Tag Archives: Business

It Takes a Village Idiot & Other Self-Serving Nonsense

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

Another election period is upon us, which means an endless stream of attack ads, empty promises and commercials about politicians who claim to be just like us but would never cavort with any of us unless it was during an election cycle. But what gets my goat the most is not the election pandering itself but one of the common refrains that just won’t go away. The one that says we’re doing it for the children.

You know the appeal I’m talking about. Someone will go off half cocked (or full cocked, or because someone did something involving a cock), and then state that he or she is doing what he or she is doing “for the children”. What they are really saying is that they’re doing for themselves, but they really need to sound like they’re doing it for a much higher purpose, and what purpose is higher than the generation that is coming up next?

In 1996, Hilary Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, wrote a book called It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. During the Bill Clinton Administration, it became a major talking point, and in 1996, H. Clinton went on a nationwide, ten-city book tour where she advocated that it takes a village to raise a child. I won’t get into the quandary that was the fact that H. Clinton really didn’t write this book, as it was actually ghostwritten by Barbara Feinman, but I did want to talk about a fundamental foundation of the book itself, and why it still continues to provide problems for modern day America.

One of the problems I have always had with the book is that it makes a specific claim that it never really backs up. Drawing from a spiritual African folklore idea, the book projects a belief that in order to raise a child in modern society, it requires everyone in the society to participate to make that child better. It also demands that all of the society’s resources be combined to bring forth the best children we can raise. That’s all fine and dandy if you have children, but it also makes a major assumption that a childless adult cares one iota about someone else’s children.

The book’s idea has been used a lot lately in projecting itself in political issues. Whenever there’s a debate about adult values being considered, quite often the argument gets placed back into the nursery sphere, and we’re arguing whether or not children should be subjected to influences they may not be ready for. Examples are music, videogames, television and movies.

Let’s look at those examples a bit. The first example was music, and look at how we’ve handled these issues in our modern day brush with this issue. It should not be surprising that one of the first avenues of contention occurred right about the same time rap music became a mainstream phenomenon. Next thing you knew, we had political commentators all over the country arguing that musicians (rap stars) were advocating all sorts of violence against police and state run institutions. In order to “protect” the children, we had to separate this horrific music from their ears. As such, people like Elizabeth Dole and Tipper Gore started advocating that music needed to be controlled because if it was not, then we might risk the future development of our children. That alliances occurred between such strange bedfellows as Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and John Denver against such actions is a testament to how deranged the attacks were in the first place.

Since then, there have been all sorts of continued attacks on the arts by all sorts of different “for the children” advocates. Computer games are constantly attacked by Jack Thompson, a disbarred Florida attorney, who has continued a Quixotic campaign against videogames that is so futile that he is continuously ridiculed by the Penny Arcade comic strip duo of Tycho and Gabe, even though he continues to threaten to sue them, causing them to humiliate him even further.

I could go on for hours about this sort of stuff, but the point of this post was to emphasize how fallacial the argument is that a village must respond to the needs of the few who advocate it takes a village to raise a child. And that’s where I wish to continue.

You see, the whole “it takes a village” crowd has managed to force itself into the decision-making process of a lot of things that directly affect adults who have nothing to do with children, and that’s just wrong. Part of the reason we formed a society in the first place wasn’t to protect the children, but to protect the adults from each other. As critical as it is that Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau compete against each other for why we formed in the first place, not a single one of them advocates that we formed for the purpose of raising kids but that our formation was for the purpose of how adults interact with each other. Somehow, with this whole “it takes a village” nonsense, we’ve kind of forgotten this.

Because of “it takes a village”, I now have to jump through hoops just to play a videogame. Now, I don’t have too much of a problem with most of the rules, such as having to be of a certain age to play a certain game, but those rules have developed other problems that do directly affect me. Because of these draconian rules for games, it is very possible that some of the games I would like to play aren’t even being carried by specific retailers. Wal Mart doesn’t carry anything that has the NC restrictions, because it figures that if kids can’t buy it, then it’s not worth stocking. But even though we’re talking about games, it should be pointed out that the majority of the customers who buy computer games aren’t kids, but adults. Yet, because of rules that exist because of kids, we’re limited in our selection by what kids would actually be able to buy.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, in a 2008 report, the latest one conducted, the average age of a gamer is 35, and only 25 percent of the player base is 18 or younger. So, we’re creating draconian rules for a small segment of the gaming population, yet 75 percent of the population is an adult who is limited in selection by these rules. To make it even more bizarre, it’s significant to point out that the average age of a purchaser of games is 40. I probably shouldn’t have to make the mention of the significance of that.

