Tag Archives: economy

From blacksmiths to international banking institutions…

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One benefit, if benefit is the right word, of my father and mother in-law no longer an influence on my daily thought patterns, is that my mother is not one to fret over the workings of people we know only from television images and newspaper stories — the megawealthy, the overambitious politicians, the steroid-filled athletes, the exhibitionist actors, etc.

We can live taciturn lives without concern about those outside our day-to-day circle of influence.

Otherwise, I can serve on the committees that determine who gets wireless spectrum segments, whose technological development is the de facto standard, how to protect ourselves from monopolistic predators with no social benefits, and which laws protect people or corporations more.

At the end of the day, only I can truly tell myself if I am better off today than I was yesterday, or if I’ve put myself in a position to potentially be better off tomorrow.

For example, have you ever worked with a team to develop the de facto standard for a telecommunications method like ADSL?

For those who missed the whole dialup/ADSL/cable/satellite modem portion of history class, there once was a time when people were unable to get instant access to world events such as game scores, election results or regime changes except through mass media announcements.

Then, as technology progressed, we were able to communicate gossip about world events not just by landline voice lines but also through nonvoice methods like dialup modems, which some of us might only recognise through old films like “You’ve Got Mail” or ringtones that simulate a modem sync-up tone series.

Well, I guess it’s time for me to skip all that and join the new evolution in communication technology — a smartphone with builtin WiFi hotspot.

First, I’ll have to buy the smartphone, which is, for me, right now, a choice between the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the latest Nokia 9xx to be announced on 5th September (my wife leans toward the Apple iPhone 4/5 series).

Then, we’ll take the smartphones home, test their WiFi hotspot throughput, see if it’s faster than our ADSL line or a potential cable modem, and concede defeat that we can’t outcompete the advances of technology by continuing to stick with ADSL, a telecommunications method that a team I once worked with at Conexant (the descendant of Rockwell Semiconductor in the days of the Hayes modem and the AT command set) put into a play several products including a residential gateway.

After all, it doesn’t look like I’ll ever get the gigabit throughput that Chattanooga residents enjoy, let alone the speed that AT&T U-verse promises but hasn’t delivered to my household here in the so-called advanced metropolis of the Rocket City, a/k/a Huntsville, Alabama, USA, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Orion–Cygnus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, Observable Universe.

In retrospective, all of this seems a bit slow, doesn’t it?

Well, we’ll leave that chapter in this story for another blog entry…

The Headline Games

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Working with my colleagues in policy thinktanks funded by large governments public businesses like China and Russia, I wanted to prove that no nation takes itself completely seriously.

We put together a few future stories in our ongoing pasttime of the Headline Games.

What is one of the atheistic countries with the most self-absorbed leader on this planet?  North Korea, of course.

What is one of the most martyr-themed, theocratic countries on this planet?  Iran, of course.

Then, let’s play a round of the Headline Games to maneuver the two countries to make a deal with each other.

That way, we prove that a theocrat will bed with an infidel with no chance of conversion but plenty of blasphemous profit to benefit them both — spreading atheism and false idol worship in equal measures; an atheist is never so happy as to make love with a theocrat and have pocket change to spare on activities that have nothing to do with glorifying/worshiping/serving a god.

All governments public businesses, you see, are fungible.

One is the same as another.

We may argue the finer points of freedom — whether one may practice one’s beliefs in public or in private only — but let us not split hairs over spilt milk.

The water did not pass under the bridge, it took the bridge with it in a flash flood, much the same as the role of living under the auspices of a public business we call entities like China, Russia, Luxembourg, the United States or the Cherokee Nation.

In the business of globalisation, we allow the protectors of their subcultural practices to carry the banners bearing their beliefs; however, we expect them to behave correctly, conforming to the international business standards to which they all must bow and pray at the end of the day, regardless of the god(s) they do or do not claim is/are responsible for their origin stories.

