A new development

A recent incident in Murray, UT has garnered significant attention. As usual, the news reports focus on the humorous side of the unusual occurrence without taking the time to dig into what it all means. We would like to let you know that due to a tip from "Walter" we have found that this dog belonged to the Company's No. 1, "John." Further investigation has shown that he was abandoned not long before the incident at Smith's. Our best information points to the fact that "John" could no longer afford to feed his dog and so he had him flown to Salt Lake City International Airport and abandoned him there. We figure he picked Utah because it has a reputation for being kind to animals. We hesitate to jump to conclusions, but all signs point to the fact that the Company is declining precipitously and may be on its last legs. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hopeful, so here's hoping that the Company's end may come sooner than any of us thought!

The Price of Oil

As the price of oil surged over the summer, many analysts said bad things might be coming. The price of oil recently fell below $39/barrel, but many analysts are saying this is a bad thing. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not informative, and so we would like to explain what is going on here.

An altruistic news outlet would strive for a single goal: give the public unbiased and useful information that would allow them to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, the world's news outlets are not altruistic. They are answerable to corporations that pay the salaries of the reporters and anchors, and therefore answer primarily to those who have the money. If those who have the money are altruistic this does not significantly alter the goal of the news outlet, but, unfortunately, those with the money are rarely altruistic. More often than not, those with the money simply want more money. This changes the basic motivation of the news outlet from one of providing unbiased information to one of providing information that the public is willing to pay for (through newspaper costs or advertising revenue or what-not). This fundamental switch in motivation accounts for most of the doomsday-style headlines we see, including those about "high oil prices are bad" and "low oil prices are bad."

Now that this blog is firmly established, here at the GPD we are currently working on establishing a number of altruistic news outlets that will tell you the way things are, not the way people with money think you want to be told that things are. Keep your eyes open!

The lack of posts over the weekend

The volume of Christmas gifts being returned over the weekend must have been higher than normal (most people would blame the slow economy, but I know better...we have a lot of secret projects underway at the moment) as the weight of said items appears to have created a black-hole-like mass near my computer that does not allow for Internet traffic to escape. It appears that today the mass has dissipated, and that the supply of posts will now cease to be interrupted. We have scientists working overtime on this phenomenon, but we don't have any publishable results just yet. Thank you all for your patience.

Big Brother is (Possibly) Watching You

Most of us are now used to the idea that we are probably on somebody's video surveillance almost anywhere we turn, and so we have stopped thinking about it. Even criminals sometimes forget that they are on camera and make embarrassing blunders. Those of us who have no criminal goals, however, have generally felt no ill effects from the constant video surveillance and tend to harbor no ill-will against it... not yet, anyway.

With the increasing number of red light and speeding cameras, however, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe that it will not be long before most people are irritated with video surveillance. It has long been known that these traffic enforcement cameras are not infallible. There was even an episode of Columbo where the perpetrator used a speeding camera to fake himself an alibi. Recently in Maryland the trend of faking out the traffic cameras has taken another turn. Apparently teenagers as a prank will print out someone's license plate, affix it to their own, and then speed past the cameras to send traffic tickets to someone they don't particularly like. What is perhaps the biggest concern here is that the local police department doesn't admit to knowing that things like this happen.

We, your Board of Dictators, promise that you won't be ticketed by fallible machines once we are in control. We may leave them around to instill fear in the hearts of the weak-minded, but we will not use them to distribute traffic violations. We also promise that our revenue estimates will not be based on quotas of traffic violations and therefore we will not have any incentive beyond cruelty (which, incidentally, is not a driving force in the GPD) to serve up more traffic violations than is absolutely necessary.

Merry Christmas (and Happy Other Holidays) from the GPD!

We would like to send out to everyone a Christmas (and other Holiday) greeting. We hope you are enjoying yourselves!

We have created a special "Holiday GPD Logo" for your enjoyment. Enjoy!

More from our anonymous friend

It seems that "Walter" has been busy. In addition to loads of new intelligence that we can't talk about here lest we endanger our agents he has found time to implement the beginnings of vigilante-style superhero law enforcement in Malaysia. As is usual in these cases the news reports tend to focus on the absurdity of the witness's claims rather than the real story, but congrats to "Walter" anyway. We haven't heard yet whether "Walter's" superhero persona has a name, but we hope it's a good one, since the name "Walter" doesn't strike much fear into the hearts of hardened criminals (at least not yet). While we are not suggesting that all of our supporters should create superhero personae and carry out vigilante-style justice, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to stopping petty crime, and we are pleased that Malaysia has a new (nameless) hero.

Equality: not so simple as you thought

We have received a lot of questions from our supporters as of late inquiring as to why we talk about equality and refer to people as "world citizens" when we clearly put ourselves in a position of more power and prestige than the average world citizen. Some have even accused us of following the pattern in Orwell's classic Animal Farm, where the pigs used the slogan "All animals are created equal" to start the revolution, and then shamelessly added "... but some are more equal than others" to justify their oppression. We consider these comments libelous and craven, but since we are a benevolent Board of Dictators we will not respond in kind. We would like to state that we believe all men are created equal in terms of their rights and duties, but we do not believe that equality extends to all aspects of life.

Take, for example, the American tradition of voting. The current electoral system allows for each person who is at least 18 years old to cast a single vote in whatever matters come before the voters where he or she lives. This is often called "fair" or "equal" as every voter has the same influence on the outcome of the election as every other voter. If you were to stop and consider it, however, this system is not necessarily fair, especially when voters are asked to decide matters of policy. Why should a teenager fresh from high school be given the same voice as someone who has studied the issues for years and is clearly more qualified to make the decision? Shouldn't the more intelligent, ambitious, and accomplished part of society be given more of a voice than those who spend their days watching sitting on a couch and not contributing to society except by keeping advertising revenue high by watching more TV? Clearly fairness and equality are more complex than they appear to be.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe that people are inherently different, and that some are more ambitious than others and will inevitably achieve more and contribute to society more than others. We will work very hard to eliminate the barriers that keep certain ethnic and social groups below others, but we will not force everyone to be ambitious achievers. We embrace the idea of putting all of our citizens on equal footing and then letting them become what they may become, even if some become members of the Board of Dictators while others barely achieve anything.

Liberty and Limits

Last week the Board of Dictators held a human rights summit, as many of the more prominent human rights organizations (including the ACLU and Amnesty International) had written to express concern that we had not specified how we would ensure human rights as dictators of the world. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to human rights, and we told them as much in the extremely successful summit.

One thing we learned from the summit, though, is that there is a general misunderstanding about the roles of liberties and limits in society, which is why I am posting this. Make no mistake about it, the GPD is in favor of giving world citizens all of the liberties that we can. We believe that when people are free to choose their own destinies they are generally happier and more productive than they would be under duress. Unfortunately, however, people across the world have frequently shown that they are incapable of managing even the simplest liberties possible. For example, a lady in New Jersey recently chose to raise at least 69 rabbits in her one-bedroom apartment. Another lady in North Carolina chose to move 61 Christmas trees into her house. Someone in Michigan chose to leave a heart (possibly human) in a carwash. Someone in Pennsylvania named children "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" but can't understand why people think he is racist. These are just a small sampling of the deluge of strange decisions made every day, but they illustrate the point that society cannot be left completely to itself lest it degerate entirely.

At the summit we outlined our system, which essentially means that each world citizen will initially be on the same footing as every other citizen, but as they make good use of their choices the limits they have will be removed. An illustration or two may explain how this system is designed to work, and will probably be instructive. Parents naming children, for example, will initially have to run the names by the local GPD office, but after they demonstrate an aptitude for naming children they will be allowed to name their children by themselves, and only if the name is found to be in bad taste when the birth certificate is drawn up will the couple have to meet with officials at the GPD office. As for driving, we will build our system on top of the SQ freeway metering solution already proposed. We will allow newly-licensed drivers to have more restrictive route choices (with lower speed limits) and allow drivers who have demonstrated responsibility to use the unrestricted roads. This principle is essentially a way to avoid anarchy by give society limits, but also ensure that those citizens who are responsible enough can rise above the petty rules.

