Note: This is a rant and is meant in no way, shape or form to end any discussions about anything. These rants are meant to start discussion and (hopefully) open some minds to new ideas. Also, these rants are written by fairly seasoned pompous asshole who will not respond to comments or questions. Now here’s Tom with the weather.

Western democracies have a great ability for deception. They are built on the promise of freedom, liberty and equality. I could argue that all three do not fully exist but the one that suffers the most and so few people talk about is equality. Now you could ask any person is a democratic country if they believe in equality and for the most post they will say yes. I’m not going to dispute the fact that they believe in the concept of equality but the problem is that they don’t care about it.

Historically, democracy and equality has not come hand in hand despite the fact the concept of democracy is based in part on the equality of all people (one person, one vote). Almost all western democracies have histories of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and oppression. So while countries wrote constitutions and charters promising rights and freedoms for all they had laws that instilled oppression and inequality for others. In a lot of cases, this has been corrected; slavery doesn’t exist in western democracies anymore and african countries are now autonomous. So most of the laws have been changed and yet equality is still a dream that has not been reached.

Fast forward to many years after the abolishment of slavery, around the time African imperialism ended and you see the Civil Rights Movement and the last wave of feminism. Both of these movements pushed for more equality and achieved that goal; rights for African-Americans have vastly improved and so have women’s rights yet still no equality. More decades have passed and equality is still a dream, a vague apparition of the future…why?

The answer is that we, as a society, don’t care about equality. We almost all believe in it but we don’t do anything to obtain in. Some Scandanavian countries have closed the gap between the rich and the poor and countries like South Africa have parity in terms of the sexes in the elected governments but most countries, especially those with the worst records of equality, are still no where near equality. No elections are fought on aboriginal rights or quotas for gender parity in parliament, senate or congress. Parties campaign on taxes and security, not equality. We all say we believe but its obvious from all this that we just don’t care.

As allonby mentioned, the site has slowed down due to the release of new version of our favourite series (well I guess that’s debatable) and to be clear, I fucking love this game. So for those of you that haven’t played the game and for some moronic reason, aren’t sure if you should buy it, I’ll give you my impressions and thoughts on the game (btw, I’ve played about 10 hours so far, which may seem like a lot but when compared to allonby, it’s not).

To start with, let’s talk about the Subspace Emissary, the biggest first player mode in the game. I beat this mode and I would say it is very hit and miss. To be clear, its more hit then miss. The main part of this mode involves going through side scrolling levels with various enemies and it can be fun. Certain parts get tedious and some environments lead to stupid deaths. Depending on the character you are playing (until the end your choice of characters is limited) you could die by falling down a hole that another character could have jumped over. This is a small problem but it can be infuriating at the time. Other then that the boss battles are sweet and this mode is the best way to open up almost all the characters.

Speaking of new characters, I’m mostly impressed with the new comers and the changes to the veterans. Ike is a powerhouse with a sword which is sweet. Sonic is fast, lacks good finishing movies but his final smash is amazing. Metaknight also suffers from the lack of any finishing moves but he dishes out damage quite fast. Snake is alright, no great moves but fun enough to play. Olimar seems pretty useless to me at this point but I’ve been told that there is more to him. Pokemon Trainer is alright but I’m kind of disappointed. Wolf is pretty badass; he is powerful and fast and his move set is different enough from Fox and Falco to make me happy. Also, the changes to Falco make him unique in my opinion but considering he was a complete clone in melee, any change is welcome. Pit has a sword and can fly so I’m happy. So overall, pretty happy with the new guys this time around.

The new stages in Brawl bring more intensity and franticness to a series where I figured it would be impossible to make it any more frantic. New stages are either ever changing or destructible and each brings a new challenge to the brawls. Also, the new items available make brawls a new experience. Of course, the most powerful new items is the final smash ball which changes gameplay as soon as they appear and they are so much fun.

The only other mode I’ve spent time with are the event matches and I am quite happy with addition of coop event matches. These matches aren’t anything new really, same style of challenges but this mode as always been fun and with new characters there are plenty of new challenges.

Well that’s my thoughts so far on SSBB. I can guarantee that I will be playing this game for a long time as it is mine and allonby’s favourite past time (and to be honest, the basis for our entire friendship) and I will just get just as excited for the next one and let’s be clear, no matter what the tag line is for this game, Nintendo will continue to make this cashcow of a series.

