Monthly Archives: November 2011

When You First Begin to Realize You’re Never Going to Change the World

Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , ,

I was one of those little precocious kids who grew up, convinced that he was one day going to change the world. At first, it was going to be through science, as I studied physics, sure that I was able to see the world in ways that no one else possibly could. I had my ground-breaking theory that re-explained the universe’s creation through a process called neutra-matter (my own invention) that was the embodiment of light, and thus, the separation particle that kept the barrier between matter and anti-matter. It all made sense to me, and actually still does. I worked through college to become a physicist, and throughout my education, I devoted a great deal of time just trying to disprove the theory so I could move onto something better. And I never did. So it might be true. Or not. We’ll never know because I didn’t remain in physics, and even if I did, I hit a point where I started to realize that no one really cared.

Yeah, that was true. No one cared. I had this great idea, and I was convinced it could change science. But again, no one cared. So I moved onto a different field. Genetics.

In genetics, I was quickly invigorated with a new idea that consumed my every scientific thought. I now had a convincing argument as to how the AIDS/HIV strain first emerged, and coordinating this theory with the concepts of archaeology (which I was also studying at the time), I realized that there was a way to use my theory to trace down Patient Zero, and possibly erect a cure for AIDS by creating a genetic suppressor from the origin rather than from the current variation of the virus. And it made a lot of sense to me.

So, as this was during the dawn of the AIDS era, I managed to convince a coordinator of the first AIDS conference to listen to my theory, and she was so intrigued by it that she arranged a meeting with me and a group of scientists who were all part of the first conference. They read my report, called me in and then in a round table discussion, asked me all sorts of questions about my theory. And they were intrigued. And then one of them asked me where I got my medical degree, and I revealed that my education was in physics, and that I did not have a medical degree. Essentially, the discussion was over, and no one was really interested in hearing anything else I had to say. In the end, my theory was shelved, and I went on with my life. Decades later, AIDS is still out there, and unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be cured any time soon. Of course, I can’t say my theory would have done it, but it bothers me that it was never followed up.

Many years later, I was in graduate school after doing the whole Ph.d thing in political science. This time, however, I was pursuing communication. And suddenly it dawned on me that our usual process for conducting diplomacy was wrong. In the middle of the night, I woke up with an additive theory, utilizing political science international theory, interpersonal communication theories, a communication rhetoric theory and a mathematical model I designed in my head that would eventually be completed through computer modeling. This new theory, I predicted, would lead to a brand new way of conducting negotiations and diplomacy. Latching onto one of my fellow grad students with a background in history, we wrote up a theoretical paper on this and then presented it at communication conference. After that, a few people from different organizations contacted me by email asking me more questions, but over time, I starrted to realize that it also required people to really think differently than what they were used to. When I tried to present it to the Obama Administration, I realized no one was really interested in learning. People were pretty satisfied with doing things the way they had been doing them since the days of Caesar, so very quickly I got the impression that I was barking up trees that no one wanted me barking near. So I gave up on that as well.

The point is: At some point, you start to realize that no matter how many great ideas you have, eventually you’re probably going to hit the point where you realize that most people generally don’t care. The status quo is so much easier to stick with, so the amount of work involved in getting anyone interested in change is practically at a ridiculous premium. It’s a lot like the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s going on right now. I mean, they have great ideas and the best intentions at heart. But the reality is that no one is going to listen to them, and mostly what they will receive for their efforts is ridicule and pepper spray. You can’t convince people to change their ways, even if the change is in their own best interests.

So, at some point, you have to realize that as much as you like, you can have all of the greatest intentions in the world, but at some point you need to do the proverbial growing up of reality and settle for mediocrity and, if lucky, a small step after a period of anarchical punctuated equilibrium.

That’s where I am now. There are so many things I wanted to do with my life, so many things I thought I would do with my life, but in the end, I realize that it really didn’t amount to much. No fame. No fortune. No changing of the minds of the masses or even a few leaders. Not even a really cool career or a stable girlfriend (or an unstable one for that matter). At some point, you begin to realize that all you really have is an apartment full of friendly stuffed animals, a shelf of unpublished, or crappily published, novels, reruns of Star Trek and a World of Warcraft account. Had I known that a long time ago, I probably would have chosen a much easier route to get here.

