http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-07/us/us_kinkade-dead_1_thomas-kinkade-popular-artist-nature-scenes?_s=PM:US

Painter of Trite. Mass-produced, feather-lite fluff, designed for collection plates, calendars and nursing homes. Warm, cozy, idyllic, pastoral – scenery so perfect and so effervescent that it’s overkill. Especially when you realize how many of these he has run off the assembly line over the years. They’re all the same, each one a carbon copy of the others, in form, style and composition. The more he makes, the more they feel like parody to the point where they transcend their own uplifting warmth to invert into something ironic and disturbing. Salvador Dali would have considered Kinkade’s entire body of work to be a masterpiece of sentimental absurdism.

That Kinkade wants to capture idealism while at the same time violating basic principles of physics and lighting is a good metaphor for what’s wrong with his work: It’s so insincere that it’s offensive to real life. Despite objects ranging from fifty feet to fifty miles away, there is no depth. Everything is a flat, multi-tonal, highlighted stroke of the same brush, betraying real perspective. There is a limited range of colors and everything is in focus. Where is the light reflecting off the snow coming from? Why does the interior of every cottage look like it is on fire? And who really lives in cottages anymore, anyway? They are cold, damp, rural, and do not have central heating, electric lighting or indoor plumbing (but then again, neither did 99 percent of civilization. That’s not what I’m getting at).

This is a guy claiming to be doing God’s work and according to him God is safe, boring, and only just barely aesthetically pleasing. The pinnacle of mediocrity. And you just know that in an alternate Universe there’s a Thomas Kinkade who didn’t quite make it as an artist so he started World War III instead.

Heaven better not look like a Thomas Kinkade painting, or I’m going to spend the rest of eternity jumping up and down on the junipers.

I don't normally make mixes. At least, not for public consumption. I can count on one hand the number of mixes I've made that weren't intended for friends or girlfriends (they make great Valentine's gifts. Far better than cards and chocolate).

Those of you who've known me for a long time are well aware of my feelings on trance. The common misconception is that I hate it. But truth be known, I don't hate what trance is -- I hate what it's become.

So, in preparation for Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music v3, I'll be releasing a series of homely-crafted mixes on what I feel is the purest essence of a particular genre.... starting with trance.

This is mostly an experimental set, first and foremost. I joked one time that it would be great to see a trance set deliver 40 records in 80 minutes like house, hip hop and techno megamixes do. Also, I despise breakdowns. Any DJ who kills the momentum with a 1-minute+ lull in the music needs a serious cockpunch.

So I decided to make a set of what I consider to be pure trance. This is a set of (mostly) trance anthems, without the tedious breakdowns (and mostly without the anthems). The beat keeps bumping, the momentum keeps moving, everything pushes forward, like it should be. Repetitive, but addictive.

You can listen to the mix here.

This mix is also a chronicle of the history of mainform European trance, starting with the early proto-trance records in 1989 and gradually moving to the modern super mega anthems of the 2000s, so you can see how it's evolved.

Tracklist:
You don't get one. I want you to think of this mix as a conceptualized whole rather a bunch of loosely stitched-together tracks. Nothing obscure is used -- it uses tracks that Oakenfold typically played in the 90s and what Armin would normally play today, but with a twist. Any longtime trance fan should be able to identify most of the tracks used.

You are free to trainspot what you can (heh). For the record, there are 44 tracks.

Get the inside scoop here!

With the recent OWS protests by the youth and downtrodden, the economic calamity facing the first world, and the sobering reality of the adjusted unemployment rate (people who've given up, aren't counted as unemployed, don't collect entitlements, etc.) which might very well be in the ~20% range, the question is frequently raised: Are we officially in an economic Depression?

Well, let's take a look at what defines a Depression first. Technically, a Depression is just a really severe recession, and recessions happen all the time, defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth (half a year). Recessions generally last a year or so. Depressions are called when recessions do not recover after two years.

So by every metric that matters we are in a Depression, and we are long overdue for one because, historically speaking, Depressions were not only frequent but anticipated and even welcomed. Cycles of short, bullish climbs followed by crushing economic depravity was considered normal according to Capitalist theory ("the market correcting itself"), and so were not considered bad. Besides, the standard of living was much lower 100 years ago and most of the damage was done to the working poor which no one in any position of power cared much about, so there was no effort to make corrections to the market for the sake of human suffering.

Depressions were not really called Depressions until the 20th century. Before then, they were known as Panics, as in Bank Panics, because Depressions are almost always caused by bad banking and things that bad banking can ruin, such as currency, commodities, gold/silver, stocks, lending, derivatives, and yes, even mortgages.

Like the Depression of 1819, caused by post war (of 1812) inflation and depreciation of bank notes due to war debts (there was no Fed, so banks could print their own money), which led to widespread foreclosures, bank failures, high unemployment, a collapse in real estate prices, a slump in agriculture and manufacturing, yadda yadda...

