It's Just a Joke...really

ESPN has made a politically correct move and suspended one of its reporters for statements he made about a female colleague on the air. Supposedly, he made negative comments about the outfit she was wearing, and after that the heads at ESPN went nuts. The commentary has been all over the place since then, with people either saying it's much ado about nothing, ESPN overreacted, or Kornheiser should be fired, skewed and napalmed with extreme prejudice.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it brings up a subject I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and that's the whole idea of comedy and humor.

Years ago, when I was in the service and out of the Academy, I was required to attend a basic training unit (I attended a lot of them as part of my assignments while working for CID and CI). I remembered I was in this battle of wits with this really stupid PFC. He was trying to insult me, and my response was to take every insult he waged, agree and then use an additive process to show how he was now contradicting himself. By the time I was done, he looked really foolish, wanted to fight, and let's just say that the situation did not end well for him.

BUT right after that, and because of that, it got me to thinking about humor. I was a very flippant young man at the time. I was quick to use a cynical response to unarm an opponent, and much of my humor was directly insulting in some way. At the time, I thought that was what constituted "funny".

Well, at that time, I made a decision because I felt really dirty after that conversation because even though EVERYONE was laughing with me, they were all laughing AT HIM, and something didn't seem right about that. I began to see humor as something that could be very negative. After that day, I made a vow to avoid ever using negative humor that hurt someone else. I no longer found it funny, and therefore, I would no longer try to gain favor for using that style of humor.

What I discovered is that there are very many people who ONLY know that type of humor as "funny". As I was reading through the responses to the Kornheiser story (the guy who made the stupid comments about his female colleague), I started to notice how many people would say something like: "you people don't understand humor, so leave him alone", and all I could think was that perhaps a lot of people don't understand humor. The ability to poke fun at someone else's expense should never be considered funny to an enlightened community, yet there is so much of that type of behavior in our society. From political pundits to late night talk show hosts, negative humor is used so much at the expense of other people. Oh, we justify it by using such comments as "he's a public person" or "he or she should have known better". But in the end, it's humor that comes at the expense of another individual.

One solution to this problem for me back then was to think through each attempt at making a joke. How I used to do this was think to myself, "would everyone find this funny, including the subject of the humor itself?" If the answer was no, then it wasn't funny to me. It took me many years to cement this into my psyche, but it was something that had to be done because I was no longer finding insults or negative commentary to be funny. I don't even find it funny when it is done by very good comedy folk; I tend to be the only one in the room who doesn't laugh, and I have come to a comfortable understanding that I'd rather be that person than the one who joins in with them.

Unfortunately, very few people agree with me. Or they agree, but in the end they practice a different processing when it comes to such humor, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

What I'd like to add to the interesting part of this observation is that I do succeed in creating a lot of humor on a daily basis, both in my writings and in person. But it's never negative towards an individual. Oh, it may still by cynical and biting at times, but there's never a person sitting in the next cubicle, thinking "I wish he wouldn't use me as the brunt of his jokes all of the time."

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The Problem is Simple: Lawmakers don't know how to stop spending our money

It seems almost as if lawmakers in this country have no clue that to fix the problems in front of them, they have to stop trying to fix the problems caused by them. An example: Grand Rapids. On May 4th, Grand Rapids is going to ask taxpayers to increase city taxes to solve the budget problems of Grand Rapids. Before that, the city government asked the people of the city to come up with "ideas" to solve the problems of the budget, OR they would have to start cutting essential services. A lot of the comments that were entered by citizens were mainly "stop spending our money on stupid stuff" but that's the problem. The government NEVER sees any of the money it spends as problematic. The problem is always that there's not enough money to spend. So it asks for more.

Well, taxpayers aren't really excited about picking up the additional tab. Here's a story of taxpayers saying just that, in the Grand Rapids Press. You see, the average citizen is being asked to tighten his or her belt but the government doesn't believe it should be held to the same standard. Instead, it believes it needs more money to do the things it needs to be done.

To anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation, or the government, it is not hard to see how this waste accumulates. First off, whenever there is excess money, there is NEVER an attempt to put that money back into the system. Instead, that money is seen as extra, and it spent as part of the extra fund capacity. If you don't believe me, it might be interesting to ask what has happened to the money that was paid back to the federal government from the loans that were made to the national banks. Was that money added back to the national coffers, or was it treated as "already spent" so it because excess? I'd like to think it's the former, but I'm willing to bet a government free lunch on the latter.

