Dreams of a lego spaceman...

It's Just a Joke...really

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:24:00 +0000

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."

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

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:18:00 +0000

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?

The Philosophical Concept of Suicide as a Process Improvement Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:58:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:05:00 +0000

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.

So, who really owns the computer games people play?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:48:00 +0000

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.

This Blog Post Proves How Cool I'm Not

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:33:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:54:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:39:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:38:00 +0000

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.

Howard Zinn dies

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:44:00 +0000

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.

The audience as shadow

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:42:00 +0000

You might say I've come to a conclusion of sorts. I realized that the whole online thing isn't really working for me. I have a blog, but no one really reads it. I have a Facebook account, but no one really communicates with me on there, and all I end up receiving are notifications of how someone is having a bad day or how someone found a lost turtle in Farmville or something stupid like that.

For me, the whole online thing never worked out. Never found a girlfriend online. Never found conversations. Never got into online gaming, aside from MMORPGs. Really nothing on the social fabric has been my thing through online.

Yeah, I play World of Warcraft. And I still will. I'm just going to take a different direction on everything else.

I'm not leaving online. I'm just dumping everything social networking that's online. Never worked for me. Adds more frustration than anything else.

I shut down my facebook account yesterday. Figure no one will really notice. Or care.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start to shed my web site as well. I've been paying $10 a month for YEARS to a company that has been getting my business that amounts to me talking to myself. Sure, I have a friend or two who reads the blog, but honestly, I can hold a coversation with those people in person. I don't need a blog to communicate with them.

The website was an experiment in beta for me because it was how I was going to keep in touch with my writing fans. They never materialized. Neither did my career as a writer. I've been writing for vanity alone, and I'm the only one pretty much reading it. What's the use in that? It's like keeping a diary and leaving it out all of the time in hopes that someone will accidentally read it. What kind of game is that?

So, I'm going to be shutting down my web site over the next few weeks. I might blog here and there much as a smoker still tokes up every now and then but knows that he shouldn't, even though he swears he quit the habit a long time ago.

I've found the whole social networking experiment to be interesting, mainly because it works for some people, but it didn't work for me. I'm a writer, not a blogger. I need an audience. It's never been about me or about writing for myself. Without an audience, well, I'm nothing. It's like being in the 1991 August coup in the Soviet Union, being Boris Yeltsin and then trying to stop the coup by talking to yourself in the shower. It might make you feel better at the time, but if there's no one listening, it doesn't do any good. If Yeltsin never had his audience, all we'd know about him and those days in August was that some fat Russian guy danced on a tank. But then, we'd probably not even know that. He'd just be some fat guy with a lot of things to say and no one to hear him.

That's what I feel like. I have a lot to say, and no one ever bothered to listen. Oh sure, a few did, but they were just being polite. And I reciprocated by listening to them. That's social networking, not writing. Never been my thing. It's like small talk. Never did it, and it's probably why I don't handle dates well. I hate small talk. It leads to nothing and is irrelevant. I hate irrelevancy, which is exactly what my web page has been all of this time.

I stared this web site with the idea that the audience would eventually come around. It never did. I thought I had a lot to say about politics, being a strange, anarchist political scientist. No one ever bothered to listen. You have to be someone with media clout. That's not me. I write humor. People find that irrelevant. So nothing comes of it. I thought I had a lot to say about writing, but no one cares, and everyone else ia a writer. Just ask them. They think they are. So who cares about what another one has to say? I thought I had a lot to say about communication theory, but again, no one cares.

And like the Pearls Before Swine cartoon where the pig is constantly being reminded by the rat that his blog is irrelevant, I'm tired of pretending it's ever going to change.

So, if you have any final comments, please do so soon, because soon there may not be a place to do so. It's okay if you don't comment, however. I'm kind of used to it. I can go off into the sunset without the attention. I'm kind of used to it.

If this ends up being my last post (which is probably not the case), I wish you all well and hope you find what you're seeking in whatever venue you seek it out. I'm saving myself $10 a month and going back to realizing that only my stuffed animals ever really cared what I had to say. And sometimes I suspect they're just being kind because they have to live with me.

Stuffed animals can be that way sometimes....

Dreams that get in the way of sleeping

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:28:00 +0000

I had one of those dreams last night. You know those dreams, the ones that cause you to wake up and question whether or not you were really dreaming. It was really bizarre, one of those circumstances where a whole story was being crafted in my head, and even when I went back to sleep, the story continued from before.

I woke up several times, convinced that I need to remember this story, and even tried to edit it in my head during the moments I was awake. And then I went back to sleep and continued dreaming it again.

I don't often have dreams like this. Most of my creative writing is designed in the conscious world, where I am completely aware of what I'm doing when I do it. This was different. It was a story that was trying to create itself, and I even found myself editing it while I was dreaming it, telling myself that it needed to change in one way or another.

It was an interesting story. I'm still thinking about it today. It was one of those dystopian types of stories, something I've been writing a lot of in the last few years, but it took a really interesting direction, something I wouldn't have done if I was crafting this story myself from scratch.

I wonder if the subconscious world tries to write its own stories sometimes and has to do it in this sort of manner because my reality based writing won't let that subconscious take over like it did while I was dreaming. For all asides, it was an interesting story, and I'll probably revisit it at some point when I'm not involved in any writing projects already.

The race is on, but Chuck didn't even get out of the gate

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:15:00 +0000

I am a big fan of the television show Chuck. It seemed to do all things right, including some of the best writing I've seen on television in ages. Its first season was somewhat ho-hum, but oh my god, the second season was phenomenal. It's like they put the kids to bed and then brought out the real writers.

So, I've been anticipating the third season, even though the show was almost cancelled after Season 2 because of ratings. Well, sadly, the show is like we're watching Season 1 over again.

