The Son of The Cold from Hell, Part I

--
Prologue About The Blog:
I haven't used this blog in over a year at this point. My thinking has been directed more toward a story series I started at about the same time I skipped out from here. Therefore, I've dropped my personal manifesto to be deep and meaningful here and am simply going to use it as a public journal. I'm not going to be meticulously editing these entries and it will show. The blog will also be more obviously maniacal because I won't be filtering it much for professional quality and I'm maniacal. It's a journal.

The Cold from Hell:
After naming this worst rendition of the common cold at least twenty years ago, I've probably had every new variant for each of those years. However, I haven't had any version of it at this point for nearly three years.

What is a cold? It is an infection of the head/throat/chest/eyes/ears by a virus and only a virus. It is just about always followed by a secondary infection by opportunistic bacteria. Typically the bacteria are already present before the viral infection. They happen to notice the ravaged cells left behind by the virus and have a picnic. Bacteria never start colds. They don't travel around with cold viruses. There is in fact no association with the cold virus except that 'cold' bacteria like to eat what's left over after the virus has ravaged you. Think of them as the ever present clean up crew, ever ready to eat to excess when the opportunity arrives. I'll obsess about our actually quite remarkable symbiosis with bacteria some other time. In the meantime, read the book 'Lives of a Cell' by my hero Lewis Thomas.

It is not an influenza virus. I've had influenza a few times and know. Instead, it is a branch off the Rhinovirus family that has gradually been obtaining the destructive abilities of actual influenza, and then some. I personally have no doubt that with time it will become a new epidemic that will inspire its own yearly inoculation shots. For want of further knowledge about it, I call it a 'pseudo-influenza' virus.

Very much like influenza, the CFH knocks you off your feet with its initial attack. For many years this 'flat out' state lasted for two full days. A few years back, one strain stretched that out by an extra day. The worst aspect of this initial onslaught is the fever. Sleeping each night resulting in me being absolutely soaked in sweat. This is of course accompanied by fairly extreme dizziness and weakness. I also find my appetite drops as well. You know the fever aspect of this cold has ended when the sweats have ended.

What makes it the cold virus 'from Hell' is that it has an extreme and determined backlash after each cycle of infection. In other words, it reinfects healed tissue in repeated onslaughts. Typically the CFH (Cold from Hell) starts in the throat then heads either up or down, to head or chest. The ears and eyes can get walloped any time in-between. There are then brief periods of the victim's recovery, almost as if cured. At that point the virus reverses course, back through the throat to the other end with a full on new onslaught. This back and forth nastiness goes on for several WEEKS. There is no counting the days with the CFH. It goes on for weeks. For years I could tick off five weeks and know it was about to finally die off. In more recent years it had broken the five year barrier to six weeks or beyond.

Again note. This is not influenza. None of the above paragraph fits influenza. Despite the far more vicious and dead attacks of influenza, there are times I almost wish I had influenza instead specifically because the CFH is so damned persistent. And nothing you do stops its persistence. You are forced to wait it out and become beyond exhausted in the process, an prolonged exhaustion that makes influenza seem almost merciful. That's why I call it 'Hell'.

The Son of The Cold from Hell
I first caught what I call 'The Son of' the CFH, on December 5, 2011 while at home in the evening. It occurred when I opened and ate dried mango out of a package from The Philippines. (No, it wasn't Listeria infected mango. Please look elsewhere on the Internet for that subject). I imagine that whoever had handled the bags and/or mango somewhere along the picking, drying and packaging process was profoundly infected with SCFH, The Son of the Cold from Hell. More likely, the initial person infected and infected everyone there en masse, resulting in the dried fruit being heavily dosed with the virus.

Please note that this is a very rugged virus that withstands a lot of outside extremes in temperature and humidity. It takes standard sterilizing techniques to kill it. It doesn't need to ride along with water droplets or land on neutral pH substrates to survive. It lives anywhere people live and breathe, and apparently eat. I didn't breathe this virus. I ate it.

Having discovered my throat as I ate this very nice dried mango, it bit in and started depositing DNA/RNA into my throat cells, turning them into SCFH factories, killing the cells in the process. The cold had begun. I first noticed this the next morning as an achy throat. I did my usual throat clean out routine and the ache dissipated. I subsequently ate more dried mango. The throat ache roared back as worse. I treated it and it receded. I ate more mango. On December 10th, the throat ache was back alongside an entirely new phenomenon in the world of the CFH, a full on attack of everywhere at once. That meant my head, my eyes, my throat and my lungs. All areas were hit together, at the same time, in equal force. Only my ears escaped the effect, thanks mainly to my method of fending off secondary bacterial infection, which is the subject of another article.

