Author: Richard

Blame it on White Male Privilage

Here’s a fun Facebook encounter I had:

?”According to the C.I.A.’s own ranking of countries by INCOME INEQUALITY, the UNITED STATES is MORE UNEQUAL a society THAN either TUNISIA or EGYPT.”

Richard: well duh. if you accept that a percentage of people will always choose poverty and shit lives and another percentage will always not choose but still not have what it takes to climb out of a poverty stricken shit life – then the country with the most millionaires and billionaires automatically becomes the one with highest inequality in income. the most communist nation will have the most equal and the most free nation will have the most unequal.

Sarah Polen: Yes, because we all know that poverty isn’t generational or anything. It also isn’t a result of white male privilege. We don’t have anything called an ol’ boys network. And we are clearly putting our dollars into programs (education, healthcare, etc.) and NOT things like the military/financial bailouts so as to give people who do live in poverty the opportunity to succeed. And when we have an President like Obama who wants to close this gap, we’re all behind him 100%.

Sarah Polen: Also, on a completely unsarcastic note, who in the fuck thought Egypt (or Tunisia for that matter) was a communist country?

Richard: lol. bravo! Sarah’s satire of what an ignorant hippie would say is spot on! your sarcastic illustration of the foolish thing they believe is perfect, but unfortunately there are people stupid enough to actually believe those things and what is worse – they flaunt their ignorance instead of investigating the nonsense they preach.

they think generational poverty is an answer to anything, as if millions didn’t climb out of it and become middle class, upper class or millionaires. they actually think that “white male privilege” and good ol boys make people poor because they don’t understand how economies work and they think there are limited pieces of a pie so if the privileged have access to large chunks then that leaves just small pieces and crumbs for everyone else. they studied socialist propaganda instead of economic reality so they dont even know or begin to understand the limitlessness of the pie. you may joke that people dont know we spend $800 billion on education and are ignorant, stupid and intellectually incurious enough to never find out – but they exist! They have no clue (and dont care) that we spend 4% of our GDP on defense and 5 to 7%% on education.

There are actual Marxists out there that believe money is the answer to every problem and if we have a problem then spending more [of other peoples] money on it will fix it. Unfortunately, though you and I may mock the ignorance of these people through sarcasm, there are actually a large number of them who exist and earnestly believe (evidence be damned) that government should pulling people back who are producing too much will help poor people.

Richard: In response to the unsarcastic part: your reading comprehension is a little off, but I suspect you’re still fooling around and are still satirizing what a dumb hippie would say (very clever. very dry!). While ignorant but passionate leftists believe every issue is black and white and fail to notice nuances – smart people like us are able to understand things like a sliding scale and when they read “freedom” and “communism” at opposite ends of a spectrum, they are unable to think within the parameters of the two. People “in the fuck” who thought Egypt and Tunisia had economically leftist/socialist governments are the people who know what they’re talking about (though the other part of what I said that you conveniently ignored is most likely more to blame for their state of affairs).

Sarah Polen: A few notes/links:

Sarah Polen: USA Government Spending as required by the new act for transparent spending: http://www.usaspending.gov/ Dept. of Education = 59 billion; Dept. of Defense = 263 billion. Study on the good ol’ boys network as prevalent (as explained by those uneducated “liberals” in higher education): http://uga.academia.edu/LauraBierema/Papers/290194/Exploring_the_Nature_of_the_Old_Boys_Network_In_the_United_States_Using_Electronic_Networks_of_Practice_to_Understand_Gendered_Issues_In_HRD_ Information on the governments of Egypt and Tunisia – founded on similar principles as those of the USA: http://www.state.gov/http://www.state.gov/ I just want to make sure I’m not being confused for a “dumb, ignorant” hippie.

Richard: So you’re not dumb and ignorant, you just play it on facebook? how else do you explain ignoring 100% of what i said? lol. this must still be performance art. i get it… you’re illustrating how dumb people argue things by showing what they do is ignore what you say but use words that you said to make different points that they are more comfortable talking about, is that it? excellent job! its almost as if youre fooling anyone. almost.

Richard: Tip for the future though: be more subtle when trolling. its better when you walk the line of “is she serious??” instead of giving it away with crazy things like Egypt and Tunisia being founded on similar principals to the US. where as you might fool some people with the first half of changing the subject from GDP to raw dollars to both undermine your silly claim that we dont spend enough on education and ignore the one that was made in response to it – its too obvious that you’re mocking people who think these things when you go “full retard” with things like the leftward government of Egypt or socialist party of Tunisia being close to american principals. its better to dial it back a tick so you dont give yourself away and people are left to ponder what you said instead of realizing that you ignored the direct challenges made against your previous false claims. practice makes perfect!

