Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a RIM technician!

Does anyone really wonder why a lot of the world hates the U.S. and its brand of laissez-faire capitalism more generally? A lot of people claim to, but they seem to miss the more subtle, often cultural cues.

They do get part of it right, in that a large part of it has to do with envy — envy that something as frivolous as "Blackberry Thumb" can be a person's sole reason for visiting a doctor.

If there are any doctors to be had, that is. Because, you know, doctors live just around the street corner everywhere in the world, just like milk and apples come from your local supermarket conglomorate.

Behold, the ridiculously small-minded American excecutive. Your thumb hurts? Boo-hoo. Either work out or stop typing so many useless e-mails! You aren't providing leadership or clarity, you're cluttering the already-saturated information channels of your colleagues.

Also, for those of you that aren't aware, Research In Motion (RIM) are the makers of the Blackberry, which has become ubiquitous in the modern business environment. The title has nothing to do with rimming, though that would make for an extremely amusing title.

"What do you do?"

"Not much, just working as a RIM technician right now, looking to get into something a bit more advanced later on. You know, something that stretches my skills a bit."

" ... I'll bet you are!"

Though it is said that developing world countries are contracting our maladies, so I guess they are going to need a lot of RIM technicians after all.

All this text is making my fingers cramp ... medic!

Walking home from bowling I had a thought: the current Industrial Revolution (e.g., 'modern' society post 1700-ish) is experiencing a condensed form of resource abuse in the same style as agriculture did. The Middle East used to be quite habitable, and there is evidence to suggest intensive farming by humans is a large part of the reason it's so arid today (not universally). Until people thought of things like crop rotation or terraced farming, we were on a path to self-destruction (albeit over a much longer time horizon and with a lot lower public knowledge of the consequences). Industry finds itself in the same predicament today, whether it cares to admit it or not.

My hope/dream is that we can one day find new ways to fully make use of the land, in the same way modern farmers have been able to (and like native Americans used to in their hunting). If we could live in a "carbon neutral" society, whereby we exhausted only those emissions absorbed by plants through photosynthesis, or didn't emit anything beyond negligible emissions at all, that would truly be a great achievement for civilization.

To pay proper homage to our vanity, MySpace and Facebook should merge to become MyFace.

goddammit! (looks fake though)

Random thought: "no external being can do more than distract us from ourselves." Yup, that sounds just about right: the perfect philosophy for the angst-filled, single, and childless! w00t!

A human behavioral universal: "The surest path to failure is that of least communication."

I don't know if anyone's said it before me (Google agrees I'm the first to string that particular string of characters together in such an order in recent, technologically-documented history (lol, can we have BC, AD, and TD - technologically documented? or maybe DD - digitally documented or ADHD - All Documented on Hard Disk)).

Yes, I use nested parens, because my logic be so wicked thick the standard syntaxes wilt under its force. :oP

I think I'm becoming de-sensitized to stupidity.

I mean, I'm all for discrimination against fat people, but what are overweight people supposed to do? Avoid looking in the mirror? Become even more delusional? Skinny American girls will not only starve themselves whole-heartedly (now that they're going to be encouraged by their mothers to focus even more of their waking hours on their body image) but they're also going to be hit by buses more often as they recklessly swivel their heads away from fat people crossing intersections.

Personally, I say confront a caloric monster and either knock the food from their hand or run circles around them while poking them with a stick. They'll soon tire of trying to swat at you and since you're filling their vision they'll be even more motivated ("prodded" even) to envision themselves as being skinnier, lighter, and less prone to furniture collapse.

European attitudes toward sex, Part II:

prostitute monument!

(a nice complement to the Homomonument)

However, in a lame attempt to pre-emptively put Europe to shame, the US has its own, not nearly as nice, monument. However, it is only for a single prostitute.

Nothing to compare to an entire society for greater prostitution awareness!

I dub myself the Oracle of Cynicism. Check these extrapolations from a single news article:

1) Corporations don't give a shit about your average worker. What is GOOD FOR YOU IS BAD FOR THEM. Case in points:

"The average hourly wage jumped 8 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $17.04, versus forecasts for a 0.3 percent increase."

How does Wall Street respond?

"On Wall Street, stock and bond prices fell as the report raised inflation concerns and dashed hopes that the Fed might cut interest rates soon."

"Stock traders basically got a little bit of good news on employment front since they were worried about weakness, but they'll be concerned about the wages," said Anthony Chan, chief economist for JPMorgan Private Client Services.

They want workers to work more for less, DESPITE the US's consumer-driven economy:

"Chan said the report could show that consumers will keep spending at higher than expected levels, which could limit any expected slowdown in the economy this year. "Betting against consumers is like betting against the house at the casino," he said."

