Channel your aggression. Become a young girl, and Throw Rocks at Boys!

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across one of the funniest comics I think I’ve ever had the fortune of finding, Diesel Sweeties. To illustrate the comic, I selected this thread: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. and 7. Enjoy!

Greetings all users of this site. Upgrade time. The blog, as you may have noticed, has been upgraded. With all upgrades, a new theme has been installed as default. This one is based on Yellehs (or Shelley if you like reading things sdrawkcab). No, I didn’t name the theme. And finally, WP Dash is running, replacing Wordpress’ default Dashboard in the administration area. Comments/flames are welcome

This seems vaguely familiar. Security Guards at One Bush in San Fran are hassling honest people (well, at least Thomas Hawk) trying to take pictures of the building. Anyway, Mathew Honnan has decided that this simply isn’t right and has declared a contest. The contest? Take a photo of One Bush building at the intersection of Bush and Market and post a link to it on his blog. In one week, he will pick a winner and they’ll get US$10 of iTMS stuff. Personally, I could care less about the money. If I was in San Fransico, I’d try to get a picture of the building myself. Anyway, I’ve found this interesting link from one of the comments on one of the pages. Very interesting.

“Heh. Kinda cool.”
— Tocsic

Use My Google! … okay, that sounded a lot better in my head, before I’d typed it.

What great timing! Sci-Fi premieres the two new episodes of Tripping the Rift tomorrow night (July 27th). I’ve needed my fix of politically incorrect humour (Yes, Family Guy and American Dad are doing okay … but you can never have too much). I’m glad the show is back.

Robotech is back with a vengeance. Three years ago, Wildstorm started up a the Robotech comic series “From The Stars.” There most recent project is a five-part tie in to the new Robotech movie The Shadow Chronicles. The comic series Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles, which I sincerely hope doesn’t indicate the creativity to expect from the movie or comic ;), “[P]icks up where the original series left off 20 years ago. It addresses a lot of unanswered questions that have left Robotech fans hanging on the edge of their seats, but the events leading up to Rick Hunter’s disappearance is probably the biggest one that comes to mind,” at least according to creator Tommy Yune. Sounds kind of neat. The prequel comic begins biweekly distribution in October.

As for The Shadow Chronicles itself, very little has been released on it since it began production in 2002. With that said, there is an interview from Shadow Chronicles News with Mark Hamill¹ about his character in the series, Commander Taylor (though almost no information is relieved about Shadow Chronicles), and at ComicCon it was announced that Tony Oliver will return as Admiral Hunter. A telesync (RE: camcorder/camera recording) of the trailer shown at ComicCon can be viewed here. The quality isn’t that great and it is really just a series of animated sequences with music (no voices … except the crowd).

Notes:
1: Mark Hamill, for those of you who don’t know, is a very big name in voice acting these days. In voice acting, he is perhaps best known for being the voice of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series.

As reported on Slashdot, a well known Russian spammer has been found dead.

Very cool Flickr site, which reviews Crappy DVD Bootleg Covers. It’s quite amusing. I particularly like the bootleg of Saw which had the quote “Don’t buy the hype. Just watch the trailer again and pretend you saw a better movie.” or the bootleg for The Lion King 2 with the quote “Not as good as the first one, but okay.” I really should find out how to make DVD covers in linux. This could be a lot of fun.

“Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?”
— Joseph Stalin

In case you thought you’d never live to see the days of Fahrenheit 451 come to life, worry no more. Uber-conservative on-line magazine Human Events Online published an article last May on the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. While they aren’t advocating the burning of the books or even their censorship, one has to wonder why they compiled the list in the first place. On top of that, there are quite a few surprises on the list (including that The Origin of the Species only got honorable mention, sorry Kansas).

The first three are books on political ideas: The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kompf, and Quotations from Chairman Mao. In many of my history classes, my last on military history in particular, Fascism was an extreme reaction to Communism. I guess it is only fair that the the first three deal with Communism and Fascism. At the same time, blaming Communism for the Soviet Union (or China) is like blaming Manson for the Columbine shootings. As for Mein Kompf, yes it is a dangerous book, but it allows you insight into one of the most frightening figures in the 20th century.

I’ll skip The Kinsey Report, it was just about sex … I’m at a complete lose at how that is dangerous … but then again I haven’t read it (not likely too either), so I don’t know. Number five was a real surprise Democracy and Education by John Dewey. Anything seem familiar about that name? Anyway, he argued that one shouldn’t teach kids hard skills, you should teach them to think. He also developed “The Dewey Decimal System”, which made it extremely easy for people to figure out libraries, thus exposing them to volumes of books, and as we all know, books are very bad.

