Language: For Truth or Lies?

May 17, 2008 (Day 571).  I hate to sound cynical but I am beginning to wonder whether language is more often used to communicate the truth — or, it’s opposite.  One example that comes to mind: “I drink just to be sociable.”  Hmmm.  Maybe.  But since people are much more likely to kill each other, accidentally or on purpose, when under the influence, just how sociable is this?  “I have faith in God.”  Okay.  But how many of us say, “I have faith in gravity.”  Or, “I have faith that I cannot walk through that wall.”  Not too many.  At least, I haven’t heard many people express those sentiments.   And, if someone were to say to me, “I have faith in gravity” and I were to reply, “Well, not me.  I don’t see any evidence” — what would happen?  Would they be likely to torture me until I recanted?  Would they even argue vigorously why it was important to have faith in gravity?  I doubt it.  Mostly likely, they would give me a kind of pitying look and walk on their way.  They might say in passing, “suit yourself” and give a little laugh. 

 

When I was studying the psychology of aging many moons ago I took a test of “values” and scored way off the scale on “theoretical” which meant I was quite interested in the “truth” compared with other possible values such as economic, religious, hedonic, and so on.  I think that’s probably right.  It would seem that academia is the place where “truth” is pursued most purely and vigorously, but lately, I have come to wonder whether this is really so, at least now.  Suppose one were in the “Department of Ologyology” and actually found “the truth?”  Would everyone immediately worship you as a hero?  I kind of doubt it.  Because, now, you see, the game would be up.  If you really proved that the fundamental truth of Ologyology were X, and no-one could dispute it or further refine it, people would basically be out of a job.  All those graduate students trained in your Ologyology Department would similarly be out of a job.  So, it seems to me that the real goal of the Ologyology Department is not to seek the truth, but continually to complexify the field of Ologyology so that there are ever more questions to ask.  It is almost, in fact, a requirement to end any published paper with these formulaic words, “More study is obviously needed to further explore this complex and difficult subject.”   No matter how compelling the results, to end a paper conversely with, “So there you have it.  We have definitively shown X and thus ends the study of Ologyology” would be a certain formula for non-acceptance and non-publication and quite possibly for burning a large wooden telescope on your front lawn.

 

Another example: “Women are so emotional.”  Compared with what?  Men?  In my experience, women are much more practical than men and men are much more emotional than women.  Isn’t this obvious?  How many women kill in a fit of rage?  Precious few compared with men.  What is the proportion of prostitutes of men for women versus women for men?  Of course, there are individual differences, but it seems quite clear, that, in general, men are more emotional than women in the sense that their actual behavior is more often guided and clouded by their emotions.  What’s more, men seem, in general, to be less aware of the impact of their emotions on their decisions.  This is all fine, but what is odd is that in our culture, we have a “truism” about it that seems so clearly counterfactual. 

 

In terms of contemporary politics, of course, we find numerous examples, but this is not quite so surprising.  “Republicans believe in individual responsibility.”  Huh?  Everyone in politics has a tendency for finger pointing, but the recent crop of Republicans have elevated this to a high art form and religion.  When, in eight years, have you heard Bush or any of his coterie say, “Oh, yeah.  I was dead wrong about that.” ?  “Republicans believe that the least government is the best government.”  Huh?  What counts as government then?  They want to be able to put you in jail if you displease them with no chance of a jury trial by simply labeling you an “enemy combatant.”  No proof needed.  No sunshine test.  They want to tell you whether or not you can have an abortion, who you can sleep with, and what kinds of drugs are okay and which are not okay.  “The Republicans are the party of financial conservatism.”  So laughable it requires no comment.  “The Republicans believe in the economics of free enterprise.”  No, folks. 
“Free Enterprise” and “Crony Capitalism” are not the same thing at all.  In fact, “Crony Capitalism” is really an oxymoron.  Nothing is further from the spirit and logic of Adam Smith than the brand of favoritism practiced by The Bush White House. 

 

So what then is language?  Surely, it is not always used to deceive.  Sometimes, teams — whether hunting parties, sports teams or software development groups — actually give each other useful information that, so far as they know, is true.  But … wow….we certainly seem to have moved a long way from that. 

Giving up golf?

