I'm gonna do some out-loud thinking for a little bit.  I've thought about this before but it keeps ringing in my head.  Maybe I've misinterpreted something along the way, but, I'll see what everyone else has to feel about it.

So, as I've come to understand it, the entire point of a politician is to represent their people on public matters.  It has to be done this way because having every American voice ringing loud at once would just create a lot of confusion, and having a crowd like that in one place would just never work.  So, the public voices their vote on who they want to represent them, including the HoR, senate, and the president.  These people have one job, and that is to be the voice of the American people to come to a conclusion on public policy, foreign policy, economic policy, on and on, that essentially sets the various rules in play for us to follow.  That way we're all one the same page on what's against the rules, and what's fair play, which builds up to a complex web of how we should handle various situations.

I could go on forever about how this system of running a country is open to various holes, leading to corruption, but I believe even the most uninformed American at least knows their government no longer has the best interest in their people, so I'll get to the point.

Essentially, the issue was, "How do we manage these growing, different communities, so they're all equally represented?"  Originally, the answer was, "Assign each community one person to voice the collective majority opinion of those people."  Which worked wonderfully.  It has its problems, but it has worked, to this very day, and has become very complicated and extremely intricate to the point that not even a well-educated high school student (oxymoron but bear with me) can understand exactly how big government works without rigorous study in the field.  I'm taking a college class on this issue right now and there's just no way I can remember all of what makes congress tick.

So what if we answered this question all over again, now that the Internet has connected so many people in not only this country, but a very large portion of the world?

"How do we manage these growing, different communities, so they're all equally represented?"

My input would be, maybe have a website (or even a P2P voting system, kind of like Bitcoin maybe?) where people could not only talk to each other about matters at hand, much like a forum if not exactly like a forum, and also have a place to cast votes on how they felt this way or that way.  There's still no way every single person would be able to talk at once, but in the very least, we would no longer have to trust just a drop in the pool to make fair policy for the rest of us.  It would kill lobbying at its core.  Corporations would no longer have a bigger voice than anyone else.  Finally, it would be, for the first time in American politics, extremely efficient.  It could be done in your own home.  It would tilt the scale into who has the most innovation and mind power, not who has the most money.  I'm still thinking about how it might work, but what do you guys think?  Is this a start?  Or are we better off trying to simply end corruption in politics today?

pretty much just the blockchain

Gambling with a gambler

Gambleception.

I'm with you there.  I wanna buy coins but I don't feel like paying this much for them

Also, if you're looking for a little help when you decide to stop smoking, you could always try electronic cigarettes.  I had a boss who smoked them inside, but since there's nothing in them but a smoke-like vapor (it smells kinda stale compared to the real stuff but it's thick enough I'm sure), it was okay.

Okay, I think I got it.  So you're basically saying, profit doesn't come from nothing, and loans generate something that isn't there.  If you have 10 shells to ever exist (silly but it's manageable for me), Islander C has to keep making up shell-dollars for D to continue being in debt.  So if you had 10 shells and 20 shell-dollars, each shell-dollar is only actually worth .5 shells, and will continue to devalue as long as loans (which have to come with interest, else it's not a loan--I think that's right) are given out.  Islander C keeps pumping out shell-dollars that eventually wind up back in his pocket.  Eventually he realizes the other three are figuring out his plot, so he seizes all the shells and makes everyone use his shell-dollars.

After so long, people have trillions of shell-dollars which are worth extremely small amounts, and islander C still keeps all 10 shells to ever exist anyway, keeping him King of the island.  The more their island develops, the more powerful he becomes, until he starts attacking other islands and taking their resources once they finally hit the wall and nobody can tolerate islander C anymore.  Islanders D are so broken that they can't even figure out what's up or down because they're working to the bone to repay their ever growing interest to Islander C.  Finally, after every island is conquered, and every resource is gone/polluted, everyone dies the end!

Maybe I'm overthinking this

Wikipedia evil?

Just makes the devil look that much smarter, I guess

Booooo.

THREE CHEERS FOR THE NEW RECRUITS

Love this channel   Didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but at least the knowledge of Bitcoin is growing and growing and growing...

In other words, Bitcoin will eventually be worth more than any amount of fiat currency in the world combined?

I'm really bad at economics so I'm still trying to wrap my head around this

In scenario one, everyone is saving and becoming more prosperous together by making their prices fair and wages fair.  So the shells they earn translate evenly into the products they buy.  The shell actually corresponds with the work effort.

