http://www.michaelshermer.com/2009/09/paranoia-strikes-deep/

Paranoia Strikes Deep
published September 2009
Why people believe in conspiracies
Michael Shermer

*** begin quote ***

Conspiracies do happen, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the victim of an assassination conspiracy, as was Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, gunned down by the Serbian secret society called Black Hand. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a Japanese conspiracy (although some conspiracists think Franklin Roosevelt was in on it). Watergate was a conspiracy (that Richard Nixon was in on). How can we tell the difference between information and disinformation? As Kurt Cobain, the rocker star of Nirvana, once growled in his grunge lyrics shortly before his death from a self-inflicted (or was it?) gunshot to the head, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”

*** end quote ***

Argh! “THEY” are out to get us. Violent people want to seize the power of the gooferment to exercise over us. If you don’t think you are “being controlled”, just try doing something the establishment (left or right) doesn’t like!

# # # # #

Yes indeed. That’s chips as in British chips (French-fries, pomme-frites etc.) Battons of fried potato bathed in salt and vinegar for me please, mother…

So, when I awoke this morning, wifey was fully occupying one half of the bed. This is no comment on her size, even being pregnant. This is the fact that she likes to sleep with not only a duvet, but a zillion layers of blanket and coverings. The weight pressing down on her while she sleeps should leave her the shape of a pancake. So with her 2.5 tons of bedclothes, wifey takes up at least half of the bed. That doesn’t bother me, as I can quite happily and easily get by with what’s left and have room to move.

Until morning. When Murphy (the lurcher/dog/monkey/muppet) decides it’s time to climb onto the bed and get some morning cuddles. He’s not subtle. And he’s not small. He weighs three stone, can stretch out to almost five feet long, and appears to be essentially a short-haired bag of coathangers. And when he climbs on for morning cuddles, he lands between wifey and myself like a small elephant. Wifey and her mound of heavy coverings aren’t likely to shift, but the sudden addition of 3 stone of dog on top of the duvet means that said duvet sinks down between us beneath idiot dog and disappears from above me.

And of course, the wedge being driven between us propels me steadily toward the edge of the bed. So within a minute of Murphy deciding it’s time for cuddles, I am lying on a strip of bed four inches wide, with hardly any duvey and my pasty white buttocks hanging precariously out over the side of the bed. Until I either give up and get up, or I fall out of bed and land next to Seth, the other lurcher who is happy to stay in his own bed.

And that’s my morning routine at the moment!

And my current irritation is the fact that I am trying to arrange purchase and delivery of a christmas present to another country. Amazon sell it and do gift packaging. However, when you add international delivery in time for christmas and the packaging, the result is a little over SIX TIMES the cost of the actual product. Now tell me that’s not ridiculous. I’ve had a look at online companies in the country I want it delivered to, and they can do it in time, cheaply and gift-wrapped, but they don’t actually stock the bloody thing and couldn’t get it in time to send for Christmas. So in the end I’ve plumped for a company I trust that will do the job cheaply, but don’t do gift wrap.

Ah well.

And now the time for fried potato pieces.

Yay.

Have a goon ‘un, y’all!

Ciao

http://www.mrc.org/bozellcolumns/columns/2009/20091125064520.aspx

When the Press Favors Secrecy
The New York Times has no trouble reproducing damaging documents not meant for the public eye when the subject is national security — but not when the documents embarrass the “scientific experts” used to scare people about global warming.
By: L. Brent Bozell
November 24, 2009 10:39 ET

*** begin quote ***

The e-mails prove just how dishonest this left-wing global warming agenda truly is. And now suddenly, the New York Times has found religion, and won’t publish these private e-mails. Environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, who’s more global warming lobbyist than reporter, quoted – sparsely – from the e-mails, but declared he would not post these texts on his “Dot Earth” blog on the Times website: “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.” That rule didn’t apply to things like the disclosure of the SWIFT global bank monitoring program against terrorists.

*** end quote ***

Climate-gate proves that the issue is a fraud and the “scientists” can be trusted.

DIsgraceful! Guess they’l get a Nobel Prize for Science now.

# # # # #

Last night became accustomed to The Runaways. There was a particular member of the band that immediately caught my eye, considering that I’ve admired her from a young age.

And no. It has nothing to do with the fact that Kristen Stewart plays her in an upcoming movie.

Anyways, I suddenly caught myself reading her biography on wikipedia and then I searched for her music.

I realized how badly I wanted to play the guitar. I’d always wanted to do it, but now I feel like, If I don’t learn and play then I’ll fail at life.

Ever feel like you’re just born to do something?

Joan Jett makes me feel like I was.

As the year winds down to a close, holidays barrage our lives en masse. We start off the party with a fountain of candy, aka a new chance to try out those new bunny ears that we bought last spring, proceed to show our thanks by slaughtering the very animals that saved our lives (GEE. how thankful), and then find an excuse to do some extra shopping. I mean, cough* it’s not for ourselves.

Now, I hope I haven’t offended any of you. Stripped down to the bones, this is truly what our holidays have become. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time of showing thanks and giving to others, and many an American has prided themselves on being so ingenious as to have a holiday such as this. (It saves all the gratitude of a year and squishes it down to one day. What a conservation of saliva!) But… who are we really thankful to? The turkeys? What are we really thankful for? Our lives? By taking theirs? Don’t even try it. You can’t even sell this deal to a five year old. 

