Thanks to the following:
Jenn and Joe at KCDC; Shericka at Krispy Kreme; April, Hunter and Jonathan at Publix; Devante at Walmart; is that all I can remember right now? Wow, getting old has its privileges, including excusing one’s self for poor memory recall trick practice.
Ruralites know that once your farm is sold off, no matter in one fell swoop or in patches, the magical wealth you had in land is gone and your ties to nature cut off, turning you into a semi-robotic member of the Urbanskis, forever dependent on the hard work of others, an abomination rather than a wholly natural independent original member of our land-based species.
Thanks to the teamwork from the folks at Huntsville Utilities, after the gun blast of a burst of sparks and smoke that indicated a blown “fuse” next to a transformer which, given the evidence of sticks piled up, possibly indicating a bird nest, electric power was restored pretty quickly. Thanks to a new coach, half bear, the other half cat, life is simple again. May we college football fans remain patient while the Univ. of Tenn. pigskin players rally around their leader. Rain delays the filming of a new stop-action flick. Time to read…
Some people prefer not to mention where they’ve been — the restaurants and retail establishments — because they assume no one wants to know.
However much I agree that we aren’t interested in knowing the minute details of a person’s day, regardless of the person’s fame/infamy, how many of us like to see our names in print?
People to thank for their services: Paul at Surin Thai Restaurant; Drew, Cynthi and Kay at Publix; Garrett at Cracker Barrel; the backdock receivers at Goodwill Industries; ticket issuers at the Living Christmas Tree; UAH men’s basketball players who beat a Division I school’s basketball team for the first time in school history; UPS package deliverers; more to follow.
If you’re going to create a real virtual world to hide your wealth from socialistic hands, you have to start somewhere in an exotic location.
For instance, draw a line in the regolith sand and drive a golden spike to claim your spot on the Inner Solar System superhighway.
Where?
How many people work for a structured organisation?
My brain is fuzzy this morning so I’m just making this blog entry a thought experiment.
Corporate organisational charts are typically hierarchical, especially viewed from a monetary compensation viewpoint.
The higher up the chart you go, the fewer the people but the more they’re paid.
People (employees, consultants, etc.) are just one cost of doing business.
What if we redefined the cost of working for a structured organisation?
What if we told employees that part of their pay was tied to profit sharing?
What if every minimum-wage job taught employees not only how to work together with other people as a team but also how the risks and rewards of running a company are shared so that it’s not just the CEOs and executives who get bonuses but also everyone else on the organisation chart?
What are the costs and benefits for such a program?
Could we remove the necessity for minimum wage and unions if we as a nation said that all employees were entitled to sharing the profits for a job well done as a team?
Would employees feel a better sense of ownership and pride in their work?
How could such a plan be integrated into early childhood education?
How do we instill into children that every one of us is a profit center?
Some of us profit monetarily and some of us profit emotionally/spiritually; some both; some neither.
How does this apply to people who are congenitally unable to grasp the concept of teamwork?
Three traveling salesmen were having no luck at selling the last of their wares before the end of the year.
A new edict came from the local Roman client king that merchants could deduct 80 percent of the value of surplus goods they donated to a good cause.
So, the salesmen started asking around.
“Hey, you know any good causes that could use my stuff?”
“Sure,” replied a group of shepherds. “We had a mass hypnosis dream that told us an infant is the secret son of a line of kings but he was born in the humblest of poor circumstances.”
The salesmen quarreled over the meaning of this statement.
“Well, my moneylender could say this is a charitable cause, could he not? Gifts for the poor and all that.”
“I don’t know. I mean, what if this is some kind of ruse?”
“Maybe you’re right. But all we need is a blank receipt and we can let the accountants work out the details of the deduction.”
So they left the market and humped their camels over to the stockyard where this baby was said to be born, chatting as they went.
“Man, you ever get saddle sores?”
“Yeah. And I’ve got the solution! I have an exclusive shipment of talcum powder I’m willing to sell at a special discount, just for you!”
The stockyard owner chased them away, telling them he wanted no more to do with strange tales and late-night visitors.
The salesmen continued on. Eventually, they arrived at a small house and, like good salemen wearing their best clothes, presented themselves as three wise kings from afar (although, in truth, they were three wise guys looking for any angle to close a sale).
The first spoke. “I present to you, the parents of this shiny new baby, my gift of gold, which, at 80 percent of market value, is a really good deal!”
The second spoke. “I humbly bow before this magnificent child and graciously offer my gift of the last lot of frankincense that, in every bazaar of this great city, is worth more than its weight in gold!”