Wow, a sudden drop in posting, amazing what the release of a certain video game I can’t stop playing can do to content flow.

Regular programming set to resume shortly.

In the meantime, check out this comic strip from VGcats. It really captures what it’s like to be in the fray of TeamFortress 2. Also this one from Penny Arcade parodying echochrome. heh.

Well, back to Smash Brothers for me.

ps - zOMG Star WOlf! sauce sauce

Hello… (tap, tap) is this fuckin’ thing on?!? This is my first official post, and I call it, the IPod Touch = SEXXX!!! Okay, let’s cut the shit and get right into it. This badboy is available, in case you didn’t know, in 8G, 16G, and recently released 32G models. Each one packs a 400MHz processor. Mine’s an 8G, and no, I don’t feel like any less of a man for it. Either way, the space isn’t nearly the coolest thing this IPod has going for it. I’m sure you’re all aware that the Touch has a touch screen interface, and that it’s actually multi-touch sensitive, and if you didn’t know that, well… believe it. ‘Cause it does… so there. Anyways, it’s also got this ass-rawkin’ motion sensor thingy in it called an accelerometer. Interesting side note - before I learned the word “accelerometer” it pleased me to refer to this wondrous device as a “gravitron”, and guess what folks, it pleases me still. So, that’s a little bit about what it’s got. Now let’s talk about what it does.

Naturally, it plays music, and video and all that other basic shit. And it’s packin’ tidy little clock and calendar apps out of the box, just the way you’d expect. But one of its coolest features, (also works out of the box) is the safari web browser that allows you do view really real web pages (including secure sites, like for my online banking!) over a wireless internet connection. Now as for zooming in and out to view said web pages at a comfortable size, all you need to do is pinch open or pinch closed with your fingertips on the screen. Ooooooooooooooooooooh… Now you can also tip the whole unit from its assumed upright position to the right or the left, and the gravitron will rotate the entire screen to suit the change. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… Sexy isn’t it? Well… take a second to adjust the crotch of your pants and read on. The touch screen is so unbelievably comfortable to use. You turn it on, you try it out, and you’re good at it. It’s just that beautiful. You may notice there’s also an icon right on the home screen for YouTube… (adjust…) and yes, that’s lots of fun too.

Now… my favorite part about the Touch, by far, is the option to “jailbreak” it, and install and try whole worlds of toys, tweaks, tools, games, upgrades, patches, runtimes, wallpapers, themes, and other mind blowing 3^rd party apps on it. First… a quick how to. I’ve jail broken my IPod Touch twice so far. The first time, I did it the incredibly hard way. The second time, the incredibly easy way. Both times, I got identical results. So… I shall tell you the easy way… ‘cause you’ll like it better. Trust me. K, first step is making sure your IPods’ firmware is 1.1.1. If you didn’t purchase your IPod right when they first came out, it probably won’t be. Check under Settings > General > About to find out. If it turns out that you need 1.1.1, use this to get it. http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite….a_Restore.ipsw Save the firmware file to your desktop. Then open iTunes and plug in your pod. Select the pod on the left, and HOLD SHIFT while you click the “Update” button. ITunes will now allow you to select the firmware file to be installed on your iPod touch. Pick the file from your desktop and open it up. There. Welcome to firmware 1.1.1. Now, for the tricky part. The part that’s much easier than the multi step, hour long process my first attempt involved. Open your Safari browser, and go to jailbreakme.com… there… that’s it. Wait the IPod is done doing its shit, and you’re there.

Now that you have the installer icon on your home screen, you can open it up and start adding source sites. Once you add some source addresses, you can use the installer app to scroll through a huge list of categories of packages that are available for you to install. In other words, the more sources you’re able to find, the more unique shit you can get. I’ve got something like 93 sources and there are more out there to be found, I’m sure. And yeah, my installer application now takes like 10 mins to load up all the sources, but there’s a lot of cool shit to be found within. For days I’ve considered typing up a list of the categories and all the packages they contain, but seriously people, it’s a list at least 10,000 items long… and let’s face it… I just don’t have that kind of dedication. But, I’ll gladly tell you about some of the interesting shit that I’ve seen so far. Where shall we start?

