The difference

Most of you will have already picked up on the main difference between us and our rivals for world control, but some of you may not have, and even those who have picked up on the difference may not have had a chance to ponder it.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to ruling the world, which is why we are asking for your help to get us there.  But don't worry, we're not going to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming every ten minutes or so to babble on about needing your support until you either give in and donate money or give up and change stations, mostly since we never learned the art of babbling on about something without actually saying anything new or useful or insightful.  None of the members of the Board of Dictators took that elective course, and it has since been removed from the available curriculum at the GNU Public University and most other reputable places of higher learning.

Anyway, back to the main point of this post:  The big difference between us and our rivals is that our rivals expect you all to submit to their will either because you have been incapacitated by addictions to evil office products or because, in the case of "Edgar," you have decided that it is easier to let others think for you.  While we do expect you to submit to our will, we believe that you will do so willingly, since our will will truly be the Will of the People.  By submitting to our will you are really only submitting to your will, and it was you who got to choose your will!  What could be better?  We aren't advocating that you stop thinking for yourselves, and we are violently opposed to addictions, and due to our open nature you will never have to wonder what our goals are or why they are important.  The GPD and its Board of Dictators is, after all, the ideal government!

Appropriate responses

At the GNU Public Dictatorship one of the trickiest things we have to deal with is matching punishment of people who challenge our authority with the seriousness of their opposition.  In most cases this is fairly straightforward.  If someone assaults one of our supporters or operatives, we turn them in to the local courts and charge them with assault.  If they make rude gestures at one of our operatives, our operatives are authorized to return the gestures.  Sometimes, however, punishment is not so obvious.  Occasionally something odd happens, like a window being broken by a random projectile.  In most cases the projectile wasn't intended to break the window but was meant for something else entirely, but due to an error in judgment or perhaps circumstances beyond anyone's control the projectile breaks a window.  In most cases most people would simply ask the person who launched the projectile to pay for replacing the window and may give a lecture about proper safety when using projectiles, but not Jeff Fleming.  His approach was radically different.  After a golfer's stray ball broke one of the windows in his home adjacent to a golf course he exited his home with his shotgun and proceeded to launch (smaller) projectiles back at the golfers at a much higher velocity.  The golfers were injured but not seriously, and the local authorities found that Jeff's approach was inappropriate.

At the GPD it is our stated policy that no method of torture or punishment shall be used by officers or representatives of the GPD unless they have been subjected to the same torture.  We would like to formally ask that our supporters also refrain from using methods of punishment that they have not tried on themselves first.  If Mr. Fleming had used this rule he would not be in trouble with the law, as we doubt he has stood on a golf course and had an angry person wielding a shotgun shoot at him, but we may be wrong as we have not been able to reach Mr. Fleming for comment.  More importantly, however, Mr. Fleming should have reflected on whether shooting someone would be an appropriate response to accidental vandalism.  We're not sure whether he had a punishment chart, but it would have helped him choose the appropriate level of response.  Punishment charts are available at all local GPD County offices and can be obtained by special request as well.  We hope you, our loyal supporters, will use all of the tools available to you!

How not to steal a credit card

In this latest installment in our series of posts aimed at helping potential criminals avoid the pitfalls of simple mistakes we will tackle the topic of stealing credit cards, with the help of this incident.  After all, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to keeping people out of jail!

The first question to be answered when you are considering stealing a credit card is whether it is worth your time to steal the card.  This question is best answered by careful consideration of several factors, including: (1) the items you might be able to purchase with the card before the owner realizes it is compromised and cancels it.  (2) the time of day and the proximity to ways to use the card where ID won't be required, and (3) whether there are other sources of funding available to you.  If you have other sources of funding available, it is nearly always better not to steal the credit card.  If it is the middle of the night or you don't have places in mind where you could use the credit card without arousing suspicion, it is nearly always better to not steal the card.  In the case of David Weber, he was considering stealing from a parking garage late at night and he had no other source of funding.  He was close to a bar, but bars are known to ID people on occasion, and the owner of the vehicle was presumably going to discover the theft by the next morning.  In retrospect it is easy to say that he shouldn't have stolen the card, but the fundamental mistake he made wasn't in choosing to steal the card, it was in choosing how to use the card, which is our next topic.

