It's about time

Wow. So it’s been an inexcusable while since I posted my last essay. I was gone for white water rafting guide school for 11 days, and then training for Primal Quest started consuming my life more than I’d like. I get back, and it looks like hard core conservatives have taken the place over. Now I know how a certain spineless and message less political party has felt for the last six years. Well, some things I just can’t let go unanswered….

Ain’t Nothing on the Radio
Your thoughts betray you. You may claim to like the look of NPR, but your style is conservative all over.

You start out by slandering its name right off the bat, changing “Public” to “Propaganda.” Rush Limbough would be proud. Yet, by the end of the second paragraph you haven’t put in anything to support the clause. By the third paragraph you mention how “tax cuts have been proven” to have pulled the economy out of the drain, with out burdening us with that actual proof. I suppose, there’s no need if we had already decided to believe what ever you say.

If you listen to NPR as much as you claim, then you would realize that its place in the media is to tell a more balanced side to stories. If the government promotes a plan, then NPR will look into the other side of story. In this case, they looked at the other side of the tax story. When they did spend five minutes discussing the opposite side, at least they did broadcast a university professor compared to a homeless man off the street, which a conservative radio show would have used.

Personally, I listen to NPR just as much as I listen to conservative radio. The key to listening to all radio is to take in their points open minded, and then question what you here. If you listen only to agree, then not only are you not learning anything, but it’s safe to assume that you’re wrong.

America is a Drunken Sailor
Look at us wrong, and we’ll challenge everyone in the bar as to who wants a piece, standing in defiance to an unseen enemy, and yielding only after the guilty, the innocent, and ourselves are worse for the wear.

Do I believe that? No, but metaphors are interesting things. They allow you to go from point A to point B with out actually knowing the way, but by instead following a familiar path. This works great when some one else knows the connection between two ideas that you are unfamiliar with, and can use a metaphor to explain it to you in a familiar way – assuming that person does in fact know what they’re talking about. If they don’t, then you can be screwed pretty quickly. Imagine trying to get around Chicago with a map of New York. Some of the street names may be the same, and you may even get somewhere by accident, or convince yourself that you DO actually see the Statue of Liberty out in Lake Michigan. Metaphors are often used as a way to manipulate the masses by laying out an over simplistic path for them rally across, and actual bypass the real issue.

The enemy Within
I’m getting sick an tired of hearing the “Liberals like the terrorists” argument, along with the other coercive propagandous slander spewing forth from the right in an effort to maintain power, sidetrack the debate, and mislead the people. This includes “It’s unpatriotic to disagree with ________” (fill in the blank with what ever plan they’re currently pushing), and “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” These are juvenile attempts to weaken critics standing before the debate actually begins. It’s dangerous to the country, and is the type of intimidation that shouldn’t make it past the grade school playground, and definitely not into the modern political arena.

Although I have heard some cries from the right regarding blame being placed on the US for its prior intervention in the middle east, I only take these cries with in the scope of future conflict avoidance, not as a solution to the current terrorist network. When you have a problem, the first step should always be resolution; you should not be concerned with assigning blame as to who caused it. When someone fucks up at work, the priority is to fix it. Wasting time blaming someone is counter productive. Afterwards, you can look at what caused the problem and work on making sure it doesn’t happen again. (Yelling at the person may or may not be part of this solution)

In the case at hand, the problem stated rather broadly is terrorism. Lots of crazy people want to blow up as much of our country as possible. Pretty serious problem. The first step is obviously to make sure they don’t do that. It’s reasonable to assume that killing some of them may be a regrettable but necessary part of that step. The second step is root causing, and future prevention. A very reasonable part of this step is to ask why these crazy people want to destroy us. Just saying “they’re crazy” doesn’t quite cut it. Anyone does not at least contemplate the possibility that the US did something to piss them off is being irresponsible.

Here’s a thought experiment to look at this. Imagine you walk up to an obviously disturbed mentally ill person on the street and punch them in the face. They in turn attack you. Is it a reasonable defense to just say they’re crazy, and have them hauled away while you walk away? I don’t think so, you’re obviously at some fault.

Ok, hold on; don’t get your Ronald Regan print under wear in a bind quite yet. I realized that’s a bit of an extreme example. Here’s a better way of laying out the same analogy that’s matches the current situation.

