Looking Into The Abyss

MOST UNLIKELY AND UNUSUAL WAYS TO DIE

2011-02-22T09:02:00.001-08:00

(annual odds, arranged from most unlikely)

Death due to a meteor landing on your house: 1 in 182 trillion

Death due to a car accident after winning a Texas Lotto jackpot: 1 in 480 billion

Death due to fireworks: 1 in 55 million

Death due to ignition or melting of nightwear: 1 in 30.6 million

Death due to being confined to or trapped in a low-oxygen environment (not including drowning): 1 in 18.3 million

Death due to shark attack: 1 in one in 11.5 million

Death due to foreign body entering through skin or natural orifice: 1 in 7.65 million

Accidental death while warming up your car in your garage (carbon monoxide poisoning): 1 in 1.45 million

Death due to inhalation of gastric contents: 1 in 720,696

Accidental death due to poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism, and psychotropic drugs: 1 in 391,060

and finally...

Being wrongly declared dead as a result of a data entry error by the US Social Security Department staff: 1 out of 23,483

uncertainty makes life worth living

2010-10-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

it's ironic that most of us would like all our desires to come true, even to the extent that we want to be able to control everything that happens to our lives.

would we really be happy if everything we want actually happens? that situation would be equivalent to perfect certainty -- if i want a raspberry cake now, i actually get a raspberry cake now.

let's examine this line of thought from a slightly different angle for a while.
ask yourself: would you enjoy reading a novel you've written yourself? would you be thrilled what would happen to a character when you can write what exactly would happen?

with perfect certainty, life would have no meaning. instead of a heaven that we think it would be, it will actually be a never ending hell, and a hell where we have full knowledge of what horrors would happen next.

why we're doomed to fail

2010-02-26T05:45:00.000-08:00

there is a LIMIT on the capacity of stuff our minds can handle.

at the very basic level, our short term memory can only handle 7 +/- 2 units of information, that's why phone numbers are usually seven digits long, or truncated into chunks that are less than seven digits each.

this chunking is a technique to increase our innate limit on short term memory. so while we cannot remember more than 7 +/- 2 numbers, we will be able to remember longer sets if we chunk them provided each chunk is within the "magic" 7 +/- 2 limit. thus, we can remember 0919-457-3217, but it's hard to remember 36481247512 even if both contain 11 digits.

so, short term memory is a very basic limit, one that is innate to almost everyone of us. we're just taking bits of information here. and even with chunking, it's easy to realize that we will soon reach a limit on the levels of chunking that we can do.

for example, we can chunk bits into sets containing less than 7 bits each. then we can chunk those sets into sets less than seven chunks each -- like memorizing seven phone numbers per set. but as we go up each level, it becomes more difficult (try memorizing 5 sets of 4 groups of 5 phone numbers per group).

sooner or later, we will reach the limit of chunking as well.

then, for more complex phenomena, there's this little thing called the Dunbar Number. this is a theoretical number that researchers are postulating to be the limit of social group sizes. that is, this is the hypothesised limit of meaningful connections we can have.

we can think of this number as a limit on the number of close friendships a random person can have. when you consider the number, 150, it makes sense. after all, these connections are supposed to be close. how many of us really have 150 close connections? it seems our brains are not capable of handling the complexities of 150 close social connections.

sure, we can have 5 million entries in our phonebooks, but how many are really close to us?

the point is, simple or complex, our brains have certain limits.

and as our world moves into more and more complexity, we will soon hit that brick wall of cognitive limits. our machines may help us for a while, letting us remember gigabytes of info, and organizing our lives into manageable chunks. but sooner or later, those chunks will reach their own fundamental limits. we cannot chunk 7, to 7, to 7, and so on, ad infinitum.

as complexity grows without bound, our capability to handle them shrinks proportionately.

we are doomed to fail. brace for impact.

COPENHAGEN MY ASS

2009-12-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

world leaders are now in Copenhagen to decide if it's a good idea to spend a huge amount of money in order to limit the global increase in temperatures by less than 2 degrees Celsius.

they are planning to spend untold billions on a goal that's based on a bunch of "what if scenarios" that are far from certain. not to mention towards a future pay off that is much farther from certainty that the premises are.

even if the billions that they plan to save will be successful in limiting the global temperature rise by 2 degrees, there no evidence that this limitation will actually be beneficial or even worth the amount and effort spent.

some people always propose this analogy: that it's better to spend money now and buy insurance that watch your house burn and realize you haven't got protection.

unfortunately, that cannot be applied in the context of influencing climate change through financial intervention.

one, it is not correct that an increase in global temperature is analogous to a catastrophe such as burning one's house. in fact, there is evidence that global COOLING is the climactic event that would be disastrous for most life on earth.

two, it is far from certain that spending billions now will actually "insure" against a potential catastrophe if the rise in temperature exceed 2 degrees. the climate is such a complex system that reducing carbon emissions is only one of the million other factors that affect it. a single large volcanic eruption will cancel out years of CO2 savings from the so-called carbon emissions trading scheme.

in the same analogy as the fire insurance, it's the same as buying fire insurance that will not pay up if the fire is caused by lightning, electrical fault, children playing with fire, crazy neighbors, meteor impact and a million other reasons.

wouldn't it make much more sense if these bunch of band-wagon, publicity-seeking idiots spend the same amount of money on something that can certainly and actually help people right now?

i don't know, something like global poverty and hunger... or even smaller stuff, like controlling malaria.

why work?

