Buo Lai En's Comments | StumbleUpon.com

Alternative News

george carlin describes rush limbaugh

Buo Lai En:

A word from a splintering soap box: Farewell!

Over and over, SU's most active users warned: Force us to adopt your visual abortion of a new design, and we will leave. Over and over, we told the company: Respect our contributions or lose them. Over and over, *I* have added: Your new design doesn't work on my browser; I couldn't use it even if I could stomach this final insult.

Never once did SU pay us any heed. And that is its choice; I can't gainsay a corporation's decisions, no matter how suicidal, mammonolatrous and contumelious I think they are.

But I can refuse to participate any more, and I do. These words are the last I will write on this corporation's platform. From today, once I finish editing this "comment," I shall return -- nevermore.

If you want to reach me, do so via this page: http://www.moralintelligence.net/contact/contactform.php

(Please take note: I am no longer using my Gmail account, so don't write me using that address. And I'm not posting my current email address here for fear of a flood of spam.)

To all my friends: I wish you well, and I hope to hear from you again. But it won't be here.

Farewell.

Posted on Mar 13, 2012

Alternative Health

Hmmm... Nothing Here

cloudmagazine.tv 39

Buo Lai En:

Ah, so *that's* what it is.

And there I thought it was a giant praying mantis with pediculosis.

Posted on Mar 13, 2012

Animals

Stumblers Who Like farm6.staticflickr.com

staticflickr.com 1.7M

Buo Lai En:

Popularity incarnate:

I think I'm a bit jealous: More Stumblers have reviewed this kitten in three months than have reviewed me in over two years. And although not all the reviews are visible, I'm guessing they're all positive.

On the other hand, I have to admit the kitten wins the cuteness contest paws down.

Posted on Mar 13, 2012

Poetry

"A Garden" by H. P. Lovecraft

hplovecraft.com 136K

Buo Lai En:

The garden within.

Although I've read little of Lovecraft's verse (which he was the first to admit, despite his aspirations, was never his metier), I have read every one of his stories, and a probably unhealthy amount of his biography.

This poem is particularly poignant in light of the litany of disappointments that followed this brilliant author through life until he died in want at the age of 47. Like his antecedent, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft was a literary virtuoso who defined a genre and stirred millions in the decades after his death, but in life he was never recognized, never rewarded, never respected.

Why does our society treat its geniuses so shabbily?

Posted on Mar 13, 2012

Drugs

Harvard Gazette: Study: Intelligence, cognition unaffected...

harvard.edu 538K

Buo Lai En:

Irreversibly impaired.

No, I'm not referring to the cognitive condition of cannabis users. I mean this study itself, which suffers from fatal weaknesses of methodology, definitions, and preconceptions.

Perhaps the most egregious example of what's wrong here occurred in the selection of participants for the study, who "were mostly male because studies show men are more likely to become heavy users"; this invites two questions: (1) What "studies" (and are they any more authoritative than this one)? and (2) How are we defining "heavy users"?

The article does provide a definition of a sort, but it is so arbitrary as to call into question any data produced with it: those who've smoked cannabis "more than 5,000 times." Think this over for a moment. Would that mean they've used it on a total of more than 5,000 days, or that they've put lighter to pipe more than 5,000 times? This is never specified, and this is deeply unsatisfactory. Far more useful would be to describe as heavy users those who smoke daily or nearly so, and each day consume some minimal quantity -- which in turn should be unequivocally stated -- that no reasonable person would dispute as corresponding to such "heavy" use.

Also, the study should have left off after gathering the facts. To go on with what appears to be a message of deterrence is entirely inappropriate in this context, and would cast doubt on the neutrality of the study if nothing else did.

Last, and worst, the study falls into the uniformitarian fallacy: assuming that we are all fundamentally alike and will all react more or less identically to a given compound or stimulus. Although broad trends can be observed, these represent nothing more than tendencies found *on average*; they take no account of the difference between, for example, a dim high-school dropout who smokes pot incessantly because he can think of nothing better to do with his time, the college student who smokes while socializing after classes, the artist who finds cannabis helps him hear his muse, and the city councilman who smokes half a bowl before bedtime to alleviate his otherwise intractable insomnia.

Posted on Mar 13, 2012

Stumblers

LoveSongs-4Peace

stumbleupon.com 10K

Buo Lai En:

Master of misdirection?

Very cleverly, Lovesongs-4peace/Timpakkoo allows us to infer many things about "her" -- all of them wrong. But then, "she" never actually tells a lie. Well played.

Posted on Mar 12, 2012

Drugs

» CPR Instructions

prosourc...wide.com 55K

Buo Lai En:

Dangle that modifier!

You may think it would be hard to "enjoy Capri-Sun liquid" while dead. You may also think this page will tell you how. Surprisingly, you would be right on the first count and wrong on the second. Amazed yet?

