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About Tyson

Love writing all kinds of stuff including fiction, non-fiction, editorials, etc. But writing software is the only writing I do for love AND money!

Not Buying It Hunters

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You’ve got to hand it to them. Hunters are doing a really good job of marketing their passion for animal slaughter. Despite the number of hunters inexorably dwindling, despite the public relations debacle of Cecil the Lion, the general public opinion of hunting continues to improve year after year (see here).

This positive public impression is carefully crafted by companies like Danner boots (see here), who caters to gun-loving hunters, law-enforcement, and military types. They have been airing a pretentious series of commercials celebrating hunting. These commercials are reminiscent of those older Marine Corps recruiting commercials. It portrays hunters as the few, the proud and noble protectors of nature. According to the narrator speaking softly over slow-motion shots of hunters in the backdrop of gorgeous nature scenes:

“There’s not enough wilderness left, not on this Earth, nor in the hearts of man, so we hunt. To stand face to face with nature and hold it for as long as it’s allowed. We hunt for balance, for strength, and for a hope that the outdoors will thrive for years to come. Hunting is more than a sport, it’s a calling.”

That’s good marketing bullshit. And the hunting industry is playing a good game on offense too. If you search Google, you’ll find article after article attacking the critics of hunting. They all tout the reasonableness of “science-based” hunting, as if hunters are all thoughtful servants of the planet, out there in the wilderness tirelessly protecting the animals they love – by killing them. Their claim of “science-based” hunting is about as valid as claims of “theological science.” According to Jon Way at Eastern Coyote/Coywolf Research (see here):

“State wildlife departments often say they use “science-based management” … their technical way of saying, we want hunters (a small minority of the population) to kill as many animals as possible and as long as they don’t go extinct … then it is science-based.”

hunterPro-hunting organizations have jumped all over this science-based™ claim to portray themselves as the informed, pragmatic, responsible parties. These organizations are highly visible and prolific at spreading all sorts of reasonable sounding arguments to rationalize selling equipment to pander to guys – and increasingly girls (see here) – who love to kill stuff. For example, in an article on Hunting Life, hunter Catherine Semcer makes the following arguments in support of trophy hunting (see here):

  1. Trophy hunting provides fresh meat to local people, improving the lives of children.
  2. Habitat loss is the REAL problem.
  3. Trophy hunting reduces illegal poaching.
  4. Those against hunting just want a “bumper sticker” on their Volvo while Africans suffer.
  5. Africans want trophy hunting, it’s not for people living in New York and San Francisco to decide for them.

Of course these are ridiculous arguments. They are all self-fulfilling partial truths, deflections, and red-herrings that pose false choices. The real truth of the matter is that hunters simply love guns and love shooting stuff with their guns – big living stuff. And the industry that supports them loves making money. As Bill Bryson documents in “A Short History of Everything,” so-called “naturalists” just like them have reveled in shooting animals to extinction for much of the last 200 years. Today’s generation of hunters is no more scientific and nature-loving than the self-proclaimed “naturalists” of the 1800’s who gleefully shot the dodo, the sea cow, and innumerable bird and animal species into oblivion.

Some of you may remember the notable TV series called “Wiseguy” that aired in 1987 (see here). FBI agent Vinnie Terranova goes undercover to infiltrate the organization of mob-boss Sonny Steelgrave. When Sonny is finally brought down, he rages with righteous indignation that the government is the real bad guys. They do far more harm than him. That without him much worse mobsters would have taken over. That he in fact actually helped many people by getting his hands bloody and doing what needed to be done.

Sonny’s rationalizations sound a great deal like the usual arguments put forth by hunters like Catherine Semcer to justify and legitimize what they do.

Not Buying It Sonny. You may want to believe you were a benevolent father figure, but in reality you were just a self-serving thug.

Not Buying It Hunters. You may want to believe you are misunderstood defenders of the environment, lovers of wildlife, but you are just pathetic losers who wanna kill stuff.

By the way, I grew up in a large extended family of hunters.

The Accidental God

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Copyright © 2009 by Tyson Gill

It’s amazing what a modestly industrious fellow can accomplish with a couple hundred thousand years to blow.

Aaron, Hugo, and I were making a routine freight run to our colony on RJ94b. It was a 7 year sleeper haul that didn’t require much effort on our parts; in fact I guess you could say we were more freight than crew. Aaron and Hugo were traveling to take postings on RJ94b, while I was planning to catch a hop to RJ23e to join the terraforming team there as the Principal Scientist in charge.

Just over 4 Earth years in, the onboard computer tripped the alarms, breaking our hiber. It seemed kind of cruel to wake us up as by that point there was little we could do except appreciate how fucked we were. Some uncharted anomaly had thrown us far off course and the onboard navigation computers couldn’t compensate. We woke to find ourselves hopelessly marooned in a region of space that defied identification. Without determining our location, there was simply no possibility of laying a course back.

We adjusted to our grim situation with surprising calm. No pathetic sobbing, no bemoaning rants, no desperate prayers. We had all known that 6.8% of interstellar shuttles were lost in transit. For sleeper barges like ours, the risk rose to 8.2%. There was still a lot we didn’t know about space and travel was still a crapshoot. The odds had simply caught up with us.

Survival protocols gave us only one option; one that we all knew was little more than a bit of welcome false hope. So we put the navigation computers into search mode and went back to sleep, knowing full-well that the odds of us ever again waking were minuscule.

We were astonished and unwillingly hopeful after being awakened for a second time. That groggy, giddy, euphoria only lasted long enough for us to learn the sobering truth that we had not miraculously arrived at an Earth colony. Instead, a full 26 Earth years has passed and we still had not fixed our bearings.