The next question, assuming you decided to steal the credit card, is what to do with it.  While there are a number of options available to you, many of them don't make sense.  Stealing a credit card to use it as a coaster is probably not wise.  Stealing it to order online and have things shipped to your home is probably a bad option as the shipping info would lead right to you.  Using it to purchase items in a store where surveillance cameras would easily be able to identify you might not be so wise either.  The ideal situation in which to use a card is one in which there are no cameras and the person taking payment wouldn't feel obligated to ask for ID.  The larger a potential purchase the more likely the clerk is to ask for ID, so the ideal situation in which to use a stolen credit card is one in which the purchase price is low and the potential for getting caught using the card is low.  If you properly evaluated whether or not to steal a card in the first place, we presume that you have a good use in mind.  David Weber thought he would use his card to buy beer, which is a small purchase and bars may not require ID for payment of small amounts, and he did look old enough that they weren't likely to card him to see if he was underage.  Unfortunately for David, however, he neglected the last consideration.

The last thing to consider is whether you should use your card in the vicinity from which you stole it.  This is a complicated situation, as to use it farther from the source may arouse the suspicions of the credit card company, but to use it in the immediate area might arouse suspicion of locals who know that you are not the person listed on the card.  The ideal situation is to get far enough away from the source of the card to not run into people who know the card owner, but not so far that you arouse suspicion.  This is perhaps the trickiest part of stealing a credit card, and is the part where David failed.  He used the card in a bar near the parking garage from which he stole it, and, to his dismay, not only was the card owner's name recognized, but the card owner was the bartender to whom he gave the card!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by such needless arrests, and we hope that you will learn from David Weber's poor example and either choose not to steal a credit card or at least choose to follow smarter practices when using stolen credit cards!

Apologies

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not quick to apologize when our decisions inconvenience people or in the rare cases when we are, in fact, wrong.  Although many powerful leaders consider apologies a sign of weakness, at the GPD we believe they are an effective tool and should be used (appropriately, of course) to enhance your image and your credibility.  Which is not to say, of course, that apologies should always be forthcoming.  We might, for example, apologize to our non-human supporters for something some of our human supporters have allegedly done, or apologize to innocent victims of our intelligence operations and compensate them for their inconvenience, but we would never apologize to our enemies.  Okay, so we might apologize to them, but it will almost certainly be a sarcastic apology, unless of course circumstances put us in a situation where we are truly sorry for what we have done or are about to do to them.  But anyway, we generally don't apologize sincerely to our enemies.

In the zero-sum game of politics, however, participants are encouraged to not apologize, as apologies are said to be caused by a lack of conviction.  This is part of what is wrong with the status quo.  We should expect our politicians to be intelligent and to make rational decisions given the information that they have.  If new information becomes available, we should not just allow our politicians to change their decisions, we should expect them to at least reevaluate their positions.  In contrast to what politics often teaches, a politician who throughout his or her life never changes his or her mind on any topic of consequence should be avoided like the plague.  Such politicians are likely to either be stubborn zealots who will ignore evidence that contradicts their opinions or else carefully constructed robots programmed by stubborn zealots.

At the GPD we are sorry we didn't broach this subject earlier, and we sincerely hope that our supporters will allow themselves and others to apologize and to change their minds over time without calling into question their convictions.  And if anyone has a carefully constructed robot programmed by stubborn zealots please take it to your local GPD office as we would love to examine it!

"Edgar"

"Edgar" is continuing to post to his new blog, albeit at a slower pace than we had expected, but his latest appeal is one that we agree with, even if we don't think he's analyzing the information he has correctly or that he is coming to appropriate conclusions.

