Author Archives: Machiavelli

How to become a professor

There’s one sure-fire way to broadcast that you are an academic giant who knew what he was doing in school: Become a professor. For most people, becoming a tenured professor at an Ivy League school is a journey that takes over a decade. Not for you, though. You’re going to be a professor by the [...]
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Poem

When you are young, and it feels like you are invincible, it’s because you are. From this moment forth, you will never die. YOU are the first stirring of a new world, smuggled across every border, transcending every ideology, evading all control. What was in front of everyone’s face you made visible. What was on the tip of everyone’s [...]
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Hero fiction

I want to write poems called hero fiction. Ones that make you feel like a hero And you can read them again and again until it isn’t a rush. You are inspiration.
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Amber Rayne

Amber Rayne You’re the most sexual being on the planet to me Even though I don’t want to have sex with you, now I know how it feels for someone to be too much.
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Don’t Just Vote

Voting is the least effective strategy for having a say in society. You can vote once or twice a year, but its what you do every day that counts. Don’t abdicate your power to so-called “representatives”—take responsibility for the ways you can change the world yourself.
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Morning Affirmations

I am righteousness upon earth. By my reasoned, free action, I will make the world better every day. I am justice. Whatever truth is, I will know it. Whatever beauty is, I will be it. My eyes have opened, and the world is bestowed a new power. I will crush my goals. When I promise [...]
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Unique

I said a while ago that all my feelings had been gone through before. But I just realized they haven’t. These are unique. I just felt… sadness. Despair. Yearning for something I didn’t have. A certain beauty— the beauty of being lost. And I knew that everything I would do would be working towards that. [...]
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Love story

I used to live in a small fishing village in Southeast Asia. Come summer and the monsoon, it would rain nonstop, from torrential downpours to light sheets of gossamer rain. The family next door was Cantonese. They had a daughter about my age. It’s been a long time and my memories have faded a bit, [...]
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Don’t Tip

Why tip? People say that it gives the waiter an economic incentive to do his job better. Because of this incentive, the meal will get to the table faster and the experience is generally more enjoyable. Makes sense, no? A waitress who takes your food 10 meters from the bench to your table deserves a [...]
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Artificial Virginity Kit

The Chinese company Gigimo advertises its Artificial Hymen Virginity kit across the Arab world. The kit, which allows women to fake sexual purity on their wedding night, is the sort of product one might find in a novelty store or sex shop in America. But in Egypt, nuptial night virginity is deadly serious business. Women [...]
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Reversing Aging

a Howard Hughes Medical Institute team has found that through exposure to “young” blood cells, bone marrow stem cells start to act young again as well. “The researchers have not yet isolated the blood-borne factors that can switch old stem cells back to a more youthful state, but their results are consistent with other recent [...]
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X-Prize: Osama Bin Laden

In 2004 aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen led the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth twice within two weeks. They were racing against 26 other teams to win the $10 million X-Prize and to achieve international fame and [...]
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Spam Will Herald In A New Age

According to New Scientist, A team of computer scientists from the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA are claiming to have found an “effectively perfect” method for blocking spam. “The system… works by exploiting a trick that spammers use to defeat email filters. As spam is churned out, subtle changes are typically incorporated into the [...]
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Typical Ursula.

Miracle Jones blogs about the petition against the Google Book Settlement created by science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, winner of five Hugo awards and six Nebulas. Leguin is urging professional writers who are opposed to the terms of the settlement to sign her online petition before the January 28th deadline. From the petition: “The [...]
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Literature Publishing of the Future

I forsee the publishing house of the future offering, for instance, a poet’s latest work in multiple formats simultaneously, each at a different price: an e-text version with links to all current reviews, related scholarly and popular comment, and bundled with its own discussion forum that links owners of each of the books; a hard-copy [...]
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The Ultimate Prank: TSA Voyerism

Who are we pranking today? Just the entire US Federal Government and all American citizens! CNN is reporting on findings from a Freedom of Information request initiated by the Electronic Privacy Information Center that has revealed that, contrary to public statements by the Transportation Security Agency, full-body scanners can store and transmit images. The scanners [...]
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Mann Crosses the Line

Roger Weiner was arrested at a Mississippi gas station for violating the Mann Act, an arcane law prohibiting transport of women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” This is stupid. It should be repealed. “Immoral purposes?” Who decides what is immoral? If you think rape, murder, and slavery are immoral, then we’ve already got laws [...]
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Incinerate Rabbits for Fuel

