Friday, March 29, 2013

Putting a Pet Down

When I have a dog that needs to be put to sleep, I talk to the vet the day before. I don't even take my dog with me, I explain to them (if they are a new vet to me... my usual vets know the routine) that I want the dog to have a tranquilizer, for me to have a few minutes with them like that, and when they put them to sleep, for them to leave me alone with the body for at least ten minutes. The reason for that is because they claim that the brain is alive for 4-6 minutes after the heart stops, and I don't want my pet thinking at any time that I had abandoned them at the end of their life. Valium will just relax them and make them feel good, propofol will put them into what is called a twilight sleep... will tell you more about that in a bit. I also sign the consent form on the day before.

But when you go in, hold them, talk to them and just love on them. Let kitty know that she isn't entering this alone, or surrounded with strangers. That you, the great love of her life is there with her.

I am going to ask you to not think about death while going into this. This is going to sound nuts, but on more than one occasion, I have caught my dogs reading my mind (can tell you specifics about that later as well if you want), but just in case she can read your thoughts, think about a benign procedure. Maybe a teeth cleaning, or nail trim.

Anyhow, go, hold her and talk to her.

I don't know of a vet anywhere that will demand that you put kitty to sleep before you are ready. They will allow your pet to die in great pain and naturally, if that is what you so desire. And just because they make a suggestion doesn't mean you have to follow their suggestion. They are medical professionals, not prison wardens. You very much will have free will in the process. But if a suggestion is made (which is unlikely), you are free to say "I am not ready to do that right now". And more often than not, they won't even say that, they will ask you "what do you want to do". About the only way I've been able to elicit suggestions from my vets is by asking "if this were your dog, what would you do", and they would tell me what they would do, if this scenario happened to their pet.

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

The Reasons for Brown and Orange Clothes in the 70s

Fashion often changes in broad, pendulum-like swings, and this is a good example of the phenomenon. But while the question is deceptively simple, the answer is complex, because it involves explaining several social and historical convergences. Bear with me, if you will, and I hope all will become clear:

In the early 70's, there came about, pretty abruptly, a strong visual backlash against the electric, high-chroma,"psychedelic" colour palette that was such an iconic feature of the late 60's hippie culture; in short, the style got old very fast. The reasons were multiple: America was now deep in a quagmire of war; thousand were being drafted and returning home in coffins, mere weeks after their induction; protesters were being beaten and jailed; every day, the newspapers revealed our leaders to be ever more egregiously stupid crooks, liars and fools. Madness and anarchy seemed to lie around every corner.

Somehow all that celebratory, fun, acid-saturated colour now seemed silly and self-indulgent. It became as inappropriate as wearing a "Smile" t-shirt to a schoolbus rollover. And all the gentle social upheaval and genial questioning of institutional values that those bright colours once cheekily promised? Well, they no longer carried much appeal. In fact, they seemed frightening - just more uncertainty and conflict, in already uncertain and conflicted times.

People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained. The faintly mournful "autumn" colour palette - dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green - filled that need so well that, as you point out, it literally became symbolic of the decade. Perhaps simply because it reminded folks of a less complex time, when subtle, visually digestible, vegetable-based dyes coloured our surroundings, rather than incomprehensible, knock-your-eyes-out chemical pigments.

Concurrently with the shift in colour preferences, smaller, meticulously repeated patterns once again began to appear on fabrics and wallpapers, as sharp stylistic counterpoint to the free-form, Yellow Submarine-esque, "supergraphic rainbow" visuals that had overwhelmed every available wall surface during the previous decade.

Those autumn colours also thematically supported, and were cross-fertilized by, the decade's nascent "natural" movement. Still inspired by the lofty ideals of their older siblings' recently failed hippie paradigm, and boosted by the first vague stirrings of the modern ecology movement, '70s boomers forsook (at least temporarily) their parents' blatant consumerim, and instead embraced the generationally dormant, homespun handicrafts of their grandparents: macramé, crochet, bargello, weaving, leatherworking, cutting down old beer bottles into drinking glasses. The handicrafts they created and proudly decorated their homes with were mostly made from organic materials, so they just looked better when surrounded with earth-tone colours.

Chromatic colour was out, because it detracted from the workmanship - which was, after all, what differentiated handmade-and-unique from factory-extruded and common.

This attitudinal shift towards muted, "homemade" colour and texture, and away from slick, obviously industrial colours and finishes was, at least in part, probably a subconscious side-effect of the 70's generation's fast-growing resentment of both the politician-buying industrial complex, and its ongoing material support for a war they despised. The war ended in '75, but resentments lingered. It was, if you will, a form of protest, or boycott: a generation's tentative, somewhat pathetic attempt to re-exert control over their own visual destiny, and to wrest whatever tiny part of their environment they still could, away from the overbearing and apparently malignant industrial and commercial forces that were threatening to overwhelm them socially, financially and politically.

At the same time as these color and design changes took hold in home decor, people began gradually shifting their wardrobes back to natural wools and cottons. After a decade and a half of collecting increasingly slinky, shiny, uncomfortable, odiferous and obviously synthetic garments - which were themselves a pendulum-swing away from the ossified white-cotton-shirt, gray-flannel-suit ethos of the two decades following WWII, the fabric-choice pendulum was again swinging back. And in clothing, as in interior design, autumnal, natural colours were generally seen to be more complementary to natural materials than chromatic colours.

