∞

Is everyone famous a perverted asshole?

So, next on the pervert docket we have legendary serious news journalist Charlie Rose...

Wait, what?

So, let's take the list of people called out for being predatory assholes so far: Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, John Besh (supposedly famous chef), Louis C.K., Hadrian Belove and Shadie Einashai (rich assholes with movie theaters), Richard Dreyfuss, Gary Goddard, Andy Henry, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Knepper, Andrew Kreisberg, Jeremy Piven, Brett Ratner, Steven Segal, Tom Sizemore, Jeffrey Tambor, James Toback, Senator Al Franken, and now Charlie Rose. But wait, there's more! Yeah. I mean there's a longer list, but I'm not going to type out any more names. If you want to see the mostly complete list, look here. 

So, I let this sit for a day, and what do we have now? John Lasseter. Yes, the John Lasseter that was key in evolving Pixar into the animated feature film studio it became. The John Lasseter that took over Disney Animation in 2006 and paved the way to enormous hits like Frozen, Wreck It Ralph, Inside Out, and the upcoming Coco. The John Lasseter who was instrumental in working with Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki to bring English-language releases of their beloved animated films to the West, movies like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and Ponyo. The John Lasseter who apparently has a maneuver named after him where women angle to keep him from touching their legs. 

Most men on these lists are pigs. It's easy to see. Weinstein is obnoxious. Spacey is outspoken and overconfident. Louis CK is brash and loud. Jeremy Piven seems to play himself in Entourage. Tom Sizemore has a history of violence against women. Steven Segal is a self-important asshole. But then there are the people whom we've come to trust. Al Franken. Charlie Rose. Now John Lasseter. 

So, what's going on? 

The simplest answer is that we are finally seeing the intersection of women's rights, sexual repression advocacy, and destructive male empowerment ideologies, though that's far from a simple answer. Women are human and, therefore, have human rights. Women must be afforded the same respect and dignity that men demand. Women are not animals or property. To treat women (and I also mean girls, in case you're looking for a loophole) as livestock or store products is wrong. So, stop it. 

Sexual repression has been going on for ages, ever since the first person was embarrassed to see people having sex right in front of them and they weren't getting any. Various forms of religion have long advocated control through abstinence. Religion works best as a method of human cattle management because it focuses on the core aspects of being human (i.e., sex, behavior, food, etc) and engages emotional touchstones (i.e., fear, joy, desire to belong, love). 

Then, last but far from least, we have what most people would call Rape Culture, but is deeply rooted in male empowerment, masculinity development, and patriarchy. Men are the top. Men are bosses. Men can do stuff that weak women can't do. Women are good for making lunch and babies and looking pretty and shutting up and that's it. Men are smarter, faster, stronger, large and in charge. Men aren't crybabies, need their mommies, or have doubts or fears, and if you have any of those needs, you're a sissy and need to man up or go die in a dark alley somewhere. 

How could that kind of hyperbolic assholery ever go wrong!

Well, here's an example:

So, "rape" used to mean something, yes? Now it just means women dissatisfied with the sex they had with potent and skilled men? Invite some girls to your frat party, get them so drunk they can hardly stand, take them upstairs, and give them what should be the time of their life, and you're shocked when they get mad? Hell, they consented to getting drunk, right? They have women bodies that I can see with my man eyeballs, right? How is that rape? 

With women running around like they own the place, religious policies that have quashed the normal human sex drive creating people who have a pathological understanding of what sex actually is, combined with men who have been taught that they must take what they want and all things are subservient to them, is a combination that is just primed for a tipping point, and it seems that we might have reached it. Like gay marriage or unlike gun control.

What we need is a healthy understanding of what human sexuality really is and that has to be taught in school, to all kids. Repression and extreme control methods need to be canned. Kids who are free and encouraged to experiment will come to understand it better, earlier, and develop a core sense of responsibility regarding sex. Our current ideals regarding sex, drugs and alcohol, work, and responsibiliity are skewed badly in ways that do not favor the development of kids who understand what life is really like, and that's one of the things that is holding us back, causing all manner of problems, and won't get better unless we really work for change. 