Well, here it is day something or other.  Even though I am totally dry it is totally wet outside.  Not a day for golf.  Speaking of which….I learned that our President has given up GOLF!  Why?  To show solidarity with the troops in Iraq.  Wow.  Isn’t that something?  Some people might have thought — I don’t know — maybe sending his daughter over there instead of marrying her off?  Or going himself?  But before we trivialize the President’s actual sacrifice, let’s consider some of the upsides of his having given up golf.  For starters, suppose the President woke up one morning with his heart set on a round and the day was like today — POURING down rain.  What would I do?  Not play.  What would you do?  Not play.  What would someone who is really addicted to golf do?  Play and get wet.  What would the President do?  Declare war on the atmosphere most likely.  Yep.  I can see it now.  All kinds of scientific evidence would show up that while Global Warming was just a theoretical possibility, Global Wetting was a faith-based reality!  And the cure would be to drop a couple of H-bombs in the upper atmosphere to kind of “dry out” the wetness and make for a nice day to play golf.  Yep. 

The Media: “Mr. President, have you thought about the impact of the radiation?

Bush: “Radiation?  I don’t know what those fancy God-hating left-wing faggot science boys might say.  I just know I don’t see no radiation.  Do you?” 

The Media: “Did you consider the possible consequences to human health? 

Bush: “I heard from a higher power.  You know, I’m a decider.  That is what I am.  I listen to all the factoids and then I hear the voice of God and then I decide.  Now, leave me alone to do my golfin’….see you made me hit a Stew here right on the first tee.” 

The Media: “A Stew?”

Bush: “Yeah.  You know.  When you kind a mess up on the tee shot, you get a do-over.  We golf people call it a Stew.”

The Media: “Kind of like the invasion of Iraq?  How come you didn’t call a do-over there?”

Bush: “Because…hey.  You know, that ain’t sech a bad idea after all.  Wait.  Did you say Iraq?  Did we invade Iraq?  Because I am sure I ordered us to invade Iran.  Not Iraq.  Boy, somebody sure screwed up.  I’m makin’ some phone calls after this round…”

See?  Things could be worse.  He could have kept playing golf.  Then again, last time he listened to God, he might just have misunderstood Him.  Maybe He said to give up the Gulf.

We are not a soup can

February 9, 2008; Day 478.  Ah, yes, where were we?  Disease states.  So, basically, to state an obvious truism, the biochemical reactions in our bodies are complicated!  Moreover, we are not a soup can.  That is to say, you cannot predict what is going to happen simply by putting all the chemicals we contain into a soup can because we have “architectural pathways” to keep things somewhat organized or separate.  One well-known example is that we have arteries to take blood from the heart and veins to take blood to the heart.  So, oxygenated blood is pumped around to allow oxygen to get “virtually everywhere” in our bodies and the same system picks up carbon dioxide, gathers it together and allows exchange out into the air by exhalation.  Of course, this same system can also be used to pump other relative small molecules throughout the body…alcohol comes to mind as one such example.  If you drink alcohol, it pretty much ends up everywhere throughout your body.  So, the body, rather than being a soup can has various channels that organize and direct chemicals.  But these channels are not “equal-service providers” for all substances.  For instance, if you put grain alcohol on the back of your hand, your skin will pretty much keep it from being absorbed into your body long enough for it to evaporate.  On the other hand, if you put WOOD alcohol on the back of your hand, it (a much more deadly neurotoxin even than grain alcohol) it WILL be absorbed by your skin and course throughout your body.  Enough may cause permanent damage such as blindness or death.  Some chemicals may exhibit gradient properties under certain conditions.  Others may or may not be transferred throughout the body depending on other state conditions within the body, or be transferred at different rates.  Again, to take an obvious example from the world of drinking, if you drink alcohol on an empty stomach, the alcohol will end up throughout your body more quickly than if your stomach is full of rich food.  But this is just one obvious example.  The more general point is that you have hundreds of chemicals coursing through your body at various rates.  Moreover, many of the chemical reactions that take place are also part of more complex systems that involve negative (or more rarely, positive) feedback loops.  These reactions themselves take place at various rates.  For example, drinking a lot of alcohol (a sedative) may actually make you more jumpy or nervous a lot of the time because your body is reacting with chemical that attempt to counter-act the sedative effect (to put a teleological spin on it). 