Imagine you’re walking down the street with a cup of coffee. While walking, you trip, and spill your drink all over a person next to you. He (or she) turns around, pulls a out a glock and shoots you. Did you provoke them? Yes. Was it by accident? Of course. Did their reaction in anyway match the provocation? No, not at all. Are they messed up and in need of getting their ass hauled away? Oh yeah. Regardless, you should WATCH WHERE YOU’RE FUCKING WALKING.

For those of you out there who have completely given up your ability of independent thought in favor of talk radio, the above example has you as the United States, the people on the street are the rest of the world, and the mental disable person you spilled coffee on is a terrorist.

Thank you for shopping at Wal-mart, please bend over to allow us to serve you better
I’m no fan of Wal-mart. I haven’t been for years. Those around me quickly learn this via tounge lashings handed out at the appearance of a plastic bag with that fucking smiling face on it. I do this not as an effort to sway opinions, but more as a way to open up discussion and see they HAVE an opinion. Most do not. They see Walm-mart just as what it appears on the surface, a dirt cheap, one stop warehouse convenience store. My foreign friends will comment on some of the negative aspects of American life, the mass consumerism, the superficiality, and the spread out cities, yet be in awe of a spectacular place like Wal-mart, without putting together the connection and dependency between them all. The more informed will be able to comment on how Wal-mart is a text book example of a modern supply chain in work. If you take any supply chain, or MIS classes, Wal-mart will always be praised as the benchmark of which to compare all others. That’s why they kicked the crap out of all the other crappy discount department stores. It has nothing to do with how they treat their employees; I’m sure you won’t find any employees that are better quality or paid more at K-Mart. They haven’t been doing anything different than any other stores haven’t been doing in the last fifty years, they’re just doing it better, plain and simple. They are the spitting image of the possibilities of capitalism.


There is a dark side to capitalism, however, that many of its proponents fail to acknowledge. The larger a company becomes the more money and power it obtains. The more money and power it has, the more opportunity it has to thwart the rules of capitalism. A large company can use money gained in one successful field to enter another field. This can be good, promoting competition, and increasing quality and price. At time though, a large company can instead try to use its position to eliminate the competition instead of competing with it. This goes against the ideas of what makes Capitalism all it is.

In the case of Walmart, I dislike their rural city business plan which requires them to remove all local competition.

Castaway and Discarded

I saw the movie “Castaway” for the second time a few weeks back. Repeated viewings of movies are usually interesting and allow a more analytical experience. Castaway was no exception.

Overall, I liked it; it’s a good flick with a captivating plot, and Tom Hanks does a great job. The two things that stuck out as needing improvement, however, were the weakly portrayed romance (they expect you to take it for granted), and the way they mirrored the character’s coping on the island with the development of mankind. (Essential to the movie, but it comes off as being scripted. Okay, I suppose it was scripted.) Both of these faults were probably due to lack of time; you can only make a movie so long.

Whether I liked the movie or not is inconsequential to this posting though. What is of importance is the question that’s been nagging me ever since seeing the film the first time. (Well, besides that. We all know the box with the butterfly symbol contained a satellite telephone.) The question is whether or not a person becomes a better person from an ordeal such as the one in the movie.

In the film, Tom Hank’s character obviously loses a lot. His fiancée, five years of his life, and basically everything that he had previously defined himself by are now gone. The movie also hints at the psychological problems one could have integrating back to society; showing him rejecting the soft hotel bed in favor of the floor and flicking the light switch on and off as he did back in the cave. This list of things he lost out on could go on and on

What I’m wondering, though, is if there is any sort of a silver lining to it all? Did the experience that didn’t kill him, in fact make him stronger? Throughout the five years he learned lots of independence, and useful survival skills. He also freed himself from a life that was portrayed as being tied to a clock. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way suggesting he’s better off than if he hadn’t been stranded. What I’m asking you to do is to compare him to the person he was before the accident.

Which one has a more realistic view of life? It easy to assume the castaway character would definitely appreciate the subtleties of life a little more than he did before hand. Would he want to go back to the job he had previously though? He didn’t in the movie. (And if the movie showed it, it must be true!) Would he even be capable of taking his old job back? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to perform his previous job simply because he’d find it all mundane compared to the grand scheme of it all?

If this is the case, then not only did he lose all he had, but he also lost what he was. Talking about adding insult to injury.