And then there was the Depression of 1837, caused by the Specie Circular, a government mandate that all indian-claimed land purchases to be paid in either gold or silver, causing a rush for hard currency which the banks couldn't meet because they over-leveraged, forcing them to print money to meet calls, leading to inflation, currency devaluation, bank failures, high unemployment, death and poverty, yadda yadda....

And then there was the Depression of 1857. By now, economies were becoming more globally integrated, such that changing conditions in a war in one country would affect another. This Depression was caused by a speculative bubble in US railroad interests driven by European investors scared off by the looming Civil War. The drop in railroad securities led to bank and insurance/trust failures, high unemployment, death and poverty, yadda yadda....

And then there was the Depression of 1873, caused by unstable European markets due to the Franco-Prussian war which led to a global devaluation of silver and less cross-atlantic trade that flatlined global economies, reduced lending, bank failures, high unemployment, death and poverty, yadda yadda.....up until the 1930s, this was called the Great Depression. It's now called the Long Depression (it extended well into the 80s).

And then there was the Depression of 1893/96, a sort of double-dip recession which was caused by supply side bubble (especially in the rail industry) as a result of over-lending by banks with no guarantees on return, leading to a run on gold exchanges, causing bank failures, high unemployment, death and poverty, yadda yadda..... some economists like to combine this Depression and the 1873 one into one, Long, 30 year Depression that never really recovered.

There was also a short Depression in 1907 that is significant for a very important reason. It was actually caused by an attempted hostile takeover of a copper company's stock. When it failed, there was a loss of confidence in the banks that funded the attempted coup, and in the world of banking confidence is everything. A quick run ensued, annihilating the banks and reducing confidence across the country. Everyone was pulling their money out and the Depression might've gone on to be one of the most catastrophic if JP Morgan hadn't personally stepped in and put up his own money to restore liquidity. He encouraged other bankers to do the same, and the Panic stopped.

From this gesture, the seed of an idea was planted: What if the government can do that? This led to the creation of the Federal Reserve system in 1913. From this moment forward, banking panics no longer caused Depressions.

But Depressions can still occur for other reasons.

And finally we come to The Great Depression of 1929, caused by rampant stock speculation and buying on margin (ie: buying stock with the future earnings potential of the stock -- essentially a pyramid scheme), which was simply the largest, the longest, the worst, and the most far-reaching Depression of all. Lots of bank runs, high unemployment, death and poverty. I'm not going to yadda this one because this next part is important:

The Great Depression was a period of profound loss of confidence in the boom-bust cycle of Capitalist theory. A lot of nations felt that Capitalism was a flawed system that had abandoned them, and they sought alternative ideologies to protect themselves, and the longer the Depression dragged on the more radical and extreme those ideologies became. Every nation at one point had strong socialist/fascist movements, especially in Europe (even America had the Business Plot). The nations that pulled themselves out of the Depression the fastest -- Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia -- were the ones that rejected the free market entirely.

The western nations recognized that something needed to be done, and from their observances of the fascist and socialist states, reasoned that a government takeover of the economy was necessary but without forsaking the free market principles that their economies were based. The solution was direct government spending (something that really hadn't been done before); the problem was that they vastly underestimated how much money was really needed to jumpstart the economy. The New Deal partially worked, it just wasn't large enough.

And then the war hit, and what was the Second World War really but the ultimate public works project. War spending dwarfed New Deal spending tenfold. Moreover, it was direct stimulus spending that focused on genuine employment, resource utilization and mass production (and consumption) of tangible units. It put people to work and then killed them. Seriously, there is nothing better for a sluggish bear economy than a really big war. If we (as in the whole world) do not pull out of this economic crisis in the next five years, you can start to see similar desperation from other countries, and probably another global war.

In 1946, the financial and political nerves of the world came together and concluded that the world was too economically integrated for Depressions to be localized anymore. Each one will get longer and get more globally catastrophic unless they do something about it. Theorizing ways out of the crazy boom-bust cycle, they employed stabilized markets and strict regulations to ensure that nothing like the Great Depression (or the war it led to) would ever happen again. The system was called the Bretton Woods, and from then on, the life-crushing Depressions stopped.

That's not to mean that there were never any downswings. Recessions were still frequent and normal, but they were softened by controls and regulations intended to prevent catastrophic crashes. A generation grew up having never known the pain of economic anguish, and felt entitled and comforted in the fact that the word "Depression" was a thing of the past and something nobody ever needed to worry about ever again.

In 1971, this generation, now grown up, greedy and complacent, entered the workforce and their inertial might compelled a revolution in economic thinking. Seeing the markets as a droll, boring affair, they wanted fast profits and high-flying finance. To them, the Bretton Woods was an unnecessary hindrance to their desire for rapid profit, so they dissolved it altogether. The market returned, almost immediately, to the crazy swings it experienced up until 1929.

Like amplifying ripples in a pond, each swing gets louder, longer, more pronounced and more evocative. There was a boom in the 80s caused by stock speculation, ended by the Savings & Loan crash of 87, leading to the double-dip recession of 88/90. There was a boom in the 90s caused by the rise of the Internet, leading to the recession of the 90s due to over-speculation in the Internet. And then there was the boom of the 2000s, caused by the housing boom, leading to the current financial mess due to over-lending and derivatives speculation in the housing boom.