The Grand Rapids tax thing is really interesting because it is asking for an increase from 1.3 percent to 1.5 percent tax for those who live in Grand Rapids, and from 0.65 to 0.75 percent tax for those who don't live in Grand Rapids, but work here. What's interesting about that last category is that it increases a tax rate on people who have absolutely no input on the decision whatsoever. They don't live in Grand Rapids, so they don't get to vote here. Ever hear of taxation without representation? Apparently not.

But even so, the city of Grand Rapids is asking for more money to do what it is already supposed to be doing. If it doesn't get it, it threatens to cut off vital services. It's interesting how they never threaten to cut off non-vital services, which is usually the salaries of people who don't really have much of an impact on the city itself, like people who make budget decisions. Sorry, but you're not as essential as you think you are. A cop is essential. A firefighter is essential. A bean counter? Not to essential. But as you are the ones who make the decisions, of course you're never going to cut yourselves.

So the answer is to ask the taxpayers to give them more money. Governments all over the place are doing this, and it's actually pissing off taxpayers all over the place. What they are discovering (and California is my favorite example of this) is that the taxpayers, when asked, say no. They're not interested in more taxes, special levies, or any other legalese wordings that cause them to pay more money. Especially when they feel they are being threatened by their government if they don't pay up.

What government never seems to understand is that it's not really all that essential other than the immediate services. As more and more government gets involved, it entrenches itself and makes itself believe it is even higher on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than it really is. And people don't tend to support them.

Instead, what seem to see most of the time is the absurd amount of corruption that is taking place in government. In Michigan alone, the amount corruption in the news is astouding. Here's a small sample of just recent stuff:

Grand Rapids school board has no plans for nepotism policy despite member's son Kenneth D. Hoskins' conviction for sex crimes with students

DTE Energy, MichCon suspend energy-saving rebates, but customers still pay surcharge

Grand Haven school board member Brandon Hall found guilty of larceny

Holland Councilman Jerome Thomas-Kobes arraigned on drinking-and-driving charge

Kenneth D. Hoskins sentenced to three to 15 years behind bars for sex with Grand Rapids students

There are a ton more stories, but you get the idea from that little smattering of stories from the last two days. I don't even need to get into the cesspool of government that has been Detroit (although arguably it is supposedly getting better, according to feel good reports coming out of the Detroit Free Press).

The point being: At what point does government feel it is doing a solid enough job to ask for more money? Really. At what point?

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The Philosophical Concept of Suicide as a Process Improvement Strategy

Before I begin to start talking about this, I already know there are some immediate responses to this that I'll hopefully get out of the way by addressing them first. It seems that no matter how hard you try to broach this subject, it always seems to fall into the same kind of responses, and honestly that's not really where I wanted to go with this. So let me get through some disclaimers right off the start to move this thought process forward.

First, this isn't a call for help or a warning or anything ridiculous like that. I don't need counseling or even "a friend". It's more a thought process that I've been analyzing for some time now, and honestly I haven't been able to figure out how to even attempt talking about it without someone turning it into an "issue" rather than a discussion.

I'll put the elephant right on the table, and the question to be asked is whether or not suicide can be seen as an actual positive mechanism for one's imposing choices for the future. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I honestly haven't come up with a lot of rationale for deciding against it. What I have discovered is that every time I have attempted to talk about it, I end up in a situation where either a therapist wants to commit you, or I find the responses to be somewhat hostile. (Bring it up on the Internet on a message board or in a chat area of a computer game, and you're likely to get a whole lot of people answering in an angry tone, actually goading you on to do it because somehow you've "bothered" them by bringing it up).

But here I am. My life really isn't going anywhere. I have a few friends, but that's about it. I don't date and haven't dated longer than...well, to be honest, I don't remember when the last time was. My job is really unimportant, and to be honest, I get the feeling sometimes that it's probably not going to last that long anyway with all the budget cuts and subsequent "need to justify positions" that goes on. I was hired on at the lowest pay grade I should have received, and I'm pretty much stuck there because I get the impression that HR thinks that people are lucky to be working, so why should they care? My writing careers is nonexistent, and I'm to the point now where I don't think it's ever going to happen. It's pretty much the only passion in my life, and when you have to treat your life goal as a "hobby" and people give you condescending smiles when you talk about your "career", well, you might get the idea of how that feels.

