Admonition for Dumbasses, Not Qualified Persons

One thing that persistently irks me is being talked-down to by people who have (maybe) 10% of MY JOB-EXPERIENCE...

Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I have a wider range of job-experience being younger than 50, than most people get their entire lives.

To top that off, I have a measured I.Q. approaching 140...literally sub-genius.

I'm not trying to validate my own abilities, but rather to explain WHY I get so irritated by intra-organizational problems for which any significantly-qualified person should be able to solve/set in motion solutions with relative ease.

I have one functioning hand, one semi-functional leg and frequently-distorted vision, so I shouldn't be able to run circles around the staffs of various professional organizations...but I find that I frequently MUST perform this feat in order to survive.

Put more simply, when a high-school graduate with so many disabilities is able to out-think and out-organize a whole staff of professionals with a university degrees, it gets irritating.

But it's a more frequent exercise than you'd think...

Anyway, in my agony, well-qualified professionals often make the mistake of thinking that I'm criticizing them. But I'm not...and if they could read between the lines they'd understand that I am empathetic to the matters they themselves must overcome every day...I'm just a little less tolerant of poor-thinking and lax organization than they are, because said disabilities turn many things they consider child's-play into MONUMENTAL tasks...like physically getting to a location to "simply" do something.

I'm sure if these people took the time to get to know me they'd understand that I'm not out to belittle ANYBODY, but to inspire people to sensible action...where action is preferable to apathy.

I know that psychologically-speaking, people often respond like I'm criticizing their efforts, but to be honest, where actual effort is made, I forgive a LOT of difficulties.

It is where people sit on their asses and glibly criticize MY REAL NEEDS, that I get unruly. I have great respect for people who make ANY effort.

It's the apathetic smart-asses of the world who I disdain. So please, don't errantly-personalize things I write that don't apply to you. If you're TRYING, I already respect you for the effort.

We're all in this together.

--mattergy

Addendum:
I should explain why I use the term: "dumbasses". It's not intended to be a slight on someone's intelligence. If you tried to find it in your dictionary, you discovered that it isn't even a real word...and that is intentional.

I've borrowed a slang expression from the world of online-gaming to refer to someone who absolutely will not listen to ANYONE'S instruction, regardless of their intelligence, or position-of-authority. I think it literally means "apathetic from head-to-toe" (the ass being the anatomical-center of their apathy). It's not meant as a term of derision for anyone who cares even the slightest bit...it's only for those who literally don't care about anyone or anything except their own ego...even to the extent of being BANNED from a game-server (made a COMPLETE pariah, where the server is programmed not to even accept a connection from the person.)

Only the truly narcissistic can be dumbasses, never a socially-concerned individual AT ALL...dumbasses are utterly apathetic...apparent to anyone who has an eye to see, or an ear to hear, as Jesus might say.

Oh How I Love the Thankless Students of the World

[]

First-hand Experience with Armageddon

An occasional reader wonders "Why Apocalypticon" when they stumble onto this blog...which I think I explain fairly lucidly in the link marked: "The End of Everything" at the top left-hand corner of the page, but it occurs to me that people form assumptions first, then MAYBE read what I had to say.

Yes, I was strongly influenced by an Amageddon-Aware Southern Baptist church in the 80s, and I was one of the few real thinkers who challenged some frankly nutty suppositions, but I was only a teen then, so nobody listened.

I didn't reject everything...I just put things into a more thoughtful context...like cluing people in to the fact that the pervasive fear of impending Apocalypse in the United States was mostly a response to the threat of all-out nuclear war with the former Soviet Union being cleverly merged with Southern Baptist theology via every form of media imaginable: TV, movies, newspapers, music...and not necessarily randomly so.

When this sort of influence becomes self-confirmed by the whole culture, it's extremely difficult to shake-off. And I saw it AS IT EVOLVED, at least in Southern Baptist circles.

Again, my personal religious beliefs are NOBODY'S BUSINESS, except for the rare individual who wants to take the time to understand exactly HOW I formed the conclusions that ultimately drove me to the unique mindset I have today.

And they are rare. In general I find that people want to do one of two things: 1) "correct" my thinking or 2) try to understand how a person of my intelligence can POSSIBLY accept the validity of certain religious beliefs.

This puts me at odds with BOTH religious- and pure-science-zealots, and frankly they're both laboring under unrealistic illusions, often.