2009-09-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

A few bits of wisdom on reasons NOT to work...

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
Luke 12:25-26

Take no thought for your life,
What you shall eat;
Nor of the body,
What you shall put on.
Life is more than food,
And the body is more than clothing.
Consider the ravens:
They neither sow nor reap;
They have neither a storehouse nor barn;
And God feeds them.
Aren’t you much more valuable than the birds?
Luke 12:22-24

In The House at Pooh Corner, Christopher Robin has just asked Pooh a question:
“What do you like best in the world, Pooh?”
“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best –“ and then he has to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey WAS a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you begin to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
--- The Tao of Pooh

The clouds above us join and separate,
The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?
--- Japanese haiku

You can find teachings from almost every religion and philosophy in the world something of this sort: Just be and everything will be all right. This Principle is most prominent in Taoism and Zen Buddhism but it can be found also in most of the world’s major faiths.
It seems a nice Principle but it also makes you stop and think if it is really feasible. You will begin to think after a while: “If I will just spend my time sitting and contemplating the passing clouds, how the heck would I survive? Would God really send ravens to bring me scraps of bread to eat?”
I think the Principle does NOT suggest that one cease to make a living completely. It only emphasizes that the main reason for our existence in this world is to LIVE and not to make monthly reports, or attend meetings, or worry about things that are beyond our grasp.
Work is essentially time spent for others, be it for your boss, for your co-workers, clients, or for humanity. I believe that when the time spent for others exceed the time spent for oneself, something is amiss in the Order of Things.

We work like mad because our society tries its best to convince us that there is a Great Reward waiting for us somewhere, and that what we have to do is spend our lives working like lunatics to catch up with it. Whether it’s up in the sky, behind the next molecule, or in the executive suite – it’s somehow always further along than we are.

FUN SIMULATION FOR YOUR CITY

2009-08-31T03:09:00.000-07:00

TIME FOR A WHUPPING

2009-08-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

lenient sentences are just fucking lame! stoning to death should be adopted for hardened criminals. and if there's an aggravating circumstance such as if the criminal is a retard, small stones should be used so death takes longer.

here's just one example taken verbatim from the news:

A TEENAGE burglar who terrorised Melbourne for more than a year, breaking into dozens of homes, has escaped with no jail time, no fine and no conviction.

"I had a good lawyer. My lawyer told me I would probably get off," the 15-year-old has boasted.

Victims of crime supporters and residents are dumbfounded after a Children's Court magistrate put the teen on a youth supervision order.

He admitted to a staggering 65 offences in a 13-month crime spree - committed while he was on probation.

During his rampage he stole about $100,000 worth of property from homes and businesses, including cars, televisions, computers, jewellery and motorbikes.

We cannot report who he is, where he lives, publish a picture or pixelated image of the criminal - because of increasingly severe legal restrictions designed to protect the identity of young offenders.

We are also barred from even naming the court where Magistrate Jane Gibson made her ruling.

The youth's rap sheet included two counts of aggravated burglary, 24 counts of burglary, 24 counts of theft and three counts of intentionally damaging property.

for the judges who hand lenient sentences, i hope you or your families will be victimized by the criminals you so leniently let go. you're a shame to the justice system as much as the fucking criminals are a shame to humanity.

the feeling of sand beneath my feet

2009-07-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

The feeling of sand
beneath my feet
would have both sadness
and joy in it.
and it would always hold
an echo of you.

I chose to love you
and I choose to go on
loving you
until every grain of sand
has drifted out
into the sea.

---Theoden smiled. "Live now in blessedness; and when you sit in peace with your pipe, think of me! For never now shall I sit with you in Meduseld, as I promised, or listen to your herb-lore." He closed his eyes, and Merry bowed beside him. - Return of the King, Lord of the Rings

it's time to panic!

2009-06-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

well then, swine flu seems to be doing its best to be the pandemic that WHO so reluctantly trying to admit.
and of course, the whole world is trying its fucking best not to appear too panicky -- while actually panicking like there's no tomorrow.
they should panic!! there's no way of knowing if this shit will be the next 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million (and that is the low end of estimates).

still, some pause (and a bit of rationality) needs to be considered. for one, swine flu has infected 25,000 people so far, and killed 150, for a fatality rate of less than 1%. in other words, even if one has swine flu, there's a 99% chance the infected person will survive.

in comparison, the 1918 Spanish flu has a mortality rate of around 3%. SARS has a mortality rate of almost 10%. and both can't even compare to the numbers for malaria. malaria kills one MILLION children every year in Africa alone.

the world doesn't care though (maybe because malaria only kills the POOR). they panic on swine flu and SARS, which kill less people in a year than malaria does in a single DAY.

in fact, even rabies is far more dangerous than swine flu. rabies kills 55,000 PER year, and has a 99.9999% mortality rate (in all of recorded history, only SIX had survived).

nevertheless, as i've said, there's no way of knowing what this shit will bring us. so it's prudent to say that we should PANIC with all the enthusiasm that we can muster.

on perfection

2009-04-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

there are at least two kinds of perfection.
one is technical perfection -- that is, perfection that fits perfectly with a very specific and measurable definition of perfection. the other is the opposite (what i call "perceptual perfection", one that does not fit in any technical definition of perfection yet, somehow, feels perfect anyway.
it's best to illustrate the difference through a song, "i feel pretty", from the play "west side story".
here's a technically perfect rendition of the song. click here.
and here's a "'perceptively" perfect rendition of the same song. click here.

each has its own place...

