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Full disclosure, I am not a quote/unquote Pittsburgher by residency.  I have been a lifelong fan of Pittsburgh teams.  I attended and graduated the University of Pittsburgh.  I currently work in the city.  To that end, I consider myself a Pittsburgher because I am very attached to the area in one way or another. And even if I wasn’t I would still have been affected as deeply by the events that took place in Squirrel Hill at the Tree of Life Synagogue last month.  And I’m here to say that it, along with the rest of the world won’t get better.

I say that as I try to raise a daughter to not look at the most horrible negative aspects of humanity.  I say that as she, too, has expressed that the world is a horrible place and everything sucks.  And quite frankly, I cannot disagree with her. But I can reassure her and I want to reassure any of you that think that just because we are living through unusually extraordinary times that it means the world is never going to not suck.

Let’s face it, we’re not getting out of her alive.  The moment we were born, we began to die.  And that’s OK.  After all, we are a living thing and like any plant or animal, our physical beings are only able to endure so much over so long a time.  And no matter how much we try to prevent or protect ourselves from disease or disaster, the end result is the same.  We will all die.  We are born and we die.  Those two points are fixed in their existence. The degree to which we exist within two points is flexible and therein lies the challenge.

Now, more than ever, we are bombarded with news and information about the world.  Now, more than ever, we are aware of things that are going on outside our doors.  Now, more than ever, is that information shaped to illicit a heightened reaction, physical and emotional.  And our children are not immune to it.  We can only guard them against technology for so long.  It’s everywhere.  News alerts, crawls, social media posts… It’s all out there and the more we try to wrap our children in a blanket of ignorance to protect their innocence, the harder reality tries to creep in.  There is no escaping the wolf that is already in the doorway.  Because of that I embrace the news and offer you a caveat in your digestion of it.

The world sucks right now.  People are dying from hate and violence more than just old age.  People are more divided now than they were at a time when we were actually divided by laws.  People are more willing to accept that everything will get worse before it gets better.  And they aren’t wrong.  I’m sorry, but this is the reality we live in. 

Everything we eat will kill us.  If we buy it, it’s got chemicals.  If we grow it, it comes into contact with chemicals.  If we synthesize it, it is a chemical.  The reason you like the way a certain food tastes is because they are designed that way. Natural foods have a real taste that isn’t as fun or zingy as processed.  But real food tastes good if you know how to prepare it.

Our leaders all serve someone else’s interests other than our own.  Oh, sure, they tell us they do.  They say they will remove the corruption and drive out the evil.  They dangle a small carrot to us while giving others huge bushels.  But if that’s what they’ve been telling us for decades, and we keep falling for it, then why has no one actually done it?

Death is everywhere.  As I said, your body is literally trying to kill you every day until it actually succeeds or loses that honor to another killer.  If you eat X, it will give you Y, which is bad. But if you try to avoid X, by eating A, B will happen.  If you take F it will cause you worse side effects than what G’s symptoms are.

So, there you go. It all sucks.  Our food will poison us. Our government won’t protect us.  And our medicine will make us sick. 

UNLESS

Instead of sitting there, making excuses for why it doesn’t matter what you do to your body or the environment, instead of crawling into a hole and waiting to die of old age, covered in bubble wrap with no sharp edges on anything so you don’t get a cut, or instead of simply deciding that maybe a long life isn’t worth it because what reason do you have to make it to 30 when you can just gorge on processed cheese and chocolate and accept death at an early age maybe you can do something to change it.

Stop being complacent that the world is horrible and make it better.  Come up with new solutions to old problems.  Shout YES louder than the loudest adult who shouts NO to changing the world.  Get off your ass, take a stand, and start making little changes that improve things.  Get help.  Organize.  Make a statement. 

Stop listening to what they’re telling you is wrong and start telling them what you can do to fix it.  We used to make things.  We used to solve problems.  Now all we do is make ways for us to be enslaved by the problems we’ve created.  We scare everyone into thinking the world is horrible and that it’s all coming to get you, so hide behind a shield of hate and lies and you’ll be safe from the truth. 

We have access to the greatest wealth of technology and information than we have ever had and it can be used for good.  All it takes is enough people to band together and use it that way.

So, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

2014 D-Bag of the Year Awards Part 2 - Oh The Humanity

In Part 1 I did a semi round up of 2014's biggest d-bags, glossing over some of the moments in order to not really do any damn research.  What I came up with was somewhat of a generalization of what I feel is the biggest d-bag of the year.  I think I've done it before but we win again, Humanity.

Call it a cop out.  Call it what you will, but my pick for the biggest, most vile, hipster hat and non prescription glasses wearing douchebag of the year is Humanity via Social Media.

What is that you say?  Did you just make up some weird nominee off the top of your head like some sub-sub-sub-genre of music like Mathcore or Lowercase…  You’d kind of know what lowercase is if you ever sat and watched the DVD menu of The Social Network.  It’s ambient music with a few notes scattered about with stuff like real life noise, people talking, traffic, clacking of keyboards, footsteps, etc.