But ahead, not yet more than a missing pixel in the halo of a nearby star, sat a planet that electromagnetic scans showed to be Earthlike. Scientific curiosity immediately overcame our despair. What a find! What scientist wouldn’t happily give his life to be the first to explore such a world?

After weeks of careful preparation, and a frenzied review of landing procedures that were never intended to be executed, we managed to set down on a hilltop near a large body of surface water at temperate latitude. Of course the huge lumbering freighter could never move again, but dying on an uncharted planet, under a distant sun, was still far preferable to a cold, eternal sleep in dark and endless space.

We spent two days gradually throttling the engine down to a half-percent, but still capable of providing all the power we could use. The elegantly simple fusion cell had no moving parts and could operate indefinitely in idle mode, so we certainly had no worries about power. Next we spent several days reviewing the manifests and cataloguing our supplies. We had access to a hundred thousand tons of machinery and supplies designed to provide a full colony with all the materials needed to remain self-sufficient, so clearly we would want for nothing for the rest of our lives – except humanity.

Only after we had exhausted all our preparations, and repeated and rechecked them several times, did our curiosity overcome our fear enough to venture outside the ship for the first time. As we slid the small access hatch in and to the side, sunlight tinged with the slightest hint of tangerine washed over us. It was followed by a wave of cool, delicately scented air that reminded one of pine trees drenched in spring rain.

Hugo was the first to die.

We had ventured quite a distance from the ship, exploring and cataloguing the myriad of, well everything. Imagine stepping into a world where absolutely everything is brand new. Intricate new landforms shaped by processes of erosion never experienced on Earth, vegetation that had remarkable consistency of form and shape, but at the same time unlike anything back home, and diverse creatures that defied any Earthly phyla classifications.

alien-planet

Despite the strangeness of the environment, one should not overstate the differences. Perhaps far more remarkable were the similarities with Earth.  Our feet trod upon rock and soil, laden with minerals that were quite recognizable. Our arms pushed through photosynthetic fibers that were essentially grasses, shrubs, and trees. Our eyes caught glimpses of creatures that crawled, burrowed, leapt, and flew. We quickly felt quite naturally at home on this distant planet, unknown light-years from our own.

Any why should we not feel at home? We are creatures of the universe after all. Our attachment to our one little planet is merely emotional. All throughout the universe our same familiar chemistry and physics apply equally. It should come as no surprise that on many planets of similar size and distance from their sun, the same weather patterns would emerge, similar life would evolve, and those forms of life would diversify to fill all the same environmental niches; that some would photosynthesize sunlight and others would consume them.

It was perhaps because of our newfound feeling of familiarity and comfort that Hugo perished.

The tangerine sun was directly overhead, so we had spent about half of the long 37 hour day exploring around the edge of a massive swamp. We were all a bit groggy because our circadian rhythms were still stubbornly insistent upon a 24 hour day. Hugo was in the lead, as he was wont to do, barely able to bridle his energy and enthusiasm. We always seemed to be holding him up wherever we hiked.

Aaron and I looked up casually and halted. Hugo was simply gone. We stood still for the longest while, listening and looking for a sign of him, waiting for him to find us. But there was only the faint buzz and whistling of swamp insects that betrayed nothing.

Slowly, carefully, cautiously, we eventually ventured forth to find some sign of him. Suddenly Aaron stopped, wavering as if on the edge of a cliff. With a growing sickness, we pulled away the web-like vegetation that had grown over a deep fissure, stretching across the top like a net. With each tear, with each clump that dropped into the hole, sunlight streamed down to illuminate more of the bottom.

With one last rip, sunlight spotlighted the body of Hugo twisted into a tangle at the bottom of the pit. We called down futilely, even pelted him with pebbles, but he never even twitched.

The loss of Hugo left us stunned for many months (although clinging to our Earthly notion of months in our moonless environment was purely force of habit). It wasn’t just that we lost a friend and companion, but that we had lost a staggering 1/3 of our total population in an instant. It was the realization that no one would follow us. We were all there was and all there ever would be of human life on this planet, and now there was only us two.

The months drifted into years until eventually we banished all timekeeping devices into the deepest bowels of the freighter. We really didn’t want to know how much time was passing us by – it only filled us with despair to be reminded.

We went through indeterminately long periods where we never spoke. We had long since shared every possible idea we could say to each other. Every spoken thought was a tiresome repetition of what we had heard the other say a thousand times before. Each word was another excruciating drop in some fiendish water torture.

So we mechanically passed our days like mindless automations. Thinking only made us miserable. It became difficult to recognize even whether our behavior was sane. We had no social queues except from each other and we both quit caring what the other did long ago.

This total apathy made it all the more peculiar when Aaron sat down next to me one day and asked a question that was most startling in the fact that it was never brought up before.

“Do I look any older to you?” he asked quizzically.

“What?” I asked remotely, lost in my blissful thoughtlessness.

“Under your beard, you don’t look a day older than the day we landed,” he remarked. “Do I look any older to you?”

“Why should you?” I asked in return.

“How long do you think we’ve been here?” he answered with yet another question, seeming to change the subject randomly.

“I don’t want to know,” I told him dismissively.

“It’s been 73 years Earth time,” he stated flatly.

I don’t know how long it took me to assimilate that, or how long it took me to finally respond. When one has nothing but time, even answering questions doesn’t seem very urgent.

“Impossible,” I said eventually.

“I checked,” Aaron assured me. “It has been 73 years, 5 months, and 12 days.”

My inner scientist took over, my mind raced. It was faced with a contradictory set of observations that could not be reconciled without further facts.

“We have to check Hugo’s body,” I said flatly.

