Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So this is the first weekend of the spring/summer that I've had my camo Porsche 996 on the road. I was going to sell it, but it's just too much fun to drive because it's so fast and handles so well. I've been tossing around ideas about expanding the paint job a little but I haven't come across any ideas yet that I think I'll like long-term.

I'd forgotten how funny the car is to drive… Every day a couple people pull up beside it while I'm driving and snap pictures of it. Most people either like it at face value, or at least think it's funny. The best though is people who are stuck up enough to have a problem with it. They really need to get over themselves. Life is supposed to have a sense of humor.

Anyway… Things I've read recently that I thought were interesting…

• Student arrested over violent story as well as being denied entry into the Marines. Some kid writes a story for creative writing class involving murder and necrophilia. He doesn't get a bad mark for writing it — he gets arrested and expelled. Seriously, telling people that the only way they can express negative thought and action is by full-on snapping and going on a killing rampage is a mistake…
• Drug test cowboys and hacking your body's bacteria, both in WIRED and both just skim the surface. The second one I think we'll see a lot more over the next twenty years both as we start to understand the bacterial extinctions we've caused and the resulting damage to our own biological functioning. I think we'll also see a lot of stories about regeneration of various types over the next few years.
• Beef flavored Prozac for your depressed dog. Why are dogs depressed? Because they're slaves, active outdoor animals trapped in small, sterile environments. If you want your dog not to be depressed, move to the country, or at least spend a ton of time with your dog. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't own a dog.
• Marijuana shrinks tumors and even destroys them. It's been known for a long time that THC effectively fights lung cancer, breast cancer, brain cancers, and more — and the US government has been actively suppressing that research. Why? Because not only are people dying of cancer very profitable, it's also expected that they'll die. Now that's an easy business… Making a ton of money watching people die slowly. The medical cartels have no interest in cures — their primary drive (by law) is to extend injury and illness as long as possible (so basically — keep them alive, but don't let them get truly better). It's why in part we have a medical system that focuses on dealing with illness, rather than focussing on maintaining health and avoiding illness.
• Only 3% of Pakistani Muslims believe Osama/Al Qaeda were involved in 9/11. I thought this was interesting — the vast majority of Muslims (in a very Muslim country) believe not only that the attacks were unacceptable — that's not a surprise — but that they were not even conducted by Muslims, and that instead they're part of a larger conspiracy to wage war on Islam.
• House prices are starting to crash and as the US dollar continues to crumble, another “great depression” is looming. I think I probably agree with the quote in the article — “Every few hundred years in Western Civilization, there occurs a sharp transformation… Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself – its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world, and the people born can't even imagine the world in which their grandparents live and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through just such a transformation.“