THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT OF FEEL-GOOD...

     So how far in the minority am I for not believing any, not a single one, of the many posts you've doubtlessly seen on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit (oh yeah, and here on Blogspot), etc. is real? You know, those ones which often come with an inspiring story or perhaps a tale of revenge or some other comeuppance?

     Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

allegedly from a pissed off One Percenter

allegedly from a store's entire staff in reaction to a bad manager

allegedly given to a family with an autistic child

allegedly written by an active duty US soldier

allegedly after Zachary had come out of the closet on Facebook

allegedly given to a woman seen "controversially" breastfeeding in public

     I don't believe any of it. All these feels-inducing human interest stories come across as having been staged. And no, I still wouldn't believe it if any of the above scenarios had been caught on video because those too are easily staged. They're all too easy to fake and just seem like easy and extremely convenient ways to get attention and page views for agenda-driven websites and forums. It's confirmation bias run amok.

     After all, is it really any different than, "Can you believe what so&so did the other night with such&such?"?

     "No, what? Tell me. This I gotta hear!"

ADDENDUM: Here's some more confirmation bias courtesy of NBC news :-)

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Gay-Server-Tip-Lifestyle-Receipt-Discrepancy-233040811.html 

COGITO ERGO SUM ERGO MORIAR...

     I've been reading a book by Jim Holt called Why Does the World Exist?. It's been an interesting romp through various philosophers and thinkers over the ages from the Greeks to today concerning the question. The book, of course, does not resolve the issue. No, it's a series of interviews and explorations of man's attempts to resolve this question. Along the way, you will find yourself falling into one camp or another or some mixture thereof.

     He ends the book reflecting on the essence of self. It got me to thinking (once again) about how existence itself is the ultimate joke. It makes me wonder if the Watchmen's Comedian would have agreed?

     How is it a joke? Well...you didn't ask for your existence, but you were given it anyway, and it will be taken away from you whether you like it or not. Our lives, at least when compared to the eons that the universe has existed, are likenable to the quantum foam. As quantum physics points out, space is not really empty. Even in the vacuum, at the tiniest of levels, particle pairs emerge from spacetime itself but only fleetingly.
     Their existence, like ours, is on borrowed time and they will soon return to the nothingness whence they came. It happens all around us all the time and all the while not violating physical principles.

     The universe is what, about fourteen billion years old?, and it will continue for an untold amount of eons. And do we get? If we're lucky, about eighty years. Eighty years versus fourteen billion.
     And it's a wonderful thing too. Even if your life is shitty, existence is still the most fucking amazingly amazing thing ever in all of ever...but it's not yours to keep. You get a piece of it and then you lose it...forever.  Sure, non-existence could be likened to the billions of years you didn't exist and thought of as not such a big deal to return to but that doesn't bring me any comfort...at least not after learning what existence has to offer.

      The thing is, when I was born, I didn't know what I had been missing out on. I also couldn't know what I had been missing out on. I had to figure it all out (or at least a portion of it). But when it comes to dying, you know know damn well what you're going to be missing out on (or at least that you're going to be missing out). It's so impishly cruel to do to someone.
     Either way, I assure you I will be kicking and screaming like a little bitch when my time comes. I will hold on to reality for as long as I can muster.

     Are suitably arranged brains required for consciousness or do the particles themselves comprising the universe come ready-made with such an endowment? It makes me wonder of life's other forms. Are insects aware of their existence? Do they have a sense of self? Do trees? How about slime molds, or even bacteria? How many animals are born only to die within minutes of their birth? How many seeds sprout only to grow a few leaves before dying? And even with humanity, after watching a documentary on World War II from Japan's point of view, there were babies suffocated by their mothers in caves under orders by their military to prevent their location from being discovered by the Americans. Those babies had only a few months of existence before they were returned to the void. It just seems so ridiculously pointless.
     I guess...take existence while you can and make of it what you will for surely it shall soon be gone is all that can be said.

      I will return to the void neither silently nor with begrudging acceptance. I will return with a "Fuck you!" on my lips. How dare "you", whoever "you" are, tease me with such wonders only to capriciously take them away!!! I guess what bugs me most, is like those particle pairs mentioned above, the choice to exist and to cease to exist were never mine to make. Stupid random chance...

      In the meantime, I shall live and enjoy myself :-)

ICE-AGES, IMPACTS, & DISEASE - oh my!

