Bailout Backlash

What’s interesting is that had the government not given so much money to these financial/manufacturing giants and instead given money to, oh say,bailout individual homeowners with the mortgages, there would have been a backlash against whatever group people already disliked the most. I’m of course talking about the poor.

Had the government said “If your home is going to be taken away, here’s some free money to stop that” the people who are now complaining that Big Business is taking hard-earned taxpayer money would instead be complaing that Stupid People are taking hard-earned taxpayer money (unless they’re the ones with homes about to foreclose). And, with some exceptions, they’d be joined by everyone else who didn’t have bad luck or terrible financial planning.

So when people say that they wish the government would directly help out taxpayers instead of corporations - they should be careful what they wish for, otherwise they might set the achievement of their Utopia back a decade.

Definition: Intelligence

What do we mean when we say someone is smart or intelligent? Clearly we have some internal criteria, given that we can categorize people’s intelligence without much thought. It can’t be just one bar that we use to determine the relative smartness of someone, so there’s at least two variables.

Knowing more than other people, or knowing more than they expect you to know, is a good start on being known as smart - the number of connections your brain has made. The other half of the equation is how fast you learn something new - your ability to form new connections.

So intelligence is equal to the number of connections made plus the number of potential new connections you can make in a set time. Obviously these “numbers” are incredibly fuzzy, but it’s the best system we have to work with.

Badass History: Time of Troubles

Once upon a time in the barren wastelands of Eastern Europe, a nation arose that they called Kieven Rus. A guy named Rurik was the badass motherfucker who founded this nation of vodka-drinkin’, bear-killing, Commie-lovin’ Ruskies. As a testament to his testicular fortitude his dynasty lasted for seven centuries, even surviving the Mongol Empire. His dynasty was the one that gave Russia Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and Ivan the Cross-eyed Drunk. Unfortunately, it also spawned Feodor Ivanovich (a.k.a. Feodor the Retarded) who was the son of Ivan the Terrible and brother of another hardcore monster who was supposed to become Tsar, but instead got killed by their father. Feodor apparently missed out on the hardcore gene that his father had, so when he became Tsar he relied completely on his brother-in-law to run the Tsardom. None of this has anything to do with the Time of Troubles, but it would make a hilarious sitcom.

When Feodor died, the same brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, got himself elected Ruler of all Ruskies and this is when the shit storm began. See, he did do a pretty good job of ruling from the shadows when Feodor was still alive, but once he had the title and the power, people started complaining about how he wasn’t actually a Prince of Rus (I’m seriously just making these names up), just a lowly boyar (even though boyars were the second highest rank in the land, but whatever). It also didn’t help that soon after he took power, Russia went through a great famine that killed two million people. That was like a third of the entire population dead in two years. A starving populace and a grumpy oligarchy equal bad news Boris.

This bad news took the form of Dmitri, the younger brother of Feodor (the retard). In reality Dmitri got himself stabbed to death, most likely by Boris Godunov and his accomplice Natasha. But back then ‘facts’ were ‘flexible’, and the ‘population’ was ‘gullible’, so when this imposter Dmitri showed up in the neighboring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (henceforth known as “Polico”) tons of people were ready to follow him to death, glory, and the throne of Russia. And better than people, he had the support of various richy rich factions who saw this as a chance to extend their power over Russia.

With only 4,000 soldiers at his back, Dmitri was able to march into Moscow after Boris died, becoming the new Tsar. And then a year later he was murdered by Vasily Shuisky, who was then elected to be the new Tsar by his buddies in the Russian nobility. This is why monarchies are fun. Oddly enough, lots of people were unhappy with this new sudden change of power; notably the people who instigated the first sudden change of power. So in the tradition of all TV executives, these unhappy factions trotted out the character that had achieved the highest Nielson ratings: Dmitri. Ta-da, he wasn’t really dead this time either!

To combat this new (old?) threat, Vasily Shuisky allied with the Swedes in order to benefit from their sweet Walrus Calvary. They were no match for the Polish Winged Hussars (real name) though, and the Swedes and the Rus got slaughtered in a couple battles, forcing Shuisky to throw a temper tantrum and get carried away screaming and yelling. Now comes the super fun time. Like a multi-headed fire hydrant, three different people from the conquering army demanded the now vacant throne of Russia. One was Fake Dmitri #2, one was the son of the king of Polico backed by the military, and one was the king of Polico himself who wanted to unite the kingdoms. Sweden didn’t really like any of these options, so they declared war on Russia and took a page from the Polico playbook by claiming that THEY had the real Dmitri. And the average drunken Ruskies didn’t want the Policos or the Swedes taking their throne, so they started rioting and looting department stores. Basically, it was a shitty time in the Motherland.