They took an innovative show about a real fish out of water, a computer tech nerd who works for the television version of Best Buy (the Buy More) as one of the Nerd Herd (Geek Squad in Best Buy), but who accidentally has a CIA database dumped into his brain so he now must be protected by secret agents and go on missions himself. They teamed him with one of the hottest actresses to ever play on a television show, and she became his unlikely girlfriend (which made the show even funnier because he had no chance whatsoever with her, yet slowly was winning her over).

Now, he's gone from being the nerd with tons of information in his head to an upgrade where he also has secret agent skills, like Kung Fu and all sorts of other abilities that flash when he needs them. Bad idea. It was cute when he was stuck in hopeless situations and trying to fend for himself (like anyone of us might do), but making him into James Bond was stupid.

And then the writing...I don't know what to say other than I've seen some of the worst plot turns I've seen in a television show yet. The infamous unwritten backstory where he chose the job for the girl (yeah, right) that slowly gets filled in so you have to somehow feel for him because he dumped her when she was giving up everything for him to help him out of this life he was trying to escape. Doesn't work. The "we're getting the band back together" plot line of the hero getting the CIA group back together so everything's just like it used to be (except he's now a superhero superspy) was the main plot behind the last few seasons for Stargate SG1. It worked for Stargate because, well, that was Stargate. But it doesn't work every time you try to pull it off. Especially when it was just done in an earlier series.

So they relied on the "let's get the geek with a supermodel and it will by funny" schtick. Yeah, that was great for Season 1, but not Season 3. It was essentially a set up for a punch line they delivered at the end of the episode (it was Chuck's best friend hooking up with a superspy supermodel). It doesn't work when you're trying to make the show seem a bit more serious, which is the direction they took in Season 2. In Season 3, it just seems like bad writing.

There was a lot of bad writing done in this show, mainly because the creators don't know what they're doing with the show. All of the Buy More scenes are jokes, which is the way the show was designed. Then they kill off a main character by having him murdered in the parking lot of the Buy More. I can see the attempt to show the "it's now going to be serious" but then goes right back to zany comedy bits at the Buy More. Either do it, or don't do it. Killing off that character was like having an episode of SAW take place on Sesame Street. It can happen, but it doesn't belong. Sure, I'd love to see Elmo chasing people with a chainsaw, but let's be serious here.

I really hope this doesn't bode badly for the future of Chuck. I want this show to succeed so much, but this first outing of two episodes in a row is scary because it shows such a bad direction for such a great show to go. It continues tomorrow, followed by another episode of Heroes, which is another one of those shows that just can never seem to figure out what kind of show it wants to be.

But that's for another entry.

LOST vs. President of the United States: LOST wins

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Turns out that President Obama was going to give a state of the union on February 2, which in case you don't know, also happens to be the date that LOST is going to premiere its first episode of the final season. I think he finally realized that when it comes down to it, the people wanted LOST a lot more than it wanted a speech from the president. So, he decided not to go up against LOST.

There's a much bigger issue here that's not being addressed, and that's the fact that the President of the United States had to change the date of his speech because people actually believe the network premiere of LOST is more significant than his speech. Kind of tells you something, doesn't it? In the beginning, I was going to make this big criticism of the American people about this, but then it also got me thinking. Why would LOST be more important to them than the president giving a speech? Perhaps it has more to do with the realization that the affairs of state are becoming less relevant to the common person so that such a thing might actually happen. I mean, I think about myself, and honestly, I don't really care all that much about what's happening nationally these days, when I used to care a lot. And the reason I don't? Because it really doesn't have anything to do with me, and if you really think about it, it probably never will. Oh, we can make arguments that somehow it's significant, but it's about as significant as the wars of Louis XIV were important to the common person of France. Yeah, it's important, but it's not really.

And that's my thought for today. All I can say is that I'm glad that LOST isn't going to be postponed because of this speech. I'd rather watch the show. Sorry. That's just how it is.

After all this time, I'm still convinced Bank of America sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:42:00 +0000

When I moved back to Michigan, I opened up a new Bank of America checking account. I did it because my old account was with a bank that was bought out by another bank, and at least BofA was kind of local to my needs.

I guess some history should be included, because it's kind of important. Years ago, I had a roommate who used to be a middle manager at BofA in California. She once told me, when I was talking about why I liked my bank at the time (not BofA) that didn't charge me fees for my checking account, that the reason Bank of America SHOULD charge fees for its checking accounts AND savings accounts is that BofA is providing a "service", and thus, I should pay for that service. I said that if my money is in their bank, then they're getting free use of my money to invest, so the service is really from me. She said I just didn't understand banking. Thus, I realized that if that's how they teach their managers, I didn't want anything to do with BofA.

Then some months later, for reasons that still escape me, I actually had a BofA account, and one day when using the ATM, I made a deposit of my payroll check, which was actually an emergency check (the first one had been lost by my employer), so I was in dire need of this money. Well, the BofA ATM ate my deposit, and I mean ATE my deposit. I saw the machine literally rip my envelope to shreds as it pulled it into the machine. Never saw anything like it before. Then it proceeded to put itself out of order. It also did not credit my account.

Well, then BofA turned around and added a hefty fine to my account for a "false" deposit in which no deposit actually occurred. It didn't matter that they didn't credit a deposit in the first place. Now they were adding a finance charge on me for doing something "unauthorized". I tried talking to their people, and the clerk actually treated me like I was some sleazoid that had walked in off the street and asked for spare change.

I closed my account back then, and thought nothing of BofA again until just recently.

I had opened this account because a colleague who started at work with me said that she was offered $100 for opening a brand new checking account. So I went there and thought I'd do the same. It should have been a warning to me when they only offered me $50 (same branch she went to...bonus was for working at Spectrum Health, the place we BOTH work).

