It Takes a Village

Posted on 14 May 2011 by Larry Russwurm

C.E.O.’s have got us convinced that they are extremely necessary for a company’s bottom line. Look at the cult of Jobs or the cult of Trump or even the former cult of Iacocca. And what does it matter, in the huge companies they run, they are one amongst thousands and thousands of employees. Better to give them an extra million instead of giving everyone else a raise of a dollar an hour. Oh yes they’ve run the numbers.

But they keep getting that extra million and the lower employees keep getting passed up on raises so that today these C.E.O.’s are worth about 500 of their lowest paid employees.

And of course they’ll spin that, too. “It takes a village,” one of these leaders might say. “And you see, being worth 500 people makes me a village. What better to run such an important company but a village.”

Never mind that less than 500 people from their own company might be better tuned to expand the company than the C.E.O. “If they could, they would start their own company,” one of these leaders might say. When we know they might not have the capitalization backing them.

But we also know these C.E.O.’s are hyper competitive. Just look at Donald Trump playing that “Birther” card as an in with the tea party and thus trying to get a leg up on his Republican competition.

So when will these mega rich people begin demanding to be worth a town? A city? A metropolis?

Don’t sell their egos short. This will, unchecked, be their goal.

Real villages should speak up. When C.E.O. salaries keep going up, even when the company’s fortunes go down, there is something wrong. And, if they are worth so much, why must they hide some of their wages as bonuses?

I think C.E.O.’s are not worth a village. I would suggest that they be taken down to hamlet size but to many it’s unclear how many people are in a hamlet. So my definition is about 50 or less.

In one way I will accept a C.E.O. has something more to offer than a village. In unmitigated gall.

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Policing the Word Police

Posted on 11 May 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I’ve been surfing the net to find what phrase or word has superseded the older and now frowned upon term ‘mentally retarded’.

I did it for pure self interest, at first, until I found that the phrase I thought might have taken over, hadn’t . At least not totally. That phrase is mentally challenged. I have a bone to pick with this term. Allow me to get rid of this at the outset.

I have a mental illness and as anyone can see, mentally challenged could describe me as well. That is the problem. I don’t want to be lumped in a group with the mentally retarded because a) it doesn’t distinguish among our disparate conditions and b) might imply to people that I’m a very slow learner, which I am not. So this term can be inaccurate and have less precision than the previous language.

The term I support the most is intellectually challenged. To me it’s the best of three possible replacement terms for mental retardation.

The last term I bring up seems to be gaining the most traction in the admittedly unscientific surfing I did. That term is developmentally delayed. First I’d like to point out that the delayed part implies that maybe people with this condition can get a university degree by the time they’re 40 and could have a PhD before they die. That’s not how it works.

Developmentally delayed isn’t even precise enough to tell you it’s a mental condition. Maybe the person with this condition might enter puberty in their thirties. But more important is the fact that many people are developmentally delayed. Kids that didn’t speak properly in Grades 1 and 2 were taken out of my class and worked one on one with a speech coach. After a couple years of this, they all managed to speak quite well and caught up to the rest of the class in what they missed. These kids could be called developmentally delayed, too. There is a host of other conditions that might fit under this term as well. As with mentally challenged, this term can be inaccurate and have less precision than another term.

Some may say it’s fine to lump others with the intellectually challenged – people who object just need to be less bigoted. Let’s lump your group in with the intellectually challenged, then. Some of this wordplay I’m sure is caused by pediatricians. So we can then call the intellectually challenged “pediatricians”. How’s that for the next word on the euphemism treadmill?

I’m quite familiar with the idea of a euphemism treadmill. Here’s my 2 cents. I have a friend (let’s call him Ed) who is insulting quite a lot of the time. So normally I insult him back. But I thought it was funny to one day say “You’re such an Ed!” with a derisive tone in my voice. I used his name as an insult this way for many months. I thought it was funny. He took it as an insult every time, too. That tone of voice is going to be used on the term intellectually challenged and part of the community is going to call out for a new term when it does. We know this happens and could be prepared.

How about we use three terms: intellectually challenged, slow learner, and mentally retarded in a cycle, each portion of which could last 20 years. That way, the insults you heard in grade school would hopefully be changed by the time your kid is found to be intellectually challenged.

This might result in the intellectually challenged and their families to be not so put off by the words used. By the time the cycle was through, caregivers might not care about the name so much.

If we don’t follow my advice about the cyclical euphemism treadmill then we’re on an infinite euphemism treadmill that will never end. Again, I nominate “pediatrician” as the next word that becomes unusable by polite society.

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Are Secret Blondes Dumb

Posted on 10 May 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Last post I brought up the idea of “secret blondes”. They were young people who start out blonde but in adulthood end up with dark hair, people whose hair turns blonde by too much sun exposure, and white haired elderly people whose hair colour could also be called blonde.

