A Collection of The Futile... Or Worse
Read about the futile ways people spend their lives, engaged in activities that don't amount to anything.
Add your own stories or observations to the mix. Surely this isn't a futile time-wasting activity...?

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23		 2008-05-07 01:28:43
eddiec sez:		 Futility, thy name is....

Hillary Clinton's attempt to catch up to Barack Obama by participating in primaries and caucuses. If you aren't familiar with Slate.com's Delegate Calculator, you will see that the more Clinton competes, the further behind she gets. Move the red slider at the top of the page until the box at the bottom says, "Clinton is ahead...":
  • 3/03/08: Clinton needed to win 60% of the remaining vote to pull ahead of Obama in the delegate count.
  • 3/06/08: Clinton needed 62% of the remaining vote.
  • UPDATE 3/12/08: Clinton needed 63% -- Recall that Clinton hasn't won ANY state by more the 60% so far.
  • UPDATE 3/17/08: Clinton needed 63% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida
  • UPDATE 3/20/08: Clinton needed 64% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida -- now more unlikely than before
  • UPDATE 4/09/08: Clinton needed 65% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 60% WITH Michigan & Florida
  • UPDATE 4/23/08: Clinton needed 68% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 61% WITH Michigan & Florida
  • UPDATE 4/28/08: Clinton needed 70% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 61% WITH Michigan & Florida
  • UPDATE 5/07/08: Clinton needs 86% WITHOUT Michigan & Florida / 67% WITH Michigan & Florida
I'm reminded of an (American) football game where the team that's behind needs a 7-point touchdown to win, but only gets a 3-point field goal. They may be happy to have gained any points at all, but they're still going to lose.

So now we watch while Clinton's old-style bare-knuckle politics tries to find ways to change the rules of the game.
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10		 2008-05-02 07:35:32
eddiec sez:

Futility, a novel that eerily predicted the sinking of the Titanic

From the oracle Wikipedia comes Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan:
Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan was an 1898 novella written by Morgan Robertson. The story features the ocean liner Titan which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. The Titan and its sinking have been noted to be very similar to the RMS Titanic which sank fourteen years later.
If only the captain of the Titanic had read this book! The loss of life was... what would be a good word... ah! FUTILE!. But I don't suppose the ship's librarian would have stocked it...

Now something to brighten our day. Yes, it's the Titanic Adventure Slide!. Think of the fun you can have reliving that tragedy! Perfect for Bon Voyage parties:



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12		 2008-04-19 06:29:41
eddiec sez:

Futility in Parliament (UK)

Simon Carr: Things can get quite exciting in Parliament, but you wouldn't know it most of the time
the one fatal symptom is the sense of futility that hangs around so many occasions in the Commons. And what is futility in politics? It is powerlessness. The sense that words will not work. That however strong the argument, the whip will not change. That nothing in the room will ... happen.
...more...

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19		 2008-04-13 11:49:02
eddiec sez:

Unbelievably Good Sisyphus Animation

by Marcell Jankovics

YouTube link
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16		 2008-04-13 11:46:38
eddiec sez:

Sisyphus: The Myth

Please visit MythWeb.com for the full article:

Sinner condemned in Tartarus to an eternity of rolling a boulder uphill then watching it roll back down again. Sisyphus was founder and king of Corinth, or Ephyra as it was called in those days. He was notorious as the most cunning knave on earth. ...more...
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21		 2008-04-13 11:45:03
eddiec sez:

More futility in the news...

Hurriedly organised Sindh Games prove exercise in futility:
By Anwar Zuberi

KARACHI, Feb 16: As anticipated, the 11th Sindh Games which concluded at Sukkur on Friday turned out to be an exercise in futility. The biennial games were hurriedly announced without taking the country’s general elections into consideration and were preceded by turmoil in rural Sindh in the aftermath of Benazir’s assassination.
...more...

No word about results from the decathlon: 100m dash away from rioters, Long jump over the border, Molotov Cocktail throw, ...

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22		 2008-04-13 11:42:38
eddiec sez:

Olympic protests' history of futility

by Tim Rutten

From The Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2008: Olympic protests' history of futility
Poetry, as Auden famously instructed us, changes nothing -- and neither, despite all the predicted turmoil in San Francisco today, do the Olympics.
Chinese conduct in Tibet and Sudan is reprehensible, so all this drama is cathartic in the way protests tend to be. But whether it will have much effect on China's behavior is another question altogether. If history is any guide, the answer is no.

...more...

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21		 2008-03-30 07:58:48
eddiec sez:		 Comparing Sen. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton's campaign to another futile effort:

From Prose Before Hos:
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22		 2008-03-30 07:48:17
eddiec sez:

Other places to find futility:

Technorati

del.icio.us

Icerocket

YouTube
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23		 2008-03-27 20:48:45
eddiec sez:

And again about torture... this time from Slate.com

Taxonomy of Torture

By Phillip Carter What is torture? Euphemisms like "stress position" cover a wide range of practices, from the merely uncomfortable to the wickedly cruel and painful. At Slate, we have wrestled with the definitions of abuse and torture and how best to present these morally and legally complicated terms. The taxonomy follows the legal maxim of res ipsa loquiturlet the thing speak for itself. The tactics below are listed in order from least to most severe. ...read more...
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