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Egads!  5 days behind, so I must write, write, write, spitting out the words like a stream from a hose, that would be pumping them out or spraying them out or shooting them out and I am seriously pissed off at this computer, there is a problem with the keyboard, or something, but about every 10^th keystroke or so the cursor jumps to some other random point on the page (other indicating anywhere other than where it is actually supposed to be).  Of course, a large part of the reason I am so far behind is because this was newspaper weekend, Watson’s World News doesn’t write itself, after all, and it is almost always a weekend consuming process that we don’t finish until late Monday night, and this weekend was no exception, with the goddamned motherfucking cursor making things difficult every step of the way.

I don’t understand computers, but I am convinced that the people who do understand computers deliberately make them difficult for everybody else, perhaps out of a desire for revenge, because growing up as a nerd can do that to you.

Just ask one of them a simple question some time, and brace yourself for the half-hour of technobabble which you will inevitably hear, and you’ll see what I mean.  It seems to be a mutually exclusive thing – if you can fix computers, you lack the capacity to communicate with other human beings and vice versa.

I do not want a keyboard that is more sensitive, I want one where you actually have to deliberately hit a key for something to happen.  If mistakes are made, I want them to be my own mistakes.

I have often said, and now I’m writing it down, that someone should commission some computer genius to build a computer which can be used by mentally disabled (i.e. retarded) people.

Then, put it on the market.  That’s the machine I want to buy.

Normally, when I comment on Wonkette or Huffpo I try to be succinct, to the point and humorous if possible.  But, Mark Penn really pissed me off.

I was a bit surprised to see, when I tried to enter my comment, that I was over the word limit and had to cut my post by 10 words.  I’d never realized there was a limit before.

So, I cut a bit there, and I’m adding a bit here, for context and stuff.

His piece was about 6 things Obama should do.

Point 1 is sort of a no-brainer, of course the focus should be on jobs and, actually, I think Obama’s doing all right on this front. We’re still in a mess but we’re moving in the right direction. (Penn had basically written that Obama should focus on jobs to the exclusion of everything else)
Point 2 is nonsense. Are you saying Barack Obama hasn’t tried hard enough to be

bi-partisan? (that is pretty much exactly what he was saying)
Point 3 makes me wonder who you are working for now, Mark Penn. If financial reform is needed, and it is, there is no time like the present.  (he’d written the usual ‘now is not the time’ nonsense…after the mid-terms, he suggested)
Point 4  I am in complete disagreement. The U.S. has been taking the Israeli side since 1948, to the tune of several billion dollars a year, and they basically spit in our faces.
Even if you want to forget about right and wrong and just focus on the horse race, I think you would do well to remember that not all American Jews are Likudniks. (Penn’s piece was pro-Israel, but it was also strongly anti-Iranian)
Point 5 These are gimmicks and you are politically experienced enough to know it. Getting rid of the electoral college might be nice, but it wouldn’t make a difference. In a world of television, the most telegenic candidate with the most money to spend on ads will win. And national referenda??!! Have you taken a look at California lately?

(a bunch of twaddle about ditching the ancient protocols to further democratize democracy.  Heck, why not just do it by phone in votes, like a reality show?)
Point 6 Like point 1. Do you actually think Barack Obama is not doing enough to increase tolerance?
I think you should direct your rhetoric at the other team.

To sum up, Mr. Penn, you are wrong on all counts.

Anyway, I think there should be some kind of rating, or warning, system attached to any so called pundits, like a bell around the cat’s neck, so we know which ones are always wrong.

One thing that I think will change in the future, due to the Internet, and I am surprised it hasn’t changed already, or maybe it has, in some ways, is that Wall Street will no longer be the center of  commerce, Hollywood will no longer be the center of the movie industry, America will no longer be the massive force that holds the rest of the world in it’s orbit.

Any bozo with a video camera and access to youtube can make a film, and there are plenty of people willing to watch such films.  They don’t need to cost millions of dollars to make, they don’t need huge stars, they don’t need to be 2 hours and 20 minutes long.

