I HATE BOTOX

I hate Botox. I hate collogen. I hate plastic surgery and wrinkle creams. I hate makeup. I hate anything that purports to make you look "20 YEARS YOUNGER!!" I hate anything that makes you feel bad about being old.

As you go through life, you tend to make the same facial expressions in similar situations. I know I smile big, laugh loud, and have some intense looks when involved in a discussion. I also know that as I experience life, and take care of (or fail to) myself, these life choices are impressing themselves into my body for life. I know the fact that I am generally a happy, upbeat person now will effect the way I look basically for the rest of my life.

Isn't this fascinating? My life is etched into my face. Why would I want to erase years of experience and life from my face? Why, basically, would I want to remove wrinkles? Aging is a beautiful thing, and we need to relearn how to age with grace, not fighting kicking and screaming.

I recently watched a Craig Ferguson monologue where he attributes the rise in valuing the youth to the 50s, when marketers believed that hooking the young on their products would serve them better, as that's when people begin deciding their brand loyalties.  Unfortunately, he claims, this turned into an overvaluing of youth, which eventually turned into an overvaluing of stupidity, and that this is "why everything sucks."

Obviously, I'm not going to go that far (although I do like his reasoning and conclusions), I do still think we overvalue youth.  People need to celebrate the experience written on their faces.  Unfortunately, I do think the way society is structured does not generally lead to "happiness."  People get so caught up in their daily grind that they lose sight of what they're doing it for, and that misery also gets etched into their faces.  I think as life has gotten less communal that the emphasis on youth has increased, as youth is now associated with freedom and energy, where their lives have become monotonous and boring, basically.  People want to get back to that, instead of enjoying what they have.

These products are marketed to make you feel miserable about yourself, or at least remind you that you are not happy.  So Enjoy your old age.  If you don't, no one's going to do it for you, and you'll go to the grave looking ugly and feeling wretched.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Life After the Death of the Public Option

Why doesn't the public option have the votes for passage? You'd think that a provision that is both fairly popular and money-saving was a good bet for passage. But the insurance industry really, really does not like the public option. We'd previously estimated that its lobbying influence has cost the public option something like nine (9) votes in the Senate.

This is an unpleasant truth. But just because it's an unpleasant truth doesn't mean that it's not the truth.

This is a problem. When a perfectly reasonable and useful idea can't get passed because special interests with a lot of money scuttle it, our democracy is broken. I don't even think insurance companies are necessary. The fact that they have power and money makes this whole thing even more absurd.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HEALTH CARE?!

I love Barack Obama. Let me start by saying that. Let me also say that I do believe that our health care system needs of overhaul. But seriously, man, what were you thinking? Did you really expect to just give this to Congress and have them work it out? Congress is a shit-show, and this debate has gotten so muddied by the fact that WE HAVE NO PLAN.

Let me back up a minute. Obama's been pursuing a very ambitious domestic agenda, and I agree that we need some changes. Unfortunately, by handing over the task of crafting a piece of legislation to Congress, he's handed over the framing of his message to them. Yes, he handed over his message by handing over the legislators, and too many of them are simply not on his side. They either oppose the type of reform he wants (Blue Dogs Dems) or oppose reform period (Republicans, although they wouldn't admit to being characterized that way). Now, the debate has gotten framed entirely around a handle of components (public option, employer mandate, etc.), and the debate and negotiations have boiled down to the inclusion or exclusion of these components.

This is to the detriment of the American people. This type of framing (which occurs all the time) shuts out alternative, innovative solutions. Obama could have easily framed this differently to come out with more innovative solutions. It has become pretty clear to me that when something like the "death panel" claim becomes a rampant part of the national discourse (a claim that is pretty clearly bullshit to anyone with half a brain), you have lost control of your message.

