the future

this post was written in the future. do you remember when that happened? yes, friends, i am writing to you (or have written, or will write) from the distant future. the book “1984” by george orwell is about a dystopian future, and who can forget the prince song “party like it's 1999” about an even more distant future, or the stanley kubrick movie “2001: a space odyssey” even further in the future? and who can forget about all the prophecies concerning how the world WILL END on july 5, 1998. yes, all of that happens in the world of the future. let’s visit the world of the future is perhaps the best-known documentary film about the future, because it was filmed even deeper in the future than where i am, and sent back in time to a young filmmaker in 1973 who pretended to have made the movie himself... what a buffoonish liar! i am currently quite far into the future but not as far as that last movie, since i am right at the end of 2009, and 2010 will start in a few hours, which is even FURTHER into the future, making me even closer to the events of that documentary. now, for those of you reading this, in the distant past, it must seem strange to be reading this. in fact, back in your time, things like what i am writing, which are known as “blogs”, did not exist, nor did this thing known as “the internet”, which is the place where i put all these words that i wrote in the future. yes, you are living back in a time where the device i used to type this, “the computer”, had not been invented yet. however, you are quite lucky to be living in the past and not in the future like me, dear reader. to-day, we have things known as “nuclear bombs”, and for awhile there was a great and powerful nation known as “soviet russia” that threatened to dominate the whole world with “communism”. of course, back in your time, nuclear bombs, soviet russia, and communism do not yet exist, so it would be hard to explain. well, ok, russia does exist back in your era, if my records are correct. however, it appears to not be a terribly powerful nation, and is ruled by the czarist monarchy, with the vast majority of the population as poor landless peasants. hmm... it appears from my temporal displacement chronometer that in your time, dear reader, you do not yet even have access to the movie about 2001, the song about 1999, or the book about 1984. oh, wait... i was misreading the instrumentation... i was looking at it upside down. yes, yes, it appears the current year is 1953. by jove! that means that the book “1984”, soviet russia, communism, nuclear bombs, and primitive computers actually do exist in your time! all right then... it must be strange for you reading this on a piece of paper back in 1953. you see, i had to “post” what i am writing on “the internet” on my “blog” so that i could “run” an “app” on my “blackberry” that uses a “flux capacitor” to send messages back in time. ok, so back in your era, you have the telephone. my “blackberry” is actually a telephone just like the ones you have back in 1953, except it does not have wires connecting it to the wall, and instead the phone company sends and receives data using towers made of wire, similar to radio broadcast towers. it can also do other things besides telephone calls, such as sending messages into the past or future, if you install the right “app”, and some of these apps cost money and others are free. i actually wrote this one for time travel myself, and it requires a flux capacitor to be installed in the device, although normally flux capacitors are not in phones. so, ok... hmm... now that you are in the past, and have this message, i ought to have you do something to change history, and thereby warp the space-time continuum, allowing me to access all the 11 dimensions of “M-theory”. hmm... what can i think of that would enable this? ahh yes... your name is john robert dobbs, is it not... but people call you “bob”? you must build an amateur television set, but i cannot send you the design for it. you have to design it yourself! yes, “bob”, you must build an amateur television set of your own design by the end of this year, 1953! if you succeed, it will set in motion a chain of events that will result in the alteration of this article i typed in the future, and this article will make reference to things that didn’t exist the first time i wrote it. if you do not succeed, this article will likely end up making reference to silly things that do not exist. that is how i will know if you succeeded or not, “bob”! if you get this message and decide not to do that whole making an amateur television of your own design thing, please do not start a new religion that you keep as a secret society until you hire a few random nobodies to make the whole thing public, in the year 1979. that would make this all end up QUITE silly and i would be very embarrassed. also, if this flux capacitor does not work correctly (if it fails to store up quantum flux and then discharge it when the wave function is collapsed) you will not get this message at all, and then history will not be altered, leaving me unable to freely navigate 8 of the 11 dimensions. so please do something to alter history! also, i realize that, in the process of posting this on my blog, prior to sending this message back in time, other people who are not “bob” may come across this blog post on the internet, not in the past but in the future, but for any of you who find this on the internet, you will be in the present and me writing this will be in the past, even though right now, me writing this is in the present and you reading it is in the future. please go on about your normal activities and do not pay any attention to the odd unexplainable changes you may notice around you, as you live your daily life in the space-time continuum. there is actually nothing weird going on at all, internet blog-readers. move along now, nothing to see here. okay, you are probably gone by now... phew... close call! “bob”, are you the one reading this, back in 1953? please follow the instructions i gave earlier. if you have any questions, write them lower down on this sheet of paper, and my blackberry app will use the flux capacitor to post them as comments on this blog entry. if you are not “bob”, please do not leave any comments on this blog entry, or you will disrupt communications between me and someone who is actually in the past, which is very rude and inconsiderate, not to mention the fact that it would automatically trigger my doomsday device and start the countdown to the destruction of earth. if that happens, i will probably find some sort of scheme to save us all, like switching earth and mars around so the doomsday device gets confused and we all end up fine afterwords. but please do not do that, for those of you in the year 2009 or later. flux capacitors, you see, can change the past, and if you are not careful, the disruptions in the space-time continuum can destroy the entire universe, possibly even the multiverse! i have a carefully planned scheme that would disrupt the space-time continuum in a positive way, so that we have complete access to all 11 dimensions of space-time and can move around freely (well actually only i would have this ability at first, but i could mass-produce the device and sell you one). anyway, those of you in 2009 or later, wouldn’t you like to be able to buy such a device? yes, of course, exactly. so please don’t ruin my scheme. now as for why only the planet earth would be destroyed... well if someone here in the future posted a comment on this blog entry, this would create a time paradox capable of destroying the entire time-space continuum due to the setup i have here, since your message would be sent back in time to 1953 and “bob” would read it, and he would probably do whatever you say, thereby changing history, but you would not have it carefully thought out, and the resulting paradox could destroy the entire multiverse. however, i have built a doomsday device which catches time paradoxes before they happen. my doomsday device was built billions of years in the past, or rather, i built it and sent it back in time billions of years, and it resides inside the inner core of the earth, right in the center of this planet, where it has been for billions of years, protected by a hard outer shell made from dark matter that is impervious to harm. anyway, any time paradox that occurs on the planet earth while the doomsday device is operational will result in the doomsday device preemptively destroying the planet earth before the paradox ever occurs, thus saving not only this universe but the entire multiverse and space-time continuum. it is a paradox-prevention mechanism that prevents anything paradoxical from occurring through preemptive warfare against chaos. in fact, this doomsday device is responsible for why scientific experiments and logic have been so successful at understanding our universe, but the nature of things such as dark matter will never be discovered by humanity because that would make the hard outer shell of the doomsday device vulnerable, and then allow for paradoxes to occur. the reason my seemingly illogical plan to alter history and give us (or rather me) access to all 11 dimensions would not trigger this device is that i built into it a bypass mechanism, a secret code that you need to use in order to change the past and create potential time paradoxes without triggering the destruction of earth. also, if the device is triggered, it would detonate... about 4 and a half billion years ago or so, preemptively. the results of such a detonation would be catastrophic and likely result in the planet earth blowing up, with most of the debris eventually coalescing back into a smaller planet earth, while the farther out debris would orbit this new earth and eventually coalesce into a moon. but, as everyone knows, earth does not have any moons, unlike most planets. hmm... i wonder if humanity would still be able to evolve if this device detonated and blew up the earth. if that happened, and we still had wikipedia, the moon article would not talk about what moons are and about the moons on other planets and how earth doesn’t have a moon, but would talk about whatever sort of moon this new earth would have. hmm... i doubt someone such as “bob” dobbs would exist on such an earth, if the doomsday device went off. he would probably be removed from history to undo the paradox, and some sort of cargo cult would form around the nonexistent “bob” dobbs and the events that happened in a parallel universe where he is real. ok, “bob” dobbs, sorry you had to read that, but you have to know the importance of your mission. if you fail to do this, if you slack off, you will not exist... you will probably just end up as a cartoon image, a joke, an imaginary character, with your actual self erased from history. plus, earth will end up with a moon, which will be weird. according to my studies, the presence of a moon would create “tidal forces” which would create disturbances in the ocean here on earth. this could give rise to all sorts of unpredictable phenomena, and make it so that the weather can no longer be predicted with absolute certainty days in advance... it is hard to imagine all the things that would be different if my doomsday device were set off. or things could be even worse... and require me to switch earth, the fourth planet from the sun, around with mars, the third planet from the sun. this would save those of us here on earth, but mars would end up a cold, lifeless planet, red and barren, with hardly any atmosphere, no liquid water, no hot martian girls with their green skin. yes, the martians are a warlike people and it is only through the outer space treaty that we finally stopped mars from fighting its incessant wars with us. but just imagine the carnage, the horror, if i were forced to switch our planets around! sure, i could save earth, and we would end up with a moon, but all the martians would not only be dead, but they would have been killed off about 4 and a half billion years ago, resulting in mars being smaller rather than larger than earth, and the debris would create a huge asteroid belt between where earth is now (the place mars would end up) and the gas giant jupiter. it would truly be tragic if i were forced to do that to mars. then again, the martians have never been particularly friendly to our planet, and i am not especially fond of them personally, but it would still be tragic to kill them all through preemptive warfare! and i doubt any moon that would form around earth would be capable of supporting life, either... so we would end up with a solar system in which the only planets that support life would be earth and planet x. maybe not even planet x... it might be removed from history entirely due to another paradox that would be triggered. anyway, please make an amateur television of your own design before the end of 1953, “bob”. if you fail, the only life in the solar system will probably be on earth... and that is if i switch mars and earth around by sending the correct code back in time to my doomsday device. the best i will probably be able to manage is for it to half-blow up each of the planets, but to do more damage to mars than earth. it is good i know how to avoid creating the type of time paradoxes that destroy the entire universe or multiverse. but there will likely be a plethora of parallel universes created by this, and so people will have all sorts of legends about things such as mars, planet x, and even “bob” dobbs. anyway, “bob”, don’t slack off! slacking off is bad! you need to get to work on designing and building that amateur TV! if you succeed, “bob”, i can promise you that you will be able to get whatever you want, and once you are done working on the tv, you can slack off all you want and get things for free. you will be legendary! able to make a million dollars every time you make a mistake! imagine that, “bob”. oh, and get used to people calling you “bob” with quotes around it. you will be needed in 1998. please don’t get killed before then, or if you do, we will have to find some way to resurrect you in time, before july 5, 1998 when planet x will send its x-ist armada of pleasure saucers to destroy the planet earth once and for all. only you can save us from that destruction. or perhaps we will end up in some parallel universe where planet x and its inhabitants are erased from history, and never existed in the first place, as a result of my doomsday device and its machinations. the doomsday device has a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence system built into it, and unless i send the correct code back in time, it will do whatever it sees fit to eliminate paradoxes from the universe and keep us all confined to 3 spatial dimensions to move around in, stuck as time continues to go by, unable to move in that dimension, or 7 other dimensions. indeed, the a.i. on the doomsday device may decide to make time travel impossible for anyone or anything except it and whatever it wants to do. it may even take advantage of the fact that our brains make decisions based on quantum fluctuations of electrochemical impulses sent between neurons, and use its quantum flux capacitor to effectively mind-control all life-forms that have brains, all throughout history, the present, and the future. i doubt it would go that far, however, because i did not program it to do that, but the a.i. may become self-aware and decide to dominate everything for itself. i really doubt it would do that though. i guess the martians might get destroyed by it though, since my personal bias against martians no doubt influenced me somewhat when i was writing the code for its a.i., and the doomsday device prioritizes saving all life on earth to saving life anywhere else. it is ironic that the only way for it to save things is by blowing things up. or i suppose it might do the mind-control thing, but i did not teach the a.i. how to do that... i doubt it would figure it out, even if it tried for billions of years. the brain is just too complicated. most likely, it would only be able to cause mental disturbances in people, so that the fictional ailment of “insanity” that is in many works of fiction would actually exist in reality, and there would be a whole new type of illness called “mental illness”, all caused by the interference of this device in its attempts to mind-control everyone who has a brain. luckily, “bob”, you are the only man in history born without any brain who managed to survive, and that is why only you are capable of doing this mission, since only you cannot be controlled or influenced by this device i have built. if you do not carry out your mission as printed on this long note you are reading back in 1953, i suspect you will be removed from history as well, since the dastardly device i built won’t want anyone around that it can’t control. that is why it is of the utmost importance that i send the code back in time to control the device... oh wait... my sister is coming to visit along with her little daughter! i guess that means i won’t send any coded message to the doomsday device, and it will operate on its own. please carry out your mission, “bob”, or else earth will be the only planet in this solar system with life on it, and there will be countless other changes to our universe. nobody else should interfere, since you probably will be under some negative influence, if not outright mind control, by my doomsday device. and if mental illness comes into existence, retroactively, then in 1953 someone else may fill the void created by the destruction of “bob”, and create some odd religion based around opposition to the psychiatrists that would exist in such a world where there is mental illness, and this crazy person’s evil cult would probably recruit a number of hollywood celebrities and make a lot of money. that cult would probably have a stupid name like “scientology” or something. and then some group would eventually form in opposition to this cult, with an even sillier name, like maybe “anonymous”. it would all be extremely silly. hopefully you can prevent all of that, “bob”. oh crap... you don’t have a brain. i doubt this will work. sorry everybody! anyway my sister and her daughter are here now, so i am going to hang out with my family now. happy new year everyone!

