an Idea

So I was walking today and as usual my mind was doing it's normal wandering:

"I wonder if Falwell would tell the virgin mother not to breast feed the Christ child so it wouldn't be exposed to a naked womans breast, thus giving his perfect form an impure thought later in life?"

"What would I say in my first press conference if I were president?"

"how exactly does that lcd display work, I know how you work it, but not how to make it from scratch..."

"Damn people in chicago can't drive, fucker almost hit me."

"If the train is standing room only for the entire trip, shouldn't that tell somebody we need more trains?"

"Stupid cold, **sniff sniff snuffle snuffle*"

"Why do religious conservatives fear knowledge so much?"

That last one got me and took me almost an entire block to work out. But I figured it out. It all goes back to the garden of Eden story. Why were Adam and Eve kicked out to begin with? Was it that they ate a piece of fruit? No, that can't be the real reason, there was fruit all over the place. Was it because they realized that death existed? No, because while you can consume a piece of fruit without killing the tree, you cannot consume prime rib without killing the cow. Since Evolution is mere scientifical heresay, Adam and Eve obviously ate meat since we have the teeth for it. It obviously wasn't the fact that they were naked, since God hadn't given them capris and a tube top.

It must have been the knowledge of themselves that condemned them. THe mere act of "knowing" condemned them to travel from paradise, so in order to reach the next paradise we must expunge all knowledge from our selves in order to repudiate the original sin and purify our forms for entrance into the afterlife.

Personally, I think this is almost as bad a reason as "We can't allow anythign to question God, so we must kill those whose beliefs differ from our own" mantra chanted across the globe. But, I am willing to alow people their ignorance as long as they don't attempt to foist it upon me. Go ahead, refuse to learn the calculus and biology.

But once you have made the decision to persue ignorance, you are automatically out of the decision making process.

What the hell?

Normally slate does a decent job with it's stories and punctures the spin of the people trying to pull the wool over our eyes so we don't get upset at how much we're getting screwed.

Normally.

http://www.slate.com/id/2161309/fr/flyout (Hopefully this will take you to the story)

Quick summary: The poor have less money, but more leisure time than the poor of a generation ago, while the rich have more money, but less leisure.

The story is attempting to make it sound as if factory workers, store clerks and other low wage position holders have had some benefits to the Reagan/ Bush/ Clinton/ Bush economic plans.

What it didn't take into account is that most of the people at the top of the economic ladder have ful time positions. There aren't very many on-call CEO's.OR seasonal CFO's.

But once you get into the lower end of the spectrum, you run into part time positions, unemployment, and more stay-at-home parents. You also run into people with seasonal positions such as teachers, lifeguards, camp counselours, exterior painters, landscapers, carpenters, etc. These issues were not taken into account. Just who has more free time.

So this is the new spin: "Yeah, you're making less money, but you have more free time to spend with your family."

and my point: "Free time doesn't mean anything if I can't afford food asshole"

What the study needed to look at was the amount of free time that was had by people at the same point in their parallel career paths. for example comparing a master carpenters free time with a district account manager would be fair, but comparing Bill Gates to the guy that puts mayo on my burger isn't going to be close.

I noticed...

That every time I begin to have some faith in humanity, and see a glimmer of hope for industrialized western civilization: It is ruined.

Usually by somebody doing the electric slide.

The war against poverty.

Over the past few years we have seen the Government of this country seek to solve problems by exaserbating them. Compare teh number of Americans killed in Terrorist attacks before 9-11-01 with the number killed since 9-12-01. Yet we are fighting a war on terrorism.

Over the past 30 years the quality of life for those at the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum has at best stagnated. However it is extremely difficult to do worse than "Standing on an exit ramp with a carboard sign sparing or change", so stagnation is a default state, not a sign of improvement to come. Yet we are fighting a "war on poverty".

Recently there has been an increase in the number of violent crimes committed after years of decline. As people lose hope apparently the free meals and rent in a jail cell don't seem to be the deterrent they once were. Yet we're fighting a war on crime.

I haven't seen statistics on this yet, however I would be willing to guess that the number of people using illicit drugs, or even legal drugs to excess is rising despite the "War on drugs" Nancy started.

So I guess the point is simple, we declare war on terrorism, poverty, crime, drugs etc. and they increase. Why don't we just declare war on Education, tolerance, small business, and working families and watch them thrive.

I lost february

Almost the entire month, It went from "Superbowl" to "Try to ignor the fact that it's Valentines day and Serwah is in NYC" to "Shit Rent's due" before I even had to time to realize it's black history month.

Fortunately I don't watch TV so I missed McDonalds trying to cash in with their annual "insert MLK into our current slogan" campaign.