Regardless of the names of the people in the government or how flamboyant they are about their desire to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer, it is a simple, persistent goal of society to do so. This hierarchical arrangement is, in our minds, the “natural” order of things. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Communist, whatever… human nature and in fact nature in general demands that we act as competitive beasts. We are simply not evolved enough as a race to exist in a truly equal, truly free society, a “utopian” world. We don’t really want that. Of that much I am sure.

Just as evil must exist to define good, poor people must exist in order for rich people to be debaucherous. Without suffering there can be no joy. Based on this, those in power will endeavor to keep it. Regardless of how obfuscated or obvious their efforts are, the results will be the same.

Money is power. Power is energy. Energy is the ability to do work. Work is change, motion, acceleration, advancement, evolution, etc.

*See Shon’s Law of Energy below

Maybe O.J. can give Saddam some tips on how the “real” U.S. legal system works… I’m sure he’ll feel right at home once it gets explained to him.

OJ: “No no.. see it’s really no different than your old government Saddam, if you have enough wealth and power you can do whatever you want.”
Saddam: “Sweeeeeet.”

Well… If you’re smart you’ll fold protein. You see… there are good folks out there that are trying to cure cancer, aids, Alzheimer’s, ms and everything else. And they need your help.

Here’s the straight dope: The cures to these diseases lie in the molecular mysteries of how our bodies work. Protein folding involves a big giant computer trying to simulate these low-level biological processes. Once we can simulate them we can understand them and cure them when they go awry.

Here’s how you can help: You can start using all those wasted CPU cycles to cure disease. See, the big computer used in these simulations is actually a bazillion little volunteer computers acting as one. Each person’s computer does a little bit of the work on a really large problem, and huge problems actually become solvable. This is called “distributed computing” and it is a blessing born from the Internet, abundantly fast PC’s and some very smart engineers. The best part is it costs you nothing, you are donating tiny little slices of CPU time that you weren’t using anyway and will never miss. It’s like being able to instantly feed all of the starving people in the world with your leftovers.

How’s it work? Simple. Computers are funny neurotic little things. If they aren’t doing something every nanosecond of the day they go nuts. In order to keep them sane, we give them “dummy work” to keep them busy… we make them actively think about nothing. In Windows this dummy work is aptly named the System Idle Process. When your computer isn’t busy doing something for you, (99% of the time) it’s busily working away on nothing. The “Folding at Home” program replaces the dummy work with work that cures diseases. Replacing the dummy work ensures that you’ll never notice that your computer is being a hero. It only works on curing a disease when you are NOT working on it. You may think you use your computer a lot but believe me you don’t… one minute is an ETERNITY for a modern computer. I use mine pretty hard for about 15 hours every day and it still has lots of time to do it’s hero’s work.

Fold a protein, save a life. It might be just that simple. Remember kids, you may be a useless waste of space but your computer doesn’t have to be! =)