The significant assumption of the whole “it takes a village” thing is that everyone in society is required to contribute to the upbringing of a child. That’s relatively new and something that has been forced upon society by some people who I don’t think are revealing the whole story. When politicians use this mantra to get elected, and then turn around and don’t actually do anything that contributes to the upbringing and well-being of children, there’s a real problem here. Think about this. How often do women and children foundations have to struggle against any administration for a pittance of a budget when very adult endeavors get funded nonstop? After the Depression, married women convinced their elected husbands to start up a Women and Children’s Bureau, but once men in office set it up, they did everything possible to unfund it and eventually remove all of its teeth and capabilities. It only took a decade to completely destroy the foundation, and even though there’s a similarly named organization today, it is a shadow of its original purpose and is maintained more as a donations seeker than an actual organization that does the kinds of things it was imagined it would do back in the 1930s.

Which brings me to a very important subject to me: Me. Why should I care about the upbringing of someone else’s children? Because if you think about it, that’s exactly what’s being demanded of me. Sure, I like kids, but that doesn’t mean I want anything to do with them. I’m kind of like the hunter and gatherer guy from the Stone Age period (and not that much more intelligent sometimes). As the hunter in the tribe, my only interaction with little Johnnie is when little Johnnie is learning to become a hunter. Until then, little Johnnie is kept as far away from me as possible. He doesn’t get to go to the grub shop, or the ale house, and if he sees me on the street of our village, he should have been taught to say: “Greetings, good sir, Grokk” and then continue on down the street. He and I have very little interaction together. His father, whoever that is, is the one who actually raises him with his mother. Had I wanted a child, I would have had one, and then it would have been my responsibility.

You see, what I’m getting at is that Hilary Clinton’s book (that was written by someone else) argues that I’m supposed to present my resources and my time to raise her child. I’m sorry, but Chelsea Clinton doesn’t need Duane Gundrum raising her, or having anything to do with raising her. As a matter of fact, as a sidebar of this whole “it takes a village” crap, if I ever show up at Chelsea Clinton’s school to help raise her, the school administrators are probably going to call the police and make sure that I’m no longer allowed within 100 feet of a school, church or Chuck E. Cheese establishment. The point being: I’m only desired as long as I can provide resources. I, personally, am never invited into the rearing process.

So, if you get the point, the “it takes a village” is all about using my resources but doesn’t really want “me” to assist in any way. It’s all just a big shortcut at gathering resources for those who have children, like H. Clinton, and taking them directly from those who do not. That’s all “it takes a village” was really meant to mean. If I was ever invited to assist in the education of the child, it might be different.

The origination of “it takes a village” comes from an African source that actually wanted the village to participate in the raising of a child. The US version of the phrase never advocated for that. We’re really good at using some parts and discarding the parts we don’t like.

That’s why I think our version is really “it takes a village idiot” to raise a child because that’s what I’d have to be in order to participate without being allowed to ever participate in the first place. Like the reason I never got married, I’ve always felt it’s all about money, and I’d rather keep mine where it is.

Who Judges When the Government Goes Too Far?

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

In the northern, midwest part of the country there’s an interesting battle that has been taking place between citizens and government that most people don’t even know anything about. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about this until a colleague of mine was swept up into the bizarre, bureaucratic red tape and forced into some pretty draconian adventures with government and immovable government employees who are incapable of seeing two sides to any issue.

I’ll give you a link to an interesting article that was written in November of 2009. Imagine if you were planning to rent a room out of your home, and you were looking for a specific type of roommate. Well, as my colleague discovered, be very careful about how you designate what type of roommate you’re looking for.

In my friend’s case, he has a large home that costs a lot of money to heat it. Well, he had rented a room in his home to a family that brought in a lot more people than they indicated they were going to when signing the agreement to stay there. As a result, the heat was turned on constantly as there was always someone in the house, and the costs to heat his place went literally through the roof. He found himself almost unable to pay his bills each month because the heat bill was off the charts. And then the family left and decided not to pay the money owed for the heat, leaving him pretty much holding the bag.

So, when he decided to rent out the space again, he put forth a Craigslist ad and wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again, so he said he was only interested in renting to individuals, not families. If you know anything about how the system works from there, you probably know what happened next.

There is a group of people who must literally sit at home and read each new ad that goes up on Craigslist because immediately they contacted the regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance, which immediately declared my colleague guilty, requiring a cash payment and then a mandatory attendance at a discrimination seminar, which also cost about $300 and took place in Ohio, even though he lives in Michigan. So, imagine how my friend must have felt when he was now out about $700 for listing a room on Craigslist, when all he was trying to do was avoid someone cranking up the heat and literally forcing him out of house and home.

