Capitalist Jungle Safari

I had occasion yesterday, after my medicalist engagement, to accompany FD SCP on an expedition to a Sam’s Club. We do not have such in Greater Metropolitan Arab, nor even in Marshall County. There are two, perhaps three, in Nawth Alibam’s Shining City on the Hill.

The first thing that struck me was how much nicer the staff was to couples than to unaccompanied men. Usually I visit the SC on my own and it is rather like wandering through an ice cube tray, if one can imaging one large enough. (I hope that metaphor is not too exotic and reactionary for any passing GEN Y.) Since I normally visit as a solitary man, my ambulations are very hunter in nature. I go to where the things on my list are with no rubber necking – alright, very little. With FD SCP present, we ambulated in gatherer nature and so I was exposed to an order of magnitude more information than normal.

This led me first to contemplate the differences between SC and MalWart. Volume is the most obvious. In MalWart the most common thing is the individual item/container, although admittedly that is a sometimes ambiguous taxonomic state. In Club S the most common thing is, barely modal, a container of containers. I was reminded of the ditty about the chap at the fish cannery on cannery row, about not being able to can a can. It’s an alliterative nonsense for those unfamiliar.

This led me to compare the MalWart with the department stores of the Communist countries during Containment. The commonalities were astounding. Somehow they can operate at opposite ends of the spectrum – blatant, overt capitalism and worker paradise socialism – and end up almost the same. Both are stocked with lots of a few things. The differences arose in the absences rather than the presences. In MalWart you can usually get what you want so long as what you want is desired enough by other customers. If you deviate too much from the mode of the distribution, then what you want will not be available because it will not sell fast enough to satisfy capitalist demands. In a People’s Cornucopia you can get what you want so long as it is on the list of things to be manufactured and the manager of the factory had enough made that month.

I hope that difference is clear.

Anyway, upon arriving home I spent about as long unloading and stowing goods as we spent buying them, mostly because I had to make several trips to and from the motorcar. Somehow that seems punishment for the effort?

corporations, humans, behavior, commerce, greed

Oligarch Lies

Whenever I hear some corporate talking dummy prate about “mission” I have to hold myself not to fall in laughter. After working with America’s troops, I know what mission really means and corporations and other businesses ain’t. In fact it makes me a bit sick to think how our troopies protect these scum and they prevaricate so.

corporations, falsehoods, greed, evil

Holiday Left-overs

Foul day. No, I did not stay up last night, but I did awaken just before midnight and got to listen to a few muffled thuds before I dozed back off. The gym is closed today – any excuse is evidently good enough to avoid work – so I made do with the stationary bicycle in my study. That makes the bright points, namely getting to listen to science podcast episodes.

The first was a short bit about the filing of patents on toothbrushes and the problems of designing toothbrushes. The discussion of the latter confirmed what I suspected, that the mechanics needed for properly brushing teeth exceeds what is possible within degrees-of- freedom for a single toothbrush. I also suspect similar is the situation with toothpaste. And I learned, both pleasingly and appallingly, that most potents on toothbrushes are cosmetic and commercial.

I myself use three toothbrushes, one electric – a Braun – and two manuals, the latter primarily for spots between teeth. And often I think that is too many. Certainly twenty years ago that would have been an unchallenged thought.

Next, was a nice podcast episode on cooking. It started with a slur-compliment to Richard Wrangem (sp?) at Fair Hahvahd who advances the theory that cooking is why humans have intelligence. From there it was a riot of info-atoms. It seems that the cooking pot was also instrumental in changing things, shortly after it was developed about 10 KYA (coinciding approximately with the end of the Younger Dryas?) human dentition changed from being edge on in front to overlapping. And like toothbrushes, the “perfect” cooking pan is not possible – more desirements than degrees-of-freedom.

FD SCP and I have several pots and pans. My favorite is a SCANPAN (R) that I got on sale years ago and dearly enjoy for frying egg white for fried egg sandwiches. We should like more but they never seem to be on sale enough any more. I also have to wonder if the Earl of Sandwich ate fried egg sandwiches? They would have to be hard fried to not drip on the playing cards. But I fin fried egg sandwiches – soft fried – work best on toasted english muffins. The craters absorb the runny.

