Tag: extremist

Politicians, Debates and Schrödinger’s Cat

I just thought of something, if politicians were prohibited from alluding to a scenario involving Schrödinger’s Cat -metaphorically or otherwise- it might actually save the world economy a ton of money and time spent in syndication, thus disallowing them to pander fears and ideas that exist only by those same politicians’ own descriptions.
Schrödinger's CatIf you didn’t understand what I said:

    1.Please go find out about Schrödinger’s Cat.
    2.Understand the application of this theory to modern political asshattery in the media.
    3.Watch the debates again.

or as an alternative you can:

Drink more Kool-Aid.

Anyhow, it occurred to me tonight, that buried within most of the rhetoric and banter between candidates in the GOP debates, these guys directly allude to Schrödinger’s Cat in one form or another.

…My example is as follows:

…Pandering to the idea that the cat is dead and might still bite and scratch you…or maybe…the cat’s alive and out to steal your freedom as soon as it’s released. Worse still, the idea that someone actually KNEW there was a cat in the box AND gave it poison. Is that person criminal? How do we charge them?

…you have to remember…no one knows if the poison even affected the cat. Yet…we’re going to allow ourselves to be guided on a crazy journey of how beautiful this poor little cat was and how we wish it were still alive…

…then we’ll be guided into how we’ll hold responsible the horrible man that put that poor cat through such a horrible ordeal.

…then the media will make it worse by sensationalizing the state of the box that poor poor cat was imprisoned in.

…then we find out that some country that we have a some strategic or financial interest in supplied the poison.

…by the time the politicians are finished inspiring us and protecting our national interest in the cat…billions of dollars are allocated and we’re going to stop that country from ever poisoning cats again. Because that’s what they are. Cat killers.

…it gets worse. we are informed that an small extremist group of fanatics (who it so happens don’t even know what a cat is but believe the U.S. to be responsible for all the problems that arose from poison boxes) intend to place cats in boxes across the U.S. and poison them. With a fervor that shakes the world economy and eventually accounts for a truly scary portion of the national deficit, we eliminate and destabilize those horrible cat killers.

In the last ten years since things have become REALLY crazy and scary, the loss of innocent life in the last decade makes me saddens me to the bone, the effect of profiteering at the expense of our economy has sliced my income in half and even then, there are a lot of people here far worse off than I am, and yet the politicians got their salary increase and kept their benefits while the people they likely misrepresent to satisfy special interests and lobbies start to become a little more aware of the practice.

…and now comes the time where we have the opportunity to decide on which leader will be most capable in making sure the box is never opened again, the poison is never produced again, and the cats never die.

After repeatedly making laws that serve the big business and the financial block, we begin to realize that we have far more to fear and distrust in those who represent us in the government. All the candidates are either viewed as proven failures, proven liars, proven crooks, proven loons, even worse…proven inexperience.

…debates rage between potential leaders regarding the dead cat, the unclean box, and looming threat of yet another poison.

…we are told we have to remember what’s happened historically with cats, boxes, and poisons, and that the party that wants to make antidotes for the poison just in case isn’t a priority because the cats all of a sudden are jumping into boxes. Worse still, we’ve found out that a nation that hasn’t attacked another nation in hundreds of years suddenly hates Geiger counters.

And so the debates are still going now. They are getting more and more poignant and the candidates are fighting already, the tasteless commercials depicting candidates as faithless lunatic crooks are in full swing. Again, we begin to loose faith as we realize that the current electoral, media coverage, and campaign system will not allow the US to rally behind a single leader ever again…even if they deserve it.

The worst thing of all. For the last umpteen years, we’ve had to listen to politicians earning a living and invariably stressing information about a cat that never existed, a box that we never owned, a poison that actually was never created, and lastly a Geiger counter that was never really necessary.

Maybe you’ll get it. This isn’t about which GOP candidate can beat Obama in an election (if that’s even possible coming election time). This isn’t about all the dirt you see in commercials and advertizements. It’s not about who’s got some truly radical ideas (in every sense of the word).

I think it’s more about your own priorities after you’ve managed to filter out all the crap they’ve been feeding you about the idea of Schrödinger’s Cat.

Thus ends my rant for the evening.

For everyone returning to my site after everyone on the internet got a 12-24 hour taste of what kind of effect SOPA/PIPA will have on the US-based netizens, you can find a VERY clear and descriptive article on what SOPA and PIPA are on Wikipedia. So far the very best (and maybe the most objective) description of what the bill is about.

Take care and good night.

-Tony

PS – Ignoring the lines starting with … will serve as a shining example of what I was trying to point out.




A fresh look on Jury Duty.

A friend posted this in FB and (with permission of course) I am posting it here for the interested reader.

This is a short note he wrote describing an experience in Jury Selection that I found more than intriguing. It is taking the high ground in a scenario where it’s unheard of…in the court room. There is a huge assumption that in relying in the law, that the jury is just a formality. As the Jurors are selected based on a set of predisposition characteristics either appealing or unappealing to the court and/or the legal representation of parties involved. That said…I was appalled at the stance the lawyer took, although not surprised. I’d never heard of FIJA before or that an organization had put forth the effort to retain some modicum or baseline rationality with regard to the guilt or innocence of a defendant. Like I said…I was a little jazzed up when reading about this.