Personally, I think Obama needs to decide on something and fight for it. I know how he feels. Psychologically, I understand how much he wants to do something that everyone can agree with. Unfortunately, sometimes, people don't want to agree. I don't believe the Republicans are honestly trying to contribute to a solution. Obama needs to get behind some specifics and fight for them, because otherwise, he's not going to be very happy with what he gets.

I support the public option, mostly because I don't understand why health insurance can't be run by the government. I'm not saying the government needs to run health care (a la Britain), more like the government should provide health insurance (a la Canada). The conservatives fear a government takeover of health care, but unless the free market can really provide better service (which I don't believe it can), I see no reason why the government can't get involved. I'll re-outline some of the philosophical underpinnings of this in a later post (you can go back to an earlier post, if I didn't delete it, with my initial ramblings on the subject).

TRUTH AND HOW YOU KNOW IT

I don't know if I have any loyal readers (most, if any, of you, are probably just friends of mine), but to anyone who knows me, I am wont to argue against statements of absolute truth or moral certainty. You'll be a bit surprised to find me now arguing in favor of truth in probably the strangest places to find it: psychological and emotional motivations.

This basis for this thought starts with a conversation with my girlfriend (love of my life, of course :) ) where we were discussing a conflict that had arisen. During this conversation, I traced the things she had said, connected them with other things she'd said and believed, and tied them all down to a psychological understanding of her motivations and emotions in making the statements that she did. As I reached the conclusion of my understanding, we were both filled with this sense, this resonance inside of us that the explanation that I was making was true, that these were, in fact, the thoughts and motivations that caused the actions we were talking about.

In the middle of writing this post, the reverse happened, where I realized something about myself that I had kept buried. More often than not, we attempt to rationalize them into something else, or refuse to admit them, or dismiss them as untrue. These are egoistic responses, designed to protect your fragile psyche from the possibility of failure or truths that may hurt you, and we all do them. However, if you work with your mind on a consistent basis (which I should be doing more of, I'll admit), you'll very quickly notice the feeling you get when this comes up.

Quite often it's a feeling of resistance. Your mind is searching for alternative explanations for the feeling it doesn't want to admit. Commonly, this results in attacking the source of the anxiety, usually another person, in an attempt to deflect the criticism. Sometimes it's just flat denial. It's not true, you won't believe it. Sometimes it comes out as a form of apathy, where you don't care in order to prevent yourself from feeling hurt by it.

All of these feelings may come up in different situations, depending on causes, and it is only through practice dealing with these feelings that you can let go of them when they come up and not let them control you. The inability to deal with your own faults and work with them will only cause suffering.

We're all working on these type of things, and if you believe in personal growth, becoming intimate with that which is preventing you from being the person you want be will help you eventually not be overpowered by those feelings.

The only TRUTH is the one that exists within you.

(FYI, this post has been back-dated. I started writing and forgot about it, hehe.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8166413.stm

Amusingly, the caption under the photo said something about only children growing up to be "little emperors." Not really examined in the article, but I was wondering: is China's one-child policy going to leave China with a country full of people with "only child syndrome," i.e. an entire country of bratty, selfish people with entitlement complexes. How would that impact international politics as China sets itself up as a major player on the world stage?

We already know that Western countries in general suffer from a sense of entitlement and patrimony. Just look at our relationship with most poor nations; most people view them from one of two categories: they are a resource to be exploited (sweat shops, etc.; a view that stems from feeling more entitled to their resources than them), or we need to give them money and food so they don't starve (i.e. foreign aid; I don't disparage people who are trying to help, but they need control of their country back, not handouts). Both viewpoints stem come from a sense of superiority ("we need to help them," as opposed to "we need to allow them to help themselves.").

If China becomes a major player, I can't even begin to imagine how this dynamic is going to shape up. We're already arrogant, Russia's defensive, and the EU just feels meek and timid. No one is going to step in between a fight with the US and China. Granted, right now, we have enough self-interest to cooperate: they buy our debt and manufacture our goods, and we both buy each others' goods. We're huge trading partners. Unfortunately, I have to believe that as resources start getting scarce (which they will, whether you choose to admit it or not), we'll increasingly see each other as competitors, not only for resources, but for superiority.

