White Chocolate Oreos and other Abominations

Now anyone that says "White Chocolate Oreos" would immediately start salivating, and one would think that I would too. White Chocolate, I am convinced, is what God sent down to the Israelites for Mana. So when I had a little extra cash, I went out and bought me a box of White Chocolate covered Oreos and took them home to the apartment I lived in at the time (2000, I think.) One of the essential properties of the Oreo is its dunkability. In fact, the true glorious flavor of the Oreo only appears once it is almost saturated with milk. It is this fact that made me react in dismay and horror when I realized that, because of the White Chocolate covering, the Oreos I had bought couldn't be dunked!!. They were useless to me, and being thus dismayed, I did dispose of the vile food posthaste. It is one of the rules of the Oreo that it must be dunked in Milk, and so if I can't do that, it isn't an Oreo, and therefore, is of no use to me.

***

Stonecrest Mall, now adorned for Christmas, is ready for the throngs of people that will venture down its hallways, with the walls echoing the screaming children who think that leaving every store must be accompanied by him or her getting a toy or candy or whatever. But this I have ranted about for years. And as they ascend the escalators from the bottom floor, they will see that the rungs are not black, but orange, and there are advertisements of AT&T wireless cell phone plans covering escalators.

They will put advertisements on anything nowadays. The 1st and 10 lines on football shows, they sell commercial space on pregnant women's stomachs, etc... and it's a good thing, I guess, although how you would have commercials constantly bombarding you and have it make any impact whatsoever. But it does, in some cerebral way. So lets put advertisements on everything... star cases, light poles, walls, toilet seats (this toilet was brought to you by Scotts Toilet Paper!!!!), Airbags (by Allstate!), you could even have bullets have the names of local Funeral Homes! Hey, it would be effective, wouldn't it?

***
I want to lament the recent downfall of Sting's career as a singer. Sting's past albums have been a mix of amazing songwriting and performing (Soul Cages, Brand New Day) and banal albums of pop nothingness (Mercury Falling, Sacred Love). His live performance on 9/11, entitled All this Time, was a brilliant mix of Jazz and pop, and should have been followed with a Jazz album that would have been wonderful. But, alas, this is Sting, who has decided that medeval bard singing is where he wants to go. The latest "Winter" album has a couple of good tracks ("Soul Cake", for one, based on "A'Soulin'" by Paul Stookey of PPM fame), but the rest are performances of old English folk songs droned into a mic for no other audience but himself. And that's okay, I guess, since he has the money and can release albums however he wants to. And he is a performer, and an artist, and can create what he feels he should, but it would be nice to hear the complex lyrics and compositions that made Sting a constant on my Mp3 player.

Government and a Brave New World

Well.... I think there's one thing for it then, as the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The government seems bound and determined to dig its way into socialism, nationalizing the banks and playing doctor with our ailing economic systems. It won't let the free market system fix itself (which, admittedly, it did a wonderful job at messing itself up, no thanks to large amounts of greed and corruption stemming from large amounts of unsecured money, loans, and whatnot left over from the bubble bursting in the 1990's. They had to have someplace to put the dough, so they put it in mortgages, bad and otherwise, and now that bubble has burst. It's taking a bigger and bigger government fix to keep everything under control, and soon it won't be fixable.)

As I see it, there is only one way to adapt the government's current path, which is down the slippery slope of socialism, into the current market. And this goes double if Obama gets elected. But for the answer, we have to turn ourselves to Literature for models. I think the best model the government for socialism where a free market system is still able to exist lies in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

I've been saying for years that the world we live in now is much more like the dystopia of BNW than it is the Communistic approach that Orwell did in 1984. The government is much more successful in ruling through pleasure and happiness than it is through fear. Get someone addicted, and they'll depend on you forever, but if they're afraid of you, they'll eventually rebel.

And if you think about it, the government has been providing addictive programs for years now. To be dependent on food stamps and welfare is much easier to work hard and be successful in earning the money yourself. And with the regulations about how much money you can make on the side, it's easier to not be married, not work, and let the government carry you through, with all the computer gliches and red tape and whatnot, than it is simply to make the money needed to do it yourself. And with the economy and available jobs the way they are, it's necessary to do it this way. Jobs are being pulled overseas where they are cheaper to invest in (based on corporate taxes and quality of life, and the absence of unions), and so there just isn't any way to make money here. The interesting thing about this is, that the most valuable asset that we have in this country is our ability to spend way beyond our means. So the companies that are pulling jobs away from the US citizens are actually hurting themselves by keeping us from having the money to pay off our credit cards. (Course, that goes into the idea of "consumerism", where people are renewable resources, and very expendable, which I have outlined in past blogs).