What’s the with all the old guys and child porn these days?

News, , , , , , ,

Am I the only one noticing that way far too many “responsible” adult males are being charged with child porn crimes these days? You can’t seem to go an entire week without a pronouncement of some politician’s career being destroyed by allegations of child porn, some college sports guy running a “charity” that seems to be another word for “access to kis for sex” and now we have some university professor of engineering who allegedly was viewing child porn on his laptop on a plane in first class when he was photographed by another passenger and asked to stop viewing child porn by the stewardess. I’m not even going to comment on the allegations, other than to say, what the hell is wrong with people? Okay, what the hell is ALLEGEDLY wrong with people?

Okay, a long time ago, about the time Socrates was put to death for influencing children, old men seemed to have this thing for little boys, and back then it was one of those not talked about “discretions”. Fortunately, we’ve evolved way beyond that to where using children for your sexual needs is now straight out illegal, and yes, wrong.

Now, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that when it comes to personal mating things, I’m not exactly the poster child for normality, but come on people. Why are grown men thinking it’s okay to go after children? And then when they get caught, after they lawyer themselves up, they act like they weren’t doing anything wrong, almost as if they really want to say “come on, everyone’s doing it, right?” No, everyone’s not doing it, and not too many things freak me out or cause me to think there’s something seriously wrong with our civilization, beyond the usual things that make me think there are serious things wrong with our civilization, but this one just simply continues to evade me for any ability to understand it. And again, I’ve done some pretty bizarre things in my time that would cause a church lady to faint (or pass me her phone number…call me), but there’s one point that should never be crossed by anyone, and that’s the idea of consensuality, and NO, a child has no ability to make a consensual decision, no matter how convoluted your thinking process may be to imagine that such a thing is possible.

I’m sure a psychologist could explain all of this, but I fail to understand how someone can find this appealing in any way. But even worse, I find it hard to believe that someone doing something like this doesn’t realize it’s wrong and still manages to do it without ever seeking some kind of help. If I ever found myself doing something that was hurting others without their consent, I’d be seeking medical assistance immediately. At what point of cognitive dissonance does someone allow himself to think something like this would ever be okay?

All right. My rant is over. I hope I haven’t hurt anyone nonconsensually who ended up reading this. If so, I might have to seek out medical assistance.

Being a Single Guy is Pretty Damn Tough These Days

Movies, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , ,

It seems there’s a new Muppet Movie about to open up. For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that I’m actually looking forward to watching it when it does come out. But there’s a problem. That’s kind of what this whole post is about.

You see, I’m one of those grown up kids who probably will never grow up. And I’m okay with that. That means that unlike guys who seem to think watching football, Victoria Secret lingerie specials on TV and endless porn is the definition of being an adult, that’s really not me. I’m a lot more comfortable watching Elmo, Scooby Doo, playing World of Warcraft or watching any and all kinds of science fiction on TV. Those are the kinds of things that men are supposed to kind of put behind them when they hit adulthood, right about the time they start thinking about marriage.

Me, however, not so much. I’ve never really given much thought to getting married. Never gave that much thought to actually dating, to be honest. I’m the kind of person who is comfortable living in my own little world, and up until now, this has been okay, as long as this lifestyle doesn’t seem to intrude on anyone else.

Unfortunately, the real world has kind of changed in a way that makes such a lifestyle almost impossible. There is no end to the amount of literature written about how people like me need to “grow up” or “man up”, or whatever stupid slogan they need to use to somehow diminish the fact that I still think legos are cool. And that brings me to the whole idea of what started off this article: The Muppets.

Years ago, I went to watch one of the Shrek movies. I was alone in the theater, because it was the middle of the day, and I chose a time when most of the kids wouldn’t be there (because they’d be at school, or their parents would be at work). Well, at one point, this woman and her kid show up to the movie, and as I’m practically the only other person in the theater (there were actually about four other people in various spots in the theater at the time), her kid wandered to a seat close to where I was, and that woman took one look at me, and immediately ushered her kid as far away from me as possible. It’s not like I’m some serial killer looking kind of guy or anything, but I immediately started to get self-conscious because I could quickly see what was going through her mind: Why is there some strange guy alone at a kid’s movie? It didn’t matter what my real reason for it was, somehow I kept thinking that she was constantly checking up on me to see if I was scouting out other children.