WHY I BLAME THE SYSTEM
(and not people)

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/about-looking-for-someone-to-blame.html

I don't usually like to use other people words in explaining myself, but Mr. Beaven (pronounced Beh-vin, not Bee-vin) perfectly explains why I think the problem is not about merely changing the people at the top but changing the structure. I've been to business school; the mode of thinking that he speaks about is exactly the box we're forced into. In the business world, the corporate system forces you to think and analyze situations only by looking at how your actions benefit the corporation, for whom you are a representative agent. Whatever is good for the corporation is good for you, and you really are never forced to consider how your actions affect those who are involved with the corporations (other employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, etc.; these people are called "stakeholders", and becoming beholden to them as well is the subject of some recent economic thought, although it certainly hasn't been put widely into practice).

It's interesting because if you read about Bernie Madoff, all reports seem to indicate he was a great guy. Obviously, what he did is more of an obvious fraud than any "normal" corporation, but the idea is still the same: these "people" (as a corporation is legally considered a person) pursue their basic self-interst, i.e. making as much money as possible, regardless of who you harm in the process. The only difference is that in the Bernie Madoff case, the damages were direct, large, and human, whereas corporations are doing slow, long-term damage to the environment, and it's not as clear why it would be the corporation's fault.

People are taught by our system to think selfishly, and it's a hard philosophy to break through. It's harder to identify what you think and why, and when you make decisions over and over, taking into account the same factors over and over, those factors achieve a level of moral certitude.

I know this is all a bit rambling. The whole idea derives from a few conversations I have had with friends of mine. They've claimed, at various times, that it is the people, these "faceless executives" making millions and ripping off the PEOPLE, who must be stopped. I've always likened this to giving Tylenol for the brain tumor, or cutting our lung cancer without asking the person to stop smoking. These executives are products of a system that rewards them for self-interested actions. Corporations are programmed machines (I've often likened them to "spirits" or "ghosts", as they have no independent existence outside of the corporate charter on which they're written) whose sole goal and motivation is to make money. (I know I've said this before, but...) when you work for a corporation, and all your decisions are made in terms of that goal, you inherit that goal as a life philosophy of your own.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/24/adam-smith-corporations-markets-marketsp07-cx_mh_1025hodak.html

http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/betrayal.htm

I find it funny when free-marketists champion Adam Smith as their original hero, as he had a lot of nasty things to say about the corporation (called a joint-stock company in his time). It's funny to read the Forbes article above because they seem to think Adam Smith would be somewhat fond of today's corporate structure without at all addressing any of the complaints he makes about it. The problem is that, in essence, the purpose of the corporation is also its greatest fault. A corporation exists to make money and shield its investors from liability. It keeps investors at arms-length, only interested in how much money the corporation can make them.

In light of all this, and reflecting on our recent financial collapse, it becomes harder and harder to imagine a future where this sort of destruction does not occur without getting rid of the corporate structure. Any change that does not address this corporate programming and arms-length investors are only going to me technocratic solutions which do not really get at the fundamental cause of the problem.

WHAT IS SECURITY, REALLY?

CNN Article: Investigators Smuggle Bombs Parts into Federal Buildings

I seems like every time a study is done on our national security, in whatever areas we choose to do it in (be it at ports, on airplanes, and now, in federal buildings), we fail with flying colors. Not long after 9/11, I remember the Time article about national security, claiming that only something like 2% of the crates that pass through our ports actually get inspected. Ultimately, I think our at-the-door security is, and always will be, woefully inadequate to protect ourselves from another terrorist attack. That isn't to say we can't protect ourselves; I do believe diplomatic and intelligence efforts working together can do the bulk of the job. However, if a terrorist gets to the door with a bomb, and nothing has stopped him yet, people are going to die, and a guard with an X-ray machine isn't really going to be able to stop him as well as we'd like to think.