And there are no cats in ... Toronto?

It seems the lovable rodents have finally exacted revenge on their feline antagonists. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we would like to commend the rodents who gave their lives in this cause so that their peers might enjoy a more cat-free environment. I think Fievel would be proud, as even his great Mouse of Minsk didn't get rid of a hundred cats at once.

A friend of a friend of a friend

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal (or, if you prefer a summarized version look here) has used twenty years worth of data to assess the way happiness can be spread to other people. Previous studies have tried to deal with the pathology of happiness, but this study used data from the US Framingham Heart Study to study how happiness is able to attach itself to new hosts, and because of the amount and quality of the data were able to discover previously unknown vectors for happiness infection.

The basic results of the study included that happy individuals tend to be among us in clusters, and that they found that happiness spreads through existing social networks rather than the networks rearranging when happy people seek each other out. Also, the risk of infection from happiness is greatly elevated when a person is co-resident with a happy person, and is somewhat elevated when living within 1.6km (1 mile) of a happy person. It also concluded that simply living near a happy person does not cause infection. The key elements are proximity and relationships. Two neighbors who never speak to each other are unlikely to spread happiness. Perhaps the most interesting result of this study is that even the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend can affect you.

We applaud the work done by James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis, and would like to point out that it supports a study we commissioned years ago about the infectious properties of "support for a cause". At the GNU Public Dictatorship we have found that our influence extends far beyond our friends, and far beyond their friends. We would like to encourage all of our supporters to redouble their efforts in spreading their support to their friends. If all of us do so, the results will be great!

Common Myths Debunked

In the spirit of my post about "proof" and this BBC article we have decided to debunk a few myths of our own. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned about correcting misconceptions.

• Laughter is the best medicine. While laughter can be good for the soul, it doesn't do very much to alleviate even the simplest symptoms of even the simplest cold. Even if laughter were the best medicine for some conditions, it would be very difficult to prove that it was the best medicine in all cases.
• Even the most tempting rose has thorns. As this website points out, there are varieties of roses available that are 95-100% thorn-free. It is likely in this case that you could find a single rose with no thorns on it at all! Even if thornless roses hadn't been created by the marvels of modern technology, it would be hard to prove that no rose anywhere in the world has ever not had thorns. Even if you could prove this never occurred in nature, it would be hard to argue that a de-thorned rose doesn't violate this aphorism.
  
• Living well is the best revenge. Although R.E.M. seems to agree as the first track on their album Accelerate suggests, we don't believe that living well is much revenge at all. How can you avenge the wrongful death of your henchmen by living well? For that matter, what does "living well" really mean? Does it mean avoiding drugs, smoking, and alcohol and getting plenty of rest and exercise? Does it mean living comfortably? Not to mention that proving that there is no better method of revenge would be difficult at best.
• A .44 Magnum beats four aces. While the carrier of a .44 Magnum might be able to take the money of other players, the rules of Poker according to Hoyle clearly do not give a .44 Magnum any advantage over four aces.

We hope this was a useful exercise and look forward to more debunking in the future.

No Firm Proof

We applaud Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari for sticking to his guns and reaffirming that there is "no firm proof" that the Mumbai attackers came from Pakistan. In fact, we would like to take it one step further and say that we have no firm proof that Asif Ali Zardari even exists. For that matter, we have no firm proof that I am currently writing this blog entry, or that the world even exists. All of our perceptions are colored by our own biases, and so the whole issue of proof should be thrown out forever. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe the world would be a much happier place if people were to stop worrying about proof and simply believe what makes them happy.

More reminders of "Viktor" and his contributions to the GPD

Every so often we are reminded of how much good "Viktor" did for us. His work on turning sarcasm into a useful tool for detecting dementia was nearly complete when he betrayed us, and now that it is out in the public domain the sense of loss is increased. He didn't get the credit for his work, but it was his trials that first suggested that being rude to old people could help us identify the old people that need additional care. He carried out trials among various groups of people, but the results were strongest in older people with dementia. While "Viktor" is still on our most wanted list, we are proud of his accomplishments. Interestingly, since his betrayal "Viktor" doesn't appear to have accomplished much of anything. I guess our agents are dogging him better than the agents of the Company did.

A new threat?

It seems that medieval weapons are turning up more and more in the news these days, even in "quiet" places like the US state of Utah. A quick search of the Deseret News archives revealed the following incidents:

• Two men attack a teenager with a battle ax. In this case the perpetrators were found to be members of the colorful Juggalos.
• Dec. 11: A man attacked his estranged wife with a samurai sword. (or was he charged with attacked her? I love it when newspapers don't edit themselves properly)
• Nov. 30: A man attacked another man with a meat cleaver. I know what you're saying, a meat cleaver is hardly a medieval weapon. Those familiar with Ultima VI, however, will recognize that the meat cleaver was a very fun, if not so powerful, weapon. Ultima VI is clearly a medieval game, so clearly a meat cleaver qualifies as a medieval weapon.
• Nov. 24: A samurai-sword-wielding man is shot and killed by guards at a Scientology building in Hollywood.
  
• Nov. 18: Another meat cleaver attack.

I could post many other incidents, but these will do for now. It is clear that the Company is increasing its efforts to undermine our society, and that the faithful brad is no longer their sole weapon of choice. It appears that a small group of discontent Brad Guys have been extending the perfidious perforation of brads to new lengths. All of these tools are designed to puncture or perforate other materials (including people). This disturbing trend is apparently gaining momentum, and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to your safety!

We are implementing a series of increased security practices around GPD offices and ask our supporters everywhere to be on the lookout for ruffians wielding medieval weapons. Rest assured that our operatives are working concertedly to identify and mitigate this apparent threat before it affects the lives of our supporters.

A Despicable Attack

Many of you probably know Daniel Hoevels, the actor. We have recently confirmed that the attempt on his life, which, thankfully, did not end in his death, was perpetrated by a radical splinter group loosely affiliated with the Company. They were under the impression that Daniel had been feeding us information, but they were sadly mistaken. Some of our operatives had indeed attended several plays in which he appeared, but the actor himself had no connection to the Board of Dictators. While we appreciate the bravery with which Mr. Hoevels has faced this challenge, we have been unable to persuade him to support the GNU Public Dictatorship, and therefore we cannot award him the official Hero of the People award generally awarded to supporters who have faced great danger. The statute of limitations for the Hero of the People award is a mere 37 days, so if any of you are friends with Mr. Hoevel and can persuade him to declare his support for us within the next 34 days, please do so.

A Clarification

Many of our readers have been writing in and asking why we wouldn't want to raise the world's children in a communal nursery where love of the GNU Public Dictatorship would be instilled in them at an early age. As a clarification, we never said we wouldn't want to, we simply said we wouldn't do it. For some reason there are a number of groups out there that are uncomfortable with separating families by force and "brainwashing" the children (their words, not ours). In deference to these groups, we will refrain from setting up such a program. Based on all of your feedback, however, we are thinking about setting up a voluntary form of such a nursery for those of our supporters that want to take advantage of it. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not socially advanced!

Pablo Silva, Hero of the People

It is with great pleasure that we present to you Pablo Silva, who has been an ardent supporter for years and has been instrumental in increasing our profile in Latin America. Add to these many years of tireless self-sacrifice his latest accomplishment, and we find a prime candidate for the Hero of the People award. It brings a tear to my eyes.

So, without further ado, we now award Pablo Silva the Hero of the People award for his service to the GNU Public Dictatorship and his foresight in preserving the fairness of free kicks in soccer games without permanently scarring the playing surface. Congratulations, Pablo.

A Response

Several of our readers (who are clearly not supporters and seem to have no regard for their futures) have pointed out that my posts entitled "The Company is crumbling!" and "The Company is trying to diversify!" prove that we are not perfect, and that our claims to infallibility are null and void. I would like to point out that infallibility may not mean what you think it means. It has many different meanings, but the one which the GNU Public Dictatorship has claimed for ourselves is the one stated in the wikipedia article cited above as "some statements or teachings made by [the Board] can be relied on to be certainly true." For the skeptical I will state that 2 + 2 = 4 so that you can all, without a doubt, rely on the statement just made to be certainly true and therefore accept that we are infallible, at least by one definition of the word.

