Optimism Circa 1960's

Three posts in one day - I'm on a roll! Guess I'd better do this while my fingers are hot because who knows, maybe the next inspiration will come three months from now.

For your viewing pleasure I have embedded another YouTube video, this one a performance by my favorite female musical artist, Laura Nyro, a live version of Save the Country. Back in the '60's, lots of people were jumping on the peace and freedom, anti-war bandwagon, many of them I suspect because their producers knew what was hot and where the $$$ were. But of this I am certain: Laura Nyro truly believed in what she wrote and she lived her songs. Sadly, she died of cancer in 1997 but her songs are every bit as relevant now as when she wrote them during her 30+ year career.

In Save the Country, Ms. Nyro matches perfectly the music to the lyrics. Uplifting, hopeful, sung with such pleading urgency and conviction. If I sounded cliched in my previous post, this adds to it: what happened to all of this? In 1969 when New York Tendaberry, the album containing this song, was released, I was just starting high school - what a different world back then! People have always been selfish throughout their existence but society had not yet evolved into the "me first" attitude that permeates 2007.

I watch the video performance and want to raise my fist and say, yes, we can do this, but like the previous post's performance, a terrible sadness comes over me as I say to myself that this video is from yesterday and the mood was different yesterday.

That said, am I somehow slipping to the left? Mais No! But I'd like to hope that war is not the answer to everything and that we in this 21st century can care enough to embrace ideals like what were expressed by the song that's in this post.

Well, I've said enough. Please, just watch the video and let it speak for itself. Laura Nyro was an amazing human being.

Right vs. Left Brain Thinking

Above is an embedded YouTube video performance by Chitose Hajime on vocals and Ryuichi Sakamoto on the piano. Every time I watch this I get the chills - it is a very affecting performance of a work entitled Dead Girl. Depsite being entirely in Japanese, the emotional content is obvious; please give a listen and refer to the lyrics below:

I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

I'm only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow.

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.

I need no fruit, I need no rice
I need no sweet, nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.

All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of this world
May live and grow and laugh and play.

-- Nazim Hikmet

If you've read my other posts in this blog it is obvious what my political inclinations are. I supported our invasion of Iraq and overall I am a staunch conservative (except don't get me started on gun control; that's the one area in which I totally disagree with the conservative stance). And when I read about the never-ending battle between the Israelis and Palestinians and how there can never be a true peace achieved in the Middle East, my solution is that it would be best to just drop a big bomb on all of them and be done with it. Like Randy Newman's song "Political Science," ..Let's drop the big one and pulverize them.

I am, however, of Japanese descent and my people have the distinction of being the only ones ever to suffer the effects of the atomic bomb. If you've never seen the animated movie, Grave of the Fireflies, I highly recommend that you do; it should be required for every person, child or adult. Though animated, it's a chilling recount of the horrors of the atomic blasts that shook Japan in 1945; the YouTube video combined with the lyrics above present the horrifics in summary form.

You know my posts in this blog are often caustic, full of insults and taunts to the liberals in our society. I easily think of them as stereotypes, a poor, misled group. I still don't agree with the vast majority of their thinking but I am wrong to ignore their humanity. Otherwise it puts me only a few steps away from becoming a person who could give the command to drop another bomb.

Right vs. Left Brain Thinking is the title of this post and by this I mean political right versus political left. How do I reconcile this? I may sound like a tired cliche but war causes suffering mainly for the innocent, because of man's unquenchable thirst for power. I really don't know what to say about all of this because I know at times the use of force is the only realistic alternative, but why do we have to put ourselves through this? Each time I view this video it stirs up my emotions and brings on a terrible sadness that today I just felt as though I had to write about it.

Who's Superior - Them or Us? - Part 3

Ironically I was at the library today and spied the DVD you see on the right sitting on the shelf waiting for me to check it out. Here's an excerpt from the description on the back cover:

.. All ants belong to extended families and carry their prey home to share. Unselfishness is the rule. Everything they do is for their colony's good. For them, socialism works.

I haven't watched it yet but I intend to do so soon since ants have always fascinated me. What I found interesting was that last sentence, For them, socialism works. As I wrote in the previous blog, ants do indeed work selflessly and ceaselessly to get the job done. We should be so energetic.

But the thing is, it's all done from instinct. They don't think about what they are doing and they are not conscious of what they've achieved. If they were able to realize, I think, therefore I am, would they still operate in the same way? Socialism does work for ants and it can probably work for any other society in which the inhabitants don't have the ability to think. But once that ability is enabled, then what?

Who's Superior - Them or Us? - Part 2

So the question posed in the previous entry was, given the similarities between an ant society and a human one, is one better than the other?