My mind kept churning on the topic. I try many points of views – a lot of the time that’s how I come up with blog posts. Anyway I tried on the idea that maybe secret blondes are dumb.

You see, kids are stupid – that’s precisely why we don’t allow them to vote. And people should know by now not to spend so much time in the sun that their hair turns colour. You’d have to be stupid not to know this. And white haired old people? Well can’t old mean senile and thus quite stupid?

I didn’t want and don’t want any blondes thought of as dumb which is why I don’t like “proving” that “secret blondes” are dumb. So I thought some more and came up with defences.

Kids aren’t really stupid, they just don’t have a large knowledge base to help make wise decisions. Some people can’t help the amount of time spent in the sun – they are working. But now knowing more about sunscreen and how much you need, you can help protect your skin. Your hair doesn’t need much protection from the sun for health – the visible parts are dead. So your hair may bleach blonde but you can still be intelligent about it by protecting your skin. And finally, not all people who get white hair become senile.

Sorry for arguing both sides, but now I’ve ended where I want to. Secret blondes are not dumb.

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Blonde Jokes are Racist

Posted on 8 May 2011 by Larry Russwurm

We’ve all heard the dumb blonde jokes. We can feign innocence but we all know these jokes exist precisely to make fun of blondes. No correlation between blonde hair and lowered intelligence has ever been shown to exist.

This negative stereotype is just as bad as any racial stereotype joke. Regular readers might know my take on some racist jokes and it is also true for some of the blonde jokes. Instead of making blondes the butt of the joke, it is possible to make “the leader” the butt of these jokes.

How did everyone know that Stephen Harper [prime minister of Canada] made a mistake on the computer? They found whiteout on the screen.

The reason blonde jokes are just as offensive as racist jokes is because a blonde cannot help being blonde. I mean they could dye their hair but so too can different skin pigments be covered up. Granted the skin thing is much more laborious and so much less likely to be done. I refuse to insult a blonde person because they have not coloured their hair.

And there are “secret blondes” that fly under the radar of the blonde racist. Two of my sisters had blonde hair when they were little but grew into brown hair as adults. I myself have dark brown hair but one summer worked outdoors ten hours a day and ended up with blonde streaks in my hair. And of course one of the range of colours that is called blonde is white hair. Most elderly people get white hair with age. So at some point in life, most people are blonde. Together we can take down the regime of making blondes feel dumb.

Still, if a blonde uses the stereotype “blondes have more fun”, I think they are trying to make themselves superior than the differently coloured. In that case I don’t think the “secret blondes” would object to a blonde joke or two, or even better yet, a joke about that particular person (substitute their name for Stephen Harper).

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Could High British Fashion be Influenced by a Canadian Serial Killer

Posted on 4 May 2011 by Larry Russwurm

If you saw any part of the guests at the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate last week, I bet you noticed the hats. No not the bland hat that the Queen and other older women wore, but the startling hats of the younger, allegedly more stylish female crowd.

Here is a link to one of the pages on the Internet that show some of the hats. Pay particular attention to Princess Beatrice of York, Princess Eugenie of York, Victoria Beckham and Tara Palmer Tomkinson. Notice the style of wearing these hats over the forehead. Indeed these ridiculous hats seem to defy gravity. In fact, I’m certain that they they do defy gravity and only pins can hold them on to their owner’s heads.

Just another ridiculous high fashion thing, you may think. But to me, all I could think of was that they got the hat covering the forehead idea from Canadian serial killer, Russel Williams.

Here Russel Williams can be seen with his forehead completely covered by his hat. And his reason for doing this can be seen by this picture. He wants to hide all signs of a receding hairline. That is his reason for wearing his army hat so low on his forehead.

So why are young women of high British society copying a Canadian serial killer? I’ve racked my brains ever since I noticed this trend and all I can think of is it’s some pathetic attempt by these ladies to have street credibility. Oh how high society has fallen.

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Helping Science Denialism Come of Age

Posted on 30 April 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Poor science denialism, in some quarters it doesn’t get as much respect as science. Perhaps that’s because it doesn’t have a codified methodology like science has. Here we would like to rectify this situation.

But first we will start with the scientific method. We can use it both as a guide and a comparison, so we can thus see where science denialism departs from the scientific method.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

I.Hypothesis: Start with a hypothesis that is testable by experiment.
II.Apparatus: That Apparatus needed to do the experiment.
III.Experiment: The actual testing of the hypothesis.
IV.Observations: The carefully sensed and recorded observations of the experiment.
V.Conclusions: Did the hypothesis prove valid through the tests? Why or why not?

