From now on, I suggest you guys scan your timber through a metal detector. Pass them through a detection ring and mark suspected areas and sort prior to cutting.

No, because unless you investigate you can't know if you've caught an anarchist or some poor bastard who just happens to be having a bad hair day.

Or maybe an undercover private cop trying to cause trouble.

It's not like it has never happened. When people died in the Haymarket Riot, it was blamed on "anarchists" and turned out to be plainclothes thug cops on a corporate payroll who had set off the bombs, not the union activists who were blamed. That was the first "May Day". Not many people know that the celebration of May 1st as International Workers' Day or "May Day" started right here in Chicago, not far from where I'm typing this.

In the '60s and '70s, there was something called "COINTELPRO" that the FBI used to try to ""expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of any left-leaning group. Their operations always seemed to target a "handful" of dangerous "anarchists" affiliated with dangerous groups like NAACP or the Christian Leadership Conference. That dangerous anarchist Dr Martin Luther King was a target of COINTELPRO.

Not long ago, here in Chicago, during the protests around the NATO meeting, another "handful" of "anarchists" were arrested for "planning" to make molotov cocktails. Three of the 9 arrested disappeared while they were being held for arraignment. Would you be surprised to find out that they were the ones who had the bright idea to make molotov cocktails? It was pretty uncanny if you happened to be on-hand for any of these protests, as I was. Thousands of peaceful protesters, nurses in the case of the protest I attended, and all of a sudden half a dozen, maybe 10 guys dressed in black, faces covered, show up and try to lead the group to break windows or attack a police line. Note, they only did this when there happened to be an overwhelming force of police on hand. These black-clad guys would rush to the front of the group and throw themselves at police or throw some garbage cans or barricades, and then, along with the police, they would turn to look at the crowd to see who was with them. The protestors would look at one another, look at these black-clad guys, and then just move on, not rising to the bait. Then the black-clad guys would disappear only to show up later in the march or at some other encounter between protestors and a large force of well-armored police. The efforts to incite would fail and the black-clads would seemingly disappear again, sometimes apparently through a police blockade. It was the strangest behavior I had ever seen at a large protest.

I've become way suspicious of these highly-publicized busts of a "handful of anarchists". A law enforcement regime that will assassinate an American citizen or wiretap without a warrant or plant a GPS on an Arab-American engineering student with no criminal record is not above a "false-flag" operation, and now that there's virtually limitless corporate money to fund these efforts, and corporate leaders who are sufficiently removed from the rules of social behavior to which most people adhere, I could easily see private police groups and paramilitaries involved in this stuff. Hell, you've got so-called right-wing "journalists" funded by right-wing corporations trying to commit voter fraud in order to prove that there is voter fraud so there can be purges of voters' lists for no reason other than Hispanic surname or student status.

I don't mind being called "paranoid" about these things. I am well aware that I sound paranoid. I honestly hope I'm just being paranoid.

.the Zuck will make it the only way to access facebook.

Seriously, can anybody make a case that Facebook will not end up like Myspace?

Unless they can somehow keep time from passing and people from innovating, Facebook will end up yesterday's news.

Everybody's on the Internet (let's say for the sake of argument). Is the future really about this one social network? The idea of social networks is going to stick around, but there's just no way that one will become the everlasting social network. Somebody will say, "Why should I have to join one social network over another social network? Why shouldn't I have a social network aggregator that lets me keep in touch with friends no matter which network they are part of? Say, a "social network of social networks". Remember "chat"? Remember when everybody had their own little IM service? People aren't just going to say, "Facebook is network enough for me!".

What if I could choose my own interface that would let me talk to people over whichever social network they happen to be on? What about a social network protocol, that allows for something like a Thunderbird of social networks? With it's own set of filters and controls for my private information. Why should I trust Facebook to give me the tools to protect my privacy when I can do it with some client? Why should Facebook be the one making money off of my very existence?

I'm an idiot and I don't know anything about this stuff, but even a dope like me can easily foresee a time when Facebook is sitting on the ash heap of history. Will their purchase of a browser suddenly give them the thing they need to last forever? How about the purchase of a photo-sharing social network? Their willingness to overpay to such an extent for Instagram is proof that their time in the sun is almost finished. Hell, the fact that they went public and everyone yawned is proof that their time is about up.

I don't use Facebook. I don't care about Facebook. I care about communicating on the Internet though, and Facebook has not reached the pinnacle of possibilities for Internet communications. But it will come, unless Facebook ends up somehow owning the very idea of a social network, which considering our effed up "intellectual property" laws is a distinct possibility. I like the idea of social networks on the Internet, but I don't like any of the ones out there. I should not have to choose between one and another based upon which of my friends belongs to which social network. I don't have to choose which set of websites I will visit, and the reason I don't is because HTML is an open standard. Social networks should not be proprietary if email is not proprietary.

I'm betting whatever finally supplants Facebook stands a pretty good chance of being more like Thunderbird. Maybe open source. But standards-based.

Facebook is so last decade.

Do you attain shaman status afterwards?

Brother, shamans try to attain PopeRatzo status.

I don't take work seriously, and it is overwhelmingly about bringing home a check.

I think you're mistaking "work" for "career". Most everyone I know takes some pride in their work. They do a "good job" even when nobody is watching.

You're just jealous because you can't get laid with your female colleagues.

If I did my wife would be using my scrotum for a coinpurse.

The shortage of women in IT is mainly due to the men in IT.

Haven't used YooHoo in years.

Be careful friend. You are inadvertently smearing one of the finest beverages on God's Earth.

6 ounces of YooHoo, a jigger of Slivovitza, 1 oz of the juice of one boiled Ayahuasca vine and a cocktail onion over cracked (not crushed) ice is a great summer refresher. Miniature japanese umbrellas decorate the top of the glass to create a festive atmosphere for a party you'll never forget.

If it's any comfort to you, it usually ends with the elimination of some heads. It just takes time.

I know, but that's some cold comfort.

For me, I don't really care. My working life, my accumulating life is over. I've gotten to a point, by long design, where these things don't affect me so directly any more.

But I've got a kid, a daughter, who's just getting started in life. It burns me up that the world she's getting ready to take on is so hostile to the traditional values of love, family, integrity, fairness.

Because to the people in charge, "family values" means making sure that two gay guys can't get the same rights as my wife and me, but to me, "family values" means that a family can afford to send kids to school and get mom surgery if she needs it and maybe retire to a simple life of ease for a few years. "Family values" means that buying a home is more than the three-card monte game that the financial industry has made it. I was there the day my mom and dad burned their mortgage on a house my dad was able to buy after coming home from WWII. How many families ever get to a "mortgage burning" any more? How many people in their fifties or sixties ever see that kind of independence? And it's not by accident that the answer is "very few".

People want to talk about the "gamification" of the job market. How freaking insulting. Human beings take work seriously. The work they do is not just about bringing home a check. I don't care if you're a machinist like my dad or a garbage man or a computer programmer. Our elites have turned it all to shit, and now they want us to fix it all for them by working an extra five years of our lives and by sending our kids to trade school instead of university and by renting instead of buying.

I always go stop and stand around near my mom and dad's grave on memorial day. I look at the flag on my dad's headstone and the mention of "family and country" there. I can't believe how badly our "overlords" have mis-served us. As far as I'm concerned, they have forfeited their right to our obedience. The heads of corporations should fear us, not the other way around.

I'm ready to pitch in and buy John Galt a one-way ticket, because he's a big selfish fuck-up.

The Department of Justice better be careful. Apple can buy or sell them anytime it wants.

What's that? "Too late", you say?