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Kzoppistan

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  1. Kzoppistan
    Some thoughts on the trends in CN and personal thoughts. Why would you be interested in reading this? Beats me. But if you're as bored as I am, it might help pass the time reading it as it did for me writing it.
    First, look at this:

    In recent news:
    Might as well throw my two cents in on this.
    NSO/RoK & Crew:
    NSO had it coming. 'Nuff said. Step on enough toes and those you piss off will take advantage of the first opportunity to isolate and destroy you. I don't know much about RoK, except that this hyper-aggressive stance seems typical of them.
    Are RoK, GOD, VE, ect., ect., aggressionists? (I just made that word up.) Probably. But it's a political simulation and war is just politics by other methods. It's not supposed to be all rosey and hand holding. So they had a reasonably valid CB (they probably jumped for joy considering it's rarity) and rolled out as quickly as possible. That's that. Don't like it, plot to destroy them. I'm sure plenty of people are.
    As for NSO, I'm rather 'meh' about them, and I think they were doomed from the start. Ivan's mistake was calling it the New Sith Order. What's in a name? Not much, usually. But in this case, Moldavi adopted a theme and name that instantly set them up for failure. While I'm not the biggest Stars Wars geek, I do know that the Sith are the "evil" side, treacherous and violent. The only way one can exist with such a label (and still enjoy diplomatic inclusion) is to be violent, dangerous, court those of a like personality, and strong enough to resist those that would attack such a threat. Ironically, could they have fulfilled that role they would've seemed better suited to be allied with those currently attacking them.
    While an impressive figure in his own right, Moldavi doesn't seem able to play the role of leader of a lesser power sufficiently. He seems better wielding a great power, but not so much a weaker one, the lack of strength in NSO limits his "aura". Without the ability to follow through on threats, NSO members remind me of timid tribal people or teenagers who, emboldened by the goading of their peers, race up to the edge of the border to throw a rock at the other tribe before running back to the safety of camp for some nervous high fives. They've had a few impressive milestones and some good members but unfortunately they can't quit stand up to the image they portray.
    Instead of trying to debate the CB and circumstances, which, being the ones outnumbered and attacked, looks like nothing more than trying to squirm this away and that to spin public perception to their favor, they should just fight. To do what they are doing, that is the sign of weakness. You can't be "Sith" and try to play the sympathy game.
    (Edit: Or at least take some tips from NPO on how to put a situation in a more favorable light. See Sir Paul's publication)
    (Second Edit: I may sound like I'm ragging NSO, I'm not, I am only being critical. I can be rather biting in my evaluations, but there aren't many alliances I actually dislike. I've enjoyed a number of shenanigans and threads by NSO members and would like to see them come out of this current scrap stronger. I was, perhaps, let down a little bit after the return of Moldavi and it's been hard to shake that. I do like to see people exceed my expectations of them.)
    GATO cancellation:
    Smart move, NSO are liabilities, but horrible timing and crappy thing to do to someone you called a friend or ally. What's with the pathetic use of a technicality? Now it looks like either it was a set-up to the conspiracy nuts or they were trying to save their skins. Pretty weak. I liked GATO before. Not so much now.
    *Incidentally, I feel the almost exactly the same way about the MHA cancellation on Ramlins, despite GRE's currently disastrous image.
    Tech Raiding:
    OOC speaking, I don't really care. In fact, if fate had been different, and I was shunted into a raiding alliance instead of Zenith, I probably would be a raider. I think the game should cover a number of interests for the variety of people out there. I haven't seen too much evidence that raiding affects game membership one way or the other. I will say that excessive raiding probably stifles creativity as almost everyone has to follow the same paradigm of alliance joining, treaty webbing, ect., or otherwise have their game ruined, which sort of adds to the stagnation. But on the whole, it's a game, and the risk of failure is essential to sweeten the taste of victory. Just like life, there has to be an element of danger.
    I wouldn't want to see tech raiding or other actions like that eliminated. It's part of the fun for many and somebody has to be the bad guys. And I'm too pretty for that. But, I do think that a campaign to push back tech raiding occurrences would make for great role-playing potential. Changing the group behaviors and standards is what makes the game interesting.
    I am vehemently against tech raiding in game for a number of reasons. One, it puts me at odds with a majority of people and I like conflict. Two, it adds a touch of nobility to my character, and I like playing good guys. Three, most people who complain of tech raiding are nothing but whiners and victims butthurt over some traumatizing episode of the past. They rely heavily on what is "moral" and what not. I am, however, an ethicist last, and a Machiavellian Darwinist first. Pretty much a wolf in sheep's clothing. I understand the mindset of a raider intimately and like to surprise those unfamiliar with me by being just as hardnosed and vicious about wiping them off the face of the planet as they are about protecting their "right" to raid.
    Good times.
    Other Thoughts:
    IC/OOC
    Some people say they don't "roleplay" their nation leader, that they are pretty much the same in rl. Others say they use the opportunity to be a different person. I've never been able to find a comfortable line between the two. I've more or less adapted to the position I find myself in, but often find myself conflicted by real life opinions and the opinions of what I think a leader of a nation would have. Plus, IC isn't rigidly enforced in the alliance announcement areas so its easy to lapse into just being average joe. (for some reason, I find the RP section creepy and refuse to play). But I do try to play it "IC" as best as I can. When first starting out, I was working in the FA ministry and did my best to limit my OWF comments to those of a diplomatic mindset. A lot of mild, encouraging, and easy going comments flowed forth. But unfortunately, not only is that pretty boring but I also found my sense of humor beginning to leak through. I have a perverse, macabre, silly, and often non sequitur, bizarre even, sense of humor which often proves irrepressible. I'll never have the devastating wit of, say, Sal Paradise or comedic stylings of zzzptm but I do like to make people laugh and am not above playing the fool to get a few chuckles out folks and brighten their day. I've been able to hold my tongue with more biting comments, but find it difficult to withhold a joke or general silliness.
    Since being relieved of all gov. duties, my forum "personality" has been evolving in directions I never considered. For one, I saw the "Most Arrogant Player of the year" or some such thread and thought I'm going to win that next year. So I shifted my style a little. While I don't go over the top a la Rebel Virginia, as to copy his signature style of self praise would be nothing short of plagiarism of his brilliant rooster strutting, nevertheless, my own particular is working quite well. How much of this self-absorbed narcissism is is real and how much is an act? Quite a bit, actually.
    So who is the real Mr. O?
    The man behind the mask, as they say. That's easy:

    Schadenfreude
    Don't know what that is? Look it up.


    The Recipe of Mr.O's Character:
    85% Sadomasochistic Hedonist.
    10% Anti-Authoritarian.
    4% Nihilist.
    1% Mystic Wanderer.
    With a dash of magic sprinkles.
    Take the preceding ingredients, Mix 12 oz. of Whiskey with 8 Shots of Espresso in the handbag of a prostitute (shaken and stirred) for the Kzoppistan Kamikaze. Chill and Serve on silver tray with Fat Blunts.
    "But Kzopp," I hear you say, "you seem like such a nice chap." Well, you're right, I am pretty great. I'm not a complete and total !@#$%^&, lengthy criminal record notwithstanding. On a personal level I do have a lot of sympathy for my fellow man. I've volunteered at the homeless shelter on Christmas, made donations of goods, for example, and often do little acts to help others not really worth mentioning. But I'm just as likely to laugh when you trip and fall down the stairs. (For the record, I would also laugh at myself should I do the same.) Unlike a lot of these whippersnappers here, I'm not middle-class, been to or are going to college (well, one college credit), don't have a promising future, healthy family, will never obtain the white house with picket fence and 2.5 kids. I've been at the very bottom and have seen many things that a lot of people haven't. I've survived 3 life-or-death situations, I've hitchhiked all across the US, and been a victim, witness, and actor in a number of shady and/or violent incidents. These sort of things take their toll on the mental and emotional health after a while. It turns you cynical and callous. So in an ironic role-reversal from most folks, despite my stunning charisma dashing good looks, I'm actually much nicer on the forum than in person.
    Lol, ok, that's not true, I'm just protecting my sensitive side (no, really). But I am often cranky, snide, condescending and sarcastic. Just like all you other pricks. I'm trying to be a nicer person, really I am, but sometimes these traits leak out on the forum, and you can see it when I take offense over something some one says and then pick an argument with them. Sometimes I just take a contrary position that I don't even really believe or care. I can't help it, I just like to give people a hard time. Bust their chops a little.
    So now you know everything about me. Maybe. It could all be lies, too.
    Well, I've got more random babbling, but that's enough for one day.
    Anyone else want to share on the topics discussed?
  3. Kzoppistan
    *I was moving some articles around and found this one tucked away. Thought I'd share it. It's old, Zenith is disbanded, SNOW is long gone, and I now know who Vladimir is.