That all being said, the prevalence of the autumnal palette wasn't really as all-encompasing as retro media like That 70's Show would have us believe. Designers frequently go kind of over-the-top when they try to recreate a period look, a generation or more later. Frankly, even Mad Men, though certainly very well researched, is visually a little overbearing in its representation of the period; after all, not everything in the Sixties was of the Sixties; some of it hailed from the Fifties and Forties, even the Thirties.

Just as we still occasionally see an 80's wood panelled Buick land-shark station wagon in the Walmart parking lot, or a suitcase-sized VCR parked under a friend's tube TV, I long to see a cheap postwar suit on some poor agency schlub who supervises the steno pool. Instead, everybody wears Brooks Brothers. All the time.

It is also instructive to realize that within any fashion era "look" you'd care to examine, competing visual ideas constantly jousted with one another for dominance. Visual style is a roiling river, not a still pond. Remember that the "natural, homespun" 70's were also the era that gave birth to platform boots for men, polyester lounge suits, "designer" jeans, disco, the New York Dolls, foil wallpaper, smoked glass coffee tables, naugahyde sofas, spherical stereo speakers, shag carpet, gold-veined mirror tiles, chrome overhead lamps, and pink Christmas trees. For further proof, take another look at Goodfellas, with an eye to the set decoration and costumes; it is a veritable omnibus of questionable 70's design.

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

What is Dandruff?

Dandruff is a form of seborrheic dermatitis, which is also classically found in the eyebrows and on the sides of the nose. The condition itself is not fully understood, but is thought to be a reaction to varying types of Malassezia, yeast that resides in pretty much everyone's sebaceous glands (which cluster in the affected areas). Although pretty much everyone has the yeast, only certain people seem to react to it regularly. On the scalp this is known as dandruff.

Importantly, there are also forms of psoriasis which can be isolated to the scalp and can cause flaking, which can be indistinguishable on clinical exam but respond to treatment differently as it likely is not secondary to the yeast implicated in seborrheic dermatitis. Tar and salicyclic acid compounds (Tsal and Tgel) have shown mild relief in the improvement of psorasis, and can help people with mild scalp psoriasis. These will have limited effect in seborrheic dermatitis.

Now as for seborrheic dermatitis, there are two treatment options. One is to reduce the burden of the yeast and the second is to try to damp down the body's abnormal immune response against it (which is causing the inflammation and scaling).

Ketoconazole (Nizoral) cream and shampoo tend to work fantastically for this with limited side effects. Prescription strength is 2%, over the counter is 1%. People usually start 2-3 times weekly, leaving in form fives minutes, for a few weeks dropping to once weekly when under control. This alone often solves the problem. Alternating with selenium sulfide shampoos (ie Head and shoulders) can also help.

Alternatively, mild topical steroids can be prescribed (we usually give hydrocortisone 2.5% cream, although the 1% is over the counter) to reduce inflammation, but there can be long term side effects to its use such as skin thinning, hypopigmentation and telangiectasia so I usually stick with ketoconazole given the paucity of side effects.

Once you understand the condition, you might ask why cool water showers helps control it versus hot water. Short answer, it likely doesn't. Hot water can dehydrate our skin more, make you itchier and in particularly cause flaring with eczema, but does not plan a major role in the pathogenesis of seborrheic dermatitis.

Purpose

Everything having a purpose/reason/function is sort of a human concept that's more applicable to human affairs rather than natural or scientific affairs.

You're not going to understand it and feel will unsatisfied because you're a human, you think like a human, and to humans everything has purpose, everything has a cause. But this is not always true.

We are annoyed and cannot understand non-medium-speed objects. We can't fathom the size of quasars. We cannot fathom the speed of light. We can't fathom or understand gravity or the many physical forces. We cannot fathom the slowness of evolution.

These are flaws in our brain because we are use to only seeing medium-speed, medium-sized objects in our whole ancestry. We are not perfect, we are a work-in-progress, still evolving, and still choking on food.

Why Boredom is Good

Boredom teaches patience and acceptance.

There you are, with nothing to do but wait. Maybe you're stuck somewhere, with nowhere to go. Maybe there are things to look at, but there's nothing new. It's just an eternity of monotony.

But the truth: There's no eternity of monotony.

Sit there, and eventually you'll get to where you're going, through no action of your own. Things change if you do nothing. Things change if you be patient, quiet down, and simply wait.

You get what you want, that is, to get to your destination, through doing an action: wait in silence while nothing happens.

Want to avoid knee-jerk reactionism? Spend five hours driving without a radio to listen to.

Want to think rationally after a fight? Sit in a room with your anger and stare at a wall until you fall asleep.

Meditation is little more than letting the nothingness of what is happening to you overtake you. Boredom is resistance to that nothingness.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

How to Prevent Mattress Mold

Mold spores are damn near everywhere and they are nigh impossible to get rid of. Also, mold needs two things to grow: moisture and food. Mold feeds on damn near anything, so the best way to prevent mold is to prevent moisture.