Anyway, so the government is in a position to provide for it's citizens. Food, Shelter, Health Care, and the Democrats and their Media pundits have been preaching that it's our "right" to have all these things, and that the government is obligated to provide us with all the things we need to be Happy They forgot about the whole "pursuit" word. It's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." There is no guarantee that we will be happy, only that we should be given the freedom to be given the chance to find happiness. But now the government has taken that word away, and now they will have to provide for our happiness.

So if we're going to go the socialist way, which seems certain if Obama gets elected, or probable if McCain does, then we must give every government official a copy of Huxley's Brave New World to show them how it's done.

First, reform the education system, so that people are taught based on their skills, and are not taught equally (this is a good thing, and should be done anyway). Then, place them in jobs based on their skills (sounds good). Whether they make a ton of money or not is not important, as the government will be taking care of housing, food, transportation, health care, and most importantly, entertainment. The extra money that people do wind up with can be used to buy differing methods of enjoyment, through gambling (lottery tickets, which they already do), state run casinos and sports betting, drugs and sex (might as well legalize both, cause prostitutes can benefit the government as well), or other methods of distraction. And money can be given as salary based on the needs of the government to give x y or z to the people. And this falls in line with what is already going on. Sports and entertainment people will make the most. Other things could be decided upon based on what is needed. Law enforcement, teachers, industrial workers, etc....

Also, this falls in line exactly with the type of housing I talked about 6 months ago with Le Corbiseur's architectural plans (see previous blogs) as well as the development of mass transit systems and environmentally friendly methods of transportation. See, it's not all bad. Things could get better, with it all government controlled.

But it has to be everything, or nothing at all. Because happiness cannot be provided for part way. So the officials in Washington are going to have to be prepared to switch to a Huxley model, and convince the other world governments to do the same, or it's not going to work. Because corruption and greed and human nature sets in and destroys it all. And while Huxley banished the thinkers and revolutionaries to Iceland, it's gonna take a much bigger place to banish them if the government screws it up.

So it all comes down to this. If Obama and McCain and the other people in the government want to provide for our happiness, that's fine. We can go socialist. BUT, it must be all the way, or the state of our economical system and our country in general will go downhill fast. And that opens up a power vacuum that our enemies will be only too glad to fill. We will have done ourselves in.

Book Review: Pendragon 7

Two words: Scary Good!

For those who haven’t read the Pendragon series by D.J. MacHale, you simply must. Plot twists I don’t see coming, well developed characters and a developed plot that keeps everything moving. MacHale is amazing! Every book takes place on a different world, territories that exist in the same universe, tied together by "flumes," which people like Bobby Pendragon can travel. Bobby, the main character, is a Traveler, who has the responsibility to keep the universe safe from a bad guy, Saint Dane. Each book is incredible, riveting, but the interesting thing is how each world has characteristics that make it close to our own. Overpopulation, or pollution, or too many video games... each world has a problem that will cause it’s downfall, and it’s not consequential that our own world has to deal with all of them.

Book 7’s world, Quillian, is a world where games reign supreme. People stake their meager incomes, even their children or their own lives, on the games, in a winner take all bet that would insure that families and children would eat well, or doom them into servitude or worse. The parallels to gambling in this world, or even more striking, the need to waste millions of dollars on the lottery (which is state run), are very obvious. But that’s not all. The games are run not by the government, but by one company, a company called BLOK that was, at one time, no more than one of many businesses trying to compete in a free market economy. But by undermining the other companies on prices, buying out manufacturing processes, and slowly creating a monopoly on everything from clothing to food to automobiles to whatever, BLOK became the only company on the planet, and therefore, had all the power, even more than the governments. When Saint Dane was telling all this to Bobby, all I could think of was that this was Walmart taken to the nth degree. This was the free market system, without regulation or anti-trust policies in place, and then progressed to the point where Walmart was the sole governing system in the world.

The economy that MacHale describes is one where communism has been reached by the control of capitalism. It makes sense, that if Walmart were to control everything, they could regulate it so you had no money, and while you might be somewhat provided for, they in turn would have all the money, and so it would be the equivalent of communism, but with a dangerous and lethal twist. Robots could take care of all the dangerous and lethal problems in the world, but humans are cheaper to make and if there’s an endless supply of them (Consumerism), then it makes economic sense to use humans to do things that would kill them otherwise. But since they wouldn't want to do that, you make it a punishment for losing in a profit winning game that would provide entertainment to the down-trodden, as well as give them an incentive to bet what money they had, or even their lives, for a chance of living better, if even for a short time.