2) You may think that's hypocrisy, but this is even better:

""This is further evidence that the president's economic policies are working and producing strong wage gains for America's workers, and we should be cautious of future policies that would slow these gains," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement."

Ohhhmmmm ... ohhhhhmmmmm ... I'm seeing a vision ... it's ... it's President Bush and his minions ... they're opposing something vehemently ... the blue-blooded, overpaid failures of executives and felons within the administration are opposing ... RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE.

Wait, hold on ... the Democratss are being labeled as being just as bad as the bloodsucking Republicans for not both raising the minimum wage AND tying it to inflation, so that it'd actually be somewhat fair. Possibly even livable. The conservative pundits insinuate they're failing to push their agenda through due to lack of leadership, but the situation is a result of the Dems being forced to compromise with the unyielding Republicans, who'll allow a lower wage hike as long as they can piggyback something on the bill ... what is it ... I see numbers and ... oh it's another corporate kickback to make the "transition" more bearable for corporations. And also more 'competitive', at your expense.

Hard is Easy

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People often wonder how how I find so many odd links online. Today I searched 'ferrous' online just to be sure I had the definition correct. This was on the first page of the Google results. Check out 'filthy scum.'

Also hucking filarious, especially the karaoke version.

New corporate acronyms
Demonstrating an Understanding of Marginal Benefits - DUMB
usage - "Man, I remember when Ford bought a stake in Mazda. They were dumb."

Corporate take on poetry: Process-Oriented Emotive Mechanism - POEM

Finally, if you're wondering what the tone of my book will be like, this is a good indicator :-P

Random thoughts I had to purge from my mind:

1 Those who most worry about the afterlife are those who fear death most.

2 It's weird to think how much money has changed. Imagine it's 1800's America and you've got a few cents. You could buy quite a bit for less than a dollar. (I'll look up what the housing prices could have been like, but even recent examples illustrate the point.)

For the sake of argument, imagine a house in 1820 is $2000. Today, say a house of a similar size would run you say $200,000. Now, I'm not interested in the exact numbers and the inflation rates, currency adjustment, changes in technology, etc., but what's interesting to me is the principle. If you had 10 cents in 1820, the value of that was a lot more than today. The money was worth more relative to your house and also could buy you more in the store. Yet in both instances it may have been necessary to mortgage your home in order to be able to afford it. One would think that we'd be less attune today to things like those marginal sales at most retailers (10% off this, 30 cents off that - with coupon, etc.), yet if anything those types of minor discounts and disparities, in sales, loan rates, etc., are more prevalent than ever before. Who would have conceived of a second mortgage in 1820, let alone 1950? Yet they're happening today, with all sorts of minute differences in rates between various lenders.

Aside from all the formal (governmental and financial institutions) changes to currency, it's interesting that cents, such as they are today, are still valued. To a large extent, I believe this is a result of economies of scale. In 1820, your local tailor may gripe over a penny would have been because that penny had real purchasing power - not because it would or would not cost his shareholders (like he'd have any!) so many thousands of dollars. Today, we may not gripe over pennies, but we do gripe over all sorts of values under $1 - despite the fact that those cents are far less valuable to us than they possibly ever have been. Part of this is also because we're so hyper-aware of prices in our intense consumer atmosphere, but behind that intense consumerism looms the giant corporations who make or lose millions on our pennies. It's in their best interests to keep meticulous track of every penny to maximize their profits and offer consumers appropriate incentives to sell their products.

I'm not saying we should be frivolous with our money. This is a principle that very much cuts both ways. If anything, the focus on small denominations of money is a good thing in general, as it should foster much-needed fiscal responsibility on both the corporations' and consumers' parts.

I'm merely fascinated by the fluidity of our monetary construct.

3 As history progresses along its spiral, we seem to be heading (and all distopian novels echo this) toward a society in which "the state" (primarily government, but increasingly corporations) supersedes the family as the societal 'safety' net. Corporations are obviously reluctant to fill this role (and certainly don't do so out of any obligations to moral or altruistic constructs), but they still provide pensions so they do participate. The government is still primarily responsible for wealth distribution and this is the role which used to be played primarily by the extended 'family' - e.g., tribe - in more ancient Western cultures (or in some non-Western cultures even today).

I wonder how much this has to do with individualism - I won't take a handout from my dad (to prove my independence) but free money from the government? Bring it! I'm not sure I understand fully the motivations behind this shift, but it's there and I think it's not too difficult to extrapolate from it a future society in which people socialize in familial ways with non-relatives (obviously quite far in the future, since even in the most extreme examples Western culture has not yet totally eradicated the familial ties - though children divorcing parents is arguably at the cusp of such a reality). My idea (which is part of my coming novel, Aanthe) is further along the time line - a time when children don't know who their parents are, are raised communally according to genetic predispositions (possibly administered by the state/corporations), and where the random genetics that dictated who was born into what family are instead manipulated such that aptitudes dictate your place within the state/corporation (e.g., engineer, biologist, doctor, etc.). People of that time would look back on the randomness of the genetic ties that bind us today as an absurdity because they can much better control the genetic odds to group people into what they would presumably perceive to be much more rational groupings based on inherent aptitudes and temperament.

