So here it is. 31 December 2011, The ultimate day of the year. It’s been a good one for me, personally.
When 2011 opened, I had been-with only intermediate exception- unemployed since late 2008. My unemployment insurance had long since run out, and the job situation was beyond bleak. My bank account had run dry, and with it, so had my ability to buy food. January sucked. February sucked worse.
Funny thing about immanent starvation: it tests your boundaries. I had sworn that I would never let family connections find me a job, and yet… and yet I knew I couldn’t stretch those last 2 boxes of pasta for more than a week. So I let my little sister get me a job with the restaurant in which she had worked. I would be a host (the lowest-run of the restaurant industry) reporting directly to one of her closest friends. I got my first paycheck a couple days before my 33rd birthday. It was for $17.
A month or so after that I was formally diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder. I began taking medication and it utterly changed my world. I was able to watch an entire hour-long TV show without needing to also be reading a book! I could walk from one end of my (smallish) restaurant to the other without forgetting a 3 digit number! I was able to distinguish between boredom and inattention. It was glorious.
Also: the medication my shrink and I settled on doubled as an anti-depressant. Turns out that I was also clinically depressed for much of 2009 and 2010. Who knew?
As a result of this medication, my own drive unshackled. I was able to actually work, and work well. My bosses noticed. I was promoted, given extra duty, and promoted again. My financial situation improved dramatically. I was able to stop looking at the cats and thinking about dinner…
In the middle of the year, I began to think that I might be stable enough to start dating again. Just barely stable- but doable. That’s when the internet gods dropped Lex into my life. A couple of dates and we became an official couple. Witty? Check. Pretty? Check. Gay? Only in the sense that she’s generally “having or showing a merry, lively mood”. It’s possible that I’m more than a bit smitten.
As 2011 closes out, I find myself with a slightly greater income than I managed while collecting unemployment, but with a greatly improved sense of self worth. Throughout 2009 and 2010, my life had been in free fall. One piece at a time had seemed to fall apart, get lost, break, or disappear. In 2011, things got built. This is worth much celebration.
It’s Christmas morning. Christmas is for waking up surrounded with loved ones. Christmas is for eating Latkes and remembering that not everyone uses the same methods in their search for the divine. Christmas is for reminding ourselves that even the poorest among us- even those too poor to afford accommodations inside an inn– are human beings. Christmas is for creating new family traditions until we get them right. Oh hell. And Christmas is for football.
This week the Iraqi Civil war flared back up again as US soldiers left the country. This week saw the deaths of an iconoclast: Christopher Hitchens, an iconic freedom fighter: Vaclav Havel, and an iron-fisted dictator: Kim Jong Il. Also also: a “space ball” crashed into Namibia- there is no word on whether Superman or Jesus walked out of said ball.
Christmas is so institutionalized into American culture that even my family– which contains no Christians– gets together to celebrate it. Because of that institutionalization, the meaning of Christmas is often lost. So in brief: Christians believe that a/the deity was born into human flesh to teach humanity to be good to one another. The trick to happiness, this deity said, is to treat everyone as well as you would the deity who controls your fate. If you have more than you need, he said, why do you hold onto it? There’s more, of course. Much more.
It’s almost funny, in a way. The Christmas story tells of a trio of wise men who paid homage to the newly-born deity-made-human. And so naturally this week two famous wise men and a stooge died. This isn’t really about that, though. This is about what we owe the rest of our species.
The criterion presented here for Greatest US General seem far too limiting. For instance, rather than eliminating from consideration anyone who didn’t “fight[...] an enemy that was equal or superior to the United States in military and economic power and the general had to be fighting the main body of the enemy in that war”, I’d require only that the general had to be fighting a against a force-in-being that was the equal or superior of his/her own. Frankly the idea that no US general from WW2 can be considered great because they never faced the main German or Japanese army is asinine. How different would Kursk have gone had Patton not tied down hundreds of German tanks with the Sicilian campaign? Sherman’s Savannah Campaign utterly crippled the nascent Confederacy. To say that Sherman isn’t among the greatest generals because he had the wisdom to cripple the enemy’s ability to fight, rather than murder the fighting men themselves ignores Sun Tzu’s teachings. Obviously, I look forward to the rest of the series linked to.
It seems odd to say that people can’t get married by a Church unless they have state sanction. I know people who have been married in the eyes of a deity but not the law.
Microsoft has been working on the next iteration of the Xbox. What I find most interesting is that the head of this project is a woman. She seems to have done great work on the new UI, and I’m interested to see how far she takes the convergence project with the new hardware. The Xbox 360 really ought to have been the center of everyone’s living room, but (until recently) the user interface wasn’t good for that. Also: the name is terrible.
