Some years ago, when I was doing graduate school, I used to have to judge speech competitions between different colleges and universities. It was mostly fun, but one event I hated more than anything else was persuasive speaking, which boiled down to ten minute speeches that pretty much blamed the audience for a problem that was destroying the world and how each audience member was now responsible for fixing whatever was wrong. It would go something like: “Evil pharmaceutical companies are making drugs that are hooking people on curing symptoms rather than the actual problem itself. This is really bad, and YOU must do something about this to make things better.” And usually they’d mention my responsibility was now to contact my congressman, start a letter writing campaign, stop taking drugs, or whatever. But it always came back on me. I was the solution.
Well, I never bought that. In that scenario, pharmaceutical companies, doctors and insurance companies are the cause. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: They don’t give a rat’s ass what I think about it. They’re not going to stop because I tell them they need to stop. My congressman is not going to tell them to stop because I told him to do so. And if I’m taking pharmaceuticals to keep myself from dying of diabetes, chances are pretty good that I’m not going to just stop taking my medication because it makes some hippy kid in college feel better about himself/herself in that he or she got back at big bad pharma by delivering a speech condemning them.
Which brings me to Noam Chomsky. It seems that Noam has a diatribe about how something’s wrong with America, and how Americans need to stop doing what Americans do and somehow fix the world. Sounds great. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, Noam. The people who are contributing to the problem aren’t Americans. It’s the corporations that own Americans, their media and their legislators. Sure, “Americans” can change their ways and make things better, but they won’t, mainly because the ones that need to do the actual work don’t give a rat’s ass about the people who are being hurt. They only care about the profits. And as long as both political parties are part of the profit process, they’re not going to care either. Which means, NO ONE will do anything to make a difference.
And that’s the problem right there. Much like some freshman in college, Noam somehow thinks that shaming the average American citizen is somehow going to get that average American to take up his cause and somehow make things better, much like those underwear gnomes who claim 3 steps to profit, with step two detailed out as “????”. It’s a great sentiment, but in case Noam doesn’t know this, he has much more financial clout than I have, a much louder voice that people listen to, and so many more opportunities to make a difference. Yet, until I just read his article in Salon.com, I haven’t heard a peep from him about practically anything. Being a professional complainer might be fun, but it isn’t any more capable of making a difference than sitting in the basement and playing a full night of World of Warcraft. If you want to make a difference, you actually have to do something, not just complain about things that are wrong.
The real problem with America is that Americans are now to the point where they just don’t care. The problems we’ve created are so large and looming that it’s easier to watch American Idol and hope that the people we elected are smart enough to get the big things done. The dilemma is that the people we elected aren’t capable of solving these things. They’re not even capable of running the government so it doesn’t collapse on itself, forcing us into recessions, depressions and sequesters. Those are the people we’re looking to in hopes of making things better.
Right now, we have a large percentage of Americans who are more concerned about having a job tomorrow than they are about whether or not global warming is going to destroy a farm in Kenya. We should be concerned that North Korea and Iran are gravitating towards nuclear weapons, but we’re more frightened of being caught on the wrong side of town when it gets dark, because now gangs run freely in certain areas without any fear of being harassed by the police. We should care about the economies of small countries that have people in destitution, but when the majority of western wealth is held in the hands of less than 1 percent of the population and that the local police receive assurances from the Supreme Court that they’re not required to actually protect the people they serve rather than the government that hired them, there’s more of a problem that Noam isn’t going to come close solving because he’s as out of touch with the bigger picture as those who he complains about.
So how do we make things better? Simple. Make people care. But we don’t do that well because the organizations that do that are all about focus issues that are funded by lots of money. Not surprisingly, there’s no money behind “cleaning up the streets”, “putting people to work so they don’t join gangs”, or even “separate the 1 percent from the majority of the money.” When we do care and create movements like Occupy Wall Street, we ridicule these people and act like they’re inconveniencing us instead. To that, I don’t have a solution because unlike others, I’m willing to admit I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else. No one else seems to care, so it becomes so hard to try to care myself. As a matter of fact, it’s exhausting.
