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.