 

So, now, let’s consider.  We have thousands of chemical reactions going on, in at least partially “protected” places in the body, going on at different rates and part of complex patterns of interacting systems that include feedback loops.  Unfortunately, this complexity means that for many medicines, pharmaceutical companies only know what the first order effects are of a drug.  How do drugs interact with each other?  How does rate of absorption affect the various feedback loop timings?  Although it would be incorrect to say nothing is known about these subjects, it would be fair to say, that a huge amount remains to be discovered.  No-one has anything like an accurate overall picture of how things interact over time and space. 

 

Now, consider these kinds of phenomena at a more microscopic level.  There seems to be an often unstated assumption in genetics that you either “have” a gene or you do “not” have a gene for something and that the effects of genes are independent of where they are on a chromosome.  In many cases, this may indeed be true.  But there is a bias in the method of discovery of cause and effect here.  If genes produce or fail to produce an effect because of variations in the relative gene locations of two or more genes and these locations vary, it may be very difficult to ever discover that these genes are having an effect.  Thus, there may well be diseases that have a “genetic” cause but these diseases are only caused in a small percentage of the population who have the genes because of locational issues.  One person might have genes A, B and C and they are too far apart to cause a significant enough negative chemical interaction while another person could have genes A B and C close together and as a consequence, too much of a “bad” chemical is produced to be dealt with by the normal negative feedback loops that try to “get rid” of this “bad” chemical.  To complicate matters further, it might be that there is a further interaction with environmental chemicals.  A person with genes A B and C far apart might have to be exposed to 1000 times the dosage of a pollutant to cause a problem as the person with genes A B and C close together.  Of course, in this example, having A B and C far apart as “good” is entirely arbitrary.  In other cases, exactly the opposite could be true. 

The Age of the Greedmeister

January 17, 2008; day 455, I think.  Overuse of alcohol kills.  Overuse of greed destroys the whole planet.  I wonder…is there a “Greedy People’s Anonymous”?  When people destroy whole legions of people just to get a bigger yacht or whatever, do they really feel good or do they just get a momentary high and then, the next morning, they are more dissatisfied with their life than ever?  Like alcoholism, “Greedism” seems as though it may be a perversion of a natural system.  It is quite natural not to want to die and if you live off the land in a glacier period, you had better store up lots of food for the winter.  Up to a point, the more acorns, bearmeat or whatever that you store, the more likely you are to survive.  But then…today’s Greedmeisters are like way beyond that.  They have brought so much bounty into their cave that the floor is collapsing and they and their progeny are about to die much sooner than if they had been more modest.  Alcohol is kind of self-limiting in the sense that if you drink too much, you will pass out.  As I understand it, passing out is about one drink short of killing yourself.  And, people who have drunk too much too quickly have actually accomplished this dubious feat.  But, generally speaking, people pass out or upchuck (just) before they manage to take a lethal dose.  However, when it comes to greed for material possessions, the limit will come after it is too late to do anything about it.  For any of us.

 

There are many mysteries here.  Why do we tolerate anyone being that greedy?  Why doesn’t the greedy person themselves see that they are destroying everything?  Why do we tolerate a system that puts Greedmeisters on a pedestal and publish their puff-piece autobiographies and then treat them as fact.  Case in point.  A financial company loses BILLIONS of dollars and, even if the CEO is fired, said Greedmeister receive many millions in payments.  Huh?  Yes, let’s go over that again.  Because, let’s say that YOU gave me $1000 of your money to invest and then I went and did such a bad job of investing it that I lost the whole $1000 and you owed another $1000 besides.  Would you then “give me” a bonus of $500 for the trouble of trying?  I kinda don’t think so.  Even if I blamed everything on things beyond my control.  But meanwhile, of course, if your investments HAD paid off, it would be because of my courage, intelligence, hard work, creativity, etc. etc.  NEVER due to “good luck.”  The positive gains are always due to the Greedmeister, but the losses are always due to “bad luck”, government interference, pesky lawsuits, etc. Interesting, eh?   

$213 for a bottle of vodka!