I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm just kind of not much of anything. I'm not important to anything or pretty much anybody. Nothing I do or don't do really makes a difference to anyone. If I was gone, no one would really be affected all that much, other than to think "oh yeah, him. Yeah, too bad he's gone. Wonder what's on TV tonight?"

To be honest, my life really doesn't have that much of a purpose. Oh sure, I could go the whole empowerment route and FIND a purpose, but that's never really worked for me. Living life has made me pretty cynical, and the more I've done things the more cynical I've become as more people have taken advantage of me, and I feel that my only real contribution to this planet is as a consumer of stuff to help enrich people who will get rich regardless of whether or not I'm here.

It's almost to the point where I'm more concerned with how and when I do it than whether or not I do it. Nothing's really worked to talk me out of it, and to be honest, nothing has really even tried. I keep thinking that there's going to be some significant moment where I walk outside and see the perfect sunrise and say, "okay, that makes sense now" but that never happens. I did see a really good movie once, but that just isn't the same.

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm the protagonist in Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes where I live in a world of sand that I can't escape, and even though the world around me looks like it might be interesting and fun, I just can't get there. I'm always stuck in the sand. Hell, I can't even get a car right now, which leaves me to having to rely on a very unreliable bus system just to get to work or the store, but of course, the bus doesn't go to the store, so I have to take a taxi just to get groceries, which then serves to knock down what little money I have even faster than it normally would.

So it leaves me wondering: Why not? I actually find myself looking more forward to sleeping at night than I do waking in the morning or doing anything else during the day. Someone once said that "the unexamined life is not worth living" but never really did analyze what happens after you examine that life and realize that there's really not anything there. Unfortunately, that Socrates never really did think all his arguments through. No wonder we don't hear much about him anymore these days.

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Spammers Will Spam You, No Matter How Nicely You Ask Them Not To

A few weeks ago, I made the foolish gesture of creating a Craigslist ad in the personal relationships section. I didn't really expect to make a "love connection" but at the same time, I was curious at what type of response I would get. I got lots of responses, but very few of them were actually productive. I had included, as most people tend to do, a desire disclaimer, practically begging scammers to leave me alone, that I was not looking for someone to make me rich, or whatever, but sure enough here's the break down of what I received:

37 Responses
18 Wanting to provide me with sex (requiring me to contact them at their special site)
10 Very interested in my ad, but needing me to register at some sex site for verification (they've gotten tired of "fake people" and "scammers")
4 People who felt they could help me find "love" if I joined some pay site they knew of
2 Actual people who were interested in talking more (neither responded further...must have been the picture I sent them of me in my Disco Suit)
1 Married person who was interested (as long as we didn't tell her husband)
1 Woman with children who seemed interested, but just wasn't sure I felt comfortable with someone else's children just yet
1 Woman who claimed "I know who you are but am not telling you who I am"

That was my response from my personal ad. My stuffed animals have more success at this sort of thing than I do. Hmm, maybe having stuffed animals is WHY I'm not more successful at it than I am. Must reconsider this while playing more World of Warcraft and shopping for a new slide rule before returning to my job at Best Buy.

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So, who really owns the computer games people play?

One thing I've always found fascinating about online games with persistent worlds (games where the world doesn't change, but lots of people can interact together in the same world) is the concept of who actually owns the content. I don't mean the overall game itself, because that is obviously owned by a company that made the game, but the specific property that each character owns within the game.

Think of it this way: If you're an elf who owns a +5 Sword of Death (I'm sure some game has something named like that), and you log out, that sword is still in your in game inventory somewhere. When you sign back on, that sword is still there with your character. Some other player doesn't get to just go into your private inventory and steal it (unless you're playing some twisted game where you can do just that, but I have yet to see a successful one that has survived longer than a few hours with that kind of play style). So, do you really own that sword, or is it the property of the company that makes the game?

That's an issue that has been argued back and forth since the creation of games like Ultima Online, long before World of Warcraft and the latest Star Trek Online. The game companies will always argue that THEY own the property within the game, and that you are just playing in THEIR world (Sony Online Entertainment used to make that argument of "You're in OUR world now" on their marketing materials for Everquest). But that's an easy argument to make before getting into the nitty gritty. A customer IS paying money for the experience of playing the game, and there is a somewhat legal precedent that as long as the company honors its commitments (meaning all of your stuff is there after you leave and return to the game), your business arrangement remains. There are any number of customers who have ended their business arrangement with a company when the company has lost their equipment (thus, they have felt a breach of unwritten contract was reached). Therefore, in legal terms alone, a company that runs a computer game may have been making the accepted agreement of honoring that unwritten contract by continuing to take money for services. The challenge is convincing a judge of exactly what those "services" actually were.

