Print this article(With apologies to whoever came up with the Latin phrase "sic transit gloria mundi" ("thus passes the glory of the world").)
Now that the time has come, I can barely make myself type it: This will be my final post.
There, I said it!!
I was slaving away on the computer a few weeks ago when my train of thought was interrupted by a voice in my head that said "You need to focus on expansion, not reduction." It came so out of the blue that it'd have been easy to attribute it to an outside source, but since there wasn't so much as a wisp of smoke rising from any of my bushes I accepted it as a message from my subconscious mind, one so major that it'd come bursting into my consciousness in this unprecedented way. Although I wasn't working on anything blog related when it happened, I knew instantly that it was a reference to how I'd steadily given up everything I used to do with my free time in order to be able to write decent posts, and that... that... I needed to stop blogging and go back to doing all that other stuff. The very idea shocked me to the bone; stop blogging?!! Although not addicted to it (I'd had no problems scaling back from blogging daily to every 2nd, 3rd and finally 4th day), I was still passionate about it, still getting a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it; how could I QUIT?
So I took a hard look at what blogging was costing me: I'd read through my entire library annually since I was a kid, but I hadn't touched any of those books since this blog got into full swing. I've only read the most recent bunch of Stephen King novels once instead of a dozen times. I stopped reading Dean Koontz entirely, even though a couple of his newer novels have been given to me (they're waiting in the pile with the other unread books). For the 1st time since literally grade school, I'm not reading any women's magazines, because when I didn't renew Cosmo (I'm just too old for it now) I couldn't justify paying for LHJ or Redbook because I wouldn't have time to read them. I have CD's I haven't played in years, not to mention my huge record collection that's still stored at my mother's because we don't have my husband's junk consolidated enough to bring the rest of MY stuff here; he managed that because I've been blogging every spare minute and he won't do a lick of work without me standing over him. I've got a mountain of lovely puzzles and games still sealed in their boxes because I haven't had time to play with them even once, and old favorites covered in dust for the same reason.
My husband brought me home a cool-looking DVD from Blockbuster, but I had to send it back unwatched because it had subtitles and I don't have time to actually look at the TV screen for an entire movie.
I haven't polished my toenails in so long that all my polishes are probably dried up (which is sad for my husband, who has a low-grade fetish for my feet), because if I'm at the computer I'll forget and scrunch my wet toes into the carpet... and I'm only away from the computer to get too little sleep and exercise.
I decided to try writing shorter entries to see if that could fix things; I've been averaging 3 "compose screens" per post rather than the previous 5 since then, although sometimes it made me feel constrained because it didn't always allow me to say all I'd wanted to. It DID free up a non-trivial amount of time for me... and it felt like waking up from a dream. I looked around my house and saw, really SAW, how much just plain maintenance and organization had gone by the wayside: I discovered EIGHTEEN jars of pickles and relish strewn throughout my pantry with expiration dates as far back as 2002, because I've been trusting my husband's opinions as to what we should buy instead of sorting periodically through all the food myself, tossing expired stuff and keeping track of what was in there. My roses had aphids on them. My tires were low on air. Some of my newer collectables hadn't been put on display yet. And on and on and on.
That this could be the result of blogging might be puzzling to those of you who write standard-type blog entries that can be tossed off in 10 minutes, and who therefore don't need to give anything up to blog, but my long, complicated entries take more hours than you'd believe to create, not just because I'm the world's slowest and worst typist but because of the amount of time I have to spend pondering what I want to say and how best to say it, researching to double-check my facts and seek out further info to allow me to cover topics more thoroughly, and doing several rounds of editing (including reading everything out loud to be sure it "sounds like me"), all of it interrupted constantly by the phone, my husband, the critters and the myriad tasks that can't wait for me to finish a paragraph.
I LOVE that process, I love the ideas I come up with, I love my posts, and I love being part of the blogosphere; I'm not tired of it, burned out or out of ideas... it's just reached the point where it's necessary for me to do other things with my free time. I need to get at least an hour more sleep per night, exercise a couple more hours per week, call my friends more often, spend more time with my husband doing something other than discuss topics (and, um, you know), and re-embrace my former pleasures... and maybe discover some new ones.
Believe me when I say that I've thought EXTREMELY hard about all this; I'm not walking away from almost 3.5 years' work on a whim. I tried to come up with a way to blog AND have a full life again, but failed; I'd have to blog once a month or some such nonsense to make it all work, and in the fast-paced blogging world that'd cause me to drop right off everyone's radar, leaving me posting for nothing but a handful of diehards, if that much... and this blog deserves better than to be piddled away into nothingness. I could switch to making short posts, either about nothing much or just skimming over topics rather than plunging into them, but YOU deserve better than that (after all, that's not what you come here for), *I* wouldn't get any joy out of it, and, again, I'd be turning this blog into a shadow of its former self... I refuse to continue posting just to keep the blog going. To blog in a way I can be proud of, with sufficient frequency to have someone still reading what I wrote, I couldn't spend much less time on it than I've been doing, and just adding an extra day or so between posts wouldn't be enough to get me the rest of my life back; to my sorrow, the only choice I have is to quit entirely.
sigh
I had so many things I still wanted to tell you, but in a way I've already said everything that matters; although I've covered a wide range of topics, there are only a few that are really central, that I've been covering from different angles since Day 1... and those are the things that I hope you'll take away from this blog, and keep in mind long after you've forgotten it (and me):
1) As non-coincidentally discussed in my previous post, there's more to the world than what's easily visible or scientifically provable; with a little effort, you can figure out for yourself what some of those things are. Don't take anyone's word for it, work it through it on your own, based on things you can be sure of, so you can be sure of what you're placing your belief in. You don't have to call it religion, spirituality or metaphysics if you're not comfortable with that; think of it as philosophy:
"Philosophy... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
This blog contains the sum total of MY spirituality/philosophy as it has evolved to this point; if you enter "karma" into the search thing at the top of the page, you'll get all the relevant posts. I don't expect you to swallow it whole, since your personal experiences differ from mine and thus your beginning assumptions will differ, but I hope that the way I've reasoned things out will inspire you to do the same with your own data.
2) We need to stop deciding that people are "good," worthy of respect and trust, and that what they do is ok, based on knowing them a long time, loving them, sleeping with them or even sharing DNA with them; instead, judge everyone you know objectively by their actions, and based on that decide who gets to be closer to you... and who you need to kick to the curb.
3) People will periodically do you wrong, because they're evil, mad at you, too depressed to know better, etc; they'll generally give you plenty of red flags before doing so, which in self defense you need to stop discounting out of misguided loyalty and heed. To learn about some of these warning signs, search this blog for "Beware List."
4) American culture has a sick obsession with evil people; we see them as being more fun, exciting, sexy, glamorous and desirable for relationships. If you're tired of being done dirt to by folks like this (and they'll ALWAYS do it to you sooner or later, usually sooner), choose, CHOOSE, to spurn them and pursue nice people instead, however dull they may seem at 1st (remember, YOU will probably seem dull to them as well, but the truth is that neither you nor they are actually dull).
5) Being a good person requires action; if you don't do good deeds, and in particular if you don't defend those who're being attacked, both online and offline, you can NOT call yourself a good person... you're neutral at best.
6) When you see some sort of interpersonal battle going on, analyze what's happening correctly and then take the correct action, especially if you're in a position of authority: There's virtually never any confusion as to who's a victim and who's an attacker, and thus no confusion about who should be blamed and punished (the attacker(s)) and who should be protected and supported (the victim(s))... and it doesn't matter who you know or like better, or how strong the urge is to illogically decide that the victim did something horrible to cause the fight (they didn't) or that the attackers are in the right because there's more of them (they aren't), you should still make the proper judgment and act accordingly.
7) And the #1 concept I hope to pass along; don't just cruise through life mindlessly accepting everything. Constantly question if what you're being told is true, whether the teller is a friend, the media, scientists, whoever; if it isn't, try to discover the truth and share it with others, even if the process is difficult or painful.
"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true."
-Carl Sagan
Constantly seek out what the REASONS are for why things are a certain way and why we do the things we do, and ask yourself if the status quo is right or wrong... and if the latter, DO something, even if that just means blogging about it to raise awareness.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."
-Carl Sagan
And last, but far from least, I want to express my undying gratitude for every person and service that allowed this blog to be more successful than I could ever have imagined when I 1st decided I wanted my own place in cyberspace to say what was on my mind: Every site, from Blogger on down to the little guys who design sidebar doodads, that provided me with things of value for free over the years-thank you. Every person that took the time to read my posts, liked them enough to come back for more, and especially those that linked to me, submitted me to directories, cast "votes" for me, and said nice things about me on their blogs-THANK YOU!!
I'll always look upon what I accomplished here with great satisfaction; I've done some of the best, deepest, most original thinking of my life for these posts, and one of the biggest thrills of my life has been the knowledge that thousands of people around the world, even from exotic countries that I barely knew anything about before I got online, would read what I wrote and maybe absorb and carry on some of my ideas... I paid a high price for that thrill, but I consider it to have been worth it even though I now have to walk a different path.
It's hard to stop typing, to finish this post and with it my time as a blogger; that'd sound nuts to non-bloggers, but I know that YOU, my blogging brethren, understand. I'll miss you, I'll miss the blogosphere, and I'll always remember you with great affection.
I wonder how long I'll stare at the "Publish Post" button before I click it and end my blogging career.
I wonder how long it'll be before I close the "Publish Status" window.
I wonder how long it'll be before I stop automatically checking on my blog.
I wonder how long it'll be before I stop responding to anything interesting I learn with "that'll make a good blog entry."
I wonder how long it'll be before I go even one day without thinking about my blog.
I wonder what'll be the 1st thing I do after I summon the courage to publish this entry and start my new life.
Ok, here I go...
Goodbye everyone!!
xoxoxoxo
Omni
Now that the time has come, I can barely make myself type it: This will be my final post.
There, I said it!!
I was slaving away on the computer a few weeks ago when my train of thought was interrupted by a voice in my head that said "You need to focus on expansion, not reduction." It came so out of the blue that it'd have been easy to attribute it to an outside source, but since there wasn't so much as a wisp of smoke rising from any of my bushes I accepted it as a message from my subconscious mind, one so major that it'd come bursting into my consciousness in this unprecedented way. Although I wasn't working on anything blog related when it happened, I knew instantly that it was a reference to how I'd steadily given up everything I used to do with my free time in order to be able to write decent posts, and that... that... I needed to stop blogging and go back to doing all that other stuff. The very idea shocked me to the bone; stop blogging?!! Although not addicted to it (I'd had no problems scaling back from blogging daily to every 2nd, 3rd and finally 4th day), I was still passionate about it, still getting a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it; how could I QUIT?
So I took a hard look at what blogging was costing me: I'd read through my entire library annually since I was a kid, but I hadn't touched any of those books since this blog got into full swing. I've only read the most recent bunch of Stephen King novels once instead of a dozen times. I stopped reading Dean Koontz entirely, even though a couple of his newer novels have been given to me (they're waiting in the pile with the other unread books). For the 1st time since literally grade school, I'm not reading any women's magazines, because when I didn't renew Cosmo (I'm just too old for it now) I couldn't justify paying for LHJ or Redbook because I wouldn't have time to read them. I have CD's I haven't played in years, not to mention my huge record collection that's still stored at my mother's because we don't have my husband's junk consolidated enough to bring the rest of MY stuff here; he managed that because I've been blogging every spare minute and he won't do a lick of work without me standing over him. I've got a mountain of lovely puzzles and games still sealed in their boxes because I haven't had time to play with them even once, and old favorites covered in dust for the same reason.
My husband brought me home a cool-looking DVD from Blockbuster, but I had to send it back unwatched because it had subtitles and I don't have time to actually look at the TV screen for an entire movie.
I haven't polished my toenails in so long that all my polishes are probably dried up (which is sad for my husband, who has a low-grade fetish for my feet), because if I'm at the computer I'll forget and scrunch my wet toes into the carpet... and I'm only away from the computer to get too little sleep and exercise.
I decided to try writing shorter entries to see if that could fix things; I've been averaging 3 "compose screens" per post rather than the previous 5 since then, although sometimes it made me feel constrained because it didn't always allow me to say all I'd wanted to. It DID free up a non-trivial amount of time for me... and it felt like waking up from a dream. I looked around my house and saw, really SAW, how much just plain maintenance and organization had gone by the wayside: I discovered EIGHTEEN jars of pickles and relish strewn throughout my pantry with expiration dates as far back as 2002, because I've been trusting my husband's opinions as to what we should buy instead of sorting periodically through all the food myself, tossing expired stuff and keeping track of what was in there. My roses had aphids on them. My tires were low on air. Some of my newer collectables hadn't been put on display yet. And on and on and on.
That this could be the result of blogging might be puzzling to those of you who write standard-type blog entries that can be tossed off in 10 minutes, and who therefore don't need to give anything up to blog, but my long, complicated entries take more hours than you'd believe to create, not just because I'm the world's slowest and worst typist but because of the amount of time I have to spend pondering what I want to say and how best to say it, researching to double-check my facts and seek out further info to allow me to cover topics more thoroughly, and doing several rounds of editing (including reading everything out loud to be sure it "sounds like me"), all of it interrupted constantly by the phone, my husband, the critters and the myriad tasks that can't wait for me to finish a paragraph.
I LOVE that process, I love the ideas I come up with, I love my posts, and I love being part of the blogosphere; I'm not tired of it, burned out or out of ideas... it's just reached the point where it's necessary for me to do other things with my free time. I need to get at least an hour more sleep per night, exercise a couple more hours per week, call my friends more often, spend more time with my husband doing something other than discuss topics (and, um, you know), and re-embrace my former pleasures... and maybe discover some new ones.
Believe me when I say that I've thought EXTREMELY hard about all this; I'm not walking away from almost 3.5 years' work on a whim. I tried to come up with a way to blog AND have a full life again, but failed; I'd have to blog once a month or some such nonsense to make it all work, and in the fast-paced blogging world that'd cause me to drop right off everyone's radar, leaving me posting for nothing but a handful of diehards, if that much... and this blog deserves better than to be piddled away into nothingness. I could switch to making short posts, either about nothing much or just skimming over topics rather than plunging into them, but YOU deserve better than that (after all, that's not what you come here for), *I* wouldn't get any joy out of it, and, again, I'd be turning this blog into a shadow of its former self... I refuse to continue posting just to keep the blog going. To blog in a way I can be proud of, with sufficient frequency to have someone still reading what I wrote, I couldn't spend much less time on it than I've been doing, and just adding an extra day or so between posts wouldn't be enough to get me the rest of my life back; to my sorrow, the only choice I have is to quit entirely.
sigh
I had so many things I still wanted to tell you, but in a way I've already said everything that matters; although I've covered a wide range of topics, there are only a few that are really central, that I've been covering from different angles since Day 1... and those are the things that I hope you'll take away from this blog, and keep in mind long after you've forgotten it (and me):
1) As non-coincidentally discussed in my previous post, there's more to the world than what's easily visible or scientifically provable; with a little effort, you can figure out for yourself what some of those things are. Don't take anyone's word for it, work it through it on your own, based on things you can be sure of, so you can be sure of what you're placing your belief in. You don't have to call it religion, spirituality or metaphysics if you're not comfortable with that; think of it as philosophy:
"Philosophy... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
This blog contains the sum total of MY spirituality/philosophy as it has evolved to this point; if you enter "karma" into the search thing at the top of the page, you'll get all the relevant posts. I don't expect you to swallow it whole, since your personal experiences differ from mine and thus your beginning assumptions will differ, but I hope that the way I've reasoned things out will inspire you to do the same with your own data.
2) We need to stop deciding that people are "good," worthy of respect and trust, and that what they do is ok, based on knowing them a long time, loving them, sleeping with them or even sharing DNA with them; instead, judge everyone you know objectively by their actions, and based on that decide who gets to be closer to you... and who you need to kick to the curb.
3) People will periodically do you wrong, because they're evil, mad at you, too depressed to know better, etc; they'll generally give you plenty of red flags before doing so, which in self defense you need to stop discounting out of misguided loyalty and heed. To learn about some of these warning signs, search this blog for "Beware List."
4) American culture has a sick obsession with evil people; we see them as being more fun, exciting, sexy, glamorous and desirable for relationships. If you're tired of being done dirt to by folks like this (and they'll ALWAYS do it to you sooner or later, usually sooner), choose, CHOOSE, to spurn them and pursue nice people instead, however dull they may seem at 1st (remember, YOU will probably seem dull to them as well, but the truth is that neither you nor they are actually dull).
5) Being a good person requires action; if you don't do good deeds, and in particular if you don't defend those who're being attacked, both online and offline, you can NOT call yourself a good person... you're neutral at best.
6) When you see some sort of interpersonal battle going on, analyze what's happening correctly and then take the correct action, especially if you're in a position of authority: There's virtually never any confusion as to who's a victim and who's an attacker, and thus no confusion about who should be blamed and punished (the attacker(s)) and who should be protected and supported (the victim(s))... and it doesn't matter who you know or like better, or how strong the urge is to illogically decide that the victim did something horrible to cause the fight (they didn't) or that the attackers are in the right because there's more of them (they aren't), you should still make the proper judgment and act accordingly.
7) And the #1 concept I hope to pass along; don't just cruise through life mindlessly accepting everything. Constantly question if what you're being told is true, whether the teller is a friend, the media, scientists, whoever; if it isn't, try to discover the truth and share it with others, even if the process is difficult or painful.
"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true."
-Carl Sagan
Constantly seek out what the REASONS are for why things are a certain way and why we do the things we do, and ask yourself if the status quo is right or wrong... and if the latter, DO something, even if that just means blogging about it to raise awareness.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."
-Carl Sagan
And last, but far from least, I want to express my undying gratitude for every person and service that allowed this blog to be more successful than I could ever have imagined when I 1st decided I wanted my own place in cyberspace to say what was on my mind: Every site, from Blogger on down to the little guys who design sidebar doodads, that provided me with things of value for free over the years-thank you. Every person that took the time to read my posts, liked them enough to come back for more, and especially those that linked to me, submitted me to directories, cast "votes" for me, and said nice things about me on their blogs-THANK YOU!!
I'll always look upon what I accomplished here with great satisfaction; I've done some of the best, deepest, most original thinking of my life for these posts, and one of the biggest thrills of my life has been the knowledge that thousands of people around the world, even from exotic countries that I barely knew anything about before I got online, would read what I wrote and maybe absorb and carry on some of my ideas... I paid a high price for that thrill, but I consider it to have been worth it even though I now have to walk a different path.
It's hard to stop typing, to finish this post and with it my time as a blogger; that'd sound nuts to non-bloggers, but I know that YOU, my blogging brethren, understand. I'll miss you, I'll miss the blogosphere, and I'll always remember you with great affection.
I wonder how long I'll stare at the "Publish Post" button before I click it and end my blogging career.
I wonder how long it'll be before I close the "Publish Status" window.
I wonder how long it'll be before I stop automatically checking on my blog.
I wonder how long it'll be before I stop responding to anything interesting I learn with "that'll make a good blog entry."
I wonder how long it'll be before I go even one day without thinking about my blog.
I wonder what'll be the 1st thing I do after I summon the courage to publish this entry and start my new life.
Ok, here I go...
Goodbye everyone!!
xoxoxoxo
Omni
You know what reality is, right? Or do you? We define reality, in the strictest sense, as what we and the instruments we've designed can perceive; the problem with that is that neither our senses nor our instruments are designed to perceive reality as a whole... all we can get are bits and pieces.
We think our 5 senses are wonderful, but looked at objectively there's not much to them: We can perceive light and sound, but only within certain ranges. We can distinguish some sorts of chemicals via smell and taste, but far from all. Our sense of touch tells us about what we're in contact with (down to a certain level) and temperature. And that's IT; our bodies have no ability to detect any of the other aspects of reality, whether it's commonplace stuff like microwaves, esoteric stuff like the parallel universes predicted by string theory, or anything in the spiritual realm. Even within the zone of what we CAN detect, we're no great shakes; countless lower animals have far sharper senses than we do, and in the bigger picture our senses evolved only to help us deal with our immediate environment, so we can't see atoms or galaxies, much less the nuts and bolts of how the omniverse is built and operates. Worst of all, our senses, and the parts of the brain that deliver their data to us, are easily fooled; illness, drugs, tiredness, emotional distress, religious mania, etc can distort our perceptions, and illusions, both of the optical and magician varieties, show how easy it is to trick them.
And; our brains filter out the overwhelming majority of info our senses produce, so that our conscious minds only get a trickle of what little information we HAVE about reality... don't you wish you could see what the world around you looks like withOUT that filtration? AND; studies show that your memory isn't anywhere near as good as you think it is, which is bad because pretty much all our knowledge and understanding is rooted in MEMORIES of what we experienced or learned. Thus, we're basing our view of reality on woefully incomplete data brought into easily-fooled brains through crude senses, filtered heavily and then corrupted over time.
