My friends nudged me to read Freakonomics by Stephen D Levitt - which I did by audiobook. Inside, the chapter “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?”, Levitt breaks down how the drug dealing ganglife is little better than working at McDonalds. Recently, Venkatesh has given his two cents on how Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA4) is - in my words - no better or worse than politicians or cops over at Slate.

What gets to me isn’t his knowledge take on GTA4, but his factual accounting of gang life. To succeed in gang life, people need to rely on friends, and like in business, betray associates when the opportunity arises. His basic approach blows the conventional wisdom out of the water: making money, whether from drugs or burgers, is achieved similarly - coerce others to make money for you - whether it’s by hook, crook or book.

This is rather pessimistic viewpoint, but more importantly, it’s a rational, explainable response that helps us understand our place in a capitalist society.

In the last couple of centuries, with the UK’s and USA’s efforts on the rights of children, such as child labor laws and penalties for juvenile criminals, slowly a change of perspective is occurring in other nations. We’re seeing a rise of child abuse investigations in Europe - especially former Soviet Socialist Republic, and Asia is addressing on a nation-by-nation basis, such as Japan beginning to rethink their anime/hentai industry and Thailand’s continuing crackdown on sexual tourism.

For a long time, I’ve postulated a society hold the ethics it’s resources can hold, but here’s a heinous example of how these changes are taking far too long a time to cross cultures: Monster Father imprisons his daughter for 24 years, sires 7 children, kills one of them. The mother did nothing. This isn’t to say that Austrians are pro-abuse as a culture, just that their police didn’t execute when this girl and the children needed them most.

As more of these warped people come to light due to changes in culture, the more likely we’re going to encounter similar extraordinary events, and expose entire cultures of institutionalized and consensual child abuse. Eventually, we have the potential to communicate the abhorrent treatment of young women facing a culture of rape and mutilation in more remote locations.

Children don’t have a choice. We need to set a finite line. A person who physically abuses children as a form of cultural control needs to be excised from the gene pool with prejudice. Cultures that embrace these cultural memes should be pressured by the UN to change and economic efforts should be brought to bare.

I don’t. I love my American troops. But I’m tired of Iraq, and I’m tired of this administration. After listening to a testimony about how we built our Baghdad embassy, which I found here at Suicide Girls (one of the best websites out there). Congrats, America, you’re slavers once again!

We have invaded and further destabilized an entire region. We have created an entire growth industry of religious deathtard mercenaries. We’ve completely fucked our monetary future.

Worst of all, at the edge of the opportunity for women and black men, we have two fucking poseurs wearing “minority suits” - Obama and Clinton won’t do shit to change anything other than pull out of Iraq.

In my mind, I know that everything changes, it gets worse and better, waxes and wanes. But I don’t think it’s going to get a lot better any time soon.

Pages written since my last post: 12 - part of chapters 1 and 2.

Is it’s name. I pronounce it Tiggers, not Tigers, not Tigris. Tigger.

The Independent Game Rating System is an inevitable thing. With all the republicrats running around screaming “What about the children? What about the baaaabies?”, and with all the concepts of classifying the damage to kids’ poor tormented psyches that video games do, someone had to step up and try to appease both sides.

You know, sometimes confrontation is a good thing and sometimes capitulation… excuse me, compromise is bad. TIGRS is an effort to appease the jerks, and it’s a good faith effort. I don’t know Daniel Kinney, but this seems to be a genuine good attempt. At least the designs LOOK cool.

With a rating system, as a business owner, I reduce the level of risk to my business by posting. So without further adieu, here’s the TIGRS for That Cult Game.

Mild Language Intense Cartoon Violence Animated Bloodshed Suggestive Themes Crass Humor Drug Use

Not Bad, huh? Personally, I think it’s sad that parents can’t get it through their heads: If you BREED, YOU’RE the one responsible. Not society, not the neighbors, and not the police. Do your best, but don’t blame others for your or your kids’ failures. Do your very best, because the kid deserves no less, and if the kid turns out to be a brainless monster, deal with the monster. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, people are broken.

But don’t blame a GAME DEVELOPER for it. That’s just weak thinking.

Sometimes we stand beside greatness. Nicole Bradford, the Global Director of Strategic Growth for Vivendi Games appears to be one of those great souls who knows the value of commitment, and how to sell a good idea.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bradford announced an initiative that game developers need to help students. In her eyes, an mine, it’s a match made in heaven: Good developers needs practical knowledge of Math, Science, Communication, and Art. Our schools need mentors from community members - role models - to help students learn practical skills.

But this is also self serving, and not just in the “We get smart students.” There’s a political battle going on, and just like when politicians point at Booze, or Drugs, or Iraqis, saying “America is under attack”. This battle frequently involves GAMES. We’re too violent. Or corrupting the youth. Or just plain not good for kids, because we all know that our children should play innocent games like Ring Around the Rosie, or Chess, or Cowboys and Indians.

Now, I know *I* may have a problem when I volunteer to present Heresy.com games to children, but others in our industry don’t. I can offer my services to the more enlightened teachers and schools, maybe academies or colleges.