I'd like to use this article to make two points about our security: first, the at-the-door security (i.e. the guy running a porn site from his post - I'm not making this up, read the article!) is mostly designed to accomplish two things: to make white, middle-class Americans feel safe flying and otherwise going about their daily lives, and to make the administration (first Bush, continuing with Obama) look like they're trying to keep us safe. We don't see diplomatic efforts to get Pakistan to help us look for the Taliban; we don't see the spies in Arab countries getting intel on terrorist organizations, and those efforts don't score political points or make us feel better. Guards with machine guns do. There's no reason to have the national guard in Penn Station (or whoever; they carry fucking machine guns. Like, really?).

That being said, though, in combination with intel and diplomacy, as long as we continue to meddle in other countries' affairs (and we will, as long as there are vested interests who stand to benefit from that meddling, and as long as we have a system that allows them to get what they want), we are going to need at-the-door security to help guard against specific threats. If we get intel that a building is going to be bombed, we need people who are there who are going to be able to protect that building. Personally, I don't want that type of job contracted out to a private company; I want someone who who is beholden to the US Government, and by extension, the people the United States. I don't want someone who only answers to a private company, whose prime goal is to make money.

This may sound contradictory, and in a sense, it is. I don't think our security is or will be that good, but if anyone is going to do it, the government should, because if we're going to pay for protection, the free market isn't going to get you the best security, it's going to get you the cheapest.

"He also said security is 'budget-driven; it's not risk-driven.'"

Although it doesn't say so in the article, I would bet the primary reason for this is due the organization being a private contractor. There are plenty of stories from contractors in Iraq (which I don't think people realize, but that was essentially a privately-contracted war; read the The Shock Doctrine) using shoddy materials and bilking the government out of the cost of full-price goods. There was one story in the book where the company contracted to run the Baghdad airport using fork lifts that were already there, repainting them, and charging the government for the cost of brand new ones (this is from memory, so I could be wrong or slightly different; however, the idea is still the same).

The market should provide most goods and services, but there are plenty of instances where the government should be providing some of these things. This happens to be one of them.

Military and defense run for-profit is a most evil type of creature, as the expansion of war and death essentially becomes the programmed goal of that organization. The last thing we need is more of that.

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF THE FINANCIAL SECTOR?

I know up to this point in our history, Wall Street, with its big buildings, tough executives, and large buckets of MONEY, has developed a bit of a mystique about it. I don't know what it is, personally; all these people running around, creating, buying and selling all sorts of esoteric financial products, working absurd hours, and making more money than they know what to do with, never really appealed to me. However, in light of these new financial regulations (and more importantly, the entire collapse of our economy), I have more important questions we need to be asking ourselves.

Looking through the "myth of Wall Street," what are banks really supposed to do? Banks and the financial sector in general do not produce anything. They do not contribute to the output of this country; they provide a service, which facilitates the production of goods and services from other parts of our economy. If the financial sector merely serves as a lubricant for the rest of the economy, I have two questions that follow: is it really necessary to save the financial sector in its own right? Is it necessary that banks be run as a private enterprise?

"INNOVATION" AND OBAMA'S NEW FINANCIAL REGULATIONS

I just started reading an article, and I was struck by a quote from a Republican senator who feared feared financial regulation because it may "stifle innovation." I understand that as a concern when regulating most industries (although regulations might stimulate innovation, albeit only in getting around them). However, when regulating the financial industry, you have to be aware of the fact that innovation in the financial industry is what caused the problem in the first place. In fact, I might argue that part of the problem with the financial industry in general is its constant innovation, creating new and interesting ways of moving money and risk around without actually creating anything of value.

That's the key difference: innovation in the financial sector doesn't add value; it just becomes a new tool for banks to play with. People then "created" money on top of this new "innovation," which evaporated like dew on a summer day the moment the sun came out and showed everyone what's going on. Their house of cards, built on the innovation that made everyone enormously wealthy, came tumbling down.

