel like what tends to be called an 'extremist' position in the uS media or in conversation, I would call, from what, I flatter myself, is an objective perspective, 'centre-right', and that the position of every politician currently in office falls within a spectrum of far right to centre right. Who cares what i think? but i strongly suspect that the proper course of action for those who do feel as i do that the US is more or less exactly the opposite of the ideal is simply to begin organising on a local level, even if that means sitting in a pub with the one or two other people who think the same way once a week or month or whatever and discussing particularly a reasonable further course of action. or start publishing an independent paper of sufficient quality as to actually merit reading, which is easier with each passing year, given the advance of technology. Again, I don't know, what sort of thing is appropriate. my political activity these days is limited to occasionally emailing my friends back home and yelling at them for not being more active in protesting the London Olympics, for which i have an irrational hatred on the basis of being evicted because of them, so anyone, do feel free to join me in that.

I imagine I've fallen a bit behind the trend of the thread in the space of time it took to jot down the above...

KevinK, I recommend a multi-part documentary the BBC produced a few years back called the power of nightmares, which investigates the history of Al Queda and extreme Islamic terrorism in general. I remember, for instance, a clip of Reagan dedicating the Challanger space shuttle launch to the mujahadeen [proto-Al Queada], which is one of those things that you just have to laugh at...until the ball drops, then you cry and cry and cry, then get drunk and repeat.

Having just finished reading Wilhelm Reich's 'Listen Little Man' [to summarise it in one sentence: 'everyone is a stupid stupid fascist, except me, I am not a fascist] I am uniquely qualified to give a response replete with the amount of cynicism appropriate to a discussion of the media in the United States.

Do you know, I've seen almost every episode of the West Wing, and I still have no idea what the president actually does on a day to day basis? It seems like he [or she, why not?] basically corresponds to the English Queen: makes speeches on important occasions, travels around meeting people, lots of waving, dinner parties, but no real work. And of course, there's my pet thesis that George W. is the first reality tv president. I mean, he really is doing what any of us would do if we found ourselves president: abuse all the benefits of office, take as much time off as possible to catch up on all the universe wide comic book crossovers that came out in the last few years and let the experts handle the nitty gritty. If they made Congress into a reality tv show, I would watch the shit out of it.

Still, I don't know how the network news gets away with it. The news is neither informative nor entertaining [unless you have a sick sense of humour]. I can't turn on a news channel without a sense of wide eyed, jaw dropping horror, that in the mind of a rational human being what I am watching could represent a fair and comprehensive survey of the world today.

I loved especially that debate sponsored by YouTube a while back, where the audience opinion was scrolling across the screen in real time. First of all, you could tell the audience were not the brightest, since the rating never dropped below seven or so for any candidate. One rather wonders why the scale was one to ten, and not one to three, since clearly the public's scale of opinion of politicians is limited to perfect, superlative, and very very good, if the scrolling opinions were anything to go by. Either that, or the audience was doped up before the debate began.

Anyway, this is all a pussyfooted way of saying, it isn't like the candidates themselves aren't superficial. I mean, i follow many people on this thread in not having a strong opinion on any candidate, but Obama's 'change' has to be the most superficial campaign in the history of politics. change from what to what? Politics 'changed' under Reagan and W. more than under any other administration, is that what he means? Or does he mean a change back to the status quo, the liberal consensus of Clinton? Change is a neutral term, without a context it means nothing. there's all this talk of changing attitudes and hope, but really I don't think people care about other people's attitudes and hope, I think people want more and better stuff. Why don't politicians use /that/ as a slogan? and why aren't they asking that in the debates? will your nomination lead to more and better stuff? Obama came the closest I suppose, with his 'vote for me and I'll give you a thousand bucks', but he really should have just promised a Wii in every home.

Sorry, i've been doing manual labour all day, and needed some kind of vent. feel free to dismantle as appropriate ;p

And so, the public space arms race begins.... They'll put iron spikes on the benches next, just you wait.