The only stipulation was that I had to have direct deposit started with my paycheck. So I did it, practically the next day. It took some time to initiate, but once it did, my direct deposits have gone directly into my BofA account.

Well, the $50 never showed up. So I went in a few weeks ago and inquired about this, and the clerk said she'd check on it, and someone told her on the phone they'd get right on it. Today, I received a letter in the mail stating that I took too long to initiate my direct deposit, so I did not qualify for the bonus. Keep in mind, I started it the next day (after receiving it). It took weeks to get started, which I can't even imagine how a time frame that doesn't fit that makes any sense.

So, they're pretty much telling me "screw you, duane" like they did so many years ago. Bank of America has not changed. A bit. They suck, and let's just say that I am very stupid for having given them yet another chance.

Won't happen again.

How far have we come?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:11:00 +0000

While in the process of reading Rebecca Solnit�s �A Paradise Built in Hell�, it has become apparent that one of the recurrent themes throughout the book is not just the negative perceptions that lead to abusive behavior, but a certain socialist perspective she has in pointing out that the major abuses come not from evil people, but from altruistic-appearing, powerful entities who use their stature and power to push their own status quo agenda upon those who might act against them, even if that is just their perception rather than reality.

The San Francisco earthquake example is the first she uses, but what was very obvious throughout this entire section of the book is that all of the major abuses that took place were power play operations that were designed to maintain a certain status quo of power, not necessarily of status quo circumstances. The military responded with force not because of a need to suppress looters and evil happenings, but because of a desire of the local post commander to keep a certain state of power in operation, something that could only be done by having soldiers act with violent actions towards victimized citizens, often as a prelude to perceived threats that were probably never going to occur.

She follows this up by showing that some of the major political figures who existed in San Francisco at the turn of the century were individuals who were already caught up in class politics with challengers, and that the reaction to the earthquake was used as further leverage in long-running battles. The acts of political figures against Universal Railroad and other union suffragists were waged as preemptive strikes to keep power from changing hands, even though much of the power in question was economic, rather than political and military. The political forces in place used the opportunities presented to them from the earthquake to make sure that such economic forces did not act against them, and that when the emergencies were over, that they would not have the chance to rise up again.

The military�s cooperation in this whole mess is scary, because often it is discussed how the dichotomy of the military and civilization power structure serves to keep the United States in its state of citizen-first separation. In her reporting, it is observed that the military often acted with the mindset that the citizens were to be feared and subjected to violence rather than protected. In history books, and especially in the words of the military, the reaction of the US armed services during this period was exemplary, saving the people, but in reality the reaction of the US military was one of violence, where citizens were seen as secondary citizens, subject to the whims of individual soldiers who had little problem with opening fire on citizens seen in the ruins, treating them as looters, thieves and criminals before ever considering why they might be there in the first place. This sort of mentality still exists within the military, and no one ever really questions it, because it is the exact type of wording we receive when we hear that the US military has attacked �insurgents� whenever an air strike takes place where the victims are often unknown because strikes of that nature are not known for their exactness. Quite often, our military treats any skirmish and death as �us versus them� where those who make up the �them� have to prove themselves to be worthy of victim status, or they are forever considered enemy combatants who are casualties of war. That is the exact approach the military took towards San Francisco after the earthquake. Today, many citizens who were shot and killed by soldiers, acting on their own decisions, are still seen as the guilty party. What no one bothers to point out is that soldiers in the United States, even back then, were not authorized to open fire on citizens unless they were acting in the interests of an actual martial law situation. There was no official martial law declared in San Francisco back then; the military acted on its own, taking its orders from a military general who declared martial law in theory alone. The president, the governor, and even the mayor (the last two not actually having the power to do so) never instigated martial law in that emergency. The deaths that were caused happened as a result of soldiers taking the law into their own hands. No, that fact has never really been discussed all that much. It�s not really just a footnote in history, but it doesn�t even get treated as that.

The book, although somewhat condemning in its style of writing, does present a pretty strong case for why we really should be paying more attention to these sorts of things. It took only an unannounced emergency to turn a civilized city into a stomping ground for injustice. When it finally ended, no one was really held accountable, and to this day, we don�t even teach what really happened.

If anything should come out of a book like this, that should be the lesson. We�re still the victims of �the winner writes the text books� philosophies in this country. We haven�t moved that much further than such barbaric actions. Unfortunately, every time we try to take a step back and pretend that we�re some enlightened society that is so distanced from the bad days, we should remember that we�re really only a disaster away from falling down that rabbit hole again, even in the greatest, freedom loving societies all around us.

One of my biggest criticisms of modern name America is that I don�t believe we�re all that as enlightened as we like to think we are. It was only a century ago when we enslaved a great deal of the population, actually arguing that it was the �right� thing to do. It was less than four decades ago that we were quite willing to separate parts of the population from drinking from the same water fountain, convinced that there was some morality involved in such decisions. Every day, we find ourselves facing our own selves in the fact that we do not believe we could ever be like that again, yet everywhere around us, someone is still acting in that type of interest. Granted, the victims keep changing, but the attitudes do not. And the reasoning still exists just as much as it always did. We always claim morality, either through religious grounds or through some other equally mundane process of whatever makes us feel better.

Some day, we�ll get it right. We�re just not there yet.

What cable companies don't want to face about their future

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:28:00 +0000

A recent article on CNN.money stated that cable companies are going to be raising their prices over the next few years, to where people are paying about $95 for cable per household. The article goes on to state that the reason cable companies have to do this is because a lot of their clients have switched over to Web programming and cable offerings that can be obtained through such sites as Hulu.com, so their only option is to raise the prices on the subscribers that they have left.