As comedian Steve Martin relates on his late-70s Wild and Crazy Guy album, "It's so hard to believe in anything anymore....I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my Lucky Astrology Mood-watch."

Obviously it's a joke, and Steve's personal-beliefs remain mysterious to the public to this day...and more power to him for that.

The point is that I BELIEVE THAT FREEDOM-OF-THOUGHT allows people to EXAMINE ALL THINGS HONESTLY, which is a concept that I'm sure all intelligent people can agree on, no matter what they believe.

As I've frequently mentioned to several people...I'm a terminally unaffiliated American, in the truest sense.

I've found that ironic paradoxes frequently inspire unique thinking, which is the high-point of human-consciousness in my eyes...admittedly, a recipe for delusional thinking, but also one for clear-thinking.

And if I've learned anything, it's that I'd rather live in a world of confused people than one of unthinking robots.

At least you can argue with the confused. Robots only act as they are programmed. And what good is that? except for lawn-sprinklers. ;)

Attention on the Skies=Soul-Searching?

Speaking of comets, those of us who remember comet Hale-Bopp
will recall that that tail is extremely long-lived.

The people in South America who observed January 2007's Comet McNcnaught will recall that the tail remains visible for an evening or two, spawns a flurry of hype, and then, due to the Earth's own motion relative to the sun, it's just ... gone.

This psychological mirror-turned-in-on-itself can only be described metaphorically even by actual eye- ear- nose- and skin-witnesses. Just a thought.

Ice on Fire

Original image copyright: Stéphane Guisard
Modified Formatting for aesthetic presentation

Comets aren't really on-fire...the long tails we see are vaporizing ICES and DUST PARTICLES of various compositions, fluorescent from excitation by solar radiation...

That's why we don't see comets--without good equipment--until they get relatively close to the sun, and why photos of comets taken from earth are often taken in the early morning (just before sunrise) or just after sunset, when the brilliance of the sun itself is BELOW the horizon.

Seen here is Comet McNaught, from one of several photos taken in January 2007 (one year ago).

M.S. Costs America!

I have made no effort to hide the fact that I have Multiple Sclerosis, and can currently type only with my NON-DOMINANT hand (I stress non-dominant, because I literally had to retrain myself to do everything with the hand that had not been used to lift so much as a fork before I developed M.S.)

Anyway, it's estimated that 400,000 Americans have MS, and that, in itself, is reason enough to understand the realities of the disease outside of the "pitiful feel-sorry-for-me images" of M.S. sufferers presented by various media.

The reason it should concern EVERYONE is because even though relatively FEW people suffer from M.S., the financial-costs M.S. incurs are barely believable...just diagnosing the disease can take years, and finalizing the diagnosis of M.S. (and eliminating the possibility of other neurological diseases) can cost hundreds-of-thousands of dollars...per patient.

And M.S. is NOT racially-distinct. It affects people of all races (preferring WHITES in temperate zones actually, even though black talk-show-host Montel Williams is probably the most well-known M.S. sufferer in the U.S.). And M.S. strikes most people in middle-adulthood (ages 30-50) so a person can live a completely normal and healthy life before presenting symptoms of M.S. at all.

Again, "it's not my problem" is exactly the WRONG ATTITUDE for a person to take regarding M.S...because many of the problems of ordinary aging are experienced by people with M.S. well-before advanced age (I became almost completely paralyzed by M.S. before I saw my 40th birthday, but almost no one cares about how disabled a "good-looking young man" can be, if the compliment isn't followed-up with the right questions).

A family can easily go bankrupt in the first few months after M.S. becomes apparent (if I had not worked so hard, and paid so much into Social Security before I was 36, I would not have enough for even my rent).

This isn't a flaw in the Social Security system...it's a result of property-owners keeping rents for their the properties at the current "market-rate" despite a lack of commensurate salary increases (yes, even the ordinary working-class are perpetually at the mercy of land-owners, but imagine NOT being able to work, and still having to pay the rent).

Anyway, I'm really thankful for the Social Security system in the United States, because in a completely capitalist economy (like ours), there are very few (legitimate) avenues of survival from which to choose.

And the well-known rant that people are basically exploiting the system may be true (to some extent), but without the "system", many otherwise capable people would not be able to survive.

Keep that in mind when you vote for your next President.

