Category Archives: Politics

Another Writer Accused of Making Stuff Up

Books, Memoirs, News, Politics, Writing, , , , , , , ,

The “Three Cups of Tea” author, Greg Mortenson, has been accused of making up stories in his book.  Accused by Jon Krakauer of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Mortenson denies the falsehood claim and is not commenting further due to a medical condition he is suffering from recently. Unfortunately, with him out of commission and not on record to defend himself, the media frenzy will probably swarm him at this horrible time for him. Hopefully, he gets a chance to defend himself, and the truth is reached, regardless of what that truth might be.

With this accusation, the writing community appears to be undergoing yet another challenge, as it did when the whole James Frey controversy occurred with “A Million Little Pieces”, a book that featured numerous made-up events in a book claimed to be entirely non-fiction. Hopefully, the accusations will not continue to paint a dark light on the many works other writers have put out there, making it so that readers walk into every bookstore, expecting fiction in the non-fiction section and accepting each memoir produced as a “quasi-” real account.

I recently published my “Neo Revolutionary Messages” on Kindle and Nook, and I promise that it is entirely non-fiction, as it is an analysis of the August 1991 Coup d’etat in the Soviet Union (where Boris Yeltsin challenged the hardliners when they imprisoned Mikhail Gorbachev). Yet, with stories like the one I linked here, there’s always the fear that a reader is going to think the author took liberties with the facts for the sake of trying to tell a better story.

We Still Don’t Get the Whole “Education” vs. Incarceration Thing

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , , , , ,

One of the continuous statistics that plagues the United States is our incarceration rate, especially when compared to how unwilling we are to support education. Some time ago, like back in the 1960s, social scientists figured out that if we wanted to grow our country as it needs to grow, we needed to stop putting people in prison and start taking extra efforts to educate the people who generally end up in our prisons. But rather than put together a national effort to turn this population around, we responded to fear and opportunistic politicians who realized that we’d put them in power if they pretended to be doing something about crime. You know the old call of the politician (“elect me, and I’ll clean up crime because my record has always been about putting bad criminals in prison”). Yet, no matter how many of these politicians we put into office, they don’t clean up crime, they don’t make the streets safer, and that population of potential criminals just seems to soar.

We know all of this. We realize what’s wrong. We know EXACTLY what we have to do to fix this. Yet, we don’t, and we won’t. Instead, some prosecutor or district attorney from Bumfuck, Montana, or Idaho, or Utah, or wherever, is going to make a career out of locking up violent criminals who took the only path they have ever been taught. What no one ever focuses on is WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?

The reasons are simple if you understand game theory. Actually, the reasons are simple if you understand common sense, but I probably shouldn’t have to go there. But in game theory, the simple prisoner’s dilemma gives the rational choice explanation that people tend to do what is easiest and provides the best payoff with the best incentive. Sometimes, even the best incentive doesn’t matter. In the end, people want to travel downhill because once the wind gets into your sails, you don’t have to do a lot of work to get to the bottom of the hill. So, if we examine a system where we offer almost no incentive to educating our population, but there are incentives to go into lives of crime (sailing downhill without any real resistance; face it, police departments are obstacles, not impediments), the most obvious result is going to be a life of crime rather than a life of productivity in society.

Our response has always been the most ridiculous one available: Morality. We try to put forth this argument that if we try to convince people to do the “right” thing, they will, because that’s what good, moral people do. But morality is based on societal norms, not on what is right or wrong, and that’s where we error most of the time. Most people who argue morality tend to have their grounded in some higher concept (either religion or a history within a government that has served them well). When you try to convince everyone else that they need to comply with the same moral foundation, what incentive do they have to participate? If someone isn’t a strong follower of your religion or hasn’t benefited from the civilization like someone else has, what makes any logical thinking person come up with the determination that someone deciding on a future will choose the more difficult path? Logic says it’s probably not going to happen. Reality agrees. History confirms it.

So, what is the solution? Well, first off, we have to get rid of this whole moral foundation crap and find a commonality that everyone can actually agree on. Doing the right thing means nothing when doing the right thing equals starvation, social pariah status and a pretty crappy life. But doing the right thing might mean something if the bar is raised so that those who aren’t participating in the game actually start to see the payoffs as productive AND achievable. For too long now, we’ve played this game of wanting people to rely on government to assist them, but then allowed government to only do as little as possible so that we’re lucky if the rising tide equals basic survival needs. America is a place that offers this fantasy dream for everyone, and as long as we keep the ability to achieve that dream too high for the average person, then people are going to reinvent their path to achieve it.