It is now December 17th, a week after the onslaught and I am just able to stay on my feet and happily walk around, alert and unencumbered with a cold attack. THAT'S A FULL WEEK of initial onslaught. That's a record for the CFH. It was easily the worst attack ever, the most painful, the most exhausting, the most demoralizing.

IMHO this throws the CFH right out of the rhinovirus family off into a family of its very own. I'm now calling it The Hell Virus. I thought maybe The Hello Virus, sort of sounding like 'Rhino' virus. But that reminded me of cute little Hello Kittie stuff. No way. Remember that sweet little aphorism that goes 'Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!" That one goes on the funeral pyre alongside all the other aphorisms celebrating simple-minded thinking. The SCFH doesn't kill you, but you wish it had because it makes you so incredibly weak. And then it comes back. Just kill me, please.

Yes, like its predecessor, The SCFH has the lash back effect. It nailed me early this morning with a relentless bout of coughing. There was nothing there to cough up by this point. Therefore, I have to assume the coughing was from the fact that The SCFH was again attacking my lung cells. Therefore, as per The CFH, I jumped back on my cough medicine as well as head medicine to stop the worst of it.

Part II of this posting will cover The Rest Of The SCFH as well as my medicine regime, for which I am extremely grateful.

BTW List:
- I always cover my mouth & nose when I cough or sneeze. I you don't, there's something wrong with you called 'SELFISHNESS'. Change your ways selfish person. I saw you not care! Why are you alive? Seriously! What is your life for if you allow yourself to be just a disease vector? Reevaluate and respect yourself. Respecting others will result.
- I take baths when I get colds, not showers. I enjoy soaking in fairly hot water. It's good for killing off the secondary bacteria and the humidity is blissful.
- I wash my hands and face all day long when I have a cold. This helps prevent myself spreading the virus all over the house. I like that. But I don't like chapped hands or nose or lips. Therefore, I also moisturize! It's a necessity. Get over the cute and feminine factor guys.
--> If you have a cold out in public and you don't wash your hands and face all day long, there's something wrong with you called 'SELFISHNESS'. See above. Get some self-respect.
--> And yes, this fits you lunatics who don't wash your hands after using the bathroom to relieve yourself. I see you just walking out after taking a dump! Selfish selfish selfish! I pity your lost world. So sad for you, so sad...

Stay healthy kids!
:-Derek
--

Conceptual Dimensionality, Desperation Mode & The Marvel Of Sharing

--
My head is an oven. Concepts are recipes I put together, then they cook in my mind until they're done. If I like how they taste then I write them down and put them somewhere, such as here. The more one learns about cooking, continuing my metaphor, the more one realizes that cooking is not about reproducing recipes, but about playing around with the ingredients to come up with a variation on an established theme. As one gets very skilled with a group of ingredients one can create new combinations almost certainly knowing what the outcome will be because of past experience with those ingredients, resulting in a new recipe. The art of food is always evolving. The art of conceptualizing is the same.

But events, such as time limitations and a lack of certain ingredients, get in the way. A lot of what we cook up gets botched or is incomplete or is missing something or other that doesn't let it taste quite right. Shite happens. That's part of being the dirt that got up and looked around. It's a messy thing being alive. I certainly believe a lot of things happen for a reason. But sorry, not everything happens for a reason. There is just sheer chaos out in the world at times, if only due to other people's bad decisions or a slight breeze in the air stirred up by a solar flare that happens to knock a balancing rock off a cliff causing it to land on your house below. Some things happen for a reason, and that is why cooking works! You can count on so many wonderful things to happen in our world. But you can also count on the unexpected and the unexpectable (I just had to teach that word to my spell checker) to happen as well. It's the old 'expect the unexpected', which is a very handy conceptual tool in and of itself.

How wonderful that we humans are so thoughtful. I enjoy making the most of this marvelous gift. But oddly, most people don't use their gift, or don't understand how to use it, or don't know they have it.... Something is wrong with their ability to cook. Even boiling water can seem daunting, despite it being a fundamental human skill, the one that comes right after knowing how to start a fire. What would any of us do without fire, that dangerous essential of civilization?