    __________________________________________________


    Critique of "The Slavery of International Rights"
    By Kzoppistan, originally posted in the Zenith Debating Chamber on February 21st, 2009. Formatting and minor editing by Ferrous
    The following is a critique on "The Slavery of International Rights," an essay by Vladimir.
    This article falls short of convincing me that international rights should not exist. Whether or not I feel international rights should exist is a different story, but this article fails to convince me of anything except the inability of the author to argue a stance, despite the heavy "intellectualization" of the wordage. The author attacks the position of the Globalists and attempts to knock flat their assertions by an examination of the components of "rights". However, the author falls victim to the fallacy of argumentum ad logicam, or simply argument to logic (This is the fallacy of assuming that something is false simply because a proof or argument that someone has offered for it is invalid; this reasoning is fallacious because there may be another proof or argument that successfully supports the proposition.) He may have scored several points against the Globalists if those really were their points that they put forth, but for the case against international rights he's just knocking down straw men. A careful examination of his refutation shows that his arguments are, at best, limited in scope.
    Before that look, though, I'd like to point out that since the article details the inter-player relationship the author can be forgiven for thinking "inside the box" because, when you take a long view of it, there already is an international body of rights and enforcement, the Admin.
    One of the major points of contention I have with this article is the lack of clarification of what rights the author is talking about.
    Onward.

    This statement can be proven false by simple logic. If I am a person who supports international rights, then that makes me a Globalist. However, that does not necessarily make me some one who believes that international rights are negative (as in, they only require others to refrain from interfering). What if I believed that a world governing body should be imposed to enforce international rights? What then? (the end result of that intention is what he decries at the end of the article, but the points he provides to get to that final argument are weak, thus the reason of this critique.)
    Then that premise is false. An international body doesn't have to be created to enforce an international law. By the author's definition: "Rights have two prerequisites in order for them to exist: a law in support of them (whether by written legislation or precedent) and a body capable and willing to enforce that law." Neither of those stipulate that an international body must be the enforcing party. Most enforcement of international laws, such as they oft written "no spying" law, is done by the offended party.
    Another example:
    What the author fails to consider is the fluid nature of rights. Rights are formal rules of entitlement not only created by those with the power to enforce them but also by consensus. (Which we'll examine in a moment) What if, in the example above, that alliance applies for protection from a larger partner. Then it certainly has the right to exist as long as the protecting partner is strong enough to deflect an attacker.
    That statement is incorrect by the point above about spying.
    Is that not the point? If not, then why was there conflict built into the system? What is the difference between one nation imposing their will by force-of-arms on another nation, and one bloc forcing their will on the rest of the world?
    Yes. For many, who ever wields complete control over the rest could be considered the "winner" of the game. For those who just want to develop their nations to the fullest can do so within the protection of an alliance.
    Ironically, both the Globalists and the author are wrong for the same reason but by different routes of reasoning. The Globalists contend that there should be international rights, like the right to existence- which would make it illegal for one nation to attack another. But that removes the risk factor and is contrary to a major factor of the game. Besides, there already is the right to exist without being attacked, it's called peace mode (if one doesn't want to incur the penalties of existing in peace mode, they have to entertain a little bit of risk, kinda like life. Don't like it? Play a different game. Or enforce your will in this one.) On the other hand, the ultimate argument of the author, despite all the blah-blah above it, is that the method to enforce those rights would make some one an imperialistic a-hole. That is also messed up because enforcing your will upon another is, again, a major feature of the game. To simplify, the Globalists say "Don't do that" and the author says "You shouldn't tell other people what to do" which inherently contradicts itself.
    As a counter point to the "against the point of the game" argument (yes, I know, I'm arguing both sides , could be, "the game is what you make it." If all the major powers agreed and enforced a rule that everyone should buy 10 tanks and then decommission them every Tuesday, well, that's the game. Despite the designer's intentions.
    Some of the better stances to take involve a middle-of-the-road approach. Let's take two alternatives to the dictatorial bloc the author provided. One in reality and one hypothetical.
    Both are international rules of consensus.
    The first involves the SNOW treaty. While it is, in essence, an economic treaty, it also serves as a bloc of power and protection. Since it spans several alliances, that constitutes international, if not global. When an alliance joins, they receive the right to not be attack by other signatories. If they are, the bloc, and particularly TOOL, can punish the perpetrators. This is right by consensus. If some one doesn't agree to that charter, they don't have to join.
    Let's take a hypothetical example. Let's call it the "Hammer of Ice". If all the major alliances and nations on the white sphere can come to an agreement to not attack one another and pass the responsibility of enforcing that agreement onto the alliance who holds the senatorial position then you will have a extraordinary large bloc of power and rights. If the agreement to rotate the senate position through a roster of alliances, (passing the Hammer of Ice) then it is not an elite few that enforce those rights but rather the whole white sphere. Rights by consensus, law, and enforceability. Now, if there was a person on the white sphere who did not agree to those rights and refused to move spheres, is that the tyranny of the majority over the minority? Of course, but that is also no different from the tyranny of the strong over the weak, the crux of the game warfare mechanic and life itself.
    So in conclusion, I think this case could have been much better argued by pointing out the undesirability of universal rights because they conflict with the nature of the game, rather than all the other hoo-ha this guy said.
  5. Kzoppistan
    I'm a big drunk. There, I said it. Because of that, though, I've had many, many, different kinds of drinks at many, many, places. One of my favorite drinks is the Bloody Mary. A cure for hangovers (or the start of one), it's a drink everyone should try. One, it's kind of different. It's a nice diversion from the thousands of fruity sex-in-your-hair or what ever the next cheap slop is that they can disguise with artificially flavored liqueurs, plus, a guy can only drink so much cranberry juice in a single night. And Two, if you drink one in the morning, you feel like you're doing something right. Or getting your vegetables. Or, well, maybe, but my point is, they're good.
    For those of you that don't know, it goes a little something like this:
    Bloody Mary recipe courtesy of the New York School of Bartending:
    * 1 oz. to 1 1/2 oz. (30-45 ml) vodka in a Highball glass filled with ice.
    * Fill glass with tomato juice
    * 1 dash celery salt
    * 1 dash ground black pepper
    * 1 dash Tabasco
    * 2-4 dashes of Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire sauce
    * 1/8 tsp. horseradish (pure, never creamed)
    * Dash of lemon or lime juice
    Garnish with celery stalk.
    As you can see, it's salty, spicy, and vegetably.
    A caveat, the Bloody Mary is a bit of a special drink. It's a pain in the $@! to make, because you have to have ingredients that just don't fit too often in other drinks. Worcestershire? I mean, come on. Because of this, I've seen it made three different ways:
    1. Put actual celery, tomatoes, ect. in a blender and do it up with a homemade touch. Very rare, but the best way. You won't find that in too many places.
    2. The pre-mix. Could be made at the bar pre-hours, might just be a mix bought in bulk. Who knows, it's in those plastic containers.
    3. V8 juice is the usual.
    Now, some quick backstory: A few weeks ago I took a buddy of mine to the local Turkish/Persian eatery (used to be called Istanbul Palace, now...? Grape Leaf, I think) and on the way out he suggested we get some drinks at the bar next door. Being a little, eh, hungover, I wasn't keen on the idea, but he advised a Bloody Mary to ease my troubled mind. So, seeing the wisdom of this counsel, I obliged, but to be honest, I wasn't expecting much. The bar was a local working man's joint, a sports bar, called, simply, The Campus Pub. But, lo and behold, to my surprise, the bartender (who also happened to be a knockout blond) made one of the best Bloody Mary's I've ever had. Ever Had. And I've had a bunch. Who would've thunk it?
    So that set the bar.
    I got to thinking, since I live downtown, which bar makes the best Bloody Marys around? With that thought fermenting, I went out a few days later.
    So there I was, drinking at a local joint, when the idea to test each bar's Blood Marys came back to me like a car barreling out of the fog. Thus spawned the Lexington Downtown Blood Mary Crawl.
    Now, it's true, I was already pretty sauced having been drinking since noon, but on the other hand, I'm a professional. I hit a number of bars, in a vague zig-zag manner, which I'll list in order of getting to them.
    All of the bars made decent drinks. I didn't have a bad one. So my rankings are Standard, Good, and Excellent.
    When the idea hit me I was sitting in McCarthy's Irish Bar, a favorite of horse-racing enthusiasts, working professionals, college students, and Irish business folk. That night it was helmed by all-around-nice-guy Donny the manager. The drink was Standard. However, I will say that it was the fastest Bloody Mary I've ever seen made. No joke, from the minute the words came out of my mouth to the moment the cool glass of vegetably vodka touched my sweaty little palm, 40 seconds.
    The second place I went to was Bellini's. One of the nicest places to eat in the city, Italian styled, and you definitely want to dress up when you take your date there. (Why they let me in there, I'll never know). The man behind the bar was Ryan who proceeded to serve me with that nice blend of cool professionalism and wary friendliness that comes from eyeing a sloppy drunk come in the door. Ryan used the cracked peppercorn straight from grinder which was a nice touch and the taste was evident in the drink, as well as the peperoncini juice. This bumped it up to Good.
    Making my way around to the end of the block and around the corner, I stopped by another of my favorite Irish bars: Molly Brooks. They have a beautiful crafted wood interior, a great atmosphere, and super friendly staff. Unfortunately, they didn't have the ingredients, which was a disappointment, because it is otherwise a great place to drink. Get it together, Molly Brooks!
    Right next door, the next bar posed a different kind of challenge, Crossings. It is a watering-hole that caters to a... particular clientele. Let's say you won't find a lot of ladies hanging out. I had never been inside, but, deciding that my quest for the best Bloody Mary must be legitimate, I stepped through the door. The bartender Pete quickly put me at ease and then proceeded to make the best drink of the night. It was Excellent.
    Across the street I entered the next domain, Mia's. The band was rocking and the place was full. I didn't catch the name of the lady behind the bar because she was so busy but she get time to make me a drink that was Standard all while giving me the skeptical eye appropriate towards someone who claims to be writing a blog about Bloody Marys. I really liked the atmosphere but, duty called, so off I went.
    I stopped by the Side Bar, another great joint and pretty new addition to the downtown scene. For a Gen-X'er it is a bit like home, most of the staff have tattoos, there's a retro Betty Page kind of vibe on the walls and '90s alterarock tunes blaring from the stereo. Kind of place you want to ride your motorcycle to. Once again I was disappointed because they didn't have the ingredients.
    Winding around, I ended up at Le Deauville. One of the nicest restaurants in town. Traditional French cuisine made by real French people. Cozy with a wide front that opens out to the street. At once contemporary but with a touch of the Old World. Another place you want to put on your good shoes for, this place will impress any date you take out, and the food is delicious. Their drink was Standard, mainly because it was served in a smaller glass than most other places, though the taste was good. I didn't catch the name of the pretty lady who made the drink, cause frankly, I already had 4 big glasses of this delicious drink on top of what ever I had before that. Despite my obvious state of intoxication, they made me feel very welcome.
    I should interject at this point, that I didn't find out until later that professional tasters don't actually eat everything they taste, they sample it and move on. However, even if I did know that then, I'm a tightwad and can't let $4.50 go to waste. So I was pretty schwilly by this point. However, that didn't stop me from catching a cab back to my local stomping grounds, Lynagh's Irish Pub & Grill for one more. A Good Bloody Mary, made particularly nice by the mystery mix they have behind the bar.
    So there we have it.
    In order of Best in Downtown:
    Crossings: Excellent
    Bellini's: Good
    Le Deauville: Standard
    McCarthy's: Standard
    Mia's: Standard
    Side Bar: no ingredients
    Molly Brooks: no ingredients
    Of all Sampled:
    Campus Pub: Excellent (The Best)
    Crossings: Excellent
    Lynagh's: Good
    Bellini's: Good
    Le Deauville: Standard
    McCarthy's: Standard
    Mia's: Standard
    Side Bar: no ingredients
    Molly Brooks: no ingredients
    Summary: I was a little disappointed that literally two of the nicest places to eat in town, used pretty standard ingredients for their drinks. The best Bloody Marys came out of left field, Campus Pub and Crossings both surprised me with their quality. I will say, however, that ALL of these great establishments I would take any guest to, all go above and beyond to cater to their customers and that is something even a drunk like me won't forget.
    There are still lots of bars downtown, so look for Part 2 coming soon. Also, if any of the establishments listed have improved their recipe, drop me a line and I'll come by and check it out.
    Cheers!
  6. Kzoppistan
    As a person who has an interest in the nature of perception, and also as an artist, I have been long fascinated by optical illusions. I've seen a lot of them, but this one caught my attention today as I was looking up 'darkness' as a wiki entry:

    Square A is the same shade as square B.
    It seems unbelievable, but it's true.
    I'm pretty familiar with the concept of relative shading but I thought I would do a little experiment. Despite the impression of different values in my mind from seeing this picture, I was fully confident that the author was correct (having seen a similar illustration before) and they were the same shade. However, just for fun, I copied the pic and pasted it in my photoshop program. Then I took the eyedropper tool and sampled both squares. Lo and behold, all Red Green and Blue attributes were 120 for both squares, an exact match.
    Then to see how it would look, I took the paintbrush with the sampled color selected and did this:

    It is interesting that the effect of gradation is a complete illusion. It looks like a smooth blend, doesn't it?
    In fact, if you relax your focus and stare somewhere in the middle of the two squares you might see the two blocs and their connecting line as a whole pop out of the background.

    The nature of perception sure is neat.
    What's even more interesting is how the lesson of this simple visual trick can be used to extrapolate other facts in the areas of life. There are certain redundancies or patterns in existence, and what is observed in the visual realm can be also observed in other realms. Not only in our external senses, light, sound, (energy), ect., but within our minds as well, especially since all of our senses are filtered through interpretative mechanisms that apply subjective meaning and causality to the things we experience. In short, how the mind perceives the stimuli and puts together a mental representation of it, (as viewing is an active process, not a passive one), those same mechanisms may also be similar to how we consider abstract concepts.
    So, despite how it looks, the two squares are the same but only appear different simply by the contrasting values around them.
    Makes you wonder, then, what other things in life are actually the same but which their sameness is obscured by the particular framing, intentional or otherwise, of the environments around them?
  7. Kzoppistan
    ----------------------------
    Mike McConnell, the WashPost & the dangers of sleazy corporatism
    By Glenn Greenwald
    [Original article here:]
    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/29/mcconnell/index.html
    In a political culture drowning in hidden conflicts of interests, exploitation of political office for profit, and a rapidly eroding wall separating the public and private spheres, Michael McConnell stands out as the perfect embodiment of all those afflictions. Few people have blurred the line between public office and private profit more egregiously and shamelessly than he.