And yet, this, this  is what the American people call being thankful. Ha, that is funny. Hahahahahaha.

Actually, no. It’s not. 

In chinese, there is an idiom describing people like this. 忘恩負義 . Forgetting all the things, all the blessings that people have given and betraying their trust. Watered down, it equates to patricide or matricide. Maybe I sound a little too dramatic. A little too indignant. But if you think about it, isn’t it true? 

What right do humans have to take another animal’s life? Just as how no human can take the life of another human being without paying the price of the law, animal’s have their lives too. Is there no price? Maybe not on the human level, but in a spiritual level? I think the main reason we have so many world problems is because we think we can do everything. That we can control everything. Excuse me, but before humans existed, the planet survived quite well. Now, we have climate change, resource depletion, global warming, species extinction x1000. Our waters are polluted, and it seems the world is becoming a very perilous place. 

Although we claim to be the “intelligent species”, how then, did we end up destroying the very place we live in? Isn’t that just a bit hysterical? And to a certain degree, ironic? We strived to climb to the top, and after a lot of grunting and stamping on other animals’ faces, we get there. But if we don’t even have a world to live in, what is power? Nothing. Without a family and people to love and share with, what is money? And without morals, what is intelligence? 

Sure we are great. Sure we have made many scientific breakthroughs and have done a lot of wonderful, laudable things. But sometimes, we  need to find time to look into our own hearts. To see if we are truly thankful.

I spent November 12 through 15 at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Atlanta. It was a delightful weekend full of way too many thoughts on gender, sexuality, and equality. It’s taken me a while to write about the experience because I wanted to let some of my powerful reactions to simmer for a while. Now that I’m almost two weeks removed, I have a few comments to make:

1) Feminists do have style. I know the reputation: Feminists are ugly. They are dowdy. They have hairy legs and saggy breasts. They don’t show any skin. It’s all lies. There were beautiful women abound in all shapes, sizes, and colors, of all ages, wearing some of the cutest ensembles I have ever seen.

2) The sex wars continue. When studying feminism, I’ve encountered lots about the so-called “sex wars” of the late 1970s and the 1980s. In my idealistic worldview, I like to pretend that these are over. We now recognize that sexuality is often an important part of human existence, and that as long as sex occurs between consenting adults, it is just a (often fun) part of life. Yet, the topics of BDSM and female submission kept popping up. Even in sessions on entirely unrelated topics, participants would suggest that womenfolk’s lower place in society is because of the inherent degrading nature of heterosexual sex, the “female torture” that occurs within BDSM, or the “pornification” of American culture. Inevitably, someone else would counter that sexual freedom and expression is a valuable component in society. Really, it’s been thirty years and the great sex wars still continue?

If you’d ask me, I’d say it’s time to get over it. Sex is fun. Sex is good. Sex is an expression of desire and attraction, as well as the more animalistic nature within us all. Sex can be loving and vanilla, sex can be rough and kinky. I can be sexually dominant, I can be sexually submissive. I can have sex within long-term relationships or I can have sex with my friends. I can be aware and responsible for my own actions, while also assuring that my partner(s) are fully consenting. The sex wars have been going on for a decade longer than I’ve been alive, and even I’ve got this figure out. Isn’t it time to move on and focus on some more pressing issues upon which we can all agree?

3) Some people never change. Related to the previous observation, I was surprised at how unwilling certain participants were to consider new viewpoints. For example, on a presentation about transgendered individuals as part of the feminist movement, I had to listen to the two older ladies sitting behind me trading snide remarks for the duration of the hour. “The one on the left, that’s a he/she,” one of them said. The other added, “He can’t be part of the feminist movement, he’ll never be a real woman.” I think it can be valuable to admit what you don’t understand or are not comfortable with, but some of the comments I heard were downright disrespectful.

4) Race divides. For a conference entitled “Difficult Dialogues” that focused on issue of intersectionality, there were surprisingly few intersections happening. While I will admit that there were some truly inspiring presentations delivered to diverse crowds, there also seemed to be some strong racial divides. Even during Angela Davis’s keynote speech, the audience was largely split by skin color.  In my life, I try to break down barriers and have difficult dialogues. On the institutional level, however, it was difficult to observe.

5) Women’s centers can be powerful community resources. I am probably going to get in trouble with my friends for saying this, but the women’s center at my university does very little. In the past, it was a valuable community resource, and I’ve heard great things about the events they sponsored. Even last year, Inga Muscio, author of Cunt, spoke on campus. I don’t want to place blame on the women’s center leadership, as I think the problems lies more in the structure of the center and its position under student government than in a lack of passionate leaders. Anyways, women’s centers at other colleges and in other communities are doing so many things. They are financially independent! They have full time, professional employees! They attend conferences and discuss the challenges and successes they experience. They organize not only social events, but cultural and political events. They are resource centers and activist gathering places. We need more.

Don’t get me wrong. The conference was amazing. Next year in Denver, anyone?

Did you know that Isaac Newton’s birthday was Christmas Day? Or that spiders’ blood is copper-bearing rather than iron-bearing, and is blue? Or that on Venus, the sun rises in the west?

Also, did you know that Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen is a reworking of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale? Or that Tolkien’s Ents are named for the Old English word for ‘giant’? Or that Carveddras in Cornwall was once spelt Caer Vodred – Mordred’s castle?