The GPD has long been against anti-pinkilessness, and according to all the statistics we have about the subject, it has decreased 62.54% over the last year alone.  Some of this is due to better enforcement, but most of it is a genuine desire on the part of younger people to not have the biases their parents had.  In "Edgar's" case we can state that there have been 3,129 documented incidents of anti-pinkilessness directed against him in the past year, but we do not believe that that is the reason his attempt at world domination is not moving as quickly as he had hoped.  The reasons we believe it is not moving quickly are:

• He isn't so popular as he thinks he is.  Many people know him, but they know him only as the face of the evil Parent Corporation.  He hasn't had time to erase that image from the minds of world citizens yet.
• The GNU Public Dictatorship is a better alternative.  We have been working tirelessly in a constant effort to overthrow evil office products for more than a decade, and our efforts have shown results.  "Edgar," while he promises to eliminate these evils, has no record of doing so.
• "Edgar" is moving too quickly.  He expects people to swear their allegiance to him and give up all of their rights all in one fell swoop.  We don't expect you to do both at the same time, and in fact will give you the illusion of rights for as long as it makes you feel comfortable.  If science fiction hasn't taught us anything else, it teaches that societies based on lies that produce collective comfort are the way of the future!

We are still working with "Edgar" and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hopeful that "Edgar" will accept that we are a better alternative and join us rather than competing against us, but we are also nothing if not patient and will wait for him to realize the shortcomings of that approach.

The tragedy of the commons and the GPD

From time to time here at the GNU Public Dictatorship we take time to ensure that our supporters understand what we're all about.  Today we would like to discuss something that Garrett Hardin called "The tragedy of the commons."  The argument, essentially, is that individuals who share property each have a rational motivation to exploit the shared property for their own benefit, even when doing so ruins or otherwise damages the common property.

Mr. Hardin explained this concept in terms of cows grazing on common land.  Each farmer could put an extra cow on the land and therefore increase the benefit to himself as he is able to support an extra cow.  The detrimental effects of additional cows on the common property are not born by the individual farmer, but by the group, which means that each individual farmer either puts more cows on the property and overgrazes the property, or stands by while other farmers put more cows on the property and overgraze it.  Without some mechanism to regulate the common property, the farmers will destroy it.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we follow the open source model, which implies that everyone shares in the ownership of the government.  We expect each of you to dedicate some of your time to being well-informed and knowing what we're up to, which is why we take the time to write these posts.  While the Board of Dictators will be running the world, we all live in it, and so we all need to take ownership of it.  The problem, of course, with common ownership, is what we referred to earlier.  Everyone individually has an incentive to use up the common resource for his or her own benefit.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not prepared for such a situation, as we have enforcers placed at GPD County offices around the world.  Any time someone is found to be consuming too much of the world, an enforcer will be dispatched to ameliorate the situation.  If an individual world citizen is implicated too many times, his or her privileges as a world citizen would have to be revoked, and assuming we have interplanetary spacecraft by then they will be shipped to some other planet not under GPD control.

Just to be clear, the enforcers are only one of a suite of motivational tactics we will use, but they are the most prominent.  We expect our supporters and all world citizens to respect each other and to not incite the tragedy of the commons, but if they won't do it on their own, we will certainly be glad to help!

It's not real lettuce, you know...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to making the New Future better than the old one, which is why we are trying to remove the remaining barriers to the Board of Dictators running the world.  At the same time, however, we caution our supporters to not defy the current institutions too much until the time is ripe for change.  When we posted recently about zero-sum games, we made it clear that the acquisition of currency is a zero-sum game unless individuals are allowed to print their own money, and we guess that Larry Jones did not really understand it when we said that most governments object to individuals creating wealth.  Or perhaps he understood perfectly and was simply taking a risk that he wouldn't be found out, since when he was stopped he tried to eat the counterfeit money.  We're not sure yet since he has been taken into custody and our request to interview him was denied.

No matter what his reasons for creating or otherwise obtaining the counterfeit bills, however, Larry should not have eaten them when confronted by police.  No sane person would eat money he or she believed to be real, so by eating the money Larry was admitting that he knew it wasn't real, and by extension that he knew he was passing counterfeit bills.  If he wanted to avoid a long jail sentence his best bet would probably have been to plead ignorance and say he either found the bills or was given them by a stranger or something else that would be hard to disprove.  Just to reiterate, at the GPD we do not advocate counterfeiting or other schemes that governments frown upon, but we do hope things will keep getting better! (and how could they not, once we're in power?)