Tech-knowledge-ee

A week or so back a topic came up regarding the pros and cons of technology. Being the perpetual cynic, I had insinuated that technology might be taking a hold of civilization with negative consequences. It was noted that people of today have it better than any other time in history due to technology, and that any negative side effects are simply brought upon the users themselves. My initial counter reply didn’t post because my internet connection timed out, which is a good thing, because the more I thought about it, the more complex and revealing this issue became.

My first point in my original counter reply was that many users of technology bring negative consequences to the people around them, not just themselves. An example would be people talking on cell phones in inappropriate public places. It’s convenient for them, but also obnoxious to everyone around them. (This just happens to be a subject I’m particularly passionate about.) A better example would probably be weapons used to injure innocent people. This is the ultimate situation of someone using technology in a way that has direct bad effects on others. I have a gun, you don’t. You’re dead, I’m alive.

These examples suggest not only a duality of technology’s effects, being that they can simultaneously be both negative and positive, but they also hint at the relativity of the assignment of such effects. Since the user of the technology (person with a gun) would consider its use a positive thing while the victim (person with hole in chest) would most likely consider it a negative thing, it apparently depends on who you talk to when determining the inherent badness of a technological tool. It follows that if the determining factor is the person, not the technology, then the “badness” must be in the person, not in the technology. (There is a large hole in the way I laid out this argument, but it’s easily patched. I just didn’t bother writing it out.)

This leads to the common conclusion that technology is just a tool. All tools are made up of benign, inanimate objects assembled into clever uses of the six simple machines and often taking advantage of some sort of a power source to further the usefulness. (When talking about the simple machines, I consider the screw to just be a special application of the inclined plane, and instead replace it with the semiconductor doped depletion area to round out the six). Even something as horrendous as a nuclear weapon is just a mix of relatively harmless pieces assembled by man, and is only as bad as the person behind the button. (Oh my god, he just reference WMDs. Quick everyone run around panicking and start invading foreign countries!!) Saying that a weapon is evil is just the same as saying that a garden hoe is evil. Hell, why don’t we just say that the fulcrum, chemistry, and metallurgy are bad. Throw in the theory of gravity, relativity and Maxwell’s equations while we’re at it, and we can have an old fashion Amish square dance.

Or so the theory goes. Something still didn’t quite sit right with me. Does being a tool imply that no assignment of good or evil can be applied to an object? Here’s a simple thought experiment I used to test this theory we’ve come up with.
Imagine a man who wants his wife dead, but doesn’t want to be implicated in a murder. Instead, he tricks another man into killing her by telling him what ever lies necessary. Basically, he uses the second man as a tool in his plan. There is no doubt that the husband is guilty of debauchery in this case, but what of the second man? He wouldn’t have been involved had it not been for the husband, yet he chose to go along with it, and most any court of law in this country would hold him accountable. Hence, the tool is accountable for the action.

Ok, I’ll admit, that might be a little weak. I left out one very important aspect. Choice. The man in the previous thought experiment, regardless if he was being duped or not, still made a choice to participate. He could have opted out, even if it would have had dire consequences on himself. A garden hoe, on the other hand, has no say in what it’s used for. The tool is an object, and the entire concept of morality, good or bad, requires a decision making process to be discerned. That kind of goes back the entire Adam/Eve/Apple fairy tail, where we’re told that morality did not exist until people had the power of choice.

Well, we do have the power of choice, and morality does exist. The question I now ask is where does it exist? Can morality only exist in people, or can it be possessed by objects also? I started this essay talking about the negative effects of technology, with the intent of exploring the issues of how people choose to use it. So far, I’ve only been talking about whether isn’t possible for a piece of technology to be inherently bad. When the topic of “choice” is brought up, it seems ridiculous to try to say that an object can possess a quality involving morals.

That’s not too far of a stretch though. In addition to saying that a person is bad, we also say that that the action performed by that person is also bad. A murderer is a bad person. The act of murdering is also bad. We make this claim based on the results of the action. The person is considered bad because of their decision making, the action is considered bad because of the result. This type morality judgment, to decide how good something is based on the outcome (or intent of outcome), is a common practice in ethics and was laid out by John Stuart Mill, in his writings of Utilitarianism. A little introspection shows that this is often the same process by which we’ve actually been using to determine the morality of a person. We judge them by their actions, which are judged upon the results. A balancing of the good vs. bad outcomes must be performed as well. (This is where all sorts of snags come up in Utilitarianism.) My claim (finally) is that we can also place a judgment on the tools used. If the results are bad, then the tool is bad.

