This man has had an incredible impact on how we view the potential of the human brain. He would read up to 8 books a day, committing every bit of information to memory. He’d read the left page with the left eye, and the right page with the right eye. Not to mention an opening up to the incredibly complex world of autism.
You’ll find more neat ideas on www.thefuntheory.com.
Have you or has anyone you know made an insurance claim following an injury? My father was in a vehicle that was rear-ended by a van, suffered a severe back injury, and to be honest has actually ruined his own life psychologically and now physically (and it has affected the lives of others, which I’ll describe some day). It took him four years to settle with insurance, receiving only a fraction of what his plan was supposed to offer.
In the Unites States, health care is pretty much the same. If you don’t have insurance, you’re fucked if you contract a long-term illness. If you do have insurance, they’ll blame some fabricated “pre-existing condition” that usually does not apply, in order to make it so that the sick don’t get their coverage. In all honesty, even Canadian insurance companies are disgusting.
The worst part? That New Brunswick lost out on the chance to have a government-run insurance option in 2004.
Fear Mongering in America
Not to mention how scary it is for people to bring an AR-15 to an Obama town hall meeting:
I would dare think that if people would be generally more informed and cared a little more about how their country was run, life would be much better.
This is my first bold step: I will be stepping down from my current HVAC design job at the end of the week, and I will begin following some of the steps I think need to be successful at what I want to do. My first task; to virtually attend each of the 26 lectures of Introduction to Game Theory from Yale’s Open Courses.
I’ve read quite a bit about starting a business in the past three years, and I feel I know what I need to know. This couldn’t have happened sooner.
Here’s the first lecture:
Seven Years Ago
When I was in High School, the guy whose locker was beside mine didn’t exactly have a model youth. His mother was divorced and deep into drugs and he had absolutely no self esteem. Regularly, pranksters would manipulate him into doing stupid things; they were entertained, and he thought they might actually care about him if he pulled off those stunts.
Fast forward a few years, this same guy discovers the wonders of having confidence in oneself. He is able to shrug off people who he doesn’t agree with, and just keep doing what he likes. In this case it was absolutely horrid, stupid and meaningless music; but it made him happy. The problem here, is that he only gained his confidence in a time where his worldview was completely distorted, when he was vulnerable.
I thought of that guy today, after reading two articles about the rise of militias in the US (here and here. There is a Youtube clip in question, run by the founder of the Ohio Militia. This video reminded me of my locker buddy to a tea.
Pale Horse
It shouldn’t take long for you to be reminded of someone similar to my high school locker mate. Within 10 seconds of this guy speaking, you can tell he’s an idiot. He has weird pauses between words, he tilts his head more than a bobble-head, then poses the first of many great questions: “Who else would I expect”. Indeed, that is a good question. Then he adds completely unrelated imagery, and convinces us of how thing are “really bad” without any explanation, because it must all be so blatantly obvious.
After this brief lack of substance, he jumps to telling people to buy themselves AR-15s (as you can see). Although his safety is off, I’m sure he can otherwise demonstrate the least bit of firearm discipline. He tells us to ask ourselves and ask: “Why do I not own one of these?” Personally, I can’t see a situation where I would need to shoot another person. I am quite convinced that my country (or continent) is quite stable as it is, and that the only people I fear is not my government, but people like Pale Horse who think shooting people is the answer. What about personal protection? Even if they someone is breaking into my home, I’m not going to three-up a person stealing by killing them. No, I don’t think that “the country is almost part of an–perhaps what the Nazis were trying to do” (1:20).
You’d think that this guy would take it as a sign that 90%, well, 99.999% of people that show interest to his group don’t actually participate. So I typed www.ohiomilitia.com and found that it was a dead dummy website, showing that most people who stumble on it look for MILFs, payday loans and accident lawyers. Ahh, after Googling it, I found the true website: http://www.freewebs.com/ohiomilitia/. As you can see, it is a pretty well designed site. It has Metallica playing on the background, although the Survival Training Tips are a bit hard on the eyes. His MySpace shows that he’s 26 and married with kids; could that be the root cause of such patriotism? I love the touch of Command and Conquer and Final Fantasy game music to his Youtube videos too.
