How utterly predictable. First Lindsey Lohan gets one, now all the kids want in on the act.

That’s how we told people to shut their piehole when I was a kid.

Dystopian snark aside, this post, from Gizmodo, deserves to be repeated here:

Onlooker “You sure seem to have a lot of vigorous arm movement right before you go to bed”

Me “Um, yeah.. I was waving goodbye.”

Onlooker “Every night?”

Me “Yes, every night. I love saying goodbye.”

Cheers to GalacticPope, Internet poet.

I love it. The people will track…themselves. Mwuahahahahahaha.

Privacy concerns are valid, a cheap easy feedback tool is a GOOD thing generally.

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And I think part of it is opportunity for outrage. The “child rapist to be provided child porn in jail” headline that has been floating around the media the last couple of days has been a good example. The headline states a pretty horrible situation, that terrible material is being given to a terrible person. So a normal person gets the endorphin kick of being outraged. But the reality of the terrible situation is that the individual is serving as his own lawyer and has a legal right to evidence against him, which is child porn. (Pardon me while I vomit a little) And he will be supervised by guards while viewing the material and will not be able to take the material to his cell.
The full story backs away from the tabloid nature of the headline.

My next example is the incandescent light bulb argument going on in the House of Representatives. It’s not about the light bulbs. There is no ban. It’s a efficiency standard that was written in collaboration with industry. There are many exclusions and the more efficient bulb is still incandescent. But it has been turned into “the government is going to make you buy CFL’s at gunpoint”, next they’ll want your guns and your apple pie. It is an opportunity to make people angry for no real reason. Because angry people vote. And they vote stupid.

And while I’m venting my spleen… The attacks on Michelle Obama for eating a hamburger, fries and a shake are another good example. She does a photo op and eats a high calorie meal. Somehow this invalidates her work on childhood obesity. I think this a text book example of the “Al Gore uses electricity and flies in planes, therefor there is no anthropogenic climate change” meme. It uses a false notion of hypocrisy to attack your opponents message. You can’t win in this argument. Any deviation from a straw man version of purity is used against you. And if Al Gore lived in a yurt full time without electricity, running water and the carbon footprint of a ladybug they would simply attack him as a crazy person who lives in a yurt. Coal deregulation for everyone. Kind of like when they made Candidate Obama’s conversation about arugula with arugula farmers into some elitist attack.

And thank you for this opportunity for me express my outrage. The cycle continues.

Future gererations won’t even be able to comprehend that Chuck Palahniuk started out as a satirist.

“I see you took a huge dump, here is a coupon for a dollar off of a 36 pack of Charmin brand toilet paper!”