Everything You Know Is Wrong!

(please read this post on my futuring blog)  You can discuss it or share your thoughts here, if you like.  Thanks for reading and, hopefully, for your comments.  — Tim

 

America is NOT Becoming an Entitlement Society

Much noise has been made by conservatives, getting louder and louder since the Reagan presidency, about America becoming an “entitlement society”.  I can firmly state that this is not the case, but not because we don’t have social welfare program to help those in need.  I can say it because the word “entitlement” is being used to hide the Republican movement away from the spirit that built this country and made it successful.  I am speaking of the spirit of barn raisings, communities pulling together to provide for common needs, and the clear intent of the signers of the constitution that this country would be good for all of its citizens, not just those who had enough wealth to manipulate people, organizations, and the law for their personal profit.  The intent was for royalty, self-made or otherwise, not be able to hurt everyone else for their personal gain, and to never allow despots to seize power for the simple purpose of making themselves more secure and wealthy.  The Forefathers wanted to see a country with fairness and justice at its core, where the poor would not be left to die homeless in back alleys while the wealthy got all the benefits of society, and in which people wouldn’t work themselves to death for decades to barely support their families. 

Unfortunately, the Republican position, as indicated by their misuse of the word “entitlement”, is one of selfish greed.  Such greed is the hallmark of small minds who fail to understand how this country was built (not by cowboy gunslingers but by farmers and main street merchants working together).  These same small minds have no sense of fairness and disregard the truth that the wealthy were made wealthy not just through their own efforts, but through the efforts of everyone who ever helped make this country the great and wealthy nation it is.

The word “entitlement” was cleverly chosen to support Republican political aims and put a negative connotation on the word as they misinform and mislead their followers.  Over the past few decades they have worked hard to manipulate people into believing ridiculous things such as that people on welfare are enjoying living high on the hog at everyone else’s expense.  I invite anyone who believes this to try to live on welfare for a month, and I guarantee they will not enjoy it.

If anything, it is the Republicans who feel entitled.  Many of them apparently feel entitled to do anything necessary to increase their personal wealth and political power, and to lie and mislead, often grossly and with impunity, to achieve their narrow personal goals.  If America is becoming an entitlement society, it is the comfortable and wealthy 1% who are the entitled, not the millions who struggle to stay alive every day and night.

In any case, America is NOT becoming an entitlement society.  It is the Republican party and their ultra-wealthy backers who feel entitled, and have no regard for the constitution except as it supports their ends, nor regard for anyone else but themselves.  Think about this before the next time you cast your vote.

Phony Health Scam Provides More Proof that the U.S. Educational System is in Serious Decline

(Rant On) I can’t stand pseudoscience scams.  I was tipped off by a friend to a concept unfamiliar to me called “earthing” so I looked it up.  There are books and web sites about this subject, and even an “M.D.” after one of the names connected with it, though it is a ridiculous piece of pseudoscience anyone with a high school science education would see at once is crap.  There can be only a couple of reasons for this notion even seeing the light of day: some people are sociopaths who have no qualms about robbing others, some people are seriously deluded, some are too dumb to see through the scam, and some may be desperately struggling with health problems and grasping at straws.  It’s a sad thing to see.

Earthing is a complete misinterpretation of electrical grounding.  Basically the claim these people make is that somehow, by being in contact with the earth (bare feet on bare ground, for example) we get some poorly specified electrical health benefit.  They sell “earthing mats” and quite a few other items you have to electrically ground by connecting them to the 3rd (ground) pin in an electrical outlet, and which you then sleep, sit, or stand on to obtain the purported benefit.

Of course, this is a complete scam, and the proponents are either ignorant and slightly nuts or purely in it for the money (robbing innocent people who don’t know any better).  The concept is totally transparent and without value except perhaps via the placebo effect.  They offer no scientific proof of benefits, but surround the concept with a lot of “woo woo” pseudoscientific claims and anecdotal reports from users.  This proves nothing.

Scammers avoid public comment.  It is worth noting that their website has no place for public commentary except for carefully selected reports from users that all read like delusional malarkey.  They’ve published a book touting their “discovery” as “The most important health discovery ever?”, and I was glad they put the question mark on that subtitle, because the concept is pure BS.  All of these people need to take a beginning science class that covers electricity fundamentals, or a class that teaches how scientific proofs are made.  In either case they would quickly see what an empty rip-off this so-called “Earthing” is (unless they’re nuts, which is also a reasonable possibility).