Aaron rose and followed me to where we had buried Hugo. Using our hands, we dug up the shallow grave and brushed away the dirt to reveal the corpse of our long-dead shipmate.

We gasped in shock.

The reason for our amazement was exactly the opposite of what one would fear beholding. His body was nearly perfect. It was like a wrinkled, deflated prune due to loss of moisture, but there was no decomposition. There was no mold, no sign that insects or worms had ever defiled the remains.

We sat back and just stared at the remarkable corpse.

“Have you ever been bitten by an insect here?” I eventually asked Aaron. “Even been bothered by one?”

“Have you had any kind of cold or flu since we landed?” he asked, not expecting any answer.

So another false assumption about alien planets was debunked. It was always thought that since humans would have evolved no resistance to alien bacteria, they would decimate any human exposed to them. It turned out to be quite the opposite for us. In our case, this alien world had evolved nothing to endanger us humans. Bacteria, viruses, insects; none of them even seemed to recognize us as living things. It appeared we were immune to any kind of infection this planet had to offer.

As to our apparent lack of aging, Aaron formed some hypotheses about that. He pointed out studies that had demonstrated that aging is largely a designed-in process that can be dramatically slowed or accelerated in response to environmental stresses. Apparently the conditions on this planet, or more precisely the lack of the factors that stimulate our aging chemistry, had essentially halted those processes.

More decades passed and the boredom increased to an almost unbearable level. We tried to remain actively engaged in farming, mechanics, music and art, yoga and meditation, and even many more esoteric pursuits. But it was a never-ending struggle just to come up with any reason to continue living.

Eventually Aaron walked casually out of the ship. Hanging at the end of his arm was a ceramic pistol. There were many such weapons crated in the hold, long given up for lost by their buyers. Occasionally we had taken them out for some recreational target shooting.

But Aaron was not planning any target shooting that day.

“Goodbye James,” he said pleasantly, pausing to give me a sincere and resolved smile before he turned to stroll into the brush. He seemed perfectly sane and lucid.

I could not find it in my heart to stop him. That would only be cruel. Who was I to selfishly insist that he remain alive only to keep me company?

Moments later, the sharp pffft of the air gun resounded across the otherwise quiet valley. The insects momentarily became silent and somewhere in the distance a flock of winged creatures took to flight.

I couldn’t bring myself to attend to Aaron’s body immediately. It would keep.

I really don’t know how much time passed before they arrived. My old notions of time ceased to have any meaning for me. Perhaps my brain had physically adapted to perceive time differently just as I had long since adapted to the 37 hour daily cycle.

Whenever it was, I sensed them approaching my valley long before they arrived. I felt their ripples. Over the uncounted years I had become intimately attuned to all the life in my valley. Every plant, every creature was my family. I watched each generation born and pass on. I knew them all as individuals, helped them. My family warned me of their coming.

Each year the creatures pressed further into my territory. I observed them carefully, first through a telescope and then through binoculars as their annual advancement brought them ever closer.

They were obviously social animals, curious like small mammals. Their family groups bonded together into a greater community. Young ones frolicked playfully but stayed protectively near their parents. Evidently the land they came from held predators which they feared.

The creatures were smooth-skinned and incredibly lithe. Dissection of some recent remains showed that their internal skeleton was composed of something as strong as bone but also extremely flexible. They made peculiar chittering noises that indicated rudimentary vocal communication. I spent my days watching them and learning their ways.

One year I finally decided to approach. They already felt like my own family, a part of my valley. My memories of Earth, even of Hugo and Aaron, were only dim and vague recollections. I recalled that I had once been to a place called Earth. I <thought> it was real, but could no longer be sure if I had perhaps only imagined it.

But the little creatures weren’t elusive memories. They were real and I yearned for them to know me as I knew them.

So each day I approached right up to the edge of their awareness, until they looked my way and chittered anxiously, and there I waited until nightfall. Sometimes I did the same at night. And each week the distance between us contracted ever so slightly.

They little creatures gave me a sense of purpose, of community, that I had never found on this world.

I don’t believe it ever actually occurred to me to play God. I never contrived to alter the normal course of evolution. It was only in my mind to help along the little creatures that I become so fond of.

It started by simply protecting them. Using the pneumatic rifles from the ship, I methodically exterminated the predators nipping at their heels and any new threats that wandered into the vicinity.

Without that pressure to migrate, they seemed content to remain in my valley. I learned their rudimentary language and ever so slowly expanded it, giving preferential care to those with the greatest aptitude.

My efforts paid off well, and each new generation was noticeably more adept with language than the one before. Eventually I began to introduce them to abstract concepts through language.

I gradually taught them how to clean their day to day wounds and how to use local plants to fight infections. Most learned quickly and those that did not learn tended not to survive as long.

Ever so slowly I managed to teach them to cultivate the insect population that they fed upon in a sustainable manner. I taught them to manage their waste and maintain their environment.

Over many, many generations I taught them to make fire and tools and to use them to char their insects so they stored indefinitely. I showed them how to cook the insects along with various plants into soups and porridges that provided better nutrition. Those that learned raised more thriving offspring.

But beyond that, I modeled social skills from the earliest days, starting with a simple demonstration of cooperation in picking parasites off their skin. Little by little, some started to teach those social behaviors to their young.

And yes, there were always some bad actors who displayed antisocial tendencies. I hated to do it, but I had to breed those behaviors out for the good of the community. Typically those individuals would just fall mysteriously dead shortly after their behaviors became evident, creating a helpful superstition that antisocial behavior caused their death…. and in fact it did.

I stepped feebly out of the ship to regard my valley under the moonless sky. My back ached from bending over my labors. I had been hard at work documenting all the technology aboard the ship in a way that my people would understand one day.