Still think you know what reality is?
But wait, what about the information brought to us by scientific instruments, or more basic ones like cameras-don't they show objective reality? Ignoring the issue of glitches and such, when one of our gadgets records something, it means that something real was there; it does NOT necessarily mean that what was recorded exactly matches what was there (ask anyone who's tried to photograph a dark object on a light background), or that the experts, who are only human, correctly interpreted what was recorded, or, and here's the biggie, that what has so far been recorded is everything that exists. Most scientists like to make it sound like we know everything now, except for minor details, but the truth is that, not only do we NOT know it all, we can't even guess at how much exists that we can't even SPECULATE about yet, much less measure and study via instruments... and all that stuff is part of reality.
If you went back a few hundred years and tried to talk to people about, say, subatomic particles, you'd be greeted with laughter, scorn, derision... and maybe get thrown into an asylum, or even burned at the stake as a heretic. Even the most educated folks wouldn't believe you, because they'd have no way to perceive or otherwise detect the particles, or any evidence at all of their existence, and wouldn't just take your word on it... just as people with no personal experience of "the unknown" usually don't believe that there are spirits, psychic abilities or karma no matter what those of us who've experienced them claim.
In the modern world, some of the most brilliant people we've got, theoretical physicists, can't agree on... just about anything that'd explain how the universe(s) is built at the finest level and/or how all the forces and the quantum world can be tied in together, despite the fact that massive amounts of the highest level math point to... well, they don't agree on that either. In other words, they don't agree on what reality is... so how can WE be sure when THEY aren't? And let's not forget, there's no reason whatsoever to think that the points they're debating now will be the final answers; if you had a dollar for every time the so-called experts believed they had the final answer for ANYTHING and were later proven wrong, you could retire. String theory, which is the best they can offer currently to explain reality, might be right, but why should we believe that strings are absolutely the most basic parts of matter/energy (which are actually the same thing, remember)... just because they're the most basic part that anyone's THOUGHT of thus far? And let's not forget that they've got nothing but guesswork to account for what 99.02% of the mass of the universe is made out of (see my post of 2-15-07); it could be ghosts, God, heaven, hell, demons, angels, karma, anything your religion, spiritual path or philosophy has come up with, and/or stuff that no human has even guessed at yet in the wildest speculative fiction... and whatever it is, it's part of reality.
STILL think you know what reality is? If so, you need to write a book, because you're the only human being with that knowledge; of course, you'd be asked to furnish PROOF to convince the scientific types... and if you don't have any, you're in the same boat as the rest of us, because we've all spent the greater part of our lives, at the very least, believing that the combination of our personal observations and experiences, whatever bits and pieces of scientific lore we can recall, and our particular flavor of spirituality combined to fully describe reality.
Ok... so what? On the one hand, this is all totally irrelevant, because you can live your life just fine without knowing what reality is. On the other hand, it's the biggest issue there is... and would you still be reading this post if you didn't have some shred of desire to KNOW? The best suggestion I can make is to pay a little attention to science to give you some guidelines, and ALOT of attention to those patterns in what goes on around you that can't be explained by normal cause and effect, and keep asking yourself "how?" and "why?"; sooner than you'd believe, you'll discover that "There are more things in heaven and Earth," and be a big step closer to knowing what reality is.
We think our 5 senses are wonderful, but looked at objectively there's not much to them: We can perceive light and sound, but only within certain ranges. We can distinguish some sorts of chemicals via smell and taste, but far from all. Our sense of touch tells us about what we're in contact with (down to a certain level) and temperature. And that's IT; our bodies have no ability to detect any of the other aspects of reality, whether it's commonplace stuff like microwaves, esoteric stuff like the parallel universes predicted by string theory, or anything in the spiritual realm. Even within the zone of what we CAN detect, we're no great shakes; countless lower animals have far sharper senses than we do, and in the bigger picture our senses evolved only to help us deal with our immediate environment, so we can't see atoms or galaxies, much less the nuts and bolts of how the omniverse is built and operates. Worst of all, our senses, and the parts of the brain that deliver their data to us, are easily fooled; illness, drugs, tiredness, emotional distress, religious mania, etc can distort our perceptions, and illusions, both of the optical and magician varieties, show how easy it is to trick them.
And; our brains filter out the overwhelming majority of info our senses produce, so that our conscious minds only get a trickle of what little information we HAVE about reality... don't you wish you could see what the world around you looks like withOUT that filtration? AND; studies show that your memory isn't anywhere near as good as you think it is, which is bad because pretty much all our knowledge and understanding is rooted in MEMORIES of what we experienced or learned. Thus, we're basing our view of reality on woefully incomplete data brought into easily-fooled brains through crude senses, filtered heavily and then corrupted over time.
Still think you know what reality is?
But wait, what about the information brought to us by scientific instruments, or more basic ones like cameras-don't they show objective reality? Ignoring the issue of glitches and such, when one of our gadgets records something, it means that something real was there; it does NOT necessarily mean that what was recorded exactly matches what was there (ask anyone who's tried to photograph a dark object on a light background), or that the experts, who are only human, correctly interpreted what was recorded, or, and here's the biggie, that what has so far been recorded is everything that exists. Most scientists like to make it sound like we know everything now, except for minor details, but the truth is that, not only do we NOT know it all, we can't even guess at how much exists that we can't even SPECULATE about yet, much less measure and study via instruments... and all that stuff is part of reality.
If you went back a few hundred years and tried to talk to people about, say, subatomic particles, you'd be greeted with laughter, scorn, derision... and maybe get thrown into an asylum, or even burned at the stake as a heretic. Even the most educated folks wouldn't believe you, because they'd have no way to perceive or otherwise detect the particles, or any evidence at all of their existence, and wouldn't just take your word on it... just as people with no personal experience of "the unknown" usually don't believe that there are spirits, psychic abilities or karma no matter what those of us who've experienced them claim.
In the modern world, some of the most brilliant people we've got, theoretical physicists, can't agree on... just about anything that'd explain how the universe(s) is built at the finest level and/or how all the forces and the quantum world can be tied in together, despite the fact that massive amounts of the highest level math point to... well, they don't agree on that either. In other words, they don't agree on what reality is... so how can WE be sure when THEY aren't? And let's not forget, there's no reason whatsoever to think that the points they're debating now will be the final answers; if you had a dollar for every time the so-called experts believed they had the final answer for ANYTHING and were later proven wrong, you could retire. String theory, which is the best they can offer currently to explain reality, might be right, but why should we believe that strings are absolutely the most basic parts of matter/energy (which are actually the same thing, remember)... just because they're the most basic part that anyone's THOUGHT of thus far? And let's not forget that they've got nothing but guesswork to account for what 99.02% of the mass of the universe is made out of (see my post of 2-15-07); it could be ghosts, God, heaven, hell, demons, angels, karma, anything your religion, spiritual path or philosophy has come up with, and/or stuff that no human has even guessed at yet in the wildest speculative fiction... and whatever it is, it's part of reality.
STILL think you know what reality is? If so, you need to write a book, because you're the only human being with that knowledge; of course, you'd be asked to furnish PROOF to convince the scientific types... and if you don't have any, you're in the same boat as the rest of us, because we've all spent the greater part of our lives, at the very least, believing that the combination of our personal observations and experiences, whatever bits and pieces of scientific lore we can recall, and our particular flavor of spirituality combined to fully describe reality.
Ok... so what? On the one hand, this is all totally irrelevant, because you can live your life just fine without knowing what reality is. On the other hand, it's the biggest issue there is... and would you still be reading this post if you didn't have some shred of desire to KNOW? The best suggestion I can make is to pay a little attention to science to give you some guidelines, and ALOT of attention to those patterns in what goes on around you that can't be explained by normal cause and effect, and keep asking yourself "how?" and "why?"; sooner than you'd believe, you'll discover that "There are more things in heaven and Earth," and be a big step closer to knowing what reality is.
In today's "Foxtrot" comic strip
http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2007/05/13/
the "average" kids get promised rewards for straight A's, but the smart kid doesn't get offered anything because he ALREADY gets straight A's; kudos to cartoonist Bill Amend for making the long overdue point that, while it's fine to reward kids for better-than-usual performance, kids that perform well all the time should get something for it every so often too... even, dare I say it, MORE often than the kids who perform less well.
Those of you that're constantly changing your layouts will love this one:
http://colorpicker.info/
The topmost picker (there are some other useful ones on the page as well) allows you to select any color and get multiple colors that go perfectly with it, whether you want similar colors or wildly contrasting ones; there are controls (nearly every part of the display is clickable) that allow you to alter aspects of the colors to get you to the desired shades(s)... you can even choose to see how your chosen colors would appear to people with different kinds of colorblindness. The only thing that keeps this from being perfect is that, inexplicably, although you can enter specific #'s for hue, saturation and brightness you can't enter the hex # of a color; Photoshop can translate hex to HSB, and if you don't have it you can go here
http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/boethin/pub/coca/
to get a translation, but be aware that you may have to alter the hue 15-20 points to get the correct hex at Colorpicker-the math for that is a little bit off.
Here's a site that, as long as they don't do something stupid, will make a fortune:
http://www.bagborroworsteal.com/
Bag Borrow or Steal™ allows you to "Rent the Latest Authentic Designer Handbags Purses Jewelry and Accessories"; they've adopted the Netflix concept (also used by Blockbuster and some game rental companies) of your being able to pick what you want, have it mailed to you, keep it as long as you like, and mail it back when you're done... with the necessary difference that you have to pay for every week/month you keep each item, since these things are worth far more than most DVD's. Unlike with the DVD/game setup, you can't treat these items like garbage (I'm convinced that at least one of my fellow Blockbuster-onliners drags DVD's behind his truck), because they get checked when you return them, and you get penalized if you damaged them; the upside of that is that renters are presumably guaranteed to receive them in usable condition. If, once you've got a stellar accessory, you can't bear to part with it, you can "steal" (aka buy) it... or cross your fingers and hope you snag it when it gets demoted to their online store. What makes this site brilliant is that for a tiny fraction of what it'd cost you to BUY these pricey, cutting-edge accoutrements you can "rent" them for a party or to just be trendy while they're "hot"; I'm betting that this is gonna be BIG... and if they ever offer stock, it'd be an excellent investment.
This next one is the coolest thing I've ever seen online, a Shockwave... well, it's not a game really, it's... just go take a look:
http://www.lecielestbleu.com/media/pateasonframe.htm
Be sure and have your sound on, because it's musical, and I don't just mean a few beeps and clicks; most of the construction pieces are effectively musical instruments, and each one that's part of your maze/machine adds to your orchestra. In addition, the controls on the factory actually do stuff, and for the musical pieces you have the ability to change the pitch of their "songs." My husband and I have had hours of fun with this; my goal is to have as many different actions going on at once as I can, and his is to try to construct and guide it so that he has one "playing piece" trapped in a infinite loop; however YOU play it, I guarantee you'll love it.
And finally, here are a couple of great free samples we've gotten recently:
My husband loves this cereal, which is as crunchy as you can get without eating gravel (aka Grape Nuts)
http://kashi.com/trialevent3/freesample/default.aspx
My mother actually laughed with pleasure when she got this and saw how big it was (it contained THREE hair care products, each a full 2 oz), especially compared to the little packets most hair-related samples come in
http://www.gethairapy.com/samples/
http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2007/05/13/
the "average" kids get promised rewards for straight A's, but the smart kid doesn't get offered anything because he ALREADY gets straight A's; kudos to cartoonist Bill Amend for making the long overdue point that, while it's fine to reward kids for better-than-usual performance, kids that perform well all the time should get something for it every so often too... even, dare I say it, MORE often than the kids who perform less well.
Those of you that're constantly changing your layouts will love this one:
http://colorpicker.info/
The topmost picker (there are some other useful ones on the page as well) allows you to select any color and get multiple colors that go perfectly with it, whether you want similar colors or wildly contrasting ones; there are controls (nearly every part of the display is clickable) that allow you to alter aspects of the colors to get you to the desired shades(s)... you can even choose to see how your chosen colors would appear to people with different kinds of colorblindness. The only thing that keeps this from being perfect is that, inexplicably, although you can enter specific #'s for hue, saturation and brightness you can't enter the hex # of a color; Photoshop can translate hex to HSB, and if you don't have it you can go here
http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/boethin/pub/coca/
to get a translation, but be aware that you may have to alter the hue 15-20 points to get the correct hex at Colorpicker-the math for that is a little bit off.
Here's a site that, as long as they don't do something stupid, will make a fortune:
http://www.bagborroworsteal.com/
Bag Borrow or Steal™ allows you to "Rent the Latest Authentic Designer Handbags Purses Jewelry and Accessories"; they've adopted the Netflix concept (also used by Blockbuster and some game rental companies) of your being able to pick what you want, have it mailed to you, keep it as long as you like, and mail it back when you're done... with the necessary difference that you have to pay for every week/month you keep each item, since these things are worth far more than most DVD's. Unlike with the DVD/game setup, you can't treat these items like garbage (I'm convinced that at least one of my fellow Blockbuster-onliners drags DVD's behind his truck), because they get checked when you return them, and you get penalized if you damaged them; the upside of that is that renters are presumably guaranteed to receive them in usable condition. If, once you've got a stellar accessory, you can't bear to part with it, you can "steal" (aka buy) it... or cross your fingers and hope you snag it when it gets demoted to their online store. What makes this site brilliant is that for a tiny fraction of what it'd cost you to BUY these pricey, cutting-edge accoutrements you can "rent" them for a party or to just be trendy while they're "hot"; I'm betting that this is gonna be BIG... and if they ever offer stock, it'd be an excellent investment.
This next one is the coolest thing I've ever seen online, a Shockwave... well, it's not a game really, it's... just go take a look:
http://www.lecielestbleu.com/media/pateasonframe.htm
Be sure and have your sound on, because it's musical, and I don't just mean a few beeps and clicks; most of the construction pieces are effectively musical instruments, and each one that's part of your maze/machine adds to your orchestra. In addition, the controls on the factory actually do stuff, and for the musical pieces you have the ability to change the pitch of their "songs." My husband and I have had hours of fun with this; my goal is to have as many different actions going on at once as I can, and his is to try to construct and guide it so that he has one "playing piece" trapped in a infinite loop; however YOU play it, I guarantee you'll love it.
And finally, here are a couple of great free samples we've gotten recently:
My husband loves this cereal, which is as crunchy as you can get without eating gravel (aka Grape Nuts)
http://kashi.com/trialevent3/freesample/default.aspx
My mother actually laughed with pleasure when she got this and saw how big it was (it contained THREE hair care products, each a full 2 oz), especially compared to the little packets most hair-related samples come in
http://www.gethairapy.com/samples/
First, a quick announcement: If you look at the "subscription area" in my sidebar you'll see that I've added a new option, "+ Bookmark"; if you click it, you'll get a window that'll allow you to add my blog to your bookmarking services, not just Del.icio.us and Digg but a bunch of others too, 33 total as of when I write this. The site that provides this service, Addthis.com, also offers a similar service for feed readers, but it doesn't have nearly as many options as offered by Addtoany.com (my yellow "subscription button"), so I didn't take advantage of it; it's worth keeping an eye on, though, as it'll make for a nicer-looking display to have both buttons be from the same site, and they may catch up eventually.
Husbands generally do things that wives don't like; that's a given. MY husband really pushes the envelope, though: A prime example is his insistence that if he lays down on the floor with his eyes shut he won't fall asleep, that instead he'll somehow become more rested but stay awake... despite the fact that it's NEVER happened that way. His perpetual snoring eliminates any gray area as to what he's doing, but he'll still try to deny that he was sleeping even after he's TOLD that he was snoring; he also tries to convince me that he's an ill-used victim, that I'm inventing the snores that are so loud that I can't hear the TV over them just to mess with him... as this is an all-ages blog, I'll refrain from including my reply to that line of discussion in this post. The thing that makes this behavior pattern so dismaying is that he does this same nonsense at other people's houses; it's bad enough to lie on someone else's floor with your eyes shut, which is rude and weird and socially unacceptable even for geeks, but to then fall asleep in the middle of their living room and start snoring so deafeningly that all conversation grinds to a halt and everyone stares open-mouthed in horror is just unforgivable... especially since he'll do it even when he's warned not to. (Perhaps he wants to make sure that we're humiliated in front of EVERYONE we know?)
He seems impervious to shame about the previous issue, but this next one embarrassed him enough that he's actually making an effort to change (with a little help from ME, of course): One of his favorite ways of being a jerk is to respond to everything I say with "Yes dear"; he's gotten so used to automatically saying it after every sentence spoken to him that yesterday he said it to his BOSS... and the latter is a gay man, and it's anyone's guess what he thought it meant (I hope he didn't think it was intended to be some sort of slur on his sexuality). Luckily, that conversation took place over the phone, and he didn't have to face the man he'd misspoken to... doubly lucky considering that he's a hardcore blusher. Even better, the reflexive blither to the last person in the world he should be blithering TO woke him up to how deeply ingrained his idiocy has become; when I pointed out that his next slip of the lip might be to one of my friends, or one of their husbands, he wanted to deny it but couldn't... and since he's socially awkward even by geek standards, he naturally doesn't want to risk making it harder to feel comfortable with one (or more) of our friends as a penalty for how he's been getting a kick out of being aggravating. An official end has been called to his being able to get away with "Yes dear"-ing me all the time; from now on, if he does it I'm going to whack him with a ruler... I'm not strong enough to hurt him, but the hope is that this somewhat extreme response will prevent him from getting the jollies that encourage him to perpetuate his disrespectful behavior and give him the chance to retrain himself in proper conversational responses before he makes another, possibly worse, faux pas.
As always, we managed to see a little humor in the situation:
Me: The word "dear" should never come out of your mouth again.
Him: But what if someone asks me where venison comes from?
Me: Say you don't know.
Him: Then they'll think I'm a moron.
Me: No change there, right?
Both: LOL!!
No look into my marriage would be complete without something gross, since marriage is in itself gross: While I was typing away on my laptop recently my back knotted up; I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and limped down the hall to get my husband to crack it for me. The door to his study was closed, which generally means that he's, um, taking matters in hand in there; I knocked, and he informed me that he'd just finished... if I hadn't been in pain my "wifely radar" would've gone off and I'd have been there within the 1st 30 seconds, but I didn't perform "whackus interruptus" on him this time. When he opened the door to see what I wanted, I told him that I needed my back cracked... but that he'd better go sterilize his hands 1st, all things considered. In response, he waved his unclean hands in front of my face; I recoiled, laughingly calling him a pig, and he chased me down the hall with his hands outstretched while I shrieked with disgust. When I was able to grab a magazine to shield myself from the biological attack, and aimed a few blows at his overactive groin with it, he went snickering on his way to the bathroom; I called after him that he was lucky that we don't have an autoclave, because I'd expect him to put ALL the affected bodily parts into it. ;-)
Husbands generally do things that wives don't like; that's a given. MY husband really pushes the envelope, though: A prime example is his insistence that if he lays down on the floor with his eyes shut he won't fall asleep, that instead he'll somehow become more rested but stay awake... despite the fact that it's NEVER happened that way. His perpetual snoring eliminates any gray area as to what he's doing, but he'll still try to deny that he was sleeping even after he's TOLD that he was snoring; he also tries to convince me that he's an ill-used victim, that I'm inventing the snores that are so loud that I can't hear the TV over them just to mess with him... as this is an all-ages blog, I'll refrain from including my reply to that line of discussion in this post. The thing that makes this behavior pattern so dismaying is that he does this same nonsense at other people's houses; it's bad enough to lie on someone else's floor with your eyes shut, which is rude and weird and socially unacceptable even for geeks, but to then fall asleep in the middle of their living room and start snoring so deafeningly that all conversation grinds to a halt and everyone stares open-mouthed in horror is just unforgivable... especially since he'll do it even when he's warned not to. (Perhaps he wants to make sure that we're humiliated in front of EVERYONE we know?)
He seems impervious to shame about the previous issue, but this next one embarrassed him enough that he's actually making an effort to change (with a little help from ME, of course): One of his favorite ways of being a jerk is to respond to everything I say with "Yes dear"; he's gotten so used to automatically saying it after every sentence spoken to him that yesterday he said it to his BOSS... and the latter is a gay man, and it's anyone's guess what he thought it meant (I hope he didn't think it was intended to be some sort of slur on his sexuality). Luckily, that conversation took place over the phone, and he didn't have to face the man he'd misspoken to... doubly lucky considering that he's a hardcore blusher. Even better, the reflexive blither to the last person in the world he should be blithering TO woke him up to how deeply ingrained his idiocy has become; when I pointed out that his next slip of the lip might be to one of my friends, or one of their husbands, he wanted to deny it but couldn't... and since he's socially awkward even by geek standards, he naturally doesn't want to risk making it harder to feel comfortable with one (or more) of our friends as a penalty for how he's been getting a kick out of being aggravating. An official end has been called to his being able to get away with "Yes dear"-ing me all the time; from now on, if he does it I'm going to whack him with a ruler... I'm not strong enough to hurt him, but the hope is that this somewhat extreme response will prevent him from getting the jollies that encourage him to perpetuate his disrespectful behavior and give him the chance to retrain himself in proper conversational responses before he makes another, possibly worse, faux pas.