What needs to be done is nothing less than a nation’s desire to raise everyone to a level of an agreed upon American Dream. This means that everyone gets to participate, and the bar isn’t constantly lowered so people can achieve some level of clout that’s higher than everyone else. Yes, we’re talking about a socialism of ideas, although not necessarily a socialism of economy. As long as there are people who feel the need to want to be “above” everyone else, we’re never going to achieve a level of sustained prosperity. And without everyone able to prosper in society, we’re left with what we’ve always had: A civilization that constantly strives to reach for the bottom.

It’s not just enough to increase education at the expense of incarceration. It’s a need to make that education lead to something bigger than we already are. Otherwise, we’ll never achieve anything other than classism and separation. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten really good at reaching just that.

Recap of the News and a treatise on quantum mechanics in movies

Business, Movies, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s time for a little recap of the news, Duane style. There were just too many little things going on that I didn’t want to write a bunch of different posts rather than just do the whole thing at once.

1. Charlie Sheen. It seems his second performance (in Chicago) was a lot better than his first one in Detroit. Let’s see if he can manage to pull it off with a majority of his shows or if the one in Chicago was a fluke. What I have found fascinating about this whole story is how many people feel it necessary to comment about how stupid people are for wasting lots of money for a concert ticket to watch a “train wreck”. You know, as much as I agree with the sentiment, it’s their money, and if that’s what they want to do with it, who cares? It’s not like everyone else doesn’t waste money on stupid things as well. Some people pay outrageous amounts of money on porn, some on shoes, some on video games, others on Apple products. So let them. The only ones I found to be most relevant in their condemnations were the people who paid money to see him and were seriously disappointed. It should be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out over time.

2. Libya. Most people who know me also know I’m not a real fan of war. Since leaving government service, I’ve become more of a peaceful individual, and the idea of starting wars for any reason bothers me. Anyway, the situation in Libya is interesting in that it’s not just about war. It’s about choosing sides. For decades, we treated Gaddafi as the enemy, and then during the War on Terror, we started treating him as an ally. And the second that a revolution started in his country, we took sides against him. But at the same time, we also realized that we still want and need oil, plus the help of Libya against future terrorists is also a necessity, so if he isn’t removed from power, there’s going to be a very interesting dilemma our country has to face in the future. Do we go back to treating him friendly, or do we forever treat him as an enemy, knowing that he’ll probably start fostering terrorism used against us. Add to the fact that the rebels are now possibly targeting civilians in order to fight Gaddafi, and you have one of those situations the US is so good at getting itself into. We’re really good at doing the “right thing” but what we’re not really good at doing is knowing when to stop or even how, especially when the “right thing” is no longer the good thing. We stopped potential civilian casualties, and now we’re in the situation where we have to decide whether or not to back the rebels rather than just protect civilians. Like I said, we’re not historically very good at making choices like these.

3. Source Code. I saw this movie over the weekend, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve been hearing mixed reviews from others, however. Most of the established review sites have liked it, but the people who haven’t seen it seem to be interested in criticizing it, which is somewhat bizarre if you think about it. One of the biggest criticisms has also come from people who have seen it, and it (SPOILER ALERT…don’t read further if you’re interested in seeing this movie) has to do with the ending of the movie. And I’m finding that kind of funny because I think the criticism comes from people not realizing exactly what happened at the end. I keep hearing critics say, “the cheezy ending which didn’t make any logical sense” or how they believe that there was too much suspension of disbelief that was required to make that leap at the end. Well, what I want to add to this is that I think they didn’t understand what happened. It wasn’t a cheezy ending for the main character to make the choice he did. What really happened was he understood what was going on, but the scientist didn’t. The scientist thought he invented a process (the source code) to take someone through another individual’s mind and relive the last moments of his life. He argued the significant point that kind of gave away the ending, IF YOU KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT QUANTUM MECHANICS. The movie created a Shroedinger effect, in that what was really going on (and the main character realized it in his own uneducated way) was not a reliving of last moments of life, but a jump into another reality, kind of the “is the cat dead or alive” effect of Shroedinger. When he asked to save the people on the train and sent out an email message to the woman behind the camera, he realized that he was saving another reality, not his own. He understood that the people on the train were dead in his own reality, but he wanted to save another reality this time, and that’s the one he managed to continue living in. Yes, it’s highly complex, but if you followed the quantum mechanics, it actually made some sense. Anyway, spoiler done.