The exhausting effort left me feeling like a man of perhaps 80 or more years. It turned out I wasn’t truly immortal after all. I merely aged very, very well.

The delicate tangerine lights dotting the valley below mirrored the myriad of stars above like a clear mountain lake. It brought me great satisfaction to know that my people finally comprehended what the stars are and drew wonder from them as I did, facing  their lighting softly downward to respect grandeur of that panorama.

Some long dead nuclear engineers would have been gratified to know that after so very many years of continuous operation, their fusion cell still hummed along, despite now being powered up to 8% to supply clean energy to the growing population. Over the centuries I had to void the warranty many times over by performing unauthorized maintenance, but fortunately there were ample stores of spare parts, in fact enough to keep the generator running for another few thousand years with the aid of a bit of ingenuity and generous portion of luck.

The fusion core was buried deep within the cavernous ship, which itself was now buried under the mountain of rock forming a great pyramid that overlooked the sprawling city that lay before it. Future archaeologists might conclude that I ordered its construction to satisfy some insatiable egotism, or out of some primitive fear of the afterlife. The truth is that I ordered the century long project as a way to instill an ethic of work and pride in cooperative craftsmanship. It also served the practical function of protecting the precious space vessel and all its precious cargo from natural disasters for use by posterity.

Three million of my adopted children now live in ecologically sound habitats throughout the valleys, and more settlements swell in population all around the globe. Each year throngs leave their workplaces and schools to come to pay homage at my pyramid. I had long since given up trying to assure them that I am not their god, not their almighty father, as my protests only convince them of the contrary.

Although it was never my intent, in the end I am responsible for the selective breeding of an entire civilization of creatures that worship me. But that won’t last much longer. There are far too many for me to manage now. Already I can feel them growing into their own. Soon they won’t need me anymore. They won’t even want me around any longer. Perhaps they will rise up and kill me, to finally rip their cord from the womb of their accidental god.

On that day my work will be done.

Find Your Cause

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Why do some people become activists?

Some become activists because they have a natural passion, a deep sense of empathy for the tragedy or injustice felt by others. Jane Goodall is one such example. Her empathy focused on the animals that she fought for throughout her life.

Others become activists after they are personally struck by tragedy or injustice. John Walsh became an activist after his son was kidnapped and murdered. In response to that life-changing event he dedicated himself to hunting down criminals and saving kidnapped children.

John was transformed into an activist, Jane simply was an activist.

Regardless of how you get there, it is admirable to have at least one cause greater then your own immediate self-interest that you are passionate about. It is not only good for society, not only good for the planet, not only good for future generations, but it is good for yourself as well.

But most of us are not naturally passionate activists like Jane Goodall. And thankfully most of us are never transformed by tragedy into activists as was John Walsh. Most of us don’t have a burning passion and most of us don’t become active in causes until and unless we’re personally affected by them.

Sure, I guess I should care more about starving kids in Africa, but frankly I don’t know any of them personally so it’s hard to get too worked up. We’re apathetic about gay rights until our own child comes out. We don’t think much about cancer until our spouse is stricken. We don’t fight to get guns off the street until our child dies to gun violence. We don’t typically offer anything beyond the mildest philosophical support for the heartfelt passionate causes of others, little more than token responses to their pleas for help and support – unless and until we’re personally affected.

You can still find transformed activists out there working hard for every possible cause. It sometimes seems difficult to accept their impassioned urging that we should care, when they never cared until it personally affected them. Sometimes we even wonder, what kind of person are they that they only became concerned about a problem after it affected them or someone they love personally? Was it not a problem before it impacted them? Did they not pretty much ignore the pleas of those affected before they were personally impacted?

activismThe practical reality is that there are way too many important and worthy causes for us to become deeply, emotionally, actively involved in every one. But surely you have room in your life and in your heart for just one. It would be nice, would it not, to choose a cause, any cause, that you really care about, rather than maybe someday simply adopting a cause only because you have been personally stabbed through the heart by it?

There are so many worthy causes that deserve your help before you personally suffer from their effects; quiet causes and loud causes, modest causes and epic causes, surely there is a cause that matches your interests, abilities, and personal style.

Find your cause before it finds you.

When Smokers Ruled

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I hear lots of you, especially my younger friends, express sympathy for smokers. I know you think that I am unduly harsh on them and that society as a whole is excessively severe toward smokers. But frankly you didn’t live through the smoky days when smokers ruled the world. If you had you might not feel we are harsh enough. Your misplaced concern is like expressing sympathy for those poor overregulated coal-fired plants now that the air is finally breathable – breathable only because they were heavily regulated in the first place.

smoker wearing crownTry to imagine the world back when smokers were completely unregulated. I grew up in the 60’s and in those days smokers had absolute uncontested sovereignty. They smoked wherever and whenever they wished and no one had any right to complain. You cannot appreciate how hellish they made the world. Thankfully you don’t have to live in it anymore. Movies glamorize it with dreamily wafting artificial smoke. Even supposedly accurate period pieces like “Good Night and Good Luck” totally sanitize the filth that was the 60’s. In reality, ashes stained every surface. Every table was cluttered with disgusting overflowing ash trays. The surface of every table and chair was riddled with burn marks and littered with butts. The air in any indoor space was a toxic cloud of fumes. Windows were literally browned-out with thick layers of tar. It was a time distinguished by disgustingly yellow teeth and smoke-reeked clothes and upholstery. You don’t see, smell, and feel those things in the movies. The movies don’t make your eyes sting and your throat cough.

smoking while eatingBack then, dinner at restaurants was like eating out of an ashtray. Adults smoked right up until their first bite, immediately after their last bite, and indeed some took a drag between each bite. They would then drop their butts into water glasses or into their leftover mashed potatoes even while others will still eating.