Posted on Mar 9, 2012

Stumblers

marijuananews

stumbleupon.com 140

Buo Lai En:

@MaryMaryJane: He?

Posted on Mar 9, 2012

News(General)

Distort, Attack, Repeat: The Fox Propaganda Machine in Action...

rollingstone.com 52

Buo Lai En:

How To Lose Readers and Irritate People

Let me clarify this at the outset: I do not disparage this article itself. It appears, from what I saw of it, to be well written, factual and effectual.

My objection is to the decision by Rolling Stone (a choice made by far too many site operators) to chop the article up into 13 incremental installments. As much as I may enjoy the content, I will not, as a matter of principle, encourage this tactic. It is meant to compel readers to view as many pages as possible, extracting from them as many "impressions" of advertisements as possible, for the greater profit of the site. To me, this smacks of a certain manipulative dishonesty, and I refuse to reward it: When I find such an article, I look for an option to read it as a single page; if such a choice does not exist, I leave.

Posted on Mar 8, 2012

Alcoholic Drinks

10 Best Sexual Drinking Games

mademan.com 863K

Buo Lai En:

Practice makes imperfect?

To judge by the spelling, the author of this article must have practiced each game just prior to writing the article. Nothing like thorough research!

Posted on Mar 8, 2012

Psychology

How cannabis causes ‘cognitive chaos' in the brain

psypost.org 12

Buo Lai En:

Misleading and disappointing

To read the headline of this article, one would expect a definitive study showing marijuana to be implicated in pervasive impairment of mental functioning. But it turns out that the study was flawed in a way all too reminiscent of past studies designed to deter cannabis use rather than to understand it: It didn't use cannabis as such at all; rather, it used something held to be equivalent to tetrahydrocannabinol (by whose measure is not clear) in the absence of the other compounds found in the actual plant.

This should be sufficient in itself to discredit the study in all but the most deeply prejudiced opinion, for it has been known for some time that THC *in isolation* can be harmful; it is the full bouquet of naturally occurring cannabinoids, however, that marijuana users actually consume, and that is a far different matter. Rather than exacerbating the potential harm done by THC, these compounds tend to mitigate it, and in combination have never been convincingly proven harmful in any way.

One is tempted to conclude that this site is more interested in getting page views with alarming headlines than in presenting the truth.

Posted on Mar 8, 2012

Humor

Weird Owl Smoking in the Trees

thehayze.com 387

Buo Lai En:

Weird Owl *Yankovich*, I presume?

Posted on Mar 7, 2012

Writing

The Reality Behind ‘Reality TV' Seasons change....

tumblr.com 0

Buo Lai En:

Better with a byline

This is a mordantly amusing article, but I would like it still better if it came with attribution. As it stands, I don't know whether ElleDark wrote it herself or reblogged it from another source.

Posted on Mar 5, 2012

Facebook

An In-Depth Understanding of the New Facebook Pages Timeline...

socialeyezer.com 521

Buo Lai En:

A difference that makes no difference...

There is only one thing I want from the privacy-annihilating Facebook: out. And that is precisely what the site won't allow. Citing "upgrades," it has made my browser non-functional (and replacing it isn't an option at present, given my financial constraints), thereby removing my ability to use the "Delete your account" page: The "Delete" button appears, but is dimmed, and clicking it does nothing. Nor, apparently, is it possible to reach a live person and request manual deletion.

Perhaps it's time to call in an air strike and carpet-bomb Faceplantbook with "Dislikes." It won't do any good, of course, but at least it will tell Mark Zuckerberg what we think of his "retention" tactics.

Posted on Mar 5, 2012

Environment

Decisive Ecological Warfare

deepgree...ance.org 56

Buo Lai En:

To kill the fire?

As I read the post-civilizational scenarios postulated on "Deep Ecological Warfare," I couldn't help comparing them with a series of novels, beginning with _Dies the Fire_, written by Stephen Stirling.

In this speculative fiction, Stirling imagines a freak electrical storm over Nantucket followed by a blinding white flash and a brief blackout experienced by everyone on Earth; starting immediately thereafter, we discover that all electricity and fast combustion are gone, apparently for good. Planes, suddenly without power, crash onto cities and create fireballs that incinerate millions and destroy countless buildings and much of our present infrastructure. Most of the world's population dies off within the first year, as governments collapse and warlords form enclaves that become empires mad for conquest. And technology takes a Great Leap Backward, with the remaining population living in a "neo-medieval" world in which power no longer springs from the barrel of a gun, but from a sword wielded by a strong right arm.

Industry and industrial agriculture implode almost instantaneously, leaving populations either to live by subsistence farming (as the protagonists do) or by appropriating the produce of the farmers and reducing the latter to serfdom (as the villains do). But however terrible the loss of life and universal sufferings that lead to it, the world that emerges is a paradoxically hopeful one, and the reader is left to wonder whether the apocalypse has not also been the sole means of delivering us from our own hands.