Where I live, the USA, we've been suffering an anti-renaissance for quite some time. Some call it the inevitable decline and fall of western civilization. We used to chatter about that concept when I was in junior high school back in the late 1960s, back when there was a very good book just out about the decline and fall of the Roman civilization and lots of books trying to comprehend how Germany declined and fell into fascism/naziism, and Italy and Spain and Japan and so on. We were trying to make sense of what had become blatantly obvious at my school via our very good teachers: That there were too many people on the planet and the damage was clearly showing. I'm talking about circa 1968 when books like 'The Population Bomb' were around, written by the brilliant, if imperfect, Paul R. Ehlich.

What's new in the current 'Trivia Era', as I call it, is the emphatic and demanding demolition of intelligent conceptualization within the USA. I'll probably dare dissect the situation in some future essay. For now I'll simply say that it is a complicated and acrid soup of a mindless mutation derived from conservatism mixed with heaping spoonfuls of hypocrisy, greed, short term thinking, long term disaster, hate, abuse, propaganda, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), herding mentality and a last dire dangerous ingredient I call 'Desperation Mode', or 'a la mode' if you prefer.

I've been personally studying 'Desperation Mode', deliberately or not, since I was 13. Obviously it was a direct result of that previously posted dream I had back then explaining to me what was mankind's worst enemy: Deceptive 'Truth', aka my baby talk phrase 'zunipus stargo', aka unreliable imaginings or conceptualizations, aka thought cooking. It is when we humans become desperate that we have the weakest grasp on what is real versus what is imaginary. It is when we reliably go out of our freaking minds. It is mass insanity. Its ultimate form is war.

Desperation Mode is something we humans also do our best to avoid. No one wants to think about depressing things or events, unless they're a bit mental. Been there, done that, didn't like it. But there it is as a form of disorganized human thought that leads to our ultimate failings, such as what was behind the last door of my 'Hall of Time' dream concept.

There are a variety of ways to detect when desperation is occurring. But I fell over an extremely easy marker recently while I was thinking about mind dimensionality, as an analog for spacial dimensionality. It's a very easy thing to detect in human behavior. One phrase for it is 'Reductive Thinking.' I'm going to toss out this little formula for your consideration:

The more reduced the thinking dimensionality of a group of people, the deeper they are into Desperation Mode.

I've been talking to people about Reductive Thinking for years, warning friends and foes about it being both a critical human skill and a critical human failing. While I was studying science I learned, as you may have, about the "KISS Principle". Thanks to Carl Sagan, many of us know about "Ocham's Razor", another Reductive Thinking concept. Both of these concepts can be used as tools for clearing the mind or for damaging the mind. The damage occurs when one uses these concepts as 'truth' or as 'reliable' when they are not. They are nothing more than tools of thought, much like a chisel, capable of cutting away the unimportant to reveal the essential, or they can be used to crack open someone's skull and bludgeon their brain to mush. As you might guess, in Desperation Mode, such simplification chisels become increasingly used as weapons of destruction rather than tools of revelation. Thus their danger.

I consistently return to my basic concept that:

We never know everything about anything.

An abuse of a simplification tool leads to our assuming that simplification is 'ALWAYS' a good thing when in fact we may be using it as a dire weapon of destruction. Thus the derisive terms 'ignorant' and 'stupid' and 'idiot' and 'retard', etc., where people with simple minds and simple mental systems of conceptualization are looked down upon as anything from humorous to dangerous.

Today in the USA I am surrounded by people who don't see such abuse of simplification tools as anything within the spectrum of humorous to dangerous. They wield simplification as a deadly weapon and call it 'GOOD'. That's desperate. That's insane. That's mankind at its worst. That's self-destruction.

So here is the so-simple concept I fell over that helps me detect desperation in anyone's conceptualization processes:

What are the number of dimensions in which someone is thinking?

In the olden days, like 40 years ago, one of those big burning questions was how many dimensions are there to the physical world. Is it three? Is it four? Is it five? It was in part a matter of semantics. What symbol system are we using? Are we confusing the symbol for the thing itself? (There's a huge concept for discussion some other time! For the moment I'll point you to both Zen Buddhism and what is called 'General Semantics'). The standard version, or thought system for physical dimensions back then was:

0) First you have to have existence. For convenience I call this the 'Zero Dimension'. We-The-Geeks like using zeros as the first in a list of numbers. The Zero Dimension was considered to be 'a point in space' and nothing more.

