Now, things get hairy if someone tries to be racist, sexist, anti-semitic, ageist, etc. A woman with more experience gets paid less than a man in the same position. An African American is hired for a position instead of a more qualified Caucasian. An old person is fired right as they are about to earn their pension to be replaced by a younger person. These are the kinds of discrimination that we need to outlaw.

Why? For two reasons. First, it is unfair to make hiring decisions based on criteria that people can not control. A Hispanic can not become black. A woman can not become a man (surgery will most likely lead to worse discrimination). Second, these are not criteria that have any effect on job performance. There is nothing about race or gender that will affect your job performance. Two people of different genders and races with equivalent education and experience will both be equally good at any particular position, as far as an employer knows. To make your decision based on those factors is just plain wrong.

Smoking is a completely different story. A smoker is very likely to take many smoking breaks. This will reduce the amount of time they spend doing what you are paying them to do, which is work. If you ban smoking breaks, they will probably become very upset while unable to smoke, and will not be able to concentrate on their work. Oh, and people smoking outside your building is more likely to piss off your non-smoking employees who have to deal with secondhand smoke as they enter and exit. Oh, the increased risk of fire, and increased insurance costs count for something too. Oh, and since they are a smoker, you can’t count on this person to be a long-term employee.

Smoking is a decision that people make. They choose, willingly, to make themselves worth less as employees. They let the whole world know that they lack will power and good judgment skills. Not only should employers be allowed to discriminate against such people, they would be stupid not to.

Now let’s look at the obese people. For a moment, let us forget about people with thyroid problems. They are incredibly rare, and they can bring a doctor’s note to their employer to avoid discrimination. When I say obese people, I mean people who are so fat that it interferes with their everyday lives. We’re talking about people who need special, expensive, seating. We’re talking about people with fat fingers who might need to type on their keyboard and telephone with a pencil. We’re talking about people who can’t walk at an average speed. My friend, once, literally could not get down a hallway at work because an obese person was as wide as the hall. Also, the insurance costs and the poor likelihood that this person will serve you in the long term. It’s much easier to justify spending money to train someone who is likely to be an employee for many years, than it is for someone who is likely to have a heart attack tomorrow.

Obesity is a decision that people make. It may not be a fully conscious decision, like smoking is originally. However, it is clearly the result of a lack of will power in the vast majority of cases. A person is just unable to will themselves into eating less and working out more. If a person has so little control over their body that they can’t stop eating, and they can’t force themselves to work out on a regular schedule, how can you expect that person to force themselves to do the work you assign them? Heck, with the problems of an obese person, how can you expect them to show up to work every day?

It all boils down to one thing. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we should judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. If smoking and obesity are not representative of the negative content of one’s character, then what is? What does it say about someone when they choose to smoke? What does it say about someone when they can’t control themselves enough to not be obese? It is fair to discriminate against them because they can always quit smoking or lose weight. With more potential employees than open positions, it would be in the best interest of any employers to start taking such factors into consideration for their employee hiring and firing procedures.

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The issue of the day, though, is the taser. The taser is a device which makes it easier for officers to subdue other individuals. It inflicts a relatively large amount of pain, while having a very low (but non-zero) chance of inflicting any lasting injury. Also, tasers provide much more safety for the officers than alternatives. They can stay well out of range of say, a knife-wielding individual, and subdue them with much lower risk of being stabbed. There are two conclusions to be drawn from these facts.

First is that the taser is not perfect. It hurts a lot to be tased, and that is not as humane as we would like. Also, it does have a chance of permanently injuring some people who have weak hearts, or other medical problems. It is often difficult or impossible to ascertain whether or not someone is likely to be permanently injured by a taser prior to tasing them. This is a risk we must acknowledge and mitigate. Knowing this, we must continue to search for newer and better technologies than the taser. Ideally we will develop a weapon that can subdue individuals 100% of the time, with extremely low risk of danger to the officer, causing no pain, and having no chance of causing any lasting injury to anyone.