A blog

Apparently "Edgar" made good on his promise to start a blog, but the execution looks a bit amateurish.  We hope he can achieve happiness, but we don't think he will persuade many people to accept Rule By "Edgar" any time soon.  On another note, the Parent Corporation is now being investigated by the SEC for "irregularities."  How exciting!

Oh yeah...

In our post from yesterday we implied that someone was taking our language and spinning it in an abusive way, but regrettably, we neglected to mention what it was that got our dander up as we assumed you must know.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sorry that you didn't know what we were talking about.  For those who still don't know what we were referring to or who claim you do but hope we will make it explicit so you can pretend you knew all along, we are talking about this cost-saving scheme in rural China.  Rather than characterizing it as what it is, which is discrimination based on geography and income levels, they called it "BYOD" (Bring Your Own Desk).  While it is marketed as a cost-saving technique to encourage initiative among students and attempts to borrow from our (now defunct) BYOO (Bring Your Own Office) experiment, it is clearly nothing more than corruption and improper routing of educational resources.  Perhaps they did not read the post in which we concluded that BYOO was not worth pursuing, or perhaps the translation they read was incorrect, but we think it more likely that they chose to label it "BYOD" to try to put a good face on what is a contemptible practice.  The GPD is investigating the situation and trying to figure out whether we can get desks for these underprivileged students or whether they will have to wait for us to expand our influence further in China.  Incidentally, China recently upgraded the GPD from "Undesirable" to "Uncertain" so we are hoping for huge growth.  China has a roaring brad industry, which is probably why they despise us, but in recent years their profit margin on brads has decreased, so they are much more amenable to the idea that they may stop producing them altogether.  We'll see.

Regrettable

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not disappointed when individuals or organizations such as governments around the world take some of our terminology and apply it to programs that are diametrically opposed to our own programs.  We know that we are not alone in this, as evidenced by the co-opting of the phrase "Internet Freedom" by politicians to mean almost the opposite of its original intent.  Both major US parties embrace "Internet Freedom," but by that phrase they do not mean that they support the right of all to use the network, but that they support the freedom of copyright holders and the freedom of service providers.  This convolution and re-assignment of terminology has also produced the debate of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.  The astute observer would notice that both sides of the debate are for something, and that by definition, then, everyone agrees and there is no debate.  But there is a debate, and they do not agree.  This clever word-trickery allows politicians to hide their evils and to denigrate their opponents, but it isn't limited to politics.  Many times this sort of thing ends up dividing society and shaping the opinions of the masses so that discrimination or other practices that harm certain individuals are encouraged.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are for equal rights for all, and if you don't agree with our definition of equal rights you are welcome to petition us to change our stance.  After all, you have equal rights as well!

Another note from "Natasha"

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not confused about "Natasha's" long-term loyalties.  She recently abandoned her post and married our former nemesis, but she did so not out of disdain for us or love for our former nemesis's former occupation, but out of everyday love.  Although she hid her infatuation from us quite skillfully, several of our well-placed-but-tricky-to-contact-quickly sources confirmed that they had their suspicions quite a while ago.  The situation gets even less clear when you consider that "Edgar" still wants to rule the world, but he swears he does not want to do so with evil office products.  In some ways he wants to fight along side the GPD, and in some ways he wants to crush it.  "Natasha's" latest note to us, while it does provide some clarity, raises even more questions about where she and "Edgar" want to be.  Here is the text of her latest note:

To Whom it May Concern:
While I regret that I am no longer able to continue my employment as an operative for the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators, I would like to make it clear that I still have the skills and the motivation to fight evil office products in whatever form they may take.  I still intend to ruin the Parent Corporation, the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, the New Company, and any other institution that tries to push these instruments of evil on society.  In the last few days I have been attempting to perform some missions on my own, but I have noticed that it is more difficult than it used to be.  For one thing my profile is much higher since I defected, and for another I do not have the team I used to have.  I am writing this note to ask whether I might be permitted to join in GPD missions where my skills would be an asset and where my profile would not compromise the mission.
Sincerely,
"Natasha"

We have considered her note in our board meetings and have agreed that she can still work with us on missions where her new loyalties will not compromise the situation.  We wish it was less complicated, but at lease we're learning more about where her loyalties lie!

