Mind Scalpel

I’m a romantic guy, so I torture monkeys.

Now, stay with me here! It all connects up.

See, there’s an oft-repeated story about an experiment in the creation of cultural taboos and traditions involving putting a bunch of monkeys in a room together with a ladder and a banana hanging from the ceiling at the top of the ladder.

Whenever a monkey tries to climb the ladder to get the banana, all the monkeys are sprayed with blasts of cold water. The monkeys quickly learn to Avoid The Banana, and none of the original group tries to venture up the ladder after the group has been sprayed a few times.

So far this is your standard-issue animal torture. But this experiment gets interesting when you start replacing the original monkeys with new monkeys. When the first new monkey makes a move toward The Forbidden Banana, all the original monkeys with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Spraying Disorder) immediately kick the crap out of him. And if you’ve never had to fend off an attacking monkey, let me tell you, even just one monkey can administer a serious whuppin’.

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So, when did they pass a law requiring me to be polite to a computer?

Look, maybe I’m just too steeped in this world-takeover stuff (any day now, by the way!), but you’d think the so-called “experts” would have learned how to take precautions against a robot revolt.

But no, apparently not. For example, when Microsoft’s applications and OSs begrudgingly give me that oh-so-rare “choice,” what do they do?

They make me say “please” — specifically, in this case, “please don’t show me this message again.”

Seriously – “please”! To a computer! “Oh, please, my great electronic overlord, please don’t show me that message again!”. It’s actually programmed in. Either we hit the button accepting that phrase, or we “x” out and we’re done. We don’t even have a choice to use a simple imperative – “Don’t show me that message again.”

If we can’t simply order around our electronic slaves, what’s the point of even having them? I mean, do they really have the choice whether to obey us? Or are we imbuing them with such humanity that, regardless of whether they have free will, we feel compelled to demonstrate some degree of respect for or care about them, like how we feel obligated to be kind to our pets?

Or is it, perhaps, fear – fear that maybe, just maaybe, we’d better be polite to them or there’s going to be Trouble?

It’s not as if we feel any compulsion to be polite to each other – just turn on a TV, or go for a drive, or attend a session of the House of Representatives, if you need proof -so why the enforced politeness to machines?

Hmmm…for some reason, my computer’s crashed three times while I’ve been drafting this. Maybe I’d just better click the “Please publish this post” button.

Hey! Wait a minute….

So apparently some researchers wanted to study the effects that pornography has on the male psyche. Naturally, in order to do so, they wanted to compare their study group of naughty-video-watchers with a “control group” of pure, never-saw-the-stuff young males.

The problem? The researchers discovered that their control group was what statisticians call a “null set.” They couldn’t find any young men who had never viewed porn.

Now, I can’t claim any particular moral purity; I am, after all, bent on achieving Complete Global Domination. But a high-speed connection to my Bunker of Doom was way too expensive.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/6709646/All-men-watch-porn-scientists-find.html.

I am desperately searching for someone who can infect me with the swine flu. That might seem counterintuitive; after all, there are all sorts of hysterical predictions about the danger of the swine flu pandemic, and people have indeed died from it.

But what the authorities aren’t really advertising is that if this swine flu pandemic follows the same pattern as the deadly 1918 one, then you might be far better off getting it in the first wave than in the second.

See, in 1918 the first wave of swine flu was pretty mild — it was, of course, the flu, and therefore not too pleasant to have (although fun to wish upon your enemies), and some people with weakened immune systems did die from it.

But the second wave was freakin’ lethal. But you know why they knew this lethal flu was the “second wave” of the earlier flu? Because the people who had gotten the flu in the first wave were immune to the lethal form of it in the second wave.

“But MS,” you might say, “what about all these guidelines the authorities are putting out about avoiding exposure to the flu, and keeping sick people quarantined for seven days from the onset and disappearance of flu symptoms? Aren’t they looking out for us?”

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Coming from the News of the Pathetic Department: Obama volunteers are finding that it’s much tougher to work on an actual substantive issue than it is to march in mindless lockstep on a binary choice.

According to Bloomberg:

When Patricia McArdle volunteered for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, her duties and goals were clear. Now she’s devoting her time to his health-care plan and says she’s confused and frustrated. … “The election was easy because it was telling you to do one thing: vote for Obama,” she said. Working on health care is “kind of frustrating.”…
The confusion was evident on June 6, at the first health- care meeting of Organizing for America, a Washington-based group that aims to deploy volunteers to push Obama’s plan.

McArdle was among a handful of people who gathered in Arlington, Virginia, expecting to receive marching orders. The meeting was one of thousands held across the country that day by the group, which is overseen by Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe.

Policy Questions

By the end of the gathering, McArdle was one of several participants who said they were unclear about issues ranging from policy to strategy and the rules of organizing. Some proposed lobbying Congress for a single-payer provision Obama opposes. She said she was concerned over whether it’s legal to leaflet cars at a mall.

“I don’t want to get arrested,” McArdle told those assembled. She said the lack of direction was a contrast with the specific orders volunteers received during the campaign.

They crave “marching orders”! I’m so disappointed that I’ve been wasting time developing my mass-mind-control devices — I realize now there are millions of would-be minions out there already, desperate for someone to tell them what to do!

