Return of Amazing
I was a bit amazed this morning to read in the feed of the Huntsville Times that an Alibam justicer had dismissed charges against four war protesters on the campus of the Black Warrior. [Link] The amazement was not limited to this triumph of student rights to do ineffectual, inane things over the directiveness of the fascistic administration and their jackbooted thugs on this hedonistic campus that brings new meaning to what Soma really is. Rather it was also that the Students for a Democratic Society – the SDS – still exist.
I recall this organization well from my student days when I viewed it rather disdainfully as a diversion from real activity. Somehow today it seems much more like an ineffectual, inane thing that should be treasured but probably only exists as a relief valve for those who have not succumbed to the brainwashing of True Amerikan Consumerism.
Of course if the four students involved have been barred from class since the end of February, it is still a victory for autarkic organization.
Another return is that of individuals in the service of the Yankee government misusing “official” credit cards.[Link] Although the matter is this time concerned with employees of NASA rather than the Yankee army, it is still a bit of amazement that this is newsworthy. I suspect this says more about the lemming rush to find news to print on Monday rather than any actual value. And the fact that a few NASA folks are misusing Yankee government credit cards is more a matter of the propensity for humans to betray their ancestry and be less than wise than it is a matter of organizational depredation.
Speaking of human, I note that Swedish researchers have determined that the number of fat cells in the human body is fixed with new ones being produced at the same rate as old ones die off. [Link] The part of this that is amazing to me is how the rates balance. This must have something to do with homeostasis? Of course it is bad news for the vast majority of the Great Amerikan Consumerate, including SCP, who are somewhere between overweight and flat obese, that these cells may be fixed in number but not in how much fat they contain. This definitely brings new meaning to the term “blivet”.
And on that note, researchers at the Patagonian National Centre have advanced research results indicating that Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis should really be just plain old Homo Neandertalensis. Again. This research used analysis of facial traits. The immediate wonder is whether they can provide their analysis software to the Homeland Defense Gestapo since their face recognition software has a consistent error of about 0.5. The second thought is that I am not quite ready to buy off on this, at least if it asserts that neandertalensis and sapiens were not interfertile. I have seen entirely too many people, including some general officers of the Yankee army, with supraorbital ridges and prognathous jaws.
Lastly, I note that Amazon is litigating the state of New Yawk over a new state law mandating that internet merchants collect New Yawk tax regardless of any brick and mortar presence in that state. [Link] Despite my general dislike for Amazon, largely the result of failed orders, I have to side with them on this. If the states are allowed to arbitrarily invent “legal” means of preying on the internet then the states need to be abolished. I cannot speak for citizens of New Yawk, but I increasingly have to ask what benefit is provided by state and county instrumentalities that could not more efficiently and effectively be provided by federal instrumentalities staffed by civil servants rather than politically appointed relatives of elected politicians?
Aren’t Mondays grand?