Yeah, I just coined it Humanity via Media is the biggest d-bag of the year.  I wanted to just say Social Media specifically, but there’s more to it which I will get to in a bit.

Why Media? 

Social Media has been as pervasive in our lives. 
We post, tag, comment, retweet, upvote, tumblr (sp?), Instagram, blog, film, and basically overshare everything.  The problem is there is no governance in place to weed out the real, satirical, or fake information.  To the point about Bill Cosby, both Kirk Cameron and Raven-Symone were reported to have been raped or assaulted by Bill Cosby sometime in their career.  These stories were both false, posted by Onion emulating sites like HipHopHangover.  But regardless of their incredulous nature, they were shared across the Internet via twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.    The Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths promptly divided friends on Facebook, probably more so than the midterm elections because on one side you have the barrage of people tuned into the “Police State” conspiracy and abuse of police power theories, and on the other there is the contingent of people who stand behind the badge and say that if they were truly innocent victims they wouldn’t have been committing a crime and when an officer tells you stop, you stop.   The problem lies in the dissemination of information via Media and how Humanity shows its colors when it shares or promotes those stories, real, satirical, or fake as it were.   Look at the “fake” media accounts of Chris Rock and other Twitter celebs who were retweeted without any kind of verification of “Did they actually say it.”  It’s akin to everything on Facebook being attributed to George Carlin or Sarah Palin whether they said it or not.   The Media itself is wholly guilty because they sensationalize some things and no one site is truly objective in its portrayal of anything anymore.   Fox is all right wing, MSNBC is all left.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert piss everyone off because they get hoisted onto the pedestal of news when they are basically satire and entertainment.   But the media feeds into social media and then we go back down that rabbit hole all over again.

We have no filter and we have social media muscle. 
It’s kind of like beer muscles.  You get drunk and think you are invulnerable to anything you try to punch, animate, inanimate, or otherwise.  In the case of social media or even media, it’s the belief that we have no problem making a comment, vile as it may be, towards someone because we don’t have to say it to someone’s face.   Think back to that Artie Lange Twitter rant.  Go search over the ones tagged to the Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, or even Hollaback.  Do you think Artie Lange would seriously say, in person, to Cari Champion the things he tweeted?  Have you ever read the comments section on any news article concerning anything polarizing like politics or human rights?  It’s insane.   Now, I joke about hating on PewDiePie as a YouTube content producer because I am one, too and my opinions are just that, my opinion.  But he disabled the comments on his YouTube account, for good this time.  His belief is that the comment section on his videos is just rife with spam, self-advertising, and fights among fanboys.  With about 19 million subscribers, I guess there is a ton of comments.  Well, it may be best for humanity but it’s only one of millions of places to see vinegar and hate on the Internet.  I, myself, jumped into the ring early on, being online for certain things trying to drum up my social media profile after this little moment pushed me a small step towards Internet Fame Mediocrity by calling out John Travolta on Twitter during the Oscars. It was retweeted 1500 times and favorited by 1000 people.  I admit it, I took a little pride in my humor and was continuing to try and make fetch happen throughout the rest of the year.  Then again, I think John Travolta has dyslexia and I just laughed at someone with a disorder.  But, he's famous and knows famous people, and he is musical and should have known that her name wasn't Adele Dazeem.

For every Social Media win there are millions of fails.
Everyone thinks that revolution will not be televised, it will be posted.    We had countless videos of people dumping buckets of ice water on themselves, all for… charity?  Was it really charity or attention?  The Ice Bucket challenge was probably the most videoed moment of the year and people challenged each other to donate to ALS and film themselves being hit with a bucket of ice water, supposedly how it feels to have symptoms of ALS.   But what started out as a way to donate to a worthy cause became a “look at me” moment as everyone posted videos of themselves but probably not everyone donated.  And in doing so, did they actually fix anything?  Social Media Cause of the Week Awareness comes off more like Evil Political/Business Figure Karma Washing by building libraries or parks in areas to offset their horrible practices or platforms.  And while the initial ALS Ice Bucket challenge started off with a good message, it was polluted by the fails videos and other “Staged” event videos and copycat challenge videos that followed.  And it didn’t just hit the everyday Joe, celebrities got in on the challenge as well.   Glorification of the self outshone the message in the end.    Another case of fail was that Hollaback video where after it went viral, tons of parody videos including everything from someone dressed as Princess Leia to a Lamborghini became the subject of catcalls or lack thereof.  The Arab Spring was filmed on a cell phone and that lent a face to what was actually going on in the region.  That was social media for the win.

We have no context or objectivity.
 Recently, Sarah Palin tweeted out a picture of her son Trig, standing on the family dog to reach something on the counter.  As a proud grizzly mom, she said her son was a problem summer, the tweet went viral and the Internet did what it does.    She pointed out in a fiery article that Ellen Degeneres posted a similar picture in July of the same year.