Bottomline, Ms. Bradford rocks, and deserves our support. I encourage all of you to offer her your assistance.

My guts went cold this morning with the knowledge of approximately 100 higher education employees were rounded up in Baghdad today. It’s a reactionary move, but I think we’re seeing a home jihadi version of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: kill the knowledge, kill the knowledge keepers.

We’ve seen this fire before: Communist Russia and Cold War America. Fervent indoctrination with a clear and concise enemy and a hallucination of a plan to get there: kill the intellectuals.

This warfare is suspiciously effective: without higher education, people will be limited in their experience. Start re-education, like Soviet Russia with Fatwas. Control the present to control the past, control the past to control the future.

We’ve seen this behavior before: in China, in Russia, in America (McCarthyism), in Cambodia. It’s the exact same behavior of Germany - a flawed final solution therefore it’s neither.

So why does it matter?
The denial of our intellectual capabilities threatens the extinction of humanity. We must leave this planet. We must adapt our form to more threatening environments. Intellectuals prefer not to fight back under the aegis that peace equals reason. Intellectuals must stop thinking that peace and reason are equivalent. Most intellectuals are “peaceful” because they avoid confrontation.

I entreat fellow thinkers that instead of thinking peaceful coexistence, think of mechanisms to burn out the fear and anger first to enact change.

We must move forward.

Do I consider myself to be a “Bright”? By their definitions, yes. By my own willingness, sure. But what is a Bright? What are the attributes of Brightness?

Declaring one’s Brightness is an attempt at consciousness raising: changing the name by which someone calls oneself is an attempt to change a political discourse. Being an a-theist is a definition of no god. Being a bright is not just no god, it’s also an implication of one’s intelligence, allegiance to the truth, and a bit of shiny-ness.

By implication alone, it’s challenging an embedded linguistic metaphor and trope: religions claim their followers have seen the Light. In literature, Light versus Dark has been thinly veiled as religious versus evil, and in thesauruses (thesauri? thesaurisies?) around the word: light is synonymous with good and truth. Atheists are godless - an inherently evil state. Brights on the other hand is synonymous with curiosity - a bright child, and with progress - a bright future.

And even more simple, in a trope that only morons will understand, you can’t spell Bright without being Right.

Atheists are more united by the rational of seeking a better future with our curiosity uniting our efforts than their godlessness. Shouldn’t the name by which we refer to ourselves reflect that definition?

The Backhanded Implication
I do not regret the return implication of the Bright naming: those that aren’t Brights aren’t bright. This renaming is not just an escape from the godless state, but it’s forcing people to recognize a very big elephant that no one has been wanting to discuss: education, primarily children. Across the world today we grant parents and religious figures near impunity of how to mis-educate their children.

To be knowledgeable - to be bright, one must study from a wide resource-rich repertoire - that is to say, we have to be exposed to non-doctrine to be considered knowledgeable by our peers. To only be knowledgeable about one form of thought isn’t smart - it’s indoctrination.

The simple declaration of one’s Bright status is an action of political identity, Mazlow’s “self actualization” combined with the feminist-rooted consciousness raising efforts it takes to remove an imposed paradigm.

In short - it makes you feel good. Go on, say that you’re a Bright.

There’s the brain dead: the religious pompous fools that think they can dictate right from wrong based on old books written when we didn’t have a cure for trichonosis, let alone a word for it.

And then, there’s the OTHER brain dead: the kind-hearted souls that just want to go-along to get along, thinking that the deposing of Joe Lieberman has made a difference. Ding-dong, the witch is dead, now we get a happily ever after.

And then there’s the rational ones: those that observe and nod sagaciously (a word that only follows a nod), noting this as a positive significant event for the world’s future. They’re not so brain dead, as desparate to believe that this single event has meaning beyond the displeasure of a populace.

All of us trying to do what is right. Standing up, as it were, taking action because it’s Right.

You can only stand up for what is right when you have a strong belief in right and wrong - and the people who will beat you to it are those that buy into Manichean duality quicker and easier. Their reaction of right/wrong has been a darwinian survival trait - I feel threatened, therefore I kill that which is most alien.

Rational minds want to wait and rationalize, therefore WAITING as the pattern occurs… because knowing more, understanding the pattern is a darwinian survival trait - the smartest course of action will result in survival. Meanwhile if it’s a pattern of ensuing chaos where the exception of hope is used to delay action in the idea of “we’re seeing positive change.”

And in somewhere, Connecticutt, Joe Lieberman will no longer be in congress. The first brain dead ones have said, “This is bad!” The second have said, “The is good!” The rational ones have cautiously sought hope. And I, well, I think we’re in trouble.

