actually, i think he's missed the boat on this. this was true in the 70s, nobody listened, and now we have a mess. moving forward, college degrees are the next thing to become useless, as industry after industry becomes integrated with advanced automation.

rather than bite and claw around ways to find new types of jobs, i think we need to come face-to-face with the so-called luddite fallacy and realize that the technology is getting to the post-marxist reality of superproduction, taking us off these so-called infinite growth curves. this is actually progress, in terms of maximizing individual human freedom. but it's going to require a paradigm shift in economics, which of course won't happen.

in the meantime, you're looking at an economy run by robots and endemic structural employment, driving political unrest that's going to lead to some hard choices. the teleology be damned, but i think the dude got it right.

nowadays, unless you have a passion for academia, you're really better off just trying to get in somewhere when you're 17 and focusing on climbing the ladder.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cut-university-enrolment-by-30-expand-colleges-ceo-commissioned-report-urges-1.3014893

i just saw the animal i've been seeing traces of around here for the last few months, but i neither had my glasses nor a camera. it looked like a large black felid, which is confusing me in how i ought to react.

see, there aren't supposed to be large, black felids anywhere around here. it's established that there are cougars in the region, but melanistic cougars aren't supposed to exist; rather, a large, black felid would probably be a jaguar, and this is nowhere near it's historical range. the thing is, though, that people keep seeing them, all over the eastern side of the continent.

it was standing in a back alley, beside a garbage can, about 20 m away and just looking at me. my eyesight is not terrible, but it's not good enough to tell the difference between a large cat, a large dog and a coywolf at 20 m. i just backed away slowly, ensuring i didn't turn my back, like one is supposed to in such an encounter.

given the combination of evidence i have (including it's interest in the garbage can) it seems far more likely that it's a coywolf. if so, i'm not really worried. they sound scary, and everything, but they don't see us a prey source. in fact, they help in the pest control (rats, birds, and especially canada geese) that the city won't carry out anymore.

but i can't shake the fact that it *looked* like a cat. and if it is a cat, it's an obligate carnivore - unlike the coywolves. canids can eat fruit and whatever else is left out. cats need fresh meat, and if that's a cat, it's a big one.

again: the reality is that i have no convincing evidence. the idea of a jaguar hanging out in downtown windsor is patently absurd; if i were on the other side of the phone, i would laugh at anybody calling that in. but i remain concerned about the possible consequences (children being eaten) of ignoring this.

i need to make sure i have my phone on me when i go out...

i mean, if i was confident it was just passing through, then whatever. but it seems to be making a home here.

something i've been thinking about is whether this might be a good "safe place" for a species like this, specifically to raise cubs. big cats like this can move a good distance, and it's really not that far out to areas where there's large amounts of deer. an abandoned house in the city is probably a safer place to leave the cubs.

i know - they'd be detected by now. but they're pretty sneaky, actually.

wow, rt. i don't expect your media major anchors to have masters degrees in law, but this is painful to watch.

the division of powers is a jurisdictional issue, and it's crystal clear within constitutions. even the most corrupt judge can't really fuck these kinds of cases up. there's very little room for interpretation. in fact, it's surprising it even went to court - especially if the argument was some kind of incoherent "exception". no. no exceptions to division of powers...

this could turn itself on it's head, though. if the rule is that it's in the city's jurisdiction, that means that local law trumps state law, absolutely. which means that all the companies need to do is bribe their way into city council to get a specific ban overturned.

it actually renders cuomo's decision irrelevant.

it's also the reason why city council votes on decriminalizing marijuana are useless; the division of powers places this (criminal law) in state and ultimately federal jurisdiction, so the city has no control over it.

he more i look at the reaction to this, the more i think it will backfire.

"mike pence is a leader.
mike pence turned indiana into the new west virginia.
vote mike pence, 2016."

on the bright side, it should be good for west virginia.

this would have been assumed unconstitutional before the hobby lobby case last year. i know it looks like a local legislative issue, but it's really a federal judicial issue.

a lot of companies have come out against this as unworkable, including a lot of what's left of the manufacturing sector there. what they need to do is focus on changing the judicial precedent, by orchestrating a case that forces the court to deal with a contradiction they can't square. it should have to do with workplaces restricting christianity, somehow. that will force the court to reverse itself, which will allow a judicial challenge of this law.

that could take 20 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LH2FVxrj4k

my guess is that the second car was following the first, the driver got scared about getting lost and made a stupid choice as a consequence of it. the truck has too much inertia to stop that quickly.

you know who is likely to argue against intelligent extra-terrestrial life?

lizard people.

think about it.

i agree that intelligence seems to be lethal, here, on this planet. i even wrote a symphony about it in the late 90s.

but we really can't even talk about the chemistry of possible extra-terrestrial life, really. there's just far too many variables to be able to get a handle on this...

for example, look at the way that plants or mushrooms work, with these elaborate root structures. if a species like that evolved intelligence, it might be collective, and then the game changes. or, look at ants. smart ants would be a frightening proposition.

i want to argue the bigger issue is distance, but it's only meaningful relative to our short lives. maybe some other species has a lifespan of 10,000 years. then, these distances are manageable.

but i do think that, if there was anything close enough to contact, we'd already know about it. either there's nothing in this area of the universe or the information is being suppressed (i don't think that's so crazy....) or they were here before, and are avoiding us....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ccNt4Dzyfg

it seems like a lot of the people in the united states want a king, not a president.

he's kind of half making a valid point. it's one thing to point out that the lack of local activism is responsible for the lack of movement - and he's technically correct in doing so. it's another to look at the viability of local activism, combined with the broad intentions of the american public. it's not clear that americans ever wanted a republic. it's pretty clear at this point, however, that they don't, right now. maybe they will one day...

putting obama's soft right leanings aside, historians looking back are going to see a blown opportunity. he walked into this with a congressional majority, and sat on his hands until it disappeared. now, he complains he can't get anything through congress. oops.