We in the leisure hours of playing the Headline Games ply our trade, regardless of the tools we use (you) to accomplish goals we want to share with you but you would not understand, having no knowledge of the communication methods your society has not matured enough to learn (yet).

Humour is a given, a public key to unlock the mysteries of the mysterymaking business.

Let us look at the emperour’s new clothes and old hat tricks to show you what we mean…

What I went through with my mother in-law in 1997…

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…I go through with my mother in 2012.

My mother in-law was 80 years of age when her husband died.  My mother was 78 when her husband died.

In both cases, as in any longterm relationship between two people, the survivor learns new forms of daily decisionmaking.

My mother in-law depended on her now-deceased son and living daughter (my wife) to help her make decisions after their father died.

My mother depends on my sister and me to help her make decisions after our father died.

When my father in-law died, my wife was almost 35.

When my father died, I was 50.

In between: fifteen years of wisdom gathered through life experiences, some shared between us, some accumulated individually.

Fifteen years of social changes/progress, including new technology (think about how much the Internet has changed in 15 years), new businesses, failed businesses, climate change, fashion cycles, pop music tastes, entertainment choices, medical science advances, etc.

Are we more or less tolerant of Iranian atheists/humanists?  Liberal Quakers?  Non-heterosexual relationships?  Physical/mental challenges?  The unemployed?  Cute cat videos?

Is there room in your life for a late night TV talk show host with a robotic skeleton and cloth-horse costumed actor(s)?

Would there have been such a creature 15 years ago?  Could he have been a reformed Scottish alcoholic comedian?  Do such creatures exist in real life today?

I learned a new phrase today: conformity to tomorrow (from book, “Without Apology: The Heroes, the Heritage, and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism” by Chuck Fager [which I read, quickly, in the book section of Unclaimed Baggage Center]):

“Conformity to tomorrow: …consists in a moderate opposition to the existing political power, together with the espousal of the ideas and doctrines of the most sensitive, the most visionary, the most appealing trend in society. This is a trend which, from the sociological point of view, is already dominant, and is the one which should normally be expected to win out….In this way, the political stand has the appearance of being independent, whereas in reality it is the expression of an avant-garde conformism.” (Jacques Ellul, a French Reformed theologian and sociologist, 1972A, p. 123.)

I would toss musical acts like Rage Against The Machine, political groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and economic movements like the EU handling of the PIIGS into the realm of avant-garde conformism, as well as most official social protest groups not included in terrorist lists for “wanted: dead or alive” drone attacks.

We always have to have enemies toward whom we formally direct our confusion/fear-based hatred.

But, as usual, I digress.

Earlier today, at a roadside restaurant called Carlile’s in Scottsboro, Alabama, a town where a plentiful plethora of people met for camaraderie and shopping bargains, my wife and I held a wonderful discussion with Autumn, mother of three boys aged 7, 6 and 2, the first taking the role of the responsible eldest (“Mom told you not to do that”), the second a quiet child who puts up with the physical shenanigans of his two brothers, and the youngest, the rowdiest one of the bunch.

Autumn, raised by her grandparents, lost them both nine months apart five years ago.  The emptiness inside is slowly, very slowly, wrapped up in new friendships and new experiences we call the passage of time.

When she wants to turn to her grandparents for guidance, they are not there and she feels an instant pang of pain.

Although she has a beautiful tattoo of a heart on her arm where every one of her three boys first rested and for whom she tattooed their names, she would never tattoo the names of her grandparents or the name of her husband on her body because the reminder of their losses, in plain ink visible under skin, would be too much to bear (beauty is not the only thing that’s skin-deep).

She, like all parents, believes deep down that her kids will outlive her, their futures bright.

To those who’ve lost their children to congenital conditions, I give you my sympathy.  No one wants to survive the death of offspring with a promising future.

My wife outlived her parents and her only sibling.

I have outlived my father but not my mother and my only sibling.

As this storyline grows more complicated, my life and the lives of my family members are intricately intertwined.