Games… gotta love ‘em. And after jailbreakage, this thing’s really packin’. It’s got a Nes emulator. I installed and tried it out for awhile, and it was pretty sweet. ROMs can be acquired in different packs through the installer, or added to your iPod in windows explorer once you’ve plugged it into your computer. The NES emulator actually builds the NES controller on the touch screen, which can be a tad difficult if the touch is being held upright. Flip sideways and the screen and controller will reposition. Oua-la. Much better. I’ve seen other emulators available in the installer, including a PSX emu, and I believe a SNES one as well, although I can’t say I’ve tried either of them just yet. Yeah, yeah, perhaps not entirely practical when you really wanna beat a PSX game… but it sure is candy to watch the touch do it. It’s got a ton of other cool games like chess and stuff. And hey, remember that game you might have played when you were a kid. The one where you have to roll the marble through the wooden labyrinth? Well it’s got that shit too. It also runs crayon physics, which makes for some pretty amazing gaming. P.S. If you don’t know what crayon physics is all about you can check out this YouTube flick. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgRWT0QH-sU Prepare to be fuckin’ amazed.

There are also various sound/music based apps that can be fun to mess with. I’ve got a beat box style drum machine with the ability to change drum kits and programmable patterns that loop at a selectable tempo. I’ve also installed and enjoyed using the guitar tuner app, tunewiki (which displays lyrics for songs in your playlist in real time while the track plays), a variety of different internet radio apps from some of the bigger broadcasting names in online radio, a piano app that’s more for fun than actually composing on, and so on, just to name a few.

Other impressive apps include eBook readers, (with thousands of downloadable eBook packages in the installer that include everything from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, to Harry Potter, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and even older classics like Frankenstein, and collections by Poe), WeDict, a dictionary style app that allows you to customize your quick reference library. (I’ve added a Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus, Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, English Etymology dictionary, a large jargon file dictionary, and an irregular English dictionary, so when I search any word in WeDict, I get the results for that word from each.) I didn’t bother with language dictionaries, but with options to and from English to Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian, I’m sure other people will. There’s even a PDF viewer app. How friggin’ cool is that? Add to that the flashcard packages for languages and the Greek alphabet that are all part of the iStudy setup, and it’s all pretty sweet.

The skins, and themes, and wallpapers and shit are just too numerous for me to even bother to begin to tell you about. They’re like sand in the desert people. The best I can tell you is, try ‘em out.

There’s also a small group of apps that focus on the online IPod Touch community, like wallpaper, which will share your wallpaper to be viewed by any other touches using the program at that moment, while you are able to view theirs. These of course from the good people at iApp-a-day, who’ve made some other very interesting apps as well.

There’s also a lot of other shit that’s a little bit beyond me, to be honest, but it all sounds very cool. Apache web server apps, BitchX IRC clients, DNS command line tools, Ruby web proxy server, ebay watchers, BSD subsystems for linux command line utilities, Pure FTP servers, Open source implementation of LLDP, Wi-Fi stumblers, VNC clients, GNU Wget, AFPd servers, Wi-Fi access point loggers, and a whole lot of other shit that I’m just not sure about yet. But if I find out anything cool about any of these apps, I’ll post something just to let you know what’s worth it.

I should also mention that I’m starting to see a lot of upgrades, patches and plug-ins for the safari browser. I’ve recently installed one that lets you download files in safari. (It tells you what path you’ll find your downloads in once you plug into a computer again.) Apparently there’s another one for OTA downloading and Installation of PXL packages from websites. Cool beans.

Anyways, these are some of the things that I think make owning an IPod Touch a lot of fun. It’s got the internet, it’s got the YouTube, it’s got the apps. There are even magic tricks out there for it. So pick one up and check it out. IPod Touch fuckin’ rules!!! PSP owners… dismissed.

Creased Comics is quite possibly one the best comics on the internet. Created by the genius that brought you the George Washington Rap, each comic is weird, obtuse and hilarious. His humour isn’t for everyone but I think it’s fucking hilarious. Also, his collection of comics keeps growing which means new shit all the time. Enjoy

Every time I start to write this rant, I delete it because I think I fall short. The other posts on mental-enema are amazingly good and I never think my writing can even come close in comparison. I feel like there is a standard that I have to achieve before I post my work.This got me thinking about my rant, on reality television and the melo-dramatic bullshit that everyone seems to love. There is so obviously not a standard when it comes to what we watch. This is evident when we look at television shows like Big Brother and Survivor which are on their 100^th cycle. I watched the first season of both Big Brother and Survivor, they were masterpieces… putting people in that kind of physical and emotional turmoil then turning on a cam recorder, was simply genius. However like a good joke told too many times, its gone sour.

