Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in pseudoascetic's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, December 21st, 2004
1:41 am	mandate Black box voting in columbus and tensions mounted we just lost the right for our votes to be re counted the computer gives the results, no paper validation to show how does it work? only Diebold knows why the exit polls don't match the computer's totals what a big surprise. Electronic errors and computer miscounts the list of problems begins to mount. In central city precincts the number of voting machines was reduced while 40 other machines were never used black folks are waiting eight hours in line and the colored girls sing, "vote or die... trying." In a race so close it's so easy to push numbers around you wonder how many the system squeezed out so who won? the results aren't clear. there'll be no democracy this year. But a spoonful of media will make the mandate go down. distraction, attachment, agenda diversion while other issues might be more pertinent. Surveillance and military trials its a great new age The bible has replaced the constitution, second amendment retained We love the USA but we sure as hell hate gays and all the immigrants we've detained No charges, no lawyer, no rights, put in solitary a model society for liberty and equality What did we learn from the japanese internment camps? to make the prison cells more cramped. But a spoonful of media will make the mandate go down. distraction, attachment, agenda diversion while other issues might be more pertinent. Holy wars and torture its a great new age Arlington is seeing some busy days our boys remains return with flags draped over their faces but our christian values remain to replace those lost we're calling up old off-duty soldiers from their lives of wives, work, and riding mowers. as the list of dead goes on, what did we learn from Nam? We don't need history lessons, we listen to God. But a spoonful of media will make the mandate go down. distraction, attachment, agenda diversion while other issues might be more pertinent. We're causing the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs with global warming from our coal and our cars not many glaciers left in glacier national park and the artic is falling apart but our environmental laws do the opposite of what their titles claim While the EPA says "everything's OK" and the dept of defense invades what did we learn from george orwell's books? enough to give our politics a sharp new look. As the debt approaches how many trillion? it remains that nothing is solved The blue collar and unskilled will foot the bill drown your tears in alcohol (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:35 am	Advertizing-based economy Long ago people exchanged goods and services by trading things comparable value. Then people started using currency to represent wealth. This made trading easier, providing an efficient way to value goods. With the industrial revolution came a manufacturing economy, as goods were mass-produced, what with the division of labor, factories, and steel mills and all. Over time, as poorer countries industrialized, we let them make stuff for us; all we had to do was let our debt rise, and we could get away with giving poorer countries an "IOU" for making our crap. in the US, this set the stage for a service-based economy, wherein %80 of the population got by by taking small increments of money from the rich business owners by pretending to be nice to them, making reservations for them, telling them how much money they have in what investments (and keeping track of by how much the rest of the country has overdrawn their checking accounts), bringing them drinks, planning and preparing events for them, and providing for them pleasant dining experiences at nice restaurants with ethnic themes. Over time, this %80 of the population got tired of doing things, and found a newer, easier way to get money from the rich business owners, and thus, the advertising-based economy was born. It started with print, radio, and television ads, and spread to billboards, benches, busses, banners (sometimes behind planes, cars, clothing, and tattoos. When a city could convince some immigrants to build a sports stadium, the construction was nearly paid for by and advertizer buying the naming rights. Then stores realized that they didn't have to pay to put an ad in a newspaper, when they could create their own publication, with %100 advertisements, and mail it to your house. TV producers started doing to same thing, and ran shows that were a half hour block of solid advertising, without any commercial breaks. Companies started to measure their success in the amount of advertising they were able to produce. Stock market values of companies rose and fell depending on the amount of ads they were able to put out. Instead of trading goods for goods, or money for goods, people were now trading advertising for goods, or even advertising for advertising. A roofer would do a job for an investment banker if the banker were to put the roofer's company's logo on his business card. But these types of occupations were becoming more scarce, as most people were becoming advertising executives (a higher and higher paying job), or tailoring their trades toward the advertizing industry. Artists were doing graphic design for corporate logos and product packaging. Psychologists and psychiatrists were hired by advertisers for their advice on the best ways to manipulate the public's fears, aspirations, and anxieties. Effort was put not into providing a service for people (it was easy to convince people that they needed whatever was being sold), but into getting people to pay attention to the millions of ads that were out there. Instead of advertising in order to increase profits, corporations were trying to raise profits in order to advertise more. Consumers, accosted with ads for half the time they were awake (and trying to create ads for the other half), lost the mental strength to resist, and gave their money to whichever corporation managed to reach them with the most effective ads most often. In return, the corporation would let them take items (that were made by somebody in another country) from large box- shaped stores. By the time the advertising-based economy had become well established, politics and business had essentially merged, with elections mainly being decided by the effectiveness of ads produced by the campaigns, which were funded by corporations. No one did real work anymore, except occasioally constructing buildings to hold corporate offices or bank headquarters, although some members of the proletariat were still doing chores for rich people. (Comment on this)