Humans have evolved over millions of years and sex becomes viable with the onset of puberty. To deny this simple, biological fact, as we have for all of recorded history, is to try to push back against the impossible weight of millions of years of evolution. 

That kind of strategy just can't win. Period. 


∞

Amateur Egghead - Why is psychology a science?

In this series, Amateur Egghead, I examine a range of different subjects on which I have no formal education or expertise of any kind. The opinions and thoughts within are my own and will likely piss a bunch of people off, mostly the ones who benefit from the things I talk about. -Ed.

It's difficult to start this without getting directly to the point; why is psychology still a science when the only thing we're learning about the human mind is all about the mechanics of the brain? The brain is the medium in which the "mind" resides, but it is not the mind itself without the person attached to it and the experiences that person has had. Science, as defined by Oxford, is:

"the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment..."

The world, as we know it, is already astonishingly complex, so much so that we don't know more than a fraction of what constitutes knowledge, and we've been hammering away at this ever since we became sentient. Hell, we don't even really know when that happened (though there are some really good guesses out there). Our universe, that which we can perceive and surmise from observation, is immensely enormous and, from our perspective, has no end. How do we even fathom that concept? 

There's a bit in Douglas Adams' wonderful Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy trilogy where protagonist Arthur Dent ends up in a cave on Frogstar World B. There he meets Gargravarr, the custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex, a device so hideous that it can destroy your mind.
When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it there's a tiny little speck, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
The device works by extrapolating the existence of everything by scanning a piece of fairy cake (smaller cupcakes made by Brits using sponge cake). Even fictionalizing the entirety of the cosmos as a way of getting back at your nagging wife who complains that you lack perspective is just too big to grok (and I use this term on purpose, as you'll see if you click the link). Existence itself is simply too vast to completely understand beyond our less-than-subatomic little sphere of influence, perched on a tiny speck, floating in a dust cloud billions of times our size, which in turn is a speck that is one trillionth of another larger dust cloud.

It's no wonder people believe in gods.

Even on Earth, life is extraordinarily complex without even discussing the human factor. There are countless billions of all manner of life above and below the water. We discover new species almost every year. This planet, this tiny ball of rock and lava spinning in space, is literally teeming with life. Then there's us. Humans. People.

We, unlike any other species, have evolved the most, at least within terms we can understand (or grok, if you desire a deeper meaning). We alone have progressed beyond the mere simple acts of survival that differently evolved forms of life engage in. Thanks to our opposable thumbs, soft skin, and lack of significant offensive or defensive qualities, we came to develop a range of cognitive defenses that have proven formidable, especially when used against our own kind. Over millions of years and through several different iterations, we became sentient.

Once that happened, all hell broke loose. As soon as people started to understand that they were a "they", we began to develop everything we are today. We look at things and make decisions about them based on prior experience, whether that be where we were born and raised, who are parents were, who are friends were, the good and bad things that happened to us, education, food, sex, trauma, pain, love, everything. All of these have a basis in instinctual behaviors, but are mostly, significantly shaped by our experiences in life. We barely understand our place on Earth, much less in our galaxy in the even more incomprehensibly immense universe, to the point where we still believe in myths like Santa Claus and gods. 

So, please excuse me if I'm more than a little skeptical about people who call themselves scientists walking around telling others they can help them with their psychological issues if they just submit to years of costly psychotherapy. Is that snake oil I smell or are you blatantly bullshitting me? 

There is no question that there is real science being performed around a wide range of brain and mind related subjects. We're actually getting rather good with some of the mechanics of how the human mind works, but psychologists would have us believe that, with sufficient training, they can help people sort out the bits that you can't see or poke with a stick. My skepticism might have something to do with the fact that I, myself, was in therapy for well over a decade and find myself little different as a person for it. And yet, it's not personal. I never felt any ill will towards my therapists. In fact, most of them I liked quite a bit and one of them I can count as a friend, but they didn't help me, and that, I believe, is for a very specific reason. 

They don't know me. 