And now here we are today. We have an economic crisis on our hands: Something global, something catastrophic, something once again caused by irresponsible banking, something that people in the 19th century would recognize immediately. Only no one today wants to use the "D" word. Because it's not one of those. It can't be. We fixed it and everything, right?

The only difference between past Depressions and what we're going through today is that in the past, the government for the most part kept a policy of non-intervention which often exacerbated the banking panics for several years. Today we know that when an economic Depression hits, the worst thing the government can do is nothing.

So at least we got that going for us.

As I previously said, protesting is a romantic, youthful idealistic pastime, but it's very ignorable and it's not very constructive. It is a three year old throwing a tantrum on the kitchen floor, only it's a group of adults doing it in a public setting.

Protesting by itself has a very low percentage rate insomuch as achieving any of its aims (if those aims are at all concrete and realistic). The teeming examples throughout history have shown protests of having been everything from peaceful to violent, from intellectual to ignorant, from earnest to goofy to celebratory. Protests have encapsulated all types of moods, settings and public atmospheres, from rage-filled riots to meditative hunger strikes. If there's one commonality among all protests, it's that the actual protest itself does very little to change the status quo.

It's what happens after the protest that matters.

Protests are good at raising awareness and identifying problems. They are not good at finding solutions. If the problems are already well-known, then the protests are superfluous. Protesting can be a catalyst for change but it is not change itself. Change can only come via one of three ways (or all three), and this is something the OWS movement needs to understand if it would like to see any of its hazy demands met. Currently, the movement is ignored by the insulating elites because so long as none of the protestors obtain any real power, there's nothing to fear. The system is unaffected -- OWS can starve on the street or be kicked out by the Police, it doesn't really matter.

So to get to the next level, OWS needs power. Real power. The kind of power that the Police don't kick out of the park. They can do this three ways, and be warned, it requires a fair bit of maturity to execute any one of them. Because currently OWS is broke, unarmed and leaderless, and there's no such thing as any group in history that has ever achieved power with these three traits:

Politically

OWS can obtain power politically. Since the political system is rotten to the core and all elected officials and those running for office in the next term (so far) are wholly subsidiaries of the kleptocratic plutocracy raping the nation, this is not a partisan issue but a populace one. OWS must put forth its own candidates, must have them run for office and win, and must have them propose legislation in OWS' favor. No existing candidate or representatives are trustworthy enough to subscribe to this mandate (plenty have expressed their sympathy, however, though not enough to spurn any action...politics as usual). The only way to truly change the process is to replace the corrupt seeds currently poisoning it. And make sure the replacements are incorruptible.

Economically

OWS can obtain power economically. Money (or lack thereof) is a powerful motivator, and it makes everything move faster, better, and with a purpose. Most of OWS may hate money and Capitalism, but it must understand that the system is not going away (not without great upheaval and catastrophic loss of life which is unacceptable) and the only way to change the system is to use money to influence it -- and no, this is not a contradiction. Capitalism is not the problem. Capitalism itself has no ethical or moral value -- it is just a tool, like a hammer, and like any hammer you can use it to build a house or bash someone's skull in. There's nothing sinful about making money and using that money to further your private and public ventures. That's what all rich people do. That's what OWS lacks.

Militarily

OWS can obtain power militarily. I'm not actually advocating this option, just pointing out that it's available and has been known to be quite successful in the past. If OWS feels that the other two options are not feasible and there is no further recourse and they have nothing to lose, then they must organize into an army and physically (and violently) storm the seats of power and ruthlessly toss out the ones who have broken the nation and by proxy them. This is very much the desperation option, when there is no hope to avoid eternal serfdom. Fortunately they live in a country where firearms are freely obtainable. Because while OWS does not have the money or the power, there is one advantage they do have: The numbers.

They are, after all, the 99%. The people. The populace. The public. The plebians. The proletariat. The peasants. The hoi polloi. The powerless.

Well, let's wait until the revolution to see whether that's true or not.

While I am sympathetic to the 24h protestors on Wall Street and other major cities around the globe, at the same time I'm discouraged by their lack of cohesion, organization and focus. I suppose that's to be expected with a movement that considers itself the 99% -- how do you even try to corral so many different opinions and perspectives into a single-issue driven force?

So let me try, but first, in order to find solutions, we must first identify the problem.

The problem is that the government and the people have no money. This is where the Tea Party gets it right, but where it gets it wrong is in the assumption that the government is 100% to blame.

A broken and corrupt government is not the problem. It is only a symptom of the problem.

The problem is gross inequality. And gross inequality has historically been fatal for apex civilizations.

America is repeating the age-old pattern of all empires in the past: In its meteoric rise to the top, it obtains too much wealth, power and privilege too quickly, making management of its spoils prohibitively cumbersome. This results in a severe inequitable distribution of affluence at the hands of a class of opportunistic plutocrats, leading to a generation of governing elites that insulate themselves from the consequences of their decisions. Separated from the common life of the country, they become casualties of their own privilege, devouring the excesses of the system at the cost of infrastructure, efficiency, and industrial providence.

