I learned the delightful definition of a techno-thriller per Bruce Sterling, author of The Caryatids (Bantam 2009), which I plan to read like some time, when I get around to it and the library has it and I’m in the mood for fake instead of real politics.  It is, “a science fiction novel with the president in it.”

I also learned that I have forgotten if I ever read the Theodore Sturgeon story, “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?” and I’m pretty sure I don’t still have the 1967 Dangerous Visions it was published in.  (Another trip to the library.) But I learned this in the context of learning another definition, that of “cosmopolitan.”  According to Doctorow, “to be cosmopolitan is to live your life by the ancient science fictional maxims: ‘All laws are local’ and ‘No law knows how local it is.’ ” 

Context is a pretty good book, despite the really mean last line.  Short short essays – good for reading on public transit, while eating dinner or accomplishing other short-term bodily functions.  You don’t want to sit down and read it for a couple of hours straight, but you do want to read it.

City sounds that tempt me to violence:
your booming music coming out of your car – especially the subsonics.
your unbelievably loud leaky earphones that are making you so deaf you have to turn them up even louder.

You know how the capitalists are always fomenting about “double taxation?” They mean that corporations pay taxes on their net earnings and cannot deduct dividends from their taxable income. The dividends are then given to shareholders who pay taxes on them (mostly at only 15%). Because the shareholders own the corporation, they feel that the corporation paying taxes and they, the shareholders, having to pay tax on the “same” money is double taxation.

Here’s how things work. I go to work and they pay me. I pay taxes on what I earn and I can do whatever I want with the rest. If I buy something, I pay sales tax and the company I buy from pays income tax. If that company hires someone to do work, it pays payroll taxes and that person pays income taxes and then gets to do what s/he wants with the rest. See how that works? Every time someone earns or gets money, a tax is due and paid. The same money is used by everyone and tax is paid. Nobody calls this double taxation.

And you know how the right wing has decided that corporations are people? They get all the rights of actual human people (and a few extra, thanks to the Corporate Five on the Supreme Court, who should, by the way –but this is a separate rant – be impeached).

So, here’s my question: if corporations are people, why do you fuss about double taxation? We’re just treating corporations like anyone else. They make their money, they pay their taxes and they do whatever they want with the rest.

You can’t have it both ways.

Thomas opined in the Brown video game case that the founders clearly believed that children have no first amendment rights and that parents had complete authority over their children and the ability to make all decisions for them. His opinion goes on to glorify the absolute authority of Puritan parents and notes approvingly that, in colonial Massachusetts, child “committed a capital offense if he disobeyed ‘the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother.’ ”

So, if it’s ok to kill your child, and according to Thomas, an embryo is a child, why isn’t abortion ok?

*Originalism: The belief that you can read the minds of dead people.

First scenario – If you feel like it (and can afford it) you buy health insurance from a private company. The company applies a lifetime cap to what it’ll spend for you and it gets to decide whether it wants to pay or not. If you didn’t feel like buying insurance or if it doesn’t pay, you go to the hospital anyway and guess who pays? I do! And so do all the other taxpayers in America. The government guarantees you get medical care.

Second scenario – The government says you have to buy health insurance from a private company. When you get sick, the private company pays.

Now, tell me again – which one is socialism?

She said “People just want a government that works for them” and I thought “aha.That’s exactly it.” She didn’t say “the people” – she said “people.” Each individual wants the government to work for him or her. As in the Republican mantra “I’ve got mine” as opposed to the Democrats’ “We’re all in this together.” Funny what a huge difference a definite article can make.

Maybe this is the root of the historic Russian inability to tell the self from the masses?