My colleague tried to get anyone to listen to him, but generally people don’t care. He, and I agree, felt he was railroaded through a system that didn’t even give him an opportunity to present his own side. He was literally guilty without a chance to even prove innocence, which in my opinion, should never happen in this country, but it does almost every day.

Well, something interesting just happened that puts an interesting wrench into his phenomenon. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a 31 year old nursing student put up an ad on her local church’s bulletin board asking for a “Christian roommate”. As I’m sure you’re suspecting, she was turned over to the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, a regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance. And, of course, the government treated her as a criminal without even considering any other possible circumstances or potential outcomes.

The difference this time is that unlike my colleague, this isn’t something that’s being taken without a fight. Remember, this was a religious act of “discrimination” so it should not come as a surprise that major entities are now responding in anger at a government entity that has no intentions of backing down. Nancy L. Haynes, executive director of the local Fair Housing Center, offers: “Our interest really lies in her getting some training so that this doesn’t happen again.” But as this is starting to become an issue that is getting the attention of some very powerful religious organizations and groups, one wonders if the government is really going to have the last word on this.

And I guess that’s the point of this. My colleague had no recourse, nor did he have anyone that was willing to advocate on his behalf. Basically, he was told he was in the wrong, and that under no circumstance would he be able to respond in any way that was not exactly as the government directed. Well, if the government caves on this, and they most likely probably will once very powerful entities get involved, then it’s important to look at this and start asking some important questions, like:

Is government answerable to the people, or is it as all powerful as it claims to be (at least in this case)?

If a powerful organization can change the dogmatic approach of government, then why isn’t there some kind of recourse for the average American?

And most important: How come these governmental entities do not have oversight that keeps them from acting as judge, jury AND the enforcement mechanism.

No one likes to be railroaded by government, but what’s even worse is being railroaded right before someone else gets treated completely differently because of powerful friends. That’s the origin of the pool corruption, even though most people won’t recognize it when they’re swimming in it.

I’m Suspecting Amazon Doesn’t Actually Understand Writing

Economics, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

For a bit of time now, Amazon has been trying to herald the move towards electronic books, essentially ushering in a new medium for which books will eventually become the primary method of production. The Kindle, which is not a new story, was supposed to be their attempt to usher in this new era, and so far, it is doing a pretty damn good job of leading the industry. Sure, the iPad is an attempt to steal back some of that thunder, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that right now Amazon is in the driving seat with the capability of calling a lot of future shots.

Which is why I found it shocking that Amazon released the following statement:

Generally speaking, writers have two options when they sit down to create a new piece that can be distributed through conventional channels. They can author a short, attention-grabbing magazine-length feature that doesn’t require the reader to invest more than a few minutes of their time, or they can craft a long, 50,000-plus word novel that is meant to be absorbed over multiple sittings.

Now, if you’ve never been a professional writer before, this may sound quite innocent, and maybe even informative, but if you have any knowledge of the publishing business, and I mean ANY, you know that there are far more than two options an author has when sitting down to write a new piece. Basically, Amazon is stating a writer can choose from a short story or a novel, and now they have somehow managed to invent something in between that.

Writers have been writing all sorts of variations of those two models for centuries. Publishers have been publishing variations of far beyond those two models for centuries as well. Just recently, the whole unmentionable (by me, mainly) epic of Twilight released a novella, which just so happens to be a book that is too small to be a 50,000 normal novel and too big to be a short story. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? Yes, writers have been tackling this genre long before Amazon came onto the scene.

To me, it appears that Amazon is attempting to somehow create a new category to invent a brand new revenue stream, even though that category has existed long before Amazon became a web site, back in the days when an Amazon was often referred to women I dated who used to beat me up when I didn’t comform to their expectations (but that’s a completely different article, of course). We don’t need this new category, especially when Amazon already charges different prices for different books based on the expectations and demands of the specific publishers.

To indicate they are somehow inventing a brand new length of writing after 4000 years since the first human scribbled some carvings on a cave is somewhat insulting to the rest of us. It’s not like they need special programming to release an e-book that has fewer pages than a “normal” e-book. The whole announcement sounds like a non-announcement to me, but more of an attempt to remain in the news now that everyone and his brother is releasing an e-reader and selling it at Best Buy.