But where is the moisture in a bed coming from? At first I thought it may have been residual 'chemical' moisture from when it was new and we may not have allowed it to 'dry' enough before covering it in all our sheets. On further thought, it seems much more likely that the moisture is coming from our own bodies via transpiration and/or perspiration (water vapor and sweat from the skin).

Now, why is the mold on the bottom and not on the top? My guess is that this is similar to condensation on window-sills during the winter. When air hits a cold surface such as the window glass, it may reach the dewpoint allowing the water vapor to condense into liquid water. A similar phenomenon may be happening with a bed because the bed absorbs water vapor moisture from your body at night and it encounters the cooler surface, maybe reaching the dewpoint, at the bottom of the bed.

Another point to note is that a waterproof mattress covering will not prevent the bed from absorbing water vapor from your body. Water vapor freely passes through breathable waterproof materials.

Alright, so what can you do to prevent this from happening?
  1. Cover the top or the entirety of your mattress with a gas-impermeable mattress protector. This would prevent water vapor from absorbing into the mattress. Here is a good example that even advertises that it prevents mold and mildew.
  2. If you don't have a gas-impermeable mattress protector, then don't sleep in a cold environment. Optimal sleep temps are 60-68 deg fahrenheit. A colder sleep environment may promote more moisture condensation on the underside of your bed.
  3. If you don't have a gas-impermeable mattress protector, then you need to keep your bed well ventilated. For instance, keep it on box-springs and a metal frame without any bedskirt or anything underneath the bed to inhibit airflow. Sleep with your window cracked open or your bedroom door open to allow airflow. Uncover your bed during the day to allow it to breathe (there's some evidence to suggest this may prevent dust mites as well).
Some other things to note.
  1. I called Sealy and asked them how to prevent mold growth on memory foam and they could not give me any meaningful advice.
  2. House plants are great mold breeders. Consider getting rid of them, especially if you have a problem with mold gnats.
  3. If you have a bathroom that connects close to or directly to your bedroom, make sure it is well ventilated with a roof fan. Imagine the amount of moisture that could come from a poorly ventilated bathroom if you have just two people showering every day.
  4. Basements, even daylight basements, are notorious for mold because moisture is drawn in from the ground through cracks, joints, and porous materials. If you have a memory foam bed in a basement, then definitely get a dehumidifier!
  5. Check your home for other sources of mold and water-leaks/moisture. Check under carpets, behind dressers, inside dressers, all surfaces inside cupboards, etc. If you want to take it a step further and spend some money, you can test your air for mold to see how bad the problem is and what types of mold are present in your home.
source

Why Electronic Arts Sucks

EA represents a lot of what is so wrong with the industry these days. The problem is that their focus is more on getting instant gratification for their stockholders. Games are no longer about fun, they are about min-maxing. What's the least amount of effort we can put into a game, and still come out on top in terms of dollar signs? See, from EA's point of view, it doesn't matter if people enjoy your game or hate your game. As long as in the end they make a profit, they are perfectly content.

The worst thing about this is that they will never change. No matter how much controversy SimCity or the next disaster stirs up, EA will only be putting in the minimum amount of effort that it takes to bring their numbers back up. The only real hope anyone has is to start backing real game developers, people who actually enjoy games.

I'm tired of seeing F2P, microtransactions, and other forms of money-grabbing gimmicks. I don't care about how it can benefit certain types of games, how it's destroying games, or how developers design the game to push players to put money into a game touted as "free." I really don't. What I do care about is the fact that nobody seems to care anymore that games have gone from, "How enjoyable is this game" to "How much money can I squeeze out of this?"

Games used to be about having fun. The fun of development, to do something nobody else has done before, of creating the mechanics around it to make it playable. The absolute elation of seeing a growing fanbase of people enjoying your hard work.

Sure there are a few games out there that are plenty popular without necessitating crudely thought up systems to coerce a few extra dollars from you, but as a gamer, can you really say that you like the direction that the industry is headed? I've seen a lot of games that I played growing up ruined by people who simply don't understand what games are, and why you can't just inject money into the formula without consequence.

Personally, I'm done. After the abysmal embarrassment that was Command and Conquer 4 and seeing what they're doing to Generals 2 (sorry, I mean "Command and Conquer"), I'm honestly done. I'm not buying any more EA games. I've realized that game hype is another spawn of the PR machine that works to mask the crap that EA represents, and not playing the next Super-Fantastic-Mega-Ultimate-Shooter-Strategy-Alien-Cowboy-Nukes 6 isn't going to kill me.

I'm not encouraging anyone to go for a refund and never buy another game from EA again, but I am encouraging free thought. I encourage people to get back to the roots of gaming, and to stop defending those who would turn one of our last escapes into a no-fun zone. Games should be about creating something for people to enjoy. It is my firm belief that if a game is made with honest effort and in good faith, success will flow.

source

Monday, March 18, 2013

Online Privacy and You: Why you need to be Concerned

Collusion is an plugin for Firefox and Chrome browsers....

