Serendipitous Twitter Messages Of The Day

On my Twitter feed, these two messages appeared right next to each other:

Twitter messages by @SuzanneTwoTon and @RichardDawkins, Aug. 8, 2013

Irony doesn’t get much heavier in this corner of the universe. What I conclude from this is that if aliens contact us, the NSA will know about it, but won’t want to reveal that knowledge, because it will endanger lives in our worldwide war on Al Qaeda. No doubt someone will eventually leak that information, but everyone will ignore the news and focus on what bad manners it was to release it without authorization.

Afterword: Links to the original messages here and here.

UPDATE (and After-Afterword): About that “bad manners” link – John Lewis is one of the few congresspeople these days for whom I have undying respect. The man risked a lot more for freedom back in the day than most of us ever will. Still, it is more than a little ironic that a man who values civil liberties so much would poor-mouth the efforts of someone else who is trying to preserve them.

Saturday Entertainment: Lewis Black On Economics

It’s a standup routine from a few years ago, but Lewis Black made more sense here in eight and a half minutes than a typical American economics reporter does in a typical year:

Of course, Keynes didn’t really say that we should just build “a big fucking thing”, nor did he mean that having folks dig holes and fill them up again was the best plan. What he was saying was that it’s a better plan than not employing people.

There are plenty of things that need doing in America. If you can’t think of at least two things, I’d say you’ve really not been thinking about America for a while. Employing people to do those things would be a much better plan than either stimulating the banks through Quantitative Easing or its ilk, or pointless tax breaks for the rich.

Wikipedia describes Keynes’ ideas:

Keynes developed a theory which suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called countercyclical fiscal policies, that is, policies that acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit spending when a nation’s economy suffers from recession or when recovery is long-delayed and unemployment is persistently high—and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays. He argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than waiting for market forces to do it in the long run, because, “in the long run, we are all dead.”



Keynesian economics (Active fiscal policy)

The current depression, AKA the “Great Recession”, serves as proof that Keynes was right. Five years after the initial crash, the economy shows no real signs of recovery. None of the endless tax breaks and spending cuts by federal, state, and local governments has reversed that trend, nor would anyone with a functioning brain think it would. We’ve been cutting taxes and spending for decades. At some point, you really do start cutting bone, and we started seeing the white dust a long time ago.

A Welcome Return

While I wasn’t paying attention, American Extremists returned to the Internet:

It’s good to see Vastleft’s work again. Irony in the quantities we’ve been seeing it lately demands a cartoon.

Twitter Message Of The Day

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson shows his talent for dry humor:

Image credit: Screenshot of Twitter message by Cujo359

I wonder when Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus will be on again? I’m sure the mayhem will be just as tasteful…

Moving GIF Image Of The Day

A hex editor showing an empty GIF file. Image credit: Bless Hex Editor/Wikimedia

Don’t know what a moving GIF image is? Don’t worry. Go here. You’re welcome.