The News, Summarized
Irradiated by LabRat
Or, a simulated version of what reading my various news feeds is like lately.
- Prominent liberal demagogue everyone knows is a liberal demagogue donates a bunch of money to a Democratic president’s campaign. WILL THIS HURT THE CANDIDATE?!
- Women could have sex, at will. This is just terrible.
- Romney says something amazingly tone-deaf revealing his provincialism. Santorum says something amazingly tone-deaf revealing his provincialism. Gingrich sits back with an eye on his watch waiting for his second second look from voters after Santorum finishes melting down this time. Ron Paul may or may not have said something, but no one noticed.
- Allegations that Ron Paul believes in conspiracy theories give way to conspiracy theories about Ron Paul. Progress?
- Basketball player of Asian decent emerges, is awesome. Collective media struck by irresistible compulsion to constantly reference his race. Statisticians determine stereotype, facepalming density will reach 100% by end of current basketball season, predict run on fortune cookies, Noxema.
- Normally irrelevant state primaries become relevant. Statisticians predict monthly, highly local runs on cheap liquor supplies.
- Congress continues to do things. High bipartisan support of violent disdain for Congress continues to unite America.
- Troubled teen with a background of chaos and violence shoots up his classmates. Dancing in the blood of the fallen in support of various political causes surprisingly muted. Progress? Progress.
- Extremely rich candidates from upper-class backgrounds describe opponents of being extremely rich and upper-class. Media accuses candidate of being really white and rich; candidate opponent attempts to characterize same candidate as being basically an Occupy protestor or actually Barack Obama. America posts reactions to My Face When.
- American public expresses concerns about jobs, economic recovery. State governors express their primary constituents’ concerns are jobs, economic recovery. Politicians, media continue to concentrate on contraception, the Girl Scouts, Jeremy Lin, who is the whitest and the richest of them all, and the Catholic church.
- Blogger bursts into bitter tears as Google targeted ads decide that mentioning Jeremy Lin must mean the writer is actually Chinese. Ads change from weird trick discovered by white mom to weird Asian tricks for hair care.
- Awesome new action movie debuts, is blatantly military recruitment propaganda. A nation decides whether it should care or not; settles on pretty much “not”.
February 28th, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Pretty much on the money, or whatever facsimilie we’re using these days… sigh
February 29th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Makes you wonder about the lack of intellectual rigor, or possibly the narrowness of their ideological viewpoint, when you can predict the news that closely with such little effort. It’s probably a sign of the impending apocalypse, when all of the world’s liberal media are overcome by the density of their own collective self-absorption and collapse into a self-referential singularity.
One could argue that this has in fact already happened, and we just haven’t noticed because we’re still inside the event horizon.
February 29th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Old NFO:
Denominate wages and prices in gallons/ounces of regular gasoline.
You can just as easily run a checkout stand swipe machine on ounces of gas as you can on Obama dollars.
Everyone needs and uses gasoline in some form or another. Just make it the currency. A fractional oil futures receipt ain’t going to inflate like a Wiemar Republic Mark.
February 29th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Or even better, just use watts. I doesn’t matter where the energy comes from.
Ultimately, all currency is a marker for energy invested in something.
February 29th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Kristopher:
You do realize you’re going to have to pay David Gerrold royalties on that, right? Even if he used kilocalories instead of watts.
February 29th, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Only if it gets used in fiction :).
March 3rd, 2012 at 6:24 am
I don’t recall people getting too hyped up when “Top Gun” turned out to be the best recruiting tool that the naval aviators ever had.
Prior to that movie coming out, the Navy was facing a pilot shortage that was bad enough that they were pleading with the ship drivers to consider learning to fly.
March 3rd, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Propaganda and recruiting tools aren’t inherently bad. Depends on what you’re trying to achieve and how deceptive you’re being.
Naval aviation and SEALs both have extremely high washout rates and most wind up doing something much less glamorous, but… it’s not like that’s inaccessible information.