Proceed with Caution!

It has been a great week for our investigative reporting. Not only have we found proof of the dangers of too much karaoke, we have also found that too much kissing can cause hearing loss! What happened in this case was a simple pressure differential problem, where the pressure in the inner ear was reduced so much by the kiss that the ear drum gave way, much like an airlock made of rubber, which, incidentally probably wouldn't be a good idea even if the submarine or spaceship wasn't involved in a passionate kiss. I guess the eardrum was never meant to be an air lock. Anyway, enough rambling. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to keeping you safe! Couples, please proceed with caution.

I can't wait

Recent controversy over the "natural born citizen" status of President-Elect Barack Obama has got me thinking about how nice the world will be when we are no longer future dictators, but dictators. The whole question of citizenship will be completely different under our rule. Instead of basing our estimation of a person's worth on the particular events that preceded that person's birth into this world, we will use the actions of that person to define his or her worth. We won't have to worry about whether someone was born in Weehawken or Novosibirsk, just that they were born.

Don't get us wrong; we won't take this to the extreme it is often taken in science fiction, where babies are separated from parents and raised in a nursery where all sense of individuality is stifled and a sense of patriotic love for the GNU Public Dictatorship is fostered. We don't intend to make everyone equal, just to remove the barriers to that equality. All world citizens (except, perhaps, for those lucky few "preferred citizens") will receive the same treatment from us, and we will make it our mission to serve your needs with enlightened self-interest. After all, it will be in our best interest to keep you happy. Besides, we'll save a bundle by not having to print passports!

The Company is trying to diversify!

I may have been a bit premature with my last post where I intimated that the Company was crumbling and in the throes of death. While brad consumption is down, our sources have corrected me and explained that the Company is realizing that we are winning the war on brads and is attempting to diversify its portfolio. As this BBC News article explains, one of their latest attempts to make a profit is the fake video game console. Please be careful while shopping this holiday season and don't fall into the trap of saving money by buying fake. As Clare Merrills said, "When you buy these goods, you're not funding our economy, you're actually funding criminals in these far off places and it could be linked to terrorism."

Among the other fake goods you should watch out for are:

• Can openers
• Staple guns
• Silly string
• Sofas
• Nuclear reactors

If in doubt, please contact your local GNU Public Dictatorship office where we can look the product up for you. Happy Shopping!

P.S. We are sticking to our goal of ridding the world of the Company by the end of 2009. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not diligent!

Sources

Many people have asked us lately how we have such far-reaching contacts all over the world. It's true that our projects are many and varied. It's also true that our information-gathering network is extensive. However, we are constantly frustrated that our network cannot extend even further to enable us to make even more impact in the world.

Occasionally, something marvelous happens to bring about big change at the GPD. One of these marvelous things has happened recently and we're still agog. We have recently received inside information from a new source, who has named himself "Walter" but refuses to reveal his true identity. 

The contributions of "Walter" have been world-changing. It is through his inside knowledge of The Company that we have made such enormous strides in bringing brad production to a halt in many parts of the world. "Walter" is elusive, however, and our other agents have yet to put a face to the name. His information is strictly one-way: he continually feeds us information but cannot be tracked, so we have no way of passing information back to him.

This is frustrating to us, as we'd like to work with "Walter" to make even greater strides. I am writing today to beg "Walter" to come forward and identify himself so that he can be properly thanked. He is an international hero and should be recognized with the highest honors possible. Once we have tracked his true identity, Tim will be proudly awarding the "Hero of the People" badge.

"Walter": if you're reading this, the dog flies at 11:20 and the horse jumped the moon three nights ago. Please reply.

The Company is crumbling!

The recent capture of Fred has been a stepping stone for us to much greater infiltration of the Company. We can't reveal any of our sources just yet, but we can tell you that reports from multiple sources have confirmed that Fred's attempt to gain admittance into the Board of Dictators was in fact a desperate attempt to keep the Company from crumbling, and that the Company itself is in the throes of death, as the economic crisis we have helped engineer is causing people to buy disproportionately fewer brads this Christmas season.

While we are pleased with our progress, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ambitious, as we are setting a goal to rid the world of the scourge of the Company by the end of next year! We know it is a long shot, but we believe with all our concerted efforts that we might be able to make it. Besides, what good is a goal unless it inspires us to action!

It's official

For quite some time now the scientific community has been warning about the possible dangers of Karaoke, but has not been able to make much of a dent on public opinion. Ralph Nader has just joined the movement and is currently working on a book entitled Karaoke: Unsafe at any Pitch. Negotiations for Al Gore to join the movement have been progressing slowly, but he has recently completed a PowerPoint presentation about the dangers of too much karaoke. Unfortunately, none of these efforts seems to be denting the popularity of karaoke or its cousin Rock Band.

As of now, however, the naysayers will not have a leg to stand on. A Malaysian man who spent too much time doing karaoke recently died, finally making it official that karaoke is dangerous. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are not teetotalers and we do not recommend complete abstinence from karaoke and Rock Band, but we do recommend moderation in all things.

Shooting the Moon

Those familiar with the game of hearts will understand the basic strategy: you want to end the round with the lowest number of points possible. In this game, the longer you can fly under the radar (by not collecting undesirable cards), the more likely your eventual success. The most powerful cards are those which are worthless.

Yet there is a trick to this game. If you collect all of the damaging point-collectors, then you "shoot the moon" and all of those points (26) are added to every other player's scores while you add none to your own. If you try to shoot the moon, you are playing a risky game. One card in the wrong hands could land you with 25 points and your opponents with virtually none. 

When playing hearts, you need to diligently watch so that other players do not shoot the moon, saddling you with the extra 26 points. The trick is that you may be so preoccupied with getting rid of your cards that you don't notice where they're going.

We at the GNU Public Dictatorship understand that the principles of Hearts also apply to leadership. We have been flying under the radar for years, enabling us to formalize our government style and build a large base of supporters. Our seeming harmlessness is our greatest tool for eventual world domination. If we were to attract too much attention too soon, you can imagine there would be more than The Company for us to deal with (and they cause us enough headaches for now).

However, we also understand that the seemingly preposterous foibles of current governments should never be laughed off. Like the game of Hearts, enough foibles may enable them to "shoot the moon" by innocently collecting all the cards they need. We at the GNU Public Dictatorship are nothing if not vigilent and serious about monitoring the current political situation so that we cannot be taken by surprise. If we stumble, remember that we are playing a larger game than you might see. We may be collecting cards of our own for our eventual victory.

What's your SQ?

Have you ever been frustrated with the sheer lunacy of other drivers on the freeway? At the GNU Public Dictatorship we've been working a solution. We're not naive enough to suppose that it will solve all of the problems, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Our solution builds on the idea of metering, but takes it a step further. In metering, traffic entering the freeway via an on ramp is artificially choked at the on ramp to prevent backups on the highway itself. This "choking" is generally accomplished by means of a light which allows vehicles to enter the freeway at predefined intervals. Rather than choking based on time our system will choke the flow based on the driver's Stupidity Quotient (SQ). A central database of SQ scores and drivers' licenses will be maintained, and drivers' licenses will have embedded RFID chips. Gates at on ramps will open only for RFIDs associated with drivers with low enough SQ scores.

We believe our system will work better than metering as it controls the quality of the traffic as opposed to the quantity of the traffic. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to improving your lives!

The sky is smiling, and so are we

We would like to thank all of you who were kind enough to write in thanking us for making the sky smile this week. For those that missed it, here's a collection of pictures. We are flattered that you all gave us credit for the celestial emoticon, but we have to admit that we are not completely responsible as we cannot claim to be in complete control of the weather just yet.

