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PReSiDeNTiaL CHRiSTMaS CHoiCeS...
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Now THAT is scary. Makes me think of the Borg queen. Ugh.
That Hitlary mask scared the crap out of my cat.
Another new keyboard.
So, what you are saying here is that the best the country can produce is another Bush and another Clinton.
Motherfucker.
That Hitlary mask scared the crap out of my cat.
Another new keyboard.
So, what you are saying here is that the best the country can produce is another Bush and another Clinton.
Motherfucker.
You have a time-share Monarchy.
William. Nutteryahoo should be in your crosshairs.
A Bush vs Clinton Presidential Race?
We are SO screwed.
OTOH, I'm lookin' pretty good as a candiate.
Yes you are,
but I'm voting for an old yellow dog.
(as soon as I can find one who will run)
I've got an old yellow dog, he's dead but that shouldn't be a problem....
Clearly a huge improvement over the teleprompter in chief.
238 years ago: Americans fought, bled, and died to get rid of a monarchy that enforced arbitrary taxation with violence. When they won, they put in a constitution that would prevent future generations from having to fight, bleed and die again for the same reasons. Over time, the arbitrary tax code enforced with violence came back bigger and better. Over time, politicians (including those featured by William) started accepting honorary titles from monarchs again.
It should not surprise anyone that 240 years after independence Americans will be forced to "vote" for one of two feudalistic dynasties.
NONE OF THE ABOVE
Have you ever considered the possibility that for a number of reasons, Americans back then enjoyed a higher degree of literacy and intelligence? I have. I think you can guess what my conclusion was.
And now we have two hundred plus years of dumming down. The outlook does not look promising since the rapid advancement of technology has exacerbated intellectual laziness.
And by intellectual I do not mean think like a Nobel PhD does.
Sadly, I think Goebbels and Hitler had the masses pegged. Morons and idiots who will believe anything you tell them.
i know this, the history books were a lot smaller, and the math and science books as well. it was probably easy to absorb everything they could give you by the time you were eighteen. education was of a short duration and had lasting benefits, now its pretty much the opposite. now books written by uneducated people seem to be the thing., of course they have to a ghostwriter so they can appeal to the audience. i am anxious to read Greenspans latest, he has something to say about irrational markets, and that interests me, and with Greenspan its okay, because i read everything at cross purposes to the author. many writers have the right idea but they cast in the incorrect context. art criticism made its repuation in the day from reading texts at cross purposes. the final destination of the turned inside out reader is the conspiracy theorist, the guy or gal who cracks the Da Vinci code. and like mass hysteria, several people seeing the virgin mary on the side of a water tower, peoples mind converge on the theories. which is not to say these theories aren't correct, its just that books lie to us, they tell us all sorts of things that aren't true. what we learned in school is crap (to paraphrase paul simon, kodachrome) but we need our illusions.
Actually that is not true. However, only property owners used to be able to vote. and most property owners at the time were more well educated than the average voter today is.
Because they had too for their own survival. Slave owners went to a lot of trouble to make sure their slaves were kept as ignorant as possible.
Which meant keeping them away from books.
Notice how conditions today are extremely noncondusive to book reading. When i say book reading, I mean leisurely critical reading as opposed to cramming useless information inculcated for exams and Prole advancement.
I have tried using all manner of ebooks and no matter what anyone says, it is not the same mental experience as quietly reading and flipping paper books. It is a pain in the ass to mark the text and it is a pain in the ass to have multiple books open simultaneously. And your device is a constant distraction with emails etc.
But most people are so busy Facebooking and watching the Kardashians and Sports to have time for that moron thing George Carlin liked to do: It's called thinking.
So for the vast majority of Americans, considering a fringe low brow concept like false electoral choice is futile.
Do you think this has been gactored into the equation? Deliberate dumbing down? Makes you wonder what insights there are in big data and AI that is coalescing into over the horizon capabilities.
I am sure they are keenly aware that every new development in technology offers new opportunities for propaganda advancement. And if you apply scientific methods to that exercise, it is very easy to exploit. Neuromarketing is one example.
So what are you saying, DWTS and Wrastlin/fightin aren't educational? C'mon....
I learned a great deal from Pro Wrestling on Saturday Nights...
I learned everything I needed to know about American politics and 'voting' watching the WWF.
Book burning will be much easier when it is just a matter of wiping cloud databases. That said i do use a Kindle because I have more books than I have room for. It's really handy for travel, a very portable library but as you say, "bookmarking" is a pain compared to flipping pages or using sticky flags on a real book.
I have been through the inconvenient to travel with books thing. The most I will ever take now is one book. If you have to distract yourself reading a pile of books physically or on a device, the trip is probably not worth taking ;-)
Seriously, think how many people spend a small fortune going to some exotic place so they can read their books. I exclude a long trip into the vast wilderness where a book might come in handy and where there is no way to recharge your device.
Of course, I can think of sitting on many beautiful beaches or plopped by pools reading a book. And now looking back I can't remember the books I read there. I took Das' book Extreme Money to Thailand last year. WTF was I thinking.
Make it one fat book...
To be fair, there is one circumstance where the ebooks cream paper books, reading in the dark.
Guess my Parkinsons kicked in...
If I'm on vacation I buy some trashy sci-fi novel from the airport bookstore and have it read by the end of the flight. During my vacation, my one and only after 36 years of marriage, I bought Benjamin Franklin's 'Fart Proudly', read six pages and fell asleep...leaving it on the train.
In my opinion, if you're readiing on vacation, you're filling the void of actual traveling. (Other than looking at foreign scenery that has real grass, trees, water and shit that you don't normally see in your native Mojave Desert.)
During my one, and only (so far), vacation in my life, we were too busy going to see shit we never thought we'd ever get to see.
And as far as e-books...saw one, couldn't turn or smell the pages...
Of course, my cell phone actually has a dial.
you guys get vacations? sheeit. ive been working like a dog since i was 16. that was over 15 years ago. i went to Seattle once to visit family when i was 15. first and only time on an airplane. i need to get out more
I know what you mean: I read on the plane and almost never on vacation. Before the Kindle I guess I used to carry 3 or 4 just because I didn't like to be away from them!
I used to try reading on the plane. But now, since I have totally blacked out cable TV and I don't go to movie theaters, the plane ride is for catching up on movies. And I am one of those people, as I am sure you are as well, who reads multiple books simultaneously. The modern predicament. ;-)
Which are you reading right now?
SnowCountry by Kawabata, The Pat Metheney Interview Book, The Endless Crisis by Foster, Rereading The Grand Chessboard by Brezinski
Whoops, almost forgot: Putin's New Russia: http://www.hellevig.net/ebook/Putin's%20new%20Russia.pdf
BTW, all zh'ers should know, Brezinski's book is free in pdf online:
http://www.obafemio.com/uploads/5/1/4/2/5142021/zbigbrew_grand_chess_boa...