Now, any other people on Earth would have just rolled over and let themselves by ruled by a foreign king for a few hundred years. I mean, they were being invaded by one country right after being conquered by another country, people were starving, brigands were briganding, and whole towns were being slaughtered by anyone and everyone just for kicks. But these weren’t any other people on Earth, these were fucking Russians, and Russians don’t ever roll over (that’s where the wet spot is). When Russians get pissed off, they get drunk. But once they’re pissed off and drunk, then they get their clothes on, eat breakfast and go to work. But if they don’t have any clothes to wear, breakfast to eat, or work to go to, they start getting rowdy and violent.

Kuzma Minin, a smooth talking butcher, knew his countrymen well. He directed this rowdy violence against the foreign bastards, driving them from the heart of the Motherland using waves of screaming Commies armed with pitchforks. On Nov 4 Kuzma had apparently done enough to be able to declare this the Day of National Unity, even though large parts of the country were still under control of the Swedes and Polico, but whatever. And for his efforts in achieving this, Kuzma Minin got a town square named after him.

After the dust had settled a bit, Mikhail I Fyodorovich Romanov became the new Tsar of Russia for absolutely no reason other than he was distantly related to the old Ruril dynasty. Apparently this tenuous connection was enough, because he was the founder of the Romanov dynasty that would rule for another few centuries. Russians are hardcore people. They lost one century long dynasty, but rather than accepting a new way of governing themselves they fought tooth, nail, and broken vodka bottle to create a new dynasty that would controll every aspect of their lives for centuries to come.

Self-Improvement for Assholes: Lying

It is amazing that there are people out there who truly can not lie. It’s not that they won’t out of a moral obligation, it’s that they are such horrible liars than when they attempt to pass of a lie, they are nearly incapacitated by mumbling and bumbling. Seeing as how much of human interaction is based upon lies, people with this inability should be viewed as handicapped, or retarded, or whichever polite term we’re using today.

The biggest problem in attempting to lie is that you know you’re lying, so by extension people can read that you’re lying. To work around this problem, simply recognize the fact that reality is defined and colored by an observer; that if you’re the witness of an event, you control its reality. If you can succeed in convincing yourself for the duration of your period of lying, the biggest hurdle will be cleared. If you fail at this, lying becomes much harder and using all of the tricks possible still won’t convince a careful observer.

The second best thing to do is to simply observe your own mannerisms, facial and body, on a day to day basis until you understand how you act. Then, try to consciously practice being yourself and see if you or anyone else notices something odd about the way you’re acting. If you’re acting weird when you try to be yourself, you can fix whatever the weirdness is. From there, you’ll have a better time staying completely neutral and natural when lying.

Third thing to try is to channel your nervous lying energy into an action that isn’t normally associated with lying. Instead of scratching your nose, try tapping your foot. Instead of twitching your face, pretend to be distracted with what you’re doing and slightly turn your head towards the interrogator (or don’t move it if you were looking at the speaker to begin with), but keep your eyes on the distraction when you answer. And don’t flick your god damn tongue. How anyone can go through twenty years of public scrutiny and still do that out of habit is beyond me.

Lastly, if you still can’t lie because of your damnable social conscience, then don’t lie. Just don’t tell the truth. To lie, you must provide false information. To not tell the truth, you simply provide a lack of information, which is easier to do.

Lying is not hard. Keep it simple, play it stupid and you’ll be fine.

“Where’s the bomb?”

“Somewhere in Kansas.”

Emotions and Reason

Evolutionary science has taught us a lot about ourselves; from the way we organize our societies to the way we act. It has allowed us to trace the way our needs for survival in the Stone Age, and before that, have been adapted to create the cultures and the people of today. It’s also given us this obvious realization: emotions are a shortcut for reason.

We get mad, we get sad, and we get glad due to the factors of our lives. These emotions give an impetus to change the factors, or to work to keep these factors constant, in order to have a better life. The faculty to reason, to follow a logical progression of thought based on available evidence, also works to get ourselves a better life, or at least to get us what we want. Emotion and reason work together to achieve the same thing, just in different ways and at different speeds.