Enough Besmirching

There are a number of groups out there that will do just about anything to besmirch our name. Most recently it was the Matchams Leisure Park in the United Kingdom. They advertised themselves as a great theme park but did not deliver. Patrons were rather upset at the exorbitant prices they had to pay for admission and at the terrible living conditions of the animals. The Organizer of the Matchams Leisure Park said, rather cryptically, "What is not here that we haven't advertised?"

We have found ties between the amusement park and the Brad Guys, but we don't want to jeopardize our operatives by telling you any more. We believe that they have created a fake amusement park to try to convince people not to visit the GNU Public Theme Park in Corpus Christi, Texas. We hate to break it to them, but attendance has not dipped yet at the park, and RideTorrent use has exceeded our own expectations. Once again, the Company has failed. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful for your support!

The Lenovo Initiative

Recently Lenovo announced that they will allow their laptops to be "locked down" by means of a text message sent to them. Presumably this feature has been added to prevent stolen laptops from yielding the owners' personal information, but we know better. Our operatives tell us that Lenovo has been conducting experiments with this technology for some time, and that the true intent is to allow Lenovo to cause "random hardware failures" on its hardware by sending out text messages (obviously right after the expiration of the warranty) that tell different components of the computer to shut themselves down until Lenovo tells them to wake up.

While we disagree with the decidedly monetary motives for this kind of technology, we have been working with the US government to include such technology on the military equipment they sell overseas. It would allow them to generate more revenue through a subscription model and everyone knows that more defense funding is always good.

Surprisingly, though, the military has expressed concerns about the "security weaknesses" of this model. They seem to fear that some rogue individual or group of future dictators with a cell phone could shut down the entire US Army. Oh, well, maybe someday.

A happy end to a nail-biting standoff

For about 90 minutes last Friday the world watched with bated breath at a standoff in a bank in New Jersey, only to find that the "perpetrator" was a cardboard cutout of a man.

Incidentally, this incident is a good metaphor for the current state of society. Our current governments are constantly telling us to "look this way!" or "look over there!" so that they can keep our attention fixed on something unimportant rather than the things that are happening that really matter. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sincere, and we promise never to misdirect your attention to cover up our own acts.

The Immigration Battle

It has been all over the news lately that company after company is being raided for hiring undocumented workers. Well, now it turns out that even Google is hiring undocumented functions. The problem is real, so what do we do about it?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we suggest that the solution is to cut the Gordian knot altogether instead of spending exorbitant amounts of time and energy untying the complexities of immigration law. Rather than fret about who can and who can't work, under the GPD no worker will be undocumented. We will keep track of each and every one of you, which will allow corporations to hire without worrying about the documented status of workers. It will also allow us to serve your needs better, much like the little key chain cards allow supermarkets to serve you better. With everyone documented, the problem disappears into a puff of smoke (It's times like these I wish I knew how to do foley with a blog entry...I'd pick that wonderful poof sound from The Sword in the Stone and put it here). At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not resourceful!

An Experiment in Misinformation

This article chronicles the public side of one of our recent experiments in misinformation. We don't expect to release the full results for some time, now, but as many of you have been asking us whether we were involved in the incident at the university in Ottawa we will take some time now to explain what we can.

The experiment was designed to test how viable different methods for spreading misinformation were, relative to each other. We used word of mouth with trusted and untrusted sources, print media, the Internet (youtube, blogs, and advertisements), and many other sources. The scientists among you will certainly be asking how we kept all of the variables controlled. While it would take much too long to explain at this juncture, rest assured that our results will contain sufficient information to quell your fears. The portion of the study that recently entered the public arena had to do with leaking misinformation about Cystic Fibrosis to students about to participate in a fundraiser for a charity that is trying to combat the disease. While our final report will be much more complete, what we can tell at this point is that the initial leak on a blog made it into the print media unchecked, and that one of the students' friends read the print media and relayed the information to the committee, which voted to direct their money elsewhere. Even we were surprised at the credibility given to this source, but we are certainly going to learn from this study. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not adaptible!

Another barrier removed!

As you all well know, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to equal rights for all of our supporters. Until recently, however, there has been a glass ceiling in place for a small group of ardent supporters: mechanical creations, better known as robots, androids, or cyborgs.

Never fear, however, as part of that glass ceiling has just been shattered! Osaka University has just premiered a short play where, finally, a robot is allowed to act. We hope that the removal of this barrier will be as complete as was the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and that our comrades the robots will be allowed fully into the performing arts.

An interesting correlation

RITLA just released a study of violence among young people in 83 countries around the world. If you don't speak Portuguese you can read the BBC's writeup of it here. The bottom line of the study appears to be that if you are young person living in Central America you are much more likely to be killed than if you are a young person living in Europe or Japan.

While they propose a number of reasons for this disparity, we would like to put forth our own theory. Last year we commissioned a study to gauge support for the GNU Public Dictatorship around the world. Those interested in the details of this survey should request more info, but the bottom line was that support for the GNU Public Dictatorship was lowest in the very same region that has the highest murder rates. As the data reported below shows, regions with higher support for the GPD have lower youth murder rates and vice versa.

Region	Support (in Lehman units)	Murder Rate (per 100,000 young people)
Africa	553.9	10.4
North America	398.2	14.3
Latin America	229.8	15.5
Asia	523.7	11.3
Europe	624.1	10.5
Oceania	655.3	9.6

On a related note, we are currently looking for two more ambassadors to Latin America to try to shore up our support and stem the tide of murder among young people. Send us your resume if you are interested. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned for the welfare of our young people!

Request For Proposal

Have you ever ordered something new at a restaurant only to find out when it arrives that you really dislike it? Most of us have experienced this disappointment at least once in our lives, and here at the GNU Public Dictatorship we would like to say that Enough is Enough. We are hereby opening our request for proposal (RFP) to reduce the occurrence of such events. Our RFP will remain open until we find a proposal we like, so feel free to submit as many proposals as you can come up with.

Just for clarification, this RFP is not a brainstorming session. We know that people have proposed a number of methods, from requiring restaurants to offer free samples, to scratch & sniff menus, to scratch & taste menus, and so forth. The problem with these suggestions is that they provide a solution without talking about how to get to that solution, and without discussing the moral, sanitary, and practical obstacles that need to be overcome.

Your RFP should outline your solution, and provide enough supporting information to let us know how you plan to overcome any obstacles to implementation. The winning RFP(s) will receive funding from the Board of Dictators' discretionary fund to help them carry out the proposal. Please feel free to ask us any further questions. Happy proposing!

Easier Theme Park Access!

We are still at full capacity every day at the GNU Public Theme Park in Corpus Christi, and the fire officials still won't budge on the maximum occupancy, but never fear! We have been working closely with Bram Cohen to extend his successful file sharing protocol BitTorrent to theme parks, and we think we've made a breakthrough. The adventurous among you can download our new RideTorrent client. (The site is new, so if your DNS lookup fails do not despair! Just wait 48 hours and try again)

The basic principles remain the same. Popular rides will be sent piece-by-piece across the Internet to users, who will then use their uploading bandwidth to redistribute those pieces to other users while they continue their own downloads. The net effect is that end users are able to use the rides much sooner than they would if they went to Corpus Christi and got in line. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not innovative!

The True Purpose of Potlucks

Many of you likely participated in Thanksgiving potlucks over the last week or two. Some of them were sponsored by church groups, and some by companies. They probably told you it would be a good way to mingle with your friends and have some good food. Most of you probably took this at face value and did not stop to think about the true nefarious purpose behind these potlucks.

The idea of a potluck is that each person will bring something to eat. In a true potluck there are no assignments made, but most people who organize potlucks don't like to leave everything to chance and therefore make some assignments, such as who is to provide the main dishes, who is to bring rolls, and so forth. If you're thinking to yourself right now that you see nothing nefarious whatsoever about this, you're not alone. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that 95% of respondents were unaware of the dark side of potlucks.