Richard: ?”hey random guy on the street: why are some people poor?” – “white privilege.” – haha. that part is my favorite. the follow up of an obtuse article about the existence of good ol boys is just precious. how long have you been satarizing leftists like this? youre good.

Jessica Schneider: Hey Richard, I don’t care what your viewpoints are, don’t talk to Sarah like that. Your opinions don’t make you right, they simply mean you have a different ideology that you would like to see shape this country than Sarah. And being degrading and name-calling because you think you’re smarter is just more of the bullshit of the exact male privilege she just described. And another reason that compromise and cooperation continue to be pushed aside in favor of a static democracy (you know, those governments that are supposed to represent more than one viewpoint) that can’t progress. Name calling like a child says more about you than it does about Sarah. Seriously, you have more to learn about how to have a respectful dialogue than Sarah has to learn about political economy. It has nothing to do with what your opinions actually are, but how you express them. So far, I don’t know anyone who has ever heard of Richard Bushnell, but I know a lot of very famous and highly respected intellectuals who espouse similar ideologies to Sarah. So once again, having different viewpoints doesn’t make someone dumber than you, it just means they have a different value system. At least Sarah’s includes respectful disagreement. So yes, you actually could learn a thing or two from her. Grow up, Richard.

Richard: Hey Jessica, I don’t care what your viewpoints are, don’t be an elitist jerk and tell people they’re not allowed to respond to snotty sarcasm with factual sarcasm. No ones opinions make them right. the facts they’re based on do. Are you a performance artist too? Calling a response to baseless put downs, “male privilege”, sounds like more satire. HINT: Free speech is not a female privilege, babycakes. All sexes are allowed to exercise it, so if your outrage that someone didn’t just shut up and take the abuse they were dished isn’t satire then that’s pretty pathetic.

What “names” are you claiming I called anyone prior to babycakes? If you’re referring to “full retard”, thats a quote from Tropic Thunder that references the way a person acts (ie: is not calling someone retarded). If you’re just referring to a general tone that you cant pinpoint and thus is why you provided no examples (because you cant) then…lol. So is this part of the satire where you make things up to show how to act foolish? or are you falsely calling legit responses to silly claims “name calling”? Again, I think you’re making a mistake like Sarah in going overboard with the trolling because it’s too obvious. When you say things like “name calling like a child” (ie: hypocritically chiding someone for name calling in the same sentence you call them a name), it just gives the whole thing away too soon.

Where exactly can I learn how to have a respectful dialogue? From your free speech stifling name calling hypocrisy? or from Sarahs sarcastic bullying and eloquent use of phrases like “who in the fuck thought [what you just said]”? Why don’t you lead by example? Wanna take a poll on how many people have heard of me vs Sarah? or do you want to abandone that Appeal to Authority fallacy on account of it being total nonsense? No one said a different opinion makes anyone dumb, so it’d be awesome if you didn’t use strawman fallacies as the basis for your attacks either. I still can’t learn anything when you fail to provide any details though so I don’t know what I am to learn from Sarah via respectful dialogue since my replies were mirrors of hers in tone. Was it that I didn’t mock her understanding of a subject by saying “who in the fuck would think XYZ”? That must be it, cuz I got her sarcastic dismissal down pretty well. I will try harder to use “fuck” more often when baselessly attacking people I disagree with. ?

[Original Poster of the link]: Dance puppets, dance!

Richard: any time! puppet shows are my favorite!

Richard: wait… im still doing it wrong. Jessica says I should take my que from Sarah on proper responses so scratch that last reply and lemme try again:

*clears throat* “yes, because we all know that we’re puppets. we’re not human beings or anything. we don’t have anything called an ol’ boys network. and on an unsarcastic note: who in the fuck thought i (or anyone else for that matter) was a puppet?” — hope that is better 🙂

Siri is Siri-souly kewl

The iPhone 4S has a new digital assistant in it that understands speech. so you can talk to it like a person instead of trying to use buzz words like a machine. instead of stupid things like “command: dial number” you can just say “call my drug dealer” or “whats the weather like in Bangalore?” or “where can I hide a body“. No joke…

People are calling it Skynet (Terminator) but I see Siri as more of a HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Not cool enough for you? Microsoft is working on interactive holograms…

It’s a Buyers Market for Private Islands

Despite the weak economy, the number of millionaires in the U.S. and their combined net worth hit record highs in 2010, with investible assets up more than 8.4% from 2009, according to the World Wealth Report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. Several record-breaking real-estate sales this year have buoyed optimism in the ultra-high end of the market, including the $85 million sale of a Los Angeles estate owned by Candy Spelling earlier this month. In March, a Russian buyer paid $100 million for a home in Silicon Valley, the highest price ever paid for a single-family home.