The emotions we have might be more geared towards a pre-civilization life of course, so they aren’t as based on available evidence as critical thinking is, but that’s why they’re shortcuts. If we lack the time, we shouldn’t be afraid to go with our emotions; our gut feeling. If we do have the time to go through a logical thought process, there’s still nothing wrong with taking into account our emotions by giving them a place in the equation.

So we now know that to hold reason as an ideal is not to automatically become an emotionally bankrupt human. It also means that if we live life solely reacting to our emotions, it doesn’t automatically mean we lack the capacity to reason. It’s only if we choose to ignore emotions or to ignore reason do we become machines or idiots.

Have a picture of an awesome animal for absolutely no reason:

Badass History: The Samnite Wars

History is the best written entertainment ever. There’s aren’t any plot holes, boring drama, or impossible physics, there’s just pure badassery. Follow me below the dotted line to see why.

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The Samnite Wars were a series of three wars way back in the day that basically cemented Ancient Rome’s dominance in the boot peninsula. They’re called the Samnite Wars because they were fought between the tribes of Samnium and Rome, and since Rome won and went on to fight a million more wars, Samnium wins the name battle. And that’s pretty much all they win.

It wasn’t always bad to be a Samnium tribe. They were pretty much the stereotypical hardcore nomadic hill people; herding animals, stealing women, constantly killing but also fucking like crazy. They ended up having too many babies, so they swarmed down from the hills to kill their more civilized and less awesome cousins and to take their flat land to have room to raise more sheep. Now, I like to make fun of cousins, and these guys are no exception; they were ‘civilized’ little sissy-pants who wet themselves and cried when they got a boo-boo.

But even civilized sissy-pants don’t like to die, so they went to their big friend, Rome, to protect them from the mean ol’ hill people. Rome sent some envoys into the hills to see if they could work things out the peaceful way, but the Samnites were all “Fuck your diplomacy” and just sat on the envoys, forcing them to eat dirt. Surprisingly enough, war soon broke out. This war became known as the First Samnite War. Historians are creative. This war lasted for two years, in which time Rome pretty much mopped the floor with the Samnites, taking over a bunch of rich land. In the end, Rome was forced to make peace in order to deal with a rebellion by some Latin allies (I hear they had quite the temper).

Of course the Samnites are crazy motherfuckers, so 14 years later they invaded the same lands with the same goals. Guess what happened? Yeah, Rome went to war with them again, starting the Second Samnite War. This time they wanted to end the shenanigans completely, so they thrust deep into the mountain passes to come upon the flower of Samnium culture. Unfortunately, they were stupid bastards and ended up getting ambushed in a mountain pass, almost getting completely ball-stomped. Fortunately, the Samnites were stupid bastards too and just let them off with a stern warning to not come back for five years. Seriously, wtf were they thinking? These guys might have been the Conan’s of Italia, but they had the brains of…well, Conan.

Romans took this five year lull as an excuse to eat some beef jerky, lift some weights, and basically get super pissed off that they lost. When the five years were up they came charging out of their houses, yelling their war cries, thumping their chests, and all hell-bent on slaughtering those punks who beat them. And then they got killed. And they kept getting killed for another three years, because the Samnites were simply better fighters. Noticing that the Romans were pretty much fucked, the Etruscans in Northern Italy decided to get in on the action, hoping for some booty. They chose a bad time to get involved. After the initial failure in manhood, the Romans stole a bunch of secret ninja techniques from the Samnites and started to win battles because of their new fighting skills plus their epic helms of +5 to asskicking. They kept winning battles until they won the war.

Finally there came the Third Samnite War. If this had taken place in Scotland, it would have had a movie based off of it called ‘Braveheart’. It was a last ditch effort by the scrotum-bustin’ and free lovin’ Samnium tribes to remain free of the tyrannical Roman Empire. They managed to persuade a few other barbarian tribes to join their glorious people’s revolt; Estruscans (again), Umbrians, and Gauls. The pivotal point of the war came at a ginormous battle in Central Italy, where more brave warriors fought that at any other battle in the history of Italy. The allied tribes gained the initial advantage with their powerful Chariots of Death ^TM, but then the vaunted Roman discipline came into play and they managed to rally and crush the barbarian hordes.

The Samnites resisted longer than anyone else in Italy with giant “Fuck you” yard signs, but eventually they were forced to sign up with the Romans. And thus began the Galactic Empire, which would last until Vader threw the Emperor into the Death Star beam. Or something.