In scenario two, people are selling their goods evenly, one good for one shell, yet buying at 50% higher than normal from islander D who is attempting to make a profit.  However, because islander D is a glutton/couldn't find business, he wound up keeping more than he could sell, couldn't make ends meet, and wound up owing islander C a shell plus interest.  So unless islander D makes some better business, and gets his ass in gear, he's going to be islander C's bitch forever, who will continue to earn shells from islander D's bad business.

Is that right?

What the hell lol  If you're going to snoop, don't make it obvious you're snooping.  And then don't curse at the guy.  EU or US, everyone knows etiquette.  You don't just treat a guy like shit for no reason.

And that's not even considering the issue with privacy.  What's a private message that's not private?  May as well just drop PMs all together and use something else if everything's under someone's eye.

Finally, if you're gonna have a guy with the power to monitor messages, at least make sure he knows what he's doing.  This looks like the kind of stuff a child would pull.

All that said, I don't want anything to do with this coin.  Good luck!

I don't think those records are a coincidence   But it's not the first time America's attacked itself to instigate something huge.  I wonder, if they were controlling all that stuff, what their reasoning could be.  Only thing I can think of is to create industry for construction etc.

I like playing this while watching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4LyoUGxVd8

Why can't America just be 50/50 on anything

I always figured it was due to snail mail being slowly phased out.  Would accepting bitcoins help?  I'm not sure...  If people still don't use it, maybe not.

I think we must first assume music is as simple as "Oh, I like this, let's get some more of it."  I think the reasons people love some songs almost universally is different than the reason people love the songs they usually enjoy.  For example, PSY's Gangnam Style has to be one of the most popular songs in all of music history (I'm just basing this on YouTube views so don't sue me )  However, most can agree, the song is simplistic, repetitive, and, more than anything, catchy.  It follows a distinct formula that all pop songs follow, yet somehow, someway, Gangnam proved to be several times more liked than most top songs  (Assuming people who watched the video liked the music.)

In this case, I believe it was more so the humor of the song's video, as the lyrics make no sense to the average listener (unless you speak Korean, of course!  In which case, the lyrics are goofy anyway.)  But humor isn't a standard quality of music; normally, when dissecting a song, "Is this song funny?" doesn't normally get factored in.  All of this, inevitably, mixes into whether or not people will impulsively purchase the song for listening.  The industry sees this, says, "Wow, we need us some of that!", and so the cycle continues.  The problem I'm having is how little musicians can diversify their music when the industry needs more Gangnam style to reel in more money, as the point isn't to make amazing music, but to make what sells.

And yes, that song is quite atrocious  I like weird music like that, and I don't know why.  There's no industry for it, so I don't find a lot of music like it, as there's no incentive to make more music like that.  It's horrible, but it's one of a kind--bad news for me   But the point I'd like to make is this: if a child is exposed to certain music while growing up, they'll have a tendency to like it.  My brother and sister enjoy rap and hip-hop, because they went to a very urban school where that was the in-thing.  Not the good kind of hip hop, either.  Stuff like T-Pain, Lil' Wayne.  There's no MF Doom on their platter, nor do you find Nujabes or Aesop.  It's simply unusual, that people seem to have a love/hate relationship with top musicians, when 'hidden gems' as they're called remain loved by all their listeners.  It's disproportionate.  I love all the music I love, yet I still hear about music I don't love, and it's always a popular song everyone else falls in love with and I die a little bit because I know it's awful and took very little effort to compose.

Also, you're an excellent pianist!  I've been playing for a year or two now, but I'm still nowhere near your level.  Must practice.

You might enjoy this...  Hauschka - Freibad

I liked the top comment,


I actually saw a documentary about this once.  Apparently we've known for a while how to manipulate the weather.

And, being the distrusting person that I am, I would wager KATRINA WAS A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY--

Sorry, getting ahead of myself here.  Just sayin tho 

I think you're onto something there.  I think it follows the whole reason why there are so many sequels of Shrek, or sequels of anything that turn out to be terrible--as long as people will buy it, they will make it.  Quality ceases to matter there; the iPhone I got a couple years ago is already breaking down.  Guess Apple's trying to give me a hint to get another one   So is pop music a product of capitalism?  Was it inevitable?


That's pretty unique    Or did the rhythm guitarist wake up late and forget his guitar?  Just kidding

Anamanaguchi - Helix Nebula  Here's an odd band who's mixing chiptune and electric guitar.  AFAIK, they're the first and only to do this, though they've been around for a little while now.