4. Obama announced his reelection. Really? That came out of nowhere.

5. The Budget and Shutting down of the government. Hope it doesn’t happen. But this is what happens when you give people too much power, too much responsibility and no ramifications if they don’t get the job done. To them, it’s all about winning this ideological battle and has nothing to do with actual service. All of them were elected to serve their country, but in reality they’re doing what they do best, serving themselves. The only people who will suffer will be “the people” as the politicians will all get paid regardless of what they do. Always remember that when they do what they do, or even more importantly, don’t do what they do.

6. Anti-teacher sentiment in America. I’ve really never seen it this bad. For ridiculous reasons, the right has decided that the way to clean up government is to go on the warpath against teachers, pretty much trying to use teachers as their scapegoat of everything that’s wrong in America. For years now, the problem has been education, but teachers aren’t the problem; they’ve been the ones trying to solve the problem. Unfortunately, no one seems to really be interested in dealing with the actual problems, like poverty, hunger, apathy and violence. Because governments have been spending money like it’s going out of style, somehow the teachers have been seen as the ones responsible, even though they don’t make those decisions but politicians do. So, of course, because politicians can’t blame themselves, they’re going after the people they can blame. Economically, the system cannot maintain itself as it has, but that’s not the fault of teachers; that’s the fault of the budget people who have been playing the “kick the can down the road” game for decades now. Well, we’re running out of road, so obviously now that it comes time to make tough decisions, we’re proving we elected people who have never made good decisions to begin with and expecting them to come up with proper solutions. How more broken can the system be than that?

7. The War on Drugs. I know it hasn’t been in the news lately, but actually it has. It’s in the news every day, even though we see it as other stories. We’ve been fighting this “war” for decades now, and we’re not winning. Instead, what we’ve done is create a criminal society where addicts are now perceived as criminals and added to our prison system population instead of treated. Then we ruin their lives, making it impossible for them to ever properly rejoin communities, thus falling back into irresponsible behavior. We have also created a criminal element of people who prey on other people. By allowing this behavior to continue, we have also pushed back race relations a hundred years, where we have one group of people attacking another group of people, where the only things that separate them are color of their skin, because other distinctive characterizations are more difficult to ascertain. In some cities, like Denver, we have race riots being fought, and they happen under the noses of the rest of the country, which prefers to be completely oblivious to this type of behavior, using pretense as a process of filter. Where we need leadership to fix this, we have people who gain political prominence and power by fueling this behavior, and we all lose. I’m just saying.

That’s all for today. Stay well, and don’t eat the yellow snow. It doesn’t taste like bananas.

The Logic of People Escapes Me Sometimes

Politics, Religion, , , , , , ,

I just read that in Afghanistan, a bunch of people rioted and attacked the Friday UN because a Florida pastor burned the Koran in a protest last month. Doing so, the rioters killed 12 people. Part of me is left shaking my head in astonished amazement at the outright stupidity of people (both the pastor and the morons who attacked the UN). I mean, honestly, attacking their local UN is like me slapping the girl who works at the Hot Dog on a Stick shop because my girlfriend broke up with me a month ago. In other words, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The UN had nothing to do with some moron in Forida who basically thinks he’s superior to the rest of the human race. Yet, for some reason, stupid people felt it was important to back up the stupid actions of a stupid person by doing something massively stupid.

Look, I understand the Koran is a holy book to a lot of people. And I understand that people might be understandably pissed off when someone disrespects it. This isn’t even about religion to me. I totally understand that some people completely believe their physical book is more important than their own well-being. But what I don’t, and won’t, understand is how anything got accomplished by attacking the office of an institution that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the people who committed the offense in the first place. The people injured in the UN office in Afghanistan weren’t even Americans! So, if they wanted to try to make that kind of causality argument, they didn’t even get that right. The people killed were UN workers from completely different countries that have no ties to the US AT ALL. Five of the murdered, and yes, they were murdered, were Nepalese UN guards.

What really bothers me about this is that nothing will be learned, and nothing will really be said. Instead, we’ll go back to putting our heads back in the sand, and somewhere down the lines another ridiculous incident will happen, and no one will bother to hold ANYONE responsible.

What is wrong with this world where people randomly kill other people because they’re upset over an action that happened which had no connection to what they did whatsoever? If we want to make this world a better place, THIS is the kind of crap we need to work on. And as long as it continues happening, we’re never going to have peace, friendship or understanding amongst any people.

