Mama, I'm gonna go to the bathroom and pick my nose. Can you come too?

As I was walking downstairs to the garage to empty trash for the Monday morning Waste Management pick up (cargo included regular trash, recyclables and used diapers), I realized what a useless being I am.  Waste Management picks up and processes our trash, GM/Toyota make our cars (mechanics repair them), our clothes are manufactured in other countries and transported to us by different companies, when they tear or a button or two come off, we dispose of them rather than repair them, electricity is generated and delivered to our residence, water, gas, piping, the house that was built for us were not by us.....  Just how much would we be able to accomplish if dropped on a different planet where we had to fend for ourselves, like in the movie Predators with Adrien Brody?  Yet, a few thousand years ago, we were completely self sufficient.  I would be a laughing stock of earth's inhabitants back then, but I can sure devise a mean spreadsheet on a laptop I have little knowledge of the mechanics.  Now we have refregirators so we can stock food derived from cattle we would have no clue how to raise, but we sure like to graze like them.

Sometimes I wonder if I were to travel back in time, whether on my own free will or kicking and screaming, how much would I accelerate the development of useful (and useless, e.g. text messaging) technology?  I can describe how I used to drive a kick a$$ car, and fly thousands of miles in a matter of hours 30K+ feet in the air, but would I be able to hasten the invention of automobiles, aircrafts, antibiotics, the steam engine, drip irrigation, electric power generation, AC/DC (the band), prevent the rise of communism and Stalin, fascism and Hitler, Pol Pot, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, AIDS, 400K+ deaths a year in the U.S. from cancer and complications caused by smoking, and 9/11?

In all of human history, we're the most spoiled bunch, and we have little to show apart from our college degrees that load us with useless information on how to push meaningless numbers around in a fictitious economy manufacturing nothing, but not how to diagnose and repair common breakdowns in our house (read Shop Class as Soul Craft).  I have a fire alarm 25 feet high on the ceiling that was chirping for weeks 'cause I couldn't find a feasible way of changing its battery until we called a handyman to get it fixed!  I bet our neighbors were enjoying the pleasant sound.  Pluck the moron who put a fire alarm on a cathedral ceiling.  I haven't been billed for the handy service yet, but I bet it's no more than $75 for that, and repairing our kitchen faucet from low water pressure.

Today, we are so dependent on others to provide us with the basic necessities of life that even my 2.5 year old daughter asked my wife to join her in the bathroom while she picked her nose.  These are her words:  "Mama, I'm gonna go to the bathroom and pick my nose.  Can you come too?"

How not to preserve gender equality and women's dignity

"France says that ensuring gender equality and women's dignity _ and upholding a tradition of secularism _ are among the reasons France is outlawing fully covering Islamic veils, like niqabs, which hide all but the eyes." - Newser, Oct. 29, 2010.  The ban was passed into law in October, 2010, to be effective in April, 2011.

No matter how backwards a niqab is, surely it's not as offensive as this:

But lo and behold, a mayor in an Italian southern seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia has banned "very skimply clothes".  "Short skirts will be allowed to be worn as long as they are in keeping with Mayor Luigi Bobbio's rule; they can't be revealing." - mydaily, Oct. 27, 2010

Surely, banning skimpy clothes would be in line with France's concern about gender equality and women's dignity. Therefore, if France is serious about the dignity of women, skimpy clothes should be banned as well.  Because if not, then the effort to ban the Islamic veil must have had motives other than what was publicly stated.

Vacuum of Death - Bring it!

My nightly routine involves spending one hour cleaning up after my 2.5 year old and washing by hand the baby bottles and their gazillion accessories.  One particularly difficult night, after spending overtime picking up rice from the floor surrounded by stuffed animals, I thought of the perfect product for this and other back breaking tidying up activities:

Vacuum of Death (VOD)!

Here's how this product works:  Vacuum of death is a must for any household that wants to remain stuffed animal free.  Any stuffed animals found on the floor will be seeked out and destroyed by this vacuum.  In its spare time, VOD stands guard at the entrance of the house, and at the first sign of an approaching stuffed animal, activates its 1,200 AMP motor, sucking up these most undesirable waste of products and incinerates them to smitherines from a distance of at least 100 yards (the length of a Football field).  VOD is a smart product, designed to identify repeat offenders; those who bring stuffed animal gifts on 2 visits or more, and offering them one of two options before they ring the doorbell:

1.  Go back to where they came from WITH their gift
2.  Meet the same fate as the stuffed animals described above, the American justice way

Here's why this product is necessary:

Politics of waste - What the heck happened to Stephanopoulos?