For many, this claim doesn’t really make a lot of sense. They still only see morality as some thing that should be applied to creatures with free will, and see it as pointless to try to apply it anything else. There is, however, a justifiable reason as to why one would wish to apply a judgment towards an object. If an object can be deemed bad, then we can make a decision regarding how to use such an object. If the object always results in bad results, we could say that it is a bad object, and should not be used. (Hey look ma, I just justified book burning. Ok , maybe not.) The opponent can still argue we’ve simply shifted the moral value of the act onto the object rather the person using the object.

Here’s one more example to illustrate my point. The common cold virus. Its not alive, it’s not moral, and it has no use, other than to make people miserable. No one made it, and no one chose to get or give it. There are no positive effects of it. It is useless, and I therefore label it a bad object. Any takers on this one??

Ok, now for a quick recap. I tried to demonstrate why I think it’s possible to consider an object as morally bad. Even if that object is just used as a tool, I mentioned that the consequences of its use can determine its judgment. I also stated that these results are often mixed, some being good for some people, and some being bad for others. The purpose of all this was to introduce the idea that an object can posses inherently bad properties.

This now brings me to the point I wanted to make two pages ago, but first needed to take a quick short cut through Canada to see all the scenery. My point is that I believe technology has inherently bad aspects to it. When it was stated that “Technology has no negative effects.” It didn’t sit right with me. I’m not a technology abolitionist by any means; I own a car, a cell phone, and with the amount of time I spend with my laptop, I could potentially be considered married to it in some cultures. Everywhere I look, I see misuses of technology. Yes, it is the peoples’ choice, but it seems that the more technology out there, the more bad decisions are made. Instead of using it to allow themselves to do more, they do the same amount, but just become lazier.

With that, I finally realized what it is about technology that irks me. It makes things easier. Every piece of technology or tool ever envisioned was made for the exact purpose of decreasing the work for man. What a beautiful thing. What a curse. That’s why I was having such a hard time identifying the inherent problem with technology, because the problem is also its glory. Any time things are made easier, it means you do less work. If you do less work, you can live a better life, but you also become weaker. If you are weaker, then you have lost something compared to what you were before. Regardless of what you have all gained, which is possibly magnitudes more significant than what you have lost, you have lost something none the less.

This is why every generation will always look at the following generation with a bit of contempt, and a bit of jealousy. The younger generation will always seem to have it easier, and never seem to understand what they have. The older generation will always look back at their own youth, and remember their trials and tribulations, but also remember what they gained by those experiences. I imagine that somewhere in the past there was at least one prehistoric man who looked on his younger companions with disdain as they used their fancy metal tools, when bone had always worked fine for him.

Perhaps Stan Lee said it best, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Yeah, that is the second time I’ve used that quote on this blog. I’ve just always thought it was cool.

Stone Aged

McLent

Well, it’s Wednesday again. This isn’t just any Wednesday though, it’s a special Wednesday. This is the Wednesday when I actually post on essay on time, with good grammar, proper spelling, and maybe even a dash of wit.

Ok, that’s not actually why I meant it’s special. I was referring to the fact that it’s Ash Wednesday. This day marks that special that time of year when good Catholics try to live a purer life closer to god, while remembering the temptation Jesus suffered at the hands of Lucifer while fasting in the desert. Starting today, they’ll give up their vices for forty days; hopefully maintaining this fast through the eve of Easter, after which they can participate in Pagan fertility rituals involving eggs, bunnies, and feasting, and forget about Jesus until Christmas rolls around they get presents.

Despite my jest, I actually always liked lent. Unlike many of the Catholic sacraments which don’t have a lot of practical use, the lentin fast contains a sense of purpose. It reinforces the ideas of self discipline and will power, which make you a better person. I try to practice these on a regular basis and encourage others to do so as well.

