Watermelons

John Stossel on the cargo-cult environmental holiday of Earth Day:

It's possible climate change may become a problem. But even if industrialization brings warming, we've got more important problems. On my TV show this week, statistician Bjorn Lomborg points out that "air pollution kills 4.3 million people each year ... We need to get a sense of priority." That deadly air pollution happens because, to keep warm, poor people burn dung in their huts. 

Yet, time and again, environmentalists oppose the energy production most likely to make the world cleaner and safer. Instead, they persuade politicians to spend billions of your dollars on symbolism like "renewable" energy.

Do environmentalists even care about measuring costs instead of just assuming benefits?

Well, no.  No they don't.  If they really did care about the environment, they would be supporting the development of nuclear power, instead of slaughtering birds with wind turbines.  If they really did care about global warming, they would be supporting natural gas development in the US instead of opposing it.  If they really did care about people dying of easily avoidable malnutrition, they would be supporting the development of golden rice instead of opposing it.

Instead of doing anything to actually solve these problems, what do they do?  Designate a holy day to spend worshiping mother Gaia.  Drive a coal-powered electric car to show how much they care. Carefully separate paper and plastics into the proper recycling bins as an act of penance.  Nothing they do, say or support has any practical, real-world application to solving a problem.  Their actions are no more than a salve to soothe whatever tattered remnants of conscience still inhabits their shriveled, blackened souls.  

They are not visionaries.  They are your so-called betters, who ache for approval and yearn for authority over others more than anything else.

They are racists, bigots, and nihilists who long for death.

50k and Counting

Human Sacrifices at the Green Altar

Last year, more than 30,000 winter deaths were thought to be caused by fuel poverty, up by a third from the previous year, according to the Office for National Statistics. - http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992359

Across Europe, low income residents are being sacrificed to the Green Gods of Faux Environmentalism. Increasing numbers die in winter, unable to heat their cold dark homes — while fat green government and EU officials and cronies pat each other on the back in congratulations for pushing the penetration of the intermittent unreliables big wind/solar to more and more destructive heights.

Twenty-two thousand in 2012. Thirty thousand in 2013.

Still, you know - you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.  Amirite?  Besides, these were poor people.  They probably lived miserable lives and had sub-standard health insurance and stuff.  It's not like they had anything to contribute to society, after all.  Just dead wood, really.

If you haven't noticed it already, environmentalists hate poor people.  After all, it's not like they matter... in non-election years, anyways.

Besides, when you get right down to it, fifty thousand dead peons is just a rounding error in the ongoing environmentalist death toll.

"There are facts..."

"... and then there are PolitiFacts."

PolitiFact summed up in two quick images.

It's OK, though.  You see, they were for the ACA before they were... well, no, they are still shilling for the current administration and doing their best to make it look like the ACA isn't a complete and utter disaster.  They were just hoping that we peons somehow wouldn't notice the immense train wreck that was taking place in front of our eyes.

Just a Reminder

CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies -- more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

Think about that.  One month in to the ACA implementation, and 2 million people are now uninsured. Keep in mind that this is not an "unintended consequence".  Evidence that NBC News unearthed is that the administration expected somewhere between 40% and 67% - or more - of individual policy holders to have their current policies cancelled this year. 

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. 

So 7 to 10 million people will be uninsured this year, thanks to Obamacare.  How... unfortunate.

Or not.  As the Washington Post points out,

If you dig into the regulations (go to page 34560), you will see that HHS wrote them extremely tight. One provision says that if co-payment increases by more than $5, plus medical cost of inflation, then the plan can no longer be grandfathered. (With last year’s inflation rate of 4 percent, that means the co-pay could not increase by more than $5.20.) Another provision says the co-insurance rate could not be increased at all above the level it was on March 23, 2010.