As always, we managed to see a little humor in the situation:
Me: The word "dear" should never come out of your mouth again.
Him: But what if someone asks me where venison comes from?
Me: Say you don't know.
Him: Then they'll think I'm a moron.
Me: No change there, right?
Both: LOL!!
No look into my marriage would be complete without something gross, since marriage is in itself gross: While I was typing away on my laptop recently my back knotted up; I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and limped down the hall to get my husband to crack it for me. The door to his study was closed, which generally means that he's, um, taking matters in hand in there; I knocked, and he informed me that he'd just finished... if I hadn't been in pain my "wifely radar" would've gone off and I'd have been there within the 1st 30 seconds, but I didn't perform "whackus interruptus" on him this time. When he opened the door to see what I wanted, I told him that I needed my back cracked... but that he'd better go sterilize his hands 1st, all things considered. In response, he waved his unclean hands in front of my face; I recoiled, laughingly calling him a pig, and he chased me down the hall with his hands outstretched while I shrieked with disgust. When I was able to grab a magazine to shield myself from the biological attack, and aimed a few blows at his overactive groin with it, he went snickering on his way to the bathroom; I called after him that he was lucky that we don't have an autoclave, because I'd expect him to put ALL the affected bodily parts into it. ;-)
Ok, now ask yourself that question again and really think about the answer. Still sure you're a rugged individualist?
Do you have the same political beliefs as your parents? Or the exact opposite ones? Or ones that match the views you encountered in college? Or the same ones as your romantic partner or social group? If you answered "yes" to any of those, and you didn't do an in-depth objective analysis the conclusions of which coincidentally fell into one of those categories, you're not thinking for yourself.
Do you have the same religious beliefs as your parents? If you said "yes," unless the reason for it is that your deity appeared to you and confirmed that you'd picked the one true religion, you're not thinking for yourself.
If asked your opinion on an issue, does your reply parallel what you read or heard from the media, or, worse, on a blog? Unless you did independent fact-checking and, again, in-depth analysis, that just happened to dovetail with those NON-objective sources, you're not thinking for yourself.
If you're asked what music, movies, etc you like, and what comes out of your mouth is whatever's currently popular, either among your circle of acquaintance or in general... do I even have to say it? Popularity is probably the most powerful influence on the average person's preferences; if something is perceived as being popular, even among total strangers whose tastes are unknown, people rush blindly to that thing rather than looking at the ones that are closest to what they already know they like. The New York Times has a fascinating article on this topic called "Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?":
"people almost never make decisions independently - in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the 'best' of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing."
"when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called 'cumulative advantage,' or the 'rich get richer' effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors"
Ahhhhhh, I love to find out why folks do the silly things they do. In case you don't believe the explanation, fear not, they proved it with an experiment:
"more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ex=1334203200
Do I need to quote any more? You know what happened when people could see how many times each song had been downloaded, right? You can give a little slack to those who're influenced by their loved/liked ones raving about something, or even by strangers if they can see excited faces or hear excited voices, since we absorb each others' emotions so readily, but to just see NUMBERS and be so influenced by those tiny traces of strangers' preferences is pretty scary... and I'll bet that every person thus manipulated would swear to their dying breath that they always think for themselves.
Human beings are social animals, and as such it's natural for us to be affected by what those around us think and feel; that undoubtedly served us well in our primitive days, when we had to all want the same things and work towards the same goals in order to survive. There aren't many of us in the modern world who want to live our lives with others doing our thinking for us, so it's up to each of us to look at all our opinions and ask "WHY do I feel that way?", and to be willing to devote some serious skull-sweat to each topic that we can't find a solid reason for holding our current view on.... only then will we truly be thinking for ourselves.
Do you have the same political beliefs as your parents? Or the exact opposite ones? Or ones that match the views you encountered in college? Or the same ones as your romantic partner or social group? If you answered "yes" to any of those, and you didn't do an in-depth objective analysis the conclusions of which coincidentally fell into one of those categories, you're not thinking for yourself.
Do you have the same religious beliefs as your parents? If you said "yes," unless the reason for it is that your deity appeared to you and confirmed that you'd picked the one true religion, you're not thinking for yourself.
If asked your opinion on an issue, does your reply parallel what you read or heard from the media, or, worse, on a blog? Unless you did independent fact-checking and, again, in-depth analysis, that just happened to dovetail with those NON-objective sources, you're not thinking for yourself.
If you're asked what music, movies, etc you like, and what comes out of your mouth is whatever's currently popular, either among your circle of acquaintance or in general... do I even have to say it? Popularity is probably the most powerful influence on the average person's preferences; if something is perceived as being popular, even among total strangers whose tastes are unknown, people rush blindly to that thing rather than looking at the ones that are closest to what they already know they like. The New York Times has a fascinating article on this topic called "Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?":
"people almost never make decisions independently - in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the 'best' of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing."
"when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called 'cumulative advantage,' or the 'rich get richer' effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors"
Ahhhhhh, I love to find out why folks do the silly things they do. In case you don't believe the explanation, fear not, they proved it with an experiment:
"more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ex=1334203200
Do I need to quote any more? You know what happened when people could see how many times each song had been downloaded, right? You can give a little slack to those who're influenced by their loved/liked ones raving about something, or even by strangers if they can see excited faces or hear excited voices, since we absorb each others' emotions so readily, but to just see NUMBERS and be so influenced by those tiny traces of strangers' preferences is pretty scary... and I'll bet that every person thus manipulated would swear to their dying breath that they always think for themselves.
Human beings are social animals, and as such it's natural for us to be affected by what those around us think and feel; that undoubtedly served us well in our primitive days, when we had to all want the same things and work towards the same goals in order to survive. There aren't many of us in the modern world who want to live our lives with others doing our thinking for us, so it's up to each of us to look at all our opinions and ask "WHY do I feel that way?", and to be willing to devote some serious skull-sweat to each topic that we can't find a solid reason for holding our current view on.... only then will we truly be thinking for ourselves.
No, this isn't a man-bashing post; it's about people with higher-than-average levels of testosterone for their gender. With that said; we take it so for granted that the overwhelming majority of crimes, especially violent ones, are committed by MEN that we don't wonder WHY... all *I* ever thought about it was that testosterone often leads to aggression, and aggression can be the root of criminal behavior, but that's clearly not a sufficient explanation. If testosterone is part of what creates, not just aggression, but EVIL, that'd explain alot; here's the 1st hint that this could be so (asterisks mine):
"Most people don't appreciate an angry look, but a new University of Michigan psychology study found that ***some people find angry expressions so rewarding that they will readily learn ways to encourage them.***
'It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for,' said Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study and a U-M associate professor of psychology."
This is horrifying, of course, but shouldn't come as a surprise; we've all known people who clearly enjoy being able to upset others... but did you ever consider what the psychological mechanism could be that'd cause them to have that response? They're bad people, yes, but what's in their brains that MAKES them bad; abnormal physical structures, alteration to mental pathways due to trauma... or, reasonably enough, hormonal or other chemical differences? (Evil is so huge and so varied that it almost certainly arises from a combination of things, but we need to know what they ARE.) This article doesn't explicitly make the connection that people who have this anti-social response are evil, but there's no other word for those that get a kick out of making others angry; nice folks don't react that way.
"They took saliva samples from participants to measure testosterone, a hormone that has been associated with dominance motivation.
Participants then worked on a 'learning task' in which one complex sequence of keypresses was followed by an angry face on the screen, another sequence was followed by a neutral face, and a third sequence was followed by no face.
Participants who were high in testosterone relative to other members of their sex learned the sequence that was followed by an angry face better than the other sequences, while participants low in testosterone did not show this learning advantage for sequences that were reinforced by an angry face.
Notably, ***this effect emerged more strongly in response to faces that were presented subliminally,*** that is, too fast to allow conscious identification. Perhaps just as noteworthy, participants were not aware of the patterns in the sequences of keypresses as they learned them.
While high-testosterone participants showed better learning in response to anger faces, they were unaware of the fact that they learned anything in the first place and unaware of what kind of faces had reinforced their learning.
Wirth, the lead author of the study and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added: 'Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat. In that sense, anger faces seemed to be rewarding for high-testosterone people, but aversive for low-testosterone people.'"
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3209
I don't have to point out how powerful and deeply ingrained the enjoyment of angry looks has to be for it to work subliminally, right? There might've been some gray area if they'd been showing the angry faces of those the subjects dislike or are competitive with, but they were using the faces of strangers, so all this can be is the pure love of the anger of others... pure evil.
What IS evil? We don't know. We're finally emerging from the shameful days of imagining that so-called "mental illnesses" arose from some mystical thing separate from our physical beings (a mystical thing inexplicably affected by medication) and accepting that they, like every other affliction, are caused by PHYSICAL issues (mostly from imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brain); it's high time that we grasp that evil MUST arise from physical sources as well. Can we be genetically predisposed to be evil? How about genetically CERTAIN? We don't know. Are the brains of evil people fundamentally different, as the brains of schizophrenics typically are? Which of the wide variety of chemical and electrical processes our brains possess are abnormal in evil people? We don't know... and can you think of any possible excuse as to WHY we don't know, and why as best as I can determine no one's studying this? We should be dragging every serial killer and equivalent scumbag in our prisons out of their cells and into research centers to do every test and scan in existence on them, right down to their DNA, to see exactly how their brains differ from those of decent human beings; once we know what the sources of evil are, we've got a shot at what would be the greatest advance in all of human history... treatments, or even CURES, for evil.
"Most people don't appreciate an angry look, but a new University of Michigan psychology study found that ***some people find angry expressions so rewarding that they will readily learn ways to encourage them.***
'It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for,' said Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study and a U-M associate professor of psychology."
This is horrifying, of course, but shouldn't come as a surprise; we've all known people who clearly enjoy being able to upset others... but did you ever consider what the psychological mechanism could be that'd cause them to have that response? They're bad people, yes, but what's in their brains that MAKES them bad; abnormal physical structures, alteration to mental pathways due to trauma... or, reasonably enough, hormonal or other chemical differences? (Evil is so huge and so varied that it almost certainly arises from a combination of things, but we need to know what they ARE.) This article doesn't explicitly make the connection that people who have this anti-social response are evil, but there's no other word for those that get a kick out of making others angry; nice folks don't react that way.
"They took saliva samples from participants to measure testosterone, a hormone that has been associated with dominance motivation.
Participants then worked on a 'learning task' in which one complex sequence of keypresses was followed by an angry face on the screen, another sequence was followed by a neutral face, and a third sequence was followed by no face.
Participants who were high in testosterone relative to other members of their sex learned the sequence that was followed by an angry face better than the other sequences, while participants low in testosterone did not show this learning advantage for sequences that were reinforced by an angry face.
Notably, ***this effect emerged more strongly in response to faces that were presented subliminally,*** that is, too fast to allow conscious identification. Perhaps just as noteworthy, participants were not aware of the patterns in the sequences of keypresses as they learned them.
While high-testosterone participants showed better learning in response to anger faces, they were unaware of the fact that they learned anything in the first place and unaware of what kind of faces had reinforced their learning.
Wirth, the lead author of the study and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added: 'Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat. In that sense, anger faces seemed to be rewarding for high-testosterone people, but aversive for low-testosterone people.'"
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3209
I don't have to point out how powerful and deeply ingrained the enjoyment of angry looks has to be for it to work subliminally, right? There might've been some gray area if they'd been showing the angry faces of those the subjects dislike or are competitive with, but they were using the faces of strangers, so all this can be is the pure love of the anger of others... pure evil.
What IS evil? We don't know. We're finally emerging from the shameful days of imagining that so-called "mental illnesses" arose from some mystical thing separate from our physical beings (a mystical thing inexplicably affected by medication) and accepting that they, like every other affliction, are caused by PHYSICAL issues (mostly from imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brain); it's high time that we grasp that evil MUST arise from physical sources as well. Can we be genetically predisposed to be evil? How about genetically CERTAIN? We don't know. Are the brains of evil people fundamentally different, as the brains of schizophrenics typically are? Which of the wide variety of chemical and electrical processes our brains possess are abnormal in evil people? We don't know... and can you think of any possible excuse as to WHY we don't know, and why as best as I can determine no one's studying this? We should be dragging every serial killer and equivalent scumbag in our prisons out of their cells and into research centers to do every test and scan in existence on them, right down to their DNA, to see exactly how their brains differ from those of decent human beings; once we know what the sources of evil are, we've got a shot at what would be the greatest advance in all of human history... treatments, or even CURES, for evil.
Think about it: If you've been online for any length of time, you probably have THOUSANDS of bookmarks, many of them for sites that'd be time-consuming to locate via a search engine, especially if they aren't high-ranked... and that's assuming that you remember every site you've bookmarked, and that each one has either a distinctive name or unusual keywords to give you any sort of chance of pinpointing it amongst what're probably a million similar sites. This means that if you lost all your bookmarks, by which I mean ALL versions, forms, copies, backups and files of bookmarks from every computer you use, some of those sites would only be recoverable with a great deal of time and effort, possibly more than you'd ever be able to make, some you'd never find again, and probably MOST you'd have no specific memory of and thus have no way to look for; what would that mean to you? Take a minute and look at your bookmarks, and ask yourself how many of them you'd reasonably be able to recreate if they were lost; then, ask yourself how much you'd be willing to pay to protect them. I'd probably be willing to pay $1000 for mine, maybe more.
What about your cookies? You're probably signed up with a whole bunch of sites, some of which make you go through elaborate procedures to get back into your accounts if you can't remember your login info; what'd it be worth to you to prevent your entire cookie file (and all backups) from being wiped out? For me, this is worth a couple of hundred dollars; there's nothing that'd be lost forever if mine vanished, so it's not as valuable as bookmarks.
How about all the files you've downloaded over the years? Music, videos, images, cartoons, photos, animated gifs, graphics, etc; how much would you pay to keep from losing every copy you've got of all of those things? For me, this is probably a $1K deal again.
And your blog entries? Some people delete all their stuff periodically anyways, to get a "fresh start" or some such thing, but most of us place a little more value on what we write; what's your blog content worth to you? Frankly, I'd let all my posts about my personal life, and the ones about trivial stuff like movies or food, go without a whimper unless I could get them reasonably cheaply; I don't love the sound of my own voice, bloggily speaking, enough to value everything I write highly just because *I* wrote it. There are a fair # of my posts, though, that cover spiritual, psychological or sociological topics that represent a huge amount of time, effort and thought, and for them I'd pay... it looks ridiculous typed out, so let's just say I'd value them at quite a bit more than mere bookmarks.
For those of you with fancy templates, it'd also be fair to ask how much you'd pay to not have to start from scratch, with a blank or simple pre-fab template, with none of your files or scripts (again, this means that all backup copies of everything would be lost); I'd be willing to pay maybe $100 to not have to find and re-install all my blog doodads and such... I bet folks who did detailed artwork and/or code for their blogs would pay a great deal more.
How about all your emails from loved/liked ones, including those that have photos attached? How about your entire inbox address book(s)? How about your complete IM histories? How about the meaningful posts you've made on forums or other people's blogs? How much is all that worth?
What's the total combined value to you of all these internet-related pieces of information?
When's the last time you backed all that stuff up?
The fine folks at Shedd's/Country Crock have created a way for you to help feed the hungry for free, and all they ask is that you "Tell us about a time you shared with someone or someone shared with you. For every story you share with us, we'll donate a meal to a family in need through America's Second Harvest." They've provided 12K meals as of when I'm writing this, and are promising to provide up to a MILLION meals, so go here
http://spreadthesharing.com/StoriesofSharing/TellStory.aspx
and add your story... remember, all across America people are hungry every day (disgraceful, isn't it?), not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas when most of us donate food.
What about your cookies? You're probably signed up with a whole bunch of sites, some of which make you go through elaborate procedures to get back into your accounts if you can't remember your login info; what'd it be worth to you to prevent your entire cookie file (and all backups) from being wiped out? For me, this is worth a couple of hundred dollars; there's nothing that'd be lost forever if mine vanished, so it's not as valuable as bookmarks.
How about all the files you've downloaded over the years? Music, videos, images, cartoons, photos, animated gifs, graphics, etc; how much would you pay to keep from losing every copy you've got of all of those things? For me, this is probably a $1K deal again.
And your blog entries? Some people delete all their stuff periodically anyways, to get a "fresh start" or some such thing, but most of us place a little more value on what we write; what's your blog content worth to you? Frankly, I'd let all my posts about my personal life, and the ones about trivial stuff like movies or food, go without a whimper unless I could get them reasonably cheaply; I don't love the sound of my own voice, bloggily speaking, enough to value everything I write highly just because *I* wrote it. There are a fair # of my posts, though, that cover spiritual, psychological or sociological topics that represent a huge amount of time, effort and thought, and for them I'd pay... it looks ridiculous typed out, so let's just say I'd value them at quite a bit more than mere bookmarks.
For those of you with fancy templates, it'd also be fair to ask how much you'd pay to not have to start from scratch, with a blank or simple pre-fab template, with none of your files or scripts (again, this means that all backup copies of everything would be lost); I'd be willing to pay maybe $100 to not have to find and re-install all my blog doodads and such... I bet folks who did detailed artwork and/or code for their blogs would pay a great deal more.
How about all your emails from loved/liked ones, including those that have photos attached? How about your entire inbox address book(s)? How about your complete IM histories? How about the meaningful posts you've made on forums or other people's blogs? How much is all that worth?
What's the total combined value to you of all these internet-related pieces of information?
When's the last time you backed all that stuff up?
The fine folks at Shedd's/Country Crock have created a way for you to help feed the hungry for free, and all they ask is that you "Tell us about a time you shared with someone or someone shared with you. For every story you share with us, we'll donate a meal to a family in need through America's Second Harvest." They've provided 12K meals as of when I'm writing this, and are promising to provide up to a MILLION meals, so go here
http://spreadthesharing.com/StoriesofSharing/TellStory.aspx
and add your story... remember, all across America people are hungry every day (disgraceful, isn't it?), not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas when most of us donate food.
I can't just call them "recipes" because they're only partial ideas about how food can be put together to taste good; I don't cook, but as a supertaster (see my post of 3-5-04) trying to find ways to eat in a culinary landscape designed for tasters and non-tasters I've given alot of thought to food and how it can be combined in palatable, convenient ways, and this is what I've come up with:
1) The glory of Monterey jack, especially pepper jack (which is just a LITTLE hot, so don't be afraid to try it):
a) Mozzarella goes bad quickly, and isn't actually that good; instead, use jack cheese, which looks the same, has the same consistency, but lasts longer and tastes MUCH better, on Italian dishes (including pizza).
b) Instead of using only cheddar cheese with Mexican dishes (how did we Americans get used to doing that-it's not like this British cheese is authentic on Mexican food), omelettes, mashed potatoes, etc, mix it with jack; the latter is far lower in fat and calories, doesn't separate its oil out so easily, and adds a great deal of flavor, especially if you use pepper jack... it's one of the rare occasions where reducing fat and calories IMPROVES flavor.
2) Sourdough makes it better:
Sourdough isn't only for the rolls in fine restaurants and the occasional Jack in the Box burger; in addition to being just plain tastier than white bread, the tanginess of it adds another dimension of flavor to whatever you're eating it with, which makes food more satisfying... and even by itself, with real butter (the trans fats in margarine are deadly), the sweet/sour combo is so good that you can nearly make a meal out of it. I keep hoping for the return of sourdough rye, and sourdough dill rye, which starred in the best sandwiches of my childhood; if you can get these breads where you live, try some and see what I mean. I also hope that eventually some entrepreneurial type will make a sourdough crust for pizza; if they also substitute pepper jack for mozzarella, they'll have made the ultimate version of my favorite food.
3) WTF is nutmeg, anyway? If you've got that ancient bottle of nutmeg that only gets used as a garnish for eggnog, toss it out and use cinnamon instead; it has a nicer color, smells better, and is utterly delicious.
4) Sprouts aren't just a relic of the 70's; they're the fastest way to get some green stuff into a sandwich, pitas, tacos, etc, because they don't need to be cut or shredded. Even better, if you can find radish or daikon sprouts (a daikon is a root veggie that tastes like a mild radish), they've got that sharp radish-y taste to them, and are REALLY good with more strongly seasoned foods... I even put them on my Montague's All-Meat Marvel pizza.