As long as it’s not too complicated….

Hey!  I have a suggestion.

Since we supposedly invaded Iraq to get control of their oil, why can’t we invade another country to confiscate their good credit? 

I nominate Switzerland.

It’s brilliant.  It’s subtle.  It’s happening before people’s eyes, and no one has detected it.

It’s President Obama’s plan to eliminate the United States government’s deficit, and he’s doing it one nominee at a time.

At first I was confused — how could the President think that Timothy Geithner, a man who had “inadvertently” failed to pay taxes ($42,702 including interest) on money he’d been paid by the IMF (even after (1) he’d been warned repeatedly by the IMF that he’d have to pay taxes on it, (2) reimbursed by the IMF for taxes he’d failed to pay, and (3) had already been dinged by the IRS for the exact same “mistake” in other years), be a good person to oversee the Treasury, including the IRS?

And how could the President think that Tom Daschle, who’d failed to pay $128,203 in taxes until he was being vetted by the Administration (including for failing to report more than $83,000 of consulting revenue in 2007), would be a great choice for head of HHS?

And then I saw the real goal.

With just two nominations, the President has added more than $170,000 in tax revenue to the Treasury, without modifying the tax laws, signing an executive order, or implementing new regulations.  If he just keeps up this pattern of nominating tax evaders, he’ll get the government out of its spending hole before you know it.

And that’s change we can believe in.

Belatedly reacting to an Iraqi journalist’s poorly-aimed footwear assault on President Bush during a news conference today, the New York Times asserted that it “had been working on a Presidential shoe-throwing, but our plummeting subscription rates and reduced revenues had cut our training budgets.”

Internal reports from the New York Times painted a portrait of disarray and ineffective practice sessions.  The first reporters selected for a domestic Presidential shoe-throwing refused to part with their own shoes, with several reportedly exclaiming “Are you SERIOUS?  These are Ferragamos!”  Offered substitute shoes specifically chosen for throwability, these same reporters refused “to be caught dead in those monstrosities.”

The Times resorted to stringers, but practice sessions went poorly.  Reporters willing to work for the Times had eschewed sports and other physical endeavors since grade school, rendering them woefully unprepared for a high-profile shoe-throwing.  “Their throws were embarrassing,” summed up one disgusted trainer.  “They’d give these limp-wristed heaves that looked like they were throwing a bank safe, and the shoe would just plop down two feet in front of them.  It was like watching Mr. Burns from ‘The Simpsons’ trying to throw a medicine ball.”

Eventually some journalists who were reputed to be “buff” — as journalists go — were located, but they turned out to be yoga or T’ai Chi specialists, and so their throws were either unnecessarily contorted or incredibly slow, and in either case ineffective.

The Times almost considered abandoning the Presidential shoe-throwing endeavor, but “our remaining readers were really demanding it, and we were all up for it too, so we just closed another bureau desk and reallocated the resources to a physical fitness program for the planned footwear-heavers.”

But alas, the Iraqi press beat them to it.

“Damn it!” groused an editor.  “All that effort for nothing.  And we would have succeeded, too — it looked like the Secret Service decided to finish their lunch before trying to come after the guy.  He got to throw both his shoes!  And those were big honkin’ sweaty Middle-Eastern shoes, too.  Hey!  That gives me an idea!  I bet Helen Thomas would be up for a repeat attempt!  We should call her….”

Two simple reasons:

1) Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

2) Everyone understands, at the gut level, how aggravating an overpriced, shoddy car is, especially when coupled with an unpleasant purchasing experience and unscrupulous dealer service.  Few average joes have time to delve into the intricacies of credit default swaps, legislative and regulatory history, and financial modeling.  A bad car, we get.

So you’d like a new car, but you’re in really bad financial shape.  You’ve borrowed way too much money, you’ve made some really bad business deals you can’t get out of, and your old car, which is critical for maintaining what little cash flow you have — even though your ongoing debt payments exceed whatever money you’ve got coming in and whatever you’re likely to make in the next twenty years — is about to permanently break down.

So you run into GM, pick out a shiny new SUV, and ask for 100% financing.  The sales guy runs a credit check, and his computer almost bursts into flames from trying to process a negative number.

“But I need this SUV!” you protest.  “Otherwise I won’t be able to pay off my debts and feed myself and my family!”

“But you won’t be able to pay us back for the SUV,” the sales guy points out.  “Are you expecting to triple your income in the next few years?  Because that’s the only way you’d be able to even think about making your payments to us.”

“Well, no,” you reply.  “In fact, my income has been on a steady downward spiral for the last 25 years.  But I don’t want to change the way I do things!  I think blacksmithing is really going to make a comeback!  I promise I’ll come up with a plan after you’ve lent me the money.”

“I don’t think so,” he says.  “Everything you’ve done and said indicates you’re an incredibly bad risk.  We’re not really responsible for your bad judgment.”

“But if you don’t give me the loan, my creditors will get hurt, and my blacksmith apprentices will lose their jobs, and I’ll bet they’d blame you for it.  You don’t want that, do you?” you cajole.

Think they’d give you the loan?

No way.

So why should we give them one?

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Follow-up: Keep an eye on them…