A house divided

People like to think class doesn't matter in the U.S. and that with enough pluck you can change your status of living.
Bullshit.
If I've said it once,I've said it a thousand times, THEY constantly pump the American Dream™ to keep people struggling for their Disneyland family and home. It is at the core of modern American Society. The struggle keeps our frail consumer driven economy going. Those that do very little but are in a position to profit from the system, skim from the top as the money wheel turns.
Talk like that will label me a Communist, but I'm not. I believe forces bigger than man are now in control. The systems consciousness comes from the millions of little share holders that keep needling the entity for more profit faster. Never is there a clause "unless it is evil."
With that I find this quite interesting...

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Danah Boyd
June 24, 2007
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Blue/green or green blue?

I still can't decide which, fascist dystopia or dystopian fascism.

"I think what is chilling now, however, is how often 'national security' and 'terrorist threats' are used as an excuse for illegal harassment and abuse. The most disturbing trend I see is when people are asked to present identification when they are not breaking any laws." (Photography Banned in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland)

And this from Wired via Schneier...

Congress asked Homeland Security's chief information officer, Scott Charbo, who has a Masters in plant science, to account for more than 800 self-reported vulnerabilities over the last two years and for recently uncovered systemic security problems in US-VISIT, the massive computer network intended to screen and collect the fingerprints and photos of visitors to the United States. (DHS Security Chief Dismisses Congress's Hacking Questions)

"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you

DES MOINES - Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist. (More)

Shame on us.

Intermission

Apologies to anyone looking here as of late for something new. I've been working on more mundane things that have been consuming much of my time. It also gets a little heavy seeing one's culture flush itself.

The Day America Died
posted by populist

...The spiritual wound was self-inflicted. It was something we chose to do to ourselves. The "real wound" was not a matter of what the enemy did to us, but rather the way we, as a nation, chose to respond to our enemy; the manner in which we willingly allowed the injured pride of a once great nation to bleed into such hate, to transmute into such a frenzied need to destroy our enemy. (More at Disinformation)

Terrorists are idiots...

Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot
The recently publicized terrorist plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, like so many of the terrorist plots over the past few years, is a study in alarmism and incompetence: on the part of the terrorists, our government and the press.

Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots -- and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse -- is wrong. (Schneier on Security)

And so are oil execs...

Yes Men Strike Oil
After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to "huge global calamities" and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience "that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil," said a Yes Men press release. (Wired)

Corporate evil

Yahoo shareholders have rejected plans for the company to adopt a policy that opposes censorship on the internet.

Legoland Needs Women!

Help the Chaotic Nipple in his quest to lean on the powers that be to increase the number of female characters in Legos.
I'm actually really for this. While I'm not a Legoist myself, I think it would be particularly good for child development. Legoland is a microcosm of what can be, and if boys don't see women well represented in fantastic societies and girls don't have icons and totems to play with in their toys, they'll devalue the roles of women in Gulliver's world.

• Sign the Petition

"They are likely to be risk-averse, stifled by fears which are more phobic than real."

Very Ballardian article brought to my attention by Schneier

Childhood Risks: Perception vs. Reality

Great article on percieved vs actual risks to children:

The risk of abduction remains tiny. In Britain, there are now half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922 -- despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic.

Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting children is now the norm -- often in the back of a 4x4.

We are rearing our children in captivity -- their habitat shrinking almost daily.

See Ballard's Running Wild.

Links

I've been spending time sipping Blue Hawaiians in the tiki room and ducking all things intense for the past week or so. I have however, been collecting some interesting links.

Key 64 - For the mystical. Articles like "Developing an internal body language.", "Sizing up your magical practice", and "Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Psycho-Shamanic Journey"
I'm more of a practical application, Quantum sorcery kinda guy myself.

If you've been beset by disaster, the Red Cross has their "Safe and Well List." Folks can list themselves as "Safe and Well" and those looking for them can search. Good for the traveler.

If you think we're going to make it, there's the
.

If not, here's "Make your own biodiesel." Here in the north east we use a lot of heating oil. This is a simple process and can be done for as little as 50 cents a gallon. Tap into the oil line with a proportioning valve and you're augmenting your fuel with a cleaner burning material while reducing costs. The trick is to get the grease and actuall process it.

With I leave you with a couple of episodes of Vegas Vic's Tiki Lounge radio show.

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

Ahhh.....

Interesting

Judge Halts Award Of Iraq Contract
By Alec Klein and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 2, 2007; Page D01
Brian X. Scott, a 53-year-old Colorado man, filed the complaint in early April. He argues that the military's use of private security contractors is "against America's core values" and violates an 1893 law that prohibits the government from hiring quasi-military forces.