I do. And because I think all of these things are cool things to know, I want to spread the love. I think everybody should know cool things – the little tidbits of trivia that make you smile.

The first few questions are random interesting factettes, of the sort that people accumulate through life, via pub quizzes and Fun Fact columns and the Horrible Histories books. The second set would qualify as middling to extreme medieval geekery depending on who you asked, and I only learnt the answers whilst doing my degree.

Yet I’m fairly well convinced that the same impulse lies behind the two sets of questions: the burning drive to, having learnt an Interesting Fact, immediately communicate it to everyone I know. I don’t do this very much (did you know that Charlie Brooker’s first name is actually Charlton?) at least I like to think I don’t, but the instinct for rei frigidae (cool facts) is constantly on the watch.

In the shady groves of Academe, research tends to be paramount. The promise of shiny new research is what gets funding out of the AHRC (the clue is the R) and contracts out of prestigious universities, because it’s the quality of the research, not the quality of the teaching, that is assessed in the RAE (again, clue is in the R). And obviously research is all well and good.

But there’s a reason that Great Academics do not spend all their time locked in ivory towers libraries perusing their books of magic. And that is because you have to somehow generate the next wave of researchers and the only way to do that is by teaching students, in the hope that some of the hitherto undifferentiated horde will be inspired to carry the sacred flame forward to the future. And so on.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the driving impulse behind the really good academics, the ones who get up on tables in full gownage to play God in Noahs Fludde and teach alliterative meter with the aid of bongos (no, really) is the same one that makes me want to tell people that there’s a gene called sonic hedgehog. It’s the sheer impetuous desire to want everyone else to be as excited about something as you are. To pass on facts that make you smile, or think, or tickle the intellect and send the imagination swerving off down unexpected paths.

Too often academia gets given the reputation of being a dry, boring, pedantic place. And I don’t doubt that for people who’ve been railroaded into university – because they don’t know what they want to do, or because it’s What Nice People Do even though they want to be a hairdresser, or for any other reason – it can indeed be dry, pedantic and boring as hell. The academic environment isn’t for everyone.

But I think that part of that reputation is to do with the (still a little bit prevalent) ivory-tower, ancient-scrolls approach to research and teaching. Ostensibly the reason we devote decades of our lives to our little fields of speciality – be it the physics of coffee or the nuances of 14th-century poetry – is because we love this stuff, and so why shouldn’t that love come out in the way academics teach their students?

In a subject as, um, subjective as English, there’s no such thing as authoritative truth. The reason we study the Arts is not to discover the Ultimate Answer (did you know that rainbows are made by light hitting water at a 42-degree angle?), but to explore new ways of looking and new lights to cast on old things. The mood should be one of constant curiosity, of questioning, of poking and tinkering, of turning something round and looking at it from the other side. It should be about infectious excitement – the mode of “Hey, look what happens if I do this!”

Because the world is just awesome, and every res frigida, every cool thing, that makes you smile and go “. . . that’s pretty neat” is a little piece of that. I honestly think that that’s what it comes down to, for me: I want to show people how many weird and wonderful and boggling things there are in the world, and how they reflect, refract and illuminate one another.

Perhaps I’m simply too young to have been disillusioned by funding applications and university politics, but right now I can’t think of a better way to spend my life.

Workout notes 2 miles at Barton Springs in 1:12:58 (36:07/36:51). 39 F air temperature (68 F water); not my fastest but this was in line with what I do when I am at the start of swim training; I’ll take it given I haven’t swam longer workouts lately.

The pool was almost empty at the start (6:30 am); some tri-geeks and old farts showed up when I left.

Travel Yesterday, traffic on I-35 from Dallas to Austin was HORRIBLE; that trip took about 4:30 when it normally takes 3; mind you there weren’t accidents. This was pure traffic. I hate this stretch of road; it is by far the worst part of the trip.

One note: in Dallas we stopped at a sports bar to eat; it was called the Sports City Cafe. The food was good and they had lots of TVs including one at each booth. The waitresses wore black cropped spandex shorts and pantyhose; young guys would have loved that.

Posts

Sports
Women’s spectator sports struggle to draw fans. Though men don’t watch women’s sports that much, they watch more than women do!

But that doesn’t explain why WNBA attendance was on a steady decline even in boom years. Doesn’t explain why, four decades after Title IX was supposed to bring an explosion of interest in women’s sports and 13 years after David Stern’s creation tipped off, that the league continues to struggle.

The play, by all accounts, has never been better. The attendance has never been worse, off nearly 30 percent from its peak in 1998.

Two franchises folded in the past year, and it could get worse as NBA owners such as the Maloof family in Sacramento shed their teams. The deciding game of the WNBA finals sold out only after Phoenix Suns players bought and gave away tickets in the upper bowl of US Airways Center, and television ratings remain minuscule.

The LPGA Tour, meanwhile, will have its smallest schedule in nearly 40 years, with 24 tournaments — and just 13 of them in the United States. There are huge gaps between tournaments and, although prize money has not been announced, it is likely to be down.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. New generations of women who grew up playing sports were supposed to be the foundation of fans who would rather go watch women play basketball or soccer rather than pay even more money to watch men do the same thing.

But it hasn’t happened.[...]

Interestingly enough, the reason professional women’s sports have struggled to survive isn’t necessarily that men don’t watch them — it’s that women don’t either.

