Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Thus it has always been...

...and thus it shall always be.

This thinking is found on both sides of the aisle, from the young Marxist of my last post to the second-hand Fox News I was exposed to recently.

The guest was blaming the Millenials problems on poor parenting by Baby Boomers who just "stuck their kids in front of iPads."

Well, yeah, you can certainly make the case that Millenials woes and need for adulting classes is attributable to poor parenting.  Many things in early adulthood can be attributed to a lack of pre-adulthood training.  Then again, blaming parenting for everything sort of lets people off the hook for responsibility to educate themselves, and frankly, the Millenials taking adulting classes are doing precisely that, so I'd be more inclined to applaud those ones.

Also, I really wish I'd thought of adulting classes and lived in an area urban enough to capitalize on this idea.  Sadly, most of the Millenials around here grew up in farms and/or the (used to be) Boy Scouts, and are therefore pretty well-equipped for adulting.

What you can't make a case for, though, is that Millenials were plopped in front of iPads.

Why?

Because Millenials run from 1981-2002, and the first iPad was released in 2010, and, at a base price of $600 inflation adjusted, was cost-prohibitive to wide circulation let alone giving to a clumsy little brat.

This means that the youngest Millenials were 8 before they handled an iPad or other tablet.  90% were at least double digits; 77% were at least in their teens, and 44% were in their 20's.*

Okay, so, he should have said "Commodore 64" or for the younger kids "Gateway 95." Big deal.

Well, it is a big deal.  He just asserted a narrative that Millenials grew up plugged in 24/7 like a lot of kids these days are (Supposedly.  Ours sure aren't.).  Except, that's completely false.  If my parents plopped me in front of anything, it was an old Zenith Space Command Color that weighed as much as me.  Not exactly something that fit in a stroller, plus, you'd need a really long extension cord.  But not a cable, because it had rabbit ears.

Oh, sure, the school's Apple IIC had a carrying handle, but it also weighed 18 pounds with the monitor, so I never carted it around.  Plus it cost $3000 inflation-adjusted, so it wasn't the sort of thing you let a kid play with unsupervised.

This guest just made an obvious, objectively false statement, and rather than anyone calling him out on his (at best) stupidity or (at worst) dishonesty, the talking heads nodded along sagely.  The narrative trumped the facts for them.  They wanted to believe that the proliferation of children playing everywhere on smart devices has always been a thing that can be blamed for Millenial infantlization...and so they did.

And then they complain about "fake news."

*Source:  Infoplease.com birth rates by year.  All calculations mine.  I welcome any corrections.

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Thursday, November 22, 2018

Thanksgiving


I recently had a discussion with a young Marxist.  Well, at least I think that’s what he was.  I mean, his arguments were too incoherent to really draw any conclusions, but he seemed to be arguing for anarcho-communism, and he left me utterly speechless by espousing the labor theory of value.  Seriously, I thought that had been so utterly discredited that no one could possibly still buy into it.
We talked for a couple hours, but my biggest takeaway from the conversation was that the greatest difference was ingratitude.  Here we are, living in a time that was unimaginable at the start of my own short lifetime, and all he can do is complain about what’s wrong with the world.
It brought to mind a line I’d committed to memory that has been attributed to persons from GK Chesterton to JBS Haldane.  I personally originally heard it attributed to Abraham Herschel.  Anyway, it goes like this:  “The world is perishing, not from lack of wonders, but from lack of wonder.”
Or to borrow a rather longer, but much funnier observation from one of my all-time favorite authors, Jim Butcher:
 
“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks.

The drinks, people.

