Rico Penguin
Spelunking the Universe
Cats and Kids or “Why your internet is cats.”
01 week ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’m incredibly disappointed in the internet right now. Let me tell you why, when I was in college we read about the psychology of the “Crazy Cat Lady” and some theories behind why (mostly) single women can find themselves growing old with a house full of cats.
The main study that seemed most reasonable to me was that the symmetry and rough location of the cats various facial features, nose, eyes, and mouth are all roughly in the same place you’d find them on the average human child.
So for women without kids, and even those who have children but the children have moved out, cats can become proxies to help satiate the genetic motivators that lead people to become parents in the first place. What I’ve found most interesting with the internet over the last few decades is just how quickly the feline has dominated it.
The vast majority of animal images I’m presented across the internet are cats. Sleeping, walking, prowling, yawning, or in the case of YouTube “talking”. But these images appeal to both genders, one would suspect that if it was only women (such as was suggested by the studies) that we’d see a dominance of women sharing the imagery. At least anecdotally I see an even distribution of people across both genders replicating and spreading these images across the net.
Now to clarify, the reason I’m upset with the internet is that for the life of me I can’t find the studies we researched. It’s borderline infuriating, if I search for anything with cats in the name I’m hit with arts and crafts, ICHC, or other totally unhelpful data. Perhaps I need to expand my search engine pool.
The theory is interesting however, while I’m going to bet the primary goal of domesticating cats was to have them around to kill things that would otherwise have a grand old time 
killing people (rats, snakes, and so on), I can’t help but wonder if the structure of their faces lead most people to produce the same hormones that they would when presented with an infant.
Basically I’m thinking that cats have become so widely adored because they push our genetic buttons. Don’t get me wrong though, I have no problem with things that excite dopamine release or hinder uptake. In this particular case I imagine a cat is much healthier than Heroine or Tobacco. Frankly as one of our kittens sleeps against my leg and I look at her snoozing face I’m certainly feeling pretty darn good.
So yeah, something to think about. Perhaps if you find the study work drop me a line, I’d like to add it to here.
Bubble Butts
01 week ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Man my hands are cold…I should not do deck building downstairs. But as I wait for these 10 sickly digits to warm up to something I can feel I’ll tell you a bit about our kitties. Very little, just one more story to help prove they are evil geniuses. My computer uses 3 screens and I switch between Eyefinity and extended single, there is a single key combination that switches them back and forth. Venus stepped on only two keys, those VERY 2 keys.
She then looked at me, after a light puff of air she walked off. The damage had been done, and dominance had been established.
So I don’t do drugs and I have a pretty solid reason why, well not a single reason, but this one I think is pretty solid. I have weird thoughts while 100% sober. Today I was curious about bubble butts, and I know many people are thinking “Well sure I was thinking about those today too!”
But I don’t think you are on the same page as me, I created a thought experiment in my head that asked the question: “IF all other things were the same, what would be different if our butts did nothing but blow soap bubbles?”
100% sanitary, all your butt does in this universe is blow soap bubbles throughout the day. The first and most obvious thing is that soap can dry out your skin if you leave it on there too long, so I suspect pants would need to be dramatically different. If nothing else back less chaps would be mighty popular.
But further, would butts be considered dirty? If we presume that these are 100% the same as soap bubbles from soap products its not a matter of sanitation. Also would people be mortified to get hit by a butt bubble of someone else? This seems like a thought that is biased by my own personal feelings on the matter, if someone now were to blow a bubble with their rear I would be an extremely unhappy person to have it land on me.
Would it be funny? We laugh at farts now, would bubble blasts be hilarious to us? I know for me it seems like it would be painfully funny, but if everyone is doing it then I would suspect it would be similar to hearing elbows pop.
How would chairs be designed? The moisture from the bubbles would be terrible on most modern fabrics. Imagine your office chair getting a fresh coating of soapy water each day. The mildew build up and other issues would just be terribly inconvenient.
I’m not sure what the mechanism would be, frankly, how digestion would lead to the production of soap bubbles but I’m sure nature finds its way.
This sort of strange stuff is what racks my brain about once a day or so. I don’t really need any drugs to help me wonder the oddest things.