Okay, so you’ve downloaded Ubuntu or some other variety of linux - commonly referred to as flavours, builds, or  distributions - and want to install some program you found on SourceForge (a huge internet repository of open source software by nerdy people with a lot of programming talent - sometimes - and obviously a lot of spare time). Now installation can be a problem if your built-in package manager (the module that pops up when you click the add/remove button in your “start” menu) doesn’t handle that particular application. More complications can arise if they haven’t provided you with something called the binary version. Binaries are just packages of source code that have been compiled and are ready to install out-of-box. In this post I’ll go over installing a binary package and then next time move onto the source code installations.
If you’ve been given the binary version of some piece of software then you can install it on your Ubuntu system by navigating to the folder you downloaded it into and running one of a few different kinds of commands that either actually installs the software into your system or runs the software from the folder you downloaded it into. Briefly, the way to do this is as follows;

1. open a terminal window then type

cd /directory_string/name_of_downloaded_file

Where cd is a command that stands simply for ‘change directory’ to whatever you type after the ‘/’. The highest level of directory (or most basic if that makes more sense) is just called ‘File System’ by default which is like a Windows ‘C’ Drive. Most of your activity, if you’re a basic Ubuntu user, will occur in folders within the /usr/ folder. It is important here to understand that directory_string should be something like this;

/usr/local/share/

…etc if that’s where the program you’re installing is located. Moreover,  it is important to ensure you type the name of the program exactly as it appears in the file system. Sometimes your downloads will be in your user folder, in which case it will look something like this;

/home/your_user_name/Desktop/

…etc if you downloaded it somewhere in a folder on your current Desktop. The best way for a windows ex-patriot to find the string is to click the ’start’ button on your desktop. Then, open the ‘places’ folder and navigate as you would using Windows Explorer to the place where you downloaded the files. At the top of the file explorer module will be a series of buttons that begin with the first folder you entered from (e.g. usr) and will end on the right with the current folder you are in. It’s a handy way for you to navigate around since you can click any of those buttons and be transported back to that particular folder. So, for navigating within the Terminal window you just have to place ‘/’ between each of the those folder names beginning with a ‘/’ before the first folder and not necessarily ending with a ‘/’ unless you’re also going to identify something within the last folder (like a program or file you want to manipulate). A handy location string short-cut is ‘~’ which, when placed before the first ‘/’ in your string, indicates the current user directory. So, if you wanted you could replace the following long folder path;

/home/your_user_name/Desktop/

with the following short cut;

~/Desktop/

Now that you’ve navigated to the folder with your download in it, you can take a look inside the package with or without ‘extracting’ it first. The command dir at the Terminal window prompt will show you the files in the folder you are currently in. Notice that you’ll know what folder you’ve navigated to because the location is given before the prompt in the Terminal window. You can also just use the GUI (Graphical User Interface) or Windows like file system explorer (Windows Explorer) like you did to find the file path in the first place. Inside the package will be a bunch of folders and files that you really don’t need to know anything about at this point except that there will also be a document (Word Pad looking opened with a Text Editor) called README.doc or possibly Install.doc that will contain specific instructions on installing that binary including additional ‘libraries’ that your system might need. I’ll deal with libraries next time as well. So, follow the instructions for installing provided and you’re probably good to go. The README file will likely also contain instructions for ‘extracting’ or ‘unzipping’ the compressed package. You can do this in a few different ways and the Ubuntu Linux distribution contains a number of pieces of software for this purpose. The most commonly used is tar. The end of the file name of the package your trying to install likely looks like this;

somepackageidownloaded-4.5.3.2.1.tar.gz

the important part to understand right now it the tar.gz. That file extension means that the package is compressed using tar and can, therefore, be uncompressed/unzipped/extracted using the same. the file system GUI approach will determine all of this automatically if you right click and select extract to here from the context sensitive menu. On the other hand, you can extract the files from the Terminal prompt - as long as you’re in the folder that contains the package- by using the following;