The city of Stockholm enlists fluffle1 cullers and carrion contractors to warm the homes of its citizens. “[Rabbits] are a very big problem,” said Tuvunger. The rabbits are eating their way through the city’s central parks. “Once culled, the rabbits are frozen and when we have enough; a contractor comes and takes them away.”2 It’s normal in [...]
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Urban Vertical Farming

Dickson Dispommier, a Columbia University professor and visionary champion of vertical farming, claims that a 30-story glass skyscraper using nonsoil farming could produce enough food on a single city block to feed 50,000 people. But his farm would cost $200 million to build. Other seers are promoting more modest vertical schemes, such as Sky Vegetables, [...]
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Stop Working in the Private Sector

From a new Cato Institute report on “Employee Compensation in State and Local Governments“: The study’s author, Chris Edwards, found that the wage premium for public sector employees was about 34 percent and for benefits about 70 percent. Lineage: Reason <- Cato
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Kalashnikovs

Ever since the Kalashnikov’s introduction in the Soviet Union in 1947 it has been a favorite due to its simple design. Of between 90 and 122 million assault rifles estimated to have been produced since World War II, between 70 and 100 million were Kalashnikovs. Together, these small arms have been responsible for more civilian deaths than [...]
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Bring Back Slavery: Save Homeless People

Washington DC has passed a 5 cent tax on all plastic bags. This is stupid. Instead of bags, Americans should employ homeless people to carry about their things. Such homeless people could be bought and sold like a commodity, provided that they who so use the homeless provide food and shelter. In this way, the [...]
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Osama bin Laden Not Involved in 9/11 Attacks

Is it possible that Osama bin Laden was not involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center? It is curious that Osama bin Laden initially denied involvement. From CNN, dated September 17, 2001: In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, “The U.S. government [...]
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The Dangerous Kit

“The Dangerous Kit” teaches kids at a young age not to be afraid of the world around them and to be critical thinkers by providing hands-on experience with items at different times in culture have been seen as shockingly dangerous when the true scale of their deleterious effects is between zilch and inane. A booklet [...]
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Thorium, Blood of Civilization

When the choices for developing nuclear energy were being made, uranium was chosen because it had the byproduct of producing plutonium that could be weaponized. But thorium is safer, easier to work with, and gads more efficient. The plants are smaller, use a hundred times less fuel by mass, and the operating costs are much [...]
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The Perfect Crime

Purchase and intentionally age soft drinks before giving them to someone. The drinks will retain their bubble and taste, all the while becoming cerebrally carcinogenic dietary saboteurs. According to Wikipedia, “[R]esearchers found that 6 months after aspartame was put into carbonated beverages, 25% of the aspartame had been converted to DKP.”1 If this is true, [...]
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End Airborne Terrorism

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate plastic explosives concealed in his underwear on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, I saw public outcry for greater airport security. People saw yet another terrorist show airport security ineffective. They asked, “How could this have happened?” People paid to make solutions came up with ideas like ramping up airport security, and [...]
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Possible Location for Moonbase Found

Using images from the SELENE craft, Moon researchers have found a giant hole (hundreds of feet wide and hundreds of feet deep) in what they think is a lava tube. The lava tube provides protection from meteorite strikes, cosmic rays, UV radiation, and harsh temperature variations, so it is an excellent candidate for further exploration [...]
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Institutionalized Conspiracy

CIA logoIn most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.
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NASA Every Week

NASA could open up a new wave of innovation in space exploration and terrestrial technology by lessening consequences of launch failure and making frequent launches available to engineers. If there were weekly rocket launches, there would be an astronaumical increase in opportunities for new communication, remote sensing, orbital debris mitigation, robotic exploration, photographic, and human spaceflight technology ideas to be tested. Our understanding of chemical rocketry and other, more advanced forms of aeronautic propulsion would inevitably advance and the United States government would do something inspiring for is citizens and for all the future.
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Sanctioning Iran

Last week, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure to put a new round of sanctions on Iran, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009. Not only are sanctions an offensive maneuver perceived as a precursor to war, but it is clear that the United States is not promoting freedom and peace in [...]
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Citrus History

Oranges are often said to be a wholesome, natural, and tasty thing to eat. But just what is “natural?” The history of the orange and it’s acidic friends is a scientific adventure through prehistoric genetic engineering and cultural trade. It is commonly accepted that there are four founding species of the citrus genus: Lime (Citrus [...]
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Pleasing Everybody

I was just reading the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, which tell computer application developers how to make their applications integrate well into GNOME, and the internationalization section closes with a list of some common things to avoid: Pictures of flags or money Maps showing political boundaries or contentious location names Lists of countries or cities [...]
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