retry

last night i was quite upset and wrote my first blog post in months, telling all about everything, and it was quite long. now i’ve deleted that post and will summarize the parts that i have not declared classified information. my girlfriend broke up with me earlier this month and i am rather upset about a lot of things, including that, but also other things. my emotions are not terribly positive these days. also, this is an anonymous blog and i do not want my identity revealed on it. ok that is all.

my girlfriend

recently i got a new girlfriend. actually, a few weeks ago, back in late june of this year (2009). so that, among other reasons, is part of why i haven’t posted anything to this blog lately. she is not only my new girlfriend, but the first girlfriend i have ever had in my entire life, so i am rather proud of this new accomplishment. if you have been reading this blog in the past you are no doubt familiar with how i have never dated anyone before. well that long period of epic fail in my life is now ancient history. now i will find new and more epic ways to fail, probably. lol. anyway this is an anonymous blog so i am not saying what my girlfriend’s name is, and actually for privacy reasons i won’t really say anything else about her on this blog, for the time being at least, except for one thing: we both like each other a lot. ok that is enough information for you. there are many, many details, none of which you will find out about on this blog. bwahahahahaha! enjoy your ignorance on this subject. you will probably find many other subjects to be ignorant in as well, such as the grand unified field theory of physics, the easy way to become a billionaire fast, or the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