Lent also makes sense from a historical standpoint. Back in the glory days of the middle ages when nonsensical concepts like separation of church and state were unheard of, the churches had the mandate and power to forcibly control and mold the populace. Dictating the practice of will power would have been one way to turn parishioners into better citizens. It also fits neatly into their greater plan of imposing guilt and self loathing as a method of creating a perceived need of salvation, which the church was more than happy to supply, well, as long as you paid your dues. Overall, it was a good plan.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, the practice of lent has really lost its meaning. Although people will abstain from certain things for the season, many don’t actually make any sacrifices. They’ll simply trade one vice for another one that is just as easily accessible. They might give up coffee, only to drink more soda instead. Maybe they’ll stop eating chocolate, but then increase their intake of other candy. Granted, I’m not saying that all lentin promises are rubbish; in fact I’ve known many people who really take it serious, and rather impress me. There is one main practice mandated by the catholic church, however, that has always annoyed me, and that’s the meat rule.

For those of you not inculcated with the ways of the meat rule, let me quickly indulge you. The catholic church mandates that good parishioners abstain from eating meat on the first day of lent, Ash Wednesday, and every following Friday until Easter. That’s a total of seven days. (They don't count Sundays towards the forty days, so there's an extra week) One exception, however, is fish, which is not considered a meat for the purpose of the rule, and is thus allowed to be consumed on the forbidden days. I think this has something to do with the fact that people in the biblical era ate fish as a staple, and it follows that eating more fish could potentially allow one to relate more to the people back then. That’s just my theory. It could be that fish was harder to come by years ago or maybe harder to prepare and make taste good, which could at least conceivably make it a sacrifice to eat it. (At least maybe for the person who did the cooking.)

Regardless of the origin of the rule, I don’t think it applies today. You can go into any restaurant or grocery store and find a plethora of sales and specials on seafood during lent. Perch, cod, salmon, chump, shrimp and lobster; it all counts, and most of it tastes quite good. Even McDonalds will offer deals on its fish fillet sandwich over the five weeks. Additionally, you can find many fish fry specials on Friday nights where the entire family can go out and gorge themselves on endless plates of greasy fried perch and french fries. Although these options technically follow the rules, they seam to completely go against the entire point of having the rules in the first place. It’s like the church allowed a giant loophole as to not actually inconvenience its parishioners.

With all this in mind, I’ve decided to participate in the lentin tradition of sacrifice this year even though I have little affiliation with the Catholic church these days, or Christianity in general (Although I do agree with most of the stuff Jesus said; he was on to something). I’m going to give up not eating at McDonalds. Wait, huh? Yeah, NOT eating at McDonalds. Just stay with me a moment; it’ll make sense. Trust me.

I used to eat at McDonalds a lot, especially my first year in grad school when it was the closest and cheapest food available in a timely manner. Eventually though, I started to taste my food and eat healthier in general. It really has little appeal to me now. It depresses me to think what I’m actually putting in my body when I eat there, compared to when I cook for myself, and I not only know, but can pronounce every word of the ingredients. Plus there’s the whole practices of the meat industry, which I won’t bother going into here, but I find rather revolting. These days, I maybe eat at McDonalds once every six months, until today that is.

Hence, to start off lent today, I went to lunch at McDonalds. This is actually a sacrifice for me though. For starters, I wasn’t able to eat the nice healthy lunch of fruit and sandwiches I’ve accustomed too. Second, the closest McDonalds is a mile and a half away. Since I don’t drive my car to work, the only options are either biking or running down the hill and back. Today I chose to run. Although that did allow me to get a short run in, it didn’t allow me nearly as long as I would have liked, which leads to my third point, I don’t have as much time over lunch to exercise. All the sacrifices I make to try to be a good catholic. Plus, do you have any idea how hard it is to run up a mile and half hill with a stomach full of Big Mac and fries? Its six hours later, and my stomach still hurts. (I did consider driving to work, which would also be a sacrifice since I couldn’t get any writing done on the train, it would cost more, and I’d have to sacrifice some ideals, but I just don’t have strong enough faith for that. Baby steps I guess)

The idea for this plan came to me last year when I found myself sitting in airport hungry on the Friday before Easter. The only place without a huge wait for food was McDonalds. As I was eating my greasy burger, it occurred to me that it was lent. I’ll admit that this at first filled with a bit of guilty pleasure, breaking rules that I didn’t agree with. As I thought about it more though, I began to realize how stupid the meat rule really was. I had actually completely forgotten about lent up until that point, and now that I remembered it, I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t have more Fridays left to eat fast food. I decided that the following year, I would make a point to eat a Big Mac on every Friday of lent. I like the irony, and now, after almost a year of waiting, the time has come. You can call it an exercise in irony if you like, but I just like to refer to it as McLent.