     It was just something that came up the other day in conversation but it left me wondering about the causes of extinction in plants and animals. It can't always be impacts, supervolcanoes, and ice-ages. Nor would it be fair to always blame humanity for these problems (though I'm sure with our worldwide presence and relative ease with which we can travel we do share some of the blame). After all, over 90% of all the species which have ever lived are extinct and were extinct long before homo sapiens entered the scene. As George Carlin would say, "We didn't kill them all. They just disappeared. That's what nature does."

     It had me wondering what role disease has to play. White Nose Syndrome is devastating bat populations in North America. Mortality rates make the Black Death look like a walk in the park by comparison. 90%-95% of bats who contract this fungus die and at this point I'm not even sure if those "lucky" 5 or so percent are naturally immune or simply got lucky. But still, it's like the Drafa Plague for bats...

     Fossil records only show that species have gone extinct and can only date those extinctions relatively or within a plus-or-minus of thousands to millions of years. With rare exceptions like the K-T Extinction event which famously wiped out the dinosaurs can it be shown that 80% of the species alive at the time perished in short order but even then, it only happened instantly in geological terms. Overall hundreds or even thousands of years may have passed before that 80% threshold was reached.

     But still, what of disease? Recorded history has only been around for a mere 6000 years and it's only become detailed recently. Yes, humans are responsible for some extinctions like the dodo bird but I don't think it's productive to reflexively blame humanity as we haven't been around long enough to notice how else the Earth disposes of species.
      Even if the White Nose Syndrome isn't 100% fatal, could it crash the bat populations to the point where it would be impossible for them to recover? The disease was only noticed in 2007. If a thousand years is the blink of an eye in geologic time, what is a decade or two? Is it possible that several bat species will have gone extinct before 2017 or 2027? And if so, how often has something like this happened? Viruses, bacteria, and fungi are insidious creatures and the former two have had quite a head start evolutionarily speaking.

      I don't know but like I said...it makes me wonder.

WHILE NOT BLIND TO COLOR, I'M STILL COLORBLIND...

     I'm not sure what the point of these tests are except to embarrass me but the following panels (left to right) are tests for three types of colorblindness called protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia respectively.
     Protanopia means the subject has difficulty distinguishing colors in the green-yellow-red end of the spectrum. "For a protanope, the brightness of red, orange, and yellow are much reduced compared to normal." It can be so bad for some people that colors like red appear black or dark gray. It also states that "[v]iolet, lavender, and purple are indistinguishable from various shades of blue because their reddish components are so dimmed as to be invisible."
     Deuteranopia sufferers also have difficulty distinguishing in the green-yellow-red end of the spectrum. "A deuteranope suffers the same hue discrimination problems as protanopes, but without the abnormal dimming."
     Tritanopia is the opposite of protanopia in which its sufferers have difficulty distinguishing the short wavelength colors of blue, indigo, and violet. They, like the protanope example, appear dimmed allowing blues to appear black or as dark gray. This is the rarest of the types.

     That's just the simplified version. There's way more to it than what I've just written. There's also protanomaly, deuteranomaly, and tritanomaly whereby the subjects possess all three cone cell types but with one of the types defective rather than absent like with the above examples.

     Okay, for the example test below, the top row of images is how they appeared on the Wikipedia page I'm getting my information from for this post.

     All I got from this test was just how poorly I perceive colors. Even knowing the answers ahead of time, I could only easily see the 56 on the right panel. The left panel is completely blank and the middle one shows hints of color on it. Now even though I said I see the 56 easily, it's still faint. If your color vision is normal you'll have to tell me if the numbers all appear ghostly or if they're so obviously plain that the test itself seems insulting.
     As you can see, I copied the three panels and I traced around what I could see. If my life depended on seeing the 37, I would be so dead. So very dead...

     But then, in an attempt to make me feel better, I wondered what would happen if I put the original panels into a photo editor and supersaturated the color.
     I've always said that I can see all the colors, just not well. I often need bright light to distinguish them. I've noticed this at work when red and green labelled things are next to each other in shaded areas, I cannot distinguish them even though I know which is which from reading them. But put them in the light and the red and green pops right out.
      I also think of this when looking at the stars. Three stars and the planet Mars are supposed to be noticeably red to the naked eye. Antares (the bright star of Scorpius), Aldeberan (the bright star of Taurus), and Betelgeuse (the topmost bright star of Orion) are all supposed to be ruddy-colored to the eye. They're just bright stars to me. However, if I look at them through binoculars or a telescope, their color becomes apparent.
      I remember the last time Mars became bright in the evening sky, I asked my Best Friend what color that bright "star" was and she replied that it was red thus letting me know that I was missing out on something. I pointed out Betelgeuse and got the same response. I wonder what this colorful world looks like? It's impossible for me to ever know. Do they look like supersaturated color photos? It makes me wonder when I gently uptick the color in some of my photos if to non-colorblind individuals those photos look ridiculously overcolored whereas to me they look simply "enhanced".

