Protest This

So another couple of protesters chained themselves to a coal-carrying ship in an effort to draw attention to the use of the destructive and polluting fuels that fulfill our addiction to generating cheap electricity.

So what.

By now we know it's bad. We get it, we really do. Freakin bad things are the popular fare. So, really, how hard is it to complain about it. Again. And again. Just sit there all day and moan about the state of being. Blaa, blaa, coal is bad, blaa, blaa so is nuclear, blaa, blaa, blaa. Jumping in a dingy and chaining yourself to something is pretty much the same as just complaining.

Protesters. You'd figure they'd get it. If we shutdown the coal and nuclear, then the resulting economic disaster would wipe out daddy's savings accounts, destroying their means of protesting and they'd have to get a real job. Harsh, but true.

Not that shilling for an eco-cause isn't big business. These days it probably rivals banks in profits. Yep, collect from the guilty, spend on the misdirected, and annoy the overworked. I think they've figured it out. It's a business and if you do it well enough, you get a mansion and a sports car. Whopee. Oh yea, and the best part are those crazy volunteers that do all the work for free. Neato.

Now if you did want to do something constructive, you can figure out some other better way to generate electricity. Sure, it is not as fun as riding around in a portable boat, being chased by the law and getting cool stories to bed chicks with, but it is probably a damn sight more useful. And a heck of a lot harder than just complaining about it.

Foolish Drones

Like a hoard of angry insects, the next buzz is upon us, and its name is Enterprise 2.0.

But we should not judge something too harshly before we have at least investigated a bit. Digging not too deeply, we see that Enterprise 1.0 is a hierarchy, while 2.0 is a 'flat organization'. Interesting.

The last time I worked for a 'flat' organization, it was that way for an unfortunate reason. The spin was that no one reported to anyone else. Everyone was more or less equal. Initially you might think that this might be quite the novel idea, but as we so often learn, nothing in life comes for free.

The lack of an official reporting structure doesn't stop people from having to report upwards, but it does insure that there are no pesky middle-managers between the top and the bottom. To put it bluntly, it is a control freak's dream reporting structure. You sit at the top, tell them they are all equal, and then use that to drive them all nuts. No fuss, no muss and definitely no middle management. You still write the checks, so they have no choice, and no way to protect themselves. Hierarchy not only leverages our bosses, but also protects us from theirs. Given the type of personality that is often drawn to the light of executive status, that can be a good thing.

So, I'm thinking that the 2.0 really stands for 'twice as sucky', or something similar...

The Fallen

I figure there is a duality in mankind where we are split between our evolutionary roots and our idealistic aspirations. Intellectually we operate on higher order concepts, while emotionally we let our impulses drive us forward.

That is a fancy way of saying we are caught half way between being animals and being civilized. Evolution is an on-going progress, and there is still a long road yet to travel.

Something that I always keep in the back of my mind, as I watch the news.

We see then, on rare occasions, examples of people at their finest. Individuals or groups that have applied their intelligence towards constructive efforts to make the world a better place. Always inspirational, but all too infrequent.

More often we see those that have fallen from our current heights. Setting aside over 10,000 years of civilized behavior they let their base impulses drive them towards acts of madness. Often they can't even see what they have become. What they have been reduced to.

Sadly, if your thinking that I am only referring to those poor souls in war-torn countries, or other regions that have clearly descended into hell, there are also examples coming from places where people feel they have risen above all of that. In the heart of civilization, come horrendous examples of terror, selfishness, or greed that easily rival those of the most burnt out infested wreck of a place.

We can rise up all we want, pretending to be civilized, but there are always aspects of our evolutionary roots that will pull us back down to being animals.

It is a race between our evolving into something sustainable or the animals amongst us tearing it all down because they don't understand it. Oddly, we have the most to fear from the smarter ones, who think they get it.

Insanity

Have you ever wondered if everyone else is crazy? Maybe it's some type of "lead poisoning" thing again, similar to what is believed to have helped destroy Roman civilization? Apparently it does make a quite different, the type of metal you use in your plumbing.

It has to be something like that. Otherwise, our only real explanation is that most of those nearly-hairless upright uptight barely-conscious hyper-active clothed monkeys are just completely whacked. That wouldn't bode well for the future of the species, would it?

Experimental

The point of this blog? I think, for me it is to play with writing, a bit of experimenting with layout and to fiddle with the settings in blogger.

Should you continue to read this? Maybe, maybe not. What are you asking me for?