As one of the many people who have left paying cable behind, I can say without a doubt that cable companies have a much worse time ahead of them than they want to admit. Granted, I still get cable because it's lumped in with my current housing package, but to be honest, if it wasn't, I wouldn't be paying for it because there's not enough on television that I want to pay to watch. I used to love watching certain television shows on the Sci Fi channel (which for some mysterious reason has changed its name to SyFy, or something stupid like that). Most of those shows are gone, or on hiatus, or in mid-season disappearance mode, or whatever. Most shows on other channels have either ended their run (Monk) or got cancelled by the networks (Firefly, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Veronica Mars, etc.). Honestly, there aren't enough shows left worth watching. I'm not a fan of reality programming, or the latest version of American Dancing With the Idols, or whatever those shows are. So, I have really zero desire to subscribe to cable. I watch about the average of three or four shows now, if that (trying to think: Lost, Chuck, Stargate Universe....), so I'm not really missing much. I even missed those shows when they played because they have the strangest broadcast scheduling (kept getting put on hiatus in the middle of their seasons as if this would entice me to watch the other garbage they put in its place).

This is the problem cable companies have with the rest of the country. They don't offer enough quality programming that people are really excited about subscribing to. What they have is an audience of people who turn on the tube for companionship, or as a talking night light. With other diversions like World of Warcraft (for me), dvds (Netflix), the Internet (I can't even begin to point out the opportunities available here), and whatnot, cable companies really aren't the "necessity" that they want people to expect. There's an old marketing aside about how most of the things we have today weren't really considered necessities in the past. Someone had to convince us that we really needed them. That includes the telephone, the radio, the television, the microwave and then the computer. In the beginning of all of these technologies, ad men had to convince us we needed them. Now, we expect them, so we now think of them almost as if they're part of Maslow's Heirarchy. They're not. The radio is almost nonexistent these days, the telephone moved to the cell phone, and each thing reaches a point to where it is replaced with something else. Cable is that way, too, because television has slowly been replaced by so many other items that occupy our time and attention. Cable companies aren't going to want to face that anymore than record companies wanted to face that their business model was irrelevant ten years ago, and they were about to be surpassed by file sharing sites. Come to think of it, they still haven't gotten over that, nor have they come to realize it either.

So, cable companies are going to slowly realize they've become somewhat irrelevant. Or that they should be irrelevant. The only thing they have in their favor is the complacent viewer who will continue to buy their content. But that can only last so long. The dvd was out for quite some time before the last vinyl record buyer finally switched to cds and dvds; some never did. But a huge company can't survive on the nostalgia factor.

At least, that's what they're going to discover.

Criminal nabbed through World of Warcraft account

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:40:00 +0000

The story is here.

Turns out that police sent a subpoena to Blizzard, which runs World of Warcraft to track down a fugitive who was trying to escape justice. Now, I'd be all for this particular turn of events if the fugitive had actually done something OTHER than a drug crime. His crime was dealing in multiple controlled substances.

I'm not into drugs, nor have I even dabbled in it. Been against them personally for my entire adult life. But I am not a fan of criminalizing drugs; always felt the solution was to treat the addicted rather than put them in jail.

Unfortunately, way too many resources are spent chasing drug crimes, so that other things are left behind. And even worse, drugs are so visual in our society that it gives avenues of criminal behavior the go, rather than treats it as a symptom to be cured. If gangs are going to do bad things, I'd prefer they stuck to actual crimes so that police went after that sort of stuff. Unfortunately, in this society, that's never going to happen.

Too many careers are made on the enforcement of drug crimes, and that's not a boon for an enlightened society.

People with too much knowledge to ever read a book and why we keep on rewarding mediocrity

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:44:00 +0000

One of my pet peeves in talking to other people about books and knowledge is when I find myself dealing with someone who claims a little (or a lot of) knowledge about a subject in which they really know nothing. It usually starts when I'm talking about a particular book, and the person I'm talking to will discount pretty much everything I say and then interject with "common knowledge" about a subject of which he or she has no knowledge nor is the subject all that common. Take educations as a subject. I was having a conversation with someone about teaching in high schools and community colleges. The person I was talking to went on a rant about how he knew so much about the subject because he had an aunt that was a teacher, and boy, could he tell me stories. I remembered conversations I had with other person who used their knowledge of having been in high school once to pass on their "brilliant" insights about teaching at high schools. This reminded me of a book, Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrificies and Small Salaries of America's Teachers by Daniel Moultrop, Ninive Clements Calegari and Dave Eggars. It's one of those books with brilliant insights and exhaustive research, but every time I brought it up in conversation, I was rebuked by someone who had "better" information, and would never, ever, in a million years, read that book because they already knew everything they needed to know about the subject.

I used to run into this type of attitude while in graduate school. A student would respond to a conversation about a book with a diatribe on the subject, but not once would actual evidence ever be brought up. I even had one student talk about a movie she saw on the weekend as "evidence" once. Such conversations become very tiring, very fast, and people often wonder why I've come this close to giving up on the institutions of education these days.

An interesting area of study is that of ethnic and racial studies because the area is filled with such misinformation based on stereotypes and beliefs fueled by race politics. I was in a course that was studying poverty once when the students each went off on a rant about their knowledge of poverty based on personal experiences ("I was an undergraduate who once could not afford to buy a CD for months because of how little money I was making from financial aid" as the type of example). I'm not a real fan of comparative studies as a process of explanation, but having been through poverty, such circumstances really irritated me when it was politically incorrect to stand up and say: "You don't know anything about poverty because you've NEVER BEEN POOR!"

