They Succeed Because We Let Them.

I think one thing that we’ve been talking about a lot in Boston is the fact this is not necessarily anti-capitalism, and that this isn’t anti-wealth. And so, you know, we’ve found that some people who are just wealthy might be a little alienated by our movement.   And so we’ve been sort of actively trying to reach out to them and say that, you know, it’s not that we have anything against wealth, and it’s not that we have anything against capitalism. We just want to make sure that our democracy is functioning the way that it’s supposed to function. – Jason Potteiger, brainwashed and unemployed recent graduate

And how is shutting down businesses, destroying property, and truly being a public danger and nuisance in any way a functioning democracy?

We’re not a democracy, we’re a representative republic, but if we concede the point for the sake of argument, the functioning “democracy” functions when everybody votes.  Then you keep abreast of the issues and write to your congress-critters.  That’s how it works.

Or, you can make a public spectacle and waste taxpayer dollars as an attention-whore and say stupid things like this:

“Inherently, in asking for demands, you are accepting that there is a power greater than yourself, which is something that this movement is categorically against,” Patrick Bruner, a 23-year-old protester, told the group. “This movement is founded on autonomous action and collective wisdom.”

There’s earned arrogance…

Arrogance has to be earned.  Tell me what you did to earn yours.  – House

And there is Patrick Bruner’s arrogance, which really doesn’t have a lot of life experience to justify it yet.  Of course there are powers greater than ones’ self – it is a fact of life and you can’t change it even if you close your eyes really hard and wish for it to be different.

Sam Abrahamson… back in the NPR interview:

You know, I came out here, essentially, because I’m sick of the apathy that seems to be pervading through my generation. Just like Jason, I’m worried about paying off all this debt that I’m racking up from college. So one of the things that I’m hoping to accomplish from these protests is to get some financial reforms, that we can have support for people like myself who are in the middle class, who are not going to have the ability to pay these loans off by themselves.

Grammar is not a strong point of college graduates, obviously.

How is Occupy Wall Street supposed to pay off all the debt one racks up from college?  The guy went to college in “pre-reforms” times, and surely must have known that he would be responsible for paying for the services rendered (obtaining an education).  If you know you are not going to have the ability to pay off the loans by yourself, perhaps you ought to save up some money and then go to school.

What Abrahamson is trying to do is get the education and then not have to pay for it.  Free lunch.  As a graduate who paid off all of his loans the less-polite part of me very much wants to say to Abrahamson:

Stuff it, you snot-nosed litte dirtbag.  Suck it up and be a man.  The real apathy here is rooted in your inability to face that you have to work for things in life and the rest of the world owes you no favors.  Stop being a child.

Idiots succeed in making statements like the ones above because no one calls them on it.  The Democratic Party gets away with calling itself the party that includes blacks and minorities because they are allowed to.  Media is allowed to slash the Tea Party as people clinging to guns and religion because they are allowed to (yes, I know Obama said that one).

And Occupy Wall Street is allowed the fiction of claiming that their 0.001% represents the rest of us in the 99% even though it is utterly untrue.  They don’t speak for me even one tiny bit.  They can’t even coherently speak for themselves since the liberal portion of this country is really composed of a bunch of special interests that band together as long as purposes suit rather than be held together by a common cause which is indeed bigger than themselves.  Autonomous action and collective wisdom is synonymous with anarchy and chaos.

The politest fiction is that demonstrative liberalism isn’t rooted in hubris.

More later – I need a nap.

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Traders in Shock: “You Mean they can go DOWN???”

Drunk on their own juices and stale farts, investors on Wall Street faced a harsh reality today – some for the first time – as they came to grips with the fact that a DJIA of 14,000 might just be unsustainably high and correct itself.  Harshly.

Whaddya mean, the market can go down?  – an anguished investor

Ex Chairman Greenspan spoke up today and told us pretty much nothing that we could not have figured out for ourselves.

First of all, let’s recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event…  – former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan

I’m just shocked.  Of course, the DJIA isn’t the cause of the problems, it’s just a symptom.  A symptom of extreme terror brought on by a rather rash run of hedonism on the part of investment bankers – which allowed the system to get far more momentum than it ever should have.

Ah well, that’s what capitalism is all about, right?  It’ll all correct itself and move right along, right?  Yes and no.  Bailing out Fannie and Freddie was necessary, as much as it chokes me to say.  Bear Stearns was a warning shot – if you stayed the wobbly course after that warning, you pretty much tied your own noose.

What is totally unknown is how many of these remaining lending institutions will be bailed out with money taken from taxpayers to save their money.  Got that?  Ultimately your money and livelihood is in danger, so we’re going to take some other money of yours and paint certain institutions of our choosing with rainbow colors to make it all work out right in the end.  Maybe.  If no one panics about it.  Trust us.

The latest word I got was that the fed may make it so an institution that has both mortgages and private financial branches may be allowed to lend money from the private savings part to the risky mortgage side.  But what happens if it goes wrong?  All go boom, fed steps up and gives people their money out of a pool of… their money.

We have politicians crying for infusions of money for local economies, companies crying to be bailed out, other politicians asking for extensions on unemployment benefits, and over here we need tax credits to stimulate business in this area… everybody is piling on with their needs.  Has anyone stopped to ask where all this $%*^&#@ money is going to COME FROM?