Although I recall being told in college “I’d love to get you high.” which I thought was a flattering compliment. Although I suspect I’d be incredibly boring stoned. I’d probably say things like “Guys, guys, I’ve been thinking about taxes.”
I’d write more but it is quite difficult to write when it looks like someone is reading it, even though I’m sure they aren’t. (Hint…hint…)
My Cat–The Evil Genius
01 week ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I just came to the startling realization that of our two kittens, the quiet one, is quite possibly evil. She has a very consistent desire to chew up anything rare in your house. Got a stack of penny business cards? Meh, this is not acceptable for my pallet. But this, this rare gold leaf from the depths of King Tut’s Tomb? Oh I will chew this, I will chew this with the delight of a thousand children dancing in a ball pit.
Our cats like straws, in fact I’d say they love straws. But Venus doesn’t just like any straw, she likes your straw. Anytime I have a drink she can be surrounded by 30 straws and look up at me, silently planning her assault.
She’s exceptionally good at getting straws out of cups, both from open top cups and the coffee cups with the tiny slit in the top which I jam a straw through. (I’m told you shouldn’t do this, hot liquids + plastic equal chemical leakage).
The thing that lead me to write this was what I just realized tonight. A few times in the last few months she’s knocked over cups of water in the middle of the night. I thought it was because of how fluffy she is and that she was just bumping them. Today I saw the truth with my own eyes!
She looked up at my cup and said “This moisture shall be mine!” Put her paws right up on the rim and tried to pull it over.
So all this time when she’d knock over cups, it wasn’t an accident, it was pure evil genius.
She’s the cutest super villain I’ve ever known. I look forward to seeing what other devious things she’ll unveil upon us in the future. I suspect she might be one of the smartest pets I’ve ever lived with. Then again Artemis knows how to open medicine bottles…
Tomorrow we’ll get back to other stuff. Sometime soon I’ll post pictures of these cute little fuzzy children. From back when they were little living blips on the floor to the nearly full grown kids they are today. The internet can always use more cat pictures.
Questions–The Good and the Bad
01 week ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’m not sure if I’ve covered this before. I imagine I have, often I feel like a broken record going on and on about the things that interest me. At the end of the day I’m just beating a universe sized horse fruitlessly waiting for it to twitch. Also in advance forgive the odd typos, I’m almost literally typing blind as I write from across the room on a 42 inch television. The font is coming out as a few pixel tall slits of black on a canvas of white for me.
Luckily as a kid I used to stay up late writing, this meant that my eyes would burn. So what I would do is type with my eyes closed, envisioning the words in my mind and using my fairly automated knowledge of the keyboard. It was nice, I could see the story unfold in my conscious while the text was being prepped for its inevitable loss in one of the many hard drive reformats of the time. Because, I wager, no parent figured their kids had anything meaningful saved on the PC.
At least I can think of no other reason to reformat without asking everyone in the house if they have something important saved. But I digress, we were sitting on a few hundred floppies, I should have learned then to make backups.
So, with that digression out of the way, I would like to talk about what makes a good question and what makes a bad question. Folks often say, at least when the topic arises, that there is no such thing as a dumb question. I’m not entirely convinced but I do know there is something at least indistinguishable from a bad question.
But how? How can a search for answers ever be a bad thing? How can someone who constantly spurts from the chops about the importance of learning and of curiosity be telling you now that there is such a thing as a bad question. In fact I think there are some questions that are downright destructive, they waste your time, something that is extremely precious as a mortal.
Worse still people think these questions are deep, insightful, meaningful. This gives them unearned weight in the grand scheme. When people say something profound you darn near invariably here someone say “Oh yeah? Well what about X?”
Richard Dawkins put it best: “Why is a Unicorn Hollow?” Now I >know< this has been said before on here. But it is a solid point, it is a question, but in the end it is utterly useless. It doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding anything. And worse still this question can be asked in any universe.
This is where you discern a good question from a bad one. I highly doubt this rule is universal but it works as a soft filter. IF a question can be asked in any universe and still be basically equally relevant, it is a bad question.
