I like to understand at least the basics of how the machines around me work. I'm don't feel compelled to understand enough to design or build the gadgets I use--far from it. But I do seek to understand the fundamentals. Until tonight, I hadn't ever thought about how LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens work, but now I know the basics, thanks to Bill Hammack, the EngineerGuy:
I'm reading a 900-page compendium of George Carlin's written works: 3 x Carlin. It includes a full copy of Napalm and Silly Putty, a book Carlin published in April, 2001. Take a look at this excerpt from the chapter Carlin titled "Airport Security" (p. 325):
I'm getting tired of all the security at the airport. There's too much of it. I'm tired of some fat chick with a double digit IQ and a triple digit income rootin' around inside my bag for no reason and never finding anything. Haven't found anything yet. Haven't found one bomb in one bag. And don't tell me, "Well the terrorists know their bags are going to be searched, so now they're leaving their bombs at home." There are no bombs! The whole thing is fuckin' pointless. And it's completely without logic. There's no logic at all. They'll take away a gun, but let you keep a knife! Well, what the fuck is that? In fact, there's a whole list of lethal objects they will allow you to take on board. Theoretically, you could take a knife, an ice pick, a hatchet, a straight razor, a pair of scissors, a chainsaw, six knitting needles, and a broken whiskey bottle, and the only thing they say to you is, "That bag has to fit all the way under the seat in front of you." And if you didn't take a weapon on board, relax. After you've been flying for about an hour, they're gonna bring you a knife and fork! They actually give you a fucking knife! It's only a table knife--but you could kill a pilot with a table knife. It might take you a couple of minutes. Especially if he's hefty. But you could get the job done. If you really wanted to kill the prick . . .Or suppose you just had really big hands, couldn't you strangle a flight attendant? . . .Indeed, George Carlin pretty much summed up American airline security back in April 2001. Consider what happened only five months after he wrote these words, a dramatic series of attacks that depended on the lax American security described by Carlin, as well as the less-than-brilliantly-conceived strategy of allowing flimsy doors to the cockpit. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, American political and military leaders elevated Osama Bin Laden to the status of alleged evil genius, essentially to give themselves cover for the pathetic American security protocol described by Carlin. The American establishment embraced bin Laden as an evil genius because it served two purposes. A) It was an attempt to deflect criticism from the abject stupidity of the American approach to airline security; recognizing the "genius" of bin Laden allowed hawks to continue with their mantra that Americans can do no wrong, and it was an exceptional and evil man that spilled American blood; B) Calling bin Laden a genius and broadcasting his brown-skinned non-English speaking image all over Televisiondom justified pouring trillions of dollars into America's warmongering-torturing-spying machine; it "justified" an immense job-security program for those who wanted to use those many of those exciting Yankee weapons of war to pretend to solve complex international social and economic problems. And lots of bombs have been dropped ever since. Here we are, a decade later, with our economy and our infrastructure on the verge of a second collapse, with almost nothing good to show for all of that money we've poured into our wars of discretion. We Americans continue to demonstrate that we are absolutely incapable of self-critical self-examination, in that we continue to pour two billion dollars per week into our Afghanistan adventure despite the lack of any meaningful military objective. It's merely an adventure in sunk costs (and see here). And the American corporate media cozily continues to conspire with the American military to pretend that we've been making great strides in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. Americans are currently mesmerized by their "Peace President" to continue supporting, if not escalating, the most expensive self-deceptive con-job in history. But at least we killed an evil man whose genius was that he was about as observant as an American funny man. To summarize by paraphrasing George Carlin, the American military involvement in Afghanistan is a stupid idea, it’s a waste of money, and it’s there for only one reason: to make white people feel safe!. That’s all it’s for. To provide a feeling, an illusion of safety in order to placate the middle class. Because the authorities know they can't make America completely safe from terrorism; too many people have access. [Photoshop image by Erich Vieth. Image of George Carlin by Creative Commons; Image of Osama bin Laden, public domain]. . .
Airport security is a stupid idea, it's a waste of money, and it's there for only one reason: to make white people feel safe!. That's all it's for. To provide a feeling, an illusion of safety in order to placate the middle class. Because the authorities know they can't make airplanes safe; too many people have access.