(sources: TMC Net, Amazon’s web site)

Why war happens in this day and age, a primer on making change

Economics, Politics, Religion, , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of talk about war lately. It seems that whenever international diplomacy starts to fall apart, or easy answers to complex questions don’t seem all that available, talk of war starts up, and people begin to think that this is the solution to everything. It rarely is, and on an unconscious level, I think most people realize that. But in the end, it tends to be the final vestige of common sense, and then we find ourselves engaging in war talk which leads, not surprisingly, to war.

But few people seem to think about why we find ourselves talking about war, except in simplistic terms, like “they started it” or “they gave us no other choice.” Unpacking such comments can often lead one to realize that such proclamations are the same kinds of claims we made when we were children, when that one kid threw a rock at us and “forced us” to engage in a fight. We all know that walking away was an option. We also know ten or twenty other alternatives that didn’t lead to “knocking his block off”, but for some reason the escalation of hostilities seemed to be the only one we chose.

But is it as simple as that? I don’t think so. I think there’s a part of that, but it still doesn’t explain why a nation would want to go to war. People don’t think collectively like that unless something happens that puts them into a disturbed state of mind (like being bombed unprovoked by another country, invaded in the middle of the night, or where hatreds between two peoples has gone on so long that no one is capable of thinking any other way). So, if we put this sort of thing on the shoulders of the leaders, the ones who make these sorts of decisions for nations, then perhaps we might figure out why we see so much war today.

One of the problems historians have with modernists is that people who think in terms of “today” often think that we’re in some kind of enlightened age where things today are so much different than they were in earlier eras. We see that we have so much more technology, so we sort of assume that our thinking has progressed just as well. Well, it hasn’t. If you examine most wars happening today, you’ll see the same sorts of horrific actions occurring today as existing back in the days of barbarism. Soldiers still pillage. Soldiers still rape. Soldiers still run off with the spoils of war. And no, there isn’t a nation around that is so enlightened that it hasn’t done these things. Wars in Africa have been decimating the infrastructure of those countries. The UN has been accused of, and has definitely stood on the sidelines of, numerous rapes that have happened as a consequence of war. The United States had a run of American soldiers removing the relics of Iraq during its most recent war, and in some cases soldiers had to be forced to give back these items as we had to keep reminding ourselves that “civilized soldiers don’t do that sort of thing”. Only very recently did we return some of the spoils of war from Iraq’s palaces, as some military units in the United States had them on display as “trophies” of the war.

So, our thinking isn’t any more enlightened than its ever been. In some cases we act better, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty actions of war, we look the other way when things start to fall apart. That’s a natural consequence; no one wants to think they are part of the problem but somehow always part of the solution.

Which brings me back to leaders. When leaders don’t get along with other leaders and can’t seem to find easy solutions to complex problems, they do what they’ve always done: They declare war. Or they just attack. You’d think that centuries having done this over and over that we’d figure out how to stop this, but we’ve never been all that good at learning from history. Or even our own pasts.

But what’s significant about this is that we’re still following a model that is no longer relevant for today’s time. In the old days, just a few hundred years ago, leaders of nations used to duke it out on the battlefield over all sorts of stupid reasons. (“You stole my girlfriend, so we’re going to wage an epic war.”) But for so many centuries, wars were fought between the nobles of their subsequent empires. A king would declare war, and then all of his nobles would rally behind him and fight. Sure, lots of soldiers would fight as well, but the important fighting was the accumulation of nobles. If a king wanted to go to war, he had to convince all of the people who would actually be going to war that they needed to go to war. So those people would take to the field and fight. That was war.

Today, we don’t have that model. None of the leaders who declare war, or who help that leader decide on war, actually fight any more. The nobles are now very rich men (some women, although not that many) who are part of an aristocratic infrastructure that has no connection to the military. Instead, our military consists of a lot of people who are not part of the economic elite. When we go to war today, we send a lot of very poor people out with the skills to decimate the very poor people in the militaries of other nations. No more do we send out nobles on horses, leading the charge.

This means that the people who decide to go to war are most likely not the people fighting it. Think about that for a moment. If you didn’t have to fight a war, what would stop you from deciding to go to war? Sure, some might have kids fighting in those wars, but look at our legislature when Iraq and Afghanistan wars started. Very, very few sent their own kids. Instead, they sent the kids of other parents. There was absolutely no risk to them. Only benefits. And the economic elites didn’t send their kids either. They received only benefits.

But that’s just the western nations. What about all of those other third world nations? Same thing. Their leaders are rarely fighting the wars. Instead, a lot of brainwashed, or patriotic (call them whatever they are), young people fight those wars for them. When you have this model in place, there’s absolutely no reason to avoid war. As long as the enemy doesn’t destroy your infrastructure and your continuation of being able to rule and enrich yourself, there’s nothing to lose. Even the economic elites of Iran and Afghanistan have suffered minimally, having stopped being rewarded by their former leaders and now enriching themselves through the corruption of having themselves selectively placed in positions that allow them to do so.