The second conclusion to draw is that the taser is currently the best we have. Go back in time before videos of police activity were routinely posted on the YouTube for everyone to see. Back in those days, there were no tasers. You are fooling yourself if you think police brutality started with the taser. Police have been subduing people, appropriately and inappropriately, for as long as they have existed. It’s just that now we are increasing exposure of these incidents that we see the truth that was always there. So how did police subdue people before tasers? Simple, they would beat the crap out of them with night sticks/billy clubs. I don’t know about most people, but I’m personally glad that the police have switched from billy clubs to tasers. If you would rather be bludgeoned into submission, be my guest. The taser is not perfect, but it is the best we have, and it is far superior to what we used in the past.

I have one more thing I want to discuss. Judging by the popular opinion on the web, as I see it in the comments of sites like Digg, pretty much every instance of tasering is considered police brutality. This is not the case. If you actually examine the situations closely, some of the videos you see are clearly cases of police acting out of line, and others are not. In either case, it is always unpleasant to watch another human being in pain. All of the videos, even the ones where the police are in the right, are unpleasant to watch. These unpleasant feelings are the reason there is outrage, even when there is no cause for it. Let me use some examples to show when tasing is appropriate and when it is inappropriate.

Let us first use the obvious example or Mr. don’t tase me bro! Here you have a student, and regardless of his opinions, he was very “excited”. As he was up at the microphone asking his question, he had not yet done anything wrong. If the police had tased him at that point, it would clearly have been a case of brutality for which there is no excuse. But that is not how it happened. In the video the police clearly ask him to leave, and he clearly refuses. At that point he is trespassing. Still, someone trespassing is not enough cause to use a taser on them. Now that he has refused to leave, the officers attempt to forcibly remove/arrest/detain the individual. He actively resists, and is beginning to get out of control. What options do the officers have at this point? They could beat him with clubs like the old days, some taser haters seem to really like this option. They could physically overwhelm him and drag him out kicking and screaming in handcuffs. That might seem better for the individual, but it puts the officers at a much higher risk of injury. Generally, I think, police policy should prioritize the safety of the officers above that of the criminals. The final option, is to use the taser.

They warn the student loudly and clearly several times that if he does not calm down and stop resisting he will be tased. They warn him loudly, clearly, and repeatedly. He does not calm down, and he does not stop resisting. If anything, he resists more and clams down less. The officers are left with only one option. They tase the dangerous, trespassing, resisting, individual. They then easily and safely remove him and diffuse the dangerous situation. It is a painful video to watch, yes. But when you carefully consider the circumstances there was no better option.

Let us look at one more case of the grandma on the lawn in the wheelchair. Here you have a case of a mentally disturbed individual acting in a very dangerous manner. She was wielding knives and other dangerous weapons and causing a disturbance. The police were called, and it is their duty to remove the danger from the situation. Despite the fact that the woman is wheelchair-bound, no officer can be expected to approach her while she is wielding a deadly weapon. Even the option of beating her with a club the old fashioned way is out of the question. You could shoot her with a gun, but I think we would all agree that is out of the question. You avoid the use of deadly force unless you have absolutely no other resort. What option do police have? Yet again, the taser comes into play. They can tase the woman from a distance to subdue her. This will make it safe to approach her and diffuse the situation. Yes, she is elderly, and has a higher risk of the taser causing permanent damage or killing her, but the taser is still the best available option until we develop new technology.

Here’s where things go horribly wrong. It should only take a few seconds of tasing to subdue this woman. One officer properly discharged their taser for only a few short seconds, but evidence seems to suggest that another officer discharged their weapon for an inordinately longer amount of time. From what I can tell from the news article, it is my opinion that tasing the woman was the appropriate course of action. However, the tasers were used in an improper fashion, and that improper usage was a significant factor in the woman’s death. This is clearly a case where the officers were in the wrong, and should be held responsible for their actions.

