June 30, 2010
SCIENCE VINDICATES DREAMERS!
Good news, space cadets! Senior analysts and researchers here at bobcrespo.com headquarters in Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.A., Planet Earth have been perusing the latest scientific studies of daydreamers and the big news is just as we've suspected all along: DAYDREAMING IS A GOOD THING AND A WANDERING MIND IS A HEALTHY MIND!
What can we say, but... BAM!
Too bad some of our old grammar school teachers are dead or otherwise occupied or we could be telling the old warhorses where to stick it. Not only were we correct in predicting that we would never need algebra again, but that our daydreaming ways are useful and beneficial! Hey teach, I wasn't distracted, I was exploring (and you were so damned boring)!
There's a seminal story about daydreaming involving an employee of Henry Ford. It seems that Mr. Ford was showing an efficiency expert around his company headquarters when they came to an office where a man was seated with his feet up on his desk just staring out the window. The expert asks Ford why he doesn't fire such an obvious slacker. Ford replied; "He was in that same position when he came up with an idea that made me millions." The feet-on-the-desk guy stayed.
So the next time someone calls you a space cadet, take it a complement, because science is on your friggin' side! If any of you want the scientific particulars, you wade through those dry scientific journals. Just suffice to say that after all the lab rats, monkeys, test subjects and Latin phrases, the results confirm that daydreaming is a good thing.
Besides, without daydreamers, where would we get games, inventions, poems, music, bikinis, toys, stories, kaleidoscopes, books, statues, recipes, balloons, plays, paintings, motorcycles, architecture, G.I. Joes with the Kung Fu Grip or bold new flavors of ice cream?
Not from those pinched-face, no-frills human tree stumps a child has to endure from time to time during the course of their education. While most teachers are just fine, great teachers are rare, and mostly responsible for any good memories we have of school. The lousy memories are of those soul-crushers who make it their mission to straighten out all the "irresponsible" dreamers that cross their path.
You just know it was one of those clowns who decided that shaking one leg in class was a disease that needed to be drugged into remission. Which means that over half of every second grade class that ever was anywhere needed to be heavily sedated.
Interesting concept, and one you might enthusiastically embrace if you were a non-leg shaker. What an advantage! You'd be the smartest kid in class and win at every sport! Looks good on the scholastic resume, and in 10 years no one will know you were competing with kids just north of a coma.
Doesn't work, of course. Not the lectures, the sedatives or the disapproval. Other than annoying the crap out of them, kids shrug this stuff off and continue to think the most appalling things in the privacy of their own little minds, the one place they can be certain where they alone are in charge.
Drives these people nuts and confirms their opinion of humanity in general and children in particular as impractical fools in need of a huge dose of misery. Look for next month's Letters to The Editor in the science journals to be full of shrill rebuttal letters from these drones. They'll all sign them; "long-time educator," maybe even type in one of these dumb-ass frowny-face things just to prove what dorks they are.
There's not much to be done about them either, except to tell the kiddies that these people happen sometimes, don't take it personally. Soon enough they'll be out of your hair and seem pretty funny afterwards. It's a useful test, too, Junior's First Excruciating Ordeal. Good life prep there. There's always next year and a teacher that appreciates your daydreaming butt and doesn't give a crap if you shake your leg all day long as long as you're learning.
At least now, at long last, dreamy kids have SCIENCE on their side. And so do the rest of us. Dreamers dream, and nobody can tell them not to.
What can we say, but... BAM!
Too bad some of our old grammar school teachers are dead or otherwise occupied or we could be telling the old warhorses where to stick it. Not only were we correct in predicting that we would never need algebra again, but that our daydreaming ways are useful and beneficial! Hey teach, I wasn't distracted, I was exploring (and you were so damned boring)!
There's a seminal story about daydreaming involving an employee of Henry Ford. It seems that Mr. Ford was showing an efficiency expert around his company headquarters when they came to an office where a man was seated with his feet up on his desk just staring out the window. The expert asks Ford why he doesn't fire such an obvious slacker. Ford replied; "He was in that same position when he came up with an idea that made me millions." The feet-on-the-desk guy stayed.
So the next time someone calls you a space cadet, take it a complement, because science is on your friggin' side! If any of you want the scientific particulars, you wade through those dry scientific journals. Just suffice to say that after all the lab rats, monkeys, test subjects and Latin phrases, the results confirm that daydreaming is a good thing.
Besides, without daydreamers, where would we get games, inventions, poems, music, bikinis, toys, stories, kaleidoscopes, books, statues, recipes, balloons, plays, paintings, motorcycles, architecture, G.I. Joes with the Kung Fu Grip or bold new flavors of ice cream?
Not from those pinched-face, no-frills human tree stumps a child has to endure from time to time during the course of their education. While most teachers are just fine, great teachers are rare, and mostly responsible for any good memories we have of school. The lousy memories are of those soul-crushers who make it their mission to straighten out all the "irresponsible" dreamers that cross their path.
You just know it was one of those clowns who decided that shaking one leg in class was a disease that needed to be drugged into remission. Which means that over half of every second grade class that ever was anywhere needed to be heavily sedated.
Interesting concept, and one you might enthusiastically embrace if you were a non-leg shaker. What an advantage! You'd be the smartest kid in class and win at every sport! Looks good on the scholastic resume, and in 10 years no one will know you were competing with kids just north of a coma.
Doesn't work, of course. Not the lectures, the sedatives or the disapproval. Other than annoying the crap out of them, kids shrug this stuff off and continue to think the most appalling things in the privacy of their own little minds, the one place they can be certain where they alone are in charge.
Drives these people nuts and confirms their opinion of humanity in general and children in particular as impractical fools in need of a huge dose of misery. Look for next month's Letters to The Editor in the science journals to be full of shrill rebuttal letters from these drones. They'll all sign them; "long-time educator," maybe even type in one of these dumb-ass frowny-face things just to prove what dorks they are.
There's not much to be done about them either, except to tell the kiddies that these people happen sometimes, don't take it personally. Soon enough they'll be out of your hair and seem pretty funny afterwards. It's a useful test, too, Junior's First Excruciating Ordeal. Good life prep there. There's always next year and a teacher that appreciates your daydreaming butt and doesn't give a crap if you shake your leg all day long as long as you're learning.
At least now, at long last, dreamy kids have SCIENCE on their side. And so do the rest of us. Dreamers dream, and nobody can tell them not to.
June 29, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 708
The term "life is what you make it" is starting to catch on with geneticists.
SAMMY SCIENCE ON THE SINGULARITY
Sammy Science back in the house, ready to talk science. I don't know why I keep writing for this website, since so few of the people who write in believe in science. Either that, or they're completely off the wall. Not that it matters much to scientists or to science itself who believes in it. What is, is, period amen. Facts don't cooperate with delusions. That said, let's see what's in the inbox this week:
Dear Sammy Science: When's that Singularity coming, Science Boy? You know, where we all get our brains hooked up to the internet, grow our own artificial replacement parts and live forever. I'm getting a little impatient here. - Levon Thyme
Dear Levon Thyme: I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you, sir. Those developments are only theories, the wishful thinking part of science. Theories don't become hard science until they are proven. So far stem cell research isn't close to providing you with viable replacement organs, never mind eternal life. The chips to be implanted in your body to allow you to interface with the internet are also pipe dreams, with the research, experimentation and creation of such chips in their infancies. If and when these things are ever proven to be viable, the technology will be prohibitively expensive.
Are you very wealthy? If not, you'll be included out of that whole immortal loop, and you'll be looking up stuff on the internet like you do now, which is incredibly advanced compared to humanity of only two decades ago. You have the largest library ever assembled at the tops of your fingers! You want more? You want it fed to you like some intravenous data drip with no intellectual effort at all on your part? That would just be a waste of good data.
As far as living forever, what about injury, accidents, disease, murder and natural disasters? Death by starvation already claims 36 thousand people every single day on this planet. With nobody dying of old age, people will still be humping like bunnies, but only for a lot longer, and producing children well into what we consider "old" age. Can you imagine Food Wars, Energy Wars and Living Space Wars with a population of 20 or 30 billion people, with every square inch of space being occupied or farmed, and every natural resource taxed to their limits? Sounds like hell on earth.
The better deal for all of us is to take care of our health, learn all we possibly can and enjoy the years we've been given. The Singularity sounds good until you start examining the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. It's impossible today and impractical tomorrow.
Dear Sammy Science: Since when do you science guys have all the answers? Some of us are getting a little sick and tired of your smug, know-it-all attitude! - Gene Poole
Dear Gene Poole: Science has all the answers? Hardly, sir, or what would be the point of pursuing science? Heck, we don't even have all the questions! The pursuit of science is the admission that there are things you do not know but want to find out. Science is the act of truth seeking through careful observation, extensive study, sustained effort, experimentation and proof. The reason why Einstein was a genius is not because he formulated his incredibly complex Theory of Relativity, but because experimentation and observation proved it to be completely accurate. You can guess all you like about the nature of things, but until you are proven right, yours is just another theory, or an article of faith, never to be confused with facts.
Dear Sammy Science: So, you think science has it all over religion, eh? Can you prove that? - Reverend Winsome Loosum
Dear Reverend Winsome Loosum: I never said that. What I said was that they were two completely different pursuits, and not necessarily hostile towards one another. My specialty is astrophysics, and as an astrophysicist I spend a lot of time observing the known universe. The more astounding natural wonders I observe, the more I notice how very similar are the building blocks and the order of all life and creation in the universe, from the atomic level to molecular structure right up to solar systems and galaxies; a nucleus surrounded by orbiting bodies, with just the right amount of gravitational "pull" and "magnetic" push to keep these structures stable, whole and functioning.
To these scientifically trained eyes emerges an incredibly advanced intelligence at work; for lack of a scientific explanation, God. Of course I can't prove this any more than you can prove the tenets of your faith, Reverend, but the feeling is a powerful one and the existence of God would explain the intricate and unchanging natural laws. Don't think of science as your religion's enemy, but an ally. We just go about our truth-seeking another way.
Dear Sammy Science: When's that Singularity coming, Science Boy? You know, where we all get our brains hooked up to the internet, grow our own artificial replacement parts and live forever. I'm getting a little impatient here. - Levon Thyme
Dear Levon Thyme: I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you, sir. Those developments are only theories, the wishful thinking part of science. Theories don't become hard science until they are proven. So far stem cell research isn't close to providing you with viable replacement organs, never mind eternal life. The chips to be implanted in your body to allow you to interface with the internet are also pipe dreams, with the research, experimentation and creation of such chips in their infancies. If and when these things are ever proven to be viable, the technology will be prohibitively expensive.
Are you very wealthy? If not, you'll be included out of that whole immortal loop, and you'll be looking up stuff on the internet like you do now, which is incredibly advanced compared to humanity of only two decades ago. You have the largest library ever assembled at the tops of your fingers! You want more? You want it fed to you like some intravenous data drip with no intellectual effort at all on your part? That would just be a waste of good data.
As far as living forever, what about injury, accidents, disease, murder and natural disasters? Death by starvation already claims 36 thousand people every single day on this planet. With nobody dying of old age, people will still be humping like bunnies, but only for a lot longer, and producing children well into what we consider "old" age. Can you imagine Food Wars, Energy Wars and Living Space Wars with a population of 20 or 30 billion people, with every square inch of space being occupied or farmed, and every natural resource taxed to their limits? Sounds like hell on earth.
The better deal for all of us is to take care of our health, learn all we possibly can and enjoy the years we've been given. The Singularity sounds good until you start examining the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. It's impossible today and impractical tomorrow.
Dear Sammy Science: Since when do you science guys have all the answers? Some of us are getting a little sick and tired of your smug, know-it-all attitude! - Gene Poole
Dear Gene Poole: Science has all the answers? Hardly, sir, or what would be the point of pursuing science? Heck, we don't even have all the questions! The pursuit of science is the admission that there are things you do not know but want to find out. Science is the act of truth seeking through careful observation, extensive study, sustained effort, experimentation and proof. The reason why Einstein was a genius is not because he formulated his incredibly complex Theory of Relativity, but because experimentation and observation proved it to be completely accurate. You can guess all you like about the nature of things, but until you are proven right, yours is just another theory, or an article of faith, never to be confused with facts.