For instance “Why Here?” People ask this as if they’ve come across a profound realization. Why Earth? Why not Mars? But if they took a second they’d realize it doesn’t matter what planet you live on. The question would always be just as valid. IF we were in a universe where we lived on Mars we’d be MArtians saying “Why here? Why not Earth?”
It’s a profoundly bad question, it leaves people bantering on for hours into what basically ends up being either “I don’t know” or “Because.” There is nothing to gain, if the hope is to push an agenda well that is equally futile. Anyone convinced by this sort of question is not likely someone you want joining you for tea. Unless all you want is their money on Weekends, then I could see their ability to be influenced being critical.
Another good one “Why Life?” Why do we live, Why is there any life in the universe? For about 10 seconds it seems like it’s a solid question. Oh my goodness, my eyes have been opened to the truth, I must accept it! Until you realize again that in any universe where the question can be asked the question will be asked. It’s not productive because it brings nothing to the table. In any universe without life no question can be asked and thus it is equally valid in its empty value.
These questions feel good, let us gloat about our own self perceived importance. That our tiny dusty residence is somehow profoundly important in the universe. I’ve said before that I think we are supposed to make ourselves important instead of feeling it is a birthright. Humanity fails for as long as it feels it is inherently something fantastic.
We die just like a snail beneath the heat of a nuclear bomb, we choke just like a frog with the loss of our atmosphere, and we fade just like the leaves at the ends of the Earth. For as long as we are just as easily snubbed we are hardly anything of greatness (in relation to something as vast as the universe).
My personal favorite in terms of empty questions is “What is the meaning of life?” Really? This is it, this is the thing that keeps people up at night? Does nobody realize you can darn near replace the word Life for anything else and it sounds silly? “What is the meaning of Toaster?” Now you could respond and tell me what a Toaster does, or what goes into a toaster, or the history of toaster. But that’s not what I asked, I wanted to know the meaning of toaster.
How about the meaning of Dirt, or farts, or the setting of the Sun. What does any of this mean? If I can ask this question equally well about basically everything then it isn’t a very good question. Worse still it is a question with infinitely many answers.
IF we are just looking for time sinks I can provide everyone with enough Sisyphean tasks to last an eternity.
I’m not saying that someone should stop being curious, or that Philosophy doesn’t have its place, but giving unearned weight to completely asinine questions is something we should abhor. These questions only seem profound because of just how open ended and weak they are. They overwhelm our senses by being so utterly disconnected from the rational. Your brain hears these questions and pauses “Wait. Did I really just walk the body into this thing? I should really rethink my operations because I have failed in my duties as conscious.”
An optical illusion is interesting, for a moment it can overwhelm your brain as it tries to figure out what kind of wackiness it was just assaulted by. A hollow question is no different. It is a (usually positively intentioned) form of troll logic.
When these questions lead you to thinking about other things outside of the box that is great, but more often than not dwelling on them is an incredible waste of your time. Because you could be just as well replacing the subject of the sentence with anything else and getting just as much done. The main trope that all these kind of questions have in common is they insist upon some level of inherent value. They praise our existence in one manner or another. They are, as the internet likes to call it, circle jerks.
They are built by people who wish to feel better, for people who wish to feel better, and at the end of it all all they are is a form of mental masturbation. A way for people to smile and feel like every molecule of space and time was put into place solely for them.
It’s narcissism, it drives me batty, and I think if ever there was a thing in my mind that was a “peeve” this certainly falls into it. Children tend to be told that at some point they should grow out of playing imagination, but that’s all these questions are. I’m a fan of keeping a child like mind, just don’t wrap it up and act like its some deep philosophical treasure chest just waiting for the next great mind to unlock it.
At best it is a box of cracker jacks. But not the cool old kind that came with a bird whistle or a green army man. No it’s the modern kind where it’s a piece of paper that folds to show you a picture of a cracker jack.
No magic card today…Venus ate one of mine. (Can you tell?)
A Handy How-To on Regulation
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Oh man, I bet you were thinking today “I want to read about regulation and how to do it effectively!” I heard your calls, I thought about it while building card decks and I’ve come to the following conclusion: Well…you’ll see as we move along!