TROUBLE WITH PIRATES? W-T-F?

2009-04-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

the navies of rich western countries and even richer arab countries are having trouble with pirates off the east African coast.

what the FUCK is going on?!?

these somali bozos are illiterate bunch of morons, with IQ and equipment comparable to stone-age Neanderthals.
the navies are equipped with radar, thermal imaging, satellite navigation, and weaponry than can blow us all to kingdom come, for goodness sake.

the shipping companies and their governments should just set aside their "political correctness" and Geneva Conventions for a while and EXTERMINATE these bunch of illiterate nuisance! i'd rather have a dozen pirates BLOWN to smithereens than have my imported gasoline rise 1 cent due to the cost of the ransoms being paid.

if the western governments are such a bunch of SISSIES to be squeamish about killing people, their navies can simply sink the boat and let the pirates swim 300 kilometers to the nearest shore.

that way, they're not technically killing them. it wouldn't be their fault if these Neanderthals drown after swimming just 2 kilometers, or were eaten by sharks while pathetically treading in the Indian Ocean.

the cycle of things

2009-03-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, the whole area is underwater, and the calcite from the uncountable marine organisms settled and formed into layered sediment.

Then the sea levels fell, and the limestone that was formed stood mighty and strong.

Now the waters are coming back, slowly carving the rocks, and reclaiming the elements that once belonged to its depths.

the business of predicting the unpredictable

2009-03-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

it's sad. and futile. and so fuckingly irresistible.
will i get rich? will my career be great 10 years from now? will my city be underwater within my lifetime?

that's why so many people do it, or attempt to do it -- even in the face of certain failure.
feng shui has the answer. so do tarot card experts. or financial analysts.

what's worse, an even larger number of people believe, or wish to believe, those whack-jobs.
yes, yes, please let my horoscope be true. my financial manager says so, so who am i to argue. it's in the stars, i'll win the lottery tomorrow.

it takes two to tango, huh? well, it also takes two to depict human stupidity.

~_~

2009-03-05T07:36:00.000-08:00

tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño
----Neruda, Soneto XVII

so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close

self-fulfilling prophecy and the idiocy of crowds

2009-03-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

As the global financial crisis rages on, the phenomenon I call "idiocy of crowds" is on track towards a self-fulfilling prediction of an economic catastrophe of global scale and astronomical proportion.

Since I have so much faith on the predictability of the "idiocy of crowds", I will now make a prediction on how the global markets will look like one year from now (or March 2010):

The Dow Jones is at 4,500-5,000 range and the S&P500 is at 400-500 range.

Unemployment in the US is at more than 15%.

China is on recession (2 quarters of negative growth).

Japan is on depression.

The European Union is on depression.

Oil is now at less than $20 per barrel.

The G7 countries are now in deflation.

And now I will sit back and relax, and watch how the crowds will prove me right. If I happen to turn out right, I hope the CEOs who are reading this now, and are still CEOs in March 2010, will remember to offer me a lucrative job in long-term financial planning. Standard security notice fine print below.

experts don't know shit

2009-02-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

... especially when it comes to predicting the future, whether they may be experts in economics, climate, or technology. That's why the experts weren't able to predict any of the significant world-changing events like this current financial mess, the financial mess in the 30s, the rise of Hitler, hurricane Katrina, and so forth. Nor can they be expected to predict the next financial crash or boom, long-term climate change, the next Big Thing in technology (or Hollywood), or any other stuff that actually matters.

There's a whole bunch of anecdotal evidence about expert opinion that failed the test of time dismally. Here are just a few examples:

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927

"It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?" -- Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone, 1876

"By 1985, machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do." -- Herbert A. Simon, of Carnegie Mellon University - considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence - speaking in 1965

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Associates of Edwin L. Drake refusing his suggestion to drill for oil in 1859

And on an article from Money Magazine:
"Some 25 years ago, Philip Tetlock, 54, a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas Business School at the University of California-Berkeley began an experiment to quantify the forecasting skill of political experts.

By the time he finished in 2003, Tetlock had signed up nearly 300 academics, economists, policymakers and journalists and mapped more than 82,000 forecasts against real-world outcomes, analyzing not just what the experts said but how they thought: how quickly they embraced contrary evidence, for example, or reacted when they were wrong. And wrong they usually were, barely beating out a random forecast generator."

if you think your city is crappy, think again

2009-02-12T02:44:00.000-08:00

If you think you live in a crappy city, you still have a reason to be thankful that you're not living in one of these REALLY crappy cities:

Kabwe, Zambia
Lead levels in Kabwe are astronomical. On average, lead concentrations in children are five to 10 times the permissible U.S. Environmental Protection Agency levels, and can even be high enough to kill.
People potentially affected: 255,000
Type of pollutant: Lead and cadmium

Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
Sumgayit's many factories, while they were operational, released as much as 120,000 tons of harmful emissions, including mercury, into the air every year. Most of the factories have been shut down, but the pollutants remain — and no one is stepping up to take responsibility for them.
People potentially affected: 275,000
Type of pollutant: Organic chemicals, oil and heavy metals