I never liked this concept. Nice as it is to be geekish and say zero is always the first number, to strictly apply mathematics to dimensionality, the 'Zero Dimension' should be plain old Zero, or nothing, as in NO EXISTENCE AT ALL. That's how it works within my thought system. Nothing is nothing is zero. Thankfully in modern times, this somewhat dim concept of the Zero Dimension has been thrown out the window along with the rest of the dimensions. But for the sake of this essay I'm going to continue to call the 'Zero Dimension' the simple state of existence, the point in space. Bear with me. Being flexible in one's thought conception system is very useful even if it can also be annoying.

BTW: I am not going to give you a link to Wikipedia's 'Zero-dimensional space' page because it will thoroughly freak you out as yet another, different dimensional concept.

1) The First Dimension is: The straight line in space. It may have a beginning and ending or it may just start and end at infinity. There is only the X measurement of dimension.

2) The Second Dimension is: The square, or plain, or the circle, or any other flat shape. It consists of lines, but they don't have to be straight, and there can be as many as you like going in any direction as you like as long as it is somewhere with an X & Y dimensional coordinate system.

3) The Third Dimension is: The cube, the sphere, or any other beyond-flat shape. It consists of lines going in any direction we can, as humans, imagine. It is what we see with our two eyes and hear with our two ears within our perceived 'reality'. There are three dimensional coordinate measurements: X & Y & Z.

Being human, I stop there. I'm done. I personally can't sense any further dimensions.

But someone just had to throw in what I consider to NOT be a dimension at all: TIME. Thus we get this monstrosity:

4) The Fourth Dimension maybe is: Time. Except we can't measure it like X & Y & Z because it is entirely relative to itself AND it only goes in one direction. You can't go backwards. It does not help define anything at all in space. It is a 'Change Factor', as I call it. For now I am going to leave it at that except to toss in this mean little quip:

You can tell a sci-fi writer is desperate when they start writing stories about going back in time.

Why am I so mean? I love watching Doctor Who! It's because let's face it: Going back in time is a physical impossibility. Such stories are not scientifically based in any way. Thus, they are fantasy. Thus the sci-fi writer has broken the rules of his trade and become a fantasy writer. Fantasy can be incredible stuff! I'm a Clive Barker addict! He is the modern genius of fantasy. Never would he call himself a sci-fi writer. I am so mean and cruel about this subject that I would tell anyone, including H. G. Wells himself to his face, that stories about traveling back in time are fantasy! Deal with it! But I digress. I tend to do that.

The only direction Time travels is forward.

Let me end this dimensional concept list by pointing out that thankfully modern science has found evidence for an incredible number of dimensions, all beyond human comprehension, that exist around and as part of us. A lot of this has been theorized thanks to the study of Quantum Mechanics within the field of physics. (When you have a lot of time to blow your brain open, go read an up-to-date book on Quantum Theory. I find it to be incredibly inspiring, so much so that I have two series of stories based upon its concepts: My stories about 'Collocation' and my Steampunk related character 'Colonel L. Afonte', aka Colonel Elephant. I may post a link to some of these stories in 2011).

How I put the Three Dimensions to work for me with regard to Desperation Mode:

Three dimensional thinking is encompasing thinking. It takes in all the information available. With time, science has become very good at applying thought concepts within an X, Y, Z sort of realm where ideas are mapped relative to one another within three chosen coordinates. What's even more super kewl is creating BIGGER coordinate systems with even more dimension measurements. We do this in computer programming all the time! It solves so many problems! But I'll restrain myself and continue.

My favorite three dimensional systems encompass human personalities. It is mind blowing how diverse we humans are with regard to personality. Carl Jung had one great system, well integrated into the Myers-Briggs personality system. I learned a very useful alternative system from Dr. Tony Alessandra while I was working at Kodak. At the time, he called it his 'Beyond Gold' personality system as applied to business organizational behavior. Later he expanded his system and now calls it 'The Platinum Rule'. His personality system is shockingly relevant to how today's businesses either thrive or fail due to human personality interactions and personality cultures within a business. He'll kill me for saying this, but he inspired my concepts of 'Marketing Maven' versus 'Marketing Moron', creative versus destructive marketing. And there are at least five other personality systems I can name, all of which have relevance within particular situations. Put it all together and you have a universe of personalities that can only be mapped within a three or more dimensional symbolic system.

Like it or not, we humans are extremely multi-dimensional thinkers.

