Powerman 2004
Sensors have detected an increase in political polarity among Chaosnow visitors. Initial scans reveal this to be an opportunity for healthy debate and discourse.
As we draw closer to November's Powerman 2004 Contest, it interests me to hear people's honest opinion. Especially when those opinions challenge my own.
I'll start: I am still undecided.
- Preparedness is more important than nation building.
- Domestic economies require more leadership than "deficits don't matter".
- Nuclear proliferation is a more pressing threat than dirty bombs, if you have to rank them.
- I don't need the Federal Government to rewrite the Constitution in order to improve my marriage, thankyouverymuch.
- More power to the States!
- Smaller government please!
- If we are going to play with Socialism, I'd suggest we focus on alt energy, updated infrastructures and education
Anyone else?
Go to GOOGLE, type in quotes "miserable failure" and hit the 'Im Feeling Lucky' button ..... a funny suprise awaits you
Pardon me while I rant, It is certainly not aimed at you, Psiphi. I've been brewing this for a few months.
People who seed google think they are so cute. The reality is that it does YOU and ME and all other google users a disservice. It's just lame.
Michael Moore. Hil Clinton. Jimmy Carter. GW Bush. All of these people are "miserable failures". As you can see, it's not just daisy-brained leftists using my best search tool as an inside joke of the day.
Many more ratwangers are into the futile practice. It's just that they have not focused their efforts on one individual, opting instead for a shotgun approach to spreading their infectious hatred for multiple victims.
Dear Aching Bloggers: If you aren't using google for research, please limit your play to Yahoo or some other bullshit engine.
All this whole hate-based, partisan negativity threatens what needs to be a balanced and issues-based election. Last election was such a joke. We need real debate and substance in place of the shitfuckery.
cool, i was not necessarily promoting the misuse of google, lol. I was under the impression it was the result of a disgruntled employee or something ...How does that work? by submission/suggestions?
I agree about the need for "real debate and substance", for a little substance i watch C-SPAN while working, it's boring, but you get the real meat without having Clear-Channel/Aol-TimeWarner/Murdoch edit it down to 3 1/2 seconds for you. ;0
What happens is you get a large group of people to place a link to the victim using the key phrase as the text of the link. Due to the way Google crawls the net, the phrase will become linked to the victim. When Google sees enough bomb links pointing to the victim, the phrase will land in first place.
The brass ring is to be included in the Google Zeitgeist.
It's a mixture between popularity contest and hate-grafitti with all the relevance of a petty gossip ring. I did laugh the first time I saw one, though I've forgotten what it was.
Google Bombing could be considered the juvenile "crank call" side of SEO. SEO is search engine optimization, upon which a whole Internet industry is based upon. It is part art, part science, that is a make or break factor for thousands of businesses.
Click the link for your quick primer on SEO...
Get a load of that Fine Looking Website! :)
Man I need to put the SEO-hurt on my biz-sites. Some'n fierce. Thanks Thermit, for great links and observations as usual.
Appreciate that! (Guess you noticed the new layout!)
Lemme know, when you are ready to do something with SEO, I'll spill my guts and tell you everything I know. Google made SEO a bit more tricky this year, but there's plenty that can be done to help. Left you some PMs over there.
BTW, anybody who is interested in talking money or business come on over to Money Talk, you're warmly invited. [shameless plug over]
greetings and salutations dude! Definately a schlick freakin site dude. Of course I have but a cursory interest in money or bidness... suffice to say I'm happy to know where to go in the event I should have more than cursory possesion of some. Really though, very ez to read and very easy on the eyes. The content is well laid out and more importantly, is clearly and concisely worded. Nice!
Killer. Thanks, glad to hear it. I can understand your point of view, until relatively recently it would be a topic that I had little interest in myself, possibly even a bit of hip-E disdain, but now I find myself ready to retire, or at least no longer workin' for the man, so it's become a topic of intense interest. I wanna be rich so I can then forget about it and be a hip-E. Cyclic... interesting!
If you think work has spiritual elements, then you'll have to agree that money is all tied up in that also. Unless you're a hermit, in which case your whole job is world-avoidance and money is moot.
For the rest of us, money is a measuring stick. It's a tool for approximating the value of a persons time (and by proxy, almost everything else you can touch). But it's just a dumb tool, so if it isn't carefully guided, it can be way off. And that can cause suffering.
