Doomed

Jared Diamond's Collapse is an interesting read, in an absolutely chilling way.

I am always reminded of its lessons whenever I hear how a social organization designed to make human life better ends up creating the opposite situation.

Consider this firedoglake post about the California fires.

To sum up:

People form communities so they can collectively achieve more than they could alone. These communities pool resources in order to effectively deal with disasters. Then some of the people in the community become so wealthy that they don't have to worry about disasters, because they can insure their property for more than its worth and they can always move to their summer home. So they form another organization of other wealthy people who pitch a fit that their taxes are too high.

They use their wealth to gain influence, and use their influence to buy politicians. The politicians cut taxes to please these shitheels. Children starve. People walk around sick and dying. Food is contaminated. Toys leak poison. Cities are swept off the map because the levees weren't maintained.

And in California, fires destroy lots of property and kill lots of people.

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The signs of our collapse are pretty clear. They are in the headlines every day. Not just America, but we're already in the disintegration process. We can shamble on for a couple hundred years as a husk - the Roman Empire did.

But we're at the point where we are squandering our resources at such a fantastic rate and lack the political will to take care of anyone but the superrich.

Our President, phony huckster fuckstick that he is, demands billions for his imperial ambitions and then threatens to veto a bill that gives health care to children. He should've choked to death on that pretzel. Too bad the opposition party can't muster enough courage to pluck a lame duck.

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California burns. The budgets were cut more and more every year. Unchecked global warming increased the fire risk year after year. The National Guard is busy being overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. FEMA was gutted by the Department of Homeland Security, who are too busy selecting targets to be kidnapped and sent to Syria for CIA torture to do a goddamn thing to save people.

It's not that things haven't been this bad before.

It's that I've got to fucking live in it.

The Zombie Laws

Yet another video game law has been struck down.

Censors will never stop wasting money with these frivolous attempts at criminalizing something better left to social regulation.

I especially liked this part:

"An integral part of the court's analysis was its concern that the statute would criminalize the sale of material 'without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game's social value for minors.' As a case in point, the court looked to the game God of War, which tracks the Homeric epic Odyssey in content and theme. Although that game shows exposed breasts, the court held that 'there is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey.' "

Whoever issued that opinion gets it.

It being the notion that videogames are just as deserving of respect, and protection, as any other expressive medium. They looked at more than the surface content and went for a deeper analysis. This is laudable.

Here's an old post dealing with this topic.

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I was away for a week in Albuquerque, seeing beautiful scenery and eating wonderful southwestern cuisine.

I had more written for this post, but the most recent Firefox sucks and crapped out on me, losing half my words to the abyss. Perhaps more on the trip later, with pictures.