Well-deserved thanks

Here at the GNU Public Dictatorship we would like to extend well-deserved thanks to Juliana for her tireless role in ending the global recession. While it isn't yet completely over, her efforts to fix the ailing economy have been consuming most of her time over the last year and are starting to produce tangible results. Here are some excerpts from e-mail we have received about her interactions with officials that will remain nameless here at their request:

"I thought I knew how the global markets work, but that was before I met Juliana. Her in-depth knowledge is astounding. She is definitely a valuable contributor to the New Future"

"I wish we had let Juliana help us before the economic collapse."

"Her insight into the workings of complex markets astounded me, and I work for the Fed!"

Thanks, Juliana!

A frightening incident!

Earlier today I was reading a book that my son had made in preschool when I discovered, much to my dismay, that part of it was constructed with a brad! Needless to say the book was promptly destroyed and an investigation was launched into how my son got his hands on a brad. We had screened our preschool teachers carefully and had made our objections to the use of brads a matter of record, so we were unsure why they chose to introduce our children to such an evil device. What we found should raise warning flags for everyone, and should inspire renewed vigilance against these tools of evil.

As it turns out, my son's preschool teacher was very busy last week and had asked her sister to assist her. Her sister, apparently unaware of how dangerous brads are, brought some crafts to keep the kids busy. We have reprimanded the teacher for trusting her sister's lesson plans. We have also made it clear that if there is another "mistake" we will take our son elsewhere, but it just goes to show that no matter what we do we cannot prevent our children from coming into contact with brads, and that the best thing to do is to teach them from an early age what to do if they encounter one.

We beg all of you who have contact with young, impressionable children to please take the time to talk to your children about brads before they are exposed. Nobody wants to have a brad addict in the family, and your actions now could prevent grief later!

Aunt Gertrude

As it turns out, "Aunt Gertrude" was Mr. Gehris's code word for his new invention. We have more information about this invention than we can share right now, but we hope to be able to share it very soon. Many thanks to Henrietta French, Horace Olsen, and Penelope Quartremain for the crucial information they found in their own private records and shared with us!

Equal Rights for Zombies!

Over the years the GNU Public Dictatorship has been instrumental in pushing reforms that guarantee equal rights for everyone, regardless of where they were born, how they were educated, or whether they happen to be a tomato with less-than-perfect symmetry. We have even worked to eliminate the symbols of discrimination along with the discrimination itself. It was brought to our attention recently, however, that our crusade for equal rights for everyone has ignored a whole segment of society: the undead. In fact, our policies toward the undead have often been less than tolerant.

Last week we were contacted by a representative of the Zombie Rights Campaign, and it has been an eye-opening experience for us. We have always prided ourselves on our tolerance and magnanimity, so when we realized that we, ourselves, had been discriminating we were distraught. We had some serious debate, a portion of which are reproduced here. For the full transcript please submit form W99823-J: Request for Transcript of Board Meeting to your local GPD office.

Tim: "If we look at our historical record, we can see that the GPD has unflinchingly supported equal rights in all cases. In order to maintain our principles, we must support equal rights for zombies."

Daniel: "We can't very well support equal rights for zombies while commissioning studies about how to deal with it when they attack, can we?"

Tim: "I never said the issue was without complications, just that we cannot afford to deny rights to an entity willing to ask for them, even if they have the potential to destroy the human race if they were to attack in a coordinated fashion."

Juliana: "The fundamental problem here appears to be the definition of a zombie. Is a zombie a creature with a will of its own, or is it a mere pathogen waiting to infect others?"

Daniel: "Assuming we support equal rights for zombies and a zombie is defined to be a pathogen, we would have to support equal rights for bacteria and viruses, even when such a campaign could seriously jeopardize our own health and safety."

Juliana: "Agreed. We can't simultaneously define a zombie as a pathogen and campaign for its rights. This is the crux of the issue."