Enhanced color or ridiculously overcolored?

Do you see the rainbow's colors as easily on the left image as I can now see them on the right?

      Anyways, I supersaturated the test boxes and much to my joy, the numbers in all the boxes became quite plain to me. I see a red 37, a pale green 49, and a very blue 56. However I will admit that the 49 doesn't stand out, stand out...and the 9 looks like it's missing its top making it look like a crude 4. I see the 49 more as an absence of the darker, reddish looking dots whereas both the 37 and 56 look as though they had been spray-painted on.

     I again traced out the numbers albeit less carefully this time but as you can see (and likely saw all along), I can perceive the numbers now. If I would have to self-diagnose, I would say I am deuteranomalous. I found an anomaloscope online. According to the site, it's not possible to properly emulate the test using a monitor but the results are still useful and mine? My results are bad :-)
      It makes me wish I had money to waste. I would like to be properly diagnosed and alongside a non-colorblind friend because I would want to see just how off my vision is. Using the anomaloscope, where you see yellow, would I see greener light or redder light?

Well... Shit...

A POST LIBERAL/CONSERVATIVE WORLD...

     I wonder if the liberal/conservative divide has run its course in American politics? We seem to be at an apex for the two ideologies...at least from the perspective of the House of Representatives. Hell, I'm not even sure what the words liberal and conservative mean politically anymore. I've had this notion that liberality was about embracing change or at least trying something new; that is was akin to progression...future thinking and that conservativism was about preserving the status quo or even retrogressing to a time or way of doing things perceived to be better than the way they are being done now. Liberalism was about trying out untested ideas and Conservativism was about proven ones (even if those ideas had been proven ill-advised).
     Yet that's not what the words mean. Like how "theory" means one thing to scientists and means quite the opposite colloquially, liberal and conservative, when worn as political labels, take on very different senses from the dictionary senses of the words.

     But where do we go from here? If liberalism and conservativism are on the way out, what ideologies replace them?
     In the past, there were liberal and conservative Democrats as well as liberal and conservative Republicans. What was their ideological dividing line? What did the parties back then ultimately disagree on before reaching an apex that allowed the current liberal/conservative paradigm reign?
     I'm not sure. I'm guessing this was the turn of the century (the 20th one) right up and through World War II that defined it. I imagine it came to a head in the McCarthy era. The Cold War paranoia may have ended the one reign bringing about the current liberal/conservative divide.
     Or maybe it goes back further to the ascendancy of the Republican party. Abraham Lincoln was its first President and soon after the Whig party died out. Perhaps a third party will rise soon in this country, electing its first President causing one of the two major parties to go extinct (I'd bank on the Republicans going extinct because they seem to be rushing headlong into it with their Tea Party and overzealous conservative factions).

     What might tomorrow's paradigm be? Libertarianism/authoritarianism? Labor/Capitalists?
     Personally I'd hope for the rise of a true labor party in this country. One emerging paradigm is the Haves vs. the Have Nots and there's a lot of Have Nots in this country who are unrepresented in government or at best marginally so. Congress is comprised as a percentage of their body by many more millionaires than are present as a percentage of the nation's population. Congress is also heavy on lawyers and businessmen. As Neil deGrasse Tyson asked (and I'm paraphrasing), where are the engineers, the scientists, the teachers, the service industry, the philosophers, hell even the ditchdiggers? Can we truly be represented by a government if that government's representatives do not even remotely resemble its constituencies?
      Personally I'd like to see a political party comprised of the actual poor, working, and middle classes and if any of its leaders are wealthy, they should have worked their way up to it. They should know intimately what it is like to be in the trenches so to speak.
       I would think the next divide would be between labor and the capitalists. The Republicans seem almost totally comprised of the latter category and the Democrats mostly so. What about the rest of us?

      But given the very close, very bipartisan vote on defunding the NSA (I believe it was 217 - 205 against defunding it), perhaps the next partisan divide that will shake up and reorganize the parties will be that of libertarians and authoritarians (though I'm sure the latter side will pick a better moniker). Privacy versus Need to Know.