The idea of everyone bringing food to share with everyone else is a great idea. The problem arises in the unequal consumption of the food products. Take, for instance, a young person that makes a fruit salad, takes it to a potluck, and takes it back almost whole. What does this do to this young person's self-esteem? What about the person whose ego is inflated because his or her fruit salad is consumed completely at the potluck? If an event such as a potluck can cause so much strife and division, can it be truly harmless? We think not. We believe that potlucks are just the natural continuation of childhood "picking teams" that tend to perpetuate differences in social status to make the winners feel good about themselves at the expense of the losers.

Next time you are approached with an offer to participate in a potluck, please keep this in mind. Please eat equal portions of all of the dishes so that none of the participants will have to suffer the shame of not being picked. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not egalitarian!

Look what we have done!

Ever since we decided that gas prices had gone up enough to scare people into action on alternative energy sources we have been working tirelessly to reverse the trend we had previously put in place. The following graph (from this BBC article) chronicles our progress. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned about the state of your pocket book.


The student of propaganda will note that this graph follows law 13b, which states, "Never include zero in your graphs, as it will tend to make it harder to make your point." It is an admirable application of the law as it makes it look like we have dropped oil prices to less than a fifth of what they were, when in reality we're only about at a third of what they were. Good work, Bloomberg.

Note: the Propaganda 315 teacher has asked us to emphasize that the course is in propaganda, not plagiarism, so be sure to include a few of your own words in your write up on this graph.

Another small success

Many of you noticed the announcement last week about Microsoft's intent to provide free anti-virus and anti-spyware for Windows. We have kept quite about it for a few days to make sure the press moves along, but we would like you all to know how we were able to broker this deal behind the scenes.

We had three separate campaigns running:

1. Craig has been working with Microsoft's salespeople all around the world and "encouraging" them (we won't go into exact methods) to sell fewer and fewer licenses of Microsoft Live OneCare. Our theory was (and it appears to have worked) that tanking sales would force Microsoft to release something better and cheaper.
2. I have been working on a project (codename: TwoCares) for some time. It involves sending as many minidumps (you know, when something stops working and it asks you if you want to send it to Microsoft) to Microsoft as possible, and we have used all the resources at our disposal to generate them and send them. It's amazing how much minidump data a High-Performance Computing cluster can produce in the course of an afternoon! We're not sure how this affected Microsoft's decision, but we know that they were much more willing to work with us once we offered to stop pursuing TwoCares.
3. Juliana has been working with Google to provide alternatives to OneCare. Google's offerings are generally much trendier than Microsoft's, and so we thought that might help.

With these three campaigns working in tandem it was only a matter of time before Microsoft gave in. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not inventive!

A Difference in Strategy

We would like to take a moment to respond to some more unfounded criticism of the GNU Public Dictatorship. Last week a columnist in the Waycross Journal-Herald compared the GPD's Board of Dictators to Al Qaeda, and argued in very inflammatory language that we are trying to force our will on the people of the world. (Oh, and don't be surprised if you can't find the offending article online--they received so many negative comments about it that they have probably just removed it altogether to conserve bandwidth). As we have repeatedly told our supporters it is generally best to ignore unfounded criticism rather than to lend it credibility by refuting it, but once again our inboxes are full of requests from concerned supporters to defend our reputation.

To be fair, we do have certain things in common with Al Qaeda. We share three letters in common with them, and we are an organization with supporters across the world. When we get down to the fundamentals of ideology and methods, however, we find that we have very little in common with our angry brothers.

As for ideology, Al Qaeda believes that anyone who believes differently from them has no right to live. They take this belief into action when they perform terrorist attacks and when they intimidate more moderate muslims by releasing videos in which they rant about the evils of everyone else. They recently released a message criticizing President-Elect Barack Obama for not joining in their fight. While we applaud their whole-hearted dedication to their beliefs, we do not share many of them. We believe that everyone is entitled to have his or her own opinion about any topic that can be imagined. We believe that merely having a belief is not grounds for summary execution, and we do not believe in using terrorism to intimidate people into supporting us. We believe that people will support us without our having to use force. We know that there are those out there that would call us "unjustifiably optimistic" for this belief, but we cling to it nevertheless. We are, however, nothing if not pragmatic, and understand that certain actions must be taken to ensure that people "choose" to support us, and we do not apologize for these actions.

Shocking!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are shocked and appalled today! Someone tasked with producing a photo of four-star General Ann Dunwoody for the press decided to clean up the low-quality snapshot before releasing it!

Okay, enough sarcasm. What is actually shocking is that the AP finds it shocking. Governments around the world routinely doctor their photos, and not usually for strictly aesthetic reasons, as was the case here. The AP should know that the Department of Defense is no different. Even NASA faked some of its moon pictures. But enough about that. There are a number of valid national security reasons to doctor pictures, and any government not engaged in this practice is sure to receive a call from Adobe trying to get them to invest in Photoshop.

We don't understand why the AP would be so upset about this particular picture. Who would want a picture circulated of them which appears to have been taken by a stone-age digital camera in lighting conditions that might make even the most battle-hardened trained photographer run screaming? Besides, you can hardly tell the name says "Dunwoody" in the original. The Department of Defense apparently had two choices: call her in for a new portrait, or doctor the original to make it look okay. But enough about the quality of the picture. It appears that what bothers the AP most is the replacement of the background of the photo with an American flag, changing the "circumstances" of the photo, and thus making it unfit for publication. Never fear, General Dunwoody, we will not stop publishing pictures with doctored backgrounds!

Breaking News: Brad Guys' link to ETA finally explained

Since the recent capture of Mikel Garikoitz we have had our agents working around the clock with the French Police to gather information about his involvement in the terrorist organization ETA. Why, you may ask, are we so interested in a Basque terrorist? As it turns out, we have been tracking down alleged links between ETA and the Company for several months now. One of our agents suggested that ETA and the Company may be one and the same, but we have our doubts. ETA isn't particularly brad-friendly. In fact, the traitor "Viktor" had infiltrated them some years back and learned that they hate brads almost as much as we do. I know this isn't a post about "Viktor," but it always pains me to think of how much good he did before he was turned by the Company and how much good he could be doing right now if it weren't for his weakness. Anyway, while we never believed that ETA and the Company were officially working together, we have seen disturbing similarities in the tactics used by both groups.

Our work with the Spanish and French authorities is starting to pay off, as the recent string of high-profile captures can attest. Even so, we have been unable to prove the existence of any links between ETA and the Company until now. Our interrogations have finally uncovered the fact that Mikel was affiliated both with ETA and the Company, providing the missing link we have been searching for for months. We have also been able to glean that the two organizations have no formal relationship and are not supporting each other's causes. Add to this the fact that authorities believe that many of the recent ETA attacks were carried out by Mikel, and we are very pleased. It appears that our fears of an ETA-Company alliance were unfounded.

We would like to thank all of our supporters and agents that made this arrest possible. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ubiquitous!

A Giant Leap for India

Last week India was able to land its first probe on the surface of the Moon. It was a momentous occasion for the ISRO, and we hope it is the first of many successful missions to the Moon for them. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe that space, like the Internet, should be a land without boundaries. It is wonderful to see India continue its technological advance, but we do have to ask the question of where they will outsource their tech support?

Help for the Homeless

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned for the homeless and other disadvantaged people roaming our streets. We have noticed the long lines at soup kitchens and have decided that we need to intervene. We have teamed up with Kraft to produce a new variant of their venerated Lunchables line that can be made on the cheap and distributed quickly and mess-free at soup kitchens and churches. We call them Parishables, and they should be appearing at a soup kitchen near you early next year, or as soon as we can work out the remaining kinks. (It's surprisingly hard to get bread to come out of the packaging process at just the right degree of staleness.)

What's wrong with the Status Quo

What's wrong with the status quo? A majority of our applicants have chosen to respond to this question for the essay portion of our application, and, with a few exceptions, the responses have been very well-thought-out. We noticed that there were a few common themes running through them, and would like to talk about one of them here.

Before we get started, we would like to point out that there are many things wrong with the Status Quo Agreement, but we're not going to talk about it except to say that we think the parties involved are acting in a very immature manner.

