Money Makes You Crazy

I occasionally wonder about stupid things that don't matter at all. Actually, that's a lie. I do that constantly. Today, I'm wondering about when it is the world will have its first trillionaire and, as an extension of that, when being a millionaire won't be all that impressive any more. If I was an economist, which I never will be, because my brain has the capacity for some form of compassion for other human beings, I could probably make a rough estimate for it. Or, failing that, I could come up with some random year and have people believe me because experts don't lie.

See, because millionaires and billionaires are sort of like the pantheon of modern America, billionaires especially. Maybe millionaires are demigods or something, I don't know. But I mean, you got people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and they aren't really people anymore. They're BILLIONAIRES. They're special and different because they could buy and sell you twenty seven times with their pocket change and still have enough left over to buy them and every prostitute in the city a lobster dinner and a ride home. Warren Buffett isn't just a regular guy. He's so ludicrously wealthy that he could just decide to sit in his house and decay for the next fifty years and he'd still probably have enough money to leave his grandchildren reasonably well-off. That's kind of awesome and kind of terrifying, when you think about it.

Personally, I'm waiting for one of these guys to go insane. No, not Howard Hughes insane where they just start raving like lunatics and wearing tissue boxes on their feet. EVIL insane, where they secretly commission a giant death laser and try to take over the world. I mean, after you have all that money, you could live comfortably for the next millennium, OR you could go out in STYLE. Come on, just one. I'm looking at you, Jobs. You're already a bit nuts. iLaser. Think about it.

A Wretched Hive

I'm surprised that YouTube is even allowed to exist these days. You know, because people bitch about how the "Nazis" at Warner Music Group are taking down videos that violate their copyright claims,* but they need to realize that it's amazing what we DO get away with. There are entire MOVIES up on YouTube, and nobody does a thing. Well technically, they TRY to, but they get re-uploaded so fast that there's no possible way the lawyers could keep up, and they have more important things to do. You think Disney doesn't know that there's like a million copies of all their animated movies on YouTube? Of course they do, but they know it's not worth the trouble to try to get them all taken down. There's too many of them, and they come back way too fast. Yes, movies on YouTube are basically herpes.**

So then YouTube has to take the fall for all that, not the users. Because the users are nobody. And it's just amazing to me that there hasn't been a movement by corporations to get the whole site taken down. It's probably because it's such a useful tool for getting videos shown that NOBODY wants it gone. Regular people, companies, terrorists...they all get use out of YouTube. So the companies get to pretty much go screw themselves. YouTube is kind of like if all the digital pirates decided that they were just going to come out and flaunt the fact that they're stealing stuff, right in front of the companies they're stealing from. Actually, it's kind of exactly like that. WOO! ANAAARRCHY!

*I know it gets absolutely ridiculous at times (taking down videos with one second of copyrighted audio, taking down videos that apply for fair use, etc.), but I really wish people would quit whining about this sort of thing. You can't blame them for wanting to keep their claims protected. There are a lot more awful things corporations do to get up in arms about.
**Friday night is Tasteless Joke Night!

I'm Pretty Sure I've Talked About Dinosaur Cloning Before, But Oh Well DINOSAURS

So once the whole cloning thing inevitably gets under way, what're we going to do about the dinosaurs. Yeah, there's two things that we need to stop pretending are true right now: That cloning isn't totally going to become a thing that everyone who thinks it's immoral is just going to have to shut up and deal with, and that scientists totally aren't going to immediately start trying to figure out how to bring dinosaurs back. You know, after all of the clone human organs, benefit humanity, boring, practical science part. In the fun, awesome science division, things have probably already started moving in that direction, so we might as well just roll with it.

Now personally, I know everyone's going to start screaming about how "this is totally like Jurassic Park" and "you guys are totally going to wreck the ecosystem", because apparently these people are going to be shocked to discover that scientists aren't stupid. You know why the people in Jurassic Park got eaten and killed? Because they were stupid and made stupid decisions. Also because it is a movie and it wouldn't be very good if it was just called Placid Plant Eating Dinosaurs Eating Plants Park. When we clone dinosaurs, we're probably not going to be that stupid. You know, we can probably handle that sort of thing. We have rockets and stuff. Shoot a velociraptor. PROBLEM SOLVED.

Or hell, cross breed them with dwarfism. I don't care. Make mini dinosaurs. I just want dinosaurs before I'm dead. Why can't scientists cater to my five-year-old boy dreams?

He Started It

I think it's high time we start solving our wars through means besides "killing each other". Come on guys, there's gotta be a couple different things you could come up with. It's not like murdering a whole bunch of 20-year-olds from the other country is anything other than a psychological and emotional blow. Bombing, fine, but combat itself is becoming a bit pointless these days when we have weapons that can level entire buildings, or even countries, we don't have much reason to be doing that stupid crap any more. So let's start fighting by not pointlessly murdering each other, okay? That'd be kinda fun. We just have to decide what it is we're going to do.