With this in place, why wouldn’t a leader want to go to war? That’s the question that no one seems to ask. Instead, they allow themselves to be rallied towards more wars. As long as you have standing armies that need to be used in order to be seen as useful, you are always going to see petty wars being fought for the purpose of justifying existence.

Until people stop accepting this as the way things are, the model has no reason to change itself.

Poverty is getting worse in America, but no one seems to care

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , ,

It was reported again today that poverty is getting worse in America. The info came from the Census Bureau this time. Seems that in 2009, poverty jumped to 14.3 percent from 11.3 percent in 2000. Unemployment is also worse. Yet, you wouldn’t know this from the pundits who want to do everything to convince us that everything’s fine, or everything’s just on a downswing, just waiting to start swinging back up to prosperity.

But there’s no evidence of that. We’ve had a couple of HUGE stimulus packages and MAJOR bailouts of industries and banks. Hasn’t done anything but make a few more millionaires into mega millionaires, and the job outlook doesn’t look any better, and poverty looks like it’s becoming more of the norm.

So what are we supposed to do with this information? Riot in the streets? Jump off the nearest bridge? I’d like to know because I don’t really have an answer. There are two political parties in power that will continue to be in power NO MATTER WHO GETS ELECTED, and these two parties are acting like it’s no big deal. Oh sure, they’ll complain if it might get more of their people into office, but in reality, they don’t care. Because everyone of them have jobs. We’re paying for them. They have jobs pretty much for life because the system is designed to keep them in power and to allow them to decide how much we get to pay them. We, on the other hand, have little to no power, and we have to listen as they argue about how much they should be able to charge us for the privilege of letting them serve on the government payroll.

Oh, we can get upset, but it won’t do any good. They’ll still be in power no matter how mad we get.

And people will still continue to get poorer, and the jobs will continue to disappear from us because the corporate heads of most companies have discovered there’s profit in not paying people. There’s even profit in bankrupting your company, cheating all of your customers, and in some cases, pretending you have a real company and charging people to rip them off before they go bankrupt themselves and the criminal gets even wealthier.

No, there are no jokes in this post because there’s really nothing funny about it. Those who might actually be reading this will just file it away to never be used again and then go back to wondering about whether or not Lady Gaga will wear something bizarre during her next television appearance. Instead of paying attention to who really runs the country, they’ll think about who they want to vote for on the next American Idol, or who to vote off the island.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate will continue to rise, and unemployment will continue to dip, while someone in government (doesn’t matter which party) will spin it to make it seem like everything’s better, even though everything’s not.

Kind of sad. I’ll close with a picture of cute puppies because that’s probably more important to people anyway.

What is the future of the literary magazine?

Writing, , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been wondering this question for a bit of time now with the emergence of the Internet as the place where everything seems to be centered in writing these days. In the old days, to be a writer, you first finished your education (generally), then you started publishing in literary magazines, then to commercial, high paying magazines, and then you started to work your way into getting that novel published. Granted, some people took an easier path, but mostly this was the formula for success.

The Internet has kind of changed all of that. Now, anyone can claim to be a writer and try to make his or her way without any previous work. This has developed a whole sense of a lot of junk that has been thrown into the mix, making it almost impossible for a writer to get recognized and even worse, that much harder for a reader to figure out what is worth reading. Bookstores start to gravitate away from the old formula, and the next thing you know (or we currently know) bookstores only publish commercial fiction that is churned out by publishers who are only willing to invest in already established names or, even worse, celebrities who are now writing books. Like Nancy Grace’s new book. Or Glenn Beck’s. Or the autobiographies of unimportant important people which were really written by other people. This leads to events like Tyra Banks announcing she’s writing her new book Modelland, which really excited only about four people, all of them employed by Tyra Banks.

Which brings it back to me. It’s my blog, so why not?

At one point, I was actually making a name for myself in the literary magazine marketplace. Editors started to know me. Sometimes they even commented on my published work when they saw me in another magazine. It used to be a really close-knit community, and I was breaking into it.

And then I stopped writing for about a decade and a half due to a really strange relationship I had with a woman. It took me that long to realize I needed to get back to writing, and here I am. But no one remembers me any more, so it’s like I’m starting over again.