Thirdly, an episode on leftovers. I was thrilled to find out that the expiration dates on foodstuffs, with notably exceptions of dairy and flesh, have only to do with flavor deterioration rather than safety. The whole date thing is a scheme by the food manufacturers to waste food and get more cash flow.

Now if I can only get FD SCP to listen to that podcast?

And lastly, I listened to a new podcast [Link] from the New Yawk Times. The subject was science kits/toys then and now, mirroring an article. I have to admit to being appalled by the whole thing. Science kits were mediocre in my day – except the American Basic Science Club kits! – but they are abysmal today. No chemicals in the chemistry sets? So far as I can tell science kits have ceased to be the learning vector of nerds and introverts and have become some extrovertist social engineering activity for bogs and extroverts. In fact, the podcasters proudly bragged that the modern science kits were not for nerds and introverts! Evidently, the war on religion is also on science if we are trying to kill off all of tomorrow’s scientists.

Is his more evidence of the new feudalism?

Rain came in last night and is pattering still. I must venture into it and distribute seed for the tree mammals and the dinosaur descendants. And then settle down to what will probably be a wretched day.

humans, stupidity, corporations, greed, physics, sceince, extrovertism, tyranny

WalMart WasteLand

The weirdness continues. Starting with the word “weirdness”. Whatever happened to i-before-e-except-after-c? The opinions I have heard from colleagues put most of the blame on the congress and their partisan antipathy. One even commented that he wished things would heat up a bit so a couple of them would do each other in and promote some cooperation for survival.

As unpleasant and attractive as that was: violence is always nasty and abhorrent; but if politicians use it on each other isn’t that like microbes competing in a decomposition pit? Can we really get upset over that? Only, it seems, if our wallets and consumerism are being decreased.

Yesterday I ventured out to the local MalWart, only because my list was mixed between foodstuffs and other stuffs, which meant I would have to go two places otherwise. Besides it was 0630 and the other grocery stores were no open. In case I have not mentioned, one of the reasons that the businesses of Greater Metropolitan Arab are hurting so much is that they keep too restricted hours. Almost nothing opens before 0800 and almost nothing is open after 1700. So much for catering to the majority of folks who work in Nawth Alibam’s Shining City on the Hill and aren’t in town during open hours.

The MalWart is an exception. It isn’t open 24/7 but it is open more than most other places, including city hall and the senior center. Heck, the senior center has fewer operating hours than any of the banks. But the problem with going to the MalWart early is that is when they restock – ayeh, makes no sense, why don’t they stock at 0200 like everyone else in the ‘real world’? – and the restockers are belligerent. Evidently all of them are evening people who aren’t allowed to do their job at the decent hour of 0200 and hence have to take out their frustration on the early riser who come needing foodstuffs at 0630.

The worst are the bread restockers, who are not MalWart employees and hence feel no compunctions about maiming and killing customers. After all, they are the customers of their customer and hence scum and filth. Sadly, as is usual, I needed a loaf for FD SCP, who prefer Amerikan sliced white bread. It was almost my last turning point, being located near the front and the aisle was crammed with three competing restockers and wheeled trays of mediocre bread.

I entered bravely, meeting the walking dead gazes of the bread zombies with bared teeth and a firm grip on the buggy. My intent was tacit but not their submission, which was a slow awakening of their own risk, with gutteral noises of submission. The desired loaf was obtained and I wended my way to the solitary check out queue and thence to home to break my fast.

Sometimes I think we would be better off as an extinct species.

humans, corporations, stupidity, nonsense, garbage

Sudsy Humor

I noted on the audio-visual electromagnetic receiver the other evening that a new ‘manly’/'athletic’/'sports’ version of TIDE detergent is being introduced, marketed to men.