Chernobyl, Ukraine
When Chernobyl melted down on Apr. 26, 1986, the ruined plant released 100 times more radiation into the air than the fallout from the nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today the 19-mi (30-km) exclusion zone around the plant remains uninhabitable, and between 1992 and 2002 more than 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer cases were diagnosed among Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian children living in the fallout zone.
People potentially affected: Initially estimated at 5.5 million, currently disputed
Type of pollutant: Radiation

Dzerzhinsk, Russia
The city's own environmental agency estimates that almost 300,000 tons of chemical waste — including some of the most dangerous neurotoxins known to man — were improperly dumped in Dzerzhinsk between 1930 and 1998. Parts of the city's water are infected with dioxins and phenol at levels that are reportedly 17 million times the safe limit. The Guinness Book of World Records named Dzerzhinsk the most chemically polluted city on Earth, and in 2003 its death rate exceeded its birth rate by 260%.
People potentially affected: 300,000
Type of pollutant: Chemicals and toxic byproducts, including sarin and VX gas

Sukinda, India
Sukinda, which contains one of the largest open cast chromite ore mines in the world, 60% of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at levels more than double international standards. An Indian health group estimated that 84.75% of deaths in the mining areas — where regulations are nonexistent —are due to chromite-related diseases. There has been virtually no attempt to clean up the contamination.
People potentially affected: 2,600,000
Type of pollutant: Hexavalent chromium and other metals

hot, cold, or or drowning?

2009-02-05T23:16:00.000-08:00

Northern America and Europe is experiencing one of the worst winters in recent history while parts of the southern hemisphere are experiencing droughts and record high temperatures. At the same time, island nations in the South Pacific are slowly drowning.

I bet a horde of environmentalist fanatics are viewing this as a sign from the almighty that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) will soon spell our doom.

Well, if all the climatologists in the world, with all their superfantastic supercomputers and climate models, can't predict the climate in the next year or two, I would bet my last dollar that they can't predict the climate in the next 50 years either.

AGW believers claim that their models show a catastrophic effect if global temperatures rise more than a few degrees. And yet how can we trust their models when those same models can't even predict next year's average temperatures accurately?

Climate is a dynamic system and very sensitive to minute changes -- for all we know, a ginormous comet is already heading our way and will hit us 3 months from now, changing climate significantly as well as killing us all -- so how can these doomsayers be so confident to proclaim that the Earth is inevitably moving to a warmer future?

As for me, I embrace the uncertainty of the future. Nobody knows anything about the future, no matter how all-knowing some claim to be. That's why I'll just sit back, resume watching TV, and increase my carbon footprint to cool/warm my ass in this scorching/freezing weather.

LET THE POLAR BEARS DROWN

2009-02-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

ice in the arctic has melted enough so that the ice cap is now effectively an island. but that's a good thing. now, ships can travel through what was before ice-blocked seas and save thousands of miles in travel time.
so what if some polar bears drown due to disappearing ice? with all the money we save from less travel time, we can breed more polar bears.

plus who gives a serious crap about polar bears anyway? i betcha, most of the vegan-nature-lover-greenpeacer hypocrites would rather have their organically-produced tofu (shipped from Japan) arrive a day early than save a polar bear from drowning in the arctic.

fucking hypocrites.

anyway, there's also news that land-based ice is also melting. guess what? the people in the largest land-based ice melt (greenland) are happy about it! and they have good reason to be happy; who wouldn't trade a land buried in ice over a land where one can actually see the soil, and possibly even plant something.
ah, but the fucking environmentalists say the seas will rise once the land-based ice starts to melt.

ok, here's a fact: if the ENTIRE greenland ice or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) were to melt, global sea level will rise 7 meters. both hold about 500,000 cubic miles (2.2 million cubic kilometers) of ice. now, it's practically impossible for the entire greenland ice sheet to melt, unless we're hit with a ginormous meteor, in which case we're all fucked anyway. but even if it does happen, 7 meters is not too bad.

sure... some polar bears might drown, as well as the entire maldives, but worse shit can and has happened compared to a rise in sea levels of 7 meters.

what's really irritating is that the fucking environmentalists and that ex-vice president dude keep on blaming our precious right to pump carbon as the cause of global warming, ice-melting, sea level rise, and drowning of polar bears. those morons don't have any credible research to back their preposterous assertions, but they just love to hear themselves talk.

fucking morons.

here's a thought, from ACTUAL scientific research: from 18,000 years ago until now, the sea level has risen 130 meters (now that's deep shit), but the rise in sea level from 1870 onwards is (surprise!) 195 MILLIMETERS. for the environmentalist morons, 195 mm = 0.195 meters. 0.195 meters of increase for more than a hundred years of human-initiated carbon emissions? WTF?

oh yes, there's probably a whole lot of those carbon-emitting SUVs on the planet before 1870!!

WHAT A BUNCH OF MORONS

2009-01-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

give a bunch of morons democracy and they will inevitably create something so mind-bogglingly stupendous that it will put other (non-democratic) moronic creations to humble submission.

a description of the amazing work goes: "The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide."

it appears that these bunch of morons decided to commemorate another moron as a "hero" for having done an act which he perfectly knew would have no serious consequence -- that he will not be otherwise castrated because castration is not used anymore and the castrators have been removed by people he now brands as invaders.

ingrate!

if this particular moron is supposed to be so courageous, he should have done something during the reign of a real tyrant, instead of standing aside and playing with his tiny yellow balls while his fellow countrymen are being bombed with chemical weapons.