Dear Sammy Science: So, you think science has it all over religion, eh? Can you prove that? - Reverend Winsome Loosum
Dear Reverend Winsome Loosum: I never said that. What I said was that they were two completely different pursuits, and not necessarily hostile towards one another. My specialty is astrophysics, and as an astrophysicist I spend a lot of time observing the known universe. The more astounding natural wonders I observe, the more I notice how very similar are the building blocks and the order of all life and creation in the universe, from the atomic level to molecular structure right up to solar systems and galaxies; a nucleus surrounded by orbiting bodies, with just the right amount of gravitational "pull" and "magnetic" push to keep these structures stable, whole and functioning.
To these scientifically trained eyes emerges an incredibly advanced intelligence at work; for lack of a scientific explanation, God. Of course I can't prove this any more than you can prove the tenets of your faith, Reverend, but the feeling is a powerful one and the existence of God would explain the intricate and unchanging natural laws. Don't think of science as your religion's enemy, but an ally. We just go about our truth-seeking another way.
June 27, 2010
A CLOSE CALL AT THE WORLD CUP, AMERICA LOSES. THERE IS A GOD!
In South Africa on Saturday, June 26, 2010, The United States avoided a cultural disaster of epic proportions by losing their World Cup soccer match to Ghana and getting eliminated from competition. We can only thank God that it didn't occur to anyone to use actual athletes instead of soccer players on our American team, a move that would revolutionize this game.
There was one such scare when Kobe Bryant showed up dressed in soccer clothing, but it turned out he was just there to seek out new girlfriends half a word away from home so he wouldn't have to add to his wife's extensive diamond collection. Also rubbing elbows at the World Cup were renowned womanizers Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger.
Apparently there's a lot more action off the field than on it at a World Game., which isn't very hard to imagine at all. Soccer basically consists of 22 guys running up and down a football field kicking and face-slamming a ball and doing their best not the let it roll in to the gigantic goal areas at each end of the field. They're pretty good at that, all that not scoring, with most games ending up tied at zero-zero.
Rumor has it that there are rules to all this chaotic running and kicking and flailing about, but you'd never know it by watching a game (if you can stay awake). Even the 90 minute clock is more of a guideline than a rule, with the referees having the power to extend the length of the game but not tell anyone. They can also nullify a goal for no reason at all and not have to explain why.
Not that there's any reason at all to care about any of this. It is, after all, soccer and not a real sport. What Americans need to worry about is having our team accidentally win one of these World Cup tournaments one of these years and popularizing the game here. And make no mistake about it, winning or losing one of these games has nothing to do with skill, since there are no skilled athletes in the field, so the danger of winning is always there. It's all luck.
Our answer has always been to put the clumsiest, most uncoordinated people we can find on our soccer teams in order to ensure defeat, and even then they sometimes win over teams whose countries have been playing the game for over a century. We have enough problems here in America without adding soccer. Bad enough that suburban Soccer Little Leagues have been punishing our children for 30 years and the government does nothing about it.
Let the rest of the world have their soccer and their World Cups and their vuvuzela horns. They'll never be America, and they need something to call their own, even if what they call their own is the reason why they'll never be America. We get amber waves of grain, purple maountains' majesty, and actual sports. They get soccer. Nobody ever said life was fair.
There was one such scare when Kobe Bryant showed up dressed in soccer clothing, but it turned out he was just there to seek out new girlfriends half a word away from home so he wouldn't have to add to his wife's extensive diamond collection. Also rubbing elbows at the World Cup were renowned womanizers Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger.
Apparently there's a lot more action off the field than on it at a World Game., which isn't very hard to imagine at all. Soccer basically consists of 22 guys running up and down a football field kicking and face-slamming a ball and doing their best not the let it roll in to the gigantic goal areas at each end of the field. They're pretty good at that, all that not scoring, with most games ending up tied at zero-zero.
Rumor has it that there are rules to all this chaotic running and kicking and flailing about, but you'd never know it by watching a game (if you can stay awake). Even the 90 minute clock is more of a guideline than a rule, with the referees having the power to extend the length of the game but not tell anyone. They can also nullify a goal for no reason at all and not have to explain why.
Not that there's any reason at all to care about any of this. It is, after all, soccer and not a real sport. What Americans need to worry about is having our team accidentally win one of these World Cup tournaments one of these years and popularizing the game here. And make no mistake about it, winning or losing one of these games has nothing to do with skill, since there are no skilled athletes in the field, so the danger of winning is always there. It's all luck.
Our answer has always been to put the clumsiest, most uncoordinated people we can find on our soccer teams in order to ensure defeat, and even then they sometimes win over teams whose countries have been playing the game for over a century. We have enough problems here in America without adding soccer. Bad enough that suburban Soccer Little Leagues have been punishing our children for 30 years and the government does nothing about it.
Let the rest of the world have their soccer and their World Cups and their vuvuzela horns. They'll never be America, and they need something to call their own, even if what they call their own is the reason why they'll never be America. We get amber waves of grain, purple maountains' majesty, and actual sports. They get soccer. Nobody ever said life was fair.
June 24, 2010
NEW TV SHOWS FOR OUR VIEWING PLEASURE
Well, it's Summertime and you know what that means, right? Yeah, sure barbecues, beaches and laying around getting brown, to be certain, but we also get treated to the latest brainstorms from the good people in TV Land, new shows designed to entertain us and sell us many consumer goods. Our reaction to these pilots and previews will decide what's on the programming schedule this Fall. So, as a public service, bobcrespo.com has gotten hold of some clips and episodes from these TV hopefuls to let you know what we're in for. Let's check them out:
Six Blabbermouths Talking at Once: New from CBS, the producers figure they'll go "The View" one or two better with this lunchtime talk show featuring both men and women discussing anything that pops into their heads. In an interesting (maybe) twist, there will be no moderator and the show's panelists will spend the whole hour interrupting one another and getting loud, vicious and angry.
Real Lunkheads of Brooklyn: Forget that New Jersey moron with his "The Situation" 6-pack abs. Brooklyn-born producer Joe Blow of TNT has found a whole bunch of people even dopier than him, and with tip of the cap to The Jerry Springer Show, prone to sudden violence. We get to meet "Sticks" Fallon, Tony "Tech-9" Tumello, Lamar "Ice Pick" Johnson, Angel "Of Death" Guittierez and Ivan "The Terrible" Rostov,/span> 5 small time hoods leading violent and stupid ethnic gangs as they battle each other over drug corners and control of prostitution, protection and gambling rackets, all while trying to avoid getting whacked by the more competent and established criminal gangs. The idea is to see if any of them or their henchmen survive the entire season.
Law & Order, Parking Violations Bureau (PVB): Now that the flagship series of the L&O franchise has been cancelled, the producers have come up with another sure-fire winner. In Law & Order, PVB, you'll see PVB officers writing summons after summons on the streets of New York, with the occasional car tow-away for hardened scofflaws. This tense drama stars Andy Dick as the PVB field supervisor, Loretta Swit as the no-nonsense Motor Vehicles Department Judge, The Fat Guy from "KIng of Queens" as a tow truck driver and Megan Fox as the hot babe who always pushes the envelope when it comes to summons-issuing.
The Everything Sucks And I'm Surrounded By Traitors Show: This new political commentary show from Fox News will be hosted by talented newcomer Brandon "Iron" Birch, a commentator that Fox producers assure us is even more smug and ignorant than Bull O'Really, louder and less coherent that Glen Bucks and more filled with hate that Flush Limburger. Fox promises Mr. Birch will continue their "fair and balanced" (wink, wink) approach.
The Old Gay Guy, A Baby, A Ho, A Drunk And A Dwarf: This new situation comedy from ABC figures to out-Will & Grace "Will & Grace," and also "Two and A Half Men," "Big World, Little People" and the new show on USA network, "Real Crack Hos of The Bronx." The deal is that an old chicken hawk gay dude who lets handsome young men (and the hot women that attract them!) hang around his large, beautifully appointed Manhattan apartment in the hopes of any kind of action, has suddenly found himself with full custody of his jailed lover's baby girl. Starring David Hasselhoff as the old gay dude, he enlists the help of aging prostitute Tiffany Lamp (Sarah Palin), a young alcoholic slacker (Ashton Kutcher) as the object of both the wrinkly old dude's and the pathetic hooker's affections, and an irritable dwarf dog trainer named Stretch (Danny DeVito). Fun for the whole family! Tuesdays at 9.
HMO: Medical Battleground!: This gripping new medical drama takes place not inside any emergency room, clinic or hospital ward, but at the real front lines of providing medical care in America; inside the offices of Megahealth, Very Ltd., a huge health insurance corporation. Hold on to your seats as dedicated clerks and middle managers fend off deadbeats and charlatans seeking expensive medical treatments for pre-existing conditions and wasteful surgery for doomed children, and question the need for disposing of expensive latex gloves after every examination. Starring Corben Berenson as Vic Taney, Denials Manager, with Robert Vaughn as Billionaire CEO Martin Cheswick and Katey Sagal as their arch-nemesis Sneaky Sally, a box-store employee with a Mickey Mouse health insurance plan who keeps trying to get Megahealth Very Ltd. to foot the bill for dialysis treatments for her sullen, tantrum-prone daughter, played by one of the Olsen Twins, the producers are really not sure which one, but she looks appropriately sickly.
Celebrity Maury Povich Show: Identical to the regular Maury Povich Show, only this time the loose women are accusing famous men of being the father of their child. First episode: "Hold That Tiger!"
Judge Judy - Terror Court: This one is actually produced by the United States Government and taped on location at Guantanamo Prison in Cuba. Defendants are volunteers from the inmate population who are looking to end their incarceration one way or another and agree to abide by Judge Judy's decisions. The twist is that Judge Judy gets to hand out whatever punishment she feels like. Imagine the terrorists' surprise when she sentences them to being one of 72 "virgins" in Leavenworth Prison with "Property of The Aryan Nation" tattoos on their foreheads and buttocks.
Six Blabbermouths Talking at Once: New from CBS, the producers figure they'll go "The View" one or two better with this lunchtime talk show featuring both men and women discussing anything that pops into their heads. In an interesting (maybe) twist, there will be no moderator and the show's panelists will spend the whole hour interrupting one another and getting loud, vicious and angry.
Real Lunkheads of Brooklyn: Forget that New Jersey moron with his "The Situation" 6-pack abs. Brooklyn-born producer Joe Blow of TNT has found a whole bunch of people even dopier than him, and with tip of the cap to The Jerry Springer Show, prone to sudden violence. We get to meet "Sticks" Fallon, Tony "Tech-9" Tumello, Lamar "Ice Pick" Johnson, Angel "Of Death" Guittierez and Ivan "The Terrible" Rostov,/span> 5 small time hoods leading violent and stupid ethnic gangs as they battle each other over drug corners and control of prostitution, protection and gambling rackets, all while trying to avoid getting whacked by the more competent and established criminal gangs. The idea is to see if any of them or their henchmen survive the entire season.
Law & Order, Parking Violations Bureau (PVB): Now that the flagship series of the L&O franchise has been cancelled, the producers have come up with another sure-fire winner. In Law & Order, PVB, you'll see PVB officers writing summons after summons on the streets of New York, with the occasional car tow-away for hardened scofflaws. This tense drama stars Andy Dick as the PVB field supervisor, Loretta Swit as the no-nonsense Motor Vehicles Department Judge, The Fat Guy from "KIng of Queens" as a tow truck driver and Megan Fox as the hot babe who always pushes the envelope when it comes to summons-issuing.
The Everything Sucks And I'm Surrounded By Traitors Show: This new political commentary show from Fox News will be hosted by talented newcomer Brandon "Iron" Birch, a commentator that Fox producers assure us is even more smug and ignorant than Bull O'Really, louder and less coherent that Glen Bucks and more filled with hate that Flush Limburger. Fox promises Mr. Birch will continue their "fair and balanced" (wink, wink) approach.
The Old Gay Guy, A Baby, A Ho, A Drunk And A Dwarf: This new situation comedy from ABC figures to out-Will & Grace "Will & Grace," and also "Two and A Half Men," "Big World, Little People" and the new show on USA network, "Real Crack Hos of The Bronx." The deal is that an old chicken hawk gay dude who lets handsome young men (and the hot women that attract them!) hang around his large, beautifully appointed Manhattan apartment in the hopes of any kind of action, has suddenly found himself with full custody of his jailed lover's baby girl. Starring David Hasselhoff as the old gay dude, he enlists the help of aging prostitute Tiffany Lamp (Sarah Palin), a young alcoholic slacker (Ashton Kutcher) as the object of both the wrinkly old dude's and the pathetic hooker's affections, and an irritable dwarf dog trainer named Stretch (Danny DeVito). Fun for the whole family! Tuesdays at 9.
