Decius wrote: For some reason I didn't consider this before but YouTube is a virtual treasure trove of plunderphonic audiocollage videos. This is Negativland passing judgement on recent U.S. history in a, well, rather damning way. I'll try to make a point of posting interesting stuff of this sort on a regular basis.
The Bottom Line was actually published by Negativland on the "Free" album back in *1993*.
Kinda says something about the timelessness of the sentiment of "let's not fucking torture people yo".
"Freedom's waiting! At your 7-Eleven!"
"Doesn't just hearing it make you wish you were drinking?"
This is not an easy thing to describe. It's a film. It's not long. You should watch it.
Thanks for the recommendation. Very enjoyable. And very true about the Death/Taxes/Spam trio, they are all unavoidable :)
Bonus trivia: The song playing in the background is Aphex Twin's "Ruglen Holon" from the album Drukqs released in 2001. Man, has it been over five years since the last Aphex album? Yep. Rumor has it there's a new one coming out this year. We'll see.
RE: Stratfor | Rhetoric and Reality: The View from Iran
Topic: Society
4:49 pm EST, Jan 19, 2007
Rattle wrote:
Fear and uncertainty are the foundations of international agreement, while hope and confidence fuel war. In the end, a fractured Iraq -- an entity incapable of harming Iran, but still providing an effective buffer between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula -- is emerging as the most viable available option.
Not exactly a new idea. Interesting that 25 years ago this was one of Israel's ideas for Iraq.
Decius wrote: This is your country on Medicare and Social Security.
The ratio of federal debt held by the public to GDP would climb from 37 percent currently to roughly 100 percent in 2030 and would continue to grow exponentially after that. The only time in U.S. history that the debt-to-GDP ratio has been in the neighborhood of 100 percent was during World War II. People at that time understood the situation to be temporary and expected deficits and the debt-to-GDP ratio to fall rapidly after the war, as in fact they did. In contrast, under the scenario I have been discussing, the debt-to-GDP ratio would rise far into the future at an accelerating rate. Ultimately, this expansion of debt would spark a fiscal crisis, which could be addressed only by very sharp spending cuts or tax increases, or both.
There is some very sound advice in here. The following statement seems so logical and obvious that one wonders why the Fed Chief has to say it.
Members of the Congress who put special emphasis on keeping tax rates low must accept that low tax rates can be sustained only if outlays, including those on entitlements, are kept low as well. Likewise, members who favor a more expansive role of the government, including relatively more-generous benefits payments, must recognize the burden imposed by the additional taxes needed to pay for the higher spending, a burden that includes not only the resources transferred from the private sector but also any adverse economic incentives associated with higher tax rates.
Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who are living in total denial about this.
I like the SSA's debunking of why SS is not a Ponzi scheme. From the SSA:
"There is a superficial analogy between pyramid or Ponzi schemes and pay-as-you-go insurance programs in that in both money from later participants goes to pay the benefits of earlier participants. But that is where the similarity ends. A pay-as-you-go system can be visualized as a simple pipeline, with money from current contributors coming in the front end and money to current beneficiaries paid out the back end. So we could [imagine] that at any given time there might be, say, 40 million people receiving benefits at the back end of the pipeline; and as long as we had 40 million people paying taxes in the front end of the pipe, the program could be sustained forever. It does not require a doubling of participants every time a payment is made to a current beneficiary. (There does not have to be precisely the same number of workers and beneficiaries at a given time--there just needs to be a stable relationship between the two.) As long as the amount of money coming in the front end of the pipe maintains a rough balance with the money paid out, the system can continue forever. There is no unsustainable progression... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]
Those that were exposed to the Best of Bootie 2005 will be happy to know that the next Best of Bootie CD has been released. It can be downloaded for free off the Bootie website.
The Best of Bootie compilations contain the best mashup tracks I've ever heard. I just started playing the new collection, and it sounds like it blows the last one away. These make the perfect party albums. They really confuse and delight a crowd. Every song is guaranteed to be familiar sounding.