Money, though often abused and frequently wrong, can be seen as a non-determinate value-meter that tracks the worth of your living time.
Okay, there's a deep end here and I really don't want to leap off until I'm sure you people will at least enjoy watching the splattermark.
Yes, truly money is energy. All spectrums of energy come from one source. The one source is spirit. It's all tied together, just like all of us. Now, go splat!
Money, though often abused and frequently wrong, can be seen as a non-determinate value-meter that tracks the worth of your living time.
I sincerely hope, (and truly believe) that you will think about that statement a little more and reconsider your criteria for judging the value of your "living time."
Money, though good for many things in this world, is useless as a measuring stick for much of anything remotely "valuable" to me. Sorry dude. Your stretching the boundaries of what I can tolerate as opinion and stepping into "ain't got a clue" territory where I disconnect and give up trying to understand your point of view. That statement, though Thermit tries, is indefensible.
I was about to say "nothing personal", but it is. Plain and simple.
No way dude, I never said it was the only measure of the value of living time. There are many, many ways to peel that onion. I am NOT saying Money is a way of life or that it always follows merit or anything of the sort.
But it does measure value. Is food valuable to you? How about electricity?
Follow this for a sec and see if it clicks. And remember, I'm not describing the "one true" anything. It's just a view among billions.
Your life is a conversation. It is a conversation between you and the collective forces of the Universe. The Universe poses problems, you solve them or not. You pose wishes, dreams, desires, the Universe responds with new problems to solve. This conversation continues unto death.
You heard Mark describe money as stored energy. So basically, money is stored work. And work is what?- the things that you do that hold value over time.
In the conversation of your life, money (specifically, how much you have) is The Universes current best guess as to the value of your stored work.
And everything that you have come into contact with your whole life has played some small part in shaping what your bank balance is right now.
So it's a running total. I agree, it's not a very fair measuring stick. In a perfect world, maybe. However, in our world there are so many factors that are out of our control that it's absurd to rate your value by your acct balance.
Still, it's there and it's measuring *something*. And your time, blood, sweat and tears are definitely some of the biggest factors.
for you.
Capitalism.
The philosophy I have come to regard as truth states clearly:
"The richest man, is the man with nothing at all. For he has nothing to lose and everything to gain."
That alone throws out your bathwater and leaves the baby quite intact.
I love you bro!
I will concede that I probably "whittled down" your post to something you never intended it to be. A philosophy. I am quite certain that you never intended nor did you say that it was anything of the sort. It just struck a chord that to me was not musical. I must also say that I'm a bit sensitive on the subject "self-worth" and measurement there of. I have been going through a period in my life of self-examination that has forced me to look honestly and often harshly upon my endeavors. I am sorry for distilling your concept down to a simple right or wrong summation.
I took "measure" and "value" and left the rest on the table.
Absolutely no prob. Way out here in the deep end, it's hard to tell which way is up sometimes. Until the splatt.
Money is collectively agreed to represent somethng you can take back out of the system, but it's not nearly in the same as "real" stored energy, such as hydrogen or electricity - where there is a measurable quantity of "SOMETHING" in there that holds the energy.
Money is just paper, with an intellectual and social agreement that it represents somethng. Burn it and all that worktime you supposedly stored in there goes *POOF* -
just like that, no tremendous explosion from your stored work energy, the value of it just goes back into the collective fantasy world we created it from.
It's not a 'cosmically' legitimate means of storing energy - way too special case and contingent on human economics - divorced from physics and real life support. *If you are on a sinking ship, days from rescue and a billion dollars is offered for the only life vest ........ how valuable is money?*
Not near as valuable as wealth already realized as techlonogical effectiveness (ie. the life vest)
well ok, take that analogy and SCALE IT UP - This whole planet is close to being a Sinking Ship right now and soon technological effectiveness will be the measure of your ability to exist ... not money or credit
I guess if we want to flirt with rigor, we should get specific on a few things.
Money is, of course a human construct. Let's not confuse real physics with our non-deterministic valu-meter.
Take away the paper, because the medium is irrelevant to money. You are left with the magic part which you called: "an intellectual and social agreement".