So I’ve been reading a lot, not necessarily recently but just in general. One of the things I’ve noticed over and over is that regulations are originally (at least stated to be) put in place to protect the little guys, the average people, from the evils of the wild west of capitalism. At its core capitalism is a deceptively evil thing, living life with no concern but the market and profits. But there are some simple ways you can make it work, and I think that Libertarians would enjoy some of the things I’m going to say.
The first thing to note is that regulation for regulations sake is always abused. It always mutates into something that hinders start-ups, hinders progress, and overall chokes out any sort of forward momentum. However if you just get rid of regulations you will be left with a very very bad world, if you can’t expect the leadership to properly regulate themselves, you can’t expect anyone to. That’s not necessarily because people are bad, but picking and choosing who can be trusted is not something one should do.
So what I propose is not regulations in the strictest sense but instead requiring that all businesses be open to the public. The records, the processes, the factories, require that people be able to see every step that lead to their I-pod, their home, their burger, or their pants. This provides the missing piece to the idea that the “Market will regulate itself”, because as it stands the thing that stops businesses from regulating themselves is sweet secrecy. No need to fix how you take care of your cattle, nobody sees your workers beating them with nail bats.
No need to have your pants made in the US, nobody sees those people being oppressed to save you the 20% off the top. How about the nets put around Foxxconn to catch people who try to end their lives? A work environment so terrible that death is better.
These things are largely hidden behind a veil, easily, and it is usually done because of supposed “security”. Security against what? Terrorists? If they want to bomb a large chicken factory they can do so without seeing what is inside. In fact, if you force people to take into consideration that “someone just might do them harm” you incentivize them to diversify.
No longer is it safe to have a single super massive chicken farm, so instead of one centralized (and very susceptible to harm) factory you spread them across the country and have them closer to the target of their product. Pants, I-Pods, Etc, these companies suddenly have their skeletons dropped on the doorsteps of the consumer.
Are you willing to let people kill themselves just to get an I-phone for 399 instead of 478.9? This becomes the question and I bet more often than not you will not find support for their shady practices to shave a buck off the top.
Now look at the upstart companies, perhaps a family farm? If these folks want to raise their cattle, chickens, etc, as it was done ages past. They can do so. You can see exactly how they do everything and decide for yourself if you like that over the ammonia meat in the local meat factory. I’m not saying either is better than the other (though if I was forced to I’d take the former), but that’s not the point, the point is that the only way the consumer can choose properly is if they are 
presented the whole package up front.
Everyone needs to show their hand and let the market decide. There are some exceptions, occasionally a business gets too large and monopoly laws are very important. At a certain point a business can get so big that it will utterly obliterate any competition the moment they show up. If there are literally no options you cannot exactly make a choice.
Cake or death is not a fair dichotomy.
Obviously not saying this is perfect. But I think for the back of my head while building decks it isn’t bad. We force all businesses to be as open and up front as they want their customers to be. Origin fishing your PC for data? You should be given all theirs in kind.
Legislatious!
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
So I’ve been very seriously considering entering into politics in the future. I have a strong suspicion that in the not-to-distant future we will see it not only possible but actually witness people winning elections with the aid of the internet. I’m sure some folks have gotten votes by advertising by the internet but I’m speaking more of a (and forgive me for using this word) grassroots movement.
Internet Memes spread like wildfire with little to no money investment, the ability for information to travel to millions of people without millions of dollars is very possible. With this in mind I bet a person with enough internet presence could become a powerhouse during elections. I’m obviously not that person, at least not yet, but it is something to keep in mind.
I don’t believe I’m the only one seeing this possibility, the sheer veracity of these bills trying to censor the internet tells me that the binary party system is witnessing a great shift of information. Where it used to be newspaper, news TV, or bust, it is now a globally connected web sphere (this elicits a vision of spiders making their own balls for sports). The ability to control information and manipulate it has become incredibly difficult.
There are of course weaknesses, twitter and Facebook occasionally carry false information for a few days before snopes or some other service roots it out. Celebrities die and then undie, things are stolen yet not, or wars have broken out where no such is available. I look at these more as the birthing pains of something great, the internet while a few decades old is still very new and people are still figuring out just how to use it best.