You can usually tell when a civilization enters this state when it stops producing and starts owning. Each generation gets lazier than the previous, using its vast accumulation of wealth to buy opulent standards of living rather than earn them. When the industrial base moves from manufacturing to finance and the elites suck up all the wealth, that's when the end is near.

The big money gains in the last 30 years have all been in finance, which is technically bad for a consumer economy because it needs the people to consume to keep going, and the purchasing power of the people is dwindling. This has been offset by production of cheap products overseas (cf. rise of Walmart) and the issuance of cheap and easy credit (cards), but the wheels of consumption are falling off and have been for the past 30 years. In response, all upper class money is being taken out of manufacturing and production and being moved into finance and property speculation because that's where the big gains are, and we've had two big finance bubbles in the last 15 years to affirm this assertion. But this doesn't help anyone. The money gets taken out of general circulation, and it swirls aimlessly from stock to stock, from company to company, pushing up each others' holdings like sheeves of corn and doesn't do any genuine good for the general standard of living. None of it trickles down, and if it does, it evaporates before it gets to anyone below.

What I'm trying to say is this:


Is not sustainable.

This is the stuff that Occupy Wall Street already knows and is rightfully upset about. What it doesn't seem to have a clear angle on is what to do about it. Protesting is a romantic, youthful idealistic pastime, but it's very ignorable by the insulating elites and so long as none of the protestors obtain any real power (either in politics, finance, or even raising an army), there is nothing to fear. They can starve on the street for all Wall Street cares.

The real problem is America doesn't produce anymore. Why doesn't it produce? ...because its cost-prohibitive. Why is it cost-prohibitive? Because Americans can not afford products made in America because Americans do not have the money for them.

(I know its hyperbole, but what I'm really referring to is the trade deficit. America hasn't had a trade surplus since 1975, and that is an odd result for a country as large and resource rich as this one. Yes, America manufactures 1.7 trillion tons of goods, but it imports more. I'm not saying Americans should learn to curb their consumption, but if this many goods are needed why can they not be made here? Employment has tanked while production has gone up, but still more are needed?)

Now, there are two solutions to this problem:

1) Pay working class Americans (more money) to make things, so they can then buy those things.

2) Move the manufacturing plants overseas so things can be made cheaper, thereby allowing working class Americans to afford them with their decreased buying power.

Guess which solution the political and economic nerves of America chose.

So the system is broken. Everyone who's not in the 1% already knows this. What we need, now, are concrete solutions.

So here are my concrete solutions:

- Jack up the livable wage, and peg minimum wage to the rate of inflation, federally mandated (it should be around $10/hr right now). Get real disposable income into the hands of the people who need to spend it most. This will result in inflation, because more spending capital will raise prices (which is what happened in the 70s when women joined the workforce and all families became dual income), but that won't occur until the spending class wipes out their debts and everything is squared off. Then things will settle to an equilibrium.

Allow me to go on an aside here about inflation: Inflation is not bad. It's supposed to happen. The problem with inflation is that the first things that go up in value are the largest commodities humans can buy: Property. It sets the standard by which every other purchasable thing on the planet is priced. When property spikes, inflation trickles down and everything else slowly adjusts accordingly: Next comes housing, then stocks, manufacturing and shipping, entertainment, and finally consumer products, right on down to chocolate bars going up 5 cents at the corner store. It usually takes 5-10 years for the smallest consumer good to adjust medially against a property spike.

The last thing that goes up, however, are employee wages. Especially minimum wage. There are some states that have not adjusted their minimum wage since the 70s (Georgia has the lowest minimum wage in the Union at $5.15, and only for companies with more than 6 employees. If there are less than 6 employees, there is no minimum wage. Tipped employees earn $2.13). This makes inflation prohibitively bad for the working class because their wages never keep up and their incomes are always shrinking against the real value of fiat.

Of course, wages tied to inflation is the best solution but no one wants to gun for it because those in power like to keep things that way. This is something Occupy Wall Street should be fighting for the most and we should be hearing in their rallies every day.

- Bail Out/Stimulus plan. There is no single culprit to the Great Recession -- everyone had some part in screwing things up. But when the markets crashed and things became desperate, the only people who didn't receive help were the 99%. Everyone got a bail out: Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac got a bail out, Wall Street got a bail out, the auto industry got a bail out, and the American people did not. Main Street is the odd one out, stuck with a bill that they did not order.

We need one more bail out, not for Wall Street or the auto industry but for the working class. As a matter of fact, stimulus spending is one of the prime methods of jumpstarting stagnant economies. Remember that it doesn't matter who has the money or where it is, so long as it keeps moving (and it needs to move north-south, from rich to poor, between income brackets, not laterally). If the economy hits a recession, fear grips investors and they start hoarding and saving instead of spending, exacerbating the problem. This is why the best stimulus' plans are for the poor.