So, next time someone writes an article about what WE need to do, my first thought is “what are YOU doing first?” Quite often, the person hasn’t really thought it through, or more likely, hopes you just won’t figure that out.
The post isn't about the movie, but the picture definitely works
As I know I’m the one everyone turns to for on topic news reporting, I thought I’d give some opinions on what’s currently happening. Okay, no one reads me, so I’m ranting to the wind, but it’s my blog, so I’m going to do it anyway.
1. Obama Takes Credit for Lame Duck Victories. Um, okay. It seems that our current president seems to think that he has done great things by using the lame duck Congress to get a lot of legislation pushed forward before the end of the year. A couple of thoughts: First, Obama didn’t really do anything. The lame duck members of Congress did. So it was really them that succeeded in doing what they did. Second, while it’s wonderful that a lot of gridlocked legislation got pushed through (DADT, Bush Tax Cuts, START treaty, Adoption of Stickman as Ambassador to Iceland [okay, the last one didn’t happen, but it really should have]), when the new year starts up, we’re back to where we were before, except now we’re going to have a lot of pissed off Republicans who still think they have some kind of mandate to provide gridlock to the presidential agenda. Basically, the Democrats rammed through a whole bunch of legislation that required them to use their majority that is going to disappear at the start of the new year. That can’t lead to positive relations in Congress for the next year. Expect a lot of political partisanship to get much worse in the very near future, all of it blamed on the lame duck stuff. Lesson: You really don’t get a free ride when the odds are stacked against you for the future. Even the Bush Tax Cuts, which the Republicans are all happy about being passed, are going to be seen as Obama’s lame duck stuff that will cause immediately cause Republicans to blame Obama and the Democrats for anything that comes out negative, even as Republicans use the money to fuel their own desires.
2. Rahm Emanuel is Cleared to Run for Emperor of Chicago. Or Mayor, or whatever it is he’s running for. Basically, an Obama Administration guy is running on that name connection alone, even though everyone who had anything to do with Obama was thrown out of office during the last election. Supposedly, this might work in Chicago, which is Obama’s former backyard. But how does this affect the rest of us? It doesn’t. It means absolutely nothing to us. For all I know, he’s probably going to lose because he’s not actually Obama. The people of Chicago aren’t voting for Obama; they’re voting for some guy who once worked for Obama. He has to run on that. No one outside of people who might gain from any connections to this guy really cares in any way, shape or form. So, everytime I see an article about this, which is practically every day even though I don’t subscribe to any papers that have anything to do with Chicago, I want to claw out my eyes with a rusty spork. Please make him and his personal desire to be god of Chicago go away. Please, even if it’s just for the children.
3. Steven Spielberg is not going to advise Democrats on how to win over the voters. Thank God. It’s not that I don’t like Steven Spieldberg. His movies are great. But they’re movies. And as we learned from World War II, when a movie director like Kapra is making movies for the country, they’re not movies; they’re propaganda. Having a famous filmmaker try to change the perception of Americans about the Democrat Party is a disaster just waiting to happen. What’s wrong with the Democrats right now is that they’re constantly running on a platform of being for the people when they’ve been so out of touch of what the people want and need that they need education, not propaganda. But they’re not going to get that education because they don’t seem to realize what’s wrong. People are pissed at the Democrats right now because they came in with a plan to give the people what they wanted and then and went and did things that politicians have been doing for decades (filling their own pockets). We saw Rangel and Conyers and all sorts of shenanigans that benefited none of the people, but only the people in power. THAT is what they need to fix, and trying to get a famous movie director to advise them to change their public image is never going to work because it’s not their public image that needs fixing. It’s their actions they conduct in the name of the public interest. But I doubt they’re going to figure that out because the people who advise them are the same people who have been advising them while they were holding $1000 a plate fund-raisers to get elected.
