Recently in analysis paralysis Category

President Obama Will Accept His Nomination at a Stadium Named After a Giant Multinational Bank

this weekend provided me with a great example of the extreme difference between the service you get from an enormous corporation and a small business. our society is barreling down the road toward a future comprised only of gigantic corporations. it is possible for a well-run corporation to provide good customer service -- if the corporation makes that its goal. in my personal experience, apple has made customer service a priority, but a quick google search will reveal that many others have had the same horrible giant-corporation service experience that I have had.

people in my parents' generation have noted the effects of increasing corporatism in our society, but i don't think it's well understood that the sheer size of giant corporations guarantee the impossibility of customer service, at least in the sense that my parents grew up with. my two stories from this weekend will illustrate what I mean.

on Sunday, I went for a bike ride. 25 miles from home, my shifting cable broke. this meant that my bike was reduced from 30 gears to 3, and as a bonus, they were the three hardest gears. this meant, in my hilly home, i was basically stranded. i probably could have biked home over the hills in the hard gears, but i very likely would have injured my knees.

like an idiot, i had no money on my person. still, i took a chance and rode an extra 3 miles to a bike shop. i walked in, explained to the mechanic that i had no money but did have a broken cable. he was already working on a bike. he took it off the rack, put mine on the rack, replaced the broken parts, and fixed my bike. he told me i could pay when i got home. we'd never met before, i had never bought anything at that bike shop. i rode home on my perfectly fixed bike, showered, then brought my money and my bike back to the shop. i paid for the repairs and gave them my bike to perform additional expensive, non-emergency maintenance.

the bike mechanic (who was not the store owner, and did not ask anybody for permission for extending me credit) treated me like a human being and took a risk on me. like a good member of society, i rewarded this shop with my business.

starting last Monday, our home internet was failing for 1-2 hours every night, beginning at 9PM. it was entirely predictable and repeatable. on Thursday we called Comcast and reported the outage, while it was in progress. they acknowledged the outage, said they didn't know the cause, and scheduled a technician visit for Saturday morning. the technician arrived on Saturday and said he had no idea what the problem was, and that he could not see it. of course he could not see it, we said, because it happens at night. Comcast will not send a technician at 9PM. we confirmed with the technician that there was no way for them to put a technician at our location when the problem was happening.

he said we had a very old modem, which is true, but he also said it was extremely unlikely that the very old modem would cause a scheduled outage. he also said some of our coax wiring was faulty, which also was not the cause of the problem. he rewired the house anyway, to satisfy some urge of his own. he apologized for not seeing the problem, and left. that night, at the regularly scheduled time, the internet went out. we spoke to 4 different Comcast service reps, and each one told us a different thing. one claimed that he could not fix our outage because our very old modem was not supported by his database. this didn't seem to present a problem for the subsequent technician. one tech asked for my social security number, the other three did not.

after a lot of frustration, Comcast reset something, and our service was restored -- for another 24 hours. the problem occurred, as scheduled, Sunday night. We expect it to return tonight. We have a new modem that will arrive on Tuesday, not because we have any great need for a new modem, but because until we have a new modem, Comcast will keep blaming our "unsupported" modem for the problem. When our internet goes out Tuesday night, with our shiney new "supported" modem, what options will we have? They won't send a technician at the time the problem occurs, and when the problem is not occurring, there's nothing for the technician to see. So we're stuck.

Now, out of the 6 Comcast personnel we've talked with in the last week, 5 of them were very nice, and as helpful as they possibly could have been. But not a goddamn one of them spoke to any of the others. Nobody properly took notes on our problem, and nobody read the notes. They didn't even have a proper standard procedure for dealing with customers (social security number? why?). They did useless, unasked-for repairs. They blamed my hardware for the problem, and offered absolutely no plan for resolving this problem. In the end, we may have no choice but to take our business elsewhere.

