Let me tell you about my girlfriend

Her libido has become so supercharged

it hums when I'm around her

Most of the time this is great,

but now I'm now feeling inadequate

because suddenly it seems like I have

a decreased libido compared with hers

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Keywords: emasculation, sex, female, libido

What purpose does "American Idol" serve? What interest does billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of the FOX network, have in cultivating an audience of millions that blindly adores something that is without substance?

There comes a point where the aspect of “bread and circuses” could not be more obvious.

The term needs an update. With 70% of America'a economy dependent on consumerism. and wall-to-wall Reality TV, "Shopping & Freak Shows" is a more appropriate expression for the 21st century.

Vital to the panaceas is the lie that we live in a country where fame, fortune or some variation of the “American dream” is just one contest away. Where consumerism can bring you happiness and status.   more »

The announcement Friday by Bush of an economic stimulus package, after months and years of declaring that the US economy is “fundamentally sound,” shows that the vast dimensions of the financial crisis have become evident even to the most blinkered “free market” ideologues in Washington.

There was a distinct note of panic in the sudden issuance of a statement, only hours after Bush’s return to the US from a weeklong trip through the Middle East.

Bush could give few details of the stimulus package, since they have not been worked out, but instead outlined what he called the broad “principles”: the package should be limited to 1 percent of GDP, or about $140 billion; and it should consist of tax cuts only, with no increase in social spending.

In rejecting any extension of unemployment benefits, greater funding of home heating assistance, or other direct assistance to those hardest hit by the economic crisis, the Bush Regime is making it clear that its sole concern is to stabilize the financial markets and prevent a chain reaction collapse.   more »

If there had been a Best-of-the-year list for philosophy in 2007, Nick Bostrom’s so-called simulation argument would have been near the top.

The European press has been all over Bostrom’s claim for a few years, but it hit big in the US on 14 August when John Tierney of the New York Times discussed it in his science column.

Then Keith Olbermann picked it up on his MSNBC show. Olbermann got right to the point when he closed his segment and quipped, “I wonder what the Intelligent Design folks are going to think of this!”

This is Bostrom’s claim: that there’s a real chance—one in five, he roughly estimates—that me, you, and everyone else you know is a computer simulation of a person, not too unlike those characters in The Matrix.   more »

Poverty is the other GPE. I know why politicians avoid it. There are no votes or money in helping the poor.

And it's un-American, politically risky, and a bit depressing to attack our national myths--that anybody can make it here, that the poor are just lazy, etc.--especially during an election.

And most importantly, of course: most candidates are a bunch of spineless wussies who are afraid the wing-nuts will call them "class warriors" and take their lunch money.

What we need more of are trenchant analyses of class andclass consciousness, sadly lacking on so-called progressive sites.   more »