A: Sarah Palin touts the problem solving skills of her son, Ellen says "Well, that's one way to reach the sink."  Both are bad examples of how treat animals. 

B: That's Sarah's kid and dog.  The other is fan submitted to The Ellen show.  Ellen can't stop someone else's bad behavior.  Sarah could.

The difference is, one is Sarah Palin, and the other is Ellen.  Righties, including Palin, will say "No one cared when Ellen did it."  Well, they did.  If you go to the Facebook post and look at the comments, A LOT of people called it out.

It's called context.  They pulled that Ellen pic because she is a well known liberal and lesbian.  It's a tactic of taking something that looks the same and then use it as a juxtaposition.  The more visceral and equally non contextual comment would to be to say, "Obama ate a dog once."   

We also look at things non contextually such as photos depicting a moment in time, free of whatever is going on before and after that moment.  Someone's face say the Obama daughters looking disgusted.  Then, media adds the context.

Or, as I did last month on Facebook to prove a point, "An armed white man killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, was in a long standoff with the law, and was taken into custody, alive."  Immediately, my conservative friends accused me of trying to associate this event from a few years ago to the Michael Brown case.  I did no such thing.  I simply made a factual statement with no context.   Everyone attached their own context based on their beliefs.   It was a dick move but showed the nature of what I am speaking to.

 We have no long term memory.
"Hey, did you hear the one about the price of gas when a certain President took office vs what they are now?  Blame so and so!"  
"Hey did you hear how so and so is giving all these illegals clemency?" 

Chances are, you have seen your friends share something on social media, touting their political leanings.  Usually, it's bashing the person they didn't vote for.  Chances are, they didn't do any research into the subject and just re-posted or re-tweeted something from a site or feed that uses these little subjective posts as click bait for traffic.  What usually occurs in some of these situations is that people cling to the notion that this country is going to implode because of the people in charge and nothing like this has ever happened before in anyone's lifetime.  Let's face it, nothing is new anymore. Policy and political strategy is about as fresh as Hollywood script ideas.  The problem lies in that people tend to have short term memory when these things occur.  They tend to forget that other administrations and other environmental influences recur, like the seasons.  Gas prices fall in the winter, and rise in the summer, so when someone points out that the price of gas was lower in the January of an inaugural year vs. the Memorial Day of a midterm, everyone grabs torches and pitchforks.  Moreover, Presidents have no direct influence on the price of gas.  The market fluctuates based on fear and speculation and time of year.  But social media, and by proxy, we tend to wear our hate right out on our sleeves and feed the trolls of viral mud slinging because why?  See the next point.

We are despicable human beings.

Everyone wants to see the train wreck.  There are far more disasters and fires started on social media and media outlets than good feel, faith in humanity stories.   Everything is hashtagged for social media glorification.  #NotAllMen  #YesAllWomen #NotAllPolice #NotAllBlacks #AlexFromTarget #BlackLivesMatter #PoliceLivesMatter #GamerGate  But, you cannot change the world with a hashtag.  Let’s face it.   We are not Gandhi, Maya Angelou, The Dalai Lama, or Whatevertheirnames are like Bukowski or Poindexter.    Slacktivism is not helping fix problems.   If it were, we wouldn’t need a name attached to a social media account.  It would be anonymously attached to a building or a billboard.  Stop the glorification of yourself in the name of some cause.  In a more despicable note, GamerGate was a form of victim blaming in that someone posted something, maybe true, maybe not, about a female gamer who released a game and then she and her family received threats by misogynistic people on social media.  People came to the defense of Person A and were threatened as well.  Others criticized Person A and they were threatened.  The funny thing is, I wonder if those same people who sent death threats would ever, ever follow up on them if they were face to face.  It's the Social Media Muscle at work.  "Yeah, I'll kick your ass from behind my firewall."  But, in person, you're peeing your pants at actually following through.  If it actually happened, it'd be like this... (NSFW - Language)

 

Fear sells better than cheer.
When Ebola entered the country, pundits went nuts saying "CLOSE THE BORDERS!" and "OBAMA IS TRYING TO KILL US!"  First of all, Ebola was already in Atlanta at the CDC.  The level of spreading of Ebola in the US vs. Africa is ridiculously disparate.  We are a first world country with better than average healthcare.  And quite frankly, how the hell do you close the borders to air traffic?  Ebola isn't just walking over the Rio Grande.  We had an outbreak of mumps in the NHL this past fall, did anyone, ANYONE start yelling to close the border to Canada?  Ebola is a dangerous disease if you don't have the capacity to deal with it.  But it's a lot easier to get people glued to their sets when you have that newscast with the scary music, biohazard graphics, and fear than it is to give out good news.  We are a society that likes Schadenfreude.