You may not realize who collects what, which is exactly what Collusion wants to make clear. For instance, you do not need to be registered with Facebook for them to make a profile of you. Once you've visited any page that is affiliated with them, they'll create a file about you and collect each and every visit to every site that has a "Like" button or a Facebook plugin. Google is even more extreme, as they collect data from every place that has AdSense, Analytics, and similar services, which basically covers almost everything the average person visits. Those services may not always be as obvious as a "Like" button - for instance, some are implemented by displaying a single transparent pixel image.

You may not realize in which way this data can be combined, and how complete these profiles actually are, apart from just showing what news you read. You cannot know what kind of surveillance methods and laws will be implemented in the future. Already, biometric information gathering such as the identification of people from video recordings is becoming more and more successful, even prompting for the EU to begin implementing a system that can link people in public places to their Facebook pages and other photographs. Similar plans are implemented by the US. Other technologies include public voice surveillance, supervision of vehicle movement or behavioral analysis in public spaces. All this data can and will be linked and combined with what is collected about you online.

This kind of information isn't something that will stay in one place forever and will only be used for one purpose. This may be as trivial as the ToS changes over at Instagram, where people would surrender the copyright to their photos for Instagram to use, and it may be as severe as a fundamental change in government that asks for access to this data. Again, this may be as tolerable as FBI warrantless surveillance and as extreme as a dictatorship craving information about previously acceptable behavior.

I'm not trying to evoke Godwin's Law, but what would have happened if the Nazis had access to all communication data of their citizens, allowing them to see who had ever communicated with a Jew, and what they had talked about? These suspicions may seem outlandish, but who would have considered it realistic for Greece to have a sizable Fascist movement ten years ago? And this information will not only be around for ten years, but possibly until the end of your life, and it could still affect your offspring afterwards.

It is a central premise of computer technology that no system is ever completely safe. This means that your information can fall into the wrong hands by illegal methods, possibly by technologies we can not yet imagine. There may be huge obstacles to overcome in order to raid Facebook's or Google's servers, but there are myriads of tracking services available which the average user will not scan for security problems or loopholes in the ToS. If one of these is compromised, your information is out in the open to be transmitted without your control or judicial supervision.

There are a lot of psychological and sociological implications to constant and ubiquitous surveillance. It has been proven in numerous experiments that people will behave very differently if they know that they are being watched, especially if they do not know if there's a supervisor currently present and who they are. This applies to only to a limited extent to online behavior right now, because few people realize the amount of surveillance which is already happening.

It is not a logical fallacy to assume a slippery slope in this case, because as the change happens slowly, people grow accustomed to it. I was ridiculed years ago for outlining some of the things we currently see, but when I remind people of that nowadays, they respond with "so what". For that reason, we have to be aware that these changes may lead down a very dark road.

As an example, I vehemently oppose the usage of mobile surveillance drones, while a press statement by our police presidents says that the upcoming models will "not yet be armed due to insufficiently evolved technology". None of my peers have expressed outrage at this concept. This is potentially very harmful to society, and every bit of surveillance furthers the mindset to accept such laws.

Those are main reasons for opposing surveillance. They apply to any kind of surveillance, of course, but tracking Internet usage is a central part of that in today's massively networked world.

If you're interested in other perspectives, there are lots of articles available online. Following the publications of the Electronic Frontier Foundation would be a good starting point for a better look at the sociological implications, and seeing TED talks by technology activists such as the Chaos Computer Club or the participants of DEFCON would be a good way to learn more about the technological side.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Writing and Original Ideas

It's an oft-repeated maxim in writing that good ideas are overrated: a good writer can make a good book out of an awful idea, and conversely, a bad writer will take a great idea and usually turn it an awful book. A common story, first brought to my attention by Brandon Sanderson, tells the origin of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. To quote Wikipedia:

The inspiration for the series came from a bet Jim was challenged to by a member of the Delray Online Writer’s Workshop. The challenger bet that Jim could not write a good story based on a lame idea, and Jim countered that he could do it using two lame ideas of the challenger’s choosing. The “lame” ideas given were “Lost Roman Legion", and “Pokémon”.

The moral of the story, aside from "don't make bets with Jim Butcher 'cuz he really takes that shit seriously," is: don't spend too much time worrying about whether your ideas are good or not, when you could be using that time to write (and thus becoming a better writer in the process).

There's a flaw in this story which I'll elaborate on later, but overall the utility of this advice is obvious. Just consider the structure of a typical novel: if the average novel contains 30 chapters, each of which contains 1-3 scenes (or more if you're feeling frisky), and each of these scenes requires at least a few ideas to make them interesting (to say nothing of the ideas needed for characters, the setting and the premise of the book as a whole), it's clear that a professional novelist absolutely must be able to generate a lot of ideas quickly to stay in business.

Of course, we don't want to write books by always chaining together the first things that pop into our heads (at least, I assume we don't; who knows, I haven't tried it), but we can't afford to spend hours or days deciding what path to take on every little detail either. So for the most part, once we have the "big picture" laid down the way we like it, it's better to just take what your brain will give you and trust your writing skills to paper over any residual lameness that's left over.

