Paul Simon

Mr Alienation his-own-self.

Phoebe Snow

Goin' on 40 years - still can't beat this.

Welcome To The Jungle

There was a "decent" jobs report that came out a day or two ago, and it indicated a bit of drop in the unemployment rate and some other fairly OK stuff, but the thing I remember most is that the majority of the 162,000 new jobs were Part-Time.  Yay us.

47% of American adults don't have a Full-Time job.

That ain't good, but hey - it gets worse.

A Little Light Reading

Aha - suckered you into a post about science.

From The Verge:

Beams of light are usually speeding along at around 186,000 miles per second, but for one minute, researchers in Germany brought some to a screeching halt. Using a crystal frozen to temperatures below negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit, a research team managed to hold light in place for a full minute — marking a drastic increase from the previous record of just 16 seconds. The technology will eventually be applied to quantum computing as a way to retrieve and read data, but it'll have to work on a much smaller scale and for much longer periods of time before that can happen.

And here's a Peer-Review paper for any uber-nerds who happen by.

Now I suppose I need to ask all you 'conservatives' to stay calm and try not to get too frightened by all this.  I realize you guys can take just about anything and turn it into a massively spooky conspiracy aimed at contaminating our precious bodily fluids or some such nonsense, but really, you don't have to feel threatened by every fuckin' thing that comes around the corner.

And BTW - how come this is the kinda thing that gets done in Germany, and not here in USAmerica?  This wasn't a "pure science" thing - it's happening because there's an application in mind - but this is exactly what we need to be funding in some pretty big ways.  If we just kinda let the smarts guys do what they do, maybe we could find a really great use for the ability to store light that doesn't have to be about blowing shit up or knocking shit down.  Could we at least try that for a while?

Today's Pix

Good Morning, Everybody

...and fuck you, NSA.

Rest o' y'all, have a great day.

Fuck You, NSA

I just wanna give a good solid shout-out to my government, as it wastes an enormous amount of their time and my money looking for shit they can hang on people who have nothing more nefarious in mind than fixing a decent meal for their families, and knowing something about the world they live in.

A New York woman says her family's interest in the purchase of pressure cookers and backpacks led to a home visit by six police investigators demanding information about her job, her husband's ancestry and the preparation of quinoa.

Michele Catalano, who lives in Long Island, New York, said her web searches for pressure cookers, her husband's hunt for backpacks and her "news junkie" son's craving for information on the Boston bombings had combined somewhere in the internet ether to create a "perfect storm of terrorism profiling".

Members of what she described as a "joint terrorism task force" descended on Catalano's home on Wednesday.

I may have to post just that simple loving phrase every day - I may even have to answer my phone with a good hearty "Fuck the NSA", like a lot of us used to say "Fuck the FBI" back in the 70s - and I say 'loving' because just like practically everybody else, I truly love this joint which means I have to insist on expecting my government to live up to the ideals it was founded on.  I want us all - together - to be the country we know we once were, and can be again.

So yeah - Fuck You, NSA.  Here I am.  Come and get me.

Loser Sosh'list Dweebs

According to this piece from The Pachamama Alliance website, the idiots in the Swedish gubmint put together a program that's become so efficient, they've run out of garbage.

Of course here in God's USAmerica, we'd never allow such a thing - there's a not-so-subtle (even if subconcious) attempt to flaunt our status by making sure the neighbors can see the evidence of our latest acquisition, or the sheer volume of the shit we discard, cuz everybody knows the success of your lifestyle is directly proportional to the amount of trash you put out at the curb every week.

In order to continue fueling the waste-to-energy factories that provide electricity to a quarter of a million homes and 20 percent of the entire country’s district heating, Sweden is now importing trash from the landfills of other European countries. In fact, those countries are paying Sweden to do so.

You read that correctly, countries are paying to get rid of a source of fuel they themselves produced so that Sweden can continue to have the energy output they need. You don’t have to be an economist to know that’s one highly enviable energy model.

Why do we insist on being the Capital of Dumb-Ass-istan?

Just Thinkin'

Each of my eyes is made up of about 6 million cells, and each of those cells is made up of about 100 trillion atoms.

Add the hundreds of trillions of atoms that make up all the other cells just in the rest of my Central Nervous System, and you get a number that's as difficult to comprehend as the universe itself.

But consider this:  every one of those atoms was created in the core of a star billions of years ago.  And now, those atoms making up the cells making up my eyes allow me to capture and analyze and appreciate the energies released from the same process that went into creating my ability to capture and analyze and appreciate...

Like the man said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

Yeesh

While we're feeling dewy and inspired by how plucky and brave these guys are, let's try to avoid thinking this isn't just supremely disheartening.



Yes - it's both.  But why the fuck do we think it's OK to put people thru this kind of hell? Do we really believe it's good for a thousand people to have to live like feral dogs in order to give 30 kids a small shot at making it outa there alive?  This 'tough-love-pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps' bullshit is exactly that - it's bullshit.

Here's a tho't: let's stop dumping our garbage on people and then pretending that's what makes 'em good people.  Imagine where these folks could take themselves if they didn't have to start in the shitter.