We are ALL the problem.
Was the iCloud hacks a sexual crime?  Maybe.  I am not a lawyer.  I am not a woman, either.  But, those involved did steal private images and videos.  They did re-post them and that, in itself, is probably worthy of some investigation.  If anything, digital theft or invasion of privacy, breaking and entering if that applies to digital environments.  And not as if I am downplaying the severity of what Jennifer Lawrence went through, but to say that anyone who viewed the images are also committing a sex crime, that is a stretch.  OK, I admit it.  I saw the images.   I wanted to know.  And I'm not claiming Pete Townsend "research" as reasoning, but really, is it a crime.  The sites that host the images, yeah, probably guilty of something, but best you can do is say, "Take it down or face litigation" over copyright.   What happened to the people who had their cloud accounts invaded is awful and this victim shaming/blaming mentality is horrible, but quite honestly, if you're using your digital accounts to store naked images and videos of yourself then you shouldn't be surprised that this is going to happen.  Not to say it's apples to apples but if I walk down the street in a bad neighborhood with $100 bills hanging out of my pockets, I don't deserve to be mugged, but it's probably going to happen eventually and I can be pissed off about it and say it's wrong and it is, but it's still something that can be prevented.  Flame me all you want, but the same goes for the cloud.  And yes, the hackers are the worst in humanity, but the victims calling it something it probably isn't doesn't help.  It is what it is, wrong and unfortunate. So, there it is.  As cliched as a wrap as that is, and pretty much ever word I say,  "That's That"  We have a lot of cleansing to do in 2015.  To quote Neal Sampat from The Newsroom, you embarrass me. 

I embarrass me, too.   I am just as bad.

Since 2008, I've pretty much dedicated 98% of this blog to pointing out what's wrong with the world through the pop culture lens.  The last two years have been particularly crass or depressing depending on the day.   And while I am probably going to continue to uphold the "Angry" moniker since it is my brand.  I want to be different.  I got old real quick in my late 20s and 30s and I will be starting a new decade of my life.  I gave up a lot of what made me... me.  I still haven't given up all of my snark as a resolution but I do plan on making substantial changes in my life starting now.  So, let's see if I can get back to being a little more like who I used to be before Mongo took over.  Hopefully, I can bring some of you along with me.

Happy New Year, d-bags. 


Sorry, I couldn't resist. 

2013 D-Bag Awards Round Two: The Fellowship of the D-Bags

• Mother Nature
• Humanity
• Congress
• Hollywood
• The Brothers Tsarnaev
• George Zimmerman
• Aaron Hernandez
• Black Friday
• Phone Companies

There are your nominees for the biggest douche bag in 2013.   Look at them.  Each one deserving of the title, but only one will walk away with the right to be called as such. 

It’s been a long year for us.  We’ve survived natural disasters and possibly being shot by George Zimmerman or Aaron Hernandez.  The Boston Marathon bombing taught us not only that we are strong as a society but severely flawed in our hatred and stupidity towards those people and things we think are different.   We elevate stupidity to lofty heights and reward companies for being douches by raking honest working people for a buck.  We’d call our congressman and tell them what’s up, but they already know what we’re talking about anyway and they’re probably on recess anyway and not going to listen.  I guess you could say it sounds just like a really bad movie involving sharks and tornadoes, but that would never get made, RIGHT?

So, looking at that list of nine entries, it’s hard to narrow down one particular contestant and say that THEY are the biggest douche bag.

Then again, maybe it isn’t that hard.  Maybe the answer is pretty easy.  Look at that list.  Everything boils down into two columns; Nature and People.  Mother Nature tore Death a new one in the last round, but it’s still nothing compared to the sheer force of hate and stupidity that is humanity.  This year, with all of the issues: same sex marriage, racism, bullying, rewarding stupid famous people, and sharing it all on the Internet, we have sunk to new lows.   We hate with more vitriol than I think we have ever done so, before.  We have gone to greater lengths to screw one another over, keep each other down, and simply just hate.   And it’s not that there isn’t a bright and shining center in all of this, but it’s so clouded over with the general blech of people being spiteful and entitled and bratty.   The entire human race needs a good spanking and for that the 2013 D-Bag Of the Year Award goes to us.

We deserve it.   Next year, let’s try harder to not be such assholes.

Paved With Good Inventions

As we continue to hurl ourselves into Idiocracy territory, I thought about the last 20 years of my life.  After all, my 20^th reunion is this fall.  Good time to reflect.  Look back on my adult life.  Cry in the corner a bit.

What I discovered is that for all the technological innovation we’ve seen in the last two decades, we’ve become incredibly stupid and selfish.  If I could go back in time and change one thing, I might actually make the ultimate sacrifice.  I might try to prevent the invention of the Internet.

I know.

I KNOW.

What madness is this?  Why, on Earth would you un-invent the Internet?  Aren’t you writing a blog?  Aren’t you selling shirts, online?   Aren’t you trying, and failing, to produce YouTube videos?  Yeah, but that doesn’t change the truth.  And, before you start clutching your routers and barking madly, understand where I’m coming from on this.  It’s like Terminator 2.  No matter how hard they tried to keep Skynet from happening, it happened.  Granted, it happened in a bad way, a la Terminator 3, but it was inevitable.   Now, I don't want to keep the Internet from ever happening.   I only wish to delay the process until we are better equipped, mentally and emotionally, to handle it.