There are many positions one can get in politics, I’m sure the conventional suggestion is to start small as a Mayor or something similar and move up the ladder. However I think I’m going to take a different route. The minimum age for Senate is 30, there are a few other constitutional requirements such as being a US Citizen for at least 9 years (I’ve got 25 and counting), and living in the state you represent. Since I’d obviously be living wherever I was living and by the time I’m 30 I’ll have been a US Citizen for 30 years it looks like I’m fairly solid for the entrance exam.
But what? What about a track record, why would anyone vote for me over a seasoned politician? I’ve been thinking about that. Look at the history of the US, we have followed a fairly consistent system of electing people with legal backgrounds (eg. lawyers) and people who were previously in some other position in government. Where has that gotten us? Well it would be hyperbolic to say nowhere good, but it has certainly left us with hundreds of people in congress who have deep connections with various special interests.
It’s all so commonly said that it borders on the cliché, even by saying “Special interest” I feel like a talking head. But I do think there is something good to be found in voting for someone fresh. It would be quite surprising if they did worse than the people who are actively being malicious. Plus we could finally get some people in congress that aren’t lawyers. I’m not necessarily a person who hates lawyers but…54% of the Senate is lawyers and 36% of the House is Lawyers.
This brings with it a particularly disturbing thought. The law is not concerned with what is best in the interest of the people, nor what is most positive, it is only interested in the law. Laws can be made easily to make any activity legal. So if the people making the laws are only worried if things are illegal then they can shape the world in any way and sleep easy at night.
Again, sounds silly, talking head sort of jargon, but look at just about any major law passed since you started paying attention to politics? Passing pollution bills that make it legal to put more crap in rivers, more crap in the air, or passing bills to make it difficult to compete with any current large businesses. These people aren’t scientists, they aren’t biologists, climatologists, teachers, doctors (well most aren’t doctors), or any other discipline that should be making these laws.
And who tells them why the laws are good ideas? Lobbyists, a job that is by-design not genuine. People who are paid to convince these Lawyers that these bills are good ideas. It’s not entirely their fault that they have no idea just how bad putting Mercury into the air is (Coal Plants), it seems obvious to me but perhaps the lobbyists are incredible convincing and use the terminology “PPM (or Parts Per Million)” to make it sound much less dangerous.
So I’ve got a plan, I’d love for anyone to steal it before I hit 30. I’m going to run for office and put up a web forum. The only way Lobbyists, regardless of who they represent, can reach me is by posting on this public forum. They will make their case and explain to me why their laws are important. I will then call upon the entire population of my state to fact check the data and if it is genuine then I will decide whether to push the law or drop it.
The same would be done for bills proposed by other Senators (I’d personally prefer running for Senate, less people to report on) I would post those bills to the forums. Folks could then summarize the bill and everyone could discuss it. If we find any major loopholes (think SOPA) I would crush it, or at least explain why it is foolish and vote against it.
By myself this wouldn’t change the world, you still have 99 other Senators who are getting paid big dollars to do things for people with big dollars. It will then be up to the people to spread this system to other areas. Require their senators to use the system or vote in someone who will.
Furthermore on the forums we’d have people certified. PHD in Astrophysics? Send us a copy of the documentation and we’ll get your account marked up as such. This way when people discuss different bills and their impact the average visitor will immediately see that they have training in the field. Does this mean those people get special treatment? No. But it does mean that people will get recognized for their efforts. The voice of a paid head is not nearly as important as that of an educated citizen.
Obviously it would require lots of help, but this is true about any forums. The amount of moderation and the difficulty of keeping up with the project would probably be somewhere on the Scale of the World of Warcraft forums. If they can do it I’m sure we state could.
I’ve got time to think about it, work on ideas and expand upon them. But I’d love for someone to steal this and run with it. To a certain degree I’m looking at Al Franken. I’d love to see him put up a forums so that people could respond to the things he has been saying in Email. But I’m a little hard on him because he spent so long mocking the people to (seemingly) just evolve into one of them.