5) And speaking of the 70's: Remember yogurt and granola?
Now that they've discovered that over 70% of our immune system's in our digestive tract (who'd have guessed it-I'd have thought 0%, wouldn't you?), it's time to start eating the only thing known to directly enhance the intestinal flora... active cultures, found in yogurt and yogurt-ish drinks (there's also cultured soy stuff, but I wouldn't feed that to a dog). Make sure the carton says CONTAINS active cultures, not "made with," as the latter doesn't mean that any of the cultures are still alive and the former does. Unless you want to ingest as much fat and calories as if you'd had ice cream, go for nonfat yogurt, and get plain to avoid having a cup of sugar in it; granola's sweet (Quaker Valley 100% Natural's still the best), and the tartness of plain yogurt goes well with it. To greatly increase the fiber and nutrition of the grain part of the mix, go to Whole Foods and get that other 70's favorite, wheat germ, and also some bran (in its natural form of little flakes, not a yucky cereal containing it); you can use lots of wheat germ, which tastes pretty good, but go easy on the bran, which is sort of like eating cardboard but which is unnoticeable in small amounts. Add some fresh fruit and you've got your nutritional bases covered. You don't have to save this for breakfast; we use it as a dinner once a week, and it'll be extra-good when it gets too hot to cook in a few months.
6) Glop:
This is the closest thing I have to an actual recipe; it's what my husband and I call the dessert I came up with for us to have on special occasions. Unlike most folks, I HATE pie crust, and don't get too excited by cakes, so I combined the things I DO like into something that's not only delicious but fun, and allows each eater to personalize it to their own preferences: canned pie filling (usually light cherry for me and tart cherries for my husband), mountains of whipped cream (Cool Whip Extra Creamy is the best), and walnuts or pecans. My husband adds chocolate syrup to his, and if we've got shredded coconut that's awesome too. On alternating occasions, we have the glop on angel food cake; I'm betting that pound cake would be good too, but no one makes it fresh around here. And that's all there is to it; no baking, no measuring, no preparation, just open up the containers and let people glop it onto their plates... hence the name.
Bon appetit!!
1) The glory of Monterey jack, especially pepper jack (which is just a LITTLE hot, so don't be afraid to try it):
a) Mozzarella goes bad quickly, and isn't actually that good; instead, use jack cheese, which looks the same, has the same consistency, but lasts longer and tastes MUCH better, on Italian dishes (including pizza).
b) Instead of using only cheddar cheese with Mexican dishes (how did we Americans get used to doing that-it's not like this British cheese is authentic on Mexican food), omelettes, mashed potatoes, etc, mix it with jack; the latter is far lower in fat and calories, doesn't separate its oil out so easily, and adds a great deal of flavor, especially if you use pepper jack... it's one of the rare occasions where reducing fat and calories IMPROVES flavor.
2) Sourdough makes it better:
Sourdough isn't only for the rolls in fine restaurants and the occasional Jack in the Box burger; in addition to being just plain tastier than white bread, the tanginess of it adds another dimension of flavor to whatever you're eating it with, which makes food more satisfying... and even by itself, with real butter (the trans fats in margarine are deadly), the sweet/sour combo is so good that you can nearly make a meal out of it. I keep hoping for the return of sourdough rye, and sourdough dill rye, which starred in the best sandwiches of my childhood; if you can get these breads where you live, try some and see what I mean. I also hope that eventually some entrepreneurial type will make a sourdough crust for pizza; if they also substitute pepper jack for mozzarella, they'll have made the ultimate version of my favorite food.
3) WTF is nutmeg, anyway? If you've got that ancient bottle of nutmeg that only gets used as a garnish for eggnog, toss it out and use cinnamon instead; it has a nicer color, smells better, and is utterly delicious.
4) Sprouts aren't just a relic of the 70's; they're the fastest way to get some green stuff into a sandwich, pitas, tacos, etc, because they don't need to be cut or shredded. Even better, if you can find radish or daikon sprouts (a daikon is a root veggie that tastes like a mild radish), they've got that sharp radish-y taste to them, and are REALLY good with more strongly seasoned foods... I even put them on my Montague's All-Meat Marvel pizza.
5) And speaking of the 70's: Remember yogurt and granola?
Now that they've discovered that over 70% of our immune system's in our digestive tract (who'd have guessed it-I'd have thought 0%, wouldn't you?), it's time to start eating the only thing known to directly enhance the intestinal flora... active cultures, found in yogurt and yogurt-ish drinks (there's also cultured soy stuff, but I wouldn't feed that to a dog). Make sure the carton says CONTAINS active cultures, not "made with," as the latter doesn't mean that any of the cultures are still alive and the former does. Unless you want to ingest as much fat and calories as if you'd had ice cream, go for nonfat yogurt, and get plain to avoid having a cup of sugar in it; granola's sweet (Quaker Valley 100% Natural's still the best), and the tartness of plain yogurt goes well with it. To greatly increase the fiber and nutrition of the grain part of the mix, go to Whole Foods and get that other 70's favorite, wheat germ, and also some bran (in its natural form of little flakes, not a yucky cereal containing it); you can use lots of wheat germ, which tastes pretty good, but go easy on the bran, which is sort of like eating cardboard but which is unnoticeable in small amounts. Add some fresh fruit and you've got your nutritional bases covered. You don't have to save this for breakfast; we use it as a dinner once a week, and it'll be extra-good when it gets too hot to cook in a few months.
6) Glop:
This is the closest thing I have to an actual recipe; it's what my husband and I call the dessert I came up with for us to have on special occasions. Unlike most folks, I HATE pie crust, and don't get too excited by cakes, so I combined the things I DO like into something that's not only delicious but fun, and allows each eater to personalize it to their own preferences: canned pie filling (usually light cherry for me and tart cherries for my husband), mountains of whipped cream (Cool Whip Extra Creamy is the best), and walnuts or pecans. My husband adds chocolate syrup to his, and if we've got shredded coconut that's awesome too. On alternating occasions, we have the glop on angel food cake; I'm betting that pound cake would be good too, but no one makes it fresh around here. And that's all there is to it; no baking, no measuring, no preparation, just open up the containers and let people glop it onto their plates... hence the name.
Bon appetit!!
We put a great deal of trust in our financial institutions; we have to, because with the exception of a few holdouts who still keep their $ in their mattresses we've all handed over our entire accumulated funds to them. The gov't is aware of this, which is why so many laws apply to such companies... except for PayPal (which acts as a bank but isn't regulated like one), but that's a whole 'nother essay. The companies themselves are aware of the importance of dotting every "i" and crossing every "t," and so go to great lengths to perform each function in a proper manner... usually. Their failures, therefore, are particularly dismaying. I've got 2 such issues currently in progress:
I belong to a military credit union, a holdover from when I was a military dependent; this is mostly a good thing, as it provides even more benefits than a regular credit union, 1 of which is that I've had a free credit card from them for about 20 years. A couple of months ago, they sent me a letter informing me that they were inexplicably eliminating gold cards, and thus that I had to choose between several equally worthless types of "reward cards" to replace my current one; given my lengthy history of things going wrong, I held onto that letter in case of trouble... which provided me with the # to call them with when, well past the date that my new card should've shown up, I still hadn't gotten it. The guy I talked to apologetically explained that there'd been some delays getting the new cards out, but that I should have mine within a few days; this was a little grim, especially since the old cards were going to be cancelled en masse whether we'd gotten the new ones or not, and some folks might not HAVE any other cards, but I resigned myself to waiting. And waiting. Finally, I called again a few days ago, and was informed that it'd been so long since even the delayed cards had been sent out that, after a check to see if someone had tried to activate or use the one they'd sent me (they hadn't), they had to CANCEL that account and issue me a card with a whole new #. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Wait, that's not all!! Yesterday, I got a card from them... with the OLD #. There were no dates on any of the enclosed letters, or on the envelope either (they have the special non-profit thing on there that doesn't get postmarked), so I have no way of knowing if the card was sent 6 weeks ago when it should have been and had been floating around the postal system in the interim, or had just been sent out instead of a card with a new #, or been sent some random time in between; this totally violates professional business practice, and might even be illegal for financial companies' paperwork. I called them today, to discover that my old # has in fact been cancelled, and that, brace yourself, they have no way to find out when the card with the old # was sent out...???!!! So, now I have TWO versions of the card with the old #, neither of which are good, and have to wait at least 2 weeks before getting the card with the new #... all because they decided to be the only credit card issuers on Earth to no longer offer a gold card. Oh, and the final blow; according to the supervisor that I asked to speak to, everyone EXCEPT the idiot who cancelled my old # was aware that the delays had continued, and if I'd spoken to anyone else I would've been told to wait a little longer, and thus would be DONE now instead of having to continue waiting for their next blunder.
Even scarier, for sheer ineptitude, is my ongoing problem with USAA, which usually provides top-notch service in all their departments (I have investments, insurance and a credit card with them), but this time have really embarrassed themselves: I'm signed up to use their website, and recently they started asking the members to create login names to use instead of their member #'s to access their accounts, which is a good idea security-wise, and not rocket science to implement... right? I created a login name without a hitch, but the next time I tried to access my account it accepted the login and then took me to the screen asking me to CREATE a login name. After several trips through the add-a-login system failed to convince it that I HAD a login name, I called the website support #... and they had no idea what was causing it to misbehave. They talked me through all sorts of activity on their site, but couldn't figure out what was going on; finally, I had to get off the phone, but they were supposed to call me within the next couple of days to let me know it was fixed and what the bug had been... and they never contacted me.
I finally just went to log in and see if it was fixed... and it refused my login. After a protracted struggle with security questions (which they later agreed should NOT have been asked under those circumstances), it sent my login info to the email account I had on file with them; I discovered that my login name had been CHANGED without my knowledge or consent, and without them even TELLING me... and neither my phone nor my email had been out of service in the intervening time. I called them again, and they couldn't determine what had happened or why; they assured me that the system couldn't have altered my login name, which any 6 year old knows is baloney, and theorized that one of the tech guys might have done it because the underscore in my chosen login name was causing a problem... which is pitiful if true and still no excuse to change my login and not TELL me. Once I realized that the girl I was talking to couldn't help, I requested a callback from a supervisor for the next day (today).
The supervisor seemed genuinely appalled at how far afield from USAA's normal treatment of members the tech department had gone, gave me his private # so that I can deal exclusively with someone who knows my case (classy), and asked me to log into my account and see if I could change my login name back to the original one; although it had let me log in with the new name and use the account without problems the night before, today when I logged in it sent me directly to the "create a login name" screen... and of course we had no idea why. He had me go through a bunch of trial and error stuff on the site to no avail, and then went and got a programmer; she had me do even MORE trial and error, also to no avail. Now, as so often happens, an entire tech department is going to have to be called into action to fix a glitch that appears to only exist for MY account; the supervisor's supposed to call me back within a few days with a full report... I can't wait to hear it. He also informed me that, not only was he going to track back to whoever said they'd call me and didn't, and whoever changed my login name without informing me, with thorough squaring away to result, but that there was going to be a training exercise about this particular problem so that the next time it happens (which it probably won't, unless I have a long-lost twin somewhere) they'll all know how to handle it properly.
Un-frigging-believable.
I belong to a military credit union, a holdover from when I was a military dependent; this is mostly a good thing, as it provides even more benefits than a regular credit union, 1 of which is that I've had a free credit card from them for about 20 years. A couple of months ago, they sent me a letter informing me that they were inexplicably eliminating gold cards, and thus that I had to choose between several equally worthless types of "reward cards" to replace my current one; given my lengthy history of things going wrong, I held onto that letter in case of trouble... which provided me with the # to call them with when, well past the date that my new card should've shown up, I still hadn't gotten it. The guy I talked to apologetically explained that there'd been some delays getting the new cards out, but that I should have mine within a few days; this was a little grim, especially since the old cards were going to be cancelled en masse whether we'd gotten the new ones or not, and some folks might not HAVE any other cards, but I resigned myself to waiting. And waiting. Finally, I called again a few days ago, and was informed that it'd been so long since even the delayed cards had been sent out that, after a check to see if someone had tried to activate or use the one they'd sent me (they hadn't), they had to CANCEL that account and issue me a card with a whole new #. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Wait, that's not all!! Yesterday, I got a card from them... with the OLD #. There were no dates on any of the enclosed letters, or on the envelope either (they have the special non-profit thing on there that doesn't get postmarked), so I have no way of knowing if the card was sent 6 weeks ago when it should have been and had been floating around the postal system in the interim, or had just been sent out instead of a card with a new #, or been sent some random time in between; this totally violates professional business practice, and might even be illegal for financial companies' paperwork. I called them today, to discover that my old # has in fact been cancelled, and that, brace yourself, they have no way to find out when the card with the old # was sent out...???!!! So, now I have TWO versions of the card with the old #, neither of which are good, and have to wait at least 2 weeks before getting the card with the new #... all because they decided to be the only credit card issuers on Earth to no longer offer a gold card. Oh, and the final blow; according to the supervisor that I asked to speak to, everyone EXCEPT the idiot who cancelled my old # was aware that the delays had continued, and if I'd spoken to anyone else I would've been told to wait a little longer, and thus would be DONE now instead of having to continue waiting for their next blunder.
Even scarier, for sheer ineptitude, is my ongoing problem with USAA, which usually provides top-notch service in all their departments (I have investments, insurance and a credit card with them), but this time have really embarrassed themselves: I'm signed up to use their website, and recently they started asking the members to create login names to use instead of their member #'s to access their accounts, which is a good idea security-wise, and not rocket science to implement... right? I created a login name without a hitch, but the next time I tried to access my account it accepted the login and then took me to the screen asking me to CREATE a login name. After several trips through the add-a-login system failed to convince it that I HAD a login name, I called the website support #... and they had no idea what was causing it to misbehave. They talked me through all sorts of activity on their site, but couldn't figure out what was going on; finally, I had to get off the phone, but they were supposed to call me within the next couple of days to let me know it was fixed and what the bug had been... and they never contacted me.
I finally just went to log in and see if it was fixed... and it refused my login. After a protracted struggle with security questions (which they later agreed should NOT have been asked under those circumstances), it sent my login info to the email account I had on file with them; I discovered that my login name had been CHANGED without my knowledge or consent, and without them even TELLING me... and neither my phone nor my email had been out of service in the intervening time. I called them again, and they couldn't determine what had happened or why; they assured me that the system couldn't have altered my login name, which any 6 year old knows is baloney, and theorized that one of the tech guys might have done it because the underscore in my chosen login name was causing a problem... which is pitiful if true and still no excuse to change my login and not TELL me. Once I realized that the girl I was talking to couldn't help, I requested a callback from a supervisor for the next day (today).
The supervisor seemed genuinely appalled at how far afield from USAA's normal treatment of members the tech department had gone, gave me his private # so that I can deal exclusively with someone who knows my case (classy), and asked me to log into my account and see if I could change my login name back to the original one; although it had let me log in with the new name and use the account without problems the night before, today when I logged in it sent me directly to the "create a login name" screen... and of course we had no idea why. He had me go through a bunch of trial and error stuff on the site to no avail, and then went and got a programmer; she had me do even MORE trial and error, also to no avail. Now, as so often happens, an entire tech department is going to have to be called into action to fix a glitch that appears to only exist for MY account; the supervisor's supposed to call me back within a few days with a full report... I can't wait to hear it. He also informed me that, not only was he going to track back to whoever said they'd call me and didn't, and whoever changed my login name without informing me, with thorough squaring away to result, but that there was going to be a training exercise about this particular problem so that the next time it happens (which it probably won't, unless I have a long-lost twin somewhere) they'll all know how to handle it properly.
Un-frigging-believable.
If you're still struggling to get your taxes done, this one's for you; if you didn't earn over $52K last year, you can get "free federal online tax preparation" and access to free electronic tax return filing via the IRS website:
http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp
http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html
Several years ago, I went through a period of signing up for tons of freebies and samples online; even then there were forums dedicated to getting free stuff, so all I had to do was click links and fill in my info on the requisite websites. Most of what I got was those little packets of lotion and shampoo, but I got some bigger stuff too: I especially remember a large bag of hard candy from Sweet'N Low (for my husband, who loves saccharine), and, the all-time champion sample, several styrofoam bowls filled with cereal that I'd "designed" with my choice of ingredients from a lengthy menu of options (also for my husband)... and the latter was so good, although very expensive, that we bought it a couple of times when it was on sale and mourned when the website closed down (the idea was brilliant, they just either couldn't figure out how to do it cheaply enough or were too greedy).
I got some unusual freebies from sites eager to bribe people into signing up for their newsletters (I was still willing to acquire more email in those days, when spam wasn't an issue): gardening gloves, a tire pressure gauge, and then there was the ugly pen... I was supposed to get an ugly pen for subscribing to a daily humor thing, and never got it, but the emails were hilarious so I read them anyways; I eventually submitted a funny rant to them, and when they accepted it they sent me a free ugly t-shirt, which was much better than a pen, so I was satisfied (and besides, I'd gotten plenty of pens from other sites).
I ran across a couple of blogs dedicated to samples/freebies a few weeks ago, and dove in and signed up for a bunch of stuff; the bulk of it has been for my mother, who's thrilled to go to her mailbox each day and get something new to try, which provides a valuable distraction from her constant worries about her health (there's no sign of the cancer having returned, but she still has to take blood thinners and deal with issues from the surgery) as well as saving her some $, which will always make her happy. I've received various pet food samples (all of which are being checked to be sure they haven't been recalled, fear not), which I'm testing on the raccoons and skunks to see what they prefer; I got a generous 6 oz of Purina Naturals cat food that the little male skunk and one of the coons have shown a real preference for, but there are still plenty of contenders... and, as crazy as we are about our critter visitors, we'll probably end up buying a bunch of different pet foods so that everyone has their favorite.
Samples seem to be getting bigger, because I've gotten some pretty impressive ones: My husband consumes soy products, so I signed up here
http://www.soyjoy.com/spreadthejoy.aspx
and he got THREE full-sized Soyjoy bars, and liked all 3 flavors enough that he plans to buy more; they're not gross like most nutrition bars, and they're not too sweet like cereal bars, so they make a good on-the-go snack.
The folks at 3M have the honor of being the ones who sent the biggest samples ever; 1st, they sent me (and my mother, from whom I learned to be a habitual note-writer) a package of different kinds of Post-It pads, a dispenser, and a variety of sticky tabs to mark places on paperwork and such... and that seemed pretty impressive, until the doorbell rang Saturday morning because they'd sent me a package too big to fit into my mailbox!! The box is over 26" tall, and I assumed at 1st that it was something my husband had ordered, but MY name was on it, so I opened it up; it contained another set of sticky tabs, a pad in a hard leatherette folder, and a GIANT Post-it pad meant to be stuck on the wall to use for business presentations... the paper for this monster is 20"x23"!! If you'd like a mountain of Post-it products too, sign up here:
http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/perks/perks.html?rp=postit
The best recent sample came from Yogi Tea, which gives you 5 different choices of trios of tea bags to try free:
http://www.yogitea.com/FreeSamples/FreeSamples.asp
My mother, who's notoriously hard to please, was so enthusiastic when she tried the Green Tea Pomegranate flavor, which she was able to drink without honey, that we were very hopeful about our own samples, which came 4 days later (the post office sucks); my husband tried the Classic India Spice flavor, and pronounced it so wonderful as to be "revelatory." I don't drink hot beverages, but I'll tell you that this was the best-smelling stuff ever; I kept sniffing his mug to get hits of the cinnamon, cardamon and ginger, and it's made his entire study smell lovely, in marked contrast to its usual miasma of "eau de colon" (not a typo). He started joking that he'd rub the tea bags on his body to increase his chances of "getting lucky," and then that, given tea's alleged antibacterial powers, he could wash under his arms with them to kill the stink:
Him: The only problem would be that I'd forget and reuse those tea bags.
Me: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!
Him: LOL!!!!!!!
And that, dear friends, is how we had fun with freebies.
http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp
http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html
Several years ago, I went through a period of signing up for tons of freebies and samples online; even then there were forums dedicated to getting free stuff, so all I had to do was click links and fill in my info on the requisite websites. Most of what I got was those little packets of lotion and shampoo, but I got some bigger stuff too: I especially remember a large bag of hard candy from Sweet'N Low (for my husband, who loves saccharine), and, the all-time champion sample, several styrofoam bowls filled with cereal that I'd "designed" with my choice of ingredients from a lengthy menu of options (also for my husband)... and the latter was so good, although very expensive, that we bought it a couple of times when it was on sale and mourned when the website closed down (the idea was brilliant, they just either couldn't figure out how to do it cheaply enough or were too greedy).