So, yeah. Has there been any significant change in your co-pay or overall policy cost in the past 3 years? Keep your eye out for your cancellation notice.  Oh, and if your current policy doesn't include maternity coverage, even if you're a single male who will never, ever, ever need that coverage?  The Magic Eight Ball says there's a notice in your future, too!  Thinking about getting married?  Significant change, dude.  Lose your insurance policy.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Now, I want to remind you that the employer mandate was delayed for a year.  There are an estimated 170 million people in the US who are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance.

That means that starting in late 2014, when the employer mandate kicks in, we can expect somewhere between 85 and 120 million more people to get those cancellation notices.

That is not a blip.  That is not a glitch.

That is an order of magnitude change.

That is close to half the freaking country... and it is completely intentional.

"If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period."

... until we decide you can't, peon.

Update: Well, isn't that interesting.  Minutes after I post my simple analysis, I see that Reason has unearthed very similar figures from that bastion of right-wing Teabaggery, the Department of Health and Human Services.

Missing object

Government is just a word for things we choose to do together...

... to you.

Linked List

RPC handshakes and mbuf corruption;multi-threaded with task list interruptions.All of the pain that a core file brings;These are a few of my least favorite things...

So, yeah, work is really worky this week, and my posting schedule (what there is of it) has suffered.  To make up for it, here's a  bunch o' linkage for yinz guys.

• Over at The Smallest Minority, Kevin has no Faith in Government.  According to recent polls, that puts him well into the majority.
• At Sharp as Marble, Robb Allen expounds on just one of the reasons that you shouldn't be sleeping soundly at night.  I say this is one reason you shouldn't have faith in the government, either. Wait, no - make that two reasons.  Um.  Or maybe three reasons?  Wait -  four?  Man.  You know what?  Never mind.  Just go read his blog.
• Neo-Neocon points out that the presidency actually requires some skills.  I'm pretty sure she means "some skills other than continuous campaigning, fund raising and playing golf."
• Larry Correia has posted The Internet Arguing Checklist.  Learn how to give ammo to the people already on your side!  Convince the undecided!  Allow your opponents to display their petty ignorance to the world!
• Speaking of argument ammo, College Insurrection points to a Harvard (yes, that Harvard) study that shows gun control doesn't work.
• Via Questions and Observations, you can find Andrew Klavan explaining the progressive's version of the IAC: "Shut up!"
• House of Eratosthenes points out an alternate strategy employed by global warming advocates: never start a discussion, just declare that debate is useless.
• Robb Allen (there he is again... seriously, guys just go read his blog!) points out that the progressive argument for gun control is specifically based on emotion as opposed to logic.
• Not to be left out, Aaron Ross Powell has a handy pointer on How Not To Argue Against Libertarianism.  Well, really, it's got some good points on how to not argue against anything, really.  Starting off with not misconstruing your opponent's positions in order to knock down a strawman.  I guess there are some people who need to be told that's not a valid debate tactic?

Plenty of good stuff in there, right?

Now go read your Robb Allen.

Blood. BOILING.

Sheriff's Department Takes Family's Home and Contents Using a Fake Eviction

U.S. Navy veteran Ted Visner and his wife, Kathy Smith of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, have been living out a nightmare. It started two and a half years ago, when the family fell victim to an apparent real estate scam by a local sheriff's department employee.

Ted Visner says they bought their former home on a land contract, only to learn seven months later, that the seller, Isabella County Sheriff's Dept. employee Shelly Sweet, was not making monthly payments on the house. A bank foreclosed on the property, all unbeknownst to the Visner/Smith family.

Ted Visner, who builds custom homes for a living, said, "Although we were paying Sweet every month on the purchase of the property, she had not been paying the underlying mortgage and the home fell into foreclosure." I asked Visner if he had records of those payments, he said he does, including canceled checks. You won't believe what happened next.

"On a weekend Sweet knew that we would be out of town, she offered the contents of our home to her friends and coworkers at the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department, claiming we had abandoned the home. Many took her up on her free offer deal and took over $55,000 dollars worth of our personal property."

RTWT.

This is utterly evil, and unconscionable.