But perhaps I’m wrong, and this sort of system would show that quickly.
At any rate, this is something I was thinking about for the majority of the time I was cleaning the Kitchen today. So it is hardly rock solid, but you must start somewhere. I actually 
have a pretty deep seeded love for politics, I can see something beautiful hiding just beneath the surface and I think if people were more aware of various pieces of the system they’d be more happy to talk about it.
It’s a many sided problem, the biases that lead us to elect bad people, to vote against our best interests, to ignore critical pieces of legislation, and to overall express learned helplessness. The more people know why they do what they do, and why those they count on do what they do, the more they can think over the influence of the biases of the brain. (That got quite wordy…)
At any rate, that’s it for today. Just another 6 years before I can give this a shot. Actually if I’m doing the math correctly I might have to wait 8 years. I won’t be 30 during the election season in 6 years, I’ll be 29. Don’t do math while you are tired folks. I’ll be 26 in August which means I’ll be 30 in 4 years which means I’d be old enough just in time for the elections in November. Ah well! Just more time to spelunk the universe. (Oh yes, I went there)
Kids–Particularly Furry Ones
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I had plans to write more today but I got attacked by the Children. Namely our Calico Cat, Artemis. She decided that all night long was the perfect time for me to play with her. When I decided I’d prefer to sleep she promptly pimp slapped me.
Alternatively walking on me, or trying to eat me feet, or exhaling stinky kitty breath in my face at least once. She managed to escape punishment by being painfully adorable.
So my brain is basically slush, my entire work day was just one long drag of exhaustion and now I think I will pack up my brain today. This weekend anytime I see her sleeping I’m going to poke her, or play with her, or meow in her ear.
Vengeance will be mine!
Make them Fish.
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
So I don’t know how many of you know this but my main (and only paying) job is Associate Producer for a game company. I spend more of my time talking with users than I do Producing, this means that I’m talking with tens, hundreds, and easily totals of thousands of people. Not all at once, it is a trickle over time. People flow through like the tides, and indeed there are periods where the waves are far less welcome than those before and after them.
During this time I talk with each person in a similar manner. I tell people that I am a mirror, I provide a response that is mirrored to their attitude. Indifferent people get indifference, angry people get stern responses, dull people get dull responses, and so on. This isn’t always true, I do shape it because at the end of the day I am my own person. The trick to working with me is to come to me with positivity, you can be upset, being upset is part of our core. If we are upset about something we are likely passionate about it and that passion is important.
What I will not accept is ignorance. I also don’t let people off easily who expect me to spoon feed them everything. I try to make people fish, I want them to be uncomfortable with ignorance. This is something I feel is very important. Once people get an earnest knot in their stomach when they don’t know something they become something great. These are the people who go on to send people into outer space, to create new means of heating homes, powering our world, feeding our people, and these are the true leaders of our future.
I want people to never accept waiting. Turn to educated people and ask, certainly, but while you wait try and find the answer yourself. Don’t wait for them to shovel the information into your brain, explore and take in the delicious nectar of the stars yourself.
I get the occasional user who is upset with this. But I’m fairly stern about it, once someone is comfortable with ignorance they will carry it to the grave. These people make me endlessly sad and I’ve wasted perhaps far too many minutes trying to drill into them just how destructive that mentality is. Ignorance is bliss, truly, but it requires ever increasing doses. The more people that are ignorant the more bleak the world becomes, these people must then become even more ignorant to keep up the façade of happiness, and the cycle continues ad infinitum until all things end.
Hyperbole? Overly Poetic? Sure, that’s kind of my thing. But this is something that should not be ok. I would love for everyone to be comfortable, but I don’t want anyone ever comfortable with not knowing. I want it to eat away at people, I want it to drive them to learning on their own. I want it to ignite a spark that lights their intellectual fire. I want that burn to spread across the land and engulf their entire world.
I would go so far as to say I would like people to carry this to their death. Because if enough people do it then nobody will ever have to do it again. We are, for lack of a better phrase, truly blessed, extremely fortunate also works actually, either way we are carrying within our own (incredibly) tiny skulls a device that can store and process insane amounts of information.
