Justices End 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors

Justices End 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors

I wonder what effect this will have.

Read Full Post »

The truth is that I love being disengaged from the rest of the world. I like to analyze and not put myself right there "in it."

"I'll streak his blood across my beak and dust my feathers with his ashes
I can feel his ghost breathing down my back"

Read Full Post »

The First Man-Made Synthetic Organism Is Going To Be Derivative of an STD.

Apparently the simplest known life form to duplicate is an STD. So that's what they're starting with. Scientists, start your engines!

Link (with more information and a pretty gross/amazing anecdote about someone getting gonorrhea in their eyes.)

Read Full Post »

One of the saddest things about advertising

Is that, generally speaking, in order to do an effective job of selling products, advertisers are required to continue inventing new schemes to trick consumers into buying into the claims of their ads, because eventually, we wisen up.

David Lubars, a senior ad executive in the Omnicom Group, explains the industry's guiding principle with more candour than most. Consumers, he says, "are like roaches —you spray them and spray them and they get immune after a while."

This, obviously, was said in reference to advertising. From page 30 of Naomi Klein's No Logo (2000).

Read Full Post »

Thursday, some asshole was standing outside the bank, and

I was running some errands on Thursday. I biked into town, and, among other places, I went to Commerce Bank to use the machine that converts pocket change into more useful forms of currency; it's like Coinstar, but free. As I left, some dude in a suit who was standing just outside the doors of the bank asked me if I wanted a "free" water ice. Of course, I declined. I didn't want to get within personal distance of this guy, because I suspected he was going to try to sell me something. I said, "No thanks man, I'm good." He replied, "You don't want a FREE water ice? :(" and I said, "I'm sure man, I'm good."

I think he was very disappointed.

ha haha hahahaha

Read Full Post »

It's My Birthday. So What? I Don't See Any Reason To Celebrate.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about biological imperatives and how they pertain to my take on the human condition. The fact that today is my birthday means relatively little to me. I've been told that there are certain things that I should do on my birthday, and around the time of my birthday. I disagree wholeheartedly. I was born on this day 22 years ago, so I should celebrate it based on that condition alone? Maybe that's ok if I want to celebrate, but what if I don't? Instead of putting my party hat on, on this "born day," I'm going to put my thinking cap on.

I feel that it is our duty, as human beings, to have reasons for all of the things that we do. There are, however, things that we must do; we cannot really say why we do them. These are the things that are very deeply ingrained in our brains. These things, these biological imperatives, are what drive us to survive in a biological sense. These are the reasons why we eat, sleep, and fuck.

It's easy to have a reason why or why not to decide to pursue a career in fashion. You pursue a career in fashion because you enjoy aspects of fashion and would like to earn a living, and maybe even achieve fame and prestige, through your career. You do not pursue a career in fashion because you could not see yourself earning a living from doing something fashion-related.

It's almost impossible to have a reason why not to eat. People who do not eat, die. At the same time though, because we are human, we can choose what to eat, or what not to eat. At a certain point, or points in our life, we feel an incredible urge to fuck, with the end result being reproduction and the passing-on of genetic code to another generation. We can choose who to fuck, though. I think this happens, whether we know it or not, based on who we marry. Some marry for money or security, and some marry for love. Either way, there's something powerfully attractive about who we marry, and it all returns to biology, to biological imperatives.

As for the things that we don't feel some internal (and almost always undeniable) compulsion to do: we really need to be aware of our reasons for doing those things. If you don't have a personal reason for doing the things that you do, then you're probably a tool. I don't care what you do, but you should have your own reasons for doing it. Not someone else's. Note that this is just a guideline, something to be considered. A lot of our choices take place in the subconscious, so it can be hard to catch oneself when taking other people's reasons for doing things.

Groupthink

Biological Imperative

Read Full Post »

"At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat..."

At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red-heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth.

H.G. Wells - The Grey Man. A chapter from The Time Machine that was removed, and, instead, published as a short story. This story is pretty amazing. That's just an excerpt up there, and it really has nothing to do with the main subject matter of the story. In spite of this, I thought this was one of the coolest parts of the story. I emboldened the part that I liked the best.

For the past few years (usually in the summer, as it is now) I've had long periods of nightmares -- at least one per night, usually for a stretch of approximately a week. I read writing by people like H.G. Wells, and their descriptions of these fantastic (and often awful/nightmarish) things, and I wonder if they've experienced the same vivid nightmares that I often contend with.

Read Full Post »

I Haven't Seen You In A While. Or, Gnome vs. XFCE

It's been a minute, hasn't it?

Now that my extra-long spring semester is over, I have free time, and lots of it.

Today, I used some of that free time to reinstall Linux. Yes!

I tried out Xubuntu, and I must say, I didn't like it as much as I had hoped.

I've gone back to using Gnome. One thing that I loved about Xubuntu though, was the window manager, XFCE. I'm using it in place of Metacity now.

I'm glad I tried Xubuntu, if only for that reason. It's a solid distro, but it isn't for me. If I'm feeling less hung over later, I may elaborate.

Read Full Post »