Irrational Focus

I probably shouldn't writing about this. Going against what seems to be the current popular viewpoint, particularly when you are not an expert, is never a good idea. Under most circumstances I might not chime in, but for this one in particular, I've seen it going on for far too long and I though at least I might put my perspective out there. Carefully. So I'll add a disclaimer, that says something like bla , bla , bla , I'm not an expert, bla , bla , bla , this is all observation, bla , bla , bla , use your own brain. And of course, positive comments are hugely appreciated, negative ones you should probably keep to yourself. I'm not looking to start a controversy, I just want encourage people to think a little more deeply about this. There is clearly a problem, and we are doing our best to ignore it. The winds changed after I left high school, with the shift often dominating the news. It started with things like the zero tolerance towards violence in high schools. A...

Beep, beep. Misunderstood and abused, the horn in your car is actually a very clever communications device. We say more with a simple tap on the horn than I think most people could ever realize. For many, their communication choices might change if they really understood what they were shouting. For instance, with some honks we may be making a statement about another driver. A simple short honk directed at a car that has just cut you off is a quick statement of saying "hey, watch it, you almost caused an accident with your reckless driving!" Letting someone know this hopefully helps them to try and behave in a less foolish manner the next time. Short and sweet. A longer more dramatic honk aimed at someone performing an illegal maneuver says something more serious like "if it were up to me, I'd remove your licence, you idiot!". Longer it is, the more dramatic the statement. A series of short staccato honks, over and over again, says more emotional things like ...

Forget nukes or environmental damage, the 20 th century's greatest enduring legacy is our refinement of 'marketing'. Given that insanity, we need to change our formerly pagan seasonal holiday from being some wishy -washy family-oriented value-inspired celebration of some kid born well over 2000 years ago, to one that celebrates the real modern values of Christmas: the power of Marketing! After all -- like lemmings to a cliff -- we succumb to the propaganda wave year after year, buying tonnes of useless stuff for each other so that we can either immorally re-gift it, or just toss it into our basements to await the untold years and inches of dust buildup, before someone else comes along and dumps it into a land fill site where it really should have been sent earlier. They say Christmas was an early propaganda attempt to sway the hordes from celebrating their drunken festivals -- such as Saturnalia -- which would make it a very early form of mass marketing. An historic spin-f...

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless" -- Steven Weinberg The key to our spiritual needs is the answer to the question "why are we here?" No other question, in history has ever been answered so often with so many different variations. Yet, for many people they still search for an answer they can accept. It is, of course, our Achilles heel, that fabled weak point to which virtually anybody can seize control of our will and our actions if they understand how to invoke the right magical incantations. Countless religions, cults and other "organizations" have existed since our very origins as a socialized species whose sole claim to control is the possession of this answer. How many of our billions are under some spell or another? It is funny, because it always seems like the little kid in the car screaming "are we there yet?" every five minutes. I mean, do we really need to know why? We've kinda guessed at...

I always knew it was coming. Since I was a kid, somehow I figured that my generation was going to be the one to live through the height of modern civilization. We were destined to get to the other side and see a long slow steady decline. Maybe it was all of that nuclear paranoia, or the talk of asteroids. It might be those sci-fi books on biological disasters, or our more recent understanding of our own environmental consequences. One thing is certain, I am convinced that the end is coming soon and fast. I feel kinda like one of those crazies on the street with a picket sign prophesying our impending doom. "The end is nigh", it says. You just can't live through that much anti-propaganda and still remain positive. I figure that for all of the potential environmental, biological or natural disasters, we're most likely to do it to ourselves. We are overwhelmed by the sheer number of indicators that are leading the way. We feed on fear in the news. The media keeps deliver...

We are gathered here today to lament our old friend character. Dead; due to our conformist desires to all dress in the same dark colors, shop at same annoying thrifty stores, repeatability watch the same bad plots and listen to the same recycled music. A premature demise driven by the miracle of globalization that not only made our world smaller, but also shrank our culture, our food and quite possibly our minds. We now look and sound so similar that even the weirdest are barely distinguishable; our own mothers couldn't tell us apart. The end clearly visible in our daily zombie march towards the grey lifeless towers where we create endless rules and marketing campaigns to bind us to our hollow existence. We huddle together claiming freedom, but fearing to use it. What a wonderful species we will be when we can no longer detect ourselves in the masses. A dark dull army consuming our way through the last of the planet's resources. And not a character amongst us. Farewell old fri...

I'm such a fool. No, really I am. I keep daydreaming that if I write a really good post, one that is entertaining and worthwhile people will actually come to think that I am smart. You know, if indirectly I write that I am smart, then people will believe it, and so in the end I will be smart. But alas, no. I probably can't write something smart enough to get beyond my own foolishness. It would be nice to be famous just for being famous. There are certainly a lot of examples of that going around; that has to be the craziest thing ever. If you can exploit being famous, then you can get the freedom to do the things in your life that you put off because you are too busy not being famous. Or does fame eat too much of your time? Perhaps, I should just settle for rich? Or do I have to get famous to find a quick way to get rich? I am certainly getting too old to spend too much time trying to get rich the slow way. Still, I can't help thinking that people will listen to me if I am f...