Now excuse me while I go beat up a Best Buy employee because Chevron raised the price of gas again.

What is the Future of Government in a Twitter/Facebook World?

Economics, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We keep hearing stories of how governments are being toppled by people armed with Twitter and Facebook accounts. While these accounts keep forgetting to point out that you need more than Twitter or Facebook to topple an oppressive government, what we should take from these examples (like Egypt, Tunisia, currently Libya and possibly a future Iran) is that revolutionary movements have been assisted by these social networking technologies. And that’s no small deal.

What doesn’t get addressed is something I find even scarier, but seems to be completely off the radar (or gps) of everyone involving this issue. What these technologies definitely do is provide immediate access to higher up entities than have ever been experienced before. What do I mean? In the olden days, a king communicated with his people by throwing up broadsheets that people would read by wandering out into the village square where they were posted. If they were lucky, a town crier would yell out the messages to people as well, which mainly assisted a population that was generally illiterate. As education has emerged and moved from the upper class to the middle class and now finally to all of the classes, people are capable of reading their own messages, so that town cryer is no longer necessary. And because technology has emerged alongside this development, people are now able to receive instanteous communication from higher-ups. This was the paradigm that brought us up and through the 19th and 20th centuries

But Facebook and Twitter also do something else that 19th and 20th century technology did not allow. Instead of just reading messages from leaders, we now have the innate ability to communicate BACK to our leaders. Add email to the mix, and our ability to actually speak to a previously untouchable leader has completely evolved into something kings and queens never imagined (and certainly never wanted). Today, we are moving from a receptive community to a community that is able to push rather than just receive.

What are the implications of this? Well, for one, it means that our need to rely on government is quickly diminishing. In the old days, we had government developed for us because basically we weren’t smart enough to maintain affairs on our own. That’s not the case today. In an enlightened society, or one that may soon be one, the need for government is minimized, which means that those people who have gained access to the halls of power are now seen as oppressive entities rather than those who serve the public good. Right now, we have a debate going on between Congress and the President of the United States as to whether or not government is even necessary (they’re thinking of shutting it down because they can’t pay their bills). What no one is addressing is the reason why this is happening. Those who advocate big government are pretty much behind the idea of needing government to take care of every need and desire, and I’d argue they’re not wrong in that a lot of people DO need government, but there is another segment of society that is slowly divorcing itself from the constraints of government, and unknown to a lot of average people, a whole bunch of them were actually elected to national office. We call them the “Tea Party”, and even though progressives use them as the butts of their jokes. a real movement is taking place right now in this country that should be seen as very dangerous to the natural order. If you want to understand why a lot of Republicans believe that government should be shut down, perhaps people should actually listen to the Tea Party instead of just making up jokes about them and figure no one takes them seriously.

Personally, I think the message that is being put out by the Tea Party is premature, in that I don’t believe the country has moved to that level of sophistication yet. Yes, believe it or not, I actually see their arguments as highly sophisticated; unfortunately, the ones receiving the majority of attention are the most unsophisticated ones imaginable, which is ironic just on that level alone. Only about 70 of them are in power right now, and that’s nowhere near enough of them to make the impact they want to make, so all they’re capable of doing right now is disrupting government, rather than shutting it down.

But what should be seen is the longer term implications from ideas that they do espouse. Our Twitter and Facebook technologies have actually developed movements that coincide with this attitude of the people believing themselves to be superior to government. Granted, another irony is present as well, as most of the Tea Party thinkers are usually way behind the learning curve when it comes to emerging technology, but that’s really for criticism and derision more than an argument. What we should be focused on is that that these types of movements (the usage of technology in its ability to supplant government rather than supplement it) tend to grow, not go away.

My more important question is the one that fronts this entire essay: What is the future of government in a Twitter/Facebook world? In other words, if we finally reach a point where people feel they are on the same level as government, rather than recipients of messages from government only, do we present a new paradigm for the future? Essentially, does this equal status present a situation where people can finally rise above government, believing themselves to be superior, and thus, believe government should be eliminated, or at least changed drastically to reflect the submission of government to the people, as was originally intended by the Founding Fathers? Or do we end up becoming the enemy of government, which will hold onto its last grip of power until finally removed by those who have deemed it no longer worthy?

Personally, I don’t think anyone is thinking this way yet. That’s okay. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Although it was destroyed in one.

When is it Okay to Steal Another’s Ideas?