November 10, 2007; Day 387.  Last night, we returned from GROUP in Florida (GROUP is a conference on social computing and not a convention of groupies).  Good conference and good weather.  Now, here in New York, it is COLD!  Our plane, of course, was late, as usual these days.  But what is scary is that it seems as though the airlines are on a kind of suicide mission.  There are these little hints…such as, if you get stuck in the cattle car (coach), they offer you only fat-filled, sodium-filled snacks.  What’s with that?  If they really care about your “safety” as they claim to do when they are taxiing to the gate at .06 miles per hour and tell you to be sure to keep your seat belt fastened for your safety, then why would they feed you only such crap?  One reason is simply economic.  The stuff that is filled with fat, sugar, salt, BHA and BHT will last for about a thousand years so they don’t have to worry about trying to control inventory levels or throwing stuff out because it is out of date.  It is NEVER out of date.  But check this out.  They have us get on the plane as though they are only going to be a half hour late.  Then, they give everybody water.  Then they make everybody sit on the tarmac for another hour.  And, then, when we finally take off, get up to altitude, and have a smooth ride, and the seat belt sign SHOULD be turned off, the pilot gets on the horn and asks everybody to please stay seated for another half hour so the flight attendants can serve the snacks.  And, of course the booze which now costs $5.00 for 1.5 ounces when it used to be the merely outrageous price of $3.00 for 1.5 ounces.  Let’s see, “A pint’s a pound the world round.”  So that means, a pint is 32 ounces and there are 21 1/3 drinks in a pint.  Or, 42 and 2/3 shots in a quart.  A quart of the medium quality vodka they have on planes is generally what?  Maybe 25$?  But instead, they are, in effect, charging 42 2/3 x 5 or more than $213 for a quart of Finlandia or SKYY or Smirnoff’s or that Swedish one?  I want to say “SAAB” but that’s obviously not it.  My God.  I’m forgetting the brand names.  Anyway, you can see why they are so eager to get that disservice cart out into the aisles.  They are making a KILLING on the booze.  Well, not with me, they aren’t! 

 Now, mind you, this is a three hour flight, so there is plenty of time for the flight attendants to perform the cart disservice after people have had a chance to use the toilet.  So, here they are POing their clientele left and right if not down right ruining their customers’ health not to mention their budgets…and meanwhile, we discover that pilots fall asleep at the wheel; that passengers who get upset about being late get beaten cuffed and left to die.  How much longer before they start just taking a purposeful nosedive?  Well, it’s something to think about, isn’t it?  Some fresh young MBA from Wharton or Hahvahd, eager for the fast track to CEO, will probably figure out some mathematical formula to prove that it is more cost-effective to simply crash the planes than finish the trip.  Of course, it won’t really be more cost-effective, but he or she will find a way to make it appear to be cost-effective “on the books” and that’s all that matters these days when it comes to stock price.  It’s all about manipulation and perception.  It used to be, at least a little, about making good products efficiently and providing superior service.  Now, however, you simply put customers on hold for approximately thirty years while playing messages that advertise good service or tell you that, “Your call is important to us.  Please stay on the line.  All of our service representatives (all = one here) are busy helping other customers (right, or, more likely, smoking pot in the lavatory).  Your call is important to us.  Please stay on the line and use your other cell phone to call for medical help in case you need IV’s to stay alive while you wait.  Don’t hang up!  Our accounting department is having an important betting pool on just how long we can get suckers to stay on the line before they commit suicide.  Your call is important to us.”  And so on.  You know, maybe ten or twenty years ago, this “Your call is important to us” crap may have actually worked because there were still a few companies that actually seemed to care.  But does anyone put any credence in anything that is said by any PR department or advertisement any more?  Or, for that matter, does anyone even believe the FDA when they say some food or drug is “safe?”  If you do, please write me because I have a really good deal on beach front property on the moon.    

Size matters?

October 22, 2007.  Day 368.  According to my calculations, that means more than a year.  Wow.  Still, I dream about drinking.  Can you believe it?  I don’t feel any “smarter” but my brain works better.  That seems like a contradiction but it really isn’t.  It’s like my head is “bigger” without being any “more accurate” on what it is that I am concentrating on.  It’s all the stuff I don’t concentrate on that works better.  Just as my peripheral vision is “wider” but my focal vision is no more acute. 