Tasers are the best technology for subduing dangerous individuals that our officers have available to them today. They are extremely preferable compared to the bludgeons of yesteryear. More and more officers every day will arm themselves with tasers because of their effectiveness, and more and more instances of people being tased will occur. More and more of those instances will appear on the Internet in video or story form thanks to our amazing information society. As painful as it is to hear about, and watch, many of these situations, we need to keep a level head. Sometimes when a taser is used, it is the appropriate course of action for the officers to follow. Sometimes when they are used, it is blatant police bruality. Next time you watch a video of someone being tasered, have some empathy for the police officer. Consider what you would do in their situation, take all factors into account, and then decide for yourself. Is this a time to be outraged, or is this a time to be glad the police have an alternative to bludgeoning people with sticks.

Stop being outraged by sensationalist headlines on blogs, and think with your own head.

At least here in the US we only have to deal with the loss of the 4th amendment. Random searches on commuter trains and buses pretty much guarantees that. Anyone who uses those facilities to get to work pretty much either has to give up their job or relinquish their rights. As they say, it’s liberty or death. Especially in London. The policy there seems to be that they can protect their citizens from being blown up by bombs by shooting the victims first. Better to be killed by police than terrorists I guess.

There’s no real point in repeating the same talk about freedom, justice and cowardice many times. It would just be a waste of my typing and both our bandwidths. But I felt I had to put up something. Despite the incredible amount of news I feel that there are fewer and fewer people who really care about freedom. Usually I’m full of valor and nothing upsets me or scares me away from my beliefs. But with these most recent occurrences I am more afraid of our own security forces then any terrorists. When someone like myself doesn’t have 100% confidence you know that times aren’t good.

So next time you’re at a security checkpoint. Next time a terrorist kills people, just think about it. Is the security actually making you safer or just making you feel safer? Does giving up your rights help stop terrorists, or is your loss of liberty actually their goal? When they see people in a panic as opposed to going about business as usual, does that encourage or discourage more terrorism? I think these questions are easy to answer if you try. The truth is a hard pill to swallow.

Douglas Rushkoff’s take is, as usual, the most insightful on the net.

Some people say he is grandstanding for votes. That may be true, he may only be going after the baddies to make news and get more votes from people like me. His recent attack against a spyware company made the front pages of Slashdot as well as the free morning newspapers in the city. But it really doesn’t matter what his motive is for doing his job so well. In fact, if he’s only doing it for votes then that is an indicator that democracy is working as intended. The point of democracy is that people elect candidates to represent them in government, and that they elect people who do what they want. If Eliot Spitzer is doing what the people want in order to get votes, then democracy is working flawlessly. As long has he continues his present course of action, which I see no signs of changing, then it’s all good by me.

I imagine most people don’t feel strongly about any particular political candidate. Sure, there are people who are crazy for Bush, or crazy for Nader or whatever. But most people are just choosing from the lesser of two evils. It is rare for someone to say “Yeah! This is the fucking greatest person, I want to vote for them!” It’s a feeling I’ve never had before in my entire life until Spitzer came around. Even that cool Obama guy doesn’t make me feel that way. Sure, he’s a cool guy and I would probably vote for him, but I don’t feel so strongly about it.

Back in the days of coliseums and such people would have champions fight battles for them. It was much like boxing, pro-wrestling or actually all professional sports today. People feel very strongly about a particular person or team. If the Mets win, the Mets fan wins. That is because the Mets fan feels that the Mets are an extension of himself. They represent him in the field of baseball. They are his champion in the field of baseball. And I think that that is how representative democracy is supposed to work. At the beginning people like George Washington were champions of the people who represented them in the arena of government. The people felt that when George Washington won, they won. That feeling doesn’t really exist anymore, and that’s why our government is failing. Ideally people would feel this way about every candidate they cast a vote for. Instead, we have one person in the entire country who I can say I feel this way about.