Is there a single, rational reason why the Isabella County Sheriff's Department, Board of Directors, and Prosecuting Attorney's office are not being investigated for fraud, theft, and abuse of power?

Rope, please.  We're going to need quite a bit of it to clean up this particular mess.  Careers must hang.

Head 'asplode

View From The Porch: Cradle and Grave of Liberty, Part Deux...

Ten police.  Warrantless search.   Legally owned guns seized.

In the suburbs of Boston.  On Independence Day.

As every irony meter within a thousand miles explodes.

An Appropriate Name

Senator Dick Durbin thinks that the First Amendment is awesome!  Unfortunately, this brain-damaged hulk of statist refuse also thinks that some animals are more equal than others.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has penned an editorial for the Chicago Sun-Times in which he argues that journalists need some form of government-granted protection, but that the government should decide who is a real journalist and who isn't. 

Who does Dick think qualifies as a journalist?  Hint: it's not you, peon.

That would be because he's a totalitarian hack and a waste of good air.

Rope.

Hemp Shortage in 3... 2... 1...

Seriously.  If all y'all government idiots keep this up, we're going run out sometime in October.

First up, a young Texas man (yeah, yeah - he just turned 19, so technically still a teenager) has been in jail since March for the heinous crime of trash talking during a League of Legends game.

A Texas teenager who has been in jail since March faces an eight-year prison sentence because of a threatening joke he made while playing an online video game.

In February, Justin Carter was playing “League of Legends” — an online, multiplayer fantasy game — when another player wrote a comment calling him insane. Carter’s response, which he now deeply regrets, was intended as joke.

“He replied ‘Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk,” said Jack Carter, Justin’s father, in a statement to a local news channel.

What the... seriously?  You have got to be kidding me.  I see far, far worse in WoW trade chat on any given evening.  It's a tasteless joke, sure; but in context, any reasonable person would figure he was just exaggerating for effect.  Unless, of course, you're the woman who reported him:

But a Canadian woman who saw the post looked up Carter’s Austin address, determined that it was near an elementary school, and called the police. Carter was arrested one month later, and has been in jail ever since. He recently celebrated his 19th birthday behind bars.

Looked up his address?  Why?  If you honestly thought he was a threat to someone, why bother with that step?  Did she think he was a lazy psychotic killer?  "Oh, man, I'd totally go commit unbelievable acts of violence, but I'd have to walk, like, three blocks.  Maybe next week." [1]

Meanwhile, if you're the police, why do you put this guy in jail over something like this?  Investigate him, sure.  Have someone with experience in diagnosing mental illness check him out, and if he is really disturbed, get him somewhere where he can be treated.  Do something proactive instead of leaving him to rot in jail for the crime of making a tasteless joke.

Either there is way more to the story, or there are some folks in Austin whose careers deserve a good ol' length of hemp.

Next, we have a University of Virginia student charged with three felonies because Virginia state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents are (a) thuggish idiots who are (b) incapable of telling the difference between a case of beer and a case of water, and (c) can't grasp the concept of "check out the situation to make sure we're not endangering ourselves or others before performing the canonical example of a career-limiting move":

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked. 

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot. 

"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified," Daly stated.

Good Lord. Six plainclothes law enforcement officers, one with a gun drawn, jump a young lady and her friends in a dark grocery store parking lot.  What a great idea!

Now, I know that under those circumstances, my first thought would be, "Wow, this totally normal, and exactly the way that I would expect police to approach me!" [2]

However, Ms. Daly had the entirely unreasonable view that she and her friends were in terrible danger, merely because they were being attacked by gun wielding thugs [3] who were yelling at her, jumping on her car, and trying to break her windows.  How ridiculous, right?  I mean, it's not like anybody has ever impersonated a police officer.

Riiight.  I wonder if Harris Teeter sells rope?  We could use six lengths, I think.

So, naturally, she is the one who ends up being charged with a crime:

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn't good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can't understand why she sat in jail... 

Agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense.