Now, all of the above is pretty standard craft-talk, but it's a subject that's close to my heart, because I was a longtime sufferer of the "is my idea good enough?" syndrome. In my particular variant, I had an unhealthy, often subconscious aversion to any idea which I perceived as "cliché" or overdone. And I wasn't alone either: I can't count the number of times I've seen people post variants of "how do I get past the feeling that everything has been done before?" to various writing forums.

It's easy to understand where this feeling comes from; literature, if not society as a whole, places a high value on originality. How many times have you seen a critic quoted on a movie poster or book jacket describing a work as "dazzlingly original" (or "brilliantly original" or "wonderfully original" or some similar adverb)?

Conversely, re-using ideas that have already been done is associated with plagiarism; do it too much, and you might be labeled a hack. Sure, maybe there's really no use in trying to be original since everything has been done before, but we don't want our books to be like everything else, do we? We want to be special, and if that means we have to try a little harder, then so be it.

It's a convincing fiction, and an easy trap to fall into, but for the rest of this article I'm going to make the best argument I can that the exact opposite of the above statement is true. Originality is not necessarily any better than being unoriginal, and in many cases may actually limit the potential audience for your work.
The basic tenet of my thesis is this: when consuming media, most humans are hard wired to desire familiarity first, and novelty only in small doses.

Rather than speculate on how this came to be (I have some ideas, but I'm not an evolutionary psychologist and this post is going to be long enough), I'll start with the example of my 3-year-old son, for whom we purchased a Netflix subscription a few months ago (ah Netflix, ultimate tool of the lazy parent). Right now, he's on a massive Spiderman kick--every time he sits down, it's Spiderman, Spiderman, Spiderman, which is fine since Netflix has approximately 10,000 Spiderman cartoon episodes available for streaming. Except, he doesn't want to watch 10,000 Spiderman cartoons; he wants to watch one cartoon, the first one he ever saw, where Spiderman fights the ice monsters. Over and over and over. It's a pattern he's engaged in ever since we started letting him watch TV: unless you demand that he watches something else, he will ask to watch the same thing again and again until some sort of threshold is reached and his brain switches and says I don't want to see this anymore, give me something new.

Of course, that might be typical for a toddler, but what about an adult? I'd argue that the degree to which this behavior changes as one enters adulthood is highly dependent on the individual. Some people will watch the same movie 200 times or read the same book every year for their entire life, while others are put off by anything that isn't very different from what they've seen before.

Personally, I'm probably in the upper quartile of novelty seekers; I hardly ever see movies twice and I never re-read books, which might account for some of the anxiety about originality mentioned above (and it would be interesting to see how many other creative-types feel the same way). However, my unscientific viewpoint is that the majority of humans actually fall closer to the familiarity-seeking side of the scale than the opposite. Just look at popular music: remember the Four Chord Song? Those with a background in music theory know that this video isn't just a clever joke: most rock songs really are very structured very similarly, drawn from a small set of intervals that people are used to hearing, which in turn makes those intervals sound pleasing to western ears. Then there are genres where the differences are even more shallow, like the blues; there are blues fanatics who would gladly listen to blues every day, even when almost every song uses the same twelve bar progression or the same minor pentatonic scale!

In terms of print, the amount of novelty the average reader seeks also varies by genre. Some genres (i.e. Gothic romance) are so predictable they could almost be written by filling in character names on a Mad Lib. Literary fiction sits on the opposite end of the spectrum, because almost anything is acceptable as long as the prose has good "style" (which in itself is subjective). There are some forms of science fiction where the goal is to come up with completely new ideas, and others where the same concepts are recycled over and over (space opera, etc.). But for the most part, if you survey the most popular works from any given genre, you'll find that they borrow liberally from popular books that came before.

And here's the key point: this is not a bad thing. On one level, a genre is nothing more than a set of promises made to a reader: the reader goes to a particular shelf and selects a particular book cover because they think they already know what's going to happen in that book. Of course, you as the author want to surprise them, toss them a curveball once in a while the same way a good songwriter will sometimes change up and add an accidental or put in that iii chord before the V-IV-I turnaround. But if you examine the above-mentioned popular books, you'll see for yourself how light of a touch they tend to use with originality: they pick one, maybe two existing tropes and invert them, or inject one completely new concept, but leave the rest of their genre's conventions alone. And that's what most people crave: to have their hands held, then be shaken up just a bit before being gently placed back into their comfort zone.

And therein lies the flaw in the Codex Alera story: "Lost Roman Legion" crossed with "Pokémon" isn't a lame idea at all. It's actually an awesome idea, because it re-uses two concepts that most people are already familiar with. If you don't believe me, try pitching a book to an editor that doesn't have some obvious comparison to another book which readers are likely to know already. Or, try doing an elevator pitch for a complex, completely original story and watch an agent's eyes glaze over, then repeat the process by saying "it's X meets Y!" (example: Tale Spin in the Warring States Period) and observe the result.
So, if you're going to be anxious about something, be anxious that maybe your ideas are too original to sell, and you need to dial it back and start stealing more. Start with the Tale Spin thing. That one's free.