4. Facebook is a networking program, not a lifestyle. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg was voted as Time’s person of the year. I really don’t care. He’s a rich, elitist, misogynist who happened to be at the right place at the right time to steal the right idea at the right time. Ever since then, he’s been trying to become important, but he heralded the creation of a platform for people to find their old friends and keep touch with their current friends in ways bordering on stalking, but only if the victim was sending texts to her stalker to announce where she’d be going next. Yes, I have a Facebook account. But it’s not my only means of oxygen or survival. It’s an interesting tool. And that’s it. For me, the person of the year would have been Julian whatever his name is who was running Wikileaks. That person really made an impact last year. Facebook didn’t. Neither did that rich billionaire, irrelevant sack of shit owner of Facebook either. It’s almost as if Time went out of their way to create the easiest winner of the award, realizing that if they chose the guy who should have got it, the government would have actually shut down Time Magazine as a threat to the country. I honestly don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to realize that this had to have been part of their discussion the night before they made their decision.
5. 2010 Kindle Sales will reach 8 billion. So what? Oh wait, I mean 8 million. Whatever. I mean, it’s kind of cool that Kindle will sell that many, but as expected, this kind of announcement fails to mention what’s really important: How many books are being sold, and how many are available? You see, it’s one thing to sell a bunch of devices, like Barnes & Noble is doing with the Nook Color, but when they don’t tell you how much information is available for the device, it’s really doing a disservice to the buying public. An example: I bought a Color Nook from B&N, and I’ve been nothing but pissed about my purchase ever since. I bought it, expecting the market to be represented in books, magazines and newspapers, but so far the selection has been abysmal at best. I have yet to see a justification for the color device because the magazine selection for the device is horrid. I have yet to see any new magazines sign up, other than really crappy ones that I would never flip through at the bookstore for free. When they start getting the marketplace to respond to their product, I’ll be happy. And don’t get me started on prices. The price for practically every book I’ve seen with the Nook has been either exactly the same price as the Kindle or much higher. Computer books are ridiculous in that they’re sometimes more expensive for the Nook version than they would be if I bought it in a physical copy. Not a good sign if they’re trying to capture a market. Or even tap into one.
This is the same problem, I have with the Kindle. The prices for books just don’t seem to justify the device itself. When books are $9.99, it might be worth it, but there’s a mindgame being played here that they don’t want to own up to. A lot of these books are now out in paperback and available from some retailers for much cheaper than $9.99. Yet, the price for these books doesn’t go down. They remain at $9.99 or recently, $12.99, which seems to be some bizarre sweet spot the book companies think they can get. In other words, they’re making the market reliant on the hardbook, brand new price model when most people haven’t even really been reliant on that model in the real bookstore of the past. I bought a few books that were “discounted” at the $7.00 range, and I realized while buying them that I could probably get these books for less than $5.00 because they’ve been out in paperback forever. Kindle is trying to take the Apple approach of “people are suckers who will pay anything for something digital, and if we capture that market, they’ll always pay us full price”. Kindle started out well with their price model, but then they caved in against the book publishers, and that bit of working together has managed to screw the average customer who is now faced with paying stupid prices or going back to the old model of waiting for physical books to go down in price. Without even trying, the e-reader market is doing a good job of killing its own future marketplace.
6. The iPad. The hype over this product has completely overwhelmed me. Not enough to buy one, but enough to cause me to wonder if people really are that daft. I mean, it’s not like the technology was really all that new. We’ve had tablets on the market for a few years now, but they never sold because people didn’t see a need for them. And then Steve Jobs announced the iPad during his yearly announcement meeting, and suddenly everyone had to have one. I’ve looked at it, and almost even bought one, because I’m a stupid Internet geek who buys stupid things like the Nook Color. But I waited a day and then realized I didn’t want OR NEED one. It didn’t do anything I couldn’t already do with devices I already had. I mean, it’s got a bookstore so I can read e-books. They’re more expensive than any other store, because it’s Apple, and I already have a Kindle and an Amazon Nook. Not worth it. It does some word processing. So does my laptop. Much better, too. It looks like a Star Trek datapad. That’s cool. But that’s about as useful as it gets. It doesn’t actually do anything my iPhone doesn’t do. It’s just that my iPhone is smaller.