We were given fire by the Gods.  And we ended up torching the world.  We literally did not understand what we were given.    For awhile we just did silly things with the Internet.   Hell, we still do.  Cats playing keyboards, planking, Hadouken pics, Horse Head Mask videos.  But soon, it warped and became something different.   There was porn… so much porn.  Then there were cell phones and soon commercial WiFi.  iPods.  iPhones. 

Facebook, Instagram, Elvis Presley, Disneyland.

It spiraled out of control.   Slang (OMG, WTF,  ROTFLMAOBBQ)

We became addicted to technology.  Our lives revolved around little devices that did everything for us.   A phone replaced a pager, a camera, a gaming device, a laptop, watch, GPS, radio, Walkman, and tons of other devices.  It became the Swiss Army Lazy Man.   Texting gave way to sexting.   Polaroids gave way to selfies-in-a-bathroom-with-duck-face being Instagramed and put up on Facebook.  “Like, please!”  (read: I have no self esteem and need constant and instant approval to maintain my shell of an existence.)  Soon, there was cyber-bullying.   Hacking phones, emails, the need for 24/7 news that may or may not even be accurate spread like a wildfire.   We became unable to put the genie back into the bottle.

And, I don’t think we ever will.   Isn’t it odd that in the last 20 years we’ve invented things that bring us closer together, more so than ever before, yet put us farther apart in terms of actually connecting with people.  Used to be, if you wanted to reach someone, you had to catch them at home, by phone.   Now, you call their cell.  And, in a lot of cases, they want you to hang up and just text.    Also, isn’t it odd that in the last 20 years, so much technology has come about yet, what’s the last thing we cured?  Polio, I think.   We’ve created a generation of customers.

Our kids?  Our kids have become over-privileged and entitled. 

“Well, Johnny has an iPod and he’s seven.” 

“Well, Johnny is also a selfish brat that can’t wipe himself yet, but can send a text.  He probably still wets the bed.”

Nobody wants to work for anything.  And I don’t mean the 47% vs. the 1%.  I’m talking about EVERYONE.   Somewhere along the way, we lost our mission.   Our grandparents went to WWII.  They sacrificed a lot of things in order to keep the country running.   Now, we’re asked to give up something and suddenly,  since 9/11, our government is out to control or enslave us.  Take away our rights.  Funny.  Our grandparents sacrificed a lot in order to give their family a better life.   Our parents, well, at least mine, gave up a lot of stuff in order to make our lives better.   They scrimped and saved.  They went without new clothes or fancy appliances.  They made ends meet and did what they could to ensure that we never had to live like that, ever.   And somehow, we thought, “Oh, cool.  Great.  Thanks.”  And that was it.  We accepted their generous offer.  We watched as they worked hard and bled for us and we just took that better life and continued to not pay it forward, but instead we cheapened the thought.

We were given so much without having to ask for it and yet, when it came to our children, or the next generation born into the millennium, they didn’t understand what our parents did to provide, because we were the end result.  We didn’t continue the trend.   We didn’t have to work hard anymore.   Technology caught up and made it easier.   Hell, I am just as responsible.   I work in an office all day, but I also run a business where I don’t have to put a lot of effort into it and am rewarded, monetarily.   Granted, I wish I could work more on it.   I know the quality would benefit, but at the end of the day, I get emails saying , “Congrats on your sale” with no deserving of that praise.  The Internet has done the work for me.

We take to Facebook and instead of sharing our lives with each other, we share half assed researched and cited examples of hate against one group or another.   I can count on at least one hand how many friends I have on Facebook that never say a word, yet post CONTINUALLY their disdain for one group or another in this world.   And 9 times out of 10, they share from one subjective group that is not even factual all the time.  It’s just a funny picture, or what they claim to be funny, slamming another person/group/religion/etc.   They don’t say “Hi”, or “How are you” they say, “Here’s why you’re all wrong and I’m right” in graphic form.  And for all that friending and sharing that goes on, I believe we are more so divided than we ever were as a civilization.   Friends are not friends, they are an audience for our amusement and our agendas.  We don't connect, we try to redirect.

We do not deserve the Internet.    If aliens were to come here, looking for intelligent life, we’d be blown off the face of the galaxy like we were a plague. 

“For the love of Blurg!   Zyphos, we must eradicate this menace on Earth before it spreads and infects us.”  

“How do you know that, Lishu?” 

“I saw it on Reddit.   And Grimjor saw a post on Zarnbook that he shared from "I bet this Gorpcar can get more likes than Firtarp.”

100 Andelorians like this.  (Picture of a tentacle in a thumbs up position.)

So, yeah.  Let’s go back, blow the servers and tell the geeks of the 90s to keep working on it and we’ll work on being better humans, so that one day, we may be deserving of such an awesome power.    Should be ready, sometime before the next Mayan calendar runs out. 