The Meaning of Life

Life exists to perpetuate life. This is fact. All of the processes of life are geared towards sustainability, growth and reproduction. The history of life is a history of evolving to overcome obstacles put forth by the environment in order to continue the chain of life through time. Life has yet to face the largest obstacle: the destruction of planet Earth.

The problem is not the effects of civilization on this world; it’s a mere scratch on the surface. Rather it’s the destruction of the only known place in the universe that can support the growth of life that’s the problem. Whether it comes as too much energy from our Sun, from a body of rock hurtling through space, or from Mother Nature being a bitch, we know Earth will be destroyed. And soon, if you consider the scale of time that evolution deals with.

We humans should respect life. Not individual life or the life of a specific species, but life as a whole. As the dominant species on this planet, we have the responsibility to make sure that we have expanded beyond this rock when the next disaster strikes that wipes out all Earthly life. This is the largest obstacle that life will have to overcome, and we are the only ones that can do it. Saving the leopards won’t help; reducing green house emissions will only buy us a tiny amount of time.

If you care about life at all, your only meaning in life should be to expand the scientific knowledge that will enable our expansion beyond this planet and to support the policies of society that encourage interplanetary growth.

Do you doubt our ability to ensure the continuation of life? Humans are not a sick, destructive force. Humans are not insignificant objects, adrift in the vast expanse of space. We are the greatest thing the universe has ever seen. We destroy and create by design, not random chance. We play the game of survival the best. We are the ideal form of life. We will survive the destruction of our birthplace.Humans are fucking amazing and we will do anything.

Badass History: Aftermath of WW1

History is awesome. Unfortunately, your attention span is too short to read a book about it and you’re too lazy to head over to Wikipedia. So instead, you’re just going to read my blog posts about how fucking badass history truly is. Try not to be distracted by the moving picture below.
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Imagine a crazy straw. Now imagine you’re using that crazy straw to drink some liquor. Now imagine a Goldberg contraption that injects you with a hallucinogenic. Finally, imagine you’re trying to see the dolphin in a Magic Eye. This might give you some idea of what Europe was like in the years following The War to End All Wars.

Normally when war ends there’s supposed to be peace, because that’s kind of the definition. World War One was special though, much like your cousin living in the attic that no one talks about. Not content with simply being a ginormous clusterfuck of a war, The Great War spawned a series of smaller revolutions and conflicts. As that old bastard Winston Churchill said ‘The war of giants has ended, the wars of the people I don’t care about begin’.

The intense conflict of WW1 destroyed many of the Empires of Europe and drained the resources of the rest. The small states seized upon this vacuum of power to establish themselves as independent, sometimes by treaty, sometimes by armed rebellion. Of course, most of these new nations weren’t content to simply be independent; they also wanted to be the next Great Powers. So even though the people of Europe should have been tired of being blown to pieces, getting trench foot, and smelling the mustard gas in the morning, they couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to fight some more battles with their neighbors for that extra acre of wasteland.

Let’s see if we can make a short list of events: Imperial Russia became Commie Russia; Poland became its own nation after a hundred years of foreign rule; Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to became their own nations too; Ireland started a revolution; Romania fought with Hungary over Transylvania, Yugoslavia with Italy over Rijeka, Poland with Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn Silesia, with Germany over Poznan, with Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia and with Russia over Ukraine; Ukrainians, Belarusians; Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians fought against each other and against the Russians; Greece and Turkey did their own thing; Commie Russia fought against Anti-Commie Russia (again);some shit went down in China and Mexico for some reason; and the Mimes of Paris slaughtered the Jugglers of Marseille.

Holy Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. I hope nobody actually read that previous paragraph, because I’m pretty sure it literally makes heads explode. And that was just the conflicts up to about 1925, and probably not even all of them. Needless to say, the awkward dynamics of Europe that caused the Great War were not solved at all by it. In fact, shit got messed up even more. Shit continued to be messed up until the Second World War, which fixed a bunch of the messed up shit, but not all of it. Shit continues to be messed up to this day in some parts of Europe as a direct result of the enormous shitfest of World War One.

Sound Bite #1

“Subjectively, I’m an objectivist.”   -  Bizilbur

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The Limit

Is there a limit to knowledge? Could we one day actually know everything? If this is true, pity the generations without hope of learning or progress. Or is there an infinite amount of learning to do? If this is true, it would put a more tangible grasp upon the idea of infiinity and make our lives even less purposeless than before. Glorious.