Jack Williamson has died

One of the greatest names in science fiction, Jack Williamson, died yesterday in his study, surrounded by friends and family. Born in 1908, his first story was published when he was just 20 and his most recent novel was published last year, in 2005. He gave us the terms "terraforming" and "genetic engineering". Over his 98 years he published 43 novels and countless short stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/jack-williamson/

unemployment figures

I keep hearing politicians trumpeting about the unemployment figures. But nobody really knows what the unemployment figures are anymore. The politicians keep distorting the figures by all manner of shifty techniques.

They move unemployed people onto pensions and sickness benefits. They outsource employment services then use wicked contracts to force the contractors to throw people off the dole. They use work-for-the-dole to make it look like people are employed. They define the problem away by redefining employed as working at least one hour per week!!!

The politicians do this out of short-sighted expediency to make themselves look good. Then when the figures unsurprisingly show what they've been massaged to show, the politicians do the most stupid thing of all -- they believe their own lies and change public policy to run the country as if the figures were real.

The worst part of this is not that it screws everybody over good and proper, but that now nobody really knows what the truth is. The figures that are meant to tell us are a fabrication. Nobody knows. This is just insane!