But when it comes to studying race, it's a very interesting dilemma because there are so many people in higher levels of education who rely on their race as their only foundation for their level of scholarship. I remember an African-American woman in one of my classes who received no small amount of scholarships and endowments, mainly because she signed her name to forms stating that she was African-American. I think I was one of the only other graduate students to read what she was writing (something she made a habit of keeping from other students), and I was astounded at how little research she conducted nor how her "conclusions" consisted of making some of the weakest arguments I'd ever experienced. Had I ever submitted anything like I read from the several awarded papers she had written, I would have received a red comment on the paper from a professor stating, "yeah, but who cares?" But the interesting thing is that there was no way in the world anyone would ever DARE say that out loud back then, because not only was it important to award everything you could to someone who was doing no work whatsoever in her educational process, it would have been career suicide to have even hinted that one suspected the work of being as weak as it really was. This person went onto achieve a PhD in her field, and in my many conversations with her over the years, I came to realize this whole pursuit was really a walk in the park for her, because no one ever challenged her, nor did anyone ever put her through any length of criticism for producing nothing but shoddy work. That, in a nutshell, is one of the serious problems with our educational system these days.

Which brings me back to lazy research and those who refuse to engage themselves in exploring deeper analysis. There's an interesting book that few people have read but many have seen called The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient by Sheridon Prasso. In this book, the author explores western stereotypes that we keep reinforcing over and over again. Having been someone who has been swept up in the same stereotypes myself (an infatuation with Lucy Liu when she first appeared), it helped to understand why such things affect the psyche. When talking the book over with others, most people just don't get it, and when I've tried to explain it to people, I discover it's not their ability to understand it that's the problem but it's their perspective about Asia, Asian people and other such matters that make it almost impossible to explain. Until you read it yourself, you really don't understand, but getting someone to read it is like pulling teeth with pliars. It just doesn't happen.

Anyway, I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. Unfortunately, getting people to read is never an easy process, and I'm almost to the point where I'm giving up on trying. If people want to be considered experts on subjects they know nothing about, let them. I'll just smile knowingly and laugh behind their backs instead.

Sex Doesn't Sell--in movies

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:28:00 +0000

According to a "ground-breaking" article by CNN, they've discovered that sex doesn't necessarily sell when it comes to movies. This is one of those few articles that is missing an appropriate "no duh" at the end of it.

This is an example of one of those stories that gets written because someone has taken a slogan and then decided that the evidence doesn't match the wordage of the slogan itself, mainly because the slogan is just that, a slogan. Also, the slogan is appropriate to a completely different vehicle, and the reporters are trying to play the game of "lookie what we found!" when in reality they found that their lack of research equates to a stupid story.

So, why do people say "sex sells" if it doesn't sell in movies? Because it sells in advertising. That's where the wordage gets the most play. Beer commercials are a great example. Guys drink beer, girls show up wearing almost no clothing, and then profit! Girl wears sexy lingerie, other women watching the commercial see it and then go out and buy lingerie expecting to be as sexy as she is, and then profit! Okay, the second example is an example of misleading advertising (as was the first) mainly because I think most of those commercials are designed for guys who then turn to their girlfriends/wives and then try to get them to wear the sexy lingerie, and then somehow profit entails, but the results don't somehow come out the same.

And that's the beauty of sex sells advertisement. Almost always it creates a fantasy that is unattainable for all but women who happen to be sexy lingerie models. Guys aren't going to end up with her. Sorry, but she's dating some rock star that makes gazillions of dollars and wouldn't give you the time of day. Average women aren't going to look like her; let's face it...there's a reason she makes millions of dollars to pose in her underwear.

Which brings us back to the original topic, and that's sex sells imagination in movies. When does it ever sell? Well, I can think of a few examples. "Mr and Mrs Smith" was a movie that was definitely a sex sells kind of movie. It had two of the hottest stars in movies, both sexy to people of practically both genders interchangeably, and that sold that movie well. I'd venture that Transformers benefited from several sexy stars, although I personally never liked the movie or the stars of it, but I'm commenting on movie trends, not on my own wants and desires. If this was about my own wants and desires, every movie would have Shania Twain running around in lingerie. Come to think of it, every movie with Shania Twain in it regardless would improve 90 percent of the movies regardless of what she was wearing. And she could sing the soundtrack, too. Hmm, must consider this for a future post and column.

But I digress....

Some other movies that do well with sex selling in their movies are, well, for simplicity, porn. I mean, let's face it. If you are interested in sex in movies, then you really can't go any simpler than that. So, why don't more guys just watch porn instead of watch movies that are sexually suggestive? Well, if the guy wants to get his girlfriend/wife to watch it, well, that's about as close as he's going to get.

But the point is that this article that CNN wrote is more about trying to dislodge a theory that no one is making. I haven't gone to a movie yet because I was interested in a sexual theme of the movie, ever. I've seen some pretty damn sexy movies over the years, but I went to see them because of some other reason. So the idea that sex sells is really limited to advertising and porn. I think the enlightened people just don't want to admit it. To make a movie that is nothing but sex is really either making a porn movie or a soft porn movie, and anyone who has watched the latter has begged for that two hours back in their life.

The Hobbesian Model in Retrospect: A case study approach to studying creation of government in online games, such as Ultima Online

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:15:00 +0000

One of the hidden attributes of philosophy is the realization that no matter how much stock you put into a theory, the chances of that theory ever being challenged by real world circumstances are so miniscule that such events will either never happen or happen so far after someone�s lifetime that criticism is irrelevant anyway. Well, let�s take a look at one of the fundamental concepts of political philosophy that even non-theorists are required to study ad nausea: Why do societies and civilizations come together in the first place?