Said friend is John Jay Myers, he’s a stout Libertarian and holds some incredibly well-informed views.
Here’s his post:

Today I had Jury duty where myself and 60 other candidates were told to fill out a long questionnaire and asked quite a few questions during a 2 hour interview process. During the Q & A we were told that we were not to determine right or wrong just that the guilt or innocence in regards to the law.

Their first question to me was “On your form you wrote that you were a member of FIJA?”, “Yes the Fully Informed Jury Association.”

“What is that?” they asked “FIJA is a group that believes that the jury not just judge whether someone broke a law, but whether you believe breaking that law is really a crime.”

I said “Take for instance marijuana, if someone is arrested on a marijuana charge and I don’t feel like marijuana should be illegal, I am going to judge not only whether the act was committed, but whether I feel it is a crime. The same goes for owning automatic weapons, or similar unconstitutional things.”

The attorney said “You realize that what you are doing would be wrong, and not in accordance with the judges orders”, I said “you should realize the way you are doing it is wrong in my opinion” and went on to say “We have judges and prosecutors who are all elected in partisan races, they may also seek to act in a partisan manner, the jury is the last avenue we have to try defeat unjust laws, or activist judges, it is how our founders intended it to be.”

Someone said outside the court “But in this instance it is a crime of an adult having sex with a minor”, I said “Sometimes that can be equally ridiculous, the law can say that an 18 year old can not have consensual sex with a 17 year old female, that is ridiculous in itself, but as we have seen, when a judge sentences that person to years in prison, we have achieved a whole new level of tyranny” and finished “All I am saying is that I cannot be asked in advance whether I will automatically comply with the judges authority, I will have to hear all the facts, and see how I feel about the crime, and the people who committed it.”

On my way back in, the Bailiff whispered to me “I suppose you have heard of Oath Keepers” I said “Yes I have” and he said “Well I am a member” and he gave me an approving look. I tapped him on the shoulder and thanked him.

During the breaks I had many other people come up to me and tell me they supported what I said and what I was doing, they didn’t think I would make it on the Jury though.

The last person said to me in the elevator “You know, in a perfect world it would work just as you described.”

I said “Wouldn’t it!”

Obviously I did not make it on the Jury.

So I immediately had all these questions. What is FIJA and how do I sign on? Who are the Oath Keepers? What do they do? Not under the premise of getting out of Jury Duty, quite the opposite 😉

FIJA, located at http://fija.org is an organization bent on informing the public of their rights as jurors in the US courts. This isn’t any kind of extremist silliness, this is incredibly good information easy accessed that provides a TON of insight into the role of a Juror and the responsibilities that role owes to us as a people and to our Constitution. The information is easily accessible and the details aren’t hard to navigate. The perspective isn’t unique, it’s simply cleaner and far more rational than I thought.

The Oath Keepers are public servants, specifically law enforcement, firefighters, and military personnel, their spouses, and and other supporters that simply reiterate their oath to the constitution in a manner that clearly draws a line when interacting with U.S. citizens in certain matters that clearly ignore their constitutional rights. Their webpage is located at http://oathkeepers.org and while I am a bit critical of the site’s aesthetics, the base idea id simple. These are people serving the people by making it clear they have no intention of willfully breaching peoples’ constitutional rights. While I am not a public servant in the capacity they are recruiting membership from, I certainly share the sentiment. There are a couple very decent videos in there too.

Now here’s my beef. These organizations are doing nothing more than employing some common sense (with a dash of conviction). If I was in a similar situation, that attorney would likely get a sharp-tongued response noting specifically that he was NOT a representative of the court nor a representative of the Judge and his candor was fallacious and threatening. Some Judges might be inclined to spank that asshat dress that attorney down for doing so. Why on earth aren’t more people on board with this philosophy of ardent informative activism? Is it just laziness?

Anyhow that’s all I have for the night.

If you’re interested in more of John Jay’s words, you can find him at http://johnjaymyers.com




Started writing…

..and surrounded all the hate around me…

…I could not find the moral purchase that would allow me to continue unbiased. In looking at extremes…I could only become angry at people for promoting hate.

…the news became worthless…in some interviews I actually saw the cues for specific questions geared for propaganda.

…in my mail I saw a guy running for office that saved lives by torturing Iraqis…and read a monologue from April from him promoting some pretty scary gatherings.

…and all I can think of is how did you learn to hate so much…and how on earth do you think you’re worthy of serving in any leadership capacity after getting court marshalled for torturing people…literally.

..and then I realize that obviously I am hating too. I chastise myself for becoming the monster.

Why in the hell would I want to write about people that take an extreme stance on an issue that only moderation will resolve.

So who do I slam? Myself for even sharing this. Sorry just a bit pissed at the world in general….especially the extremist parts.

-Tony