Now back to our topic, we, like many of our applicants, believe that a serious problem with the status quo is that people tend to lack common sense. Common sense would seem to indicate that an intoxicated person should not drive to meet the police somewhere, but that's what this family did. Common sense would indicate that an encyclopedia that anyone can edit wouldn't be a good source for legal judgments, but there are a number of judges that disagree. (Incidentally, we have begun work on a new wiki for them. We're calling it wikiprecedent. Finally, the court of public opinion will have a virtual home.) Common sense would also dictate that it's a bad idea to do a fake fundraiser in your own neighborhood. You should at least try to take money from people who don't know that you're not using it the way you claimed. Common sense would seem to argue for checking a heavy 150cm x 120cm (5' x 4') box before letting it be mailed out of a prison.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we offer a unique solution to this rampant lack of common sense. With our shining guidance and you as our supporters, the world can't help but become a much better place almost overnight.

The demise of odortising

It is with great sadness that we must announce our intent to abandon odortising. The decision was not taken lightly. In fact, we had several long board meetings to discuss the complex web of alternatives and options, but we finally decided to let it die because of some fundamental problems:

1. Apparently not everyone finds the smell of fresh toner appealing. We tested "fresh toner," "freshly printed and bound book," "burnt marshmallow," "fresh coffee," and several other smells with our focus group, but apparently our sample was too small or too biased. As it turns out (based on our real-world trials) most people have their own idiosyncratic group of "happy" smells.
   
2. Apparently not everyone finds the smell of burnt popcorn offensive. We believe there must be a correlation between this problem and the first problem with our campaign, but we haven't had time to track it down just yet.
   
3. Apparently some people find certain smells appealing in certain contexts and offensive in other contexts. The smell of a newborn baby's diaper, while perfectly acceptable in the context of a nursery, tends to offend people in a restaurant. Weird.
   
4. Apparently it's too costly. We spent quite a bit on our first campaigns, and because of the problems listed above we didn't get a very good return on our investment.

Rest assured that we will not give up on innovative marketing, but we are throwing in the hat on this one. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not practical!

"Clearly"

Earlier this week treasury secretary Henry Paulson stated that the bailout package they passed is "clearly helped stabilize" the financial system. Clearly. It's such a condescending word. In fact, it smacks of The Emperor's New Clothes. Clearly anyone who uses such language is simply trying to hide the fact that they are having trouble coming up with concrete evidence to support their views, or that they know they are naked but don't want to admit it to anyone else. Clearly, however, when something is or should be clear to everyone it is okay to use the word "clearly".

Unfortunately, the current political environment clearly favors this sort of statement. If Mr. Paulson had stated that the bailout "appears to be helping" he would clearly be required to account for the taxpayer money he used and would clearly be required to show how using that money is benefitting the taxpayer. Because he used a clearly superior statement, anyone who challenges him is automatically putting himself or herself in the position of being someone who doesn't understand what is "clear" to everyone else. Clearly not many people would subject themselves to this sort of ridicule just to point out the fact that somebody is clearly mistaken.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe that nobody should be ridiculed for challenging the veracity of statements made by people who are clearly their intellectual superiors, and therefore promise that we will never use the word "clearly" to cover up our own nakedness. If we use the word "clearly" you can be sure that we have done our homework. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not clearly better than the competition!

Equal rights for fruits and vegetables

First of all, I'd like to join with the rest of you in thanking Juliana for getting oil prices down to their lowest value in 20 months. Excellent work, Juliana!

In other news, it seems our Campaign for Equal Rights for Fruits And Vegetables (CERFAV) has finally convinced the EU to lift some of its restrictions. CERFAV still has a long way to go, but at least we have convinced the EU to allow potatoes not meeting society's definition of attractive to be sold along side their more superficially-appealing counterparts. Brussells sprouts will no longer be required to watch their weight so closely, as they still have a chance at being sold even if they gain a little extra weight. Cucumbers will be allowed to bend as much as they like.

Even with this victory, however, CERFAV still needs to convince consumers to buy less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables. Until they do, we fear that young fruits and vegetables will continue to need counseling to deal with their body-image issues. We plead with you all to help us in this campaign by talking to all of your European friends about the benefits of fruits and vegetables that are allowed to be themselves. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned about the happiness of our produce!

Excellent News!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are all pretty excited today! We have just been informed by our agents that our raid on the Company was successful, and that we were able to capture "Fred" (their No. 2 man) and a number of assorted spies and operatives!

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for the application for membership in the Board of Dictators submitted by one Franklin "Fred" Duncan. When we saw "Fred" in quotes like that our suspicions were immediately raised, and we looked more closely and confirmed our suspicions. (Don't worry, at the end of this post we'll post some choice excerpts from his application)

What was perhaps most surprising of all was that Franklin (or "Fred" as we like to call him) used real contact information. It was his Sleep Number and his Blockbuster Account Number that clinched it for us, but he also listed real references (some of them spies for the Company), and when we had one of our assistants call him at his contact number and ask him about brads we knew we had our man.

We had a special board meeting to discuss Franklin's application, and after a good deal of brainstorming, debate, and digging, we came to the conclusion that our previous efforts must have destabilized the Company so much that they felt their only chance to survive would be to have their No. 2 man "defect" to the Board of Dictators so he could work from the inside. We applaud their planning and their valor, but we would like you all to know that such schemes will not work. A Board of Dictators is by design much harder to infiltrate than a standard Dictatorship.

We would like to thank all those who made this victory possible, and exhort all of you to watch how the Company responds to this crushing blow over the next weeks and months.




As promised, here are a few excerpts from his application:

About his accomplishments and honors:

As for recent triumphs, it was my planning and execution that resulted in the death by poisoning of Henry Ralston and the near death of another of my enemies. They were completely unaware of the fact that the restaurant they were eating at had been compromised. I was also able to intimidate one of my detractors by infecting her children with an obnoxious virus with flu-like symptoms. I caused another rebel to need several stitches on his head. My contributions have been key to the success of my current organization, and I intend to use my keen intellect and impressive network of friends and resources to affect your organization as well.

From Essay Topic A (What's wrong with the status quo):

However, as I keep saying, the primary problem with the way things are is that I don't have enough power. If I were given the opportunity to rule, say, Australia, I would be able to prove to the world that they could trust me to run their affairs.

From Essay Topic C (Why are you essential to our success):

I would bring to the Board of Dictators a unique perspective. My years of work in another organization which shall not be named here have provided me with an incredible wealth of information that the GNU Public Dictatorship would find valuable. Also, given the chance, I would show you, the members of the Board, what a dictator really is. I would lead you to new heights, as long as you are willing to follow me there. My glorious presence would redefine the GNU Public Dictatorship and would allow it to make peace with certain troublesome office products.

Whitewashing the Company

Most of you know at least a little about World War II history (Sorry, Heintz, you'll have to look it up in Wikipedia), and are familiar with Hitler and Stalin. History has been justifiably very unkind to Hitler and his ideologies, but as this BBC article points out, Stalin has all but escaped history's judgments.

Unfortunately, history appears to be repeating itself here. Despite the many atrocities committed by the Company and its history of pushing brads not just to responsible adults who can make the choice but to our innocent children, the Company is rarely vilified in the mainstream paper press. We do appreciate the efforts of several online publishers to print the truth about the Company. As for newspapers and magazines, though, we believe this is probably just a "marriage of convenience" as was the case with Stalin. Too many of our newspaper and magazine editors are relying on brads for their fastening needs, and as such, they fear to disenfranchise the Company. Although we haven't found conclusive evidence that we can talk publicly about just yet, we believe that many of these editors are actually paid by the Company for their complicity.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are engaged in publishing the truth, regardless of the personal cost to us, and we believe that everyone needs to know that the Company wants to push its views on our unsuspecting children. Please, do not believe the "whitewashed" version of the Company you will find in print media.

I have a dream

I have a dream. It may not be so lofty as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream, but with a little luck and some well-placed research dollars we might just make it.

