Xengar

But those I've had this argument with wouldn't be convinced by this anyway.

James Sinclair Sums up my take on the current American political wrangling nicely:

"Yeah, I'm oversimplifying, but only a little. The greatest threat to our economy is neither corporations nor the government. The greatest threat to our economy is both of them working together. There are currently two sizable coalitions of angry citizens that are almost on the same page about that, and they're too busy insulting each other to notice."

Anyone have any suggestions on how to undemonize a particular person's "them"? Especially when you weren't the one who did the initial demonization?

With intense monitoring, it may be possible to detect quakes before they happen: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26773/

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/127575.html.

If you were granted unlimited magic powers for just five minutes, what would you do?

I'm the sort of person who would probably spend those five minutes exploring the word "unlimited". Could I, for instance, grant myself another five minutes or, even more simply, the powers without the time limit? If no, then the powers aren't truly unlimited, but maybe I could grant those powers to someone else, or multiple someones else for five minutes? With an implanted desire to use them the way I wanted to before going on with their own choices? If the "unlimited" part is a one time only deal, how about "limited" long-term powers? For myself or others?

Admittedly, all this could be taken care of by granting myself knowledge of the limitations of this "unlimited" power, but where I'd go from there depends on what the answers are.

I guess I'm trying to say, don't combine the word unlimited with a limit in the same sentence :)

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/127331.html.

The Indiana Supreme court seems to have decided that the fourth amendment is inconvinient. "We hold that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." In other words, the police can do whatever they want and your only recourse is to protest after the fact. I'm certainly not interested in defending the actions of Richard L. Barnes, but this decision . . . yeah.

Full court opinion here.

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/127158.html.

Printing human organs on demand? http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/05/02/technology-quirks-organ-transplant-engineering.html

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/126736.html.

http://xkcd.com/893/

I really hope this chart proves to be wrong, but given the current political climate I'm not going to hold my breath.

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/126558.html.

A pair of rap songs depicting the conflict between the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek.


The internet sure is full of things. If you don't pay close attention to where you're going, you never know what you'll run into.

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/126443.html.

I case you've been living under a rock and think that the U.S. Congress is currently a functional governing body, the Democratic Representatives nearly tricked the House Republicans into passing a budget that they (the republicans) put forward. Yes it was just some of the outliers of the republicans who were truly for that budget, but the fact that they embrace and support those outliers to the point where it came within 18 votes of passing...

I sure feel well "represented" by these clowns.

Unfortunately, I find that I don't care for the rest of the album this is from, so the artist will get minimal benefit from my enjoyment of this song, but maybe some of you folks might like it. This is a very simple video, but quite effective just the same, and it says where you can find more at the end.

Right, I just tried to post a silly little image to my Livejournal and had it swallowed in a 503 Service Unavailable error. I don't use LJ often enough for it to be worth this hassle. I hate punishing them for something that isn't their fault but, then again, I'm not sure it harms them much to have my sporadic posts tagged "cross-posted from Dreamwidth" at the bottom.

I made this account back last September during the last little dust up, but haven't used it since. I'm officially switching over now.

This entry was originally posted at http://zengar.dreamwidth.org/.