A survey earlier this year by Scarborough Research, a marketing research company, revealed that 14 percent of adults had some interest in the LPGA. But 63 percent of those fans were men, and just 10 percent of women said they were interested in the sport.

The WNBA numbers are similar, if not so lopsided. Again, 14 percent of fans said they had some interest in the product, with men outnumbering women by a slight margin.

So what do women watch? Well, they’re big on the Olympics, but they also like sports involving men.

One out of every three women identify themselves as “loyal” NFL fans, while one in four feel the same way about major league baseball. Meanwhile, just 6 percent say they are “loyal” WNBA fans, the same percentage that identify themselves as fans of monster trucks.

With those kind of numbers, it’s easy to see why the Maloofs shut down the Monarchs, and why sponsors are shutting off the LPGA. There’s not nearly enough critical mass for either sport to grow past niche status.

Yes, some men will watch because some men will watch anything involving a ball.

Political Correctness in Academia gone mad: in Great Britian, some are proposing that the word “fail” not be used any more to describe academic performance and the phrase “deferred success” be used instead.

see more Epic Fails

Politics

President Obama verus Governor Palin in 2012? Nate Silver does some analysis of approval rating versus head to head poll numbers of Obama-Palin and Obama-Romney. Evidently, Romney is a bigger threat (but not much of one). Silver also goes on to address the practice of cherry picking data to back up one’s claims.

Speaking of President Obama, I certainly don’t agree with him on everything; I wish that he were a stronger advocate for civil liberties in the face of governmental power.

However, I strongly approve of his moves in the direction of clean energy.

Security: Schneier reports on the practice of computer users blowing off many computer security practices; it appears that security practices are often driven by things other than evidence.

Science Remember the guy who was in a vegetative state allegedly being able to communicate again? Don’t believe it; this was a case of someone typing messages from the guy, purportedly guided by the guy’s hand. I get sick of these woo-woos at times.

Humor (sort of) Hey ladies, do you complain that your butt is too big? Not only does Sir Mix A Lot like Big Butts, but some women pay to have implants to get a bigger butt (and sometimes there are problems with those implants)

So, hey, ladies, if you have a big butt, put on spandex and do those deep bending stretches!

I remember my big-butted wife wearing black spandex tights and doing the above stretch in the gym; but being in public I couldn’t react the way that I wanted to. She flashed me a sly grin and said that I needed to focus on my own workout.

It’s been a very odd day…and the day isn’t even over yet, but I need to rearrange my thoughts, or get them out so I can file them somewhere else. You see, I’ve had one of those moments today that you think will never happen. No, it’s not something that actually happened to me…but it’s definitely something I can say that in the history of my thinking, that I have never thought of.

I found out today that someone I know, someone I’ve met and conversed and laughed and had fun with, and sometimes argued with, has been jailed for something that is just utterly despicable. Sure, I’ve heard of the floating rumours involving other people that had no real evidence to back it before, but this quite literally real. There’s a conviction and everything. And I’m sickened and replused to my core. And I don’t know…I feel a little betrayed, it’s an odd feeling to have just because someone turned out to not be who you thought they were. People are like that all the time. But most closet skeletons are relatively harmless. Most of them won’t have you defined as the lowest of the low.

Now, I know I don’t have the most impeccable judge of character, but I think I’m decent enough, and to not see this coming is like a major shake up to all that I know about how I judge people. Are people who they say they are? Talking to my online friends this morning about the situation, I’m saddened to think there will be a small part of me now that forever wonders if they’re hiding something dark, sinister and repulsive. Maybe I’ll wonder it about everyone I meet and everyone I ever have met. Self doubt on my own ability to spend time with a person and know what kind of person they are. It sucks to a normal morning to realise that you will forever question yourself and your social interactions from now on. I’m already paranoid enough as it is, I didn’t need this to add to my mistrust of people in general.

A few months back, I would have said this person was harmless, if not a little bit of an asshole who liked to stir the pot. A few months ago (and I’m sure you could look back through my entries during my time in London and check), I said that I couldn’t have hated him if I tried. I guess I was more wrong than I can possibly imagine. Those words I know I wrote, keep flicking in my head, how could I have known that they would be tested and left wanting?

Those words, and that 6 months isn’t long enough for such an depraved “obsession”. It is the lowest of the low. It is sick and revolting and while I consider myself reasonably empathic, I can say I will never understand it. It is a disgusting act that utterly repulses me, whether you take part in it or are merely interested. 6 months isn’t long enough.

I feel saddened by the fact that 90% of the shit people do in this world doesn’t affect me anymore.  And I’m going to jump into this by going into the us v. them situation lovingly cultivated at the school supposedly full of very intelligent people.   One would think that a bunch of people purportedly selected for critical thinking ability would be able to work out a situation much deeper than allowing themselves to give into knee-jerk reactions and jingoistic slogans but apparently that is not the case.  Of course I’m not talking about everyone (generalizing a campus community of 30,000+ is equally stupid) but it seems to be an attitude that is pervasive enough.

Hell, I agree that charging more for an education ultimately prices people out and probably costs society more in the long-run due to fewer people being ‘educated’ and whatnot.  Assuming that going to college for four (or more) years is requisite to being a highly contributive citizen.  However, I don’t agree that there were many other options to be taken.  Sure, we could cut administrator salaries, but there aren’t a boatload of administrators whose pay cuts will magically balance out a $500 million deficit.  And sure, we could break into contingency funds, but once they’re gone and the state doesn’t pay up enough, what are we going to do then?  In short, if you wants to actually make you effort useful go scream at the government for disinvesting in education.  Scream at people older than you for consistently trying to get more for less, without going that little step further to realize that such a plan is ultimately unsustainable and results in the clusterfuck we find ourselves in today.