The inside of cars was a hellish torment as well. With all the windows closed in those cold Wisconsin winters, all the adults would smoke nonstop. Once I asked my mom to let me open a window. She refused. When I pleaded with her to stop smoking she answered, “I’m the one smoking, why should it bother you?” So I then flipped the radio switch to full volume. “Turn that off,” she shouted. I mimicked “I’m the one listening, why should it bother you?” My logic was lost on her and I was answered only by a solid smack across the face.

Even the great outdoors provided little respite from the tyranny of smokers. Mounds of ashes lined every curb. Every grassy park lawn was covered with butts, matches, and packaging. When us kids played on the beach we would shovel up handfuls of butts infesting the sand. In the winter the pristine snow was defiled with ashes, butts, and packaging everywhere you looked.

This is only a pale portrayal of everyday existence when smokers ruled the world. Frankly you cannot imagine it any more that I can really imagine the pollution in London during the height of the industrial revolution. So don’t feel sorry for smokers. Don’t give them any of that power back. If you let up, they will return life to the hellscape it was back when they had their way.

And don’t fool yourself into thinking it would not be that bad again. Smokers have not changed. Smokers today are not more enlightened and considerate than smokers back in the 60’s. This is obvious when you still see them blithely toss their cigarette butts on the ground anywhere they happen to be when done with them. They don’t care that you have to walk through them or that your kids play in them. They have not changed. They have no social conscience when it comes to their addiction.

Smokers in fact have turned the new outdoors into the old indoors. In NYC at least, we nonsmokers have to hold our breaths when we go outside and hurry past the gauntlet of smokers. We have to grimace in disgust when they walk ahead of us billowing out smoke like a coal locomotive. We used to escape outside to get a few gulps of fresh air. Now we have to rush inside to escape the smoke.

The only reason smokers still do these things is because we let them. If we let them smoke in restaurants again, they’ll once again smoke between bites and toss their butts into your water glass.

I went on a bus trip in Brazil not long ago. The tour guides laid down the law on the first day. “We will not allow you to stink up the bus and we will not clean up your disgusting soggy butts from the snow slush on the bus floor. Further we will kick you off the bus if you toss your butts all over Brazil.” The tour guides handed out twist-top vials and instructed smokers to only smoke off the bus and to keep their butts in the vial until they could dispose of them properly. The smokers were at first irate at this restriction of their right to litter at will, but did quickly adopt the practices and the trip was a joy for all, including the smokers themselves. Most importantly we were not embarrassed by those smokers flicking their butts our across every scenic place of beauty we visited.

Here’s my advice informed by history. Don’t give an inch to smokers lest they take a mile. Start a movement to make smokers everywhere adopt the eco-friendly tour policy and put their butts into a container until they can be disposed of properly. Even better, force cigarette manufacturers to provide a clever package that makes it easy for smokers to deposit their butts right back into the pack! Smokers and their corporate suppliers must be forced to do this through laws and/or social pressure. They will not do it simply because it is the socially responsible thing to do.

One last addition. At first I was annoyed by the emergence of e-cigarettes because they only encourage more smoking. But I now appreciate that they do have one huge unanticipated benefit. They eliminate a tremendous number of butts being strewn all across our shared spaces. For that reason alone, I think they’re a really, really good thing. If they would just lose the smoke effects and that silly LED on the end, I’d have little reason to complain about smokers except for their impact on my insurance rates!

Fighting the Malware Mafia

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malwareI’d been plagued by malware on my home computer for a few months. It was one of those particularly malicious creations of evil and despicable “humans” – the kind that takes your browser hostage and extorts money from you to “fix” it. You know, like that helpful mafia guy who for a small fee will be happy to “fix” the problem with his shattering your kneecaps.

I fended off the extortionists for months by repeatedly going through a tedious process of removing these ad programs that got created, by removing browser extensions and add-ons that suddenly appeared, and by removing strange Windows services. It would go away for a while, only to suddenly reappear a day or week later with all new names like “digisales” or “turbodeals.” In short, it simply would not die. It kept recreating itself in seemingly endless incarnations. But they were all the same malware with the same extortion screen shown here.

Of course I tried running every virus, malware, spyware, and adware removal tool I could find to eradicate this vermin including Windows Defender, Malwarebytes, AVG, Bitdefender, Ad-Aware, Spybot, System Mechanic, and others. None of them found or fixed the malware.

Then I upgraded to Windows 10, hoping the problem would go away. It did disappear for a while and I kind of forgot about it. Except, I had this annoying problem in the Edge browser. Whenever I tried to copy a URL from the address box, my browser would hang for 30-60 seconds. To try to identify the cause of this, I removed extensions and changed options. At some point during the process, bang, my malware is back with a vengeance. I could not use Edge at all, even though none of the other browsers were affected.

Yet another round. Tried running all the malware programs again. No luck. How could they fail to identify such a severe virus?? Tried one more program with the somewhat silly name of SUPERAntiSpyware (found here). Their tagline is “Remove Spyware, NOT just the easy ones.” Well, I thought, let’s test that bold claim.

So I downloaded and ran SUPERAntiSpyware and viola! It found thousands of “malicious” cookies and cleaned them up. Total cure. Compete recovery. Poltergeist expelled. Problem solved. I’m clean! No more hostage lockups, no more problems copying/pasting in Edge, and my browsers seem much snappier to boot!