    McConnell's behavior is the classic never-ending "revolving door" syndrome: public officials serve private interests while in office and are then lavishly rewarded by those same interests once they leave. He went from being head of the National Security Agency under Bush 41 and Clinton directly to Booz Allen, one of the nation's largest private intelligence contractors, then became Bush's Director of National Intelligence (DNI), then went back to Booz Allen, where he is now Executive Vice President.
    But that's the least of what makes McConnell such a perfect symbol for the legalized corruption that dominates Washington. Tellingly, his overarching project while at Booz Allen and in public office was exactly the same: the outsourcing of America's intelligence and surveillance functions (including domestic surveillance) to private corporations, where those activities are even more shielded than normal from all accountability and oversight and where they generate massive profit at the public expense. Prior to becoming Bush's DNI, McConnell, while at Booz Allen, was chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the primary business association of NSA and CIA contractors devoted to expanding the privatization of government intelligence functions.
    Then, as Bush's DNI, McConnell dramatically expanded the extent to which intelligence functions were outsourced to the same private industry that he long represented. Worse, he became the leading spokesman for demanding full immunity for lawbreaking telecoms for their participation in Bush's illegal NSA programs -- in other words, he exploited "national security" claims and his position as DNI to win the dismissal of lawsuits against the very lawbreaking industry he represented as INSA Chairman, including, almost certainly, Booz Allen itself. Having exploited his position as DNI to lavishly reward and protect the private intelligence industry, he then returns to its loving arms to receive from them lavish personal rewards of his own.
    It's vital to understand how this really works: it isn't that people like Mike McConnell move from public office to the private sector and back again. That implies more separation than really exists. At this point, it's more accurate to view the U.S. Government and these huge industry interests as one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity -- with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, it's more like an intra-corporate re-assignment than it is changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI, he's simply in one division of this entity and when he's at Booz Allen, he's in another, but it's all serving the same entity (it's exactly how insurance giant Wellpoint dispatched one of its Vice Presidents to Max Baucus' office so that she could write the health care plan that the Congress eventually enacted).
    In every way that matters, the separation between government and corporations is nonexistent, especially (though not only) when it comes to the National Security and Surveillance State. Indeed, so extreme is this overlap that even McConnell, when he was nominated to be Bush's DNI, told The New York Times that his ten years of working "outside the government," for Booz Allen, would not impede his ability to run the nation's intelligence functions. That's because his Booz Allen work was indistinguishable from working for the Government, and therefore -- as he put it -- being at Booz Allen "has allowed me to stay focused on national security and intelligence communities as a strategist and as a consultant. Therefore, in many respects, I never left."
    As the NSA scandal revealed, private telecom giants and other corporations now occupy the central role in carrying out the government's domestic surveillance and intelligence activities -- almost always in the dark, beyond the reach of oversight or the law. As Tim Shorrock explained in his definitive 2007 Salon piece on the relationship between McConnell, Booz Allen, and the intelligence community, in which (to no avail) he urged Senate Democrats to examine these relationships before confirming McConnell as Bush's DNI:
    [booz Allen's] website states that the Booz Allen team "employs more than 10,000 TS/SCI cleared personnel." TS/SCI stands for top secret-sensitive compartmentalized intelligence, the highest possible security ratings. This would make Booz Allen one of the largest employers of cleared personnel in the United States.
    Among those on Booz Allen's payroll are former CIA Director and neoconservative extremist James Woolsey, George Tenet's former Chief of Staff Joan Dempsey, and Keith Hall, the former director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the super-secret organization that oversees the nation's spy satellites. As Shorrock wrote: "Under McConnell's watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs the Bush administration has run, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme" and "is almost certainly participating in the agency's warrantless surveillance of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens." For more details on the sprawling and overlapping relationships between McConnell, Booz Allen, the INSA, the Government and the private intelligence community, see Shorrock's interview with Democracy Now and his 2008 interview with me.
    Aside from the general dangers of vesting government power in private corporations -- this type of corporatism (control of government by corporations) was the hallmark of many of the worst tyrannies of the last century -- all of this is big business beyond what can be described. The attacks of 9/11 exploded the already-huge and secret intelligence budget. Shorrock estimates that "about 50 percent of this spending goes directly to private companies" and "spending on intelligence since 2002 is much higher than the total of $33 billion the Bush administration paid to Bechtel, Halliburton and other large corporations for reconstruction projects in Iraq."
    * * * * *
    All of that is crucial background for understanding just how pernicious and deceitful is the Op-Ed published this weekend by The Washington Post and authored by McConnell. The overarching theme is all-too-familiar: we face a grave threat from Terrorists and other Very Bad People ("cyber wars"), and our only hope for protection is to vest the Government with massive new powers. Specifically, McConnell advocates a so-called "reeingeer[ing] of the Internet" to allow the Government and private corporations far greater capability to track what is being done over the Internet and who is doing it:
    The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. . . . If an enemy disrupted our financial and accounting transactions, our equities and bond markets or our retail commerce -- or created confusion about the legitimacy of those transactions -- chaos would result. Our power grids, air and ground transportation, telecommunications, and water-filtration systems are in jeopardy as well.
    Scary! And what do we need to submit to in order to avoid these calamaties? This:
    The United States must also translate our intent into capabilities. We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options -- and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageable.
    In one sense, this is just typical fear-mongering of the type the National Security State has used for decades to beat frightened Americans into virtually full-scale submission: you are in grave danger and you can be safe only by vesting in us far greater power, which we'll operate in secret: here, allowing us to "reengineer" the Internet so we can control it.
    Think about how dangerous that power is in relationship to the war I wrote about this weekend being waged on WikiLeaks, which allows the uploading of leaked, secret documents that expose the corruption of the world's most powerful interests. This "reengineering of the Internet" proposed by McConnell would almost certainly enable the easy tracing of anyone who participates. It would, by design, destroy the ability of anyone to participate or communicate in any way on the Internet under the shield of anonymity. Wired's Ryan Singel -- noting that "the biggest threat to the open internet is . . . Michael McConnell" -- documents the dangers from this "cyber-war" monitioring policy and how much momentum there now is in the Executive and Legislative branches for legislation to implement it (as a result of initiatives that began during the Bush era, under McConnell, and which continue unabated).
    But there's something even worse going on here. McConnell doesn't merely want to empower the Government to control the Internet this way; he wants to empower private corporations to do so -- the same corporations which pay him and whose interests he has long served. He notes that this "reengineering" is already possible because "the technologies are already available from public and private sources," and explicitly calls for a merger of the NSA with private industry to create a sprawling, omnipotent network for monitoring the Internet:
    "To this end, we must hammer out a consensus on how to best harness the capabilities of the National Security Agency, which I had the privilege to lead from 1992 to 1996. The NSA is the only agency in the United States with the legal authority, oversight and budget dedicated to breaking the codes and understanding the capabilities and intentions of potential enemies. The challenge is to shape an effective partnership with the private sector so information can move quickly back and forth from public to private -- and classified to unclassified -- to protect the nation's critical infrastructure.
    We must give key private-sector leaders (from the transportation, utility and financial arenas) access to information on emerging threats so they can take countermeasures. For this to work, the private sector needs to be able to share network information -- on a controlled basis -- without inviting lawsuits from shareholders and others. . . .
    [T]the reality is that while the lion's share of cybersecurity expertise lies in the federal government, more than 90 percent of the physical infrastructure of the Web is owned by private industry. Neither side on its own can mount the cyber-defense we need; some collaboration is inevitable. Recent reports of a possible partnership between Google and the government point to the kind of joint efforts -- and shared challenges -- that we are likely to see in the future.
    No doubt, such arrangements will muddy the waters between the traditional roles of the government and the private sector. We must define the parameters of such interactions, but we should not dismiss them. Cyberspace knows no borders, and our defensive efforts must be similarly seamless."
    In other words, not only the Government, but the private intelligence corporations which McConnell represents (and which are subjected to no oversight), will have access to virtually unfettered amounts of information and control over the Internet, and there should be "no borders" between them. And beyond the dangerous power that will vest in the public-private Surveillance State, it will also generate enormous profits for Booz Allen, the clients it serves and presumably for McConnell himself -- though The Washington Post does not bother to disclose any of that to its readers. The Post basically allowed McConnell to publish in its Op-Ed pages a blatant advertisement for the private intelligence industry while masquerading as a National Security official concerned with Keeping America Safe.
    It's not an exaggeration to say that the "cyber-war" policies for which McConnell is shilling is the top priority of the industry he serves. Right this very minute, the front page of the intelligence industry's INSA website (previously chaired by McConnell) trumpets the exact public-private merger for "cyber-war" policies which McConnell uses the Post to advocate:

