11/28/08

I hope they hang themselves.

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html

A pregnant woman also lost her baby/fetus. (Update: the baby/fetus and mother are apparently ok afterall)

They are all guilty of reckless homicide, as far as I am concerned. Since the law likely can't do anything about the majority of them, if any, then I hope guilt overrides them. To think of the misfortune of having such selfish parents, I should think the kids those of bastards are safer being raised by wolves. They're scum and should spare us all from their utter worthlessness. They weren't stampeding to escape anything but higher prices and a reduced selection.

11/20/08

Whatever you may think of the Fairness Doctrine,

balance and fairness do not exist by its absence, and the Free Market ensures nothing but that the biased, albeit varied, will of the people can affect the content and direction of the media. However, it is because not all people think alike that competition and some semblance of the aspired to goals of balance and fairness can even exist. While It is not correct to assume complete balance and fairness are the default benefits of F.M. competition, that F.M.C. aids in achieving those goals, is probably correct, as a challenge to preconceived notions, as F.M.C. inherently brings, can wrest us from ignorance, and committees whose purpose is to impose balance and fairness can have the ironic consequence of preventing both, as their own ignorances can cloud them from seeing the folly of their own understandings of what balance and fairness are. But to accept competition alone as being what brings truth, perhaps more important than either balance or fairness, about, is to allow yourself to be readily mislead by a flawed premise: Reading a thousand dishonest sources cannot make you more knowledgeable of the truth, merely more skeptical of what truth is, and a thousand honest ones cannot disagree with each other in any substantive way, if honesty refers to what is factual, and not to the sincerity of the opinions of sources, thereby making their value to you negligable, unless you accept them as honest.

All three terms, balance, fairness, and truth, and any of their synonymous words and phrases, may exist within any given medium, not by deflecting to the biased nature of other media, as a means of protection against criticism and scutiny, but by how well that given medium strives to live up to those goals. Fox News, the New York Times, print media, talk radio, etc., any of them, cannot have their fair stories made unfair, nor can their unfair stories be made fair, by the amoral quality of their competitors, nor even by their own internal character. Each source is responsible for itself. If two siblings give both halves of the truth of a matter to their parents, when both know the full truth, both siblings are liars, and will be so even if the parents learn of the whole truth at nearly the same time.

My intent is not to advocate for the Fairness Doctrine, but to express my rejection of the notion that F.M.C. will create what the F.D. can’t either, and that the aforementioned goals can exist in the media as a whole. With or without the F.D., they can’t.

11/7/08

Comment turned into blog post: on improved standing in the world after the election of Obama.

http://www.alan.com/2008/11/07/suddenly-its-cool-to-be-american-again/#comments

Below is the initial comment I left. My view on the matter might surprise you, if it doesn’t just baffle you instead.

I understand the need to be liked, I appreciate and, indeed, want the improved relations Obama’s Presidency will hopefully give us, and there’s a far better chance of that happening with him than would happen with McCain, but there’s a big but here.

Go back 3 years: suppose you were in Germany. While there, based on nothing but the guilt of your association with America by virtue of being an American, you were subjected to harsh, perhaps harrassing, treatment. No one seemed to care if you were liberal, or even apolitical, they wanted a scapegoat for the bad policies of the Bush administration.

Now fast forward: It’s a month from now, and you are in Germany again, and, based on the same association, you are innocent; you are praised. But, as before, no one knows you, they assume what you are, that you agreed with the election of Obama and therefore deserve their praise.

The fact is, the very premise some used to justify bigotry against individual Americans is now used to heap praise upon individual Americans.

I did vote for Obama, and improved foreign relations was a big reason for that, but I want to be thanked, should I ever be abroad, or speaking with a foreign person here, when it is known what I did, not just assumed that I made the choice to vote for Obama.

To me, these so-called positive anecdotes are insulting, and I can’t help but wonder what bigotry lies behind them.

I want stronger allies, and their peoples to support my country when it endevours to do good. I don’t want to be liked for something before they even know if I did it.

Posted by WFG
November 7th, 2008 at 2:30 am

11/1/08

Were vs. Vamp.

The werewolf versus vampire debate is either ages old or merely a "Hollywood" creation. Whichever is the case, it is, nevertheless, a fascinating debate. To save you time but also risk the cessation of your reading the remainder of this, I will tell you if I had to choose a side to be the victor, I would probably choose that of the vampires, if for no other reason than the fact that vampires would have more frequent access to their powers than werewolves, thus making the fur-covered supernatural beasts more vulnerable to their supposed arch-rivals.

But aside from the limitation of about only one day a month to use their powers of greatly heightened senses, speed and strength, there is another issue which seems to bring disfavor to the werewolf, that of the origins of both of these evil creatures.

Of course, different cultures have different origins for their versions of vampires, the related zombie, and werewolves and werebeasts of varying kinds, but I will stay with the one's I know somewhat, and point out a very obvious difference between the two.

Vampires

I've heard of two like, and one different, origins for the classic vampire. The first two are that of a deceased person, having died violently, or in some state of despair or unlove, becoming possessed by either a wicked spirit or demon. (I would assume that, if possessed by the latter entity, the vampire that would be formed would be significantly more powerful than the vampire formed by that of possession by an evil spirit alone.) The third theory is that the original spirit of the deceased causes his own corpse to rise again. (The obvious issue that would come up with the former two origins is how, if at all, the vampire has the memories of its body's previous host spirit. I really don't know the answer to that, and have to acknowledge there being some greater credence to the third origin being the most likely.)

Werewolves

Werewolves have one origin in popular culture, of which I am aware: A punishment by Zeus on King Lycan for having dared to serve the King of Mount Olympus human flesh, claiming it to be the flesh of an animal (a pig's, if I recall correctly. How this curse spread, I don't know, and it might be well accurate to assume the lycanthrope monster spread and multiplied from another source. But not knowing that other source, I must stay with the Lycan based theory.

Now for the glaring difference.

Whether you look at the creatures from a believer's perspective, or that of a curious skeptic's, there seems no plausible reason to believe werewolves would be as powerful as demonstrated to be in films. The reason I believe this to be the case is that while I have heard of a demonic component to the creation of vampires (see earlier in this post), I have never heard the same said of the werewolf and its conception.

That distinction adds an as yet unknowable quantity. While a wolf's strength is measurable, and a conversion of human strength to the presumed stronger wolf strength might be possible, there is no way to measure the power of a demon, nor the affect of the possession and animation of a corpse on its power. Now, it can be argued that such uncertainty is also reason to believe the vampire would be the weaker creature, and I suppose that's possible, though I doubt it, but the issue here is that of the probable strength of a wolf made human. of a man and wolf made one. To that question I would posit that the creature, while deadly, would not be as powerful, perhaps not even nearly so, as we are lead to believe.

The demon, if the cause for most vampires, is, for me, the key.

Anyway, Happywappy Halloweenykeeny.