I hate fake "progress".

A weeks worth, enjoy.

Section A:

Stop reading this. I'm anti-semetic.

anti- :
anti- or ant-
pref.
1.
1. Opposite: antimere.
2. Opposing; against: antiapartheid.
3. Counteracting; neutralizing: antacid.
4. Destroying: antiaircraft.
5. Inverse: antilogarithm.
6. Displaying opposite characteristics: antihero.
2.
1. Inverse: antilogarithm.
2. Displaying opposite characteristics: antihero.

Semetic:
adj.
1. Of or relating to the Semites or their languages or cultures.
2. Of, relating to, or constituting a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic language group that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic.
n.
1. The Semitic languages.
2. Any one of the Semitic languages.

Wait, I'm African, Yemeni and Saudi (as well as whatever else), and I LOVE me (and was in love with some other fellow Semites). I guess I'm pro-semetic.

pro- :
pro- 1
pref.
1. Acting in the place of; substituting for: proform.
2. Supporting; favoring: prorevolutionary.

Too bad, no easy pigeonholing here. I tell you what I am though. I'm anti-asshole.

Article here.

Let's go for this quote:

“The Americans demanded from Sharon contiguity for a Palestinian state,” said Shaul Arieli, a reserve colonel in the army who participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations and specializes in maps. “This road was Sharon’s answer, to build a road for Palestinians between Ramallah and Bethlehem but not to Jerusalem. This was how to connect the West Bank while keeping Jerusalem united and not giving Palestinians any blanket permission to enter East Jerusalem.”

I'll take unmitigated gall for $400 Alex. Blanket permission? I'm seriously laughing at the multifaceted absurdness of that statement. The sheer incredulity it causes would destroy a sublimely logical mind. It takes a lesser (as the Architect would say) mind to really savor the reality dissonance that quote contains. I, luckily, am made of sterner stuff (I can neither confirm nor deny the the five minutes of seemingly lost time nor the puddle of drool next to my keyboard directly after I read that quote).

As a service to Americans everywhere I shall describe this via (everybody's favorite!) an automobile analogy.

It would be like the person who carjacked you being forced by the corrupt beat cop to give you a ride to somewhere that was already on the carjacker's path of travel AND listen to him complain about it while trying to avoid taking you at all, then having him drop you off six miles away from your destination because, "...hey, it's better than nothing".

I mean it would make sense if it were possible to get 500+ years of hero worship out of decimating TWO CONTINENTS worth of indigenous peoples... oh, um... hold up;

what I meant was if you could be lauded for you peace efforts because you sat down with a bunch of people and divided up land you didn't own so you wouldn't kill each other while pillaging said territories... uh, no;

well I could see if the wisdom that declared that all mankind had certain inalienable rights also decided to to place the capital of this new country in a region that claimed that certain people were in fact not people (although this region [and pretty much the populace of the whole country] was agrarian enough to know the relationship between a horse, donkey and mule), but paradoxically pierced their own deception enough to demand that these non people be given partial (3/5) voting status... wait... damnit...

...then shit, I've got nothin'. Maybe we should cut Israel some slack.



Fuck that.

Section B:
Article here

This is how the pitch conversation should have gone:

Let me get this straight. You are having problems with student performance and student integration. Well we need to fix that. What? You've got it? A solution? Good! What is it? You want the kids to pick a major? What the fuck does that have to do with the fucking problem?! Get out of my office before I shoot you in the face with a brick gun.

Haven't I already visited the education issue? Well actually, yes. Good, I can skip the background and get right to the point. I thank my stupidly broad and seemingly useless base of knowledge everyday. Why? Because it provides me with a large enough view of the world to see how certain things are related, interconnected, and influenced by other things. This allows me to be better at doing the things that I actually like (and/or that earn me [and via my enhanced productivity, my employer] money). I can adjust for outside influence by anticipating interference and preparing countermeasures or designing to take advantage of beneficial influences. So, for example, if I make boxes, I might understand how the price of tea in China might affect my cardboard supply so that I might choose my building materials appropriately.

Seriously, who needs adaptive, innovative, responsive employees here when you can get the cheap (soon to be absolutely better) foreign version. Now go sit down and watch TV with your kids so y'all can learn something.

Section C:

Remember how the United States Senate had an all-nighter recently? I do. Let me recap for you. The MAJORITY (not 60 or 67, but 53ish) basically said, "let's get the fuck out man". The minority responded, "...you're defeatist, you're going to cut and run, and a bunch of Bizzaro world's other greatest hits". But the war supporters had a new phrase/idea (it's a shame when your ideology is your phrasebook), it was essentially, "What's the hurry? Petraeus is going to give us a report in September and that's not long, surely we can be rational, responsible adults and wait until then". Stupidly (I know that is shocking to people who have been watching the GOP) they argue for more time to 'let the surge work', while simultaneously saying that the amount of time involved is so minuscule that nothing will change during it. I know, take a moment to yourself............................................ So, here we are ONE month later and we find out that the Petraeus report that we were going to find under our pillow if we were good little boys and girls, is just as real as the tooth fairy. I know you can't believe it. Read for yourself. Of course this would be a problem for normal people, but this crowd has the 'Reality? Bah, we just make up shit as we go along...' mindset, so their response was normal (for them). The White House came out and said that they were ALWAYS going to write the report, and that they were going to get INPUT from Petraeus. Yep, we're waiting an insignificant amount (I mean it's only human life and suffering and our national treasury hemorrhaging into the sands and streets of Iraq) of time for a report from people down the street. I must say I love the "CEO" White House, it's as productive and efficient as any other business run by GW.