And that’s the mindset of a lot of people whenever a single guy shows up alone to a movie theater, specifically to see a movie that others deem as a “kiddie” movie. In our society, we have people so paranoid about children that they start to perceive that every other person out there has some secret intention to harm them if they can just get away with it. You see this same mentality whenever a porn star goes to read to children at a library, an adult venue comes anywhere near a school, or anything that involves “sex” ends up being in the earshot of someone who might think there are children around. There is such a fear of practically everyone else that otherwise normal people are no longer normal, but they are now suspected child molesters and abductors, and all sorts of other evil entities that I have not yet heard about.

When I told a female friend I was thinking of seeing the new Muppet movie, she said, “you can take my kid to see it”, which would then give me an adequate reason to go to a movie theater (because I would have a child with me). Other than the fact that the offer wasn’t serious, I kept imagining how bad things are when a single male has to “find” kid to drag to a movie just so he can go see a kiddie movie that he’d rather not see with anyone else.

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a few years back about this because we surmized that even if two single guys went to a children’s movie, there would still be people looking at them strangely, wondering why two older adults were at a movie theater where kids were present. The idea that people might be there for something innocent, like watching a movie, seems to get in the way of irrational fear, however.

A couple of years back, I used to have a couple of close female friends with whom I would always go to these types of movies, because a single guy was always “okay” at a children’s movie, as long as you were there with a “date”, even if you weren’t dating the woman you were with. I used to drag my friend Kat to movies all the time (or she dragged me…not sure how it really worked out), and if it wasn’t for her, I never would have seen Wall-E, because I probably never would have gone to a movie theater to see it alone. It’s just not worth the stares.

But today, I don’t have a female friend I hang out with like I used to. Back then, while I was doing grad school, it was a lot easier finding a female friend who liked to hang out, who didn’t think you were trying to date her. Nowadays, in the real world, that just hasn’t happened for me. The last woman I asked to a movie wanted dinner to go along with that movie, meaning she expected it to be a “date”, not just two friends hanging out at a movie. And that’s okay, but that’s not the kind of person I want to see the Muppets with.

So, I’ll probably have to wait until it comes to dvd, which usually diminishes the experience of seeing a movie like that in an audience of people who are laughing as Kermit and gang do the kinds of things that only Kermit and the gang would ever do.

Stupid Passwords

Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , ,

Years ago, when I was first learning a programming language (BASIC for back when it was practically the only language you could learn on the first personal computer, the TRS 80), I created a program and established a password system, because I thought this would be the wave of the future, where everyone would need passwords to get into programs. Turns out I was right, even though that doesn’t mean I was really all that forward-thinking, as it did seem kind of obvious at the time. Well, my first program I designed was a computer game called U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, and part of the beginning of the game required you to enter a password (yes, really exciting gaming I was making back then). I chose something I figured no one else would ever guess.

Well, another one of the kids learning computer programming with me tried out my program, spent a few seconds thinking about me, looked at the blinking interface asking for a password and then typed OMEGA. He guessed my password on the first try. Yeah, I felt really stupid, and to this day I still haven’t figured out how he did it, other than the possibility he was actually watching me when I coded it in back when I wasn’t really paying attention to who was stranding behind me while I was typing.

The point is: It was a stupid password.