 

We just got back from California.  The drive to the airport was nerve-wracking because gusts of wind kept threatening to blow our small (officially “mid-size”) rental car right off the road.  What is this trend to make cars “higher” anyway?  It just seems stupid.  I was behind a car the other day that had an enormous silhouette but apparently no more room for cargo or passengers than our much “smaller” SAABs.  The whole world seems to have gone nuts.  It’s as though “size matters” but “the labels of size” matter even more.  Starbucks has three sizes of coffee.  They could be called, “Small, Medium and Large” but they are named “Tall, Grande, and Vente.”  ??? The smallest size is called “Tall.”  What does it mean to call a car that gets blown around the freeway like tumbleweed “mid-sized?”  It reminds me of NYNEX days, when every year our benefits were reduced by “New!  Improved!  Benefit plan — Flex Plus!!”  and so on.  What drivel.  Do people in HR or PR or whatever they are in actually think this crap works?  All it does is make people cynical and think that if you are so dishonest you cannot call a small car “small” then what else are you lying about?  Who falls for this?  No-one so far as I can see.  I’ve never had someone say to me, “Oh, my!  I cannot finish all this coffee!  I got a TALL and it’s too much for me.”  Or: “Oh, I can’t handle a mid-size car.  It’s too big to maneuver.”  No.  Never.  It’s just like the “Up in the sky!  It’s a bird.  It’s a plane.  It’s superman!”  I have still never seen anyone confuse a bird with a plane.  And, I’ve been on the lookout too.  And, I’ve never seen a shred of evidence that anyone falls for these stupid marketing ploys of labels either. 

 

On the other hand, people DO seem to fall for the outward appearance of SUV’s and so on which are huge gas guzzlers and pollution production factories but actually give almost no more usable room inside to the passengers.  Maybe in this case, what people are looking for is not comfort or convenience but an intimidating presence.  How sad.  Of course, there are people who actually need SUV’s.  I understand that.  But half of those sixteen people actually opt for pick-up trucks.  And, of course, there are people who actually need pick-up trucks as well.  They seem the least likely to be fooled by all this marketing hype.  “An SUV that is as big as a planet but as maneuverable as a hornet.  Big enough to hold the entire Giants football team, but elegant enough to drive into the Opera House.  And, easy on your wallet too!  It costs less than you might think!”  Of course it costs less than you “might” think.  You MIGHT think it costs a million dollars.  You MIGHT.  Anyway, it is beautiful outside.  And rain is on the way.  Enough.

Where are we headed?