My dream is that one day we will all be able to have cybernetic legs to help us in climbing stairs and jumping over tall buildings in a single bound. No longer will those of us who are shorter than our peers be picked last for kickball or basketball. No more will the elderly have to shuffle around with their walkers. At long last we will have equality for all!

Well, my friends, my dream is one step closer today. Our operatives working with the Japanese car maker Honda have developed what they call a "walking assist" device. The current incarnation is much cooler than previous attempts, and it is clear that our funding is making a difference. Although Honda has only shown their prototype, we understand that full production is not far off. We have learned that the first version of this device sold in the US will be marketed under the name CyberLegs. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream has taken 45 years so far; here's hoping I don't have to wait that long to realize my dream.

Big Brother Kim

There has been a lot of speculation about Kim Jong-il's health of late, and the North Korean news agency (KCNA) has been working overtime to prove that Big Brother Kim is alive and well. Unfortunately, the KCNA's propaganda artists really need some more training. As this BBC News article points out, one picture they released had several flaws obvious even to the untrained eye.

Or so it seems. It is also quite possible that the KCNA knows exactly what it is doing and is simply trying to confuse the general public by making a legitimate photo look like a fake. Ask yourself the question of whether it is easier to splice Kim Jong-il into an existing photo and make things look pretty good at first glance, or to modify an existing photo of Kim Jong-il to introduce some inconsistencies that make people doubt the legitimacy of the photo. What better way to show your superiority to the rest of the world than by producing a "fake" photo and then proving it to be real?

Or perhaps they wanted us to think that they were smart enough to produce the "fake" photo on purpose and they produced a fake photo to throw us off the track and Kim Jong-il is really in poor health or perhaps dead.

But then again they would have to know us well enough to know that we would never buy the fake photo, so they would clearly have created the "fake" photo on purpose to confuse us.

But if we are to accept that they knew that we would know that they knew we knew that they knew that we would detect the fake photo, then we can clearly not choose the glass in front of us.

Unfounded criticism

While we generally prefer to let slander and libel run their course rather than to legitimize it by taking the time to respond to it, the recent flood of criticism combined with your plaintive e-mail messages have convinced us that we must respond this time. It seems that the Company has been trying to turn public opinion against us by trying to claim that our Board of Dictators amounts to one-party rule. Before responding to this claim we will take some time to understand what it means, and why the Company would bother to make this assertion.

In a pure democracy, the state is run by each and every citizen. This means that each citizen is tasked with helping to make each decision that the state needs to make. If N is the number of citizens in the state, this means that there are N parties required for deciding the fate of the state, each with with their own (possibly conflicting) interests in mind. For small values of N (2, for instance) this is not a problem, but for higher numbers of N it becomes an extremely unwieldy form of government.

For this reason the founders of the United States decided against pure democracy and opted instead for a representative democracy, or a republic. In a republic, groups of citizens choose individuals to represent their interests, then let those representatives make decisions for them. If there are N citizens and M representatives (with M<<N, where "<<" means "much less than"), then this republican government is equivalent to an M-party system. Because M is much smaller than N, this system is clearly more manageable than a pure democracy, and as long as M is not one this system still allows the people to influence the decisions of the state.

Our founding fathers didn't want it to happen, but soon after the US was formed, political parties began to form. The reason for this is simple. Even with relatively small M, reaching a consensus is very difficult. Imagine trying to get 20 people with differing tastes to agree on a restaurant for dinner. The solution our politicians decided on was political parties. Instead of each individual representing his or her own beliefs, the representatives choose a political party and accept its ideology. Now, instead of M parties, we have a P-party system, where once again, P<<M. Consensus can be reached much more easily, and citizens still get a choice of which party represents them. Unfortunately, it also limits the individual citizen's control over the state, as he or she is forced to choose among groups of policies rather than individual policies.

Some states have taken this one step further and said that only one party will participate in the government of the state. The Communist Party and the Nazi Party are two prominent examples, both of which tend to oppress the people while telling them what is best for them. This is the notorious one-party system, and it is not generally good for the individual citizens as it removes their power to choose.

Even when a single party is mostly good, letting it have free reign often has undesirable consequences. The more extreme elements of the party begin to take control, and since there is no opposition, their extreme ideas take root. Party members propose ideas haphazardly and are not forced to evaluate them or debate them. Since all of their peers are members of their party, they simply accept each others' ideas. This is not the system of checks and balances that the founding fathers had in mind. Someone should at least be the devil's advocate.

The GNU Public Dictatorship and its Board of Dictators is clearly NOT a one-party system. Craig, Juliana, and I each represent differing points of view about how a dictatorship should be run, and before we act we debate the pluses and minuses of all of our actions. It should be obvious to any neutral observer that it is at least a three-party system, which is certainly better than the two-party system prevalent in US politics. We are also still accepting applications for membership, which could potentially increase the number of parties in the system. The Company wants you to overlook their own aspirations to one-party rule by trying to redefine the term to suit their needs, but they are bound to fail in this endeavor. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to multi-party rule.

For the impatient among our supporters

For all of our supporters who keep sending us e-mail and to whom we have not yet responded: we do, in fact, realize that we have not yet announced any results on the applications for membership in the Board of Dictators.

The fact is, the number of applications we received is much higher than the members of the Board of Dictators ever could have reviewed in the time we originally gave ourselves. Rather than simply ignore applications we hadn't read by the deadline, we decided to keep reviewing applications until there aren't any more to review. We can't give an exact date of when this will happen, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not diligent!

Code of Practice

We have been carefully watching developments in the UK's latest attempt to prevent animal cruelty, and we think that, although it may sound rather silly, it's time that we proposed our own Code of Practice for Supporters of the GNU Public Dictatorship. Don't worry, we wont go on for 26 pages on the entertainment needs of our pet cats, and we won't have an 8-week consultation. We're borrowing the idea of their code of practice, not the substance. This is by no means a final draft, but here's a start:

Code of Practice

for Supporters of the GNU Public Dictatorship

Article I. Marshmallows are not waterproof, nor will they be unless you coat them with lacquer or some other waterproof substance. Unfortunately, this will most likely render the marshmallows unfit for consumption. Consequently, please do not immerse your marshmallows in liquid, unless of course the marshmallows are to be consumed in conjunction with that liquid, as may be the case with hot cocoa.

Article II. When you strike your head with a metal object such as a hammer, it will most likely hurt. It may even cause serious injury. We, the GNU Public Dictatorship will not be held accountable for self-inflicted head wounds caused by such means.

Article III. Sitting on a hat is not a good idea. If the hat is rigid, it will likely hurt you, and if the hat is breakable it will likely break. Please look at your chair and ensure there are no hats on the chair before you sit on it.

Article IV. Sitting on a cat is not a good idea. If the cat is alive, it will likely protest and you will likely be scratched. If the cat is dead, that is just plain gross. Please look at your chair and ensure that there are no cats on the chair before you sit on it.

Article V. Water-soluble paints will not withstand a high-pressure wash, and will generally not withstand even a washing by hand. If you want your car's color to remain vivid, do not paint it with a water-soluble paint unless you are going to apply a sealant.

Article VI. Handing cash to random individuals may improve your karma, but it will not generally improve your current financial situation. Please take a minute to consider what your life will be like without the money you intend to give away before you give it away.

This is obviously not a complete document, but we'll add to it as we think of more and more common sense suggestions that somebody really should write down for those without common sense.

It's almost 1984!

Okay, so it's really almost 2009, but we are a step closer to having newspeak forced upon us. Several local councils in the UK are now banning their staff from using Latin phrases as it "might confuse people." While the goal itself is laudable, as any government that isn't trying to oppress its citizens would certainly want the average citizen to understand what the government officials are saying, we don't believe that singling out Latin is fair. What will all of the native Latin-speakers think when they are told (obviously not by the government) of these restrictions? Will they feel welcome knowing that their language is specifically forbidden while lesser languages such as Esperanto and Hmong are acceptable? We at the GNU Public Dictatorship promise to accept all people, regardless of their native language, and to give them equal status in The New Future.