But that's going further than I wanted with this post. What I was really wanting to talk about are these people who sell their accounts, convinced that the property within the game is theirs. I actually find myself somewhat fascinated by the advertisements they make on Craigslist and other such places. A lot of these ads involve the most popular game on the block, World of Warcraft, and way too often someone tries to sell his or her account for hundreds of dollars. What caused me to want to write about it was how someone actually had the nerve to write: "You are paying me for the time I put into making this character." In other ads, I've seen words such as: "I wanted to get something back for all of the time I put into building this character."

Now, I play World of Warcraft, and I have a lot of fun playing the game, as I believe many other people do as well. Not once have I ever thought that I was producing work, that my tribulations were actually part of the process I must endure before I have a commodity that I can now sell back to another customer who will value the time I've have endured in this game. No, I had fun doing what you do when you play a game, and never was it thought of as work. Oh sure, the quests might have been difficult, and I might have been frustrated from time to time, but it's not a job, and trying to convince someone that he needs to pay me hundreds of dollars for my account because of my "work" is just ridiculous.

But I see it all of the time. What is even more interesting is that selling one's WoW account is not authorized by the Blizzard, the company that owns the game. Nor is buying or selling of gold, the currency used in the game. Yet people still do it.

And I've often laughed at the arguments people make to justify it. Here are some of my favorites:

1. It takes a lot of time to accumulate money in the game. I work hard in my regular job, so I should be able to use that money to save time in the game because unlike the kids who play this game, I don't have as much time to waste on the game.

If it's wasted time, then don't play the game. Part of the challenge of the game is being able to accumulate wealth in the time that you're actually playing it. Being a CEO of a company OUTSIDE of the game shouldn't suddenly make you a god in the game. Cheating in the game is cheating in the game.

2. Buying gold (or a character) doesn't hurt anyone else, so why should they care?

Buying gold actually causes massive inflation in the game so that those who play the game must pay outrageous prices for items they buy from other players. Essentially, that CEO with his outside money is making it impossible for anyone to play the game without investing outside money into the game to bring the game back to an even playing field. It does affect other players, and it ruins the experience of the game. Also, Blizzard has pointed out that people who partake in the gold selling community also contribute to illegal programs in the game that are used to accumulate money through exploits. It also causes a lot more hackers to play the game who go after legitimate players and take over their accounts, selling their goods when they take over their accounts and then going onto the next victim.

There are a lot more points to make about this, but the main point is that virtual worlds are living worlds of their own that do much better without outside stimulation that brings outside forces into the inner dynamic. While some games welcome microtransactions that benefit the game making company, virtual economies do not benefit from profiteers who try to link outside money with internal money economies. Even the microtransaction models of some games out there ruin the experiences for normal players. This type of behavior practically destroyed the Ultima Online housing market because you couldn't get a home unless you were able to buy it through Ebay, back during the hey day of UO. When new housing opened up, that Ebay market died almost overnight. People who used to make $150 for a keep (large house) could no longer get that, so they let those properties just collapse, and then players were able to place homes for the price of housing that existed within the game. It practically changed the market within the game overnight, which was a great thing.

Anyway, that's my rant for this topic today.

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This Blog Post Proves How Cool I'm Not

Turns out that social networking scientists have finally discovered that teens don't think blogging is cool. The article is here. According to PC Magazine, only adults seem to blog these days, and unfortunately, teens don't think we're cool for doing it.

Um, when have teens ever thought adults were cool anyway? And why is it we're all concerned about what teens think? Honestly, are we all sitting around at the mall, waiting on the next issue of Teen Magazine to discover what teens think are cool so we can all go ahead and do that "thing"? At what point did adult coolness (yes, it does exist) revolve around the coolness of kids who aren't old enough to vote. Of course, it should go without saying that voting isn't cool, but that's another issue, and we won't get into that here.

I'm completely at a loss to understand how the gauging of coolness somehow came down to what teens think. When did we suddenly care what children think before deciding what to do? It's almost as if someone did a corollary study that went something like: Harry Potter is popular = Teens like Harry Potter = People who like Harry Potter are cool. I don't buy that.