We all know the Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau models that stem from these conversations, and we all know how one buys into one theory or the other as to why people get together and allow themselves to be ruled over, or why someone gains power in what should be an almost impossible act of acquirement. I mean, what rational person gives over his or her power to some total stranger all in the name of protection from danger and a desire to avoid loss of belongings or life? If you look at that dynamic today, it seems almost ridiculous because why should any normal person feel that others should be in charge of him or her just because one is a part of every day society? Political scientists like to think they have it all figured out, depending up on what their particular bent is on the theory, but what I�ve always found fascinating is how little the average person thinks about these things, because the average person is the one who gave up power in the first place and continues to do it on a daily basis every day he or she does exactly what government tells him or her to do.

But before going off on that tangent, who was right? Did we get together to create a society for the sake of community, or was it something even more basic like Hobbes projects, and we just got together because we�re scared to death of each other, feeling that we�re probably a lot better off with some neutral administrator than we are trying to fend for ourselves? Unfortunately, we�re so far into the game that we no longer have to even ask why we got into it in the first place. We�re incapable of getting out of it, so why should it matter why we got into it way back before we even started writing histories about it?

Fortunately, there was a stable platform where this question was being asked, and there were a lot of people participating to give us exactly the answers we might be seeking about this situation. To find the answer, we have to go to the one place that scientists are still apprehensive about going: Computer games.

The problem with trying to test political theories, or even just philosophical theories, with computer games in the past is that they have mainly been seen as an environment that gives us access to children, and of course there is the stigma that we are almost always talking about a game of some sorts. Thus, scientists avoid being seen in that medium, because it then indicates that their science isn�t scholarly, so we miss a lot of information that is both fascinating and ground-breaking. Fortunately, we�re a little more enlightened these days concerning such issues, so a lot of scholarly research is coming from the genre of computer games.

But even more important is that games have evolved into sharing an agenda with another one of those new areas for exploitation, and that is the world of social networking. With the advent of Myspace, Facebook and other networking tools, scientists are now finding themselves with access to a lot of social data that they only conjectured about before. In the past, a scientist would study a bunch of students at some particular college or series of colleges, almost to the point where we probably know more about sophomores in college than any other entity on the face of the planet.

But something new happened in the 1990s, and it passed by a lot of social scientists without them even realizing it was happening. One of these games that came along was called Ultima Online. It was created by a group of computer gaming professionals at a company called Origin, and it was the culmination of a series of medieval setting role-playing games, called Ultima, which had, at the time, recently received resounding success with its seventh version, Ultima VII. It would continue on with several other continuations, specifically Ultima VIII and Ultima IX, but when Ultima Online was released, it was to the fanfare that was created from the global success of Ultima VII, a game where you arrived in the world of Britannia as the immortal avatar, a human who has achieved a sense of full enlightenment and brings that enlightenment to the welcoming, and not so welcoming, people of Britannia. The originator of the series, and the owner of Origin, was Richard Garriott. He would come to be known as Lord British, the sovereign who lived within the lands of Britannia.

Ultima Online was one of the first graphically enhanced multi user dungeons, where many people could play the same game at the same time. To handle the expected player capacity, different �shards� were developed, which housed exact duplications of the world of Britannia. The explanation was that the wizard Mondain had broken a gem that shattered into shards, each one being a different representation of the known world. The entire world of each shard was identical, but once the game went live, the world would change demonstrably, so that if you lived in one shard, you might not recognize the environment in another. An example was an early misunderstanding of this fact when I found a house near the city of Yew that had a training dummy in it I could use to train my fighting skills. Being on another shard, and not recognizing this nuance, I found myself wandering that same area near Yew, wondering why I could not find the training dummy house, no matter how much I searched.

A feature that made Ultima Online unique was that you could be attacked by other players, if you were wandering around outside of the safety of a protected town. In town, the guards would kill anyone who committed a crime, like stealing or attacking another player without cause, but outside of their protection, you were pretty much on your own. In the game, they called this player killing, or �pking�. At one point, a new player would realize that leaving a city could be dangerous, and thus, would either stick close to town, or be very cognizant of surroundings when traveling.

This brought about an interesting dynamic that leads to the focus of this study. At one point, there was the realization that going outside of town might be dangerous, but there was an entire world out there to explore. Either you hid in town and missed everything outside of town, or you took a chance. In the beginning, you took a chance alone, and after some time, you were probably killed by someone who made his or her livelihood by preying on unsuspecting tourists. But slowly, something emerged that acted as a compensation to this sort of behavior: The player town emerged.

The player town was a collection of self-made homes that its owners banded together to create a small society. Leaders were elected, commerce was developed and encouraged, and, most importantly, security was developed. Players did not have the advantage of automated guards appearing in their towns when criminals appeared and acted in such interests, so players had to become the guards themselves, often serving as militias that acted against anyone who worked against the interests of the town. As these towns grew stronger and larger, the security they offered grew as well. If a town member was attacked near town, the town militias would band together and go after the pkers. Eventually, these militias became armies, and from time to time, an attack against town members, or to people allied to the town, would result in a force of players who would travel to the power base of those who orchestrated such negative actions, often leading to deadly force.

In a very short time, players banded together and created small civilizations within the game that had their own leadership, and quite often their only reason for banding together was the protection of all. Others would join to engage in safe commerce, because it was often difficult to find customers outside of major cities, but customers often sought out player cities rather than game-run cities as the venders in player cities were a lot more accommodating to dealing economically than a system that was mainly computer driven (the major cities, which would not allow the placement of player venders).

For years, this was the model of city creation in Britannia. Some cities rose or fell based on how they handled outside elements. Some of them became famous, while others lasted mere moments before disappearing forever. An example of one of these cities that lasted for several years of renown was Shannara, named after the famed novels by Terry Brooks. This was also one of the cities that serves as an excellent case study for the changes that occurred after the introduction of Trammel.