I read it for the philosophy.  Seriously.
So this young Marxist is complaining that capitalism is evil because 700,000,000 people live in abject poverty.  Pointing out that within less than half my lifetime (admittedly 75% of his), that number has plummeted from over 1,500,000,000, he continues to concentrate on the inequalities and insists any gains are attributable to changing the methodology.
So I change to a more tangible metric:  food.  I point out that fewer people are starving today, because of GMO’s and other aspects of Borlaug's Green Revolution have raised food production to 2,500 Calories per person per day for the entire population, and that the only thing standing in the way of world-wide feeding--nay, obesity--is the corrupt governments of the producer nations (yeah, that’d be US) trying to force the “backward” countries to comply through economic embargoes and the corrupt governments of the “backward” countries sending all the food that does get in straight to their armies.  I observed that such a thing was unimaginable when he was born.  He insisted that it has always existed.
The conversation bugged me, because I couldn’t put my finger on exactly where the two of us deviated.  We both shared a disdain for cronyism, corporate welfare, law enforcement abuses, and many other problems of our modern America.  But why do I view the world with hope, and he with bleak fatalism?
A few days later, I was headed home.  Needing to fill up with gas and wanting to take advantage of our loyalty card, I pulled out my smartphone, Googled “Kickback card Sidney MT,” and was given the location of the Town Pump.  I fueled up Patty, then decided to get myself something, too.  When I walked in, I blinked at the size of the coffee section.  One dispenser dispensed 6 different coffees.  A second dispensed 5 chocolate or coffee drinks.  A dozen or more drip coffee dispensers sat next to them.  There was even another machine that dispensed 4 different sweeteners.  I paced off the counter:  it’s over fifteen feet long!  Over twenty drinks before you even start mixing things (I had a mocha spiked with about a shot of high-caffeine drip).  Then I grabbed an apple fritter.  It was amazing.
As I sat eating the fritter, it then occurred to me that it was taking me longer to eat it than it took me to earn the $0.89 it cost.  When, in all of recorded human history, has it ever taken an average person more time to eat a luxury food item than to buy it?
And that’s when it hit me, that the difference between me and the Marxist was a sense of wonder and gratitude. 
And maybe part of it is age and a rural upbringing.  I lived in the pre-internet age.  Shoot, I still remember rotary phone service!  I vaguely remember the tail-end of news coverage of the Ethiopian Famine. I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But it can't be just that, because people a couple times my age recently elected an economically illiterate authoritarian because he promised to "Make America Great Again."  
Really?  By what metric?  Do we want microwaves to cost $14,000 (inflation-adjusted), minorities to not be able to share water fountains, the everpresent fear of a nuclear holocaust, or childhood leukemia to have a sub-20% survival rate instead of the inverse we enjoy today?
Which just goes to show that ingratitude is rampant on both sides of the political aisle.
In the end, gratitude and wonder are not something that certain people or cultures have, and others do not.  It is a discipline each individual must practice every day.  I, Pencil is a good place to start.
So I could sit here today depressed by working on Thanksgiving, 2.5 hours away from my family, and going home to this:
 
 
Or, I can look at this and thank God for the ability to safely store tasty,* nutritious** food at room temperature.  I can consider the number of people who have died over the millennia from a lack of this ability, and tip my hat to the people who have ensured that this little bit of seasonality on an otherwise dreary day will not leave me retching my guts out tomorrow***.
So here’s to Monsanto, Norman Borlaug, Nicolas Appert, and Louis Pasteur.  Here’s to the farmers who grew it, the inventor of the robotic lines that cooked and packaged it up, the workers who keep them running, the truckers who dropped it off, the stockboy who shelved it, and the store clerk that rang me up.
And here’s to Brennan Manning, Remy, Donald Miller, Andrew Heaton, Ronald Bailey, Leonard Read, Mike Rowe, and a hundred others who have helped me see what a wonderful world we have.
 
 
*relatively, I mean, it is a Hormel product
**relatively, I mean, it is a Hormel product
***hopefully, I mean, it is a Hormel product
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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Spants: Director's Cut

Whenever a director's cut is released, it always begs a number of questions.  Were the creative differences between the director and producer or studio so great that the story was substantially changed from the director's original vision?  Who truly owns that vision, the producer or the director? Is the studio simply trying to double the number of copies sold a minimal outlay of resources?
Some critics will no doubt say that this year's Spants installment is just an excuse to pack more gore into the original.  Some may say I am just satisfying my proofreading OCD. Some may claim I am doing this solely for retconning in an on-screen hippie kill into the one work that is missing one.  Still others will say I am retconning in the government connection that was dumped into the franchise in Spants 3 with absolutely no groundwork beforehand.
Others, no doubt, will claim that it's because transitioning between two jobs 2.5 hours apart has left me with little to no time to write.  Others will claim that that it's because I can only do decent work three sheets to the wind, and my hard liquor fund is non-existent.
To all these criticisms I will simply answer...yeah, pretty much.
In good news, the new job will soon be 7-on/7-off, leaving me more time to actually write stuff.  Next year's installment should be back on track. In the meantime...