HMO: Medical Battleground!: This gripping new medical drama takes place not inside any emergency room, clinic or hospital ward, but at the real front lines of providing medical care in America; inside the offices of Megahealth, Very Ltd., a huge health insurance corporation. Hold on to your seats as dedicated clerks and middle managers fend off deadbeats and charlatans seeking expensive medical treatments for pre-existing conditions and wasteful surgery for doomed children, and question the need for disposing of expensive latex gloves after every examination. Starring Corben Berenson as Vic Taney, Denials Manager, with Robert Vaughn as Billionaire CEO Martin Cheswick and Katey Sagal as their arch-nemesis Sneaky Sally, a box-store employee with a Mickey Mouse health insurance plan who keeps trying to get Megahealth Very Ltd. to foot the bill for dialysis treatments for her sullen, tantrum-prone daughter, played by one of the Olsen Twins, the producers are really not sure which one, but she looks appropriately sickly.
Celebrity Maury Povich Show: Identical to the regular Maury Povich Show, only this time the loose women are accusing famous men of being the father of their child. First episode: "Hold That Tiger!"
Judge Judy - Terror Court: This one is actually produced by the United States Government and taped on location at Guantanamo Prison in Cuba. Defendants are volunteers from the inmate population who are looking to end their incarceration one way or another and agree to abide by Judge Judy's decisions. The twist is that Judge Judy gets to hand out whatever punishment she feels like. Imagine the terrorists' surprise when she sentences them to being one of 72 "virgins" in Leavenworth Prison with "Property of The Aryan Nation" tattoos on their foreheads and buttocks.
June 23, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 705
There will be Peace on Earth someday, no more war. Then we can come up with some other stupid destructive shit to pass the time.
A LESSON FROM A BABY MAMMOTH: REASONS NOT TO BE CHEERFUL
Here's a risk involved with global warming that not too many people talk about; that bacteria frozen for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years will thaw out and carry diseases that no creature living today has ever experienced. Our immune systems repel all sorts of invaders, and we've built up resistance and immunity to countless bacterium and viruses. Hell, we peacefully co-exits with billions of bacteria that reside permanently in and on our bodies.
Recently a 50,000 year-old baby Wooly Mammoth was exposed in Siberia, and scientists are preparing to send it to Paris for further study. Before they could do that, however, they had to heavily irradiate the carcass with gamma rays to kill all the germs residing within it. Unlike the Mammoth, those microbes can come back to life after being frozen for millennia, hence the massive doses of gamma rays.
Also unlike the mammoth, human beings have never been exposed to these potentially lethal microbes. Hopefully the Arctic Foxes that ate part of the mammoth before a hunter found it don't spread any fatal diseases. Imagine if global warming kicks into high gear and hundreds of thousands of prehistoric flash-frozen animal corpses start rotting in the sun?
There's only so many heavy duty gamma ray blasters to go around. Widespread thawing could launch wind-borne and scavenger-borne diseases that might ravage animals, plants and human beings alike. Penicillin might not do the trick. Very few doctors or scientists are familiar with these microbes.
One known poison to have previously emerged from ancient animal remains is anthrax, deadly scourge of livestock for many thousand of years and lately a realistic biological weapons threat. Just the mention of the word anthrax is enough for governments to start slaughtering and cremating thousands of healthy animals in deathly fear of a general outbreak, a catastrophic prospect. As familiar as we are with anthrax, we can't do much about it.
So, leaving aside whether or not global warming is our fault or if we can even do a damned thing about it, maybe the powers-that-be ought to think about all that unfrozen bacteria waiting in frozen limbo to kill that portion of humanity that doesn't drown when the oceans rise and claim the land. Maybe build some more gamma-ray blasters or get super busy researching medicines to fight germs that were around long before we were. What else is under the ice?
The only worse possible scenario would be America winning the World Cup and making soccer popular here. Bad enough we just might be living in the beginning of The End of Days, but having to put up with widespread soccer and that "gooooooallll!" guy might be even more irritating than extinction.
Recently a 50,000 year-old baby Wooly Mammoth was exposed in Siberia, and scientists are preparing to send it to Paris for further study. Before they could do that, however, they had to heavily irradiate the carcass with gamma rays to kill all the germs residing within it. Unlike the Mammoth, those microbes can come back to life after being frozen for millennia, hence the massive doses of gamma rays.
Also unlike the mammoth, human beings have never been exposed to these potentially lethal microbes. Hopefully the Arctic Foxes that ate part of the mammoth before a hunter found it don't spread any fatal diseases. Imagine if global warming kicks into high gear and hundreds of thousands of prehistoric flash-frozen animal corpses start rotting in the sun?
There's only so many heavy duty gamma ray blasters to go around. Widespread thawing could launch wind-borne and scavenger-borne diseases that might ravage animals, plants and human beings alike. Penicillin might not do the trick. Very few doctors or scientists are familiar with these microbes.
One known poison to have previously emerged from ancient animal remains is anthrax, deadly scourge of livestock for many thousand of years and lately a realistic biological weapons threat. Just the mention of the word anthrax is enough for governments to start slaughtering and cremating thousands of healthy animals in deathly fear of a general outbreak, a catastrophic prospect. As familiar as we are with anthrax, we can't do much about it.
So, leaving aside whether or not global warming is our fault or if we can even do a damned thing about it, maybe the powers-that-be ought to think about all that unfrozen bacteria waiting in frozen limbo to kill that portion of humanity that doesn't drown when the oceans rise and claim the land. Maybe build some more gamma-ray blasters or get super busy researching medicines to fight germs that were around long before we were. What else is under the ice?
The only worse possible scenario would be America winning the World Cup and making soccer popular here. Bad enough we just might be living in the beginning of The End of Days, but having to put up with widespread soccer and that "gooooooallll!" guy might be even more irritating than extinction.
June 21, 2010
UNMISTAKABLE SIGNS THAT YOU ARE FUCKED UP
Bobcrespo.com is doing yet another public service. We're just all about the love here at bcdc HQ, so here is a list of things that if you do, say or think, means that you are indeed Fucked Up. Here goes:
You have a TV in your bathroom: That's just Fucked Up any way you look at it.
You blew a hole in the ocean floor and are killing everything with crude oil: If that describes you, you are most definitely Fucked Up.
You think Steve Jobs is a cool guy: Okay, maybe the guy makes decent products, but there isn't a smugger, more irritating geek alive. Rich and smart as he might be, he's definitely Fucked Up. No need to join him.
You think health care is a bad thing: Exactly which part of providing medical care to sick people is the evil part? Would it be the medicine, the healing or the grateful smiles when a loved one recovers? If this rubs you the wrong way, that's a pretty good indication that you're Fucked Up.
You don't like ice cream: You're Fucked Up and there's little hope for your sorry ass.
You spend your spare time inventing new emoticons: We all hate you and you are Fucked Up. See if you can come up with one that resembles an extended middle finger and send it to yourself.
You prefer "Law & Order, SVU" or the lame-ass "Criminal Intent" one to the regular Law & Order: You got something against Sam Waterson's unibrow? That's Fucked Up!
You carry a man purse:Next!
You talk a whole lot about the Rapture: What the fuck is the Rapture? This is Christianity you're talking about here, right? Well it's based on this book, see, called the Bible, and pretty much everyone has a copy. You can't just make new stuff up! It's already been made up, and The Rapture ain't in it! That's just Fucked Up. You're not scaring anybody and you can go away now.
You are a member of a criminal gang: You're a maladjusted punk who can't make it on your own, and very Fucked Up. Nice tats, Bozo! That skull with a snake and a bloody knife is forever.
You're a boss at Goldman Sachs: Not only are you Fucked Up, you're the worst possible kind of bank robber ever, a boring one. You greedy pricks never stand the house a round of drinks after a big score, never spread any honey around town, you Goldman Sachs of shit! Go sit in you private art gallery and admire your Renoirs, you soulless creep.
You are a doctor or scientist and accept money from a corporation to lie about their dangerous product: You slimy betrayers know you're only a bunch of Fucked Up cheap whores.
You lie about another country so that Congress will let you invade them and steal their oil at the cost of over 100,000 lives: That's about as Fucked Up as a person can get.
You insist your woman wears a potato sack that covers her entire face and body when in public: How Fucked Up is that? What, you're ashamed of her? Listen, Abdul, don't take it out on the old lady just because you're on the wood and your medieval society demands you pretend otherwise. Be a man about it and just admit you're gay, it's no crime. Your crime is enslaving women. Tell those bearded old chicken hawks in muumuus that run your life to go fuck themselves.
You're a self-help guru with your own TV show: Odds are you're a bug-eyed scary creep and really Fucked Up. You might want to work on that.
There's not enough Apps on your brand new phone: Do us a favor and don't show how us all the wonderful thing your cell phone can do. How about making a damned phone call? When you come up with an App to make you less Fucked Up, let us know.
You're Glen Beck: Wow. Fucked Up doesn't even begin to describe how Fucked Up you are. There's not enough Thorazine on the planet to make you anything but the stupidest and most irritating Wus on earth. Who let this dog out?
You have a TV in your bathroom: That's just Fucked Up any way you look at it.
You blew a hole in the ocean floor and are killing everything with crude oil: If that describes you, you are most definitely Fucked Up.
You think Steve Jobs is a cool guy: Okay, maybe the guy makes decent products, but there isn't a smugger, more irritating geek alive. Rich and smart as he might be, he's definitely Fucked Up. No need to join him.
You think health care is a bad thing: Exactly which part of providing medical care to sick people is the evil part? Would it be the medicine, the healing or the grateful smiles when a loved one recovers? If this rubs you the wrong way, that's a pretty good indication that you're Fucked Up.
You don't like ice cream: You're Fucked Up and there's little hope for your sorry ass.
You spend your spare time inventing new emoticons: We all hate you and you are Fucked Up. See if you can come up with one that resembles an extended middle finger and send it to yourself.
You prefer "Law & Order, SVU" or the lame-ass "Criminal Intent" one to the regular Law & Order: You got something against Sam Waterson's unibrow? That's Fucked Up!
You carry a man purse:Next!
You talk a whole lot about the Rapture: What the fuck is the Rapture? This is Christianity you're talking about here, right? Well it's based on this book, see, called the Bible, and pretty much everyone has a copy. You can't just make new stuff up! It's already been made up, and The Rapture ain't in it! That's just Fucked Up. You're not scaring anybody and you can go away now.
You are a member of a criminal gang: You're a maladjusted punk who can't make it on your own, and very Fucked Up. Nice tats, Bozo! That skull with a snake and a bloody knife is forever.
You're a boss at Goldman Sachs: Not only are you Fucked Up, you're the worst possible kind of bank robber ever, a boring one. You greedy pricks never stand the house a round of drinks after a big score, never spread any honey around town, you Goldman Sachs of shit! Go sit in you private art gallery and admire your Renoirs, you soulless creep.
You are a doctor or scientist and accept money from a corporation to lie about their dangerous product: You slimy betrayers know you're only a bunch of Fucked Up cheap whores.
You lie about another country so that Congress will let you invade them and steal their oil at the cost of over 100,000 lives: That's about as Fucked Up as a person can get.
You insist your woman wears a potato sack that covers her entire face and body when in public: How Fucked Up is that? What, you're ashamed of her? Listen, Abdul, don't take it out on the old lady just because you're on the wood and your medieval society demands you pretend otherwise. Be a man about it and just admit you're gay, it's no crime. Your crime is enslaving women. Tell those bearded old chicken hawks in muumuus that run your life to go fuck themselves.
You're a self-help guru with your own TV show: Odds are you're a bug-eyed scary creep and really Fucked Up. You might want to work on that.
There's not enough Apps on your brand new phone: Do us a favor and don't show how us all the wonderful thing your cell phone can do. How about making a damned phone call? When you come up with an App to make you less Fucked Up, let us know.
You're Glen Beck: Wow. Fucked Up doesn't even begin to describe how Fucked Up you are. There's not enough Thorazine on the planet to make you anything but the stupidest and most irritating Wus on earth. Who let this dog out?
June 19, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 703
Life doesn't get much better than Tom Jones singing "You Can Leave Your Hat On."
THE LITTLE MAYOR WHO COULDN'T... STOP BREAKING BALLS (WTF?)
