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Are the Baby-Boomers Abandoning the Darkside?

Posted by Oscar on September 8th

Read More: Politics, Pop-Culture, Money, Memes, Arbitrary conclusions, Breaking News, Music

Bob DylanVietnam raged and the affects of McCarthyism were still being felt. The country was dominated by fear and anger and hatred. Amongst this turmoil the largest generation America has known was coming of age. A highly educated generation and highly independent, forced to watch their friends kill innocent people. Forced to watch their friends die and they lived with the fear that they could be the next one called to a foreign land to fight for a bogus cause.

These young Americans began to speak out and rise-up. They gathered and wrote and sang and yelled and fought back. They obeyed few rules as they sat-in, smoked pot and challenged authority. They had their own artists and their own art. They had their own culture. They changed America and improved the world by getting us out of Vietnam.

It was as if the children of America were going through a collective adolescents. But something happened in the 80’s, 90’s and oughts. It felt like they had become complacent, as if they’d grown up and become the America they fought against. They got married, had children and their priorities changed from global to personal, they had to make sure their kids were safe and going to soccer, politics became less important.

Children are not children long and the children of the Baby-Boomers are out of college.

What do the baby-boomers do now? Maybe politics, for politics have become important again as again they watch their friends die—only not from war, but from poor healthcare or abysmal social support. This situation will only get worse as the old get increasingly older, the baby boomers will most-likely have an average lifespan of over 100, they’ll need something to do with all that time. And as they’ve proven before, politics is something they’re very good at.

As you may have heard a baby-boomer icon has leapt from obscurity. Bob Dylan’s new album “Modern Times” debuted at number one and although not as overt as Neil Young’s “Living With War”, “Modern Times” is still political and very powerful.

In addition it has been reported that drug use is up among Baby-Boomers, sitting around with friends post-retirement smoking a Jay doesn’t seem so far fetched when that’s how you sat around with friends pre-employment.

Does this mean the Baby-Boomers are becoming… dare I say it… LIBERAL once again? I believe it does, in fact I think that their little (albeit 30 year) selfish, money-hoarding phase is over. I think it has to be if they want to remain members of a respected nation that allows them to grow old with respect.

Suspect Westbound On Olympic

Posted by Czech Air on February 23rd
Read More: Pop-Culture, Money

Anyone who knows me knows I am somewhat of a sports guy, and every four years comes one of my favorite sporting events. No, it is not the World Cup. It is the Winter Olympics. The first Olympics I remember watching were Sarajevo’s games in 1984. The first real games I remember, however, were Calgary ’88. In those games, I fell in love with the speed and excitement of the Winter sports. There are a few of those sports from which I cannot take my eyes. They are: Nordic skiing, Nordic combined, biathlon and ski jumping.

Who the hell knows why I became addicted to those sports, but I have fond memories of watching them as a little kid. I’d plop down in front of the television and wait for the events. My father would always help me out and make sure he told me what days the sports would be on the TV, and then, I’d wait.

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What is “Lifevision”, and why can’t I find it?

Posted by Oscar on February 6th
Read More: Technology, Politics, Money

3d piece of crap monitorSo… Apparently there is this company “Lifevision 3d” that was being used to monitor attendees of the superbowl (some kind of… football, gamey thing, but not soccer). It has a 20 inch screen that projects an image 30 inches in either direction. Sounds like some pretty cool shit, but I can’t find a page about it anywhere. No review. No coverage. No wikipedia. Only some wierd PR site, with the terrible picture that you see of this thing. Therefore, I’ve determined, it doesn’t exist. And here’s what I think happened:

“Intrepid Defense & Security Systems” is a contractor for homeland security. Homeland-security rich-white-guy knows Intrepid-Defense-&-Security rich-white-guy and they decide they need to spend a holy-shit load of our money protecting some private, bullshit, display of masculinity. They sit around and think of some great bullshitty thing to spend the money on that sounds high-tech and half assedly try to make it happen, making them an amazing amount of money off the tax payers and less effectively protecting the superbowl than if they wouldn’t have wasted our money in the first place.

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An ad hominem argument against the right

Posted by Oscar on January 30th
Read More: Politics, Religion, Money, Sex, Funny, Science, Natural Disasters

I’m watching Orrin Hatch defend Alito during the hearings right now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that his head has a strong sense of “Butt” about it. It’s elusive but there is a pronounced “Butt” quality. It could be the shape or how he uses his mouth which is a bit sphincter-like. Also everything he says is crap.

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We Digress Episode 3, 1-7-06

Posted by Oscar on January 9th
Read More: Politics, Money, Memes, Audio

Quite a bit about campaign finance reform and it’s occasionally funny.
We Digress Episode 3, 1-7-06

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How to Launder Money

Posted by bongo on December 28th
Read More: Money, Ask EightAndFive

First of all: Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law.