Please don't interpret this article as me encouraging people to defy their own artistic sensibilities for the sake of sales. If your ideas have rarely or never been done before and that's the book you want to write, then go for it. But you can still be aware of humanity's propensity for familiarity and use that to understand your audience: you're aiming for the experimental noise-rock listeners, not the people that listen to Justin Bieber. On one hand, there's a lot less of the former than the latter, but on the other, if you can find those core fans and really speak to what they crave, you may find yourself with a truly devoted fanbase. After all, there's so little out there for a true novelty-seeker to enjoy.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

An Arguement for Compulsory Education

Compulsory factory education was among the first general education policies in the world and was one of the reasons Prussia (and later all of Germany) became a scientific, economic and military powerhouse. But enough with the history, let's hear some arguments

The point and great benefit of having a compulsory school system is everyone learns roughly the same curriculum, the teaching of that curriculum is monitored by multiple parents (and if necessary, parents initatives, ministries etc.) and the chances of someone just imprinting their views on kids are minimized.

If it were up to me, I'd also ban private schools, as that would incentivize rich parents to lobby for better state education.

What everyone seems quick to invoke is the idea of an "indoctrination factory" while forgetting that because it is PUBLIC everyone has the possibility (and duty) to supervise and try to improve the standard of teaching. And while I'll be the first to admit that changing stuff for the better at the national level is nigh impossible due to heavy lobbying, with state schools you can at least improve things locally. If you allow homeschooling, you have no public supervision, you just have the parents having 18+ years to mess up their children if they are so inclined.

"HAH", some might cry "now you have shown your true colors! You want the children turned into willful servants of "the man" and make everyone learn the same things! Supervised by the sheeple establishment no less"

Well, yes and no. I want everyone to learn the currently accepted scientific consensus, while leaving enough room for indiviality. You know where you can ensure that? Public Schools.

Public schools where more than one strain of thought is present in both teachers and students, where every student HAS to learn a bare minimum by themselves because even the best teachers in the smallest classes can't smother them with constant attention and drill their biases into them like a pair of parents can with 1-7 children.

For the vast majority, the compulsory school system is beneficial. I have personally known co-students who came home and spent another 3 hours unlearning evolution and in some cases physics because their parents were religious nuts. With compulsory public (or at least not-at-home) schooling, at least they had the chance to get a different perspective.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Modernism versus Post-Modernism

Modernism refers to a structural phase in philosophical thought. It's key intuition was that if you could understand the relationships between various phenomena at one moment in time that you could infer the causal structures of those relationships.

So Freud said that his field of study could be understood by the invisible structure of unconscious desire, Marx said that his field could be understood by the mainly political structures of the economy, Darwin said that his field could be understood by biological structures of evolution and Neitzsche said that his field could be understood by the structures of the will to power. In anthropology it was Levi Strauss and myth. In Linguistics it was Sassure and and the signifier. In theology it was Schliermacher and religious aesthetics.

In each of these thinkers there is no appeal to a God, an absolute, or a center to the structure itself, it was not the center that mattered, but the structure, and the structure was viewed as dynamic. So the only thing a thinker could do was study "the way things are now" which is to say, to identify the current position and function of those structures. Or to look at "how this came to be" or the history of a certain aspect of the feild. (Philosophers use "synchronic" and "diachronic" to explain these who views).

Modernism tended to elevate the synchronic ("the way things are now") over the diachronic ("how this came to be") which is how it cames to be incorrectly asserted that modernism only cares about up-to-date-ness or the "modern" world.

Note here that God is of little use to "modern" scholars. Freud could not use God to explain a psychosis anymore that Nietzsche could use God to explain the will to power. God was not referenced by the structure as so was not needed in the theology. You can't imagine Marx saying "the working class poor of the world will rise to seize the means of production, oh, except for the Polish, they are cursed by God".

They each believed their structures to be universal and they did not reference God to prove that universality. The structure doesn't reference heaven. (This is precisely the point where Barth disagreed with Schliermacher - and why his Romans changed the trajectory of theology, by reattaching the event of the word to the divine.)

Post-modernism was one of the responses this prevading belief in structure. This is why, in philosophy, post-moderism and post-structuralism are almost synonyms.

Barthes and Derrida noted that all modernism relied on a belief in languages ability to explicate the structure, where they saw it was too dynamic a tool, always inserting its own tensions and fissures into meaning without the permission or intention of the author. This meaning could not be fixed long enough to pursure a synchronic investigation and certainly could not be reliably communicated as the structure changed in the telling.

Lacan and Foucault problematized the assumptions of gender and power along with a slew of feminist post-structuralists (Irigiray, Cisoux). Lyotard noted that to try to percieve the grand narrative was to make claims language and thought could range over history, which he asserted was false.

If we were to study synchronically, it would have to be a "local" study (and this is where the "everyone has a valid opinion" misreading of postmodernism comes from.). One cannot assume that language and thought will be structred the same "over there" any more that I can assume that language and thought will be structured the same "back then". It must be noted here that the "grand narrative" (or metanarratives) that these writers spoke of were the modern narratives of power, evolution, economy etc. that we discussed above. Thus the thinkers were beyond modernity or post-modern.

Again there is little use for God is this thought was God is viewed as an attempt to "fix" language (as in keep it in place), and attempt to set up an authority over meaning that is non-local. This is usually oppressive and should be deconstructed.