7. Which brings me to my iPhone. I bought an iPhone when they were first released. And it rocked. Back then, I had a crappy cell phone that was not very smart, and the move to a phone that did everything was great. But it’s been some years since I first bought that phone, and the marketplace has finally caught up to it. You see, there are some things that the iPhone won’t do, mainly because of Apple and because of AT&T. I have been getting a lot of phone calls from telemarketers lately, including one that calls me every day. I can’t block their calls because AT&T won’t let me do it without paying for a special service that does just that. Apple won’t let me get an App to block calls because for some reason Apple just doesn’t seem to think that’s a good App. So I’m left having to be innovative and work around my phone in order to get my phone to do what I want it to do. So a few days ago, I bought an Android phone that lets me do all of the things an Apple phone won’t let me do. And I’ve been really happy with it since. I had to move to Sprint PCS instead, and well, it’s working out like a first date with a supermodel who only orders off the children’s menu to watch her weight. Apple managed to push itself out of my market when I used to say nothing but wonderful things about them and their phone.
8. The Spiderman Musical. Now, as much as I love a train wreck like everyone else, I’ve kind of hit my saturation point with this story. Okay, they tried to make a musical that was too innovative to actually be done successfully. Fix it or move on. It doesn’t really matter to me.
10. South Korea is trying to rile up North Korea with live fire exercises. Um, poking a tiger is not always the best way to entertain the kids. But what do I know?
That’s all for now. Have fun and avoid eating the yellow snow. Just cause it looks like lemon flavoring doesn’t mean it’s going to work out that way.
Just thought I would take some time to do a little bit of a wrap-up of things going on, including the news.
1. My job. Well, I haven’t lost it yet, but it’s never really going well. I like the people I work with, and I tend to deliver whatever is desired from me, but it’s one of those jobs where you just get the feeling every day that it just isn’t working out, and no matter what you do, it probably never will. It’s unfortunate, but I really need to find something stable that doesn’t make me feel like it’s going to end tomorrow on a whim that I can do nothing to avoid.
2. My writing. Nothing seems to be happening. I send stuff out, and if I ever get a response, it’s a generic, no thanks. It’s really frustrating, and I really don’t know what to do about it. It’s like I’m forever on the outside looking in to a great place where everyone is writing lots of fun stuff. People who come out of the place engage me in conversation, but I’m never allowed inside, almost as if there’s a conspiracy to keep me outside but no one on the inside knows anything about it.
3. Stickman. I’d produce more of Stickman, but it’s really hard to try to bring humor to the rest of the world when you get the impression the rest of the world doesn’t care, doesn’t really want it, and you’re just wasting your time. Or at least it feels that way.
4. My life in general. It feels like I’m constantly in limbo land, and I can’t find a way out of it. I don’t feel I’m where I need to be, but I don’t know where I need to be either. There’s really no one significant in my life, so I don’t have that to look upon as a solution to anything, or even as a journey towards any place. If I had to use one word to describe the feeling, it’s “blah”. Really blah, if I needed two words.
General topics:
5. The Guild Season 3. If you have never seen this series, and you happen to be a computer gamer, especially one who plays MMOs, this series is for you. It’s put out by Felicia Day, and it’s manufactured by a bunch of Internet happy people (meaning, without a lot of commercial backing), and it’s funny. It misses every now and then, but it does deliver. I recommend it.
