Pollywogs!

http://www.garrettsocling.com/2006/11/19/assholes-playing-god/

vs…

'Neocons' abandon Iraq war at White House front door

(1/18/07 Update: Convienent how history dissapears almost as fast as it happens: google cached version)

Ok, the Yahoo story is fleshed out very nicely, mine is short and rough.

Some actually interesting things I've seen recently:

Why it doesn't make sense even trying to invade Switzerland…

(that strike-the-root site is pretty good)

Lessons forgotten: why the US loses small wars 

(summary: we really don't care enough and can't be brutal enough)

Food cravings

Following the money trail: where your taxes go… 

(answer: guns, bombs and retired people) 

Growing up in Africa (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

(warning: pretty hardcore shit…not for the easily offended)

No one loves the Navajo…

(don't drink the water…there's uranium, lead, arsenic and cadmium in the water…(must be like New Orleans…if you aren't 'worth' saving from an income generation standpoint, the government doesn't give a flying fuck about your life))

Josh Wolf is a journalist who took some pictures of a riot. 

(he government threw him in jail because he said they couldn't have all of his material, Ni hao Mao Zedong!   …did I mention he has been in jail for over one hundred days and HASN'T BEEN CHARGED WITH A CRIME?!?!)

More news from Africa that makes you think of feudal Europe… 

(remember, like eight hundred years ago when everyone lived in shit and filth and worked the fields for their master and died brutally because the local lord didn't like the guy twenty miles to the east and you loved the pope (or else) and believed that Grendel and Beowulf was a true story…)…(actually, this story reminds me a lot of the United States for some reason…)

Thank god, the nightmare is over…

(did I already post this?) 

How to grow and make a luffa…

(for the moonjuana smoking hippy in you) 

I've run out of ideas.  I've read lots of things, thought lots of thoughts, but I currently feel topicless.  Nothing rises above the rest and stands out 'you should write about this'.

So, I'm requesting that you, my faithful reader, let me know what you'd like to see.  Think of something you'd like to read about, something that I've written in the past that you'd like me to follow up or expand on, something that you've always wondered about…something that I can search about on the web, look up some stuff, think and write about.  It can be mundane and trivial or pressing and relevant.  I'm not picky…post a comment or send me an email via garrettsocling at gmail dot com…

If (as I suspect) I don't get any suggestions, I was thinking of tracing the evolution of Santa/Satan over the past two thousand years, how they congealed out of myths and figures that had come before, etc etc…this being the time of year to begin the annual War on Christmas and all…

Happy Holidays! 

I find that when I have a problem or a question, simply writing it in the form of a question, or exploring it in writing by trying to describe what I am thinking will help me either figure it out myself or at least understand better what is going on:

You are given two ropes and a lighter. This is the only equipment you can use. You are told that each of the two ropes has the following property: if you light one end of the rope, it will take exactly one hour to burn all the way to the other end. But it doesn't have to burn at a uniform rate. In other words, half the rope may burn in the first five minutes, and then the other half would take 55 minutes. The rate at which the two ropes burn is not necessarily the same, so the second rope will also take an hour to burn from one end to the other, but may do it at some varying rate, which is not necessarily the same as the one for the first rope. Now you are asked to measure a period of 45 minutes. How will you do it?

If you light both ends of one rope, it will burn in exactly a 1/2 hour. Thus, burn one rope from both ends and the other rope from only one end. Once the one rope (which is burning from both ends) finally burns out (and you know a 1/2 hour has elapsed), you also know that the other rope (which is buring from only one end) has exactly 1/2 hour left to burn. Since you only want 45 minutes, light the second end of the rope. This remaining piece will burn in 15 minutes. Thus, totaling 45 minutes.

