Skettios.com

Don’t know what they are saying on Fox news… don’t care either.

Dear BBC,

I’m an American and I enjoy reading the BBC, but I read something on your website today that made my blood boil.

Your article by Kevin Connolly has an inaccurate tagline. It claims that ‘McCain may have won’. Judging by his McCain skewed article, I’m sure that’s what Connolly would love to have the world audience believe. Well your own BBC score card shows the candidates dead even with 24 stars. Those that bother to click the scorecard tab would see that Connolly is in fact wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7639102.stm

What is worse, is that in an earlier article you stated that a poll held immediately after the debate showed Obama winning, in most key areas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7638435.stm

I know you are in the media business, and would like to turn this presidential election into a ‘horserace’ but that kind of coverage is grossly unprofessional at best, and at worst a bold faced fallacy.

Tell Kevin Connolly he’s letting his bias show. Better yet, axe him and seek a prescription for your websites dual personalities.

Dan McDonald
Bangkok, Thailand

I just don’t buy this bailout package that the Bush administration is ram through Congress.

The very point of capitalism is that businesses take risks, and when they make bad decisions they deal with their losses.
It’s market evolution, the survival of the fittest. A lot of financial institutions are dealing with losses right now. I get it, it stings. Everybody fucks up sometimes.
The difference is, that when I fuck up, I’m out cold hard cash, and worse in debt to some of these same financial institutions. It’s a rigged game. The whole system is set up to make sure that they make money, and I end up in debt. They are the ones, running the show. I thought these people are supposed to be better with money than anyone else.

What’s more pathetic still,   is that they pay lobbyists to make sure Washington bends the rules in their favor. In my mind, this is equivalent to a Vegas casino, losing money on it’s own roulette table, except on a much larger scale.
I say, don’t bail them out. Let’s bury them.
I don’t want to sit and listen to $700 billion dollars being sucked out of American taxpayers pockets, while overhead golden parachutes open and gently drop the CEOs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and all the others into their million dollar villas.
We’re all going to pay for this, one way or another so let’s choose the way how it gets done. Either you allow Bush to bankrupt the federal government and pay it in taxes or you pay for it through the fallout that happens when we let the big ones fall. Personally I prefer the second option, because it makes the CEOs, board of directors and shareholders eat a big piece of the smelly shit pie they’ve made.

Investing is a risk, you should read the prospectus before investing or sending money. Anyone ever seen this before?

Time for Wall Street to face up to what they’ve done.
I say let them fall.

The market will sort things out.

By the way Mr. Bush, if you’re so eager to help out, my credit card could use a little attention.

Hello.

I just wanted to stop by and tell you that Senator Joe Lieberman  is a pissant douchebag.

from wikipedia:

A pissant, also seen as piss-ant and piss ant, is one or the other of two specific types of ant. The word can also refer to an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her significance. Its origin is with pismire, a 14th-century word for ant. [1][2]

The original pissant is any of a certain group of large ant species, commonly called wood ants, that make mounded nests in British and European forests. The name pissant arises from the urine-like odor produced by their nesting material—pine straw and pine needles—and the formic acid that constitutes their venom.[3] Formica rufa is one such ant, but there are others with similar characteristics.

In the United States, the word pissant can refer to any small ant that infests a home.[4]

[edit] As an insult

This word is also used for people who only think of themselves, cocky.^{[citation needed]}

The word pissant is used as an insult in the United States. In conversations with his advisors during the Vietnam War, U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson often referred to Vietnam as “that damn piss-ant little country.”[5][6] The word is used by lesser public figures as well: a Virginia politician once silenced a heckler by saying “I’m a big dog on a big hunt and I don’t have time for a piss-ant on a melon stalk.”[7]

 douchebag:

Douche bag, or simply douche, is considered to be a pejorative term in Australia, the Philippines, Ireland, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s.^[6] The metaphor of identifying a person as a douche is intended to associate a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and malice.

Also, in case anyone is paying attention. Yes, I am in Bangkok, and Yes we are under a  ‘State of Emergency’. Nothing is really happening though. Probably still safe to go to the beach.

Just got back from Singapore, pics will be up shortly. Singapore is a great city, and definitely doesn’t deserve any bad reputation. It was awesome.

Also, for anyone who doesn’t keep up with him Bloom got hitched, on the 30th. Congratulations dude!

 

Disneyland in China

Somebody told me once that there was a Disneyland in China. I said that they were wrong, that there was a Tokyo Disney, a Euro Disney, and a Hong Kong Disney, but surely no Disneyland in China. I was wrong.

Hilariously wrong.

Of course you do. Who wouldn’t?

I love this photo. It actually shows a side of Bush that I actually like. A diplomat, an everyman, out molesting some of our countries finest athletes.

I know it’s unusual for a standing president to attend the Olympics, but I’m actually really glad that Bush made the trip.

He secured and renewed several key trade agreements in Asia, including one in South Korea that has had an impact on the U.S. economy. He took the chance to comment on China’s Human Rights records. He gave our athletes a much needed boost in the games. He’s finally being a diplomat. In his last few months in office he’s doing some of the stuff that he should have been doing all along. He’s also having some fun, and taking risks that this kind of stuff will show up in the news, and that guys like me will rag on him for it.