Fast-forward to today, and Mashable has printed an article telling us just that: People still use stupid passwords. Their list (from Mashable) of the top overused passwords is:

  • 1. password
  • 2. 123456
  • 3.12345678
  • 4. qwerty
  • 5. abc123
  • 6. monkey
  • 7. 1234567
  • 8. letmein
  • 9. trustno1
  • 10. dragon
  • 11. baseball
  • 12. 111111
  • 13. iloveyou
  • 14. master
  • 15. sunshine
  • 16. ashley
  • 17. bailey
  • 18. passw0rd
  • 19. shadow
  • 20. 123123
  • 21. 654321
  • 22. superman
  • 23. qazwsx
  • 24. michael
  • 25. football

Yep, believe it or not, people are still using PASSWORD as the number one stupid password. The others are equally obvious, which basically make the point for us that people generally use things they can remember to be their passwords, which means that quite often the average user, being a nimrod, is going to use something that is going to be massively easy to crack.

For years, my own password process has really evolved, then devolved and then re-evolved after one of my overused passwords got broken into, and my email sent to everyone as spam mail. It’s amazing what people choose for their reasoning behind passwords, which is why for the longest time I was using the name of a password used in a movie about computers a long time ago. I even named one of my stuffed animals after that password, and for years, I kept using that, or variations of that name, as a password. Stupid idea, and let’s just say that my eventual evolution didn’t come soon enough.

Some of the other names on that list are ridiculous, and I’m embarrassed that people would actually make such mistakes. “123456”? Really? Or “abc123”? I can see “Superman” just for the nostalgia factor alone, but “qwerty” and “654321”?

Okay, part of me also has to look at this from another angle. Sometimes, I think companies we do business with create password situations for us that really don’t make any sense. I’m a lot more careful about my email and my banking information than I am with my Netflix queue or a password I’m required to make up for a job search service I’m only ever going to use once in my entire lifetime. The other day, I was required to fill in additional information AFTER my password that was completely irrelevant to me, meaning that if I ever had to challenge my information (to get my password back), I’m never going to remember the answers to those other questions they wanted me to come up with. I’m talking about stuff like “What is your wife/significant other’s favorite color?” As I don’t have a wife or a significant other, I’m mainly making shit up there when I have to come up with an answer. In one the other day, it gave me six different questions to choose from, and to be honest, anyone who had to answer one of those questions has a much different kind of life than I do because I don’t have a favorite sports team, a significant other (which was the subject of three of the six choices I could use), a maiden name, or even the middle name of my best friend (haven’t had a best friend in quite a few years now). What would make those kinds of challenge questions better is to let me make up my own question and then present my own answer. Otherwise, chances are pretty good that I’m going to be clueless whenever it comes to trying to figure out a one-time password that I am not going to remember, and no, I don’t write them down somewhere because that’s the one thing you SHOULDN’T do with passwords.

I think I’ve said about enough on that subject. Please enter your password, writing it in iambic pentameter, to continue to my next irrelevant point.

The Problem of Writing a Romance When There’s No Romance in Your Life

Relationships, Writing, , , , ,

 I found myself thinking back on one of those great romance stories, specifically the one that plays out really well in Romancing the Stone, with Kathleen Turner. In this movie, Turner plays a romance writer who stumbles while realizing she doesn’t know what her romantic hero would look like, but has a basic idea of his characterizations only, and then goes on her whirlwind romance where she finds the “hero” to become her shining knight (as that kind of story generally requires). Well, recently, while working on my novel in progress, I’m come to a similar situation.

Okay, not exactly like the movie, in that I’m some romantic novelist looking for my knight in shining armor, or even my knightess in shining armor. But as I put together the basic framework of the novel and built the edges of what would need to be filled in, I’ve come to a horrible conclusion that is making this novel very difficult to write. You see, romance has never really been a part of my life.

Adventure? Yes, there’s been a lot of that. Intrigue, conspiracies, espionage, and action? Yes, those have all been a part of my life at one time or another. And I’ve written extensively about those sorts of subjects. I’ve even used the elements of adventure and crafted science fiction and fantasy tales of great imagination.

But romance? Well, that’s really never been a part of my life.

Sure, I’ve been involved in relationships, but to be honest, most of my relationships have been a lot more Woody Allen-ish than Jame Bond-ish. To be even more honest, the kinds of romances I’ve lived in my life would fill a bunch of comedy novels and screenplays, and that’s fine, but that isn’t what I set out to write this time around. I was trying to write what would end up being a powerful romance of a completely tragic nature. There’s very little comedy in that area of what I’ve been trying to capture.