For the most part people don't know or care about all this. They don't think "I was gonna tell this person about Jesus, but now I'm worried I'll posit an opressive, non-local, grand narritive that undermines authentic gender performativity." Rather there is a complex system, in any cultural context, that defines what is sayable without justification. As someone put it "The doctrines of (post)Modernism may not be a danger to us, the spirit of (post)Modernism may".

Getting Started with Wine

Wine is, without doubt, the most socially acceptable drink to order when you aren't on steady footing with the company, the venue or the event sophistication. Spirits and cocktails are either too strong or too quickly consumed to be proper social beverages, and beer has a tendency to make you burp and is best consumed in comfortable company. What's left? Wine.

Restaurant lunch. Fancy dinner. Mingling with guests at a function. Business lunch. Casual seaside picnic. Upscale party where you don't know many people. All ideal wine times.

First of all, the only rule is:
  • Do not drink sweet/dessert wines and believe you've made it into the connoisseur's lounge
Try to familiarize yourself with wine varieties and regions. It isn't that hard once you get started.

White wines range from very dry (which is sort of tangy/sour and yet neither of those things) to very sweet (sugary, syrupy sweet). Red wines are much heavier and stronger, and can be mild and warm (Merlot) ranging all the way to fruity and flavorful (Cab Sauv) to spicy and hot (Shiraz). There are few sweet reds that are not fortified (port - traditionally a nightcap drink) or blended with whites (rose).

Regions are just 'where the wine comes from', which makes a difference, but not as much as the wine variety. For example, a Shiraz from California is called a 'Syrah' and is typically deep red. A Shiraz from Australia is typically deep purple.

Try a bunch of them. The rest will sort itself as you go.

There is no correct way to open a wine bottle or drink it from the glass. Pour it and go. You'll see people swirling and sniffing and biting it and all manner of stuff. Let them go for it, they're having fun. What matters is sipping the wine and enjoying the taste and smell. You don't need to swirl and sniff and do a handstand to make that happen.

Don't panic about matching wine to food. The loose guide is match the colour of the wine to the meat you're eating. Red meat, red wine. White meat, white wine. That's it. Beyond that, go by your taste buds alone. You'll pick up what tastes nice with wine as you go. As mentioned above, olives and cheese are common favourites.

People will swear there are specific wines for specific foods, but these people are largely making it up. Your own taste determines which wine you want to drink. Humor these people, for they will not be howled down, but take their advice with a grain of salt. They're likely just regurgitating what a posh uncle once told them, which they then converted to gospel. I say again: the only determination of a good tasting wine is your tongue.

Remember that rule, because it applies to price as well. Try all kinds of price ranges if you can, but never make the mistake of believing expensive = better taste. Incorrect. Better taste = better taste. Your mouth will tell you which one that is. If it happens to be a $4 of cleanskin plonc, congratulations, you will save a lot of money over the years. If it happens to be a $60 bottle of reserve New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, great. Fork it out. It's worth it only if you actually enjoy it.

Learn to appreciate wine and you'll always have a readily available drink that won't disassociate you from the company you're in. It's a drink that matches your circumstances. You'll look sophisticated in sophisticated company, you'll look casual in a relaxed atmosphere, you'll look professional in a business setting. Beer and spirits can't offer that. Wine is an easier and tastier drink than a lot of younger people give it credit for, and it is to their detriment. Give it a try. You'll never regret it.

Unless you become an alcoholic, in which case, you didn't hear about any of this stuff from me.

Also, rosé is not a blend, I was mistaken in a tired haze and sabotaged by the fact that I don't like it and, therefore by my own advice, don't drink it. Go forth and drink wine, you classy lords and ladies!

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Getting Started with E-Cigarettes: How to Stop Smoking the Real Ones

If you're a smoker, Electronic Cigarettes will change your life.

I was a 2-pack a day smoker for about five years, and a smoker going back more than a decade. I tried my first eCig, decided to stop regular cigarettes cold turkey a week later (after I had smoked through those I had already bought), and I have not had a single cigarette since that time -- approximately 14 months.
It. Freaking. Works.

Let me list it out for you bit by bit:
  • No more smelly clothes/hair/house
  • All the nicotine, none of the carcinogens
  • It is UNBELIEVABLY cheaper
  • You can use eCigs ANYWHERE -- I use them in every restaurant, bar, airports, you name it.
  • There are innumerable options in terms of flavors and nicotine content
  • If your goal is to quit and not just switch to a better way of enjoying nicotine, this is without a doubt the most efficient way to taper down yet devised.
  • Did I mention how much CHEAPER it is?
No joke, if you're a heavy smoker (1-2 packs a day), you'll be chewing through at least $150-200 a month minimum on your habit.

Know how much my eCigs cost me? Less than $100 per 3-4 months.