The Power of Smells

We have been very pleased with the results of our previous advertising campaigns. The increase in good will is almost palpable. We at the GNU Public Dictatorship are nothing if not innovative, and so we will soon be launching a new form of advertising. We call it "odortising."

"Odortising" takes advantage of the strong association that people have between things that they smell and emotions that they feel. It is really a supplement to traditional advertising, and is most effective when used in conjunction with other methods.

Next time you smell something pleasant that makes you feel happy, look around and try to notice our advertising. Next time you smell burnt popcorn or vomit or something else that makes you sick, look around and see if there are any brads or brad paraphernalia around. Happy smelling!

Isaac Henshaw: Hero of the People

One thing that never ceases to amaze us is how willing you, the people, are to sacrifice comforts for the Cause. Many of you struggle daily against the proliferation of brads and some even stand up directly to the Company. Despite improvements in security, the Company is occasionally able to punish our loyal supporters.

One such supporter is Issac Henshaw. Until recently he had been our main intelligence contact into the brad industry in the Mediterranean, but when the traitor "Viktor" turned on us he outed Issac and his family. Because of the quick pace of events in the case of "Viktor" we did not have enough time to prevent Issac from being abducted and tortured by the Brad Guys. We were, fortunately, able to intervene in time to save his wife and children, and we got Issac out as quickly as we could. Since then Isaac has been recovering from his ill-treatment.

After being captured, Isaac was taken to a secret facility in Romania where the Brad Guys perfected the art of the knee-grab torture. Issac assures us that, although many of us have reported seeing a form of it used by unscrupulous brad-pushers all over the world, we have never seen it so expertly performed. Issac reports that the torture facility recruits knee-grabbers from all over the world and trains them in the art of inflicting pain in a seemingly friendly grab of their neighbor's knee.

If you see anyone practicing the knee-grab torture, please report it immediately to your local GNU Public Torture Prevention office. The more information we have, the more quickly we can eliminate this pernicious evil from among us.

For his service in our cause and his endurance of undeserved torture, we are pleased to award Isaac the honor of Hero of the People. Congratulations, Isaac! The GNU Public Dictatorship is nothing if not proud of its heroes.

What Cheek!

We have been trying to get through all of the applications that have been submitted, and to our surprise we ran across one from "Viktor." Yes, that "Viktor." The application itself is quite stellar, but of course we wouldn't have hired "Viktor" otherwise. What we can't figure out is why he thinks he might have a chance after what he pulled last month. Perhaps he is regretting his rash decisions? Perhaps he is trying to mock us? Perhaps the Board is just so attractive that even our enemies have to constantly suppress their desire to join us? We're not sure, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sure that he will not be joining the Board of Dictators this year.

Public Service

It became clear from some of the application we received that many of you are working under the impression that Board members make beaucoup bucks for our contributions to society. We hate to disabuse you of this notion, but, as SimplyHired has pointed out, members of the Board of Dictators make very little. The good news is that interest in the Board of Dictators is increasing, at last count by 10366%. Here at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not selflessly engaged in a labor of love.

The GNU Public Theme Park is here at last!

We are happy to report that everything is going well on our first day of operation at the GNU Public Theme Park. We reached our maximum capacity at 8:17 this morning, and we regret to say that we have not yet discovered a way to use BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer filesharing applications in order to allow more people to enjoy the theme park. We apologize to those supporters who have not yet been allowed inside the park, but we assure you that you will get in as soon as the Corpus Christi Fire Department says we can let you in.

Essay Responses

We have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the responses to the essay questions on the application for membership. We've quoted two passages from the responses to each topic below. We wanted to give credit where credit is due, but our lawyers tell us it would expose us to liability if we disclose the authorship of the quotes before we make our decisions on the applications. Apparently somebody could sue us for something-or-other. We weren't really listening to them very closely. We still want to give credit, so we'll give first names only and hope our lawyers don't read this post.

From Essay Topic A: Explain what is wrong with the status quo

"Perhaps the primary thing wrong with the status quo is that many people refuse to believe that there is something wrong with it. We can't improve our situation if we don't admit to ourselves that it needs to be improved. We also need more Pokémon movies."
--Michelle

"It's not about making money, it's about taking money, destroying the status quo. Because the status is not quo. The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it."
-- Billy

From Essay Topic B: Democracy is often touted as the surest way to a society that is best for all concerned parties, but it is clear that democracies often discriminate against minority groups, and there are inefficiencies introduced by the endless cycle of debate and the system of checks and balances. Dictatorships are clearly more efficient, and when run properly can benefit society more than a democracy can. Please choose one side in this debate and argue your case.

"One common criticism of Dictatorships is that they are less-than-friendly to minority groups. This criticism, however, should also be brought against deomcracies, as any group that does not have enough representation to gain a majority in some geographic division is denied representation. Dictatorships, in this case, are no worse than the supposed best alternative."
--Catherine

"When faced with urgent threats democracies can sometimes act decisively, but there is almost always a backlash against the executive branch for seizing 'too much power.' Dictatorships never have to deal with this backlash."
--Jerry

From Essay Topic C: Make a case for your membership in the GNU Public Dictatorship’s Board of Dictators. Explain why you are essential to our success.

"The Board of Dictators has operated for too long without a nose-flautist. Just think of the publicity and the interest that it would generate to be able to offer GNU Public Nose Flute Lessons. As an added benefit, I'm also an expert at T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage."
--David

"I have studied under the best guerilla vegetable artist in Illinois, and I intend to use my acquired knowledge to benefit the entire world. I am well-versed in classical and Norse mythology. I have three post-graduate degrees in the social sciences and can honestly say that there really is only ONE point of view. We must all unite in order for the few to govern us."
--Gwen

From Essay Topic D: Brads are known to be very sinister. Please explain how you have defended the world against this threat and how you would use your office (should you be chosen) to keep everyone safe from brads.

"As long as the world continues its pernicious slide toward full acceptance of these metallic demons our children will never be safe. The first thing I would do as a member of the Board would be to stage an 'accident' involving brads. The softer methods of informing the public aren't moving quickly enough, but if the public has to deal with a brad crisis then perhaps we will get through to them."
--Linda

"The first thing to be done about brads is to make them less available. We must work with the major purchasers of brads, the US public school system, and first convince them to stop buying brads. Without their subsidy, the brad industry will likely collapse on itself within weeks."
--Geoffrey

From Essay Topic E: Who is the coolest member of the Board of Dictators and why is he/she the coolest?

"Juliana is probably the coolest member of the Board of Dictators, although the difference in coolness among the three members of the Board is rather slight. The deciding factor for me was that I was able to use some of my connections and to get the elementary school records of all three members of the Board. It is true what they say about your permanent record, by the way. It is clear that from an early age Juliana was more popular than her counterparts, which makes her cooler than them."
--Harvey

"Craig is clearly the coolest as the average temperature in his hometown is the lowest of the three."
-Danielle

Business Casual Dictators

Here at G.P.D. headquarters, we hosted a "Bring Your Child to Work" costume party today. Needless to say, the turnout was substantial and our photographs of the nearly-completed theme park were greeted with youthful cries of joy.

The winner of the costume contest was Abe Smith, who dressed up as his idol, Abe Lincoln. The award was based more on the ideal than the actual delivery, since we at the GNU Public Dictatorship are nothing if not dedicated to learning from those great leaders who have come before us.

Little Abe was, surprisingly, the only child who did not choose to dress up as a Future Public Dictator. Naturally, we on the Board were flattered by the attention and lavished praise accordingly. After the many variations on the costume we saw, we were struck by one important quality: those who most closely resembled the actual Board of Dictators wore business casual clothing.

And here at GNU Public Dictatorship, that summarizes what we are: we are a Business Casual Dictatorship. We have no desire to put ourselves above you: the little people who contribute to the world in whatever small way you can. We at GPD have no need for Neimann Marcus bespoke suits or large personal accounts for clothing expenses. We offer ourselves to you as we are--simple, pure and genuine.

Beware those who value the appearance of goodness more than goodness itself. Genuine concern cannot be written off as a business expense.