I happily paid for a subscription to SUPERAntiSpyware for all our computers. It is amazing that none of the other big names could find this malware. Clearly they all do just find “the easy ones.” Even more amazing is that Microsoft apparently cannot produce the best tool for cleaning up the system they know better than anyone.

And lest you think “lie down with dogs wake up with fleas” applies to me, consider that my wife joked about that. “What porn sites were you visiting?” I actually don’t visit any sketchy sites, but of course the best way to convince your wife that her suspicions are right is to try to deny them.

Well SUPERAntiSpyware had the last laugh. When we installed and ran it on her computer it found one malware program and almost two thousand adware cookies on her machine as well.

Bottom line. I’m sold on SUPERAntiSpyware. We had other products running when we got that malware and they didn’t help us. Of course, this is entirely anecdotal. You may contract a virus that only one of the other programs will find. But the evidence I have available to me says SUPERAntiSpyware is the one I’ll trust. Here is their link again: SUPERAntiSpyware.

Aspirational Advertising

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angieHave you seen the latest Angie’s List commercial called “gutter?” Of course you have. Jeff is the inept husband who cannot even clean out his gutters because apparently he’s got a debilitating fear of ladders and an overwhelming aversion to touching yucky gutter gunk. His wise and sensible wife calls Angie’s List to hire a contractor to clean out the gutters for hubby. Jeff hugs her with joy and relief for saving him from the horror of gutter-cleaning. Another happy family thanks to Angie’s List. Nice good-natured humor, right?

Well first let me point out that this pro gutter cleaner obviously isn’t all that pro. Sure, he came equipped with the requisite work gloves, but then he set his muck-bucket on top of a slanting roof, reaching up over the edge to toss in the leaf-rot. The pro technique would be to safely hang the bucket from a rung. It would have been hilarious if he had tipped the bucket and it came sliding down in comically slow motion to dump the muck onto Jeff’s head.

But I’m not here today just to make fun of the Angie’s List pro gutter-cleaner guy, rather to illustrate a much bigger problem. Here’s the reality. It is overwhelmingly females who make most purchase decisions and most purchases. So naturally companies craft most of their marketing to influence women. Their typical formula to accomplish this has long been to depict men as big dumb babies and their wives as the smart, wise, and sensible ones who of course demonstrate their competence by choosing their product. This Angie’s List commercial just follows this tried and true marketing approach for consumer advertising – the stupid, incompetent guy and the smart, competent woman. Not picking on Angie’s List here. This ad merely follows the industry norm and is far from the most egregious example.

Is it any wonder that so many American women have the view that men are children who need a mother? One could argue that advertising doesn’t create culture, it just reflects it. But we all know that is a simple-minded cop out. Advertising amplifies and normalizes the cultural hot-buttons that they press over and over to instill the attitudes that become our culture.

Imagine the reverse. Image if Swanson had a campaign that essentially said, buy our frozen dinners because your wife is a cute airhead who can’t cook crappy Salisbury steak!

And I’m not merely defensive about the way advertisers portray men. I also get equally worked up by their typical caricature of elderly people and other groups. I’ve railed since my youth as a teacher about how advertisers contribute to our terrible anti-education culture here in America. Think back a moment. Think of all the famous ads targeting kids. Most of them sell their products by communicating anti-education messages. School is boring. Teachers are dumb. Bueller… Bueller… I’ve got the back to school blues. Quick get to Six Flags before your fun summer ends!

There is no reason that these companies could not sell their products in a socially conscious and responsible way that does not engrain negative cultural images through catchy jingles. Angie’s List could come up with plenty of good reasons to market their services without making men look like idiots. Lifeline could sell their emergency beepers without making the elderly look pathetic. Levi’s could sell jeans without making school look like a gulag. How about showing how well you’ll be able to focus on your great teacher while wearing those comfee new loose crotch jeans at your desk? I’ve occasionally seen a few companies like McDonalds sell their products through positive messages about education, but even they are sporadic.

So why do they all do it? Because it’s easy and it works. If advertisers can leverage the widespread feeling that men are idiots, that old people are pathetic, and that school is stupid, then they can then count on those campaigns working every time. But it amazes me that they do work so well. Do women really like to think of their man as such a pansy that he cannot even climb up seven rungs and pick a few leaves out of a gutter?  And do we really want to see our beloved father as a zombified husk? Do we really want our kids to see going back to school as some kind of cruel joke on them?

Apparently most do and advertising has spent decades reinforcing these memes to ensure that they will move product every time. But advertisers could do so much better as an industry, we could do much better as a society, and each of us could do much better as consumers. Advertising should be aspirational, emphasizing and reinforcing the most noble of cultural attitudes. I think it would sell product just as well, even better.

All we need to do is motivate them to change. We need to start rejecting cheap stereotypes that pit groups against each other and demand more positive, aspirational advertising campaigns. More fact-based arguments and fewer emotional ones. We should start by boycotting any company that sells their products to kids by reinforcing negative feelings about education. That is the most important priority.

Advertising both reflects and shapes our culture. But we can shape advertising too. If only a few more of us stop responding to these stereotypes, even start to actively boycott the offending products, companies and advertisers will change. And those changes in advertising tone will in turn snowball into an avalanche of widespread cultural transformation improving our attitudes about education, about men, about the elderly, and many other important issues and groups.

The Political Pickup Artist

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mysteryIn 2007, a show called “The Pickup Artist” ran for two seasons. It was a reality-show contest format in which an elite Pickup Artist named Mystery mentored a motley group of misfits and losers in techniques for picking up women. Which dweeby kid would apply their lessons well enough by the end of the season to earn the title of “Pickup Artist?” Stay tuned!