London can only be described as exactly like the time I ate a bowl of rabbits.

This is what I mean about American complacency and its relation to ignorance. The following is self-evident to nearly everyone not living in the U.S.:

"Beginning in 2000, newly elevated President Vladimir Putin restored Russian stability by concentrating political power in the Kremlin, curbing free expression in the country's media, and consolidating economic power in the hands of the state. (The tripling of oil prices over the last four years has made his work much easier.) This forceful reimposition of order has earned Putin a 70-plus-percent approval rating. Broadly speaking, Russians have chosen the order that flows from authoritarianism over the chaos they believe was generated by ill-considered attempts to impose Western-style democracy." (article)

Many people in the U.S. would argue with you until they were blue in the face that the Russians do have a democracy simply because they can vote. They cannot understand that you can freely choose authoritarianism (see: Hitler) just as easily as you can vote against it.

Wait, didn't Sir George say we were going to Mars? Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran - it's all the same as long as they don't have nukes. He must've figured Martian bacteria must have developed nukes by now, so it's safer to invade the moon.

What is most upsetting is that we're holding people to two different sets of standards for free speech based on age. How is it that a minor has any less right to voice an opinion, however controversial, than an adult? If anything like the situation at this high school occurred at the university level, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. That is unfair and hypocritical, and yet it is being seriously argued as appropriate by Ken Starr.

I rail on the American people in general for being ignorant in general, but nothing is 100% applicable all of the time. If you wonder why a President who was impeached continued to remain popular, it's partly due to the obvious bias of the people doing the impeaching. That's why no matter how much Bush caters to his radical base, he'll never convince most Americans that stem cell research is morally reprehensible – it's just too large a hunk of horseshit for people to swallow.

These are exactly the types of paradoxes that stymie most American workers – perform better by working less.

This is why I like Taoism and love reading Lao Tzŭ's masterpiece, Tao Te Ching (particularly Stephen Mitchell's translation – absolutely brilliant).

Also, in case you hadn't notice, irony has been recently redefined.

This, however, is just damn funny.

What is most disturbing to you:

- the fact that Mormon underwear looks like something from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange,

- the fact that our constitutionally secular nation is hyper-fixated on candidate religion,

- or that the Mormons have an entire website devoted to their undergarments (I've left the link text for effect), http://www.mormon-underwear.com ?

PS - my favorite part of the Slate article linked above:

"Romney's faith is of particular concern to evangelical voters who make up the GOP's key voting bloc—some of whom believe Romney belongs to a cult."

The evangelicals think his religion smacks of cultish tendencies? Spectacular. I don't think I've had enough compassionate hypocrisy just yet today, let's go for one more.

How about righteous indignation at something which displays the degradation of morality within society. Yes, by golly, we are not going to stand idly by and just allow the truth to be told – these blasphemes must be censored for the greater good!

Wait, it's quite likely no evangelicals read that because Silicon Valley is the modern-day Gemorrah. Duh! Let's just blame the liberal media! Yeah, so liberal they failed to make an issue of the well-documented connections between this current unethical Bush administration and the Iran-Contra fiasco. Media bias is not defined as asking pointed questions at a press conference, no matter how much the inept Bush giggles or condescendingly tries to side-step the queries.

Does anyone else notice that? This so-called "average Joe" president is unbelievably smug whenever he talks to the press. I'm sure the idiots not watching at home are probably thinking "yeah, that's it Georgie, you stick it to those Blue-blooded liberal pansies!" Oh wait, these are the same geniuses that need to be told in excruciating detail how driving slower and less often can reduce America's oil dependency, advice which they promptly ignore because they're just one person.

Anyone can complain while in the U.S. – I'm thousands of miles away and it still gets my goat every day! I hope North Korea nukes you to your senses America! You're on notice!

Darwinism strikes again!

Awesome!

... on a related note, Iran has submarines? Not that I care about the excuse, but still, wtf, eh?

The following style is, in a nutshell, why I am such an avid fan of Slate:

"If we had wanted our country to be run by James Baker, we had our chance. He was interested in running for president in 1996 but discovered that his interest in a James Baker presidency was not widely shared." [article]

Oh, I'm sorry, your answer is incorrect. All answers must be stated in the form of an '-izzle'.

The only consolation after Michigan's loss to Ohio State: a 3-point margin of victory signifies domination like 2 percentage points give a "mandate."