I had once read of "nocebos" before, but I was recently reminded of nocebos. What are they? The following is from Wikipedia:
In medicine, a nocebo reaction or response refers to harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable effects a subject manifests after receiving an inert dummy drug or placebo. Nocebo responses are not chemically generated and are due only to the subject's pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug will produce negative consequences. In these cases, there is no "real" drug involved, but the actual negative consequences of the administration of the inert drug, which may be physiological, behavioural, emotional, and/or cognitive, are nonetheless real.How powerful can a nocebo be? Wikipedia offers this example:
Writing from his extensive experience of treating cancer (including more than 1,000 melanoma cases) at Sydney Hospital, Milton (1973) warned of the impact of the delivery of a prognosis, and how many of his patients, upon receiving their prognosis, simply turned their face to the wall and died an extremely premature death: "... there is a small group of patients in whom the realisation of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death.The existence of well-documented nocebos raise some interesting questions for me. For instance, is it the incessantly spread media claims that terrorists lurk around every corner that is causing Americans to ignore the federal government's wild growth of warmongering, spying and homeland security budgets (and perhaps these things serve as placebos for the disease of terrorism)? Does the nocebo of ubiquitous terrorism cause us to ignore that our government tortures, spies on us and fights illegal wars? Perhaps the fear of "terrorism" causes us, metaphorically speaking, to curl up in the fetal position, unable to see beyond our own little lives. My question is whether we are entire country afflicted by nocebo-inflicted stupidity? Bruce Schneier offers an excellent rundown of the real risks that face Americans (and don't miss the many excellent comments too):
Consider that on this very day about 6,700 Americans will die.... Consider then that around 1,900 of the Americans who die today will be less than 65, and that indeed about 140 will be children. Approximately 50 Americans will be murdered today, including several women killed by their husbands or boyfriends, and several children who will die from abuse and neglect. Around 85 of us will commit suicide, and another 120 will die in traffic accidents.
[...]
Indeed, if one does not utter the magic word "terrorism," the notion that it is actually in the best interests of the country for the government to do everything possible to keep its citizens safe becomes self-evident nonsense.
He offers a lot more compelling statistics too, I'd highly recommend his article. The illustration that stands out is that we don't do everything we can to prevent deaths generally, only potential death by terrorism. "[W]e seem to consider 43,000 traffic deaths per year an acceptable cost to pay for driving big fast cars." Here's another excellent recap of the relative dangers of terrorism and other--much greater--dangers, at least between 2000 and 2006. And here's what you should really be concerned about -- the top ten causes of death in the United States We are freaked out and made socially dysfunctional by the thought of terrorism. We destroy our education, health care and infrastructure budgets to attempt a "perfect" shield against something that will hurt almost none of us. What is the real risk of terrorism? Consider this, from a 2006 article titled "Don't be Terrorized," at Reason:[I]f terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. [Former Business Professor Michael] Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000. Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300.
I learned another interesting term today: "Sunnydale Syndrome." This term, associated with the television series "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer," refers to the fact that many people overlook real (not terrorism) crushing and surreal social dysfunction and, instead, tend to their mundane lives. We wake up and see the sunshine, we hear the birds, a car drives by and a neighbor says hello. Focusing on these sorts of occurrences causes many people to overlook the many dramatic problems our country faces, such as oil depletion, chemical toxins in the environment, global warming or the fact that big businesses almost completely owns Congress. Dr. Who summarized this situation: "Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception matched only by its ingenuity when trying to destroy itself." — The Seventh Doctor, Doctor WhoWhat do Americans think of banks? According to this Huffpo article commenting on a Gallop poll, not much:
According to a new poll by Gallup, 36 percent of Americans now say they have "very little" or "no" confidence in U.S. banks, the highest percentage on record since Gallup first started tracking that data. Those saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in banks has also stagnated, stuck at 23 percent for the second straight year, after falling to a low of 22 percent in 2009.
I hadn't realized that this is how donuts are made. [via reddit.com]
.jpg){kind=link}