That's not just a 'good thing'. That is part of our amazing diversity as a species that makes us so incomprehensibly creative as well as effective as an overall culture of social sharers. Sharing is our behavior where we pull it all together and put it to work for our benefit as a whole. I'm a sharing fanatic. Screw our stupid monetary symbol systems. Our strength as a species comes down to sharing.

Therefore, as you'd expect, I get very annoyed when people ignore their own human nature and go all Reductive Thinking about anything. That's an instant FAIL from my POV. For me, it's 3-D or FAIL.

But shockingly, even 2-D thinking is beyond the scope of a massive number of people. What I find outrageous is 1-D and even 0-D thinking.

What is One Dimensional Thinking? It's United States politics. Gag me. It's LEFT versus RIGHT. It's Democrat versus Republican. It's Liberal versus Conservative. It is one boring, entirely ineffective and non-representational straight line upon which we are all supposed to fit. It is stupid, idiotic, retarded, ignorant, etc. It is Reductive Thinking blown to destructive proportions. It is incredibly unrelated to actual human thought. It is IMHO worthless garbage, it is so far from representative of anything of importance, usefullness or goodness to mankind. It is what politicians blether on and on about every freaking day of their lives. It is one massive clue that politics really is the lowest of professions, below prostitution. If you ever meet a politician that deliberately thinks 'Off The Line', shower them with praise! They are a rarity.

One Dimensional Thinking is easy to detect within a simple conversation with another human being. When you hear it, beware. It is Destructive Reductive Thinking. What is a shame is that once you get off the topic of politics you often discover these people are as multi-dimensional in their thoughts as any other humans! I love a lot of these people! I work with them regularly, and we all pitch in to do such things as feed the poor and homeless. (I work at a food pantry one day every week). Many of these people are called 'The Salt of The Earth' because they follow some of the most wonderful of Judeo-Christian concepts. That is why I stick with them despite the all-too-frequent and vehement PoliTardiness (as I call it).

One Dimensional Thinking is Desperation Mode thinking. It is used as a Reductive Thinking bludgeon in attempt to deal with mass human behavior. It is a hammer with which to remove the inconvenient for the sake of ignorant simplicity.

But it gets worse. The final descent into insane despair is Zero Dimensional Thinking. Here is a key phrase to trigger your concern:

"You're either with us! Or against us!"

This is your cue to leave the room. Just leave. You're in the midst of the worst of despair. There is no reason to expect anything resembling sanity from someone who is so desperate that they reduce the world to The Zero Dimension. You either exist to these people, because you fit their 'Absolute Truth' point in space, or you don't exist to them at all. You're off the map. You're not on the coordinate system. You're not of their kind. You're gonna get killed. This is war. Get as far away from these freaking loonies as you can. Defend yourself and your loved ones as best you can. If need be, isolate these nut jobs so they can't do anyone any harm.

Want to understand just how badly things are going in the USA, here in our Trivia Era? Read the news and count all the examples of Zero Dimensional Thinking. The deeper the despair, the more you'll find Zero Dimensional Thinking going viral within the population.

Survival Strategy:

Please don't catch the disease. Stay human. Keep your head. Find the positive and push the positive at others if only to let them know that, when the chips are down, when you ain't got a penny, there is more to the world than Destructive Reductive Thinking. There is always sharing, that greatest of human behaviors. Put diversity back to work and make your sharing with others stronger. Help the 1-D people rediscover their 3-D natures. Skip the 0-D people entirely and focus on encompassing the best of mankind during the worst of times. There is magic in sharing.

Let me say it another way: At this point in time, as I continue to cogitate on our future as a species, the best key I've come up with to returning to personal, cultural and species sanity is simply sharing with others. It's the giving and the taking. It's the benefiting others and their benefiting you. It is strength in diversity. It is strength in numbers. It is strength in perspective. It is restored faith in mankind. It is the anchor line of culture. It is what we humans do best to be the best we can be.

♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨

Class dismissed!
Thanks for attending.

Homework: Think of something unique to you that you can do for, or contribute to, Earth our miracle planet. What can you share? Think about how to share it. Discover where you can share it. Then take that marvelous last step and . . .

;-Derek
--

My PUR Water Filter Reviews at Amazon

--
Tonight I posted a couple poignant reviews, along with my usual helpful hacks, of the PUR Water Filter systems and PUR Flavor options over at Amazon.com. I'm posting them here for your amusement and (hopeful) benefit. Enjoy!