This book ranks up there with Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. This series is a must for any middle or high school student, and every teacher should read them and maybe even use them in school.

I’m reading a book right now, 100 Cupboards which is also very good, and I’ll review it later.

Urban Planning, Oil, and Terrorism

FDR, in his fireside chats, buzzing statically on the radio, promised each person a car for every garage and a chicken in every yard (well, maybe not). And Henry Ford turned the automobile from a luxury item to a mass produced necessity. Cars have become an agent of change in the twentieth century, and perhaps it was a catalyst for the mental change in people that brought about suburban sprawl, the rise in gas prices, the housing boom and resulting bust, the war on terrorism, and many other things. Now I'm not blaming the woes of the world on the car, but I am saying that the interests of car makers, and the businesses that support the automobile, namely, the oil companies, have promoted the lifestyle of suburban sprawl that only the car could provide.

Glenn Beck was talking about the recent real estate bust on his radio show a couple of days ago. One of the main points that real estate investors have to get people to sign their lives away on mortgages that will eventually run them bankrupt was that everyone had the "right" to own a house. And Locke would have agreed. The words that the Declaration of Independence copied went something like this, "life, liberty, and... Locke said "property," while our founding fathers said, "the pursuit of happiness." Both statements say something about the attitudes that came out of the United Kingdom. Locke thought that it was everyone's right to own property. A house. A place away from the bustle of London where they could escape the disease and crime that so often hit the city in his day. On the other hand, Hamilton, Payne, and the others changed it to "the pursuit of happiness" because they saw that everyone had to have an opportunity to achieve their goals, if they worked hard. They didn't see owning a house as a part of those goals. But in the 20th century, when material goods have outweighed the need for spiritual and mental growth (although Thoreau would have countered that the need for material goods started back before his time), it has become a "right" for everyone to have a house. As if the house was a part of the "American Dream." Further, FDR put in place governmental policies that started the idea of the Government as a caretaker for all those who live in poverty. It was a form of socialism, but created in a roundabout way so that it was not clearly seen as such (and still isn't) until people became dependent on the government for housing, food, welfare.

Skipping forward to the 1990's, when the economy was good and the real estate market and the feds made it so that real estate interest rates were low, people were talked into getting mortgages on houses that were more expensive than what they probably could afford. They did this by graduating the payments with adjustable rates. But once the introductory rate expired, and people didn't have more money then than they did at the beginning, the house payments doubled, and people couldn't afford the houses. Coupled with the push of credit cards (see my "Consumerism" blog posts earlier) and the changes in the bankruptcy laws which made it harder to declare bankruptcy, people were forced to either declare bankruptcy or lose their houses to foreclosure. (I sped all that up a bit, from the 1990's to present day.)

But back in the 1990's and early 2000's, people were talked into getting houses. They were informed that they had a "right" to own a house. Everyone should own a house, and it should be far away from the noise and pollution of the big city, nestled in some small neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. This is why Newton and Henry Counties exploded in population in the 2000's (counties near Atlanta.) And people were forced to drive 2 hours to work each day, and 2 hours back. People were happy to do so, for it meant that they owned their house and it was their right to do so. It was their right to sit in traffic and waste gas and wear and tear on the car, because they owned a house.

Who, then, profited from the so called "right" to own a house? The companies that sell the houses must not be the only ones that expect to profit off of this financial arrangement. Let's look at the different people that would gain an advantage in this society by promoting the idea of the suburban house as an escape...

The government has always been in favor of adding new jobs to the job base here in America. With the construction of the Interstate system in the 1950's, a continuance of the programs the FDR put together in the 30's, people had jobs, were able to make a profit, and were then able to afford the houses that were built in a constantly expanding system of suburban neighborhoods. When my parents bought the house I was born in, there was nothing out where Westbury was created (near the then rural town of Mustang, Oklahoma). But now, the neighborhood is indistinguishable from the rest of OKC that has grown up around it. And now there are other neighborhoods still farther out that are now taking its place. All these places needed roads built, utilities, cable, phone service, and once the people moved into the houses, they became revenue building places for the cities or counties around them.