A little competence goes a long ways

Competency is, unfortunately, somewhat of a rare thing. Some people are immediately recognizable as being very capable the moment you meet them. One of the first clues is often that you can tell they are listening when you talk to them, and they can provide proper feedback or guidance when necessary. If you work with them, they acknowledge that they are there to do a job, and as soon as it is explained to them, they will go about completing it. When they say they’ll do something, you can expect it get done. If they make a mistake, they’ll take responsibility and take steps to fix it. These are our true leaders, and at the very least our good worker bees.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who are for all practical purposes useless. They have no drive, and are seldom dependable. Make excusing or covering up a mistake take priority over fixing it. Although they are perfectly willing to stand there and allow the compressed air waves emitting from your vibrating vocal chords to move the small bones in their inner ears and produce electric signals in their brain, there is no promise of making any practical use of those signals. The main problem is that these incompetents will not distinguish the difference working towards a goal, and simply being there while the clock counts down.

My first experience with the competence/incompetence issue on a large scale occurred as a teenager working at the Food Mart. (Ahh, the Food Mart). It was a typical small town grocery store with a number of full time adult employees and a number of high school age kids to fill in the nights and weekend hours. Some of the kids were the competent type, many weren’t. The adults, well, lets just say they worked at a grocery store. At the time I thought that a handful of us were probably the smartest employees at the store, including the management. Looking back now, I’m even more in agreement with that statement.

The competency divide was established very clearly after any new employee was hired. They either got their work done, or they didn’t. In many cases it was the later. There usually wasn’t much of a middle ground, and worse, this was generally just accepted; no probation, no reviews, and no firing. It was just a fact that another person would now be showing up, getting paid, and accomplishing nothing. Although I admit we were minimum wage labor, and that this wasn’t exactly rocket science or saving the world stuff, just stocking shelves and carrying out groceries, still, a lesson was learned. Some of will do, some of us will not. Some of us will build, while others will just consume. Some of us will live, and the remaining will merely exist. (We still get paid the same though.)

If you’re lucky, you’ll have an employer that appreciates competent people. This was not generally the case at the Food Mart. I think that the first manager knew at least on some subconscious level, that half of the stockers were smarter than he was, and he took petty joy over being able to control us. Needless to say, the store was run pretty poorly. In later years, a different manager took a different approach. He realized that he was sitting on a goldmine of competent labor that would work at slave prices, and had no problem using that to all our advantage. He gave us more power and responsibility along with a small raise, and in exchange he got a much smoother operating store.

Years have passed now, however the lesson still remains. What I thought was a problem isolated to a bottom labor force of which some in it would raise above to bigger and better things later in life, is actually a problem that persists elsewhere. Although I work at a great company that has a work force of talented and diverse people, incompetence is still noticeable if you look between the lines. Since it’s a more educated field, the number of people who come from middle class suburban families is drastically increased. I don’t know of any other recent college grads that are first generation college educated. They have the education, some ambition, and even some responsibility, but many often still lack the drive. To many, this is the only job they’ve really had, and have no idea how good it is. To others, they are simply good quality worker bees caught up in a queen’s world. Luckily, we have a very formal review process every 6 months to weed out any non-contributing staff.

One of my points though, is that the managers I had for the first 12 months at my job love me simply because I was competent. All I had to do was be dependable and think a little bit about what I do, and suddenly it’s hard for me to screw even if I try. Although I have no problem staying at work late, or coming in early, I’ll often purposely sleep in if I’m tired, or leave early. Although I do consider myself somewhat of a better worker relative to others, I’ve been preoccupied a lot, and wouldn’t grade myself that great on an objective level, or compared to what I’m capable of.

A good example of a situation that should have made me look poor was two weeks ago. I was wrapping up some reliability data for product qualification that was just about due. Gathering the data had taken a couple of weeks because the collection process was menial and tedious. We’d usually have technicians do it, but are short staffed, so I was fitting it in between other work. As a result I was already a few weeks behind the completion date I had originally indicated. When I handed the data all in, it was all wrong; the units hadn’t been setup properly from the beginning. As far as I’m concerned, this was my fault. Even though technicians did the setup, I should have checked the patterns stored in the memory before hand. I knew that a bug in the setup algorithms had caused improper setup in the past, yet I didn’t even check one unit. More so, I should have noticed it while testing, and should have at least noticed it while wrapping up the data. I messed up, and immediately said that it was my fault. To remedy it, I aligned resources and put together a plan to complete another data turn in as short a time as possible. After getting all the data recollected, and submitted 48 hours later, I found out that I had now made another mistake, this time a simple omission in the spread sheet. Here’s where it gets even better.