Business, Economics, Memoirs, Politics, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , , ,

The other day, I was reading through different blogs, specifically looking for information about a political theory that’s always been one of my pet projects. Because my theory has never made it into the mainstream as theories go, I’ve always followed the ideas that resonate around it, wondering if the political atmosphere of academia will ever change to where my idea might start to have a bit more merit. Anyway, the other day I was following a conversational trend on a particular economic impact on international negotiations when I came across a drawn graph that immediately struck me as very similar to my theory. Well, to be honest, it was not only similar, it was the exact same graph I had drawn five years ago as an explanation of my theory.

I checked for attributions on the graph, wondering where my  name would appear, but none was given. As a matter of fact, the “author” indicated through lack of any information that the graph was completely of his own doing, that he had come up with the economic graph to prove a point that he was making.

I just stared at it, flabbergasted that someone would actually take my own work and claim it as his own. I read through the rest of his theorical post, and what I discovered was that he didn’t even use the graph correctly. So there was my information, used, abused and done so wrongly.

I sent off an email, asking for clarification of where he got the information, but never received a response. I sent off another, and still got no response. I posted a comment on his blog following the article, asking for some clarification, and a few days later, my comment was deleted. No explanation.

I had heard there were people like this, but I never believed it would ever actually happen to me. I mean, my theories are generally nuts, or so out of the mainstream that I don’t expect anyone other than a deranged scientist to ever agree with me. But there it was. Right in front of me. I sent one more email asking for any type of clarification, and the next thing I saw, the whole post just disappeared. The author never responded to me once.

What bothered me the most was that the “author” is somewhat respected in the field, which means that if the two of us were ever in the same room together, everyone would have wanted to talk to him and probably would have ignored me completely. Personally, I have no desire to drag someone’s name through the mud for reasons that really substantiate doing so, but an inner feeling asks me how many others this guy probably does the same to as well. For all I know, my situation is a very isolated incident. But who knows? Certainly not me. Or I. Never really got that grammar rule right.

As a writer, I always assumed that somewhere down the line someone would probably steal one of my ideas, but as an academic, I never actually believed it would happen in academia, or from someone who actually has a lot of respect in the field. Dont get me wrong. I’m not bitter, and I have no desire to go after someone for something like this. Personally, I’ve always accepted that most of my political theories will die with me before they ever get implemented by anyone with the ability to use them.

So I guess I’m just ranting. That’s what blogs are for, aren’t they? I mean, what would Charlie Sheen do? Don’t we always ask that when stuck in a dilemma?

Taxation Gurus Just Don’t Seem to Get It

Business, Economics, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CNN Money ran an article today from Jeanne Sahadi advocating the need to raise taxes “because the looming debt problem is just too big”. Her argument goes on to say that Republicans are misthinking the whole issue because as long as the debt remains large, the country can never go forward.

Well, my response is twofold. First, we need to stop putting taxation into a partisan framework. That never solves anything but makes the issues so tied to other agendas that there’s no way to have a rational conversation about the issue in the first place. By making it partisan, any response of negativity to Sahadi immediately gets lumped into a “he’s a Republican, and therefore he is only limited to Republican talking points.” Whenever the conversation moves to the next level of analysis, the responder can immediately throw it, “oh yeah, but Republicans also believe (fill in the blank, and you realize why no rational debate is then possible).”

Second, and this is really my more important point, at what point did government become so important that it became the elephant we SEE in the room rather than the one hiding in the background? In other words, why is government always the most important factor for the debate? Why isn’t the individual considered more important?

Think about it this way. If we go back to the original foundation theories of government and agree that people came together in a Hobbesian fashion to escape from our evil surroundings, we understand that we then gave up a little bit of our freedom to achieve security. Now, no matter whether you buy Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau, at no point did we ever really give up the original reason for getting together, meaning that we got together because it was mutually beneficial to us, NOT because we were all desiring to create a government. At no point did the foundation of government ever supercede our reason for creating government. In other words, those who create a government are always more important than the government itself, not the other way around. Yet, in every one of these arguments, especially the one put forth by Sahadi, government is the reason we do the things we do, so that we are required to sacrifice at the altar of government, instead of the other way around.

I pay taxes. I’m not rich, but because I am low middle class, I pay money into taxes that really makes an impact on my daily life. The majority of people who pay taxes are like me, lower middle class people who don’t make a lot of money. Any increase in taxes to us hurts big time, yet we’re rarely ever represented in these conversations about taxation and government. Instead, the Republicans represent the interests of the very rich, and the Democrats represent government attempting to fund more money for governmental programs. In a fair world, we’d have another party that actually represented a social class of common people, but we don’t have that in this country. Oh, both sides claim to be that representative, but they never are. They represent their own interests and those interests are never ours.

