Google: the Mass Advertising Machine

America prefers money to freedom.

Since its inception, Google has always 'kept it simple'.  Streamlined user interfaces and fewer variables that get in your face -- so little to account for at so much power and ease of use.  The code behind, however, is not.  Google is a leviathan of AI (artificial intelligence) and could probably figure out how to program your old school VCR or what the question to answer '42' is, if you know how to properly refine a search string.  It's advertising engine is no different.  It quite diabolically crunches numbers/keywords so as it knows exactly what to sell you at what exact time.

So enter the evils of advertising into a company who boasts to "do no harm" and what do you have?  Well, for a start we might well not need use a word as strong as evil to describe the advertising world/market, after all.

The internet, back in the early 90's, was tantamount to the wild west; a time where anything goes and lawlessness rode high in the saddle.  Of course, the governments of the world -- particularly the American gov't -- have made their pledges to censor the internet, with varying degrees of success.  Even before SOPA there were such antithetical movements as '24 Hours of Democracy' and so forth.  So how does Google AdSense factor into all of this?

Well, for one, Google played the biggest hand in forging the internet as the marketplace for anything and everything.  I would attest that the reason we have freedom on the internet to the extent that we do is part and parcel of the catch 22 that is freedom of speech in cyberspace.  In short, Google makes the internet indispensable, and what makes the internet indispensable is freedom of speech.

What would Blogger and YouTube be without dissidents and dissidence?  A hell of a lot more boring, for one.  Imagine the kind of ennui we'd be living day-to-day if the internet were as dry and blasé as the BBC World Service or Fox News Channel.  We may be sleeping with the enemy, but we still have control.

The control to express ourselves as we see fit, in a reasonable manner.  Cyber bullying and despicable sex trades will always be a factor on the internet... but they have been factors in life long before the advent of social networking and email.  There will never be a point to Orwellian control over anything or anyone; people who are truly intent on exploiting the system always find a way... instead the guys on the ground take the blows with nowhere to roll to.  Think we can have an internet of unprecedented order?  That'll hold about as true as having a noble war -- it'll hold about as much water a colander.

The US Presidential Race 2012 or Grim and Grimmer

Them's fightin' words!

In a mere seven days the voting will commence and the Americans will crown their new kingpin.  But which courgette with ears will be the victor?

We've not been presented with much of a choice (this being the nature of America's two party system) but of what little choice there is, what facts are to be considered?

If Obama is elected we can expect promises not broken, but kept only by the president and none of his cohorts in gov't -- I need only remind you of Gitmo and we'll all remember how Obama's seeming underlings in Homeland Defence and Security pulled the right strings to keep political prisoners, prisoners.  I wonder if he'd be waterboarded if he left office and went to spinning classes at that mosque they were going to allow to be built at WTC ground zero.

If Romney wins, we can expect four more years of the Bushs' NWO, rampant gun crimes increasing or at very least being maintained and illegal abortions sky rocketing (that last one is just a guess, but what else might the Republican party now have to axe in the name of all that is holy?).  One pleasant change, however, at least the Fox News Channel would be blissfully free of paparazzi photos of Obama endorsing Marlboros. 

Obama and Cameron Poke Fun at Handicapped Japanese Lad

David Cameron and Barrack Obama met, last weekend, for cigars, brandy and a rousing game of table tennis with a Japanese-American lad of 16.  Akira was thrilled to bits to have been visited by the leaders of the English-speaking world... until the press left and these dignitaries of Truth, Justice and the Anglo-American way started to wail and howl in hysterics at his club foot after he had fallen over from a risky pingpong manoeuvre which left him reeling on the floor.

Showing their true colours, the pair of world leaders went to help the lad up, then quickly retracting their hands, brushing them through their hair and simply stating oops, too slow.  Akira managed to find himself up right and quickly left the room crying.  Mr. Cameron suggested they raid his parents' liquor cabinet, but finding only sake and some rice cakes, they proceeded to defecate in the corner of the room and promptly left.

