h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You mean they don't?!


~jwf~

The day after the Egyptian 'football riots'
it has turned political. Officials being sacked
or resigning, police tear gassing and rubber bulleting
crowds demanding to know what went wrong and why the
security forces failed to contain it.

A rioting mob is a rioting mob.
Once violence and property destruction
get into the mix it no longer matters
what the original reasons may have been.

We are a savage species and mobs have a way
of bringing out the worst in all of us.

I remember reading that in the US over the century
between 1860 and 1960 there was on average one
lynching every three days.


~jwf~

Agents provocateurs are a wonderful thing...

A winkeye maybe needed but it didn't seem appropriate somehow.

Yes its horrible...

Here is something from the New York time4s you might find interesting
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/occupy-movement-regroups-laying-plans-for-the-next-phase.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/01/491631.html

I despair in this country really I do. I am not railing against Occupy here

but where is the opposition or any meaningful dissent, none in parliament, not the unions, nothing organised filling the gap, or anything really disorganised adding up to anything

by organised I do mean kind of co-ordinated, rather than 'organised on a half brick throwing scale'

um, wrong link

I meant

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/12/occupy-uncertain-future-st-pauls

Well it seems the tents and structures have been removed
but St Pauls are saying, folks, the people as it were, are
welcome to hang out and chat about the issues.

I can't argue with the aesthetics of that rationalisation.


~jwf~

The St. Pauls eviction was... interesting... the City of London polis lined up in full riot armour, some of them wearing masks. Way to present a non-threatening face to the peaceful protestors, guys.

And this from the US: http://tinyurl.com/7cy8fk3

I guess that banker was one of these 'Job Snobs' we've been told about.

I liked this one:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/singing_foreclo.php

That receipt is a (nearly) complete photoshop. It's fake. The article you link to even has an update although they should actually retract the story. This is just another case of internet trolling. It was made to "karma whore" on Reddit. The angry mobs obliged by upvoting it to the top and ignoring everyone who was skeptical.

Don't believe everything you see on the interwebs.

*gasp*

People lie in the interwebs as well as in life?


Amazing

"Don't believe everything you see on the interwebs."

I don't, but I had no reason to believe this was fake... it's not like they go out of their way to draw attention to the story that confirms it's a fake with that teeny-tiny link right at the bottom of the article.

And, frankly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has actually happened somewhere in the world.

Yes, Yahoo should make an obvious retraction of this story and feature the update rather than just add that small update.

The most offensive stories of bad tips are where the waitress receives a religious tract. It usually states something about her reward can be redeemed in heaven. These are sadly true and far too common. You can find suppliers for these "tips" online.

I'll take a 1% tip over one of those.

The "Occupy Movement" is another part of a Sixties revival..

Back then we were all pretty badly served by the state of "Western Civilization" and leading "intellectuals" from an already "Lost Generation" that had been badly damaged by "The Age of Catastrophe (1914-1945)".. but at least we had grown up with a close/imtimate knowledge of just what Human kind is capable of achieving in the way of "The Eve of Destruction" etc.

By the time of Gordon Rattray Taylor's "RETHINK. Radical Proposals to Save a Disintegrating World" in 1972, the apparent luxury of a world still dominated by "Anglo-Saxon" and German Eurocentrism and the idea of a managed reality- and therefore the possible option of a Plan B- was fast disappearing, especially with the The Opec Oil Crisis.

Short-termism and crisis management became the order of the day, along with a growing tendency to organise "education x3" in accordance with the needs of the new reality.

Our son did spend some time at the Occupy site at St. Paul's. He found there some friends he had made when working at Glastonbury, and we have had a few chats about some of the (to him) exciting ideas about just how things might be better "If I Ruled The World".

But rather like that "Man of La Mancha" song there seems to be tilting at windmills, and little appreciation that "there are more questions than answers". And a desire to "rule the world" probably often reflects a resentment that the world is not adapted to suit the needs of the individual or group, whereas the success of the human species is generally considered to be based upon its own ability to adapt.

I wrote a few years ago that the Sixties Generation gave up and retired too early, accepting this cult of "wet behind the ears" people who can "run things" with all the lightness of ignorance. It is in our own Sixties that we stand some chance, like previous generations of "elders" of helping the "young" to see the bigger picture.

But in some ways we are like those Star Treck populations where people have merely been educated to know how to run the existing system and not build a new and better one. This is the theme of a news item today on the Rasberry Pi which hopes to educate the next generation about how the computers that the modern world depends upon actually work.

Cass

The challenge for those who wish to bring about meaningful change is what they are up against- and the most important thing in that is neither wealth nor "Big Money" but "intellectual capital".

Our son may have enjoyed debating with people at St. Paul's and the like. He may even argue with his Dad. What are Father/Son relations for?

But his sister has a Masters Degree in Physics after which she qualified as an actuary which involved 14-15 exams (I lost count) in groups that were each the equivalent to another degree in themselves. It is such super-brains- modelling with the latest computer technology- that model the Future- using the "cutting edge" thinking of the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

So they avoid such questions because their knowledge and understanding is of almost totally different worlds.

Was it "Citizen Kane" in which Orson Welles played a extra-terrestial who, in one scene, was subjected to the seductive advances of an "Earth-woman". He scathingly replied that really his feelings were rather like she might feel were she being subjected to the advances of an earthworm?

Cass

It definitely wasn't Citizen Kane.

Well, I don't know about anyone else but *I'm* confused...

Thanks for the link (to the link) to the singing protesters:

http://youtu.be/QPIq7bLDoAA