Cultural Oddity

Another death in sport

 

Another day, another "accident". US national swimmer died during a swimming competition.

Unfortunately, it only confirms my long-standing thesis that sports are inherently unhealthy and dangerous.

 

 

Free wireless for the masses

SFO (San Francisco International airport) is finally getting a free wireless for its passengers. It is a long-long-long overdue overture. Will see how it works. (As of Friday, August 13 2010, at 2am I was not getting any free signal.)

Absence of the said free wireless was a strong reason for me to fly from San Jose whenever I could. And to spend as little time in SFO as I could, therefore spending less on food and drinks in the airport. It was a soundly dumb business decision, which greatly inconvenienced the customers.

Now if only Washington Dulles could follow the suit...

Money is not intellectual

Here is an interesting article about "blogosphere", and how a blog can (should?)  make money:

"...publishers make money by selling readers, not adspace, and that if he’s going to make money, he’s going to have to do so by getting high-value readers that companies want to reach."

The author seems to think that a blog need to have a substantial content in order to make money:

"The job of the editorial side ..., then, should not be to maximize pageviews. Instead, it should be to create the best-quality content for the readers that Blodget wants: to build a large and loyal readership base which feels that it has a strong relationship with the site."

I could not agree less.

Creating a loyal reader achieves just that -- a loyal reader. A person who comes over to the site to read something of substance. This is not necessarily a significant fraction of people browsing around. Not to mention that an average the reader of high-quality content is probably purposeful enough in his/her visit to read, and not to click on them distracting ads around. For that, you need the types who buy stuff "just as seen on TV". Intellectual, they are not. But "The Basic Instinct" was highly profitable. As well as "The Hangover".

Sell them soap operas, not Shakespeare.

Dusty future

A quote from Associated Press's article about dust storm in Beijing:

"China's expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought. The shifting sands have led to a sharp increase in sandstorms — the grit from which can travel as far as the western United States."

Here you go. A future of man-handled earth. Coming to a location near you in the form of dust storm.

Pedophile Priests

Here is another wave of pedophile priest scandals. This time, current Pope is implicated in covering up a child rape by another priest. 

Well, sometimes it seems to me that there is a 50% coincidence between "organized religion" and "organized crime".

Apparently, there is no mechanism in the Catholic church to remove the Pope, because the latter possesses "supreme" God-like power.

Yeah, right. How antiquated!

These rules have to be changed in the modern times. Or Catholic church won't survive.

Life purpose of blogs

Calculated Risk has a recent post with embedded video, where another blogger talked about leading blogs about economy.

Something he said resonated with me. That was "insightful commentary". I think that's a distinguishing feature of the blogs, as opposed to the mainstream media.

Sure, blogs can have elements of entertainment, such as Mental Health Breaks at Andrew Sullivan's blog. Or breaking news, such as Google's management blogs. But a strong distinguishing feature of a leading blog has to be the insight. Otherwise it's hard to have a following in this media, which tends to be massive and anonymous (or meaningless) by default.

The cause of similarities between the USA and the USSR

Something dawned on me while watching The Young Turks. For many years now I have been feeling like I'm back in the USSR every now and then. All the while living in the USA.

It's an odd feeling. It's not like the countries are all that similar. The lifestyle is distinctly different. The cultures are very different. But a strange feeling kept resurfacing that I've seen this before.

I think now I know why.

The funny ideology aside, the USSR can be viewed as one gigantic corporation. Where the top-level managers ("Politbureau") would make all the decisions. For everything. Which is, of course, highly unhealthy and inefficient.

As Cenk Uygur pointed out, the USA is controlled by corporations. In form, it is a democracy. But in substance, the so-called representatives have been bought and  controlled by corporations.

And so, the difference is one-corporation state or a dozen-corporations state. It's a very fine difference. So fine that it's unimportant in daily life. Once a corporation has the influence, you get all the goodies associated with the former soviet society:

• Taking the corporate survival over individual life.
• Economic inefficiency.
• Corruption.

The more the better

The "fitness" gurus have a habit of saying nonsense. They would like you to believe that if only you do something-rather a few minutes a day, which is, or course, easy, you'll get fast results. In such cases, they are lying through their teeth.

But such nonsensical claims have a valid point. That is, people are generally lazy. They don't like to spend effort. They like exercises which are:

• quick,
• easy,
• which bring results fast.

Which is a sheer nonsense. But it gives rise to a proliferation of strange practices. Such as "yin yoga", where you don't spend efforts, because stretching cold muscles is all you have to do to be fit, in spite of all the rules of sports medicine. (By a strange coincidence, the founder of this "yoga" is Pauli Zink, who proclaimed himself to be a Monkey (Kung-fu) King a while ago. Which encountered some serious fraud accusations. )

These natural human tendencies (leading to unhealthy desires) caused one kettlebell aficionado David Chester to joke that heroin is the best for those who want to loose wait fast. Because it's quick to take. And it's easy. And it brings results fast. Very efficient.

If, however, you want to get some fitness results in a natural way, you have to work on it. And the more, the better. Here is a study (if you need one) which showed that extra training was giving rise to health improvements even for runners covering 50 miles a week.

The worst country song ever

   Here is the dude who got his guitar damaged by United airlines.

   And he complained to the customer service.

   And he got nothing by that.

   And he wrote a song about this.

   And he got several million views on Youtube.

   And he feels righteous about it.

   And I think he is totally nuts.

The assumption is that United is guilty of breaking the guitar, and it did not compensate the customer for it. And people are used to think that "customer is always right". 

Well there is a reason for the proverb. But one should not take it absolutely. Because some customers are un-reasonable or even insane. What if somebody comes to a car dealer and demands a car for a dollar? What if somebody demands a first class cabin for the price of economy? What if somebody puts an expensive guitar in the luggage and demands a super-careful treatment?

Everybody and his brother knows that the airlines throw the luggage around. They even worn you. about it. If your piece is expensive and fragile, carry it on yourself. Or at least insure it. But no, the dude is going to relinquish any responsibility for his own instrument, and then demand a compensation from the bad-bad-bad airline. A typical modern dude. No responsibility.

Of course, he is a modern dude, so he's going to write a song about it. And put it on Youtube, and millions of people are going to see it. I don't really know why. Maybe because he's got back to the evil airline (which is just doing it's business). Or maybe because millions more people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit.

In any event, there were millions of viewers. And this reminds me of something else. When the recorded sound was invented, somebody said that oh well, now there will be a lot of bad music recorded. The development of the internet is similar. Overall it's gotta be positive. But, like a true democracy tool, it has plenty of quite ugly revelations. When, for example, an immature simpleton singing country songs can easily damage reputation of a legitimate business and feel good about it.

No evidence you would have died

A man is suing an insurance company to reimburse his expenses. His doctor advised him to go to another hospital to get a liver transplant faster than in the insurance-covered center. In fact, he had to get out of state.

The insurance lawyer's claim sounds particularly sinister: "...there was no evidence [the patient] would have died had he waited to have the transplant in California."

It sure sounds like the insurance company would like you to die before suing them.

Which brings back my favorite impression of this universal health coverage "debate". It's not a fight between a "socialized care" and "free market". It's a stand-off between decent and civilized on one side and backwards and decrepit on the other.

Reminds me of the USSR before it's collapse once again. The system clung to it's old and crusty ways even though they were not working out. Used scare tactics to brainwash it's citizens into obedience mode. Did not work in the end, but sure inflicted some suffering.