Wow.

(via rulesformyunbornson)

We need to reinvent General Motors and we need to do it in a very, very abbreviated time period so that we’re not spending our time careening from crisis to crisis.

-New GM CEO Fritz Henderson

I said a few posts back I don’t think we’ll be living in the same world we do now in another 40 years.  I constantly worry about this, mostly because I feel like I should be spending all my money now instead of hording it for retirement in a government account that probably won’t even exist.

When we get a house in November I’m going to be one of “those guys,” because one of the first things I’m going to do is start a stock of canned foods and fresh bottled water, and weapons, in the basement.

I’m also not ruling out the idea of burying land mines and remote-detonated explosives in my lawn to ward off any T-800s that may trickle in.  Or any of you crazy starved, thirsty bastards.

In all seriousness, though, it’s both humbling and terrifying to really think about how fragile we are.  Case in point.  (That’s two links).

I have an idea for a story!!  We’ll have a guy, who suddenly discovers he’s… different.  He can do things that other people can’t.  He’ll get all shy and bothered, and won’t tell his friends because he thinks they might not accept him, but they’ll soon find out anyway!!  One of them won’t believe him, and want to go get pizza.  Another will get mad and not talk to him anymore until he apologizes.  And one of them will be different, too!!  And then we’ll discover that there are others like him.  And some use their powers for less than stellar things!!  And there is a government organization that wants to exploit these people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I’m really tired of superhero stories).

UPDATE:  Another great blog about the differences between boys and girls.

I thought this was relevant because of the discussion in one of my earlier posts.  Sad and surprising, but eye-opening in a “what I will teach my kids” kind of way.  I tend to agree with the second paragraph.

From TheWeek:

Sure, singer Chris Brown punched, bit, and choked his girlfriend, the pop star Rihanna, so badly that she landed in the hospital, according to a police report. But for Brown to get that angry, it must have been Rihanna’s fault. At least that’s what a lot of teenagers believe, said Jan Hoffman in The New York Times. In a finding that has sparked consternation among parents and domestic-violence experts and led to a new crusade by Oprah Winfrey, nearly half of 200 teenagers polled by the Boston Public Health Commission held Rihanna responsible for her recent assault. “She probably made him mad for him to react like that,” a female ninth-grader said. Reports that the couple have reunited, and recorded a new duet together, have further muddied the lines of responsibility. “She probably feels bad that it was her fault, so she took him back,” one girl said.

For this ugly way of thinking, I blame feminism, said Kathryn Jean Lopez in National Review Online. Back before “natural gender roles” were deliberately muddled, it was normal “for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection.” But feminism conditioned us to view men and women as equals. “By inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man’s image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we’ve confused everyone.” Teens are making excuses for Chris Brown because they no longer expect men to treat women with special deference.

You’ve got it backward, said prosecutor Glenn F. Ivey in The Washington Post. At a middle school I visited recently, I heard the same blame-the-victim talk about Rihanna. But “the room froze” when I asked whether Barack Obama could ever be justified in hitting Michelle. “Putting hands on Michelle Obama was somehow unthinkable.” And therein lies the power of the First Lady, a strong and dignified feminist and mother. Mrs. Obama could make a difference in countless lives if she focused on domestic violence as “one of her primary issues.” Ultimately, though, said DeWayne Wickham in USA Today, it comes down to what we tell our own daughters. Here’s what I’m telling my 15-year-old: One in four women gets beaten up by a man. Many of them then make the same mistake as Rihanna, and believe the guy when he says it won’t ever happen again. “Don’t walk away from that man,” I’ll tell my daughter. “Run.”

It’s images like this that scare me (click the pic to make bigger).  I’m also reluctant to post stuff like this because I’ll likely hear a lot of “I told you so“‘s from those who were for McCain.  The thing is, I still trust my president and accept that this spending may be a necessary evil — because really, I have no idea myself and kind of have to trust him at the moment — but I just don’t see anything really getting better.

I understand now the difference between a budget deficit and the national debt.  It’s easy, really, I’m not sure why it wasn’t clear to me before.  If you spend more than you take in over the course of any given year, you have a deficit that year.  The deficit has to be made up by taking loans.  We take loans from ourselves (printing money) and from other countries.

The thing is (and this is from that documentary I watched yesterday), government programs like Social Security and Medicare will take up 100% of the government’s income by 2050.

This is why I said in 30 to 40 years we’re going to be living in a totally different world.  This isn’t going to last.  You can’t run an organization without making any money.  The problem is, nobody wants to do anything about it, because we’re a nation of cowards.

No politician will ever get elected by saying, “I will raise your taxes.”

I’m not saying I have all the answers—that’s why I elect people who presumably do.  But the blame cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of a President.  They only act according to what the public can tolerate—what the public will let them do—and we can’t tolerate things like giving the government more money.  But at the same time, we can’t really tolerate cutting any government programs.

It scares the shit out of me when I really stop and think about it.

I’ve been critical of Lost this year and I don’t think I’ve been able to really articulate why.  I love science fiction, and am usually all over time travel stories, but am having a very hard time with it playing such a large part of this show.

I had a much better time in the first few seasons when we were all speculating, wondering if time travel really was the answer, and it blew my mind when Daniel launched that rocket from the boat to the island and found that it was 31 minutes out of sync with the rest of the world.  That was intriguing just enough… I really wasn’t looking to go back and forth 40-50 years at a time.

It’s kind of like table salt.  You put on the right amount, things taste delicious.  You open the top of the shaker and pour it on, suddenly the food is gross and unappealing.

