Science/Engineering/Technical forums

For those who think we aren't already in a police state:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-pos ... -377-words

We should copy that list and send it all over the net as a chain letter...frigging idiots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YPlmGDn ... _embedded#

We're past the point where our system can fix this. This is because of course, that anyone with this much monitoring power (new NSA computer center is pretty huge and nice) obviously knows all the dirt on all the pols who set their budgets - so, welcome to no longer being able to brag about being in the land of the free - the KGB or Stasi weren't this capable or active. And we are paying these guys to do it to us, though I'm sure most of them at the grunt level aren't paid that well at all, but just do the work because they need a job. What a screwed up society we've made for ourselves, once we disallowed the teaching of morality (or much of anything else other than re-written history) in our schools.

This obviously isn't stopping anything "bad" from happening to us - it's an attempt to stop anything bad happening to "them". Who stopped the underwear bomber? Citizens. In fact, that's true of 100% of the credible "terrorism" plots the entire time the DHS has existed - they don't have a single real bust that wasn't entrapment. Not one. And you know they'd be shouting it from the rooftops if they had one. These are not the actions of a government of, by, for me or us. These are the actions of a government afraid we'll wake up and throw them out (not just elect the other head of the same monster).

Found this as O/T on another site, and it's O/T here too, except we do really like to appreciate talent around here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60GJ0dJ1 ... re=related



OK, this one IS on topic. When the mainstream or even tech media starts talking about financials - that's a big fat canary singing in the coal mine. Sure, ZeroHedge predicts the end of the world tomorrow every day, and has for years. This isn't the same thing at all.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/0 ... _strategy/

Sigh, this pretty much says it all. We're stuck with human nature, and it just won't allow some systems to work in the large. And oh, yeah, good luck with the idea you can make any decent sized change in human nature - that's the one thing that's never "different this time".

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-pos ... cs-failure

Someone's actually going to jail! Well, maybe, and not the real perps, but at least someone. Probably even get some fines of about .0000001% of what they stole!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/taibbi-ba ... rned-mafia

Nah, anyone who thinks there is systematic market manipulation needs to adjust their tinfoil hat, right?

Deer in the headlights market today. Fun to be short. Picture says it all:

I'm sorry this link even exists to post:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-pos ... um-tyranny

Been saying the same for awhile. The above kind of pulls it together, but even still, leaves out quite a bit of government "prep" to end democracy utterly. If we did the same stuff, well...we're wackos, right?
Dangerous ones. Fit for the slammer. But they "need" to do this stuff? For whose safety exactly would that be?

I'd bet all the "wack job preppers" on earth combined don't have 450 mil rounds of .40 ammo between them...only useful to kill tactically outnumbered people at close range....

Oh, that's right, we need all that stuff to give to the mexican drug cartels:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/congress- ... nt-2571335

A little friday humor. Hot redhead stock market talking head (maybe not as much as she thinks) tries going a round with a banker who practices Thai fighting and catches a good one.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/banker-b ... d1qMw.html

A little OT, but really impressive time lapse video of the Colorado fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... A7eHY022k#!


Watch this one full screen...it's not a waste of time.

From big jim on ZH:


BigJim's picture

Virginity like bubble; one prick, all gone.

Man who run in front of car soon get tyred.

Man who run behind car soon get exhausted.

Foolish man give wife grand piano, wise man give wife upright organ.

Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.

Man with one chopstick go hungry.

Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.

Panties not best thing on earth! but next to best thing on earth.

Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cat house.

Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.

It take many nails to build crib, but one screw to fill it.

Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.

Crowded elevator smell different to midget.

- Things Confucius ~probably~ didn't say

Well, I hope the original author doesn't mind me saving and sharing a copy - couldn't have said it much better myself:

By Bill Frezza, originally posted in Forbes Magazine

Lamenting The Lost Legacy Of Independence Day

Why do we still celebrate Independence Day? Is it a lingering habit, a mindless bit of nostalgia, a time to indulge in fireworks and barbecues, devoid of any deeper meaning? Can anyone honestly argue that our nation still honors the values, or practices the principles, for which our Founders fought?

