7 pm my time; mid-night in Iceland. New year's eve.

Watching '2 lbs per person on the island' fireworks display over a roving web cam; a panner that scans most of the city for ya is taking up my time.

http://eldgos.mila.is/english/newyears/

OK, so I’m easily amused. The party is city-wide, used to fund rescue work and a national event there.

From a land where cleaning up the city on Sunday (FOR FREE, BY CITIZENS) is an expected civic behavior.

Musing on the development of morals elsewhere while doing so.

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Morality: the current game-laws that keep society running.

Current morality seems to be a vague memory of the ten commandments, mostly, “thou shalt not get CAUGHT killing.” The rest is gone.

It starts with changing the names on anything you can get away with.

Politicos lead the charge there. From campaign promises, to platform planks to whatever they can claim as their own from the public purse. (insider info and US congress, we're looking at you.)

Industry? Ah, Mickysoft. 4 or 5 billion a year in pirated intellectual property costs. That's only what they get caught at and is hauled screaming out of their hides. Quiet settlements and not-proven slid by.

Sorry, Netscape. Took all your tech, gave it away, put you outta biz? Here, the courts say we owe you a couple million.

The biggest promoters of harsh laws are the worst offenders. Music, (ask any classical musician) electronics, movies....

And it seems to be spreading.

Did something nifty at work that got someone else promoted and you demoted? Every manager that didn't say 'no!' added their name to it, then used it as a funding plank that raised buddies but beat you down ?

That's the game now. Just change the name. Invent the news. Toss out hate-campaigns and charity as distractions in the great bread and circus.

We have always been at war with Eur-asia. Ho-kay by me, right?

Saw something weird today. A place I've worked... (a place where the creatives have been beaten to death, a place where memos congratulating everyone for a job well done is a normal curtsey)...

and a place where insider corruption and bribery has been a problem before.

You want something done, you tip them well. Services, deliveries, getting bumped up the job-que... Cash helps grease the wheels.

This runs over and makes normal western christen morality road-kill on the info highway.

It was ten years ago I was observer to this scandal. In a (major) public institution.

It's still happening today.

And someone was tipping for a push-start in a parking lot.

Here in Canada, you can't get thru the winter without boosting, pushing, hauling cars out of the snowbanks or, in extreme cases, pushing a set of summer tires (in freezing rain) on the teenie rust-bucket over the hill with your SUV/jeep, whatever.

Without getting out of the car or ever talking to the people involved, for the last one.

Ordinary christian kindness...( or in the case of the loser in the junk heap, getting pushed out of the way.) is going extinct.

The kids exposed to this will expect cash for kindness for life. And to pay for it.

I'm watching the fireworks over Iceland on a web-cam right now.

The fireworks are sold to fund rescue workers. They sell 2 lbs for every person on the island.

It makes one HELL of a party on new year's eve. (City clean-up is done by ordinary cits every Sunday there, too. Every week, as a civic duty)

Man, I wish they had finished liberalizing their libel laws there. Made Iceland into a free-media zone.

They didn't.

The water-wars people say anyone who opposes the giants of the industry get creamed with fictitious law-suits, the same way Monsanto drove seed-cleaners out of biz.

Steal whatever you can. Change the name. Invent some bull-news. Slime them under.

Damn. Where are the lie-detectors when you need them, eh?

Pat Donovan

sat, DEC 31st, 2011.