We have the potency to unravel the fabric of the universe and to do beautiful things. But this will never become commonplace for as long as people are fine with just being fed fish.
Make them fish, make every person you meet fish, give them hints, teach them how to fish, but be hard on them. Don’t let anyone get comfortable with waiting for the answer to fall on their lap. If you work on a forums you push people, count every edit of “I figured it out” as a victory towards the future. If you can 
take them further to explain how it works you will create an internet ripe with data (Even more than it is now).
Don’t ever let up, don’t let any mind end with a question unasked. If enough people are deeply entrenched in the workings of the real world we’ll all be the better for it. Just imagine, if everyone knows what’s going on in politics then nothing can slip in under the radar. If nothing slips in under the radar there is nothing to try and not think about.
If you are left not needing to be ignorant to be happy, is this not the ideal situation? With that in mind, I’m finishing a book at this time, once I’m done I am very excited to talk about Polyface farms. They are certainly a very good reason to live in Virginia or near the DC area.
Politics and the “Argument of Ignorance”
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
There is something called the “Argument from Ignorance” and that’s not what I’m talking about today. No today we are going to (kind of) talk about SOPA. But, you say, we just did! Well no I’m not here to rant on about SOPA again but more what people should do about it now. Specifically you should find out if your local congressmen supported it at >any< time and never vote for them again. Find everyone you know and tell them not to vote for these people. I’m going to give you two very strong reasons why.
The first reason Politicians might pass laws like this is they are self indulgent narcissists, people who only went into politics to play the power game and control the lives of thousands or millions. This is the cynics approach, perhaps the accurate one, that all these people are in politics because politics attracts just these kind of people. Now I realize the failure of this point since the “regular people” had to vote in the same monsters over and over, so its largely on the shoulders of the average person for not being educated about politics (only enough to complain about it I suppose) but the fact remains that some people are like this. This is the first of only two reasons a lawmaker would vote for this (only two? dude getting ballsy). They have special interests, bribes (also known as lobbying dollars), or some other personal gain involved in doing this sort of thing. For some, in the case of SOPA, just by censoring the free exchange of information they secure their jobs indefinitely. From a survival standpoint I applaud their cold hearted drive to maintain a position that many don’t even have to stay in a home (as most are millionaires).
I’ll start getting back into linking many of my points soon, so feel free to assume I’m making things up as I go. Just figured I’d get this out there.
The second reason a Politician might pass a law like this is because they are ignorant of its dangers. You’ll hear this from the politicians that have now flip-flopped on their position for SOPA once they saw the huge backlash. These people are either liars or extremely dangerous. They’ve admitted that they were ignorant of the bills potential but still were voting for it? Imagine if your surgeon had no idea how to properly perform surgery but said “Fuck it. Lets do this.”
These kind of people do not take their position seriously and should not be allowed to keep their job. They are absolutely deadly and, even if honest, are not fit for office. I would argue they aren’t fit for any leadership position. If you don’t know something you always ask. If nobody knows then you research it. But you never, ever, pass a law without being 100% aware of the consequences.
This has been going on for a long time in the US but it gets worse with each generation. The power 
individuals have to destroy the environment, to kill people, to disenfranchise people, these are now on the level of states, countries, or entire continents. There needs to be an extremely serious approach to this.
You cannot have a dim wit smiling as he talks about invading Iraq, you cannot have people who are either malicious or ignorant passing laws in congress, and you cannot expect anything good in the future for as long as these things are not fixed.
Do not vote for anyone who supported SOPA. No matter the reason these people are dangerous, the same should be said for any bill that is nearly passed that has dire consequences. The people are either evil or stupid and neither is an acceptable political status.
Why SOPA/PIPA are Bad.
02 weeks ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
So I’m writing this from upstairs which means I’ll be warmer which I hope means I won’t have the “cold hands / short post” problem. The only downside to writing up here is I have to magnify the screen by 2x to see anything that I’m writing. However beggars can’t be choosers and I’ll take the steadily rising 63 degrees of our bedroom over the 57 degrees downstairs.
