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

...but I wish I had HBO. They're going to be showing a screen adaptation of Angels in America (both parts - 6 hours) starring Meryl Streep and Al Pacino. Ah well. There's always Survivor and Hollywood Squares on CBS .

Yeah, and I missed Martin Scorcese's Blues series earlier in the year as well. Nobody in the UK has even shown a sign of buying it yet.

Life sucks sometimes, eh?

How are you today?

I'm ok. Nerdy me is getting all excited reading about the philosopher Karl Popper. I was reading a cnn article about american polarization over bush, was led to read about who george soros was, he apparently liked popper's ideas... i like when following internet trails leads somewhere interesting.

Soros is not well liked in this part of the world. It was his attempt to 'Braek the pound' that lead to the disasterous interest rate increases of 'Black Wednesday' which led to much heartache and misery in the UK.

A plague on him.

Well he hates Bush anyway. And has an Open Society Institute, that's about all I know.

So what happened? What does 'break the pound' mean? *goes to google black wednesday*

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2259648.stm

from what i can tell, he and other traders took advantage of a questionable economic policy?

Granted the Tories weren't helping anybody, but it was Soros' choice to try and break the pound, which he admitted himself he attempted to do.

The direct result of his actions was misery for real people. Like ben harper says;

'Excuse me Mr.
do you have the time
or are you so important
that it stands still for you?

Excuse me Mr.
won't you lend me your ear
or are you not only blind
but do you not hear?'

That economic policy was wrong at that time was self evident to everyone except 'Badger' Lamont. Soros didn't need to take advantage of it by doing what he did and affecting real lives with his abstract policy...

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

I find it truly..odd I guess that he is at the highest level a participant in an economic system he philosophically rejects. Maybe he has some grand design for the salvation of the world through f*cking with monetary systems

Or he just doesn't realise that his economic dabbling affects real people. When you are as rich as he is you don't come into to contact with two many really 'poor' people. They just become a vague abstract concept that you can patronise and try and 'help'.

Sorry if I sound jaundiced, but frankly I take the view that the guy is a parasite. He doesn't *work* for his money, and I doubt he really understands what goes on in a household that makes less than the median wage. Or anything under a couple of hundred thousand a month, to be honest.

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/1292/2.html

He seems to have caught that same bug that Paris Hilton is suffering from..oh what to do when you have lots of money, but are otherwise more or less irrelevent. In his case, he seems to have created a mission out of some loose readings of some vague concepts regarding what a good society should be and how it should function.

To misquote Marcus Aurelius 'Do not debate what it is to be a Good Man. Go out and be it.'

Frankly, much as ai hate Bill Gates, the Microsoft millions have done more good for the 'common man' in Seattle by being ploughed into the Seachickens via Paul Allen than Soros will ever do by pratting about with vague philosophies...

Yeah..I have trouble understanding people. Popper (Soros' mentor), for instance, was apparently a huge prig who couldn't bear to be argued with - even though he espoused open and fair discourse as a necessary component of his ideal society. I wonder what it is that must compell most every human who has the capacity for great ideas or actions to at some point just become an a**.

Well, certainly very few of them actually do any bloody good. One of the more interesting thoughts in Moore's 'Dude! Where's my Country?' is the bit where he names Nixon as the most liberal post war president of the US. Makes a pretty good case for it as well.

Heh..though I'm not sure where to put media lovelies like Moore on the radar either.

So much getting worked up, a fair bit of good intentions, very little hope.

Well good sir, I think I'm retiring. Thank you for giving me some things to learn about

Much of Moore's work is hyperbole, it's true, but Bowling For Columbine is a fine movie and it made me laugh as well. He also put his money where his mouth his at the elction and worked for the Nader campaign. I think Moore is in the right place, emotionally, and I'll settle for that over intellectually anyday.

Sweet dreams, hon.

'Dude, Where's my Country?' - I *want* that book! Many people seem to dislike Moore, but although there are one or two things I vehemently disagree with him about, by and large, I still find him very interesting.

I want to read 'Nickel and Dimed' by I forget who, whichi documents a sociologists experiment in living in these days as a minimum wage employee, i.e. she gets a job at Wal-Mart and experiences the struggle of trying to maintain a household at what the government considers a 'fair wage.'

Barbara Ehrenreich, I just read an article excerpted from that, in the 'New Internationalist' magazine - the chapter about WalMart. It's brilliant!

I HBO.