SOMEONE NEEDS TO HELP ME PLEASE, says the answering machine this morning.

I’m fifty-nine and I’ve worked every day of my life, and I have a hi-lo license and a CDL and a perfect record and the plant I worked at closed in January and I’ve been looking for a job every day since then and no-one is calling.

When I lost my job I had to start paying my ( Read more... )

Original Essay: The Not Rape Epidemic

I was not-raped, once when I was twelve, and several times when I was (barely) fourteen.  The details of those events are not part of this post, which is “squick safe”.  The article linked above is awesome, but might squick you, fyi.

At the time those incidents happened, I didn’t know how to say “this is ( Read more... )

…And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good philosopher can do:  Explain that SHIT out of sticky things and deliver a MONSTER smack-down to a whole demographic of annoying assholes in under ten minutes.

Excuse me while I go finish swooning.  ;)

Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.

The American state of Kentucky, combining an F-you to the Constitution with the kind of critical thinking that rightfully leads to extinction via Darwinian smackdown, has decided that this is a reasonable legislation:

The 2006 law organizing the state Office of
Homeland Security lists its initial duty as “stressing the dependence
on Almighty God as ( Read more... )

Ahem.


( Read more... )

America the Banana Republic: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
Now ask yourself another question. Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? Has anybody even offered to resign? Have you heard anybody in authority apologize, as in: “So very sorry about your savings and pensions and ( Read more... )

Learned something today…

MERS (the Mortgage Electronic Registration System), or more properly “MERS Inc.” as it is a private corporation (.org address notwithstanding; I hate it when companies do that!), was created by a group of big mortgage-industry players, including Fannie Mae, in 1997; it went fully operational in 1999.  Its mission is “to ( Read more... )

According to the Global Mammal Assessment, one in four mammal species on Earth faces extinction.

Anybody else thinking there’s a huuuuuuge “oops” in our future?

Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.

A modern philosopher-type I’m fond of once said something like, “When you’re in your darkest hour, remember that you’re also one small step away from something amazing, something wonderful.”  Which is true, of course; suffering itself can push us towards profound revelations of exactly the type that free us from future suffering - this is where the ( Read more... )

Horrible: The United States is doing such an unbelievably crappy job of taking care of its own citizens that charities created to deliver medical care to refugees in third-world nations are finding themselves desperately needed at home. That’s right, it’s so bad now that the richest country in the world - which your government assures you doesn’t ( Read more... )