Next on the list is Das Kapital. Oh course, another book on communism, sort of. It was a direct strafing run at capitalism in which Marx portrayed “capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.” I mean, if that wasn’t true would we need amend the Textile Labelling Act like this, in order to force clothing manufacturers to list exactly where the clothes they sell came from (and what subcontractor made them)? If I was to describe capitalism, I’m fairly sure I’d use Marx’s description. How many people here have work in retail/food services? How many of them obey labour standard laws, even if it costs them money in the long run? Yah, thought so. Their defense of why Das Kapital is a dangerous book? “21st Century America: a free, affluent society based on capitalism and representative government that people the world over envy and seek to emulate.” I think I’m going to be ill. Many US companies are outsourcing things to India right? Why? Because it’s cheaper …

Moving on: The Feminine Mystique. Betty Friedan interviewed a lot of house wives in the 50’s and 60’s and found that even though they’d done everything right — married young, had kids, had successful husbands — they were mostly depressed and unhappy. Many were thinking about ex-marital affairs and suicide. Friedan theorized that the cycle was never ending, these woman made their children dependant. The boys would find woman to replace their mother, and the girls would end up trapped like their mothers because they thought that was what a wife/mother was supposed to do. The most important thesis in the book is the idea that women should become their own individuals (figure out who they are) before getting married. I’m not overly sure why this book is “bad” per say, but she does insist that woman should work in the workplace, instead of just staying at home. I guess from a certain point of view, this is the worst thing that ever happened to conservative America.

The Course of Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte. Now this is an interesting book (I’ve gone on-line and looked up other’s comments on it since I’ve never encountered it myself). Basically Comte argues that humanity has advanced beyond the need for theology and that socialism (by this he means society) could replace it. He suggested that you could be moral and not believe in god. I’m guess why this book is bad is it makes it difficult for people and/or governments to convince people that they should ignore their moral systems in favor of doing immoral things because god instructed them to do (ie: blowing yourself up to take out some infidels). Very inconvienent.

Beyond Good and Evil. Not really a surprise, but the description is. It’s strange how the same people can read a book and come to two completely conclusions of what was being talked about (ie: the Nazi’s completely misunderstood what he was trying to say in Will to Power). The authour of the article on Human Events Online said “Nietzsche argued that men are driven by an amoral ‘Will to Power,’ and that superior men will sweep aside religiously inspired moral rules, which he deemed as artificial as any other moral rules, to craft whatever rules would help them dominate the world around them.” What I believe he said is a little different. Basically societies are formed when barbarians rip down a peaceful people and impose their rule over them. As time passes as they become more civilized, they are forced to impose their own views of right/wrong in order retain control of society. He mentioned religion, but not in direct context to the idea of the living will to power. At least that is how I interpreted this bit:

Of course, where the history of the origins of aristocratic society is concerned (and thus the precondition for that raising of the type “man”), we should not surrender to humanitarian illusions: truth is hard. So without further consideration, let’s state how up to this point every higher culture on earth has started! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every dreadful sense of the word, predatory men still in possession of an unbroken power of the will and a desire for power, threw themselves on weaker, more civilized, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-raising races, or on old, worn cultures, in which at that very moment the final forces of life were flaring up in a brilliant fireworks display of spirit and corruption. At the start the noble caste has always been the barbarian caste: its superiority has lain not primarily in physical might but in spiritual power—it has been a matter of more complete human beings (which at every level also means “more complete beasts”).

…As the result of a stroll though the many more sophisticated and cruder moral systems which up to this point have ruled or still rule on earth, I found certain characteristics routinely return with each other, bound up together, until finally two basic types revealed themselves to me and a fundamental difference sprang up. There is master morality and slave morality. … Distinctions in moral value have arisen either among a ruling group, which was happily conscious of its difference with respect to the ruled, or among the ruled, the slaves and dependent people of every degree. In the first case, when it’s the masters who establish the idea of the good, it’s the elevated and proud conditions of the soul which emotionally register as the distinguishing and defining order of rank. The noble man separates himself from the nature of those in whom the opposite of such exalted and proud states expresses itself. He despises them.

But, as I said, people have different interpretations of this so go read it yourself and make your own decision.

Then we come to the most confusing of all General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics saved the world, or at least that was what my history class on the 30s told me. The idea was that the government needed to take an active role in the economy in order to create jobs for the unemployed, to stimulate economic growth. It was sort of like triage for economies. How this idea is “dangerous”. According to the article “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.” … so did Canada. Up until the 80s, we were doing quite well. Recently we’ve been doing quite well again. Just because you have idiots running your government doesn’t mean that the idea itself is dangerous, but your politicans.

On the honourable mention list, I also have to mention Unsafe At Any Speed. That’s a strange book to find even on the honourable mention list of “Dangerous Books”. I mean, Nader wrote a book about a car (A Corvair IIRC) that could explode even when parked (and off) and that it required exacting pressure balances on its tires or it’s suspension could cause the vehicle to roll. The book forced the US government to start taking an interest in road safety of vehicles. The three E’s (Engineering, Enforcement, Education) of basic road safety came from this book. How was it a dangerous book? How?

Ideas are dangerous, but censoring people’s ability to read them (or even attempting to influence their opinions on them) is, in my opinion even worse than the idea contained. I know, I know, they aren’t listing these as books to censor, but why would you identify the 10 most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century? What is the purpose? Maybe I should create a list of the ten most dangerous people on the planet … that would be an interesting list now wouldn’t it?