2 corrupt politicians switch parties in desperate attempt to avoid going to jail

2 extremely corrupt politicians, new york state senator pedro espada of bronx and new york state senator hiram monserrate of queens, have switched their allegiance from democrat to republican in order to avoid criminal prosecution. the 2 gentlemen were bribed into doing this by tom golisano, an insane billionaire from rochester who has run for governor many times and always lost badly, and who announced he was moving to florida a few weeks ago because he hates taxes. both of these men, who are now loyal to the republicans but claim to be democrats, are puerto rican-americans, and they are part of a group called the “gang of 3” that was publicly considering supporting the republicans in the state senate several months ago because they dislike the leader of the new york state senate democrats, senator malcolm smith of queens. the coup d’etat took place on monday, carried out by none other than republican state senator tom libous of binghamton, who happens to represent ME. he can go fuck himself. anyway, the new york state senate has gone from a 32-30 democratic majority to a 32-30 republican majority, but the 2 democrats who joined with the republicans, pedro espada and hiram monserrate, are both criminals who will probably end up in jail. the districts that those 2 democrats represent are VERY heavily democratic, in terms of the voters. neither of those 2 state senators have more than an ice cube’s chance in hell of surviving when they are up for re-election in 2010, if they manage to avoid going to jail before the next election. of course, new york state politics is famously the most corrupt in the nation. former illinois governor rod blagojevich was nowhere near as corrupt as a typical new york state senator. and tom libous of binghamton would not be the #2 ranking republican in the state senate unless he were highly corrupt, because to rise to the top ranks in this state, you need to be corrupt. joe bruno, the former republican state senate majority leader who ruled the state senate with an iron fist for many years, is now in jail, because he is one of the few corrupt politicians that actually got caught and had to pay for his crimes. he only left office last year. so now we have the corrupt joe-bruno-style state senate republicans, joined by 2 new LITERAL “partners in crime”, democrats pedro espada and hiram monserrate, in what basically amounts to a new majority coalition for the state senate, a bipartisan coalition of criminals who belong in jail. governor david paterson rightly condemned this, but david paterson himself was once the leader of the state senate democrats, just a few years ago. now some say that this coup was illegal, but i think that is silliness. politicans change parties all the time, and every so often it switches the majority in a legislative body. it happened in the united states senate in the spring of 2001, for instance, and that was perfectly legal. but this is new york. this is where tammany hall was. this is where the mafia crime families all had their headquarters, and still do. until recently, new york city had one of the highest crime rates in the nation. political corruption has always been standard practice in this state. now a coalition of corrupt politicians has conspired to overthrow the will of the people, who elected democrats to a majority in the state senate for the first time in 40 years, a remarkable feat given the gerrymandering of the state senate districts to heavily favor the republicans (which is part of the bipartisan package deal, along with gerrymandering of the state assembly districts to heavily favor the democrats). here is a huffington post article about what has happened, here is a daily kos post with more scandalous revelations, and for continuing coverage, follow the news at the albany project. there is even video footage somewhere on the internet of binghamton’s own tom libous carrying out the coup d’etat on the floor of the state senate. before he did this i actually thought tom libous wasn’t all that bad (although i still disliked him), and had actually been at an event where he spoke and after he gave a speech i actually clapped along with the other people, since it was an event to promote hiring people with disabilities and he didn’t really say anything i disagreed with in that speech. never again will i clap if i am at a tom libous speech, no matter what he says. he has proven himself to be a complete scumbag, albeit nowhere near as bad as these 2 former democrats from new york city who switched parties to try to avoid ending up in jail. given the fact that their districts are so full of loyal democrats, and the democratic party establishment is now 100% completely opposed to these 2 gentlemen, they have no chance of re-election, like i said. tom libous, on the other hand, will continue getting re-elected until he decides to retire, or until he gets so old that he dies. there is no way anybody could ever possibly defeat tom libous in an election for his state senate seat. typically some random nobody who happens to be a democrat decides to run against him, and easily wins the democratic nomination since nobody else wants the embarrassment of being creamed in a general election, and then the random nobody is creamed in the general election and never heard from again in the public media. most of these elections to the state legislature are such foregone conclusions that it is probably a waste of taxpayer money to even hold the elections in the first place, since it is always obvious that the incumbent wins no matter what. in these troubled times for the state budget, with our legislators abandoning any pretense of democracy in their mad and corrupt lust for more power, we might as well completely stop having elections to the state legislature, and just have the state democratic party chairman appoint every single member of the state assembly, and the state republican party chairman appoint every single member of the state senate, and call it a deal. it would not be much different from the current system; it would just be more obvious that the system is undemocratic. i encourage state attorney general andrew cuomo to prosecute as many state legislators as possible, gather as much evidence as possible, charge them with as many crimes as possible, and seek the maximum possible sentence for each of the state legislators that the attorney general can dig up some dirt on. hopefully the judges and juries will be unsympathetic to the state legislators and adopt an attitude of “lock ’em up and throw away the key”. it is time to put an end to the rampant corruption once and for all, and i doubt anyone can do this except possibly state attorney general andrew cuomo. then again, i have heard him referred to as a member of the “cuomo crime family”, referring to how his dad mario cuomo was governor and alleged misdeeds of an unspecified nature. but our state needs a knight in shining armor to purge the halls of power of those who have become corrupt and done illegal things while in office. we need our own version of gotham city’s district attorney harvey “twoface” dent, preferably without the twoface part. eliot spitzer was the real-life version of harvey dent, after being our knight in shining armor as attorney general but then getting caught in multiple scandals as governor and forced to resign after being found having sex with prostitutes. so perhaps instead of harvey dent, we should look for someone to be more like batman, the dark knight. i suppose governor paterson would do. after all, he is unpopular, just like batman is at the end of the movie the dark knight, and yet governor david paterson has continually done the right thing during his short career as governor, even when doing the right thing means that it will make him less popular. as for eliot spitzer, he has been rehabilitated by the media and is now on a new crusade to fix what is wrong with wall street, which will take forever because everything is wrong with wall street, and it is as corrupt as the state government if not more so. eliot spitzer will also take forever to do this because he is not state attorney general or governor, but a mere slate.com columnist who occasionally appears on television and has no actual power anymore, plus his reputation is permanently damaged by the prostitution scandal. it seems new york state might, for the time being, be in the unfortunate state of being dominated by billionaires like tom golisano and mike bloomberg. but hey, unlike tom golisano, at least mike bloomberg actually holds elected office. mike bloomberg also needs to be removed from office in the next election... the way he buys elections with his own money reminds me of italy’s current dictator, sergio berlusconi, who in turn reminds me of benito mussolini since both of them are right-wing italian dictators. of course italy is technically a democracy, but billionaire sergio berlusconi, completely corrupt and a criminal, owns all of the media outlets in that country, so everybody votes for him because the people on tv tell them to. corruption runs rampant on this planet, in pretty much every country, from the poorest nation to the most wealthy nation of all. typically corruption is actually the worst in very poor nations such as afghanistan or the nations of africa. in a wealthy state like new york in a democracy like the united states, it is possible for people to tackle and even defeat corruption, throwing the perpetrators in jail. the only problem is, most of the perpetrators are still out there, and are actually the people who are in charge of everything. if only the rule of law were applied, our laws were enforced, and both the wealthy and powerful and the poor and powerless were treated equally by our judicial system, according to our constitution. it seems much of government itself has, over the years, become a criminal conspiracy, violating many of the laws that that same government passed into law in the first place. by conspiracy, i am using the legal definition, of course, which means when 2 or more people secretly decide to commit illegal acts. under that definition, of course, virtually everything is a conspiracy, and in fact i and everyone else i know am part of multiple conspiracies. but, whatever... people in high public office ought to be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens. my state senator tom libous spends plenty of taxpayer dollars campaigning for himself, and i bet most of it is probably legal, since people like him write all the laws. there are all sorts of local events that in the credits always thank tom libous and say they are sponsored by tom libous, such as summer musical festivals paid for by him. well not with his money, of course. with the taxpayer dollars of new york state, instead. and everyone who goes to a tom libous-sponsored event like one of his summer music festivals (such as my parents and i) gets plenty of pro-tom libous propaganda there, all taxpayer-funded. it is probably legal, too. this greatly saddens me. tom libous has much of the local populace brainwashed. i do not doubt that the other state legislators are all doing similar things. and as for the mayoral election this year in binghamton... don’t even get me started. i don’t even live inside city limits. but i do support the re-election of mayor matt ryan, although i doubt he will win again. the people of binghamton are very upset, and naturally, since he is mayor, people blame everything that is going wrong on him. i would suggest that the people of binghamton realize the state government is screwing us over, and the bread and circuses of tom libous such as the summer music festivals will not solve any of our underlying issues such as the local economy here that has been in the toilet for decades. an event where musicians perform to the general public for free that is organized and paid for by the government does not solve our economic troubles. such things are mere distractions to our problems, although they do have a positive effect on the mood of the populace, which might possibly make people more optimistic about things such as the economy. anyway, new york state government is so corrupt i fear it is beyond redemption. perhaps we should simply adopt anarchy as a form of government, as somalia did... just look at how well it turned out for them! now somalia is full of pirates, and pirates are awesome. i am joking of course; somalia is one of the poorest nations in the world and has incredibly high rates of violence, and is not a good role model for anybody. perhaps mussolini, who i mentioned earlier, would be a better role model: at least he was able to make the trains run on time, as everybody said. for that matter, how about stalin, who turned the soviet union from a poor agrarian society into an industrial behemoth and global nuclear-armed superpower? the downfall of the soviet union was caused by them finally having a decent human being as their dictator, once mikhail gorbachev took over in the early 80s. his incremental reforms from totalitarian towards a more free society resulted in the complete downfall of the entire soviet empire, and the overthrow of communist governments in all nations except for china, vietnam, laos, cuba, and north korea. in fact, one of the many communist governments to fall as a result of mikhail gorbachev being a pacifist was the last-ever government of somalia, and another was the government of afghanistan. look how well those countries are doing now. so, doing the right thing does not always yield good results, and doing the evil thing sometimes is much more effective. perhaps that in some way justifies the current state of affairs in new york state. by being evil, our government officials might actually be doing us a favor, in some perverse sense. it is true that most if not all of the formerly communist nations of central and eastern europe are now much better off as capitalist democracies than they were under soviet control. i do believe that capitalist democracies have been proven empirically to be better than any other system. after all, what communism replaced in russia was czarist dictatorship and economic feudalism, not democracy and capitalism. but i do not believe in the extreme form of unbridled, unregulated, free-market capitalism, but rather the more moderate type of capitalism practiced in western europe and scandinavia, which some people call socialism. and i do not believe in corrupt gerrymandered systems of “democracy” where the results of any given election are a fait accompli, but rather true representative democracy where the people in power actually represent their constituents, rather than acting out of their own selfish lust for power and corruptly serving their wealthy and powerful donors who make sure they get re-elected every time. of course, the united states congress is also full of representatives whose districts were gerrymandered, and the federal government has some problems of its own, but they all pale in comparison to the problems faced by new york state. in high school when i was a senior, i once spent a day “career shadowing” someone who worked for a state government program to bribe corporations to either create new jobs in new york state or not leave new york state. this person’s boss was bob moppert, the republican politician who on multiple occasions had lost congressional elections to the ultra-liberal democrat maurice hinchey, who is still binghamton’s righteous and noble congressman, perhaps the second-greatest congressman in all of america, second only to dennis kucinich. anyway, bob moppert was in charge of the local office of this state government agency, in charge of economic development for the southern tier, appointed to that position by former republican governor george pataki (who is a hungarian like my mom, george soros, nicolas sarkozy, and many other people). so bob moppert had this staff of people working for him, and i was sitting there at a meeting with his staff, where he called up the people who ran various corporations on the telephone, to talk to them about either creating jobs in this region of upstate new york, or just keeping the jobs they already provided here. it was obvious that he was dealing with a bunch of liars and crooks who just wanted free government money, and he knew that. i could see that he was frustrated with it. but he did his job and gave out corporate welfare to the fat cats anyway, doing exactly what this government program was supposed to do, except for the fact that the companies were only required to keep the jobs here for a certain amount of time (i think it was 3 years) and then they either immediately left the state, laying off everyone, or came back to the government, demanding and getting more money. in fact, it appeared that part of his job was to negotiate how much money to bribe each company not to leave the area. this government program was finally cut from the state budget this year, i believe. probably many businesses will leave town for good, which was going to happen anyway, and all this program did was bribe them to put off the inevitable. i do not believe that program should have even existed in the first place, because it is exactly the sort of corruption involving the government and corporations getting too closely intertwined that needs to be avoided at all costs. instead of spending taxpayer money on music festivals that hire cheap local musicians and charge no admission fee, all to improve the public image of certain state legislators, or spending it on pork barrel corrupt corporate welfare to bribe corporations not to lay off all their workers, i have a far better idea. stop wasting the fucking money on stupid crap in the first place, focus on important spending priorities, and lower state taxes to a reasonable level. that is the exact agenda that governor david paterson articulates in most of his speeches, but the recalcitrant state legislature is too corrupt and unaccountable to the people to give a damn about anybody except themselves, and so his opponents there, as well as special interest groups that benefit from the status quo, have been attacking him relentlessly, steadily driving his approval ratings lower and lower, because he is one of the few people trying to do the right thing. so, i propose having david paterson dissolve the state legislature and declare himself dictator of the state, and having him write all the laws from now on. that would immediately end all gridlock, and he could easily balance the state budget just by typing a few numbers in an excel spreadsheet, hitting print, and signing it into law. oh, and the governor would still be an elected position, so if the people don’t like what david paterson does, they could elect someone else next time there is an election (if there is ever another election once he is made dictator). to quote george w. bush, “if this were a dictatorship it’d be a heckuva lot easier.” maybe just a temporary dictatorship, for a month or something, and then after a month is over, the governor would go back to not being able to write his own laws, and the legislature would regain its powers again. under the current system of so-called “democracy”, what can we expect? the state of new york is headed towards financial ruin, nobody will have a job, and everyone will end up on welfare until the state goes bankrupt and all welfare programs are ended, along with all the state universities, community colleges, public radio stations, and all sorts of other things... everything except the police and prisons. ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is the direction in which we are headed, especially in areas like greater binghamton. i propose we tax the hell out of wealthy people. they all live down in the new york city area, and all that money could end up here, in the upstate region, and make the people here wealthy instead. all i am saying is, i want money. and so does everyone else. so do all the crooked politicians and special interest groups. and that is the problem, because so many of the crooked people get exactly what they want: money. which means less money for ordinary people like me. the republican party ought to do this nation a public service and dissolve itself, and have all republican politicians resign from office. then some third parties would come in to fill the vacuum caused by the final end of the republican party, and they would have fresh new ideas on how to improve things and win a lot of elections. the republicans are wrong about pretty much every issue, they are incapable of competent governance, and they are faith-based ideologues who are completely out of touch with reality. while they have the right to exist, that does not mean that it is right for them to continue existing in their present form, as the party of bigotry, hate, big business, fundamentalist wackos, and other extremists. they are dead wrong about pretty much everything and deserve to fade away into obscurity. and we need some third parties to shake things up and break the two-party stranglehold on our political system, to end all the cronyism and corruption that is so pervasive. i may be a registered democrat, but i vote the working families party line, because the working families party of new york state best reflects my values and who i support. yes, the politicians it supports are the democrats, but voting for that party sends a signal that i am pissed off with politics as usual and want change: not just any change, but POSITIVE change. just look at their statement on what the state senate did, or the rally they had against it. and if enough people voted for the working families party, it would become even bigger than the democrats or the republicans. that would be a very good thing. i am a registered democrat, though. after all, how else can i vote in democratic primaries, such as how i voted last year to help barack obama defeat hillary clinton? it should be obvious to everyone by now that hillary clinton is a centrist and barack obama is more progressive (or liberal, if you prefer). i have to be a registered democrat to be able to help people like barack obama get elected, and prevent the joe liebermans of the world from winning primaries (note to right-wingers: substitute "arlen specters" for "joe liebermans" and you will understand what i meant). anyway, to hell with binghamton, i am leaving this dump at the end of july, and going to europe. ok, ok, i come back from europe in late august, but i think i will be proving a point with my temporary absence, namely that binghamton sucks and that europe is way cooler. yeah, ok, the united states of america is still the greatest nation on earth, bla bla bla, but it sure as hell is nice to travel to other countries and get away from here for a bit. then when you get back it is a nice relief to find that people speak english and you can use dollars as money again. i have been told that my trip to europe will actually include a stay at a resort in croatia, of all places. that is sure to be interesting. apparently resorts in the former yugoslavia are much cheaper than resorts in wealthier nations. i hope nobody starts any wars in the countries i visit while i am there. that would suck. i know this girl who was visiting thailand about 2 or 3 years ago when it had a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government. apparently it wasn’t really that big of a deal, life as usual continued for virtually everybody, and most people were pretty glad the military coup happened. i guess democracy isn’t as popular as it used to be. living in new york state, it is easy to see why.

