MSFT Word bites…

It’s official. For the next two hours I shall deeply despise MSFT. Why? Cause Office just crashed. Crashed. And burned. Furiously. With a FAILED recovery attempt. Who the hell fails at recovery??? Ugh. Pa-the-tick. Pas de tick. No tick? Well, at least not yet…

Other news: no idea what I am doing this New Year. Mary will soon move into the new apartment. Grandpa crashed there last night doing card tricks while I found a hell-of-a-shelf unit that is looking good in the living room and might look better in Alex’s room, yet would not fit in mine despite the fact that it would fit at least 2.5 Jennifer Ruskeys.

Alex. Could not have done it without you, man. Now let’s see if it will fit with Mary’s couch.

Cold Water Procedure or How to Never Have a Cold

The following is a procedure that I highly recommend if you would like to deal with or prevent a cold or generally improve your health.

Social engineering through the media…

Going along with the last post , was talking to Sarah’s friend Remy about relationships and the problem that this society has that leads to cheating and negative effects thereof. The problem being:

1. Society expects people are expected to be in a monogamous relationship.
2. Suppose: person A is with person B. 1 -> A enters a relationship with B without wanting necessarily for B to be THE one.
3. A meets C who may be as cool, if not cooler than B.
4. Then A has a choice:
a) Hook up with C, which hurts B, which hurts A, thereby starting off relationship with C on the wrong foot, and ruining chances with B
b) Don’t hook up with C, thereby creating resentment between A and B for chances lost.
c) break up with B to hook up with C, which is pretty much the same thing as a)
d) become friends with C, and then make a smooth transition between C and B if C is a better choice.

Now d) would seem like a good choice, except that in our society d), more often than not, leads to paranoia for both A and B, because B becomes paranoid that it might be left. A becomes paranoid of hurting B. Not pretty.

So how should the society be built? This is where I was stumped. My initial solution is to change the way people think to “I want the best for my partner” sort of love rather than “I want what’s best for me”. Except then, this may lead to promiscuity, which, in turn, would lead to more social problems than we set out to solve – emotional desensitization, increase in STDs, etc. And this, if applied irresponsibly leads to pregnancies, and more children being brought into this world without parents, which would be a terrible side effect not worthy of egotistic ends initially sought. So what would be needed is a global psychological change starting out with growing of reponsibility…

Speaking of birth – it should be a privilege, not a right… perhaps if that was implemented, psychological reforms could be successfull… and how to create such reforms? Support artists who project certain ideas… then art becomes a tool of psychological social engineering… brr, sounds a bit 1984ish…

Dangerous words and social responsibility…

According to psychology, if one is exposed to an idea, then one’s chances of thinking it are increased (ref: no original idea). If one starts to express that idea (for whatever reason), the chances again go up a notch – for example if you tell yourself in response to seeing someone “what a prick”, eventually you will start to genuinely feel that way towards a person. (self-fullfilling profecy?)

Then is the entertainment industry taking an integral part in forming our society? When we listen to a song, unless it is something extreme, we try to make out the lyrics and often even start singing along thereby forcing upon ourselves certain beliefs. For example, I was listening to John Mayer while driving, at it went like:

So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too.

Which, combined with the music, brought a warm-and-fuzzy that, should I have had a daughter next to me at the time, would have driven me to evaluate myself in that framework and adjust my behavior (even if slightly). And then there are other songs… with em guns and shit.

But seriously:

1. Is it possible to find correlations between “happiness (and moral/proper behavior)” and nature of information to which one is exposed by looking at different societies? Probably been done before…

2. This could be a tool for some serious social engineering if properly harnessed that could potentially alleviate quite a bit of angst.

This blog, for example, is already trying to influence your mind. Just repeat after me: I want to send all of my money to Nikita…. I want to send all of my money to Nikita…

Humpy’s Lament & Education Dali style

Posted this as an away message, and, since the reponse was… eh… favorable, decided to post it for all to… eh… enjoy…

What’s in a ball,
I listen,
As air whistles past,
At last,
I’ve fallen off the wall.
But I can see the horses at the bottom,
And if I squint, I even see the men,
My king – can you not see that it’s my autumn,
My king – must they attempt to glue me whole again?

Today, I have seen the most bizzare training video… ever:

http://www.hugi.is/hahradi/bigboxes.php?box_id=51208&f_id=1000