Build Date: Sat Apr 20 08:50:07 2024 UTC
Do you ever just punch domain names into Netscape and hope something comes up?
-- Mr. Bad
Making the Planes Run On Time
2002-02-06 21:31:16
Staggering up from a holiday-binge induced coma, this correspondent fears a Rip Van Winkle hallucination because it's looking a lot like Italy... in 1939.
A few raghead camel-jockeys handed our Law & Order zealots their best hook for eviscerating the Constitution and Bill of Rights since McCarthyism. Defense is double-plus good and the Bush-Lite administration is merrily planning a full-on Military Industrial Complex orgy with every weapons system in sight - as though terrorists plot fielding tank divisions and supersonic fighters.
And of course they're also cutting taxes, too (mostly to the benefit of rich asshole buddies, as opposed to the rest of us), leading to deficit spending - which is a striking contrast to last year's guess at major budget surpluses. (The parallels to Enron's pump and dump are scary, but not very surprising.)
This is all more than mildly annoying, but what did we expect? We "elected" these people (or so they and a majority over at the Supreme Court tell us).
But it's all just money (even though it is _our_ money). Easy come, easy go, wasting our taxes is what government does best, so who cares - guns or pork? This would all be more or less business as usual (the Republicans give away money to the rich, then the Democrats give some to the poor and middle-class) except for the present assault on basic liberties, rights, and citizen data.
You read it right, bucko: "All your data are belong to us" - sayeth the Feds. Their pretense for this is the claim that cross-indexing every scrap of your data - all your purchases, where you live and with whom (for ten years or so), your education, drivers licenses and vehicle tags, arrests and misdemeanors, civil actions, credit information, even IP addresses, web posts, and email - will enable them to single out "suspicious" airline passengers, preemptively.
All of your data will be fed into a web of interconnected databases to track your every move, record your every public act, and log your every statement, "private" or not - all for a dubious justification of making airplanes safe.
A parallel initiative put forward by the desperate corporate bastards running the airlines would let people submit to "voluntary" background checks to get exempted from obnoxious security checks at airports. It's bad enough that a government agency wants to shred our privacy and Constitutional protections, but having airlines extort our privacy to avoid draconian security checks is simply an unconscionable proposition. Here comes a stratified class society courtesy of an unholy collusion between "our" (yeah right) government and a cabal of bigass overleveraged airlines desperately seeking to create profits.
In the 1930's sometime, Mussolini said "Corporatism is Fascism." Of course he meant that as a recommendation for Fascism, but it was perceptive of him. And after all - as was said in Chamberlain's Britain all too glad to appease the Axis Powers way back in those days - fascism made the trains run on time.
When my recreational drugs run out, I'm going to get me some Greyhound stock.
T O P S T O R I E S
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
Gary Busey definitely involved in a hit and run accident
Gary Busey was definitely involved in a hit-and-run accident, but won't face any charges because he's rich and famous. (More...)
Gary Busey allegedly involved in Malibu hit-and-run
"Sir! You hit my car! I need your information!" the woman yelled at Gary Busey driving a battered Volvo station wagon before he sped off. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Pigdog brings you SETI astronomer Seth Shostak to bring you the truth about Ay-leens (More...)
My dear and close friend, Porn Maven Shannon Mariemont, sent me a titillating message the other day about her new project: the PornOrchestra. Her desire, at most, is to reinvent the porn soundtrack and, at least, to receive a cease-and-desist order like all her cool friends did last year. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
Grow better illegal mushrooms than lousy "Psilocybe fanaticus"
Disclaimer: PaoTzu's a1 illegal mushroom cultivation cookbook is meant for educational purposes only. Be aware of the techniques used by hardcore criminals! Protect your children! Read, learn, educate. Do not try this at home. (More...)