A blog?

"Edgar" has recently contacted our operatives to let them know that he is starting a blog where he will tell the world how awesome he is and why we should let him rule the world.  He then started listing the reasons why we should let him do so.  In the interest of brevity, we'll include only his top seven.  The list he gave our operatives included 29.

1. "Edgar" is a family man.
2. "Edgar" is smarter than you.
3. "Edgar" has your best interests at heart
4. "Edgar" and "Natasha" are well-traveled in the world of aspiring world leaders and know how to avoid many of the pitfalls
5. "Edgar" and "Natasha" will not require you to vote, but you can if you want to.  It won't make a difference, though, since votes will not be counted.
6. "Edgar" and "Natasha" will do the right thing regardless of what everyone says they should do
7. "Edgar" and "Natasha" will soon have a blog.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical that "Edgar" will be able to attract a large audience with a blog, especially when he claims to be smarter than you and unresponsive to your input.  We have successfully used this blog for several years now, but we have succeeded because of your support.  We pledge not to become so out of touch with your needs that we presume to dictate what you will do without due process and meetings of the Board of Dictators!

Some excerpts from our applications

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with excellence wherever we find it, which is why we continue to accept applications to the Board of Dictators in spite of the fact that in the history of the GPD only one applicant has ever succeeded in joining the Board of Dictators.  This year's crop of applicants looks promising, as is evidenced by (most of) the following (anonymized for now) excerpts from some of our applications*:

For Topic A: Explain what is wrong with the status quo, and provide concrete suggestions to improve it.

"...The status quo is wrong because the power is in the hands of the wrong people.  I propose that we build cement conduits to carry the power to the hands of the right people..."

"...I think that the best thing we can all do to improve the status quo is to stop accepting it as inevitable.  Sure, by definition the status quo is what it is, but why do we have to accept that?  Why shouldn't we all decide that the status quo is what it should be instead of what it is?  I have been promoting this idea in spite of my court-appointed therapist's objections for some time with little success, but I think that in the right venue I could really make a difference..."

For Topic D:  While we have known about the dangers of evil office products for quite some time, many world citizens still use them “professionally.” Many justify it by saying that their employers expect them to do so or that it isn’t affecting them, but recent studies show that more than half of “professional” evil-office-product users are addicted to them. “Natasha’s” recent bout with evil sticker addiction should serve as a warning to us all of how easy it is to become an addict. Please explain what motivates you to actively fight against even casual “professional” use of evil office products and how you would use your appointment to the Board of Dictators to keep everyone safe from these pernicious products.

"...'Professional' use of office products may seem like 'the thing to do' since everyone else does it, but I have successfully changed the culture in my office such that not only do we not use brads and hole punches, but we do not use anything on the GPD's watchlist of potentially evil office products.  I had three assistants that refused to cooperate, but now that all of the office is participating they keep each other in line and report any evil office product use before it becomes a pattern.  I would expand this pattern by..."

"...'Natasha' was weak, but we are all weak.  I recently had to refuse to use a hole punch at work, and was cited for it.  I appealed to HR and said that my religious and political views oppose the use of such instruments of evil, but I was ridiculed.  I ended up losing the position, but I am glad I did not give in.  People should not have to choose between their jobs and their convictions, and if I have anything to do with it they won't have to..."

We are encouraged by the quality and quantity of applicants so far, and we look forward to seeing your application if you have not already submitted it!

*As non-human supporters are not required to fill out the application, these answers are all from human applicants.  As we narrow the field for non-human applicants we will post some more information about them and their qualifications.