That such scams succeed is a failing grade against our educational system.  The saddest part is what the existence of such a scam says about Americans and our educational system.   For decades religious fundamentalists and the lunatic fringe have attacked our educational system again and again with vouchers, “schools of choice”, private schools, standardized testing, and the arcane provisions of laws like “No Child Left Behind” (which really was the opposite of what its name says, like a lot of conservative initiatives).  Schools have been forced to be less focused on real education and more focused on other things such as standardized tests.  School funding has been slowly leached away along with students now attending private schools, usually corporation-owned, degrading the capabilities of public schools.  On top of that there is an extreme fundamentalist element in the religious right (can you say “Taliban”?) that constantly tries to kill public education because it doesn’t support their religious views.  This small but very vocal minority have driven the Republican Party into extremist territory, and threaten the existence of the party even more than they threaten to have their views forced on us. 

Isn’t the increasing number of know-nothings in our population bad enough?  Not for the religious right, since ignorance is the gateway by which they recruit and brainwash new adherents.  I recommend that anyone who thinks “earthing” as described on the website has any real benefit get their head checked.  If you think your health will improve because you put your feet on a grounded mat I have a big bridge I’d like to sell you.

As always, if you think I am off base please educate me. — Tim

Who Will Be the AT&T of the 21st Century?

I have seen the new look of Facebook and … I see no good in it.  FB, like Google, gets worse (more anti-user) daily.  They compete to see who can be the new monopolist in the tradition of AT&T and other giant corporations of the past, none of which benefits us.  Social networks are just useful enough to keep us addicted to them, to make themselves necessary and unavoidable, while they spend ever greater resources on taking advantage of us.  As I’ve written before, the terminator is here, and its name is “multinational corporation”.  Whether we can regain our rights is a good question that can’t be answered yet, considering how easily average people can be manipulated by armies of corporate Ph.D’s.

Mastercard SecureCode – Is Credit Card Security Getting Out of Hand?

On-line credit card security is turning me away from on-line shopping.  Those of you who shop on-line have probably run into the SecureCode system.  It requires me to know one more password in an era when I am overloaded by passwords.  Many systems demand passwords that often must be constructed under differing rules, and that results in my having many passwords.  As a person with a poor memory since birth, I constantly struggle with passwords.  SecureCode, however, is not helping.  I don’t buy on-line often enough to remember my SecureCode password, so every time I want to make a purchase I have to answer a bunch of extra questions to  be issued a new SecureCode password.  Having a different password only makes it harder to remember.  Then, when I’ve answered all the questions required to establish a new password, they reject my password and say I need to use a different card.  Now I really won’t remember that password.  (Interestingly, it appears computer criminals are probably more enamored of SecureCode and similar schemes than the consumers who are forced to struggle with them.)

At some point on-line shopping just becomes too much of a hassle.  When this happened to me again just a few minutes ago I thought about it … and then cancelled the entire purchase.  It was just too much of a headache.  How many hoops must I (and everyone else) jump through to make a simple, small purchase on-line?  I get tired of all that jumping, and instead of saving $10 on a purchase on-line I will just go down to the local store and pay the extra money, get my merchandise (with a chance to actually SEE it before I get it), and be able to quickly return the goods if they don’t work – something that I find to be a major pain in the butt with mail order purchases.

Is Mastercard SecureCode ineffective and over-the-top?  I’d say so, and I am finally giving up trying to fight with it.  When will the companies supporting this overblown, tedious, and problematic system get it together?  Until they do, being confronted with the SecureCode system in the future will probably cause me to abort my purchase.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Related reading:
Fraud Shielding – A Perspective on Payer Authentication, 2009, thefraudblog.com

Fun with Internet Technoprofiling

High technology products increasingly adapt to our habits.  In yesterday’s post on internet advertising I noted how responsive the internet ads we see have become to what we search for, where we go, and what we do on the internet.  This practice, of tracking user viewing and searching habits and using the results to increase the effectiveness of advertising, is called technoprofiling.  Currently technoprofiling software isn’t very good and advertisers keep showing me things I already bought or things I bought for someone else, neither of which particularly interest me.  That’s not a very effective way to advertise, but the advertisers are working with what information they can get.  While the advertisers work out the bugs in their software this presents some opportunities for hi-tech fun similar to some we’ve seen in the past.  Do you remember (or still have a) TiVo?

The New Face of Advertising on the Internet – Still Much to Learn

Internet advertising is taking an ever-larger place in our lives, and increasingly sophisticated methods and systems are being used.  Have you noticed how the ads on web pages you visit are more and more often for businesses near you?  Have you noticed a correspondence between the things you search for on the web and the ads you see?  It’s no coincidence.