Sometimes I think that Eliot Spitzer is a lot like Reggie Files-Aime of Nintendo. Kicking asses and taking names. Nintendo fans feel that Reggie is their champion, he represents them in the Nintendo corporation and helps get the games they want. Spitzer does the same thing, only instead of making video games he punishes corporate corruption and greed. If you’ve ever read political manga like “Eagle”, “First President of Japan” or “Sanctuary”, it’s a very similar idea. I even heard a rumour that he did some things down on Wall Street that are very similar to the types of things that happen in those fictional political thrillers.

I’m moving to New York in a week or two. And barring any unforeseen hidden information coming to the surface I will cast my vote for Spitzer for governor in 2006. It will be the first time I have ever felt this way, but I hope it is not the last. I’m not trying to convince anyone else to vote for him, but I am urging you to only vote for someone you feel strongly for. We can’t go on selecting the lesser of evils forever, that is not the way our democracy is supposed to function. Select a champion who will represent you on the field of political warfare, and choose wisely.

The crazy libertarians have a solution, they made another model. It is a two dimensional diamond. The right is conservative, the left is liberal, the top is libertarian and the bottom is statist. The middle portion is centrist. And people can be placed in different areas of this chart, you can even be on the line between two different things. But this model, while different and more forgiving than existing ones still restricts peoples thinking. It is still a model and still puts limits on free thought about political standing.

This is my problem. I’ve come to believe that I am bi-political. It seems that everyone’s opinion on any issue pisses me off and my opinion pisses everyone off. I can only believe that this is because my beliefs do not fit into anyone’s political model. Crazy conservative Limbaugh-types piss me off a whole lot. But so do dirty socialist hippies. I feel that I lean toward the left because I feel those types of people are more caring individuals, they actually care about people. But those people don’t like me because on some issues I feel the same was as the crazy right wing radio guys I hate so much.

For example. I feel that we should get rid of social security slowly. It is now more of a problem than a benefit and people who aren’t smart enough to save money for retirement, tough shit. But there are people now who are expecting to receive it and have paid into it and are currently relying on it, screwing those people is not good. This is an idea that leans heavily to the right.

I believe gun control is bad. The number of guns has no relation to violence. It is the violent nature of our culture that increases killings. It appears that people will use things like box cutters and potato peelers when guns are not available, so guns are not the cause they are just a tool. And as the old saying goes, we’ll always have the first amendment as long as we have the second. This is a right wing idea.

I believe abortion is OK. Lefty idea.

I believe that war is bad. In fact, I’m near pacifist. I believe in non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. War is almost never the answer. And when it is, it should be strictly defensive. That doesn’t mean it should be weak, just strictly defensive. Because if you act in this manner then you become the good guy and the world will support you and you will win while maintaining a moral high ground. This is a left wing idea.

I believe in freedom of information. Intellectual property should not exist. Only physical goods may be property and people may not be property either. Money should simply be a common exchange for goods and services, not information. If it doesn’t cost anything to share it, you can’t charge to share it. This is a crazy idea that only nerds like.

I do not believe in the death penalty. In fact, I’m not even sure if I believe in prison. I think that everyone is guaranteed some rights. And that only be infringing upon the rights of another person can and should you be punished. And that punishment should come in the form of the removal of rights from the offender. This is a libertarian idea.

I have heard all scientific evidence for and against environmental issues like global warming. I’m not sure what to believe, but I tend to lean towards global warming being real, though it probably isn’t the end of the world. However, I do not believe there will be any significant environmental concerns in my lifetime that will have an effect on my life. Therefore, I don’t care. I think there are more important current pressing issues than the environment and that over time if we worry about advancing technology we will develop a solution to the worlds energy problem and wont have to worry about the environment, it will fix itself. The planet is a lot less fragile than we make it out to be. This is a conservative idea.

