A Massacre is A Terrible Thing But It’s Worse When

A massacre is a terrible thing but it’s worse when it’s forgotten.

Could there be anything worse than that?

Yes, there could!

The regime that enabled the massacre was being feted by the world.  Kind of similar to Nazi Germany being feted after the Anschluss. Or exactly like if Stalin’s Russia had been allowed by the international community to parade itself.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the infamous massacre of thousands of its own citizens by the Burmese Junta. Most authorities blame China as well as the Junta since it is the Chinese weight behind the Junta that has enabled them to thumb their nose at the world.

The entire story is here.  Several ideas in that story deserve to be taken up.

Instead of Champion Olympians, maybe China should be called Champion Genocide enablers. Tibet, Burma, Darfur.  Who will be next?

Mint Spectacles on: When Should a Liberal Pretend to be a Conservative

Continuing the conversation on why conservatism sells (the first part is here). If you were a liberal, when would you want to pretend that you were a conservative?

When you want to make money of course!

How so?

How many liberals do you see with merchandise displaying their belief such as say, global warming exists  or that we did ascend or descend (as your preference might be) from apes? Not many. Truly – look around you.

Whether it is tee shirts or mugs or key chains or whatever, conservative stuff sells more.  Just like the blogs with conservative point of view on how global warming doesn’t exist or how the earth was created 10000 years ago get far more traffic than their liberal/progressive counterparts. So do blogs that say that the science behind evolution or global warming is not science.

This was gently pointed out to me when I was thinking of putting up an online store with my smart alecky slogans about global warming and some creative insults etc.  So naturally I got to thinking why there was this imbalance.

It’s not like conservatives have more income or that they work less hard or are somehow different. I knew some really, really nice people who voted for Bush in 2000.  In short, conservatives aren’t different from others except in their doggedly held opinions.

And so my final hypothesis is:

that conservatives spend so much time and money on reiterating their opinions because they need to constantly reaffirm to themselves that they are right about things.

Now it may be that you are disappointed by this hypothesis. I was. I said really – is that all?  Then I began to see what it meant. It meant that anyone who makes conservatives feel good about their beliefsis sitting on a gold mine. On the other hand, liberals/progressives et. al are so comfortable with their beliefs that they don’t need to display them on  tee shirts.

So someday I may write a post about why conservative beliefs  about global warming etc are so lightly held that they need constant reassurance that they are right!

And a note:

Some of you may wonder why I did not have a hypothesis that conservatives buy stuff because they feel like they are in a minority. I didn’t because the fact is conservatives talk to other conservatives and really don’t have very much reason to suppose that they are in a minority.

Mint Spectacles on: Making Money Off Conservativism or Why It Sells Part 1

Sometime ago I read about a guy who said he had a six figure income from selling tee shirts with conservative slogans on cafepress (you can read the article here) .  Which got me to thinking about why is it that conservatives spend so much on stuff that basically keeps repeating what they believe.

When I say spend, I don’t mean just money, but also time. Conservative blogs whether on wordpress or elsewhere have dedicated readers.  One of the few liberal blogs which has a huge readership is the Huffington Post.  If there are other such blogs with a million plus readers, please do let me know.

Now why is that?

One reason could be:

All the conservatives have more money and therefore do not have to work so much and therefore have all the time in the world to congregate on the Internet, whether to promote creationism, now called intelligent design, or to tell each other global warming doesn’t exist or that science and scientists know squat.

But although this may seem to explain why conservative stuff sells, it is not supported by data. Conservatives that spend their time and money are not likely to be richer than progressives, scientists and liberals. At least I can’t find any data that says one is richer than another. I have seen comparisons between red and blue states but every state has both conservatives and liberals so to say blue states are richer and therefore liberals are richer is simply not good logic.

So if that is probably not the answer, then what other reasons could there be?

More tomorrow.

An aside: for all those who think that the globe is cooling (a.k.a. global cooling), Northern Californians now feel the need for fans and air conditioners – ask anyone who can remember 20 years ago or earlier about how cool Northern California has always been. Remember Mark Twain’s famous San Francisco quote?

“the coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco”

I should mention that all Twain scholars are not convinced that he actually said this.