Carma

This past weekend, I finally got up the outside Christmas lights. I also cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom. Now, that may not seem like a lot of activity, but apparently, it was enough to tweak my back a bit. By Tuesday morning, I was finding it extremely difficult to move or bend.

I must have also pissed off the gods of nature because I was delivered a car-mic blow coming to work. I have about a 35 mile commute which can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. Now, I leave in the dark and get to work in the dark, so noticing any potential problems with the car when I leave is somewhat hard. As it was, I didn’t notice anything while driving for about 25 to 30 minutes.

In fact, it wasn’t until I entered the Squirrel Hill tunnels that I noticed something wrong. As I was exiting, the car felt and sounded weird. My first thought was a tie rod went. So, I pulled off to the side of the road and looked. The back passenger tire was flat and smoking. Apparently, I’d been riding the rim pretty good for awhile. Yet, somehow, I never noticed it until then. Realizing I had no room or light to change the tire on the side of 376 West, I limped into Oakland and stopped at a Sunoco. I was hoping to just fill the tire with air. Hopefully, it would be enough to get me to the office and I could deal with it when it was light out.

As I hooked up the air, I could hear it hissing out from somewhere else on the tire. This was not going to be enough of a patch. So, I dug out the donut and jack. Now, over the course of 10 years, I have changed a few tires, using the supplied jack. It’s a pain in the ass, but in a pinch, it gets the job done. However, the jack on my ’05 Malibu Wagon was not one I had ever seen and harder to get disassembled. Realizing I was probably fighting a losing battle, I called my dad (A.K.A. my insurance agent) to ask him if my insurance covered towing back to my place or the local garage I use..

“No.”

So, I sucked it up and fought some more with the jack until I thought I had broke it. Then, if there was any more proof needed that there are still good people out there, I was saved by a random stranger. He was there getting gas and saw me struggling with the jack. He came over and managed to figure it out and we began changing the tire. Unfortunately, the iron they supply to remove the lugs wasn’t exactly great and a few of my lugs felt like they were rounded off, slipping as we tried to turn the handle, probably from over tightening at the garage I usually get tires put on at. My savior apologized because he had to leave and go pick up his wife. He did say that he would swing back around and if I was still there, he’d continue to help.

I struggled with the last two lugs, resorting to smacking the end of the iron with the bottom of the jack to get a snug fit. Stepping on the handle and applying the equivalent of my full body weight in torque nearly dropped me to my knees when the iron slipped off the lug. Random stranger returned and we both worked on the last two lugs, getting them off and pulling the tire. The inside of the tire looked as if Edward Scissorhands had put it on in the first place. The inside was completely shredded and smelled of burnt rubber. We laughed at the sight and I told him that if he wanted a real laugh, know that my last name was ironic. He said something to the effect of “If I was a girl, I’d have a whole pit crew out here changing this thing.” Unfortunately, it was hard for me to get any torque or even bend over to work on the car. My back was making it hard to breathe. The stranger did most of the work, which made me feel like an invalid, but I was thankful.

During the whole ordeal, I offered to buy him and his wife coffee for their trouble. He declined the offer. I then realized I had a $100 bill in my pocket. Our department meeting was going to be at the Casino later and afterwards, I was going to do a little gambling. Hard to fathom, I had been gambling with my life on this tire.

After the donut was on, I thanked the stranger, named Matt, repeatedly and made a last ditch effort to compensate him for his time. I tried to give him my $100 bill, but he declined, again. I tried hard, but he wouldn’t take it.  He was a decent person, selflessly helping a stranger in need. Gave me a good feeling. I hope to pay it forward, as long as someone doesn’t need tire changing help.

As a side note, I drove to work, on the donut, with the hazards on, going around 40 mph. Even with my four ways on, I still had plenty of people honking and flashing me with their high beams. Turns out, the same side as the blown tire had a blown turn signal bulb. So… I looked like that one jackass, driving 40 on the highway with his blinker on for 10 miles. During my lunch, I went to a local shop up the street and got two brand new winter tires. They were probably both due, anyway. Merry Christmas… again. After all, I wasn’t about to drive downtown, to the casino, on the donut and I wasn’t going to just ride with someone else and come back to a donut at six o’clock in the evening, still needing to change out the donut. Then, today, I stood out in the cold and fixed the bulb. Did wonders for my aching back, standing there without a coat.

How To Send Donations To Haiti Relief Effort

On Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, a devastating earthquake hit the impoverished nation of Haiti. While the death toll climbs into the tens of thousands and the destruction to the capital of Port au Prince is massive, the effort to get relief supplies and help to Haiti is overwhelming as the world comes together as a community to reach out to those in need.