I had left work immediately after emailing the spread sheet of data to the colleague in New Mexico who was doing more analysis on it. He had replied an hour later, pointing out my mistake. Since I had already left work though, I didn’t get the email until 11:30pm that evening when I took a study break to check my work account. The only reason I was checking my work account in the first place was because I was already planning on showing up late the next day. The mistake was a quick fix, and I re-sent the spreadsheet within a couple of hours. When I got to work the next morning I found that during an early morning conference call meeting, the colleague in New Mexico had stood up for our department in California, thinking that I had actually been working until 11:30 the previous night. Overall, I was treated like I had gone out of my way, when in reality all I had done was, well, my job. That should be expected. If I hadn’t messed up in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to push it so close.

This brings me to my final point. If you’re competent in your work, you can get away with so much!!. First off, people are willing to overlook minor things if they know that you have the important stuff covered, particularly if they trust that you’re not going to mess up anything that is going to cause more work for them, or make them look bad. Second, if you’re more productive in general, people will assume that you are working hard, and won’t question your actions, unknowing that you already finished your work and are simply screwing off.

Case in point, the Food Mart. I won’t go into details; those who were there in the glory days need no reminders. A while back at my current job I skipped out early of a department meeting to go to the lab to finish some work. It sounds dedicated, but in reality, I needed to get my work done then so I could go to a different meeting for organizing this years bike to work day, and then leave work early to meet a potential new roommate. What I didn’t know is that a group of us were getting recognized for a project we had completed last year. What happened though was that my name got left off the award list, which didn’t really matter any way since I wasn’t there. I didn’t find out about it until the next morning when my managers were apologizing to me not only for me having to work through the meeting, but more so for me getting recognized, a fact that means little to me.

Like I said, a little competence can buy a lot in the world.

Proclamations of Retardation

On the train ride home Wednesday night, I was on the verge of finishing an essay completely different from this one to post. The ride inspired me to write this instead. As usual, this article suffered from severe scope crepe, and ended up touching on many more topics than intended. Part of it is my need to potentially defend myself for statements I make. Not that that is a bad thing, one should be able to stand behind any statements you declare.

The train on the ride home was surprisingly packed, more packed than I’ve ever seen it in fact. Granted, this simply means that some of the small bench chairs designed to accommodate two average sized people actually have two (most likely larger than average) people in them. A “crowded” light rail car during rush hour in Sacramento isn’t anything like one in Europe or New York. As the car filled up, it became harder to ignore the people around you; everyone was forced to acknowledge the existence of other passengers.

As anyone who rides public transit in this country outside of New York, San Francisco, and to some degree Chicago knows, the passengers generally herald from the poorer side of the spectrum. Most of these passengers are every day normal people, and in many ways it’s actually hard not to respect them. Their reasons for taking the train are generally not because its more convenient, or cheaper than driving, or because of a moral dedication towards progressing public transit, but more likely because its their only option. There is no car at home for them to have to waste money on gas filling up. They do what’s necessary to take care of their family, even if that means taking public transportation to work at a cost of potentially adding hours to their day just to get to work. This is in stark contrast to many of the people driving down the highway that runs parallel to the light rail tracks. As I see many of the fancy SUVs go down the road empty except for the driver who’s wearing a suit and talking on a cell phone, I’d be willing to bet that if their car broke down, they’d probably call into the office and say they couldn’t make long before they’d consider taking an extensive series of busses, and trains to get there.

With that being said, however, there are also the “trashy” people on the train. These are the passengers who have no respect for others around them, talking loudly, and being rude in general. They will often also maintain an unkempt dirty appearance or smell that can immediately turn off others. Alcohol or other substance abuse is often apparent. Although there is most likely a correlation between the propensity towards being trashy and income level, it would be a gross error to confuse the two. You can be poor and still maintain respect for yourself and others. You can also be well off and still be rude in public. Unfortunately, many upper and middle class citizens fail to make this distinction, and instead find the concept of riding public transit somewhat insulting. Sometimes these thoughts make me feel judgmental. Who am I to say what is considered appropriate behavior? Maybe in their culture and background their actions are completely normal, and here I am referring to them as trashy. I recognize that these doubts can lead down the slippery slope of relativistic morality, however, and I take step back again. There are some standards that we should try to maintain, and being polite to those around you is one of them.