I don’t forgive you for fucking up our country George, but I can forgive you for wanting to grab a piece of that ass.

All of the 6.3 million seats for Olympic Events were sold out according to Beijing IOC Officials. In fact there were many news reports about Olympic tickets causing a panic in the streets, as they were being sold to locals. So why are there so many empty seats at Olympic events?

The BBC and Beijing officials have their own explanation here’s mine.

Chinese people are very enterprising. When I was in Taiwan, Muse came to play at the Peace Park Stadium. I couldn’t figure out how to buy tickets beforehand. Tickets were advertised at 500 NTD for pre-sale, 800NTD the week before, and 1200NTD at the gate.  I ended up arriving at the stadium without a ticket, expecting to hand over 1200NTD. Fortunately for me, somone had been thinking ahead. As I was walking up to the ticket counter, the woman working there pointed behind me. I had walked by a group of three older women, and one of them was approaching me. She asked me if I wanted a ticket, I asked her how much. She sold me one for 600NTD, right in front of the concert official. The same official then smiled and put a wristband on my arm, chatting politely with the scalper the whole time. Slightly confused, but extremely grateful to have saved 600NTD (about $20), I went in to see an amazing show.

The woman who sold me the ticket must have purchased a bunch of them before hand, or else knew someone at the ticketing venue. She used her knowledge of the ticket system and her contacts to make a small profit on scalping tickets. This is completely normal in Asia, and probably most metropolitan cities around the world.

It’s my opinion that people in Beijing were probably expecting to be able to do this for the Olympics.

Many of them probably thought that they would be able to buy discounted local tickets, and then sell them to visiting foreigners for a profit. For me, that explains the mini-gold rush to buy Olympic tickets. Why wouldn’t you buy something that you were virtually guaranteed to be able to sell on for a profit? In fact I would bet that Chinese officials encouraged people to buy all of the tickets as a point of national pride!

This scheme probably would have worked too, if they didn’t live in China.

If they had lived in Bangkok for instance, there would have been a plethora of tourists that weren’t in the city for the Olympics at all, most just merely passing through.  A lot of those tourists would have been tempted to pick up a ticket for an Olympic event, just to see one, or to get the experience of seeing one.

I mean, think about it this way, if the Olympics had been in Paris, how many people would have been visiting the city anyway, not just for the games. How many of those people would go see a game, if a cheap ticket was available?

In China the situation was reversed. In fact the Chinese government made visas into the country more difficult to obtain prior to the Olympics. They added a provision that you had to have a reason to visit the capitol, and even a printout from your hotel room. This significantly cut down the already small amount of tourists that would have been visiting Beijing for something other than the Olympics.

The result is that Chinese people were largely left without anyone to scalp their tickets too. It’s highly unlikely that your average Chinese person would be interested in something like weightlifting, fencing, or even judo. In fact many of them would be too busy making money catering to the visitors, they wouldn’t be able to go sit through a bunch of Olympic sessions. The natural result of all this: Empty seats.

I’m quite certain that this is the story that would come out of Beijing, if stories were allowed to come out of Beijing.

I was reading fark.com when I stumbled upon a U.S.A. Today article by Kim Komando. (New Window)

The article is essentially about binaural beats, and how they can affect your mood by changing your brainwaves. See the wikipedia article HERE for more information on that. I’ve never heard of binaural beats, but the basic idea is that you play a sine wave with a certain frequency out on side of the stereo and a different frequency outside of the other. If you’re wearing headphones, they meet in your head, and make a beat at a certain frequency. So if the two waves are close enough in frequency they make a beat. That beat can actually entrain your brainwaves to follow them. Supposedly you can even entrain your brain waves to go to certain levels like Alpha (relaxation and cognition) or Theta (pre-sleep). I know what you’re thinking, don’t argue with this shit, it’s science! Actually there hasn’t been a lot of research on the mind controlling effects, the U.S. army never solved the solution of getting enemy combatants into headphones, and gave up before really getting started.

Fortunately there are a lot of bored people on the internet so some of them said, if you can mess with the brain, isn’t that kind of like … drugs? Some other people said, drugs are a good idea, and they started playing around with the different kind of beats and frequencies until they found a few that they claimed had a drug like effect. They gave them clever filenames like Marijuana.drg and Heroin.drg, even YaBa.drg and then they sold them over the internet!

Fortunately another set of people came along and cracked them, and started giving them away for free over the second best invention ever, bit torrent.

So, excited by this incredible news, I headed over to The Pirate Bay to get myself some drugs. My girlfriend was out of town for the day, and I was looking forward to spending a Sunday on the couch doing drugs. I haven’t done that since I left Michigan State.

I downloaded the program and decided to start with something light. I chose ‘Instant Happy.drg’ and loaded the ‘dose’. I listened to five minutes of strange sounding tones and subtle beats, and sure enough I did feel happy. Next I tried ‘Heroin.drg’, since heroin is one of those things I’ve always wanted to try, but never wanted to pay for, I thought this would be a good opportunity. Unfortunately I have no basis for comparing the virtual heroin to real heroin, but let’s just say although I felt nice, I didn’t sink into the carpet or see a dead baby crawl across the ceiling.

