Lunacy from Brussels

ALL the existing options are unattractive, because lobbying technology is now too sophisticated - technology for disseminating propaganda is orders of magnitude better than it once was, but average intelligence is at best increasing linearly.

Anyone with money and a crazed idea can create a movement around it, and through television and other media convince the average Joe Sixpack on his couch that the most pressing issue facing the world today is gun-grabbing, or saving the rare albino ocelot, or legalizing marriage between homosexual cheesemakers. Governments merely have to determine statistically how many people belong to each movement, decide how many votes they need, and hence calculate which idiotic ideas they must support in order to be voted in.

A Democratic administration would be no different. Worse, in fact. There would be even more bullshit doomed social programs stealing from my pocket.

Guilty as charged. That was a typo. Sorry.

---------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Someone sent me an email pic, which looked pretty real, of one of those illuminated freeway information signs explaining to traffic-jammed motorists that "Some asshole talking on his cell phone just got creamed".

Bob

In 2075 I'll be dead, and not in the least interested. It sounds like a perfectly daft idea. Canberra is already too far away from most of the people it governs, and as a World Capital it would be a couple of orders of magnitude worse.

Australia's politicians are a pretty appalling bunch - though not as parochial as their American equivalents, nor as theocratic - so their chances of running an effective campaign to lure the seat of a world government to Canberra can't be rated as good.

--------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I'm eagerly awaiting the day when the teevee nooz reports a car (or SUV) crash where the cause is found to be distraction from talking on the damn telephone!

Thanks, Rich

The virtue's what?

Rich Grise, Self-Appointed Chief, Apostrophe Police

I was hacking on my "Rich the Wacko" sig file today, and one of the sayings in one of the "offensive" fortune files was:

DON'T OBEY MORONS.

Cheers! Rich

The "World Government" should be at the bottom of the ocean, or maybe on the Moon.

Thanks! Rich

Brussels is a sort of 'neutral territory' for the big EU countries. The really small states carefully avoided hosting the white elephant.

How do you feel about Canberra as the site of the World Government in

I read in sci.electronics.design that Andrew VK3BFA wrote (in ) about 'Lunacy from Brussels', on Thu, 13 Oct 2005:

Indeed; it's just an example of the imperfection of human institutions. It really doesn't matter what the composition of the group is; it is rarely more than 30% successful in its endeavours. Kipling commented that the monkeys (Bandar-log: see

Yes, well, some people do seem to be resistant to stuff that others aren't. Consider yourself lucky.

My grandfather had emphysema for over 40 years, and died at 86. Someone else might die of it at 55.

Actually, the Moon is a nice idea. And it follows the same principle as having the UN in New York. Nobody in their right mind would have wanted to live in New York in 1946, and the Moon is now the most inhospitable location accessible, and even more remote from real human beings.

---------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Yeah - we had a chunk of it in junior HS metal shop class.

It also appears as a fog when you let HCl mix with NH3. :-)

Cheers! Rich

I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard the Dreaded Libertarian wrote (in ) about 'Lunacy from Brussels', on Thu, 13 Oct 2005:

'cell phone road accident' gets over 3 million hits on Google.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard the Dreaded Libertarian wrote (in ) about 'Lunacy from Brussels', on Thu, 13 Oct 2005:

Well, if it was in Chicago, it would be at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote (in ) about 'Lunacy from Brussels', on Thu, 13 Oct 2005:

DON'T encourage him!

I thought that was also in the old flux used with lead based solders?

hits or collisions?

martin

Since the "bullshit doomed social programs" actually make you richer in the long term - none of us make money from a sick and ill-educated underclass that spends most of its adult life in a prison paid for with your taxes - you are presenting an instructive example of how effective lobbying technology can be.

Read Will Hutton's "The World We're In" (ISBN: 0349114714). My copy dates from 2002 but it is still available from stock at

----------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Meanwhile, nobody is talking about lower reliability caused by whisker growth from the tin in these new solders...