So certainly, outside of the context of that particular society, money has no meaning at all. Just like the hermit example.
Very well, so money requires society. I agree. That's a good point.
What's up with the "Sinking Ship"? People have been saying that for millenia. What part of the planet is sinking?
Thomas Jefferson said his idea of the perfect society, and his dream for the country he helped found, was that people worked on their farms, produced the food and goods they needed for the upcoming year, and any surplus food and goods generated would be bartered for a book or a violin or something like that. In that context, surplus food and goods would be money. To ancient polenesians, it might have been pretty shells. Point being, everyone wants something in return for goods and services they render, whether it be chickens or bamboo, we want something. This is the downfall of Marxism, communism, and socialism. If I work harder produce better "things", why then should I be dolled out the same amount of chickens or shells that the guy who sits on his ass and reads the inquirer all day gets? A society without money could not exist, because it puts the control of what you GET in the hands of someone else. I know of no one other than God I want to have that power!
Just because recent experiments in Socialism have failed, it doesn't necessarily demonstrate that Communism has failed.
Although I agree with you in principle, Communism has not yet had a turn at bat.
Sadly, that quaint Jeffersonian ideal is rendered moot by today's mega-corporate Jetsonian suburbia.
Man! I just read some-of-that-buckminster-fuller-stuff Psiphi's always pushin' `round here! That guy was a devorce waitin' to happen! And that whole who-am-I-to-kill-me story.....quite the ego! hehe! Anyhoo...back to the discussion! Centralization is actually the downfall of his ideal. Ergo, I am from Coffeville, Ms. originally. It is a VERY small town, but one which survived on a kind of "cottage industry"..a saw mill, a cotton gin...stuff like that...etc. Today, all highways go around Coffeeville-not through it. Our society has chosen to focus it's energies on a few larger centers of economics, rather than lots of small ones. And by-the-way, communism (and it's ilk) will ALWAYS fail, because it relies on the willingness of humanity to equally share what he perceives as his.
*Not that we are about to all die tomorrow*, but i don't take anythng for granted but the laws of physics. It's like the old 'confusing the map with the territory idea' the money doesn't actually do anything, it's worthless without the system that goes with it and the know-how to make it do something good for you.
I don't see Fuller as being socialist - there is nothing inherently socialist about doing things faster, better, cheaper, more ecological. I agree with his assertion that we need to go beyond communism, socialism and capitalism - and find a way of organizing ourselves that is less likely to result in the fuckups we are experiencing now.
Centralization is not really a theme of Fuller's ideal .... He was careful to point out often that Nature itself is not Centralized - it's interdependent, like gears that are turning together smoothly, while changing together over time ... and an imbalance in one part of the system causes nonlinear effects in other parts on the system.
Fuller's philosophy was a ruthless form of "if you have a problem, fix it the right way, and them move on to the next thing" For example standard light bulbs ... only in the last 15 years have long-life 7 year, low wattage bulbs been commercially available. For a long time nearly all light-bulbs sold in the US were made to break .... at some point the original idea of a device to provide light became replaced with a cash-cow approximation that created a self perpetuating industry - which sank to the lowest level of resource-effeciency it could get away with in order to make $.
This was the shit that Fuller wanted to get rid of. If you know how to do it better and cheaper ... then do it, consider the problem solved for the moment - cheap and long lasting lighting, move on and make money off something else. There is no real need to keep turning RECORD PROFITS in light bulbs for the rest of eternity .... just so you have people buying them once a month. I'm all for truly free-market capitalism, but this is a perverted form of capitalism where the preferred product is kept off the market to accomodate recurrent cash milking of population groups.
It's true that Fuller's Ego was huge, but whatever, the man was WAY ahead of his time and was incredibly deticated to solving vast problems in the least political, least emotional, least reactionary and most direct, no bullshit way possible ...
It's hard to know what to think .... the Pentagon is preparing plans for Global Weather change/Resource Wars while the Bush administration says it's all junk science. There are a lot more ice breakups in the last 6 years ... which sinks us *a bit* if the ice starts out above-ground and slides in ;)
also maybe sinking in people ... as the population threatens to double again in 25 years or so .. ugh
I was expressing to completely seperate thaughts. One was about the Bucky fuller stuff I had just read, AND THEN, I was finishing a discussion with Phayyde in which I had mentioned T. Jefferson's Ideal society. The two were not related...sorry...but, I did enjoy your response. `specially that stuff about the pentagon weather control plans and all....maybe they should change the name from the pentagon to....SPECTRE.....whatcha' think?