I hate big corporations and their evil. I do not believe corporations should be treated as people. I believe that when a corporation does something wrong, like have child labor in sweatshops in Asia, that the individual people responsible for those things should be punished as individuals. I believe executives of corporations that do wrong should be held just as responsible as mafia bosses are when their henchmen kill and rob people. This is leaning in the socialist direction I think.

So what am I? I don’t really fit onto any political model. Everyone who does fit into a model hates me. Some other people who are also outside the model change their views to fit into the model. This is because they can’t picture themselves outside of it, so to avoid the illusion of self contradiction they change all their views to match the party line. These people I believe are particularly weak willed. My point is that in this world someone like me can’t win. The reason is that people’s thinking along political issues is stuck into this straight line left to right model. Somewhat more open minded people who use the libertarian box thing like to think that everyone has a place on it. But every time I try to figure out where I am it moves around. Because people can’t place me, they hate me. Disagreements on issues, negatives, stand out a lot more than agreements or positives. If someone agrees with me it takes only a few seconds to agree. But they only remember the much longer disagreement. Some people are bi-polar and have trouble in social situations. I haven’t even gone through every issue in the world, but as you can see I’ll take a different stand on each one. I’m bi-political and I don’t fit in.

So originally I thought was most people thought. Just because you are against the war doesn’t mean you don’t support the troops. And its true. You can be against the war and simultaneously not want the troops to die. Wanting them to come home alive is a form of support, and wanting their time in that terrible place to be shorter, safer and better is supporting them. And it is not contradictory to both support the troops as people and also believe that they should not be there.

After long and hard though I have come to two conclusions. The first is that we should support the troops. The troops are mostly good people, like you and me, who just happen to join the military for whatever reason. They don’t want to kill innocents in Iraq, its not their fault. And a good military, the kind of military that protects freedom, is the kind of military we have. It does not act on its own volition. That means we never have to worry about military coups of our government. It also obeys orders very well, which is also good because that makes it very efficient and powerful, moreso than any technology we have. And that’s exactly the kind of military we have and need, one that while comprised of people is basically a perfectly obedient tool. Obedient as a hammer, as powerful as a pile driver and as politically involved as a squirrel (or other woodland creature). But the military is made of people, and those people in doing their job as best they can need our support so they don’t feel like the tools they are.

The other side of me says, Fuck the fucking troops. The troops are people. And they were sent to Iraq to overthrow a soveriegn nation against the vast majority of the world. They kill innocent people, have incited more terrorism than they prevented and generally made the world a shittier place. Yes, some blame must go to the people at the top who decided we should have this war. In fact, a lot of blame goes to those people. But these troops are in favor of it. Anyone who is over in Iraq doing their job can only fall into two categories in my eyes. One possibility is that they agree with the Iraq war, and they are doing it because they want to and believe in it. I do not support that belief, so I do not support those troops. The second possibility is that they are against the war, but are too cowardly, and continue to act contrary to their beliefs. Or they so strongly believe in the previous paragraph that they continue to do so. Both of these mindsets are either cowardly, stupid or basically lacking in will power. And while these are good people I cannot support them because I can’t respect someone who lacks will power. So I don’t support those troops either.

This leaves only the troops who disagree with the war and have acted in accordance with their disagreement. Most likely these troops are no longer troops. I’m not sure exactly what they would do, but I imagine it means they go to military prison, get discharged or some other such thing. What it does mean though is that they have elected to do something else other than fight the Iraq war because they believe so strongly against it. And I say that I fully support these people. However, they are no longer troops! So in fact, there are no troops, in the Iraq war, that I can support.

There may be troops elsewhere in the world who I support. I can support the troops who are bringing aid to poor countries. I can support the few troops fighting drug lords in Columbia and other areas. There are plenty of troops I support. But the United States troops and troops of other nations who are fighting the war in Iraq I cannot support. And those are the troops which are definitely implied by “the troops” on the yellow ribbons.