And when did this issue become black and white?  Goading people to stand outside a building which some thought locking themselves in would be a good idea is only going to attract those who are too lazy to figure things out for themselves and instead prefer to latch themselves onto a movement because, hey, all the cool kids are doing it.  Why bother considering the issue when you can fight the power!  Even if the power can’t really do anything because giving in would just end in disaster.  It’s so easy (and consequently lazy) to make the enemy of those directly in charge when things are so much more complex than that.  Maybe it’s better to pay a bit more for an education instead of having no education at all.  There’s no law saying that the state is obligated to provide a college education, it was just a really nice idea that got fucked up by people with a breathtaking lack of foresight along the way.  The same goes for a lot of things in life.  One would think we would have learned a bit better by now, especially the fact that nothing’s black and white.

What I find more interesting (and subsequently depressing)  are the implications of all of this.  Is humanity so lazy as to just go after the most convenient option in the hope that it sticks?  We’ve managed to make things so easy for ourselves that suddenly we just expect everything else to run as smoothly.  Feeling down?  Take a pill.  Don’t want to open your mouth and speak to another person?  Send them a digital message.  At the same time we’ve made it so easy to not think either.  We’re constantly looking for new distractions and ways to improve and refine said distractions so that they remain distracting.  Television, computers, video games just begin the list.  This isn’t to say none of those things can be meaningful and thoughtful, but they definitely can make it easy to leave one’s cognitive functioning behind completely.  It’s almost as if we’ve conditioned ourselves to the path of least resistance.  Even if we think we’re actively doing something, it’s most likely because it’s the easiest thing to do.  Don’t like the way something’s being done? Throw a tantrum.  Generalize and obfuscate until people feel like they have no other choice but to climb on board.  Why attempt to work out a complex problem thoughtfully when you can just throw up your arms one way or the other?

So much in this world seems to be driven off course by people exploiting the human proclivity for laziness.  Sure it’s nice to do something positive and progressive, but if it’s not going to directly make a big deal, then why should anyone bother?

And when our lack of foresight and laziness finally catches up with us, what do we do?  In this case, it seems like people just play the blame game with the most convenient target.  We stand around wondering how this possibly could have happened to us and crying wolf when we’re the wolves in the first place.  It appears as though we’ve managed to detach ourselves from actually living to the point where we don’t recognize our actions as our own, collectively.

Now, I don’t have all the answers and am just trying to figure out this crazy, messed-up world for myself one little bit at a time. Nor am I perfect and live by my word 100% of the time, I’m a human being who makes mistakes like everyone else.  I’d like nothing more than ideal situations to be reality.  But they’re not.  As long as we effectively keep ourselves separate from reality, those ideals keep slipping farther out of reach.  If we want to actually fix things, we’re going to have to wake up.  And that is something way easier said than done.

some parts of the city still have those oldschool walk signals. win.

doing it esther style.

1. Don’t drive. Take transit whenever possible and make friends with the subway. Learn how to fucking walk, or ride a bike. Even if you decide to leave your car at home once a week, it’ll do wonders for the environment. And probably your wallet.

2. Join a CSA. Eat local, seasonal, organic produce and support your local farmers! They work their asses off to provide good food (usually organic) so support them. Your body will thank you and your conscience will help you breathe better.

3. Buy a composter. Composting is fucking fantastic. It’s magical dragons. Seriously. You take your leftover veggie scraps, fruit peels, egg shells, you know, all that organic compound goodness, mix it with something brown, something green, churn it, and you get mulch! And it creates garbage space and doesn’t leave your waste bin smelling absolutely putrid.

4. Open your windows. Let in natural light. I don’t believe in using overhead lights unless it’s dark.. it’s wasteful and completely unnecessary. The sun is big. and nice. and it shares its warmth and its light. It’s practically begging you to take advantage of it, so go do it!

5. Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order. Do we really need as much as we have in our society? Probably not. Be aware of how much you are actually using. Stop using so much. Second, don’t toss your tupperware after one use. Use it again. Then when its time has gone, recycle it. Many plastics (numbers 3-8) are not always recyclable at local plants, so many plants have to use storage space to store these things, and when there’s not enough room, they ship it overseas to places like China and India, where burning plastics is legal… yes it’s gross. So don’t go “hey I recycle” and just use and use. Recycling can get bureaucratic and you don’t wanna know about plastic drama. So feel better about the choices you make by choosing to use less and reusing the things you do use.

6. Okay it was supposed to be 5, but this one is a no-brainer, and yet not enough people do it. When you go grocery shopping, carry several reusable grocery mesh totes with you so that you don’t have to use plastic bags. They’re durable and can carry more than those flimsy, nearly translucent bags, and you don’t end up accumulating all those fucking irritating bags in your house. Also, get yourself a reusable water bottle (I just got a klean kanteen! yay!) and a water filtration system. Brita filters may seem pricey, but when you compare it to those water bottles you’re buying in bulk or at the vending machine, those things are saving you money and you end up feeling less guilty about the copious amounts of petroleum used to make plastic bottles… not to mention, they leak BPA. Gross much?