    The Report just published by that that industry group (.pdf) is entitled "Addressing Cyber Security Through Public-Private Partnership." The industry's Report sounds like a virtually exact replica of what McConnell just published in the Post: America is under grave threat and can Stay Safe only by transferring huge amounts of public funds to these private corporations in order to restructure the Internet to allow better detection and monitoring. And look at the truly Orwellian and unintentionally revealing logo under which the Report is written: showing a complete linkage of Government institutions (such as Congress and regulatory agencies), the Surveillance State, private intelligence corporations, and the Internet (click on image to enlarge):

    Readers of The Washington Post, exposed to McConnell's Op-Ed, would know none of this. They would think that they were reading the earnest National Security recommendations of a former top military and government official, and would have no idea about the massive profit motives driving him. Although the Op-Ed, at the end, identifies McConnell as "executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, which consults on cybersecurity for the private and public sector" (as well as a former NSA head, DNI, and retired Admiral), there's no hint that Booz Allen, its multiple clients, and the industry it represents (along with McConnell himself) would stand to benefit greatly from the very policies he advocates in The Post. Indeed, just like the INSA, the Booz Allen website, at the top, this very minute promotes the exact policies McConnell advocates:

    So here we have a perfect merger of (a) exploiting public office for personal profit, (b) endless increases in the Surveillance State achieved through rank fear-mongering, © the rapid elimination of any line between the public and private sectors, and (d) individuals deceitfully posing as "objective commentators" who are, in fact, manipulating our political debates on behalf of undisclosed interests.
    And, as usual, it is our nation's largest media outlets (in this case The Washington Post) which provide the venue for these policies to be advocated and glorified, all the while not only failing to expose -- but actively obscuring -- the bulging conflicts of interests that drive them. While "news" outlets distract Americans with the petty partisan dramas of the day, these factions -- whose power is totally impervious to changes in party control -- continue to expand their stranglehold on how the Government functions in ways that fundamentally alter our core privacy and liberties, and radically expand the role private corporations and government power play in our lives.
    ___________________________________________
    An excellent article by Glenn Greenwald as posted on Salon.Com
    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/29/mcconnell/index.html
  8. Kzoppistan
    THE MEDIA
    Revealing quotes from those who know
    To play those millions of minds, to watch them slowly respond to an unseen stimulus, to guide their aspirations without their knowledge - all this whether in high capacities or in humble, is a big and endless game of chess, of ever extraordinary excitement. - Sidney Webb (Founder of the Fabian Society)
    "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." - Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225
    "I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their times." -Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
    " never saw a foreign intervention that the [New York] Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don't let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?" - veteran New York Times reporter John Hess
    "The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly." - Noam Chomsky
    "Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people..." - Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
    "Americans are too broadly underinformed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world ... Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don't have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations... Politicians and the media have conspired to infantilize, to dumb down, the American public. At heart, politicians don't believe that Americans can handle complex truths, and the news media, especially television news, basically agrees." - Tom Fenton, former CBS foreign correspondent
    "It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not be free - to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation, wants him to think, feel and act. The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective." - Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958
    "The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not "what did he know and when did he know it" stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate." - FOX news exec John Moody's internal "Daily Memo to all Producers" on March 23, 2004
    "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby (Former CIA Director)
    To repress rebellion is to maintain the status quo, a condition which binds the mortal creature in a state of intellectual or physical slavery. But it is impossible to chain man merely by slaving his body; the mind also must be held, and to accomplish this, fear is the accepted weapon. The common man must fear life, fear death, fear God, fear the Devil, and fear most the overlords, the keepers of his destiny. - Manly Palmer Hall (Occultist and 33rd degree Mason)
    "We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years... "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government." "The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller, Trilateral Commission Founder 1991
    "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?" - Edward Bernays, "Propaganda" Pg.71 in 1928 (1891-1995 Nephew of Sigmund Freud)
    "The American propaganda system is not centrally programmed as it is in a totalitarian state. Instead it permeates the culture, the media, and the institutions. Individuals who point out unpleasant realities of current or past American behavior are often subjected to social pressures and treated as pariahs. They are disturbers of the dream." - William H. Boyer
    "NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill." - Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, September 13, 2001 issue 'We've Hit the Targets'
    "The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominate political mythology." - Michael Parenti - Author, Historian
    "Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing." - Neil Postman
    "We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television." - Howard Zinn
    "Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretence that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth." - Mark Crispin Miller
    "As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends to compensatingly increase and the dictator... will do well to encourage that freedom in conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope, movies, and radio. It will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate." Julian Huxley in the preface to "Brave New World"
    "Expecting FOX News to report real news is about as silly as waiting for George Bush and Dick Cheney to tell the truth... Americans care, but it's tough to care when you don't know what's going on. That ignorance is what the warmakers count on and what the corporate media delivers." - Amy Goodman (Journalist)
    "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd." - Bertrand Russell
    "The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." - Noam Chomsky
  9. Kzoppistan

    Two Pics

    By Kzoppistan,

    Just some art I figured I'd post.
    A header to one of my addresses to the Zenith Assembly:

    My Election Poster:

    I was going to work that theme into my official personal seal but, alas, !@#$ happens
  10. Kzoppistan