SPANTS:  Director's Cut:
A brightly lit, sterile-looking laboratory
Hot but ditzy graduate assistant: “Dr. Whackjob has developed this new solution which weakens the chemical composition of the insects DNA. He hopes to find a way to prevent them from reproducing, or even to stop the cells of the adults from replicating. Or something like that. He made a lot more sense in bed last night.”
Corrupt government inspector: “What is this random jar of spiders for?”
Assistant: “Oh, Dr. W likes spiders.”
Inspector, leaving: “Incidentally…”
Assistant: “Oh, right, your bribe.” Hands over wad of cash.
Inspector: “Um, I don’t take bribes.”
Assistant: “Oh, right, I meant ‘administrative fee’.”
Inspector: “Much better.” Counts cash, then pockets it. “Well, all the enclosures look secure to me.”
Interior of limo outside campus
Inspector:  “Look, I believe in what he's doing as much as the rest of us, but his methods are just unsafe.”
General:  “The good doctor's work is essential to national security.  We are willing to overlook any...irregularities...as long as he continues to get results.”
Inspector:  “Yes, but those enclosures...”
General:  “Are perfectly adequate for the level of research he is currently doing.  He is only working on perfecting the formula. By the time we get around to more...practical...applications, the research will be conducted in a top secret underground lab we're constructing in Idaho.”
Inspector:  “Another 'budget overrun' in the F-35 program?”
General:  “It's the gift that keeps on giving.  The real question is, does the good doctor suspect where his grant is coming from?”
Inspector:  “No, as far as they know, they're working for Generic Pesticide Conglomerate, Inc., and I’m just a government safety inspector on the take.”
General:  “Good, let's keep it that way.  Now, I'm off to the Hill to keep Generic Pesticides in business.”
Inspector:  “What is it this time?  $650 toilet seats?”
General:  “No, $1,300 coffee mugs.”
Dimly lit laboratory
Night janitor, mopping floor and knocking over jar of spiders: “Aw, crap.”
Spiders escape and run across floor
Janitor: “Double crap”
Spiders break into ant enclosures and start screwing the queens.
Janitor: “Well that can't be good.”
Brightly lit laboratory, next day.
Dr. Whackjob: “Where the crap did my spiders go?”
Assistant: “Like, IDK”
Dr. W: “Aw crap, they’re in the ant enclosures. I knew I shouldn’t have scrimped on the seals.”
Assistant: “OMG.”
Dr. W: “If you weren't so good in bed, I wouldn't put up with you.”
Dr. W and Assistant clean out ant enclosures, hampered by his constant perusal of her butt each time she bends over.
Assistant: “Doctor, do these ants look fat to you?”
Dr. W: “Who cares, let’s go wax the desk in my office.”
Laboratory
Night janitor enters looking down, walks into big web.
Janitor: “What the...”
Fire ant drops down on line in front of janitor’s face.
Zoom to door. Screams echo down hall.
Laboratory, next morning
Assistant, walking funny: “Wow, what a night.” Sees mop laying on floor. “Is that Frank’s mop?”
Dr. W: “Frank?”
Assistant: “The night janitor.”
Dr. W: “You know him from somewhere?”
Assistant: “He used to come and work on my plumbing.”
Dr. W raises eyebrow.
Assistant: “Oh, that came out wrong.”
Dr. W: “Really.”
Assistant: “Well, he has a huge plunger.”
Dr. W looks up and sees janitor’s desiccated corpse hanging in web above head.
Dr. W: “Had”
Assistant: “Had?”
Dr. W: “Had a huge plunger.”
Assistant looks up. Ants start to drop from ceiling on lines.
Zoom to door. Screams echo down hall.