7. Okay I wasn’t going to add this one, but seriously, last one. Go vegetarian for one day of each week. Or if you really have balls, go vegan. Honestly, it’s not that hard. I come from a culture that has meat in even non-meat foods. I still managed to pull off veganism for a year. I still eat vegan most of the time. But sometimes, rancid, curdled milk beckons my name. As do the dead fetuses of chickens… and then sometimes I eat their moms too. But usually I don’t. Anyway, the meat industry is very wasteful and we use mass amounts of energy and water to feed livestock, and then we chain them up in rows and stacks, and then we have them slaughtered in disgusting, unhygienic factories.  Skinny Bitch, anyone?
If you do not have any issues with eating dead, rotting carcasses, then at least be nice to your own body and eat free-range and organic.

As an endnote, this information is probably quite redundant. But it’s that important. Yea. Also, this post is dedicated to Sara Snow, who is kind of my hero. I used to watch her show on Discovery Health all the time, and then we got rid of cable. Sads.

Guess what. My unannounced hiatus was due to my accumulating of rage so that I may release the whole barrage of it in a single post for overkill’s sake. After this I’m probably going to go on another hiatus to amass more rage so that I can punctuate my new scheme of semi-hiatus blogging pattern with more rants. Now, today the unfortunate subject of my criticism is (suprise surprise) Modern Warfare 2, which sickens me to a whole new level that I have never thought possible before.

Seriously, what the fuck Infinity Ward. You’ve just reduced your franchise into a festering shitpile of crap. Modern Warfare 2 is in every way a monumental testimonial to the characteristic failure of sequels. Sequels tend to suck in general. Usually this is due to the disproportionate allocation of awesome ideas to the prequel so that the sequel lacks said awesomeness when it gets released. Undoubtedly and rightfully, great prequels should be filled to the brim with awesome ideas or else it wouldn’t be in such a state of leet and no one would ask for a sequel to it. So the disappointing reception of most sequels is actually due to the receptors of the sequel asking for it (haha double entendre) rather than the developers of said sequel. But not this time. Infinity Ward managed to fail a sequel in a brand new kind of way that no game developer has ever thought of before. Essentially, the gameplay of Modern Warfare 2 stays as awesome as its prequel but everything else that the gamer is not supposed to give a shit about has been degraded into a state of epic suckage. FFS people acquire this game for a substantial amount of currency. Who the fuck ever thought of making it mandatory for customers to install additional software (i.e. Steam) on top of the game to play the game as part of the EULA? Apparently Infinity Ward thinks that Valve Anti-Cheat that gets installed on all games activated through Steam will solve the pervasive problem that previous incarnations of anti-cheat software have failed to mitigate. Yep. Obviously deterring a minority of hackers is more crucial to the satisfaction of the rest of the playerbase. Not only did Infinity Ward not improve online multiplayer, they made it worse like some fucking monstrosity I don’t know.

Steam makes life inconvenient as hell. With Steam you don’t get to make multiple profiles because Steam is all about the exclusivity of the player and this mantra gets taken quite literally by the Steam people. You can play on only ONE profile. If you fuck this one up, stfu and suck more. There is no regress. If you die 50 times in a match and get 0 kills, these deaths are permanent on your record. You even get an in game accolade for sucking that much. That’s like blatant mockery of the guy who payed you ten trillion infinite dollars for your mocking program. On top of that there’s the reduced recoil on every gun. Ok I know my rant is entering the realm of gameplay but yea, the game does sucks there and there’s nothing I can do or say that will make it not suck there. This is becoming a stupid point and click game. In the past you could evade incoming fire because the recoil makes bullets go everywhere except your character. Now you just point, click and hold your mouse button to see that guy in front of you dead. And the greatest gun in Modern Warfare, the AK-47 just got its recoil cranked up to ungodly proportions because apparently it takes too little skill to use guns from Russia with all its sheer stopping power and whatnot. And then you look at all those recoilless guns and realise you’re playing a match infested with noobs who can’t even handle virtual firearms. Really I’m beginning to think all those American troops that invaded Iraq actually possessed more intellect than the supposed intellectual youths that play these games.

Matchmaking sucks. FYI matchmaking is a multiplayer match hosting technique commonly employed on seventh generation game consoles. It’s where you get onto a master playlist hosted by the developers of the game and the game finds other players with the lowest ping who are also trying to find other players to play with. The game puts you guys into a match and selects the guy with the best connection to host the match. Then you play. This sucks for many reasons, of which the one causing the most annoyance is the part where matchmaking doesn’t involve any actual servers. The hosts change every match. And you don’t play with the same people every match. Sometimes you get shuffled into a match dominated by a clan (and I hate clans) and they do their teamwork thing and vanquish your entire team in the blink of an eye over and over with each respawn. Clans ruin the game for everyone especially when they go about professing their leetness when all they’re doing is just being pricks. I hate it when I get matchmaked into a clan match. And chances are, the whole clan is going to be shuffled into one team because these guys are all in one party (a party is where you invite people you know so that you can play together (stupidly, parties will also ensure that you and your friend never fight against each other because the matchmake will put everyone in the party in the same team)) so the game becomes inbalanced and horribly shitty for the losing team. In Modern Warfare clan dominance was less of an issue because dedicated servers on the PC version balanced teams periodically. If there’s a shitpile of players on the winning team getting 15:1 kill death ratios chances are half of them will be ported over to the losing team for their disappointment. Furthermore with dedicated servers, customization is allowed. And there’s also virtually no limit to the number of players allowed in a single match. Even if all these fail at least you still walk home with the assurance that your connection will stay relatively constant whenever you play on the same dedicated server. Matchmake matches are unpredictable and from experience I can say that most players make shitty hosts with me not being any exception. Matchmake has all these rules and player count limits and lack of custom elements it makes life suck so much.