I have been considering what George Toffel would make of this? I should hope he would find some humor in the folly of humans, much as he used to find humor pinging the students in his nursing organic chemistry course when they fell asleep, usually on a cold monday morning during football season. He did, after all, name the detergent after the school’s team, a name which makes more sense applied to the detergent than to the teams and is hence a matter of humor in itself.

I would wish Professor Toffel all the humor he may obtain given the suffering he endured.

corporations, heroes, humor

Twinkie Politics

Nice morning. Rainy in a sort of desultory fashion. Just the right mood setter for winter. And now that we are settled down to the usual grrr brrr of politics and money and tyranny there is news, or, at least, articles, bubbling out again. One of the things that I have encountered are articles analyzing the results of the recent chief executive election.[Link] These fall into two major categories: democruds talking about how they are vindicated and validated in their feudalism of social engineering and ‘justice’, an odious mixture of the imprecise and the subjective; and repulsians admitting that they vertically copulated but asserting that they are still fundamentally right in their classic capitalist feudalism and will make cosmetic changes to recover the elections two years hence.

Neither is convincing. I still maintain that the fundamental problem is politics and parties. More than half of the American electorate is now part of the excluded middle whose ideas and desires fit neither party but because of the partisan dictatorship of the process have to pick one or the other to check the box on election day. Whether the parties realize this is unclear. There is too much posturing and maskarovka. In this case it was the democruds whose program was the lesser undesirable of the two, both in terms of burdens on the taxpayer and the so-called leadership.

On a more positive note, the church of Rome has finally taken some steps to publically admit that they stole solstice. [Link] The bishop of Rome’s latest book seems, at least according to the journalists, to admit the Joshua ben Joseph wasn’t born on the twenty-fifth of december in the year one CE. Now perhaps we can recover the real significance of winter solstice and celebrate someone whose birthday was on that date.

Oscillating back the other way, this was followed by an article about why Hostess flopped. [Link] In many ways, it is indistinguishable from the political pieces. It claims that the problem was changes in Amerikan eating habits and the obesity pogrom. Sounds altogether plausible except that it ignores the sales figures were not down by 0.5 but maybe 0.1. Another whitewash job for the capitalist pirates who gutted the company and pushed it over the edge. Rather like politicians?

politics, corporations, religion, nonsense

Slave Masters of Amerika

One of my colleagues, Magnetic-Electric Field Coupling, pointed me to a rather difficult article;[Link]

• J.C. Penney, Sears
• Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Red Lobster, Applebee’s and IHOP
• Wendy’s,  Panera Bread Co., Chipotle Mexican Grill, Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC
• Bloomingdales and Macy’s
• Starbucks
• Target, Wal-Mart.

These are the companies who pay their employees the least and generally use force and intimidation to dissuade them from joining unions.

Think about that the next time you buy something from one of these companies. How does that feel ethically? Morally? Do you really want to save a little money by harming other people?

False Thanks

Anomaly! Middle of the week holy day. The rules of modern society and the uber-gubment are violated!

Today is Thanksgiving, one of the finest of our holidays in the Yankee republic in that it is not about any person or cult. Maybe. It can be argued that it is about the cult of relief at leaping out of the frying pan into the fire, which was the situation with the early settlers of the Americas.

I should amend that to early European settlers of the Americas. I should count the folks who walked across the Bering land bridge or who boated over from either Asia or Europe – the stone people. They don’t count in this except as villains who were already here and had to be dispossessed of their land, a thing that was possible only because of a different model of land ownership and a lower level of technology. And that triumph of technology and greed has become the hallmark of American society ever since.

Which brings us to the root of the matter. Is Thanksgiving relevant? The answer is apparently NO. Yes we talk about being thankful but t is a forced, contrived sort of thing and not the gush of emotional relief that characterized the origins – supposedly [Link] – of the holiday. Some of our number go to great lengths to publish what they are thankful for but blandly ignore and assessment of the merits of the items on the list. Which are usually trite and inconsequential.