So I can now safely say FUCK THE TROOPS. Fuck them with big rusty nails those murdering, cowardly, evil sons of bitches. I don’t necessarily want you to die, because I want no man to die. But I do not condone your actions. If you want my support you will have to change your ways and do something else. Thank you, and good day.

It has become quite apparent over the course of history that the vast majority of people in the US and the world, dislike our two party system. You wont find too many people who really agree with and fully support one of the two candidates. Just about zero people support both of them simultaneously. There seems to be this common understanding that both Republicans and Democrats suck ass. The differences between them are existant, different enough to be meaningful, but not radically different. And the major opinion of people when it comes to third parties is that they often can find a third party they agree with, but believe it is a wasted vote. None of this is new, its just stuff everyone seems to know.

I’ve been thinking about possible solutions to our dilemma. Or interesting future courses of action that could result in fun, radical change, destruction of the system, etc. But recently a few ideas are moving towards the front of my mind and need further fleshing. The problem with all these ideas is that I cannot see a clear path leading to any of them coming into reality. All of them are future possibilities with no way to get to them from the current situation. However, they are interesting and fun ideas, so I want to share one of them with you now

The idea is just as the blog title says, an all-star political party. When people run for office now they run as a team. Vote for President and Vice-President for 2k8! etc. You never see generic stuff like vote Republican or Vote Democrat. Sometimes local candidates conceal their political party for various reasons. But since the damn party system exists you would think that people would use it to its fullest power? If you want people to vote in a block, run as a block. Right now every candidate has to campaign seperately for every position. If say, every republican campaigned for the republican party as a whole they could minimize campaign travel and increase block voting for themselves. Not something I agree with, but I do believe it is a wise campaigning tactic that is not used. Anyone know why?

Anyway, with this tactic in mind I believe we could form an All-Star Party. We wouldn’t pick a person to be president, a person to be VP and then try to get them in office. We would make a whole party consisting of famous people, political stars, incredibly popular and talented individuals from all over the place. Sure, one of them would be our presidential candiate. But one would be our VP. Another would be the person we promise to nominate for X cabinet position. There would in fact be a different person for each cabinet position on the campaign trail with us. Sure, they might not actually be the person due to the need for congress to accept the nomination the president makes, but they would be the first people we nominate. And all those people could campaing all over the country at the same time, rallying support wherever they go.

The real cool thing is that all these people will be famous and well known. We could even bring in people from left, right, center, up and down. It’s all good. Throw in people like Oprah, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Ben Stein, Stephen Hawking, Jesse the Body, Jerry Springer, McCain, Nader, Perot?, Bill Clinton can be Secretary of State (no rule against it AFAIK), etc. Just load it on up with as many people as you can get in on it. People like me have some ideas that go way right (I’m indifferent about the environment, consumer protection is bs, personal responsibility, power to the states, etc.) and ideas that go way left (go poor people go, fsck evil corporations, war is bad peace is good, death penalty bad, freedom for all peoples, gays too, abortion ok by me, etc.). And the problem is that I can’t vote for particular issues, I have to take a big bag of presets. With the all star party I would feel safe because even though someone in the party might be someone I don’t like, the rest of them are good enough to weigh it out. It wont be a question of who you hate more. It will simply be a party that everyone either likes, feels dead even about, or slightly dislikes. As long as we mix the viewpoints up enough.

The problem I see with the plan is that people wont take it seriously. A party full of comedians, actors, talk show hosts, big name politicians and famous brains would look like a joke at first. That’s why it has to be started like 3 years before the actual election. If you start it up early and keep at it for a long enough time people will realize it isn’t a joke. They will begin to look at it seriously and give it careful consideration. And think of all the absolutely free publicity? The campaign would cost so much less than any before it. Not to mention the fat wallets of the famous people running would contribute nicely. Having people take it seriously is a big problem, but when they walk into the voting booth in November 2k8 and they see a row of celebrities they might just vote straight across.