ICU room
Instrument: “Beep. Beep.”
Handsome, chiseled young doctor: “It would help if I knew what inflicted these injuries.”
Grizzled sheriff: “I don’t rightly know. All he kept moaning was ‘Spants’. Sounded like a danged record.”
Doctor: “Well, it reminds me of my days with medico sans frontiers.”
Sheriff: “Medi-whazzit?”
Doctor: “Doctors without borders. I was in the Amazon River Basin.”
Sheriff: “That near Stinkin’ Creek?”
Doctor: “In the rainforest. These bite marks look like the army ants. But an ant big enough to amputate a man’s leg would have to be 7.4 meters long.”
Sheriff: “Ampu-huh?”
Doctor: “Cut off.” Rolls eyed and continues. “And this stuff looks like tarantula web. But I’ve never seen web this thick. This would take a spider 12.3 meters long.”
Sheriff: “So you’re telling me that we have a gang of insects including a 7.4 something long ant and a 12.3 something spider?”
Doctor: “Well, a spider is an arachnid, not an insect.”
Sheriff: “Boy, don’t make me knock the far outta you.”
Sheriff’s office
Graduate assistant’s bookwormy-but-hot-in-a-girl-next-door-sort-of-way sister: “Sob! Why won’t you tell me what happened to her?!?”
Sheriff: “We don’t know.”
Sister: “Then why aren’t you out looking for her?!?”
Sheriff: “’Taint been 24 hours.”
Sister: “That’s not actually law and you know it.”
Sheriff: “Woman! Go back to the breakroom and get me a doughnut!”
Sister: “Up yours banjo-player!” Storms out, slamming door.
Young, rakishly handsome deputy: “Wait miss!”
Sister, turning on sidewalk: “What!”
Deputy: “Look, I’m sorry my boss is a sexist jerk. I’ll help you.”
Sister: “Thank you, but I’m gonna go it alone.”
Deputy (who has seen a lot of sci-fi): “Well, when you need me to dramatically rescue you, just scream.”
Science building hallway at night
Student watchman in Che t-shirt is arguing with Graduate Assistant’s Sister
Hippie:  “Look, lady, you’re super-hot, and I’d love to help you in the hopes of getting you in the sack, but I’m really not supposed to let anybody into the lab here.  Besides, I’m almost certain I heard Frank screaming last night, and now he’s missing.”
Sister:  “What’s your major?”
Hippie:  “Non-binary gender studies.”
Sister:  “That sounds sooo interesting!  Is there a place we can sit, and you can tell me all about it?”
Hippie:  “Well, I suppose…”
Sewer
Hippie:  “And so obviously, Marx’s theories were obviously the result of xis own gender-fluidity rebelling against the patriarchal society xe was living in.”
Sister, under breath:  “Graduate Assistant, you had better appreciate this.”
Hippie:  “I mean, how else does the labor theory of value make sense other than an existential scream that everyone’s life is worth the same no matter whom they choose to love.”
Sister, whirling:  “It doesn’t!”
Hippie:  “I know, right?  Obviously—“
Sister:  “No, you half-wit, I mean the labor theory of value makes no rational sense at all!  You cannot suggest that you I spend thirty hours making a toaster that does not toast that it is somehow worth more than one that does work made in 15 minutes on an assembly line.  That’s just stupid!”
Hippie:  “You’re only saying that because the system—“
Noise echoes down sewer.
Sister:  “Shhhh!!!”
Hippie:  “Did you hear that?
Sister:  “Yeah. Do you have a gun?”
Hippie:  “They don’t issue us student watchpersons guns.  And even if they did, I wouldn’t touch one of those killy killing things!  Only proper authorities should carry them in the service of the redistribution of wea—“
Water behind Hippie roils as queen spant rises and cuts “xim” in half.  Blood sprays everywhere.
Sister, wiping face:  “Oh, thank God.  Also, HEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPP!!!!”
Sister turns to run, but slips on Hippie’s well-distributed viscera.  Queen spant seizes her.
Abandoned warehouse which happens to be connected by sewer to lab.
Sister, trapped in web with spants advancing toward her: “Help! I need to be dramatically rescued!”
ICU Doc, bursting in: “I figured out what happened! The spiders and ants crossbred! They made Spants!”
