The right to free speech is not to be confused with the right to an audience.

Yes. To those of us that would cry that ANY attempt to tell someone that something is not fit for print is some kind of censorship, I say, you're watering down your argument by standing for crap and insult.

(From a comment about the whole "Fuck Bush" thing in Colorado, but not really related to that. My opinion on that is that I think it is, at best, a quaint, but misplaced sentiment. At worst, it is sensationalist journalism.)

The Power of Attraction

Recently, there was a study released that confirmed that men choose their mate based on looks, which, I can only assume, means that women choose their mate based on something more. I don't know, I wasn't interested in reading the story.

But lets go with that assumption and extrapolate. It is pretty obvious that our goal in life is to promote the continued existance of the species, in some way or another. The simplest way to do that is to make more people. The way to make more people is to have sex. But what reproduction means is different for men than it is for women. Men do not need to alter their lives for a few years (9 months + nursing, which was the only way to feed babies for most of the existance of our species, except, of course, for the very very rich who had nursemaids) in order to procreate, so their main goal is finding the best possible mate in terms of overall health (including looks). Women look for a guy that is not only healthy, but likely to help out so that she isn't left with the kid, all by herself. And what does a pregnant or nursing woman need? She needs what we all need, food, shelter, and clothing, but she also needs time and relaxation. A pregnant woman needs MORE nourishment but is LESS likely to be able to get it all by herself. Women need someone to meet their basic needs on a daily basis during this time. Men only need the woman to be pregnant, healthy, and alive.

Of course, men know that the best mate is more than *just* good looking, but in the end, women are more concerned with their looks than men are. And men, partially freed from worrying about how they look, partially to attract women, do other things - all kinds of other things. Everyone needs a mate to continue the species, but were not interested in just any mate. So we have competition for mates. Women strive to be the best looking, the healthiest. Whereas men strive to prove that they can provide.

So that is the mating dance of the homo sapiens sapien.

Long ago, long before written history, long before agriculture, every adult member of our species needed to devote the entire day to obtaining enough calories to stay alive. Lets not forget that men usally needed to provide for more than just themselves while the women were hampered from later stages of pregancy. Nobody had the time to develop fancy bowls, religions, or governments. Those that did starved to death. But along the way, there came agriculture, loosely defined as the cultivation or maintenance of a food resource leading to the eventual harvesting. Cultivation took a varied amount of work, from the domestication of animals to waiting around for the salmon spawn. But what this meant was that one person could suddenly feed two, three, ten, one hundred. The people that didn't have to spend their entire day looking for food also had nothing to do. The results are all around us.

I feel we are at a very important milestone in the history of our species, much like those living during the advent of agriculture. Remember how women devote years of their lives to the care of new generations? Until only recenly, only the very very rich woman could afford to both carry on her own genes AND not devote her life to pregancy. One baby might take two years, significantly more if babies died in infancy or early childhood. Women have devoted their entire lives to one thing - procreation. But after thousands of years, we've filled up the planet. Oh, technically, we could handle more growth. Technically, we could make the entire planet like California.

Technically, which really implies ignoring the unmeasurable. Simply put, there are too many people NOW. I've been caught in traffic on a SATURDAY around here more than I care to remember. So not everyone needs to have a kid to perpetuate the species. In fact, a lot of people can do a lot more good with other activites. We also have a system that allows women to just assume that any pregnancy will not only go to term, but the baby that results will live into adulthood and even old age. [Of course, this is not necessiarly the case in a large segment of the world]

The result? Women do not need to devote their lives to pregnancy. And because we're homo sapiens sapiens, we want to do other things now. Men used to spend their time looking for calories for themselves and the women. Agriculture solved this problem thousands of years ago. Women spent their time being pregnant or nursing until about a hundred years ago. The difference? Look around.

"Jumping 0.9%"

I am SO FUCKING SICK of all the play-by-play of the Dow Jones jumping up a hundred or down fifty points.

-Source

Does anyone understand statistics in this dumb country? No? I didn't think so. See that graph? You see it?

13,000

Does anyone get it?

Read the beginning of that Wikipedia article. We've got 100 years of source data about a stupid game of controling people's lives and we think we know it all. Take a look at that graph again.

There are two types of bull markets. A secular bull market is a period in which the stock market index is continually reaching all-time highs with only brief periods of correction, as during the 1990s, and can last upwards of 15 years. A cyclical bull market is a period in which the stock market index is reaching 52-week or multi-year highs and may briefly peak at all-time highs before a rapid decline, as in the early 1970s. It usually occurs within relatively longer bear markets and lasts about three years.

That little dip in the early 21st century was NOT a correction. And I cannot see these "corrections" from the 1970s. This is a bunch of made up bullshit.

This is the stupidest shit in the world. Business is the biggest bunch of bullshit. At least my history thesis was about something that actually fucking happened.

And here is where I complained about work, or my lack thereof. I've set my bar really high, but they've set my bar really really low. So they think I'm doing great, but I feel like nothing is happening.

The world is full of complete idiots. All you have to do to know that is to read the comments on anything that gets a lot of comments, especially Alternet. The glut of morons complaining about "why is this on here" is enough to make one homicidal. If you didn't like the article, STFU, who gives a shit? Feminist articles or even blog posts garner that kind of response more than any other post. The obviousness of men wanting women to stop talking at all is nauseating and pathetic. I can't even talk about it anymore, it is getting to be a cliche. Our society is going to hell, or is already there.