    CNN and the US PSYOPS

    By Kzoppistan,

    http://www.counterpunch.org/cnnpsyops.html
    March 26, 2000
    CNN AND PSYOPS
    By Alexander Cockburn
    Military personnel from the Fourth Psychological Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, have until recently been working in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
    CNN is up in arms about our report in the last issue of CounterPunch concerning the findings of the Dutch journalist, Abe de Vries about the presence of US Army personnel at CNN, owned by Time-Warner. We cited an article by de Vries which appeared on February 21 in the reputable Dutch daily newspaper Trouw, originally translated into English and placed on the web by Emperor's Clothes. De Vries reported that a handful of military personnel from the Third Psychological Operations Battalion, part of the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, had worked in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
    De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service as having confirmed the presence of these Army psy-ops experts at CNN, saying, "Psy-ops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta through our program, 'Training with Industry'. They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news."
    This particular CounterPunch story was the topic of my regular weekly broadcast to AM Live, a program of the South Africa Broadcasting Company in Johannesburg. Among the audience of this broadcast was CNN's bureau in South Africa which lost no time in relaying news of it to CNN hq in Atlanta, and I duly received an angry phone call from Eason Jordan who identified himself as CNN's president of newsgathering and international networks.
    Jordan was full of indignation that I had somehow compromised the reputation of CNN. But in the course of our conversation it turned out that yes, CNN had hosted a total of five interns from US army psy-ops, two in television, two in radio and one in satellite operations. Jordan said the program had only recently terminated, I would guess at about the time CNN's higher management read Abe de Vries's stories.
    When I reached De Vries in Belgrade, where's he is Trouw's correspondent, and told him about CNN's furious reaction, he stood by his stories and by the quotations given him by Major Collins.For some days CNN wouldn't get back to him with a specific reaction to Collins's confirmation, and when it did, he filed a later story for Trouw, printed on February 25 noting that the military worked at CNN in the period from June 7, (a date confirmed by Eason to me) meaning that during the war a psy-ops person would have been at CNN during the last week.
    "The facts are", De Vries told me, " that the US Army, US Special Operations Command and CNN personnel confirmed to me that military personnel have been involved in news production at CNN's newsdesks. I found it simply astonishing. Of course CNN says these psyops personnel didn't decide anything, write news reports, etcetera. What else can they say. Maybe it's true, maybe not. The point is that these kind of close ties with the army are, in my view, completely unacceptable for any serious news organization. Maybe even more astonishing is the complete silence about the story from the big media. To my knowledge, my story was not mentioned by leading American or British newspapers, nor by Reuters or AP."
    Here at CounterPunch we agree with Abe de Vries, who told me he'd originally come upon the story through an article in the French newsletter, Intelligence On-line, February 17, which described a military symposium in Arlington, Virginia, held at the beginning of February of this year, discussing use of the press in military operations. Colonel Christopher St John, commander of the US Army's 4th Psyops Group, was quoted by Intelligence On-Line's correspondent, present at the symposium, as having, in the correspondent's words, "called for greater cooperation between the armed forces and media giants. He pointed out that some army PSYOPS personnel had worked for CNN for several weeks and helped in the production of some news stories for the network."
    So, however insignificant Eason Jordan and other executives at CNN may now describe the Army psyops tours at CNN as having been, the commanding officer of the Psy-ops group thought them as sufficient significance to mention at a high level Pentagon seminar about propaganda and psychological warfare. It could be that CNN was the target of a psyops penetration and is still too naïve to figure out what was going on.
    It's hard not to laugh when CNN execs like Eason Jordan start spouting high-toned stuff about CNN's principles of objectivity and refusal to spout government or Pentagon propaganda. The relationship is most vividly summed up by the fact that Christiane Amanpour, CNN's leading foreign correspondent, and a woman whose reports about the fate of Kosovan refugees did much to fan public appetite for NATO's war, is literally and figuratively in bed with spokesman for the US State Department, and a leading propagandist for NATO during that war, her husband James Rubin.If CNN truly wanted to maintain the appearance of objectivity, it would have taken Amanpour off the story. Amanpour, by the way, is still a passionate advocate for NATO's crusade, most recently on the Charlie Rose show.
    In the first two weeks of the war in Kosovo CNN produced thirty articles for the Internet, according to de Vries, who looked them up for his first story. An average CNN article had seven mentions of Tony Blair, NATO spokesmen like Jamie Shea and David Wilby or other NATO officials. Words like refugees, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and expulsions were used nine times on the average. But the so-called Kosovo Liberation Armmy (0.2 mentions) and the Yugoslav civilian victims (0.3 mentions) barely existed for CNN.
    During the war on Serbia, as with other recent conflicts involving the US, wars, CNN's screen was filled with an interminable procession of US military officers. On April 27 of last year, Amy Goodman of the Pacifica radio network, put a good question to Frank Sesno, who is CNN's senior vice president for political coverage.
    GOODMAN:"If you support the practice of putting ex-military men -generals - on the payroll to share their opinion during a time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on the payroll to give a different opinion during a time of war? To be sitting there with the military generals talking about why they feel that war is not appropriate?"
    FRANK SESNO: "We bring the generals in because of their expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don't bring them in as advocates. In fact, we actually talk to them about that - they're not there as advocates."
    Exactly a week before Sesno said this, CNN had featured as one of its military analysts, Lt Gen Dan Benton, US Army Retired.
    BENTON: "I don't know what our countrymen that are questioning why we're involved in this conflict are thinking about. As I listened to this press conference this morning with reports of rapes burning, villages being burned and this particularly incredible report of blood banks, of blood being harvested from young boys for the use of Yugoslav forces, I just got madder and madder. The United States has a responsibility as the only superpower in the world, and when we learn about these things, somebody has got to stand up and say, that's enough, stop it, we aren't going to put up with this. And so the United States is fulfilling its leadership responsibility with our NATO allies and are trying to stop these incredible atrocities."
    Please note what CNN's supposedly non-advocatory analyst Benton was ranting about: a particularly bizarre and preposterous NATO propaganda item about 700 Albanian boys being used as human blood banks for Serb fighters.
    So much for the "non-advocate" CNN. CP
    --------------------
    Look at the date. 2000.
    Ten years later we have CNN reporting on fluff pieces regarding the Yemen airplane bomber.
    http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/18/passengers.to.bomb.suspect/
    Lots of condemnation from the commenters, as usual. Some by honest, albeit misdirected Americans. A lot more by what I suspect is staff of CNN.
    There are two persons not included in this "report", Lori and Kurt H.
    Curious, considering that they have first hand accounts and are eager to tell the world. Why is that? Perhaps it is because they have started asking real questions.
    http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2010/02/interesting-note-to-todays-cnn-article.html
    If any of that has caught your attention, look at this:
    http://www.legitgov.org/northwest_bomb_plot_oddities.html
    Of course it's no surprise that we are now conducting covert (and not so covert) ops in Yemen.
    It's quite clear that CNN is one of many mouth pieces for the corporate war machine whose goals are simultaneous acts of class warfare, resource acquisition, and global positioning.
    TURN OFF YOUR CABLE TV!!!
    LOOK AROUND YOU AND SEE!!!
    DON'T BE A SHEEPLE ~ QUESTION AUTHORITY!!!
    The "news" is lying to you.
  11. Kzoppistan

    My Own Beer Review

    By Kzoppistan,

    As some of you know, we agreed to do a beer review as part of Fark's terms. One of our Advisors, Mike, already did the review (a great one, I might add) which should complete the term. Instead of grandstanding in Mike's thread, as well displaying my own general poor taste in beer, to a larger audience to get in on the fun, I'm putting a beer review in this blog. I'm not too familiar with the more complex tasting nomenclature, but can pick out malt and hops well enough.
    Let's begin:

    Pabst.
    Pabst tastes like chilled donkey piss. A favorite of punkrockers and/or homeless everywhere, the only redeeming quality to choking down this vomitous bilge-water is that it taste about the same as Bud or Miller for a quarter of the cost. With a pocket full of change you are enabled to drink for several hours at the local dive bar, assuming you can stand the company of those doing the same.

    Red Stripe is a actually a pretty solid beer, despite it's popularity with college students and Jamaican enthusiasts. It is a light lager and respectably strong compared to it's drinkability. It is a little sweet with very light bite and a slight skunky aftertaste. Nothing fancy here, but it goes good with a fat spliff.

    Sapporo. This is the Japanese equivalent of Budweiser, especially considering that they are both rice beers. They taste about the same. Frankly, I prefer sake. I do like buying this one because of the double size, and, admittedly, the can is cool. I like to walk around and intimidate other beers with it.

    Steel Reserve tastes horrible and does irreparable damage to your kidneys and reputation. Long term use of this product probably injures the brain, too. However, the 8.1% ABV is respectable and the 40 oz. get's the job done. I've drank a lot of this stuff, which probably explains something.

    Stone brewery makes some pretty good stuff, Arrogant !@#$%^& is probably their more recognizable beer but all of them are good. This is the oaked version review which I may or may not have ripped off from some beer site:
    A dark brown with a minimal head. Belgian lace lingered. Carmel with some mild oak. No bourbon or other spirit aroma. Hop bitterness present up front with some carmelly malt. Tastes of mild oak with hops. Finishes with a definite oak presence, although restrained, and intermingled with hops and sweetness that lingers on the back of the throat. Complex overall. Upfront easy to drink; however, the finish cranks
    ups the taste buds and lingers (hops, sweetness, carmelly
    flavors). Not to thick but still a tad sweet for me.
    Even though the finishing gravity is likely relatively low
    (1.014-1.017), as Stone tends to mash on the low end, the
    sweet finish limits its drinkability.

    DTs is a pale ale with a strong fruity taste, good alcohol content (8.5% I think), and easy drinkability. Reminiscent of pears, it goes down smooth and creamy. Usually a little overpriced, but its a good drink.

    Flying Dog is one of my favorite breweries. They make a nice 6 pack with 5 different beers. The porter is my fave.
    Pours a deep reddish brown with thick off-white to tan head, with good head retention.
    Smells of chocolate malt up front, and just some generic roasted malts. There is also a substantial floral hops aroma with touches of citrus.
    Taste is of more chocolate and roasted malts, with a bit of hops but not much. A hint of bitter coffee towards the end, finishing clean and mostly dry.
    Medium body, but a bit thin and watery, the carbonation is a bit on the crisp side.
    It's real benefit is that you can drink a lot of them. A lot.

    My other favorite brewery at the moment is Left Hand. The Sawtooth Ale is stocked at the bar so I've had a lot of them.
    Smell is maltiness up front followed by some faint hop characteristics. Not much there really.
    Taste is also somewhat faint. Lots of maltiness up front with some buttery tones. Finish has a nice hoppy bitterness.
    Mouthfeel is watery with some slight carbonation.
    Drinkability is pretty high on this one and is pretty much the reason I drink it.
    Thanks for reading.

