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[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 20, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, November 20th, 2010Okay. Maybe that’s a few years away.
 This is a still from a video of a training session with the new TSA robots. |
I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I have a profound fear of flying. It’s not that I’m afraid of flying per sé; in fact, I’ve skydived, gone hang gliding, been in a hot air balloon, and actually love being in any kind of flying vehicle. If I could afford it, I’d love to get a pilot’s license. No, my fear of flying is a very recent development, and is restricted to a fear of flying on a major airline, especially in America. Mostly because I’m afraid of how I’d react to the latest advancements in TSA procedures. And so really I guess my fear is for the well-being of TSA personnel. I really, really do not understand people who accept the newly-instituted TSA pat-down policies. I mean, I can understand why President Obama says they’re frustrating but necessary, and why John Boehner brags he’ll be flying commercial airlines more than his predecessor. Obama gets to go straight from Air Force One to Cadillac One, and Boehner – like other politicians – is exempted from all the ass-grabbing going on. What I don’t understand is why apparently 4 out of 5 Americans support the new scanners. It’s hard to decide which recent incidents are most appalling. The woman who had her breasts exposed while agents laughed? The 4-year-old boy who was strip searched? Or in light of the UCSF scientists’ letter highlighting radiation risks, perhaps the recovering cancer patients like Thomas Sawyer, who had his urostomy bag knocked loose, leaving him covered in urine, or the former flight attendant and breast cancer survivor who was forced to remove her prosthetic breast. Or maybe the absurdity of patriotic soldiers returning from the wars that are supposed to be saving us from the terrorists having their nail clippers confiscated. Keep in mind this was one of 233 people toting assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns. For a much saner and complete roundup by an actual security expert, see this Bruce Schneier post from the other day. More images and video below. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Johnny Can’t Read
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 16, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010Or write. Or think critically. Or contribute anything useful to society. But will probably make a good foreclosure robosigner.
I’ve longed for years to arrive at this point in my life. The point where I begin the early stages of my planned curmudgeonliness, and spend all my time complaining about “young whipper-snappers”, and how “by golly, we didn’t do things that way in MY day“. As a ninth grade dropout who remains without a degree but would have loved a different life in which I had either had less arrogance or more firm guidance as a teen with an above-average IQ, I’ve spent much of my adult life lamenting the sad de-evolution of education. The focus on test-score-driven funding and the creation of “degree mills” has left us surrounded by an amazingly dumb and inarticulate group of 18 to 24-year-olds. It’s vaguely appropriate that they’re already being called Generation Z, because their brains are obviously snagging a few. The recent flap at UCF involving widespread cheating was telling enough in its own way, and I think it’s already common knowledge that the students of the last couple decades confuse learning with the relocation of information. As is evident in the success of the term paper mills that have been making news since at least 2006. What is probably even more telling in the case of the Florida cheating scandal though, is the students’ reactions. They of course are trying to assert that cheating is “simply how it’s done these days“, and blaming the professor. I’m going to let this little bunch of morally decrepit miscreants speak for themselves. Being the cute little Digital Natives that they are, they’ve saved me some video embedding by doing it all on their school news website with a piece called UCF Students Give Their Side in Cheating Scandal With Video. I think you should pay special attention to the Quinn Confrontation video, brought to you by a young gentleman (or “fuckstick”, as a friend of mine referred to him) named Logan Herlihy. Herlihy is probably destined for success in cable news. He seems to be comfortable confusing news with vapid sensationalism, and as he says on his ModelMayhem page: “as cheezy as it may sound I really believe my body is my temple. I come from a great genetic line my grandfather and mother were both film stars and my mother and father were both international models back in the 70′s“. Reading that kind of self-assessment makes me think that while the educational system gets rid of that psyche-scarring “D” as a grade, we should add a new letter. “P”. For “precious”.
Daylight Slaving Time
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 5, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, November 5th, 2010Daylight savings time is clearly a tool of those in power to keep the working man enslaved. And even if it isn’t, it’s freakin’ annoying.