Can't be sports, because if it was Kenya and New Zealand would have a massive advantage. I guess New Zealanders have become strong by having to constantly fight giant spiders all day, and...I can't say "Kenyan people are good at sports" without sounding racist, so I'll go with "I think there's like lions there or something maybe not I dunno", so then I'll look ignorant instead. Can't be video games, because well...South Korea. Yeah, just...yeah, South Korea. See, that's the problem right now. America just has way too much of an advantage in the whole "blowing up other places for...reasons that I'm sure someone can up with" market, which isn't fair to everyone else.

Or, here's a good idea, how about full-grown adults stop acting like goddamn five-year-olds and learn to share. Have you ever realized how many world problems would be solved if the people who run our countries just listened to the things most of us were taught in kindergarten. No lying, no stealing, no fighting, wait your turn, and most importantly, share. Yyyeeaaahhh...

Gourmet ANYTHING

How did we decide that certain animals are alright to eat and others aren't? I mean obviously it was originally "These animals are pretty docile and taste good, let's raise those", so they started with that. Cows? Okay. Pigs? Fine. Chickens? Awesome. And then it starts to get a little weird. Turkeys? That's usually still okay. Sheep? Maybe, but mostly only the baby ones, which is a bit messed up. Ducks? Only in China. Goats? Getting a bit strange, although milking them is apparently alright. After that, it all goes downhill. Dogs and cats? You'll get arrested in most countries. Frogs and snails? French people don't count. ANYTHING that lives on an African savannah? Not gonna happen. So what's the deal with that?

Okay, pretending for a second that there's no such thing as an endangered species list, why would it be totally gross to eat like, a tiger or something? Okay yeah, that would be horrible. I acknowledge that that would be a horrible thing to do. But WHY is that? Why do we think that way? What if you find out there was this new group of people who were totally into eating anteaters, or badgers, or lemurs or something? Wouldn't that freak you the hell out? It probably would. And I'm not entirely sure why. We just sorta picked which animals are okay to eat, and everything else was just not okay.

Sure, you could make the argument that those animals probably taste awful, but there are two problems with that. First of all, taste is subjective. Case in point: There are people who like mint ice cream.* Second, how do we KNOW? There could be a whole world of soul-destroying food just waiting to be discovered. Let's take advantage of that by never speaking of this again.

*Seriously, I do not understand you people.

Just Call Them Whatever You Want

I'm pretty sure that "liberal" and "conservative" have become pretty antiquated terms at this point. It used to be that a liberal was someone who wanted a lot of government. You know, regulations, state-funded programs, health care, all that good stuff. A conservative, by comparison, was someone who wanted a very small amount of government. You know, states rights, independence, unregulated everything, all that good stuff. But that's gotten a bit backwards lately, hasn't it? The "conservatives" are the ones who want to make it so that we regulate everything, i.e: keeping drugs illegal, stopping people from having abortions, telling gay people to go jump off cliffs, etc. And the "liberals" are the ones who want to legalize all the drugs and let people do their own thing. The only point where it still makes sense is in debates like health care, or taxes. But socially? It's pretty much gone backwards.

And don't say "Oh, well some people can be politically liberal but socially conservative." Yes, that's true, but do you think the crazy, super pro-drug people would identify as "conservative"? Hell no. Because to them, a conservative brings to mind a boring white guy who hates gays, or possibly a racist housewife. And to those far right-wing people, a liberal brings to mind an insane stoner who secretly wants total anarchy. So I think it's high time we came up with new terms, so things can start pretending to make sense again.

Okay, how about the far-right can be "assholes", the far left can be "douchebags", and the independents can be "pricks". That's fair, right? If anything, it would make debates far more interesting. And every news station in the world would get to have fun for at least a few weeks while everyone adjusts.

I Guess It Was Future Week

I'm excited to be living in an age when a whole slew* of things are becoming obsolete. Technology is advancing at such an incredible rate these days that a whole bunch of things are starting to be completely useless. We don't need landlines anymore. Plasma screen TVs are starting to be increasingly common. Newspapers are practically an anachronism at this point. That's a new thing for us. Before, old technologies disappeared very, very slowly. It took decades to die. Now, things are getting more and more advanced faster than most people could have possibly imagined. And it is simultaneously really scary and super cool.

I know there was some statistic about how processing power was going to continue to double for the next decade. I don't actually have the attention span to look it up, but the point is that we are going to have the best computers ever and all the naysayers can shut up about it. They're not going to destroy humanity. They're not going to ruin culture. They are going to be SWEET. And then we're totally gonna upload our brains into servers and play video games with our minds in space and if you don't want that then you need to readjust your standards.

There are plenty of things to be cynical about, but "technology is going to become increasingly awesome" is not one of them. It's going to be great. I'm ready for intergalactic space battles taking place inside my skull while I'm also sitting on my couch, which is also in space. Oh yeah, I live on the moon at that point. Because shut up, that's why.

*Doesn't "slew" not sound like a real word? Say it out loud, it sounds like kind of awful soup, or possibly some off-brand dishwashing liquid.