my internet is broken

i don’t know what the hell is going on here... some websites and things work and others don’t, but the internet is not working the way it normally does most days. a few hours ago, the internet was completely offline in the house where i live for about an hour, since apparently the cable modem could not communicate with the dhcp server run by the broadband internet service provider. half the websites on the internet come up with error messages, or the text loads but the images don’t show up, and they are very slow. but some websites still work 100% perfectly (at least when i am online and the internet isn’t completely off). all the computers in the house are configured perfectly for the internet and nothing has been changed on them, and these problems occur no matter what web browser is used. it is not just the web (hypertext transfer protocol) but stuff over other internet protocols is also effected. it seems the problem is certain servers either do not respond, respond slowly, or cannot be contacted in the first place for some reason. i think the dns servers are probably working but i dunno. i am pretty sure this is the internet service provider’s fault. the cable modem actually has lights on it to show whether it is connected, and when the whole internet was offline, you can guess what was going on with the lights: they were all indicating that there was a problem and it could not connect. i think perhaps the internet service provider (which, to be more open about things, happens to be time warner cable’s roadrunner service) might be a bit overloaded with its bandwidth. as ted stevens would say, the tubes are clogged. now obviously i am able to access blogger.com right now to post this; it is one of the sites that happens to be working. but there are sooooooo many websites that are down right now, at least when i try to connect to them. this is just getting really annoying. broadband internet access is not supposed to be this crappy. half of all the news websites i try to connect to do not work, and i am not talking about newspapers that are out of business, but news websites that are popular and updated very often. how am i supposed to know what the news is when i can’t even access half the news websites for some strange reason? i could watch news on tv, read a newspaper, or listen to news on the radio, and i suppose even my cell phone has a service that lets me read news and other websites (that costs an extra $5 a month so i am not subscribed to it). but... seriously... none of those news sources is anywhere near as good as the internet. on the internet i can look at like 20 different news sites or whatever i want instead of getting it all from 1 source and having to assume that the 1 source is correct on everything and will fully inform me on everything i need to know about what’s going on. at least that is how the internet USUALLY works. currently, the internet JUST BARELY works. now, if you are connecting to the internet and your connection works fine, and you can access any website you want, ok great. i am just complaining that my internet connection is a bit iffy. we have actually had this same internet service provider for about 10 years. they are the only broadband provider in the area. so there isn’t really anywhere else to go. every once in a while over the years we have had problems with our internet connection, and sometimes they fix the problem really well, and other times the problem is something more pervasive, like they replace your cable modem with another identical model and you continue to have the same problem, or they look at the wires in your basement and do some stuff with some tools and tell you everything is ok, and stuff is still the same afterwards. sometimes you can just call them on the phone and some guy in india just presses a button and it fixes everything with the connection between the cable modem and the internet service provider, at least temporarily. sometimes they say silly things like that maybe the router is broken or something, even though the router and cable modem have different ip addresses and i can access either one in my web browser to look at their status and configuration web pages, and both of them have plenty of indicator lights. and there is a firewall after all, so hackers and such are not a problem. anyway i am pretty disappointed by the internet connection failing like this. it is just not cool. i just want the internet to work. maybe there is some kind of virus or worm or something that has hijacked a bunch of computers with the same internet service provider as me, and those computers are using up all the bandwidth. that is a feasible explanation for the current phenomena, based on how the tcp/ip protocol operates. in any event, i am hopeful that this problem will clear itself up soon and the internet will go back to working normally again.

update immediately after i first posted this and then tried out some websites: the internet seems to work now. i guess that it was just a temporary problem. things like this just piss me off though. why can’t the internet just work 100% of the time like it is supposed to? i think perhaps a number of websites i was trying to look at have scheduled server downtime in the middle of the night, and perhaps i was trying to connect during their server downtime. that makes more sense than there being a ton of bandwidth being used in the middle of the night. still, i wonder what is wrong with the dhcp server that assigns my cable modem its ip address, and why it wasn’t working for an hour, keeping all the computers in the house offline for that time. all of the websites that i remember not working before now work perfectly and come up very fast, so it seems the broadband internet connection is now working perfectly again. i just wonder what happened to make it temporarily not function correctly. it is too late to find out now, since now everything works perfectly. i could print out the log from the cable modem of all the error messages it had when it couldn’t connect to the internet, indicating that the dhcp server did not respond. it is all rather puzzling. despite all my technical knowledge, i cannot really explain what happened, and now it all seems to have resolved itself automatically. i am not very satisfied with that situation. i want to understand everything, understand how things work and why they work that way, and understand what goes wrong when something goes wrong, and why it went wrong. however, this does not seem to have been much or even any of a learning experience for me. as someone with a degree in computer science who is a+ certified in computer repair, it really frustrates me when i encounter computer problems that are beyond my expertise. this is actually a networking problem though, not a computer problem per se, and there are a number of separate certification programs for people who want to be experts in computer networking so they can set up and fix computer networks. it would be nice, though, if i already knew everything and were basically omniscient. or if the internet just WORKED and never had any problems, which would mean nobody would have to know anything about it. whatever... who cares... it works now... meh. i need to sleep now... bye bye... i had pretty bad insomnia last night... hope it doesn’t happen again tonight... who knows... i sure as hell won’t be on my computer posting to my blog, i will either be asleep or trying to sleep... good night.