I got some unusual freebies from sites eager to bribe people into signing up for their newsletters (I was still willing to acquire more email in those days, when spam wasn't an issue): gardening gloves, a tire pressure gauge, and then there was the ugly pen... I was supposed to get an ugly pen for subscribing to a daily humor thing, and never got it, but the emails were hilarious so I read them anyways; I eventually submitted a funny rant to them, and when they accepted it they sent me a free ugly t-shirt, which was much better than a pen, so I was satisfied (and besides, I'd gotten plenty of pens from other sites).
I ran across a couple of blogs dedicated to samples/freebies a few weeks ago, and dove in and signed up for a bunch of stuff; the bulk of it has been for my mother, who's thrilled to go to her mailbox each day and get something new to try, which provides a valuable distraction from her constant worries about her health (there's no sign of the cancer having returned, but she still has to take blood thinners and deal with issues from the surgery) as well as saving her some $, which will always make her happy. I've received various pet food samples (all of which are being checked to be sure they haven't been recalled, fear not), which I'm testing on the raccoons and skunks to see what they prefer; I got a generous 6 oz of Purina Naturals cat food that the little male skunk and one of the coons have shown a real preference for, but there are still plenty of contenders... and, as crazy as we are about our critter visitors, we'll probably end up buying a bunch of different pet foods so that everyone has their favorite.
Samples seem to be getting bigger, because I've gotten some pretty impressive ones: My husband consumes soy products, so I signed up here
http://www.soyjoy.com/spreadthejoy.aspx
and he got THREE full-sized Soyjoy bars, and liked all 3 flavors enough that he plans to buy more; they're not gross like most nutrition bars, and they're not too sweet like cereal bars, so they make a good on-the-go snack.
The folks at 3M have the honor of being the ones who sent the biggest samples ever; 1st, they sent me (and my mother, from whom I learned to be a habitual note-writer) a package of different kinds of Post-It pads, a dispenser, and a variety of sticky tabs to mark places on paperwork and such... and that seemed pretty impressive, until the doorbell rang Saturday morning because they'd sent me a package too big to fit into my mailbox!! The box is over 26" tall, and I assumed at 1st that it was something my husband had ordered, but MY name was on it, so I opened it up; it contained another set of sticky tabs, a pad in a hard leatherette folder, and a GIANT Post-it pad meant to be stuck on the wall to use for business presentations... the paper for this monster is 20"x23"!! If you'd like a mountain of Post-it products too, sign up here:
http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/perks/perks.html?rp=postit
The best recent sample came from Yogi Tea, which gives you 5 different choices of trios of tea bags to try free:
http://www.yogitea.com/FreeSamples/FreeSamples.asp
My mother, who's notoriously hard to please, was so enthusiastic when she tried the Green Tea Pomegranate flavor, which she was able to drink without honey, that we were very hopeful about our own samples, which came 4 days later (the post office sucks); my husband tried the Classic India Spice flavor, and pronounced it so wonderful as to be "revelatory." I don't drink hot beverages, but I'll tell you that this was the best-smelling stuff ever; I kept sniffing his mug to get hits of the cinnamon, cardamon and ginger, and it's made his entire study smell lovely, in marked contrast to its usual miasma of "eau de colon" (not a typo). He started joking that he'd rub the tea bags on his body to increase his chances of "getting lucky," and then that, given tea's alleged antibacterial powers, he could wash under his arms with them to kill the stink:
Him: The only problem would be that I'd forget and reuse those tea bags.
Me: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!
Him: LOL!!!!!!!
And that, dear friends, is how we had fun with freebies.
The Beware List represents my lifetime experience of how people behave if they're evil, sociopathic, manipulators or major depressives, especially when they're about to screw you; folks like these follow very consistent patterns, so if you pay attention, and don't discount the warnings out of misguided loyalty, you can stop them cold. This post contains the latest installment of the list; to read entries 1-70, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06, 8-31-06, 10-6-06, 11-19-06, 1-10-07 and 2-27-07. Beware of anyone who:
71) Has no problems with someone being attacked, but cries “foul” if the victim fights back, especially if they outfight the attacker.
This is a sure sign of someone who doesn’t hesitate to attack and feels entitled to get away with it; only chronic evildoers think that evil behavior is ok, and only the scariest sociopathic ones object to victims fighting in their own defense.
72) Expresses intolerance and an ugly attitude towards any group of people for whom they don't have proof of MAJOR wrongdoing, and/or fails to see such an attitude in others as a reason to not associate with them.
Anyone who'd have such dislike of a group of people based on nothing, whether it takes the form of bigotry or just contempt of those who post on a "rival forum," will just as easily dislike, and abuse, YOU based on nothing, and in general is either evil, a psycho, or too stupid to be involved with.
73) Thinks that, no matter how monstrously someone behaves, all they have to do is say “sorry” and they should be totally forgiven, and thus that the victim can NEVER reproach them, demand reparations, or even express their anger/hurt.
Only the most chillingly evil and sociopathic types believe that their victims should be denied the basic human right to express pain and confront the ones who caused it. With the hypocrisy that's typical of wrongdoers, they'll react to any wrongdoing (real or imagined) done TO them with vicious counterattacks or crazed melodrama, AND will totally ignore any apologies given to them, however heartfelt.
74) Believes that there’s a statute of limitations to their bad behavior, such that, if a certain # of days (weeks, etc) have passed, a misdeed is magically erased even if nothing has been done yet to “settle” it.
This is a sure sign of a frequent wrongdoer; this person can screw you over repeatedly and if the last time wasn't in the recent past they expect you to treat them as if they've never done you wrong... and will see YOU as bad if you have a more sane view of things.
75) Thinks that being their friend means that you always have to do whatever makes them happy, and so considers anything you do that makes them UNhappy a “betrayal” and just cause for outrage (although they of course exert no effort to keep YOU happy).
This person has no clue that adult relationships are NOT supposed to be the same as when their mommy circled everything around them while expecting nothing in return, and may also be a manipulator, albeit a clumsy one; you'll NEVER be able to please them long-term unless you're an absolute doormat... and why would you want to?
76) Tells you they believe that friendship means you give unconditional love.
GOOD people assume that treating their friends (lovers, etc ) well, and behaving decently in general, will always be a condition of being loved; only evil people need to be loved unconditionally... even though they don't GIVE unconditional love in return. In addition, it's usually a red flag when someone feels the need to announce how friendship should be; it means that they're NOT following the standard rules like you are... and will make you pay for it eventually.
77) Uses “depression” or “going through a bad time” as an excuse to be overly-demanding, show no caring about you or your life, or otherwise treat you badly.
It's perfectly acceptable for someone who just suffered a major loss to focus on themselves and their pain such that they don't bother to consider other people's feelings, but when someone behaves protractedly in this manner, and isn't losing a loved one every month to justify it, they're a master manipulator trying to persuade you to let them walk all over you.
78) Has no consistent definition of what's “good” or “bad” in a relationship, but expects you to know how they’re seeing things at any given moment and act accordingly.
This person is either a clueless depressive who confuses friends with their mommy or a manipulator determined to keep you guessing and trying desperately to please them.
79) Can’t handle being disagreed with, even if you have more info on the topic than they do, and so starts a fight and/or goes stalking off if you hold firm in your assertions or opinions.
Manipulators love this tactic, but it can also indicate that someone is a depressive, overly aggressive, or seriously immature; not a good bet in any case.
80) Does the “fire and ice” routine EVEN ONCE (this is when they give super-intense attention and then back way off for no reason).
This can indicate a psycho or extreme flake, but 99% of the time it's used by manipulators to take control of the relationship by making you chase after them.
I hope these warning signs will help you prevent people from sticking it to you; remember, they can only get you if you LET them.
71) Has no problems with someone being attacked, but cries “foul” if the victim fights back, especially if they outfight the attacker.
This is a sure sign of someone who doesn’t hesitate to attack and feels entitled to get away with it; only chronic evildoers think that evil behavior is ok, and only the scariest sociopathic ones object to victims fighting in their own defense.
72) Expresses intolerance and an ugly attitude towards any group of people for whom they don't have proof of MAJOR wrongdoing, and/or fails to see such an attitude in others as a reason to not associate with them.
Anyone who'd have such dislike of a group of people based on nothing, whether it takes the form of bigotry or just contempt of those who post on a "rival forum," will just as easily dislike, and abuse, YOU based on nothing, and in general is either evil, a psycho, or too stupid to be involved with.
73) Thinks that, no matter how monstrously someone behaves, all they have to do is say “sorry” and they should be totally forgiven, and thus that the victim can NEVER reproach them, demand reparations, or even express their anger/hurt.
Only the most chillingly evil and sociopathic types believe that their victims should be denied the basic human right to express pain and confront the ones who caused it. With the hypocrisy that's typical of wrongdoers, they'll react to any wrongdoing (real or imagined) done TO them with vicious counterattacks or crazed melodrama, AND will totally ignore any apologies given to them, however heartfelt.
74) Believes that there’s a statute of limitations to their bad behavior, such that, if a certain # of days (weeks, etc) have passed, a misdeed is magically erased even if nothing has been done yet to “settle” it.
This is a sure sign of a frequent wrongdoer; this person can screw you over repeatedly and if the last time wasn't in the recent past they expect you to treat them as if they've never done you wrong... and will see YOU as bad if you have a more sane view of things.
75) Thinks that being their friend means that you always have to do whatever makes them happy, and so considers anything you do that makes them UNhappy a “betrayal” and just cause for outrage (although they of course exert no effort to keep YOU happy).
This person has no clue that adult relationships are NOT supposed to be the same as when their mommy circled everything around them while expecting nothing in return, and may also be a manipulator, albeit a clumsy one; you'll NEVER be able to please them long-term unless you're an absolute doormat... and why would you want to?
76) Tells you they believe that friendship means you give unconditional love.
GOOD people assume that treating their friends (lovers, etc ) well, and behaving decently in general, will always be a condition of being loved; only evil people need to be loved unconditionally... even though they don't GIVE unconditional love in return. In addition, it's usually a red flag when someone feels the need to announce how friendship should be; it means that they're NOT following the standard rules like you are... and will make you pay for it eventually.
77) Uses “depression” or “going through a bad time” as an excuse to be overly-demanding, show no caring about you or your life, or otherwise treat you badly.
It's perfectly acceptable for someone who just suffered a major loss to focus on themselves and their pain such that they don't bother to consider other people's feelings, but when someone behaves protractedly in this manner, and isn't losing a loved one every month to justify it, they're a master manipulator trying to persuade you to let them walk all over you.
78) Has no consistent definition of what's “good” or “bad” in a relationship, but expects you to know how they’re seeing things at any given moment and act accordingly.
This person is either a clueless depressive who confuses friends with their mommy or a manipulator determined to keep you guessing and trying desperately to please them.
79) Can’t handle being disagreed with, even if you have more info on the topic than they do, and so starts a fight and/or goes stalking off if you hold firm in your assertions or opinions.
Manipulators love this tactic, but it can also indicate that someone is a depressive, overly aggressive, or seriously immature; not a good bet in any case.
80) Does the “fire and ice” routine EVEN ONCE (this is when they give super-intense attention and then back way off for no reason).
This can indicate a psycho or extreme flake, but 99% of the time it's used by manipulators to take control of the relationship by making you chase after them.
I hope these warning signs will help you prevent people from sticking it to you; remember, they can only get you if you LET them.
I had a really good coupon for the new Pringles Select chips, which are gourmet-style snacks in a bag rather than the can-o-chips Pringles is associated with; 3 of the 4 available flavors (Parmesan Garlic, Sun Dried Tomato and Cinnamon Sweet Potato) didn't have a chance of tasting good to me, but, as a lover of Chinese food, including moderately hot stuff (and how hot could a mainstream chip be, after all?), I figured that the Szechuan Barbecue flavor had a good chance of being enjoyable. I got them, tried them, and...
YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They're so good that I, with my will of steel where food consumption is concerned, could barely stop eating them. So good that my husband, after just ONE chip, warned me that I needed to hide the bag, half-joked that he'd be buying more bags that I'd never see, and asked if we could have a MEAL built around them (which we will-we'll have hamburger patties to provide protein and then polish off a bag of these chips with them).
They have a wonderfully complex flavor, with a combination of different "categories" of flavors as is common in Asian foods; salty, savory, tangy (from the soy sauce) and spicy... and the potato/rice combo from which they're made makes them very crunchy and satisfying. These are surprisingly sophisticated, "adult" chips... which most likely means that they won't be around long, because kids probably won't like them, and Americans are used to blander snacks and view anything really different with suspicion. Go grab a bag while you can, and, if you love 'em like we do, stock up before they're replaced with the 10 millionth version of cheese or ranch flavor.
If you haven't seen it yet, the cutest video ever posted on YouTube can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno&e
It's called "Otters holding hands," and features 2 of the adorable critters floating around in their exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium with their paws clasped; when they drift apart at one point and then come back together, the bigger one REACHES OUT to recapture the paw of the smaller one... I was literally shrieking with delight the 1st time I saw it. While it was easy to anthropomorphize this as romantic, especially with one otter being so much bigger than the other that they were presumably a male and a female, I suspected that there was a natural behavior involved, and so contacted the aquarium to get more info. The email I got back said:
"This is a common behavior for otters in the wild. It is called rafting. They do this in the wild to stay together in turbulent water. The sea otters in the YouTube film are Nyac (the lighter one) and Milo. They are not mates that I know of."
I also was told to look for more info here:
http://www.vanaqua.org/education/aquafacts/seaotters.html
where it says:
"Sea otters segregate by sex: groups of females and their pups stay in the centre of the range. Territorial breeding males stay close to the female groups while sub-adult male groups are seen on the outskirts of the range."
and:
"'Milo' is one of the Northern sea otters at the Aquarium. He was born in August 1999 and weighs 36.8 kg. His daily diet is 8 kg of fish fillets, crab, squid and clams.
'Nyac' was born in 1989. She weighs 28.2 kg, and eats 6 kg of fish fillets, crab, squid and clams."
So; despite the fact that otters of different genders don't normally hang around together, and that the water in that tank was anything but "turbulent," a male and a female, both old enough to be sexually mature, were "rafting" around protractedly... granted, being in an abnormal environment could cause abnormal behavior, and they apparently haven't mated YET, but it sure LOOKS promising for baby otters to be showing up sometime soon, doesn't it? In any case, they've done more for otter conservation than anything we humans could come up with; no one who sees them could fail to love them and want them kept safe, and according to this clip from the BBC (yes, this has become an international story)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6530000/newsid_6532000/6532073.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm
well over 1.5 MILLION people watched the video within a 2 week period, so the ottermania will clearly have a real impact. The BBC clip also reveals that Nyac was one of a sadly few otters to survive the Exxon Valdez oil spill; she's a tough little girl as well as fluffy and pretty... let's keep our fingers crossed that Milo's noticed her finer qualities as well.
YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They're so good that I, with my will of steel where food consumption is concerned, could barely stop eating them. So good that my husband, after just ONE chip, warned me that I needed to hide the bag, half-joked that he'd be buying more bags that I'd never see, and asked if we could have a MEAL built around them (which we will-we'll have hamburger patties to provide protein and then polish off a bag of these chips with them).
They have a wonderfully complex flavor, with a combination of different "categories" of flavors as is common in Asian foods; salty, savory, tangy (from the soy sauce) and spicy... and the potato/rice combo from which they're made makes them very crunchy and satisfying. These are surprisingly sophisticated, "adult" chips... which most likely means that they won't be around long, because kids probably won't like them, and Americans are used to blander snacks and view anything really different with suspicion. Go grab a bag while you can, and, if you love 'em like we do, stock up before they're replaced with the 10 millionth version of cheese or ranch flavor.
If you haven't seen it yet, the cutest video ever posted on YouTube can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno&e
It's called "Otters holding hands," and features 2 of the adorable critters floating around in their exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium with their paws clasped; when they drift apart at one point and then come back together, the bigger one REACHES OUT to recapture the paw of the smaller one... I was literally shrieking with delight the 1st time I saw it. While it was easy to anthropomorphize this as romantic, especially with one otter being so much bigger than the other that they were presumably a male and a female, I suspected that there was a natural behavior involved, and so contacted the aquarium to get more info. The email I got back said:
"This is a common behavior for otters in the wild. It is called rafting. They do this in the wild to stay together in turbulent water. The sea otters in the YouTube film are Nyac (the lighter one) and Milo. They are not mates that I know of."
I also was told to look for more info here:
http://www.vanaqua.org/education/aquafacts/seaotters.html
where it says:
"Sea otters segregate by sex: groups of females and their pups stay in the centre of the range. Territorial breeding males stay close to the female groups while sub-adult male groups are seen on the outskirts of the range."
and:
"'Milo' is one of the Northern sea otters at the Aquarium. He was born in August 1999 and weighs 36.8 kg. His daily diet is 8 kg of fish fillets, crab, squid and clams.
'Nyac' was born in 1989. She weighs 28.2 kg, and eats 6 kg of fish fillets, crab, squid and clams."
So; despite the fact that otters of different genders don't normally hang around together, and that the water in that tank was anything but "turbulent," a male and a female, both old enough to be sexually mature, were "rafting" around protractedly... granted, being in an abnormal environment could cause abnormal behavior, and they apparently haven't mated YET, but it sure LOOKS promising for baby otters to be showing up sometime soon, doesn't it? In any case, they've done more for otter conservation than anything we humans could come up with; no one who sees them could fail to love them and want them kept safe, and according to this clip from the BBC (yes, this has become an international story)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6530000/newsid_6532000/6532073.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm
well over 1.5 MILLION people watched the video within a 2 week period, so the ottermania will clearly have a real impact. The BBC clip also reveals that Nyac was one of a sadly few otters to survive the Exxon Valdez oil spill; she's a tough little girl as well as fluffy and pretty... let's keep our fingers crossed that Milo's noticed her finer qualities as well.
Sounds like a wonderful bit of advice, with the subtext that it'll allow you to make the most out of life... but will it?
If you knew that tomorrow would be your final day: Would you go to work and/or school? Would you exercise or take any other health-enhancing measures such as stress reduction or consuming nutritional supplements? Would you make, or go to, any doctor or dentist appointments? What kinds of food would you eat, and in what quantities? Would you bother showering, brushing or flossing? Would you do any housecleaning or yard maintenance? If you had sex, would you use contraception or worry about safer sex? If there was someone hot you've wanted to sleep with who was willing, but you'd held back because at least one of you wasn't single, would you go for it? Would you waste time picking up your dry cleaning or running other errands? Would you shave, trim your toenails, or do anything else that'd essentially be primping your corpse? Would you be polite to people you dislike? If you'd previously quit drinking, smoking or doing drugs, would you binge on them? Would you read/listen to/watch the news? Would you engage in any retirement planning? Would you get those squeaky brakes on your car checked? Would you sleep for even one minute? Would you obey the speed limit and other traffic laws? Would you worry about the price of anything you wanted to buy, especially if you had no dependents?
Would you blog?
The reality is that we have to do lots of things that we don't like, and restrict or eliminate things we DO like, in order to be healthy, to not live in a pigsty, to earn a living, to get along with those we can't avoid, and so on; if you were honestly going to live each day as you would your last, you'd have to live like a lunatic or little kid with no idea as to consequences... it can't be done.
What if the quote was just meant to refer to your free time, rather than allowing for things like not working or doing other important tasks? If you were honestly going to treat that time as if it were on your last day, you'd still make plenty of choices that'd be disastrous long-term; on the constructive side, it's likely that you'd want to contact as many of your loved/liked ones as possible to say good-bye, tell them how you feel, and have final exchanges of whatever thoughts you'd never gotten around to sharing... but you can't have those "final conversations" on a daily basis. In general, you can't just pick the 1 or 2 most fun or emotionally important things and do only those every day; even if it were possible, it'd be foolish, and would mean eliminating the variety and new experiences that're a part of a healthy, happy life.
What if the quote was just meant to encourage you to do MORE of the most important or joy-making things each day? Unless you're self-destructive or an idiot, aren't you ALREADY doing the things that're the most important or joy-making for you as much as you can within the confines of living your life properly? I don't mean the things that other people or your guilty conscience tells you SHOULD be the top stuff, but the ones that actually ARE; isn't whatever you're CHOOSING to do the stuff that's truly important to you, and what actually gives you the most enjoyment for your effort (whether that means doing outdoor activities, knitting like a maniac every spare moment or just sitting quietly watching TV)?
What if the quote just means "Live life to the fullest"... translation, DO more, and make sure it's stuff that OTHER people see as worthwhile? Screw THAT; I want to do LESS "worthwhile" stuff, and spend more time doing trivial things like playing solitaire (with CARDS) or just lounging around and staring out the window, thus becoming more relaxed and happier... how about you?