Tim: "I think that if a bacterium ever asks us for protection we would have to acquiesce. Or, more generally, that if something has the presence of mind to request protection that they are by definition more than simply a pathogen."

The debate continued for several hours, and although both sides of the debate had compelling arguments, the Board of Dictators has finally decided that the GPD cannot any longer avoid entering the campaign for equal rights for zombies. Zombies who demand equal rights are clearly more than pathogens here to destroy civilization (even if they are here to destroy our civilization) and deserve the same protections that the rest of us enjoy. Besides, all of our research shows that zombies do not use hole punches or brads.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pragmatic, and while we aren't saying that our supporters should never kill zombies, we would like to remind them to consider the rights of zombies before shooting them with shotguns or knocking their heads off. After all, they're not here just for your amusement!

Thanks

We would like to thank those of our supporters who helped investigate the strange incident in Jordan. Because of your help we did not have to divert needed resources from our other investigations, and we have found some important clues that may very well unravel the mystery surrounding Jacob Gehris's death once and for all. We don't want to give everything away, but we would like to state that we have found nearly all of the remainder of Mr. Gehris's body and the accompanying documents. With a little luck our operatives will soon have their hands on the documents the Parent Corporation has, and we will be able to reveal to the world the secret that the Company thought they had destroyed so very long ago. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to the truth!

A request

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not aware of the sacrifices you make every day for the New Future, and we are nothing if not reluctant to add to your concerns. Unfortunately, however, our other channels of gaining information have been nearly exhausted and we would like to ask you to perform some distributed peer-to-peer investigations to see if we can find the missing link.

The documents we recovered from Ernesto Ruiz's construction site referred to a letter Jacob Gehris had sent to his "Aunt Gertrude", but, try as we might, we can't find a single bit of information about who this "Gertrude" was* (she certainly wasn't his real aunt). If you have access to records contemporaneous with the life of Jacob Gehris, please look through them for any implicit or explicit references to an "Aunt Gertrude." We look forward to hearing from you.

* This isn't strictly true. We know quite a bit about who she wasn't, and we suspect at this point that "Aunt Gertrude" may not be a person at all, and that the entire message was coded. Either way, we believe the exercise of looking through your personal belongings will be beneficial and will probably turn up new leads (even if they don't lead us to Mr. Gehris' "Aunt Gertrude."

Act before thinking... or is it think before acting...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we have long held the opinion that there are multiple classes of people living on the earth. Many cultures have formalized this difference, including the Indian caste system and the Italian fascist movement under Benito Mussolini, but we believe they went too far. In fact, as we have previously made clear, the GPD is opposed to all forms of discrimination. We have no plans to create a formalization of the class system as such a system would inevitably foment discrimination.

Even so, however, the fundamental class of a person is sometimes apparent, as in this case of a woman driving drunk to pick up her friend who was already picked up for DWI. We'll leave the class determination as an exercise for the reader.

A good start

While many people have contemplated the implications of urban sprawl, few have done anything about it. Luckily, Steven Von Worley has taken the first steps for us, mapping out the contiguous United States in terms of the distance to the nearest McDonald's. Even if it weren't informative and deeply meaningful, it looks pretty cool. While there is still much to do*, we would like to officially recognize his invaluable contribution to society. Thanks, Steven.

*We didn't want to ruin the body of this post with a list of things yet to be done, so we're including a short list of future work here at the bottom:

1. Map not only the location of each McDonald's, but the perceived quality of each location. As any patron knows there are distinct differences in the dining experience at different restaurants. On a related note, the quality of a McDonald's often depends on the proximity to other options, but that would be difficult to model
2. Create a mapping service that, given any location will provide the quickest route(s) for walkers, hikers, ATVs, bikers, drivers, canoers, and so forth to the nearest McDonald's. This service would need to be available on mobile devices.
3. Correlate this data with the population density.
4. Include the rest of the world.
   