So now our diminutive multibillionaire Mayor here in Skyscraper Park, Little Mikey Bloomberg, has had another brainstorm designed to make life a little more difficult for non-wealthy New Yorkers. Seem he thinks our parks are too crowded. Okay, so what's the plan, lil' fella?
Build some more parks, right? There's some available land here and there in the BIg Apple, and it might be a good idea to give everybody a few more quiet patches of green to relax on, the better to appreciate the contrast to the hustle and bustle that defines our daily lives in the man-made canyons in this citiest of cities. Heck, we love our parks, big and small.
Not so fast, Mr. & Mrs. UThinkUMatter, Little Mikey's got a better idea! Get rid of a lot of the food vendors, artists and entertainers that are a unique and colorful bonus of life in New York. Mikey figures people will make their park visits less frequent and shorter if their surroundings are less interesting, more like other cities' parks. Pleasant but dull.
Playing the mayor's trump card in his manic war on street and public park vendors, Mayor Bloomberg began aggressively revoking park and vending licenses and denying new permits, pulling the figure out of his ass of 81 vendors allowed in Central Park, which is a huge park. Citizens rallied to the vendors' side, and now he's backing off that figure, but some licenses will be lost, which translates to jobs and livelihoods lost and families made desperate. Isn't there enough of that going around these days without aggressively adding to it?
For the mayor and "his people," whoever the hell they are, to speak blandly of "licenses" instead of the real human beings each license represents, only reminds us what a bad idea it is to elect billionaires to public office. They are not even a part of the public, but a separate class of beings, never among us, always apart in an unreal world of private clubs, limousines, multiple vast estates, private jets, servants, security and complete isolation from the masses.
In a city with very many wealthy individuals, the billionaires are the Bosses of Bosses in this tiny hidden community made up of a pampered elite who want nothing more than to cavort in high style without having to be unduly aware of the riffraff who built and run this town. Oh, you can fetch their drinks alright, hold an umbrella over them while getting soaked yourself as they scamper from the limo, and you may also qualify scrub their marble palaces for slim wages, just don't pretend you count for anything other than that.
Having a billion dollars means having more money than 100 very, very rich people combined. Having tens of billions of dollars puts about 100 layers of people between you and reality, every billionaire a cocoon-bound Howard Hughes minus the manic hand scrubbing, living in a bubble of luxury and seldom hearing the word "no" unless it is coming out of their own mouths.
When was the last time you ran into a billionaire on line in the supermarket or at the dry cleaners? How many of your children's classmates in public school are the offspring of billionaires? Ever sit next to one at a ball game? Any of their kids joining the army to serve their country or simply to qualify for G.I. educational benefits, risking life, limb and sanity fighting rich men's wars?
Now, our little Mayor Mikey, he fancies himself a "Billionaire of The People" (¡As if there could ever possibly be such a creature!) because he regularly rides the subway, just like any other New Yorker. That is, any other New Yorker who's got a bunch of guys with guns and walkie-talkies following his every move and has the train dispatcher alerted as to which train you are on so there will be no delays.
Mayor Mikey ever show up on your block to see how you're getting along? If he does, it is with a huge entourage of (!) handlers (don't only mental patients and dancing bears qualify to have handlers?), "advance men" (WTF?), security specialists and hordes of reporters with cameras who make sure his every moment among "the peoople" is staged and choreographed so that he has no direct contact at all with the citizens he leads.
This is your cue to hide your wallet. This is the little prick behind trying to ban smoking outdoors, who tells people what kind of fat they are permitted to fry their food in and commands us to consume less sugar, all the while jacking up the price of municipal services and parking tickets sky high, while inventing countless new "fines and fees" to be levied on those of us less than enthusiastic about his vision of New York City, a vision that has little to do with reality.
Towards this end he fills our city jails each week with poor people who have committed the most minor of infractions, mostly for having the temerity to be seen and heard in his city. Thousands of New York's poor are subjected to regular police "sweeps" designed to keep as many poor people out of sight for as long as possible, since being poor definitely doesn't fit in with his "vision" of New York as a swanky playground for the monied elite.
234 years after gaining our independence from monarchs, New York City is the last bastion of America to suffer under one-man-rule. This city of 8 million people does not have a representative government, with only a powerless and corrupt City Council in lieu of a legislative branch of government. That is the equivalent of the nation of Austria being administered by one man, with no local mayors, legislators, aldermen and what-have-you representing the interests of smaller constituencies. The mayor does as he pleases, needing to consult no one, and that's the way a CEO billionaire like Bloomberg likes it.
This little man has been doing his best for 9 years and counting to make life in this country's most expensive city even more expensive and now he wants us to sit in our own public parks without access to a damned hot dog or an ice cream cone while perusing the works of a struggling young artist or listening to a talented troubadour. Can we toss a ball around, maybe, or is there a new fine in place for having a catch with your kid? If Mikey wanted that law passed, there's no congress or senate here to stop him.
What the fuck would a guy like that know about people, or parks, or street artists or hard-working vendors with families to support? Or the millions of New Yorkers and tourists who really dig having them around. Apparently we're all "licenses" to Little MIkey, to be revoked or denied as is his whim, or jailed for the weekend or longer if we step out of line.
So if you are not one of the wealthy elite in New York City, do try not to be too conspicuous and breathe too much air, would you? Little Mikey is making it abundantly clear that this is their town, and he's the Boss of All Bosses in NewYork. We're just here to pay the bills and make their ride a sweeter one. Thanks, Little Mikey, but...
Build some more parks, right? There's some available land here and there in the BIg Apple, and it might be a good idea to give everybody a few more quiet patches of green to relax on, the better to appreciate the contrast to the hustle and bustle that defines our daily lives in the man-made canyons in this citiest of cities. Heck, we love our parks, big and small.
Not so fast, Mr. & Mrs. UThinkUMatter, Little Mikey's got a better idea! Get rid of a lot of the food vendors, artists and entertainers that are a unique and colorful bonus of life in New York. Mikey figures people will make their park visits less frequent and shorter if their surroundings are less interesting, more like other cities' parks. Pleasant but dull.
Playing the mayor's trump card in his manic war on street and public park vendors, Mayor Bloomberg began aggressively revoking park and vending licenses and denying new permits, pulling the figure out of his ass of 81 vendors allowed in Central Park, which is a huge park. Citizens rallied to the vendors' side, and now he's backing off that figure, but some licenses will be lost, which translates to jobs and livelihoods lost and families made desperate. Isn't there enough of that going around these days without aggressively adding to it?
For the mayor and "his people," whoever the hell they are, to speak blandly of "licenses" instead of the real human beings each license represents, only reminds us what a bad idea it is to elect billionaires to public office. They are not even a part of the public, but a separate class of beings, never among us, always apart in an unreal world of private clubs, limousines, multiple vast estates, private jets, servants, security and complete isolation from the masses.
In a city with very many wealthy individuals, the billionaires are the Bosses of Bosses in this tiny hidden community made up of a pampered elite who want nothing more than to cavort in high style without having to be unduly aware of the riffraff who built and run this town. Oh, you can fetch their drinks alright, hold an umbrella over them while getting soaked yourself as they scamper from the limo, and you may also qualify scrub their marble palaces for slim wages, just don't pretend you count for anything other than that.
Having a billion dollars means having more money than 100 very, very rich people combined. Having tens of billions of dollars puts about 100 layers of people between you and reality, every billionaire a cocoon-bound Howard Hughes minus the manic hand scrubbing, living in a bubble of luxury and seldom hearing the word "no" unless it is coming out of their own mouths.
When was the last time you ran into a billionaire on line in the supermarket or at the dry cleaners? How many of your children's classmates in public school are the offspring of billionaires? Ever sit next to one at a ball game? Any of their kids joining the army to serve their country or simply to qualify for G.I. educational benefits, risking life, limb and sanity fighting rich men's wars?
Now, our little Mayor Mikey, he fancies himself a "Billionaire of The People" (¡As if there could ever possibly be such a creature!) because he regularly rides the subway, just like any other New Yorker. That is, any other New Yorker who's got a bunch of guys with guns and walkie-talkies following his every move and has the train dispatcher alerted as to which train you are on so there will be no delays.
Mayor Mikey ever show up on your block to see how you're getting along? If he does, it is with a huge entourage of (!) handlers (don't only mental patients and dancing bears qualify to have handlers?), "advance men" (WTF?), security specialists and hordes of reporters with cameras who make sure his every moment among "the peoople" is staged and choreographed so that he has no direct contact at all with the citizens he leads.
This is your cue to hide your wallet. This is the little prick behind trying to ban smoking outdoors, who tells people what kind of fat they are permitted to fry their food in and commands us to consume less sugar, all the while jacking up the price of municipal services and parking tickets sky high, while inventing countless new "fines and fees" to be levied on those of us less than enthusiastic about his vision of New York City, a vision that has little to do with reality.
Towards this end he fills our city jails each week with poor people who have committed the most minor of infractions, mostly for having the temerity to be seen and heard in his city. Thousands of New York's poor are subjected to regular police "sweeps" designed to keep as many poor people out of sight for as long as possible, since being poor definitely doesn't fit in with his "vision" of New York as a swanky playground for the monied elite.
234 years after gaining our independence from monarchs, New York City is the last bastion of America to suffer under one-man-rule. This city of 8 million people does not have a representative government, with only a powerless and corrupt City Council in lieu of a legislative branch of government. That is the equivalent of the nation of Austria being administered by one man, with no local mayors, legislators, aldermen and what-have-you representing the interests of smaller constituencies. The mayor does as he pleases, needing to consult no one, and that's the way a CEO billionaire like Bloomberg likes it.
This little man has been doing his best for 9 years and counting to make life in this country's most expensive city even more expensive and now he wants us to sit in our own public parks without access to a damned hot dog or an ice cream cone while perusing the works of a struggling young artist or listening to a talented troubadour. Can we toss a ball around, maybe, or is there a new fine in place for having a catch with your kid? If Mikey wanted that law passed, there's no congress or senate here to stop him.
What the fuck would a guy like that know about people, or parks, or street artists or hard-working vendors with families to support? Or the millions of New Yorkers and tourists who really dig having them around. Apparently we're all "licenses" to Little MIkey, to be revoked or denied as is his whim, or jailed for the weekend or longer if we step out of line.
So if you are not one of the wealthy elite in New York City, do try not to be too conspicuous and breathe too much air, would you? Little Mikey is making it abundantly clear that this is their town, and he's the Boss of All Bosses in NewYork. We're just here to pay the bills and make their ride a sweeter one. Thanks, Little Mikey, but...
June 17, 2010
MORE HEADLINES WE'D LOVE TO SEE
Bobcrespo.com feels your pain. We know only too well you're wondering when it will be safe to read the papers and watch the news again. Simply put, there's just nothing good happening lately, and to add insult to injury, it's World Cup time, which has become somehow even more irritating with the addition of the screeching vuvuzela horns. But we can pretend, can't we? Let's just slap up some decent headlines for just one day and make the world go away! Who wouldn't welcome these headlines?:
OBAMA KICKS BRITISH PETROLEUM BOSS' ASS ON LARRY KING LIVE
BEN & JERRY'S ROCKY ROAD FOUND TO CURE CANCER
MIRACLE CROP REVEALED, GLOBAL STARVATION ELIMINATED
LEBRON JAMES SIGNS WITH BROOKLYN NETS
NO GOALS SCORED IN ANY GAMES, WORLD CUP DECLARED A 32- WAY TIE AND CANCELLED FOREVER
SARAH PALIN SUFFERING FROM LARYNGITIS
A CRISIS OCCURS FAR AWAY AND US NAVY SHIPS DON'T RESPOND,
"NONE OF OUR BUSINESS" SAYS PREZ
MASS RESIGNATIONS ON WALL STREET! STOCKHOLDER REVOLT FORCES OUT CRIMINAL CEOS
FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES RETURN THEIR FACTORIES TO AMERICAN SOIL, MILLIONS EMPLOYED
MANNED MARS MISSION LAUNCHED
OSAMA BIN LADEN CAPTURED, AL QAEDA DISBANDED
BOTH WARS ENDED, TROOPS ON THEIR WAY HOME
AMERICA HALVES MILITARY BUDGET, INVESTS IN EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, RESEARCH AND INFRASTRUCTURE
PROMINENT MUSLIM CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE COMPLETE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT CHRISTIAN CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE COMPLETE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT HINDU CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT JEWISH CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT SCIENTOLOGISTS ADMIT THAT EVEN THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL SCIENTOLOGY STANDS FOR
PROMINENT WORLD LEADERS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, VOW TO DELIVER WORLD PEACE
GUY WITHOUT SPIKY HAIR WINS AMERICAN IDOL
GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK WINS GOOD CITIZENSHIP AWARD
PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS SHUNNED BY CONGRESS, CORPORATE TAX BREAKS CANCELLED
CHEAP, EFFECTIVE SOLAR POWER UNVEILED, OIL WELLS ABANDONED, OPEC FINISHED
KEY TO PERFECT HEALTH FOUND - BEER!