You give a billion dollars to 10 rich people, they're not going to spend it. They'll squat on it, invest it or move it overseas, and that doesn't help the economy.

You give a billion dollars to 100 million working class people, they're going to spend it on lunch. The money is instantly recirculated, the wheels of economy start moving again.

It sounds backwards, but it works: The best way to get out of a recession/depression is to spend your way out of it. Roosevelt's New Deal policies didn't pull the country out of the Depression because 1930s economists underestimated how much money was actually needed to get things going again -- they simply weren't spending enough. And then the war hit, and what was WWII really but the ultimate public works project? War spending dwarfed New Deal spending tenfold. Moreover, it was direct stimulus spending that focused on genuine employment, resource utilization and mass production (and consumption) of tangible units. It put people to work and then killed them. There is nothing better for a sluggish bear economy than a really big war.

- Higher marginal tax rate. In fact, more taxes in general. Rich people paid for World War II, it only stands to reason that rich people pay for the wars of the last decade too. The top tier income tax bracket was 94% during the War, and it remained in the 70 percentile until Reagan lowered it to 28%. The idyllic 50s that Republicans fondly look back with rose-tinted glasses was a system of health, prosperity, happiness, and growing American might, power and profit, that rested completely on a judicious economic system that taxed the ever-loving crap out of the wealthy classes. And it worked: It built the most powerful commercial-industrial empire in the entire world (the fact that America enjoyed a sweet monopoly for a generation because every other industrialized country was blown to smithereens notwithstanding).

Oh, and get rid of those stupid Bush tax cuts. They are a large part of the damn problem in the first place.

- Tax Wall Street. There needs to be more taxes on Wall Street in general. Estate taxes, capital gains taxes, hedge fund taxes, CDS taxes, investment taxes, insurance taxes, stock taxes, day trading taxes -- THAT is where all the money is, and most of it is not even being recorded, much less taxed. Trillions of dollars pass through hands every day on Wall Street. All it does is flitter around from owner to owner, accumulating more of itself and not producing anything of worth or value. It's like a swirling whirlwind of money out of reach of the average America.

Most of the tax code was written nearly 100 years ago, before all this existed. The financial sector has come up with so many creative ways to make money -- especially since the 80s -- that the vast majority of it doesn't even have any oversight.

To prevent crazy market swings (which ruin lives), I would like to see a tax on every dollar magically created out of nothing on Wall Street. This would slow down bull markets so they don't crash so hard later.

- Incentivize domestic manufacturing. Sure, it is cheaper to produce things overseas, but stuff is cheap anyway (and getting cheaper) through a myriad of other factors -- improved manufacturing processes, computers and automation, reduced marketing and advertising/business costs through media and technology, and also planned obsolescence (making it lighter, cheaper, and more disposable is the rule of modern economies, which I suppose is healthier, because consumption of the Next Big Thing is how we keep going).

The only thing that's not getting cheaper is transportation (fuel, shipping, etc), and this kind of works in our favor because it does mean imports will increase in value as we hit peak oil (which we're at right now, and this will be sustainable for about the next ten years or so before global production declines and demand increases), and foreign labor will not be cheap forever. I'm not a fan of tariffs, but I am a fan of favoring domestic enrichment over foreign conquest (commercial OR military), and any policy that brings our businesses back home and gets our people back to work is a good policy.

Because here's the thing: These are American companies making American products for American target audiences to spend American money -- they're just being made overseas. The money still stays in America, it just goes from consumer directly to owner (with some negligent production costs being ferried to China), without the benefit of hitting any middlemen along the way. This is what's causing the economic funnel above. And this leads me to my next point:

- Huge penalties for any corporation with the letterhead in the United States and no manufacturing base here. For many companies, the only thing that exists here is the financial division. Yet the goods are sold here, the marketing and advertising is spent here, the target market is here, and the owners all live here. Yet everything else is overseas.

This even exists from state to state. There's a reason why a lot of the national banks -- and even the biggest firms on Wall Street -- all have their headquarters (really just a token joint or PO box) in the state of Delaware. Delaware has the most relaxed banking regulations of any state in the Union and they can get away with raping other states (and people) so long as they pretend they're a Delaware corp.

I'm no hater of globalization, but I like to think it's more than fair to insist that if a company wants to be in a certain state or bracket for the tax writeoff or profit incentive, that the company has to physically be in that location.

- Cut half the army. This is my one point that attacks government spending. See this?



This is a Carrier Strike Group. It consists of one or more aircraft carriers, their escorts, and an accompanying war fleet of anywhere from 15-20 ships. A carrier takes six years to build, costs $4.5 billion dollars, and is the most expensive military unit in the history of the world. It is so expensive, there are only twenty carriers in the world right now. Only nine nations have carriers, and seven of them have only one.

The United States has ELEVEN.