Giant pumpkins

We're sorry for the inconvenience the lack of posts over the the last week may have caused any of our supporters. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to maintaining regular contact with our supporters, but sometimes the resources of the Board of Dictators are stretched just a bit thin. Last week, for instance, I was working on isolating a particularly virulent infection that has been recently observed on hole punches in the American West. The good news is that the infectious agent has been isolated and that those who have been infected (and are still alive, anyway) are expected to make a full recovery.

We have also had a task force guarding this pumpkin, which has consumed a great deal of our expendable resources. Some of our supporters in the area asked why we do it. The answer lies in what Ms. Harp said:

"The fear of any giant pumpkin grower is that some kid will come and destroy it with a baseball bat."

This simple quote summarizes the problems inherent in most forms of government: the few "hooligans" that seem to think that they are more important than everyone else slip under the radar and make life difficult for the rest of you that just want to live a happy life. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we felt it would be a good time to introduce Ms. Harp to a Better Way, the New Future. When we are fully in power no pumpkin growers will fear random kids with sports equipment--for one thing because we will systematically eradicate the genes that produce a gourd-smashing affinity (among other undesirable habits), but more generally because of the unique advantages our Board of Dictators provides.

What are they up to?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ubiquitous, but apparently our presence is thinner in certain regions than in others. We have received reports of a strange incident in Jordan, and due to some resource allocation difficulties we won't be able to send an operative there until tonight, so we are asking all of you who might be in the area to please investigate it as much as possible and send us your info. We are confident that with your help we will be able to tie this to the Parent Corporation. Thanks again for your support!

Another clue

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated, which is why we have had our operatives searching for hints about what the Parent Corporation recovered along with Jacob Gehris's hand. The investigation has advanced enough today that we are able to reveal an important clue. Of course we know more than we are revealing publicly, but we are still trying to protect our investigation from unnecessary complications.

The clue itself may not seem particularly important, but trust us that it is. It seems that the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch knew where the hand was buried as early as April of this year, but they were afraid to act without more knowledge. The clue we found was an entry in the logs for our administrative computer system in the GPD office infiltrated by "Edgar". It read, simply:

[20090612T180942.1233] /home/quisling$ rm -f clapper.cad

The first thing we found interesting is that this command shows that the user who performed this action had root privileges, which we never grant under normal operating circumstances, even to our Counts. We dug through the logs a bit more and found out that our IT manager had been tricked into installing a program that allowed "Edgar" to run an elementary buffer overflow exploit and gain root access so that he could delete a file in quisling's account (our IT manager has had his fingers smashed between a door jamb and a refrigerator as punishment). We were able to recover clapper.cad (which is why our IT manager hasn't been fired), and we recovered partial plans for a Clapper-like device. What is particularly interesting is that these plans were last modified on April 3, 1975, well before the patent was filed for The Clapper. We aren't sure why "Edgar" felt the need to delete these plans, but we suspect, based on the logs, that the plans were copied there by mistake early in his infiltration and that he was attempting to cover his tracks. Based on the surveillance tapes we have of "Edgar" we also suspect that he was using our computer system to try to complete these plans, and that when he discovered a piece of information (which we, unfortunately, still cannot reveal) he realized that the remainder of the plans had not been in the possession of the Company, but buried with the hand of Jacob Gehris. We suspect that the UBHP now has the completed plans, and we are being more-than-usually vigilant to make sure it doesn't adversely affect you!

George, the Hypnotherapist

As George the Cat is now a licensed hypnotherapist, the GNU Public Dictatorship is proud to be the the first organization to invite him on a lecture tour. Check your local GPD office for information about when you can see him!

An unanticipated reason not to change your name.

Many people when they achieve (or want to achieve) fame end up trading their hard-to-pronounce or hard-to-spell name for a name that is nearly monosyllabic or deemed more "appropriate." The examples are many, but include Louis Burton Lindley, Jr (who later became the much more interesting Slim Pickens), Marion Morrison (who later became the infinitely more manly John Wayne), Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili (who changed his name to the much more imposing Josef Stalin).