Now I would like to discuss money laundering.

This is a topic that has nagged at me since the movie “Office Space” was released. How can a bunch of highly educated people not have a clue as to how to launder money? ANY amount of money? It is ridiculous to think that people who have been to college can’t figure out how to make something as anonymous as CASH become an untraceable item.

There are two driving principles to launder money: (1) You want it to be untraceable. In order for the money to be untraceable you need to convert it from one type of monetary system to a different type of monetary system, or you need to send it from one anonymous account to a different anonymous bank account with timed transactions. And (2) Once you have this money, you want to be able to spend the money without fear of being tracked down.

Pretend you have somehow acquired a few thousand dollars (no more than say…$100k) and you want to spend it…but you don’t know the history of the money and you suspect that it may be money that was acquired through less-than honorable means.

Normally of course, one would be inclined to turn in the money to the authorities, but for the purpose of this posting let’s presume that if you go to the authorities someone in your immediate family will have to face the music and go to jail or otherwise face legal punishment or criminalization.
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Black Friday Insider Information

Posted by bongo on November 14th
Read More: Money, Ask EightAndFive

So what I am saying is this: I ain’t much for shopping. I hate going to the grocery store. When I am browsing for stuff I don’t need, I like it to be in an exotic location: Hawaii, Mexico, etc.

However, let’s say you really feel like doing some day after Thanksgiving POWER SHOPPING!! What do you do? Well, you could get in line with the rest of the lemmings and blindly wait outside your favorite big-box retailer. Perhaps ordering stuff online suits your style…but if you want to target very specific items and hone in on them like a giant laser-beam from the moon, (more…)

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The House of Cards

Posted by Oscar on November 3rd
Read More: Politics, Money

It’s strange to witness the collapse of a government. It feels as if every leader of the Republican Party is under investigation for offenses related to corruption. Having paid fairly close attention to politics since the end of the Clinton era I feel as if this collapse was inevitable and it was something I’ve been desperately anticipating. Now that shit is hitting the fan, I don’t feel good about it, a bit vindicated but not good. I also fear as if very little is going to change. I see people being held accountable but nothing being done to prevent this sort of thing occurring again. I suspect that the only real solution to the state of the state is campaign finance reform. I would vote for a neo-con if I knew that it would result in publicly financed campaigns.

I’m curious to know how my fellow eightandfivers feel about the recent indictments and the exposure of the rampant corruption.

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Boycott DRM now!

Posted by junkgui on September 24th
Read More: Technology, Politics, Money, The Internets, Video Games

If you thought opening up your XBox or PS2 to solder in a mod chip was fun, the future is brite. The brave new world of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) will soon have all of us, opening up our TVs, computers, and monitors in various risky maneuvers, and I cant wait. Imagine a world in which it is a felony for any of us to watch a movie at home, or listen to music… And it’s not just that, imagine a world where one or two company’s hold a monopoly on computer operating systems, which will be in everything. An operating system that only runs digitally signed code, where it is mathematically impossible to run software that they don’t want you to, using a computer you own. And best of all it eliminates competition, because companies will soon be able to choose who can and cannot compete with them, just keep enough staggering ball twisters around to make it look like there are other players in the industry, other player that at a drop of a hat could have their license to run code revoked, or made prohibitively expensive.
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$2,000 dollars for Americans, $200,000 for Israelis

Posted by Oscar on September 9th
Read More: Politics, Religion, Money

W has promised $2,000 for families affected by the hurricane to help them restart. Our government is giving 2.2 billion dollars to Israel for 8,500 families to move out of the Gaza Strip. This comes out to a little over $200,000 per.

It’s not that I don’t think we should be helping people in another country try to achieve peace (although I don’t think we do it in a very effective way). It’s the hypocrisy of the neo-cons in a situation like this, they say they are doing so much but in relation to what they are willing to do for a lucky few, they are doing very little. If the people we meet on the street who considered themselves “conservative” (or as I like to call ne0-cons: “not conservative”) knew about this giant cash award given to citizens of another country, they would freak out.

Israel Asks U.S For Another $2.2Billion In Aid, atsnn.com

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Phish reunites to tour in 2009. - #

Here's a helpful and depressing tutorial on the current financial crapstorm, in cartoon form. I'm having a hard time figuring out who did the video, but it was linked to on Cosmic Variance. - #

MoveOn.org is giving away free Obama buttons. Almost 2 million ordered so far. - #

If I had married Tea Leoni and starred in film and TV with Gillian Anderson, I would have the exact same problem. How many love children do you have David? - #