Yum!

January, February, March, April, May, June....fucking June?  I really do have zero follow-through don't I.  Perhaps someone should get me a smart phone that has an accessible and usable task list that I can access to remind myself to do things.

As I sit and watch Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" again with my two young children I am faced with a certain amount of trepidation of the future and the place of humans in it.  Since the release of "The Happening" (in all its melodramatic and unoriginal glory) as well as the winter that was not, I find that I think that the future may or may not be in jeopardy as we know it.

When that ridiculous guy said that we should expect insects to increase in size in the next 50 years and he forgot to think about the fact that insects breathe through spiracles in their skin, if they get bigger then their spiracles get bigger, meaning more susceptibility to toxins and diseases. Insects were never much larger or smaller than they are now.  

People will believe anything that you tell them if it is dark and  scary enough.  After all, 2% rise in sea level over the next 15 years is nowhere near as alarming as 500% increase in killer bee attacks over the same time period.  (By the way, one of those is actually true).  My point is this, we need to relax a little on the paranoia, unless it comes to Republican policy.  (I stand by the maggot in the taxidermist shop metaphor).

I once said that I thought both sides of the climate change argument were missing the real point and I stand by that.  I also think that people are focusing on the wrong things when they side with the locavore movement, anti-genetically modified food, and increased dietary diversity.  But, these are points that I will probably never get around to talking about.

I shudder to think that I am slowly becoming right in this weird time of 2012.

Shocking

I keep coming back here to realize that I still have this blog active. I am trying to figure out why I cannot stick with it or anything. I think I think that I think people may or may not read it. I had some friends in Orlando who used to keep track of it but they stopped due to one or more of the following reasons: 1)I am a lot more boring than I think I am. 2)My life got a lot less interesting. 3)Their lives got a lot more interesting. 4)We all have kids now so the world seems much less drab and drum.

I don't know the answer but in private times I think that I know the answer. At any rate, I can honestly say that I don't just blog during election times, it just seems that way. I go back every so often and look at my original posts (you know, the ones that will keep me from ever being in public office) and think about how angry I seem. I was simply trying to be snarky and sarcastic but I probably came across more dickish than anything. That is OK, if I want to make a career out of it I can always write for a local entertainment paper. After all, the RFT or whatever you call it in other cities is simply a place for no-talent writer hacks to try to smooth out the rough edges of their version of the English language. I also seem to believe that most of those idiots are there simply to hear themselves talk anyway. After all, how much of a loser do you need to be to write something that no one will ever read. It would be like publishing a blog that no one will ever read...

Humdrum - ho hum

So, what's the haps? How goes it? Any changes in the basicality of life all over the place? (please do not look up basicality, but pronounce it in your head as BAY-SIC-AL-IT-EE, practice it twice....thanks.) I have been trying to understand politics lately. I have been trying to understand the climate change problem, (and I think that both sides are essentially missing the primary point) and I have been trying to stop understanding our economy. Part of the problem of being an intelligent monkey is that I have a basic idea of how basic micro- and macro-economics work, and thus have an understanding of the royal goat-fuck that our economy is becoming. But first, let me say farewell to many Dems and the joyride that have taken our country on in the last 2 years. Ah, no one understood you or what you were trying to accomplish...and you didn't explain. It serves you right. Now, Republicans....welcome? I unfortunately do not have a sandwich or anything to drink to offer you, seeing as I am still eating my own shoes from your last set of policies. I equate you all and your policies to being a maggot released in a taxidermist's shop.

Enough of that. I am too far left to think that things will ever be right, now. Republicans, please just fuck off and leave me alone. You sell people a set of bad ideas that polarize everyone and make sure that people are scared of their neighbors. Republicans tend to make me fear white people in large groups. I think of militias and fat white dudes trying to play military.

I just am tired of having to claim I am Canadian when I fly to Europe.

Assume the Position

As things spin delightfully out of the control of the average person the delicate question arises, do we have hemorrhoids (metaphorically speaking) in this country. And by hemorrhoids, I mean a condition in an uncomfortable place that leads us to be a little more embarrassed and a little crabbier than we might otherwise be. Do we have a personal problem that we don't want to share but instead do our best to displace all of the discomfort we feel to those around us?

I find that I like the above analogy to link many of the issues facing the US today. Global Warming/Climate Change: Oh man, does this analogy work. Take aside the "facts" that people do not want to pay attention to and focus on the minutiae of the dilemma itself. See, when you have a hemorrhoid, you do not care how it happened or when it happened or what you did to cause it, you just want the soothing crème to make it all better. From a GWCC standpoint, people are given facts about it, told how it happened, told what we are doing to make it worse; but we do not care about any of that, they just want it fixed. Now, if I told you that the only way to get rid of your hemorrhoid was to stop drinking everything but water, stop eating all fast food, and drive twice a month, people would say "I will just slather a little cream on it". This is what we do, we slather a little cream on it. Not enough, mind you, to actually help it heal or to even stop it from getting worse, but the cream soothes a little bit and makes us feel like we are actually doing something to make the hemorrhoid better.