Yes, marketers are interested in what teens like because teens buy products. That's about as far as it goes. But guess what? Adults buy things, too. And quite often, they buy them without a single thought about what teens want or care about. It's like the argument about music where somehow we have to believe that a music group is cool because young kids like the music. Well, that model is killing the music industry because guess what? Young people are more likely to illegally download music. It's not because they're evil. Okay, young people are evil, but that's beside the point. The reason they are more likely to download music illegally is because they have grown up within a culture that has seen music as a free commodity due to the growing online presence of music (that is easy to download without paying for it). Older people grew up with record albums and then CDs where they mostly paid for the music. So, they tend to continue to pay for music.

Well, the music industry has historically tried to appeal to the younger crowd because that's the crowd that paid for the music. But that younger crowd grew up and no longer likes the hip, cool music that gets put out as brand new (some do, most don't). So, newer bands that appear might appeal to younger people, but they're going to make less money because fewer people are willing to pay money for it. Therefore, if a band really wants to make money, it needs to appeal to an older crowd (not teens). But because so few new artists do appeal to the older crowd (and the industry keeps wanting to sell us compilation CDs of old groups), we're not buying as much music anymore. So, of course, the music industry is convinced that everyone is illegally downloading music because no one wants to buy the new stuff (that appeals to the audience that doesn't like to pay for music).

Again, the music industry cares more about a demographic that doesn't buy their music than it does the demographic that might buy its music. Kind of a ridiculous revelation, isn't it? Well, this is because they aren't paying attention to the bigger picture, which is that they need to appeal to an older crowd that is not seen as "cool", which is pretty much the revelation that is being shown in the original article. We're so concerned about a group of kids that are so insignificant to the grand scheme of things that we're willing to call ourselves not cool, even within our own social circles, where teens don't belong.

It's kind of crazy on that level.

So, I'll continue blogging, even though it's not cool to teens, who wouldn't read what I had to write anyway. But if you are reading, I guess that makes us both not cool. But I'm okay with that. I gave up trying to be cool back when I was a teen, a time ironically when I was supposed to be cool.

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Toyota's Response to Pedal Problem? A cute, apologetic girl

The Reuter's article is here.

I talked about the Toyota recall situation yesterday. What I find interesting is that the Reuter's article the next day shows a picture with an apologetic looking Japanese girl in front of the Toyota sign. This might give one the impression that Toyota might actually have some female leadership. It doesn't. As a matter of fact, when doing a google search for Toyota leadership (and women), what I kept coming up with is women suing Toyota because of discrimination in the workplace.

It does seem odd that the face of an apologetic Toyota is an apologizing woman, when none of the executives of Toyota are actually women. I guess apologizing is for women. The real men drink saki and do men things. Or something like that. What's next? Manga cartoon girls with samurai swords fixing cars? That might at least be interesting.

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Toyota's Gas Pedal Problem and Ostrich-thinking Behavior of Auto Companies

I was reading a very scary story of a woman who was driving her Toyota when suddenly she started accelerating and could not slow down her car. She ended up in an accident, and the rest of the article was how this was becoming a somewhat frequent occurrence with Toyota vehicles. Then the article went on to explain how Toyota was wrong for trying to avoid dealing with the horrific situation until finally the public outcry has forced them to do so. Now, Toyota is going through a PR campaign to somehow save its US business, something that might be difficult, as happened back in the days when Pintos were discovered to explode when you rammed them from behind. Pinto never really recovered, and it is wondered if Toyota ever will either.

Some information is important to add here because there's a difference between Toyota and Pinto. First, Toyota has a stellar reputation in the US, and over the decades, it has grown to be a very reliable maker of cars in this country. Pinto didn't have that history, at least not the decades that it needed.

There's a second piece of information that is important to add as well. This isn't the first time this situation has happened, and I'm going to let you in on a little secret: It's happened to me with at least two different cars. Neither one of them were Toyotas.

My first occurrence of this happening was with a Chevrolet Chevette. I was on the freeway, having a normal day, when suddenly my car started to accelerate. I couldn't stop it. I was going faster and faster, and I started to panic. I tried turning off my engine, but the car was now just revving so fast that it was practically burning my engine. I then discovered that when you turn off your car, if you don't put the key into the right slot, now you can't turn your steering wheel either. Discovering that while in the middle of a panic usually doesn't lead to very good results. Common sense doesn't really come to the forefront when you're not sure what to do and are in unfamiliar circumstances. Fortunately, I somehow managed to slow down the car to a stop (using the emergency brake in quick spurts).