Unfortunately, as a gigantic corporation, Comcast is able to buy up all the bandwidth in a region and squash small startups. This is "capitalism" according to some. What it means in practice is that a customer of Comcast may expect overall entirely incompetent "service" from the company, while each individual person may actually be very pleasant. The problem is that the corporation is so huge, decentralized, and isolated from its actual infrastructure and customers that communication -- and thus competent problem resolution -- is not possible. It is possible to solve common "we've seen that a million times before" problems. But real debugging of complex problems, in a timely fashion that would actually satisfy customers, is entirely impossible.

It is the very size of the company that causes this problem. It is why I quit Bank Of America after being a customer for a decade and a half. BofA is "too big to fail" and they're also "too big to be competent".

The constant, cancerous growth of corporations into giant corporations is going to make our future a nightmare. Imagine a future where all bike shops are organized like Comcast or BofA. when my shifter cable snaps, I have to make an appointment for between 8am and 12am, and the technician says he's not sure what the problem is but he's going to replace my handlebar wraps because that can't hurt. where every time I call "customer care" to ask them to fix my shifter cable, I have to explain from the beginning what happened, and they tell me that my shifters are unsupported and I need to purchase a whole new bicycle. Imagine that this is the only bike shop within 10,000 miles.

this is where we are heading. the notion that "capitalism" means unchecked growth and consolidation fails totally to consider the unpleasant consequences. it is simply untrue that gigantic corporations can be dealt with like the small businesses in my parents' memories. when BofA "accidentally" arranges the order of your transactions so that you incur a major fee, there is no person you can talk with who gives a shit. when Verizon charges you a thousand bucks in overage fees because you forgot to turn off your phone before checking it to Australia, who is going to help you out? you signed away your rights as a human being when you entered your contract with them.

there are solutions to these problems. capitalist solutions, in fact, as jefferson and washington understood capitalism. the sort of capitalism that was destroyed by the railroads and our first American monopolies.

infrastructure is owned by the people. the highways and freeways of the USA are publicly owned (or used to be). the same for bridges, waterways, airwaves, and aquifers (again, used to be). the infrastructure is licensed to companies which can then compete on quality of product and service. there are no monopolies, no duopolies, no false competition like we have between the 3 mobile carriers or 2 internet providers that americans can "choose" between.

i have roughly 30 bike shops within 20 miles that I can choose from. i don't need scare quotes around the word. i can truly choose. and as a middle class person with a reasonable wage, my choice can actually be based on something other than price. i don't have to choose the closest, cheapest bike shop. i can choose one that provides the best service. and in this way, i can promote good service.

poor people don't have this luxury. they must choose based on price. and thus, a growing pool of poor people promotes cheap service, not good service.

this is the crucial broken part of our "capitalist" system. as more and more people become poor, as more and more of our collective national wealth, resources, and infrastructure are handed over to the Comcasts and ATTs and BofAs of the world, there are fewer people who are able to promote good service with the tools of capitalism. As the giants grow and consolidate, as competition is killed before it can get a foothold, the giants have less incentive to provide service. soon, good service is a forgotten memory, with nobody wealthy enough to demand it, and nobody left to provide it.

that is where we are heading. until we start caring, large scale, about living in a society and stop pretending that we're all isolated islands of total self-sufficiency, we'll keep sliding into the united states of comcast.

i need to get back into focus. i delayed a bunch of distractions (new obsessive video game, rekindled espresso obsession) to make room for the winter vacation, and then when i got back, i indulged all the distractions. so rather than space them out over a couple of months, they hit all at once. this, of course, leads to suffering in the arenas of language study, job focus, athletics, etc. in other words, i need to get back on the get-smart-and-exercise wagon.

fortunately, i think the new espresso setup requires so little tinkering to get good results, i should have plenty of time for the good stuff.

now i just need to beat the video game two or three times, and get bored with the online play, so i can get on with the rest.

and tomorrow, everything will change again.

today, things are pretty much the same.

but between yesterday and tomorrow, our lives in 2012 will be rather different from our lives in 2011.

fortunately, both changes are likely to unfold positively.

i'll post pics on thursday so you can see what i mean :)

i'm (i guess) some kinda flaming liberal. and yet the only person who has even remotely represented my liberal interests in the past several presidential races? ron paul.