I own almost every studio album by David Bowie, and /not one song/ comes within a second on either side of 2:42 apart from bonus tracks. I've got Candidate at 2:40 and John, I'm only Dancing at 2:45. Thats it. So there

It takes years, but the Metropolitan Police are quite generous with their compensation. Try to get them to arrest you if this happens; it works out to about a grand per day...minus, and this is completely serious, room and board.

This is more or less how I anticipate quitting when the time comes. Take three or so days out of mind, take out the N64, replay ocarina of time, finally get to egypt in goldeneye, Cruise the World and, theoretically, Ill have been throuh the worst of it. Beer is the monkey wrench here. Three days I can maybe manage, but one beer, and I reckon Ill be right back on the cravings.

I'm just imagining everyone's face if they realised they had to go on without me.

funny how the boy could cry wolf like three times before the townsfolk stopped believing him, but you could really only fake your death the once before you lose credibility.

Do you know what the real problem with this is? It sets up an unrealistic standard. A man or boy reading this might dream of one day meeting a woman who will like him for being into comics, and this will not happen. /sigh/

No way Jardine, you need to go into grilled cheese making with the spirit of science and experimentation. Never eat the same sandwich twice. Same kind of sandwich, that is. If you made a sandwich so good you want to heave up and have a second go at it, then you should probably take that chance, although you may learn a lesson in too much of a good thing.

Takuan,

I came across this today:

http://www.mylastemail.com/

Much less morbid than a dying video.

First lecture of my English degree? Space fiction is not a proper genre. According to my distinguished professors, Space fiction and Western are the same genre, differentiated only by syntagmatic elements such as lasers or colt pistols. Paradagmatically, they are identical, in dealing with the exploration of an as yet semi-lawless frontier. I use space fiction instead of Sci-fi, because obviously not all Sci-fi has anythin to do with space. My take was my professor was thinking more Star Trek than Star Wars, since the main story in Star Wars takes place within a political framework unknown to the Western. Or alternatively, Star Wars is western from the perspective of the native tribes. But the idea is both genres consist of taking strongly individual characters and placing them in situations with as much freedom as possible, hence turning every decision they make emphatically into a psychological one. Brilliant.

Famously space and western were combined in the Red Dwarf episode Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse, probably available on the internet, and highly recommended.

Oooh just thought how to do a honey pot: Either fry the bread or use a large cracker, dip that in chocolate, thin layer of chocolate ice cream with maple treat, and cream cheese to satisfy that requirement. I reckon that would be about the tastiest sandwich ever. Or leave off the treat and garnish with mint perhaps...the possibilities, mmmm.

how does one judge these missionary position sammiches? They must be real aficionados to discern the subtle craft.

I reckon I could whip up a mean Mediterranean style one. Or else is it cheating to just serve up a cheeseburger?

And that, in case you were wondering, is HOWTO: break into someone's house.

Doping is threatening the integrity of science.

Well...but comics 'almost' get me laid all the time, /in my mind/!!!!1!!1

I grant you his documentary evidence is pretty significant, tho.

You must wear the robes of the church of the psychadelic monks, if you are to find the New Sound, hidden out somewhere, in the desert.

Do this, and Roger Daultry will do the hoovering.

'Almost' being the key word here.

Whoever says people want stuff for free has never seen a free shop. Fair enouh, most stuff is usually crap, but you literally cant give away stuff in a free shop. Or take how many people feel about scavenging in rubbish.

When people think of free they think of 'free' time shares or cruise trips or in other words somethin to be treated suspiciously.

That said, from working on a farm, people were genuinely surprised if you mentioned that taking from the crops at night was stealing. Despite the fact that they wait until after dark, they would always come off as thinking the crops were there for anybody to take. Which is weird, if you think about it. I mean, I didn't go to their offices at night and steal their paper clips.

I'll mention as prologue that trespassing is not criminal under English law, so the following is not an admission of guilt to anything:

There is a many storied b