After a bit of a disappointment with the last dose, I decided to try ‘Alpha’. It promised to put me in a relaxed state of cognition, intuition and ready my mind for sudden insights. I listened to more strange tones, this one was actually quite soothing, a lot like white noise. After a few minutes my mind indeed felt very relaxed. I realized how nice and quiet it was, having the apartment all to my self. Then I remembered that I lived in Bangkok, and that the weather outside was wonderful. I had a flash of insight, I thought “Hey, the condo has a swimming pool!”. The dose worked, my insight achieved I unplugged my headphones and spent the next hour swimming.

Later after lunch, and a trip to Pantip plaza to buy software, I decided to give the drugs another try. This time I was in the mood for something much stronger. Browsing through the fark article, I saw someone talked about the Hand of God. I looked it up, and I saw that the I-doser site was selling it for $200. I thought, damn, $200 this must work. I looked through my file collection, and sure enough there it was. Before starting the ‘dose’ I read the comments, they said

‘Its like the Holy One reaches from the sky, as you lay with closed eyes and shows you the universe, everything, infinity. Only five people were ever shown the power of this dose then it was put away in the i-Doser vault for fear of release. Fluttering eyelids, great and almost supernatural clairvoyance, rings of light and great insight, but all this comes with a price. It could also bring fear, an unknowing realization of self, and a breakdown of all senses. Weeping, fear, anger: you need to realize with such insight could come bad consequences.’

“Damn,” I thought “that is the shit for me”. I clicked open dose and sat back on the bed, waiting to talk to Jesus. At first I didn’t feel anything, then indeed my eyelids started to flutter. Then I started to feel paranoid, and worse yet a strange sense of fear. I couldn’t help it, I had to keep opening my eyes to see if there was someone else in the room with me. There was no one, but I felt like I was being watched all the same. The fear intensified until I realized what was wrong. My girlfriend was going to be home shortly, and the condo was a pit. I better clean up I thought, or else she’ll see this mess and whoop my ass. With that thought, I unplugged the headphones and put on some Muse. I have to admit I felt pretty good.

I wrote this post on Friday, but for some reason it didn’t post to the site properly, rather it saved as a draft, so here you go, fresh but not quite steaming.

I don’t know when they are going to play the Opening ceremony in the U.S., but I just finished watching it live here in Bangkok.

It was spectacular. Really the best one I’ve ever seen.

I tuned in hoping that something would catch on fire or fall down, and I was impressed by how smoothly everything went, and how cool it all went together.

Best part by far was the gymnast running the Torch on the wall around the top of the Bird’s Nest. I liked how they showed footage from everywhere the torch had been. I wonder if they had any from France or Japan.

Check it out if you get a chance, better yet, Tivo it so you can fast forward through the athlete’s entrance.

I actually agreed with George the other day, and that was scary.

He gave a speech at the Queen Sirikit Center here in Bangkok and had some interesting things to say about China. Specifically on the subject of religious freedom and human rights he said:

I have spoken clearly, candidly, and consistently with China’s leaders about our deep concerns over religious freedom and human rights. And I have met repeatedly with Chinese dissidents and religious believers. The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings. So America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates, and religious activists. We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights not to antagonize China’s leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential. And we press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs. As Chinese scientist Xu Liangying has said: “Human nature is universal and needs to pursue freedom and equality.”

Naturally China isn’t happy with him, they are probably wishing they could revoke his visa.

If I were Hu Jintao I would have said, “But Mr. Bush, what about your unprovoked attack on Iraq. How many people had their human rights violated because of that conflict. How about the sequestering of war protesters, the silencing of prisoners of war, the suspension of habeus corpus, the unauthorized wire-tapping of American citizens and worst of all the torture endured in Iraq and Guantanamo. All of this was allowed and perhaps even authorized by you.”

He didn’t say that of course, because he is too polite for that.

But I’m not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7544415.stm

4 protesters from the U.S. and the U.K. were arrested in Beijing today after climbing a lightpost and unveiling a Free Tibet flag. They are probably getting the shit kicked out of them right now, and will be released to friendly U.S. and U.K. authorities who will make sure that they don’t talk to the media.

It’s bullshit, but it’s the sick and twisted way of the world.

Protesters those who have been caught, and those planning something even better for the games should remember this:

China doesn’t care about your rights, as far as their concerned you have none.

The U.K. and the U.S. don’t care about your rights. Their only responsibility is to ensure that you don’t die and create some kind of a political incident. China is their trading partner, and currently carrying billions of dollars of U.S. debt.

Be Careful!

Keep up the good work!

Remember if you get in trouble we can’t send Jackie Chan to rescue you this time!

The best news by far though, was that the protestors were barely visible due to the heavy pollution in Beijing. The Chinese campaign to eradicate pollution from their capitol has done almost nothing.

I read a report that the Today team was planning on moving to Beijing for the games. More on this in the follow-up.

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