‘Murica

It’s okay to love America. It’s okay to hate it too. The good doesn’t excuse the bad, the bad doesn’t nullify the good. There is nothing wrong with loving your home, even if those who rule it are repugnantly corrupt. There’s nothing wrong either in harshly criticizing the atrocities carried out in its name, even […]

Schopenhauer’s Freedom of the Will

It’s tempting to take the view that Schopenhauer proved with his essay, On the Freedom of the Will, that the spiritual proletariat has no free will. If you go to the heart of what this prize winning essay really wanted to achieve however, you will realize it cannot achieve anything on its own, because its reason to exist was […]

Anarchy Zonage

Rick Santorum is painted as a laughing stock, but he (could) represent something liberals fear: a common sense approach to anarchy and the outrageous. Most people would take a normal life mixed with adventure spirit and a positive outlook, without denying an inherent hardship in facing a world that seems to be callous at every […]

Illuminati: oligarchy for illiterates

The goal of conspiracy theory is to shed light on ulterior motive. Government and celebrity are easy targets because you only trust these so far as you can tolerate them above and beyond their normal role in society, which is entertainment in both cases. This is the reality for government because policy merely dictates what […]

Tor: hacking your tiny universe in service to the NSA

Obama supported the NSA because XYZ. Hillary Clinton will be elected the first female president because idiots like novelty, and she will make symbolic reforms that won’t change anything, including giving the NSA a slap on the wrist. No one cares, and everyone accepts they can be easily surveilled by who knows who at any time doing almost anything. The privacy […]

Planet of the Apes (1968)

This movie was ahead of its time in a way last year’s Interstellar is not. Forty years from now, it will still be seen as more brave and more honest than Nolan’s cheeseball mindtravel. The latter isn’t ahead of our time at all, only smarter than its target audience. Big difference. The modern Planet of the Apes remakes don’t even deserve to be […]

Sacred this, sacred that

At some point it’s just you. No one else. They told you X you did Y. They said up, you went down. They said for sure if you went that way now, forget it, you’re history. Yet here you are still standing, strong as an ox. You knew all along their protective measures were just […]

Leaders of rats

There is no appropriate image for this missive. In some cultures (therefore some schools of communication theory), pictures and images are to be avoided at all costs, and when put together with words, they can allow you to make false connections between the picture and the ideas behind the words. News media, for example, takes advantage […]

Objectivity

In an ideal world, you choose a side and it marches to victory because it is right, and righteousness beats evil because that’s how it’s supposed to work. In the real world, the less powerful side will likely lose because that’s how mathematics works. But still you must choose a side because to sit on […]

Perfectionism: example or warning?

Ancestors. We all have them. They don’t know we exist, but they spared us more than a few thoughts and words. The better ones, anyway. In our finer moments we believe they died for us, to make our life easier, to guide us. In part they did, but mainly they followed the only path that allows […]

Future Consciousness

futurism