Which leaves me with the dilemma that hits a lot of writers, in that it is often very difficult to write about what one wants to write rather than what one knows. People who know a little bit about writing (and quite often those who know very little bit about it) constantly harangue writers about “write what you know”. And that can be very good advice for when you’re starting out. The usual journey of a writer goes like this:

Novel 1: Write out that unique idea you’ve been thinking about for ages.

Novel 2: Write about killing off your family/parents/friends (either physically or metaphorically).

Novel 3: Rehash an idea that’s been bothering you for awhile (and complete the requirements of Novel 2 if not already done so in Novel 1 or 2).

Novel 4: Reinvent Yourself as a Writer

And every novel after that serves as a reawakening as a writer, in which you learn new techniques to try to build upon the skills you already have, so that each new novel becomes the reinvention of you as a writer, writing something you could never have achieved in a previous novel because you just weren’t ready.

Working on my 13th or 14th novel (one of them is always hard to quantify), I’m way past the stage of killing off one’s parents. In each new novel, I find myself trying to reinvent the very idea of writing, tackling new techniques I never would have attempted before but now feel ready to attempt.

This one has been no different, in that the chronology of the novel serves as a mechanism for revelation and storytelling, to the point where it’s not a gimmick, but a necessity. However, with that in place, I now find myself in the earlier period of the courting stage of two of the main characters, and I realize how little experience I have in this area. Sadly enough, I even had to delete a few chapters because I found myself mimmicking old movies that had dating scenes in them because it was easier to fall back on past remembrances that weren’t mine than to orchestrate them myself from a fabrication that is completely unfamiliar to me.

It would be different if I had participated in dating rituals when I was younger, but I never did. Going to a club or something like that was never my thing, and my first experiences along this line didn’t happen until I got to the Academy. But that was so different an experience from what an average person would experience, as young cadets dating in a club environment does not equal what happens when college students meet each other in that same kind of environment that occurs around a university setting (not an Academy setting). The rituals of dating were never really something I participated in either as I tended to date very unique women over the years who definitely did not fall into the “normal” categories of dating. To explain the quandary further, let’s just say that when I find myself trying to describe a dating ritual for my main characters, I find those types of encounters somewhat simple and almost cliche, in that nothing I ever went through fell into such normal parameters. But to try to integrate the kinds of relationships I’ve had over the years into a story that requires a solid, normal foundation is somewhat bewildering.

But I did go into this project hoping to stretch myself as a writer. I guess it’s doing just that.

Why Social Networking Never Really Worked For Me

Social Networking, Writing, , , , ,

I know this is going to sound a bit strange, considering the amount of time I put into social networking sites, and the amount of energy that I expend actually working with them, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I’ve never been a fan of social networking sites. And it’s not because of reasons you might suspect.

You see, part of the appeal of a social networking site is that you can revisit the past by contacting people you used to know and get reacquainted with them. And that’s great. I’ve run across a lot of people I’ve known over the years, hooked back up with them on social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, and it’s been great. However, there’s been a sinister underbelly to this whole thing as well. And I suspect it’s one of those things that really only affects me more than anyone else. Let me explain.

For years, I have had great relationships with a lot of people, relationships that I have valued greatly. But it’s only through the use of social networking that I began to suspect that quite a few of those relationships were quite one-sided, in that I think I may have been the only one to actually have thought them to be as significant as they really were.

An example: When I was a young kid, I had a friend in fourth or fifth grade who gave me a stuffed animal who has been with me practically my entire life. At the time, that stuffed animal was pretty significant to her, and a friend of mine and I used to play catch with him in class. And at one point, I guess he became even more significant to me because she gave him to me, and I thought that was such a thoughtful gesture. Over the years, I remembered her name, mainly because she gave me that stuffed animal. And that little guy and I have been through a lot together. I went into the Army, and he went in with me. Other soldiers used to call him Lieutenant Elmer, and there was a time when I tossed him out to little kids to play with, as a sort of “get to know us as good people, not just occupiers in green uniforms” and they played with Elmer, throwing him around kind of like my friend and I had done in fourth and fifth grade. Like I said, that little stuffed animal has been with me for nearly forty years, and he’s seen more of the world than most other people ever will. And he may have had a serious impact on the lives of people who experienced his friendly stuffed ways.