6. Survivors (the British import series). Another interesting show. I recommend it. It’s another one of those shows that doesn’t appear to have been backed by a very large commercial enterprise. Either that, or it was backed by a commercial enterprise that seriously sucks because its production values are very amateurish. But it’s quality of show is very high. The writing is good, the acting is surprisingly not bad, and the premise is quite original and fresh. It is also very daring in its material, which has shocked me a few times because it really feels like some show that had been made in the 1970s, but with a sense of 2010 in mind. As a matter of fact, I just checked, and it WAS produced in the 1970s, so that explains that. But another one I recommend.
7. Sandra Bullock and her husband. Every now and then something in the news causes me to want to make a comment. Well, recently, Jesse James went on Nightline and said that he cheated on Sandra Bullock because he was abused as a child. Today, the father announced that Jesse was lying, that he never abused him. Well, my thought on this, having no knowledge of said events, is that abusers rarely ever admit they abused anyone. And in many cases, the spouse will also claim there was no abuse because no one wants to believe that something happened under their noses. But having said that, it’s a stupid reason to use as an excuse as for why you cheated on your wife. Any excuse is a stupid excuse because cheating is just that…cheating. I’d never have gotten married to anyone if I ever imagined once that I would be cheating on my future wife. And once I was married, cheating is NEVER an option. Why so many people can feel that there is justification for whatever reason is beyond me. I even heard one person say his wife cheated on him so now he has a blank check to do the same. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe it’s why I’m rarely in a relationship. They never make a lot of sense to me.
8. LOST. It was great. Great ending. Great show.
9. The iPad. Um, is it a netbook? A laptop? An oversized iPod? I’m not sure. But it isn’t enough of a substantial product to get me to want to buy one yet. I need something like it that I can really use to write a novel on and feel comfortable with it. It’s almost there. Why wouldn’t I buy one? In order to use its 3G network, I have to pay AT&T more money. I already pay them to use it with my iPhone. If they can’t lump those two together, they’re ripping me off. Not buying it for that. I don’t hang out at wi fi spots enough to use it otherwise. No word processor that I could find on it when I was looking at it at the Apple Store. Or maybe there was one. I don’t know. The guy who worked there was so impressed with himself that he worked there that he spent the entire time trying to score with some hot chick that was looking at an iPhone that I couldn’t get anyone to help me except for the one guy who “thought” he might be able to guess. Not a hard sell for me.
10. BPs oil disaster. Clean it up. Well, cap it off and then clean it up. I don’t want to hear about how you’re thinking you can do it. Just do it. As for Obama’s involvement, I don’t care. Get BP to fix it or call in the Marines. Or Flipper. I don’t care. Fix it. Or get Red Adair to fix it.
11. North Korea. Not sure what to say there. Our foreign policy was written in shortly after the First World War. We haven’t changed it since. Not sure why we’re under the impression that things are going to get better if we keep doing the same things that haven’t worked before. Didn’t Einstein have something to say about that and insanity?
That’s all for now. Some days, it just doesn’t feel worth it to continue, but then I remember that there’s still another episode of LOST to air before doing something stupid. Oh wait, the show ended. The networks better come up with something soon, or I’m cashing my ticket out of here.
I’ve talked about this before, but no one really seems to listen or care, but here it is again just for the fun of it. It appears that North and South Korea are rattling sabers and could be moving from posturing to actual fighting. The North Koreans may have (most likely) sunk a South Korean warship, and right now everyone is going nuts trying to get the North Koreans to admit their crime. Secretary of State H. Clinton says they have to own up to their deed. South Korea says they have to admit what they did, because they now have proof. North Korea says “make me!”. In other words, it’s business as usual on the Korean Peninsula.
You see, this has been going on ever since the two halves of one country decided to separate. Or someone decided to separate them. They both want to be back together, and but neither one of them is ever going to happy until the other one is gone. It’s kind of a bizarre set of circumstances, but that’s where they are.