Recently, one of those editors contacted me and published one of my later pieces of work in his literary magazine, a science fiction one. A success. Yay. But it leaves me wondering if this old model of publishing is still viable today. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll include it on my vita like I normally would, but I wonder if the publication of this story in this ‘zine is really going to contribute to my eventual success. Oh don’t get me wrong. I’d still have it published there cause I like the editor and support his continued attempts to build an audience for what he does best. But I’m still wondering if there’s a career out there for me because there are so many writers these days, and basically you’re competing with anyone who has access to a computer today.

It makes me wonder if the age of being a writer is somewhat over, unless you already made it famous before or you’re some kind of marketing genius capable of making a name for yourself in the sea of endless writers.

Is Craigslist Really the Enemy They Claim It Is?

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

Craigslist recently announced that it is going to be suppressing its listings for sex ads. Instead of the adult listing, it now shows up as “censored” on their site. Public interest groups are now high-fiving themselves because they seem to have won some sort of Quixotic victory that they believe has somehow made things better. Others, of course, still say that it’s not enough and want pretty much the universe when it comes to compliance. I thought it would be interesting to examine this and see what’s really going on.

First off, let’s look at the original problem. Craig Newmark started Craigslist back in 1995 in San Francisco. The idea was to give people a one stop marketplace where they could take care of their every need. You could find an apartment, get a job, sell that old TV you could never get rid of, and yes, even hook up with a potential partner, if that should be your current desire. Not surprisingly, that latter option has opened up all sorts of controversial issues with the online distributor of trade.

In 2002, according to Wikipedia, because of complaints, Craigslist started adding warnings to some of their personal ad areas, such as “men seeking men”, “casual encounters”, “rants and raves”, and “erotic services”. Already, these areas were causing problems with the mainstream segments of the population.

From this point forward, Craigslist has been on the attentions of quite a few public interst groups, and not surprisingly, law enforcement officials.

Up until this time, erotic services were pretty much an entity you had to search through some pretty creative methods, often involving a lot of bait and switch circumstances that one had to navigate solely on the hope that the next time would be better than the last time. Massage parlours were often a place men would go to seek prostitution, and after a lot of false leads and deception, it was not unusual for a man to pay hundreds of dollars to receive absolutely no desired experiences. Some got lucky, but most didn’t, and it was quite often a very discouraging experience.

The Internet was supposed to change all of that. At one’s fingertips was now immediate access to all sorts of information. Craigslist jumped into the game, and people were now following want ads for what they were seeking, and in conjunction with a lot of other erotic services on the Internet, people were actually finding what they were seeking. It was not unusual to see someone’s want ad on Craigslist, then check out the profile on one of the other erotic feedback sites, and then decide whether or not to book a session with that person. Very hard to find erotic services were now being much easier to find because they could now be found on Craigslist. Many people may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there looking for some very specific types of encounters, and having everything in one place made it much easier for these people to connect.

Well, this didn’t bode well for the industy when there were people who would do everything possible to make sure that such people could never make any such connection. But this probably wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if another entity did not show up, which made things even worse. I’m talking about the scammer.

People may not realize it, but the entity of the scammer has pretty much destroyed every good thing that has ever come across on the Internet. Porn didn’t hurt the Internet, as the fuddy duddies would like you think it did (it actually served to fuel the Internet in its infancy, which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). Scammers did. Most of your email is now pretty much worthless because scammers found out they could profit off of naive people. You are required to buy special software to protect your computer because scammers discovered they could infect your computer just by hosting evil programs on sites where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Ebay used to be a great place to buy things; scammers and thieves put a wrench in the trust factor of that entity. So it is not that much of a surprise that scammers showed up and pretty much destroyed Craigslist.

Some of the biggest crimes that have rallied people against Craigslist have been people who have been cheating other people on the Internet. Call them scammers. Call them thieves. Call them the mob. Or whatever, but it’s this group of people who have caused all of the problems that have made Craigslist the cesspool that it can often be.

Because face it. Women being prostitutes has never caused all that much of a problem, unless you’re Tiger Woods. But people forcing women into prostitution has. Child predators looking for children for sex causes problems. Again, those same people are the ones that make this sort of thing available. These people are criminals who care little for the activity but everything for exploitation and making a quick buck. Unfortunately, they serve to diminish an activity that others might be providing in a more positive way, and unfortunately, there’s often very little way to separate the two.

There are a lot of honest people who are into the sex business who aren’t trying to steal from other people or to hurt other people. They easily get pushed aside whenever the bad class of people show up, and unfortunately that bad class shows up way too quickly and way too often.

All of the issues that have caused public interest against Craigslist have come from these bad elements of our societies. No one rallies around a leader seeking to stop prostitution. But everyone rallies around anyone seeking to stop child exploitation and people who wish to develop nonconsensual slavery circumstances.

