Lowell Lecture Series: America First? America Last? America at Last? – april 20, 1992, lecture by gore vidal
so succinct, this msg on patents is amazingly lucid and reminds me why i put up w/ /. despite the running amokness of the trolls. now, when /. gets around to incorporating a web of trust and disallowing non-registered anonymous posters…
blogger changes the times for all your postings when you change timezones.
net connection back up. my adapter address got disassociated from my account somehow. how the heck does that happen?
rant for the day: ok, so i go to this academic series lecture, and i’m out having a cookie and a mountain dew and making smalltalk with one of the student senate girls helping set the lecture up (puff piece about art history). because one of the upcoming lectures is about the foreign policy of the presidential candidates, i bring up whether the professor will be discussin nader. then she says to me: you shouln’t vote for nader. a vote for nader is a vote for bush. firstly, she’s just plain wrong in what she’s trying to say (there are 100 million disaffected voters, me among them who would rather watch star trek voyager than vote for bush OR gore — and will voice their disaffection by not voting at all otherwise, given the slim choice), and secondly a vote for nader is a vote for nader. if i were voting for bush or gore, i would vote for bush or gore. this isn’t about odds, this is about political voice. yes, statistically, whatever. but you know what, it’s because people think like that that nothing changes. vote for what you believe in. if you want to vote for the lesser of the two evils, write in for cthulu.
now i ask myself, why the hell would i want to vote for a republicrat, both candidates who have been bought and paid for by corporate interests, both with fine traditions of being perfectly willing to sacrifice my rights for their agendas? and why wouldn’t i vote for someone who is whip-smart and is actually committed to helping real people and not just the legal people entities known as corporations, and who also has a similarly smart vice-president (rather than say, picking some slimy, moralizing, centrist in a bid for swing voters who don’t know better and vote based on what the advertising or the polls say). recent related discussion on mefi.
of course, reading gore vidal just makes me depressed (he’s right, naturally).
oh, and for those who believe that gore is much less evil a choice than bush (or vice versa), ask yourself: who is going to protect your right to privacy? who is going to protect your rights to fair use, your right to benefit (as a member of society) from lapsed copyrighted material, who is going to protect you from illegitimate trademark lawsuits, who is going to protect you from ratification of unconstitutional search and seizure laws, who is going to limit the amount of military intervention and aggression of the us military forces, who is actually going to take the drastic steps to actually protect the environment for our future generations?
if you said not gore and not bush for all that, you’d be dead on the money. that’s why i’m not voting for either of them, because they’re on the payroll, and the money isn’t coming from any friends of mine. in fact, if you want to come to conclusions, voting for gore is voting for bush, because they both represent the same fundamental thing: manipulation of the citizens by corporate overlords.
oh yeah, the gore vidal interview is so good, a must read. quote: Well, I’m here for the simple reason that very few people say what I say, because very few people have the long perspective I do. The fact is that I’ve spent my life studying American history and politics. I know how the country’s run. There will be an opportunity to get rid of this system. And the opportunity will come from the total collapse of the economy, which I think is on the horizon. The Dow-Jones, the Nasdaq, will collapse and the people will be very angry. At that moment you can make big changes.
oh yeah, did i mention that i’m getting this bs fed to me from a member of the same student senate that has yet to pay me for the work i did creating their election/voting site last year, when i was explicitly told last may that the check was being sent in the mail. now i have to spend even more of my time tracking them down so i get paid? wtf? well, probably the easiest way will be to write an email cc’d to every elected senator w/ info on what the dealio is. and if talking to them doesn’t help, then i guess organizing some sort of lawsuit against them for negligence of giving us the privileged information of every student attending the school or something like that would be an option. seems like an awful lot of fuss for the $3k and change that we’re owed… i’m sure that most freelancers have no doubt also experienced the dreaded deadbeat client…
fookin resnet. my connection’s been down again since yesterday afternoon.
wow, check out these numbers from inequality.org
Billionaires for Bush (or Gore):
Although they differ on some policies and sometimes wear different colored power ties, we’re confident that both candidates are deeply committed to economic inequality. They bring their hard-won personal experience making millions in a business subsidized by taxpayers (Bush: oil & gas, baseball stadiums; Gore: agribusiness) to national economic policy. Both oppose raising the minimum wage to match the cost of living. Both will continue taxpayer subsidies of generous CEO salaries, as well as taxing earnings from the stock market at a lower rate than income from actual work. Gore might be a Democrat, but he’s still a plutocrat. Vote for Bush or Gore–Because Inequality Is Not Growing Fast Enough.
actually, when i was looking for photos of the two for an art project i did last year, they were wearing the same power ties.
They Also Dance Who Party the Night Away:
Rave dancing is not choreographed,” said Wyoming Telford, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Seattle who has been going to raves for seven years.
“You don’t count steps, you don’t have to work with other people, and you’re not trying to evoke a story line.”
while definitely not necessary, any three of those things can be really fun things to do though. also a classic quote:
“A more basic technique is the Nordictrack, jokingly named after the cross-country skiing motion one makes on the so-named exercise machine.”
ahh, my sides. 😉