So lets see, why is SOPA bad? Well there aren’t all that many reasons really. There are probably tons of smaller reasons, different pieces of it you could pick apart that make it truly diabolical but it is the macro level that I am concerned with and it’s a failure of politics in general. The first thing is the name, you can generally tell what a bill won’t do or won’t be by the name. The Patriot Act was not Patriotic, Quite a few Clean Air bills actually made regulations lighter, and in this particular case this would not (in any way) stop or even hinder Piracy.
Crime is an interesting thing, it exists solely to answer a niche that is not properly addressed by the legal world. If you want to see what happens when something mundane is made illegal look at Prohibition. It didn’t stop anything and ended up being the foundation for modern organized crime. The next time you hear about a kid getting shot by a gang keep in mind that that stems from conservative laws passed in the early 1900’s (hope I’m getting my history correct, forgive me I can’t double check easily on this PC at this time). In the modern world we have the war on drugs which has single handedly cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people (speaking conservatively) and incarcerated thousands of Americans for little more than carrying and using drugs. You might think this is fair but imagine if Alcohol or Tobacco was a federal offense starting tomorrow.
How would you feel about that? I know personally I wouldn’t care but for TONS of (unknowing) hypocrites this would be an extreme inconvenience and likely a one way ticket to jail or criminal activity. So we’ll keep that in mind. Piracy itself exists because a market is not being met, Valve came along with steam and has made millions by (to a point) answering this market. Others are digging deeper graves and only worsening it.
Here is the second problem: Regulation of illegal activities doesn’t really work, regulation works best when it is dealing with something obvious and easily quantifiable. Clean Air, Clean Water, Factory Conditions, all these things that you could easily and safely examine are regulatory concerns. But when you are stuck with something that is shady and dangerous you will find no success in regulating it. What you must do is find the root cause and eliminate that (and I always suggest by satisfying it in a positive and legal way).
Then there is the biggest problem and the thing that so many people overlook. This law is not by itself ultimately evil it is what this law will open the doors to. Think legally speaking of precedence. This is where judges look at previous rulings and use that to help them decide on modern cases. This is used a LOT in politics. Politicians create a small law, then enhance it a little bit each year or even in under a year. Have you been to an airport lately? That whole charade went from profiling, to x-rays of all your stuff (including shoes), to full body pat downs or full body x-rays. It’s these progressive increases in restrictions that are so nefarious and often overlooked. But they must not be. This is extremely important, you must not ever let a law be judged on its own merits. You must always look at a law for what doors it opens towards the future.
I don’t care what country you are in this is incredibly important. Tell a friend, I know this is some small website on the edge of the internet universe but this is something that should never be understated. This is why SOPA is extremely dangerous. IT would start with some minor oppression of information and as soon as it is politically safe to expand upon it they would. Before you know it there would without a doubt be steps taken to make lawmakers immune from reference on the internet.
This might sound silly but consider what the internet represents. This is the first and possibly last free information trade global network. This represents the absolute only chance that humanity has to potentially better itself and escape the archaic systems of its past. Much like postal mail is dying to the Email, the internet will someday make many old world systems obsolete.
In the US look at what this has done for presidential and congressional voting races? Information on the shady dealings of these people are exposed in weeks or days, not months or years. The façade they put forth is quickly crushed beneath the incredible combined researching power of the citizenry.
Wars will never be the same, politics will never be the same, and truly no other facet of dominance will be. Acts like SOPA are important to people who enjoy the privileges of a closed information market. These acts will continue to be proposed for as long as is needed and they will continue pushing to get them through in sneakier and sneakier ways (perhaps hiding it in the NDAA the next time that comes around).
If the internet is not censored, quickly, there will be a considerable problem for bad people. This is something other countries (Iran, China, etc) have realized. This is something people outside of those countries should never laugh at. It’s a serious possibility and one very important reason to always fight these kind of bills. The moment one gets through it will be abused.
I’m hopeful however, unlike the airports the internet is something that the vast majority of Americans use to some degree. Some once it starts getting broken people will likely stand up. As a final note, ANYTIME a bill says it exists to “save American jobs” it will most certainly kill them. It’s not about saving them in the grand scheme, but saving the specific ones that paid for the bill.