The third spoke. “My esteemed colleagues are wonderful, aren’t they? But let’s face fact. There’s nothing you want for the middle of winter like a fresh box of myrrh, especially, if you’ll pardon my saying so, when the precious gift of a beautiful baby like this one has a little accident after eating and, forgive me for speaking out of turn, leaves a lot to be desired in the odour department.”
After some small talk with the baby’s parents, the salesmen realised they weren’t going to get a blank receipt for their gifts from road-weary parents who were wise to the ways of fly-by-night trinket sellers.
Thus, the salesmen waited until the shepherds stopped by to ensure there were witnesses should an audit of the salesmen’s finances question a deduction for gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the son of an obscure poor couple in Bethlehem, just in case no one believed their story that an angel had spoken to them to follow a star.
After a few sketches by the local papyrus newspaper artist, the crowd began to disperse.
Bowing with apologies, the salesmen rushed back to their hometowns, avoiding any contact with the Roman client king Herod until they could get their travel receipts straightened out. Tired, hungry and dusty, they arrived safely at home, carefully documenting their sales, ready to see what shipments they had that would sell better on their next trips.
In the religion we call the New World Order — the global marketplace, that is — adherents require the uninitiated to follow the same commandments regardless of their nonbeliefs:
In Europe, especially, we will continue to impose austerity hardships until morale improves and people break their dependencies upon government programs of social welfare as they find their faith in the only real religion available to all of us in any part of Earth — the New World Order of the Network, the Nodes be praised — enlightenment giving them the impetus to start their own businesses, investing the profit in the marketplace of the strong and efficient who may personally choose to support the meek and weak themselves rather than be forced to fund government support of the unprofitable meek and weak.
They say the near vacuum of space shows no favourites.
From the perspective of our species, that is.
Out here, a few protective layers separate me and my crew from the noncruelty of cold death.
We have launched mini-satellites like bread crumbs indicating our path through the pathless mix of gravity waves, comet dust and cosmic rays.
Our corporate goals of continuous learning and continuous improvement drive us toward seeking knowledge not only for knowledge’s sake, in case we encounter a situation that requires reaction faster than we can look up a solution, but also to increase our network connections between neurons, electromechanical interfaces and the Inner Solar System Net that binds us ever closer together.
Allowing us to explore within our assigned tasks, we avoid the aimless wandering of what we were taught were the inefficient aims of an overly permissive society.
Automatic tracking functions inform us when our efforts to learn are incongruous with advancing the state-of-the-art of space travel while en-route to our destination.
Or our destiny, as some of the crew likes to see it.
One or two of the crew members will always have ideas that are not sanctioned for testing against possible implementation on a larger-than-theoretical scale.
For instance, during a five-minute thought break, I was interrupted by Reqdook, whose sole task is to ensure that our seed bank is protected at all costs, even at the expense of the crew, if necessary.
Reqdook has plenty of time to explore our information database and add thought experiments to the database for further expansion by crew members in their idle between-work cycles.
Lately, Reqdook has played with the idea that we are a duplicate crew, analysing communications threads between us and other Nodes.
Reqdook feels like there’s something left unsaid during conference calls, as if we’re told one thing, expected another and left with nothing said about a third.
At three years of age, Reqdook is our youngest and least-experienced crew member so I let Reqdook make up these stories as a way of discovering how the Network gives us room to mature in our own time.
One day, Reqdook will figure out the truth, that all but a tiny portion of our “selves,” self being an artificial concept, runs on automatic functions over which we have little “conscious” control.
Every person, every set of states of energy, has access to a circle of influence that is imaginary.
I know that I do and I don’t control the Network myself because my imagination lets me think and act upon both the “yes” and “no,” the positive and negative aspects of a single entity within a Node controlling the whole Network.
I am the small self here in this chamber of a spaceship and I am the whole known universe that must pass through this set of states of energy that is me, one way or another influencing every state of energy that ever has, ever does and ever will exist.
I, and the other dozens just like me, sent Reqdook back to the drawing board, so to speak, to better understand what duplication really means.
Redundancy is a positive word in my dictionary, key to protecting the Network.
Somewhere, out there, is another Network that is a duplicate of this one, that joins other duplicate Networks as Nodes within a bigger Network that duplicates others, etc.
Reqdook will learn this hidden message that the communication threads imply but do not state.
I cannot tell Reqdook this unspoken fact because it then becomes a theory for Reqdook to record in the information database and others to refute in their supplementary comments about contradictory theories.
Such is the life of a space explorer…
treetrunkdings 