Well, apparently it is not coming in an equitable fashion from ill-performing top execs with golden parachutes.

Sort of related… in The Scotsman.  Actually really related.

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Really fun photoshop.  Invisible things that are sort of there.

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Injure a child in the commission of a crime… fry him.  Throwing a baby out of the car?  The kid was only 4 months old, you pig.

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Al Qaeda imploding due to worldwide Muslim backlash?  Excuse me while I hold my breath.  Well, ok, I guess I can see how other terrorist organizations (Hamas, for example) are providing frills – bags of peanuts, pillows and blankets, in-explosion movies, etc. – and making it a real festive affair to kill infidels instead of just suicide-suicide-suicide.

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I like this bicyclist’s discussion of problems faced by bicyclists in this country.  It is done in a non-whining analytical way, and a lot of it makes sense.  At least it does from this bicyclist’s viewpoint.

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A while ago I linked a site that sold underwear that looked skid-marked, and they were actually made that way so they could act as a “Uh Hands Off” money safe.

Now, protect your sandwich from the lunch-stealing twits from work… with culture-bags.

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Huh.  How about that?  Laser induced transmutation of radioisotopes.

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[Note:  I had originally put in an article about devil worshippers who killed, cooked, and ate their friends, but it was just too damn dark.  Yes Virginia there is such thing as Evil.]

Zero tolerance run amok.  Boy suspended for using broken pencil sharpener.  Apparently it had a sharp blade in it.  It’s good thing they caught the little bastard before he used his shiv to dead somebody.

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Tidbits… kibbles, bits, and nibbles

UPDATE:  Pardon the language, but ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!

What a complete scumbag.

He should have been treated like an ordinary citizen all this time, not like he was royalty.  He would have seen harsh treatment a long time before now if it were you or me.

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Behind the scenes of Hilton’s mock ad

The 24-year-old heiress memorized her entire monologue, which included Hilton outlining her energy plan, in an online video spoof posted on Funny or Die, the comedy Web site’s content director said.

Huh. Little girls do grow up, don’t they? From last year’s weeping in the slammer to memorizing her lines.

Why do I post this?  To ask one question regarding the original article in hopes of an answer…

WHO CARES?

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What’s to dissect? Greed. There, can someone please pay me now for my analysis?

Wall Street Report Tries to Dissect Financial Meltdown

A group of Wall Street executives released a report on Wednesday that outlined how the industry failed to foresee the financial meltdown of the last year and what companies can do to improve risk management.

The 172-page report (PDF), written by chief risk officers and senior executives at banks like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, also provides suggestions about technical issues at the same time as it offers a bit of a mea culpa.

“Virtually everybody was frankly slow in recognizing that we were on the cusp of a really draconian crisis,” said E. Gerald Corrigan, a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a chairman of the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group III , which released the report.

I find this atrocious situation entertaining in one sense: They say virtually everybody was slow in recognizing that something was wrong. Uh… who the hell qualifies as “everbody”? I think a huge number of people were screaming that something was wrong and that growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.  Duh.

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Did he get this information over the internet like on the TV show “24”?

Motorcade Map Found at House Of Bomb Suspect

Police found a map of Camp David marked with a presidential motorcade route inside the Bethesda home of the teenager at the center of a bombmaking probe, along with a document that appears to describe how to kill someone at a distance of 200 meters, a Montgomery County prosecutor said yesterday at a court hearing.

Collin McKenzie-Gude, 18, also had two forms of fake identification: one portraying him as a Central Intelligence Agency employee, and the other in the name of a federal contractor purportedly protected by the Geneva Conventions, authorities said.

The investigation has expanded to include officials from the CIA, FBI and Secret Service, prosecutors said. McKenzie-Gude, who is in the Montgomery County jail, faces charges that include weapons violations, possession of explosives and attempted carjacking. At the house last week, police found more than 50 pounds of chemicals, assault-style weapons and armor-piercing bullets.

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A Luddite’s Midsummer Nights Wet-Dream.  Sort of.

Those of you know me know that (1) I’m involved in aerospace, and (2) that I hate technology.  Sorry, but life is not black and white – actually 37.394 million shades of grey, and I’m complex with lots of issues.  Ask anybody about my issues.  They’ll tell you.

In spite of my hatred of technology, it is a necessary evil and I don’t plan on becoming Amish.  Because of that, and my career, it behooves me to learn, learn lots, learn often, and fight the urge to give up my anti-technology leanings entirely.

Seventh picture down is my favorite but there are others… the wooden computer.  Beauty, ain’t she?

Nice. I want one.  Go check out their site.  Give ’em some traffic.

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Wanna geek out?

Go HERE.  I have already availed myself of quite a few of these books.  Some are HUNDREDS of pages of good information (I found a great digital signal processing book).  One of my big interest areas is in HDR imagery and also image processing.  Yes, it is anti-anti-technology to engage in this activity like I do.  I said I was full of issues, didn’t I?

Example Image Processing:  http://www.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/Courses/FIP/noframes/fip.html

Digital Signal Processing for Scientists/Engineers:  http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm

Algorithms:  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html

I’ve found other sites that are a bit more download friendly and I’ll link them (if I remember tomorrow at work).

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