The second time this happened to me, I was driving a Ford Escort wagon. Same exact situation, except this time it was not new, and I managed to slow down to the side of the freeway and stop the car. Both times were very scary.

Both times I tried to contact the dealership where I bought the car. My result: No one cared. No one even offered to fix the car or look at it. It was seen as MY fault, and I was pretty much left to fend for myself. I had to take my car to a mechanic and pay for the entire repairs to my car. Neither Ford nor Chevrolet cared one iota that I almost died.

So, my point is: The American car companies are going to be trying really hard to capitalize on this bad media opportunity against Toyota; they'd be stupid not to. But at the same time, at least when push came to shove, Toyota acknowledged its problem. But it's not the first car company to ever have this problem. It's just one of the first to actually do something about it.

You should think about that as this crisis continues. Personally, I've never owned a Toyota, but that's because my ex-girlfriend had one, and I loved her so much that I've never been able to step foot inside a Toyota since. But it was never because of their customer service or their PR campaign. I've bought American cars since my two fiascos with their cars, and I probably will again in the future. I just don't have a rosy feeling about the people who run those companies, because when push came to shove, I was seen as an inconvenience and ignored. I'll always remember that when it comes to specific circumstances because once you've been treated like crap by a company, it sours ever interaction you have with that company in the future.

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iPad announced but most likely AT&T will be its demise

The big announcement of the iPad was made yesterday (or day before...kind of lose track of days in this wintery wonderland). I've been waiting on this announcement, not because I want one, but for weeks I've been wondering what the hell it was. I kept hearing all sorts of undocumented speculation, but no one really knew what the thing was. Well, it turns out it's not an oversized iPhone (although Apple haters are trying to make it seem as if that's what it is...or an oversized iPod). It's not that. It's basically Apple's attempt to monopolize on the ebook future.

For awhile now, the claims of a new frontier in reading has been on the horizon, most often discussed in the mentioning of the Kindle by Amazon. But the Kindle was just too expensive for a product that requires you to buy more junk from Amazon. At prices dictated by Amazon. So I was holding off. The iPad is essentially Apple's attempt to jump into this market.

And jump it will. But it will also bring about the creation of the iBookstore, which is going to be Apple's attempt to monopolize the book market like iTunes monopolized the music market. And then the movie market. And then the television weekly program market. But the difference is: People already have a foot in the bookstore market, so Apple isn't inventing the wheel here; it's trying to reinvent the wheel and then pretending that the car wasn't already invented before it.

But even with that jibe, Apple can still do it. So what can stop this from happening?

Well, AT&T to be honest. It almost destroyed the iPhone the last time because when the iPhone was released, AT&T did everything it could to screw up this wet dream of a marketing opportunity. It dropped tons of calls. It forced you into two year contracts that were ridiculous. It had lousy coverage areas. It had crappy 3G service. Its customer service consisted of two cavemen in Delhi who had to use Verizon phones to communicate with you because AT&T kept dropping their calls. Basically, it was AT&T being AT&T.

Well, it can happen again. Over time, AT&T actually fixed a lot of its problems with the iPhone, although it never could change the fact that AT&T is still AT&T (an example is a conversation I had with AT&T recently over my Internet service that went very much like this:

AT&T: Hello, welcome to AT&T, which has the fastest Internet connection in your area. How can I help you?
Me: Hi. The tech recently came out here to install my AT&T dsl but he couldn't install the fast service, so he had to drop me to the slowest service you had due to some weird line problem you guys have. I was adding AT&T because my other service was kind of crappy, and AT&T promised to be a lot faster.
AT&T: I'm sorry you had a problem. How can I help you?
Me: Um, you're still charging me for the fastest service, but you can't provide it.
AT&T: Are you saying you want to subscribe to the slower service instead?
Me: Um, no, I'd love the fast service, but your tech couldn't provide it. You're ONLY giving me the slow service.
AT&T: So you want to downgrade?
Me: No, I don't want to pay for the fast service if you're not providing it.
AT&T: (silence for a moment) Unfortunately, I don't show that your area has access to the slower service. I can only offer the faster service.
Me: Um, that's not physically possible. Your tech--
AT&T: One moment, let me put you on hold.
(insert endless silence on the line as minutes pass)
AT&T: Welcome to AT&T, which has the fastest Internet connection in your area. How can I help you?)

