[via LIFE]

The efficacy of war is manifest in many ways: technological advances, societal refinement, economic benefits, and, most importantly, global unity. Undeniably, war is responsible for the marvels of today’s society, and, inversely, the absence of war is the cause of American society’s current state of stagnation.

- The Necessity of War

The Enola Gay‘s sister B-29 Bockscar dropped Fat Man fifty-five years ago today. Though the fire-bombing of Japan claimed more lives, the immediate devastation wrought by a single weapon proved (for a second time) that human ingenuity could ultimately confound humanity.

We no longer live under the constant perceived threat of nuclear annihilation, however, the only thing that has changed in the last fifty-five years is the number of armaments waiting to be unleashed.

Think 100 terajoules is insane? Try four times that – because the size of the fireball and the number of bodies vaporized (or lining mass graves) are all that matters when nation-states compete.

… at least not if the religious right has its way:

There is Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry, which has a permanent staff presence at U.S. military academies and whose directors have referred publicly to U.S. soldiers and Marines as “government-paid missionaries.” Such groups, Weinstein argues, “are the flip side of the Taliban. They’re like Islamic officers exercising Quranic leadership to raise a jihadi army.”

- Mikey Weinstein’s Crusade
at ForeignPolicy.com

via TYWKIWDBI

Ready to hunt men for Christ?

You’ll need your Bible verse sniper scope…

The premise:

The Golden 1 Credit Union

E-Commerce Manager
SACRAMENTO, CA

Are you seeking a golden opportunity?

Golden 1, one of California’s leading credit unions, is seeking a dynamic, energetic Manager to fill a key Marketing position. This position drives the eCommerce strategy and all online marketing efforts of Golden 1 as a major contributor to the accomplishment of organizational growth and retail goals. The eCommerce Manager serves to oversee research, development, and optimization of the complete online user experience with regard to online, mobile and text banking, online affiliate partnerships, e-mail campaign management, social media networks, website and intranet website. This position is also responsible for planning and budget management, as well as the communication of expectations and standards of performance among area direct reports.

Candidates must have a minimum of five years experience in Web development and maintenance and a minimum 3 years .NET experience. Two or more years of progressively responsible experience leading and supervising a Web development team, preferably within a financial institution. Experience programming in Spanish language is desired.

Pre-employment drug testing and background check are required before being offered a position. All applicants must be over the age of 18 and have a high school diploma or GED. We offer a competitive salary along with a generous benefits package.

Please apply:

The Golden 1 Credit Union
8945 Cal Center Drive
Sacramento Ca, 95826
Email:
RKelly@golden1.com
Fax: 916-363-7198

- E-Commerce Manager (Sacramento, CA)
Date: 2010-05-08, 12:51PM PDT

Opportunity taken:

To: RKelly@golden1.com

Subject: RE: E-Commerce Manager (Sacramento, CA)

I had questions and I think the post could use some clarification:

“Manager to fill a key Marketing position”

“Candidates must have a minimum of five years experience in Web development and maintenance and a minimum 3 years .NET experience”

So, essentially, you’re looking for a marketing manager who does development work – right?

“This position is also responsible for planning and budget management, as well as the communication of expectations and standards of performance among area direct reports.”

Would that be “departmental” planning and budget management, or is the E-Commerce Manager responsible for all planning and budget management, in addition to all web development?

How many employees does Golden 1, one of California’s leading credit unions, have on staff?

I am interested in the golden opportunity mentioned in your Craigslist post – I’m under 18 but that’s not really a deal-breaker for you, now, is it? I can assure you that I have plenty of experience.

Hope to hear back from you soon!

- Z. Constantine

Yes, I troll – but only for the lulz.

A culture that just uses a pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure, to be manipulated by whatever creative design the human can foist on that critter, will probably view individuals within its community, and other cultures in the community of nations, with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentalities.

- Joel Salatin in Food, Inc.

Interchangeable parts keep things running smoothly down on the farm.

Just finished watching Food, Inc. at the recommendation of TYWKIWDBI and it left me with a few things I hadn’t seen before (it’s well worth watching if you’re hungry for more than run-of-the-mill slaughterhouse footage and McDemagoguery of Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation) which bear repeating for those who aren’t interested in sitting through an hour and a half-long guilt trip:

[via CHRISTOPHER DOMBRES]

• Food Libel Laws – One can be sued or even imprisoned for “disparaging” food items (i.e. “beef” – not necessarily a specific company’s product) in 13 US states. This legislation enables food conglomerates and interest groups to sue when a TV personality like Oprah “slanders” the good name of feedlot beef.
• Food Industry Lobbyists & Government – The Rumsfeld-Searle-Aspartame connection has been mentioned in past diatribes, however, it’s worth noting that Monsanto (which figures heavily into the Food, Inc. picture) went on to purchase Searle and has gone on to purchase … plenty of influence throughout the Clinton, Bush, and Obama cabinets and the FDA.
• Food Cabal Conspiracy – Apparently there is a lot of work being done to gag video footage, pictures, and testimony because some of the horror stories (remember that peanut plant and its stifled, underpaid workforce? What about this canned rat from Con Agra?).