October 11, 2007; Day 357.  I dreamed last night of drinking vodka at a “party” though, like most dream parties, it was a weird one.  The party seemed to have been set sometime well back into the last century and there were African-Americans who seemed to have a distinctly lower “status” than white people although the white people at the party were having a considerable, though verbally unexpressed, conflict about how to treat them.  Most people were treating them as equals, but a few people — it was clear they were plain mean folks — were treating them as unequals.  It seemed quite clear that the reason was that somehow this made them temporarily feel okay about themselves.  Down deep, it seemed they hated themselves.  I guess I was thinking about all this unconsciously because I had been reading about some of the unbelievable atrocities going on in Africa, wondering about the history of it and how colonization played a part, but also wondering how people could do these things.  It seems clear that these “men” must be extremely hateful of themselves to treat women this way.  As though killing and torturing others is a way of killing themselves.  I don’t know how to stop it.  It all seems unconscionable to “let it” go on and yet, when we try to intervene in faraway places, it generally seems not to work out too well.  Meanwhile, it also reminds me of drinking alcohol in that, alcohol actually kills cells in your body.  So….???  If you are drinking something that kills your own cells, what does that mean?  Do people really have a death wish?  Our cells apparently do have “programmed death”; that is, after say, precisely 60 replications, they now fail to replicate.  If this were the only cause of aging, however, people would live to about age 160 and then fall apart.  But maybe we are “programmed to die” as well as “programmed to kill.”  Perhaps humanity itself is expressing a huge death wish.  It did cross my mind when I read about some of the things going on in Africa right now — reminding me, of course, of American torture, not to mention economic exploitation that may be a slower form of the same thing; the Inquisition; the Salem witch hunts; the Holocaust, and so on and so on….maybe we humans collectively look at all this and unconsciously say, “You know what?  The earth would be a better place without us.”  Maybe that is why we seem hell-bent on destroying ourselves.  When I was a kid, I recall being amazed at reading about lemmings.  You know lemmings, right?  Those are “idiotic” little rodents that sometimes collectively throw themselves off a cliff into the sea.  But…aren’t we doing the same thing?  Do we unconsciously strive to return the world to its pre-humanoid condition?  Perhaps so.  Despite all the “inhuman” things we have done to each other, I’m kind of fond of the species.  But maybe we are just an experiment in evolution that has gone badly wrong.  Maybe in order to survive, what we need are genes that puts us rather “at the edge” of cruelty and violence and some folks are over that edge due to some combination of genes and environment.  Recently, in a small town, an off-duty policeman shot a bunch of people (and then himself) at a party.  People seemed “shocked” because after all, a policeman is supposed to protect.  Okay.  The blackwater guards in Iraq (why choose such a name?).  Okay.  But who chooses this kind of job?  They must be in that direction from the norm or they probably couldn’t do their job.  What puts people over this edge?  Why do they always seem to fail to see any one of fifteen other ways to cope with their problem or situation?  Or, to put it another way, why and how do the majority of our police and soldiers, given the horrendous and nerve-wracking situations that they are in, nonetheless, behave ethically?  We’d like to think that there is a way to predict this.  Indeed, when someone “goes nuts” and ends up going on a killing spree, we are always trying to find out why and how we could have know and what were the signs that should have given this away.  (sigh).  Is it just a random bit flip in some molecular maze in the synapses of a few neurons?  A slow sort of creep into a positive feedback loop from which there appears to be no escape?  “I’ll show them!”  Show them what?  That you are pathetic?  Do people actually think that they will gain some weird sort of respect from killing people with a gun?  Maybe if you walked into a party of people and killed a bunch with your bare hands, someone might read that and think, “How did he pull that off?”  But with a gun?  And, what is the thought process that people go through when they kill themselves?  Is this always part of the plan from the git-go?  Is it that once they kill all these innocent people, they come to the realization that they feel every bit as crappy as they did before and so they kill themselves because they realize their whole line of thinking was futile?  Are they remorseful?  Or, is their real goal, as I suspect, to kill themselves all along, and killing others is just part of the act?  I don’t know, but this problem of violence has been with us for millennia and we do not seem to have solved the problem.  In fact, overall, it isn’t at all clear that we are much better off as a species in this regard than we were thousands of years ago.  And, now we have atomic weapons.  We are still not out of the woods on that one, and meanwhile, even if we stay away from that fuse, we’ve got the pollution problems.  Geez.  I hope the weather turns sunny again.  Meanwhile, on a happier note….it’s time for breakfast. 

A hundred pounds of flesh

October 5, 2007; Day 351.  Wow, in two weeks it will be a year since I swallowed any nerve poison.  J   Last night I went to play *a little* golf after work.  Not much daylight left.  I did not take time to warm up and ended up playing six holes before it got too dark. When I was done, I was wondering whether there was traffic on the highway and it suddenly occurred to me that I already KNEW what the traffic on the highway was like.  I could hear it from the parking lot.  This is typical of the difference in the way my brain works.  Of course, it is not an either/or thing, but I’m much more likely to “realize” this type of thing without “trying.”  I don’t think I would probably score any higher on an IQ test.  When I concentrate on trying to do something, it’s about the same.  But “useful” things that I’m not looking for are much more likely to pop into mind.

