Sunday, September 24, 2006

Brave New Free Novel

I'm bored, and have nothing better to say. Or rather, I probably have something better to say, but don't want to take the time to say it.

Instead, I've started going through my horribly disorganized folder of bookmarks.

Thus, Brave New World. The whole novel for your reading pleasure. If you're into literary analysis, scroll down to the bottom, there' s some interesting stuff on soma and "paradise engineering."

Friday, September 15, 2006

Jay Pinkerton Takes On Batman

Behold the awesome.

There's really nothing I can say to make this more awesome. It's hilarious, it's Batman. It's awesome.

Yeah, I've got nothing better to do.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

The Internet Has No Death Squads

I'm beginning to think that revolutionaries don't matter. Or that they shouldn't. When revolutionaries matter, bad things happen. The revolutions they matterto are fragile, because they can end with just one government ordered assassination. They take on an inquisitional character, as the person becomes more important than the cause, and uses the cause to do things in their interests rather than the interests of the cause.

Successful revolutions are usually independent of any one individual. The internet revolution, for example. Now that it's off the ground, it can't be stopped, because there are so many people involved with it. This is more a feature of technological revolutions than political ones, but political revolutionaries should take note of it. Getting people on board with the revolution itself, rather than onboard with you, personally, can be an extremely effective tactic.

Not least because it means that if Things Go Wrong, at least people will be killing each other for the revolution, and not for you. Small consolation, sure -- but if you frame the rest of the revolution right, it also means that Things are a lot less likely to Go Wrong. And that's a big deal.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Yoda Was Wrong!

The Last Angry Young Man

This website is awesome. It's about how people should get angry, and a whole list of things to get angry about. This is cool.

Anger is underrated. People think of it as something that makes people attack each other. That's something that idiots do when they get angry, but it's got nothing to do with anger itself. The idea that humans should maintain a kind of neutral emotionlessness is so bizarre, so counterproductive, it denies the point of emotions. They've been around a long time (main ones, fear and such, are part of the so-called "lizard brain" that mammals borrowed from reptiles because it's JUST THAT AWESOME) and they've been around for reason.

You know what anger really leads to? Anger leads to action. If you're angry about something, you care about it, and if you care about it, you're going to do something about it. Unless you're a spineless twit.