Not a loss, not a gain nor a zero-sum game is life.

The sets of states of energy are constantly in flux.

Every waking moment is an opportunity to learn.

Is new technology an enabler of your relatively expensive entertainment addictions or an avenue of opportunity for increased wealth?  Does it increase the credit or debit side of your account ledger?  In other words, do you go into debt to play games and watch videos?

These and other questions lead us to thought trails about the costs and benefits of a globally-connected economy, where plenty of leisure is available to the masses.

If this laptop computer and these blog entries are using up CPU cycles for the sole purpose of entertaining myself, is that okay?

What about the urgency to act, the desire to change our society significantly so that spare CPU cycles are used to ensure survival of Earth-based lifeforms here and elsewhere as long as potential energy states are available to support them in this part of the universe?

Does it matter if the majority of our species believes in self-centered activities?

What are a few decades compared to 1000 years?

What is 1000 years compared to 200 million?

Can we really know the future, no matter how much we bunch together to conform to one vision knowingly, unknowingly, voluntarily and/or coercively?

All for the sake of family, whatever that means to you/me/us?

Cuban cigar sandwiches

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After Fidel Castro dies, how will the island be treated?

Would you want to vote for a national leader and, if so, would you base your choice on the candidate for whom the majority of military members is willing to die?

If you knew that taxes were an illegal form of wealth transfer, would you fight to prove that paying no taxes is the second-most patriotic act (the first being to die for preserving your municipality)?

Should the legally-accumulated gains of alpha males/females have to be redistributed to the less-than-alphas with whom they competed in the first place and won?

A little island like Cuba is a lab experiment.

Let us watch its transformation, the transcendent effects on the rest of the world, and smile…

The Dream of an ice-free Arctic Ocean/Sea shipping zone is soon upon us!

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We may debate the current/future detrimental effects of climate change many call global warming, but let us remember that opportunity arises from adversity like necessity is the mother of invention.

Look how much closer we are getting to an ice-free Arctic Ocean/Sea in the summertime:

[from: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png%5D

Will the shipping industry find significant cost savings with permanently open shipping lanes at northern latitudes?

Will the savings, in turn, correlate to reduced use of greenhouse gases?

Meanwhile, as Greenland ice masses melt further, how will our shopping/shipping habits change in relation to our ecosystem adjustments while shorelines recede and deserts grow?

At the end of the day, who benefits and who suffers depends a lot on our species’ classic characteristics of pecking order — alpha males/females, etc.

 

There once was a dog named Vetch

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While the Venezuelan government decides whether to threaten the U.S. and/or British intelligence agencies for the recent destruction of vital equipment meant to scare Central and South American countries into submission, the Association for the Assertion of Ascension assessed the accuracy of counterterrorism techniques taught in typing pools.

Very cool.

Now, a word from our sponsor:

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Well, we here at Bullseye Tech have just the service you need.

As you’re probably aware, we’ve provided surveillance data to governments around the world for years.

Why, just this week we were asked by your government to plant a person in each showing of a film about what the world will be like if your current chief executive is reelected.  These casual observers have been capturing facial snapshots of all the audience members, evaluating emotions displayed during specific scenes in the film, and recording private conversations they carry on while entering the theatre, watching the film and exiting in order to ascertain the range of voice intonations that indicate shock, surprise, agreement and/or controlled rage.

In other words, does a documentary like this simply serve to reinforce beliefs, strongly or weakly held?  Can it actually change voting patterns?

In addition, we use DMV data of the audience’s vehicles to gather property ownership, tax history and election data captured in private voting booths.

Select members of the audience were tagged with waterproof audiovisual and GPS data collection devices that send information on an hourly basis for up to 48 hours and then self-destruct, resembling bird droppings, splattered food and other innocuous substances often found on clothing and motor vehicles.

By determining the film’s effect on the actual voting and shopping behaviours of our government’s “customers,” we help keep the local economy running at its current level of inefficiency in order to destroy the economies of rival governments in other parts of the world.