Keep Applying!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not surprised by the volume of the applications we are already receiving this application year.  We have already received more applications in the first week than in all previous "elections."  It all goes to show that our work is being recognized by more and more people as a prestigious, if not a lucrative, career.  Some of this may be due to our work with our non-human supporters. After all, they outnumber humans on the planet by a large factor.  If you haven't applied yet, please hurry and do so.  While the GNU Public Dictatorship "election" is not zero-sum, early applications show more initiative and are thus ranked slightly higher than those that barely make the deadline!

Out-of-order packet delivery

When we received a recent note from "Natasha" where she asked to be removed from her duties, we were confused because we could not conceive that given the time between her escape and the note that she thought we hadn't found out what had happened, especially since her new husband had already contacted us.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship, however, we are nothing if not resourceful, which is why we investigated it in depth.  As it turns out, the GNU Public Dictatorship usually uses a mail system based on TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), which is both reliable and guarantees in-order delivery of messages rather than one based solely on IP (Internet Protocol) which makes no such guarantees.  Our mailmen usually use various mechanisms to re-send lost messages and to route the messages in such a way that they arrive in a timely manner, but sometimes the mail system is down and messages must be sent using traditional couriers.  In this case it appears that a courier took "Natasha's" message on a rather large detour through the steppes of central Asia and got stuck in customs before being re-routed to our headquarters, but because "Natasha" had requested in-order delivery we didn't initially suspect that it was clearly not received in the order in which it was sent.  "Natasha's" message actually originated a few minutes after she escaped from the reality simulator, which makes a lot more sense.  It just goes to show that we can't always take everything at face value!

Painters vs. Artists

People in society often make simplifying assumptions about each other in order to make decisions, such as the notion that the most important factor in a work crew (in whatever discipline) is the number of people it contains.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not convinced that the complexity of human interactions should not be reduced to a game of numbers.  As it is our mission to help world citizens, we will take some time now to explain what we mean by this.

In some jobs, increasing the number of workers does create a nearly linear increase in productivity, and what's more, any able-bodied adult can generally contribute about as much to the outcome as any other outcome.  That is to say, the participants are completely interchangeable and the work is nearly completely parallelizable.  If, for instance, you give paint brushes to 5 capable adults and ask them to paint a wall it will generally take about twice as long as giving brushes to 10 capable adults and asking them to paint a similarly-sized wall.  As another example, adding a second clerk at a fast food counter will generally double the order-processing speed, but this example has a subtle difference: not all fast food employees will be equally efficient with taking orders and processing payment.  In this case, taking the employee who was trained as a janitor and asking him or her to run the register would be less efficient than an employee specifically trained for this purpose.

The difference becomes more pronounced as the skills required to perform a task well become more difficult to acquire.  When you talk about a task such as carbon-dating a fossil, a person trained for the task is nearly infinitely better at performing the task than a standard wall-painting adult.  The realm of art is another where skill is required, but more importantly, where throwing more people at a task rarely makes it go faster.  Few are the paintings that were completed in half the time because two great artists collaborated.

Some world leaders, generally those who don't have an enlightened form of government like the GNU Public Dictatorship, tend to view people as interchangeable minions and compare themselves to other world leaders by the number of people they subjugate, not by the quality thereof.  At the GPD, we promise to evaluate not just your number, but also your value to society before we boast to other world leaders, but, more importantly, we will use you where you are most productive, and not ask you to restore a fresco in a Spanish church without ensuring that you have been properly trained to do so.

A Note from "Natasha"

We recently received a note from "Natasha" that apologizes for her failure to attend work and asks to be relieved of her duties as an operative, citing "family issues" as reasons for her absence.  We have to assume that she knows that we know she married our former nemesis "Edgar" and is working to rule the world with him, but it is possible, however unlikely, that she is delusional and doesn't think we know.  We have responded to her note granting her request to be relieved of duty and wishing her luck in her new life.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hopeful that things will turn out for the best, regardless of what they may look like now!

The GNU Public Dictatorship Board of Dictators "Election": A Clarification

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened that we must make this clarification, but it seems that when we posted the application materials yesterday and simultaneously asked the press to release more information we should not have relied on them.  The press apparently ignored our request and angered many of our non-human supporters.  While most of our non-human supporters were irked and simply contacted their local GPD offices for clarification, there were a few that could not control their anger and commenced to demonstrate violently against our perceived discrimination.