PART I, PUR Faucet Mounts:

How to work around mean old P&G and enjoy your great filter

Once, long ago, PUR was a great company with great water filtering technology. I still love their filters! Unfortunately, a big bad company named Proctor and Gamble bought them and messed them over in favor of customer abuse. This was accomplished using two methods. The first method is called 'planned obsolescence' whereby their faucet mount apparatus leak and die briefly after the end of the warranty period. (It didn't used to be that way in the good old days). The second method is called 'timed death' whereby their apparatus lock up their enclosed filters at a preset volume of filtered water, whether the filter is actually used up or not.

Planned obsolescence can be overcome by calling up Proctor and Gamble BEFORE your warranty runs out, and letting them know that your PUR apparatus is squirting water all over your kitchen. Ask them to send you a replacement or a replacement certificate. If need be, call repeatedly asking to speak to the President of P&G, never taking 'no' for an answer. Then take your certificate and get another PUR apparatus. This will provide you with a lifetime for the apparatus more representative of the lifetime of original PUR apparatus. You've cheated no one. P&G's cheat on you has been overcome.

The timed death lockout of your filter is extremely easy to overcome. Pull out the filter from the apparatus. This resets the nasty timing device to zero again. Put your filter back in. TADA! You're done. Your filter will work as before. Note, however, that PUR filters do eventually get clogged with stuff. You'll know when to change it.

I hope that helps everyone restore goodness to the universe. I still love PUR filters better than any other brand and wouldn't be without them. It's P&G's customer abuse that's not worth liking. Shame on you P&G.


PART II, PUR Flavor Options:

You don't want to drink propylene glycol

This concoction contains 14% propylene glycol. You don't want to drink it. You don't want your kids drinking it. It's also used in your car's radiator as anti-freeze. Corporate industry has deliberately and consistently prevented any adequate study of how propylene glycol affects the health of humans. Wonder why?

Buy natural flavorings and add them to your PUR filtered water instead.

Read about propylene glycol at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol
--

The Narcissist End Game

--
Let's play The Narcissist End Game.

I've personally watched this occur on two occasions in organizations within which I've worked. The two people who perpetrated it were best friends, which of course is fascinating. I've decided to write about this psychopathic behavior because I'm watching the exact same thing happen at Microsoft with this week's full and final departure of Bill Gates. He has left behind Steve Ballmer to run the show. The result is that Microsoft has begun its death throws. I've been documenting these death throws over at MacDailyNews over the past couple months. Apparently, Windows Phone 7 is yet another one, just in time for Bill's final fare-thee-FAIL.

Here's how The Narcissist End Game works:

The leader of an organization is so insipidly narcissistic and insecure that he (or she) can't bear the thought of leaving behind a system that will soon forge ahead into the future and forget him. Therefore, the narcissist sets up the organization's demise by putting an incompetent in line as his successor. The narcissist then departs and lets the carefully placed gears turn and grind. The end result is the catastrophic failure of his once wonderful organization.

Everyone left behind then sings in unison:

Oh, how we pine for the days when [insert narcissist here] was running the place! Oh how we miss him! When he left, everything fell apart. Only he could hold it together. If only he could return and save the day! Oh Oh Oh!

Get it? Sick stuff. And it is very real. I watched this happen at the Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine's Photography department AND at Eastman Kodak's Scientific Imaging department. In both instances the secretary was put in charge as the successor, with predictable consequences. I expect those two best friends sit around toasting themselves and their final achievement.

Now sit back and watch it happen at Microsoft. I almost feel sorry for them, but not quite. 'Oh for the days of Mr. Bill.'

:-Q*****

--

FEED or FAIL

--
Intro: This essay is going to unfortunately be jumped upon by conspiracy theorists from La La Land. My apologies. By this I mean that mankind is so fundamentally floundering and bumbling that what is more likely than an intricate diabolical plot among people is a mess of intention, mistakes, luck and lots of after-the-fact obfuscation. For example, the US NSA (National 'Security' Agency) may have effectively destroyed the US Constitution's rights to privacy, thank you Bush League. But you can count on them being incapable of effectively dealing with all the private data they've stolen from us. IOW: Count on The Stooopid Factor. This is both a cynical concept and a realist concept.

What is FEED or FAIL?