Another gigantic problem with matchmaking is the requirement for a playlist thing so that you can connect with other people. I don’t know what this playlist shit actually does but I know that people must have the same playlist version to connect to each other. Within 2 weeks of existence, the playerbase of Modern Warfare 2 has quickly deteriorated into a chaotic mess of shit. At first everyone had the same playlist version and several updates later there’s now at least a dozen versions of these playlists circulating around the community. Matches take longer and longer to initiate and matches are smaller and smaller. Ergo much frustration ensues. Seriously. After introducing matchmaking to the PC version despite PCs being perfectly capable of taking advantage of superior match hosting methods such as dedicated servers, rampant outcry is almost definitely inbound for this new cesspool of a sequel.

And not to mention the ridiculous thing with Steam. For some fucking dumb and inane reason, when you activate this game through Steam, it INSISTS on downloading the whole 11 Gb of game data from their own shitty servers rife with traffic instead of installing the game from the game disc itself. Seriously FFS again, why the fuck would I expend effort to physically acquire the game DVD when none of it is required apart from the activation code. Fuck you Steam. Obviously the DVD exists in my disc drive so that installation can be done through it. Seriously Steam, your servers are slow and even torrenting makes more sense. Downloading an entire game that takes up a tenth of my hard disk is completely and just fucking retarded. You stupid ponces go and die.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. As you read on, it may seem like I’m going back and forth and all over the place…well I probably will be lol

When we first met in summer of 06….by winter of 06 we both agreed that we were looking for companions…friends with benefits, something consistent without actually being in a relationship. It was like fireworks in the beginning! I was always over his house…we also worked at the same place. I would wait until my son went to bed (he was 9 months when we started…he’s 3 now) and drive 20-30 minutes to his house every night. My son always slept through the night so I would come before he woke up at 6:30am. This went on for months….then valentine’s day came. I asked if we would be celebrating it and his response was ‘I don’t celebrate valentine’s day anymore…I did all that in the past with my ex’. WoW! I was really into him…in fact I was in love with him. So I continued dealing with him. I professed my love for him in a letter….told him how I was in love with him and wanted more. I wanted to be the lady in his life. He told me he read the letter and he needed some time to think about it. 6 months go by and I NEVER got a response. Another month went by and I decided to tell him face to face this time….still didn’t really get an answer other than he needs time. Needing some time has turned into 3 years come December and I don’t know what to do! I love him with all that I have, I’m in love with him. We still spend a lot of time together but there are times when it seems as if he is sick of me. Like I get on his nerves or I annoy him. Everyday I’m hurting inside because I’m in love with someone and I don’t know if they love me back. He’s not affectionate with me…every couple of months I get a kiss from him. I usually only get a hug. Its like he doesn’t really want me touching him. I try to walk away but it’s killing me. Why is he still dealing with me? Whenever feelings are brought up, he changes the subject. Am I just convenient to him? Or could he possibly love me? In 3 years he’e never told me he loves me or cares about me. When I asked him if he cared he said ‘I don’t know…I guess’…wtf? I don’t know what the hell is going on! What do ya’ll think?

• I suspect that the engine of progress in the world has been competition, rather than capitalism per se. Competition occurs in many contexts, money based competition being only one, and probably not the best one. Academia is a great example of an old reputation competition.
• I need a word for a set of competitions; we usually have sets of partially overlapping, partially substitutable, and competitions which are actually in meta-competition with each other for the hearts and minds of competitors.
• Competition has a bad name because of money competition, which is brutal. But competitions, even the natural selection type competitions of ideas that occur between individuals and groups online, can be overwhelmingly positive in terms of experience for competitors and overall outcome.
• I think there are better ways of defining value than “what someone will pay”, but I don’t know what they are.
• I suspect that the western job-based economy is severely ill suited to the new realities of our world. I think if we were to actually put together success criteria for it, we would find it fails them, and is heading away from them at speed.
• I suspect that money based economy doesn’t scale, or that it does, but not in a way in which it can actually continue to do its job, ie: the best allocation of scarce resources
• I think we are heading into a future of more and more population, and this should be a good thing. People are the best thing the universe ever invented. But, we are trapped in a political, social, economic system which can’t make use of them, so they look like dead weight. In reality that is failure to scale.
• I suspect the new networked world is showing us glimpses, in the social networks and various examples of crowd sourcing, of how to make a massively scalable social/political/economic system, one which improves with every mind you add to it. One in which 9 billion people are vastly preferable to 6 billion, and 12 billion even more so, and so on.
• I suspect that the above is mathematically provable, using tools similar to what economists use.
• This requires some real work.