Let me tell the fun analogy I came up with. So there is this dragon terrorizing the village, but nobody does anything about it. Me, the meek little village man goes to the strong knights and says “why do you not slay this dragon brave knights?” They sayeth “We cannot beat the dragon, we are not that strong, nobody is.” I say “bah! you are just cowards!” And life goes on, me always waiting for someone to slay the dragon. Then Sir Jon of Stewart, a 20th level Paladin arrives to slay the dragon which has terrorized our town. I cheer him forth “Go Sir Jon! Save our town from the fiery wrath!” 15 minutes later the charred corpse of Sir Jon is buried. Hope is lost, it is true that the dragon cannot be slain. Of course, in real life it is no monstrous dragon, but instead it is the Monster of which Steppenwolf spake.

So I had an idea, as usual. We should have a new tv show (which I have no name for yet) where we have real debate. We keep score according to an impartial system. We pick an issue for the show and get two experts, one from each side. They bring 5 fact-finders each. They also bring 2 judges each. The show itself will provide 3 impartial judges for a total of 7, a nice odd number. The debate will consist of one question at a time. The debaters will know of the questions a week or so before the show and will have time to prepare. And they will debate in the classic style. Points are lost if you interrupt, lie or make a logical fallacy. Points are scored if the other debater concedes or you “win” a given question. Exact scoring will be figured out later. The 5 fact-finders you bring with you are there to provide the actual empirical evidence to back up any claims you make. Any claim which has no supporting evidence is disregarded. Any claim which is proven false by evidence found by the other teams fact-finders is considered a lie and points are lost. The judges do all scoring on a majority rules system. I also had the idea of maybe electronically shocking anyone when they lie. The show will also be show absolutely live and uncut. Maybe a 5 or 10 second delay can be added to appease censors.

At first, people would be afraid of coming on this show. People like presidential candidates would avoid it like all hell. Obviously this is because they are full of lies, and they don’t want to make fools of themselves coming off of a real debate where they both end up with negative scores. It would be incredibly damaging and embarassing. However, the show would start out with braver souls having real debates. And I am sure that it would get many viewers, especially intelligent people looking for real action. The Live factor would also draw a crowd. And if my predictions of popularity increasing are correct, soon the show could force guests. What I mean is that anyone who refuses to come on the show is obviously wrong and too cowardly to defend their position in an arena where truth prevails. So once the show is popular it can run around calling people cowards until they come on the show. Then it can tear them to shreds. I only found out about these guys on Fox News a couple days ago when I downloaded and watched Fox News. Imagine if they couldn’t interrupt or insult people! Maybe they would get so pissed off that they would start swinging fists. This is good because it jacks up our ratings a-la Jerry Springer and it also locks up crazy nutsos in jail.

Because I will probably never get a TV show I have found a way to start small. I can set up an IRC channel. Then let two people go at it in IRC. All supporting empirical evidence will require bibliographical citations to back it up. After the debate is done I can take the logs and give them to impartial people to score. The scores and logs can be posted unedited on a site. That site will be super cool, super popular, and will provide the basis for the eventual TV show.

I do not know if this will actually ever be pulled off, but I do know this. I know that it will be a show of courage. People who lack confidence or bravery will not watch this show. Weak willed people will be crushed by it because it will denounce many of their personal beliefs and outright and falsehoods. And stupid people will come on and be publicly humiliated. And all of this is fantastic. Why? Because it is a way in which we can combine the coercion and entertainment value of television with enlightenment. The key to maybe improving the world a little bit by making stupid people a little more informed. And I’ve got the balls to give it a try.