I like Bush

2009-01-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

Many "know-it-all" pundits (and an even larger number of opinionated "know-nothing" folks) have declared Bush to be the worst US president in history.

Perhaps a certain perspective is in order. Bush is nowhere near as ineffectual, incompetent, or divisive than, say, Franklin Pierce (I bet 99% of Americans don't even know this guy), Warren Harding (Bushisms are nothing compared to this description of Harding's writing: "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh."), or Andrew Johnson (who had been called a "fervent white supremacist" among other things -- although he's not directly elected, so we can probably give Johnson a bit of a break).

I don't know about you people, but I like Bush and I believe he did a much better job than the more vocal critics are claiming.
I'm not going to expound on his accomplishments, or to argue on his performance as president -- I'll leave that for posterity to decide.
As much as I am hopeful and optimistic on a coming change, I'd really hate to see someone viewed by many as (almost) the next messiah turn out to be worse than W...

best bullshit jobs

2008-12-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

Poet
Drink, write very little, diddle students, generally have license to misbehave while sponging off friends and other nonprofit organizations

Compensation: $350 per annum from your actual poetry or if you're serious about a career in the business, you earn whatever college professors are making this year, plus what you get from these very cool writer-in-residence gigs you can apply for.

The upside: Unlimited sex from adoring fans. The knowledge that your pain can be turned into something of artistic and/or commercial value. The right to drink all night and wake up at dusk.

The downside: You give a reading of your work at a small lecture hall of a university that does such things. They put you up at the Travelodge. The night of the reading, you go to dinner with the head of the English department at a sad, empty place that still features a blue plate special. Eight people show up at your reading. One of them has a bottle in a brown paper bag and is dressed wrong for the season. Afterward, you go out for drinks with him.

The dark side: You are a dead caboose sitting empty on a neglected piece of track somewhere in a forgotten rail yard. You tell yourself that when you're dead, you will be appreciated. All things considered, that seems like a long time to wait.

Where you go from here: Greeting card writer.

Life coach
Take over hapless people's entire existence and reshape it in ways that you think are good for them

Compensation: Successful practitioners in this relatively new field can earn as much as a psychiatrist - hundreds of dollars an hour. But unburdened by the same ethical constraints, an aggressive bullshit artist could conceivably view his or her compensation as a percentage of the life that is being fully, you know, actualized.

The upside: It feels good when people pay you to yell at them.

The downside: Some days you may not be positive enough to get out there and make people bark that happy song.

The dark side: Every now and then you see one of your success stories sucking the pavement in front of your local tavern.

Where you go from here: High school hockey coach.

Blogger
Download contents of your mind, even when there aren't any

Compensation: Relatively small, but prospects for high-paying bullshit job in the future are virtually assured.

The upside: This is one of the bullshit jobs you can do immediately, with no training and no prior experience. You can also become very famous, since the established media, increasingly devoid of excitement and ideas of its own, has taken to siphoning off daily blogging activity as a much better and more interesting alternative to actual news.

The downside: You need a full, daily dose of imagination, guile, bile, and people pouring nonsense into your head that you can repeat.

The dark side: Your skin glows an ethereal white, your eyes become rheumy and bloodshot. Hair erupts in horrendous places. You don't care. You are now nothing but a conduit through which pass all the rare gases of the universe. You are, in short, a blog.

Vice president of the United States
Be prepared

Compensation: $198,000. Which pales, you know, beside what the job is worth afterward, when you rejoin the gigantic multinational firm you've been steering business to for the last eight years.

Duties: Well, before the current administration, you'd have to say virtually none. Now, who knows?

The upside: Great title, decent perks, very little job responsibility (except for Dick Cheney).

The downside: Everybody makes fun of the office and thinks it's completely superfluous.

The dark side: You da man. What have you got to show for it? (Except for Dick Cheney).

Where you go from here: Back to Halliburton.

Chairman
Visionary, autocrat, delegator

Compensation: You're beyond the point where you need money. Money is for people who move through space in a world not of their making. That's not you.

The upside: Your feet do not touch the floor when you walk. This saves money on shoes.

The downside: The voices in your head won't let you sleep at night. The Congress subpoenas have the same effect.

The dark side: Everything is crawling with germs, and nobody knows how to clean your bottom without leaving it all red and chafed.

Closet organizer
Organize closets for people who can't organize their own closets

Compensation: Middling, unless the closet belongs to some crazy rich person, and who else would hire a closet organizer?

The upside: Unparalleled opportunity for those with an unhealthy interest in footwear.

The downside: Hard to explain what you do to serious people, and therefore you may not find yourself around many.

The dark side: Obsessive-compulsive disorder acquired over time degenerates into horrible need to keep everything on matching hangers, followed shortly by madness and death.

Where you go from here: Stager, another bullshit job, where people set up an apartment that's for sale to look more attractive than it actually is.

Economist
Generate conflicting opinions

Compensation: Academics make professors' salaries, in the high five or low six figures. Those who work for Wall Street firms or other fiduciary institutions can make enough to force Eliot Spitzer to sit up and take notice.