Thankfully, the charges were dropped.  Kudos to Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman for having the good sense to look at the situation sanely.  I can only hope that some good will come out of this situation.  By which I mean, everyone involved in this dunder-headed bit of idiocy gets busted back down to zero, tossed out of their agency, and ends up having to work the graveyard shift   as a Wal-Mart greeter for the remainder of their days.

[1] Just in case you're concerned about my mental health, dear reader, pleased be advised that this is an example of a what we edumacated types call sarcasm, which involves the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.

[2] That would be another example of sarcasm, just in case you're keeping score.

[3] Feel free to substitute "ABC agents" if you're feeling pedantic.  Not that there's much difference between the two in this story.

I Stand With Inigo

Well, whaddya know.  According to the Obama administration, whistleblowers are now terrorists, or something.

In 2008, now President Obama ran with the following as a key plank in his campaign: Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government...

Well, that was then, this is now.  You see, he was for whistleblowers before he was against whistleblowers, which apparently makes it all right, somehow.

Yes, informing the American public of misdeeds by the US government is considered "aiding the enemies of the United States." The reality, of course, is what they're saying is that they really mean "the current government" when they refer to "the United States," and "the enemies" are the American public. 

And, part of the program seems to be to put pressure on anyone to snitch on their colleagues if they suspect potential leakers. Government employees who fail to report colleagues who exhibit "high risk" behaviors may be subject to criminal charges. Basically, snitch on anyone who acts suspiciously, or else... And, of course, it's not just the Defense Department. The Agriculture Department has an online tutorial teaching people how to spot potential whistleblowers, entitled "Treason 101."

By now, you should realize how it works.  Good little peons support their government.  So if you're a whistleblower, then you're a terrorist.  If you're critical of a government agency, you're a terrorist.  If you're a supporter of civil liberties or concerned about NSA spying on American citizens, you're a terrorist.  If you're a second amendment supporter, you're a terrorist.

To quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Positively Terrifying

Positive Control - Global Guerrillas

When something is very dangerous, like nuclear weapons, standard forms of protections and control methodologies aren't sufficient. Something that potentially dangerous needs something more aggressive. In the military, that's called positive control... 

We're now actively moving towards a society, and a world, founded on positive control.

Well, only for you, of course.  Your "betters" can be trusted with their privacy.

Peon.

Pier. Rope. Whatever.

Obamacare? We were just leaving …

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting...

Rep. John Larson, a Connecticut Democrat in leadership when the law passed, said he thinks the problem will be resolved.

“If not, I think we should begin an immediate amicus brief to say, ‘Listen this is simply not fair to these employees,’” Larson told POLITICO. “They are federal employees.”

Because... Why?  Are federal employees somehow special?  Better than your average, everyday run-of-the-mill employee? You know - those, grubby fellows who simply are not as Smaht (TM) as federal employees?

Those non-federal employees who Rep. John Larson apparently thinks deserve to get hammered by these premium increases?  Because if it's not fair for federal employees to have to put up with these increases, by inference, it must be fair for non-federal employees to have to pay them, right?

Rep. John Larson?  You are a despicable, two-faced despot.  I thank God that you are not my representative, and I can only pray that the people of your district will take a good, long hard look at you and understand exactly what you think of them.

And then I hope they invite you to take a long walk off of a short pier.

Greetings, Criminal

Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance

Many don’t understand why they should be concerned about surveillance if they have nothing to hide. It’s even less clear in the world of 'oblique' surveillance, given that apologists will always frame our use of information-gathering services like a mobile phone plan or Gmail as a choice... 

If the federal government had access to every email you’ve ever written and every phone call you’ve ever made, it’s almost certain that they could find something you’ve done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations. You probably do have something to hide, you just don’t know it yet.

Obvious Correlations

Paul take a stroll through New York with some shipmates.  Passing through Brooklyn after dark, he points out "... only criminals and politicians can carry guns here."

Talk about packing a lot of implications into just a few words...

Ask Not For Whom The Audit Tolls...

... it tolls for thee.