And finally, what if the quote is just an encouragement to savor life? Unless you've got some sort of mental illness (which would need to be treated with MEDS, not glib advice), you're already savoring everything to the degree that's right for you based on your personality and circumstances; if you're so busy that you don't have time to, say, fully enjoy your food, making your time crunch worse by pausing and going "mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm" after every bite so that eating takes 5x as long won't work in your favor... and focusing on things you don't care enough about to already be "savoring" with the idea that this'll improve your life is just nuts.
With that said, there clearly ARE some people who get all wrapped up and frenzied about their lives, such that they're not really living them to the full because they "forget" that they'd be more satisfied if they smelled the occasional rose... but there's a whole different saying that better applies to them.
What we SHOULD be saying is "Live each day like you're gonna live another 100 years"; this would encourage you to take the long view, and make the best choices about caring for your body, managing your $ and maintaining your relationships, so that they'd all be in the best possible shape for the many years you'd have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Do you think that'll make it onto a bumper sticker anytime soon?
If you knew that tomorrow would be your final day: Would you go to work and/or school? Would you exercise or take any other health-enhancing measures such as stress reduction or consuming nutritional supplements? Would you make, or go to, any doctor or dentist appointments? What kinds of food would you eat, and in what quantities? Would you bother showering, brushing or flossing? Would you do any housecleaning or yard maintenance? If you had sex, would you use contraception or worry about safer sex? If there was someone hot you've wanted to sleep with who was willing, but you'd held back because at least one of you wasn't single, would you go for it? Would you waste time picking up your dry cleaning or running other errands? Would you shave, trim your toenails, or do anything else that'd essentially be primping your corpse? Would you be polite to people you dislike? If you'd previously quit drinking, smoking or doing drugs, would you binge on them? Would you read/listen to/watch the news? Would you engage in any retirement planning? Would you get those squeaky brakes on your car checked? Would you sleep for even one minute? Would you obey the speed limit and other traffic laws? Would you worry about the price of anything you wanted to buy, especially if you had no dependents?
Would you blog?
The reality is that we have to do lots of things that we don't like, and restrict or eliminate things we DO like, in order to be healthy, to not live in a pigsty, to earn a living, to get along with those we can't avoid, and so on; if you were honestly going to live each day as you would your last, you'd have to live like a lunatic or little kid with no idea as to consequences... it can't be done.
What if the quote was just meant to refer to your free time, rather than allowing for things like not working or doing other important tasks? If you were honestly going to treat that time as if it were on your last day, you'd still make plenty of choices that'd be disastrous long-term; on the constructive side, it's likely that you'd want to contact as many of your loved/liked ones as possible to say good-bye, tell them how you feel, and have final exchanges of whatever thoughts you'd never gotten around to sharing... but you can't have those "final conversations" on a daily basis. In general, you can't just pick the 1 or 2 most fun or emotionally important things and do only those every day; even if it were possible, it'd be foolish, and would mean eliminating the variety and new experiences that're a part of a healthy, happy life.
What if the quote was just meant to encourage you to do MORE of the most important or joy-making things each day? Unless you're self-destructive or an idiot, aren't you ALREADY doing the things that're the most important or joy-making for you as much as you can within the confines of living your life properly? I don't mean the things that other people or your guilty conscience tells you SHOULD be the top stuff, but the ones that actually ARE; isn't whatever you're CHOOSING to do the stuff that's truly important to you, and what actually gives you the most enjoyment for your effort (whether that means doing outdoor activities, knitting like a maniac every spare moment or just sitting quietly watching TV)?
What if the quote just means "Live life to the fullest"... translation, DO more, and make sure it's stuff that OTHER people see as worthwhile? Screw THAT; I want to do LESS "worthwhile" stuff, and spend more time doing trivial things like playing solitaire (with CARDS) or just lounging around and staring out the window, thus becoming more relaxed and happier... how about you?
And finally, what if the quote is just an encouragement to savor life? Unless you've got some sort of mental illness (which would need to be treated with MEDS, not glib advice), you're already savoring everything to the degree that's right for you based on your personality and circumstances; if you're so busy that you don't have time to, say, fully enjoy your food, making your time crunch worse by pausing and going "mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm" after every bite so that eating takes 5x as long won't work in your favor... and focusing on things you don't care enough about to already be "savoring" with the idea that this'll improve your life is just nuts.
With that said, there clearly ARE some people who get all wrapped up and frenzied about their lives, such that they're not really living them to the full because they "forget" that they'd be more satisfied if they smelled the occasional rose... but there's a whole different saying that better applies to them.
What we SHOULD be saying is "Live each day like you're gonna live another 100 years"; this would encourage you to take the long view, and make the best choices about caring for your body, managing your $ and maintaining your relationships, so that they'd all be in the best possible shape for the many years you'd have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Do you think that'll make it onto a bumper sticker anytime soon?
We have several skunks that visit our patio to eat astonishing amounts of kibble every night. A couple of months ago, I put out the bones left over from our ribs dinner so that they could, in theory, gnaw the scraps off of them; although they'd sadly shown no shred of interest in the rats and mice that swarm our yard, in the wild they DO hunt various little vermins and so might be expected to enjoy some meat. When the 1st skunk started eagerly tearing meat off a rib, we beamed happily; things turned unexpectedly exciting when the usually mannerly little mammal shook the bone, pounced on it, and began dragging it vigorously around... some of those bones got hauled 20 feet, completely out of the yard!! It turned out that ALL the skunks did that with the bones, which was interesting because it's not like they often pull down a COW in the wild and so would have an instinctive way of handling its parts. It's hilarious to see the normally placid animals baring their fangs and being so fierce; we'll egg them on with "Get that bone!! Teach it a lesson!! Come on, subdue that ferocious bone!!".
We used to have just skunkie girls, but a male started coming a while back, which made us hopeful about the eventual appearance of babies (we've been fooled as to gender before with our wild visitors, but skunks will stand around with their tails up right next to the sliding glass door, and, er, 2 innies means a girl and 1 means a boy). This particular male is either very inexperienced or a complete idiot, though; the one time he was here with a female, he kept harassing her, despite our best attempts to distract him, until either she sprayed him or fended him off so vehemently that she scared HIM into spraying... we couldn't see what exactly happened, but the SMELL was clear enough-my eyes watered for the next half hour. They ran out of the patio area, and he chased her around on the street; I heard several outraged shrieks, and someone sprayed again, although luckily not right up against the house. I understand that dominance of females by males is part of the process from which baby skunks result, but I wasn't happy with all that fuss, and I suspect that there's a level of ineptitude beyond which the females will refuse to play along; hopefully, the male, who's still coming but not when a female is here, will sort himself out and be able to do his duty sometime soon.
NB: This was the 1st and only time a skunk sprayed on our property; my husband surprised one on the patio recently, and she didn't so much as point her bottom at him, she just trundled away as quickly as her short legs could carry her... they're not inclined to spray unless REALLY provoked.
Even odder behavior is coming from our avian visitors: We have what appears to be a male and a female of some species of VERY small bird that looks like a wren but doesn't match any pictures we've been able to find; we call them "the tiny tweets." They have long, thin, curved beaks, and like all little birds thus equipped are insectivorous; they dart around fastfastfast and snatch up little bugs on our patio. Imagine my bewilderment when I saw them hopping around the quadruped feeding area, picking up fragments of kibble and eating them; how could they know that was food, when they have no sense of smell (the warnings to not handle baby birds because their mothers can smell you on them is nonsense) to tell them that what looks like bits of dirt is edible? And; their few taste buds wouldn't tell them that kibble was similar to bugs, so why would they keep eating it once they tried it? Even weirder, the male spent about 20 minutes plucking meat off a chicken bone, with such force that he was yanking it around although it probably outweighed him; ignoring the semi-cannibalism aspect to it, why would an insectivore eat off a bone... is he part VULTURE? Weirdest of all, the little female extracted a WALNUT from the feeding area, and comes several times a day to eat from it, chasing after it when her pecking makes it slide around and ignoring the other walnuts to focus on that one; I've been able to find references to some sorts of wrens sometimes eating berries or seeds (the tiny tweets totally ignore the birdseed, just FYI), but what attracts this one to eat a NUT that's nearly a third her size is beyond me.
Bizarrest of all is the behavior of Psycho Hummie, a little male hummingbird that appears to be literally out of his mind. These exquisite birds need to eat almost constantly to support their super-fast metabolisms, but this one will ignore the feeder and do repeated, in-depth examinations of each wind chime and the seed and suet feeding stations (hummingbirds don't eat either thing), dart back and forth across the patio a bunch of times for no reason we can determine, and then hover right outside the window and/or glass door for 10-15 minutes, MINUTES, at a time, just WATCHING me... and if I call to him when he's farther away, he'll sometimes zip over to check me out, which is heartwarming but probably not indicative of sanity either. I saw him drink from the feeder ONCE, for about 3 seconds, so he knows it's there, but maybe he hears voices from it or something and so avoids it; I'd sure like to know what he IS eating, especially this early in the season, that's kept him plump and energetic enough to do all this exploring and Peeping Tom-ing. We hit the jackpot when we installed a hanging plant that was covered with tiny flowers; Psycho Hummie went right to it and drank from every single flower, and now does so on most visits. Elated, we got more of the same plant and will hang them with the other one this weekend; we have great affection for this bonkers bird, and are happy to be able to provide him with something he likes.
I'll close with my annual plea for the hummingbirds: These precious creatures are having to undergo their lengthy annual migration with less and less food available due to our destruction of the flowering plants they depend on, and too many of them don't make it; if you're lucky enough to get hummies where you live, PLEASE consider spending a few dollars and putting up a feeder for them... being able to watch them up close will more than compensate you for your trouble.
We used to have just skunkie girls, but a male started coming a while back, which made us hopeful about the eventual appearance of babies (we've been fooled as to gender before with our wild visitors, but skunks will stand around with their tails up right next to the sliding glass door, and, er, 2 innies means a girl and 1 means a boy). This particular male is either very inexperienced or a complete idiot, though; the one time he was here with a female, he kept harassing her, despite our best attempts to distract him, until either she sprayed him or fended him off so vehemently that she scared HIM into spraying... we couldn't see what exactly happened, but the SMELL was clear enough-my eyes watered for the next half hour. They ran out of the patio area, and he chased her around on the street; I heard several outraged shrieks, and someone sprayed again, although luckily not right up against the house. I understand that dominance of females by males is part of the process from which baby skunks result, but I wasn't happy with all that fuss, and I suspect that there's a level of ineptitude beyond which the females will refuse to play along; hopefully, the male, who's still coming but not when a female is here, will sort himself out and be able to do his duty sometime soon.
NB: This was the 1st and only time a skunk sprayed on our property; my husband surprised one on the patio recently, and she didn't so much as point her bottom at him, she just trundled away as quickly as her short legs could carry her... they're not inclined to spray unless REALLY provoked.
Even odder behavior is coming from our avian visitors: We have what appears to be a male and a female of some species of VERY small bird that looks like a wren but doesn't match any pictures we've been able to find; we call them "the tiny tweets." They have long, thin, curved beaks, and like all little birds thus equipped are insectivorous; they dart around fastfastfast and snatch up little bugs on our patio. Imagine my bewilderment when I saw them hopping around the quadruped feeding area, picking up fragments of kibble and eating them; how could they know that was food, when they have no sense of smell (the warnings to not handle baby birds because their mothers can smell you on them is nonsense) to tell them that what looks like bits of dirt is edible? And; their few taste buds wouldn't tell them that kibble was similar to bugs, so why would they keep eating it once they tried it? Even weirder, the male spent about 20 minutes plucking meat off a chicken bone, with such force that he was yanking it around although it probably outweighed him; ignoring the semi-cannibalism aspect to it, why would an insectivore eat off a bone... is he part VULTURE? Weirdest of all, the little female extracted a WALNUT from the feeding area, and comes several times a day to eat from it, chasing after it when her pecking makes it slide around and ignoring the other walnuts to focus on that one; I've been able to find references to some sorts of wrens sometimes eating berries or seeds (the tiny tweets totally ignore the birdseed, just FYI), but what attracts this one to eat a NUT that's nearly a third her size is beyond me.
Bizarrest of all is the behavior of Psycho Hummie, a little male hummingbird that appears to be literally out of his mind. These exquisite birds need to eat almost constantly to support their super-fast metabolisms, but this one will ignore the feeder and do repeated, in-depth examinations of each wind chime and the seed and suet feeding stations (hummingbirds don't eat either thing), dart back and forth across the patio a bunch of times for no reason we can determine, and then hover right outside the window and/or glass door for 10-15 minutes, MINUTES, at a time, just WATCHING me... and if I call to him when he's farther away, he'll sometimes zip over to check me out, which is heartwarming but probably not indicative of sanity either. I saw him drink from the feeder ONCE, for about 3 seconds, so he knows it's there, but maybe he hears voices from it or something and so avoids it; I'd sure like to know what he IS eating, especially this early in the season, that's kept him plump and energetic enough to do all this exploring and Peeping Tom-ing. We hit the jackpot when we installed a hanging plant that was covered with tiny flowers; Psycho Hummie went right to it and drank from every single flower, and now does so on most visits. Elated, we got more of the same plant and will hang them with the other one this weekend; we have great affection for this bonkers bird, and are happy to be able to provide him with something he likes.
I'll close with my annual plea for the hummingbirds: These precious creatures are having to undergo their lengthy annual migration with less and less food available due to our destruction of the flowering plants they depend on, and too many of them don't make it; if you're lucky enough to get hummies where you live, PLEASE consider spending a few dollars and putting up a feeder for them... being able to watch them up close will more than compensate you for your trouble.
Quick note: After 3 years of having the Babel Fish translator on my site, I've switched to a new one; it's that big purple thing in the sidebar. I chose it because it has 10 languages instead of 8, allows you to select format and color, and has a more compact design; if you want it, and you really SHOULD have a translator to assist foreign visitors, you can get it here:
http://www.appliedlanguage.com/trans/free_quick.aspx
Scott Adams made an intriguing point on his blog:
"When you serve a purpose larger than yourself, you experience the sensation of having meaning. There are plenty of larger purposes from which to choose: You can save the whales, feed the poor, shelter the homeless, march for peace, serve your notion of God, whatever. The details don't matter.
If your reaction to my explanation of larger purposes was 'none of that sounds interesting to me,' then you haven't finished fixing yourself. When you do, you will automatically look outward. It's how humans are wired. We survive because, on average, the people who manage to satisfy their personal needs are changed by it. They become seekers of meaning. They ask, 'What's next?'"
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/the_meaning_of_.html
When I read that, I saw that it'd explain how so many famous people end up following gurus, studying Kabbalah, or joining fashionable (and usually wacko) New Age "religions," and how cults that committed group suicide because they thought Jesus was coming to get them in a spaceship always had members with successful careers; I hadn't been able to see the psychological pathway which would lead to people who had everything and could do as they liked seeking these sorts of things out, not to mention sticking with them after the leaders made outrageous demands or generally demonstrated that they're out of their minds, so I was glad to have this idea to get me thinking.
The 1st point that needs to be made is that there are plenty of folks who've "got it all" who're perfectly satisfied to care for their families, work in their gardens, play video games, etc, and never yearn for "more"; I'm sure that SOME of them might secretly need "fixing," eg be depressed or have other emotional issues that don't show, but we can't insist that they ALL must be that way without proof.
The next point is; why would ANYONE have the urge to "look outward"? What survival value did it have to our primitive ancestors that made it part of our programming? What could a caveperson have even DONE to create "greater meaning," and why would they have expended precious energy to achieve it? The only thing I can think of is spirituality/religion; every human culture has come up with the concept of beings or forces greater than themselves that run things, and that's GOT to be significant... but whether it indicates that many of us are actually perceiving beings/forces or that we're just used to attributing the unexplained to "something invisible and powerful" is open to debate. And how would any of that lead to a non-religious person whose body, mind and bank account were all healthy wanting to save the whales? Is it an innate urge as Adams suggests, or an extension of embryonic spiritual feelings that make us want to reach out and embrace SOMETHING... or, is it the result of societal programming to "give back" and "get involved," or simply that it feels good to DO good and/or to be seen by others as a do-gooder... OR, as is often the case, can there be a variety of causes?
I'll be making a conscious effort from now on to notice if people who haven't "looked outwards" even though they seem to have it all turn out to have problems that weren't immediately obvious; wouldn't it be slick if that ended up being a useful way to detect folks with "issues"?
I examined my own process of "looking outward"; it's probably not a coincidence that it began after I left my mother's home, married, and found myself in control of my life for the 1st time. The change didn't come right away; it took a while to adjust to home ownership, husband ownership (lol), being responsible for everything and having total freedom of action. Then, when someone I was close to betrayed me in a particularly ugly way, in response to my soul-deep scream of "WHY?!!" came answers... and not just the ones I was asking for. It was at that time that the word "karma" started coming out of my mouth; I hadn't consciously thought about it, I could just suddenly see the basics of how it worked... and thus my spirituality was born.
Has this given my life meaning? I don't know; I've never understood what having meaning, or not having it, is supposed to feel like. It's certainly given me whole new levels of understanding, though, and ideas to share with you; that's more than enough.
http://www.appliedlanguage.com/trans/free_quick.aspx
Scott Adams made an intriguing point on his blog:
"When you serve a purpose larger than yourself, you experience the sensation of having meaning. There are plenty of larger purposes from which to choose: You can save the whales, feed the poor, shelter the homeless, march for peace, serve your notion of God, whatever. The details don't matter.
If your reaction to my explanation of larger purposes was 'none of that sounds interesting to me,' then you haven't finished fixing yourself. When you do, you will automatically look outward. It's how humans are wired. We survive because, on average, the people who manage to satisfy their personal needs are changed by it. They become seekers of meaning. They ask, 'What's next?'"
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/the_meaning_of_.html
When I read that, I saw that it'd explain how so many famous people end up following gurus, studying Kabbalah, or joining fashionable (and usually wacko) New Age "religions," and how cults that committed group suicide because they thought Jesus was coming to get them in a spaceship always had members with successful careers; I hadn't been able to see the psychological pathway which would lead to people who had everything and could do as they liked seeking these sorts of things out, not to mention sticking with them after the leaders made outrageous demands or generally demonstrated that they're out of their minds, so I was glad to have this idea to get me thinking.
The 1st point that needs to be made is that there are plenty of folks who've "got it all" who're perfectly satisfied to care for their families, work in their gardens, play video games, etc, and never yearn for "more"; I'm sure that SOME of them might secretly need "fixing," eg be depressed or have other emotional issues that don't show, but we can't insist that they ALL must be that way without proof.
The next point is; why would ANYONE have the urge to "look outward"? What survival value did it have to our primitive ancestors that made it part of our programming? What could a caveperson have even DONE to create "greater meaning," and why would they have expended precious energy to achieve it? The only thing I can think of is spirituality/religion; every human culture has come up with the concept of beings or forces greater than themselves that run things, and that's GOT to be significant... but whether it indicates that many of us are actually perceiving beings/forces or that we're just used to attributing the unexplained to "something invisible and powerful" is open to debate. And how would any of that lead to a non-religious person whose body, mind and bank account were all healthy wanting to save the whales? Is it an innate urge as Adams suggests, or an extension of embryonic spiritual feelings that make us want to reach out and embrace SOMETHING... or, is it the result of societal programming to "give back" and "get involved," or simply that it feels good to DO good and/or to be seen by others as a do-gooder... OR, as is often the case, can there be a variety of causes?
I'll be making a conscious effort from now on to notice if people who haven't "looked outwards" even though they seem to have it all turn out to have problems that weren't immediately obvious; wouldn't it be slick if that ended up being a useful way to detect folks with "issues"?
I examined my own process of "looking outward"; it's probably not a coincidence that it began after I left my mother's home, married, and found myself in control of my life for the 1st time. The change didn't come right away; it took a while to adjust to home ownership, husband ownership (lol), being responsible for everything and having total freedom of action. Then, when someone I was close to betrayed me in a particularly ugly way, in response to my soul-deep scream of "WHY?!!" came answers... and not just the ones I was asking for. It was at that time that the word "karma" started coming out of my mouth; I hadn't consciously thought about it, I could just suddenly see the basics of how it worked... and thus my spirituality was born.
Has this given my life meaning? I don't know; I've never understood what having meaning, or not having it, is supposed to feel like. It's certainly given me whole new levels of understanding, though, and ideas to share with you; that's more than enough.