We have, however, recently uncovered a reason why simplifying your name may not be the best career move. In Sylvaina, Ohio, Royal Barber wrote the names of his opponents in a local race on tombstones in his yard. Mr. Eff was not pleased and asked to have his name removed. Mr. Jennewine, however, was not included in the display as his name would not fit on the tombstone. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not helpful, and we ask you to keep this in mind when debating whether to simplify your name.

What brads do to people

It is difficult to believe, but even in this enlightened age there are still a sizable number of people who are not just ignorant of the dangers of brads, but stubbornly refuse to accept the evidence that shows just how sinister they are. One such individual is Jackie Denise Knott, of Albertville, Alabama, who apparently secured a large cardboard box to the top of her minivan using a homemade brad she constructed with a clothes hanger. It wouldn't have been so bad if her 13-year-old daughter hadn't been riding in this box. At this point it is still unclear whether Jackie is a purveyor of brads or merely an enthusiast, but we are having our Truth About Brads squads investigate. We merely hope that her experience will teach people the folly of trusting brads rather than suggest to them the incorrect conclusion that the child hadn't fallen off the vehicle, so the homemade brad must have been adequate for the task. You never can tell what some people will believe.

Environmentalist overtones

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sensitive to trends in society, and we have realized recently that we may not have enough environmentalist overtones to our blog. While we have always been in favor of taking care of our environment, the new-found fascination with environmentalism in the popular media suggests that we might need to to more. As an example, think of Escape to Witch Mountain, which was adapted to a 1975 film of the same name. Even in the 1995 remake it had no environmental message, but the 2009 installment Race to Witch Mountain has finally been able to join the bandwagon. It's an awful lot like the way patriotism suddenly became popular after the 2001 terrorist attacks and even the very patriotic had to start wearing flag lapel pins in order to not be labeled a terrorist supporter.

Anyway, as a consequence we are auditing all of our standard practices to find out where we can insert our increasingly popular environmentalist messages. We would like to stress that none of our beliefs are changing. We have always taken a strong stance about caring for the environment, but now we'll try to show that concern more overtly so we can blend in with other popular news sources!

Don't try this at home

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to your safety, but we understand that sometimes restrictions on people's actions have no purpose rooted in science (other than irritating people). We have performed many studies, and if you ever wondered why they stopped asking you to turn your cell phone off while in the hospital you now know the answer. Recently we have received a number of complaints about the draconian safety regulations surrounding MRI machines, which is why we had Joy Smith, one of our senior operatives in safety regulation investigation, take her gun into an MRI room in a preliminary study. The results show rather conclusively that this is one safety regulation that won't be repealed any time soon. If she had been fine we would have conducted hosts of tests, but as it is, this is going to be the end of the road for now. We hope you appreciate our investigations and that you will send us any other safety rules you would like put to the test!

Sorting through the allegations

Many of our supporters have asked us how it is that we can somehow get to the heart of the issues the way we do without getting bogged down in conspiracy theories or unimportant tangents. Karen Hartford of Athens, Georgia, stated well what many of our readers have been saying since we started this blog:

"When I browse the web I know I am apt to find unreliable information, but I never have that concern while browsing your blog. I have never once felt misinformed or underinformed about the big issues threatening our society. I wish I knew how you cut through all of the rumors and allegations out there so that other bloggers could be as informative as you are."

We are glad that you find our service informative and helpful, and will do our best to explain how we do it so that others can imitate us more fully. Before we do that, however, we would like to point to an example of how investigation can get easily confused. While the article is an interesting read about several conspiracy theories related to the disappearance of the Arctic Sea cargo ship, it does not help the user to understand what actually happened. The fact that the author may not know is irrelevant, as in many cases people would rather be told what to believe than be given the facts and asked to reach their own conclusions. Without further ado, then, here are our guidelines for better persuasive blogging:

1. Be honest about your own fallibility. Occasionally make rash decisions or make mistakes. This will give an air of authenticity to your posts and will make people believe you more often.
   