Well, here we are.  With a heaping mound of salt on my delicious steak.  There’s not a whole lot I can do.  That’s the way the story is developing so I’m trying my best to just accept it.  Except Lost has always been an intelligent show, with writers who weren’t afraid to write intelligently, and not for the lowest common denominator of the audience—you know, those who consider Heroes good television.

So I am angered and disappointed that they’ve decided to incorporate such a clichéd story development in the show.

What would happen if you traveled into the past and killed your own grandfather?

No one knows, that’s the first question that comes to mind when you talk about time travel.  There are more time travel stories that revolve around that concept than anything else.  And now, that includes Lost.

It’s not a grandfather, literally, but it’s the same scenario.  If Sayid goes into the past and kills Ben, who is largely responsible for all of them getting thrown around the timeline anyway, and therefore Ben does not exist in the future—how can Sayid go back in time to kill Ben in the first place?

There are three classic answers here.  Number one says that he can’t.  I thought they were hinting at this when Michael’s gun wouldn’t fire back in season four.  Fate just wouldn’t let it happen.

Number two is “alternate timelines.”  Also known as “Heroes.”  Also known as “the cheesiest of the cheese of Star Trek, and why people make fun of it.”  Similar to “it was all a dream.”

Number three is that it was predetermined.  In other words, there is no such thing as free-will, and you were always meant to go back and time and kill your grandfather (or Sayid killing Ben).

The producers of Lost have given us clues that I’m still applying to the show, such as (1) the universe has a way of course correcting, and (2) there are no alternate timelines.

So, this rules out #2 (no alternate timelines).  And it has a way of combining #1 and #3 into something very obvious, which is that young Ben just won’t die.  We’ll see him in a hospital bed and that’ll be it.  He’ll be healed up nicely by mid-April.

In fact, I’m 100% sure that Ben won’t die.  Which might be completely obvious, and maybe I’m explaining things that are already very clear to everyone except me… but if we’re 100% sure that Ben won’t die, what’s the point of having him shot in the first place?  Usually when characters get shot it’s so that we can wonder about their fate and if they’re going to pull through or not.

I get the impression here that the writers want us to not only wonder that, but are trying too hard to get us to ask but what does that all mean and how is it even possible?!? If they didn’t want us wondering and asking those things, they wouldn’t have made it the cliff hanger.  The problem is that, if the writers are playing by their own rules, the outcome is 100% clear and it’s not even fun to think about.

As long as I’m being Negative Nancy I’ll also point out that I’m getting a little overdosed on the gimmick of them focusing on a character before we know who it is.  This happened twice in the last episode.  Early on, we see a fat man rush into a hotel room and shuffle around for about 30 seconds before it’s revealed that Sayid is about to kill him.  Then, when they go to the man in the tent—who Sawyer identifies as “Our You”—the camera holds on his face for about 2 seconds too long when he comes out of the tent.

Bottom line:  I don’t like being force fed mounds of table salt.

Let’s see what happens next week, I suppose.

What did you all think?

I just watched a very freightening documentary on Frontline about the national debt and was left with one inescapable conclusion:  the world we know now will not exist 30 or 40 years from now.

…is when I am talking to someone and they start mouthing the words I am saying as I am saying them.

Usually it’s not word-for-word, but if I can see your lips and tongue moving as your eyes study how my lips are moving, it’s enough to set me off.  It’s 10x worse if I can actually hear you whispering what I’m saying.

This is (1) annoying, (2) insulting, as if you have to mimic my movements and make your own mouths move in order to decipher what it is I am saying, (3) embarrassing, because it draws attention to every single word I am saying instead of the overall message and (4) discouraging, because if you can’t keep up, I worry you’re just humoring me and really have no idea how to continue the conversation.  And it makes you look like an idiot.

Whenever this happens, I immediately stop talking, even if I am in mid-sentence, and just look at the person until their mouth closes.  Ordinarily doing that would embarrass me, but I am so filled with rage that any sense of violating some social norm is drowned out.

Bear McCreary posted his musical recap blog of BSG’s last episode, and it’s great.

Not that anybody read the entirety of my BSG review but I need to make a correction:  the song that plays at the end is not a revamped version of “Passacaglia,” but rather a more heavy version of “Shape of Things to Come,” a theme played in Season One (and which you can listen to above.)

BUT, according to his blog, the bass-line of “Passacaglia” was used so I’m only half-wrong.

There is a “No Turn On Red” intersection right by my house that I pass through everyday.  I turned on red once, and was pulled over.  Never again, because that shit is expensive.

This morning, I stopped at the red light.  The car behind me honked, but I stayed put, because I’m not paying a $150 ticket for this guy.

So he angrily squeels his tires, backs up, and peels out around me.  He must not have been looking because another oncoming car had to slam on their brakes… if that car had not been alert, I would have witnessed death right in front of me, and the force of the impact probably would have sent his car back into mine.

Later on I passed the guy, who was not a guy at all but a middle aged blonde woman who turned into Starbucks.

Disobeying the law, acting like an asshat and putting three lives at risk so you can get your latte?

This is a way of life worth preserving?

…from CollegeHumor:

Mom:  Craig, what does “idk” mean?
Me:    I don’t know.
Mom:  Dang, nobody knows.

That’s funny.

…as pointed out on Peter David’s blog.

…the bird in Lee’s apartment.

I actually took the bird to be symbolic of the voyage he was about to undergo, particularly in terms of how it was juxtaposed with Starbuck. Consider Noah’s ark, in which birds were his avatars to determine if the disaster was over. Galactica was, in many ways, a retelling of Noah’s ark, a handful of humans surviving disaster, and Starbuck was the equivalent of the dove who flew out from the ark and returned with an olive branch.

PAD