Trammel is one of those concepts that can lead a former Ultima Online player to immediately start frothing at the mouth. It is probably one of the most controversial moves an online gaming company has ever done, short of the New Gaming Experience that was introduced to Star Wars Galaxies by Sony Online Entertainment, which for sake of simplicity, changed an online game so drastically that it is still unclear to this day as to whether it saved or destroyed a game that was seriously suffering in its ability to maintain its player base. Players had been leaving SWG in droves over many changes made in the game by SOE over the years, and this was supposed to fix things, but the controversy over the drastic changes have divided that player community forever, often leading to vehement disagreements between current and former players.

But Trammel was an animal of a completely different nature. Ultima Online was attracting a lot of player killers in the game, and over a particular Christmas holiday season, the number of pkers and thieves, another annoying distraction to players in the game, increased drastically. The UO message boards were filled with angry players who demanded that Electronic Arts (the new owners of Origin who had pushed Garriott from the company after the purchase) do something about it. The result was Trammel.

Trammel was a mirror world of Britannia that was added to every shard. The player would cross through a portal to this new world, and it would be a place where pkers could no longer attack unsuspecting players, and thieves could not steal from anyone as well. Those desiring the player versus player experience could travel through the portal to the old world, now known as Felucca, and everything that happened in the past was still active in Felucca. But Trammel was safe.

So, the majority of the player base moved to Trammel. Felucca became a graveyard, which was fitting because the lands of Britannia were made to appear dark and forbidding, much like a graveyard. Very few players decided to remain in Felucca.

This killed player cities almost overnight because those that existed were now in the �dangerous� land, and some people made it a habit to not even visit Felucca anymore. Then, after a number of months, the developers of the game opened up housing spaces in Trammel in what was a huge land rush that rivaled the land rush that took place in the prairies of the great northwest of the United States. The evening that housing was turned on was an event itself, with almost the entire player base signed on to grab pieces of land that they were looking forward to, finally being able to put down a huge house instead of relying on tiny little houses that had been all that could be placed in what land was left of Felucca in the old days of Ultima Online.

After housing was opened up on Trammel, the first player cities were created there as well. Liberalis was one of the first player run cities to launch on the Napa Valley server. However, after it was created, it quickly died out. Then, with almost every city that came after, the cities lasted a short while and then were abandoned.

What was discovered was that the reason for creating player cities was gone. Without the danger of pkers, without needing a place where people could gather for safety, other than the game�s manufactured cities, there was no reason to put one�s effort into such areas. The guilds that were active during this period slowly dwindled away, players finding themselves playing other games instead of Ultima Online. There seemed to be little challenge left in the game; without a need to band together, the point of Ultima Online was pretty much lost.

Games like World of Warcraft and Everquest helped players of UO realize what was missing in the game, specifically quests and something to do. Ultima Online was one of the few sandbox games, meaning that the players made the environment, not the game designers. Without a need to band together to create societies, which was crucial in the older days of Ultima Online, there was really no reason to continue playing the game.

Ultima Online is still around today, but it is a shadow of its former self, many of its prominent players having gone onto different games, often brining their entire clans with them as well.

For political philosophy, the Ultima Online experience offers a unique opportunity to explore the nature of individuals to band together and create societies and civilizations. Unfortunately, few games since then have offered an environment that produces a similar necessity, so it is unknown if there will be an opportunity to view such a dynamic again. But it is important that social scientists keep their eyes on such possibilities, because like Ultima Online, those opportunities often do not last long, and once discovered can change so quickly that the opportunity may be lost before it was ever realized.

I can't stand cold (snow) weather, but honestly I can think of worse things to complain about

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:10:00 +0000

The Winter has finally hit us in Michigan, and it is hitting pretty hard. It's hitting me especially hard because I don't have a car, and each morning consists of a half hour walk before I can get to the bus that drives me the rest of the distance to work. The walk sucks, and the waiting for the bus sucks. But having said that, it's really not the worst thing in the world.

This morning it was about 18 degrees out, and it's probably going to get a lot colder. I was freezing. I have a pretty good jacket I bought so that worked well, and the hood on it actually covered most of my head pretty well. But my face was freaking freezing. Freeeeeeeeeezing. Must figure out a way to compensate for that. What was really bad was that there's no sidewalk anymore, so I have to walk through tromping snow, which means I'm exhausted by the time I reach the bus. I can't figure out a way around that, as the city likes to plow the street but doesn't think too much about the sidewalks. Not too many people walk, as I can tell from the very few sets of footprints on the ground (there were none this morning and only one set yesterday).

When I reached the bus stop this morning, as I was watching the cars slowly drive by (the drivers scared of any speed in this near blizzard condition...does near Blizzard mean "near World of Warcraft"?...but I digress), I started to think to myself that "yes, Self, it does suck that we're freezing out here and don't have a car, but, Self, would you really want to be driving in THAT?" By THAT, I meant the near World of Warcraft conditions, or blizzard conditions. I would not want to be driving in that, and when the bus finally arrived, all I could think to myself was "now someone else gets to drive the rest of the way." Actually, that wasn't all I could think to myself at that time. I was also thinking about how hot Shania Twain is, and I was also wondering how come people who talk to their stuffed animals are considered sane, but those who are spoken to by their stuffed animals are considered insane. But, again, I digress....

So, I got to work, and I was glad to finally be in a warm place. I started smiling as other people started reporting through email and such that they could not make it into work because the conditions were so bad that they didn't feel safe driving in it. I guess when it comes to comparisons, they really don't have much ground to stand on, but it's not always about comparisons. Like, when I was in the elevator, there was a woman telling another woman: "I can't believe I had to come into work today. Omigod, it took me ten minutes to warm up the heat in my car. I so should not have to come to work under such conditions. This place is so lucky I came in." So, I guess everyone has his or her own dilemma and extreme to report. Sometimes, it's worth showing up just to listen to everyone else's. Kind of the whole walk a mile in someone else's shoes, or "I wanted to complain about walking a mile without shoes, but then I met a man with no feet" or other such fun analogies.

