Mind Scalpel

Alright, I’m getting annoyed with Google again — this time it’s their automated telepathic behavior predictor/installer that’s really sticking it to me.

Think I’m kidding? If you’ve got Google’s search bar, try typing in the beginning of a general question; Google will then activate its mind-reading scanner (embedded in all computer monitors manufactured after 1992) and tell you what the rest of your question should be, in order of the popularity of other people’s questions. And, more often than not, the question that Google asks ends up being a heckuva lot more interesting than the one you started with, so you ditch your old question and start investigating the stuff that Google wants you to. A few examples:

Original Question: How Old Is The Universe?

I got as far as “how old is,” and up popped the following “suggestions”:

• How old is McCain? Coincidentally, the answer to this one is the same as the answer to my original question!
• How old is Hugh Hefner? Hey! I just noticed there’s some old guy puttering around the Playboy Mansion among all those Playmates! How long has he been there?
• How old is Dolly? People actually care about a cloned sheep’s birthday?
• How old is Brett Michaels of Poison? Okay, this officially qualifies as a “WTF?”
• How old is Queen Elizabeth? Apparently kids still have to do history research.

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Oh, lordy. Michelle Malkin reminded me that today is Earth Day.

So with the parade of “environmental” celebrities and presidential candidates justifying their ownership and use of multiple-acre mansions and fuel-guzzling, pollution-belching private jets (including – I kid you not – a private 707 owned by John Travolta) by pointing out that they’re purchasing “carbon offsets,” I did a little investigation of that industry, and then a little thinking, which in my case is a dangerous combination.

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So, what’s all this fuss about the South Korean company that’s offering to clone your pets? Okay, granted, there is one small issue, mainly that the people who are rich enough to have this done tend to have offensively annoying pets, and therefore we could be polluting the world with more of these (click at your own risk). Still, one could engage in countermeasures by cloning big, fierce, poodle-eating hell mastiffs, so it could end up being a self-compensating system.
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Given the U.S.’s recent successful shootdown of its own satellite, some people have suggested I post a piece I circulated a little while back on a private list. So, here it is, with an addendum.

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As a parent of young children, I have developed a low-cost solution to the nation’s ballistic missile defense needs: Three-year-olds!

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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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Because relentless Valentine’s Day advertising by DeBeers (subtle hidden message to him: “if you buy her a diamond, she’ll sleep with you!”; subtle hidden message to her: “if he doesn’t buy you a diamond, you shouldn’t sleep with him!”) doesn’t make people insecure enough this time of year, now comes the Wall Street Journal to report that, through advanced brain imaging technology, it is now possible to scientifically confirm the existence of true, unending love.

This immediately eliminates the comfortable illusion clung to by much of the populace that people who claim they still feel like teenagers towards each other are either 1) mentally deranged or 2) lying through their teeth. It’s about as cruel as scientifically proving that billionaires really are ecstatically happy, leading deeply fulfilling lives, and regarding less-wealthy people as substantially inferior to themselves, rather than, say, walking around with fake smiles while they’re screaming inside.
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As part of my Secret Plan for Global Domination, I have of course been developing an army of nigh-invulnerable, genetically-engineered super-soldiers, which, as Steven Covey would say if he were a would-be Global Despot rather than a self-help guru, is a “Quadrant II” activity for evil geniuses. (Incidentally, when I execute Phase I of my Rapid International Takeover, self-help gurus will be in the first group against the wall; self-actualization will be irrelevant when everyone’s highest values will be whatever I dictate. But, I digress.)

Anyway, one typical downfall of standard evil geniuses who develop super-soldier armies is that their super-soldiers tend to rebel, often at the most inconvenient times. I’m not a standard evil genius; I’m an exceptional one. So a primary focus of my research and development activities has been not just on enhancing my minions’ physical abilities (strength, power, speed, reflexes, resistance to pathogens, ability to endure long car trips without bathroom breaks, etc.) and mental powers (situational awareness, rapid learning so they can be speedily grown in vats and quickly infused with appropriate skills, high aversion to daytime television, and so on), but also on ensuring that they will remain fanatically loyal to me.

So naturally I’ve been sticking electrodes in subjects’ brains and figuring out what can be done with them since, oh, heck, it’s been so long I can’t even remember. Perhaps you are now starting to understand a few of the reasons this blog is named “Mind Scalpel.”

That’s why I enjoy seeing news stories like this one, describing some “new” discoveries that I had developed and surpassed, in secret, years ago. See, some doctors are all excited that when they were poking around in the brain of a 50-year-old obese guy in search of the “don’t eat so much, knucklehead” synaptic center of his brain, they discovered that their patient recalled, in great detail, a scene from 30 years before:
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Most people don’t know how annual flu vaccines work — or, frequently, don’t work — or, for that matter, why we need to get flu shots every year, when most other vaccines last for multiple years or decades. I’ve found out who to blame.

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