 Anyhow…speaking of the mindful and the mindless, how’s this work?  A few weeks ago, busy as always, I took my bills with me to write checks and pay at the airport.  On the way to Rio.  Anyway, when I was done, there was NO mailbox inside security because…because…Because WHY exactly?  It’s okay to put a bomb in a mailbox OUTside security because then only hundreds of people would be injured but if you put a bomb Inside security, hundreds of people would be injured.  But wait?  You’re not supposed to GET bombs through security anyway.  ???  It seems totally senseless but maybe the real point is not security but inconvenience.  Maybe it is all part of a slow subtle (?) plot on the part of the government in partnership with the airlines to make flying so inconvenient that no-one actually does it.  The airlines can scale back to the point where their only employees are the C-level executives and they can live off the government dole of a couple million a year.  No need to fly anyone anywhere.  A few days ago, a woman got irate about airline service* — hard to imagine isn’t it?  She ended up DEAD.   (*Note: “service” is a word with more than one meaning). Anyhow, it was too much time and hassle for me to go back through security so I waited and mailed my bills later.  Fine.  Guess what?  I owed $29 to Sears.  As a result, my payment was late and so they charged me — ready for this ? — a $39 service charge for a $29 bill that was maybe a week late.  So that is….135% interest PER WEEK.  Ignoring compounding, which I am sure they would NOT, this is 7020 % interest per year.  No, not 70%; not 700% but more than 7000%.  The CEO and CFO should be run out of town on a rail.  But given the court-packing policies of the current misadministration, I would probably be in trouble for administering a punishment far more fitting to their crime than 7000% interest was for mine so instead, I’ll settle for simply never buying another thing at Sears.  I have generally bought tools, games, sports equipment, appliances, and clothes there for the last 50 years, but no longer.  Goodbye Sears.  Each month, you will be losing $ale$ but you have your frigging $39.     

Be fruitful and multiply

August 30, 2007.  (Day 315?)  Wow.  It’s been a long time since I wrote anything in this blog.  A heavy workload is the main excuse.  But I’ve been thinking (not drinking!) lately about what it means to “Be fruitful and multiply.”  Hundreds of millions of people on earth seem to subscribe to various versions of the Bible, Christianity, etc.  Apparently, this particular phrase has largely served as the basis for being against birth control.  On the other hand, according to the Catholic religion, as I understand it, it is also a mortal sin to commit suicide.  Now, when I say “on the other hand” this is strange from the perspective of people living thousands of years ago when it seemed iffy whether humanity was going to make it as a species and we needed all the children we could get and certainly did not need anyone doing themselves in.  Now, however, our greatest danger is overpopulation and the attendant resources.  If we do destroy ourselves as a species, it seems likely that it will be from over, not under fecundity.  This being the case, there does now indeed seem to be some contradiction between the prohibition against birth control and the prohibition against suicide.  Lack of birth control, in effect, is suicide, not just for an individual but for the whole human race.  This puts “Be fruitful and multiply” in a whole different light, doesn’t it?  Of course, some will stick to a particular interpretation of this message that might be two thousand or five thousand years old.  If God created human beings and if God had as much intelligence as a human being (never mind being omniscient) then surely He would realize that we were intelligent enough to interpret things in light of current circumstance.  There are animals who do not do this very well and they are called reptiles or insects although even there, behavior is not completely instinctual and rigid.  But it is reasonable to suppose that the God as portrayed in the Bible had at least some notion of what he was doing.  If that is the case, then using our intelligence to determine what a general rule means in particular circumstances should be expected.  In that case, I would have to say that in light of today’s levels of overpopulation and pollution, what “Be fruitful and multiply” means is to take the larger picture into account; that is, to do what is collectively necessary to ensure that human life continues.               

Happy Independence Day!

July 5, 2007; Day 259.  Thinking I may have had an extended black-out there?  No, just really busy at work with a variety of things.  In fact, I need to get back to it.  I had though an artifact was much further along than it really is.  We had a fine time yesterday playing golf with some slight rain.  Lately, my wife and I have been taking some additional golf trips to the place where her chapter championship will be.  This is a combination “golf course” and “shooting gallery.”  The fairways are extremely narrow and mostly right next to each other.  So, as you play, you are constantly hearing “FORE!”  “FORE!”  For those who have not yet had the pleasure of taking up the game, this is what golfers shout as a warning when they hit a wayward shot that might hit another player.  Or, at least, it is what they should shout.  Ironically enough I have been hitting far too many unintentional fades and slices lately.  This is really unfortunate on our home course which was obviously laid out by either a lefty or someone with a natural draw.  There is bad trouble on our home course on every single hole if you are right of the fairway by more than a few feet.  On this other course, there are two severe doglegs where you actually need to hit a severe draw or even a slice to make an optimal shot.  On THOSE holes (and here’s where the irony comes in) I hit it dead straight right through the fairway even though I was TRYING to hit a fade.  Sigh.  Anyway, analyzing golf is a blast but I need to get back to work.  I’m feeling great but still dreaming about drinking!