the mad teabagging party

ok, so the mad teabagging party was held yesterday on april 15th. meanwhile, responsible citizens like me, instead of having teabagging parties, actually paid our taxes. and you know what? this year, i actually got money back from the state and federal governments, whereas in past years, i have always had to pay them money. the teabaggers claim to, among other things, be protesting high taxes, but didn’t barack obama just lower taxes for 95% of americans? seriously. unless you are part of the top 5%, you already got a tax cut. what are they protesting, the bailouts? well guess what? if the bailouts hadn’t happened, their precious private sector and large corporations would have all gone bankrupt by now, and we really would have socialism. the wingnuts and paultards keep crying socialism all the time, like the boy who cried wolf, and it is getting kind of ridiculous. if they actually saw socialism they wouldn’t recognize it. so this astroturf operation by the republicans, the teabagging parties across the nation, was originally started by the paultards, which is what everybody who is not a ron paul supporter calls wacko ron paul supporters when we want to make fun of them. remember the paultards also celebrated “v for vendetta” and its anti-hero who wore a guy fawkes mask with a “money bomb” of large numbers of contributions to ron paul’s presidential campaign on guy fawkes day. the anti-hero of v for vendetta was a terrorist, and so was guy fawkes, who tried to blow up the british parliament several hundred years ago. now the internet hacker/activist group “anonymous”, like the paultards, also is into guy fawkes masks, even more so, but anonymous is into them in an ironic way. the first member of anonymous to wear a guy fawkes mask was a stick figure cartoon character known as epic fail guy. similarly, the ron paul campaign was nothing but epic fail. basically, this teabagging thing was first started by paultards (and after all paultards are republicans, since you had to be a registered republican to vote for ron paul in most of the primaries or caucuses). then some republican bloggers and national republican organizations started to take notice and became official supporters of the teabagging parties, and soon republican fox news and republican talk radio were full of stuff promoting the teabagging parties. they renamed them “tea parties” from the original idea of “teabagging”, since the republicans did not want to be associated with oral sex, although current republican senator david vitter has publicly admitted to be totally into prostitutes... and now he is into teabagging parties. you know what is funny? according to the local newspaper, there were actually 3 of these teabagging parties here in broome county in upstate new york. today when i was going to work someone actually asked me for directions to this place, and i gave him directions, and after i got home and looked at the newspaper, i realized that the guy who asked me for directions was going to one of the teabagging parties. and i gave him the correct directions for how to get there, too! then later that night one of the radio hosts on the student-run radio station from binghamton university gave an on-the-air speech in favor of the teabagging parties and expressing regret that he had been too busy with his classes that day to attend the teabagging party that was held at binghamton university. i heard the dj’s speech live on the air and it actually seemed to make some sense. the dj was mostly concerned with government spending and deficits getting out of control, and said how great america is. and he, like the republican leaders, referred to these protests as “tea parties”, not using the original term that the paultards had called it back when they first got the idea of “teabagging” all the politicians in washington, d.c. yes, originally it was called teabagging, because it involved sending actual teabags in the mail to members of congress, and congress is always unpopular. the people who came up with the idea of teabagging knew exactly what it meant, and the whole thing was a big joke while at the same time having a serious message... the paultards felt tired of being screwed by the government so they decided to screw the government symbolically, with teabags sent in the mail representing the sexual practice of teabagging, while at the same time having some kind of connection to the boston tea party back when the american colonists were protesting british taxes. i don’t quite understand the whole thing and how it developed, but apparently when rick santelli on cnbc went into a sick rant and it became a viral video, this helped build momentum for this teabagging idea. or should i say, joementum, in tribute to joe lieberman and his myriad failings as a senator. obviously joe lieberman was not involved in this, except as one of the victims who received teabags in the mail along with everyone else in congress. i just like saying joementum, just like i prefer calling them teabagging parties to tea parties. so apparently the teabagging parties were not big gay orgies, despite being called teabagging parties. fox news and other right-wing media are portraying this as if it is the first great populist grassroots movement since... since what? since the great populist movement of the pumas last year, remember? the p.u.m.a. movement stood for “party unity my ass” and was another republican astroturf operation that targeted hillary clinton supporters and tried to get them to vote for john mccain in the general election. originally there were just a few pumas and they actually were democrats who supported hillary clinton, but once the republicans found out they created lots of puma websites and started trying to spread puma propaganda, and republicans effectively took over leadership of the puma movement, which petered out after hillary conceded the election to barack obama and endorsed him, turning out to not be much of a movement at all. some of the pumas called barack obama a dangerous left-wing socialist and said we needed sensible centrist leadership like hillary clinton or john mccain. other pumas called barack obama a right-wing neocon in disguise and said that electing him would be like 4 more years of bush so john mccain would be better since after those 4 years hillary clinton could come back as the great liberal savior who would finally end right-wing misrule. yes, some people actually thought obama was a right-wing neocon, just like some people think he is a left-wing socialist. the pumas never had a coherent message other than hillary clinton good, barack obama bad. the message of the newer astroturf movement, the teabaggers, is even more incoherent, since some of them want to throw out all the bums in washington in both parties, and others are partisan republicans who support republican politicians and oppose democratic ones. basically the teabaggers are against taxes, government spending, bailouts, big government, barack obama, the democrats, and liberalism. after years and years of liberals doing public protests and conservatives just supporting george w. bush and the republicans but never doing any protests or activism outside party politics, now the right-wingers seem to be actually doing protests for the first time in a long time. well, ok, the anti-abortion people have been doing protests all these years, but most republicans are not that into protests and think it is some liberal hippie silliness that no sensible person would ever be involved in. protests are usually full of silliness, but now all the silliness is at right-wing protests. those of us on the left still have protests (i think)... for instance lots of pacifist groups keep holding peace vigils and protesting the wars, even now that barack obama is the commander-in-chief and many of them voted for him. protests sure are silly, but these teabagging ones take the cake, except maybe when compared to the pumas last year, since the pumas were really quite ridiculous, especially harriet christian, the most famous of them, or lady lynn forester de rothschild, an ultra-wealthy banking heiress from european nobility who called barack obama an elitist.

on to more serious news, the obama family has a new dog named bo. it is a gift from ted kennedy and is a portuguese water dog, the same type he has as pets, and it is related to the dogs ted kennedy has, from the same breeder, and trained by the same professional dog trainer. this is possibly one of ted kennedy’s last major public acts, since after all he is dying of brain cancer, and probably has just months to live. if dying of brain cancer is not serious business, i don’t know what is. also, dogs might act silly, but they are our friends, they help cheer us up, and when we lose a dog, it feels just as sad and tragic as when a human being dies. getting a new puppy is sort of like getting a new baby, except babies grow up to become regular boring adult humans, while puppies grow up to become dogs that are almost as silly as puppies.