By now, everyone knows that the IRS has admitted to targeting Tea Party 501c applications for special scrutiny.  Slightly less well known is that they are also being accused of improperly seizing 60 million personal medical records as well.

Yeah.  It's not been a happy week for the IRS. [1] For the first time in ages, their public opinion numbers have dipped from "slightly more pleasant than a rabid rat gnawing on my face" levels to... well, I'm not quite sure what comes under the whole face-gnawing-rat level.  I suspect pollsters going to have to dust off some imaginary numbers to accurately reflect just how your average American feels about the IRS is at this point.

Particularly since after the initial announcement, details about the IRS audits have been coming fast and furious.  Oh, no, wait - that's another scandal entirely.  Let's just say there's quite a lot of details, then...

• Just as a refresher, this administration has shown no qualms about targeting businesses and other organizations entirely for ideological reasons.
• They're also comfortable with going after individuals as well.  Professor Anne Hendershot, a sociologist, was targeted for an IRS audit in 2010 after she wrote a series of articles, mostly in Catholic publications, that were critical of Obamacare.
• Also targeted, the conservative Leadership Institute
• ...  and Smart Girl Politics.  #WarOnWomen, y'all.
• .... and The Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.
• Two different pro-life groups were reportedly told that they had to promise to not picket abortion clinics, or even more outrageously, that they would have to promote abortion.  (The later, at least, was overturned.)
• As part of their non-profit approval, the IRS asked the Linchpins of Liberty educational organization to provide them with the names of all of their former students.
• Which is actually pretty tame, compared to asking an organization to detail the contents of their member's prayers.
• In other cases, the IRS demanded that organizations provide "a U-Haul truck’s worth of information" - including the minutes of business meetings, donor lists, member lists, web pages, blog posts and social media postings.
• For an unknown number of conservative organizations, the delays in the aplication process, the expense of providing demanded information, and the threat of possible criminal charges for making a mistake led them to abandon their applications entirely.

Defenders of the IRS initially claimed that a spike in conservative non-profit applications raised red flags in the IRS, and that what followed was nothing more than professional scrutiny.  Really.  Of course, the policies were put in place in 2010, and the "spike" the IRS claims resulted in the policy came in 2011.  I had no idea that Miss Cleo was working for the IRS.

Fortunately, at least the number of cases where the IRS abused their power was limited, right?  Yeah, it would be nice if that were true.

At least the abuses were limited to one particular group of bad apples in the Cincinnati office.  Except that DC and California offices were involved, too.

Geeze.  At least the individuals involved were just a bunch of low-level IRS employees.  Of course, that's only true if in your dictionary, "low-level" means "senior".

Besides, it's not like they did anything egregiously wrong, like fast-tracking progressive applications while delaying conservatives, or turning over private data included in conservative non-profit application to political opponents.  Well, no more than one political opponent, at least.  I mean, that we know of.

Take heart, though.  As soon as those low-level yet senior officials discovered the problem, they immediately 'fessed up.  And by "immediately", of course, we mean "waited until after the presidential election".  Because that's what immediately means, right?

Ah, well.  Even if it their policies violate causality; even if there was a large number of cases where they abused their power; even if it spread across several different offices; even if senior officials knew about the situation; even if they did share information illegally; and even though they supressed information about their abuses for political reasons... well, you know that the White House was completely in the dark, because otherwise the Most Transparent Administration In History (TM) would have been all over the problem.

Or not:

I’ve been told today by several reporters that President Obama’s White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, knew for several days — perhaps weeks —that some Internal Revenue Service officials were engaging in political targeting of conservative groups, and that she did not tell the president as soon as she knew even partial reports about the story.

Sigh.

Hey, now - don't let all this get you down.  How about some good IRS news for a change?

Even as the politicized tax enforcement scandal expands, the Internal Revenue Service continues to expand its political powers thanks to the Affordable Care Act. A larger government always creates more openings for abuse, as Americans will learn when the IRS starts auditing their health care in addition to their 1040 next year... 