You could scrap half of the entire navy and still be the most powerful country in the world tenfold. Ending the wars would also bring spending back to fiscal levels. No state in history has ever simultaneously cut taxes while waging war. War spending is always paid off with increased taxes. Not the opposite. That America thought it was wealthy enough to fight three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan and Terror, which includes provisional spending for things like the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security which do nothing but evaporate money) while cutting taxes is one of the prime reasons we are in this mess today. Deficits are paid off with taxes. Always have been.

These are things we should be hearing in the arguments of Occupy Wall Street every day. While it's fun to tease idealistic fantasies like Anarchy and Communism, in truth Democracy tempering Capitalism is the best system we've yet come up with and the best solution to our problems is to work within the system rather than seek to destroy it. The alternative is always far more catastrophic.

The Top 100 Cheesiest DJs in the World

1. David Guetta
2. Armin Van Buuren
3. Tiesto
4. DeadMau5
5. Above & Beyond
6. Avicii
7. Afrojack
8. Dash Berlin
9. Markus Schulz
10. Swedish House Mafia
11. Paul Van Dyk
12. Axwell
13. Gareth Emery
14. Fedde Le Grand
15. ATB
16. Sander Van Doorn
17. Headhunterz
18. Ferry Corsten
19. Skrillex
20. Laidback Luke
21. Infected Mushroom
22. Aly & Fila
23. Steve Angello
24. Hardwell
25. Arty
26. Sebastian Ingrosso
27. Benny Benassi
28. Daft Punk
29. Martin Solveig
30. Kaskade
31. Carl Cox
32. Chuckie
33. Bob Sinclar
34. Calvin Harris
35. Noisecontrollers
36. W & W
37. Pete tha Zouk
38. Dada Life
39. Angerfist
40. D Block & S Te Fan
41. Coone
42. Steve Aoki
43. Cosmic Gate
44. Bobina
45. Richie Hawtin
46. Eric Prydz
47. Zatox
48. Tydi
49. Orjan Nilsen
50. Andy Moor
51. Roger Shah
52. John O'Callaghan
53. Astrix
54. Erick Morillo
55. John Digweed
56. Wolfgang Gartner
57. DJ Feel
58. Showtek
59. Richard Durand
60. Umek
61. Skazi
62. Paul Kalkbrenner
63. Sasha
64. Eddie Halliwell
65. Moonbeam
66. Myon & Shane 54
67. Judge Jules
68. Matt Darey
69. Paul Oakenfold
70. Alesso
71. Mark Knight
72. Sean Tyas
73. Mat Zo
74. Lange
75. Joachim Garraud
76. Simon Patterson
77. Francis Davila
78. Psyko Punkz
79. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike
80. Wildstylez
81. Roger Sanchez
82. Hernan Cattaneo
83. Tritonal
84. DJ Vibe
85. An21
86. Bloody Beetroots
87. Felguk
88. Nero
89. Juanjo Martin
90. Boy George
91. Tenishia
92. Sidney Samson
93. Dirty South
94. James Zabiela
95. Marcel Woods
96. Porter Robinson
97. Sven Vath
98. Brennan Heart
99. Leon Bolier
100. Boys Noize

It's often said that success in the tech industry never goes to the inventor, but to the exploiter of the invention.

And for an industry characteristically wrought with arcane commands, self-serving protocols and languages, and a steep, almost insurmountable learning curve, the man who would make it all very easy and accessible would be king.

Steve Jobs (and Apple) didn't invent anything. What he did invent -- that is, if you can call a process an invention --- was the enrichment of the user experience: How can the average user, who would not normally be a computer geek, use this right out of the box, in the fastest and most enjoyable manner?

Jobs didn't invent the computer. He made the computer accessible with the Apple ][. He didn't invent the graphical user interface. He made it accessible with the Macintosh. He didn't invent Unix. He made Unix accessible with OSx. He didn't invent the MP3 player or MP3s. He made them accessible with the ipod and itunes, respectively. Same with the iphone, the ipad... and don't forget Pixar.

Jobs has made an indelible impact on billions of people through the mandate of making complexity simple. Through this, he turned a modest hobby industry into the greatest commercial engine in the world. He will invariably go down, along with Ford and Edison, as one of the great innovative businessmen of our time.

Apple was utterly lost without Steve Jobs once before. Now we get to see if the company can carry on his vision without him.

Is it truly a day that we should never forget?

No.

That's what got us into this mess.

I have a better idea: Let's try forgetting for once. Let's forget this day. Let's forget the feelings it invokes. Let's forget the hatred, the anger, the lies, the racism and bigotry. Let's forget the calls to arms, the wars, the persecution of Muslim Americans, the torture and wrongful arrests and imprisonment. Let's forget the draconian laws and acts and legislation eroding our freedom in the name of "security". Let's forget the past, it being wound up in so much retaliatory death, destruction, misery, bile, confusion, suffering and nonsense that nothing good has ever come from some cheap, politically aggressive notion of "never forgetting".

It's not bad to remember. Remembering is positive, it is reflection, it is intelligent and contemplative. But "never forgetting" is negative. It is vicious, wicked, vile, and combative. Anyone who says "never forget", what they really mean is "never forget until we have our revenge".

