This is where it starts

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Constitution? Rights? What are you talking about? Those don’t exist in the USA anymore — we think you’re a bad guy (or have the potential to be a bad guy, or maybe you just look like a bad guy), therefore, we’re going to do whatever we want. We can detain you at will, only admit it to the public when it serves our best interest (by distracting from political issues we don’t like with the scare of a “dirty bomb”), with no due process, even though you’re a US citizen.

How long before this starts happening to people for reasons that aren’t linked in some way to this nebulous “War on Terror” that seems to be doing an amazingly effective job of brainwashing the American public? After all, for the most part, we seem to be accepting this instance easily enough — after all, he might be a terrorist! But what about the next person? Or the next? We did it to this guy, so now we can do it to others.

Grumble grumble grumble…. I’m a little too steamed (and tired) to go any further with this and stay coherent — but the direction things are going really does scare me.

Naked over your clothes

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The basic idea has been around for a while, but I’ve never seen something quite like this German company’s line of ‘nude’ clothing. It does make me wonder what kind of trouble that might stir up over here — it’d definitely be an eye-catcher! I’d almost love to see a group of 10 to 20 people walking down the street wearing this stuff, just to see how much confusion and consternation it would cause!

(via Boing Boing)

ClearChannel sucks

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Listen to the radio much? I don’t — it seems there’s rarely anything worth listening to anymore. Why? Easy answer — ClearChannel owns a ridiculous amount of the radio stations in this country, and seems intent on driving them all down into blandness and mediocrity. The obvious conclusion: ClearChannel sucks.

(via DayPop)

Emperor of the US

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I first read about Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America in one of the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. He was also mentioned in the book I’m reading now, The Schroedinger’s Cat Trilogy, by Robert A. Wilson. Quite the interesting — and very real — character, he declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. Lots more information about him in his archives — could make for some very interesting reading.

(via MeFi)

Music industry wakes up

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It’s about time some of the music companies started realizing that, cliched as the phrase may be, “if you can’t beat ’em — join ’em!” According to a story in the LA Times, Universal and Sony will be offering low-cost, unencrypted music downloads over the ‘net. Individual tracks for 99 cents, albums for $9.99 — and they can be freely (and legally) burned to CD once they’re downloaded. Hopefully it will work well enough that the other studios will follow suit….

Gambit

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I just took one of the many “What [random thing] are you?” tests that are floating around the ‘net — this one focused on X-Men characters. Here’s the results: I’m Remy LeBeau/Gambit — What X-Men character are you?

Look out and lock up your daughters, everyone, we’re in the presence of Remy LeBeau. That’s right, you’re that smooth-talkin’ Cajun boy with a flare for making women swoon and a great love for all things shiny and steal-able. Sure, you’re forever on the run from your past, but there’s no reason why you can’t run from it in style, oui?

Boxing

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Boxing is an interesting sport. You start with someone who’s dumb enough to get the snot beat out of him on a regular basis, and then punch him 5,000 times in the head.

— pervertkiller2015, during a Yahoo! chat session