Glee is me: Great Movie One Liners – Part I

From that 1987 classic movie Princess Bride:

Great to use on any kid, whatever be your age!

Grandpa: “When I was your age, television was called books.”

Grandpa and Grandson in the Princess Bride

And the next two lines just make me laugh and say “ain’t that the truth”

The Grandson: “I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I was a little bit “concerned” but that’s not the same thing.”

Miracle Max: You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

And from a non-classic 1989 Road House with Patrick Swayze as Dalton:

A really good insult:

“You’re too stupid to have a good time. “

And this line falls in the pantheon of classic action movie one liners:

“Pain don’t hurt”

The next few glee is me posts are going to be about more undiscovered move one liners.

Mint Spectacles on: Why Babies are Cute and Adults Are Not

Ever seen an ugly baby? No?

Really it’s a serious question. But why you might think, am I writing about babies when I actually meant to write about why people own guns? It so happens that right now I am around a couple of babies. Really cute babies.

But this particular post was triggered when I saw the father actually raise the 16 month old to smell him to check if he had done a “big job.” This from a guy who didn’t care for bathroom humor and the like.

It is my observation that people change when they have babies. They don’t change when they get married but let a little bundle of delight come into their life and it becomes hard to recognize even one’s oldest friends. Suddenly the hardened partier will sober down and get involved with nappies instead of daiquiris. Amazing!

It turns out that babies of every species are cute. Even skunks and snakes. If they weren’t, presumably, the parents would not look after them till they got old enough to be independent.

Yet even though all babies are so cute and adorable, notice they all don’t turn into the adult equivalent of cute which would be handsome and beautiful.

What happens?
Genes kick in. So thank evolution for cute babies and blame the parents and ancestors for ugly adults!

Mint Spectacles on: Gun laws and Global Warming Connection?

In case you missed the news, the Supreme Court overturned Washington DC’s ban on handguns. This naturally has been a topic of conversation all over, including the exciting (some of the time – see oakbook link) character-laden city I call home.

Over the weekend I discovered that the views, global warming ain’t happening, and that handguns should be owned by anyone who wants one can exist in the same person. So a global warming denier can also be a gun acquirer! I made me an old fashioned Venn diagram which is a most excellent visual aid to understanding this beautifully crazy world.

I wonder what proportion of those who deny global warming also happen to believe that owning handguns is great? Anyone have any guesstimates for the G & G? Please comment if you do!

All I want to know is this:
If
People believe that is it perfectly logical that one should own a gun to defend against an improbable event
Then
Why isn’t it logical for everyone to take action to prevent global warming, an event/process for which the probability is close to 1?

Of course IMHO global warming is already occurring – witness the extreme weather events all over the world, not to mention the glaciers and the poles. That said, if we make an effort, things can get better.

Now at the end, I should make my own position about guns clear. I don’t much care for guns and I don’t want one in my home because well designed studies have made it clear that there are way too many accidents in homes with guns. And the incidence of guns being used in self defense in almost the entire western world is negligible – anything under 5% is negligible for me. But policy implications of studied are apparently more difficult, at least based on the studies mentioned in all the leading newspapers.

For policy implications I’d like to see behavioral experiments with guns as well as better statistical analysis. But my gut feel is that better policing is answer to making citizens feel safe. Just like two wrongs don’t make a right, two guns in a room does not mean that the right one will stay safe.

Mint Spectacles on: Spam Blogs and Sploggers

I am a new blogger and I have already been pinged several times by spam bloggers (a.k.a. sploggers). After looking up the invaluable Wikipedia and other sources, I now know that this is a problem of epidemic proportions.

So what is being done? SplogSpot is a site where one can supposedly report sploggers. I tried to report one of the pingers but could not succeed despite three tries.

Several parties suggest that genuine bloggers put copyright notices on their posts to enable splog spotting as well as to provide remedy for those who actually have time to write letters and threaten lawsuits. Here is an article that I found from a Wikipedia link which also helpfully displays the copyright messages. It also suggests letters and lawsuits as the remedy.

But instead of individuals going after these spam blogs, here is another idea. How about a central site, run by some sort of Internet body – maybe a body like ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) can be created to deal with the problem of spam blogs and blog spams. Once a URL is reported to them, they can get the IP hosts to mandatorily take down the spam blogs.