What is NOT working is how we’ve always handled this. Our foreign policy approach to Korea has always been the old game theoretic model of tit for tat. It’s such a simple strategy that even a monkey can play it. Actually, they do. Give a monkey a banana, and he eats it. He might even do some tricks. Or throw poo at you. Monkeys aren’t really good at responding the way you’d want them to. Neither are North Koreans. And technically, they’re a lot smarter than monkeys. Can monkeys fire torpedoes? I don’t think so. So, yes North Koreans are a lot smarter than monkeys. So tit for tat is one of those great strategies that should work because North Koreans are smart enough to respond in a good way when you act in a good way towards them.
Well, that would work if North Koreans were computer programs that respond in a game theoretic fashion. And that’s the problem with game theories. They’re designed for a rational world, where people do what is in their own best interests. There’s no such thing as pride and prejudice (or other Penguin classics for that matter) in the rational choice world. People do what they do because it’s in their best interests. Or so we’d like to believe.
North Korea has rarely responded successfully in this fashion. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s not because the game theory is wrong, because it’s pretty good and one of the few theories out there that consistently gets great results when used properly. That’s the problem right there. We don’t use it properly. In order to succeed with tit for tat, it requires both players to be involved in the game. And surprisingly, the wrong player is the one who never plays. We start the game, throw out a carrot, get a reaction from North Korea, and then we respond appropriately. BUT (and this, like JLo, is a big but) when they don’t respond appropriately, we go nuts and kill the game. The solution to tit for tat is to continue the game as if it was still happening, to actually escalate further in a positive manner, but we don’t. Instead, we throw a fit and wonder why North Korea never responds favorably. So that leaves us at a point where we have to start the game over again. And wonder why it fails soon after. We’ve created a second level tier of tit for tat where we’re not even playing the same game we’re starting. North Korea is still in Game 1.0, and we’re starting Game 5.7, wondering why North Korea is responding to inputs from a previous game instead.
So, what’s the solution? Stop playing tit for tat. We need a new “game” that works, and this is another one of those FOT responses I keep throwing out there. If we ever want to get at North Korea so that they become partners for peace, we need to stop trying to change them like Sandra Bullock wondering why her man keeps cheating even though she “reformed” him. FOT puts forth the simple idea that the best way to change a potential partner is to head towards a goal that both members desire. If you look at North Korea from the perspective of what makes NK tick, you can probably find something they need and want, like sustainable food. They don’t want handouts because that makes them reliant on others, something they seem to fall apart with. But find a way to make them self-sustaining, like create a program for helping them deal with very little arable land, possibly by focusing on crops that can be grown in mountainous terrain or to enhance the strategies of fishing (I mean, it is a peninsula that is not by any stretch of the imagination land-locked). For everyone else, a stable, peaceful NK is probably the end goal already. For even longer term strategies, an economically viable NK means a trading partner and potential market for future goods. The possibilities are endless.
The importance of FOT is that both partners have to be willing to change over time, not just expect change from the other member. That’s where we keep failing. We want others to be more like us, or reliant on us. But very rarely are we willing to undergo changes ourselves, even though such changes might mean the future of stabilization in more spheres than one.
Or we can continue to try to make four party talks where we focus on what we want and how our “enemies” must comply, OR ELSE. Not a lot of rational thought in that premise when you think about it. The only way to really win in that scenario is by zero sum economics (one destroys the other). Not a pretty picture.
But it’s not like anyone listens to me anyway. I’ll check and see if anything good is on TV instead.
Some years ago, when I was doing graduate school, I used to have to judge speech competitions between different colleges and universities. It was mostly fun, but one event I hated more than anything else was persuasive speaking, which boiled down to ten minute speeches that pretty much blamed the audience for a problem that was destroying the world and how each audience member was now responsible for fixing whatever was wrong. It would go something like: “Evil pharmaceutical companies are making drugs that are hooking people on curing symptoms rather than the actual problem itself. This is really bad, and YOU must do something about this to make things better.” And usually they’d mention my responsibility was now to contact my congressman, start a letter writing campaign, stop taking drugs, or whatever. But it always came back on me. I was the solution.