Seems simple enough. Now we’ll show our tentative first draft of the method of science denialism.

THE METHOD OF SCIENCE DENIALISM:

I.Know What You Want: Start out with a tenet that is lucrative to prove.
II.Apparatus: A list of all the equipment you would like to be able to purchase by taking your position. Like certain cars or the Blackberry Playbook.
III.Casing Out: Casing out where your opponents live. Don’t worry sometimes this is just used as an intimidating one liner on your opponents.
IV.Outshouting: That active part of the method where you outshout, out email or out twitter your opponents.
V.Concussions: This is where you try to prove your biases through might. State assertively that the winner of any argument is the one who kicks the other’s @$$. Repeat until true.

Some of you may have a better understanding of the method of science denialism. We must repeat that this is just a first attempt in codifying the methodology. Any suggestions would be welcome before we formalize the method of science denialism.

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Beyond and Below Geostationary Orbit

Posted on 27 April 2011 by Larry Russwurm

At first I was going to rant about light being able to go around the world 7 times in one second, so why is there a lag of two seconds between interview question and interview answer from only half way around the world?

But it’s not that simple. You see the signals are sent up to satellites in geostationary orbit and then bounced around the globe to the proper far flung place. The problem is geostationary orbits are 22 000 miles above the equator. Then to get to the other side of the world, the signal is bounced around by other geostationary satellites and then down to the target. That is roughly 22 000 miles plus 22 000 miles plus half the circumference of a circle with a radius of 26 000 miles (geostationary height plus the radius of the earth). That’s 44 000 miles plus 3.14 x 26 000miles which is about 126 000 miles. It is actually less because the signal doesn’t have to go in a perfect circle around the Earth. It will also be more because the location on Earth isn’t directly below the satellite on the equator. So 126 000 miles is a good approximation.

Light travels 186 000 miles in one second. So, one way, it will take the signal over 2/3 of a second. But that’s close to one second. And to return, which is needed in a question/answer scheme, would be another second so we get the approximate 2 seconds mentioned in the opening paragraph.

But why use satellites in geostationary orbits? This is simple laziness on the part of the engineers. They just want to point their satellite dishes at the same part of the sky. But tracking dishes aren’t that hard to build, for instance almost all observatory instruments track the stars which move across the sky.

So why not put a series of satellites in orbit at say 5000 miles above the Earth. Doing the same calculations as above only with 5 000 miles instead of 22 000 miles we get about 38 000 miles. That’s less than 1/3 of the distance, so the delay would be about 0.6 seconds. That’s much better.

It is my belief that the 5000 mile high satellites (or less) have been up there for a long time and the satellite trucks can actually track them. It’s just that years ago reporters figured they could take a second or two to compose their thoughts in an interview. After all if it’s worth broadcasting by satellite, it’s worth composing your thoughts. So this sham has been foisted on the world by those no good reporters.

But ha ha, they’re stuck composing their thoughts for this week’s royal wedding. I bet it’ll be hard to wait the two seconds to keep up the sham.

And sham we know it is, else why not send the signal via under ocean cables, like with the Internet. But perhaps they’re worried because of what happened with that Grandma in Georgia cutting the Internet cable and leaving Armenia Internetless. After all, nothing is more important than Will and Kate being viewed by the voyeuristic public.

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I Might Flip Flop From This Position

Posted on 23 April 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I’ve seen the tag “flip flopper” ruin a politician’s career and I have to wonder why.

Sure flip flopping does remind one of that way one can lose an argument or debate. If you contradict yourself or become a hypocrite, the rules of logic state that you have lost.

I recognize how flip flopping raises that spectre. After all, over time, a flip flopper appears to have contradicted themselves.

But circumstances change. When you are 10 years old you might say “I’m a kid.” When you’re 20 you might say, “I’m an adult.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with this flip flop in positions. In fact it is the absolute, undeniable truth.

I want a politician who ran on one platform to flip flop if all the facts line up against their original position. This, to me, is the best way to be a good leader. What has been passing for “good” leadership these days is simple head-in-the-sand stubbornness.

Some of the deepest truths that our civilization has come up with exist in the field of science. Newton was our guru for understanding gravity for hundreds of years. But along came Einstein with general relativity and eventually the science community flip flopped. Sure Newton is good enough for making it to the moon, but without the Einsteinian refinements, Global Positioning Satellites wouldn’t work right.

Then there is our understanding of light. For almost as long, light was known as a wave only event. But physics again flip flopped and wave/particle duality resulted. Thus when you look at light one way, the photoelectric effect, where light acts as a particle, occurs. When you look at light another way, wave effects like constructive and destructive interference occur. Wave/particle duality has lead to things like electron microscopes. Flip flopping thus paid off for the scientists.