As you can see, we have our fingers on the pulse and our probes on the thoughts of any and every customer you can imagine, from pet spiders to neglected great-aunts.

Give us a call today because we already know your business is about to go under due to the services we provided to your rivals who, for now, are one step ahead of you.

However, if you buy our latest technology, you’ll have a competitive edge on your rivals who were unwilling to pay for upgrades.

Don’t delay! Time is a commodity you can’t afford to lose when price is no object!

We return you to the limerick contest currently in progress:

There once was a dog named Vetch
Who played a mean game of Fetch;
His owner, though blind
Was not very kind —
Ordered his dog to catch, then retch.

Overheard in a theatre

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Sadly, I guess the times of my passive-aggressive father are over.  In his day, I doubt we would have heard someone make such a bold, impolite, immoral statement as, “Well, yes, Bill Clinton cheated on his wife, but he was the U.S. President, for Christ’s sake.  Of course, it makes sense that he still represents the Democratic Party.  ‘W’ was a whore man himself before he conveniently found Jesus and cooperated with the Muslim Saudis in selling out American oil interests.  He ‘conveniently’ still represents the Republican Party, too.”

So many cynical observations about promiscuous politicians and teachers, so little time to tell them.  Thank goodness, the film “The Campaign” was enough to tie me over for a while and fill in for such a bleak political election campaign season here in the ol’ US of A, where neither of the two primary candidates for U.S. President can talk about why the American economy is doing so poorly due to their being owned by the same worldwide corporate lobbying interests.

The last two paragraphs are examples of the influences on my youth, which I am trying hard to remove from my set of operational memories.

It is while we prepare the storyline to ease over to another planet (thanks, in part, to the friendly folks at Need Another Seven Astronauts (NASA)), where we will talk about life in the universe that does not center on our species, as puny as it is in comparison to the history of helium or cilia or syphilis/gonorrhea.

I am in a mischievous mood, wanting to make fun of others for the sake of making fun of others with no purpose in mind other than to entertain myself here, rather than in my thoughts alone.

Have you ever sat in a dark theatre, felt a constriction in your chest, the left side of your body going numb for just the briefest of moments, and wondered, “Is this it?”

I can feel it again right now.  Maybe it’s just a muscle twitching after I swept the driveway yesterday.  Or indigestion.

I hope so.

I really would like to sit and laugh quietly for many days longer.

If not…well, it was a good ride.

“It.”  Hmm…

“It” is nothing more than my life, a diversion for other sets of states of energy programmed to reproduce.

I never reproduced.

Scientific studies indicate that reproducing at my age is a recipe for heightened risk of autistic children who would drink out of plastic bottles made with BPA and filled with high fructose corn syrup, take antibiotics and become obese, and, finally, succumb to the onerous labels of “BIG” — BIG farms, BIG Pharma, BIG…you get the picture, if you subscribe to the notion that it’s an “us vs. them” world.

I never met BIG.  I don’t know “them.”  They are just words to me, diversions from a goal one gazillion years in the making, looking back 1000 years from now to see what we’ve accomplished.

Milestones, not accusations.

Actions, not passive disagreement.

A colleague of my father jokingly called my dad an imaginary engineer because of his master’s degree in industrial engineering (even saying so to my father a few days before he died), which always irritated my father.  Now, an industrial engineer is in charge of the largest company in the U.S. by stock value — Apple.  Who gets the last laugh?

That’s the thing.  If this moment is my last one, do I want to have my last thoughts focused on a clever joke or expanding the life of this planet into the cosmos?

I don’t want to spin a passive-aggressive take on a reworked warmed-over punchline.

I sure don’t want to be remembered for simply being clever.

I don’t want to be remembered at all.

This universe is it, all I’ve got, the only verifiable theory of life as I know it.

If I don’t give my minute/tiny/invisible/forgettable place in life a serious thought, who will?

