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Month: February 2012

fear and santorum in the USA

By

On February 28, 2012

In political

I didn’t call this one.  Who would have thunk that Rick Santorum would have a shot at the Republican nomination?  Not only did I not predict it, it makes me a little sad.  Not completely sad, just a little irked and disheartened about either the state of politics, or probably the state of conservative America.  I understand that conservatives are on their “Anyone But Romney” train, but I thought they’d give up after Newt’s second attempt.  Before I get into a discussion of the Man Himself, I just want to point out a snippet from Santorum’s web page, regarding his stance on jobs:

Rick Santorum is committed to celebrating the family by reviving our economy and creating jobs in America again with a smarter and simpler tax code.

Ok.  I don’t really get how any of those statements are related.  It feels like throwing out conservative jargon to make people nod their heads.  It’s not a finishing blow to Santorum…nonsense rhetoric is quite commonplace in the Romney camp (as well as Obama’s entire 2008 campaign).  I’ts just irritating to see it over and over again.

Most annoying to me is the following clip (well, I like the clip. Just not Santorum’s stance).

I do appreciate him stating what he believes.  I also believe he’s totally off base.  He’s not even even following alone the common founding fathers were awesome! line of thought…just stating he believes the government should get involved with people’s lives on a moral level, and that he does not believe in the libertarian views of people being allowed to do what they want.

That’s not American at all; from his stances across the board, it’s fairly clear he he appeals to the very right wing conservative who believes that everyone in America should believe and act they way they do, because it’s the correct way to act.  I wish he, and the right, would take note of the Amish; live how you want, and stay the hell out of other people’s business.

That’s mostly my beef.  He can believe what he likes, just as I can believe what I like.  He’s even free to try and bring it into the public square, and make legislation for it.  He voted for No Child Left Behind, but openly admits it was a mistake.  Interestingly, he pushed forward an amendment in favor of teaching evolution.  Not the standard conservative vote.

Anyway, in his current campaign, he espouses all of the “crazy” that people find in the conservative right wingers.  The language is way to inflammatory and divisive, but he’s pro war-on-drugs, war-on-women (it’s totally a bullshit line, but you know what I mean), war-on-terror, war-on-industry (ok, I made that up, I just mean to say he doesn’t believe global warming is real science), and believes there is a war-on-religion.  I think most of these things are either 1. fabrications to help entrench those in power and/or 2. bad moves that enroach on our liberties.

I’m just amazed that a first world country could have enough people buy into these ideas that I, personally, find quite backwards.

On the bright side, I see pretty much no chance of him becoming president.  That moderate Romney (and why is moderate such an insult?) has a better chance of wooing democrats.  Santorum has the far-right wing vote.  Both Romney and Obama are much more moderate, and have a much wider voter base.  But, in caucuses that just have Republican voters, and the most active voters tend to be ultraconservatives, it’s not as shocking that an ultraconservative would poll well.  I simply didn’t predict it.

I’d post a picture, and tell you to do a google search for Santorum to learn more, but I can’t recommend doing that.  (So go do it).

 

i <3 interweb

By

On February 10, 2012

In technology

Everyone once in awhile, I’ll smile a lot at what the internet enables.  A few similar things have happened before, but the latest one is personally the most moving.  The picture below is a snippet from the Kickstarter page.  Kickstarter is a crowd-source funding platform.  If you want to, say, make a documentary on lemmings, you can post a project and dollar amount you need to start, and individuals/whoever pledges to donate in whatever amount they see fit.  This allows the general internet public to decide on projects they feel worthy, and fund them.  There’s some art projects, media, hardware…lots of interesting, boring, great projects.  I’m not 100% sure of all the details, but if your goal is not hit, then everyone’s money gets returned.  If you need $50k to fund your lemming film endeavour, and you only get $10k in donations…those people haven’t lost anything, and only cough up the dough if the project hits their goal within a deadline period.

Anyway, this is it:

I know, those of you voting for me in the 2024 elections may be unfamiliar with the words described above.  In less than 24 hours, the internet community contributed more than $1 million dollars to fund a developer with a history of fantastic games.  So what?  This is what.

Games need developers, publishers, distributors, all of these things.  And when a brilliant (and sometimes not brilliant) development studio wants to make a game, someone needs to pony up the dough.  More and more often, a big studio like EA (Electronic Arts), Activision, etc will fund them…but having the wallet means you can dictate some of the process of development.  Furthermore, just like recording artists get screwed by their production companies, development studios can see very little return while their publisher rakes in the dough from a successful game.

Something like Kickstarter allows this model to be circumvented.  People can choose who to support, donate directly, the developers can work on their art in a much purer sense.

Another example of this is Louis C.K.  Instead of going through the usual channels, he self-produced a comedy album (is it called a comedy album?), and distributed it online for $5.  He’s well known and popular enough for the internet to take of the marketing for him…but cutting out the middleman allowed a lot of dollars not to be burned doing nothing.  I understand this is a poor way to “stimulate the economy”…but really, it’s a much more efficient way of working in the internet age.  If his experiment failed, the studios could point and laugh…but he made over a million dollars.  I’m not here to toot anyone’s horn, but he donated nearly $300k of this to charities.  I don’t see publishers giving away 30% of their profits.

I’m not saying everyone has the capabilities to produce things themselves, but the big media companies are becoming increasingly obsolete.  Services like Pandora and Spotify make music free/inexpensive, which cuts into the big studio’s profits.

Keep being independent.  Keep crowd-sourcing funding when necessary, and pour back whatever profits you can back into the community.

What I’m saying, dear 2024 election voter, is that I believe the big studios are wasteful, and corrupt their art, whether it be music, video, games, or other things that I can’t think of right now.  I’m sure this effects books and physical media (painting and such) as well, but nobody looks at art anymore, and only girls read books…and only Vaginal Fantasy Novels.

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