History is not the type of place that one should "never forget". Those who dwell on the past always have problems facing the future, because they use it as a checklist to seek out enemies and conflict. This is generational resentment we're germinating here, and nothing constructive or useful can come from this.

We need to let this go. We need to move on. We need to forget. It's okay to remember. It's not okay to "never forget".

All Empires and apex states, when they fall (and they all do, eventually), exhibit a number of similar characteristics of varying intensity that contribute to their demise. If you read closely, you can see these same symptoms showing up in the United States.

1) As an Empire grows affluent, a decadent class of elitists emerge who consume the produces of the state at an unsustainable level resulting in an extreme inequitable distribution of affluence. They use their power and influence to control policy and insulate themselves from the consequences of their decision-making. Resources that are normally spent on infrastructure and civil well-being are instead hoarded and squandered on their lavish lifestyle. Even as standard of living grows more decrepit, their lives are unaffected and they fight to ensure that things stay this way (in other words, they don't care how bad things get so long as they remain on top).

2) The military becomes less home-grown and less honor-and-duty based and becomes a corrupt bureaucracy where proxy wars are fought mostly to promote commissions and upgrade weapon systems and tactics. Eventually, the state cannot afford to constantly deploy such an expensive, bloated beast so it turns to paying off enemies or even hiring them as mercenaries because its easier and cheaper than actual war. You can usually tell the last throes of an empire is when the military is almost completely staffed by foreigners fighting for money, not homegrown talent fighting for their way of life.

3) The economics of the Empire gets warped by the spoils of their conquests. The influx of new riches completely crashes some markets, opens others, and makes everything very turbulent, which is kind of bad. The ridiculous level of wealth attained compels the Empire to shift its economic priorities from one based on production and trade, to one based on finance and speculation. When the primary industry is banking, that's when the Empire has peaked: It is no longer interested in doing anything, it just wants to squat and spend money. It usually takes several generations to do this. This leads to point 4.

4) The new generations who grow up in the Pax Golden Age of an Empire have an entitlement complex. Unlike their forefathers who worked hard to establish the Empire's dominance, they get to reap the spoils, and it makes them soft and uncommitted to keeping the Empire going.

5) Leadership gets more cutthroat as an Empire gets more affluent. When there is more at stake to be won, the major players will fight harder for it. So a political system that was once a model of administrative efficiency to establish the Empire's dominance, quickly becomes a backstabbing, underhanded internal struggle between various factions. No Pax Golden Age is ever actually peaceful (which only ever refers to external threats, not internal fighting). All Empires have at least one (or more) civil wars/political assassinations during their Pax. Uprisings and revolutions are common.

6) Enemies figure out how to defeat the Empire, not through force of arms, but to bankrupt it through provocation. By spreading the Empire's resources out, they bleed its coffers until it collapses in on itself. Almost no Empires are ever conquered from without -- they always fall apart from within.

No Empire wants to admit that its once proud civilization is at an ebb. Each one firmly believes that without it to lead the way, humanity itself is doomed. Yet, somehow life managed without it. No Empire lasts forever, and subsequent Empires often supersede it with more glorious riches, more advanced standards of living, and more efficient armies. No Empire holds a privileged position on humanity; no Empire is a caretaker for the human race. This is something every Empire must come to grips with and accept as its power diminishes. Though their Empire may be over, humanity is not.

Have a nice decline.

...in response to a Farker who claimed that the Canucks "dirty play" is a new low for hockey and players don't respect each other anymore...

What respect? You mean when Conn Smythe famously claimed "If you can't beat 'em in the alley, you can't beat em in the rink"? That kind of respect? The respect shown when legendary Eddie Shore broke his stick over Ace Bailey's head, giving the latter brain damage and drinking through a straw for the rest of his life (trivia: The all-star game was originally a benefit for Bailey's family's medical bills)? That kind of respect? Did Rocket Richard show respect when he attacked a linesman (leading to the Richard riots?) Did Gordie Howe show respect when he broke Lou Fontinato's jaw in 7 places and squished his face like hamburger? Lou never played again after that fight. You think the "Gordie Howe hat trick" is just for shits n giggles? It's because he started his career as a fighter and halfway through the first season he had to stop because he had beaten up every other player thrice times over. He had no respect for anyone. Almost took Teeder Kennedy's head off.

These are the legends of hockey. We have idolized plaques in the hall-of-fame dedicated to them. They were the best players in the game. But they were also dirty motherfuckers and just plain mean bastards who would impale the nearest simpleton to win the Cup. Ted Lindsay had more stitches on his face than goals in his career (and he had 379 goals).

Did Pat Quinn show respect when he crippled Bobby Orr's knees and shortened his career? Did Bobby Clarke show respect when he repeatedly slashed Valeri Kharlamov's ankles, breaking his achilles and forcing him out of the '72 summit series? Do you think the "Broad Street Bullies" was just a nickname? Did Terry O'Reilly show respect for Andy van Hellemond when he took a swing at him (van Hellemond was a ref)? Did Dan Maloney show respect when he attacked Brian Glennie from behind (he was banned from Toronto for that)? Did Dave Schultz show respect when he put boxing wraps on (ie: "putting on the foil") in preparation for whoever he was going to beat to a bloody pulp every game? Do you think Slap Shot was a satire or a documentary of the way hockey was played back then? Was Mike Milbury climbing into the stands and beating a fan with his own shoe an homage, or a reflection of the respect adhered in hockey's most famous movie?