If I don’t have my father around to argue with that the world is not falling to the Nazis and Communists all over again, to whom do I direct my attempt to make peace with my father and our generational gap?

If I don’t have my mother in-law around to convince that the United States is not about to go into another Great Depression (or worse) because a man who is too young (and black) is the U.S. President, to whom do I say that it’s not just white people and old people who care about the American Dream of [democracy and/or capitalism] and freedom for all?

It was a tough decision to say I would never vote again because I care about the higher ideals of our country and our world.  The everyday arguments of this time, of my generation, are perennial — that’s why I don’t care about them.

My visions are hundreds and thousands of years in the making, carrying on a long tradition passed on to me by others, regardless of the current form our organisation of life (i.e., civilisation) may look like.

War and the desire for peace are perennial.

Using available resources until they are depleted and worrying about the consequences are perennial.

That’s why I don’t care about them or the ways we beat our chests like good primates in unison about our alignment with issues such as these.

In the big picture, our species is unimportant.

We aren’t going to agree with the big picture until something else comes along to change that view.

Even then, we’ll argue that our ancestors — the keepers of our origin stories — were right and we’re the center of the universe.

So be it.

You can keep perpetuating those stories in whatever form you like, if it makes you feel better as you procreate.

As long as you keep in the wee spot at the back of your thoughts that you’re working for a larger cause than our species.

I use “cause” cautiously and facetiously because it implies more than what a single blog entry in a continuous storyline is supposed to be about, bringing up imagery of the influences upon my youth again, when this is solely about the way the universe works non-anthropomorphically.

Enough for now in this chapter.

More as it develops…

Double Sided Sales Slip Customer Copy

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A couple of kids protesting in a church on the other side of the planet taught me that if you want to play with fire, be prepared for the consequences.

A musician who’s part of a corporatised musical group playing officially-sanctioned anti-corporate lyrics taught me that hypocrisy knows no cultural bounds.

You see, I’m all about the power of the people.

But keep in mind that my goal is to move the wealth of many thousands of millionaires and billionaires out of reach of the people.

The “people,” of course, is a meaningless term that can be used positively or derogatorily: “We the people…” or “you people,” and its many forms used to provoke crowds in time for [re]election.

The people get used a lot, don’t they/we?

Keep people distracted while we prepare…

Well, I’m not supposed to tell you what’s being prepared, am I, if I am to maintain this storyline?

Let’s imagine a few possible futures:

  1. It’s clear that changing the habits of billions of people to save themselves from themselves is not going to happen when so much profit is at stake, including just good enough profit to feed the mouths of billions of people.  If you had the opportunity, would you set up a location for your friends and family that is safe from invasion by non-heavily armed people and sufficient to provide you a livable subculture/ecosystem while the rest of the world was experiencing major/negative climate change?
  2. You have great wealth at your disposal and you believe that the global economy is your friend so you spend your billions of dollars trying to improve local economies which, in turn, improve the global economy, increasing not only your chance for survival but the whole world’s, too.
  3. You and your friends in private and public businesses have been testing the theory that living off-world is a sure way to hedge your bets about Earth’s climate change and any detrimental effects it may have on your way of life.  You encourage the use of public funds to affirm your theory while you amass the resources you need to build off-world colonies.
  4. Your family has lived in relative poverty for generations.  You have competed against your peers and created a small empire — it’s time to enjoy the fruits of your labour, cost no object in pursuing a life of luxury.
  5. Your family has lived in the peace and comfort of middle-class living for generations — no reason for you to change the course of history.
  6. Poverty means nothing in your subsistence lifestyle.  Words like “blog” and “computer” do not exist in your language full of nature-based terminology.

All of us are familiar with these scenarios, through personal experience, from someone we know or by popular culture references.

In telling the story of our species in relation to the humongous universe in which we barely understand we live, tying these subplots together is interesting some days and boring on other days.

However, it’s all I have to work with here.