Anyway, so the point is, even with all of this, AT&T can actually capitalize big time on this announcement. ALL THEY HAVE TO DO is inform the current iPhone users that they can use their already paid for 3G coverage on an iPad as well as the iPhone. This will cause more sales of iPads and continuous business for AT&T rather than more continuous jumped ships of people who give up on their iPhones and switch to Verizon. Instead, what is going to happen is that AT&T will demand that you pay for 3G coverage twice at $30 a shot to cover two separate items from the same company. If you want to sour a relationship with a customer, this is exactly how they can do it.

But mark my words, they will. Because remember, this is AT&T. They can do the smart thing, take a dip in new sales of service (but not in current business) or they can melt their market share they already have. Basic economic theory says to go for the quick profit. Sound economic theory says to do what I'm suggesting. Stupid people in business will do the former; brilliant ones will do the latter. Guess which one they'll take. We'll leave that to the future so we can laugh at them when the obvious happens.

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Howard Zinn dies

The article

He died at 87 years old (although the article mistakes his age as 89). He wrote a history book called A People's History of the United States, which may not seem like an important book based on the title, but it was. It wasn't important just because of the subject, but because of the approach. And that's why I'm taking a moment from my day to write about it, even though I'm still contemplating ending this blog anyway.

One of the problems with scholarship and knowledge is that there are too few people willing to take a different path than the ones everyone else takes. Social science is filled with that problem. To even get published in many social science fields, you have to pretty much do exactly what everyone else is doing, and then try to pretend that what you're doing is different enough to warrant attention. It's very dysfunctional.

Zinn went against the grain by focusing on the common person rather than on world leaders. Up until his ground-breaking book, history taught us about great leaders and how they impacted the world. Not on the common guy or gal. No one cared about the laborer or the shopkeeper. Instead, it was always about the one person, or few people, who made the big decisions, as if there was nothing else to history. When we hear about an era, we hear about the Chang Dynasty (named after a leader) but we never hear about the Farmer Bob Period of History. What this used to mean to me is that no matter what contributions I make to the world, I'll never be remembered because my chances of being president or someone of that stature are so minimal that it's not even worth trying. Most people will be forever forgotten and forever insigificant. Zinn showed that may not be the case. Even if they don't remember your name, they might remember what you accomplished, or what you were doing, even if they don't remember you by name. Great people lived in castles, but unknown important people built those castles, and it is sad at how we still don't pay attention to those secondary actors.

Some years ago, when I was attending West Point, I was in a history class where it was our assignment to reenact the French Revolution. The teacher saw me as an unimportant member of the class (I came from a poor family, and I was never seen at the Academy as one of the ground-breakers because I didn't have a senator or a general for a father, something two of my colleagues did), so he gave me the unimportant position as "shopkeeper" whereas the rest of my colleagues were given the "important" positions that would take place during the French Revolution. Well, one of the important characters was playing a general who was put in disfavor with the monarchy, and there was a trial for his life. I, as a citizen, was the deciding member of the jury that outlined his future fate. The king wanted "death"; I voted for banishment (with his army). The general and I were actually seeing eye to eye on where this might go in the future. Anyway, the scenario played out, and in the end, the general came back and took charge of France with his army (after everything fell apart, and all the political actors played out their politics to their ultimate demise). When the general came back, he remembered my action and made me king of France. It was a token position (he was still the power behind the throne), but this little shopkeeper became king of France.

Well, the teacher was actually kind of angry because a shopkeeper should NEVER have become king, and he didn't like how I used his political paradigm to become the victor, even though I was a non-entity in his planned scenario. Even though other students kept bringing up how fascinating it was that a shopkeeper became king, he refused to even discuss that part of the scenario as the review and tried to instill "other" lessons from the exercise. I don't think he ever forgave me for "winning" his game.

The point is: Sometimes the lowest peasant can make the biggest impact, yet we refuse to acknowledge any such contributions. And that's what Zinn was pointing out.

I can only hope that if I ever do contribute anything to history or science, it is something of this nature, something that causes people to think outside of the box. Running stats on crap we already know is beneficial for limited purposes; it's the stuff that questions our very foundation that will change our perspectives. Unfortunately, getting people to listen is equally as challenging as seeing things differently.

But at least Zinn showed us how.

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