It’s hard to know how seriously to take this Dutch magazine’s explanation for using a rather racist word. On the one wrist, America sure does seem to have gotten it’s cultural claws into everything. It would make complete sense that we would have exported our negative stereotypes. On the other, well. I’d like to think that we would have started exporting the fact that you can’t use that word anymore. In defense of the Dutch, I only recently learned that “wog” is the British version of the N-word. So I can see how they would have missed the negative connotations.
One of the reasons I follow sports I don’t particularly care for is so that I can make light conversation. People emotionally invest in sports, but not (usually) to the same extent that they do in politics or religion. This is one of the great things about video games. People can enjoy them socially, create friendships around them, and- unlike with professional sports- actually participate in them together.
Nothing says “Christmas” quite like porn. Ok, maybe not literally. But the human sex drive is one of the most fundamental forces of our existence. So it’s not really surprising that pornography has been prevalent throughout our history. And it’s not surprising, therefore, that the people who have been on the business end of it have been the first to push the edges of new technologies.
I’ve gotten a bit preachy today, I know. Christmas morning is for opening presents, and finding toys. How much do we value those toys? Not metaphorically, but in actual cash terms. It’s worth remembering that most of what we buy in the 21st century is not physical product, but intellectual ambition.
Best quotes of 2011. Pet peeve warning: this “top 10″ list starts at “1″ and counts up to 10. Why do people make lists like that?!
The Swedes spend every Christmas with Donald Duck. Well, and why not? I’m going to do a little snoopy dance in celebration.
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for watching “How I met your Mother”. Or Sundays might be for gearing up for Christmas. Possibly, Sundays might be for blushing furiously that you missed last Sunday’s blog post. Alternately, Sundays might, just maybe be for visiting the wonderful world of Dickensian England.
This week: The War in Iraq ended on schedule– yet another promise kept by President Obama. This week: the world economy kept on teetering– but now in a whole new way. Also this week: a desperate Republican Presidential candidate called for an American caliphatevatican perfectly, lilly white, protestent theocracy.
The theory of justice underlying American wealth distribution holds that those who add the most to human welfare are rewarded with the most- and most fun- material possessions. Which is why when incredible money generators turn out to be destructive of wealth, it feels like a major betrayal of American values. Also: class warfare.
America is building a huge, awesome new rocket. It’s got a huge, awesome new name. Personally, I’d probably have avoided reminded the world of the ill-fated attempt to use nuclear weapons as a method for space propulsion. But that’s nit picking. Rockets. Red glare. Space. Awesome.
The National Labor Relations Board is the government entity which ensures that workers are not exploited by their employers. When Walmart employees were repeatedly locked- without pay- into stores overnight, the NLRB was there to help. That’s one of the many reasons that conservatives are doing their best to destroy it. All things considered, I admire both the style of the play and the shear chutzpah displayed in being so nakedly evil.
Longer school years are better for students.. Shorter school years are better for the theme park industry’s ability to hire cheap labor. When education and business colide, guess who wins.
Wait, wait wait. So it turns out that those “surveys” designed to terrify non-teens as to what those kids today are doing are wildly inflated. Who would have thought?
As a pedestrian, the rules between myself and cars are well understood. I’ve got the right-of-way, and in return, I don’t go near the road unless I have to. Cyclists don’t. Cyclists imitate the rules cars observe when they find them convenient, and ignore them when those rules get in their way. I’ve never been hit by a car while I’ve been on foot. But bikes? More than once. And every time the bicyclist has yelled at me.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was always intended to sit at the heart of the living room. They’ve done a poor job at communicating this fact outside of the gaming world. From what I can see, even for non-gamers, it would be a sound investment as a media center.
Thursday the 22nd of December is the Winter Solstice- the shortest day of the year, and the holiest on the pagan calendar. That’s one of reasons municipalities light “holiday” trees. It’s less to do with avoiding sectarianism, and more to do with including everyone in society. Also: it just so happens that I’m pagan.
Learning how to read fundamentally changes the way a human brain interpretes the universe. As we’re moving into a new, electronic, method of interacting with information, there are questions about what effects this might have on the human brain. Also: Starcraft is awesome.
Patents strike against the very core of free flow of information. They can serve the useful function of allowing for the monetization of new ideas, but they do so by preventing anyone else from using that idea. Even when using that idea without permission can save a life. The privatization of human existence by the America Supreme Court has been both awesome and terrifying to behold.