What it comes down to for the majority of us is a question of how much we value government. I, personally, don’t value government all that much. I see it as a mechanism to keep gangs and drug dealers from killing me on a daily basis. And to be honest, government doesn’t even do that very well. Serious amounts of money are spent on a drug war that fuels this continuous battle between mean streets and the common person, and the common person is rarely seen as the one to which government answers. An example: A few years ago, I was beaten and robbed by gang members who targeted me because of my color. Instead of a serious response to the victim, which you would expect in a case like this, or at least might see on television played by actors who don’t represent real police officers, I ended up in a bizarre situation where two police agencies argued IN FRONT OF ME over which one was responsible for taking the report. Neither one of them wanted the responsibility. Of course, after all was said and done, the culprits were never caught, and I suspect they were never even pursued. Over the next few weeks, before I finally moved across the country to get away from the cesspool that is Hayward, California, I read the blotter reports in the newspapers about how the same individuals were continuing to target citizens in the EXACT SAME AREA EVERY DAY, and even escalating to public buses, convenient stores and train stations. In other words, government didn’t care one bit whatsoever.

Yet, when it comes to taxation, Sahadi believes that if government is starting to fail financially, it is within our requirements to respond immediately and fix it. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Right now, we spend so much money on things that have very little to do with the average American who does pay taxes. Let’s go over a bit of that list.

Wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq: Who benefits from this? Me? I don’t think so. Did I care about freedom in Iraq to begin with? No, not really. I’ve never had contact with anyone from Iraq before. Nor have I had contact with anyone from Afghanistan or Libya. Sure, I buy gas, and some of that comes from some of those places, but if we weren’t fighting a war in these places, we’d still be buying gas from these places regardless. I don’t even suspect it would cost that much more because prices are controlled by OPEC, not tin foil hat dictators.

That pretty much translates to our entire military budget. Yes, it is responsible for protecting America from foreign enemies, but honestly, we’re not actually doing that with our military. We are located in countries that are not ours, fighting for issues that have nothing to do with freedom in the United States. And in order to conduct these wars, we have had presidents (the last two specifically) advocating to suppress our freedoms, which means we’re fighting to lessen our freedoms, which is ironic in its own cynical way. If we were defending America specifically, I’d be happy, but we’re not. We’re pushing agendas of people who are not the lower middle class. And we’re backing up those issues by sending young lower middle class soldiers into wars to support people who rarely serve in the military themselves.

Most governmental agencies that the common person desires are usually handled by the states. My education is handled by the states. The federal government does nothing but institute standards that no one ever achieves. Our federal government has no idea how to educate the youth of America, yet they feel worthy of forcing their standards on the states regardless. I don’t see the value in this. Sure, I can see the value of making sure we don’t teach creationism in school, but nowadays, federal government isn’t even doing that; it’s doing the exact opposite and then fighting with itself over those specific, political standards. Not necessary and not helpful.

Heath care seems like it’s important, but when you threw it into politics, it starts to get useless. Tylor Cowen, in his excellent article, The Great Stagnation, points out that even though the United States spends more money than most countries on health care, we have some of the lowest levels of life-expectancy and our health success rates are dismal at best in comparison to nations that actually spend less of their GDP of health care. Like most governmental issues, we do horrible with our money because we keep believing in American exceptionalism, when we don’t realize that exceptionalism doesn’t always mean better. Part of our problem is that we have a lot of money already in the mix that should be spent better, not a need for more money to be spent on doing the wrong things more often. That last sentence is probably the most significant of this essay but will echo with no one.

In the end, it will come down to partisan drivel politics again where we have people who have a stake in winning an argument over issues that should never be decided by partisan politics. But we don’t seem to care because we’ve gone way beyond caring about what’s important and care more about winning arguments that don’t benefit us even when we do.

As a taxpayer who pays what he believes to be enough taxes, I don’t subscribe to the theory that more money is necessary to fix the problems of bad spending. Unfortunately, the people we have in government are not the best people when it comes to spending wisely; they never have been. Instead, we have the people who are best at convincing people to vote for them because they’re good at making people feel better about themselves, especially when we live in a country of people who should be a lot more critical of their own shortcomings. We’re educating ourselves horribly, we’re grossly overweight, and we let ourselves be ruled by foolish passions over issues that require serious contemplation. But this will fall on deaf ears because we’re a nation of people who likes to hear that we’re great, and when that person comes along who strokes our ego, we’ll vote for him, and we’ll wonder why no one ever does anything about fixing our country. We certainly won’t get the answers from anyone who is paid to tell us what we already keep hearing, but then we’d stop paying them if they didn’t. We’re pretty good at creating vicious circles in this country. Another thing we’re good at, eh?