on to even more serious news... pirates! they keep kidnapping people, ships, and cargo off the coast of somalia. somalia is the only country in the world whose form of government for over a decade has been anarchy. some anarchist theorists actually claim that economic growth under anarchy in somalia has been better than it was during the years when somalia had a functioning government. and some even more crazy people sometimes claim that somalia actually has a government... what it actually has are a bunch of people who pretend to be a government but do not even control their own capital city, let alone any other territory. whenever someone mentions “the government of somalia” you know they are full of bullshit. that is like referring to the one world government. similar to the government of somalia, the one world government is pure fiction and does not exist. so according to market anarchists (who are like libertarian paultards except they take libertarian principles to their logical extremes), somalia’s anarchy is totally awesome and causes all sorts of innovation in the private sector, and things that ought to be legalized are legal in somalia because under anarchy there are no laws, which is exactly what anarchists want. anyway, one of the innovations that the people in somalia’s private sector have come up with, one that would be illegal in any other country, is hi-tech, 21st century piracy. yes, these pirates are hi-tech. they have machine guns, speed boats, and satellite phones that work out in the middle of the ocean. their operations are extremely profitable, and the pirates in charge of things stay put on land, keeping in contact with the pirates at sea by phone. it is basically somewhat similar to the mafia, drug cartels, or street gangs, except they do this stuff out in the ocean. while somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, it is near the suez canal, where a large portion of the goods that supply europe go thru all the time, coming from asia. as for europe exporting stuff back to asia... well not as much, but i am sure they export at least a bit, and it probably mostly goes thru the suez canal. everything that goes thru that canal goes by the coast of somalia, and the pirates can easily attack any ship they want. under maritime and international law, non-military ships are not allowed to have things like machine guns, so it is illegal for the merchants shipping goods through the suez canal to carry weapons onboard the ships that are as powerful as the weapons carried by the pirates onboard their speedboats. shipping companies almost all have pursued strategies of negotiating with the pirates, giving them ransom, and letting them keep it and get off free, and now the pirate leaders of somalia are very wealthy, especially compared to everyone else in somalia. any would-be government of somalia that ever tried to form would not stand a chance against the pirates, who would be able to use their money to buy weapons for and hire as mercenaries large enough armies to crush anyone else in somalia who dared to oppose them. the only forces that are powerful enough to fight the pirates are forces from outside somalia, such as the united states military, or, believe it or not, the french military. yes, both we, the americans, as well as the french, have killed somali pirates in recent days to end hostage standoffs. i think all the non-pirates behaved heroically. however, the pirates are resolved to continue their piracy, and for good reason: they are making money hand over fist, it is the only way they have to make money, and they live in a country that has not had a functioning government for many years, filled with extreme poverty, starvation, and lots of violence and collapse of social order. islamists tried to take control of somalia awhile ago, but since they were loosely allied with al qaeda, the united states paid ethiopia money to invade and occupy somalia and support a fake somali government, which was toppled soon after ethiopia decided to withdraw its troops. now, to be honest, there are different parts of somalia that are controlled by different “governments”, each claiming to be legitimate, and some of these parts are more stable than others. after the ethiopian withdrawal, the islamists have gained control of more territory once again, for example. however, these “governments” are mostly just warring factions fighting over territory, and are not like real governments. the pirates in somalia are closely allied to one of the “governments” that controls a bit of territory along the coastline. it is easy for the pirates to ally with one of the warring factions that controls some territory, since the pirates are the ones with all the money they got as ransom payments for the ships, hostages, and cargo. everyone else in that country is dirt poor so the pirates can easily bribe the leaders of a faction into supporting them. the united states has been involved in somalia too, of course, but we have been supporting a bunch of losers, namely the so-called central government that is incredibly weak and does not control any territory, rather than supporting a rival faction that has a better chance at winning control of the country. that is why we had to pay ethiopia to invade somalia on our behalf, using the entire ethiopian military as a mercenary-for-hire proxy fighting service because the united states military was too busy fighting other wars. that mission did not exactly go as planned, although early on the ethiopians easily defeated every foe they faced. the ethiopians got tired of fighting on our behalf, and we were not paying them enough to make them continue, so they withdrew. we americans could easily conquer somalia if we wanted, but then we would face the same problem as in iraq and afghanistan: invading and occupying a foreign country, doing nation-building, putting in place a puppet government, and fighting an insurgency. the amount of money that such a military endeavor would cost is probably far more than the amount of money the pirates are making, so a more fiscally responsible policy would be to just pay the pirates the money they ask for, after talking them down to a reasonable sum of money. we are in enough wars already. maybe if some other country wants to fight the pirates, we could offer them some kind of support, but our military has enough other problems to deal with. by the way, according to market anarchists, having a government-run military is evil socialism, and gives the government a monopoly on the use of force to impose its will on others, and is therefore horribly oppressive. market anarchists believe in having privately owned militias that people pay money to in order to have protection. so, for all the teabaggers protesting so-called socialism, do you realize that the biggest socialist institution in the entire world is the united states military? why don't you send the military some of your teabags? oh yeah, no gays in the military, how could i forget. if there is ever a draft, i hope the no-gays rule is still in place, because i will need some way to avoid being forced against my will to fight for a cause i do not believe in, and if pretending to be gay is the only way to avoid having to serve in some unjustified war like the one in iraq, then that is what it takes. back in world war 2, i think men up to their early 40s were drafted, so i am not out of the woods yet at my age, since i am still in my 20s. just like the former hippies holding weekly peace vigils, i am pretty much a pacifist opposed to all war, so i could never in good conscience ever serve in a war. and if i were a soldier, my anxiety disorder would mean that either i would be a nervous wreck, too nervous to shoot straight or function properly, or i would be drugged up on anti-anxiety pills, too drugged up to shoot straight or function properly. even if i believed in the mission and wanted to fight, i would not be capable, because of my emotional disorder of panic attacks. anyone who wanted me as a soldier would have to be crazy, since besides that problem, i was always the worst person at every sport i played in school, and i would just totally suck at being a soldier. maybe they could have me clean latrines or cook food for the actual soldiers, or do some other menial task. i dunno. maybe they might even decide to put my ivy-league education, high intelligence, and math and computer background to good use, and have me actually use my skills. naw. nobody would ever give me a job where i actually use my skills. hasn’t happened yet. that’s why the economy sucks, because nobody is behaving rationally. just look at all the teabagging parties... can you honestly name 1 person who is behaving rationally? and no, you can’t name yourself, since you are biased in your own favor, probably. the fact is, we people are never rational, since it is biologically impossible for us to achieve rationality. our brains are just not wired that way. now think about this: is it rational for someone to give himself up as a hostage and put his own life on the line to help save his ship’s crew? very brave and heroic, but not exactly rational. is it rational to give orders to shoot the pirates on a lifeboat with that very hostage, if just 1 missed shot means that the hostage will either be killed by you or by the pirate that is not killed instantly by a bullet, and if your mission is to save the hostage, not kill him? if you really think about it, nobody in this pirate debacle behaved rationally at all, not the pirates or anybody else. the only thing everybody had in common was irrationality. now computers are perfectly rational, so if we built robots to do stuff, the robots would be rational too if they had computer chips functioning in the same role as our human brains. imagine robot pirates taking a robot ship captain hostage, and then a navy of robots is sent to rescue the robot captain from the robot pirates. the whole thing sounds utterly absurd! robots would never behave in such a silly fashion! they are far too sophisticated... instead, the robots would all be having parties to celebrate how logical they are, and only the most rational robots would get invited. the less rational robots would just sit there and rust in self-pity, feeling an irrational sense of loneliness that does not make any sense for robots to have, since robots are not supposed to have any emotions. now, as for the pirate situation, the nation hardest hit by the piracy is of course egypt, since the pirate attacks are causing less and less merchants to ship cargo thru the suez canal, cutting into the egyptian government’s main source of revenue. so logically, egypt has a stronger direct interest in putting a stop to somali piracy than any other nation. if other nations like the united states encourage egypt to take care of this problem, perhaps the great pharaoh will be moved by our pleas and let our people go from the pirates who take them hostage. well ok, egypt has a president now, instead of a pharaoh, but he still needs to let our people go... not just let them go from the pirates, but how about letting us go thru the suez canal without paying him a toll? no, just kidding, of course egypt gets a toll, otherwise there is no incentive for them to crack down on the pirates. another idea is, maybe if we let the islamists take over somalia, the islamists would put an end to the piracy because it violates shariah law? who knows? the taliban is apparently profiting off the trade of afghan heroin, so i don’t think we can count on islamists to not want to make money off lucrative money-making opportunities such as somali piracy. or we could just ask our best friends, the israelis, to launch some of their nuclear weapons, and have the weapons aimed all over the coastal areas of somalia. then afterwards we would claim we had nothing to do with the nuclear attack by the israelis, and join the rest of the world in condemning their actions. what an incredibly stupid idea. we should probably just do absolutely nothing, and wait for the egyptians or someone else to solve this problem for us. besides, the suez canal is not used to supply the united states with goods; it is used for trade between europe and asia. if egypt does not deal with this, perhaps the europeans or asians will, but it does not really affect the united states that much at all. perhaps we just need to periodically make a show of force to demonstrate we are the world’s only superpower, and that is why we killed those somali pirates in a daring rescue of the captain. we have been paying out so much in bailouts, we could have easily afforded the ransom and not had to kill anyone, and it would have cost less than this naval expedition. or we could have just nuked the pirates ourselves. what is the point of having nuclear weapons if you never get to use them? i am just kidding. we need to eliminate all nuclear weapons from this planet because they are too dangerous. being nuked is almost as bad as being teabagged. ALMOST.

glenn beck is crazy

this glenn beck guy is seriously off his meds and needs to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital:



time for the men in white coats to take him to the loony bin...

oh great

oh great, some jackass murdered a bunch of people here in binghamton. this is so messed up... nothing like this has ever happened here before. goddamn murderer. at least the guy who did it is dead. we have always had so little crime in this small tight-knit community before today. a very sad day for everyone. i am glad i was not at the civic center today. my job is just across the chenango river from that place.