But years later, when I made contact with the person who gave me that stuffed animal, her response when I mentioned I still had him nearly floored me. I got the impression she didn’t even remember him. And those memories of the connection that we had back then, shared over that little green frog who has touched so many lives, were forever tainted.

This same phenomenon has radiated also through other relationships I have had as well. There are a number of people I have known through the years who don’t seem to remember our relationships as fondly as I have. So when I went to contact them, after finding them through some search algorithm that Facebook or whatever site I was using used, I realized that they had almost completely different memories of our special times together. In some cases, they didn’t even accept friend requests, which gave me the impression that not only did they think back fondly on our wonderful times together, but they may not have remembered them at all.

Memories are like that, in that not always do both people remember an event the same way. I have a former best friend of mine who I actually went through a lot of work to find again through a social networking site. When I finally found him, it was a ho hum connection, which meant that no matter how fondly I remember our great adventures together, time destroyed the real bonds of friendship. Like Wolfe’s book warns us, sometimes you can’t go home again, no matter how much you long for how great home was at one point in time.

That’s what social networking has shown me, and it hasn’t been the experience I hoped to have. Sometimes, I think it might have been better to keep some of those past relationships in memory where that shared fondness still existed, never to be replaced by the reality that that person I would have done anything to be with a few more seconds longer in that relationship we once shared hasn’t spent one instant thinking about us since we parted ways.

Why Sasha Grey, the Porn Star, Isn’t Allowed to Read to Children in School

Business, News, , , , , , ,

 

In case you missed the ground-breaking story, the former porn star Sasha Grey, was discovered reading to little children at a public school, Emerson Elementary School. She claimed it was for Read Across America Compton, but according to Read Across America, they do not show any record of Sasha Grey ever having any affiliation with that group, or that she was reading for their program. Regardless of any of that trivial stuff, the uproar that came along was that a porn star, or ex-porn star, dared to read literature to little children who might be so impressionable that they’d start up porn careers, or whatever it is that paranoid parents assume is going to happen because of this. Believe me, they’re a lot safer around Sasha Grey than they are any Penn State football coach who might be volunteering to help out. I’m just saying.

But what’s even more interesting is this whole fascination with redemption that Sasha Grey is attempting to go through, and miserably failing. You see, if you’ve ever been a porn star, you’re doomed to be a porn star forever. In the United States, any sex-related career is about as low as you can possibly go, and any attempt to “better” yourself will always end up with some sanctimonious asshole holding that previous career against you because it’s so easy to do in our prudish environment.

Personally, I have zero problem that Sasha Grey used to be a porn star. So, I don’t care if she reads to children, administers mass during Christmas, or continues having sex with blindfolded midgets. However, I can’t speak for the rest of our society that seems to have problems with anything involving sex, even when serious incidents of hypocrisy are screaming in our face.

The real problem for me is that Sasha Grey is attempting to capitalize on her fame as a porn star and turn it into fame as a mainstream star without suffering any of the backlash for tying her fame to a questionable past. If she wants fame in our society, a society that frowns upon porn activity, then it’s really hard to cry foul when she has done nothing to separate her desire to be famous from her desire to be famous as a porn star. You see, Sasha Grey is most likely not her real name. It’s her “porn” name. If she wants to be seen as mainstream, she needs to completely separate her porn name from the name that she uses as a future star. But she’s not willing to do that because she’s gained a certain amount of notoriety for being a porn star.

The problem is the baggage she brought along with her. And that’s really no one’s fault but her own. While I don’t have a problem with her being a former porn star, I’m not the one she has to convince. She has to convince the rest of mainstream America, which is founded by a bunch of prudes who are two steps away from being a fundamentalist church state. If she wants to make her way as a famous actress, she’s going to have to live with the fact that a lot of people are going to hold her to her past, as long as she’s going to keep using that past to propel herself into a productive future.