Is Innovation Dead?

Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In case no one’s noticed recently, we seem to have a real innovation problem in the world today. I say this only because we live in an age where people think that innovations are happening all around us non-stop, yet no one really seems to recognize that we’re actually stagnating, doing nothing new and pretty much living in the successes of the past.

What am I talking about? Think about it. When was the last time something truly innovative appeared that has enriched humanity? I mean REALLY think about it.

What are the great innovations of today? The computer? The Internet? The microwave oven? The cell phone? Self-cleaning ovens? Google? Viagra? Honestly, I can’t think of an actual innovation that doesn’t have me thinking, um, that’s just an improvement on a previous innovation. The computer is probably one of the few that might be arguable as an innovation, although I would argue it’s really not that much more innovative than a calculator. It’s a machine that reads numbers in binary and then translates them into an operating system language that then gets used to produce computer programs. Nothing it does is really truly innovative. It’s not even all that useful if you think about it because the old arguments that the computer would make our lives easier were incorrect; the computer has arguably made our lives more difficult and as a result has increased the amount of paperwork we use, although it was supposed to cut down on it at some point.

The Internet is an improvement on the computer and email. The microwave oven is an improvement on the oven, and some people even argue that it’s made us a lot less healthy as a consequence of the types of food that can be produced from it. The cell phone is an improvement on the actual telephone, and I’d argue that it doesn’t make our lives any better as it now forces us to be “on” all of the time rather than letting an answering machine take a message for us so we can get back to people later.

Which brings me to the realization that there’s really nothing new that’s defining our current age when it comes to innovation. To make it even worse, people are no longer innovators either. Fewer people invent things, and fewer people are actually involved in the process of producing things. The rich people of our time don’t actually do anything other than move money around, or even worse, speculate about money. The people who do the most work get paid the least while the hardest workers are controlled by the people who haven’t made anything with their bare hands during most of their lives. Patent lawyers make far more money than the people who make the products that are patented and arguably wouldn’t be able to make the items they’re arguing about even if they tried.

The days of a lone scientist sitting in his laboratory trying to solve the mysteries of the universe are over. Instead, we have academics who sit in university libraries and then write papers that they discuss with other scholars who argue the merits of theories with people who generally don’t make anything themselves. Most current day scientists go into the science without producing new science but begin to theorize upon a foundation of theories that someone discovered centuries ago, and quite possibly that new scientist would never have been able to figure out the logic behind that theory himself/herself if presented with a blank state today. The line is “built upon the shoulders of giants” but we have so few people who are capable of creating the shoulders these days. Everyone stands on shoulders, profiting off the marvels of those who came before us.

Part of this problem may stem from the very nature of specialization, which makes the general theoretical scientist almost obsolete. But without those philosopher-scientists leading us forward, what exactly do we have to say for ourselves when we start to run out of new ideas? Conceptual innovation doesn’t really give us anything new but lets us figure out new ways of using what we already know. Which is why I argue that while Google is interesting and fascinating, it is by no stretch of the imagination an actual stretch of the imagination.

So, no one should be really surprised when we start looking for enlightenment from our world leaders and we keep coming up with the same, bad responses and answers. Instead of some great 21st century logic of how to move the world forward in areas of peace and understanding, we are still sending soldiers into hell holes to kill people who seem to be living in the ways of the 12th century. You see, as much as we like to think that we’ve emerged far better than we once were, we’re still the same barbarians we once were. We just have better toys than we used to have. So instead of pointing a spear at some Visigoth, we point cruise missiles at Libyan SAM missile sites. But in reality, it’s all the same thing. We never grew up; just our weapons did.

In the end, I hope we one day realize that we’ve stagnated in our technological growth because what that means is that our cultural growth is equally stunted. And until we start to realize that, we’re never going to move to the next stage of an evolution we keep thinking we’ve already achieved.