Today, after work I was on the treadmill huffing and puffing with a heavy stomach from a big lunch I had at a Japanese restaurant; Bento box with barbeque short ribs and assorted tempura.  On one of the suspended flat screens, Bill O'Reilly was blabbering about the 2010 election results with George Stephanopuolos.  I got to thinking.... what a mind boggling amount of effort and resources are wasted during election years.  The two opposing forces spend quite a bit of time and money jousting, and much of the effort is unproductive and less about the issues that affect the general population, and more about mobilizing the armies of partisanship and advancing selfish agenda.  The political air in the U.S. has been nasty, brutish and very polluted.  If there is such a thing as an aggregate national energy, defined as the total amount of effort available by all U.S. residents to accomplish tasks during any given period, a good chunk of it is wasted on these political machinations that serve nobody's interests.  These unproductive and often negative energies include all of the supposed news and commentary shows on T.V. with the red states and the blue states blablabla, and the processes to jockey for political gain such as "congressional redistricting".  Are you kidding me?   Such an activity is a part of our political process?  Redistricting is sometimes manipulated to maximize the effect of supporters' votes and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes, generally to keep incumbents in power.  You can read about this here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting

By the way, I couldn't remember former Clinton press secretary, George Stephanopuolos' name for this blog.  So when I visited Bill O'Reilly's page to look him up, I found the names of every guest before and after him on the O'Reilly show today, but not him!  The title of today's show (November 3rd) was "What the heck happened in the election?", when it should have been more aptly stated as "What the heck happened to Stephanopoulos?"

Politics of clutter and then some

This afternoon, as I was driving to East Coast Bagels in Irvine to pick up lunch, I saw numerous election signs lined up along Culver street.  I find it to be an insult to voters’ intelligence to assume these political signs somehow influence their vote.  These, along with all T.V., radio, newspaper and magazine political ads contain no useful information for voters, are heavily biased, exaggerated and often times inflammatory or false, undemocratic, and should absolutely be banned.  Why would a nation that prides itself in freedom and democracy allow this and other special interests detrimental to social and public welfare influence government and legislation?  How can money be allowed to wield such a force in election outcomes?  The American political system is, much like many of its institutions, e.g. its criminal justice system, in need of a little restructuring.  Such a system heavily influenced by money and special interests is self destructive, and it’s only a matter of time when drastic action will curb its stranglehold.  Proponents of free speech should take note that money and political ads silence the voice of the majority by introducing corruption in the process of fair representation.  So the current system is anti-free speech and should be dealt with accordingly.  Elections should not be about raising and spending money mercilessly.  Such a system opens the door to excessive special interest influence.  This is not government for the people, by the people.  This government serves the interests of the few who can afford to donate big money and hire expensive lobbyists.  "The long and bitter 2010 campaign season drew more than $3.5 billion in spending, making it the most expensive nonpresidential vote ever, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group." - CNN.  How much of this money is to provide voters with balanced and unbiased information to help them make informed choices?

Sadly, these election signs do influence voter behavior, which brings us to the next point:

Voting, like driving a car should be a privilege, not a right.  All voters should demonstrate a basic understanding of the candidates and issues they vote on.  All drivers are required to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the rules of the road, and driving erradically inflicts far less damage to society than uninformed voting.  So why not license citizens to vote?  How can voters lean heavily on one party, only to vote for the other in a measely two years?  Because most people vote based on their immediate financial welfare, that's why.  If John Doe had lost his job during Bush, and two years after voting for Obama is no better off, is it fair or rational to hold Obama, or even Bush to begin with accountable to his immediate state of welfare?  Shouldn't John Doe dig deeper to understand the root causes of long term unemployment rather than waste his vote based on which way the wind is blowing?

And to those apathetic voters who disengage because they perceive all politicians as corrupt or ineffective, your license to vote should be forever revoked.  Picking the lesser of two evils is still better than doing nothing.  Either that, or all citizens should be forced to vote as it's done in Australia to avoid the pitfalls associated with voter apathy and the undue influence of the right or left extremists.

A drive down Culver in Irvine, CA - Election signs as far as the eye can see