good wholesome liberals point out that he's a religionist, and anti-abortionist, a monetary-fantasy-land-ist, and a racist. i won't bother linking to the evidence, it's easy to find, and some of it is pretty conclusive.

but the perfect is the enemy of the good. ron paul isn't perfect. he may indeed be a racist. but he's not going to get into office and set up extermination camps for illegal aliens. nor is he going to get into office and appoint klansmen to the supreme court.

what he will do is stop sending billions of undeserved foreign aid dollars to undeserving foreign countries. he will stop the wars (for real, not just fake endings like bush and obama). he will not start stupid wars. he will cut back or end as much as he can the wasteful drug wars. he will expand the freedoms of the 99%. he will not fight for the 1%.

ron paul is a man whose tune has not changed. he stands for the same thing today as he did fifteen years ago. when he says he'll do something, he means it. only the severely uninformed could possibly believe the same about ANY of the other candidates, no matter their party.

all the other choices we have, or have had in my voting lifetime, have been liars, by commission or omission. ron paul -- whatever his stances on race or abortion or religion -- does not seem to be a liar or a sneak. and when you look at what he has said he will do as president, these are things he CAN do as president, without help from the useless and freedom-hating congress. contrast this to the pie-in-the-sky crap from the other candidates. contrast it to the warmongering towards Iran. contrast with the clever schemes from obama and newt to funnel money to the bankers.

i really don't get the liberal hate for RP. ultimately we are judged by our actions, not by our thoughts or our writings. as president, ron paul may think whatever he likes about black people, mexicans, and arabs. if he avoids war with iran, he'll be remembered more favorably than any of his recent warmongering, freedom-hating, waterboarding predecessors and opponents.

a vote for anyone other than RP is a vote for more war, more weapons contracts, more mercenaries, more torture, more secret prisons, more assassinations of american citizens, more money for the bankers, more guantanamo, and more money for overseas oppressive regimes of all kinds. i don't see how a good liberal could support that.

a chain email popped into my inbox this morning, about a charming little old lady who packs heat so she can be afraid of nothing. i replied with some statistics showing that gun owners are 30% more likely than non-owners to die from guns, whether suicide or homicide. statistics relating gun ownership or concealed carry to crime are not so easy to find, apparently the data is not collected.

but one thing is clear to me: i've had guns (loaded? probably) pointed at me twice in my life, both by people that I am absolutely certain consider themselves "responsible gun owners". the first was by an idiot redneck who couldn't cook a steak but wanted to show he wasn't scared of any badge carrying women. the second was last month by a grieving drunken redneck who was basically just trying to say "nice to meet you".

in both cases, i would not have felt safer had i been armed. but i would have felt a lot safer if the rednecks HAD NOT been armed.

this year about five blocks from my home, a "responsible gun owner" went off his meds and waved his gun around in the drugstore that I frequently visit. he was shot dead by police shortly after.

the entirety of human history, from the slaughter of innocents at jericho and troy, to the slaughter of innocents at dresden and my lai, to the slaughter of innocents at columbine and VA tech (twice now) shows that the concept of "responsible weapon ownership" is a complete farce. it is possible that individual humans are capable of not shooting me dead, but collectively, and on average, the human race is entirely incapable of owning weapons responsibly.

i have no policy proposals (short of personal proposals like moving to a place that understands that the proliferation of tools of violence is algebraically simplifiable to the proliferation of violence itself). it is not possible to make policy when the people at the table bring their own sets of "facts" or rely on false assumptions like "responsible gun ownership".

were all gun owners responsible, we'd have peace and rainbows. and if my aunt had wheels she'd be a trolley. but easy access to weapons ensures that our noble armed overlords will continue to militarize against us, and it's hard to blame them from seeing "us" versus "them" when "us" could be waiting for "them" with a military arsenal.

i have no policy proposals, but i do propose that people question their assumptions and prioritize solutions based on facts. it is a fact that i've twice had my life clearly threatened by firearms, and it is also a fact that in neither situation was i being robbed or carjacked or kidnapped or any of the things which concealed carry people think they're going to stop with their guns. in one case I was paying my restaurant bill (and those motherfuckers got no fucking tip that day) and in the other case I was hanging out in my sister-in-law's home. i would much prefer to live in a world where I don't have loaded guns pointed at me than in a world where I have the right to point my loaded guns at other people.

