MSNBC has pretty much sealed this guy’s fate.

“Excuse me, please, but who is ticking in the back pew?”

We tolerate this because they have oil.

She gets a “reprieve” except that they still call her the “porn teacher”.

G8 should be called G7 since the US rarely agress to binding decisions.

Justice prevails or fails, you be the judge.

I can see it now: RIAA will levy a fee for each game session you play.

And now, for a viewpoint you don’t see everyday

1. Mankind is not “intelligent life”

Most of you will just nod in agreement and move on to number 2. For those of you that pause and even begin to disagree with this: you’re an f-ing idiot. There is no intelligent life on Earth. It’s all relative. We’re smarter than cockroaches (well, maybe), but certainly dumber than many other creatures. Don’t believe me? Read This, or This, or This, or just about anything filed daily under Yahoo! Odd News. We have actually institutionalized stupidity into a legitimate system.  Case closed.

2. There is no such thing as Utopia

It doesn’t exist. It never will. Because the concept of Utopia relies on perfection, which as you will read later, also does not exist. As long as humans are involved in things, they will never be perfect. Someone will f**k it up eventually. Pissing someone else off and starting a fight or a war, or whatever. It’s human nature. Utopia is simply fiction.

3. Man-made inventions are not “organic” - EVER

I’m really sick of reading reviews of software that describe it like it grew on a tree. “(productname) now has new features such as __, __ and __” or “(productname) is capable of solving __”. No, the underpaid morons that work for (vendorname) wrote code to make (productname) do ___, ___ and ___. “It” doesn’t really “have” anything. “It” has code written by humans. Just because (vendorname) prefers you to see it as an independent organism hatched from faceless programmers, doesn’t mean we have to perceive and treat it that way. Same with car/truck commercials, electronics, you name it. It reminds me of how we watch what the magician is holding, rather than what his other hand is doing. The closest thing humans can come to creating something “organic” is raising a garden.

4. Perfection is a myth

Humans are flawed. As amazing and powerful as the brain is (or can be), it’s only reliable some of the time. It’s powered by cells that die and are replaced during runtime. Things go wrong. We forget. We make mistakes. We operate on emotion and irrational perceptions. We’re f**ked up. A generalization obviously, but so often accurate that it qualifies as fact. Humans can NEVER create something that is perfect. They (we) can only create less-imperfect things (hopefully), and that’s only on a good day.

5. Age does not equate to intelligence

As we age, we learn to cover up our mistakes better.  That’s all.  We learn to not attempt certain things in front of others until we’ve mastered it enough to impress (or simply not look stupid).  Oh yeah, and we might not attempt dangerous stunts as much, but that’s only because we learned that (a) it might hurt pretty bad, and (b) our older bodies take longer to heal up.  Is that “intelligence” or simply “instinct”?  Debatable.

6. Education does not equate to intelligence

In my business there’s a well-known saying: behind every great disaster is a great engineer. Education is attainable to those that can afford it. There’s little if any control on intellectual “capacity” during the entrance testing. Doctors screw up. CEO’s screw up. Pilots screw up. Engineers definitely screw up. Scientists screw up too. About the only axiom that can be drawn with respect to the relationship of education to mistakes, is that the higher the education, the more severe the catastrophic mistake. Why? Because the higher the education, the more critical the application of it’s perceived enablement. After all, they don’t let garbage truck drivers design bridges, aircraft, artificial heart valves, and space shuttles. Garbage truck driver might screw up and kill one or two people. A failed heart valve, aircraft design or bridge might kill hundreds, even thousands. As Cheech Marin said: “Responsibility is a heavy responsibility.”

7. “Fair” is a myth

Life is not fair. It never will be. What’s “fair” to you, might be totally unfair to someone else. In fact, it almost always is. Unfairness is the array of road cones along the highway of life. Learn to swerve around them.

8. Politicians do not serve their constituents

They serve their pay check. Call it whatever you want, it’s a job. They need to eat, and preferably lobster.  They will promise you anything; tell you anything; that you want to hear.  Whatever it takes to keep their cushy job, salary and perks.  Every election time, they spew the same rhetoric to the same mindless listeners, to cast their mindless ballots.  Once elected, they go about maneuvering to secure their job for as long as possible.  They learn the artful language of avoiding absolutes (will, shall, can, is) in favor of safer politispeak (might, should, may, could) and starting off responses to questions with “that’s a good question…” followed by superfluous ramblings of how complicated the question is to answer, and then ultimately, never really answer it.

9. We are alone

There is no intelligent life in the Universe. None that we will meet anyway. Not unless we visit them. They surely wouldn’t bother to visit us. If they picked up transmissions from our planet and watched a few minutes of our news, shows, movies, whatever, they would be convinced we’re doomed. In fact, there’s probably a reason why our planet is so “far” from any other planets that could likely support life. It’s probably because they had our planet towed out farther away from the rest of them to keep us out of the way. That’s what that circular part of the Hudson Bay really is: a towing hitch socket. It just filled up with rain water.

10. Lists are usually incomplete

As if the proposed IPP Act of 2007 isn’t bizarre enough, we also have Microsoft sharpening the dull heads of their legal department to prepare for an attack on the open source community.  We also have another loss of sensitive employee data by an IBM “contractor”.   Yet another soldier has gone missing after a bomb attack in Iraq, and fears are rising that he is in the hands of Al Qaida, along with three others from a previous attack.

After watching the TV show “Cops” for several years, I’ve learned something that might be of use to you guys working in places where they don’t relish the sight of Americans.  Especially Americans in uniform.  Bring a video camera.  Every time a cop is shot at, and they have a video clip, the bad guys are usually identified.  This shooting thing at the meeting in Pakistan (yahoo news story here) made me wonder why an American soldier (officer?) would go to a meeting with Pakistani and Afghani soldiers in a remote region known for excessive violence, and NOT be prepared for someone doing something bad to them.  Next time, bring a video camera.  Preferably one with a live satellite link to watch the scene in real time.  No more of the two bad guys pointing the finger at each other.