Chemical Warfare

Speaking from my privileged First World perspective, our, meaning the United States’, response to the Syrian war has always been a very conflicting and troubling issue for me.

Poor me, right, when there’s somewhere around 500,000 Syrians dead and over 10,000,000 displaced.

Poor me, indeed.

But since all pain is relative, all I can do is acknowledge/empathize with/pray for the atrocities external from me while focusing on finding some way to mitigate or at least reconcile with the conflicts and turmoil internal to me.

So far I’ve been unsuccessful…

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All that is certain to me are Death, Taxes, and that…

China will soon be replacing the [less-than-]United States as the world’s new Evil Overlord

And will soon thereafter be usurped by the Evil Robots.
 
Yeah…
 

Anyway, speaking of Taxes and seeing how ‘Tis the Season of and all that… Did you know that, as Americans, we spend annually:
 
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Bookies on the Books

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced next week and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the odds makers are making noise for the usual suspects. Of course we all know it’s all just a guessing-game (as most gambling is) as to who will win, a game depending on the author and scholars who make up the selection panel, and, unfortunately, the international politics at play. That said, still it’s fun to guess. Here are some of the odds: Haruki Murakami is the favorite at 5 to 1 Joyce Carol Oates is at 12 to 1 Philip Roth … Continue reading Bookies on the Books

The Proxy Wars

jurvetson / Foter / CC BY Oppressive governments like China, Iran, and Syria, among many others, are spending billions to censor the internet from their populations; and other governments like Pakistan, that one might not consider to be in the same oppressive category as China and the others mentioned, are also focused on internet censorship as well, mostly for religious purposes. But as these governments find new ways to oppress, internet freedom advocates, find new ways to circumvent the oppression. Unfortunately, those seeking access to the internet usually are not as well funded as those seeking to oppress. Just as … Continue reading The Proxy Wars

A Super Sad True Look at What May Lie Ahead

BOOK | FICTION | LITERATURE SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY by Gary Shteyngart RATING: ★ ★ ★ In Gary Shteyngart’s SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY, the state of the union is dire. The country is bankrupt and so are its morals and values. It is at war both abroad and at home with itself. Its fall from grace and global dominance is near complete. Its citizens are vacuous, intellectually dead, and have ceded their free will and persona’s to ubiquitous technological devices and the killer apps that power them. While this may sound like a description of the America of … Continue reading A Super Sad True Look at What May Lie Ahead