and you know what? when I'm not visiting my relatives, that's exactly the world I do live in. until I run into the next "responsible gun owner" idiot who wants to have a little fun with me.

part 1

the next day was a little more straightforward. hops and i woke up, watched what passes for news on the tele, had a breakfast sans bananas, and went to her folks house to see what was happening in the world.

after a good deal of back and forth i convinced hops to go for a run before lunch, which we did. i'm very glad to be back in running shape. it takes so little to get an exercise fix when you're an uninjured runner. just some warm clothes, a pair of shoes (or not), and off you go. that's what we did, with some laps for distance. back to the hotel for a quick shower, and hops revealed her brilliant plan for lunch: dr. phil's catfish and ribs, on account of their catfish is friggin awesome and her mom doesn't eat meat on fridays.

so we packaged up the old folks and drove to dr. phil's. hops stayed outside to call our hotel in STL and cancel a night, so we could stay with her sister a bit longer. i went in with the old folks to order. i ordered two catfish plates, and then it was their turn.

"ooooh, there's nothing i can eat!" exclaimed the mother-in-law. i pointed out the catfish, which was (surprisingly) hard to see on the menu, and told her we came here just so she could have her friday fish.

"i see it, but i hate catfish!" she said. oh crap.

so, eventually we ordered three catfish plates and one side of green beans. i'm sorry to say dr. phil's ribs are not worth ordering, but the catfish is perhaps the best i've ever had, and he didn't let us down. the side of green beans was pitifully small and pathetic, but had no ham in it.

then it was back to the sister's house to hang out. Earl stopped by at some point and gave me a pair of camo hunting moccasins a-la-wal-mart, just like his. ha! very nice, and very warm. i wore them later to the funeral, as they were nicer than my flip-flops and they were greatly appreciated by all the hunters in attendance.

after an afternoon of really just hanging out, we went to a local korean food place that was surprisingly good. we had fun hanging out with the nephews. in all, a decent distraction from the stresses of the previous day, but things were not really over yet.

A strong majority of Americans believe marijuana should be legal for medical purposes, but just over half say that pot use for recreation should be illegal, according to a new poll Friday.

Seventy-seven percent say doctors should be allowed to prescribe small amounts of marijuana for patients suffering from serious illnesses, the CBS New poll found. But with the concept of medical marijuana comes a dose of skepticism - just 31 percent believe the pot purchased under medical marijuana programs is actually being used to alleviate suffering.

Americans, by and large, apparently, feel qualified to make the distinction between "alleviating suffering" and "recreation". I don't think any such distinction exists, but if it does, I highly doubt that 69% of my fellow Americans are expert enough in the philosophy of living to accurately draw the line.

I strongly agree. Americans have always had a knack for extreme hypocrisy.

A new study finds that the use of antidepressants has almost doubled among people in the U.S. between the years 1996 and 2005 - increasing from 5.84 percent to 10.12 percent. That translates to a grand total of 27 million people.

27 million people in this country have "suffering" that apparently can only be relieved by someone selling them something. Nobody actually knows how many marijuana users there are in the states, but a totally not biased site like "drugabuse.gov" estimates 15 million users. Now I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me like there are a shitload of people in this country "suffering" from vaguely defined illnesses. Less than half of them reach out to illegal drugs, and more than half of them reach out to horribly dangerous commercial drugs.

and while some of the worst people in the world literally drug-abuse themselves unto deafness, we have 69% of Americans passing judgement on 15 million of their neighbors, vaguely and arbitrarily defining some sketchy line between "alleviation of suffering" and "recreation".

i'll tell you what: any recreation that I engage in, whether it's exercise, reading, watching a movie, eating a pizza, or biting my fingernails: all these recreational activities exist solely to relieve some kind of suffering, whether it's hunger, depression, boredom, fatness, or the unbearable lightness of being.

i've done enough suffering in my lifetime (and my suffering is pretty damned minor compared to most) to know that one person's suffering is another person's daily life.

i am angered and saddened that so many americans think their neighbors are too stupid and irresponsible to make adult choices about how to relieve the suffering that is inherent to the human experience, the suffering noted by philosophers and priests over all of human history.

marijuana will be fully legal in this country some day; whether it is by legislation or total collapse of society, that remains to be seen. young people these days are not as dumb as my generation was at their age. they have many more distractions, but they also have the internet, they have a whole world of lies and truths right at their fingertips. surveys show that young people are greatly in favor of ending prohibition, because the internet has enabled them to fact check government lies with far more ease than was possible in my youth.