This is the problem that Craigslist has fallen into because the owners of that site really didn’t care who was posting on the site. They were more interested in developing a site that brought in money. I can’t see that I blame them, but because of this, they have become the victim of their own success. With great success comes great responsibility, to steal and destroy a great line from Spiderman, and unfortunately Craigslist hasn’t really come up to the plate for the responsibility thing. It played a lot of shell games in hopes of getting people to think it was on the right side of morality, but when it came down to it, it was really only thinking of itself. When the public finally started to become a hammer to be used against them, they censored themselves and then tried to act all First Amendmentish and posted “censored” where they censored themselves.

The fact is: They could have dealt with this a lot easier by actually policing their ads in the beginning to see how much exploitation was going on. Instead, they dropped the ball and lost the whole game. But for lack of stupid analogies, I’ll take this one step further and say that they haven’t lost the whole season yet. They can still do something about cleaning up their site without destroying what they set out to do in the first place.

There are a lot of sex workers who do rely on Craigslist, and unfortunately because of this action, they are forced to start using more exploitive sites out there that are much worse, and that’s sad. Craigslist could step back up to the plate and decide where it wants to be in this debate. It can kowtow to the Bible thumpers and give in completely, like it’s doing right now, or it can bite back and work hand in hand with the communities that have grown up with them, making sure that the evil ones are ostracized, but the ones who are there for the right reasons still have a forum in which to do what they do best.

Unfortunately, it looks like Craigslist may take the easier road because it is filled with fewer obstacles. In the end, it may be a road that leads nowhere.

Even though they’ll probably kill me, I still love eggs

Politics, , , , , , ,

The whole egg recall thing has me worried. But not because I’m scared of eggs, or think that I’m going to die. What worries me is that there’s so much information about the whole egg thing roaming around the airwaves that I haven’t a clue about what’s really going on. Either the industry leaders are only interested in profit and don’t care if I die, or they’re great down home farmers that have my best interests at heart and this is all just some kind of overreaction. Or it’s something in between. Or none of these things. To be honest, I don’t know the details because the media has managed to ramp up the scare tactics so that I’m afraid of drinking potable water these days so that anything they say about eggs really seems somewhat irrelevant.

And that’s the problem. There is so much information that is clashing with more information that no one really knows what is real and what is made up. Everyone claims to have our best interests at heart, but after you unpack that, you start to realize that people are telling you things to maintain profits, or because they’re just nuts and want to be heard. In fact, no one really knows anything, and there’s a lot of disinformation available. There’s just no way of knowing what to trust and what not to trust.

But the simple fact still comes to light: I like eggs. I like eating eggs. I only eat them on the weekends, but it’s my one guilty pleasure. Well, aside from that other one, but I can’t talk about that one because the government is listening, and the tinfoil hat I usually wear is in the shop, so I have to be careful about what I say in public.

But I like eggs. And I want to keep eating them. I don’t know if it’s safe. I know that I need to cook them, but I wasn’t planning to eat them raw in the first place, so that’s not a problem. But even now, people tell me that it’s dangerous to eat eggs because of disease. Well, it’s dangerous to breathe as well, but for some reason I keep doing it.

What it comes down to is that at some point you have to turn out the overbearing messages and just do what you’re going to do. We can be scared of everything, like taking an airplane because of crazy terrorists armed with pen knives and box cutters, or we can just live our lives and hope that things work out. I think I’m going to try the latter, even though it might kill me.

But I like eggs much more than I like living in fear about my next meal. And sometimes you just have to compromise, like any woman who might ever agree to date me. But that’s a whole other issue.

Facebook Is Lawsuit Happy & Trying to Rule the World

Social Networking, , , , ,

Eventually it had to happen. A company becomes so powerful that it decides it pretty much owns the world. Just the other day, a teaching company attempted to file a trademark for the name Teachbook, which pointed to its online identity as a company that provides lesson plans and other teaching related materials to teachers. Well, of course, this was obviously a ploy designed to steal the identity of Facebook, because they turned around and sued them, stating that

“If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix BOOK could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ‘social networking services.”

This can loosely be translated to: “We use the word book in our name, so we own it forever and ever, and we’ll sue the crap out of you if you think otherwise.”

Not surprisingly, we visited this topic a short time ago with the brilliant mind of Paris Hilton, when she trademarked the phrase: “That’s so hot” or something as stupid as that, indicating that the phrase was never popular until she came along. As if.