People had lots of negative reactions to the unsavory methods taught in the show and by the suggestion that women are really that manipulable (though the same is certainly true of men). They were especially vexed by the fact that they could not completely dismiss the reality that the techniques promoted in the show really do work. By applying a few seemingly counterintuitive principles, these Pickup Artists really are able to pretty much walk into any kind of venue and walk out with the very willing phone number of pretty much any woman they choose.

Here are some of the important techniques taught by Mystery:

  1. Peacocking is critical. Even if you look silly, you need bling to stand out.
  2. You have to project more worth than anyone else in the room to be desirable.
  3. You have to establish outcome independence with an attitude that you really don’t care if she goes home with you or not.
  4. You have to project absolute confidence and not show a hint of self-doubt.
  5. You have to show the target you don’t particularly care about them. You need to even dis them and put them down in a mild way to make them want you more.
  6. You have to engage and actively listen.
  7. You have to be fun and actually have fun.

The series showed us that if you are able to execute these techniques successfully, pretty much any woman will give you her number. Even if she knows you’re bad news. Even if all her friends warn her you’re terrible for her. Even if she knows that there are way more sensible choices out there that would be far better for her. Despite all reason and common sense shouting “stay away” she’ll still want you anyway.

trumpNow The Pickup Artist reality show is back for another run. This time it stars The Donald as the Master Pickup Artist and he is schooling another motley group of misfits and losers in how to pick up voters. This season’s cast includes math club runt Bobby Jindal, pathetically desperate Jeb Bush, awkward twit Marco Rubio, sickeningly nice Rick Santorum, creepy-crawly Ted Cruz, messed-up-by-religion Mike Huckabee, tries-too-hard Rick Perry, and only-one-who-thinks-he’s-smart Rand Paul. None of these poor losers has a hope of getting a voter to give him their vote, let alone their phone number.

Here are some of the critical voter pick-up lessons that The Donald demonstrates this season:

  1. Peacocking is critical. That hair may look ridiculous, but bling is bling and he certainly stands out amongst the other stuffed shirts.
  2. Everything about Trump implicitly and explicitly shouts “I’m worth more than anyone else in the field and I know it.”
  3. Trump’s attitude of outcome independence says sure, I’ll be your President if you beg for it but I don’t need to be. I’m just as happy to move on to something better.
  4. Trump projects absolute confidence in everything he says and does. He never gives any hint of hesitation or self-doubt.
  5. In talking to voters whether it be women, Hispanics and pretty much everyone else, Trump is happy to put them down to make them want him that much more despite all their better judgment.
  6. Trump doesn’t hold press conferences; he holds conversations with the press and the public. Whether he cares what you have to say or not, he makes you feel that he actively engages with you and genuinely listens to you rather than delivering rehearsed pickup lines.
  7. He definitely is fun and actually sincerely seems to have fun out there playing The Political Pickup Artist game.

So, tune in this election season and see how many voters, men and women, despite all logic and reason and common sense to the contrary are nevertheless drawn like moths to the flame of The Donald. No matter how bad for us we know he is, no matter how self-destructive the attraction, we’ll secretly be drawn to him anyway. He’s the master political pick-up artist, the bad boy, the alpha male of the pack and we desire him regardless of how ridiculous that may be. It’s in our DNA.

Can you resist his repulsive attraction? Yea, right, sure you can…

Yosemite Sam on Target

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Gun-related murders, particularly mass murders, continue to rise in America (see here).

yosemitesamBut gun spokesperson Yosemite Sam reminds us that guns don’t kill people. After all, as hunting enthusiast Elmer Fudd points out, even if there were no guns those kwazy wabbits would just murder you with carrots. Wile E. Coyote, acknowledged expert on absurdly dangerous weapons, adds that even without guns some deranged Tasmanian Devil could run amok hacking preschoolers up with an Acme™ turbocharged meat cleaver. The entire cast of Looney Tunes agrees that the obvious and best solution to the plague of too many guns is yet more guns in the hands of animated characters who really, really love to shoot them. They maintain that in their cartoon-view, guns are not actually the problem anyway. Mental illness is the real problem.

I could not agree more with our Looney Tune friends! Mental illness is the real problem and we should focus our attention on that. Even though so-called real-world “scientific” studies have shown that there is no correlation whatsoever between violence and a history of mental illness (see here), anyone who shoots up a school or movie theater must obviously be mentally ill. And what does “correlation” really mean anyway? No, clearly mental illness is the problem, not guns. Case closed!

So then the only real question is how to identify these mentally ill people BEFORE they rip through an abortion clinic using their legally-purchased semi-automatic weapons supercharged with Brownells™ high-capacity magazines. Hmm. Let me think a second… could there be some factor, some objectively measurable indicator, that clearly flags individuals as mental health risks to society? Anything at all?

I know! How about we red-flag people who buy semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines as dangerous risks by virtue of mental illness? Clearly, people who are so paranoid, pathologically fearful, and sociopathic that they feel compelled to buy semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity clips – especially if they buy many of them – are mentally ill and need help. Maybe we should “register” them somehow so we can “monitor” their activities and administer appropriate mental health services.

hunterWe should be reasonable about this of course so that those few non-crazy gun owners, or at least those few crazy but harmless gun owners, are not unduly monitored thereby wasting our surveillance capacity. We should restrict our high-risk group of crazy gun owners to those who buy more than, say four mass-murder machines. High capacity clips should earn them a double-red flag status.

How many people would this high risk group include? I took the liberty of doing some back-of-napkin calculations. Roughly 24% of American adults say they own at least one of the estimated 310 million guns in circulation in our country. So, out of a total 245 million adults that means that 59 million of us are gun-crazy. Of those, 48% own 4 or more guns. That means that roughly 12% (30 million) of Americans are profoundly gun-crazy. That list would be whittled down to the subset of those that own four or more high-capacity modern non-hunting weaponry who are therefore profoundly and dangerously gun-crazy.