Of course, the automobile industry loved the idea of people driving long distances to work. Even a trip to the grocery store might take a half hour. And all that traveling required cars, multiple cars, cars that broke down and had to be repaired or replaced. And all those cars required gasoline, which, at the time, was available and cheap. The depression was not felt quite as hard in the oil rich areas around Oklahoma City, because wealth was to be had drilling for the oil to make the asphalt and to put gas into the cars. This lasted until the 1970's, when, as we became more reliant on the oceans of gas in Saudi Arabia and other countries (and it was cheap, and we were rich, so we bought tons of it), OPEC decided to limit drilling of oil, causing an embargo which made us quickly realize how the dream of an escape home would turn into a nightmare if we had no gas to get our cars from one place to another.

As usual, during the 80's and 90's, we fell back asleep, ignoring the problems of the urban planning systems that made the embargo so much worse. If we had realised the seriousness of that problem, and made greater strides toward working and shopping at places much nearer to where we live, the demand for gasoline would have dropped, and therefore, the high prices of it would not be a problem for us now. But with oil prices rising, and car companies still profiting and the housing boom going, people didn't seem to see these things at all during the 1990's. People could afford it, so they kept moving further and further out into the country away from the cities. What made it worse was that the new technologies that made tele-working possible were, and still are, mostly ignored. Companies don't see the value in letting their employees work from home. Of course, there is also the problem of self-discipline, but that is another post.

It is the oil rich countries of the Middle East that have benefited most from our need to escape to our own little worlds. One could argue that the funding of terrorist groups have in some part been provided by the cars that we drive, since we are so dependent on that oil that we are willing to work with states that have actively supported terrorism in order to obtain the gas we need, at the low prices we are accustomed to.

[All this is a basic run through of what I see based on my general knowledge of the subjects. It would take a much deeper look into the facts, researching studies and history, to make this a work that would stand up in Academia. But for now, this will have to do.]

I do want to look at one more thing, before I wrap this up. Are there places built now that would serve as a model for future cities that would see the problems built around our current model and try to fix it? I think I have found some, and will talk about them in the next post

Polarization of Society

I generally don't worry about the Yahoo! Answer function, but the question they posed about the political situation of America today intrigued me, so I answered it. My answer below, and I'll take a look at the issue and follow up at some point, because it's closely related to many things I've talked about before.


Why have political parties become so polarized that they fail to address the concerns of most Americans?

One answer is to look at the underlying motives of today's political leaders. What makes them believe what they believe? One answer (and certainly not the only one), is that while Democracy is the governmental system we exist under, we must look at government through the eyes of the business man, through the system of capitalism under which we have so thrived. Most issues under the dome are considered not only for what is good for the people or the nation, but also what is good for the financial goals of each congressman's constituents and the companies that have invested interest in the country.

The problem that we are having today is when the goals of the businessman become more important than the happiness, well-being, or even safety, of the citizens. It is at that point that capitalism mutates into a more sinister system. I have been calling it "Consumerism." This is a system of capitalism that focuses on short term benefits, cares nothing about the future, and sees the citizens as a resource, to use and abuse however it sees fit. Certainly there are many companies today that realize that, while the practices and decisions they make will profit them now, the cost may be the lives of its consumers, or the well-being of the planet.

Now, what this has to do with the question? It is necessary to look at the financial aspects of any decision in Washington in order to see the motives behind the support or opposition to that decision. Would funding the Iraq War be a blessing for airline makers, ammunition companies, oil and gas companies? Or would the instability of the Middle East actually hurt the economy? Money definitely has a primary role in what our congressmen decide.

Combine that with the philosophy behind Consumerism. Things must happen now, quickly, without regards to consequences in the future. The media, of course, instigates this in the continual hounding of officials about this issue or the other. The Iraq war should have been over a week after it began, and Iraq should now be a thriving country of happy capitalist free men and women who would be happy to spend their money for our benefit. Of course, it doesn't work that way. And when it doesn't, people must find some more radical action to make it happen quicker. It seems that today, people are living much more quickly in their daily lives, in their beliefs, in the way that they expect the country to run. Trials should be over in an hour, since that's the way Matlock did them. So too should wars, or negotiations, or whatever the case may be. The pendulum that so often swings from one side to the other, has been swinging more quickly in the past few years, with no need for a Hegelian synthesis of opposing viewpoints. To compromise would be to slow the pendulum down, and this cannot happen.

This is a complex question, with many answers, many different reasons why that polarization has happened in government (and not just government, but most of society has become polarized about everything. You choose only Coke, or you like either Paris or Lindsey, or you love someone or hate them.). I cannot answer this in one simple question, but I will try and look at it and give a better answer. I do have a blog: http://www.myspace.com/Audoin , which you are welcome to browse through. This question has given me something to think about, and to respond to, when I get around to it.