How could they? In order to effectively know someone, you must have shared their experiences. How can a person who has not been raped ever relate to someone who has undergone that horrifying experience? What could any therapist ever do to know what an individual who has a history of torturing cats to death is going on inside their mind? How could the person sitting across from me ever understand what it was like to attend nine different schools before graduating and spending years on Ritalin for ADD and hyperactivty? I'd have to talk to a trained therapist who had ADHD, took badly misdosed Ritalin, was raised in an Episcopalean household (I'm a PK), experienced his parents divorce at the age of five, and learned he was adopted, not to mention the nine schools, many of which were private boarding schools. 

Without direct experience, we can be empathetic if we are so inclined, but we can't relate in any meaningful way. I understand the urge in some to help others, and it does help to talk to someone without being judged, but it doesn't take years of intense study, a Master's degree, and an enormous, international organization to offer a kind, non-judgemental ear to someone in need. In fact, in American society, there's quite the stigma that goes along with getting therapy for mental health, so I think it might actually do more harm than good. 

Ultimately, I think it remains a science because of the discipline required to become a psychologist, and not so much the "practice" of psychology. Medical doctors can practice medicine, and get better at it. The human body, after all, is just so much intricate plumbing and organic bits and bobs. The human mind, on the other hand, is infinitely more complicated, a multi-faceted riddle, wrapped in a sheath of millions of neurons, all firing in amaing ways to produce individual human beings, each with our own personalities, convictions, desires, fears, dislikes, and pleasures. 

Without a great deal more study, how can we ever hope to claim that psychology is a real science? 
∞

How To Kill Money

“It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.... Let me give you a tip on men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the...bell of an approaching looter.” -Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was special, and not in a good way. She was a caustic, belligerent herald of the apocalypse that is raw, uncontrolled capitalism. And yet, Rand was simply a product of her time. [Keep in mind that this is not supposed to be an exhaustive analysis of the rise of Randian concepts, but just a loose overview of some of the things that led to the development of her ideas, so don’t troll me for being somewhat inaccurate, nerds. -TC]

Following the American Civil War, people from the North migrated to the South to run for political office in order to foster change in the form of civil rights, economic growth, and found public school systems, though some did go to capitalize on the reconstruction boom. Hundreds of white women moved South to teach, while white men opened banks and offered high interest loans to those who sought to start businesses. It was an odd mix of capitalist and socialist drives.

Following World War I (also known as The Great War and The War To End All Wars), America entered the Roarin’ Twenties, a period of strong economic, industrial, and cultural growth and change. Women gained the right to vote in many States. Air travel became a thing. The money was flowing. Ayn Rand left Russia to the United States in 1926, just three years before The Crash of 1929. She left what, at the time, was a dying Czarist Russia facing a growing revolutionary force living in crushing poverty, only to see the explosive crash of the American economy in 1929.

After World War II there was another explosive period of economic growth and expansion. What the people saw, and not what was actually happening, was the government swoop in to take people and resources to get killed and destroyed, and that the private sector would swoop in afterwards and fix things up, make new things, give people jobs and money, and build entire communities through the apparent power and benevolence of Capitalism. Of course, we know that isn’t the accurate truth. Many of the companies that built the roads and dams and office buildings that towered into the sky were supported by plans devised and funded by the efforts of the US Government (think New Deal and PWA). But that’s not what people saw in their home towns.

For her part, Rand saw capitalism, integrated with what she would call "objectivism", as the only way out for a truly free society. It was Capitalism that swarmed over the American landscape, transforming the troubled cities and towns into a gleaming series of metropolitan meccas, glittering with wealth and power and influence whilst ignoring the vast number of people that worked their asses off to make it happen, often to the sole benefit of a small number of people. Sort of like what we have today.

Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others. Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each person's rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else. The heroes of Objectivism are achievers who build businesses, invent technologies, and create art and ideas, depending on their own talents and on trade with other independent people to reach their goals. [SOURCE: The Atlas Society]

What you won’t often hear these days, however, is that objectivists give no fucks for the so-called undeserving, and that’s a really important flaw in Objectivism. Rand gives all credit to the solitary, strong, rational capitalist who does what he wants, when he wants, and however he achieves that is good as long as it is all in the name on his happiness. This ideology enshrines selfishness and puts selflessness in the corner, facing the wall, wearing a dunce cap, which likely has you asking, “What about all of the backs upon which these powerful individuals have lifted themselves up?”

