vector: crasch

link: http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2004/11/15/if-pharmaceuticals-were-produced-and-sold-like-computers/

excerpt:

- Vaccines and drugs would be available at really low prices, and be even cheaper next week.
- If some business-person guessed wrong about how much vaccine he’d sell and ran out, the place next door would still have plenty.
- Even if noone had brand X vaccine, brand Y would be available and just as good.
- I could choose to consult with my doctor or just go get the drug(s) I want.
- I could buy last week’s drugs for even lower prices from e-Bay.

Keep reading

At present, I'm reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler. It's the sequal to Parable of the Sower. The story involves a period of US future history called "The Pox," which, interestingly to me, covers the period from 2015 to 2030. I find this range of dates very interesting because several economic prognosticators project an economic downturn starting around 2010-2015 and lasting for about 15 years that will exceed the Great Depression by a factor of seven.

In the first novel, the protagonist is a black girl living in a walled neighborhood. Her father, a Baptist minister and college professor has organized their little walled-community around self-suffciency and defence. They garden, work together to educate the children in the neighborhood, and practice with firearms. Outside the walls that enclose the neighborhood, an economic meltdown has created an enormous residuum of desperate people; people who knowingly give themselves over to debt slavery in exchange for admitance to the safety and security of life in corporate-owned company towns, squatters working hard to retain their dignity, drug addicts addicted to a substance that leaves them enchanted by fire and prone to arson, bandits, gangs, rapists, pimps, slavers, and a panopoly of human predators for which such an environment would differentially select.

( Read more... )

In March of 1998, Time Magazine ran an essay by George H. W. Bush entitled, "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam." The essay no longer appears in the Time magazine archives, and all mention of it has been removed from the table of contents for that issue. It seems that Time has taken to editing the web to bring history in line with current policy.

link: http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere."

The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.

Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

---

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

-Milan Kundera

"SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 16 - In a case that has spurred intense soul-searching in legal circles, a 25-year-old convicted drug dealer, who was arrested two years ago for selling small bags of marijuana to a police informant, was sentenced on Tuesday to 55 years in prison."

Don't think this is insane? Consider the following:

"It would appear effectively to be a life sentence," the judge, Paul G. Cassell of Federal District Court there, wrote in a request to the prosecution and the defense for advice about whether he has any choice but to send the man to prison forever.

Judge Cassell, a brainy, conservative former law professor, surveyed the maximum sentences for other federal crimes. Hijacking an airplane: 25 years. Terrorist bombing intending to kill a bystander: 20 years. Second-degree murder: 14 years. Kidnapping: 13 years. Rape of a 10-year-old: 11 years.

link: http://www.mpp.org/USA/news_8335.html

Vector: byrdie

You've seen the varying shades of purple state by state map. Check the Urban Archipelago that emerges when you plot a blue and red county by county map of the US.

Link: http://www.thestranger.com/2004-11-11/feature.html

Excerpt:

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

link: http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/207

Try to come up with a two-word Google search that yields just one return.

If you find one (or more) post a comment and let me know.

( Here's the one I've come up with so far. )

http://www.liegirls.com/flash.html

( Disclaimer )

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.