Now we look upon a world racing to perdition as pathological ruling elites and institutions under their sway strive to extract from air, land and water every resource that can confer wealth, power and continued technological advancement upon them, with a fine aristocratic disregard for the consequences -- the "negative externalities" -- suffered by the contemned majority, and, eventually, by their own descendants. As this article hammers home, this cannot go on much longer, for the resources become ever scarcer as our populations burgeon at the urging and for the greater profit of the elites, while the ecosystem that sustains all things that live decays apace under the relentless assault of the profit-takers.

This article does offer three (or, by its interpretation, four) compelling scenarios: no resistance, limited resistance, forceful resistance, and the kind of "decisive ecological warfare" that it proposes, and goes on to discuss plausible consequences for each. But like so many other similar exhortations, it fails to account for the real source of all of our problems, which will doom any form of resistance to ineffectuality unless recognized and corrected: pathocracy.

As we have increasingly come to realize, our societies are for the most part controlled by psychopaths, whose malignant narcissism and drive to acquire power and wealth combines with a vacuum of moral intelligence to lead them to behave without real understanding of the consequences of their behavior for themselves and others. Paradoxically, it is precisely these traits that enable them to act with specious decisiveness, to manipulate others, and thereby to become "leaders."

Still worse, this tiny genetically defective minority is Patient Zero in a global moral pandemic. Using their control of the media environment and power to shape popular culture to their will, the pathocrats have infected a large proportion -- perhaps a majority -- of the people of the US and many other countries with their pathological thinking. Thus it is that people who have nothing to gain and everything to lose from perpetuating pathocracy do so unconsciously, having been taught that empathy is weakness and that those who differ from them are less than human; from such thinking spring all the evils that debauch and disfigure our nations.

What must we do about this?

The first step might well be mandatory brain scans for every prospective officeholder or wielder of public authority or private power. Abnormalities in a brain structure called the uncinate fasciculus have been implicated in genetic psychopathy, and if those with such abnormalities are barred from power, then their blandishments will fall unheard, and the moral healing can begin. And from this healing, from this vital spark of empathy renewed, must emerge any hope of deliverance.

Posted on Mar 4, 2012

Pornography

» Dreadlock Beauties - Hot Girls With Cool Hair

girlsorbud.com 457

Buo Lai En:

A steamy paradox?

The meeting of hot and cool cannot fail to produce dramatic results. And ever since Bo Derek made dreads The Look of the Early Eighties with her starring role in _10_, they have remained at both temperatures simultaneously.

Posted on Mar 4, 2012

Philosophy

Stumblers Who Like i.minus.com

minus.com 1.2M

Buo Lai En:

Quotations, quotations

This page offers another example of a phenomenon I've noted on the internet on many occasions: Old quotations that, until a few years ago, were clearly established and attributed now appear in multiple versions, and no single authority can establish which one is "correct."

For instance, I'm more familiar with this form of the adage in question: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt."

Of course, whichever version we choose to accept as genuine, it will owe a debt of primacy to William Butler Yeats' poem, _The Second Coming_, in which occur the lines: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

Posted on Mar 3, 2012

Humor

marvin.cs.uidaho.edu

uidaho.edu 908K

Buo Lai En:

A page twice thumbed

I distinctly remember reading and thumbing up this page last year. Unfortunately, StumbleUpon seems to have failed to do likewise, and as we all know, "Those whose bookmarking sites fail to remember history condemn them to repeat it."

Posted on Mar 3, 2012

Activism

Judge Side with Monsanto, Ridicules Farmers' Rights

fooddemo...ynow.org 24

Buo Lai En:

'Power tends to corrupt'

As I commented when I responded to this petition, I wish the farmers every success in their struggle against Monsanto's abusive business practices, but I am not sanguine about their prospects.

We live in a nation debauched, a pathocratic empire where psychopaths rule because their very lack of ethics paves their path to pre-eminence. As long as our ruling elite comprises a cabal of alien-souled men and women who know not conscience or guilt, and seek ever to advance themselves at whatever cost to the rest of society, and as long as our judges are chosen from that elite, we cannot be surprised to find proofs infinitely multiplied of the adage that "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."

Only when Arab Spring-style protests pervade our cities and metamorphose into a general strike that paralyzes the pathological economy -- a weaponless revolution that opposes to the arms and enforcers of the elite the invincible numbers, resolve and fortitude of a people that has withdrawn its consent to be misgoverned -- will any hope exist for justice.

Posted on Mar 2, 2012

Middle East

Israel: Capitalists and fundamentalists won't succeed in...

greanvillepost.com 37

Buo Lai En:

404.

Posted on Mar 1, 2012