OBAMA KICKS BRITISH PETROLEUM BOSS' ASS ON LARRY KING LIVE
BEN & JERRY'S ROCKY ROAD FOUND TO CURE CANCER
MIRACLE CROP REVEALED, GLOBAL STARVATION ELIMINATED
LEBRON JAMES SIGNS WITH BROOKLYN NETS
NO GOALS SCORED IN ANY GAMES, WORLD CUP DECLARED A 32- WAY TIE AND CANCELLED FOREVER
SARAH PALIN SUFFERING FROM LARYNGITIS
A CRISIS OCCURS FAR AWAY AND US NAVY SHIPS DON'T RESPOND,
"NONE OF OUR BUSINESS" SAYS PREZ
MASS RESIGNATIONS ON WALL STREET! STOCKHOLDER REVOLT FORCES OUT CRIMINAL CEOS
FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES RETURN THEIR FACTORIES TO AMERICAN SOIL, MILLIONS EMPLOYED
MANNED MARS MISSION LAUNCHED
OSAMA BIN LADEN CAPTURED, AL QAEDA DISBANDED
BOTH WARS ENDED, TROOPS ON THEIR WAY HOME
AMERICA HALVES MILITARY BUDGET, INVESTS IN EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, RESEARCH AND INFRASTRUCTURE
PROMINENT MUSLIM CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE COMPLETE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT CHRISTIAN CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE COMPLETE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT HINDU CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT JEWISH CLERICS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, EMBRACE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
PROMINENT SCIENTOLOGISTS ADMIT THAT EVEN THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL SCIENTOLOGY STANDS FOR
PROMINENT WORLD LEADERS CONDEMN VIOLENCE, VOW TO DELIVER WORLD PEACE
GUY WITHOUT SPIKY HAIR WINS AMERICAN IDOL
GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK WINS GOOD CITIZENSHIP AWARD
PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS SHUNNED BY CONGRESS, CORPORATE TAX BREAKS CANCELLED
CHEAP, EFFECTIVE SOLAR POWER UNVEILED, OIL WELLS ABANDONED, OPEC FINISHED
KEY TO PERFECT HEALTH FOUND - BEER!
June 14, 2010
ANOTHER UNNATURAL DISASTER: THE WORLD CUP
Bad enough we'd all barely gotten over the mind-numbingly dull Winter Olympics only to receive the news that from now on the Gulf of Mexico is off-limits to fish, fowl and humans, now we are forced to pay attention to something called The World Cup. Soccer blows and Americans never felt obligated to pretend otherwise. Why the hoopla now? Can't we just ignore the silly thing like we used to?
Are we so traumatized living in these perilous times that we crave a spectacle and will grasp at any distraction that presents itself, no matter how asinine? Thanks to Cable TV, we are now subject to endless promotion of the most boring sport this side of curling, every tedious match televised, every news talking head and sportscaster pretending to give a crap about soccer.
Curiously, none of them mention the fact that the British, our former masters and long-time "ally," are not only the people responsible for the disastrous Gulf oil spill, but the ones who invented soccer to give the illusion that British people could compete in a sport that doesn't involve conquering and oppressing Third World nations. Some friends.
Right-thinking Americans live in fear of America ever winning the damned World Cup and making the game popular here, a distinct possibility if anyone ever gets the brainstorm to employ skilled athletes instead of soccer players.
The World Cup is the quadrennial world championship of soccer, called football by the rest of the world since only two guys on the field are nimble enough to be allowed to use their hands while the other 20 guys just lamely flail at the ball with their legs (erroneously called "kicking") or slam it with their heads and faces without a helmet.
They do this while running aimlessly back and forth a huge field for 90 minutes with only one break while doing their best not to let the ball go into either of the gigantic goals on both ends or they will be forced to endure a maniacal announcer shrieking "gooooooaaaaaalllll!!!" at them in a painfully screechy voice for ten minutes straight.
This so unnerves the team who let the ball escape that they usually don't make that mistake again and for the rest of the game the ball doesn't get anywhere near the forbidden goal areas. After all this willy-nilly running around and flailing and face-slamming, the score of a soccer game is usually 1-0 or 1-1, with the occasional 2 or 3-1 score, which sends soccer crowds into a frenzy. Talk about your low expectations. Imagine their delirium if they were watching a sport involving actual athletes where something really happened?
Somehow this nonsense got to be the most popular sport on the planet, not all that impressive when you consider that the most popular organized human activity of all is war. Unfortunately, unlike in war, all the participants in a soccer match survive to flounder about another day, and it looks like they'll be back to annoy the crap out of us every four years. This is a menace and a disgrace, and the government does nothing about it!
Are we so traumatized living in these perilous times that we crave a spectacle and will grasp at any distraction that presents itself, no matter how asinine? Thanks to Cable TV, we are now subject to endless promotion of the most boring sport this side of curling, every tedious match televised, every news talking head and sportscaster pretending to give a crap about soccer.
Curiously, none of them mention the fact that the British, our former masters and long-time "ally," are not only the people responsible for the disastrous Gulf oil spill, but the ones who invented soccer to give the illusion that British people could compete in a sport that doesn't involve conquering and oppressing Third World nations. Some friends.
Right-thinking Americans live in fear of America ever winning the damned World Cup and making the game popular here, a distinct possibility if anyone ever gets the brainstorm to employ skilled athletes instead of soccer players.
The World Cup is the quadrennial world championship of soccer, called football by the rest of the world since only two guys on the field are nimble enough to be allowed to use their hands while the other 20 guys just lamely flail at the ball with their legs (erroneously called "kicking") or slam it with their heads and faces without a helmet.
They do this while running aimlessly back and forth a huge field for 90 minutes with only one break while doing their best not to let the ball go into either of the gigantic goals on both ends or they will be forced to endure a maniacal announcer shrieking "gooooooaaaaaalllll!!!" at them in a painfully screechy voice for ten minutes straight.
This so unnerves the team who let the ball escape that they usually don't make that mistake again and for the rest of the game the ball doesn't get anywhere near the forbidden goal areas. After all this willy-nilly running around and flailing and face-slamming, the score of a soccer game is usually 1-0 or 1-1, with the occasional 2 or 3-1 score, which sends soccer crowds into a frenzy. Talk about your low expectations. Imagine their delirium if they were watching a sport involving actual athletes where something really happened?
Somehow this nonsense got to be the most popular sport on the planet, not all that impressive when you consider that the most popular organized human activity of all is war. Unfortunately, unlike in war, all the participants in a soccer match survive to flounder about another day, and it looks like they'll be back to annoy the crap out of us every four years. This is a menace and a disgrace, and the government does nothing about it!
June 12, 2010
DOPOTO REPORTS: THINGS THAT DON'T COME AS A SHOCK
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has had an easy time of it lately. Not that there has been a flood of good news or anything else so unusual, it's just that the job of The Department is merely to point out the obvious, whether there is good news, bad news or neutral news. Our function is merely to point out the emperor's new clothes.
The dominant story in the news lately, the massive oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is for the most part a transparent and readily obvious tale, in little need of pointing out the obvious. Everybody with a marginally functional brain knows that this is a disaster of global proportions since the Gulf Stream circles the world and regulates Earth's climate, that the executives at British Petroleum are a bunch of lying sacks of shit and that the United States Government is reaping the dubious rewards of a policy of deregulation started in the 1970's.
The only shock about all this is that it comes as a shock to many people. Why? Everything described above is a matter of public record, with the slide into deregulation having already resulted in hundreds of serious economic scandals, culminating in the Economic Disaster of 2008, The Gulf Spill of Economics that saw $7 trillion in wealth and millions of jobs and retirement incomes disappear, and threw the housing market into the disarray of fraudulent practices, widespread foreclosures and property abandonment.
There are still many dangerous criminal cowboys disguised as bankers running roughshod (and unregulated) over the world's money supply. In a world where every convenience store has a security camera trained on the cash register to prevent theft, the idea that the honor system was just fine when it comes to the people handling all the money in the world seems pretty foolish in retrospect. Since the Era of Deregulation began, the financial industries have attracted a small army of thieves, gamblers and con artists whose crimes have made history's biggest bank heists nickel and dime affairs by comparison.
Similarly, oil companies are led no longer by self-made wild cat entrepreneurs, engineers and energy specialists, but by corporate thugs with no conscience There are over 3,500 off-shore oil rigs operating off the coastlines of America, 3,000 in the Gulf of Mexico, each with the potential to blow and spew just like the BP rig. Every one of them operates almost regulation-free, and the only surprise about the BP Spill is that it didn't happen sooner, in spite of the almost comic assurance of Big Oil press agents.
Few are fooled by the posturing of Big Oil executives or the politicians that are in their pocket. One picture of a greasy pelican trying to lift itself out of the black sludge that used to be the blue sea like some dinosaur in the La Brea Tar Pits puts the whole thing in its proper perspective. This could happen 3,000 more times in the Gulf of Mexico alone, never mind the rest of the world.
An obvious conclusion to be drawn here is that regulation is a fact of life for everybody everywhere. They are called laws and individuals are punished for breaking them, whether the charge is jaywalking or murder. The average person would be punished for putting raw garbage onto public streets or pumping their sewage into a river that supplies their town drinking water.
The head of the household would be held personally responsible and forced to clean up their act and make reparations to those they had harmed and/or face a jail sentence. They would not be permitted to blame their child or the family dog, or convince the town elders to clean up their mess. Then again, the average person has not spent billions corrupting the political process so that they don't have to answer for their crimes, whether it's stealing your money or polluting your children's future.
One other obvious conclusion our specialty!) to be drawn from all this is that there is no viable technology in existence to deal with catastrophic undersea oil spills. That was apparent the moment BP started to solicit high school students for ideas (We're wide open!) on how to cap the well, and even tried stuffing it with (!) golf balls and garbage at one point. Rumor has it that they are even in secret negotiations with Vince the Sham Wow! guy to sop up the oil and wring it out into tanker ships.
That's like Henry Ford deciding to install brakes and steering wheels in his cars only after selling thousands and thousands of them, something that should have occurred to him before letting all those people put the pedal to the metal. Building mechanized vehicles that can operate at high speeds, just like the feat of sucking that vehicle's fuel from a mile below the ocean's surface with giant machines, is impressive technology, but not that impressive unless you can stop the damned things and operate them safely. Sometimes the obvious is the most elusive solution of all.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.
The dominant story in the news lately, the massive oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is for the most part a transparent and readily obvious tale, in little need of pointing out the obvious. Everybody with a marginally functional brain knows that this is a disaster of global proportions since the Gulf Stream circles the world and regulates Earth's climate, that the executives at British Petroleum are a bunch of lying sacks of shit and that the United States Government is reaping the dubious rewards of a policy of deregulation started in the 1970's.
The only shock about all this is that it comes as a shock to many people. Why? Everything described above is a matter of public record, with the slide into deregulation having already resulted in hundreds of serious economic scandals, culminating in the Economic Disaster of 2008, The Gulf Spill of Economics that saw $7 trillion in wealth and millions of jobs and retirement incomes disappear, and threw the housing market into the disarray of fraudulent practices, widespread foreclosures and property abandonment.
There are still many dangerous criminal cowboys disguised as bankers running roughshod (and unregulated) over the world's money supply. In a world where every convenience store has a security camera trained on the cash register to prevent theft, the idea that the honor system was just fine when it comes to the people handling all the money in the world seems pretty foolish in retrospect. Since the Era of Deregulation began, the financial industries have attracted a small army of thieves, gamblers and con artists whose crimes have made history's biggest bank heists nickel and dime affairs by comparison.
Similarly, oil companies are led no longer by self-made wild cat entrepreneurs, engineers and energy specialists, but by corporate thugs with no conscience There are over 3,500 off-shore oil rigs operating off the coastlines of America, 3,000 in the Gulf of Mexico, each with the potential to blow and spew just like the BP rig. Every one of them operates almost regulation-free, and the only surprise about the BP Spill is that it didn't happen sooner, in spite of the almost comic assurance of Big Oil press agents.
