Can you figure out how these two connect?:
Should Michael Bloomberg be cast in the remake of a movie that starred Paul Giamatti?
Do Italy and Greece matter when analysing the LHC test results?
When was the last time you paid attention to what’s going on in the Outback or Siberia?
Did you calculate the miniscule effect of YU55 on the orbits of Earth and the Moon?
Dear Flo,
Are you connecting those cute little boxes, that Progressive uses to “improve” my insurance rate, to one of these, too? Will it record when and where I wreck into Mayhem like me?
Signed,
Lost with a GPS unit under my car
I’ll leave it up to you to connect the dots:
When you need an excuse, any excuse will do.
Finally, IndyCar gets what it needed – a fiery, death-filled crash to make open-wheeled races exciting again, hopefully making us rethink going round in fast circles (watched them in Charlotte and Nashville, myself, quickly getting bored with the speed/track disparity, like watching Sprint Cup cars race at the Huntsville Speedway, inappropriate in many ways (is that why tracks like Nashville have faded?)) – infield chicanes, perhaps? A nod of sorrow to the Wheldon family survivors for their sacrifice.
The messy global democratic construction process continues – are you onboard or a dinosaur falling behind the times? Is the Internet the anonymous crowdsourced leader you dreamed of as a kid imagining the Utopia of Walden Pond?
Here we are, in the future.
As we’ve seen before, it was a corporation that established colonies on Mars.
How did we get there?
Easy.
First of all, the U.S. Congress demonstrated the U.S. had no international power of its own, anymore, conceding and bowing down to the megaconglomerates that disapproved of setting tariffs on Chinese goods in response to China’s lack of concrete effort to let the yuan/USD exchange rate reach its true fluctuating market value.
After all, we’re dealing with reality here. There’s no grassroots movement strong enough to get millions of people to force Congressional candidates to sign unbreakable promises on this issue or risk not getting [re]elected.
Sure, we have the potential start of a massive uprising, starting as they often do, in small-scale protests on the East/West Coast, but is there enough spark to light the flames of a full-scale US Autumn to rival the Arab Spring?
What is your desire – a) trying to repair the system we have, avoiding an undeniable double-dip, or) b letting chaos seep into the system and cracking it apart, destabilising market prices – stocks, foods, bonds, property, fuel – causing waves of riots over multiple chronic issues?
I get bored at times but do I want economic war on my doorstep?
Does the Lost/Unemployed Generation have the wherewithal to stand its ground against City Hall?
Does the Generation-In-Power have the foresight to make corporate/government policy changes that benefit the people in every socioeconomic level?
Meanwhile, I’m envious of deaf people and those with whom they use sign language. They can talk at the table with their mouths full and be fully understood.
And what about those Martian colonies if the U.S. Congress believes in the words of Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, showing that banks/corporations aren’t fully in charge, and risks starting a trade war with pending legislation?
The supercomputer predicts that price increases (the aftereffect of tariffs/duties) would have a marginal effect on the global economy if the U.S. takes a unilateral approach on this issue, pushing China to increase exports to other countries interested in buying cheap goods, and encouraging the Obama administration to push harder for NAFTA-like status for countries like South Korea.
Pebbles in a pond – frequency/amplitude shifts.
Bottom line: The COTS equipment on Mars will simply have a different “country of origin” mix – everything is the same, everything is different, mass and energy are conserved, or are they?
A list of books piles higher in the house.
Piles of books rise higher, the reader reluctant to dive in during the warm summer months, content to lie down on the sofa in the sunroom, watch the world go by, snooze, check Nothing off the daily to-do list one more time.
So a book had to be moved into the bathroom to be read.
The writer – Geerat Vermeij. The story – his life story, the story of a boy blinded by disease as a toddler and going on to become a successful scientist.
Other stories he has told: one explanation of the diversity in ocean systems, for instance.
Adaptation, competition, genetic drift, specialisation – more words with multiple meanings in our continuing conversation as the proverbial blind people standing in one place describing a single aspect/feature of an elephant.
However, we tend to wander around, observe from multiple locations, regardless of physical abilities.
I had vivid dreams last night, sparked by a challenge to myself to give the widest diversity of input to the supercomputer, network of hackers and business associates so they can help figure out what is wrong with the idea that our current economic problems can be solved by motivating people to consume more and take on debt in order to motivate them to work and pay off the debt, preferably revolving debt while consuming/buying more and more and more and more.
What if the produce/consume model is wrong, regardless of its implementation in societies that are primarily capitalistic or primarily communistic?
Setting aside religious objections to the model of life as evolutionary biology, what is the next revolution in the evolution of our born/eat/reproduce/sleep/die social interaction set?
While the BRICS presumably builds upon the old middle class stabilisation model, what can the EUSA do to establish a more successful model of sustainable species growth?
Do we throw out everything and start over; that is, foment revolution on a massive scale, disrupting the global economy to create something we hope, from our angle that only includes a detailed analysis of the past and a limited view of the future, is better in the longterm?
Or is it only a matter of shifting perceptions?
What was once, in this country, a democratic republic that partially regulated the capitalistic economic system, becomes a democratic republic that is controlled by a centrally planned capitalistic economic system?
In other words, people can still vote for legislators to write laws about our social behaviours, creating rewards and punishments for how we treat one another as individuals or perceived members of groups. We separate the management of our economy from the government, voting with our money for the companies led and/or owned by those who dedicate themselves to plan the best allocation of resources – raw material, land, people.
