A Series of Unfortunate Bankers

No, this won't be Yet Another article about skullduggery and malfeasance in the financial industry (motto: "Enabling assholes since the very concept of money was invented") because like cancer and reality shows, the world already has plenty-if-not-too-much of them.

In fact, this episode of Why We're Doomed will be a quick one because I want to get right to the stupefyingly tone-deaf punchline as soon as I can.

I mean yes, what follows is a prime example of a stupid and unnecessary mistake, leading to years of torment for an innocent man who ultimately keeled over dead in court while fighting a faceless bureaucracy which was defending a meaningless typo with taxpayer-funded armies of soulless, money-grubbing misanthropes.

But this is 2013, so that's not much worse than par for the course, sadly.

Someone Will Actually Die While You Read This

You may need to take a chill pill after reading this little story about Big Pharma.

Honestly I never thought I'd be writing about pharmaceutical companies in this blog - doesn't everybody already hate them? What could I possibly add to the subject?

Their public image is already drowning in enough angry bile to flood a mass grave and nobody expects them to behave with any more civility, altruism or far-sightedness than a rabid goat which is being stung by wasps and has only a flamethrower to defend itself with (I tried to find an illustration but this was the best I could do - sorry, the goat in the picture is not actually rabid)

So I expected to steer clear of the whole pharma-cabal area. But then I read about this, and I kept reading, and finally something in my innards was inspired to secrete just a bit more bile - not my liver, that's long since dried up... I think maybe it was my Islets of Langerhans or something?

Training Wheels for Congressmen?

What, another Pacific Northwest legislator with daffy ideas about taxation and the environment? I could open up a whole new blog about these nincompoops...

It was only a few weeks ago when we covered the scintillating idea from Oregon’s elected officials that people who drive hybrid cars should be taxed more. Their neighbor to the north has not been idle, however, and now Washington state Representative Ed Orcutt has fired a fresh salvo against rationality from more or less the same type of artillery.

Sponsored Detours En Route to Doom

The first rule of advertising since time immemorial, is that every blank surface represents someone losing money from not having an ad on it.

But if you’ve seen some places lately (Las Vegas, Hong Kong, the 4th-9th circles of Hell) you’ll understand that just like endangered species, polar ice and unemployed third-world children, we’re rapidly running out of unsold blank surfaces in our environment. So 21st century advertisers will need to become more devious.

There’s no reason to fear for the future of the ad industry and all its little tapeworm-like denizens, however… the principles of evolution apply even to the lowest life forms. (which is - say it with me - why we’re doomed!)