  12. Kzoppistan
    What the Internet is doing to our brains
    by Nicholas Carr
    "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
    I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
    I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)
    For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
    I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
    Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
    Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits , conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:
    It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
    Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.
    Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
    Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.
    But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
    “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
    The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”
    As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”
    The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
    The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.
    The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.
    When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
    The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.
    Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.
    About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.
    More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.”
    Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”
    Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.
    The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.
    Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”
    Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it?
    Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.
    The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.
    Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).
    The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.
    So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.
    If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:
    I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [but now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”
    As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
    I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
  13. Kzoppistan
    This is an excerpt from the introduction.
    'Steal This Book' was written by Abbie Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was a social and political activist in the United States who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"). Later he became a fugitive from the law, living under an alias and working as an environmentalist following a conviction for dealing cocaine.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman
    They say he committed suicide, but I suspect he was murdered. Just like Gary Webb was probably murdered by the CIA 6 years ago.
    What is interesting is what Hoffman writes about 40 years ago directly mirrors what is happening today.
    You can read the entire book here:
    http://tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html
    Or download the PDF from Pirate Bay.
    Important Note: I've provided this info more as an historical curiosity than anything. Most of the stuff Hoffman advocates is now outdated and impractical. Don't try anything in there. Also, make sure to obey all your local and regional laws, kids. Subversion of the dominant paradigm is for grown ups.
  14. Kzoppistan
    As US Americans sit on their fat @#$% and stuff their faces with doritos and guzzle coke, numbingly clicking away on their facebook while absorbing the farce that passes as news on their corporate sponsored networks, the media/military-industrial complex continues to systematically dismantle the democratic institution that once made the country great.
    Thankfully, as the educational system has produced a whole new generation of docile consumers, seemingly content to do as they're told like the organic-automaton sheeple they are (work work work and then consume, spend, and borrow, to, supposedly, lift America out of its fiscal black hole. what?) they pose no threat to the power elite, who know that plebes are easily distracted by bread, circuses, and petty partisan politics and lack the perspective to realize that no matter which party wins, the machine will continue. It's goal: Global military dominance by a select corporate oligarchy ruling over a lesser class of mindless slave workers and consumers.
    US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
    Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice
    WHEN TYRANNY BECOMES LAW, REBELLION BECOMES DUTY!

  17. Kzoppistan

    A New Year

    By Kzoppistan,

    OK, my birthday is officially over. All random song induced sentimentalism has now been redacted and replaced with chaos the usual government sanctioned tripe script of fruity diatribes [<-No] rambling weirdos [<-Not Funny] glorious programming.

    Despite the cost of living . . . it still remains so popular.


    Citizen Scribe #33361, your announcement has been edited to reflect the proper national feeling. Furthermore, we did not find your comments very funny and we are becoming more concerned about your increasingly erratic behavior. These expressions of individuality threaten the stability of your function. Please see the Overseer after your shift.
  18. Kzoppistan

    Esprit de Corps

    By Kzoppistan,

    Power:
    –noun
    1. ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.
    3. great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.
    15. Physics.
    a. work done or energy transferred per unit of time. Symbol: P
    b. the time rate of doing work.
    18. energy, force, or momentum.
    –verb
    23. to inspire; spur; sustain.
    Esprit de Corps, or morale, is a type of group cohesion that enhances a group's power. When the energy of a group is harnessed and directed towards a goal, the concentration of power enhances the group's ability to accomplish its objectives. Conversely, when the power is diffused and member's individual goals are not aligned towards a common purpose, the capacity to achieve the group's objectives is greatly diminished.
    Much like a magnet, the more the particles are aligned in the same direction, the stronger the magnet is. The more people align their efforts in the same direction, the stronger the power of the group becomes.
    The question that occupies the leaders of any organization (that's us) is how to get the members to put more into the group. How do you shift a person's individual wants to those more group centered? How do you motivate members to sacrifice their energy and time for the greater good and to adopt the goals of the group as their own?
    Well, one thing to consider in this regard is the powerful effect group psychology and sociology has on individual behavior. When a person feels accepted in a group they begin to adapt to the prevailing traits of said group. The group is self-regulating in this regard, punishing those that step outside the bounds of accepted behavior and rewarding those that work within it. In short, people who feel accepted in a group start to become the roles given to them. If an honest man is treated like a criminal, it won't be long before he becomes the criminal in actuality. Vice versa, even a hardened criminal can become "rehabilitated" if the proper methods are utilized.
    Knowing this, it is then up to the leaders of a group to define and enforce the desired traits. The culture of a group is like a living organism, it grows when nurtured and withers when neglected, so it is up to the leaders to plant the seed and encourage its growth.
    One thing that creates a powerful bonding agent is having shared values. Zenithism is a set of values that detail acceptable and desired behavior. It is up to the leaders to highlight, act in accordance with, and enforce this moral code if it is to be adopted by the membership at large.
  20. Kzoppistan

    Words to live by

    By Kzoppistan,

    Some quotes from one of my favorite movies, The Outlaw Josey Wales.
    There are some really funny scenes, like when he spits chew on that carpetbagger's suit, but these quotes sparked some deeper thinking for me.
    Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.
    Lone Watie: How did you know which one was goin' to shoot first?
    Josie Wales: Well, that one in the center: he had a flap holster and he was in no itchin' hurry. And the one second from the left: he had scared eyes, he wasn't gonna do nothin'. But that one on the far left: he had crazy eyes. Figured him to make the first move.
    Lone Watie: How 'bout the one on the right?
    Josie Wales: Never paid him no mind; you were there.
    Josey Wales: Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is.
    Josey Wales: Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?
  21. Kzoppistan
    As the structure of our alliance is about to undergo a radical change, and the ministries to be abolished, I'd like to take the opportunity to address the members of Zenith and give credit where credit is due.
    First, many thanks must go to Duncan King and Metictype. Really, the bulk of the diplomatic headway that has been done this term has been constructed by both of them. They have been at all of our major foreign embassies keeping up discussion and building the bonds that keep us prosperous and safe with allied support. While the concept of the Peace and Love Train Accords started out as a group discussion without a face, the real formation came in short order with DK's rendering of the treaty and, of course, the unique concept. They were the ones to get TFD on board and ensure its success. What little I did pales in comparison to the amount of work they have put into this term. They are expert strategists who lend their particular talents to everything they do. Both DK and Metic have worked to make the hub of coordination, The Station, a great looking and effective forum. The design itself is a simply a work of art and you all should really head over there to take a peek. I can't emphasize enough how much of the direction, both over-all and in detail, was directly propelled by them. They are true masters of the game.
    JazHayre deserves much recognition. Ever vigilant on the IRC, JazH was often the front line of contact for many of the important items that came to our attention. He lent his thoughts on many of the goings on and took the initiative to handle things in what little spare time he had away from his duties as Minister. Thank you.
    In a similar vein, Gogeta, always an able statesman and consummate leader, never hesitated to take matters into his own hands and was of great assistance on a many number of occasions.
    In actuality, all the members of the Council and Triumvirate placed their stamp on the direction of our foreign affairs and it was a pleasure to work with each and every one of them.
    In our driest spell, it was PrinceKhalu that stepped up to become a diplomat and helped to tend the embassies here on the home front.
    I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Rotavele as valuable addition to the ministry. He was the best deputy anyone could ask for who did an amazing amount of work in a short amount of time. I'm glad to see he is back.
    In the very beginning of the term, both Sturtyboy and Sulmar used their experience and insight to shape the ministry and it was Sulmar who took the lead to be the MoFA before elections.
    I would like to thank Sonjo for taking an interest in the fine art of foreign affairs and I hope to see him stick around after the restructuring. Sonjo, you have a lot of potential and you've been a stalwart member of Zenith for a long time.
    To all of you that have labored as diplomats or in the PRC, in this term and those previous, you have my thanks and gratitude. It is your efforts that have a lot to do in making Zenith one of the best alliances there is. My hat is off to you.
    Finally, thanks to all of you who voted for me. It was a privilege and an honor to be able to serve and quite a learning experience. For those of you who assisted me with your encouragement when I struggled and those who congratulated my meager achievements, you have my eternal gratitude.
    To all of Zenith, keep in your heart the names I listed above and know that it is they who carried us through this last term on the FA front with grace, dogged determination, and not an ounce of complaint. Our success is a result of their hard work.
    Again, thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to hearing the fresh voices of those eager to prove their leadership in the coming months.
    In Faith,
    Mr. Otingocni of Kzoppistan
    Member of Zenith
  22. Kzoppistan