"Meanwhile, among young Americans under the age of 30, 52 percent favor legalizing pot."

These kids grew up watching their parents Paxil and Prozac and Budweiser themselves into oblivion, all while raging against hippies and their pot. These kids are not stupid. They grew up on Ritalin and Adderall. Everyone in their life was constantly on drugs, and they're supposed to "just say no" to marijuana? Why? What's wrong with drugs?

In parallel development, OWS is forcing the police state to reveal itself, and even, perhaps, question itself. I think the police actions in the coming months will escalate to the point of wide-scale intolerability. When the police state falls, prohibition must also fall. By legislation, attrition, or total collapse, the end of prohibition is coming soon, and Americans will be forced to allow their neighbors the freedom to define their own, individual distinction between "relieving suffering" and "recreation".

i've been a big fan of android since almost the beginning. my first smartphone was an HTC G1, and my second was an HTC G2.

the G1 was basically obsolete 2 months after I'd gotten it. big, clunky, poor battery life, and in just a couple of months, the battery swelled mysteriously and caused random power outages on the phone. i solved this with a simple $3 aftermarket battery, but i had to figure all this out myself since the outages were random and could not be reproduced in the tmob store.

the G2 had nicer finish, but was, oddly, more heavy than the G1. still, it had all the features I liked on the G1, plus it could run the newer OS versions.

except that HTC had decided that they knew better than google, and wrote their own bluetooth stack for the phone. that bluetooth stack works only 50% of the time with my car. 2 of my old moto dumbphones worked just fine with my car, as did the G1. but HTC deviated from the spec, or didn't test their code, or whatever they did, and after several OTA updates, my G2 does not work reliably with my car.

then i started getting random shutdowns of the G2. the battery was not obviously expanded/bowed like it was on the G1. lots of research led me to a clue: the idiotically placed metal strips on the G2 battery touch metal in the battery housing, and short out. sure enough, my battery had the metal strips (not all do). i stuck a piece of paper in there to cover the metal strips, and since then, no power outages.

HTC's ridiculously bad quality control has brought me too much grief. the G2 is my last HTC phone and I recommend against anyone getting an HTC phone in the future.

it's just never been seriously attempted. and for good reason: its very nature dictates that it cannot be implemented. but that's no reason not to try. "utopia" is a word that gets thrown around as an epithet, confusingly confused with the word "dystopia" in the minds of those who oddly desire not to live in utopia.

history shows, again and again, that nature points out the folly of men, and over and over, usually within a tragically short timespan, the human institutions built on the hopes and dreams of the best of us are infiltrated and subverted to service the greed and nightmares of the worst of us.

there are pockets of resistance throughout the world, where local cultures have decided to create utopias not ruled by greed and irrational fear. but no-one is independent, and those places are under constant threat of destruction by insane superpowers that have no choice but to impose their empire, or die.

humanity has always lived under the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. in the USA, the proud tradition of democracy, put in place by the greatest practical idealists that the world has ever produced, has been infiltrated and subverted by The Money Party, which dangles just enough false-dichotomies in front of our noses to keep us divided in the only ways that do not matter: pro-choice vs pro-life, flat-tax vs progressive-tax, hawks vs doves, hippies vs squares, tea party vs occupy. and so we vote "left" or "right" and pat ourselves on the back for electing our guy, who then goes on to service the needs of those who donated the big dollars. not you. the same people the other guy was going to service.

he who has the gold, makes the rules, because that's the consensus reality we've all agreed to by participating in the rules made by those with the gold.