Few are fooled by the posturing of Big Oil executives or the politicians that are in their pocket. One picture of a greasy pelican trying to lift itself out of the black sludge that used to be the blue sea like some dinosaur in the La Brea Tar Pits puts the whole thing in its proper perspective. This could happen 3,000 more times in the Gulf of Mexico alone, never mind the rest of the world.
An obvious conclusion to be drawn here is that regulation is a fact of life for everybody everywhere. They are called laws and individuals are punished for breaking them, whether the charge is jaywalking or murder. The average person would be punished for putting raw garbage onto public streets or pumping their sewage into a river that supplies their town drinking water.
The head of the household would be held personally responsible and forced to clean up their act and make reparations to those they had harmed and/or face a jail sentence. They would not be permitted to blame their child or the family dog, or convince the town elders to clean up their mess. Then again, the average person has not spent billions corrupting the political process so that they don't have to answer for their crimes, whether it's stealing your money or polluting your children's future.
One other obvious conclusion our specialty!) to be drawn from all this is that there is no viable technology in existence to deal with catastrophic undersea oil spills. That was apparent the moment BP started to solicit high school students for ideas (We're wide open!) on how to cap the well, and even tried stuffing it with (!) golf balls and garbage at one point. Rumor has it that they are even in secret negotiations with Vince the Sham Wow! guy to sop up the oil and wring it out into tanker ships.
That's like Henry Ford deciding to install brakes and steering wheels in his cars only after selling thousands and thousands of them, something that should have occurred to him before letting all those people put the pedal to the metal. Building mechanized vehicles that can operate at high speeds, just like the feat of sucking that vehicle's fuel from a mile below the ocean's surface with giant machines, is impressive technology, but not that impressive unless you can stop the damned things and operate them safely. Sometimes the obvious is the most elusive solution of all.
This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.
June 10, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 699
Every so often a flash of genius or insight will give hope to all humanity. Then we fuck it up completely and things go back to normal.
MICRO-AGES OF MAN IN EXACTLY 500 WORDS
There's lots of good things going on these days; cool stuff, fun stuff, nice things being done, complicated technology transforming daily lives, and a whole lot of good people all over the place doing their best to live right and keep their families safe and warm. That sentence could describe a lot of eras in history, The Industrial Revolution, the Bronze Age, The Navigation Age or even The Advent of Fire. The Wheel.
The difference is that this current era, the Information Age, is evolving even faster than even the Industrial Revolution, which threw a mostly agrarian humanity for a loop and after only about 200 years culminated in a super-mechanized World War that killed 60 million people. That was pretty traumatic for everybody. We're still not over it.
Time was, there was a whole bunch of centuries used up in an Age. The Iron Age took up almost 1,000 years. The Bronze Age? Over 2,000, plenty of time for everybody to get the hang of bronze.
Then someone invented a printing press, and whammo!, now everyone can read. Not only that, they noticed that this printing press thing is a machine, then they all start building machines until all the farmboys are choking in some rich guy's sweaty foundry or driving a tank in somebody's army somewhere, while giant machines did the farm work. Then it all blew up in our faces. Literally.
Most of humanity spent the entire Industrial Revolution playing catch-up ball and the space between haves and have-nots became a chasm. Then, without even a chance for everybody to get used to internal combustion, Bam!, here comes the Information Age and now we're really behind the 8 ball! Just to rub it in, we are reminded every 6 months by Steve Jobs that we are all hopelessly out of date and falling pathetically behind. Dang!
And you just know that The information Age is going to go whip right by in a matter of decades, the blink of an eye in terms of history, and then give way to some other Micro Age that we are not prepared for either, not when your greatest technical accomplishment is learning what the F12 key does.
This next one, we are told, will involve hooking human brains up to the internet and seeding the planet with trillions of tiny sensors so that a field of tomatoes tells you when they are ripe. Very Borg. Hopefully, this sharing of brain and internet will get us all up to speed on what's expected of us, since most of us are still completely dependent upon strangers from India using assumed names to help us cope with the Information Age.
The only thing we can be sure about the next Micro-Age is that we won't have the luxury of much time to adjust, sort of unfair to beings that took 2,5000 years to master bronze. If this Information Age ends so swiftly, how long will the next one last, or the next or the next Micro-Age? 15 minutes? Maybe Warhol was right.
The difference is that this current era, the Information Age, is evolving even faster than even the Industrial Revolution, which threw a mostly agrarian humanity for a loop and after only about 200 years culminated in a super-mechanized World War that killed 60 million people. That was pretty traumatic for everybody. We're still not over it.
Time was, there was a whole bunch of centuries used up in an Age. The Iron Age took up almost 1,000 years. The Bronze Age? Over 2,000, plenty of time for everybody to get the hang of bronze.
Then someone invented a printing press, and whammo!, now everyone can read. Not only that, they noticed that this printing press thing is a machine, then they all start building machines until all the farmboys are choking in some rich guy's sweaty foundry or driving a tank in somebody's army somewhere, while giant machines did the farm work. Then it all blew up in our faces. Literally.
Most of humanity spent the entire Industrial Revolution playing catch-up ball and the space between haves and have-nots became a chasm. Then, without even a chance for everybody to get used to internal combustion, Bam!, here comes the Information Age and now we're really behind the 8 ball! Just to rub it in, we are reminded every 6 months by Steve Jobs that we are all hopelessly out of date and falling pathetically behind. Dang!
And you just know that The information Age is going to go whip right by in a matter of decades, the blink of an eye in terms of history, and then give way to some other Micro Age that we are not prepared for either, not when your greatest technical accomplishment is learning what the F12 key does.
This next one, we are told, will involve hooking human brains up to the internet and seeding the planet with trillions of tiny sensors so that a field of tomatoes tells you when they are ripe. Very Borg. Hopefully, this sharing of brain and internet will get us all up to speed on what's expected of us, since most of us are still completely dependent upon strangers from India using assumed names to help us cope with the Information Age.
The only thing we can be sure about the next Micro-Age is that we won't have the luxury of much time to adjust, sort of unfair to beings that took 2,5000 years to master bronze. If this Information Age ends so swiftly, how long will the next one last, or the next or the next Micro-Age? 15 minutes? Maybe Warhol was right.
June 9, 2010
DON'T YOU HATE IT WHEN...
With a tip of the hat to the old Saturday Night Live skit with Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest, today bobcrespo.com reviews things that almost everybody in the world hates. Any of these sound familiar?
Don't you hate it when someone bursts upon the political scene and says great things that make a whole lot of sense and gets you excited about politics again, then all of a sudden starts doing and saying really stupid things? Over and over and over again until it's clear this person is just another batshit power addict with a hateful agenda and we got fooled again? Didn't The Who warn us about that shit? Dang! Don't you just hate that?
Don't you hate it when batshit crazy politicians get taken seriously by otherwise reasonable people? As our wacky teenagers say, WTF!
Don't you hate it when you're pitching a perfect game in the Major Leagues until 2 outs in the 9th inning only to lose it when the umpire makes a lousy call that even he admitted was wrong? Not that any of us will pitch a perfect game, but a lot of us know the feeling. The tough thing is that the pitcher who almost grabbed the brass ring, Andres Galarraga, is only 28 years old. You should be at least 40 before experiencing such crushing disillusion.
Don't you hate it when so-called men of God are silent about the great evils of their time, specifically today's Islamic leaders who are too cowardly or ignorant to stand up to those who have caused their religion to be viewed as synonymous with hatred and violence, sort of the exact opposite of what religions are supposed to be about? Doesn't that bother them? They can bitch and moan all they want about unfair profiling and no one will pay them any mind until their words and deeds prove otherwise.
Don't do you hate it when some people approach a milestone in human development as a conspiracy designed to undermine everything good and decent? Within our grasp as a society is the ability to provide quality medical care for every person.That's a sinister plot? Doctors healing babies? Granny getting her dialysis? Little kids getting stitched up after a nasty spill? As impossible as this sounds, somehow, somebody convinced people that this is evil, even though over 99% of Americans would have their lives changed for the better with the implementation of Universal Health Care.
The other less than 1%? They're very, very wealthy and they own and run America. Which is a hell of a thing when you realize that most people don't like rich people all that much. Why let them run everything? It's the very wealthy who proposed the crazy idea that health care equals tyranny. There's really no concept crazier than that, especially coming from people who have always enjoyed access to quality health care and the better life that provides. You wonder why they wouldn't want that for everybody, and you ask yourself "Gee, isn't medical care a good thing?" No wonder nobody likes the rich.
Don't you hate it when someone bursts upon the political scene and says great things that make a whole lot of sense and gets you excited about politics again, then all of a sudden starts doing and saying really stupid things? Over and over and over again until it's clear this person is just another batshit power addict with a hateful agenda and we got fooled again? Didn't The Who warn us about that shit? Dang! Don't you just hate that?
Don't you hate it when batshit crazy politicians get taken seriously by otherwise reasonable people? As our wacky teenagers say, WTF!
Don't you hate it when you're pitching a perfect game in the Major Leagues until 2 outs in the 9th inning only to lose it when the umpire makes a lousy call that even he admitted was wrong? Not that any of us will pitch a perfect game, but a lot of us know the feeling. The tough thing is that the pitcher who almost grabbed the brass ring, Andres Galarraga, is only 28 years old. You should be at least 40 before experiencing such crushing disillusion.
Don't you hate it when so-called men of God are silent about the great evils of their time, specifically today's Islamic leaders who are too cowardly or ignorant to stand up to those who have caused their religion to be viewed as synonymous with hatred and violence, sort of the exact opposite of what religions are supposed to be about? Doesn't that bother them? They can bitch and moan all they want about unfair profiling and no one will pay them any mind until their words and deeds prove otherwise.
Don't do you hate it when some people approach a milestone in human development as a conspiracy designed to undermine everything good and decent? Within our grasp as a society is the ability to provide quality medical care for every person.That's a sinister plot? Doctors healing babies? Granny getting her dialysis? Little kids getting stitched up after a nasty spill? As impossible as this sounds, somehow, somebody convinced people that this is evil, even though over 99% of Americans would have their lives changed for the better with the implementation of Universal Health Care.
The other less than 1%? They're very, very wealthy and they own and run America. Which is a hell of a thing when you realize that most people don't like rich people all that much. Why let them run everything? It's the very wealthy who proposed the crazy idea that health care equals tyranny. There's really no concept crazier than that, especially coming from people who have always enjoyed access to quality health care and the better life that provides. You wonder why they wouldn't want that for everybody, and you ask yourself "Gee, isn't medical care a good thing?" No wonder nobody likes the rich.
June 5, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 697
Scientists say that a million monkeys pecking away at a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. Smeared with monkey poop, alas.
SAMMY SCIENCE ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Sammy Science back in the house. A lot of people have been asking us scientists what to do about the massive oil leak fouling the Gulf of Mexico, a huge ecological disaster. Unfortunately, scientists are not really experts on this sort of thing, it's more of a technology problem, or rather, a massive failure of technology. What's the difference between science and technology, you wonder?
Well, science is what led humans to discover all the endless uses of petroleum, from gasoline to tar to plastics, while technology is the means to apply these scientific discoveries, more engineering than pure science. Scientists can describe the laws of physics and aeronautics, but building an aircraft is the technician's achievement.
While a scientist may have discovered that uranium atoms can be split to unleash incredible amounts of energy, they have no control over how that information is applied. Science tells us what is possible, technology makes these possibilities a reality. The line between the two can be very fine, but generally the pure scientist, since he is trying to know the unknown, does not concern himself with practical application, but hard facts and truth.
Once his or her theory or discovery is found to be true, it becomes technology. For the most part scientists build no bridges or aircraft, do no actual farming or create any medicines, but their ideas and laboratory work are the basis for the technicians who have revolutionized these disparate fields.
Not all inventors have been scientists, or at least not formally trained as such, so the line gets even more blurry. And most scientists in reality "discover" nothing, they merely interpret what they see, they "uncover" things. Isaac Newton certainly didn't discover gravity, only explained its laws. No one invented the atom or DNA, only ways to peek inside them.
Then there are the great synthesists, first-rate minds who incorporate the work of many scientists and inventors, further blurring the lines. For example, Henry Ford did not invent internal combustion engines, automobiles, rubber tires or mass production, but nevertheless changed the world by incorporating all these ideas in a practical application of disparate technologies on a grand scale.
