Now coming to an economy near you!

We, the people, in order to further our own selfishness, do refuse to learn.  Or at least that's what it appears we believe about the nature of the world.  I mean, look at two things about the government and our current economic woes.

1) The stimulus plans:  We are now onto Stimulus Plan 3: The Social Engineering coming to a Theater near YOU! It follows in the footsteps (supposedly) of the last one, Stimulus Plan 2: The Bailout, well, except that the money is earmarked for social things, and not, you know, economic things.  And that itself followed upon Stimulus Plan! where we all got hot shiny checks.  The problem is, if 1 and 2 didn't work, why in the world are we trying the same thing a third time?  I think Alcoholic's Anonymous has a saying about repeating the same action and expecting different results...

2) The principles of learning:  A basic idea of learning is we learn through rewards and consequences.  If I do A, and good things happen, I'll continue to do A.  If I do B, and bad things happen, I'll stop doing B.  Skinner lays this all out very handily in his writing on Behaviorist theories.  The thing is, after writing big checks to banks, they start buying airplanes, giving bonuses, going to Hawaii, and redoing their offices.  Now, people are understandably upset, but they are upset at the wrong people!  We showed them that if they are stupid with their own money, then Washington will reward them!  We reinforced bad behavior, and now we are mad that they are continuing on in bad behavior.  Except, we should be mad at Washington for rewarding idiots who misbehave.

Oh, but wait, it gets better.  After Stimulus Plan 2 you all voted your guys back into office!  Therefore, all of you who did not vote against congressmen who voted for the bailout reinforced voting for bail outs, so it's all your fault!  You reinforced bad behavior, you encouraged Washington to be this way, and therefore, executives to be this way.  Fortunately for me, none of my congressmen voted for it. 

Now, it's time to learn about how to change behavior.  Remember, punishment to extinguish behavior.  E.g. You vote for huge spendings of my money to fund corporate retreats, I will send you home.  On the other hand, rewards encourage behavior.  E.g. You vote that people should be responsible for their own actions then I will vote for you again.  Sound hard?  Let's try to remember this in two years.

The pursuit of selfishness

You have no right to be alive.  You should realize that of course, but maybe you have not thought about it.  Theoretically, after you were born you then somehow gained that right, but people are working at limiting that.  The idea is to put it somewhere between 1 week and 1 year, though honestly I don't know why those specific ages should matter.  I guess you could make an argument for 18.  After all, once you reach that age you are no longer under your parents legally. 

I'm talking about abortion, of course, the single most sickening legal practice I have heard about in America.  Under such laws you nor I have no real right to be here, our mere existence is at the whim of our parents.  Why, once abortion is accepted, we make such arbitrary inferences of where we can end that life.  Why is birth the limit?  After all, birth can easily vary across a 4 week span of time, and even more so and still survive with limited assistance.  So why cut off birth?  Seems reasonable to move it to 1 week, 1 year, or heck anyone who has teenagers would tell us 17 is prime age to do away with our children.  There seems to me to be no reason there should be a distinction across those ages.  And it sickens me.

Transfered

Yay, I figured out how to transfer over my last blog to this one.  Since I'm in a google account now, thought it'd be better to stream line over.  Anywho, fun times.

Test test test

Yay, new blog up and running...now to see if I can think of anything to write about...

Computer Trials

Praise God we have a new computer. Our last one just died one day. Well, it has been dying a slow death for a while, but it kept working so we though we could make it last to summer. But then it finally wouldn't turn on. Fortunately we got a loner for a bit, and now purchased a new Toshiba from a guy who had picked it up for a friend and then the friend didn't need it. It's pretty good, but it's a Vista box, so I'm having some adjustments. My pet peeves so far are as follows:

Interface change:
Okay, this is actually minor, as I can adjust, but it really irritates me. There are all sorts of things that I've gotten used to Windows doing things a certain way since 98, often with little change even through XP, and now it's totally different with Vista. For instance, with most computers I run msconfig and enable selective startup and start unchecking the 10,000 pre-loaded, processor and memory eating programs I really don't need. Well, it took me 10 minutes to look for the run command. Finally what I did was change the start menu to "Classic View" and used the run command there. I still don't know where the new menu has the run command. I'm sure I'll get over this hurdle, but it really annoys me right now.

Memory Usage:
Major beef here. After I disabled and/or uninstalled lots of junk that comes pre-installed on the computer, the system still uses 700 MB of RAM. Basically, with my current 1Gig RAM setup vs my XP box, I have 1/2 the RAM for practical purposes. I'm pretty sure this is pretty much doo-dad, ease of use, visual effect stuff, of which Vista has lots, and it's very pretty. But I'm a bare bones sort of person. I don't want flashy, I want functional. In fact, an austere operating system is better in my opinion. I have things I'd much rather take up those functions other than these stupid doo-dads. So this practical slowdown of my system really, really irritates me.

Windows Defender:
ARGH! Now, I understand the purpose, something that Microsoft has long been the target for, hacking, etc, is now being dealt with. But it comes at a major frustration to me. Installing something really pretty much looks like this,
I download the program, and run it. Windows defender pops up, and asks if I want to run the program. Here's the dialog that follows.
Me: Yes, of course, I clicked it didn't I?!
Windows Defender: It is trying to change the registry, allow?
Me: YES!
WD: I don't think so, what if it hurts your computer?
Me: It's adobe flash player, Adobe has invested interest in NOT hurting my PC!
WD: No, I think you're a hacker trying to hurt my system.
Me: What? I just bought this thing.
WD: That's exactly what a hacker would say.
Me: Okay, can I disable you?
WD: Hacker detected, police contacted. Put your hands on your head and get down on the ground. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, if you do say anything, it can be used against you in a court of law.
Me: Okay, this is like some weird twilight zone bit.

Okay, maybe that's a little over the top, but I'm sure after the first service pack or two, it'll get there. It's seriously beginning to irritate me that I can't even run my own programs without being asked 2 or 3 times.

Bad Customer Relations

It's an amazing thing. I just spent an hour on the phone booking tickets to the states. Not only was the price outrageous, but I finally managed to get tickets at just over $3000 dollars, 300 more a ticket than I've ever paid. This is probably due to the 'visa panic' cause by a terribly enacted law that requires a lot of things, including foreigners having to return to their own home countries, no longer can we hop on over to Lithunania.

But that wasn't the worst of it. No, you see, the airline we ended up with required a paper ticket. So, I had to get it delivered ($40 FedEx). I repeatedly had to tell them "NO! Not the billing address! I need it delivered to Moscow." Like I would order tickets from Moscow to the US when I was already in the US. GAH!

It gets better. I was told I had to call back Monday because ticket issuing agency was closed. So, I called back, gave them the same information, again, which they apparently didn't save the previous two times I gave it to them. They finally confirmed it with me as being shipped to moscow, and arriving on Wednesday. That same night, 3 hours later, my father calls to tell me he received the tickets. And, it's now thursday and I have no tickets... My dad is going to have to UPS the tickets here, and Travelocity is about to get a nasty call and/or e-mail from me.

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Quotes of the...well, you know, whenever

"They're stealing my heat and converting it into evil." -Starslip Crisis

"It's narrower but wider." -My aunt

"It's like, you know, a van ride." -Youth in my mother's youth group

"I'm not arrogant because she said I'm handsome, I'm arrogant because I am handsome." -Me