untar -xvf somepackageidownloaded-4.5.3.2.1.tar.gz

Be sure to read through all of the manual pages for any command you haven’t used before to ensure that the options you select for that command (also called flags) are doing what you want them to. The flags can be in any order and follow the ‘-’ but generally come before whatever file you want the command to alter. Then you can look in the file again for files with extensions like .pyc and .sh. The .pyc file likely won’t run, but it’s program code created with a language called Python. The .sh is the key since that’s like the Windows .exe files. Try simply entering the file name with the .sh extension in the terminal window and see if it runs. If that doesn’t work have another look at the INSTALL and README documents. If all of that fails you can also use file system explorer if you’re more comfortable using the GUI. Look for a little diamond shaped icon with some gears in it with your filesystem explorer. Try double clicking it. If that runs the program then it can be run from the Terminal prompt as well, all ‘out-of-box‘, right from the folder you downloaded the package into by entering the file name of whichever gear icon file actually worked into the terminal prompt.

So, with any luck that will save someone some damn time when trying to install programs. There’s more to it and more ways to install things which I’ll get into next time.

It’s been around for a while, but I’m only now beginning to learn about it in any detail. I actually remember learning Q-Basic and C++ (with allonby at school actually) and vaguely recall the transition to OOP. Personally, I really hope the next significant change in programming is called Post-Object Oriented Programming.

For anyone that’s just starting out and having a bit of trouble wrapping the ‘ol noodle around OOP, my advice is to simply accept it! Well, the idea of OOP, I mean. Objects are anything that can be called by a program and even the program itself. A vector of numbers (just a list of numbers, but programming guides prefer the term ‘vector’) is an object as is the 1000 lines of some function you just typed out. I’ll have more to say as I learn more about it and have basic questions that take me a bloody donkey’s age to find the answers to. Then, I’ll post the Q and A. Hopefully, it’ll save someone out there some amount of time to get the info from someone who is a recent convert to compu-geekdom. Convert or Die!

…

Hypothesis: Current scientific thought suggests we have already achieved max rocking level.

Perhaps max-rocking levels could be radically increased with creation of 30ft tall motion controlled guitar thrashing robot simulacrum.

Result: We rocked the fuck out.

wearscience

And now for something completely different…

I’m back in the university setting after a couple of years out and have been under a barrage of ‘awareness’. In this short post I’m going to complain about stupidity and stupid people for a moment. Generally it seems fashionable today to side with hippies and socially conscious folk especially if you’re in your early 20’s and undergoing ‘higher learning’. Walk onto any campus in Canada - likely elsewhere as well - and you’ll find no end of people parading about trying to convince you that their cause-of-the-week is particularly important. Well, my awareness is raised and here’s a short, incomplete, list of what I’ve learned. I hope you’re feeling suitably ‘aware’ after reading this. Stop me if you’ve heard this one….

- people in the world are suffering

- people in the world are starving

- life just generally isn’t fair

- you live in a rich country and have unimaginable wealth so you should help poor people

- capitalism and democracy sucks; yay Che Guavara

- drinking coffee and eating bananas makes you a bad person

- STDs may be bad for your health

- etc, etc, ad nausium

So, do you feel educated and more aware about the world around you? I know I do. Phewf.. I’m glad there’s a lot of complaining going on; that must mean things will get better.

The biggest problem with all of this is, of course, that ‘awareness raising’ has become and end unto itself. I’m well aware that the world sucks in a lot ways, thanks for the info tips. If anyone cares to look further into a problem as well as the proposed solution - on the rare occasion that a solution of ANY kind is proposed while people are raising our collective awareness right up our own asses - they would find that the ’solutions’ are economically ill-conceived and would actually lead to much more harm than good. Here I provide a single example. I’ve been to a couple OPIRG (Ontario Public Interest Research Group) meetings and one in particular left me fuming. There was a short, extremely biased, film presented about the deplorable situation of banana farmers in Jamaica. I won’t deny that Jamaica has an abundance of socio-economic trouble to deal with, but the OPIRG solution blew my mind.

Banana farmers in Jamaica are finding it difficult to survive given the current market price for bananas and the fact that it’s cheaper for them to import much of their produce from the US than to shop and eat locally produced food. This isn’t news to anyone living in country that participates in global market economies because imports are often less expensive (including within Canada). The situation is more complicated and global economics is very difficult to sort through, so I won’t be doing that here. Suffice it to say that local farmers often need to get government aid which comes to the Jamaican government from the World Bank. Just to clarify a point about the World Bank from its own website:

Who owns the World Bank?