Jon Donne wrote in 1624 in his work entitled Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions,

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

It was written in old English, but its message is clear. No man is an island. If a stone is washed away from the shore, that land is the lesser for it. Donne wrote of a fact that we have known for many, many centuries; that we all make our experience here on this spinning rock in space, and Rand’s ideas that rugged individualism where selfishness is countenanced as vital is just piffle. I’d like to see John Galt build a bridge or cure cancer by himself.

We’re All In This Together, Whether We Like It Or Not

Aside from the despicable fact that Rand’s objectivism promotes the idea that only “producers” deserve to exist and all others should be allowed to fall away, the simple idea that money is a viable foundation for all things is just ridiculous. If it isn’t clear by now, money is a horrible influence on society. Money makes people hate each other, creates an environment where sanctioned and illegal theft and corruption is rampant, and ruins good people who have only ever done good by their fellow humans. Money is destructive and stifles the advancement of humanity as a whole.

[No, I’m not ignoring the influences of religion and political ideologies, but this piece is about money. -TC]

The only problem is that it’s everywhere. Currency is so deeply ingrained into our social fabric that we can’t just rip it out and cast it aside, and that’s a problem because we need to. If we don’t, the future of humanity will remain in the hands of those who are unscrupulous enough to steal it from everyone else. It is the Oroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. Money feeds the most depraved aspects of humanity which, in turn, makes money for those who engage in these deleterious behaviors. Money is a stand-in for power, and as we all know, "might makes right". So, if money is so important, how do you get rid of it?

You use money to kill money.

Yes, that sounds a tad cryptic, but bear with me. It’s a lot easier that you might think. It is, however, critical that you understand that what I’m about to discuss isn’t a step-by-step plan of action, but an idea to force money out of society and create a new form of society that just works, embraces equality and civil rights and abhors oppression, hate, fear, and disenfranchisement.

  • First, freeze prices on everything, like bullet time in The Matrix. Jail time for price gouging. There needs to be a "No Scumbag" provision to shut down corruption at its root. Besides, as you’ll see, there will be no effective value in raising prices or cheating.
  • Second, flood the economy with an unlimited amount of money. Mint a fuckton of those trillion dollar coins and jam them into circulation.
  • Third, doing this works because it doesn’t fundamentally change how society works, it just levels the playing field at which everyone plays. “When everyone is special, no one is special.” -The Incredibles.

Now, everyone is rich. With prices frozen, anyone can buy what they want and what they need. Housing will be built for the homeless, hunger will be eliminated, money will be spent on research of all kinds, goods and services will be distributed all around the world. The list of things that can get done is far too long for me to get right. Infrastructure, public transit, space exploration, development of renewable energy sources, the end of slavery, the drug trade, piracy, dictatorships, religious and ideological oppression, the expansion of education, the increase in workplace happiness as people move to the jobs they want instead of the ones they have to take just to keep their families afloat.

While some will go hog wild and do some rather insane things, most people will get along with the business of life. People will follow their hearts. That’s because you can’t significantly change the nature of human behavior just by making everyone rich. Money will effectively become a method of tracking transactions, and slowly, over time, money will be replaced with processes, and lose all value. It will be replaced with the value that is inherent to all humans, to share and live and love and create and invent and do amazing things that we all know we can.

We’ll all just be people, all working towards enriching humanity and preserving our existence for, hopefully, many thousands of years to come.

∞

Jony Ive's Innovation-Free Apple

Welcome to the brave new world of DESIGN OVER FUNCTION that Jonny Johnnee Jony Ive guy has crafted at Post Jobs Apple where a glass sandwich costs you $1,000 and you must pay for the privilege of using your purchased media in their walled garden. During Apple's unveiling of "One more thing" in the shiny new Steve Jobs Theater on the shiny new Cupertino campus, Craig Federighi tried to use Face ID to unlock the demo phone. It didn't work. Today in The Guardian, there's a convenient PR piece explaining why. 