Speaking of learning. And data. The Khan Institute. Fascinatingly, they do as much tracking of user experience as the most intense software developers.
Fun fact: I was the Time Magazine Person of the Year back in 2006. Totally deserved it. This year, Time recognized the efforts of protestors around the world to create change. So, um, I guess I win again? Anyway. The best 40 signs of 2011.
I hope no one reading this is diabetic. Not that there’s anything wrong with people with diabetes. But the thing you’re about to see at this next link is so adorable that it might produce an overabundance of insulin. And that would be bad.
I looked up “sublime” in the dictionary, and got this.
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for figuring out how to become better at the position you were just promoted into. Sundays are for waking up and smelling the Christmas tree. Sundays are for sleeping in. Sundays are for godliness and brunch. Or perhaps, just perhaps, Sundays are for waking up early and going to work.
This week: Proving that the world learned something in 1929, Europe, America, and other large economies finally got their acts together for a European bailout deal. Egypt held it’s first round of parliamentary elections- results were announced after this post was written. This week AT&T whined that the FCC realized that if AT&T bought one of AT&T’s competitors, there would be less competition. Also this week: The Syrian uprising has turned into a full scale civil war. Good luck to the good guys.
In this space, I often criticize cops for doing bad, bad things. I honestly do think that it’s better to point out when power is abused than to note when it is used responsibly. And yet, I’m going to point out this story, where the police officers had the chance to trump up charges against a citizen protester– and declined to do so. Their small act was as utterly in line with the best traditions of the First Amendment as it was utterly out of line with expectations of unionizing workers throughout American history.
Interesting study about nakedness and perception of agency. I’d love to know the extent to which these findings are cross-cultural. For instance, many cultures have a culture of shared bathing among strangers. In those cultures, nudity and desire must (presumably) have some greater measure of divorce than they do in less public cultures. At any rate, one more thing to be wary of before making snap judgments about strangers.
I have just barely dipped my toes into the world of Frozen Synapse. It looks awesome and feels huge. What’s perhaps most interesting is the way the company has turned conventional wisdom on it’s head with regard to it’s business model. They declined to make a “free to play” game, and they declined to appeal to a huge audience. They declined to make an iPad game. And they appealed to a traditional gamer crowd- by declining to make a traditional game. The key, I think, was to fulfill a desire their audience didn’t know they had.
The greatest freedom is freedom from “arbitrary”. Clear rules, set up in advance, with understanding of the expectations due from all sides. This need is a deep part of the human psyche. Look at the Book of Job in the Torah- one person is tormented for reasons that seem utterly arbitrary. Every reader of that story walks away understanding that there has been a deep injustice. Labor agreements cannot simply be about compensation. At least, not as long as employers hold ultimate control over a worker’s schedule. It is simply too easy for an employer to abuse their unlimited power over a worker’s ability to afford food. Frankly, actual compensation is the least important part of Labor’s demand.
I’m not sure why Cracked turned into a great online magazine, and Mad limps along in a weird timewarp of nothingness. When I was a kid, both magazines tried to woo the same maladjusted-child demographic. Cracked wasn’t nearly as successful. And yet here we are in 2011, and Cracked is turning out funny social commentary aimed at adults. Also: can it really be the case that America is still terrified of black men and white women getting it on? If so, how much less terrified would we be if Hollywood showed such relationships as utterly normal?
When reading a survey of Alabama newspapers from the 1963 civil rights struggle, it is easy to conclude that the media was unsympathetic to the plight of African Americans. Looking at it from this perspective, contemporary newspapers are considerably better than their progenitors. I’m not sure that this is the best lesson. Instead, we see a group that challenged the existing power structure, and a media that was on the side of the powerful. Viewed in this light, modern media fares considerably less well. Very few newspapers in history actually wanted to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.
The framers of the American Constitution were terrified of arbitrary use of power. So they set up a system where everyone who had power would be answerable to a whole lot of people. The President would only have the power to do what Congress told him (so far, always a him). The judicial branch would make sure the States and Congress didn’t get out of line. Congress had the power to decide what kinds of cases the courts could preside over. The president got to appoint judges- and congress got to say “no” if those judges were horrible. And Congress was answerable to voters and states. Congress has declined to check the presidency, and the whole system stands imperiled.
Petroleum demand is climbing. Petroleum is hovering at $100 per barrel. Saudi Arabia can extract oil for roughly $2 per barrel. If Saudi Arabia is claiming they don’t need to drill for more oil, it’s because they either love Canada (cost: $50 per barrel to acquire), or don’t have any oil fields left to tap. Since the Saudi family maintains it’s hold over the Arabian people by controlling the oil wealth, my guess is that they don’t love the Canadians more than they love power.