The US is in a consitutional crisis point and the world is in a social crisis point:

The US’s last 7 years has been that of a defacto ruler (”world’s last superpower”), but the problem is that if you want to exert control, the THREAT of force is more useful than the USE of force. But because of 9-11 and our sore egos, we have allowed:
- Unbridled use of the war powers act
- Declared war not on a nation or an “ideology” - but a METHOD that rebels use, in fact, a method that EVERY rebel has used in the last 500 years. That alone is an act of desparate despots.
- As with any war, we’ve demonized the enemy, and then wonder why our front line soldiers rape and torture, which perpetrates a cycle
- Begun with the restriction to access of data, followed up with the unbridled monitoring of communication.
- We’ve “consolidated” Federal Services into an orwellian unit called “Homeland Security” - since when did AMERICA need to be a HOMELAND? How is HOMELAND different from “Fatherland” or “Motherland”. The United States of America used to be an Ideal, so that ANY territory can adopt to, internalize and apply to join, such as Hawaii, or New Mexico. We’ve capped our imaginations at a limit of 50 states.
- US education has suffered so much in the last 20 years that children are educated as an exception, not a rule. And while a single school board has stood up to the religious defectives, more school boards are losing the fight of religion vs. education.

Socially, the world has to decide:
- Do we grab for what is ours or try to work together?
- Do we continue to consume both lives and natural resources, or do we try to live peaceably with our environment?
- Do we allow the incredible prejudices of monotheist religions to continue to propigate genocide?

So, no, I’m NOT hopeful and I’m NOT happy about Lieberman… he’s just a very small pimple on the ass we’ve allowed this world to become.

If I didn’t feel so DAMN paralyzed about taking action (one more cook in the kitchen, the best plan sometimes is to do nothing), I’d feel a lot better about it.

So, yeah, ding-dong, the witch is dead… long live the new witch.

*thanks to Tamsen for the Name of the Article

Bob’s Extreme Statements for the Week:

1) Liberation comes from within. Freedom is earned, not given Men cannot liberate Women. Whites cannot liberate Blacks. Straights cannot liberate Gays. Americans cannot liberate Iraqis. The Lebanese people need to liberate themselves from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Israel cannot do it for them.

2) Just because we’re liberated doesn’t mean we should sit by and be idle: if someone needs help, we should offer and help them - but they need to do the work. I believe that the US government attempted to do the right thing in Iraq (for the wrong reasons) and in the wrong way. Compared to Afghanistan, where the US performed a little better.

3) If there’s direct threat to yourself (Israel vs. Hezbollah, or Taliban in Afghanistan vs. America) you have the right to FUCK them UP. In my opinion, any member of Hezbollah has forfeited their membership to the human race unless they recant. Radical perceptions of reality require others to react radically.

If you perceive your life as victimization, the rest of the world is going to victimize you - the only person that can change that opinion is you. If you are in a society perpetuating that belief - say through scholastic indoctrination - then those chains are going to be more difficult to break.

4) The creation of radical religious camps that outright campaign to deny physics, recorded and proven history, or science needs to be stopped - home schooling as well. I’m just as tired of fucking christians as I am of fucking moslems.

5) The belief in god is causing more pain than any good it could ever create.

6) The only resources on this planet that’s truly unlimited are human life. We’ve got 6 billion people. A radical excisement of that population, to tune of BILLIONS will not threaten the future human life.

7) You are a gift. Your thoughts, emotions, notions and perceptions form the world. And the world we perceive is so completely amazing that how we collectively allow the creation of slums and wars will always perplex me.

I’m having a REALLY bad day today, I just don’t understand people.

OK, I’m a libertine when it comes to sex, a position that is not popular and very hard to understand. I’m very OK with extreme body modification. The rainbow of kink is welcome as long as, at the end of the day, the participants can think back and say they learned from the experience and were willing participants.

So, by my definition, this leaves out molestation and snuff, and arguably animals. So what’s gonna happen when society crosses the stupid teen-ager problem of myspace.com (the pit of all inanity) with PornoTube.com (soon to be the pit of all perversity) with multiple juridictions of the world.

In Thailand, the laws are fairly strict (in a puritan ethos) but not very enforced. In Russia, they are hardly strict at all and enforcement is rare. In other nations the concepts of Child and Adult comes down to hair between their legs.

The key issue here is America is going to come full face-to-face with it’s holier-than-thou, save the children, my [daughter or son] doesn’t have sex denial. Worse, it’s gonna be broadcast on the internet live for everyone to see.

With a sex industry that is continually hungrier for more transgressive images, I’m expecting every sicko to post on PornoTube and the US justice isn’t going to know if they actors are legal or not. And we’re not going to be able to limit access to sites like PornoTube.com. The demand is too great.

A suggestion? Start a world-wide initiative to define what is and isn’t an adult and standardize on the rights, responsibilities, and priviledges that adults have. Here’s a few ideas, at age 13 a human will have the right to…

• have sex with anyone
• participate in elections
• own property and live alone
• sign legal documents
• hold a job, including being a soldier

And with these rights, they’re responsible for

• be responsible for their progeny
• pay bills
• be tried as an adult

Arguably, I’d allow a split of moving sex, legal, job, soldiering, bills and trials to 15 or 17, but the point is, if someone has the drives to act on his or her emotions and base nature, then maybe our society should accomodate them rather than mentally lock them in a closet and expect them to keep their pants on. And while that that does cause more diversity in the perversity, it’s what these “moral authorities” are trying to prevent.