What a No-Fly Zone Really Means

Politics, , , , , , , ,

I really shouldn’t have to write this post, but it bothers me that so many people don’t understand what it really means when they advocated for a no-fly zone over Libya. It’s like we’re playing some kind of video game where America (or the west) is so powerful that we have all of the cheat codes enacted, and there’s no way anything bad can happen. Well, we just declared war without actually declaring war again, so in case anyone thinks this is something less than that, you’re wrong. We’re now at war with Libya for as long as it takes to scare a dictator into surrendering, backing down or something equally improbable. In reality, we’re demanding he step down, which then means he either escape to another country that might take him, hope his own people won’t kill him or put him on trial, or that some other equally undesirable event doesn’t befall him. In other words, we’re asking someone to take a path of worse consequences than the one he’s actually in right now. We did the same thing to Saddam Hussein, who held out until we had to put troops on the ground, decimate his country, kill LOTS of his own people, and then finally capture him hiding out in a cellar somewhere, hoping he might not be caught.

Right now, the French have attacked with aircraft. It’s possible one plane has already been shot down. Details are hard to come by this early in the war. But they have engaged the Libyans on the ground.

Which means people are already starting to die. So, no amount of posturing, pretending or ignorance gets us away from the fact that our entrance into this war means people will now die. Yes, people were dying before, but we’re going to be killing people ourselves now. We don’t get to paint over that with new paint and then put up a new car fragrance ornament to hide the smell. We’re killing people now. And we may lose some of our own. This is war.

I’m not against a war. I just want people to know and understand that they’re in one now. Sure, we’ll all go back to the mall on the weekend and buy videogames, dresses and other crap, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that we have aircraft in the air right now bombing people we don’t know anything about, and probably never will, especially since they will be dead soon. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as some previous wars, and hopefully the survivors won’t grow up to hate anyone from the west, planning our deaths decades from now while we’re celebrating  a holiday or just going about our usual business.

This is war. It sucks. Don’t let anyone try to pretend it’s anything more pleasant.

But they will. Because that’s what spin doctors do with these sorts of subjects. Just hope that we don’t end up having to send soldiers over there to “finish what we started”  because someone in power who will never see combat can’t see any other way around the “dilemma”. War sucks, and it rarely turns out the way you plan, intended, or desired.

Now, back to American Idol and whatever we were doing before I so rudely interrupted with reality.

Finally, Pornography Will Have a Presence on the Internet

Business, Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes, after years and years of nothing but clean, wholesome information, pictures and overt religiousness, the Internet is FINALLY going to be able to show pornography. Up until now, as we all know, there’s been a huge dearth of porn-related information on the World Wide Web, but thankfully forward-thinking individuals have figured out how to bring us smut, sex and all things of the prurient interests. It seems that the .com addresses have made it so difficult for pornography to make it way to the mainstream, so entrepreneurs designed what’s called the .xxx address to showcase specifically porn-related information.

In all seriousness, what’s interesting is the current debate over whether or not the inclusion of this address for online pornography will just provide an ability for companies and nations to just block the .xxx site completely, which will lead to x-rated content being pushed right back to the .com and whatever other addresses they can think of to circumvent the censors of various governments and private individuals.

However, what’s also significant to point out is that those who advocate pornography on the Internet are also quick to mention that by adopting the .xxx address feature, this will allow adult websites to operate in an area where they can circumvent a lot of the negativity that also tends to migrate aongside pornography sites, like trojans (be nice…you know what I mean), pop-ups and a lot of other illegal activity.

Years ago, when I was first designing web sites, back in the days when there weren’t a lot of web sites yet created, the first group that moved onto the World Wide Web was the adult industry. A few of my early clients were tied to that industry, ironically enough attracted to my work that I had done designing a few church sites (the porn people came from those churches, seeing the advantages of this new technology). Ever since those days, there has been a tendency for unsavory types of tag alongside the adult community (not necessarily because they were part of it), and it has been very difficult to separate such folk from those who were just interested in providing adult content without the illegal activities as well (the gangsterism, not the illegal stuff that is deemed bad because of moral beliefs).

Personally, I don’t see the .xxx feature being all that productive, as that industry is constantly mired in bad behavior from the lazy criminal elements that see it as easy money. Believe it or not, there are two groups of individuals who make up that industry, and quite often the good people who are just interested in providing material for consenting adults get overwhelmed by the illicit behaviors of those who are out to separate people from their money at any cost. Unfortunately, that unsavory element is the one that always provides a bad name for those who are not like that, and no matter what the good people do, they’re always tainted by the crap pulled by those who have no qualms about cheating, stealing and doing whatever it takes to make a fast buck.