And that means facing the fact that the majority of our nation is pretty shitty when it comes to holding people to standards they themselves can never reach, nor would they even try. That’s too bad, but no one actually has the right to be famous and rich. To do that, you have to actually go to the people who allow you to become rich and famous. And they’ve spoken. And what they said amounts to not wanting a porn star reading to little children.

Sure, it’s wrong in so many ways, but when has the path to fame ever been based on right and wrong?

The Ramifications of a Scientific Study That Purports That High IQ is Linked to Drug Use

Business, Education, News, Politics, , , , , , ,

There was an article reported today on CNN’s site, discussing a recent scientific study in which high levels of IQ are linked to the propensity to use drugs. Immediately, the people who have responded have started making the usual faulty scientific connections, such as “that proves it! Using drugs leads to a higher IQ!” One responder, named JeffinIL, states specifically, “I never realized I went to high school with so many geniuses.” As usual, someone took the conclusions and then tried to return the conclusions to the hypothesis, essentially trying to create the cause from effect, rather than what the study itself said, that cause led to effect.

Okay, right off the start, I have to make a few comments on faulty reporting, which is leading (and will lead) to bad conclusions.

1. The data was collected in 1970 and just recently analyzed. This is not a RECENT study by any stretch of the imagination, even though the article attempts to make exactly that claim in the second paragraph: “A new British study finds….” 1970 was over 40 years ago. The people studied back then are now reaching latter stages of adulthood, which means that their “habits” and the findings are relevant to a group of people who are now in their 50s and 60s, not children as the study claims to connect.

2. The “high” score for IQ was registered as between 107 and 158. Not really that high when it comes to what people refer to as “high” IQ scores.

3. IQ has never been an acceptable gauge of someone’s actual intelligence. There’s a reason that IQ scores are rarely used anywhere other than in comparison studies in which people try to use them to inflate their attributes. People generally don’t take IQ scores to begin with, and those who do often take them numerous times to try to “game” the system. Other people learn logic skills that help them “beat” the IQ test, and mostly, the scores are considered fringe on the levels of acceptable science.

4. The study makes inferences that may or may not be contributing factors. While the only claim the study makes is that people with higher IQs report higher levels of using drugs in later years, there is no actual connection to drug use AT THE TIME of the IQ test, so there’s no way to know how much more education a person may or may not have had since having an IQ test. Socioeconomic factors were mentioned, but weren’t really discussed at length.

5. The study (and the author of the article) make a lot of guesses as part of the study, indicating that maybe people were “bored”, and thus turned to drugs because their higher IQ put them in a bored state of mind in comparison to other people with lower IQs who might not be as bored because, I guess, they don’t have as much to think about with their lower IQs. I mean, that’s the inference of that statement, but I’m just guessing based on the lack of information contained in the article itself. Seriously, anyone can do that kind of logical exercise, even people with low IQs like me.

The worst part of this study is that the way it is reported means a whole bunch of people are now going to be “armed” with faulty logic as trivial information they store away. When someone is at a party and someone offers him or her cocaine, rather than think, “no, that stuff might be dangerous”, in the back of someone’s mind is going to be the thought, “well, I did read this one study once that told me that people who take drugs are more likely to have higher IQs, so it might actually be to my benefit.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see that one coming.

They’re Trying Really Hard to Discredit the Anti-Wall Street Movement

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I’m really not all that surprised that the people who have the most to fear are doing everything possible to target anyone who has anything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. At first, it was an attempt to paint the movement as extreme, something that no one is interested in. Then it became popular, so they had to try other tactics, like attempting to fool listeners into believing OWS was filled with hypocrisy (“OMG! They have Ipads and they’re complaining about big businesses that might make technology stuff!”). That didn’t work because unlike previous movements of the past, the people attracted to the movement aren’t generally stupid. The movement has been appealing to a pretty educated crowd. It’s hard to derail that when those derailing it aren’t that much smarter than the people they hope to discredit.