2. If you don't know the answer, either guess or make one up. People like it when you tell them things, not when you tell them you don't know things.
3. When short of sources, say things like "everyone know that macaroni was invented in Ireland" or "since people prefer balloon animals to pork and beans." Invoking general knowledge makes people who don't agree with you feel like they are in the minority.

We could go on, but since lists of things for people to improve on generally become less effective after three items, we'll let it stay there. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not helpful!

A breakthrough!

We are pleased to announce that, due mainly to the efforts of our loyal operative "Viktor," we have uncovered some very interesting information that ties up a number of loose ends in both the Quisling incident and the case of the no-longer-missing hand. The breakthrough happened when Ernesto Ruiz of Waco, Texas, presented some information at his local GPD office and was subsequently contacted by "Viktor" (in disguise, of course).

It seems that Ernesto had discovered some documents last summer while supervising a demolition project in nearby Clifton. The documents were found in a vault that also contained a well-preserved human foot. Our lawyers would like us to explain that we do not advocate the actions that Ernesto took next and that we have reprimanded him. Ernesto wanted to avoid entanglements on the project he was working on, so he took the foot surreptitiously, put it in a freezer on his own property and kept the documents in his own safe. He didn't make any official reports, and the only people who knew he had found anything were his son Fabio and one of his friends. Incidentally, we interviewed Fabio and the friend (who shall remain anonymous as he is currently part of another investigation) and found that they knew nothing of the contents of the vault. While we disagree with Ernesto's decision to not notify the authorities, it was this very act that made possible the breakthrough we are announcing today. It's strange how things work out sometimes.

The documents suggest (and DNA testing has confirmed) that the foot belongs to none other than Jacob Gehris. The foot has been sent to the lab that is still studying the hand, and perhaps we'll have some more interesting findings soon. The documents are currently being studied, but they have already filled in the most significant of holes we had in our understanding of recent events. (For the curious, the documents were authenticated by John Reznikoff of University Archives).

We have previously mentioned some of the rumors surrounding the death of Jacob Gehris. One of the lesser-known rumors is that Jacob was killed to prevent him from inventing something the Company did not want released to the world. The documents Ernesto discovered bear this theory out, as they appear to be plans for a sophisticated device (whose purpose and nature will be withheld for now as we aren't sure how much the Parent Corporation knows yet and we don't want to give them more than we have to). The Company, in an apparently-misguided attempt at security, has kept their information about this invention and the whereabouts of the plans scattered in several locations. Over the years much of the information has been lost, but we did recover two such documents from "John" when he turned himself in earlier this year. The Parent Corporation apparently has one or more of these documents, and the belief that we had recovered some from "John" was what apparently spurred "Edgar" to risk his life infiltrating our office. He was able to recover one small detail from our records (the clerk who let it slip has been dealt with), which apparently told him where to look for Jacob's hand.

We're not sure whether the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch recovered any information where they found the hand, but we're sure now that they put it into Hugh Tanner's yard so it would be discovered far from its original location.

As we mentioned earlier we aren't going to disclose the contents of the documents found by Ernesto at this point, but we thought we would let you know that the mystery of the Quisling incident is now much less mysterious and that our recent breakthrough will surely give us the upper hand in our battle against evil!

Another study

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned with your welfare, which is why we commission so many studies. We hope that you, our supporters, appreciate this effort, especially since we rarely ask for the credit when the researchers are done. Most of our operating budget goes into such research.

Anyway, it is with pleasure that we point you to the results of a recent study we commissioned. We set out to answer the question "What makes people violent?" and came up with a variety of studies. The studies about brads and hole punches and violence were completed and published long ago, but this study, which shows how consuming candy as a youngster can lead to violent behavior later in life, has taken much longer to produce. We hope you enjoy it.