right-wing stupidity

i often come across stupid comments right-wingers leave on the internet. today i truly found a gem: an entire thread full of comments by them denouncing the new york times and proclaiming how happy they are that it is going out of business. it actually isn’t going out of business, but these conservative lunatics have a very tenuous hold on reality, and as they make clear in their comments, they wish that the only media that existed were conservative propaganda outlets like fox news, right-wing rags like the new york post, washington times, and wall street journal, and right-wing talk radio (rush limbaugh, sean hannity, mike savage, etc.). ok, so here it is, take a look! just read the comments there, and you will see a huge number of incredibly idiotic comments by right-wing loonies, and a few sensible comments by people who are not right-wing lunatics. when i was in college at cornell i read every issue of the cornell review that was published during that time. it is the ultra-right-wing student newspaper written by complete lunatics at cornell, and it was founded by ann coulter when she was a student at cornell. anyway, reading the cornell review was a form of entertainment for me and many other cornell students, and the vast majority of us who read it found it to be full of nonsensical articles that are completely without merit written by people who seemingly inhabit some parallel universe where creationism is factually true, any sexual intercourse outside of a heterosexual marriage is an evil sin, unregulated free-market capitalism is the only economic system that works, the war in iraq is perfectly justified because saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and evil godless liberals (who are all communists in disguise) were somehow ruining the country even at a time when conservative republicans controlled all 3 branches of government. so anyway, i have long observed that conservative republicans are completely disconnected from reality because they are so indoctrinated by their absurd ideology, and this seems to hold true both when they are in power and when they are out of power. they seem to think, for example, that ad hominem attacks against al gore for his personal energy usage disprove the scientific theory of global warming. the beautiful part about all this is, pretty much every republican politician out there calls themselves a conservative, and lots of democrats do too, but hardly any politicians are willing to be associated with the term liberal, because they are all scaredy cats when it comes to being associated with liberalism. this is because foaming-at-the-mouth rabid conservatives have spread their infection to much of the public, making people think that liberalism is somehow bad, and thus only a small percentage of people have the guts to actually call themselves liberals. i am a liberal, of course, because i am not some dumbass coward afraid of the ramifications of admitting the truth. now let me discuss the merits of the arguments the conservatives were making in this thread at politico.com. many of them were saying “who cares about darfur?”, admitting to the public that they do not really care about the suffering of other people, even if the other people are innocent victims of a genocidal campaign of terror by a brutal dictator, namely sudanese president bashir who has been indicted for crimes against humanity. of course, i have always known that conservatism is based on selfishness and liberalism is based on actually caring about other people, and statements like this by conservatives only confirm this truism. i also read many comments rejoicing in the downfall of the new york times, claiming that it was full of liberal bias. i suppose that conservatives don’t care about facts, like the fact that the new york times helped lead the way in cheerleading for bush’s war in iraq before the war started, or that the new york times always has at least 2 staunch conservatives among its small group of paid opinion columnists, and whenever 1 of them leaves, they find another staunch conservative to replace them. if you look at a conservative newspaper such as the wall street journal or the washington times, you will find that every single opinion columnist is a diehard conservative, and no dissent from the party line is allowed. the new york times regularly criticizes both republicans and democrats, but republican publications such as the wall street journal and washington times are completely 1-sided on their opinion pages. the news pages of the wall street journal are respectable, but the news pages of the washington times are just as full of right-wing bias as the editorials, which is not surprising, given the fact that the washington times is owned by korean cult leader rev. sun myung moon, who served time in federal prison in the united states before he managed to use his political connections to become a free man once again. sometimes conservatives even accuse the washington post of being a democratic paper, which is far more ridiculous than saying that of the new york times, since the washington post is a centrist paper that usually favors the conservatives, not the liberals. the conservatives who comment on threads like the one i linked to get almost all their information from conservative propaganda outlets, except these internet conservatives tend to get most of it from conservative websites on the internet, not television, radio, or newspapers. i get news from the internet, television, radio, and newspapers... from all of them... even news-magazines like time magazine too. conservatism is insane because it is a form of fundamentalism that applies to all issues. conservatives are fundamentalist about religion, fundamentalist about free markets, and fundamentalist about pretty much everything, which means that they all have 1 point of view that they all agree on, regardless of any evidence to the contrary, and they stick to that point of view no matter what. being liberal, as a dictionary will tell you, has among its definitions being open-minded. as for conservative, the first definition is “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.” the first definition for liberal is “favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.” another definition for liberal is “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.” another definition for liberal is “of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.” and liberal is also defined as “open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.” in other words, liberalism means that people are open-minded and do not stubbornly stick to old ideas that don’t work and have been proven wrong, while conservatism means either wanting to preserve the status quo and avoid change, or to go back to a previous status quo that was traditionally followed in the past until recently. now, there are several arguments that could be made against these dictionary definitions, such as saying that the dictionaries are written by a bunch of liberals, or that liberal and conservative no longer mean what they traditionally meant several decades ago, but i am not going to get into a debate over that. i would just like to say that the definitions you get at dictionary.com are fairly accurate in my opinion, and they seem to portray liberalism very positively and conservatism more negatively. perhaps the most obvious flaw of conservatism is that conservatives often find themselves debating scientists, and saying that science is wrong. this glaring flaw in conservatism is why i think it is a form of lunacy. science is what has brought us all of the modern technology we take for granted nowadays. the scientific theories underlying many of the advances in technology are the very theories conservatives claim are incorrect, yet conservatives use the same technological devices as liberals all the time. for example, much of modern medicine is based on the theories of evolution, and most conservatives are not so wacky that they refuse medical care and seek out faith healers or witch doctors instead. most conservatives are at least sane enough to accept modern medicine and allow it to be used on them. they just disagree with the primary theory underlying the very scientific advances in medicine that save their lives, the theory of evolution. evolution, for instance, explains why bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, something that cannot be explained by so-called “creation science” or “intelligent design”. another atrocious thing about conservatives besides their complete disregard for science or logic in favor of ancient superstitions is the fact that they only seem to care about people who are very wealthy, and always try to change the laws to help out people who have much more money than they know what to do with, at the expense of everyone else. they even engage in blatant corruption like the awarding of no-bid contracts to halliburton, the company dick cheney was ceo of before becoming vice president, and they nakedly do this corruption in front of everyone, and have no remorse or shame about it. it is hard for me to find any redeeming qualities in conservatism, but i am liberal and open-minded enough to find at least two. first of all, if there is some old tradition that liberals want to change, and the tradition is actually good and the proposed change would actually be bad, then in this case the mindless impulse of conservatives to always want to preserve old traditions actually turns out to be the correct course of action. a stopped clock is right twice a day, as they say. secondly, we liberals want to fix problems, and often our open-minded thinking leads to bold proposals, but these bold proposals are not always correct. it is necessary to have somebody arguing the opposite from what we argue, arguing that our proposals are wrong, so that if we do come up with flawed proposals, the flaws in the proposals are made known and debated, and then hopefully the flawed proposals are either fixed or discarded. but in general, liberals do want to fix problems and conservatives want to leave them unfixed. that is just the general mindset of both groups, and conservatives do occasionally realize that a problem needs to be solved. usually, though, when conservatives want to solve a “problem”, the “problem” is just liberal policies that they disagree with, and not an actual problem. for instance, in the case of the new york times, conservatives view its existence as a problem, because the new york times generally favors liberal points of view over conservative ones, and despite the fact that there are far more conservative media outlets than liberal ones, conservatives cannot stand the existence of even one liberal media outlet. conservatives would like to shut out all debate and have their opinions be the only opinions allowed, which they make very clear in the comments thread i linked to above. they are really an undemocratic group of people, but luckily they have not ended democracy in our country yet, probably because democracy is a tradition and they feel bound by traditions. now i may come off as biased, and of course i am quite biased, obviously, but i do often wonder about whether there are intelligent, thoughtful, open-minded conservatives who are capable of considering other opinions and defending their own opinions in a logical manner without resorting to absurd arguments or arguments based on claiming the factual authority of things like the bible. there are a few conservative columnists and pundits that occasionally seem to be sentient beings, but just when i start to have faith in humanity and think that maybe conservatives aren’t all bad, my new favorite conservative always has to go back to spouting absurdities without logical justification, and i have to stop liking them, since the whole basis of me liking them was that they seemed to be logical and make sense and not be total wackos. as for liberal commentators, there are many that i like. for instance, i like paul krugman of the new york times, which you may find surprising, given that paul krugman has said that barack obama’s economic plan will not work and that i also like barack obama a great deal. i also like the columnists at the nation magazine a great deal. my main news sources that i look at each day on the internet are the huffington post, cnn.com, and the drudge report. yes, i know, the drudge report is conservative, but, i am a liberal and we are open-minded. my mind is always open to new ideas, even now. for instance, when it comes to things like bailouts, i am not sure whether they are a good idea or a bad idea. i do not trust the government or large corporations, but the government is far more trustworthy than corporations since at least it is accountable to voters. corporations are supposedly accountable to shareholders who own common stock and can vote, but in practice, this does not work at all, and corporate leaders are basically not accountable to anyone except the government, and only sometimes, because there is selective enforcement and double standards. bernie madoff was the former chairman of the nasdaq stock exchange, the 2nd largest stock exchange on wall street, the one where most of the tech stocks are, and he pulled off the biggest ponzi scheme in history. the person in charge of the stock exchange is the highest level you can get to in wall street, so the corruption in wall street goes all the way up to the top, bernie madoff being proof of this. and of course the government cannot be trusted, since after all, we have gone through 8 years of having george w. bush run the government, and it is still full of many conservatives he put there, some of whom are bound to sabotage things that the obama administration tries to accomplish. ok, that is just one of many reasons not to trust the government. another more obvious one is that governments can never be trusted under any circumstances, which is obvious if you look at history and see how all the governments have been untrustworthy in the past. any large enough institution becomes to some