      I hope something happens in the next few election cycles because this current stalemate between the two parties is preventing the government from governing at all and it's really annoying. To paraphrase a line from Babylon 5, the two parties are like divorcing parents fighting in front of their children and trying to make those children choose sides. It's one or the other we're told. I just look forward to a modern-day John Sheridan who can rise up and remind us that we don't need either of those parties anymore.

      As a Facebook friend suggested, we need to form the Mercutio Party...a pox on both your houses!...and figure out our own way through liberalism and conservativism; libertarianism and authoritarianism; labor and capitalists; privacy and publicity; individualism and community; etc. etc. etc.

ADDENDUM: This Daily Kos rant I offer as an example adding weight to my argument that the next division will be between labor and capitalists. If professionals organize in this country into guilds like screen actors and writers have in Hollywood, then I think the country will begin moving toward a real middle class again. Loyalty to companies seems a quaint and antiquated notion these days. It is further brought about by declining benefits and loss of pensions. Why bother sticking around? Accountants, lawyers, secretaries, hell even clerks, et al. need to organize into guilds.

LIFE CAN BE FICKLE...

     While walking to work last night, I thought I had seen something dart across the sidewalk at amazing speed. At first I thought it was one of those eye squigglies, albeit darker than usual or a dark spot from having glanced a bright headlight but no, I saw it had moved into the street. It was a field mouse but a car already on fast approach would prevent the little animal from completing its journey to wherever it was going for whatever it was going to do.

      It was completely a bad luck moment for the mouse. The mouse never wavered in its run. It moved in a quick, straight line to cross the street but it mistimed by all of a second bringing it to an encounter with an object evolution could have never prepared it for and for that, it cost the field mouse his/her life.

      The line between life and death is a thin one indeed...

Its broken body brought forth a tear of blood

LINE OF THE DAY, part XXXIV

(from cspackler from this article)

"From Conservatives, all we hear is the constant bitching and crying about how all lazy people want is welfare and to loaf about like lumps of crap on the teat of society. These are people that are working full time and still getting the shaft. When we argue that people should have the dignity of a living wage to encourage more work- we get a resounding no. And why? Because it potentially compromises the profits of the largest corporation in the history of the world.

I have news for you Righties. There are a lot of Americans who are utterly incapable of delivering value in a knowledge based economy, and the number is increasing. This was cool when we had factories, but sadly, even the factories we still have need fewer, more computer literate workers.  So it seems to me that you have two choices: get comfortable with sharing a bit more of the wealth in the form of higher wages, or look forward to seeing them with burning torches at a gated community near you.

And finally, let me demystify this for everyone who believes in the myth of the infallible, omniscient CEO: there isn't anyone alive in business who is worth 500 or 1000X an average worker. No one."

     I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm also one of those people who gets pissed off when some asinine commenter mentions things like "those jobs are ENTRY LEVEL: they're not meant to support families" or "if you don't like your job/pay, get a different one" or "start your own business" or my favorite of all, "go to college and get an education so you can land a better job".

     Each one of those is stupid and simplistic in its own way. Are there jobs out there which are entry level? Yes. Should they pay less than jobs which require a skill base? Also yes. However there are a couple of things wrong, or at least questions I have, with that sentiment.
     Are there enough living wage jobs out there for everyone who wants one? If the answer is no, as I've ventured before, then it is arguable that the minimum wage must rise. It is also arguable that those jobs which do require a skill base are also not paying enough for the investment of time and money put into them. Perhaps your wages ought to be going up as well. Something tells me everyone working for a large company could get a decent raise if CEO compensation packages were limited to 25-40 times what the lowest paid worker (hired or contracted) for the company gets paid.
     The other thing is, and this may sound harsh, but I simply don't believe that it is possible, no matter how lofty our goals, to educate everyone to the levels necessary to participate in today's economy. Some people just don't have the intellect necessary to take on such difficult learning. Any Bell Curve will see to that. What of those people? Are they not deserving of dignity? And what of those people performing vital services that don't necessarily require a top-notch education like garbage haulers or bus/subway/taxi drivers or other low-level but obviously vital, services? I'm sure you would not want to live in a world where you were responsible for hauling your own trash to the dump or walking around a large city or cleaning your own sewage pipes. Yes, it's arguable that "anybody could do those jobs" but just because that is so, does that mean they are automatically undeserving of a living wage given the scale of the service provided?
     Also, what of those people who perform tasks that are also necessary but seem to add little or no value to the economy like people who work in animal shelters or for sanctuaries? What of librarians, philosophers, and researchers? Those latter jobs require a ton of skill, but offer few good-paying positions and the former jobs require passion, compassion, and dedication yet apparently ensuring the livelihoods of our abandoned furry and feathered friends and providing safety and comfort for abuse victims is not high on the pay priority scale.
     Replacing the low-education jobs with machinery isn't a smart idea either...at least not in a country with a rising population. Those people need work...they need money...and odds are they are not smart enough to compete in a knowledge-based internet level economy. And since we're not the kind of society which would kill such people for their unproductiveness or lack of utility, they have to be housed, clothed, fed, and provided with a measure of dignity. Something you're not going to get by paying poverty wages.
     To put it simply, if you don't like the idea of an entry-level worker making a better wage, then you're not being paid enough too. Don't attack down.