It is a limited, 0 dimensional, binary thought concept to deal with both naiveté and psychopathy within our social systems. It also is both cynical and realist. As a 0 dimensional concept you can count on it being as bare bones and incomplete as possible. It takes into account so little about the system it is applied to as to be merely a first blind step in comprehending the system. It is guaranteed to be remarkably wrong in a remarkable number of aspects. Nonetheless, first cuts can be useful. This one is useful if only to make clear the difference between deliberate deceit and detrimental innocence. I find it to be equally frightening on either sides of this metaphorical coin.

A FEEDer is a deliberate liar who plans and perpetrates disinformation to other people. Typically the purpose is manipulation. In any kind of marketing moron system, manipulation is a prime lever, a mental machine for obtaining something surreptitiously from another fellow human being. As the victim, you are FED garbage that is meant to cause you to respond in a predicted way that benefits the FEEDer.

In advertising there are plentiful examples. An ongoing example as of this post is the Toyota FEED that it wasn't their faulty auto acceleration systems that killed over a hundred people. It was the floor mat. As a victim, you are FED that you don't have to have your car's pedal system replaced. You only need to replace your mat. Happy happy, joy joy. Toyota benefits from your ignorant belief in their FEED.

A FAILer is someone who inadvertently tells wrong information to others. The FAILer believes the information to be true. The information is NOT true. They have FAILed to comprehend and communicate facts. The most dangerous of FAILers are those in positions of authority. We're counting on them telling us factual information. They don't. They FAIL. I find the most sad and frightening of FAILers to be those who share new information to others, where the other person has no ability or resource for comparing this wrong information to any correct related information. This literally is the blind leading the blind. Good luck with that system. This is one reason I get upset at people in the technology field who don't do their homework and end up telling ignorant people a set of ignorant information.

A very popular example is when Steve Jobs of Apple put a metaphorical gun to the head of Bill Gates of Microsoft and made him invest $125 Million dollars in non-voting Apple stock. (The 'gun' in this case was a lawsuit that would have cost Microsoft well over $125 Million. It was in regards to Microsoft being caught red-handed stealing Apple QuickTime code. Meanwhile, Apple had $4 Billion in the bank and hardly needed the investment). How was this fact blundered in public? Ignorant FAILers told others that Microsoft had saved Apple from bankruptcy. Of course the ignorant then fed the ignorant, and you got an insane form of the game 'Telephone' or 'Gossip' where not even the original information was valid. Anyone who bothered to do their homework on the subject could discover the facts of the matter on the Internet within one minute. Hyper-FAIL.

I realized the FEED or FAIL concept while I was watching a TV program called "The Spy Factory." It is about, among other things, the demolition of US Constitution guaranteed rights to privacy during the Bush League era. I found myself listening to authoritative people telling me that having these rights stolen from me provided some sort of security from bad guys. The FEED was that it was OK that the NSA were able to intercept and analyze all unencrypted phone calls and Internet data transference WITHIN the USA by US citizens. It was OK because it made the US more secure, which is bullshite. Therefore, I found myself asking whether the speaker was a FEEDer, who wanted me to believe a LIE that benefited others but not me, or was the speaker a FAILer who ignorantly believed the pathological lies he had been fed by some FEEDer? I knew the information I was being told was blatantly wrong. But what sort of person was telling it to me? Naive or evil? Innocent or psychopath?

Another way to look at the FEED or FAIL concept is from the other side of the communication, the side of the receiver. From this perspective, the FEED is of your mind. Think of the FEEDers as sociopathic zombies who want to eat your brain. You believe their lie, they have fed on you. You have lost a part of yourself to their control. Similarly, if a FAILer has messed you over with misinformation, you now also FAIL to comprehend the facts of the matter. It's a FAIL contagion.

Here is a list of some spectacularly 'wrong' people. What are they? FEEDers or FAILers? What if they're BOTH? What if they're NEITHER?!