So, the anti-protest movement, which I define as “people who have an incentive to keep things as the status quo”, is now targeting specific individuals as an attempt to destroy the entire movement. One obvious target has been Michael Moore, who likes to see himself as the everyman complainer, but according to Fox News (not exactly the most objective source, as it was the voice of the Republican Party during the entire Bush Administration), because Michael Moore has an expensive house, he’s really one of the one percenters, rather than one of the many included in the 99%. Here’s where that math doesn’t add up: Yeah, he’s rich, but just because someone is rich does not make them automatically a part of the problem.

Much of Michael Moore’s success has come on the coattails of debunking the myths of the rich, and empowering those without any power. As a result, he has become very wealthy for his actions. That should be seen as a good thing, not something to somehow force his followers to throw him to the wolves. Just because he made a success at pulling the veil back from the hidden excesses doesn’t somehow make him part of the hidden excesses.

The movement is about the fact that there are some really greedy, bad people out there who are trying to pull shell games on the rest of us. For way too long now, corporate entities have cloaked themselves in the shadows while doing all sorts of crappy things to the rest of us, like poison our water supplies, sell us damaged goods, sell wars for profit (not our profit, but theirs only), and allowed the changing of money that served to devalue the work of those who handle the actual work but benefit those who control how the money gets spent. When you have businesses built up with the sole purpose of generating more money from money, there’s seriously something wrong. When scientists are pulled off the assembly line of science and told its a lot more profit to be a businessman instead, there’s seriously something wrong.

There are a lot of pissed off people right now mainly because our education system has been teaching us that the American Way is the best course for the future. But we’re now starting to realize that those who make it rich in this country aren’t the ones who bought into the American Way (work hard and build a great country) but profited off of those who did. The ranks of the 1% should be filled with educators, scientists and innovators, not speculators, bankers, politicians and lawyers. THAT is why so many people are upset.

A lot of those people out on the streets right now are the ones who stood behind Obama when he was running for office in 2008, because his campaign promised a bright, brilliant future. Instead, we got a term of exactly what we had before, No more, no less. Hope and change yielded absolutely nothing but false promises. And the people who put Obama into power are smart enough to realize that no matter who they put into office next (Obama again, or a generic Republican), the promises are still going to be made with the reality that the next four years are going to be exactly what came before.

That’s why people are complaining. And discrediting Michael Moore isn’t going to change that.

For me, Black Friday is Just the Day After Thursday

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I noticed that retailers are starting to send me their “Black Friday” advertisements, telling me of all of the great savings they will be offering on the day after Thanksgiving. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I don’t care. Black Friday is one of those “holidays” that comes once a year that I completely ignore as much as possible, no matter how much hype keeps coming my way concerning the pseudo holiday. You see, I’ve discovered that over the years almost always one of two things happen with a Black Friday sale for me: It’s either sold out by the time I get to it, or it wasn’t really much of a deal to begin with.

The first problem is easy to understand. There are people who stay up late at night and rush the store the second it opens. People fight each other in the aisles, trying to get at that on sale sweater that they never would have bought on any other day, but they’ll kill you for the chance to get that sweater to the cash register. Sure, every now and then you hear about someone getting a “great deal” on something they bought, but for the most part, every person who raves about Black Friday to me usually tells me about some red and green sweater she bought “for only five bucks!” or some electronic item that they managed to pry from the dead hands of a child they beat like a baby seal for the pleasure of paying for it. And I nod, like I’m supposed to do, and I think about how I’m so glad I didn’t have to deal with the crowds that day.

You see, I hate crowds. Especially the kinds of crowds that come out on a Black Friday. These aren’t people watching crowds, flocks of friendly people partaking in holiday cheer, or even underfed supermodels who might be interesting to stare at as they shop for diet Yogurt, but these are crazed, ravenous creatures who seem to equate sales with a necessity on Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, and I just don’t buy into it. For me, dealing with hellbent people who are after sales is a lot like fishing with zombies. It might be interesting to experience in theory, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend the day throwing a line into the water around a bunch of people who want to eat my brains.

So, this year, when Black Friday comes around, I’ll stay at home and do something different, like anything that’s not shopping. For the rest of you, good luck on finding your sales. I’ll listen to your fascinating stories of beating up a school kid who was after that pair of shoes you just had to have, but that doesn’t mean I really care.