The Frys Electronics brothers are building a private island resort:

Island development projects can take years—at least one under way now involves 150 workers. Locals say one of the biggest private resort projects under construction in the Exumas is a compound whose principal investors are the co-founders of California-based retailer Fry’s Electronics, brothers John, Randy and David Fry and Kathy Kolder. On a group of eight islands known as Bock Cay, the project calls for a staff village with about 35 homes for employees, a main clubhouse and six guest estates built in various styles, including an Italian villa. Fifteen hundred palm trees have been imported. One unusual private-island feature in the works: an 18-hole Nick Faldo-designed golf course with at least one drive that goes over the ocean to reach a hole on a nearby island that’s also part of the property.

A spokesman for Fry’s says an opening date hasn’t yet been set, and that the island will likely be available as a very high-end rental in the model of Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. (Weekly rates at Mr. Branson’s island start at $54,500 per night for up to 28 guests.)

The Exuma Cays (pronounced “Keys” by most locals and regulars) have many of the ingredients for a destination for the extremely wealthy: sandy beaches, turquoise water and limited development possibilities—90% of the islands are either uninhabitable or protected as part of a 176-square-mile marine park. The growing ease of staying connected with cable and the Internet, as well as improved desalination and diesel-generator technology, have also made the islands more attractive, says Tom Lawson, a resident who has developed, owned or managed several private-island properties there.

The relatively large number of islands makes the Exumas generally more affordable than other exclusive destinations like the Seychelles, says Farhad Vladi, the Germany-based founder of Vladi Private Islands, a private-island real-estate company. Although prices for islands in the Exumas have doubled in the last decade, the Seychelles cost even more because of their scarcity and extreme privacy, with most basic islands selling for around $30 million.

Sounds awesome. Will probably look something like Turneffe Island, pictured below:

Making my eternal longing for one of these damn things especially painful is that now is the best time to buy but I still haven’t made my first million yet. FRUSTRATING (I blame Wall Street/Bush/Capitalism/anythingexceptmyself).

One of the least expensive on the market now is Nicolas Cage’s former island, Leaf Cay, which remains completely undeveloped and is available for $8.5 million. At the top end of the market is Cave Cay, a 250-acre island priced at $110 million that has its own harbor and runway. Listing broker John Christie, of H.G. Christie, says there are several buildings on the property, some of which are not yet completed. He says it has been on the market for about a year and the sellers are open to offers for less than the listing price.

“It’s definitely a buyer’s market right now,” says Kevin Cross, a Nassau-based real-estate broker. But he and others say buyers are emerging. “We’re getting real buyers looking in the $30 million to $50 million price range,” says Mr. Christie.

Movie stars, royalty and old-money families have yachted around the Exumas and vacationed on the main island, Great Exuma, since at least the 1950s. On the market right now is Children’s Bay Cay, the $37.5 million former vacation playground of Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, who vacationed on the island in their movie-making heydays in the 1950s and ’60s. It’s been owned by heirs to the Johnson & Johnson family fortune. They couldn’t be reached for comment.

 

Twinkle Fingers Explained

Via Hot Air: The French reinvented the calendar. These people have reinvented jazz hands, I guess. It’s as harmless as can be, but since all protests are ultimately an appeal to undecided voters, I can only imagine what the average blue-collar American will make of it. Who knows? Maybe hippie finger wiggles are just what the zeitgeist requires right now to catalyze the unemployed.

Shower by bed

Roll out of bed and into the shower? Not me. I haven’t needed a water-wake-me-up since high school. What I want this for is the reverse: I take hot relaxing baths and showers at night and then regret the trek all the way to my bed to collapse in a melty pile of fleshy goo. With this built into my mansion or luxury apartment, I could just keep a towel in the middle and do a quick wash-to-sheets.

Motherhood makes you dumber

Blame this guy, ladies. not me.

Do women temporarily get stupider when they have a baby? My wife thought so about her two births; so did my two daughters who have had children, and they tell me that all the other mothers they know think so, too. Now, as science marches on, it appears that it really is true. Jessica Henry and Barbara Sherwin have an article in the forthcoming issue of Behavioral Neuroscience reporting that women in late pregnancy and soon after birth had significantly lower scores than a control group on a variety of cognitive tasks, and conclude that changes in the levels of cortisol and estradiol may be involved.

“It’s nature’s way of hosing down the mind,” a family friend explained it to my wife when she was caring for her three-week-old and complaining that she had lost her brains. And when you think about it, what better way to help a new mother cope with the infinite demands of an infant on her life?

Is it motherhood that makes some of these protestors think that annoying people on the street without a defined purpose is “changing the world”? What are the rest of these peoples excuses then?