Don't get me wrong: these innovations were designed specifically for the purpose of spreading risk around, not heaping it all in one place, but when money is created and people get wealthy without actually creating anything of value, you have a problem. That's what financial innovation does, essentially; it creates and perpetuates bubbles.

I read about this study, not long ago, in my Finance for Social Theorists class:

Pop Psychology

Some of the things I found interesting were these: first, every time they ran the experiment with the same people and the same conditions, the bubble occurred earlier, until eventually they ran the experiment and no bubbles occurred at all. Second, if they changed the conditions of the experiment, the bubbles reoccurred. What this says to me is that maybe we shouldn't want financial innovation. Maybe regulating the market to stifle financial innovation is not such a bad thing.

HOUSEKEEPING

I am going to try and get more involved in the social web, considering I plan on making it my job, so I'm going to try and post more here. I know almost nobody reads this, and this place has been more of a repository for my ideas rather than anything anyone else finds interesting. In the meantime, I am on Twitter (so I'm cool now). Follow me here: http://www.twitter.com/NimhOfJoy. At most so far, you'll probably see germs of ideas. If you follow me, we can discuss it before it turns into a full-fledged post.

Also, I'll probably be going through my old posts and hiding them. A lot of them are angst-y teen rants, and they're not very good. If there are any gems lurking in there you want to keep, I suggest making a copy of them and putting them someplace. I won't be deleting anything, but you won't have access to it.

Hopefully, we'll turn this into a real blog, not just something I putz around with once in a while.

THE TEACHINGS OF THE WONDERFUL MS. KEOGH

When I was in high school, I attended SAT prep class to prepare for college applications. On my first day of class, I was a student of Ms. Keogh who taught the verbal section of the test, prior to the switch to the New SAT. In my high school days, I was a bit rebellious, in that teenage-angst-y kind of way, and I showed up to this class in pants that were a bit too tattered and a camo hat.

Ms. Keogh was an old woman, very traditional and set in her ways, and when I showed up the first day in those clothes, she tore into me. She would claim now that I showed up with an attitude; it's certainly a possibility, but it's not something I distinctly remember. Regardless, this defined the beginning of our relationship: I didn't like her, she didn't like me, and we were at odds for the first few classes I attended.

One day, though, I showed up to one of her classes, and I was the only student there. We began, as we usually do, reviewing the verbal section, doing questions together. We started off doing a reading comprehension, and I answered every answer correctly for that section. Continuing, we did a few verbal sections, all of which I did very well on.

From that day forward, her attitude towards me changed completely. While she still made fun of my dress, as were my parents :), she immediately began to respect me for my ability. Later, after completing the SATs, I worked at that SAT prep class as a tutor and worked alongside her, eventually becoming one of her favorite assistents.

I learned a lot from her, not only from teaching an academic subject, but I learned how the world was viewed through her eyes, this old, traditional woman, someone who I had assumed would be completely out of touch with the way the world works now. It was fascinating, and not all of her observations were completely off-base.

The two biggest things she taught me, though, were this: first, it is possible to change someone's first impression of you. Unfortunately, I am aware that first impressions often become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the interpreter reacting to his or her impression, and in your reaction to him or her, you become what they see in you. However, if there is more to you than meets the eye, as I believe is the case with most people, staying true to what's good in you will open the eyes of others. Their viewpoints can be changed.

Secondly, and most importantly, she taught me how I react in the face of that kind of adversity. I worked with her three or four times a week, and I put up with a fair amount of ribbing regarding my clothing, and I was forced to stay good-natured about it. That skill has become increasingly useful as one deals with lots of different personalities on a daily basis, in school, work, and social life, and I have Ms. Keogh to thank for helping me learn to deal with that.

Ms. Keogh, I know you'll never read this, but thank you for everything. I hope I may get the chance to speak with you before you leave us.