Unfortunately, with every good intention comes thousands of evil ones. A pattern has emerged since 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami where the online community bands together and uses the Internet to raise awareness and money to help victims of natural disasters. Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 concepts have increased the availability and efficiency of relief efforts. However, scam artists and other scum bags are also aware of these methodologies and strike while the proverbial iron is hot snatching up domain names that sound like legitimate services to aid emergency and humanitarian services.

Facebook status updates took on a familiar tone of broadcasting a cell number you could text to in order to make a donation to the Red Cross and other organizations. Always wary of these types of communications I shied away from doing so because the immediate response to the disaster doesn’t leave a lot of time to research the available outlets in order to separate fact from fraud.

However, I did read an article on ABC News in which they echoed my concerns but assuaged discomfort in participating in a worthwhile cause without fear of being duped into hidden fees and hacking of my accounts.

The bottom line is that people want to help. Some folks are so good natured that they trust to a fault and that’s almost as bad as being in a disaster. They want to reach out and spread a little hope and in a economic lull the worldwide response to this effort is amazing. If only we could see everyone in this world as a neighbor or friend and not just when something bad happens. If only the world could organize as a driving force for peace and safety instead of answering the call just because you want some karma points.

So, whatever your method for helping is I applaud you for putting your humanity above nationality. Just remember to go with organizations you trust and show caution if you see an ad on Facebook or some other website. Call your church. Go to the Red Cross’ website if you are unsure of how to participate. Check with local Emergency services like ambulance and fire. They will probably know who to put you in touch with that is on the up and up. And if you are so inclined, pray for those most in need.

If you want to donate by cell phone Text "HAITI" to 90999. Be sure to correctly spell the word and send it to the right number.

From the Red Cross' website.
The public can also help by texting “Haiti” to 90999 to send a $10 donation to the Red Cross, through an effort backed by the U.S. State Department. Funds will go to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

Where Should We Be

The final part to the series, Good vs. Evil: The Internet.

I had a real tough time trying to come up with this last post. My focus has been scattered and my brain can't process information over a few sentences long. So, you can see how writing an entire blog post about where we should be in terms of the Internet evolution can be a daunting task. In fact, my first stop on the web today was to read an article entitled, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Oddly enough, the writer complains that we, as a society, have neither the discipline nor mental capacity to absorb information if it isn't in little blurbs, yet his article is rather lengthy. Much like my blog posts.

In this case, I totally agree with the author. We are becoming dumber. Actually, let me rephrase that, we're becoming more dependent on the Internet to do everything for us. Google has positioned itself to be the 'perfect' search engine. Its ultimate goal is to predict exactly what you want when you search for something and return that result to the top of the page. That's a lofty goal. In fact, if it ever does succeed 100% of time I think we need to worry. The desire to turn Google into an artificial intelligence is exactly the thing that science fiction has predicted will cause our demise. Look at the Terminator, The Matrix, or I, Robot, movies. The back-story to those films are rooted in the desire for man to give up control of everyday banalities to machines who in turn see us a threat to them or to each other. Machines don't hate or discriminate, but they can calculate probability and foresee possible reactions. In short, they take emotion out of the equation and what's left is the logical ideal that man will decidedly destroy itself. For that, machines will calculate that a person can not logically operate a vehicle without guarantee of bodily harm and therefore, should not drive at all. You are now one step from saying that humanity can not logically exist without harming itself and therefore should not exist at all. Every little computation a computer does it a part of its sum. You can not program logic to deny itself. Sure, you can program random occurrences of illogical actions, but you are still accounting for and inserting that into the programming. Perhaps this is what we refer to as a soul. A computer will never have one and it shouldn't lest it have control over our lives.

I always follow this rule of thumb when dealing with the ideas behind science fiction, if you want ensure conflict of man vs. machine, make the humans blindly look to machines to do the most menial of labor. That's a jumping off point for disaster. It's the equivalent of cutting your nose off to spite your face. Computers are not smarter than humans. That's a little egotistical, I'll admit. However, a human built a computer. A human gave a computer the ability to do calculations. A human told a computer how to do those calculations. In other words, lest a computer be built by God or a supreme being, it's still man made and therefore subject to be no more intelligent than the smartest person. Is it quicker, more efficient, and less likely to make a mistake? Yes, but it is not smarter than a human's potential for intelligence. Yet, as we devise new ways to allow computers to do calculations for us, freeing us for other thoughts, we lose the ability to be the smarter of the two. With the Internet now controlling a lot of our calculations and processes, we have severely crimped our capacity for analytical thought.

The Internet delivers so much information, so quickly, and without interference that we have to become faster at absorbing. Long prose gets scuttled for quick sound bites. Our brain is literally being rewired to accept these changes in thought and viewing, stripping our thought process to the bare minimum. In aviation terms, its been pared down to a flying gas can. We use the internet on a daily basis for information gathering and then we forget it. We don't need to remember what the information is, we know where to look for it. The brain, like a muscle, simply does not get used the way it did and atrophies like the legs of a spinal cord injury patient dependent on a wheel chair for mobility. So, I asked the question, "Where Should We Be?" The answer is "Where We Were." Instead of giving control over to computers with an Internet connection, let's use the Internet to give us better control over our lives and our world.