To a large extent the holiday has been appropriated by the corporate oligarchs who have suborned the republic and reduced us all (almost) to a modern form of chattel slavery. Having subjugated the Amerindians who were already here, the arrogant and petty have now also subjugated their minions and associates. How much it seems like the tyranny of the Persians where everyone was the slave of someone else and the emperor was the slave of the gods.

That is what Thanksgiving is now about. Slavery. The appearance is that it is a day of respite granted by the masters from our service to them, a day given in the full expectation that we shall more than pay for the illusion later today and tomorrow. That latter is the reality, of credit overextension and depriving our children of opportunity to acquire more property, most of it so transitory and dysfunctional as to be junk in gilded wrappings, a metaphor that increasingly fits our society like a rotting, ulcerous skin.

Enough. “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”

humans, behavior, corporations, slavery, stupidity

Stupidity Stream?

Into week out and the weather has warmed. Rather, the temperature is up. And I am doubly in need of clearing tabs because I am on the cusp of transition from this box to the new six core box. And yes, I finally got my will power in line and transferred the data HD yesterday. So I am now in a bit of a mixed state. With some things not available – like my signature files.

It seems rather appropriate under such circumstances to note an article [Link] in the Register about Apple’s second patent on the rectangle. Actually, I should amend that it is not strictly a rectangle but a “rectangle with rounded corners”.

I find this bemusing on a couple of levels. First, I can recall an article in Popular Mechanics in the late ’70′s about a guy who developed a milling machine (ala a router) to cut this shape for table tops (e.g.) And he got a patent on the machine. So if there is a patent for a machine to cut this shape, how can Apple patent the shape? Seems like an implicit conflict.

Second, I fear I find this another example of BIG Brands enslaving the citizenry. If they can own geometric shapes what is next? Proper names. Will our children have to pay a royalty every time they sign their names? Or will there be public domain names? Or will everyone have a unique name that is a perversion of some actual name like some of the lesser bogs do now? And if you can’t possess your own name, how can you enter into a contract? Will we all just be numbers like that rather depressing “science fiction” movie? And will the numbers be tattooed on our arms ala Auschwitz inmates?

In a rather more pleasant azimuth, I note [Link][Link] that sales of desk/lap boxes with Linux pre-installed are up albeit not in the Yankee republic. I fear this is one more indication of our rapid degeneration in to a third world nation. It also brings me once more to the question of whether I really want to see Linux widely diffused as a tool OS (not an appliance OS.) If it means looking and acting like Winders or Apple OS, then the answer is a resounding NYET! And I am not sure the dispersion of distributions will let this be avoided. After all, they killed off CPM didn’t they?

This brings me to an article [Link] on Linux ‘Fear – Uncertainty – Doubt’ among educationalists. I especially liked the quote

‘”In a modern textbook for a Management Information Systems class Linux is being portrayed as:

•     Rarely used (only when budget is very limited)
•     Only has one commonly used application (OpenOffice)
•     Created by “a loosely coupled group of programmers who mostly volunteer their time”

Not a single one of those statements is valid and current.’

But the argument that this is bad because of economics preventing up-to-date textbooks is rot. If anything, Linux use in colleges is concentrated among IT types. And an out of date college textbook? Rarer than dinosaur descendants with teeth. Rather more a matter of author ignorance dragging. And the kind of religionist tunnel vision that infests too many modern IT organizations, real and academic.

But having grown up in the ’60′s with the ‘counter culture’ I am happy to think of Linux as the modern version. And enjoy it as the individual you had to be to enjoy things then.

corporations, computers, patents, IT, nonsense

After Vacuum

It was actually quiet last evening. Except for news readers deliberately misinterpreting the desires of the citizenry. At least we can now settle down from the fiction that the people matter any more and get back to trying to keep our heads down as Big Brands and Big Gubment further enslave us.

Having said that I am so exhausted from the strident hollowness of the politicist fanatics, who are lamost as nonsensical and dangerous as religionist fanatics, and the utter rot on the audio-visual electromagnetic receiver that I am mind grounded.

Back to life as usual as a citizen-slave in modern Amerika.

corporations, government, tyranny, ennui