I didn't think this was possible until I began writing out why it was impossible until I was confronted with the fact that not only was it possible, it made perfect sense.  Just reading it over initially, my mind didn't make 'the connection'.  I'm glad I took the time to understand it, it was more enjoyable than not figuring it out and saying 'oh that is fucking retarded'…

Without plastic surgery       /  With plastic surgery…

Found at reddit of course, without the side-by side wacko-jacko bizzaro-comparo…

http://reddit.com/goto?id=s172 

I have to wear //a lot of sunscreen//…

Sorry for not posting up much recently, here is a recent blast from the past that probably could have been its own blog post but I used it as a comment instead:

http://www.garrettsocling.com/2006/11/17/dumbfuckistan/#comment-315

I can’t help but think that it is an unstable system doomed to some type of collapse to a more stable state. People can’t continue reproducing ad infinitum, can’t continue consuming resources ad nauseum, can’t continue on the track we are currently taking without everything hitting a way. The closer we get, the more people close their eyes and hum, because there is simply a limit to everything. The industrial revolution brought about an amazing change, but unless a brand new technological revolution comes about quickly that completely changes the paradigm, a collapse is inevitable.

I’m hoping for unlimited free energy, myself. Something that will allow for a near complete reduction in the massive pollution caused by current energy production systems. Hopefully it will have the added benefit of reducing stress and competition between groups of people, lower poverty and hunger, and in general increase the base living condition for all people…

The problem with something like that is you have to sneak it out from the powers that be. How do you monetize something that needs to be free and equally available to the poorest person in the most abject nation? You don’t…and that is going to be a hard sell to todays multinational corporations. They’d much rather ride this into the ground, milking it as they can. They see the writing on the wall, but how do you change horses when your stockholders are expecting your horse to win day after day with ever increasing profits, market share and stock value? How are you supposed to say ‘what we’ve been doing is bad for the planet, bad for the future, here is what we are going to do, it will cost our company $5 billion over the next twenty years and have no positive impact on our profits, it will simply be good for the planet’? Exxon is going to do that? When they take tax subsidies (a tax burden on those millions who make minimum wage to $40,000 a year and pay their taxes like good citizens should) from our government during record profits?

I don’t have much hope. I have some hope, but it is a realistic hope. The future won’t look like today. No one cares (or, no one cares enough to actually do anything). It won’t be “Nature’s End”, perhaps, but if we are lucky it won’t be entirely a uniform, bland, enormous farm/factory feeding the mouths and megastores of a population gigantically ballooned…

If we are lucky a common mans revolution will have brought limitless, clean energy into the hands of every man, woman and child on Earth, removing one of the greatest contentions in existence today. The reduced strain on resources and the reduced output of pollution will allow people to realize they can re-prioritize while there is still something to conserve…

If we are not lucky, corporations will continue to rule the day, money will continue to be the end-all be-all of existence, and the entire world will be turned into the sterile, highly productive factory which ensures the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

…or, if we are really not lucky, the shit will hit the fan, huge chunks of the economy will go belly up, countries will go bankrupt, governments will scramble for power and/or collapse, military coups will break out worldwide, nuclear war will eventually unfold with some crazed dictator in some crazed Balkan republic in some crazed corner of Iowa, and a terrible thousand years of pain, suffering and despoiling of anything beautiful will be the legacy of our times…

I've been pretty busy playing with Linux:

http://pcspecialties.dyndns.org

Did you notice I added a Wiki?  You can deface the wiki if you don't like me:

http://www.garrettsocling.com/wiki/ 

I've been using it to keep notes of things I read and do, and then promptly forget.  Sorta of a 'howto' by myself for my future self as I do it, you might say: http://www.garrettsocling.com/wiki/doku.php?id=php-json I did get the PHP-JSON module installed and working, I didn't notice an improvement in SugarCRM but 'they' said it is the bomb.

I found this entertaining.

ANY time you come here and there isn't anything new, feel free to go to reddit.com.  Reddit is fucking awesome.  Fuck digg.com, seriously, fuck them and their Wii-ball sucking PS3 hating punk-ass bitch bullshit.  I mean, check this out: http://www.knitemare.org/cats/