It is not just GWCC that this applies to; I can write pages within this analogy to cover the entire economic crisis. Appropriately, that would be about 19 pages long, or about 2 pages shorter than the average department store credit card terms agreement. In this basic situation, you are the cause of the hemorrhoid and you are mad that the only people who have the cream to soothe it think that it is funny to keep slipping you drywall spackle in the Preparation H package instead. But, the problem is that if you slightly change your diet and drink more water than soda, the hemorrhoid will eventually go away, as long as you stop contributing to the causes.

Stretch it baby, stretch it.

But it really gets interesting and fun when you think about what we actually eat and drink as an issue. I have become a Pollanist, which must really feed his ego to have a movement named after him, but he is correct on many things. In this situation, the hemorrhoid is easy to understand and easy to see. It is dastardly hard to cure, but the soothers lead to a solution that leads to the cure and in the end, a stronger, ahem, system. The problem with this hemorrhoid is that not everyone's personal hemorrhoid hurts enough to actually cause action. In this situation, the right people are not in pain and the wrong people do not recognize the pain even if they feel it. The people with the worst hemorrhoids seem to be immune to pain or uncaring of the pain process. These people are the extreme lower class and poverty stricken. Others have the hemorrhoid and feel the pain of it, but would rather buy a softer chair than fix the hemorrhoid. The worst people in this analogy are causing the hemorrhoid but they charge so much for it that they can afford the really nice chair to sit on.

I am taking this analogy too far I think.

The point is this: Preparation H is a good medicine to treat hemorrhoids. But keep in mind that hemorrhoid is always linked to something else. If we treat the something else, we avoid the hemorrhoid altogether. Also, I just spellchecked this document, and I did not spell hemorrhoid correctly once in the entire thing.

Let's boil some water!!

Here is something fun to think about. In the next 10 years or so, hopefully, we will deal with something called Geothermal Energy. Now this is some cool shit that is really scary at the same time. It works quite simply on paper. It will cost billions of dollars to do, but the benefits for the average person will be ridiculously awesome. There are two main parts

The first part works like this: In the earth there is an area that remains a constant temperature all the time at any time of year and at any latitude. You dig down a little anywhere in the earth, about 25 feet in North America up to about 200 feet in eastern Siberia, there is a zone of part of the earth that will remain a constant temperature. This temperature is 55 degrees. This means that tapping into this temperature resource gives us a perfect starting point for all of our energy. In the middle of the summer, when it is 100 degrees outside and you want your house to be 70 degrees, you have the ability to pump air that is 55 degrees to cool your house and that is your starting point. If you want to have 70 degrees in the winter and it is 30 degrees outside, you start at 55 degrees and work your way from there. This is a simple concept and the technology is there. This will save people billions upon billions of dollars in resources and energy costs. It will cost billions to set up and the rewards will be far away. Sucks, but that is the way it usually works.

The second part is even more exciting, but effects particular parts of the world more than others. Deeper in the ground is the true Geothermal Energy that we get excited about and that we all here about. It is essentially harnessing the awesome power of magma flows, steam and underground volcanoes to generate the heat required to boil water that powers all power plants to create electricity. (Did you know that, all electricity comes from boiling water)? This is much more expensive to get, sort of. If we do #1 and get that going then digging the extra amount down to the hot stuff is actually easier to get to when you start.

I hate specifics and the love the science behind this stuff, but I will not get into it. It should be neat though. I think this idea makes more sense than trying to duplicate a small star inside a concrete funnel to boil water. However, when you think about it, it’s all kind of crazy when you think about it. We are going to tap an underground super volcano like a beer keg or control a continuous nuclear explosion in a tube so that we can heat and power our homes. It is all neat, but kind of scary in a science fiction way.

How about we set up windmills and solar panels instead, since that is cheaper, easier and a little less fuckin’ dangerous?

Stochasticity

Welcome! Welcome!

Today I am talking about Stochasticity, or randomness. I am specifically talking about the lottery and the fact that I have become like many many other Americans and have begun the process of playing the lottery. The reasoning is this:

The odds of the Missouri lottery picking my particular set of numbers is approximately 7,983,845:1. However, the odds of my winning the lottery is about 50%.

Read that again and think for a second, I will wait.

. . .

Ok, here is the logic. Someone is going to win the lottery. It may be me, it may not be me. There are 7,983,845 chances that it could be me. There are actually only two outcomes from my perspective: I either win or I lose. There is not a single reason for me to not buy a ticket and play the lottery. There are approximately 104 drawings every year. I could spend $104 per year for a chance that I might win the lottery. There are certain things that make this a much better idea than it seems.

For instance, the odds that I might become President are about 10,000,000:1. Which means that I have a better chance of winning the lottery in Missouri than I do of actually becoming president. Even crazier the odds are about the same that I will win an academy award as they are as my bowling a 300 game. (Thanks to Natalie Josef's little article from http://www.divinecaroline.com/)

At any rate, her article says the exact opposite of what I am saying. However, I think we agree more than she would think. (Not that she will ever read this anyway). The idea that we should ignore TV is quite true. However, I digress.

The lottery is a poor man's buyable hope. The idea that every man or woman can win uncounted millions and have a different life is quite intriguing. I personally do not think that I will win, but I quit smoking 2 years ago and I spent a lot more on that than I ever will on the lottery.

Stochasticity is a fascinating idea. It is an idea of comfort because it removes the responsibility of our actions and places "fate" in the hands of the "gods".

Sleep well.