Sister, rolling eyes: “Do tell.”
ICU doc: “I brought Dr. W from the hospital! He’s perfected his formula!”
Sister: “He’s awake?!?”
Dr. W, hobbling in: “I woke up just in time to finish my research and to atone for what I did.”
Sister: “What did you do? Where’s my sister?”
Dr. W, in voiceover with flashback footage of him locking his assistant in fuzzy handcuffs and shoving her into the queen spant’s maw: “I…I sacrificed her selfishly to escape.”
Sister: “Noooooo!!!!”
Dr. W: “I know, but I’m here to atone for my deeds by heroically sacrificing myself to save the town.”
Sister, as fire spants start biting: “Kill them! Kill them!”
ICU doc: “With what?”
Sister, rolling eyes: “The spray, moron!”
ICU doc: “We can't, we've only just submitted it for EPA approval. The FDA won't get their sample until next month!”
Sister: “Okay, now you're just screwing with me.”
ICU doc: “Just because I have a highly developed sense of responsibility...”
Dr. W, muttering: “I'll bet that's the only thing well developed on you.”
Deputy, bursting through wall in tank: “Enough of this crap!” To the people in the halftrack rolling in behind: “Light it up boys!”
ICU doc: “Where did you get a tank??”
Deputy, unslinging rifle: “Same place I got these sweet mint-condition flamethrowers. The army hasn’t restocked our National Guard armory since Korea. I think they forgot we even had one. Billy there so scored a Tommy gun!”
Sister, bitten by first spant: “Ahhhhhh!”
Deputy, unsheathing machete: “I’m coming!” Hacks through web and retreats with cocooned Sister over his shoulder, shooting dozens of spants with uncanny accuracy and no need to reload with his recently acquired pistol. To posse:  “Light it up!”
Posse: “On it!”
Posse members proceed to torch hive.
Queen spant, charging out of the dark to avenge her disintegrating hive: “Raaaarrrrr!”
ICU doc: “Wow, that thing is at least 7.4 meters tall.  And 12.3 meters long.”
Deputy: “Crap! My flamethrower’s out!”
Other guys: “Ours too!”
Deputy: “What horrible and yet unsurprising development!”
Billy, emptying tommy gun: “And bullets don't hurt it!”
Deputy: “Saw that one coming, too!” Fires tank cannon: “Neither do shells! I must admit that one is kinda surprising!”
Dr. W: “My chance to redeem myself!” Seizes can and stumbles toward Queen.
Sister: “Won’t that weaken the DNA more and make further mutations more likely?”
ICU doc: “Don’t ask inconvenient questions. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
Dr. W, throwing himself into Queen’s pincers and getting cut in half: “Arrrgh!”
ICU doc: “Oh no! He dropped the can!”
Deputy, dramatically jacking a round into the chamber of his rifle: “I got it!” Aims at can and fires.
Can not only bursts but explodes into a 100 foot ball of flame. Queen perishes screaming in pain.
Outside warehouse
Heroes burst through wall clinging to various places on the tank, Deputy standing tall in the turret with Sister clinging romantically to him.
Sister: “Thank you for saving me, Deputy. Lets get married and have lots of sex and kids. Also, what is your name?”
ICU doc: “What about me? I really thought we had a connection.”
Sister: “Well, the thing is, Deputy’s not an idiot.”
ICU doc: “Well, screw you! I’m gonna go occupy Wall Street!”
Billy, looking forlornly at burning warehouse: “Well, there goes my half-track.”
George: “It's okay, there's three more at the armory. And I'm getting the Jenny to replace my old crop duster.”
Billy, brightening: “You're right! Coming Deputy? We're off to misappropriate some government property!
Deputy: “I'll be along later. Remember I called dibs on the Willy’s!” To Sister: “Do you want anything?”
Sister, looking dopily into Deputy’s eyes: “I have all I want.”
Deputy and Sister walk into sunset as credits roll.
After-credits cutscene
Large cockroach stumbles out of building with egg sac stuck to carapace.
For any gluttons for punishment, the rest of the series is below.  The series will return to its regular schedule next year with Spants VIII:  Hell Comes to Spantown

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