It is entirely possible that they could help with blog spam too, specially when it comes from China or Nigeria. Or help with copyright disputes between actual bloggers!

Alternately, since software is used to create spam blogs maybe some genius can dream up of software to get rid of this menace.

Google and other search engines as well as Internet bandwidth suppliers can fund such a non-profit because these splogs hurt their business. Bloggers like me would happily report such IP addresses because sploggers hurt bloggers the most.

And in the mean time is there a wordpress widget that when pinged, puts in these notices?

Mint Spectacles on: Global Warming and its Deniers Part 2

After my last global warming post, I discovered the deniers in the blogosphere and it got me thinking. About those who write that:

global warming is a left wing conspiracy or

that global warming does not exist or

the one that makes me laugh the hardest is the globe is cooling and their tag words will list global cooling. Hmm I should add that as a tag word.

All this got me to thinking why that is so. Usually I just wonder what the grandkids of global warming deniers are going to say to them. But this time I asked something more fundamental – why do they think the way they do?

Here are my top 6 reasons.

Reason No. 6
Global Warming Deniers don’t like to think. They may not know who George Bernard Shaw was (a great playwright and a Nobel Laureate) but they agree with what he said “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

Reason No. 5
Global Warming Deniers hate to recycle. What, separate the paper from the food? What a funny notion.

Reason No. 4
Global Warming Deniers like to believe the advertisers. After all McDonalds does give you a 99cent burger when they advertise that special so when a coalition of big business says hey if business were to worry about global warming, your taxes will go up….they believe them.

Reason No. 3
Global Warming Deniers think to be right they have to be the opposite of left.
So they must believe the opposite of any thinking that is labeled left.

Reason No. 2
Global Warming Deniers are oil company investors. They love their dividends.

And The Top Reason
Global Warming Deniers saw lots of war movies when they were kids and they always wanted to be the guy who gets trapped and valiantly stands on his toes as water gushes into the room. The water rises, to his chin but he did not give up raising his gun above his hands.
So now they get to be the guys who will valiantly defend their right to consume without looking at or considering anything or anyone else. They know that climate scientists agree that rich countries will be hurt a lot less than the developing world as the oceans keep rising.
But if there is water in the streets and you own a large vehicle? Which brings us to the Real Reason No. 1
Global Warming Deniers want to feel good about owning their Hummers and hope one day, to look good in them

Anyone else has other reasons to add to this list?

Mint Spectacles on: Insults as a Creative Art Form

One of my friends saw my creative insult yesterday and asked what’s with this creative insulting? Here’s the answer.

When I get mad, the first impulse is to shout go f… yourself. But it occurred to me that what I’m really saying is go get some pleasure.

I don’t know about you but when someone annoys me, my instinct is to go POW rather than tell them to please go have some fun.  Now when I get mad I only tell someone I really like to go get some pleasure.

For the rest of the world, a whole world of insects, reptiles and their body parts exists to describe obnoxious people or offensive behaviour. And I find that once you get started, it takes a lot of creativity to keep coming up with new ones.

The ones I will post here are going to be mostly PG 13 rated. Really, quite a few of them are not for polite company, even if all the company that visits here is not polite .

Start insulting creatively and you’ll always laugh even if sometimes the person you are insulting is yourself. Like the time I did something really stupid, ah, but that’s another story.

Mint Spectacles on: Struggling Writers

Mint Spectacles is the term I use for a fresh minty point of view on stuff. which is the third thing to do in my day. I just happen to be doing it first today.

I used to be a scientist. Now I’m just another struggling writer.  Ever noticed how many of us are out there? Sometimes I think the only people who read books are those who want to write. In which case we decide what gets to be on the best seller lists.  Why do you suppose there are so many struggling writers?

Here’s my theory which draws inspiration from the skies:

Stars can be born in many ways but a common factor is that a lot of heat and turbulence impact dense molecular clouds. At any moment in time, old stars are collapsing and new ones are being born, filling the universe with countless celestial lights.
Heat about something and turbulence in life affect us and before we know it, we become writers. At any moment in time, countless writers are being born, just to be stars even if only their own little circle.