When asked, later, how the young lad, Akira, struck Mr. Cameron, he simply replied he reminded me very much of my own passed son -- a very brave boy.  And remember, this is the kind of man who's running the country until Nick Clegg can grow a pair. 

Ten Things Coarse Grain Libertarians Miss

The average libertarian is, in my experience, a bit of a pansy hippie type.  I've known so few to have any convictions which might impact others' lives, save to give them free rein in personal choice and personal liberty.  This is all well and good, however...

Ten things coarse grain libertarians miss are;

10) If everything was free, then there'd be no one to blame for anything (really think about this one).

9) If we didn't need fast cars and masses of whey protein, we wouldn't have them.  And as such someone still has to be characteristically/phenotypally better than the other guy.

8) Donald Trumps's wife is damned fit!

7) I'm better than most people at a few things.  Not everything and not everyone.  Arrogance is totalitarian, and many of your anarchists would posit that no one is better than anyone else at all, which is exactly the same thing as the arrogance you loathe.

6) My girlfriend is damned fit!

5) God might exist to make someone money, you might exist to make someone else money, but it doesn't make you "just as bad as them" because you take similar opportunities, yourself.

4) Advertisers might well be insidious... but is it not just as insidious to ascribe people to your ideals of what is effectively social mediotrity?

3) Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan are retards who are playing into exactly what they run against (which is a running trait). [see: Freee]

2) No anarchist society can be truly vigilant because when one person dies/leaves/tokes other, dissonant, brains enter the perspective and the balance must re-establish itself.  It's like using a tandem bike as a taxi... it just doesn't work!

1) From a psychodynamic perspective life is about the acquisition of power.  Tell me might isn't right when someone's just tried to steal your Skoda and the protuberance you've given them has gotten the better of them!

So herein lies the dilemma; you're not a leader, your friends aren't leaders, your enemies aren't enemies because you don't have a leader... but the reasons they're your enemies is because they probably do have a leader.  He whomsoever dies with the most toys wins!

Christian Aid Workers Celebrate the HIV Virus

What could be more reprehensible than televangelism?  The answer: Christian Aid workers.  Pictured here we find a couple of foolhardy American representatives of God and the all mighty dollar pictured with a plethora of third world children.  These are the ones lucky enough not to be born with the HIV virus or in full-time employment.  So what?

Well, for one, these meagre few have escaped the geneological stumbling block of AIDS -- which is ending up being more hereditary than infectious, in these parts of the world -- and are growing up happy, healthy and indebted CA workers for providing them with food, water and bibles... because, after all, what the developing world really needs is to be founded on as much foofaraw as that which got it in trouble and is keeping it in trouble.

AIDS in terms of natural selection means that the sinners die but the righteous prevail.  However, we're still talking natural selection, which is Darwinian, and hence the xtians are up the ideological creek without a paddle.  It ends up being a bit like saying medical science has given us heart surgery, it is a gift from the Lord... yeah, a bit like heart attacks being a gift from the Lord.  Oh, but he moves in such mysterious ways.

Is it possible to vote God out?  He's almost as bad as David Cameron!

European Union Wins Nobel Prize for Fiscal Meandering

There is just a slight bit of contention in the lower regions of my brain as the EU is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.  Why the Norsk would want to honour representatives of a system who have helped put the European economy into this much of a slump is unbeknown to me.

Peace is evidently achieved through fiscal flaccidity.  War is good for the economy and progress in general.

However, the interesting thing is that for Spain to prosper, Germany must fall out of the EU in order to bring Spain's currency into a boom stage or era or who cares?  Because of the kind of unity the EU has afforded the people of Europe, the people of Europe can no longer afford the EU.  It's one thing to try and consolidate a group of nations into one voice, but political convokation leads of financial normity leads to nothing.

Now that we're all not fighting anymore (at least I think we're not) let's see what happens if we dissolve the EU.  Peace existed before the European Union just as it existed before the advent the Nobel Prize to honour it.  The EU have a feather in their cap, now, what about ending it on a high note?