In the news.

[hummingwolf]

"WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits."

eilandesq's response:

*Office of the general in charge of the program--his secretary pokes his head in*

"General, I've got Joey Buttafuoco on Line One, Geraldo Rivera on Line Two, and Andrew Dice Clay on Line Three. They all think this idea is in really bad taste."

(May be an old joke, Scott, but it works for me.)

Eh, maybe the government types are trying to take our minds off the fact that the new electronic voting systems risk election fraud. Or maybe they don't want us discussing the constitutionality of the F word. (Thanks to Darth Spacey for that last one.)

In unrelated news (unrelated unless the F-word shows up in the poems somewhere), I rather like this:

"Vogons, fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will recall, wrote poetry so bad it could kill. Now an experiment to create poems on the web looks likely to automate the awfulness of Vogon verse.

"David Rea of Greenwich, Connecticut, has written a program that allows a poem to evolve, to see if people with diverse tastes in poetry can work together to create attractive verse."

That article tells you about the Darwinian Poetry website, which language geeks among you may find as nifty as I do.

And in less useful news, Kansas is flatter than a pancake. Maybe you'd need a map of the brain to figure out why these particular stories appeal to me now. Is anybody else as pleased as I am to learn about the possible ice towers on Mars?



(In personal news, I'm still sleep-deprived and barely coherent. I hope that isn't too obvious.)

Comments

Bad Idea

[dianne521.livejournal.com]

I think the gov't gave up on this one (after sinking 750,000 dollars into it!) when someone told them they would have all the terrorists making money when the acts they bet on turned out to happen (by them, of course.) What a world!

Re: Bad Idea

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Pentagon canceled that project on Tuesday after senators called it stupid on Monday. Good thing, too. I understand the desire to do a different kind of intelligence gathering, but the terrorism futures market was much too ripe for some deadly kinds of abuse.

[hohum.livejournal.com]

Hey, I found your journal randomly. I find what you have to say interesting, so I'm adding you. Don't feel compelled to add me back.

The terrorism market idea is the most warped rat race I've ever heard of. "My bet's on Russia. They've been gearing up for a real ass kicking these last few decades, don't you think?" "Well, they've been doing better lately, but I'm sure we could some make arrangements."

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Oh, hi there! I hope I'm not boring you too much so far.
As for the terror futures market: At least some politicians had enough sanity to convince the Pentagon to cancel it. Let's hope that some even sillier idea isn't in the offing.