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Homunculus
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2547
For a while I lived with Homunculus. A little man, older, retired and perpetually broke, he needed the money, I needed a cheap place to live.
As a condition of my living there I was treated to his opinions on everything, most, all of which weren't worth hearing and perfectly exemplifying the old adage "The unexamined life is not worth living", but he was long dead anyways, a fearful little man, waiting to corner me when I woke up to share with me some new-aged flash of insight, share worries that the government was concealing the truth, share his life's work, to warn the world's people against vaccinations, against contrails and taxes and the fluoride in the water...always something new...
He spends his days, 4:00 AM until 5:00 PM, on his computer "researching", as he calls it, miraculous resurrections, alternative medicine, government conspiracies and cover-ups, this, balanced with entire days, weeks, of defragging and fixing his computer, restoring his internet connection. He's too busy to get things done, leaving his room only to go for cigarettes. He fancies himself one of the Illuminati, his mission in life, if only he can get his computer working, to disseminate all the disinformation he's acquired, debunk the myths of evolution and science, if he saves just a single life it will all be worth it he tells me, ending with:"Think of the children..."
Once a week or so he heads on down to the food-bank, he's eligible, collects his box of groceries, takes them home, throws 90% of it away, "Not organic" he tells me, he refuses to eat anything that's not organic, he won't be poisoned by GM foods, then after lecturing me and filling the trash with the new groceries he heads off to co-op to buy himself some sausage rolls...
His kids, they avoid him, only call when they need money, a favor, he resents any intrusions upon "his work", his time sitting dazed in front of a computer screen, overwhelmed by the amount of drivel on the internet, his brain working to fit it all in, conspiracies, more conspiracies, everyone is out to get him, I should be worried too...
There is a certain Genius to his Idiocy, a life completely lived in denial, his house, a mausoleum, his perpetual avoidance of any sort of real thought or action, amusing, but sad, and I was due back in the real world...
Learned Helplessness
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2743
Gas now peaking at $122.9 per liter, no explanations coming, little, if any, reaction from consumers.
Here's a chart displaying historical gas VS oil prices:
The last time, you might note, gas prices came close to this was when Oil was close to $150/Barrel. (the last blue spike actually rises up to the 122.9). Now this strategy of "randomly" varying price without correlation to supply or cost, is something we could call "Learned Helplessness", where we, the consumers, are being tested for reaction, and so far we're failing badly. It can be expected, then, that prices will continue to be set without regard for cost, and, ironically, with oil companies in Canada alone making over $100 million/per day with NO OVERHEADS for staffing & extraction (we laid off everyone in the oilsands, remember? And lets face it, we can't compete with $32.00/Barrel) yet we'll be expected to accord them every tax break when production resumes.
Hmmm. It's cheaper at the moment to buy a barrel of oil than it is to fill your car with gas.
We are, of course, not helpless, but in playing and paying along we're setting a very dangerous precedent and overlooking our right, our responsibility to civil disobedience. This could be approached in a variety of ways, including demonstrations outside corporate head offices, certainly I'd not recommend sending letter bombs or Anthrax through the mail unless you were careful to take precautions and not be caught. Really, folks, it's time...
Homme Less
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2006
Looks good. Clearly he's got the panache and style to pull it off, me, people just try and give me money...
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The IBM Watson Developer Cloud
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2100
An online algorithm that takes text input from blogs, etc, and analyzes the sort of person you (or the author) is. Copy-paste, the bigger the sample, the more "accurate" the results.
My results:
"Your Personality*
You are inner-directed.
You are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself.
You are motivated to seek out experiences that provide a strong feeling of well-being.
You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them."
And I ran it through again, this time only using that content from my dreams:
"You are sentimental.
You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe. And you are proud: you hold yourself in high regard, satisfied with who you are.
You are motivated to seek out experiences that provide a strong feeling of connectedness.
You are relatively unconcerned with achieving success: you make decisions with little regard for how they show off your talents. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you."
I tried it a few times, the results were always 90% or greater the same.
I have a certain skepticism of online personality (or any personality) profiles, but it's fun to run through other peoples emails and compare their portrait to your experience of them.
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