I think we outta just rename the sides "Kaos" and "Control" like in 'Get Smart' .... lol
I would just like to point out that you can't have smaller governments and "play with socialism" at the same time. Socialism, by its very nature, requires an enormous government to oversee the administration of the many services provided by the state.
Bush has got Balls and I like that. I just can't help myself, But we need someone with brains in office. Proposing to amend the Constitution to take rights away from people is way off... and almost funny. I like that too, that he makes me laugh. But enough already! I'm ready for the next President. I heard Al Sharpton say in a debate that he favored 'less power for the states and more for the Feds'. Somehow I found that funny too.
As for money. I imagine a person could spend their life pouring their energy and heart into something and not have much money to show for all of it. It almost makes money seem irrelevant but it's not because it is often a measure of drive and ambition, things we need since we have important jobs to do. I think happiness is a good measuring stick
Well put, Eurybia.
And Gregg, theoretically, you are exactly right. Smaller government does not Socialism make.
But in real world, the US certainly does maintain several federal social programs which will continue in these next four years, regardless of whether we shrink or grow our feds. I was being too florid with the language using the term "Socialism".
As it stands, we are choosing to create Homeland Security, which is the largest Fed agency EVAR.
I was saying that, if we want to strike up a huge Fed program that helps the US in the long run with our economies and our terrorism problems, we would do well to create a WPA-like work force dedicated to the research and development of alt energy, infrastructure renovation, distributed power generation or science and engineering education.
Well, I think those are certainly the right priorities, but I don't think you will see them enacted under either this administration or it's ever-so-slightly-different alternative. You must understand that government has become a relationship between Washington power brokers and the various industries that want to keep thier toe-hold on the market. Although alternatives to oil exist, neither Bush nor Kerry will pursue them because of the dough that Exxon and co. throw thier way. In short, your government cares not one whit for you, your beliefs, your values, or how its policies affect you as a person. That's why education and health care have become endangered. I'm going to lunch now, so this rant has to come to an end. I'll post more later.
Is it realistic to expect the fed gov't to care about people, beliefs, values or indiviual interests? I think (gospel accd'g to me, of course) that should be more the job of local gov't.
The Feds should provide for the national defense, judicial wisdom, international trade, social programs, and certain difficult sciences that Capitalism refuses to bear (like Space). The Feds should direct themselves like a manager, forecasting trends and smoothing out difficulties that corporations would rather deny than address.
We *should* groan at the mention of the Feds. They should be the ones making us eat our economic broccoli, overseeing our daily sit-ups and balancing the reality-avoidant corporations and cash-strapped local gov'ts.
It's a very hard job - one in which the results can never please everybody. I think it can be done much more efficiently. But, since History keeps correcting me, I guess it's even harder than I estimate.
I agree that the two contenders this year are similar, from a wide-angle perspective. But I've been up and down the trail of apathy. There's absolutely nothing down there but a bunch of people whining.
I'd rather whine and regret than whine and accuse.
Who cares about local government? Almost no one. My view is that if more folks were involved and interested at the basic local level of our democracy the problems with the Feds would evaporate for the most part. We have only ourselves to point the finger at.
But Geez we need a break don't we. Working hard to make a living, kids, problems galore. It's hard to blame ourselves and our neighbors for tuning out.
Still, I for one don't want the government doling out the discipline- I don't want them to need to. I'll take over the ship anytime, been doin' my sit-ups everyday.
Well, all I'm saying is that people who shell out their hard-earned bucks ought to get something out of it. If a third of your salary goes to the gubbamint, then you ought to be able to send your chirren to kick-ass schools, to have access to quality health care (including the machine that goes bing!), walk whatever street you want without fear of muggery, and generally enjoy the prosperity that your gubbamint claims you have. If there's going to be a gubbamint, then you should get something out of it. If not, then its just a bunch of white guys in suits using your money to finance thier latest bombing raids. The library is now closed, so I must take my lackluster ass home, where I can dream up some more rant for my next ludicrous posting.