Skills required: Write very poorly, or at least so obliquely that no matter what happens in reality, the theories and prognostications you offer can never be called wrong, exactly.

The upside: People think you're brilliant, and you may be! You might get appointed to head the Federal Reserve.

The downside: Your mother leaps off the side of a cruise ship when her retirement account goes south.

The dark side: Your ideas are adopted by the ruling class of a third-world nation, who then use them to exterminate the entire middle class. Or your ideas are adopted by the ruling class of a first-world nation and cause the end of civilization as we know it.

Greeter
Say hello to people when they come into a store

Compensation: Minimum wage.

The upside: Easy to learn the drill.

The downside: Sometimes your face hurts.

The dark side: Your college buddy shows up with the girl you used to go out with.

Investment banker
Strumpet of capital

Compensation: Booooooo- yah!

The upside: These guys are so rich their Bentleys have Bentleys.

The downside: Sometimes you get a hangnail getting out of the limo.

The dark side: Under certain economic conditions (such as this current one), the 53rd floor window becomes increasingly, inexplicably, beckoning...

Where you go from here: Chairman, if you manage to ignore the beckoning window -- and the SEC.

Personal trainer
Build average humans into gorgeous beasts, have sex with as many as you like, marry some of them for brief periods of time

Compensation: $35,000 per annum. But what's the meaning of money when part of your job is holding J. Lo's foot while she tries to work out her upper thigh?

The upside: Lookin' great, eating like a champ, swinging high and hard and loose? What a gig!

The downside: The San Francisco Chronicle does a huge exposé revealing that the special additive you've been giving to your customers is, in fact, anabolic steroid. You go to jail and your clients are disgraced, in addition to having tiny, shrunken testicles.

The dark side: You are an overexercised monster, both bulgy and stringy at the same time, your body is aging, and so are the poor, hyperstressed clients you tend to; you wake up one morning, and God, you're tired.

Best-selling author
Crank it out

Compensation: $500,000 and up, depending on royalties.

The upside: Knowledge that one's name will live as long as there are airport bookstores. Kids worship you more than they do their biological parents.

The downside: Paparazzi begin to hound you as much as they do a minor Hollywood celebrity.

The dark side: You become paranoid that some people might steal thousands of dollars worth of business from your billions, and sue everybody -- as well as mandate when people can and cannot read your books.

Where you go from here: After your books overtake the bible in popularity, there's nowhere to go but downhill from there.

Quantum physicist/string theorist
Produce theories about the nature of the universe that are not amenable to proof by normal human means

Compensation: Academic professor salary. If you become a cultural icon, like Stephen Hawking, you can be one of the few who attain rock star status equal to that of, say, the host of a popular cooking show.

The upside: In your hands you hold the secret to the machinery that runs the universe. That's heady stuff, which is good--because you're a head case, dude! But seriously. The media loves you. Your last book was a best seller that everyone bought but nobody read, which, as you know, is the very best kind. And while other guys from your class are playing with petri dishes, you're accelerating fictional particles at hyperspeed underneath the mountains of Switzerland.

The downside: None of what you do helps anybody understand anything.

The dark side: Tomorrow... next week... perhaps a year or two from now... some sharp kid is going to come along with a theory that takes a wicked detour directly from Einstein, goes completely around quantum theory, and explains the entire universe in simple, elegant terms that do not need a billion-dollar machine to prove. Your entire realm of endeavor will be relegated to a footnote on the twentieth century, the way the nineteenth was obsessed with phrenology--the science of reading head bumps.

GIVING SOMETHING BACK TO THE PIRATES

2008-11-29T01:42:00.000-08:00

what the FUCK! a conglomerate of oil exporters who have a combined wealth greater than the GDP of France can't deal with a bunch of ragtag RPG-toting bunch of illiterate pirates? what the FUCK? are these filthy rich arabs that stupid? or maybe they're so wealthy that a couple of ships hijacked per year won't really mean much to them.

either way, these Somali idiots are beginning to be a real nuisance.

let me tell you what we need to do to deal with these pirates (rephrasing the greatest leader the free world has known):

"PRE-EMPTIVE action!!
we'll hunt down those that are most likely to be pirates and bomb them to oblivion.
we'll shock the crap out of these axis of ruthless pirates and awe the world of our determination to cleanse the high seas with these scum."

repelling the pirates with fire-hoses? are you kidding me? we've got more depleted uranium than we know what to do with. why not donate them to these bozos -- at 3000 feet per second.

c",)

2008-11-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

to add to my friend's post below, here's a situation that adds perspective on how number crunching on two different situations can end up to very, very different results.

NASA engineers of the Voyager Program, using mostly slide rules and primitive computers (the fastest microprocessors at the time run at less than 10 megahertz), launched a spacecraft that accomplished with perfect precision it's fly-by on all four outer planets billions of kilometers away, ending with Neptune 12 years later.

while my friend just gave an example of how even with a cadre of analysts of every stripe and millions of sophisticated risk models a day, most of the prediction output of our financial gurus are similar to what a monkey could accomplish flipping a coin blindfolded.
With all their computers, and PhDs, and cumulative knowledge in finance, economics, and statistical analysis, they were all dreaming of retiring rich early less than a year before the meltdown of the century.