Addendum 10:45 a.m. PST
Although Montel Williams it probably the best-known M.S. sufferer, he is by no means the most famous. But one special thing about Montel is that he regularly allows his audience to see what he goes through with M.S. (even taking them on video field-trips to his neurological examinations)

Semi-Intentional Scuffwork

BTW: if you save the version of the smiley-face image on this page (the one in the previous post will be clearer) and set it to your desktop, you'll see some fuzzy BLUE AREAS that are supposed to suggest the look of a kid after a day at the playground...BEFORE the bath. ;)

Smile :)

Just so the reader knows, everything is gonna be alright.

The Subsonic Whale

People are often unaware what is meant by the term "Subsonic Noise". It's just another term for vibration. And there are all kinds of things producing it: People, Cars, Elephants, even the natural "tidal"-pulsation of the earth itself (our Moon's gravity warps the Earth, and its oceans and atmosphere to an relatively significant degree).

Our sense of hearing operates on what we might call the Sonic level (Hence SUBsonic--i.e., just outside our normal range of hearing.

We sense ALL forms of noise through our bones (we wouldn't be able to hear ANYTHING without that highly specialized trio of tiny bones in our inner-ear: often called the Hammer, Anvil, and Stirrup).

However, people with porous bones (osteoporosis) have an additional acoustic phenomenon of having sounds projected into bone cavities (if you've ever noticed a strangely disconcerting loss-of-hearing when you have a cold...that's usually the result of your sinus cavities being full of viscous fluid...its like what you hear underwater).

Anyway, my point is that osteoporosis actually INCREASES a person's sensitivity to vibration because it creates natural acoustic cavities (little auditoriums) at the very topographic centers of a person, making SOME ELDERLY PEOPLE extremely sensitive to rumblings of all kinds...naturally so.

Now the tidal "rumblings" of the moon are at such a low frequency as to go totally unnoticed (except for the rising and falling of the tides--which have enough mass and fluidity to be visible to humans [as opposed to those forces working inside the Earth..which aren't readily apparent to us until an earthquake or a volcano hits], but the perceivability is a function of observing those trends over long scales of time: therefore those vibrations, too would classify as Subsonic Noise. Just not the kind HUMANS perceive.

To blatantly steal an idea from Star Trek IV: that might mean that the perception of perturbations of the earth, Moon, Sun and planets might be perceivable to large, long-lived animals far-better than they are by humans. Which makes far more interesting this passage from the book of Genesis:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201

Funny how words have so many different flavors of meaning depending on the order in which you read them. ;)

--mattergy

Addendum 5:00 p.m. PST
As I considered even more deeply how profound what I was saying actually was, I happened to be reminded that without a cohesive and relatively permanent method of sharing complex ideas, without the invention of interchangeable conceptualization--i.e. sifting the symbol systems that have been passed down lead us to the idea of actually measuring the metering of language to "discover the secrets within it"...hence Mathematics via Language.

Without Leonard Nimoy's fanciful Star Trek IV, I might have never gotten the idea that music has a whole different beat for a being whose neural networking relied in part on large sea Mammals...but even MORE on how good the idea is for coming up with higher-level languages that have a way of converting the symbols we use from ACTUAL EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE into SCORED LISTS OF LIFE'S LITTLE SYMBOL-ONE-LINERS. HENCE THE HISTORY WE HAVE ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY DISCOVERED in CASPIAN, AEGEAN, RED, NORTH, CHINA, and BLACK SEA cultures.

Addendum 1/7/08
There really isn't ANY advantage to having porous bones...the effect I'm talking about is actually a noise-canceling effect in some ways, because UNLESS a frequency is naturally echoed in those cavities, it will actually be REDUCED. In this case, a person's bones behave more like porous acoustic foam, rather than like solid crystals that carry resonant frequencies almost PERFECTLY


Addendum 2 1/7/08
I guess I'm not enunciating the idea that reducing the noise from our own body DOES allow SOME advantage, if you're listening for very faint noise (cooling is a common method of molecular noise-reduction for MANY applications [like some telescopes and lasers that require focus unperturbed by random molecular noise]) but porous bones are BRITTLE bones, and nobody wants THAT.

In this case, you'd expect that genuine sensation of large-scale, low-frequency noise would be more easily perceived in caverous liquid-filled expanses...think whale.

Plans Change

I have been ruminating over various challenges in my personal life lately (actually NOT my Personal Life per se but in the lives of people I care about).