So in this election in Canada, the NDP referred to Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Party leader as a flip flopper. Because of what I outlined above, I hope this comment doesn’t sway anyone’s vote. Maybe the NDP will win but it should be for a better reason than this.

And excuse me while I go along my merry way chanting to myself “a flip flop, a flippety flop…”

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Don’t Be Sheeple to the Pollsters

Posted on 21 April 2011 by Larry Russwurm

My memory is long for things I’ve read over and over again, especially numbers, so I want to know what the pollsters are trying to put over on us.

You see I remember the polls from the ’80s and even possibly the ’70s and it was always a survey of over 1000 people that they would say was correct to 4%, 19 times out of 20.

This means that the polls, once every 20 times are total bull$#!+ . That’s my first point.

But recently I paid attention to the characteristics of a modern poll, in this, Canada’s 41st federal election. They had the results of less than 1000 people and they claimed their result was accurate to 3.1%. I don’t remember hearing the 19 times out of 20, but I believe statistical analysis hasn’t progressed any further, so it should still be there.

Now how can a lesser poll have more accurate estimates? Then it hit me what they had done. They had simply subtracted the undecided vote that used to be ever present in polls and that’s why the polling numbers were less than with the polls of decades earlier.

It seems to me they don’t want to remind the sheeple that usually there are 20% of the voters that are undecided. That means, in the present Canadian race, the NDP (New Democrat Party) which is currently in third at 17% of decided voters, could form a majority government with just the pull of the undecided voters. That’s the 2nd major reason the polls may be relative bull$#!+ . It might be a greater than 1 in 20 chance that such mayhem could ensue.

And I still haven’t worked on the third thing that seems suspiciously out of whack. That decrease in poll inexactitude from 4% decades ago to 3.1%, now. It’s even worse than that. Here I have a poll table that “shows” some of the errors are allegedly less than 1.7 %. I simply don’t believe these figures. Not unless the pollsters have gone the expensive route of polling 10 000 people at a time. I seriously doubt they’ve gone this route.

The only other thing I can think for inexactitude being lessened would be if the pollsters did other polls, like asking “Do you use polls to strategically vote?” In this case the pollsters might have a case for inexactitude being lessened but the response would have to be overwhelmingly “Yes.” But notice that this “correction” relies on another poll.

All I can say is don’t be a sheeple. If you ever strategically vote, do it based on the last election, not a random survey.

A corrupt survey system might result if we give their polls too much power. In these times of less oversight and a much smaller watch dog press, I don’t think we can afford to let any part of our democracy get any more powerful. Let’s go back to those ’70s and ’80s qualifiers for our polls. I don’t believe there is anything that would make me agree that statistics have miraculously gotten better. I think the pollsters are getting deeper in the bull$#!+ .

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Pseudo Accents II

Posted on 17 April 2011 by Larry Russwurm

The reason I’m enthralled with pseudo accents is that I write science fiction. Of course aliens are likely to have accents to our ears, even if their mouths and voice boxes are identical to ours. And most likely these accents are going to be even stranger than human accents.

So the last post was an effort on my part to shake things up and jar my thinking so possibly I could come up with a new alien accent. But so far I’ve just thought that perhaps a human could say about an alien accent that it was kind of “Elmer Fuddian”.

But quite awhile ago, I did come up with an alien accent that a human can do, too. My inspiration was the rolled “r” that occurs in many non-English, European languages. The rolling is a sound that is concurrent with the “r”.

So that got me thinking and playing with what I could say. Eventually I came up with a clicked “n”. Next came the flatulated (yes I made the word up) “p” , the flatulated part I hope gets you thinking about gassy emanations, but really it’s more the sound a horse makes with it’s mouth that’s not whinnying. Still later I came up with a smacked “m”, that’s smack as in a kiss.

I threw all three together and placed them in a short story featuring an alien Nickpon with this accent. That story remains unsold so here I am today letting you see, dear reader and maybe some stage or screen production hears of it and makes me an offer. Perhaps they will want that extra verisimilitude for their piece. Or perhaps they just want to torture their actors. In the clips below, it was very hard for me to pull off the accents and I invented it.

Male homophobes wouldn’t like to do my accent because of the smacked “m”. I doubt they’ll like making kissing sounds every time they say man or male.

Now I should also mention that the three concurrent sounds can’t be used for a “p”, “m”, or “n” at the end of a syllable. Unfortunately, I can’t do these sounds without adding a syllable for end letters. If you can do it without the extra syllable, you have mastered it better than me. Also the “sp”, “sm” and “sn” blends are also very difficult to do so I didn’t include them in the examples below.

The smacked M

The Flatulated P

The Clicked N

The Full Nickpon Accent

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