This “registration” and “monitoring” of high-risk mentally ill individuals is clearly quite doable. Not only are these mentally ill gun owners readily identifiable simply by tracking their gun purchases, but the numbers are manageable too. The terrorist watch list monitors over a million people. Amazon manages upwards of 300 million customer accounts. We routinely issue and manage hundreds of millions of driver’s licenses without breaking much of a sweat. So clearly monitoring our population of profoundly and dangerously mentally ill gun owners is well within our capability.

So let’s start a movement. We don’t want to unfairly blame guns when mental illness is the real problem. So let’s focus on that and provide the mental help needed to all those individuals flagged as mentally ill by virtue of their insane gun ownership. Maybe we could start a White House Petition. Let’s force the government to help these mentally ill gun owners to get the help they need and the intervention they require.

Pro-gun is pro-murder.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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OK this post is outside of my normal blog cycle but I just have to toss up a quick review of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. No worries, no spoilers here, just appetizers!

In a word G.R.E.A.T. Go see it in a theatre where every great movie should be seen.

It was a stylish, seriously tongue-in-cheek load of fun. I did see the recent Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and yes I did love it too. Thought the script was brilliant – the best of the Mission Impossible series in fact. But Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a brilliant piece of writing as well. Plus it also offers fresh, brilliant acting, film-making, costumes, music, and set designs. It’s just fresh and brilliant in so many ways.

themanfromuncleBut perhaps the most brilliant is how well it honors the original show. As most of you probably know, the movie is based on the famous TV show from the 60’s. I remember it fondly as do most guys my age along with other shows of the time like The Avengers, Star Trek, Johnny Quest, and The Wild Wild West. But for those of us with fond memories of these shows, nothing causes a greater feeling of excitement and dread than a remake. We cannot help but form a crushing fear that yet another of our cherished memories will be blasphemed and desecrated like the horrendus Will Smith version of the Wild Wild West television series.

But not so with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It’s a perfect prequel to the television series. It tells the hitherto unrevealed backstory of the relationship between Napoleon and Illya that has already been cemented by the time the TV series starts off. Henry Cavill captures the distinctively polished secret agent Napoleon Solo to a tee; the mannerisms, the voice, and even the hint of detached humor that touches everything he does. Robert Vaughn would be proud. Armie Hammer is great as Illya also. The filmmaker has spiced him up with a bit of a troubled past, but it was necessary, not inexplicably gratuitous, and works perfectly. Even Hugh Grant is impeccably consistent with a younger Alexander Waverly.

As a fan of the TV show, I couldn’t be happier. My wife Beth did not grow up on the series and she loved it too. It has huge apparent cross-appeal for both men and women. I can’t imagine a better kickoff to a new franchise. Guy Ritchie proves he knows how to inherit a legacy. In the Sherlock Holmes series, he used a “show the audience what Sherlock is planning” technique very effectively. In UNCLE, he employs a similar “show the audience what just happened” sequence with equal effectiveness.

However, I did check Rotten Tomatoes just now and saw it didn’t get great reviews. The fan rating was higher than the critics ratings and that rings true because the normally sedate audience at our local theatre in Manhattan laughed and cheered throughout. Even after the credits finished rolling several groups of people remained just sitting around talking about how wonderful it was. I’ve seldom seen that happen, ever.

If this does not become a franchise I’ll be sadly disappointed. Do I expect it to compete with James Bond? To quote Goldfinger, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

Christian Fem Therapy

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FemTherapyIf you are one of the many unfortunate Christians who have been cursed with the birth of a female child, take heart. We at Evangelical Acres are here to help you during this, your trial of misery and shame. Following on the miraculous success of our patented Gay Away™ therapy technique, our theo-researchers have developed a powerful new curative program called Fem Away™.

The process starts by recognizing that this abomination is not the fault of the father. As proven by science, all babies are born of women. And we know from our Biblical analysis that all women are unclean, demon-possessed, befouled creatures. During gestation the demons inhabiting these females tempt the immaculate unborn male fetus into a life of sin. Only if the unborn child consciously agrees to let the demon into his soul does he transform into an unclean demon-possessed female.

But take heart. Our exclusive Fem Away™ therapy can help. After a totally voluntary tithing that demonstrates to God that your previous life of selfishness and greed is over, our team of transportation specialists will locate and secure your female-demon child. These professionals are trained to resist the temptations and manipulations of she-demons and relocate them safely at an Evangelical Acres treatment center.

After arrival at our secure facility, nestled in the lovely hills of a remote undisclosed location, our team of highly trained Faith Scientists will begin an intensive program of demonic expulsion, or exorcism at it is called by lay people. These treatments will be augmented by a strict regimen of sex reorientation therapy, conducted by our on-staff clergy and a large staff of dedicated male volunteers. The goal of this treatment is to show the child the disgusting nature of female intercourse and reveal unto them the joy and beauty of male sexuality.

But it’s not all serious therapy. Your child will also receive ample time to enjoy herself by engaging in a balanced recreational program of cleaning, housekeeping, and cooking activities structured to prepare her for a meaningful life after treatment is concluded when she embraces her true male nature.

During the entire course of therapy which may last many years or even a lifetime depending on the stubbornness of the demon infestation, the leadership committee at Evangelical Acres will keep you closely informed of your child’s progress through detailed prayer-based communications. You can take great comfort in knowing that through your loving donation and the grace of God, we will ensure that your evil-tainted female spawn will eventually be transformed into the pure, sinless male offspring it was meant to be.