Let's think about that one: ants rarely seem to screw anything up. They continue to multiply and expand seemingly to no end. They appear to be pretty efficient creatures: anyone who has had to put up with an ant invasion in their kitchen knows how energetic they are. One discovers a morsel of food left behind and soon there's a trail of ants going to and fro, taking bits of the food back to the nest. Meanwhile back at the nest, some ants are guarding it, some are enlarging it by burrowing into the earth to make new tunnels, some are caring for immature ants, some are guarding the queen ant, and some are out foraging for food. And as I mentioned yesterday, some seem to be idle but apparently no one objects. And this goes on, day after day, week after week, for years and years. They get the job done.

Now us humans seem to be expanding, also. Someone spots a bargain at Costco and soon there's a whole swarm bearing down on it, a trail of people taking them back to their nests. We build and build, we defend our territories, and basically, we do the same things ants do. But our human society is often mired in things that take us backwards, not forwards: like politics. Like crime. People whose actions are not in the best interest of society. Those kinds of things don't exist within an ant colony. Some of them do exist between colonies, such as ants who invade other ant nests and steal food and other ants, turning them into slaves. Or ants of different colonies who go to war with each other. But within the same colony, it seems like ants do whatever needs to be done to ensure its survial. Sort of like, from each ant according to its ability and to each ant according to its need. And it works. Even those ants who seem lazy and do nothing - perhaps they aren't able to do anything. How do we know - we don't speak ant language. But they still need to eat, and other ants feed them as well as ensure that these "lazy" ants have shelter. All this is seemingly automatic, by instinct.

Why can't we function as smoothly as an ant colony? Here's something to ponder: what would happen if all of a sudden, ants had the ability to think, and became conscious of their existence? How would this awareness affect them? And at the same time, these same ants gained the ability to experience emotions and feelings. What would happen? That's it for today, time to stop here.

Who's Superior? Them or Us? - Part 1

Back many moons ago in elementary school, I penned an essay entitled, The Homo Sapiens of the Insect World. It was a paper about the similarities between humans and ants.

It's been a long time since I read that paper and a while since I've studied ants so I don't remember a lot of details, but just some of the similarities include: living in societies; communicating with each other; having a division of labor; cultivating crops; raising "livestock" as a source of food; keeping slaves; raiding other ant colonies; and making war. Hmm.. so I guess the lives of ants encompass both the good and bad aspects of human behavior. Not the very worst yet, since there are no ant politicians or lawyers but perhaps that's still down the line somewhere. And seeing as how 99% of the ants in a colony are female and the male ant dies soon after mating with the queen, there's no adultery either. I guess ant societies represent the dream vision of radical feminists: males (called drones) are useless critters who perform no work in the colony and exist only for one purpose. After they perform that purpose, they drop dead.

But let's examine an ant society and evaluate it in terms of the question posed by the title of this blog entry.

Observe a typical ant colony and you will see a group of seemingly tireless, energetic individuals. They all seem busy carrying out various functions that are necessary for the survival of the colony. Some are excavating tunnels: they grab a piece of dirt with their mandibles, then carry it out and deposit on the ground - this is what accounts for the mounds you see around ant holes. Ants share food: when one ant finds a food source, it carries what it can back to the nest and leaves a trail that enables other ants in the colony to find the food and bring the rest of it back. When an ant is hungry, it taps the antennae of a fellow ant and receives food that is regurgitated from the supplying ant's stomach. You can also observe cooperation as several ants will work together to drag large objects, and will also work together to defend the colony from an invader.

Kick dirt over the ant hole (at your own risk, of course) and cover the nest, and soon the ants will burrow back through the dirt to open the nest again. Now, if you observe all facets of an ant colony for a while, you will also see that there are some ants who seem to do nothing but stand around all day. And no one complains. Well, since we don't speak ant language I'm only guessing that no one complains although the other ants might be cursing the sluggard behind her back. But no one cajoles these seemingly lazy ants to do any sort of work. Come to think of it, maybe ants do have politicians. Or maybe these are philosopher ants.

The point I am trying to make is that an ant society functions and survives based on the cooperative actions of each of its members, much like a human society. Except that ants seem to do this from instinct; they are not actively aware of what they are doing and are not planning out their day, they are just programmed somehow to do this. And they do so unceasingly. Day in and day out, they carry out their tasks and the nest thrives.

So how is an ant society any different from a human one? Is one better than the other? You may think I am posing a ridiculous question but think about it.. and we'll explore this in subsequent blogs. That's enough for now.

Helpful Consumer Reviews

I'm the type of person who does extensive product research before making a purchase. I especially pay attention to reviews by consumers, such as the ones at Amazon.com or Epinions.com because I feel those are more reflective of a typical experience than ones from professional reviewers. With the more popular items you also get more points of view, rather than just one critic's perspective and who knows who paid him or her to write what they did.