The Internet and I guess computers in general need to be an improvement on a process, not just do the work for you. Phrases like, "Reinventing the wheel" and "Building a better mousetrap" are terms that state that in order to make something better, you need to identify what is wrong with a process and fix it, leaving what works. In art you get Michelangelo's thought process for David, "It’s simple. I just remove everything that doesn’t look like David.” "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." The same applies here. If the Internet and computers just does the work for us, we are always dependent on them for that process every time. But, if the Internet or computers simply assist us in doing that work, we still have the control and do not lose ourselves. My father-in-law is a retired technician who worked for over 30 years at Westinghouse. 10 years later, he's gone back to work doing the same kind of technical work he did before. The only difference is everything he does involves email. Something he's okay with at home on the computer, but his job uses a different program and he doesn't get it as easily. While, I sometimes tell him that it's not that hard and that it's essential to learn this system, he reminds me that, for 30 years, he did his job without it and the work was finished on time and of quality. There's a human element needed sometimes.

Web design should be clean and simple removing everything that isn't needed. However, where does that 'everything' fit into the Internet? Google. Everything you can think of adding to or piling onto a search engine is done or in the works. When I first looked at the Internet in terms of being good or evil I said, "What would make Google better? Instead of giving me little gadgets and stuff, actually take a concept and improve it." For instance, traffic patterns. Every time I figure out directions for some trip, I always laugh at the estimated time for travel, because I know for a fact that there is construction on a particular road. But guess what? Google has live traffic information on its maps. So, that being said, I really can't think of anything that could make the Internet better.

I can, however, think of several things that the Internet can do to make humanity better. For starters, let's slow it down. I don't mean speed of search or speed of connection. I mean speed of discovery. I can think of several other worthwhile things for the brain trust of this world to be working on instead of making the Internet better. We haven't fixed major issues in this world outside the realm of computers for years. What's the last disease we cured, Polio? Our best and brightest are so busy making televisions larger and computers smaller that they forget that hey people need to use them and can't if they're dead from disease. Maybe, there is a way to take what advancements we've made in communication and electronic design and apply them to realm brick and mortar problems.

Here's my proposal. The top propeller heads at Google work to make it a better search engine. How about use their abilities to make the world a better place. I'm sorry but the Internet is not going to win a Nobel Prize. But the concepts and ideas that help shape the Internet can be applied to engineering in civil settings. We spend so much energy trying to make computers free up time for us yet we are working longer hours and commuting farther in order to do so. Design city infrastructure based on concepts that make the Internet work. We have a device on our "pipeline" that shapes the traffic on our Internet connection, giving importance to business critical functions and leaves poor schmucks like me looking for the sports score to watch an hourglass. Why not figure out a way to plan roads better. Hell, we've got a sandbox right now in the Middle East to test and design theories. I may be speaking in terms of apples and oranges but there has to be a way to look as the Internet and computers as a model for making offline life more efficient. Instead of doing everything we can to use the Internet to waste time, find ways to have the Internet enhance our time.

Classroom texts can be outdated and have no value beyond a second edition or third edition. I still keep a couple of books for reference material but an Internet repository for information and knowledge about school subjects allow educators and students to keep abreast of the most current of ideas and in essence, remove paper from the system. It's Lean and Green. Perhaps government should fund a pilot program where small schools are made paperless. In other words, each student is issued a laptop or Kindle device that accesses a central repository of information in a curriculum. Lessons are assigned through the computers to the students who then complete them and workflow is established to ensure accountability and punctuality. The devices have no internet capabilities outside the classroom without VPN into the closed network of the school and each student is provided a flash card authentication to ensure no tampering. This frees up classroom time for discussion, theorizing, brainstorming. The teacher uses a smart board to put up concepts, teach the lessons, and the smart board then zaps it into the repository for student consumption. Discussion threads spark creativity among classmates and educators and we weed out a lot of minutiae. Students are actively participating as a grade requirement and their tasks assigned by the application keep track of their work towards that goal. You could even branch out globally and connect classrooms from all over the world to learn from each other. There is your beginnings of a global community. I still think that children should learn technical skills alongside analytical skills. Yes, there are people still needed to fix cars and air conditioners but at least give them the training to do both. Let's correct the mistake that our parents paid for when the factories closed down and they had to learn all new skills in computers to gain employment.

Of course, I'm probably way behind on the times and this is already in practice at some school and the world is once again, passing me by like I'm just getting the punch line to a joke from a half an hour ago. But these are just two ideas that hit me while I was in an 'executive meeting' today..... Sooner or later expect there be desktop furniture in the bathroom for people to work on their laptop while they do their business. Why not? We take the Internet wherever we go. Why not take it to the bathroom and enjoy my bullshit along with your own. Just remember to wash your hands...and your keyboard.