Where do I sign up?
Let’s Be Thankful
Fortunately, attention seekers like this guy are on the fringe of the bell curve (0.001% of people who ask him about how to join, it seems). It’s great that they’re using their rights to shout out their views, until someone gets hurt. These people should not be left alone though. Show em’ some love, but don’t attack their views—they’ll just get more defensive.
Moral of the story, make it so that your elected officials make sure none of your doomsday scenarios see the light of day. Having a militia is hardly the answer, as I am sure a National Guard’s F-16 fighter jet could make light work of you.
First quick story comparison: A new military drone robot has been developed to be energetically autonomous (emphasis added):
The system obtains its energy by foraging – engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.
Trust Fox News to put a neat twist to the story: Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed On Dead Bodies.
In more important news, Stephen Harper said in an interview with the Globe And Mail:
You know, there’s two schools in economics on this. One is that there are some good taxes and the other is that no taxes are good taxes. I’m in the latter category. I don’t believe that any taxes are good taxes.
The author of the article, Jeffery Simpson, proceeds to vilify the PM for what he said. Even making the link that only “libertarian anarchists” think that way:
Only libertarian anarchists believe that all taxes are bad, and that society can get along without them. But who will pay, if not citizens, for the military on which the Harper government is lavishing billions of dollars? Who will pay for the police, the courts?
[...]
Indeed, the comment hearkens back to Mr. Harper’s days shilling for the National Citizens Coalition and early years with the Reform Party, when he believed that just about everything governments were doing was bad and wasteful and led to huge deficits. Since then, and especially as Prime Minister, Mr. Harper has shelved many of those views, since a distinguishing characteristic of his government has been a reluctance to cut government spending.
It didn’t take long for The National Post’s Terence Corcoran to respond:
But what is really going on here is a mounting Liberal campaign to set the state for tax increases to cover future deficits. Liberals cannot officially plant this idea, and they would much rather have Mr. Harper bear the burden by forcing him to raise taxes. As Rev. Simpson says, donning his economic hat, “economic growth alone will not restore Canada’s balanced budget.”
If that’s true, then the real alternative is is to cut spending. Now that, in Rev. Simpson’s Liberal church, is really, really scary, scary.
Can you guess what do the articles have in common? It’s just as much about ad homiem attacks as policy debate. I want to see an intelligent discussion on taxation, it’s benefits and shortcomings.
(More below the fold)
Read on… »
The pro-life v. pro-choice debate is an important one to be had. For one who has read the arguments from either side, it is apparent that abortion is a very important topic for many people. Unfortunately, there is usually a gap between debate and a mere exchange of words; it is a topic that has the potential to bring emotion out of the best of us, compromising the proper exchange of ideas.
My opinion on the debate is a complicated one, that has changed with time. In the past, I have been a staunch supporter of pro-choice. Since then I have given way, albeit not completely, to the pro-life aspect of the debate.
Matthew Good is on a roll: Bam, bam and bam.
What the Hell happened to reporting on events in Iran? What’s going on there? Why the fuck are we STILL talking about Michael Jackson? What’s happening in China? Riots? How about Pakistan’s Swat region? Israelis taking over Palestinian fishing boats?
Fucksakes the world pisses me off sometimes.
I wish there was a machine like this:
That way, I could upload in people’s minds whatever it takes to fully appreciate, say, Richard Feynman. Everything from his lectures to when he tells the story about his (hilarious) stint at Los Alamos. Once you get to know how funny, kind and brilliant this man is, then you can fully appreciate chats like these:
But then again, such a machine could just as easily corrupt many people’s minds if false information were purposely forced upon them. I think it would have more of an impact than the Atomic Bomb on our entire race.
Here are things I’ve read recently, but don’t have the time to write about:
And last but not least,