It seems like most people don't wanna try it because they feel like it's too complicated, too niche, don't know what to buy, et cetera. And in fairness, if you just jump on a message board it's like anything else -- crazy lingo and so many options its overwhelming. Let me make it easy for you:

What eCig Equipment To Buy:
  • Joye eGo Starter Kit -- This is the exact kit I bought when I first got into vaping, and I buy a new kit every 3-4 months when the batteries start to wear out. Moreover, that link goes to the exact company I've been doing business with for more than a year.
  • The system is simple. Charge the batteries, screw in the atomizer, drip the juice into the cotton filled cart (I'll get to juice a little later), put cart in atomizer, press the button, and inhale. You drip when the cart gets dry, you charge when the battery gets low. EZPZ.
  • Replacement Atomizers -- The batteries outlast the atomizers (the little piece that actually vaporizes the juice), so when your vaping starts to seem a little thin compared to when it was fresh out of the box (usually 4-8 weeks per atomizer in my experience), all you have to do is buy a new atomizer, not a whole new kit.
  • Eventually the batteries will get a little iffy, at which point it's usually worthwhile to just buy a new kit... but you get 2 batteries and 2 atomizers per kit, so it really isn't expensive at all. If you're a light smoker or someone looking to quit, a single kit will last you 6 months or longer. Me, being a heavy smoker, I get about 3-4 months per kit most often, with atomizers being between 4-8 weeks per.
  • NOTICE: There's a TON of different variables from brand to brand, part to part, et cetera. What I've listed above is the starter kit plus the correct replacement atomizer JUST FOR THAT BRAND AND MODEL. If you want to get into it and experiment, just be very careful about mixing and matching, as there really is an ABSURD amount of technicality involved in what pieces work together.
The Juice:
  • Halo eLiquid -- There are many options available for juice, hundreds of companies, flavors, you name it. Personally, I use Halo eJuice because they're American made and very high quality. Feel free to explore on your own, but of all the brands I've tried (about a half dozen), I'm a sworn Halo user. Not to mention, their flavors are yummy.
My Favorite Flavors
  • Bella Valente - My go-to flavor, and the one I use at least 75% of the time. If you're a former smoker, especially one who enjoyed cigars, this is definitely up your alley because it tastes VERY much like tobacco, with a nice hint of vanilla.
  • Smooth 8 - A bit more harsh, but in a good way. If you're the type who smokes unfiltered or Marlboro Reds, this is a good place to start. Tastes like very strong tobacco.
  • Tribeca - Good place to start if you're a person who smokes light cigarettes. Very smooth with subtle flavors, all which simulate tobacco well. This is my go-to anytime I'm out of Bella and want something a little softer than Smooth 8.
  • Captain Jack - Delicious if you're drinking whiskey or a strong stout beer. I don't use it often, but when I put it with the right beverage, it's amazing.
Now compared to not smoking anything, they're unhealthy. Nicotine puts a strain on your heart and cardiovascular system, and no matter how much better it is than smoking anything else, it's also a strain on your lungs to ingest a foreign substance and then expel it.

If health is your number one concern, you want to quit nicotine consumption entirely. What works for some may not work for others, but eCigs are a great way to taper down on your way to quitting. It depends on what your goals and priorities are. What's important is that you decide what is right for you, do your research, and make the right decision based on your desires and safety.

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Monday, March 4, 2013

On Owning a Home

Having a house in the suburbs which generates no income or food is a manufactured idea. It is manufactured to make wage slaves. You are not middle class if you own one of these money pits and you don't have at least several million in money generating assets. You are getting paid by your masters to pay for your: car(s), house, medical bills, food, incidentals, taxes, children's education, and inflation. Oh, and you get to keep the rest.

The people who were sold these purported investments were swindled. They were swindled right out of their happiness, health, and money generating skills. Now all they have is a building which is under a mountain of debt. It might as well be a pile of dirt, wood, and stone. Oh wait, it is. These poor souls are dependent on the infrastructure around them to continue functioning. They are not free, they think they are free. They think they are free because there are no chains on their feet or bars on their windows.

Astonishingly enough they are held with nothing more than a promise. This promise is shown to them on every TV, in every magazine ad, and in every supermarket. It is the American dream of a house in the suburbs and a college degree which has been sold to untold millions. Everyone knows how the housing bubble turned out for so many of these families.

The status quo will not change because we live in a sea of passivity, nothing matters because there are no problems knocking at our doors. Everything is an ocean away and there is no need to get upset because everything will be alright in the end. Be happy that you get to watch your movies and TV shows and play your video games. If you don't like your life just escape into something when you come home. Facing reality is tough.

If your current life making you happy? We are an isolated, depressed, and enslaved people. Just think about what I am saying as you live your daily life. Check out Open Source Ecology. They will free your soul, real freedom is so close. Don't let them take it from you.

Are you happy? Truly? What would you be happiest doing? Hint: It's not a yacht, helicopter, hookers, and blow. Money does not bring happiness.

Every day we have a choice, what are you going to do with your day? If it is not the thing you wish to do, then why in the fuck are you doing it? You are going to die. If you have some shit you want to do you better hurry the fuck up.

The world is happening to you. Do you want your control back? You are going to have to fight for it, and it will be uncomfortable and difficult. Do you think all of your forefathers who fought for their freedom got to sit on their couches? You come from a long line of awesomely savage creatures and your lineage stretches back to the dawn of life on earth. Act like it.