To monitor compliance with these rules, the IRS and HHS are now building the largest personal information database the government has ever attempted. Known as the Federal Data Services Hub, the project is taking the IRS's own records (for income and employment status) and centralizing them with information from Social Security (identity), Homeland Security (citizenship), Justice (criminal history), HHS (enrollment in entitlement programs and certain medical claims data) and state governments (residency).

Well, yeah, I lied.  At this point, really, you should have seen it coming.

So the IRS is building a single database of all the personal information it has about every person in the country.  On top of that, it's not only their information.  They're going to include data from a whole bunch of other government agencies, including the DHS, the DoJ, and even your state government.  I'm sure they're going to turn up quite a lot of interesting correlations once they get all those data sets together in the same room.

All told, this is going to give those consummate professionals at the IRS - you know, the ones who have been systematically abusing the power they already have - the ability to audit anyone, anywhere, for any reason that might catch their fancy.

I'm sure that's going to be just peachy keen.

Well, yeah.  That's sarcasm.  At this point, really, you should have seen it coming.

[1] Still better than Jay Carney's, though, so they've got that going for them.

About 15 Feet Would Do, I Think

Move is afoot to make government less open

Sen. Tommy Tucker of Waxhaw said a mouthful with just 13 words on Tuesday. 

“"I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”"

Them politicians do tend to get a might bit uppity if'n you don't remind 'em who's boss once in a while.

Might I suggest taking his political career and hanging it high?

Or, more colloquially:

Rope.

Californication

Following the lead of organized crime, the government of California has decided to drop all pretense of governing for the people, and go directly into the extortion and protection rackets:

The State of California has one of the worst proposals of any legislature in the country this year with a new bill that would force every restaurant and food service business in the state to commission an expensive "risk assessment" test for every menu item... 

The introduction of the bill clearly says that the law would require the food service companies to pay the state for the testing in order to fill state coffers. It notes that without the assessment, the state would have the right to shut an offending restaurant down.

In other words.... "Nice place you have here. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

Fourth What Now?

That whole Constitution thing is so passé, you know.  It's not like anybody pays attention to it anymore, really...

Feds: No Warrant Needed to Track Your Car With a GPS Device 

The President Barack Obama administration is claiming that authorities do not need court warrants to affix GPS devices to vehicles to monitor their every move.

The administration maintains that position despite the Supreme Court’s infamous decision last year that concluded that attaching the GPS devices amounted to search protected by the Constitution.

I mean, who needs that pesky old judicial branch, anyways?

Oh, and shut up, peon.

Some Quotes

Posting has been very light lately, as work and home have conspired to keep me hopping.  I have come across several good quotes in my brief stints of wading through the intarwebs, however...

Technology won’t solve all problems but proper application of technology will reduce many problems to soluble multiple problems.

-- Jerry Pournelle

... cheap energy solves most problems; and if your philosophy is one of distribution of resources, then it helps to have a large pie to distribute.

-- Jerry Pournelle

... the law isn’t able to prevent all bad things from happening. It can only try to punish the perpetrator after the fact, and that doesn’t mend a broken life or repair a deep trauma.

-- Neo-neocon

Then we start doing mash-ups and before too long, you're celebrating Canada Day by eating bratwurst tacos in a pita-bread shell at a faux-English pub in Nebraska.  You want culture?  We're a heated cabinet fulla Petrie dishes and they're all kinda porous!

-- Roberta X

If you catch up to society as it’s pushing leftward and say “Hey guys, I think we should go leftward even faster! Two times faster! No, fifty times faster!”, society will call you a bold revolutionary iconoclast and give you a professorship.

-- Slate Star Codex

Oh, one final thing.  We've apparently got mandarins, now, as well as praetorians.  Both of which would very much like us peons to just stay in our assigned roles.  Which is kind of bogus, since what we really need are more free men and women.  We're not going to get off of this mud ball if the primary output of our society are "leaders" who get all starry eyed about the failed social models of long-gone empires.