Many of our human supporters (most of whom give little to no thought about the non-human life they encounter) may be asking, "What is this perceived injustice?" or "Why would they want to demonstrate against the GNU Public 'Election'?" but if you are, please refrain from doing so out loud and revealing your insensitivity.  Our announcement yesterday in this forum focused solely on our human supporters wishing to join the board, and our asking of questions such as "what is your credit card number?" could easily be construed as biased, as there are very few non-humans who have been granted the privilege of having a credit card, and most banks agree that these are based on factually incorrect applications.  In fact, it is the stated policy of nearly every bank (actually every bank we can find except the Saga Garden Bank, which failed three years ago) to deny applications of non-human organisms.  Many of our non-human supporters took this to mean that they were not welcome to apply for membership in the Board of Dictators, but they were wrong.

The application materials we posted online apply only to human applicants.  Non-human applicants were supposed to be notified via the normal press that "elections" would be held at their local GPD offices.  Applicants who impressed their local officers would be put in contact directly with the Board of Dictators, who would then meet with them and decide whether their talents merit their joining the Board.  We had initially attempted to create an application form for non-human supporters, but we tried to decide what the common characteristics of all forms of life were and found that there were very few, such as being able to reproduce, digest, and respond to stimuli.  Since these characteristics would be readily apparent in an interview, we decided to forgo the application itself.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sorry that we got some of you worked up, but we hope that you will apply as soon as possible at your local GPD offices!

What you have all been waiting for!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to ruling the world in the best manner possible, which is why we periodically hold "elections" that allow world citizens who are not currently members of the Board of Dictators to apply for membership therein.  Nearly all of our supporters are capable and driven, but that is not enough for those who want to be part of the Board of Dictators.  The Board requires exceptional talents and dedication, and provides few tangible rewards.  Even so, we are proud to announce that as of today we are accepting applications!

In our last election cycle we introduced a new twist, where potential Board members were asked to contribute to this forum.  While the precise evaluation methods used will be determined after the bulk of the applications have been received, it is expected that serious applicants will work with us during the approvals process.  We will be accepting applications from now through November 6, 2012, when we will close the "election" and proceed to further evaluation of serious candidates.  Please be aware that by submitting an application you are authorizing us to perform a full background check, including, but not limited to such things as permanent school records, blood tests, and financial "checks."

The application materials posted below are available in international and US versions in both pdf and docx formats.  Viewers are available for both document formats for most operating systems.  Please fill the application out electronically and submit it to us online.  Please note that applications without required fields will be immediately rejected.

Version	Word	PDF
US	US2983-2012M	US2983-2012M
International	W2983-2012J	W2983-2012J

Another failed experiment

Since the Greban experiment the New Company has been working tirelessly to create monsters that can enforce its vision of society on the rest of us.  One of their more dastardly schemes was a plan to create giant mutant cat creatures.  While kittens are cute, everyone knows that cats become less cute as they become larger, and making them enormous would, by extension, make them hideous and abominable.  Our operatives thought that this operation had been abandoned after several failed experiments, but apparently the New Company has sunk lower than we had thought.  They convinced an otherwise-innocent eight-year-old boy to microwave his neighbor's cat.  No doubt they told him it would create an abominable giant mutant cat creature, but, to his dismay, it did little more than injure the cat.

Our operatives have been scouring the are for clues since the incident, and we have found several sensors and recording devices.  Apparently this "experiment" was a field trial for their new abominable cat creature program, which is still in the planning phases.  Most (non-evil) scientists wait until the lab trials are encouraging before trying field trials, and most evil scientists will wait until their is at least a glimmer of hope before hooking their machines up to themselves or others, but this is a new low.  Executing experiments as part of a field test before any successful lab trials is unconscionable.  We have seen great evil coming from the New Company, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not appalled that they would enlist help from small innocent boys or harm small innocent cats.  "Gertrude" must be even more evil than we thought.