Most of them were then laid-off after the less-than-perfect precision of their models flopped.

randomness in, randomness out

2008-10-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you gather millions of variables and run them through millions of risk models using the most sophisticated software and hardware available, and analyzed by the best minds you can get your hands on?

Here's a description from Fortune of a "nerve center" of just one of the asset managers in Wall Street :

The nerve center looks pretty much like any Wall Street trading floor. There are rows and rows of computers - 2,000 in all. Hunched over them are a cadre of analysts of every stripe: a physicist, a nuclear engineer, an electrical engineer and, of course, economists, MBAs, and accountants. [They] run tens of millions of risk models a day. On each of those, computers continually run through an ever-changing number of potential risk scenarios, some 200 million of them per week - everything from what happens if the U.S. starts defaulting on its debt to what happens if China stops buying it.

And now, when we're neck-deep in the meltdown, everybody is talking about how the financial crisis of the century has blind-sided most of us -- including the financial number crunchers with the arsenal that would put the weather forecasters' to shame.

On second thought, the weather forecasters also can't forecast the weather until after the hurricanes are already barrelling toward the coastal cities.

~_^

2008-09-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Litany
Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and -- somehow -- the wine.

let's all jump!

2008-09-15T08:54:00.001-07:00

first, let's get into nicely packaged debt that we can't possibly repay to buy a house that we don't really intend to live on or even need, then when we all default on the loans, let's all panic and bring down the whole economy. after all, money is only worth as much as we think it's worth (technically, it's just cotton fabric, intrinsically worth just a little more than the same amount of toilet paper), so we can just make up our mind that money, and everything that represents money, such as houses we don't need, can be worth as much or less as our panic buttons dictate.

that way, since the world is now interconnected, we'll bring down the entire global economy!

should we give a shit?

2008-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

given the concept of probabilistic causality -- i.e., that cause and effect might be too permeated with randomness as to make intervention a futile effort -- should we even help "make the world a better place", when it could very well be likely that our efforts, and anyone else's efforts, are ultimately in vain?

or should we just sit and watch TV?

by the way, a nice paper on Probabilistic Causation can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-probabilistic/

GAGA over GAYS

2007-10-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

What the fuck is going on? Dumbledore is GAY?! Let us think this over -- a fictional character has just been revealed to have come out of the closet, and the story is pasted all over the news network.

Why all the attention?

I say it's because most of you people are homophobes! Or if not openly homophobic, at least very uncomfortably squirmy over gay people, gay topics, gay hidden desires, and all that gay stuff lurking in the deep recesses of your minds.

Do you think that if the revelation was that Harry has only one testicle, it would have got as much media attention? I don't think so.

I bet from now on, every time you see Dumbledore and Harry alone together in the films, there would invariably be gay thoughts running in your minds. Little "what if" scenarios would be dancing in your not-so-sub conscious. And I bet quite a few will squirm, although they would then pretend like hell as if things are still as they are before the revelation.

Fucking homophobes. If you hate, or are uncomfortable with, gays, at least have the courage to show it openly. There's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with gays, but there is a lot of fucked-up shit in being hypocritical about the topic.

humanity's shame

2006-10-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

For those of us who have done evil -- evil as a human rather than a universal concept -- and for all of us who allowed evil to happen, through inaction, should bow our heads in shame.

Empire

2006-10-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

As events are unfolding in today's troubled world, there's a disturbing parallel to the world events during the period of decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

There is only one superpower in the planet and it is under siege by an enemy that is inferior in almost all respects.
That it should have handily defeated such and any enemy as it did in the past, with far stronger opponents, but it appears to be powerless this time partly because its people have become "pansies".
And its collapse, in a world where there is no comparable power to mitigate the precipitous effects of the resulting vacuum, will result in a world of chaos and general decline.

We should heed the lessons of history. It took a thousand years for civilization to recover from the collapse of the Roman Empire. We cannot afford to let that happen again.

THE PANSY GENERATION

2006-09-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

the hatemonger, glenn beck, proudly declared during the 9/11 anniversary that this generation is the "greatest generation" and implying that the current generation is even more united than the one who won the greatest war in the planet.

is he out of his mind?!
i say, this is the pansy generation!

think about it:
it's loosing a war against a few ill-equiped, ill-trained, ill-advised fanatics despite the fact that it is the only superpower in the world, with enough firepower to send us all to kingdom come three times over.

now don't tell me the most committed wins. that's crap. during the warsaw revolt, no other group could have been more motivated than the polish resistance (you'd be pretty motivated if you and your people are facing extermination), and yet the Nazis wiped them out in less than a month. it is NOT the most committed who wins, it is the one with the biggest stick provided one is not too pansy to use it.
in all categories, we HAVE the biggest stick. in fact, our stick is bigger than all other sticks combined. but what do we do? we condemn putting terrorists in "noisy" cells because we call it torture. isn't that pathetically gay? we should be pulling the fingernails off these fanatics!
we appease terrorist states led by insane perverts by asking them to negotiate. we should be nuking them off the face of the planet, or at least send in assassins and cut off their balls.

greatest generation, my ass! the only worthwhile accomplishment this generation had was that it invented the internet.

borat should not be shot

2006-08-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

the freak borat that my other friend wants shot should not be harmed in any way.
why? because i believe that borat is gay, and it's so sad to shoot gays.
gays are freaks, true. gays that look as disgusting as borat are doubly freakish. but that can't be a reason to shoot them.

if we are into shooting gays, it would mean that we have to shoot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
and no one would want that wonderful person shot.