     I've also always hated the fallacious argument of leaving your job for another if you don't like it. This couples with the going back to school argument because while perfectly simple on paper, both arguments fail to take into account that these things cost money. And then there's logistics.
     I'd love to leave my job for something where I feel like a person and not a number on a budgetary spreadsheet, but where would I go that would pay me as much or more than what I'm making now and accessible from my home without a car? I'm trapped. My job pays too much to just up and go, but too little to really live off of (as evidenced by me not owning a car). I'm sure there are many people like me. Plus jobs, even in the best of times, are not abundant or at least readily available. And forget about quitting on principle. Unless you have a ton of cash you're sitting on, that's not even an option. Believe me, I'd love to have fuck-you money in the bank, but I don't...so I have to suck it up and take the hits to my dignity, to my pride, and to my sense of self-worth practically daily.
      Going back to school is just as stupid an argument because that costs a shit-ton of money...even with loans. And odds are you will not be able to go to school full time to get a degree in four years. No, you'll be working too, trying to stay afloat while studying complex and difficult subjects...and that's if you don't have children. If you have a spouse, you might stand a chance if s/he's supportive of the idea and willing to carry you during that time. But still, there's no guarantee that your degree will get you a job that not only pays better, but enough to also pay off your loans while living your life. Otherwise, you may have been better off where you had been. It's simply not an option without a society willing to pay for such an education socially.
      The value of an education is at an all-time low I would say. In days of yore, your father could have taught you ironworking and you would have that skill for life. And you could take that skill and teach it to your son and pass along the family business just as your grandfather had taught your father. A skilled, once learned, was worth a lifetime of labor and then some.
      How many jobs can you say that about nowadays? A lifetime career traditionally spanned forty years (I guess 25-65). Think about what goes on today. Imagine you were 65 right now. That means, you would have embarked on your career in 1973. That means you would've been formally educated in the 1960s. Life's changed a lot since then. If you were picking up where a retiree was leaving off in 1973, he would have begun his career in the 1930s. The world changed a lot in those forty years too, but not so much that a (wo)man couldn't have relied on their education to last them throughout most, if not all, of their career.
      How long does an education last now? I figure at an ideal minimum, it should last for at least as many years as it would take to pay off the student loans...or at the very minimum, an education should be worth at least as many years on the market as it took to earn it (in other words, if it takes four years to get a degree, the education received should last at least four years before needing to re-up on it). Does that even come close to how long an education lasts these days? How quickly does skill obsolescence take hold forcing workers to increase their knowledge and skills these days? It sounds all so very stressful and while I'm sure there are numbers among us who can handle (and even welcome) that kind of stress, I feel most people would burn out.

      As for starting your own business, the numbers bear this one out. Unless it's all sole proprietorships, we can't all be business owners. Some people lead, others follow. I suspect in any given group there are more followers than leaders. It's a great sentiment to try to make it on one's own but you still need investment capital which the poorer among us certainly don't have and you'll also need a marketable idea and an education in business and accounting (which brings us back to the prior example).

      Just pay people better. It's also a numbers game. Ultimately businesses have to sell shit and they can't sell shit if the people on the bottom have no money to spend because it's all going into housing, food, and transportation. The few people on top, the One Percenters as they've been called lately, can't buy it all and charity from the ultra-wealthy is ultimately insufficient. Until the wealth up top is spread to the lower classes, dreamers can't dream. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with good ideas worth trying out but they'll never get the chance because they're too busy trying to survive, unable to save a few bucks to get ahead or take risks with.

      I can't think anymore so I'm done...