Today, most Americans have been trained to be embarrassed by the “extremist” individualist ethos that made the protection of liberty the primary purpose of government. They have been taught to apologize for the shortcomings of the “rich white men” who led the revolution. A majority of Americans now subscribe to an expansive view of government as both great provider and beneficent leveler. Its primary purpose is to redress unequal or unhappy outcomes, regardless of their source, through wealth redistribution on a scale so vast that it mocks the concept “private property.”

As for the causes of revolution, we’ve lost sight of them, too. King George III was a champion of laissez-faire compared to the modern cradle-to-grave entitlement state. The swollen capital city named after the man who won our freedom now claims the prize for erecting “a Multitude of new offices” bent on sending out “Swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” If there is a field of endeavor that the federal government does not yet regulate, subsidize, or penalize, just wait. A new law is only a “crisis” away.

Have these new offices been imposed on us by some malevolent force that has undermined the workings of democracy? No. We the people ceaselessly demand new offices at an accelerating rate. The majority of Americans vote as if they believe that massive new government programs— created by incomprehensibly complex laws and administered by increasingly unaccountable bureaucrats—can solve an expanding array of “problems” which our Founders would have surely concluded were the proper province of civil society and not the sovereign state.

The King was criticized for unjustly imprisoning seamen. Today, our federal and state governments imprison more of our fellow citizens than any totalitarian regime in history—the vast majority for violating a futile prohibition on the possession, sale, or consumption of substances our Founders would not have thought twice about. Vast portions of our youth are thus rendered permanently unemployable, branded as felons and outcasts with nowhere to turn but a life of crime. And yet we persist in this folly, unable to admit that drug prohibition has been as huge a failure as alcohol prohibition.

And taxes? The Founders knew a tax when they saw one—and there were very few they could abide, with or without representation. Thanks to a Supreme Court that long ago gave up defending the Constitution, we now have a chameleon levy that is not a tax when politically inconvenient yet magically becomes a tax when seeking constitutional muster. As if we didn’t have a wide enough variety of taxes, this new tax is designed to penalize anyone who refuses to participate in a great communal project designed to make every citizen even more deeply dependent on the government.

Little by little, the home of the brave and the land of the free has become a nation of rent-seeking dependents clamoring for their share of state largess. Even before the latest entitlement blowout called Obamacare, we crossed the line where more than half of Americans receive some kind of assistance from the government every month, paid for by the fewer than half that still pay income taxes. As we move into the future and the number of dependents grows while the taxpayer pool shrinks, we call the result social justice rather than its old name: theft.

Our forefathers shed blood rather than render unto King George. Yet today we madly mortgage our nation’s future to foreign powers, piling debt upon debt without limit or thought as to how it will be repaid. These debts ensnare our children and grandchildren even as we stop having them, confident in the knowledge that the government will take care of us in our old age, so why bother with the trouble and expense?

If we were still a nation capable of shame with enough intellectual integrity to call things as they are, if we hadn’t debauched our language as badly as our currency, if we had the courage to look in the mirror and see how woefully we have squandered our Founders’ legacy, this Fourth of July would be a day not of celebration but of atonement.

Give some thought to what we have lost as we mark another In Dependence Day. May providence have mercy on our nation, lest we end up getting what we deserve.

*******************************************************
Yeah, and I'm guilty too - rather than go make a fuss, I made dinner....sins of omission and all that.

It was good, but it wasn't eaten in a free country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 55BH97quk#!

Got this from ZH (yeah, I get too many there) but this is funny to some kinds of people.
Skip out to around 35: (it's in English there). For a Krugman takedown by a real wildman Spanish professor (Krugman is there so this is F/F), and the angry debate that ensues when he finishes.



Of course, again, to the right sort, some of the comments on ZH are even funnier.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ultimate- ... -take-down