There's a series on the Discovery Times channel (I don't know what that name means either) called "Most Evil"
http://times.discovery.com/tvlistings/series.jsp?series=25220&gid=0&channel=DTC
Last night, I stumbled across an episode of the series called "Psychotic Killers," and learned of the horrific actions of some of our nation's most revolting murderers; I also learned that even indulging in the most nauseating behaviors imaginable did NOT guarantee that they'd be labeled insane. The most disturbing example was the case of Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped a half dozen women and held them prisoner in his basement; in addition to the standard physical and sexual abuse that a violent criminal would be expected to inflict upon captives, Heidnik added some sick twists... such as putting the flesh of one of the women who died under his abuse through a blender, mixing it with dog food and making the other women eat it. Is this something that a sane mind could even come up with, much less DO? Not in MY book, but, because Heidnik carried out his crimes in a systematic way over a long time, and was able to do things like make some $ in the stock market, he was judged to be SANE; this made me realize that, where grossly "anti-social" behavior is concerned, the psychiatric community is a little out to sea... their definition of insanity doesn't make sense, and they seem to not have ANY clear definition of, or even understanding about, what evil is.
It's easy to label someone insane if they're raving in a straitjacket or have lost all touch with reality, but what about everyone else whose behavior is demented? The program showed tests the experts have devised to determine if a person understands cause and effect and the consequences of actions, which are used as indicators of sanity or lack thereof; I'm sure they're valuable tools for proving the existence of mental problems, but where's the proof that everyone who passes those tests is SANE? On the other hand, if all that's necessary to pronounce one of these monsters "sane" is evidence of rational thought, wouldn't that make them ALL sane, since a totally irrational person couldn't carry off a crime like that?
You hear about murders that included deranged elements (torture, cannibalism, etc) all the time; how often were those crimes committed out in public? NEVER. The killers do their deeds in secret and hide the evidence. Doesn't that show that they KNOW they're doing things that aren't acceptable, that would get them in trouble if discovered? That sure sounds like awareness of right and wrong, cause and effect, consequences of actions, the whole 9 yards, doesn't it? These turds purchase or construct weapons/tools to use for torture, killing and body disposal, they take their victims places where they won't be seen, they make sure that their screams of agony won't be heard by soundproofing the room, gagging them or (Heidnik's trick) by playing loud music as camouflage, and they carefully choose and arrange "souvenirs" from the killings; compared to that, picking a few stocks is nothing. That's why it's problematic when the shrinks are asked if these "extreme murderers" are sane, eg normal people who just decided to do bad things, or crazy, as if those are the only 2 options; it's like examining a bird and trying to "calculate" whether it's a fish or a cat... evil is a whole separate entity.
Evildoers, and our fear of them, exert a huge amount of influence on the human race, so we're long overdue to understand these people whose brains cause them to imagine, and then DO, unspeakable acts; clearly, the brain of every such person is radically abnormal in some way(s), and we need to know exactly HOW, so that they can be identified, treated if possible, and removed from society when necessary. We need the answer to the question "What is evil?".
Is evil a form of insanity? Some crazy people mumble constantly, some smear feces on their walls, some harm themselves, and some do multiple "crazy" things; could evil be just another path that insanity takes, and when someone's evil and, say, believes that the trash can's talking to them, might that be conceptually no different than a crazy person who does both mumbling and feces-smearing?
OR, is evil a type of mental illness unrelated to insanity, and is just sometimes combined with insanity the way an insane person might also suffer from depression? (If evil turned out to be caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters like depression is, that'd mean it could almost certainly be treated, maybe even cured; can you imagine?) Many evil types suffered crushing abuse as kids, and there's ample proof that the creation of a serious mental illness can result from that.
OR, is evil the result of a brain that functions in an unusual way but isn't "sick," in the way a retarded person's brain functions differently but they're not mentally ill?
OR, could an evil person's brain be physically different? They've found that pathological liars have more white matter in their brains than regular folks (see my post of 10-16-05), so it's not so far-fetched; also, from my spiritual perspective an evil person's soullessness would almost certainly require an abnormality in the part(s) of the brain responsible for soul generation... if we find a physical abnormality in the brains of evil people, will we have found the creation point for the soul?
OR, can evil come from more than one source, the way that more than one physical problem can make you cough... or does it REQUIRE more than one source to elevate it above regular badness?
We need to know what evil IS, how, or IF, it can be treated, or if we just need to lock evildoers up forever and throw away the key... and we need to scream in protest when well-meaning but misguided shrinks who can't see the forest for the trees try to make distinctions for which they don't have the knowledge instead of focusing on the main point; "This person committed horrific crimes, is a danger to society and always will be, and must never be permitted to breathe free air again."
http://times.discovery.com/tvlistings/series.jsp?series=25220&gid=0&channel=DTC
Last night, I stumbled across an episode of the series called "Psychotic Killers," and learned of the horrific actions of some of our nation's most revolting murderers; I also learned that even indulging in the most nauseating behaviors imaginable did NOT guarantee that they'd be labeled insane. The most disturbing example was the case of Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped a half dozen women and held them prisoner in his basement; in addition to the standard physical and sexual abuse that a violent criminal would be expected to inflict upon captives, Heidnik added some sick twists... such as putting the flesh of one of the women who died under his abuse through a blender, mixing it with dog food and making the other women eat it. Is this something that a sane mind could even come up with, much less DO? Not in MY book, but, because Heidnik carried out his crimes in a systematic way over a long time, and was able to do things like make some $ in the stock market, he was judged to be SANE; this made me realize that, where grossly "anti-social" behavior is concerned, the psychiatric community is a little out to sea... their definition of insanity doesn't make sense, and they seem to not have ANY clear definition of, or even understanding about, what evil is.
It's easy to label someone insane if they're raving in a straitjacket or have lost all touch with reality, but what about everyone else whose behavior is demented? The program showed tests the experts have devised to determine if a person understands cause and effect and the consequences of actions, which are used as indicators of sanity or lack thereof; I'm sure they're valuable tools for proving the existence of mental problems, but where's the proof that everyone who passes those tests is SANE? On the other hand, if all that's necessary to pronounce one of these monsters "sane" is evidence of rational thought, wouldn't that make them ALL sane, since a totally irrational person couldn't carry off a crime like that?
You hear about murders that included deranged elements (torture, cannibalism, etc) all the time; how often were those crimes committed out in public? NEVER. The killers do their deeds in secret and hide the evidence. Doesn't that show that they KNOW they're doing things that aren't acceptable, that would get them in trouble if discovered? That sure sounds like awareness of right and wrong, cause and effect, consequences of actions, the whole 9 yards, doesn't it? These turds purchase or construct weapons/tools to use for torture, killing and body disposal, they take their victims places where they won't be seen, they make sure that their screams of agony won't be heard by soundproofing the room, gagging them or (Heidnik's trick) by playing loud music as camouflage, and they carefully choose and arrange "souvenirs" from the killings; compared to that, picking a few stocks is nothing. That's why it's problematic when the shrinks are asked if these "extreme murderers" are sane, eg normal people who just decided to do bad things, or crazy, as if those are the only 2 options; it's like examining a bird and trying to "calculate" whether it's a fish or a cat... evil is a whole separate entity.
Evildoers, and our fear of them, exert a huge amount of influence on the human race, so we're long overdue to understand these people whose brains cause them to imagine, and then DO, unspeakable acts; clearly, the brain of every such person is radically abnormal in some way(s), and we need to know exactly HOW, so that they can be identified, treated if possible, and removed from society when necessary. We need the answer to the question "What is evil?".
Is evil a form of insanity? Some crazy people mumble constantly, some smear feces on their walls, some harm themselves, and some do multiple "crazy" things; could evil be just another path that insanity takes, and when someone's evil and, say, believes that the trash can's talking to them, might that be conceptually no different than a crazy person who does both mumbling and feces-smearing?
OR, is evil a type of mental illness unrelated to insanity, and is just sometimes combined with insanity the way an insane person might also suffer from depression? (If evil turned out to be caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters like depression is, that'd mean it could almost certainly be treated, maybe even cured; can you imagine?) Many evil types suffered crushing abuse as kids, and there's ample proof that the creation of a serious mental illness can result from that.
OR, is evil the result of a brain that functions in an unusual way but isn't "sick," in the way a retarded person's brain functions differently but they're not mentally ill?
OR, could an evil person's brain be physically different? They've found that pathological liars have more white matter in their brains than regular folks (see my post of 10-16-05), so it's not so far-fetched; also, from my spiritual perspective an evil person's soullessness would almost certainly require an abnormality in the part(s) of the brain responsible for soul generation... if we find a physical abnormality in the brains of evil people, will we have found the creation point for the soul?
OR, can evil come from more than one source, the way that more than one physical problem can make you cough... or does it REQUIRE more than one source to elevate it above regular badness?
We need to know what evil IS, how, or IF, it can be treated, or if we just need to lock evildoers up forever and throw away the key... and we need to scream in protest when well-meaning but misguided shrinks who can't see the forest for the trees try to make distinctions for which they don't have the knowledge instead of focusing on the main point; "This person committed horrific crimes, is a danger to society and always will be, and must never be permitted to breathe free air again."
Thanks to my friend Peety, whose highly entertaining blog is here
http://peety-passion.com/
I found a fascinating article by sociologist Bill Allin called "Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy," which begins with a thought-provoking quote:
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)
If you're puzzled as to how this could be, you haven't been paying attention; despite the lip service we give to how swell intelligence is, intelligent people are generally disliked and distrusted in our culture, and it's perfectly logical that they'd be less happy than average as a result. We hold intelligence in such contempt that even in the job world, where it should be eagerly embraced for its potential to make $, bright folks are often screwed:
"Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales)."
Or, as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams put it:
"It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead - and I say this with great affection - huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I was like frickin' Goldfinger in this crowd."
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/are_smart_peopl.html
Even more important to happiness than job success is the ability to be a fully accepted member of the human race; we're social animals, and, while there ARE people who're content to be alone, nearly everyone wants friends and a romantic partner, and in general to fit in and be liked in whatever groups they find themselves in. It's no secret that many of the sharpest folks do NOT fit in; how do they get to be so socially clueless? It starts early:
"Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development."
That doesn't make SENSE; why encourage everything BUT intellectual development if your main goal is to accumulate wealth? Whatever the reason, that IS how it works in America, sadly.
"In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are 'odd,' they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually"
"Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person."
This creates a vicious cycle, because the more a kid lags socially and emotionally the more they'll be excluded, and even mistreated, which makes them fall even further behind. Worse, unlike with most childhood problems, the adults in their lives aren't inclined to try to fix it:
"Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don't understand that they need help"
Even if parents and teachers DO see that a bright child is NOT handling things well, that they're friendless and solemn, they won't take action because that's what they're USED to seeing with bright kids; they accept it as somehow normal and ok rather than realizing that it's proof that the child has become a pariah and/or emotionally crushed and needs adult intervention.
"Western society provides the ideal incubator for social misfits and those with emotional coping problems. When it comes to happiness, people who are socially inept and who have trouble coping emotionally with the exigencies of life would not be among those you should expect to be happy."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8778/Why-Intelligent-People-Tend-To-Be-Unhappy
I really enjoyed this article-it filled in some major gaps for me. Thank you, Bill Allin and Peety. :-)
http://peety-passion.com/
I found a fascinating article by sociologist Bill Allin called "Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy," which begins with a thought-provoking quote:
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)
If you're puzzled as to how this could be, you haven't been paying attention; despite the lip service we give to how swell intelligence is, intelligent people are generally disliked and distrusted in our culture, and it's perfectly logical that they'd be less happy than average as a result. We hold intelligence in such contempt that even in the job world, where it should be eagerly embraced for its potential to make $, bright folks are often screwed:
"Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales)."
Or, as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams put it:
"It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead - and I say this with great affection - huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I was like frickin' Goldfinger in this crowd."
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/are_smart_peopl.html
Even more important to happiness than job success is the ability to be a fully accepted member of the human race; we're social animals, and, while there ARE people who're content to be alone, nearly everyone wants friends and a romantic partner, and in general to fit in and be liked in whatever groups they find themselves in. It's no secret that many of the sharpest folks do NOT fit in; how do they get to be so socially clueless? It starts early:
"Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development."
That doesn't make SENSE; why encourage everything BUT intellectual development if your main goal is to accumulate wealth? Whatever the reason, that IS how it works in America, sadly.
"In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are 'odd,' they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually"
"Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person."
This creates a vicious cycle, because the more a kid lags socially and emotionally the more they'll be excluded, and even mistreated, which makes them fall even further behind. Worse, unlike with most childhood problems, the adults in their lives aren't inclined to try to fix it:
"Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don't understand that they need help"
Even if parents and teachers DO see that a bright child is NOT handling things well, that they're friendless and solemn, they won't take action because that's what they're USED to seeing with bright kids; they accept it as somehow normal and ok rather than realizing that it's proof that the child has become a pariah and/or emotionally crushed and needs adult intervention.
"Western society provides the ideal incubator for social misfits and those with emotional coping problems. When it comes to happiness, people who are socially inept and who have trouble coping emotionally with the exigencies of life would not be among those you should expect to be happy."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8778/Why-Intelligent-People-Tend-To-Be-Unhappy
I really enjoyed this article-it filled in some major gaps for me. Thank you, Bill Allin and Peety. :-)
If you watched "60 Minutes" on Sunday, you heard Andy Rooney say something that's undoubtedly brought him a ton of abuse; that, although he never thought he'd be saying it, since in order to fill our quotas for new troops we're having to "lower the bar" and accept those with criminal records or without high school degrees, we should bring back the draft in order to have a higher quality of soldier. He based this opinion on his own military service, and his bad memories of men of these "lower types" who served with him; he considered them to be poor soldiers, and even poorer examples of Americans for foreigners to base their ideas of what we're like on.
Should American military personnel provide a positive example of what Americans are like? Ideally, yes, absolutely, and many of them DO, but that's not part of their job description; their job is to kill people and destroy things, not to be masters of etiquette. It's a moot point, though, because every country has already formed an opinion of us from American tourists, who are legendary for being loud, rude, pushy, badly dressed, and disrespectful of locals and their customs; imagine what lengths a soldier would have to go to to make a WORSE impression... and the average tourist tends to be educated, as those are the folks who can afford to travel abroad, which disproves the idea that an educated person is a superior representative of America.
Plus, call me crazy, but I'd RATHER have the less educated, less productive members of society being used as cannon fodder... especially since they're OFFERING to do it. And what other choices do these folks have? What kinds of jobs will they have to work for their entire lives without high school diplomas? Why should they be denied the opportunity to, not only serve their country, which should be EVERY able-bodied person's right if they so choose, but to do more with their lives than wash dishes or push a broom? They can get free education and training, and they and their families can receive all sorts of benefits, if they join up, and that may well be the only way they can find a better life for themselves and their kids; if they're willing to go into a war zone to earn those things, why should we refuse them?
I'm of a similar mind where those with criminal records are concerned, assuming we can trust that serial killers and child molesters aren't being allowed to enlist; if they've got the patriotic urge to serve their country rather than continue being scumbags, shouldn't we ENCOURAGE that? Same thing goes for if they're trying to rejoin decent society, have discovered that no one will hire them, and go to the military recruitment office as their only chance to make a living honestly; should we tell them to go back to the streets and sell some more drugs or rob some more liquor stores rather than cheering their willingness to risk DEATH in order to live honorable lives and provide for their families? I'm not suggesting that they let anyone DANGEROUS join up, for the obvious reasons, but it's not like they think that their criminal careers will be enhanced if they enlist, so unless they're raving lunatics their intentions are likely to be as good as anyone else's... and I'd sure rather THEY were cannon fodder than draftees.
Besides, didn't they at least USED to give people convicted of certain sorts of offenses the choice between prison and the army in some states? Wasn't the idea that military service would square them away, build character, and make them into good citizens... and that boot camp is so rough that it's punishment enough? It seems like you could make a case for, not just LETTING people with certain sorts of criminal records into the military, but adopting a nationwide policy of offering the army as an alternative to prison for a wide range of offenses; it'd probably be cheaper for the taxpayer (it's expensive to keep someone locked up), we'd be GETTING something for our $, prison crowding would be reduced, and the erstwhile criminals would be getting straightened out rather than meeting up with worse criminals in jail and becoming more hardened and anti-social.
Would you get a better quality of soldier with the draft than by letting those from the "lower echelons" enlist? Of course. Is that the highest goal, the best choice for America? No... and to my mind, that's gotta be the deciding factor. With all due respect to Andy Rooney, I think we should give those at the bottom of the heap a chance to improve themselves (or die with honor) before we yank productive citizens from their lives and force them to go to war.
I'll leave you with a little humor: 1st, there's a crazy calf in India that's been killing and eating chickens, possibly to alleviate a mineral deficiency:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070307/od_nm/india_cow_dc
2nd, here's one you'll have to see to believe; a dog who masturbates like a man, standing on 2 legs and pulling his erection with his paws... and he's ignoring the little female he was supposed to be mating with to do it!! I don't know if this counts as pornographic, or if it's safe for work, but it's a jaw-dropper:
http://www.uselessjunk.com/article_full.php?id=18703
Should American military personnel provide a positive example of what Americans are like? Ideally, yes, absolutely, and many of them DO, but that's not part of their job description; their job is to kill people and destroy things, not to be masters of etiquette. It's a moot point, though, because every country has already formed an opinion of us from American tourists, who are legendary for being loud, rude, pushy, badly dressed, and disrespectful of locals and their customs; imagine what lengths a soldier would have to go to to make a WORSE impression... and the average tourist tends to be educated, as those are the folks who can afford to travel abroad, which disproves the idea that an educated person is a superior representative of America.
Plus, call me crazy, but I'd RATHER have the less educated, less productive members of society being used as cannon fodder... especially since they're OFFERING to do it. And what other choices do these folks have? What kinds of jobs will they have to work for their entire lives without high school diplomas? Why should they be denied the opportunity to, not only serve their country, which should be EVERY able-bodied person's right if they so choose, but to do more with their lives than wash dishes or push a broom? They can get free education and training, and they and their families can receive all sorts of benefits, if they join up, and that may well be the only way they can find a better life for themselves and their kids; if they're willing to go into a war zone to earn those things, why should we refuse them?
I'm of a similar mind where those with criminal records are concerned, assuming we can trust that serial killers and child molesters aren't being allowed to enlist; if they've got the patriotic urge to serve their country rather than continue being scumbags, shouldn't we ENCOURAGE that? Same thing goes for if they're trying to rejoin decent society, have discovered that no one will hire them, and go to the military recruitment office as their only chance to make a living honestly; should we tell them to go back to the streets and sell some more drugs or rob some more liquor stores rather than cheering their willingness to risk DEATH in order to live honorable lives and provide for their families? I'm not suggesting that they let anyone DANGEROUS join up, for the obvious reasons, but it's not like they think that their criminal careers will be enhanced if they enlist, so unless they're raving lunatics their intentions are likely to be as good as anyone else's... and I'd sure rather THEY were cannon fodder than draftees.
Besides, didn't they at least USED to give people convicted of certain sorts of offenses the choice between prison and the army in some states? Wasn't the idea that military service would square them away, build character, and make them into good citizens... and that boot camp is so rough that it's punishment enough? It seems like you could make a case for, not just LETTING people with certain sorts of criminal records into the military, but adopting a nationwide policy of offering the army as an alternative to prison for a wide range of offenses; it'd probably be cheaper for the taxpayer (it's expensive to keep someone locked up), we'd be GETTING something for our $, prison crowding would be reduced, and the erstwhile criminals would be getting straightened out rather than meeting up with worse criminals in jail and becoming more hardened and anti-social.
Would you get a better quality of soldier with the draft than by letting those from the "lower echelons" enlist? Of course. Is that the highest goal, the best choice for America? No... and to my mind, that's gotta be the deciding factor. With all due respect to Andy Rooney, I think we should give those at the bottom of the heap a chance to improve themselves (or die with honor) before we yank productive citizens from their lives and force them to go to war.
I'll leave you with a little humor: 1st, there's a crazy calf in India that's been killing and eating chickens, possibly to alleviate a mineral deficiency:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070307/od_nm/india_cow_dc
2nd, here's one you'll have to see to believe; a dog who masturbates like a man, standing on 2 legs and pulling his erection with his paws... and he's ignoring the little female he was supposed to be mating with to do it!! I don't know if this counts as pornographic, or if it's safe for work, but it's a jaw-dropper:
http://www.uselessjunk.com/article_full.php?id=18703
John might be a liar, always keep people waiting, tell ugly racial jokes, cheat on his girlfriends, and shoplift the occasional candy bar, but if you ask anyone who knows him, and knows he does those things, what he's like, they'll say, "He's nice." Heck, John could be a serial killer, and when they interviewed the people in his life after his arrest, and asked them what sort of person he was, they'd STILL say "He was nice"; haven't you seen folks do just that a hundred times?