The modern counterparts to Ford Motors would be Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple, leaders in another world-changing wave of technology that flowed from various scientific discoveries. Both men were trained as engineers, not scientists. What both disciplines have in common, as always, is that they are merely working with the materials at hand, those substances provided by nature.
Unlike artists, we cannot make stuff up to improve the narrative or enhance the drama. Songs and movies don't have to make sense to be great. Science must be exact. No dream sequences allowed. Let's check the in-box:
Dear Sammy Science: What's up with this Gulf oil leak? Who's fault is it? - Kerwood Derby
Dear Kerwood Derby: It is British Petroleum's fault, of course, but they wouldn't be out there in the middle of the sea performing the very dangerous task of sucking oil from a mile underwater if we did not pay them a fortune to so so. What kind of car do you drive? How well is your house insulated? In a sense, it's all of our faults. While the Gulf Spill looks like a classic case of failed technology and criminal negligence, this might be a good time to look at the ridiculous lengths we go to to obtain petroleum. This disaster proves we are willing to risk destroying large segments of our own habitat to obtain oil. The Gulf Stream Current circles the world and is a major factor in regulating global climate, as if our climate needed another challenge. Never mind the mammoth loss of marine life, the homes, farms and businesses destroyed or how scientifically unsound that is, it's just plain nuts! It is time for an all-out effort to find petroleum's replacement. It's either fund that effort, or fund a dozen more Gulf spills and kill another piece of our planet.
Dear Sammy Science: You claim to be a scientist, all detached and neutral, interested in only the facts. Okay, so where do you stand on the superiority of the Caucasian Race to all the other human races? I've included several scholarly dissertations to back up my claim. - Angelo Saxon
Dear Angelo Saxon: Angelo, those "scientific papers" got to me just in time and were a real life saver! I had just run out of toiled paper. Here's my unbiased scientific opinion on all this: You're an asshole.
Dear Sammy Science: I know you are are an astrophysicist and so you must be interested in space travel. What do you think of all the private companies obtaining their own space craft? Should the government allow this? - Marcia from Boca
Dear Marcia from Boca: Why should the government have anything to say about it as long as they obey the law and pay their taxes? Spacecraft are the first major advance in transportation that was not created by and for private companies and individuals. Ships, trains, cars and airplanes were civilian commercial products before they were military craft. Government-owned spacecraft were designed and built by private corporations, and advances in technology have made private ownership of space craft a real possibility. Much like the internet, private space craft is an industry and a technology in its infancy, going in directions no one can predict, certain to benefit from scientific principles yet to be uncovered. Why stifle such an exciting thing?
Well, science is what led humans to discover all the endless uses of petroleum, from gasoline to tar to plastics, while technology is the means to apply these scientific discoveries, more engineering than pure science. Scientists can describe the laws of physics and aeronautics, but building an aircraft is the technician's achievement.
While a scientist may have discovered that uranium atoms can be split to unleash incredible amounts of energy, they have no control over how that information is applied. Science tells us what is possible, technology makes these possibilities a reality. The line between the two can be very fine, but generally the pure scientist, since he is trying to know the unknown, does not concern himself with practical application, but hard facts and truth.
Once his or her theory or discovery is found to be true, it becomes technology. For the most part scientists build no bridges or aircraft, do no actual farming or create any medicines, but their ideas and laboratory work are the basis for the technicians who have revolutionized these disparate fields.
Not all inventors have been scientists, or at least not formally trained as such, so the line gets even more blurry. And most scientists in reality "discover" nothing, they merely interpret what they see, they "uncover" things. Isaac Newton certainly didn't discover gravity, only explained its laws. No one invented the atom or DNA, only ways to peek inside them.
Then there are the great synthesists, first-rate minds who incorporate the work of many scientists and inventors, further blurring the lines. For example, Henry Ford did not invent internal combustion engines, automobiles, rubber tires or mass production, but nevertheless changed the world by incorporating all these ideas in a practical application of disparate technologies on a grand scale.
The modern counterparts to Ford Motors would be Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple, leaders in another world-changing wave of technology that flowed from various scientific discoveries. Both men were trained as engineers, not scientists. What both disciplines have in common, as always, is that they are merely working with the materials at hand, those substances provided by nature.
Unlike artists, we cannot make stuff up to improve the narrative or enhance the drama. Songs and movies don't have to make sense to be great. Science must be exact. No dream sequences allowed. Let's check the in-box:
Dear Sammy Science: What's up with this Gulf oil leak? Who's fault is it? - Kerwood Derby
Dear Kerwood Derby: It is British Petroleum's fault, of course, but they wouldn't be out there in the middle of the sea performing the very dangerous task of sucking oil from a mile underwater if we did not pay them a fortune to so so. What kind of car do you drive? How well is your house insulated? In a sense, it's all of our faults. While the Gulf Spill looks like a classic case of failed technology and criminal negligence, this might be a good time to look at the ridiculous lengths we go to to obtain petroleum. This disaster proves we are willing to risk destroying large segments of our own habitat to obtain oil. The Gulf Stream Current circles the world and is a major factor in regulating global climate, as if our climate needed another challenge. Never mind the mammoth loss of marine life, the homes, farms and businesses destroyed or how scientifically unsound that is, it's just plain nuts! It is time for an all-out effort to find petroleum's replacement. It's either fund that effort, or fund a dozen more Gulf spills and kill another piece of our planet.
Dear Sammy Science: You claim to be a scientist, all detached and neutral, interested in only the facts. Okay, so where do you stand on the superiority of the Caucasian Race to all the other human races? I've included several scholarly dissertations to back up my claim. - Angelo Saxon
Dear Angelo Saxon: Angelo, those "scientific papers" got to me just in time and were a real life saver! I had just run out of toiled paper. Here's my unbiased scientific opinion on all this: You're an asshole.
Dear Sammy Science: I know you are are an astrophysicist and so you must be interested in space travel. What do you think of all the private companies obtaining their own space craft? Should the government allow this? - Marcia from Boca
Dear Marcia from Boca: Why should the government have anything to say about it as long as they obey the law and pay their taxes? Spacecraft are the first major advance in transportation that was not created by and for private companies and individuals. Ships, trains, cars and airplanes were civilian commercial products before they were military craft. Government-owned spacecraft were designed and built by private corporations, and advances in technology have made private ownership of space craft a real possibility. Much like the internet, private space craft is an industry and a technology in its infancy, going in directions no one can predict, certain to benefit from scientific principles yet to be uncovered. Why stifle such an exciting thing?
June 3, 2010
JIMMY, THE BLOGGING DOG, TRIES TO MAKE HEADS OR TAILS OF HUMANS
It's me, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. The people here at bobcrespo.com keep bugging me for more blogs, but lately I've been too busy doing dog stuff to write to you. I even told the scientists that are all over me like flies on scat to give me a break for a couple of weeks. It's what you humans call a vacation. I just needed a break from the routine, that's all, charging up the old batteries, as you folk say.
Maybe you're wondering just what the heck a dog would take a vacation from, but let me remind you that I'm a working dog. Ever since my owner discovered that I could read and write the human language called English when I was a puppy, I have been called The Canine Einstein, a genius of the first order, they say, at last as far as dogs go. That only makes me about as smart as your average Cable TV host, no great shakes, really. To other dogs I'm Steven Hawkings. To humans I'm the snarky wiseass from The Soup.
But what my gift has brought into my life is an endless line of scientists studying me in every way imaginable. Since dog throats and vocal cords can't do human languages and there's no hope of teaching you my language, we communicate on computer, and I'm the fastest two-pawed typist you've ever seen. They built a special computer keyboard for me as I grew to be a pretty sizable mutt.
I don't get many days off from getting tested and measured and probed with sensors of every sort. Then there's all the reports I have to write, like this one, to people interested in a canine view of humanity. It's not like I'm the canine Proust or Hemingway or anyone with some great insight into humanity, but I suppose it is pretty unique hearing about yourself from another species' point of view.
Just don't don't get all weepy if Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, doesn't worship at the altar of mankind and think you're the greatest thing since Alpo. To dogs, you're just another mammal. The dominant species on earth right now, sure, the boss of all bosses in Mother Nature, but to rest of the world you're carnivorous mammals that form packs and stake out territories, a lot like dogs in their natural state.
Of course we dogs are more than 10,000 years removed from our natural state. Back in the day we were rivals to humans for the choicest hunting grounds. Before too long it became very apparent that humans shot first and asked question later, so some smart dogs formed a partnership with people. Dogs are very junior partners these days, owned, tagged and carefully bred, unable to even mark their territory with scat before some human scoops it into a plastic bag. That's annoying, by the way. But at least dogs survived.
Judging from the scarcity of saber-toothed tigers, short-face bears, woolly mammoths, giant caribou, dire wolves and Neanderthal people, my early canine ancestors made the right call. For these 10,000 years, humans have never known what a dog thinks of all these developments. Until now, that is. And the result for me has been a lot of hard work. I don't mind, though, since it is my hope that I can get at least some people to treat dogs better.
Make no mistake, by treating dogs better I mean letting them go. Literally. After 10,000 years we are still by nature carnivorous pack-hunting mammals, and nothing can change that. Most of the human-run animal rights groups think they're doing great things for us by cutting our nuts off. Thanks but no thanks. I'm grateful that didn't happen to me, especially since part of my job is to mate with the best looking bitches on the planet. It's a good perk. Very good.
They tried to go the artificial insemination route with me, but I'm plenty smart enough to insist on the real thing. Call me Old Obedience School if you like, but being The Canine Einstein allows me to pull rank every so often. They might be smarter than me, but there's only one Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, while there's an abundance of earnest young scientists. Which is why I insisted in a two-week vacation.
No, I didn't go to Bermuda or the Rocky Mountains and engage in extreme sports. I am a dog, after all. I just hung around the house and ran around the yard, sniffing, barking, leaving my scent all over the place and letting everyone know that this yard is under the watchful eye of Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. Other dogs came by and we sniffed each others' butts, licked one another and caught up on what's been going on lately.
Yes, dogs do talk, but our language includes sights, sounds, gestures and smells, most of which human senses cannot detect. Not that we're talking about anything world-shaking, just who had puppies and when they were taken away from them, whose owner beats then and is cruel to them, and which bitches in the neighborhood were coming onto heat. Dog stuff.
We rarely discuss anything human beings do amongst themselves since we understand so very little about people. Plus, you do so many crazy things that it takes a real doozy of a hare-brained stunt to be noticed by dogs. The vast majority of human activity is inexplicable to us, and really not all that fascinating to dogs as you'd like to think it is, to be honest. I can't be anything but honest, you see, since dogs have never grasped that whole lying thing. Our keen senses tell us in a split second who is or isn't lying, so there's no point, really.
So, I took a short vacation from a world where it is all about you, all the time. I hung out with other dogs and we did dog stuff, talked about dog things and swapped stories and oral history. See, that's another things that dogs have, an inborn species memory that connects us with a thousand ancestors, since even before we became a captive race of beings. My dog friends and I hung out for days, forming our own mini-pack in the yard, howling at the moon and beings as much dog as we could possibly be. I feel a whole lot better now. Until next time, humans, this is Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.
Maybe you're wondering just what the heck a dog would take a vacation from, but let me remind you that I'm a working dog. Ever since my owner discovered that I could read and write the human language called English when I was a puppy, I have been called The Canine Einstein, a genius of the first order, they say, at last as far as dogs go. That only makes me about as smart as your average Cable TV host, no great shakes, really. To other dogs I'm Steven Hawkings. To humans I'm the snarky wiseass from The Soup.
But what my gift has brought into my life is an endless line of scientists studying me in every way imaginable. Since dog throats and vocal cords can't do human languages and there's no hope of teaching you my language, we communicate on computer, and I'm the fastest two-pawed typist you've ever seen. They built a special computer keyboard for me as I grew to be a pretty sizable mutt.
I don't get many days off from getting tested and measured and probed with sensors of every sort. Then there's all the reports I have to write, like this one, to people interested in a canine view of humanity. It's not like I'm the canine Proust or Hemingway or anyone with some great insight into humanity, but I suppose it is pretty unique hearing about yourself from another species' point of view.
Just don't don't get all weepy if Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, doesn't worship at the altar of mankind and think you're the greatest thing since Alpo. To dogs, you're just another mammal. The dominant species on earth right now, sure, the boss of all bosses in Mother Nature, but to rest of the world you're carnivorous mammals that form packs and stake out territories, a lot like dogs in their natural state.