An entire underground music scene has formed around these type of works. The recording industry licensing regime makes it pretty much impossible to legitimately create and release these type of works. The overhead you have to devote to getting the rights is unbelievable.
I caught Bootie at the DNA Lounge last year. Good stuff indeed, the people ate it up!
Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.
To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.
None of this information is made public or shared in any way, instead it's used to grow a personal landscape, a kind of 'walk-in graph' uniquely shaped by the way you use the internet. With each day of network activity a new world can be generated, each of which are stored as tiny files for you to browse, compare and visit as time goes by. You can think of packet gardens as pages from a network diary.
...
Julian has made the beta public. OSX version now available as well as Linux and Windows.
Agreement on Social Security Between The United States of America and The United Mexican States
Topic: Current Events
7:14 pm EST, Jan 9, 2007
I'm taking this to a new thread from the Immolate Me Elmo thread.
Decius wrote: Its not that I don't care, its that I'm skeptical. SS is something that people get real emotional about. So is illegal immigration. This is a press release from an advocacy group and I don't trust it. I don't understand why the US would pay social security benefits to an illegal alien. I'm thinking thats not actually the real story here. A similar agreement exists between the US and Canada, and its fairly reasonable, and I'm quite sure it doesn't apply if you moved between the countries illegally.
The Social Security Administration signs an agreement with a foreign government, does not release the agreement to the US citizenry, is repeatedly uncooperative with FOIA requests to produce the agreement, which results in legal action to have it released. It doesn't seem like the advocacy group is the one not to be trusted to me. Why keep this agreement secret?
I believe we have a right to see this before it is signed into law. This gives us a chance to write our representatives with our opinions. I thought that's what our political system was about. I don't believe we should be bound to laws passed in secrecy.
Far from not trusting someone just because they are with an "advocacy group," I applaud their efforts. I assume you distrust them because they have an agenda. Well, who doesn't? I'll listen to what anyone says, you never know when they might have a point.
Read the agreement, it's what I linked this post to. The benefits of totalization will be retroactive. From Part V, Article 17:
2. In determining the right to benefits under this Agreement, consideration shall be given to periods of coverage or contribution under the applicable laws of either Party and other events material to the determination of benefits which occured before the entry into force of this Agreement.
I guess for me, I can see the writing on the wall. I read stories like these in the context of larger plans like the Council on Foreign Relations' Building A North American Community and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. It's especially prudent to pay attention to task forces like the CFR when current members are in high positions of power, like Dick Cheney as Vice President. Right now he is the tie breaking vote in an almost equally divided Senate. Even though his name is not in this report, I have never seen him on record about his opinion about a North American Union. I'm watching his votes carefully.
Am I speculating and worrying about some event in the future that may or may not occur? Sure. Is it unrealistic to expect that the millions of illegals here now will be given amnesty in the near future? Absolutely not. I won't launch into a long list of quotations from well known Senators, but you know it's coming.
Have you noticed something I haven't mentioned? This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is about US sovereignty and whether we want to keep it or not. This issue is central to whether we will remain a Constitutional Republic, or become a superstate. It's incrementalism, and this is just one issue out of many on the plate.
Decius wrote: Bumping Cypherghost's link through to BoingBoing, but this burning Elmo video is one part of a three part series that starts with this video. Watching the chared, burning robot flailing its metal limbs against the ground and laughing manically evokes some of the moredisturbing scenes from the Animatrix. The future is machines that don't break down, they die.
I saw this when it first came out and thought about memeing it. It made me laugh pretty hard, especially when he sits up and his skeleton arm is flailing.
I was hoping that the sound would start to get messed up, glitching like it was circuit bent, toys winding down sound or something. The sound circuitry probably just shorted in an instant though at some point.
If I make make slight social commentary, it's weird to me that a few days ago I posted about impending changes to the Social Security system that will hasten the date it goes bust, and no one seems to care enough to recommend it. Now the immolated Elmo meme already has 5 posts. :)