    Our Will Is Supreme

    By Kzoppistan,

    It is common in many alliances that the leadership will change hands. Sometimes the cause is RL, other times it's boredom, and often it's just plain old burnout from holding a position that requires constant attendance and responsibility. Such is the case in Zenith.
    What is interesting, I've found out, is how myopic, and dare I say, self-important, people become when in those positions for long. Myself included. Not from any personal failings but just due to becoming accustomed to being the ones that hold the alliance together (but only from an administrative perspective, it's easy to forget that it is the membership that actually holds it together). When the leadership decided to step down and dismayed at the initial lack of participation at the charter revisions, we were one step away from crying "the sky is falling."
    As it turns out, we were woefully premature in making such a call, as after some great discussion and a poll, the membership responded with a resounding declaration of commitment. Not only that, but out of such collective introspection, we've developed a great new charter, have some new plans in the works, and have redoubled our efforts.
    While I'm not a particularly eloquent writer, I tried my hand at rallying the troops:
  23. Kzoppistan
    The premise:
    What follows is several pages of such discourse that I would prefer not to characterize it beyond my initial remarks.

    ---------------------------------------------


    Response:
    I read through 4 pages for this...? Bah, what a preposterous set of statements some of you have been spouting.
    While the topic is, arguably, an interesting intellectual exercise in 'what ifs' and it has certainly provided the opportunity for some to mentally masturbate their propagandistic political fetishes in front of everyone, the whole of the comments disregard some basic facts about human nature that renders either system impossible to be implemented in full as they may look on paper, regardless of how much that design may appeal to the proponent.
    Point #1. People are naturally hierarchicists. When placed into a group there is a scramble amongst the members to determine who is the leader and where each member falls in the ranking system. The natural world is one of competition, as such; those that excel at the contest for resources enhance their survivability while those that do not are removed from the pool. To have complete equality invites stagnation and eventual downfall. Even amongst cooperative groups there is a struggle to rise through the ranks. Such competition is healthy as it promotes the strong, replicating its successes, and eliminates the weak, ensuring a stronger whole by it. To try to implement a system that ignores the basics of evolutionary psychology, sociology, and physiology is naïve at best, and foolish at worst.
    Because of this there will always be a ruling class. Whether it is the priests/prophets, the warriors, the president, the chairman, the authoritarian governments, the corporations that rule covertly through their government connections, or committees that formulate the direction of a nation, it will never be banished. Leadership by the alpha is how we operate as a species.
    In capitalistic societies, it is the dollar that they worship and in the communistic society it is political influence. They are both sides of the same coin. Both ideologies are veils over the true mechanism of human drive. Power over others by monopolizing the access to resources has always been the gist of the game regardless of what name it is called.
    Point #2. To assert that no authority would be needed in purely communist society is absurd. Who would punish those that transgress against another? Who would prevent those that would attempt to take more than their fair share, or subvert the system for their own gain, as is part of human nature? Whether the desire is to enforce a system of equal sharing, or to keep the have-nots from taking from the haves, the use of force is necessary.
    Conclusion: As is usual, those that advocate a particular system are the one's most likely to benefit from it. The communists see the wealth gained by others with envy and seek to take it from them and redistribute it to themselves and their allies, while those who hoard their wealth fight to keep others from it. Both sides are seeking to gain or keep resources and have constructed elaborate justifications for their wants.
    Taken to the extreme, neither system is sustainable. As is often the case, the best bet is to examine the successful attributes of each system, and combine them into a new system by a process of synthesis.
  24. Kzoppistan

    Morality Is A Contract

    By Kzoppistan,

    This was my entry on one of the OWF topics about Morilism.
    ---
    As a person who usually holds his cards pretty close to his chest, I'm going to do something uncharacteristic and speak at length about something that not only am I interested in, but have studied, observed, and discovered over the course of many years.
    Morality is a contract.
    It is a contract between a person and society. The details of that contract differ from culture to culture but everywhere it is an intricate balancing act between the needs of the individual human and the needs of the societal human.
    The end result of what a culture regards as proper conduct is derived from a complex equation, in it which is placed a multitude of variables, such as: the preexisting values of the society involved, the context of the situation, the ramifications, what parties are involved, ect.
    To understand morality as a system with definable elements, there are two concepts you have to hold simultaneously.
    The first, to discover what something is you have to understand what is not. If you take a look at all the actions considered 'immoral', if you take all the great sins, and compare them, you will find a trend that runs through them all. A sin is an action that gratifies the wants of a person- at a detriment to society. It takes from the whole and gives to the one. Conversely, all great acts are sacrifices of the self for the benefit of the whole. The dichotomy of human intention is brought about by attempting to balance the demands of both in order to ensure not just survivability but prosperity.
    The second concept is the web of connections one has and what degree they make up the in-group/out-group phenomenon. Every person rests in the center of his or her world, like the bull’s-eye in the middle of a dartboard. Around him or her is the group they hold the closest. The person identifies with their goals, values, philosophies, and usually has the strongest of all emotional connection to them. Radiating outward, like those rings on a dart board, is web of connections that make up the groups this person knows and has affinity for, seeing their success as tied to his own, outward to neutrality and to the extreme edges that are made up of those the person sees as working against them. To be sure, the border of these associative ranks are fuzzy indeed, but there is at least an appreciated line at which a person or group is “in” and those that are “out”.
    The farther away from the various in-groups an act if perpetrated, the less immoral it becomes.
    Conflict arises when people encounter others that not only have different values but different spheres of who is in the in-group and who is in the out-group.
    While some hold only the closest to them as recipients of their group sacrifice, others hold a much wider radius.
    To give one's self to another is an act of trust. To extend that sacrifice to the farthest extremes of the web has the greatest risk, and possibly the best payoff.
    Morality is a contract of implied reciprocation. It is the gold rule. It is an extension of trust that says, "I will give, if you will return the favor. If not to me directly, then to the groups I support or even society as a whole."“
    For those of you who say that morality in a game is asinine or other such things, that is simply not true. That would only be true if there weren't alliances or any cooperative nation to nation contact. Even in most pragmatic sense, people who act in accordance to their moral code consistently create honor for them selves and build trust with their allies. Honor and trust is political capital. A person or group that consistently uphold their part of the contract prove themselves to be worthy allies.
    Now, why a person would even help another person at all has to do with how they perceive their success as dependant and tied to the success of the group (not to mention the good feelings that accompany it), as this is brought about by the understanding that "many hands make light work." People are a powerful resource, the more you have behind you, the greater acts you can accomplish. The more potential there is. Which is why how politically or FA adroit an alliance is always factors into one's calculation of their strength.
    Moralism, to me, is a path of truth. It encapsulates human behavior and is an illumination of other's motivations. It is also a discipline. When the urges of the lower self call for fulfillment at the cost of a brother, it is will power and righteousness that fends off those demons in the night.
    It requires patience, attempt at understanding, and a benevolent desire to let people speak from their hearts without the fear of retribution. It is not about control or power over others, it is about studying the very bonds that holds society together and working to create an environment where everyone can enjoy their brief sojourn on this mortal coil.
    To extend a hand to those, even far removed from your own in-group, is an act that ultimately benefits the whole, even if those in their narrow viewed groups, blinded by want and fear, cannot see it. It is the investment in people, even those foreign, that will increase the wealth of the world and angle international cultural development towards a unified cause. Even if that cause is simply friendly competition and entertainment.
    Now the question is this: would you prefer to be a good ally only to yourself, or maybe just a narrow scope of people, or to the whole of human kind?
  25. Kzoppistan

    Conflict Resolution

    By Kzoppistan,

    Conflict Resolution is a range of methods for alleviating or eliminating sources of conflict. The term "conflict resolution" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term dispute resolution or alternative dispute resolution. Processes of conflict resolution generally include negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy.

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