Anyway, so I'm at work now, and it's okay. The weather sucks. And it will get worse. I remember my first winter here in Michigan when I first came to do my PhD at Western Michigan University. Everyone said the winters were HORRIBLE. And the first one was the mildest one in decades. So I laughed. And then the next Winter, it was the worst Winter they'd had in decades. Or second worst. And it sucked. So I then realized it was like to be a man with no feet. Or something like that.

Solving Afghanistan requires knowing what you want to do in the country in the first place

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:52:00 +0000

There's an interesting, somewhat irrelevant article on CNN from a former Soviet general who occupied Afghanistan during the era of the Soviet Union. The article makes the mistake of allowing the general to make the argument that the United States is doing the same thing in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union was: Installing a government that is friendly to the occupying country.

And that's the problem right there. The reason the United States is in Afghanistan was NEVER about establishing democracy. Oh sure, we're slowly coming to try to do that, but that's not why we went there. We forget why we went there when we invaded. We didn't go there to conduct a regime change. We went there to kick some ass. Kick some Taliban ass and to kick it all across Afghanistan until we couldn't find anymore Taliban ass to kick anymore. Then we should have done what any angry mob does: Go home.

Our reason for being in Afghanistan was vengeance. There's really no denying that. We went there because we were certain the Taliban were hiding Al Qaeda. So we invaded and slaughtered the Taliban stronghold. Now, well, we're sitting around and letting them come back to power.

What we should have done was wipe them out and then leave. Maybe stop for ice cream, but then just leave.

We've never been all that good at nation building. No one really is. As the Soviet general argues, the Afghans are going to do what the Afghans want to do. So let them. And if they piss us off again, we send in the Air Force, kick some ass, buy some more ice cream and then leave again.

That's really what we should be doing in Afghanistan. Sitting around and hoping they'll get together and make nice is never going to work. Sorry. It just doesn't work that way in the real world.

The Art of Lazy Science

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:41:00 +0000

I'm still in the process of continuing to read Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How they Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PHD and James H. Fowles, PHD, but one thing I've noticed in a tendency of the authors to resort to what I consider lazy science. The book itself is quite phenomenal in its process but its quoting and reference work is atrocious, leaving a lot to be desired. An example is on page 188, where the authors reference Robert Putnam by stating: "These findings contradict some of the core recommendations made by political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues who study the effect of "social capital" on the health of our democracy. It then references Putnam's Bowling Alone, but no specific chapter or passage is included. Nor is there any indication as to what colleagues these authors are talking about, especially when they mention a book that was written by one author. They then continue: "Putnam argues that highly clustered network ties improve information flow and increase reciprocity at a societal level because everyone is looking out for everyone else." If they're going to challenge specific arguments made by Putnam and unnamed "colleagues," perhaps the authors should at least give enough reference information for the reader to be able to come to a likewise conclusion.

Another blatant error comes in the next chapter when they start talking about tit for tat game theory, specifically that put forth by author Robert Axelrod. They talk about his cooperative strategy on Page 219, but when they reference him, they reference his work that has never been created, some strange volume called The Evolution Corporation, which they state he wrote in 1984. I am impressed because that means he put that out at the same time he wrote The Evolution of Cooperation, which coincidentally was written in 1984. In other words, someone should have at least edited this book to get the right titles of books they're references, especially when they're using some of the biggies of political science literature. And no, there is no The Evolution Corporation from Axelrod; I checked, just to make sure I wasn't missing a great volume of his and making a really stupid argument against bad science. When your own theory uses Axelrod as much as mine does, it's pretty hard to miss alternative novels written by him during the exact same year (with almost the exact same title and almost about the exact same subject).

Bad science! No cookie!

If obesity is contagious, why isn't good health as well?

noreply@blogger.com (Duane) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:43:00 +0000

I'm reading an interesting book right now called "Connected" by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. I'm reading it as background for my Friendship Over Time theory, specifically to explain the process of how cultural adaptation can occur over time as a process of societal change. But what is really interesting for this post is an argument that is made in Chapter 4, which is that obesity is contagious. They cite a bunch of studies and show that over time obesity can spread in groups, and eventually push itself onto outlier connected groups, up to three degrees of separation.

What never made any sense to me in their study was how come this doesn't happen with positive circumstances, like good health? How come good health doesn't spread to three degrees of separation of people?

My guess is that what they are showing is that bad things tend to spread much easier than good thing, much like communication theory shows that it is easier to push a negative message than it is a positive message. In my thesis study, when I was showing that Boris Yeltsin's message of 1991 Soviet Union's past was negative rather than the putsches' message of it being a positive past was easier to push to the public, I think there's something there. Physics shows that chaos theory tends to push disorder rather than order, meaning the universe has a tendency to spread itself out rather than contain itself in order, so why should ideas and concepts be any different?

What this means is that in order to get your friends to all want to lose weight, you have to put serious energy into the central depository of information, meaning that the state of rest for information should be one of "do nothing" and that potential energy is always there to do negative actions, pushing towards disorder, such as gaining weight and leading to less healthy outcomes. In order to turn the message, you need to put energy into the mix to achieve a higher level of valiance of energy states (so that potential energy will yield kinetic energy that leads to positive results).

So mathematically, if you want to achieve better results from your social groups, you have to put in positive energy that is stored as potential energy that can yield kinetic results that spread out to a higher level of order. In other words, energy goes uphill, requiring effort to achieve positive results, while it is very possible that if your goal is negative attributes, your potential energy required is already stored at a state of rest and is just waiting to be released.