I’ve always been a little disappointed by the fact that with all the breakthroughs in quantum physics of the last century, the closest we’ve gotten to exploring time travel remains Daylight Savings Time. To me, the government-mandated arbitrary tinkering with my clocks is nothing more than a petty annoyance; in most cases it just means that all the meetings next week that don’t happen at their scheduled time will just not happen at a different time they weren’t scheduled at. Or that on Monday some really ballsy numb-nut will say the reason they were late was that they managed to make it all the way through Sunday without knowing what time everyone else thought it was. Although there’s a liberal conspiracy theory that the latest change in DST dates was engineered by Texan politicians to give big oil billions in tax breaks, we all know that it was in fact Dick Cheney showing off his god-like authority by bending time itself to his desires. And if you dig deeply enough into the history of Daylight Saving Time, you quickly learn that it was mostly engineered to enslave the working man while giving the wealthy more leisure time. This is especially evident in the fact that TV ratings drop 16% the Monday after the time change (presumably because the working stiffs are too tired and disoriented to know when their shows are on), and that according to the book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time
4 Quick Tips To Help Solve Your Procrastination Problems
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 4, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, November 4th, 2010If you’re doing things to stop procrastinating, aren’t you really just putting off procrastination itself?
It seems like people are always talking about being more productive, and how they have to stop procrastinating. When did we all turn into little mini-corporations with deadlines and productivity quotas? Personally, I think the whole thing is part of a vast conspiracy to keep us on edge. And shopping. One built in problem with this whole procrastination vs productivity issue is the assumption that the things you think you should be doing actually matter. I mean, maybe it’s okay if you never launch that quarterly newsletter devoted to the latest developments in competitive duck herding, and maybe you don’t need to finally start blogging. At least 144 million other people seem to have that covered for you. But so far we’re just looking at this on a personal level. On a societal level, I would comfortably argue that the fact that we live in the most productive period in history has been relatively unproductive. First of all, as we recently pointed out, it just makes us run out of everything. But more significantly, in spite of our ever-expanding knowledge, technological developments, and ability to produce, people still kill each other with the same regularity, starve every day, and are depressed and sick enough to keep a $643 billion pharmaceutical industry in business. So relax. Stop beating yourself up. If you only do one thing today, make sure it’s nothing. Below are some tips. Feel free to share any of your own. When you get around to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Are You Beginning To See A Pattern Here?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 26, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010If you are, it’s probably just a mild case of Pareidolia or the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
 Some people can instantly tell how many stars there are in this image. Some have to count. |
I just watched the movie The Number 23, and in spite of the film’s theme of obsessive recognition of numerological patterns, the only pattern I’m beginning to see is that I prefer Jim Carrey in comedic roles. But it did get me thinking about how we perceive things, and the kind of nuttiness that can take over a person’s brain when they first get exposed to things like astrology and numerology (or maybe Fox News). First of all, I’ve always found it interesting that although people typically can’t enumerate five or more objects quickly unless they’re arranged in a pattern, they can, on the other hand, identify random patterns as something meaningful when there’s nothing there at all. That is of course, unless they suffer from Simultanagnosia, in which case they tragically can only recognize ONE object at a time. Combine these innaccuracies of perception, and pretty quickly you realize that we’re probably wrong an awful lot of the time. If you think you’re seeing meaningful patterns in the appearance of numbers or objects for instance, it’s possible that you’re falling prey to something like the clustering illusion or some form of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. All of this frailty of human perception is fine and dandy until you add the emotional component, and end up with a serious case of confirmation bias, which is why I jokingly referenced Fox News at the top. Much like a psychic, media organizations have – whether knowingly or unknowingly – gotten very good at manipulating subjective validation to feed the bandwagon effect. As a result, we end up with a bizarre variant of anthropomorphism, in which people ascribe human and in sometimes superhuman characteristics to talking heads. A pathetic fallacy indeed. I could go on about this for hours, but my cat is giving me that “Oh God, you’re not creating another Wikipedia linkfest masquerading as an article, are you?” look. Besides, I haven’t checked my astrology for tomorrow. So for fun, see if you can find the hidden message in this text by selecting the “xth” word of each sentence.