The result has been that I am less concerned about my readers than my own friends..so in that instance I tend withdraw (not psychologically-so, just for the sake of giving the proper level of thought to my OWN people) until those MORE MEANINGFUL MATTERS reach a state of stability that don't require so much of my personal attention.

As such I've been reminded a lot more about the people in my life who've passed-on before their time.

And by before their time, I mean, before the people they knew were ready to come to terms with the death.

It happens a lot in life, but I have always been of a mindset that tending to the LIVING is something every decent person would want in the event of their own death.

So if you're wondering why I don't seem as concerned about what's going on thousands and millions of miles distant, it's not because I've given up. It's because I respect the wishes of the recently-dead first, and THEN return to the business of fixing the world.

--mattergy

On the Radio (almost)

Original image courtesy www.bnnrc.net

When I was younger, I took a series of lab-classes in RTV-xxx (a common college abbreviation for Radio & Television course-names in American schools' course-catalogs).

In fact, I was the TD (Technical Director) on a fair number of taped shows that appeared on local television...nothing fancy, but I did get to meet popular TV-News anchor Kate Kelly during the taping of one show. (She's still a "Total Babe", BTW...an assessment made by my instructor 20 years ago)

I was prepared to launch into an RTV-career, and even transfered to a university that was locally-known for its RTV-program...and as a result I was forced to take certain courses that really opened my eyes...not classes every newly-graduated high-school student is likely to select (but I quickly noted that the quality of the ORGANIZATION of those course-catalogs made a genuine difference in the TYPE of courses I selected).

Then I realized how much LEGAL-STRESS goes into every nudge of the wand (that's the little control-stick that performs any number of functions) and pressing of a button in television and radio...and decided I'd rather do something less stressful.

And ironically enough, I ended up becoming a fast typist...so I wound up becoming a clerk in even more stressful occupations.

But I never lost my cool, and I think that more than anything kept me employed long enough to pay into my Social Security from age 16 into my late 30's when I became disabled (a solid 20-years of work by anyone's reckoning, so I feel I at least EARNED my disability-income).

PLUS...AS AN ADDED BONUS you get all these ridiculously-free insights on everything from immunology to renewing faith in the U.S. Postal Service, so I figure that's gotta be benefiting SOMEONE domestically. ;)

Anyway, all of that started as a result of pursuing a career in radio. Strange how Life turns-out. I'm probably the fastest one-handed typist-TD you've ever read...but there's no hiding the fact that my brain is awfully damaged.

You can hear it every time I brush against anything (NOT hammered down) as it falls to the floor.

Addendum 10:15 P.M.:
Okay, the course-instructor was the TD on the show that featured Kate Kelly (I was a lowly camera-operator at that time)...my later TD-work actually centered around editing TAPED programs, mostly as a "post-production TD" so I never really had to endure the stress of running the "switcher" during an actual live-broadcast.

Protect from the Rebound

Image courtesy NJNETS.COM, as published in Google Images

As I've often mentioned there's a curious connection between sudden drops in crude-oil prices and increased national strife.

A corollary to this is my awareness of how the appearance of "round" numbers in the crude-oil markets can trigger the massive buying and selling of commodities...often for completely irrational reasons.

Again, I'm aware that this is relatively USELESS information (because the world markets are inherently volatile during war-time).

But I'm NOT a commodities-trader. I'm just an observer of trends. My opinion is that the recent fluctuations in crude-oil prices are signaling general unrest throughout the world...as if you didn't know that already. ;)

Love is a Many Blender'd Thing

Photo: Take-Anywhere Cordless Blender featured on shinyshiny.tv

People are hypercritical of the modern New Year's holiday.

But I'll tell you that one of the finest acts of bravery I ever witnessed was performed by a guy who had been up drinking all night on New Year's Eve.

Naturally, I don't recommend alcohol-consumption in any quantity beyond what a person's metabolism can naturally tolerate...but the fact that this guy was SOOO HUNG-OVER made it so exceptionally heroic.

He hoisted my buddy's Jeep from a gravel rail-bed where it had slid off the hillside in a sudden cloudburst after a week of rains. Kind of a bonehead accident, but the rescue was notable.

Remember...nothing is open on January 1, except the movies...and it's unlikely any one of THOSE PATRONS would have missed a Premiering Box-Office Hit to risk self AND vehicle to get a friend's truck off the railroad tracks along a muddy hillside...hangover or not.