12:32 am	space elevator NASA will sink a good part of its 16.2 billion dollar budget for 2005 into an aging space shuttle fleet that will be used mainly to help build the international space station, according to a November 29 New York Times editorial. This article, discussing NASA’s new power to shift money between projects, questions the utility of the shuttle fleet and the space station, and suggests that NASA divert funds from these programs. I couldn’t agree more. It was planned that these shuttles would make 24 flights a year, and they haven’t even approached this number. As well as being costly, they have been inefficient. I worked at a plant biology lab at The Ohio State University where my co-workers had been planning to send up plates of moss on a shuttle to study the moss’s growth in space. The experiment was delayed for a matter of years before it was finally carried out. One of the problems was that there were many more proposed experiments than the shuttles had the capacity to perform given their infrequent launches, but on top of that, there were constant delays due to problems found during safety checks, or due to the weather not cooperating. It seems like pouring money into the shuttles is like spending $500 every month to keep fixing an old worn out car, when it would be more efficient to just buy a new one. NASA needs a new car. They need a space elevator. Kenneth Chang talked about the feasibility of a space elevator in his Sept 23, 2003 New York Times article, Not Science Fiction: An Elevator to space. He described how it would work, and made it clear that this concept is not a pipe dream. It would actually be shaped more like a ribbon; it would be about three feet wide, as thin as a piece of paper, and 60,000 miles high. A lifter, a robot whose wheels clamp onto either side of the ribbon, would carry cargo up the elevator, powered by a laser beam from the ground focused on a solar panel on the underside of the lifter. The base of the elevator would be in a calm equatorial region of the Pacific on a 150 meter platform, and the top, 60,000 miles out into space, would be weighted in order to stabilize the elevator by providing an outward pull due to the centrifugal force from the Earth’s rotation. Dr. Bradley Edwards, the Director of Research at the Institute for Scientific Research, was given a grant from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts to determine what it would take to build the space elevator. In his March 1, 2003 paper, he concluded that we have the technology to build all parts of the elevator except for the ribbon itself. The only material strong enough is entwined carbon nanotubes, cylindrical assemblages of carbon atoms. As of now, we have produced nanotubes that have half the strength needed to build the elevator, but scientists say that the material, if produced optimally, has the potential of being three to five times stronger than needed. Advances are being made in synthesizing longer, stronger, and purer nanotubes, and also in the rate of production. According to Dr. Edwards, the technology is available, or will be soon. We just need funding for research and construction. His estimated cost of the entire project is 6 to 10 billion dollars, while NASA will get 16 billion this year alone. Liftport Inc. is a company based in Bremerton, WA, which is spearheading development of the elevator. They have made significant progress in designing a climber robot, and recently provided a demonstration of the prowess of their new model at MIT. President and CEO of Liftport Michael Laine said that the event drew a lot of attention because the robot performed well despite snowy and windy conditions. Liftport also plans to create a carbon nanotube and polymer mix called Liftite that will be optimal for building the elevator. Laine plans to have the elevator operational by April 12, 2018, and there is a minute by minute countdown to this date on Liftport’s website. If the elevator were built, its use would yield innumerable advantages over the shuttle fleet. The cost per pound of ferrying freight into space would be reduced to between one and four percent of what it is currently. Launches could be made much more frequently, every three days or so, as eight lifters could go up the elevator at one time. Delicate cargo could be lifted gently to any height of orbit desired, because the g forces caused by the acceleration of the shuttle would be eliminated on the elevator. This would allow us to launch satellites with solar panels into orbit, which would be a source of clean energy. The elevator would probably be safer, as there would be no need to deal with hypersonic speeds, tons of fuel, or re-entry. It would also allow easy access to the international space station, and could foster space tourism. In light of the potential advantages of the space elevator, I think it would be beneficial for this exciting concept to get more funding. NASA could probably pony up enough funds to pay for the whole elevator by putting the shuttle program on hold for just one year. Even a few million dollars annually from NASA would be significant in accelerating progress on the elevator, and would hardly be crumbs out of NASA’s pockets. Any amount would be helpful to companies like Liftport. If NASA did not want to pursue this idea, it could always be federally funded. Assuming room could be found in the budget, I think it would be a prudent investment. (Comment on this)