Of course we dogs are more than 10,000 years removed from our natural state. Back in the day we were rivals to humans for the choicest hunting grounds. Before too long it became very apparent that humans shot first and asked question later, so some smart dogs formed a partnership with people. Dogs are very junior partners these days, owned, tagged and carefully bred, unable to even mark their territory with scat before some human scoops it into a plastic bag. That's annoying, by the way. But at least dogs survived.
Judging from the scarcity of saber-toothed tigers, short-face bears, woolly mammoths, giant caribou, dire wolves and Neanderthal people, my early canine ancestors made the right call. For these 10,000 years, humans have never known what a dog thinks of all these developments. Until now, that is. And the result for me has been a lot of hard work. I don't mind, though, since it is my hope that I can get at least some people to treat dogs better.
Make no mistake, by treating dogs better I mean letting them go. Literally. After 10,000 years we are still by nature carnivorous pack-hunting mammals, and nothing can change that. Most of the human-run animal rights groups think they're doing great things for us by cutting our nuts off. Thanks but no thanks. I'm grateful that didn't happen to me, especially since part of my job is to mate with the best looking bitches on the planet. It's a good perk. Very good.
They tried to go the artificial insemination route with me, but I'm plenty smart enough to insist on the real thing. Call me Old Obedience School if you like, but being The Canine Einstein allows me to pull rank every so often. They might be smarter than me, but there's only one Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, while there's an abundance of earnest young scientists. Which is why I insisted in a two-week vacation.
No, I didn't go to Bermuda or the Rocky Mountains and engage in extreme sports. I am a dog, after all. I just hung around the house and ran around the yard, sniffing, barking, leaving my scent all over the place and letting everyone know that this yard is under the watchful eye of Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. Other dogs came by and we sniffed each others' butts, licked one another and caught up on what's been going on lately.
Yes, dogs do talk, but our language includes sights, sounds, gestures and smells, most of which human senses cannot detect. Not that we're talking about anything world-shaking, just who had puppies and when they were taken away from them, whose owner beats then and is cruel to them, and which bitches in the neighborhood were coming onto heat. Dog stuff.
We rarely discuss anything human beings do amongst themselves since we understand so very little about people. Plus, you do so many crazy things that it takes a real doozy of a hare-brained stunt to be noticed by dogs. The vast majority of human activity is inexplicable to us, and really not all that fascinating to dogs as you'd like to think it is, to be honest. I can't be anything but honest, you see, since dogs have never grasped that whole lying thing. Our keen senses tell us in a split second who is or isn't lying, so there's no point, really.
So, I took a short vacation from a world where it is all about you, all the time. I hung out with other dogs and we did dog stuff, talked about dog things and swapped stories and oral history. See, that's another things that dogs have, an inborn species memory that connects us with a thousand ancestors, since even before we became a captive race of beings. My dog friends and I hung out for days, forming our own mini-pack in the yard, howling at the moon and beings as much dog as we could possibly be. I feel a whole lot better now. Until next time, humans, this is Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.
June 2, 2010
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 695
Once you start thinking about your legacy, you're already halfway dead. Let others worry about that and just live your life.
PICKING A NEW #2 MAN IN AL QAEDA
For the umpteenth time the Pentagon has announced that it has killed or captured the #2 man in Al Qaeda. The title, while it might be loaded with prestige for the man who gets to sit at the right hand of Osama bin Laden, has to be one of the most hazardous jobs around. Now that America has killed the latest #2 man, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, with an unmanned predator drone aircraft, somebody has to move up a notch to fill his job. The meeting of the Al Qaeda Leadership Council to pick a successor to Mr. al-Yazid went something like this:
Osama bin Laden: "I guess you're wondering why I've called you all here..."
Sheik Yerbouti: "No, we're not wondering, Ozzy. Everybody knows what happened to Mustafa. You're looking to appoint a new #2 man. Well, count me out!"
Osama bin Laden: "It is duly noted that you don't want the job, Sheik Yerbouti, and don't call me Ozzy!"
Mullah Yabba Dabadu: "Sheik Yerbouiti isn't the only one around here who feels that way, Osama. Allah knows that the #2 job in Al Qaeda is very hazardous to your health".
Osama bin Laden: "Where is your martyr spirit, my people! Let's keep the big picture in mind here, the defeat and conversion to Islam of the Great Satan America."
Sheik Yerbouiti: "And where is yours, Ozzy? No one here remembers you volunteering to blow yourself up for the cause!"
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "Sheik Yerbouti's right! You want to fill the #2 job so bad, take it yourself!"
Osama bin Laden: "How can I be an assistant to myself! Besides, the role of martyr does not fall to the leaders and planners like ourselves..."
Sultan Peppah: "Tell that to the last couple of dozen #2 men, Ozzy!"
Osama bin Laden: "They were well rewarded with 72 virgins in Paradise, and Alllah is most pleased with them! And stop calling me Ozzy!"
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "And since when is our mission to defeat and convert America? We thought it was only to get America to leave us alone!"
Osama bin Laden: "After 8 years in Afghanistan, is has become obvious that the Great Satan is a very tenacious foe and will not leave until they capture me. Therefore, they must be completely defeated and their country must be converted to Islam."
Sultan Peppah: "Oh, is that all? Defeat the most modern army in the world and take over America? With what? Hijacked airplanes and illiterate goat herders? What part of Guerilla Insurgency don't you get, Ozzy?"
Osama bin Laden: "The guerilla insurgency will defeat the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then we move the fight to their home soil for complete victory. And stop calling me Ozzy!"
Ayatollah Howmenee: "Conquer America? You had your cave checked for mold spores lately, Ozzy, 'cause you're not thinking straight. Last time we did that they invaded Afghanistan, annihilated its army and toppled their government in like, what, 3 weeks? A year or so later they did the same to Iraq, and hung their leader for good measure. Now their flying robots kill us like steel hawks from the sky! This would be a good time to lay out the grand plan to defeat these people, Ozzy. Where's your invasion force gonna land? Who gets to govern Vegas once America surrenders?"
Osama bin Laden: "Enough with the Ozzy already! We will conquer the Great Satan from within, with American Muslim men willing to die for Allah."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "Sure, like that Einstein you sent to Times Square! Get real! I'm thinking now that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to use up all 19 of our top guys on that 9/11 mission. What have we done since then? The Shoe-Bomber nitwit and the Times Square slacker, who left the keys to his damned getaway car in the car bomb?"
Sultan Peppah: "A car bomb which never went off, might I add?"
Osama bin Laden: "Okay, so they all can't be home runs. What about the trains in Spain?"
Sheik Yerbouti: "LIke the Rolling Stones song says: 'Who wants yesterday's papers?'"
Osama bin Laden: "Personally, I prefer 'Exile on Main Street,' but what is your point?"
Sheik Yerbouti: "I mean that you used up all of our best people in a just couple of big headline bombings, that's what! The rest of 'em can't even read, for Allah's sake! They couldn't plan a meal, never mind spectacular attacks on infidels. Most of our people are real good at shooting AK47s up into the air and howling like banshees, and not much else! This is your army, so command it to overthrow the Great Satan already! And while you're feeling frisky, why stop at the conquest of America? Our toothless illiterates ought to be able to conquer the whole world in a couple of years, right?"
Osama bin Laden: "It will take more than a couple of years, my friend, perhaps even a decade..."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "10 years and the world will be ours? In that case, you are indeed a masterful leader touched by Allah, and no man is worthy to be your assistant. I call upon this counsel to proclaim that from this day forward: 'No mortal man shall sit at the right hand of Osama The Great.' He will be his own #2 in Al Qaeda. long may he live! Those in favor say Aye!"
The Assembled Leadership Council: "Aye!"
Osama bin Laden: "Now, wait just a dog-gone minute..."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: The 'Ayes' have it! Congratulations, Ozzy, from here on in you're your own Number 2# man! Let the world know that Osama The Great is both the #1 and the #2 man! Meeting adjourned. Watch out for those hawks, Ozzy!
Osama bin Laden: "I guess you're wondering why I've called you all here..."
Sheik Yerbouti: "No, we're not wondering, Ozzy. Everybody knows what happened to Mustafa. You're looking to appoint a new #2 man. Well, count me out!"
Osama bin Laden: "It is duly noted that you don't want the job, Sheik Yerbouti, and don't call me Ozzy!"
Mullah Yabba Dabadu: "Sheik Yerbouiti isn't the only one around here who feels that way, Osama. Allah knows that the #2 job in Al Qaeda is very hazardous to your health".
Osama bin Laden: "Where is your martyr spirit, my people! Let's keep the big picture in mind here, the defeat and conversion to Islam of the Great Satan America."
Sheik Yerbouiti: "And where is yours, Ozzy? No one here remembers you volunteering to blow yourself up for the cause!"
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "Sheik Yerbouti's right! You want to fill the #2 job so bad, take it yourself!"
Osama bin Laden: "How can I be an assistant to myself! Besides, the role of martyr does not fall to the leaders and planners like ourselves..."
Sultan Peppah: "Tell that to the last couple of dozen #2 men, Ozzy!"
Osama bin Laden: "They were well rewarded with 72 virgins in Paradise, and Alllah is most pleased with them! And stop calling me Ozzy!"
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "And since when is our mission to defeat and convert America? We thought it was only to get America to leave us alone!"
Osama bin Laden: "After 8 years in Afghanistan, is has become obvious that the Great Satan is a very tenacious foe and will not leave until they capture me. Therefore, they must be completely defeated and their country must be converted to Islam."
Sultan Peppah: "Oh, is that all? Defeat the most modern army in the world and take over America? With what? Hijacked airplanes and illiterate goat herders? What part of Guerilla Insurgency don't you get, Ozzy?"
Osama bin Laden: "The guerilla insurgency will defeat the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then we move the fight to their home soil for complete victory. And stop calling me Ozzy!"
Ayatollah Howmenee: "Conquer America? You had your cave checked for mold spores lately, Ozzy, 'cause you're not thinking straight. Last time we did that they invaded Afghanistan, annihilated its army and toppled their government in like, what, 3 weeks? A year or so later they did the same to Iraq, and hung their leader for good measure. Now their flying robots kill us like steel hawks from the sky! This would be a good time to lay out the grand plan to defeat these people, Ozzy. Where's your invasion force gonna land? Who gets to govern Vegas once America surrenders?"
Osama bin Laden: "Enough with the Ozzy already! We will conquer the Great Satan from within, with American Muslim men willing to die for Allah."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "Sure, like that Einstein you sent to Times Square! Get real! I'm thinking now that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to use up all 19 of our top guys on that 9/11 mission. What have we done since then? The Shoe-Bomber nitwit and the Times Square slacker, who left the keys to his damned getaway car in the car bomb?"
Sultan Peppah: "A car bomb which never went off, might I add?"
Osama bin Laden: "Okay, so they all can't be home runs. What about the trains in Spain?"
Sheik Yerbouti: "LIke the Rolling Stones song says: 'Who wants yesterday's papers?'"
Osama bin Laden: "Personally, I prefer 'Exile on Main Street,' but what is your point?"
Sheik Yerbouti: "I mean that you used up all of our best people in a just couple of big headline bombings, that's what! The rest of 'em can't even read, for Allah's sake! They couldn't plan a meal, never mind spectacular attacks on infidels. Most of our people are real good at shooting AK47s up into the air and howling like banshees, and not much else! This is your army, so command it to overthrow the Great Satan already! And while you're feeling frisky, why stop at the conquest of America? Our toothless illiterates ought to be able to conquer the whole world in a couple of years, right?"
Osama bin Laden: "It will take more than a couple of years, my friend, perhaps even a decade..."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: "10 years and the world will be ours? In that case, you are indeed a masterful leader touched by Allah, and no man is worthy to be your assistant. I call upon this counsel to proclaim that from this day forward: 'No mortal man shall sit at the right hand of Osama The Great.' He will be his own #2 in Al Qaeda. long may he live! Those in favor say Aye!"
The Assembled Leadership Council: "Aye!"
Osama bin Laden: "Now, wait just a dog-gone minute..."
Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: The 'Ayes' have it! Congratulations, Ozzy, from here on in you're your own Number 2# man! Let the world know that Osama The Great is both the #1 and the #2 man! Meeting adjourned. Watch out for those hawks, Ozzy!
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