Now, click and unfilter all the replies so you can see the whole thread. Isn’t it interesting how many people obviously did not read my whole post. I was simply pointing out some of Moore’s cinimeatography techniques as well as some of his persuasive techniques. I was giving a demonstration of how the average person leaves the theatre believing more than the facts. I showed how Moore gets real shocking truths and then implies other non-truths. Yet the non critical thinker will walk away with those implications having just as much power in their mind as the facts.

The replies to this post were most frightening. One person told me how if I like Adam Smith I wont vote for Bush. No shit, I said in the post I’m not voting for Bush. They’d have to shoot me to keep me away from that absentee ballot. And they’ll have to arrest me or kill me to keep me away from Canada if he wins and I graudate RIT.

A few people pointed out how Bush and the media use the same technique. Yes, they do. But it isn’t in the setting of a movie and doesn’t have the same setup. The media will just make implications outright. Moore gets you in a truth state of mind. He tells you fact after fact and shows clip after clip of things that really happened. So when he slips in an implication it blends in with the truths into your brain. The news supposedly is the embodiment of truth. So they don’t need to use all the nice film methods they just do it outright.

One poster thinks that anyone who believes ‘Z’ has comprehension difficulties. Not at all. They simply fell victim to being weak willed, ingorant, impressionable and the strongest persuasive medium known to man, the documentary. While it is their fault it is not due to lack of comprehension. If you proposed the same things to this person in every day conversation they just might disagree with Z depending on the person.

One guy at the bottom was just sick and tired of people talking about truth. This guy obviously read two words from my post, and then he posted exactly what was on his mind all week. Of course he did inform me of some movies I will see so he gets bonus points.

One guy called me a conservative and accused me of using the same line of thinking as Rush Limbaugh. Lol!!!!

Lastly GOD_ALMIGHTY did chime in with some wise words. But he did seem to kind of veer off, his post should not have been a reply to mine, but stood upon is own. He was probably just trying to piggyback of my +5 :P

Ok, enough silly slashdot jokes, now for the real stuff. What are these posters thinking? What makes them type in the things they type. The answer for most of them is simple. They are passionate about this issue. Tons of people are, look how many posts are in the big thread! It’s definitely top 20 if not top 15 articles on slashdot ever in terms of total posting. And as passionate as they are they have something to say. And since not everyone is Michael Moore you can’t $30 million worth of people to get in their cars to come listen to you. So they go to slashdot like me. They wont make a post that isn’t in reply to something because they feel it will go unnoticed. So they start reading what others have to say. To some of them they go “hell yeah!” and keep going. Posting on slashdot is not something you do in excess like in a newsgroup or phpbb forum, so they wont actually make a post that says “this post is good” very often. If they do, it will be an AC post saying “mod parent up”. But those posts will usually already be +5 and the “mod parent up” post will be minussed into oblivion. So as soon as they see some collection of words that is vaugely contrary to their original idea they jam the reply button. They make a sentence to transition from the general idea of the parent post and then they lay their idea down for you.

I don’t know if it is a desire to change the minds of others. It might be just desire for someone to acknowledge their existence. Or maybe it is simply the need to validate their own ideas within themselves. If their ideas cannot effectively counter someone elses or be supported by other human beings then that’s a problem that does not sit right. Now, I am guilty of many of these, but I notice it. I am trying to watch myself, exactly what I do and why I do it. And by doing this my eventual goal is to escape these things. Especially existence acknowledging one. I need to keep doing this because somewhere inside of me I don’t truly recognize my own existence and need it to be constantly validated. But by simply paying attention to it, soon this will be unecessary. In the meantime I can keep doing the things I do, but I will try to do them better or more correctly. I read entire posts. I only post if I feel it will be +5. etc.

As you can see I got off on a tangent like the other guy. Did you ever notice that when your friends move away and the amount of human interaction you get suddenly decreases you start thinking on a much deeper level? Well, that’s what’s happening to me right now. I think its time to stop thinking and hit the hay. Don’t vote for Bush and don’t walk away from F9/11 thinking more than the truth.