Like going from static cartoon strips to creating animated daily cartoons in writing, if not drawing.

Protestors with machetes will most often lose to security guards with guns, who will always, always, always claim self-defense after discharging their weapons and killing protestors.

My question is this: if the commander in-chief claims credit for killing a notorious villain, does he also take credit for the most number of military suicides of any commander in-chief during his time in office?  If your military has some of the lowest morale on record, then I, in honouring my father’s legacy, have to ask myself why anyone with a military background would vote for you?  Following that train of thought, how many of us benefit from one of the largest peacetime (sorry, I mean “war on terror”) military deployments in history — should we also question re-electing the commander in-chief?  In this case, the Law of Unintended Consequences meets the Law of Diminishing Returns.  What am I missing here?  What am I not telling the reader?  I am not my father so why is there not a viable third candidate for me to elect?

Ahh…the balance of power.  ‘Tis a game that entertains, n’est pas?  Sarkozy and Berlusconi quickly become footnotes in history.  Merkel, like Kohl, is not far behind.  Anyone remember Mikhail Gorbachev or Deng Xiaoping?  Did Greece used to be a country?

It will be no different on the Moon or Mars.  More pioneers, more forgotten history as we scramble to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves from the elements while armchair bystanders question our motives and protest our version of progress that clashes with theirs.

Remember the Golden Rule: S/he with the most power protecting a stash of gold makes the rules.

Embossed business cards for the bossy busy cardshark

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Once again, a scientific study released earlier this week proved that scientists’ demand for highly-precise and extremely-accurate scientific instruments to study climate change requires the very sophisticated ecosystem that creates global warming, glacier melting, coastal flooding and other disasters that the scientists are warning us against creating with our sophisticated ecosystem.

Reinforces the theory that the observers and the observation equipment directly influence the outcome of the “pure” experiment.

Is it better to have an ecosystem declining into ignorance to save us from ourselves?

The Law of Unintended Consequences outlives Cole’s Law (sliced cabbage and vinegar) to compete against Murphy’s Law.

There can be only one true law to rule us all, better known as the Law of the Kitchen Sink: it takes just a single hair to clog the drain and flood your home.

German private industry vs. American military industry transportation choices

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The beauty of a brain in retirement is letting one’s thoughts wander.

For instance, as I was driving back and forth from unrestricted territory down a long road into a restricted American military base, I looked around me.

I remembered when I used to commute via airplane and taxi from the U.S. to Germany on business.

In Germany, I noticed that some companies, such as Fujitsu-Siemens in Augsburg, offered large covered parking areas nearest buildings for people who commuted by bicycle or motorbike.

Here in the U.S., at the local military base called Redstone Arsenal, those who carpool (more than one person per vehicle) are allotted spots to park nearest one of the buildings but motorbikes were allotted uncovered spots in the middle of the carpark.

Which got me thinking…

When are we going to design our infrastructures to optimise the mix of devices we use in our transportation systems?

In other words, if we make token efforts to promote efficient means of transportation, then people will continue to pay for the convenience of inefficient methods.

Only when we make it difficult and/or inconvenient to use relatively expensive transportation vehicles (cars/trucks/SUVs) will we change our habits.

For instance, what if people had to use mass transit to get onto a U.S. military base, with tiny carparks and large bicycle/motorbike storage facilities located at mass transit pickup points throughout walk/bike-friendly [sub/ex]urban neighbourhoods?

Would we encourage people to walk or bike to work rather than the majority piling into their one-person occupied metal-and-plastic contraptions lined up one-after-another in traffic jams morning, noon and night to get on the base?

Would we worry less about the dangers of large carparks full of uninspected vehicles on military bases?

Would we find better ways to spend our time than wait on crowded roads for our turn to drive through traffic-light controlled intersections?

Would we have more time to spend with family before and after our workdays are done?

Makes an argument like the one cited here at wired.com moot, doesn’t it, when you eliminate the need for the motorised/EV transportation devices altogether?