On a more empty train, people will choose seclusion while they sit in their own world, pretending not to notice what ever events take place. They’ll keep they’re head down, or staring out the window. It’s a natural response. By not acknowledging the run down appearance and lifestyles that can envelope the personalities on the train, they don’t have to admit that they might be part of it. When I’m faced with these situations, however, I instead try to embrace the atmosphere. Part of it is me feels the need to get by any subconscious prejudices I may have, and to see the people as just living their lives like everyone else. I condemn those who see themselves above public transit; therefore I must refute any negative claims they have about it. Part of it, though, is an egotistical side of me that wants to provide myself with a feeling of resilience.

So the train was crowded, and there was this kid sitting in front of me. (By kid I mean mid to late teens) He seemed pretty respectable, first napping, and then talking on his cell phone quietly. His conversation became louder eventually, and everyone around our half of the train could easily here it. It soon became evident that part of the conversation was revolved around some pot that a friend of the person on the other side of the line was trying to sell. It wasn’t in a real mischievous, dark, drug dealer kind of way, but more in the way a person might casually mention that a friend of theirs was selling a car. In a short amount of time, a couple sitting across the aisle from me chimed in that they would be interested in buying the pot, or “fire” as it was affectionately referred to. Connections were made, calls were placed, and everyone involved seemed much more excited the remainder of the ride.

Maybe I’m some what of a prude, but I think that kid was pretty retarded. Not only was he being loud (rude), but he was doing so while talking about drugs, which I would consider somewhat of a taboo subject to be discussing openly in public. Plus he was publicly getting involved in illegal acts, the selling of said drugs. Seriously, how stupid can you get? Although the chances of an off duty cop being on board is slim, what about a social service worker, or maybe one his neighbors? Here is the following information made available to anyone sitting around us:

his name
his brothers name
his brothers suppliers name
the buyers name
what was for sale
how much
where he lived.

Seriously, how stupid

As aforementioned, my first response was to just think how retarded he was. But then I realized that maybe drugs were just so much of his culture that it didn’t seem abnormal for him to be talking so openly about it. Kind of like speeding on the highway. Everyone knows its wrong, and you can get in trouble for it, but most people still do it, and its not that big of a deal. I wouldn’t think twice if I heard two people talking about how fast they drove to work in the morning.

In all honesty, it doesn’t surprise me to find that drugs are so ingrained in parts of our culture. They probably always have been, and always will be. Also in all honesty, I don’t think it’s as big of deal as everyone makes it out to be. Most drugs should be legalized, or at least be non-criminalized like in Holland.

Its not that I don’t necessarily think the government should have a role in regulating the sale of pharmaceuticals, although I do see personal freedom of choice as having a large part in the debate. It also isn’t that I think there aren’t huge social implications from having easy accessible drugs. It’s just a simple matter that the current drug policy DOES NOT WORK. Regardless if you think people have the inalienable right to live their lives in a hazy stupor, or if you are a straight edge republican demanding a god fearing, moral abiding society, it’s a stretch to say the war on drug has been much of a success, especially considering the side effects.

Drug abuse definitely hasn’t been stopped, although the illegal nature of it has risen prices so those afflicted by addiction are therefore also in increased financial difficulty. Drug related crime is also a huge problem. When I say drug related crime, I’m not talking about crimes committed by those on drugs, but crimes that result because the drug economy. I don’t know any statistics on it, but I’d be surprised if the majority of incarcerated prisoners aren’t there for drug related problems. Plus there’re the problems we’ve caused in other countries. Entire economies in South American countries have been affected because of the large power the drug cartels have do to their wealth.

It’s funny to hear the same people who proclaim the efficiencies of the free market then turn around and insist on trying to defeat the drug problem by eliminating the supply. (Making it illegal) Their own rhetoric says that as long as a demand exists, the supply will be created. Restricting it only makes it more profitable to get into the business, causing many problems to arise. Ugh, this is becoming another essay by itself.