Justice is Done

Vigilante justice has just been served. My hat goes off to the man who caught a thief trying to rip off his car stereo. My vehicle has been broken into several times in the past, and each time I've wished I could have caught the thief in the act, to teach him a lesson he'd relearn every time he looked at his broken face in the mirror for weeks after. The worst part of the story is that the cops told the guy they wouldn't be able to take a report from him in person because they were too busy 'investigating' other crimes. Bullshit.

30 Days

30 days until I'm 30. Good God!! I need some kind of thing that I need to do each day for the next 30 to celebrate!

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Wow. This is a fairly long video (1.25 hours) but so worth watching. If you've ever indulged in a Michael Moore or Al Gore film, you should watch this one as an intellectual counterweight.

Global Warming Causes Hornet Infestation!

It's not that I don't believe that the globe is/did/will again experience warming, or that the ecosystem/biosphere adapts to different climates. It's not that I really have anything against France. It's that I'm sick and tired of all of this bullshit about the impending 'crisis' that the doom-mongers are so breathlessly waiting for; you know, the one that will finally 'wake people up' to the evils of capitalism, and convince them to return to a planned society. Just because that's what they want, doesn't mean that's what's actually happening.

First of all, the globe, if it has warmed at all over the last hundred years, has not warmed up enough to cause hornets to suddenly invade France, causing unending havoc with the local bee population. It also has not warmed enough to cause a fraction of the things currently attributed to climate change. Finally, I believe that global warming, like diseases, can and will be dealt with by humans existing today that are brilliant, and completely financed by the spoils of capitalism.

It's like the doom-mongers really have no respect for the intelligence of the average citizen. No scratch that, they really don't. I'd hope that in fact, most people read this as the garbage propaghanda that it really is.

Mind Blowing Internet

Ok. If you know me personally, you'll know I'm the 'golly-gee-whiz' kinda guy when it comes to science and technology. And the reason for this is simple. Aesthetics, as I understand the term, relates to the cosmos, or the order of things. Fibonacci numbers, golden sections, harmonics, etc., all come from the natural order of the reality that we all participate in. These orders are recognized by us as beautiful because when we notice them in the world, we are only recognizing the part of our own bodies and minds that are designed by the same ordering principles. And so we strive for this order, we surround ourselves with it in our buildings, our arts, our languages, and I believe also in our science, among all other things that we make. So it is that I have been blessed to receive new and beautiful information to share with you. Check out Utorrent.com and download the software. Then, go to isohunt.com and search for anything you want to, and download it. When I say anything, I mean information; books, papers, movies, tv shows, music, software, ANYTHING. I can't do this site justice within the body of this post. All I can say, and of course this technology might be old news to you, is INCREDIBLE.

Another site worth checking out is gapminder.org, this thing is retardedly cool. It's a project by a Swedish academic in partnership with Google who have endeavored to graphically represent astounding amounts of data collected by the UN among other agencies. The data includes demographics, income distribution, birth rates, death rates, etcetera etcetera. The reason it's cool is that it manages to extrapolate remarkable global trends in a way that is very interesting and incredibly useful, and I dare say optimistic. If you are of the sky-is-falling set, you will not be pleased with the direction the world is actually headed, according to this site, I must warn you. Check it out!

Global Warming - Cause of Everything

Apparently, higher suicide rates are being attributed to global warming. Which is in turn George W. Bush's fault. Let's see, what else is caused by global warming:

- rising sea levels
- warmer temperatures
- colder temperatures
- mass animal extinction
- hurricanes
- tsunamis
- snow
- liberals

Anybody care to add anything?

Nanny-Statism Gone Mad

Toronto city councillors are calling for helmet laws for tobogganing. Now, I'm not anti-helmet or anything like that, and I've definitely taken a few spills where a helmet would have saved me from a head injury. But I think this is an example of trying to legislate common sense into people, and it ain't gonna work. What are they going to do, hire some tobbogan police to enforce this law (funny mental image of tobbogan with flashing lights and siren, 'can I see your license and registration son?') Accidents are still going to happen, people will die tragically because of foolishness forever. But the state has no business making these pieces of law, and even more importantly, has no business enforcing said laws. I still think that seatbelt laws and motorcycle/bicycle helmet laws are beyond the pale, no matter the contrived justification.

Meanwhile, Back in Chavezistan (Part III)...

Hugo Chavez has declared "Socialism or Death" for Venezuela. Well ummmm, I guess rest in peace, Venezuela... Go ahead and follow the other former socialist countries over the cliff.

There's Only One Taxpayer

Ever been tempted to support redistributive taxation? The kind where the rich are taxed at a higher rate than the poor, because they can afford to pay for social programs while the poor cannot? It does seem like a just way of attaining equality, you know, 'from those according to ability to those according to need'. An easy way to alleviate poverty, you might think.

But this standard socialist boilerplate is, in action, one of the most repressive tools that your government has ever concocted, aside from physical brutality. See, the way the rich get rich is of course by profit. Profit means earning more than you spend, ie. a margin between cost of the good sold and the price that it is sold for. So if a loaf of bread costs 50 cents to make, and it's sold for a dollar, the baker earns 50 cents, right? This is a simple concept. The rich capitalist understands this concept, and has long realized that the value of his/her labour is in that profit margin. However, sometimes costs go up. So if the capitalist wants to still earn 50 cents, s/he will raise the price of bread to $1.25 if the cost of making bread rises to 75 cents. Still a simple concept, no?

Ever ask yourself if taxation is considered to be an expense by the capitalist? I mean, there are more direct expenses, like raw materials, labour, transportation, marketing, etc., but truly, the capitalist knows that taxation is built into the cost of manufacturing as well. So if the increase in taxes amounts to 25 cents per loaf of bread, then this cost is always considered, and subsequently the price of bread for consumers increases in lock-step.

So while that 25 cents of taxation might go towards some social program that on one hand enriches the poor in some way, those who are poor still spend an extra 25 cents per loaf of bread. So who is paying for the social programs then? Certainly rich folks need bread too, but the poor need it even more desperately, and have less disposable income for other things after buying the bread.

Besides, that 25 cents in social programming ultimately doesn't all end up as a total benefit to the poor. Administrators (Bureaucrats) of social programs need to get paid, often handsomely, and so do the social workers further down the line (I know, they're underpaid, right?). So let's say for every 25 cents extra a poor person spends on bread, s/he receives 10 cents worth of social programming. Meanwhile, the rich are unaffected, still earning 50 cents a loaf.

That said, do you really think that the government isn't aware of this simple economic condition? Those bureaucrats who campaign on promises to erradicate poverty are actually intentionally keeping poor people poor, and the only ones who actually get richer are the bureaucrats. Who, as far as I'm concerned, could do a better service to society by learning how to bake, so that they can teach poor folks to do the same. But the bureaucrat understands that s/he needs the poor to believe that bureaucracy will save them, in order to perpetuate their parasitic lifestyle. The poor folks might just see a benefit to them of 10 cents, not understanding that it came from their own pocket in the first place, and this perception is supported and manufactured by the liars who campaign on promises of salvation. It's actually salvation given with one hand, while the other hand is picking their pocket.

Rich folks are always going to be rich, and generally it's their type-A personality and high productivity that gets them there. They could be taxed at 75% of their incomes, and yet they'd still be rich, and poor folks would still be poor, if not actually poorer.