But Facebook is doing something much more dangerous because it’s attempting to pretty much shut down the use or specific words that have any similarity to the one they use in their title. But the process of trademarking also involves the concept of “intent” and I seriously doubt that Teachbook was really planning to steal market share away from Facebook. I’m waiting for the inventor of the netbook to sue Facebook and stop them from using their name. Not going to happen because most other people, aside from Facebook, AREN’T STUPID enough to do so.

Well, the sad part of this is that because Facebook has gazillions of dollars to spend and Teachbook is a small launch with two employees, Facebook may just use its corporate clout to completely clobber them in legalese, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it because no one really backs the underdog except to cheer and say “attaboy”. So, if they go down in this fight, that just means that we’ve made the demon that much stronger.

It’s only a matter of time before Facebook turns around and says that everyone must stop using the word “.com” in their titles, because Facebook uses it and Facebook is much bigger than they are. It’s not that much different than forcing people to not use the word “book”. Think about it because soon that may be all you can do.

The Problem for the Future Might Not Just Be the Government

Politics, , , , ,

As an advocate of free speech and very (extremely) limited government, I’m often talking about the problem of government control and its intrusive nature. For those like me, we’re often seeing the future as a variation of “1984” and fear the process of new-speak and Big Brother. But one thing that has emerged over the latter part of the 20th century and into the early part of the 21st century is the revelation that the problem may not be coming from big government, but from big business. This is somewhat ironic, or tragic, because most people who tend to advocate for less government are usually big fans of privatization and the freedom of business interests. But what has happened is that big business is slowly usurping big government as the entity we most need to fear.

Look at Microsoft, Google and Facebook for examples of what I’m talking about. Microsoft won the operating system wars by dogmatic policies and, as some lawsuits would have you believe, through some pretty crappy business practices involving monopolies and claims of stolen innovations. Whether or not there’s any truth in that latter claim, I don’t really care about, but what arguments can be made is that by having huge monopolies of this nature, we’ve really made it practically impossible to innovate in new directions because dogmatic companies just don’t let you do that.

But to make matters worse, these types of companies are now going out of their way to innovate their own successes on the backs of most of their customers. Facebook, lately, has shown itself to be a behemoth that no longer cares what people think as it buys and sells our own personal information, and it laughs at us if we think what they’re doing is wrong in any way. I love their procedure for dealing with you when you decide to quit them. Instead of actually allowing you to delete your account, they “allow” you to “deactivate” your account so that they can still use your information and treat you as one of their products rather than one of their customers. To ACTUALLY delete your account, you have to go through a four or five click process to finally reach a page that then informs you that it will take 2 weeks to delete your account, as if the owners of Facebook realize that you’re being rash and hotheaded, so they’ll give you some time to think about it before they’ll allow you to make the “mistake” of leaving. Even when you deactivate your account, they make you feel so guilty about it, reminding you that if you should dare to deactivate your account, you will no longer be able to communicate with your friends, your wife, your loved ones or your family EVER again.

The biggest problem with some of these companies is that they buy and trade our own private information as if it is their own. And read the legalese they make you click and agree to before you ever access their pages. THEY OWN YOU and your information, and you’re only living in THEIR worlds. That’s really how they feel about it.

Lately, there has been a new movement to pretty much dump Facebook because of their unilateral strategies in ownership of information. The backlash has been a claim of “if you don’t continue with Facebook, then you can never communicate with anyone ever again”. It’s straight out arrogance and stupidity, but people fall for it.

What we used to fear was government becoming too powerful, which is why we made rules of what government could and could not do. But private enterprises don’t have this same type of hold on it, unless you count the government itself. Right now, Congress is looking into a number of these different large companies to stop their approaches to ownership over data and information, but these companies are doing an amazing thing as a response: They’re appealing to citizens and acting as if government is using its power to stop them from donig what is their right to do, which essentially means they are upset that government is stopping them from doing to us exactly what we wanted to make sure government could never could do to us. The irony is that because they’re not government, they think it’s okay that they get to do things that we would never allow government to do.

As big businesses are becoming more aligned with the wants and needs of government, and often use government to back up their plans (police agencies have always responded to the needs of large businesses before they respond to the common folk), this collusion may one day reach a point where we are going to find ourselves being detained by government at the behest of these organizations. Recently, when Gizmondo printed a story about the new iPhone, the government raided their offices and took all of their computer equipment. No one knows who pulled the government’s strings on that as Apple claims it was the individual who lost the iPhone, while many others claim it had to have been Apple because the government agencies involved then went silent when questioned further.

It might not be something people realize is a problem just yet, but when it becomes a problem that everyone notices, it will then be too late. But when has that ever caused anyone to be proactive about one’s own rights and responsibilities?