That said, I do notice on Amazon that there seems to be a ring of cronies who seem to go around patting each other on the back when it comes to reviewing business books. Maybe this goes on with other genres too, but since I am mainly browsing the business book section, this is where I've noticed it. They all jump in right after the book gets listed, write a glowing review, and make sure to promote their own book in some way, either in the title (telling you who they are and that they are the author of such and such book), or in the body of the review. With all that back-patting and covering for each other, it kind of makes you think they should be in the Bush administration.

Anyway, that's not what I am writing this. Last weekend we bought a new toaster oven so before anything else, I diligently read the various reviews around the internet to find one that seemed purchase-worthy. Pretty much all of them received mixed consumer reviews. What amused me were some negative reviews - the reason for these pans being things like, "this oven gets very hot and I burned my fingers on it." Or, they complained about the food inside catching on fire. Duh, don't you think an OVEN is supposed to get hot? For something costing about $50, surely you don't think the manufacturer could afford to put a lot of insulation on the outside, do you? And if the oven remained cool to the touch, then you'd have those same people complaining about how long it took to heat up anything. As for one of the posters who claimed the oven caught fire - the idiot was reheating a taco. A taco! Now, aren't tacos pretty greasy, and if the grease drips down on the heating elements, well, what do you expect is going to happen? It's like people complaining that their fireworks weren't fireproof. I hope no liberal lawmaker is reading this because the next thing you know, there will be a bill introduced to put a warning label on these toaster ovens cautioning people that they may be hot.

There was a voice of reason who pointed out that these whiners were expecting a $50 small appliance to perform like a $500 major appliance and how unreasonable it was. I guess as in life itself, the world of consumer reviews is reflected in a bell curve. There are always going to be those people on the far left of the bell curve. The ones who are never happy with anything, the ones who always seem to have problems, the ones who can't get along with people at work and wind up filing some lawsuit claiming discrimination. I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't exist, because it does, but it exists far less than the multitude of lawsuits would lead you to believe. Gee how did I wind up at this point? Let's go back to the consumer product reviews..

It's like when I was reading reviews for GPS units. There were brainless people complaining about how the GPS told them to make a turn in the middle of the block right into a building. This was a while ago so my memory is hazy but I think one of them may have done what they were told. Anyway, next time you're reading through the reviews and you run across someone who gives one star to a product when almost everyone else is giving five, take a look at his or her other reviews and see if they are the far-left bell curve type. The alarmists. The ones who expect everything to hold their hand. Included in this category are the people who give one-star ratings to a product because it took too long to be delivered to them, or the box came bashed in.

Ok, that's it for today.. just some more eye-rolling material for your day!

How Do Absurd People Think?

Continuing on with the last post about the theater of the absurd, when I learn about incredibly stupid things, such as the three things mentioned in that post, I wonder just exactly what were these people thinking when they made their boneheaded decisions???

Didn't our political animal of a county sheriff Lee Baca have a clue that his decision to give special treatment to Paris Hilton would cause outrage in the community? Was Baca really that baka or was there some hidden motive behind what he did? Perhaps because one of his major campaign contributors from the last election happened to be Granpappy Hilton?

As for what Roy Pearson was thinking when he filed his idiotic lawsuit, who knows and who cares. The guy is a jerk and doesn't deserve to remain in this country so we'll leave it at that.

Now for the finale, I really do wonder what went through George W's mind when he decided to commute Scooter Libby's sentence. Yes, he is often ridiculed by idiot liberals as being stupid and there are countless jokes made at his expense about his supposed stupidity (many of which are really funny, I must admit) but the man did not get to be president by being stupid. As wimpy and ineffectual as Jimmy Carter may have seemed, he was not stupid, either. We really do not have stupid people becoming president and that's why you don't see John Kerry in the White House but that's a blog for another day.

The target here today is Bush.. what was he thinking??? He had to have known, and his political crony advisers must have reinforced it, that commuting the sentence of someone like Scooter was going to cause an uproar. And it did. Today my communist boss told me that the reason for this was a choice of the lesser of two evils: something about had the sentence not been commuted, Scooter would have blabbed all (as my Marxist buddy put it, "told the truth about what happened") and gotten Bush impeached or thrown into jail or both. I guess the same would have happened to Dick Chaney, in which case I doubt that either Chaney or Bush would receive a pardon from the next-in-line to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi (scary thought, isn't it?). He also mentioned something about had he actually pardoned Libby instead of commuting the sentence, then the truth would have also come out.. something about how commuting the sentence would somehow keep a rag stuffed in his mouth whereas the other options would have resulted in him spilling the beans and us having another Watergate on our hands.

Well now as much as I have defended our president in the past and I disagree with the political nonsense espoused by my boss, I do have to say that this is food for thought. Because there has to be a good reason why Bush did what he did, knowing full well what the public's reaction would be. So something is fishy.. and the whole thing stinks. Like I said yesterday, I'm just totally disgusted by it all.