Blackmoor Vituperative

I just stumbled across this earlier today: Treehouse Games. They look really fun!

“If this crisis proves nothing else, it proves you cannot help people by lending them more money than they can pay back. […] it should give us pause in responding to the financial crisis of today to realize that this crisis itself was in part an unintended consequence of the monetary policy we employed to deal with the previous recession.”

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This is the funniest thing I have read this week.

Last April, Shepard Fairey mobilized his legal team to send Baxter Orr a cease and desist order threatening legal action against him. The Austin, Texas, artist made a parody of Fairey’s Andre the Giant design, adorning it with a SARS mask and the title “Protect Yourself.”

Now the Associated Press is suing Fairey for copyright infringement for using a wire service photo as a model for his artwork

What comes around goes around. Personally, I think both suits are absurd, and simply illuminate the absurdity of our copyright laws and the legal system that keeps them in place.

“One-off bailouts and rushed rescue packages are not the answer to our financial woes. See why the FairTax — which solves the root problem of current economic crisis not just the effect on Wall Street — is the answer that America needs now more than ever.”

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President Obama went on national television this evening to urge Congress to set aside “petty differences” and vote his “recovery package” into law. Bold words: it makes President Obama sound like the brave visionary, and those who oppose him as “same old, same old” politicians. But what if his bold plan is tantamount to steering the Titanic straight at the iceberg? What if pouring trillions of dollars down a hole is not the way to restore fiscal responsibility in this country?

What if the economists against Obama are right?

Call me crazy, but I think that when one is in difficult financial straights, spending money like it’s going out of style is the exact wrong thing to do.

According to the CDC, roughly 440,000 deaths each year are associated with smoking.

Also according to the CDC, roughly 400,000 deaths each year are associated with obesity.

Many more people die each year in the USA from motor vehicle accidents (roughly 40,000) than in airplane crashes (fewer than 1,000). But people spend a lot more time in cars than in airplanes. The per-hour death rate of driving versus flying is about equal.

And according to the NIH, roughly 12,000 deaths (excluding suicides) each year are associated with firearms.

The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435 000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400 000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption (85 000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were microbial agents (75 000), toxic agents (55 000), motor vehicle crashes (43 000), incidents involving firearms (29 000), sexual behaviors (20 000), and illicit use of drugs (17 000).

(from CDC: Obesity approaching tobacco as top preventable cause of death, DoctorsLounge)

So “sexual behavior” is just behind “firearms” in terms of the raw number of people killed — and is far ahead of firearms when the roughly 17,000 suicides who used firearms are excluded (as they should be, for obvious reasons).

Interesting.

PointClickHome has a slideshow of unusual architectural projects that is pretty fun to look at.

Michael Widenius, the original creator of the MySQL database system, announced in a blog entry on Thursday that he has left Sun Microsystems and is launching his own company. He is unsatisfied with the direction of MySQL development and believes that he will be able to make more meaningful contribution to the software from outside of the company.

[…]

It’s unclear how this move will ultimately impact the MySQL community, but it seems likely that the outcome will be positive. Widenius clearly wants MySQL to have a stronger community focus and is also still committed to making technical contributions. The departure of the project’s two cofounders in the aftermath of the acquisition doesn’t reflect particularly well on Sun, but it probably won’t have any direct impact on the company’s business interests or MySQL development efforts.

(from Unsatisfied with direction, MySQL creator leaves Sun, Ars Technica)

I happened to stumble across this article vilifying so-called Daylight Saving Time. The article itself doesn’t really say much that I have not said before, but it does have quite a few links that you may find interesting, as well as this public service announcement against the costly and absurd practice of setting clocks “forward and backward and upside down”.