What is the effect on an economy/society if more public roads became private toll roads?
What is the effect on an economy/society if other public services – schools, common defense (police/military), firefighting, social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance) – become privately managed, meaning you have to directly pay and/or work for the service(s)?
How do we promote love and compassion instead of selfish greed, hoarding and fear?
How do we provide a sense of stability rather than prey on insecurities?
With seven billion different behaviour sets (and growing), how many different ways must we describe the new tools we’ve created to ensure everyone understands we can have access to adequate sustenance, if we want it.
And if we or you don’t want it, that’s okay. No system or systems will accommodate every want and need, no matter how inclusive it may try to be.
More later – the analysts who run the supercomputer are ready for input, the hackers have found a way to tap into more computer systems to increase the supercomputer’s virtual processing power, and my business associates…well, I can’t talk about what they want me to talk with them about right now.
Toward what or whom do you gravitate?
I, too, don’t want emotion to cloud my judgment but shouldn’t emotion be involved if I’m truly human?
How well do you cover your tracks?
Can you tell which secret projects the Rocket City Rednecks have worked on by watching their skill sets in action on an edited-for-TV show?
Do you have the sensitivity to hear the voices of others synchronised into the one talking in front of you?
Are you a true believer in the pebble-in-the-pond theory of reverse engineering current states of energy?
Do you understand how time travel really works?
Can you detach yourself from everything, including yourself, in order to hear the silent rhythms of the universe?
Is KISS your guiding principle?
It’s nice to keep the self feeling important just enough to know the self is truly unimportant but ego (i.e., the recognition of oneself in the social web) is a vital part of being human so you balance the best you can, tipping the scales in the wrong direction many a time, refining the finetuning of holding the balance as you go along.
Letting go, letting go, letting go – what am I missing this time? What have I added? The “I,” of course!
Every subculture deserves its positive, life-affirming attitude [“as long as it doesn’t interfere with mine,” right?] as long as or even if it doesn’t know it is part of a larger set of abutting and intersecting subsets/subcultures.
What happens if we directly bail out the consumer? Other than the perception (certainly from my point) that the underwater/indebted/bankrupt consumer should not be freed from irresponsible personal financial management (and while we’re at this blame game, that person is just as likely to be an uninformed voter and maybe a bad parent), what is the reality?
If stockbrokers supposedly vetted by respectable financial companies’ HR departments are acting like psychopaths in their trading habits, some of them taking down whole companies or causing CEOs like the one at UBS to quit, meaning that internal company controls are no better there than internal thought patterns/controls of individual consumers, then why are we reluctant to forgive mortgages, credit card debt, etc., of individuals but readily willing to bail out badly managed financial institutes and political entities like Greece?
What is wrong with the balance of power?
The peasantry have little effect on overall purchasing power, that’s why.
This parroting parrot has squawked about the emperour’s new clothes until it’s hoarse but the observation is still true.
We, the people, no longer matter.
We’re back to the days when only the landed gentry had a say in the law of the land.
That’s why I’m thinking about not voting in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election for the first time in my life.
I just can’t see where any of what I say or do as a broke, out-of-work individual fits into a single vote, especially in a political entity (in this case, a state) that’ll most likely vote the way it has recently voted for U.S. Presidents, regardless of which way I’ll cast my vote.
Even in so-called swing states, if I lived there, my vote would still be just one vote, putting in office a person who is just as purple as Bush or Obama, a surfer riding the waves of aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.
Don’t get me wrong. I personally benefit from aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.
In fact, I’m a strong proponent of the global corporatising that sits over the imaginary structures we call political entities/national governments.
Take this storyline that you can’t tell if it’s real or imaginary – me in charge of the Committee that runs the show. It’s a lot easier to rule seven billion when they all are connected through the same macrocultural interests.
But there’s a difference between my being able to destroy people, businesses and rockets at the snap of my finger and my being an individual in plain sight, sitting here – or being served a chopped chicken stuffed baked potato by Mary at Gibson’s BBQ – who has to find a simple place in society despite severe social anxiety and situational depression.
And, then, erasing all thoughts of self to live invisibly as just another set of states of energy in this section of the universe that is shifting like a bubble within a bubble or a bouncy ball floating and banging around within a bigger bouncy ball at the five-and-dime store. A fake snowflake shaken around in a souvenir snow globe by a bored tourist trapped in a gift shoppe after a speedy haute couture “adventure in an exotic foreign land.”
We forget what’s been said before so we can say it again as if we’re the first on the edge of terra incognito.
I do not exist.
And yet, I do.
The paradox is not supposed to resolve itself.
It is.
That’s all that matters.
I write this while sitting on my posteriour and wearing bedroom slippers.
I am.
And yet, I am not.
Imagine the possibilities of the Internet of things in just a few months, let alone years, if every kid on the block had easily-programmable Arduino-like devices to connect their imaginations to the Internet. What if everyone’s heartbeat rate was available for view in realtime – what kind of rhythmic percussive symphony would it compose on the fly?
The average age of gamers is 37, I read. There’s more than one mobile phone per person in some parts of the world. What are you doing with your time?
Universal suffrage for women gets closer every day.
Sarkozy is not so cozy anymore, feels a chill on his left side.
Sorry, I forgot to throw in a bonus point:
treetrunkdings 