… so if any of that piqued your interest and you’re not presently engorged with the kind of USDA Grade Z circus monkey meat you’ve come to expect from your friendly neighborhood fast food dealer, give the movie a try at YouTube:

* If you answered “yes, I am hungry for change and in fact I would like some now” perhaps it is time to wake up to the fact that the problems of the food industry are hardly unique.

Related: It’s really encouraging that the filmmakers chose to dedicate the last 5 minutes of the film to “things you can do” – but we’re really not going to save the world from ourselves, now, are we?

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

- Stephen Hawking

Let’s assume, for a moment, that Environmental Decontamination Following a Large-Scale Bioterrorism Attack: Federal Progress and Remaining Gaps is a typical security proviso put together by well-meaning scientists and read by interested parties whose sole concern is that of minimal loss of life in the event of bioterrorism: lines like the following describe the potential scale of the crisis:

A large-scale biological attack would likely result in a greater amount of contamination, more areas that need to be cleaned and made safe, and a much greater cost to the American public.

You can’t have a crisis without opportunity…

The Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security blog summarizes some of the report’s most disturbing findings:

Multiple Federal agencies have potentially conflicting responsibilities in the aftermath of an attack. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be sampling the site for a criminal investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency would be working on decontamination and the Department of Health and Human Services (home of the Centers for Disease Control) would be tracking the epidemiology of any disease outbreak.

- Is The US Prepared For Bioweapons Decontamination?

From the perspective of an enterprising (if soulless) plutocrat who stands to benefit from federally-subsidized cleanup efforts and, perhaps, gain a competitive advantage by shutting down competition (or regulators – come on now, like Building 7 collapsed of its own accord?) this means that:

1. Damage – and the ensuing cleanup effort’s costs – will be maximal (you hear that, Halliburton?)
2. There will likely be no means for identifying the culprit – evidence will be swept away with the cleanup efforts and far too many different agencies will be working in dis-concert to pose any real threat of identification and culpability

Risk:Reward ratio looks right – release those germs if ‘ya got ‘em…

… Researchers found that subjects assigned leadership roles were buffered from the negative effects of lying. Across all measures, the high-power liars — the leaders — resembled truthtellers, showing no evidence of cortisol reactivity (which signals stress), cognitive impairment or feeling bad. In contrast, low-power liars — the subordinates — showed the usual signs of stress and slower reaction times. “Having power essentially buffered the powerful liars from feeling the bad effects of lying, from responding in any negative way or giving nonverbal cues that low-power liars tended to reveal,” Carney explains.

- Powerful Lies at Columbia Business School
2010-01-22

[via Bruce Schneier]

New evidence toward a proof of the sucker hierarchy..?

Life in a city is inherently chaotic – granted, there are laws which govern how everything behaves and, given enough information, it would be possible to simulate every possible scenario and discern what’s happening from the quanta in an electron which composes a polymer in the plastic seat your ass is parked in to the thoughts of the person sitting next to you on the subway – but survival is generally not of grave concern at a given moment… until it is.

… and when your life depends upon situational awareness, you can count on your five senses (along with that sixth sense of cognitive dissonance) but little else: those entrusted with maintaining control over critical situations will restrict the availability of viable information if that’s as much control as they’ve got.

The person sitting next to you? Probably thinking about dinner or the events of the day or what’ll be on the television… but he or she could be thinking about the thirty-pound bundle of explosives and shrapnel in his or her satchel – and you’d be none the wiser if you were depending upon local law enforcement to clue you in to a terrorist attack.

Announcements informed passengers of delays due to “technical reasons,” avoiding anything more specific.

- Suicide bombers kill 38 in Moscow’s subway at MSNBC
2010-03-28

Containment has failed. Keep them calm. Avoid panic.

“It’s tied in with self-esteem,” says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. “We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels.”

- Why We Lie at Tehran Times
2010-03-09

Preserve the façade of safety. Everything is under control.

Control requires complicit obedience and conditioned responses (the kind which a novel situation would preclude) – some situations must be down-played to prevent stampedes and ensure continuity, even if that means stifling the truth and inviting further casualties: the governing organism which demands freedom in exchange for security must not be exposed for its lies.

Do the math and you’ll see – the man is right. Being an uneducated, thugged-out, crack-smoking gangsta does not equate to participation in the lifestyles of the rich and notorious… but just try telling that to the stoned kids practicing their rhymes at the back of the bus.

Each choice of material or shape has a cost and a benefit. The genetic algorithm finds hundreds of good designs. Adaptation comes nearly for free: When the cost or benefit of a component changes, Qualls enters it, and reruns the genetic algorithm. No tears and no prejudice.

- Natural Computing at Dr. Dobb’s
By Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere
March 5th, 2010

Humanity engineered itself out of the solution thusly.

What of pandemics?
Scares help to sell the vaccine -
Sick society.

Apparently the fine balance between scarcity as a marketing tactic and surplus as a result of a poor distribution has left public health departments with an H1N1 vaccine surplus… so now the ads are suggesting a vaccination (or a re-up for those ever-sickly tykes) – makes one wonder how long it takes for a bureaucracy to produce a single propaganda banner and slap it up on Google’s ad service.

Feeling well right now?
That’s because you are not sick;
Get shots anyway.

You’re thinking PANIC (that’s what the media and the government keep saying) but any right-minded corporation has got to be thinking PAYDAY. [Pandemics are Good for Business]