_______________________FEED__________FAIL

George W. Bush ________[ ]___________[ ]
Paris Hilton __________[ ]___________[ ]
Phyllis Schafly _______[ ]___________[ ]
Johnnie Cochran _______[ ]___________[ ]
Dr. Timothy Leary _____[ ]___________[ ]
Adolf Hitler __________[ ]___________[ ]
Filippo Marinetti _____[ ]___________[ ]
Karl Marx _____________[ ]___________[ ]
Pat Robertson _________[ ]___________[ ]
William Kristol _______[ ]___________[ ]
L. Ron Hubbard ________[ ]___________[ ]
Sun Myung Moon ________[ ]___________[ ]
Kim Jong-il ___________[ ]___________[ ]
Rush Limbaugh _________[ ]___________[ ]
Clarence Thomas _______[ ]___________[ ]
Fidel Castro __________[ ]___________[ ]
Bill Gates ____________[ ]___________[ ]

Please note that I am not interested in comments about my selections for this list. That's not the point. Thoughtful comments about the concepts are welcome.
--

Thank You To Loving People

--
Today I have some thank you posts. These are people without whom I would not be me and would not be here. I know this is boring stuff to general people. It's the part of awards programs that drives us insane. But to those I love...

Thank you 'god' for the synchronicity classroom. It's more remarkable than I could imagine.

Thank you Gordon and Jan for putting up with me and always loving and supporting me.

Thank you Graeme, Iain and Colin for being a remarkably kewl diversity of brothers. I'm grateful we have each other.

Thank you Peter Perlso and Jesper Ørsted for the greatest friendship possible from afar. [Folks, these two guys got me my Mac laptop amidst my personal poverty and have directly allowed me to keep up with tech and write about it on the net. I've never even met Jesper! What an incredible friend he is]. We are three brothers from different mothers.

Thank you to my other brothers: Michael Mehnert, my spirit brother, how could I be more grateful to know you. Jim Richards, another spirit brother, your patience with me has been boundless, your generosity infinite. Mark Grube, may we ever support one another. Blake Sampson, you're a brother from afar I wish I could know better; you have been such loving support. Thank you Mark Sager for being the kind and giving spirit who kept me sane during my early years; you gave me optimistic amidst cynicism.

Thank you to sister Lorraine Downes Sinclaire. I could not have grown up and out without you there as my companion and guide. Sister Jeanne Bottomley, we went through probably too much together; thank you so much for years of joy and wonders.

Thank you to Michael Peres and Margaret Holtman, the greatest professors I've ever had, transcending into kind friendship.

Thank you Jeannette Angeloro for kind patience and shared wisdom, my catalyst of wise mindfulness. Thank you Naraya Reddy for fulfilling your loving self and going beyond the barriers to care for my well being, helping me find my medical survival.

Thank you Kay Silver and Leonard Silver for such remarkably loving friendship, given to a bedraggled stranger at your doorstep. I will ever love your spirits and keep your lessons of kindness in my heart.

Thank you cousins Brock and Louise, two secreted miracles of my family who have been so inspirational in my recent life.

Thank you to all my Hawley-Green neighbors who are the greatest collection of remarkable spirits within four city blocks I could ever imagine. I love you all and thank you for your patience with me and faith in me during tough times. Mitch, Michael, Nick, Phyllis, Nancy, Peter, Frank, Brian, John, Joan, Jeffery, Karen, Chris, Meagan, Mike, Debby, Scott, John, Glenn, Mary, Mary Ellen, Ben.... What a wonderful place for me to land, recover and thrive all these years.

Joan Allen, thank you for sharing your spirit of giving and being such a great companion in sharing that spirit with others.

The entire Friends Meeting of Syracuse, what a wonderful company of spirits with whom to share and grow.

Robert Newman and Katherine Hughes, fellow brave hearts, thank you for such loving support and wisdom.

Dick Newman and Kristen Carpenter, what a strange journey we have all had, and what great people with whom to share it. Thank you so much for your faith in me and your sharing spirits.

There are so many more kind people along the way, like Paul, Jan and the entire Central New York PC User's Group, the entire Apple CIDER group of Rochester, my mentors at RIT and Kodak, Frank and Arturo, my teachers in Pittsford, USF, UF, Allegheny, UR, YMCA, the Mac Advocacy newsgroup...
**MUSIC BLASTING**
**HOOK DRAGGING ME OFF STAGE**
THANK YOU EVERYONE!
. . .

Ad Slamming Culprits:Bayer& Reckitt Benckiser

--
Bayer has perpetrated F*CK SLAM ads for their One A Day Multivitamins. I've sat through a number of them on The CW Television Network.

Reckitt Benckiser has perpetrated HEAVY HAMMER SLAM ads for their Mucinex. I came across a video recording made back in December that showed them perpetrating 4 different ads intermixed within one ad session on numerous occasions. That's a world record AFAIK; Clearly an apex in customer disrespect.

Hell hath the fury like... a customer slammed. You know what to do. ;-)