keeping your cool

funny email from government colleague who survived the great quake of oh-10
(names removed to protect the identity of the self-incriminating author)

Subject: FW: GOC Notification NT086-10 5.7 Magnitude Earthquake, Buckingham, QC

FYI.

This scared the crap out of me. When it hit, I was doing a presentation in a conference room in the basement of my office tower, discussing R&D testing that involved blowing up highway tanks...eerily enough. The first thing that crossed my mind was that something in the building had exploded...

Lessons learned from this - I don't respond well to these "emergency type" situations. I interrupted my presentation by yelling "OMG! What the hell is that?!" and proceeded to run out of the conference room, leaving everyone behind. I REALLY need to work on my emergency reaction skills...

Hope everyone is safe and sound. And I hope my bunnies aren't freaking out at home right now (or peeing all over their cage...poor things).

B

p.s. Everyone told me they will remember my presentation, but for the wrong reasons...

(dis)believer

bumper sticker: "Please, God, protect me from your believers."

western ideological sustainability

difficulties in Afghanistan etc where we (the western world) are trying to implement "democracy" is exposing some of its dirty secrets... Given:

1. Came across an article that concluded that the human brain was not wired for reading. The brain is naturally wired for moving, speaking, relating, and strategizing, but we have to re-wire our brains to communicate through writing.

2. Structured civilization (high degree of civility) is, Darwinianally speaking, the pinnacle of evolution that depends on education and hard work (and resources to exploit).

3. Higher education is to society what fertilizer is to grass: to keep it strong, you have to keep investing in it to prevent the weeds from sprawling.

4. American (and likely Canadian too) politics are won largely by convincing the biggest number of rich people that you can win over the biggest number of "ordinary" people. (interpretation of political fundraising and advertising campaigns)

1+2+3+4 = Human beings are social animals. Democracy is not our natural state, and requires great investment to maintain it. As the western world starts running out of environmental resources and poor (but still naive) people to exploit, where will investments to sustain our way of living come from? More importantly, will we have the resources (and knowledge) to protect against the weeds growing from within?

1. Came across an article that concluded that the human brain was not wired for reading. The brain is naturally wired for moving, speaking, relating, and strategizing, but we have to re-wire our brains to communicate through writing.

2. Schools are to society what fertilizer is to grass: to keep it strong, you have to keep investing in it to prevent the weeds from sprawling.

3. American (and likely Canadian too) politics are won largely by convincing the biggest number of rich people that you can win over the biggest number of peasants.

1+2+3 = Human beings are social animals. Democracy is unnatural.