But, I often overestimate the short term impact of technological changes.  When I first started day trading (about 5 years before everything collapsed – I was a small time player and didn’t have enough invested to really get hurt) I thought “This will shatter the glass ceiling.  Nobody can tell on the Internet if you’re a woman or a man.”

It didn’t shatter the glass ceiling but, then again, maybe female investors just had the sense to stay out.  Or maybe not.  I’ve never seen any statistics on that.

Also, even though any bozo with a camera and youtube can make a film, the films usually suck.  There’s a reason people spend big bucks to go to the cinema.  You wouldn’t go to an amateur dentist, you don’t trust your car to any bozo with a wrench, and when you want to watch a film, you want to watch a film made by a professional.

So, I believe these changes will happen in the future of the world, but they aren’t going to happen on a massive scale just yet.

Time will tell.

Memo to self:  more blogs on science and tech development

Happy Marijuana day!!  I love smoking pot, I love being high, and I’m glad that this plant which has given so much joy to so many people for so many centuries finally has its own holiday.  In fact, I’m going to take a break now and smoke a big, fat doobie and then finish writing this article.

There are many reasons for the legalization of marijuana.

It has medical uses, and the stalks and leaves can be used for making paper and cloth, really high quality cloth, the seeds are good in salad or can be pressed for oil, and much, much more.  I just talked to somebody who’d heard of somebody who was using it for insulation, for instance.  In short, it has an important role to play in the economy.

Besides the actual use of cannabis as medicine, to remedy a specific ailment, marijuana is just plain healthy to use regularly in small amounts.  Reduces stress and whatnot.

It’s taxable.  The amount could be pretty high before it reached the level of de facto taxation under prohibition.  Keep the price steady at what it is now, and the government could make a bundle.

Huge savings in dollars and prison space just by letting all the potheads go.

Makes life easier for the police, and eases police/community relations.  Today, nobody wants to talk to a cop if they’re stoned, and more people are stoned more of the time than some people might think.

It’s the right thing to do.  The government shouldn’t be passing laws about what people can or can’t do.

There are no good reasons against it, that I can think of, but I suspect what the powers that be are really worried about (big Pharma, of course, is worried that people who smoke pot won’t have the same need for prescription drugs) is that if too many people are stoned, nobody will want to do the work, people will forget to push the buttons, to send the emails, to keep the economy running.  I must admit, they have a point.

But not everybody is going to start smoking huge quantities of pot, just because it’s legal, so they’re being paranoid.

Happy 420, everybody!

On this date in 1775, American farmers and villagers confronted British troops (well, for the most part from behind trees and stone walls) and fired the shot heard round the world. If we ever expect to go beyond war within the human race, we’re going to have to go beyond the glorification of those moments in history when our glorious ancestors won, because of course that means somebody else’s ancestors lost, but even worse, among those dead are those who would have been the ancestors of people who do not, in fact, exist. The phantom descendants of men who died too young. However, war and violence is an integral part of human history, the prequel to the movie we are now in. History is what you need to know when people tell you that you just don’t understand, there’s a lot going on that you don’t know about. And most people don’t know shit about history. There is the old saying, of course, that “if you don’t know history, you are condemned to repeat it.” I have always felt that it’s very tragic that even if you do know history, you are still condemned to repeat it because of all of those stupid fuckers out there who don’t. The first lesson we need to learn from history is that wars are almost never good things. A case could be made for the American revolution, but…Canada got their independence without firing a shot and have a much safer, less violent society today. Certainly a case could be made for the Civil War, but on the other hand, what if we had just let the South go and tried to solve the whole slavery thing just by not participating in it and helping refugees and stuff? Yes, slavery in the South may have lasted another generation, but hundreds of thousands would have lived who died and, as bad as slavery is, death rather limits one’s freedom as well. And, we wouldn’t be continuously be electing retarded southerners to the presidency. The war of 1812, the Mexican-American wars and the Spanish-American wars were all just blatant attempts to steal land and extend our power (1812 being not so terribly successful). WWI was a bloody mess that nobody understands. WWII was probably inevitable by the time we got to it, but that’s just because we didn’t learn from WWI. The beginning of one was more or less 20 years, depending on how you count, after the end of the other. People have memories like fucking goldfish.