You know what I am sick of? All of the articles about Iraq and our failed policy. It is the same thing over and over, with extra details added. At least the feminist articles provide a perspective that we haven't heard before. Or that people besides me and other intelligent women haven't already thought of. You know the difference? I DON'T READ THOSE ARTICLES because I know that other people DO care. I DON'T think I'm the center of the world or that my opinion is shared by the entire population. I'm NOT an entitled asshole, but maybe I ought to be. Too bad I was raised to RESPECT others. Thats why I had a hard time getting into SomethingAwful. It was a big penis party full of jackasses that thought that since they went through some antimosity in high school and obsessed over computer crap that they were entitled treat anyone that veered outside their tightly and ambiguously drawn lines like shit. I'm too old for that. I was too old for that at 5.

When I was growing up, I always assumed that adults knew more than I did - those older than me knew more than I did, but now I'm peaking - I'm old enough to be really really smart, and not just for my age. And now I'm looking around with my paltry 147 IQ and realizing just how stupid the rest of the world really is. No wonder I'm depressed.

And it is so obvious that the American Empire is in decline. Any anthropologist or historian can tell you, but we're debating things like it the surge worked. IF the surge worked. IF it fucking worked???? The soldiers could have been flinging their own shit instead of bullets and it would have had the same effect.

It doesn't take a fucking weatherman to see the goddamn weather.

What were the goals for the stupid "surge" of 20% more troops? Secure Baghdad so the government can get things done. Baghdad is not secure and the government hasn't gotten anything done. Anbar is secure, wonderful, did you know that Anbar is mostly desert? 1+1 still equals 2, but we're fucking debating this. They're all just fucking morons.

Back to the Dow. I'm sure you've heard of all the fuss over the jumps, and drops of the Dow in the last month. Here is how the Dow has acted over the past year, in real terms.



I'm not going to give a shit until the Dow goes down several hundred points in a few days. Period, end of story, STFU already.

What I've been saying

We need more female writers in the media.

Science!

Human-animal embryo study wins approval

Possibilities

PRO	CON
Represents an advance in biology	Tampers in the domain of "God" or just too much power for humans to have in general
This is really awesome!	Viruses can have a greater chance to mutate in a crossover manner in cells like this, it's really dangerous. (Source)
Learn more about what gives us conciousness, thus memory, thus the ability to learn more with each generation.	Diseases wipe out the majority of the population. Which means our species will continue on, but we will lose a lot of people and productivity. Which, from a rational viewpoint, isn't so bad, just as long as we live through it.

But from my viewpoint, our species will not exist forever, and we seem to be on a fast track of energy depletion (though solar is seeming to gain ground). I don't know how I will die, nor do most people. We all hope to live a long time, partially because we want to live through generations, partially because the idea of not being alive is horrifying. But we are increasingly consuming energy and space on our planet, and becoming more segmented and panicked. We're attacking each other more vigorously all over the globe, and especially within America (though American attacking within is more verbal than violent). We seem to be on the fast track to destruction, but we're really far off from that (this is potentially within the century, but probably further away), so we have time to slow down and increase our time, if we work together. If we work together... all of us, as equals, none of this "othering" crap.

Miss Teen South Carolina

I heard about this at my networking "lunch", a little event related to the new employee network at my company. We get put into a group of 4 and then the 4 of us decide a day and time to meet and talk. Both times it was me and three guys, one of which was white and the other two asian, but the demographics are not really a factor. The people are all in IT jobs, more so than me, even though we are all in the IT part of the company.

Anyway, the other three people had heard of this, and I hadn't, so after the event, I went home and looked it up. They also mentioned that she appeared on the Today Show and explained the situation. My take is that sure, she might be ditzy, but she apparently didn't hear most of the question, and in that light, her bullshit answer, created on the spot and without flinching, is almost impressive. She is, after all, 18 and has probably been trained, in the sickening pagent world, to be like this.

Everyone loves a good rant

Mostly when one can agree with the subject, of course. My former employee (the one that turned out to be sexist) did do a very impressive rant once about his experience being a TA and the undergraduates that completely failed to retain any of the information about research he provided.

Today, on Alternet, there was an article about Obama's stance on Cuba. I'm encouraged by the shifting tide right now, as represented by this piece. Suddenly, the rest of the country is realizing (or seems to be realizing, based on my vantage point) that those Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida are just disenfranchized slaveholders, waiting to go back and claim their unearned land and begin making money again. But that is beside my point here.

The last comment (well, when I read the post) included an interesting rant on the state of American "justice"

I'm all for patrotism, but why must I be a sheep. It seems we like to point the finger at Castro and Cuba for human rights violations that many states in this country abhere to themselves, but we call it justice because it was so-called decided by a 'jury of our peers' even as it was maniplilated by the politicians in our states that have such cruel laws on the books, and then we as citizens are told the laws were passed by the respresentatives we sent to to represent our interest and if we don't like the jobs our reps are doing we can vote them out of office at the next election but the laws that we passed will stay on the books even if they are cruel....and you know what, in the end nobody have to have responsibilty for anything.

-Source