extent a malicious entity that strikes out against those who oppose it and tries to suppress information that makes it look bad, regardless of whether it is a public or private institution. part of being liberal and open-minded is being skeptical and not believing in things 100% unless you have absolute proof, so a true liberal, even if they think obama is great, is still somewhat skeptical, since you can never be too sure about any politician. if you are not skeptical about your own opinions, and you are a bit of a fundamentalist about them, then you are really just like the conservatives. you have to at least think twice about things, consider other points of view, and have some doubts about your own opinions, or else you are not truly a sentient being, but merely an overrated animal that knows how to walk and talk but not how to think. yes, humans are animals, unless you think it is better to categorize us as plants, fungi, bacteria, or something else, but of course calling humans animals is controversial to many conservatives, despite it being a scientific fact. to me, anything that conflicts with science conflicts with reality itself, and has zero credibility. science, logic, and mathematics are the foundation of all human understanding of reality, and any understanding of reality that is not based on them has no real justification at all. for years, conservatives have argued that if you cut taxes on the wealthy, this can actually increase government revenue. that is an example of something that completely violates all mathematics and logic and has basically zero validity whatsoever. pretty much everything conservatism is based on is fundamentally illogical and nonsensical, which is why the end result is the same. garbage in, garbage out. it is much more popular for people to call themselves conservatives than liberals only because conservatives are masters of sticking to the party line and staying on message, creating a vast echo chamber of conservatives who all agree with each other and spread the message to other people who are not conservatives. also, since conservatives favor the wealthy, the wealthy have a natural interest in favoring conservatives, which means conservatives have a major source of campaign contributions as well as people who own media conglomerates that will spread the conservative message for them. liberals favor the poor and middle class, who are not really in charge of anything, despite the fact that the vast majority of people are poor or middle class. this means lots of potential voters, but those potential voters can easily be won over to the other side through the ubiquitous conservative misinformation coming from so many media outlets. and the conservatives want to silence the few media outlets that do not treat their ideas as equal to or better than liberal ideas. now think about this: many major cities, such as washington, d.c. or new york city, have very liberal populations, but their newspapers and other local news organizations do not share the same views as the public in those areas. new york city does have the new york times, but more people read the new york post, a conservative paper, since it is cheaper and has a tabloid format aimed for mass appeal, and there is also the wall street journal, another conservative paper that is quite popular. in washington, d.c., neither the washington post nor the washington times is liberal, although the residents of the city are incredibly and overwhelmingly liberal. the washington post is centrist and the washington times is very conservative, neither of them reflecting the views of the people of washington, d.c. i think this fundamentally indicates the cozy relationship between wealthy media barons and conservative politicians whose policies benefit the wealthy. for anyone who still believes the myth that the media has a liberal bias, i highly recommend the excellent book what liberal media? by eric alterman, which thoroughly debunks that myth. it turns out that even the new york times is not as liberal as people think it is, and it only seems liberal because all the other news outlets are so conservative. of course, the book what liberal media? was written prior to msnbc deciding to become a liberal network, but its thesis and many examples documenting how the media is actually conservative are still valid in my opinion. msnbc, for instance, is owned by a large corporation, general electric, and while its evening lineup may feature the liberals keith olbermann and rachel maddow, the warmup act, chris matthews, is a centrist who used to be a supporter of george w. bush, although nowadays he pretends that never happened. msnbc prominently features pat buchanan and other conservatives, and it gives hours of airtime every morning to conservative joe scarborough. in the past, msnbc gave shows to mike savage, tucker carlson, and don imus, among others, helping to spread the conservative message. the mike savage show, which was called savage nation, was especially awful. as for cnn, until recently they had glenn beck, and they still have lou dobbs. it is hard to make the case that cnn is liberal, and in fact they have a bias towards conservatives that is documented in the book by eric alterman. anyway, my point is, conservatism is basically an extension of fundamentalist religion, and arguing with a conservative is not really a political argument but a theological dispute, even if you do not even believe in their religion, because to them it is a theological dispute. it is pretty much a form of mental illness, one that is contagious, and one for which there is no known cure. most people who suffer from conservatism will have it for the rest of their lives. i hope that someday we can find a cure for this dreadful form of mental illness. the once great republican party, whose first president, the great liberal abraham lincoln, freed the slaves, has over about 150 years steadily gotten more and more conservative, and is now worse and more malignant than ever before, when the republican party was originally a source for good in our country. it is quite a sad tale how conservatives came to dominate the republicans, and when all the dixiecrats left the democratic party to become republicans, along with “reagam democrats”, the republicans successfully peeled away almost all the conservative democratic voters, and later most of the liberals who had voted republican in the past (such as for nixon or reagan) switched to voting for democrats like bill clinton. every 4 years, each presidential election seems to have the ideological split between the 2 parties become more rigid than ever, and there are always a number of former members of one party who “see the light” and switch parties, changing all their beliefs too. this gradual process has purified the essence of the democratic and republican parties so that both parties are now dominated by bases of voters whose views do not agree with the views of the majority of the public. the republican party, however, is much more strongly dominated by its conservative base than the democratic party is dominated by its liberal base. the democrats do not really have to do much to appease us liberals, and they can often govern as centrists and get away with it. republicans, on the other hand, have to be staunch conservatives, or else they will find ultra-conservatives running against them in primary elections the next time they are up for re-election, and they will be replaced by ultra-conservative radicals. this is why republicans in congress are so staunchly conservative and in lockstep with fox news and right-wing talk radio on everything. they have eliminated dissent from within the ranks of their party, and they have proven that they do not really have any governing philosophy other than victory at all costs and trying to pander to the base as much as possible without alienating moderates. they seem just like a fanatical cult of brainwashed zombies, except they have no leader, which has thrown them into chaos recently. at least they can agree on one thing: opposing liberalism and democrats, and trying to obstruct everything that liberal democrats try to do. perhaps i should feel sorry for them, but i cannot feel sorry for such intolerant, hateful people who think everyone who had different beliefs from them will end up in hell for all eternity, yet who do not even care about the genocide in darfur. i don’t think they would want my pity either, but that is all the more reason to give it to them: because it would piss them off, and they deserve it, after giving us 8 years of hell under george w. bush. conservatives make the most absurd arguments, like back before obama was even elected, back in october, some of them were already blaming the economic recession on obama, claiming that the stock market went down in anticipation of obama winning the election, and that businesses were already laying off workers and cutting production in anticipation of a future obama win and future tax increases on them. to prove this point, these republican commenters claimed to own businesses themselves and be laying off workers and cutting production in anticipation of a future obama win that they thought would mean higher taxes on small business. this proves the depths to which the republicans have fallen. they have seemingly hit rock bottom, so perhaps the only direction they can go from here is up. and that is what frightens me. that is not to say that i am not also frightened by what is going on in our country, right now, even with my fellow democrats in charge. these bailouts are quite disturbing, and i also have a lot of problems with other aspects of the economic policy, such as the large deficits, even though i know that large deficits are supposedly a necessary evil when you have a recession, according to most mainstream economists. having taken 4 semesters of economics in college, i do not consider economics to be an actual science. it is a “social science”, or in more realistic terms, economics is a form of applied mathematics used to advance ideological points of view by making dishonest oversimplifications and assumptions about reality in order to lie by using statistics. even economists who want to tell the truth and think they are telling the truth cannot really do so, in my opinion, because the field of economics itself is fatally flawed. we saw evidence of how it is fatally flawed with alan greenspan’s reaction to the current recession: he was completely shocked and had not predicted it at all. billionaire hedge fund manager george soros, who also happens to be the biggest donor to the democrats, did predict it, and made a lot of money because his predictions turned out to be true, and you can read his theories about it here. you should take it with a grain of salt, though: he might just be trying to advance policies that would benefit his hedge fund, although i think that is unlikely and he seems sincere. the other reason to take it with a grain of salt is that economics is basically bullshit, even when it makes a correct prediction. it is like trying to predict the weather. we have theories to explain the weather and scientific models, but we still cannot predict weather, and disasters like hurricane katrina can catch us unprepared. economics is far less of a science than meteorology, since economics has become part of politics, economists are divided ideologically, and the scientific method is not the basis for this so-called “science”. it is impossible to do a controlled experiment in economics, and controlled experiments are necessary for doing real science. so in the absence of facts, opinions prevail, to the detriment of everyone, since everyone is part of the economy and everyone suffers because of failures in the economy. there is really no way economics could ever be fixed, other than simply having several hundred more years of human history in advanced technological societies during which economic data is monitored and kept for future generations to study. in each generation, conservatives argue in favor of the world being like what liberals in the previous generation argued in favor of. that is human progress. and liberals never want to go back to the old ways. we always want to achieve greater things than have ever been achieved before, rather than going back to the dark ages, the 1800s, the 1950s, or any other time in the past. the fundamental basis for conservatism is being stuck in the past and wanting to keep everyone else stuck back in the past with you. i suppose it is natural for people to be afraid of change and want to stick with the old ways of doing things that they are comfortable with, so there will always be plenty of conservatives, regardless of how irrational conservatism is. i know the failures of conservatism much better than most people, because in my personal life i am afraid of change and i stick with the old ways of doing things that i have always done before, and i have found that this does not lead to any progress in life, yet i am unable to summon the courage to change things in my life. this is the problem with conservatism, except instead of feeling that way over their personal lives, people feel that way over government policy. and i know firsthand that it just won’t work, period. like they say, doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, and that is why conservatives are insane. of course, that is not the dictionary definition of insanity, so if you want to be picky about it, conservatives are not necessarily insane any more than anybody else would be insane, but that is only if you are obsessed with going by the dictionary definitions of things, which means you are obsessive and therefore insane. as i have shown by my earlier obsessive use of dictionary definitions in this post, i am likewise insane, so you should take everything i say with a grain of salt. therefore, conservatism is 100% true. just kidding, belated april fool’s joke. being obsessive is not a form of insanity either, technically. it is a natural personality variation, just like being right-wing or being stupid.