We call virtually everyone who doesn't perform anti-social acts on US, or on others right in front of us, "nice"; what does calling someone "nice" MEAN, then? We pretend that it means what it's SUPPOSED TO, that the person thus labeled is almost always kind, considerate, etc, but what it ACTUALLY means in most cases is:
1) I love/like them (and if you think that everyone YOU care about is nice, you're either applying unusually stringent guidelines to who you allow in your life or fooling yourself).
2) I've known them a long time... and the longer I've known them, the worse they're allowed to behave and still be called "nice."
3) I'm attracted to them... and either am too blinded by hormones to gauge their niceness or realize they're sorta scummy but don't want my friends to know I'm offering my body to someone like that.
4) I'm NOT attracted to them, but want to say something positive about them so I don't feel like a mean, shallow person for declining to date them.
5) They're a doormat who doesn't argue, stand up for themselves or get in anyone's way.
6) They're shy or quiet.
7) They're charming (charm is meant to manipulate you into liking a person more than they've earned, and manipulation is the opposite of niceness).
8) They're polite (every evil type who isn't a raving lunatic can be as polite as the next person when it suits them).
9) I met them once, and the 2 lines they said to me were polite.
10) They're an acquaintance that hasn't murdered anyone in front of me yet.
I know those last 2 sound facetious, but they're accurate; no one's willing to say "I don't know that person well enough to be sure what they're like." Are we so insecure that we have to pretend that we know everyone well, or that our judgment's so magnificent that we can get accurate readings on people instantly, or maybe that we're so holy that everyone acts like saints around us?
And what about those we see as NOT nice? How often is that based on patterns of bad behavior from them, and how often does it just mean that we don't LIKE them... with that dislike based on pitiful things like their not loving the same sports team or music as we do, or their being fat, unusually dressed or a little too "loud"? And here's a quote from the March 2007 issue of Vogue that stopped me in my tracks:
"I wouldn't call him nice, exactly-he was far too clever for that."
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!! In what way could intelligence prevent or counteract niceness? Lemme guess; unlike with every other talent, if you're smart you're supposed to tone it down so that others don't feel inadequate, and if you don't that's insensitive and therefore not nice? Besides; aren't the smart kids always disliked no matter how utterly innocuous they are? Why should ADULTS be any more rational and fair in their judgments than kids? {sigh}
So; what can we do about all this? The sooner we stop calling everyone who isn't running around covered in blood with a victim's severed head in their hands "nice" the better off we'll all be, so we should resolve to use "nice" only for those people who objectively deserve it, which can be determined via a simple analysis; if someone's nice, you'll be able to come up with a bunch of things they've done that indicate that they're sweet and warm-hearted, with few or no bad behaviors to cancel them out... and if they're NOT nice, the opposite will be true. Once you figure that out, you'll want to adjust your relationships to correspond to how nice each person is, shunning the un-nice even if they're entertaining, and making every effort to get closer to the nice even if there are things about them that put you off... right?
We call virtually everyone who doesn't perform anti-social acts on US, or on others right in front of us, "nice"; what does calling someone "nice" MEAN, then? We pretend that it means what it's SUPPOSED TO, that the person thus labeled is almost always kind, considerate, etc, but what it ACTUALLY means in most cases is:
1) I love/like them (and if you think that everyone YOU care about is nice, you're either applying unusually stringent guidelines to who you allow in your life or fooling yourself).
2) I've known them a long time... and the longer I've known them, the worse they're allowed to behave and still be called "nice."
3) I'm attracted to them... and either am too blinded by hormones to gauge their niceness or realize they're sorta scummy but don't want my friends to know I'm offering my body to someone like that.
4) I'm NOT attracted to them, but want to say something positive about them so I don't feel like a mean, shallow person for declining to date them.
5) They're a doormat who doesn't argue, stand up for themselves or get in anyone's way.
6) They're shy or quiet.
7) They're charming (charm is meant to manipulate you into liking a person more than they've earned, and manipulation is the opposite of niceness).
8) They're polite (every evil type who isn't a raving lunatic can be as polite as the next person when it suits them).
9) I met them once, and the 2 lines they said to me were polite.
10) They're an acquaintance that hasn't murdered anyone in front of me yet.
I know those last 2 sound facetious, but they're accurate; no one's willing to say "I don't know that person well enough to be sure what they're like." Are we so insecure that we have to pretend that we know everyone well, or that our judgment's so magnificent that we can get accurate readings on people instantly, or maybe that we're so holy that everyone acts like saints around us?
And what about those we see as NOT nice? How often is that based on patterns of bad behavior from them, and how often does it just mean that we don't LIKE them... with that dislike based on pitiful things like their not loving the same sports team or music as we do, or their being fat, unusually dressed or a little too "loud"? And here's a quote from the March 2007 issue of Vogue that stopped me in my tracks:
"I wouldn't call him nice, exactly-he was far too clever for that."
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!! In what way could intelligence prevent or counteract niceness? Lemme guess; unlike with every other talent, if you're smart you're supposed to tone it down so that others don't feel inadequate, and if you don't that's insensitive and therefore not nice? Besides; aren't the smart kids always disliked no matter how utterly innocuous they are? Why should ADULTS be any more rational and fair in their judgments than kids? {sigh}
So; what can we do about all this? The sooner we stop calling everyone who isn't running around covered in blood with a victim's severed head in their hands "nice" the better off we'll all be, so we should resolve to use "nice" only for those people who objectively deserve it, which can be determined via a simple analysis; if someone's nice, you'll be able to come up with a bunch of things they've done that indicate that they're sweet and warm-hearted, with few or no bad behaviors to cancel them out... and if they're NOT nice, the opposite will be true. Once you figure that out, you'll want to adjust your relationships to correspond to how nice each person is, shunning the un-nice even if they're entertaining, and making every effort to get closer to the nice even if there are things about them that put you off... right?
While surfing blogs last week, I came across a photo of a cute naked guy leaning up against a horse; you see porn pics all the time online, and normally I ignore them, but my attention was caught because the central element of the pic was uncircumcised, which as an American woman I'm not used to. My "What the heck is THAT? Oh, yeah, right" reaction gave me time to see the accompanying text... claiming that the photo was of Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter. He looks so different with his hair shorter and bangs-free that I hadn't recognized him, but a closer look verified that the face WAS his... what about the body, though? The post said that he's currently starring in the play "Equus" in London, and that, as required by the role, he appears nude in one scene; a little research verified that this was indeed the case (not having been born yesterday, I don't automatically believe what I read on blogs), and turned up many reproductions of a group of promotional photos he'd done for the play, including the one I'd seen... but always cropped short of revealing anything, er, reproductive. Further research revealed that speculation's rampant as to whether the X-rated part of the photo is faked, so I asked my husband, who's a skilled retoucher, to look at it; he said that, while an expert with sufficient time and determination might be able to do almost anything, it'd be awfully unlikely that the trickster would've bothered to add a shadowy outline of the horse's foreleg (behind Radcliffe's legs) which is only visible if you put the pic in Photoshop and "crank up the gamma," so... either one of those guys you hear about who specializes in doing this sort of thing (normally with female celebs) did a surreally perfect job, or it's real. Time will tell.
Wondering why I haven't given you the URL to the photo, so you can judge for yourself? If it's real, it's child pornography under American law, as Radcliffe is 17, and even if it's fake I don't want to potentially help pedophiles find a pic they'll THINK is of an underage boy. And where does UK law stand in all this? The age of consent in the UK is 16, but, if Wikipedia is correct, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 included images of 16-17 year olds in the legal definition of child pornography; clearly, public nudity in a theater doesn't count as pornographic, since he's doing it, but how does the law apply to images promoting plays? I hope some British blogger will post about this, because I've got no idea how to find out; either way, Radcliffe is to be congratulated for being willing to bare all on stage to prove conclusively that there's more to him than just everyone's favorite wizard.
Scott Adams has made another brilliant point about the behavior of the turds of the world, in the Dilbert comic of 3-1-07... and since he revealed in a recent post on his blog that he uses some Google service that sends him an email every time a new post is made about him so that he can check it out, let me say; Hi Scott, nice to see you, I post on your blog as "Omni" and am such a big fan that I got my husband Dilbert boxers. Anyways, the comic is here
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070301.html
In it, Dilbert asks what I assume is someone from marketing, "Do your estimates include tax and shipping?" and she replies "Relax, relax, calm down. There's no need to go all nuts about the tax and shipping. It's under control. Take a deep breath." It's right out of the manipulator's handbook; if you want to stop a conversation from going along its current lines, usually because it's an argument and you're losing but it can be anything you're uncomfortable with, throw a comment at the other person that'll make them react defensively, so that the topic becomes about THEM rather than whatever you didn't like. Accusing them of being upset is the standard ploy, because not only is it difficult to disprove it but the longer they try to the more likely it becomes that they'll GET upset and make it look like you were right... and the less likely that they'll ever go back to the topic that dismayed you.
I saw a hilarious movie that I'd never heard of before, a mockumentary called "Farce of the Penguins"
http://www.blockbuster.com:80/online/catalog/movieDetails?movieId=284673
It's full of sexual and bodily-function humor, provided by some of the funniest people in the world, to go with what's supposed to just be stock footage of penguins; that doesn't make it sound anywhere near as great as it is, so just trust me and watch this wickedly funny story of a shy penguin trying to get some "penguin booty."
And lastly: A few nights ago, my husband and I were having one of those nonsensical conversations that're common with long-time marrieds, and as all too often happens he produced some protracted flatulence; when I yelped "Do you know how disgusting you are?!!" he replied by holding up 8 fingers... and then rotating his hands sideways. When I exclaimed in astonishment at his cleverness (an 8 on its side is the symbol for infinity), he expressed pleasure that I'd gotten it instantly; when I smugly asked if he was aware of how amazing his wife is... he did the 8-finger thing again.
That almost made up for when we were at our friends' house the previous weekend, and he went into the room adjoining the one we were all in, without even a door between them, and farted loudly, much to their horror and my mortification; like a 3 year old, he somehow thought that if we couldn't see him we couldn't HEAR him. Marriage, as I always say, is GROSS... but it also has its moments.
Wondering why I haven't given you the URL to the photo, so you can judge for yourself? If it's real, it's child pornography under American law, as Radcliffe is 17, and even if it's fake I don't want to potentially help pedophiles find a pic they'll THINK is of an underage boy. And where does UK law stand in all this? The age of consent in the UK is 16, but, if Wikipedia is correct, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 included images of 16-17 year olds in the legal definition of child pornography; clearly, public nudity in a theater doesn't count as pornographic, since he's doing it, but how does the law apply to images promoting plays? I hope some British blogger will post about this, because I've got no idea how to find out; either way, Radcliffe is to be congratulated for being willing to bare all on stage to prove conclusively that there's more to him than just everyone's favorite wizard.
Scott Adams has made another brilliant point about the behavior of the turds of the world, in the Dilbert comic of 3-1-07... and since he revealed in a recent post on his blog that he uses some Google service that sends him an email every time a new post is made about him so that he can check it out, let me say; Hi Scott, nice to see you, I post on your blog as "Omni" and am such a big fan that I got my husband Dilbert boxers. Anyways, the comic is here
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070301.html
In it, Dilbert asks what I assume is someone from marketing, "Do your estimates include tax and shipping?" and she replies "Relax, relax, calm down. There's no need to go all nuts about the tax and shipping. It's under control. Take a deep breath." It's right out of the manipulator's handbook; if you want to stop a conversation from going along its current lines, usually because it's an argument and you're losing but it can be anything you're uncomfortable with, throw a comment at the other person that'll make them react defensively, so that the topic becomes about THEM rather than whatever you didn't like. Accusing them of being upset is the standard ploy, because not only is it difficult to disprove it but the longer they try to the more likely it becomes that they'll GET upset and make it look like you were right... and the less likely that they'll ever go back to the topic that dismayed you.
I saw a hilarious movie that I'd never heard of before, a mockumentary called "Farce of the Penguins"
http://www.blockbuster.com:80/online/catalog/movieDetails?movieId=284673
It's full of sexual and bodily-function humor, provided by some of the funniest people in the world, to go with what's supposed to just be stock footage of penguins; that doesn't make it sound anywhere near as great as it is, so just trust me and watch this wickedly funny story of a shy penguin trying to get some "penguin booty."
And lastly: A few nights ago, my husband and I were having one of those nonsensical conversations that're common with long-time marrieds, and as all too often happens he produced some protracted flatulence; when I yelped "Do you know how disgusting you are?!!" he replied by holding up 8 fingers... and then rotating his hands sideways. When I exclaimed in astonishment at his cleverness (an 8 on its side is the symbol for infinity), he expressed pleasure that I'd gotten it instantly; when I smugly asked if he was aware of how amazing his wife is... he did the 8-finger thing again.
That almost made up for when we were at our friends' house the previous weekend, and he went into the room adjoining the one we were all in, without even a door between them, and farted loudly, much to their horror and my mortification; like a 3 year old, he somehow thought that if we couldn't see him we couldn't HEAR him. Marriage, as I always say, is GROSS... but it also has its moments.
I learned this skill the hard way; I came from an abusive family where wrongness was seen as incontrovertible proof of moral failing and absolute worthlessness, so I figured out at an early age how to stop being wrong in self-defense. Don't worry, it's easier than it looks; heck, 95% of wrongness can be eliminated by just following the 1st rule:
1) If you don't know anything about a topic, DON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
We have such an intense desire to be seen as one of the group that when the conversation switches to something we know nothing about we have the overwhelming urge to keep babbling; this goes x10 if someone asks us directly about it and suddenly we're in the spotlight. If you try to say something that sounds like what the others have said, or that you THINK is somehow related to the topic, you've got a reasonable chance of getting away with it, which is why everyone does it... but every time you do it you take a major risk of being wrong.
2) Remember that knowing a little about a topic is NOT the same as knowing ALL about it.
It's SO tempting to extrapolate from what you DO know and try to make it seem like your expertise is far greater than it actually is; the payoff is being admired for being so knowledgeable... but the downside is that anyone who knows more than you do can slam you for being wrong.
3) Refrain from arguing an issue with someone who knows more about it than you, OR is quoting someone who does.
If you disagree with someone who knows more, it's almost certain that you're wrong, no matter how POSITIVE you are of your rightness. If you can't bear leaving their assertions unchallenged, say something like "Ok, I'm confused now-let's look it up"; that way, if the other person's right, you won't be wrong because you never SAID anything to the contrary.
And; the wisdom of those who know more than you stays the same when they're being quoted. It shouldn't even be necessary to say that, but all too often someone will argue vehemently against the words of experts because the person they're arguing with is NOT an expert, which they believe in some misty way cancels out the experts' authority.
4) Understand that using "I feel" does NOT shield you from being wrong.
Some folks think that, since "feelings are never wrong," if they preface their comments with "I feel" they won't be disputed... but it just ain't so. First of all, if you follow "I feel" with anything other than an EMOTION you're automatically wrong; secondly, "I feel" doesn't magically prevent people from seeing and calling you on your wrongness.
5) Understand that phrasing something as an opinion doesn't shield you either.
As with "I feel," some folks think that stating something as an opinion means they can't be contradicted; in reality, if there are facts about an issue, and you speak contrary to them, it changes nothing if your statement was framed as an opinion... you're still wrong, no matter how long you've held the opinion or how strongly you feel about it.
6) If you're not sure you got your info from an expert, quote your source rather than using that info as facts.
You hear about something on a blog, in a magazine, from your brother, etc, and later on when someone brings up that topic you repeat whatever you heard as if it were a fact... but if it's NOT, you're now wrong. Instead of passing on such info as if you were relaying facts, say "Some blogger/a magazine/my brother SAID..."; the blogger, magazine or brother may be shown to be wrong, but YOU are NOT wrong... all you did was quote someone.
7) Be honest with yourself about the quality of your memory.
Do an objective analysis as to how good your memory is, both long and short term, in general and about specific things like names and dates, and use that analysis to judge the likelihood that what you're about to give as factual info might be misremembered; if you're not 100% sure your memory can be trusted for that fact, say that, while you think it MIGHT be X, it also might NOT be X so you need to double-check... and whatever the true answer is, you never made a claim so you're not wrong.
8) Remember that some facts change over time.
For things like the current scientific dogma or the "news" about if celebrity X is pregnant or just gaining weight (if you read science magazines you know that the former changes even more than the latter), say "The last thing I heard/read about that was..."; that way, if the facts are different now, you're not wrong... you just told what you heard or read.
9) Don't label differing opinions as "wrong."
A real opinion, in other words on a topic where there's no factually-provable right answer, CAN'T be wrong... and if you say it is, YOU are wrong. No matter how strongly you feel about YOUR opinion, just say you disagree, and that's it.
10) Think twice before attempting to prove someone wrong.
If you get to this point, you've challenged the other person's assertion and they've held firm, which suggests that they think they've got facts to back it up; assuming they're not an idiot, you likely have a 50% chance of being wrong... why take the risk?
Anyone can do this stuff, but virtually no one does, so if YOU adopt these strategies you'll have an edge when trying to impress people... and in marriage, hehehehehe.
1) If you don't know anything about a topic, DON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
We have such an intense desire to be seen as one of the group that when the conversation switches to something we know nothing about we have the overwhelming urge to keep babbling; this goes x10 if someone asks us directly about it and suddenly we're in the spotlight. If you try to say something that sounds like what the others have said, or that you THINK is somehow related to the topic, you've got a reasonable chance of getting away with it, which is why everyone does it... but every time you do it you take a major risk of being wrong.
2) Remember that knowing a little about a topic is NOT the same as knowing ALL about it.
It's SO tempting to extrapolate from what you DO know and try to make it seem like your expertise is far greater than it actually is; the payoff is being admired for being so knowledgeable... but the downside is that anyone who knows more than you do can slam you for being wrong.
3) Refrain from arguing an issue with someone who knows more about it than you, OR is quoting someone who does.
If you disagree with someone who knows more, it's almost certain that you're wrong, no matter how POSITIVE you are of your rightness. If you can't bear leaving their assertions unchallenged, say something like "Ok, I'm confused now-let's look it up"; that way, if the other person's right, you won't be wrong because you never SAID anything to the contrary.
And; the wisdom of those who know more than you stays the same when they're being quoted. It shouldn't even be necessary to say that, but all too often someone will argue vehemently against the words of experts because the person they're arguing with is NOT an expert, which they believe in some misty way cancels out the experts' authority.
4) Understand that using "I feel" does NOT shield you from being wrong.
Some folks think that, since "feelings are never wrong," if they preface their comments with "I feel" they won't be disputed... but it just ain't so. First of all, if you follow "I feel" with anything other than an EMOTION you're automatically wrong; secondly, "I feel" doesn't magically prevent people from seeing and calling you on your wrongness.
5) Understand that phrasing something as an opinion doesn't shield you either.
As with "I feel," some folks think that stating something as an opinion means they can't be contradicted; in reality, if there are facts about an issue, and you speak contrary to them, it changes nothing if your statement was framed as an opinion... you're still wrong, no matter how long you've held the opinion or how strongly you feel about it.
6) If you're not sure you got your info from an expert, quote your source rather than using that info as facts.
You hear about something on a blog, in a magazine, from your brother, etc, and later on when someone brings up that topic you repeat whatever you heard as if it were a fact... but if it's NOT, you're now wrong. Instead of passing on such info as if you were relaying facts, say "Some blogger/a magazine/my brother SAID..."; the blogger, magazine or brother may be shown to be wrong, but YOU are NOT wrong... all you did was quote someone.
7) Be honest with yourself about the quality of your memory.
Do an objective analysis as to how good your memory is, both long and short term, in general and about specific things like names and dates, and use that analysis to judge the likelihood that what you're about to give as factual info might be misremembered; if you're not 100% sure your memory can be trusted for that fact, say that, while you think it MIGHT be X, it also might NOT be X so you need to double-check... and whatever the true answer is, you never made a claim so you're not wrong.
8) Remember that some facts change over time.
For things like the current scientific dogma or the "news" about if celebrity X is pregnant or just gaining weight (if you read science magazines you know that the former changes even more than the latter), say "The last thing I heard/read about that was..."; that way, if the facts are different now, you're not wrong... you just told what you heard or read.
9) Don't label differing opinions as "wrong."
A real opinion, in other words on a topic where there's no factually-provable right answer, CAN'T be wrong... and if you say it is, YOU are wrong. No matter how strongly you feel about YOUR opinion, just say you disagree, and that's it.
10) Think twice before attempting to prove someone wrong.
If you get to this point, you've challenged the other person's assertion and they've held firm, which suggests that they think they've got facts to back it up; assuming they're not an idiot, you likely have a 50% chance of being wrong... why take the risk?
Anyone can do this stuff, but virtually no one does, so if YOU adopt these strategies you'll have an edge when trying to impress people... and in marriage, hehehehehe.
The Beware List is an accumulation of red flags that I've noticed will very consistently indica