The World Bank is like a cooperative in which 185 member countries are shareholders. For a complete list of our members and when they joined, see the Members page in the About Us section of our website

Where does the World Bank get its money?

We raise money in several different ways to support the low interest and no interest loans (credits) and grants that the World Bank (IBRD and IDA) offers to developing and poor countries.

IBRD lending to developing countries is primarily financed by selling AAA-rated bonds in the world’s financial markets. IBRD bonds are purchased by a wide range of private and institutional investors in North America, Europe and Asia. While IBRD earns a small margin on this lending, the greater proportion of income comes from lending out our own capital. This capital consists of reserves built up over the years and money paid in from the bank’s 185 member country shareholders. IBRD income also pays for World Bank operating expenses and has contributed to IDA and debt relief. We maintain strict financial discipline to maintain the AAA status of our bonds and continue to extend financing to developing countries.

Shareholder support is also very important for the Bank. This is reflected in the capital backing we have received from shareholders in meeting their debt service obligations to IBRD. We also have US$178 billion in what is known as “callable capital,” which could be drawn from our shareholders as backing, should it ever be needed to meet IBRD obligations for borrowings (bonds) or guarantees. We have never had to call on this resource. For more information on the World Bank’s bonds and notes, go to the World Bank Debt Securities.

IDA, the world’s largest source of interest-free loans and grant assistance to the poorest countries, is replenished every three years by 40 donor countries. Additional funds are regenerated through repayments of loan principal on 35-to-40-year, no-interest loans, which are then available for re-lending. IDA accounts for nearly 40% of our lending.

Does the World Bank make a profit and, if so, what is done with it?

We often do have a surplus at the end of the fiscal year, which is earned from the interest rates charged on some loans and from fees charged for some of our services. Some of the surplus goes to IDA—the part of the bank that provides grants and interest free loans to the world’s poorest countries. The rest of the surplus is either used for debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, added to financial reserves, or helps us respond to unforeseen humanitarian crises.

Which means it has to return to its shareholders requiring that it operate much like any other financial institution and is held accountable to those 185 member countries for its policies and expenditure.

The World Bank requires that governments borrowing money from them sign contracts in which they agree to work with financial specialists to distribute the money in certain ways. This is a requirement of the World Bank and all of the countries involved that comes from previous experiences wherein loaned finances were used to supply warlords with weaponry. You might think that OPRIG would be in support of regulations that are in place to keep money away from criminals, but the World Bank representative responses to questions were carefully edited and the board of directors may as well have been sitting about a cauldron eating babies. Unfortunately, Jamaican debt does continue to worsen and it’s government continues to make decisions that don’t help the situation. However, the World Bank has advised them that the farmers who are having difficulty making money selling bananas ought to change their crops over to something that is more cost effective on the world market - produce for bio-fuels for example - because the global market fluctuates and it is unwise to remain in an industry that is failing when it is just as easy to switch over to another crop. Continual rotation of crops, or increased crop diversity, would lend to a risk management system for local farmers that could then continue to export their produce for profitable returns. Of course, OPRIG didn’t want to get into that or even discuss the alternative solutions. Rather, they wanted to take everyone to the grocery store and ‘educate’ us about which items to buy and which not to buy based on where they are coming from. I have no doubt that the nearly starving Jamaican farmer would applaud their honourable efforts when he ceases to receive ANY money for his bananas due to the boycott.
Essentially, my argument here is that not nearly enough research is done into the vast complexity of any situation before undergraduate university students and half-wit demonstrators embark on redundant and meaningless campaigns to ‘raise awareness’. I’m already well aware of many problems around the world that need solving. All of the time and effort they spend raising awareness never seems to result in any positive action. Boycotts don’t solve problems. What the world actually needs is economically viable, realistic, solutions to real-world problems. So, my message to all hippies: Remove heads from collective asses, cut your damn hair, get a real education in something useful (i.e. NOT fine arts), get into politics, and make real, economically viable, changes. Globalization isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you take the time to examine the details and complex nature of the situation. It isn’t realistic, or even useful, to do away with capitalism. Anarchy is also NOT a solution.

Now back to regularly scheduled brainwashing… note that fearmongering and propaganda doesn’t only come from governments!