SHOOT John Mark Karr

2006-08-30T02:11:00.000-07:00

here's a thought for all you freaks out there: if an even creepier freak admits to a crime so disgusting, that freak should be shot -- even if he or she did not actually commit the crime and only seeks narcissistic attention.
as for the psychopath, Karr, the choice is really a no-brainer.
he should be SHOT, and SHOT in the testicles first before shooting him in the head -- along with that other freak Borat (aka. Sacha Baron Cohen).

MY HELL

2006-08-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

Creationists
Circle I Limbo

DMV Employees, NAMBLA Members
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Greens, Geeks
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Militant Vegans
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Rednecks
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

General asshats
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Goths, PETA Members
Circle VII Burning Sands

Scientologists
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Osama bin Laden
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

BRING BACK CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

2006-08-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

oh yeah, that's the answer to a growing number of problems caused by IDIOTS.
by IDIOTS, i mean stupid criminals, incompetent employees, truant school children, almost anybody who causes problems simply because they are genetically predisposed to cause trouble.
and by corporal punishment, i mean whipping in the ass using a really, really big stick, preferrably hardwood or fire-hardened bamboo.
why would this work? because IDIOTS only respond to the most basic of biological instincts, of which avoiding pain is one of them. corporal punishment, or inflicting pain, may not work for everyone but it sure will work better than the pussy methods that modern "enlightened" thinkers have suggested and are being implemented now.
i say forget trying to be lenient to these people and hope that being nice to them will somehow reform them. i say whip them hard and whip them fast.
prisons today are so nice, much nicer than where some of these morons came from, that criminals almost want to get into them voluntarily. i say everytime you get out of line, you get a kick-ass whipping.
schools today are so tolerant and powerless against problem students, a majority of which are borderline retarded (the problem students). so instead of detention, i say a couple of dozen whacks with a fire-hardened bamboo. detentions are for pussies.

^_^

2006-08-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Millions of singles, no true love -- that's what those online services truly imply. I don't know the statistics on the success of these online dating services, but I would think it is much lower than actual (or physical) dating. Just think of it, how many do you think in every million of those who date or socialize online find true love?
And yet, for those who do the "old" process of dating where two people actually meet physically, the odds of finding true love can't be that small. Otherwise, there would have been hell of a lot more singles (percentage-wise) in the past than today -- which is not the case, as we are now at our loneliest than in any period in our history.
Why then do millions retreat to the virtual when success in finding meaningful relationships is higher in the real?
Perhaps it is because some of us, maybe even most of us, are insecure in our perception of who we are. The virtual world offers anonymity, the ability to tweak our "imperfect" selves, and the illusion of a "virtual barrier" that we believe could somehow lessen the pain of rejection. Plus it offers millions of choices.

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink
-- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

the terrorists are winning

2006-08-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

not only are they winning, we are happily making it easier for them to win. now, they DO NOT even have to carry out attacks. all they have to do is exhibit a threat and the rest of us scurry about creating our own chaos. what chaos? just try a transatlantic trip and you could very well experience europe barefoot or, worse, without your trusted Chanel perfume.

~~

2006-08-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

A recent news from CNN says that Americans are becoming increasingly lonely. And what's suprising is that this increased social isolation affects almost everyone across the age spectrum -- from college students to the retirees.
It seems ironic that as the country's population is getting larger, and technology is making communication easier, more and more people seem to lose the ability to forge intimate relationships with other people. Instead, we have an increasing number of shallow "pseudo-relationships".
We have cellphones filled a gazzilion phone numbers, yet we never a meaningful conversation in a week. We receive thousands of emails a day, yet not one of them stirrs our hearts in the same way as a single handwritten note.
I spend hours in front of a computer, as I am now writing this. But do you think I'd be doing this if I have something better to do in the "real" world?

NASTY, NASTY CREATURES ARE WE

2006-08-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

HUMANS!! so difficult, to figure out where we stand -- or what we really are. It's nice to believe (and it might also be true) that we are really nice deep down. you know, all the good and happy stuff, are really what we're made off. Then again, there is also that lingering thought (which might also turn out to be the case) that humans -- that's us -- are really NASTY, NASTY creatures. that we are capable of every evil we can conceive. not much of a leap in imagination to arrive at that -- we invented evil, after all.

It's true! if humans, homo sapiens, were never here on this planet, all the other species would never have the guts to invent the concept of evil. And a traveler from another world, where the concept of evil as we know it exists, would not have found it here in this planet had we, homo sapiens, never existed.

AND so here we are. back to the question. We know from experience and past events that our species is capable of the greatest good and the darkest evil. The question is: Which aspect of our selves is more incipient?

a bunch of pansies

2006-08-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

how come the USA, the world's ONLY superpower, have difficulty dealing with a bunch of extremists inIraq and a handfull other places in the world?
i'll tell you why. it's because the "powers that be" who control the military might of the United States are a bunch of pansies!
extreme actions, such as what these terrorists have done, require extreme response. and it seems that the powers that be in the US of A do not have enough "mojo" to do what it takes to grind these extremists to the ground!