Apparently, Apple peeps kept fingering the phone before the demo which locked out the Face ID because, well, it's supposed to. 

I don't have an issue with Face ID. What I do have an issue with is the wanton removal of effective, consistent, reliable features that everyone uses. I blame Steve Jobs and, to a greater degree, that annoying twat, Ive. First of all, when Steve came back to help (and then replace) Gil Amelio, he started cleaning house by closing down all of the projects Apple was developing, including my beloved Newton. Then Steve removed the floppy drive from the iMac. Removing old technologies in a smart manner was Steve's thing. In many cases it was brilliant. Now that Steve is dead, though, Ive is left to his own devices, and being the snob he is, he's been removing features that he shouldn't, in the belief that he's just carrying on Steve's vision of a feature-free future. 

So, now we get no headphone jack and no touch sensor, and everything is more complicated and annoying for it. 

Removing the floppy drive in the age of CD media was a no-brainer, at least in retrospect. What Apple is doing now is annoying people, forcing users to adapt to Apple's vision. Didn't anyone at Apple notice that people hold their phones WITH THEIR HANDS?!!?? And what comes on hands, but fingers, and those fingers have prints, and we have technology that can read those prints, and it functions quite well. I can pick up my phone and unlock it with my thumb in less than a second. No swiping. No holding the phone in a particular way. 

There is a critical point at which a form-factor reaches its lowest possible simplification point. For the smartphone, that is what we see in the OnePlus 5, Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S8. They are thin and amazing and fast. They all have touch sensors. They all have headphone jacks. People love them. They buy millions of them. They also don't (quite) cost a grand for the cheap one (and the OnePlus is less than $500!!). 

This isn't all that Apple has done, or in some cases not done. The latest innovation in laptops is that stupid touchbar thing they added to the MacBook line. Yeah. Apple has also resisted potential growth areas inconsistently. Phablets became popular so they rolled out the iPhone 6 and 6s, but when they rolled out the iPad Pro to compete with Microsoft's Surface line, they saddled it with sad, little iOS. Don't even get me started about iTunes. What the hell is 2010 still doing on my desktop, Apple!!??

So, in the end, Apple has jumped the shark, lost the thread, screwed the pooch (an awful saying, btw), and Tim Cook has simply handed the keys to a guy obsessed with design and nothing more. The only time we ever see Jonathan Ive is in videos. He's never there, lovingly walking us through his craft, passing on that passion. He "phones" it in. We don't know Ive as a person, but a idea. A concept. Even his Wikipedia entry is void of much detail after a certain point. 

I'm not disparaging Sir Jonathan Ive as a person, but it's clear that he's nothing without Steve Jobs at his side, guiding Ive's hand, moderating his extreme design impulses, and that's when Apple just breaks down and becomes another premium marquee with ho-hum product. 

∞

Damn You, Walter Becker

Why'd you have to go and die, man. I get the news this morning from Rima via Telegram. I can't believe it, but it's true. So many people have passed in the last few years, it brings mortality into sharp, unpleasant focus. Since it would be ridiculous for me to suggest that you haven't heard Steely Dan, go ahead and have a fresh listen to an old friend, the Dan's Gaucho, my personal favorite (if you deem valuations based on tenths of a degree valid, otherwise ALL Dan records are my favorite). 

Steely Dan was really two bands. One was the studio iteration where Becker and Fagen crafted their amazingly textured albums, staffed with a never-ending assemblage of guest artists from all walks of music. The other was the band they ran for live shows. It would be easy to misunderstand that the two are not one in the same. I guess you could say that the live band played covers of their own music. I don't mean that as an insult. The albums are individual works of musical art, impossible to replicate live, even for Becker and Fagen. 

I am near tears as I write this, but my very first album ever was Can't Buy A Thrill and I have loved, adored, and revered Steely Dan every day of my life ever since. 

Much love to you for all you have ever given me, Walter.