What part of the game have you been you watching? Semenko? Marchment? Ulf Samuelsson? McSorley? Stevens? Bertuzzi? Gauthier? Cooke? Avery? Pronger? Claude Lemieux? Did any of those guys show any respect for the multitude of careers they ended on a nightly basis? Bill McReary didn't show respect when he crushed Wayne Gretzky (Bill never played another game after that). Did Gary Suter show respect when he broke Wayne Gretzky's back? Did Scott Stevens show respect when he headshotted Kariya, Lindros, and countless others? Kariya's never been the same. Did Bob Probert show respect for the 283 different faces his fist smashed into? Did Dino Ciccarelli show respect for Luke Richardson when he baseball batted him upside the the head (he was arrested for the incident, a precedent set for the McSorley incident later)? Did Chris Simon show respect when he stomped on Jarko Ruutu's foot (to be fair, Ruutu probably deserved it, he being a dirty player himself)? Or when he slashed Ryan Hollweg in the head? Did Dale Hunter show respect for cutting short Pierre Turgeon's career? Messier was known as Captain Elbow on the ice. Nobody liked Tie Domi but Leafs fans. Did Tiger Williams ever respect anybody, ever?

Hockey is a violent sport. Always has been; this has never changed. Next to lacrosse, it's the only sport where you're legally allowed to bludgeon another man with a stick. It has a history of such thuggery it makes Ty Cobb's antics look like a Sunday picnic at the ballpark. Players may have a wavering respect for each other off the ice, but don't pretend that there was some idyllic time in the past where they wouldn't do whatever it takes to win the game, up to and including putting each other in the hospital. It was far more common than you want to admit.

souped.

How does this work? Is it everyone at once, or one at a time? Will it occur in an instantaneous flash-bang event, or does everyone slowly leave their bodies and drift toward Heaven like ghosts? Do they take their clothes with them, or do their clothes just drop to the ground when they get taken, like Obi-Wan Kenobe when Darth Vader killed him? Do people have to go to Heaven naked, or can they pick up something at the Purgatory Boutique along the way? Is there a waiting list? Is there a way to bypass this waiting list to get ahead of the queue? Does this way involve cold, hard cash? Do the people who get taken first have better seats watching the poor suckers left behind trash the world in a mass panic?

Is there a pecking order for the Rapture? I notice celebrities seem to be going early, and they always leave in threes. Will there be a warning first, so that everyone can set their things in order, or will it come quickly and just snatch people right out of whatever task they're doing? That's a bad idea, come to think of it. How many people will be driving at that moment? Using conservative estimates, if only one quarter of the drivers on the highways are Christian, and if only one quarter of them are righteous enough to go to Heaven, that's still millions of insta-accidents all over the country. Emergency response crews would be completely swamped. But then again, if these are the people left behind – the ones not pious enough to earn entry into Heaven – maybe the mass accidents are their punishment through circumstance. They can't possibly be very decent people if they didn't pass the Rapture test. For some reason, I envision the left behinders being mostly media and corporate bastard types. Like publicists and lobbyists and marketers and advertisers and reality television stars and awards-show hosts and Wall Street MBA types, you know the ones with pony tails yakking on their cell phones all the time. Yeah, those assholes. Lots of lawyers and financial dudes. That almost sounds worse than Hell.

And what about pets? Are they going with their owners, or are they left behind to fend for themselves? Is there some kind of special Rapture Kennel people can put their pets while waiting for absolution, so that they know their precious snookums are well taken care of? If the Rapture doesn't come in time, do they get their pet back? And how about money? Does it go to Heaven too, or does it just sit rotting in an undisclosed account somewhere? Are Rapturers going to need it, or can everyone else just rob their coffers when there are no more owners? Can people buy Rapture Insurance to protect their family and friends whom they are certain are not going to pass the mustard? Are there any laws set aside for the inheritance, accumulation, and redistribution of all the money and property that will be suddenly ownerless in the new world order that will be missing a sizable percentage of over one billion Christians (quite possibly most of them)? Are we going to be adequately prepared for the shock wave of the disappearance of so much human capital? Will boobies and swearwords still be on television?

What if the world becomes a better place after the Rapture? What if all the ones left behind construct a better, more tolerant and opulent civilization based on peace and kindness? What does that mean for all the devout followers who were cherry-picked into Heaven? What does that mean about God and Jesus? About Biblical living? About religion in general? What if all this time the real thing keeping people from getting along was religion? I don't personally believe this, I'm just speculating nonsensically. What if things get better after end times?

And finally, most important of all: Will Blondie be there? I really like her.

have a seat over there.