This is a great and nuanced look at illegal immigration. I do think the author missed an important angle. He asserts that “I know already that many here will argue that this isn’t racism; and that if it were white Canadians working illegally we would be having the exact same conversations. But I remain dubious of this argument; for me it just doesn’t pass the sniff test.” I’d say that we’d be having equally racist arguments, but that “white Canadians” would be found to be of a different “race” from “white” Americans. Those poor English/French mongrels.
A Hyatt hotel decided to hold a “Housekeeping Appreciation Week”, and decided not to give those housekeepers money. Nor extra breaks. Nor so much as a free lunch. Nope. The management team at Hyatt Regency Santa Clara decided that to appreciate housekeepers, they would paste housekeeper’s faces onto supermodel’s bodies. This is the way that management tells labor that they don’t consider themselves coequally human.
Within the last few weeks, a major game’s company made the claim that it wasn’t worthwhile to develop for the PC market- 95% of the people who would end up playing the game wouldn’t actually give the developer money. Another developer disagrees, claiming that it’s only 83%. I’m not sure if that 12% difference is why the later publisher is so willing to make games for the PC, but they have been fantastically profitable in doing so.
Despite the fact that I’ve been complaining about arbitrary practices all post long, don’t confuse that with “random”. Here’s a great post on randomness being important to storytelling.
I become more convinced daily that the key skill of the 21st century will be the clear translation of information into graphical formats. That’s right: the graphic designer will be the highly paid specialist of the next job boom. Artists with philosophy degrees will have the last laugh.
If you click just one link:
Leonard Cohen asserted that “Everyone knows the dice are loaded. The Occupy [City] movement has been demonstrating that not everyone is aware of this. Far too many of us saw our inability to find a job and felt alone. Far too many of us saw that we were unable to afford the lifestyle of our parents and believed it was a personal failing on our part. We’re not alone. We didn’t fail. The system changed. America became a third world nation so rich that none have noticed. Occupy [City] has been about fighting back. Here’s hoping for effective action in the next phase.
This week’s theme has been about power. Well. Isn’t is always? In the comments, leave a message about a time you abused power.
What do you mean you haven’t seen the Muppets yet?
The key to a free market is competition. Without several- or at least two- firms trying to get dollars from customers, there is no incentive for a business to innovate in terms of goods or services. Nor is there pressure to lower prices. There is no reason (other than boredom) to change what is profitable. With competition, consumers have the ability to spend money elsewhere. In order to create competition, firms must have the ability to easily enter a new market (if they think they have a good idea), and leave the market (if they think they’re failing miserably). America makes it rather difficult for individuals to enter and exit the market, creating a dearth of entrepreneurship.
One of the major barriers is healthcare. An individual with a large, ongoing medical condition (say: diabetes, or a history of cancer) would find it nearly prohibitive to leave a company which provides healthcare benefits and form their own firm- they would have to buy healthcare on the (much more expensive) individual market. Some of this pressure has been alleviated by the recently-passed Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, but much of this problem still remains. A potential solution would allow for individuals to purchase healthcare through Medicare- a significantly less expensive alternative than most private healthcare plans.
Another obstacle is simple lack of money. No matter how great the idea an individual has, without access to cash, it’s going to remain just an idea. Compounding this problem is that between 50 and 90 percent of new businesses fail in the first 2 years. In order to encourage people to start new companies, we need to lower the cost of failure. Here’s a potential solution: Every American will be allowed an interest free loan from the US government. If the company fails in the first 2 years repayment will not be expected. If the company succeeds, then the loan must be repaid in full. Obviously a lot of details will need to be worked out- including issues of fraud detection.
Even in the absence of fraud, this program will be costly. I’d propose that 5 years after the program goes into effect, we enact a tax increase on individuals earning more than $500,000 a year. Simple fairness dictates the deal: America supported high earners when they were getting started, and now it’s their turn to pay back that support for future generations.
Perhaps the largest barrier to new businesses is the mountains of red tape enacted by state and local governments. Frankly, a lot of this bureaucratic busywork seems designed specifically to prevent existing companies the indignity of having to continue to justify their existence to their current customers. But some- perhaps most- of those laws are legitimate public interest regulations that lead to a better society. Other than a general statement that rules need to be streamlined and clarified, I’m not entirely sure what a solution might be. Weak? Yes. But the problem needs mentioning, even in absence of a solution.