Just wanted to say that I’ve finished with NaNoWriMo and would highly recommend it to anyone who catched themselves saying “yeah I’d love to write, but never have the time”. This program causes you to make time, and compete and complete over the course of one month and is so very worth it. I am sure when I actually *read* what I’ve written I will be completely embarrased by it – but what the hell, it was just a lot of fun

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a very fulfilling Turkey Day! I know I did! I’ve shopped since 1 a.m. Friday morning. We got a steal at Toys R Us!! We were there from 2 a.m.-5 a.m. and my sister came out with a whole cart-full of toys for less than $120. After that we hit up Wal-Mart and got the Nintendo DS for $98. I got a pink one and a blue one for my little nephew. Now what I’m going to do with that thing, I don’t know but the Brain Age game looks really fun. Hopefully they have games a 23-year-old can enjoy. LOL

Today was another shopping day, but for my birthday. Happy Birthday to me on Monday November 30. I’ll be 23 years old. My sisters took me jewelry and shoe shopping. Praise God for them! I am so blessed and so thankful! After shopping we went out to eat because we were tired of leftovers already!

So, what do yall think about Tiger Woods and his wife? Oh my goodness!  The tabloids are saying that he’s been having an affair with Rachel Uchitel and his wife, Elin Nordegren Woods, went “ghetto” on him because of it. Uchitel was denying the claims but the source said Tiger had to go get a “Kobe Gift” for Elin. You do know what that is right? About the cost of five houses on one finger. She beat him like a mad woman. I wonder what’s going to happen next?? Until then, I’ll keep myself entertained by watching the #TigerWoodsWife trend on Twitter.

Has anyone else ever wondered if snail mail will disappear altogether soon? It’s becoming so redundant in our household. We hardly even check the mail, and when we do, it’s because the letterbox is overflowing with the 7 weekly papers we receive! What a waste of trees!!! Bills can be payed online. Advertising can be online. Conversations with friends are much easier if you don’t have to dig around for a stamp (not to mention cheaper). So why is it still here? I don’t mean to be rude, but in all seriousness, are we just waiting for the older generations to die out before snail mail becomes a thing of our history books?

I suppose it would mean that everyone would have to have access to the internet. And I suppose there are still many poor people in Sydney. But surely, with the money the Government can save on mailmen and freight they can invest in IT people and free internet stations in every suburb instead to replace the post office.

Is there anything else I’m missing?

And while I’m at it, I have to add that newspapers are also the bane of my existence. So much waste. Does anyone under the age of 35 even bother to unravel the elastic band from it to take a peep when the articles are online? Saving your fingers from ink smudge and having to face the glaring sun unnecessarily? Newspapers like snail mail are so archaic, and I hope they are made irrelevant soon so I can stop feeling the guilt of 5 cut trees with elastic bands tying them up littering my driveway.

Just after writing this post, I thought I could try doing this...

I was in Waitrose the other day and saw some wild rabbit in the reduced section. Feeling a bit culinary daring, I decided, ‘why not?’ and came home with 2 packs of wild diced rabbit, £2 for 300g.

Not sure what to do with it, I consulted The Oracle (Delia Online). Delia has a recipe for rabbit and ham pie, excellent, but I decided to ‘tweak’ it. She said use onion, I used a leek. She said use ham/bacon, I had some leftover pulled pork. Good enough.

First observations – it stunk. Pungent, gamey stink. Not ‘off’… well, I didn’t think so anyway, just REALLY strong. Stank the house out for a bit. Anyway, cooked it like Delia said, all ok so far.
Taste test – also ok. Well husband told me it was, I wasn’t touching it with a bargepole until he proved he would live first.

At this point I attempt to unroll the jus-roll sheet of shortcrust pastry I got out the freezer and the bastard piece of shit  broke all over the sodding place. At first, I think, is it me? Did it not defrost enough? So I let the other one defrost some more and by the time I unrolled that it looked more suited to go on top of an apple crumble. Bastard. I am sure I have used them fine in the past, have they changed their recipe? It’s not like it had been in the freezer too long either, I only bought it yesterday. Pile of bloody useless shit, waste of money, *grrrr*.

So I rolled out one of the jus-roll big blocks which was just about useable but collapsed all over the place when I tried to blind bake it a bit. And now we are having a puff pastry topping (Waitrose own brand) because that’s all I have left. ‘Jus-roll’ is clearly a trademark name and in no way indicates the ease of use of the product, obviously.

So while the filling is simmering, I am still pondering the smell. Was it off? Google wild rabbit smell for answers and whilst reading, another site says ‘don’t buy dark wild rabbit meat because it is most likely bruised or badly shot and may still contain lead pellets’.

At this point, I think, hmm, yes, some of the rabbit was a wee bit dark actually, so in I go rooting around the stew with my hands trying to fish out dark bits of meat to check.
20 minutes later, my hands now stink of gamey meat and I found 2 bullet things. Brilliant.

Am currently defrosting the pastry for the top of the pie. If this too crumbles into a pile of powdery nothingness, the whole lot, bullets and all is going in the bin and I am having a McDonalds.

***Update***

The Waitrose own brand pastry fared better than the crappy Jus-roll, so no McDonalds tonight.
The pie was ok – 2 year old son loved  it and to be fair it did taste good, but after I bit into 3 bone shards and was constantly on the hunt for more bullets I decided, bollocks to this. The rabbit was a bit too…’aromatically gamey’ for my liking, it wasn’t BAD, I just didn’t love it, and therefore I have decided that the amount of effort in bullet-hunting and bone-shard avoidance it is not worth the hassle. Might still try farmed rabbit though for a ‘cleaner’ taste and less preparation effort, but a bit of me thinks that defeats the object… why eat a farmed animal that is so abundant in the wild? Jury is out.