I gotta say, it warms my heart to see rich, complacent people scared.

So far, that's the most enjoyment I've been getting out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The problem I have with them is that they seem more like a wildfire: aimless, formless, frightening, though some good may come of it.

I think they are, like the Tea Party, primarily motivated by this nameless, formless outrage, although I personally think that their goals are far less full of derp. But the thing is, like the Tea Party, any hopes they have of achieving change will need to be met with the force and unity of spirit. The Tea Party had that, but its goals were effectively time-travel. No matter how hard they wanted to, they would not make the U.S. go back to the 18th century without serious societal change (read: apocalyptic breakdown). The Occupy movement, far from fighting the inertia of time, is fighting the inertia of entrenched power...they are fighting an enemy that is multifarious and creeping, that has made a life goal of infecting and permeating as many systems as possible.

But I believe it is an enemy that must be taken down to size, restrained. Like all bacteria, it can be good or bad, and right now, it's leaned towards "abusive". And that's why I'm posting this series of charts from the website Business Insider. It's a rather sobering and more importantly informative look at exactly what we're fighting for, and what stakes the combatants have.

Mother Theresa is dead.

Wait...correction. Steve Jobs is dead.

You would be forgiven for thinking the former were true. Now before this blog post sinks totally into mean-spirited contrarian bullshit, let me make a few things clear.

Steve Jobs did more than almost anyone else in the past 20 years to change the way that the world looks at computers and consumer electronics. The effects he had on the industries of design, engineering, manufacturing, and even film and music will not be accurately comprehended for some time.

Now, notice I said "effects". Not "improvements". Fact is, Steve Jobs was a force of nature. But every force of nature has a good side and a bad side. Wildfires leave people homeless and charred, but they clear the forest so new trees can grow. Steve Jobs revolutionized the way we compute, even the way we interact. But as this article points out, this was at the cost of being a downright awful person half the time.

He verbally and one could argue emotionally abused his employees to get results...he vehemently denied fathering his first child, lying outright and saying he was sterile. And his company, running under his instructions and abiding by his own revolutionary business practices currently holds thousands of children and other innocents in its factories in China, where they toil in conditions not much better than human bondage. This is not even touching the other things the article charges Apple with, such as having a generally ruthless and Gestapo-like legal team.

I'm not trying to shit on Steve Jobs' memory. I'm not trying to simply spit in the face of such a flood of positivity. But I am sure as hell trying to make the memory everyone remembers the memory of what actually HAPPENED, not some romantic but utterly false saintly chronicle of his life and person. And any time somebody who influenced a lot of people dies, there's always the danger of that happening.

Steve Jobs was a person. A great person, a powerful person, a force for change in this world. But whether those changes are good or bad cannot be measured from one standing so close to this time. We will need the distance of years and perspective to accurately judge and appraise Jobs' legacy.

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Curmudgeon...

Every once in a while, it feels real good to find something that's diabetically trite and "romantic" and sappy and just shit all over it. Cover the bastard. Just floods of ass-gravy. And it's even better when the end result is HILARIOUS (and really, with floods of ass-gravy, how could it not be?).

With that in mind, I present these pictures. A compilation of them can be found here at Caveman Circus, but really they're all around the Internet, and especially on 4chan. The originals are trite hipster faux-philosophy bullshit, and that's why I love these..."revisions". They brighten my day far more than the original posters would have.

"To be dominated by me...is not as bad for human pride...as to be dominated by others of your species."

I fuckin' hate my computer. Not my current one, but the one I used to have. I got it freshman year. It was top of the line...to the extent that it was hot-rod red and had a shit-ton of RAM. But eventually... and by that, I mean "by sophomore year"...I came to hate it. And hate everything it stood for.

Speaking of computers...there's one movie and idea that have been preoccupying my thoughts the past couple of days. I'm sure very few of you have seen the 1960's movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project. A brief synopsis, before I get to the meat of this post: Colossus was adapted from a novel, written at the height of the Cold War. It's about a scientist who creates a fantastically advanced computer. The U.S. are desperate to avoid nuclear war, and so entrust this computer, named "Colossus", with preventing it, and they give Colossus control of the U.S.' nuclear arsenal. Problem is, Colossus detects an analogous computer called "Guardian" on the Russian side. Colossus, following its programming, determines that the best course to take in avoiding The Big One is to allow Guardian to link up and merge with it, thereby ensuring cooperation. Eventually, the new, amalgamated computer decides that the best course of action is to remove humans from all control for the future course of history.