Virtual Life

Ever since the first affordable personal computer was built, the PC has been working hard to integrate itself into every area of our lives. Where once computers were massive artifacts, relegated to the geeks in their IT departments, requiring a computer science degree to understand, they have become simple enough for small children to teach their parents how to use.

Adding the World Wide Web and broadband connectivity has only helped to integrate the computer even more fully into our lives. Why, we are surrounded by computers today, with computers on our desks, computers in our phones, computers in our cars and even computers in our appliances. It’s just about to the point where we can access our refrigerator from work, check to see what’s inside it and have our oven start cooking it, all from the comfort of our computer.

With Internet access, you no longer need to even leave your home. You can do your shopping online, check out the movies you want to see, read the books you want to read (do people still read?) and interact with people all over the world. Why, friendships have even been reshaped  by the Internet, now a friend is someone you don’t know, but laugh at their funny photos and comments on Facebook. You can even fall in love, get married and live happily ever-after with someone through your computer; without ever having to see them.

Yes, the avatar has replaced the person. We’re all in the process of becoming little images of who we think we are, whether that has anything to do with who we really are or not. You can now fall in love with a beautiful avatar of the girl of your dreams, without ever knowing who she really is.

Soon, social media will take over people’s lives; they will no longer live a real life, but merely a virtual one. These new people will go to virtual schools, earn money in virtual work, eat virtual food, form virtual relationships and have virtual children. No longer will they need to worry about real life, they can enjoy their virtual one instead.

Let’s just look at virtual jobs as an example. They’re much better than real jobs, because you don’t have to do them all day. You can just show up once in a while, and with a few mouse clicks, you’ve earned your money for the day. Then you can go on a shopping spree to spend that virtual money on virtual stuff. Stop in and visit your virtual girlfriend and take her out for a virtual meal. Since you’re paying for it with virtual money, paint the town, it won’t cost you a cent.

I think the next step down the road towards virtual life is when they start making portable computer packs with the screens in goggles. Then people won’t have to leave their virtual world for anything. As they drive down busy city streets, they can change the scenery to a virtual countryside, populated by elves and unicorns and other fairy-tale creatures.

Just think, you’d never have to deal with an angry boss again. If your boss showed up, you could just delete him. That annoying co-worker could be changed into a cat. The customer who gives you a hard time could be converted to a horse and you could go riding off into the sunset.

Yes, this virtual life has potential. If there ever was a drug for the masses, it’s not cocaine, it’s the virtual world. Forget about having to get away from your problems, you can just get rid of them. Talk about looking at life through rose colored glasses, you can have your virtual glasses show life in any color you want. Ahh, what a life… who would want a real life, when you can have a virtual one?

The Missing Energy Drink Ingredient

Perhaps you’ve been asleep for the last few years and missed it, but the nation is becoming overrun by energy drinks. According to the commercials, all one needs to do, when feeling tired in the middle of the afternoon, is grab an energy drink and you’ll be back to work, bustling with energy and filled with a joy to be working once again. I’m not sure if those drinks are about giving one energy or making one fall in love with their work.

Has anyone ever checked what those things contain? Are we sure that they’re not filled with drugs? Maybe they’re really some sort of special drug, manufactured under a joint venture agreement by a number of companies; with the goal of making people work harder.

Our youth seem to be especially enamored with these energy drinks. Like fancy coffee, sushi rolls and expensive ice cream; energy drinks seem to be created especially for the younger generation. What people used to call normal tiredness is now looked at as a problem, which needs the solution of an energy drink.

Have you seen the price of those things? Why, they’ve got to be more expensive per gallon than gasoline. If one was to have an energy drink a day, they’d need the extra energy, just to make enough money to pay for their energy drink habit.

Of course, the easy solution to this is for the cheapskates amongst us, is to start making our own energy drinks. It’s a fairly simple recipe. All you need is three parts sugar, one part pure caffeine and some sort of a bad tasting liquid base to put it in; and voila! You’ve got you own “designer energy drink.” If you want to make it more impressive, add some ginseng or other exotic sounding roots and herbs. The more of those sorts of ingredients you can add, the more impressive it will sound to your friends. Even so, it’s the sugar and caffeine that will make it work.

I don’t know how, but in all this hype of energy drinks, everyone has missed the greatest energy food of all… chocolate. How can so many companies create drinks which are supposed to make you full of energy, and forget the greatest energy food of all times? It’s mind boggling, that’s what it is.

At least with chocolate, one knows what they’re getting. With some of those drinks, I’m not all that sure. Maybe they give you energy, and then again, maybe they just convince you that they’re giving you energy. Whichever it is, they’d definitely do a better job with that ageless magic ingredient called chocolate added in. 

Chipmunk Machining Operations

A new technological breakthrough has been made in the area of machining operations, specifically in the machining of wood. Recent advances in animal training has made possible the training of chipmunks to carry out detailed wood machining operations. This is a tremendous advance over the previous gold standard of using squirrels.

The history of using animals for forming wood products goes back to the days when the first beavers were trained to cut logs for cabins. By comparison to training chipmunks, beavers are much more easily adapted to these woodworking functions, since they have a natural affinity to wood. Unfortunately, their large size, and the large size of their teeth makes it difficult to use beavers for any sort of fine detail work.

The most difficult part of training beavers was in getting them to follow the blueprint. Although great woodcutters, they are accustomed to following their own whim, not concerning themselves with such trivialities as dimensions and tolerances.

In more recent times, muskrats and squirrels have been trained to replace beavers. While these smaller animals can never reach the peak of efficiency of even a sick beaver, their smaller size produces finer finishes and more intricate parts. Squirrels especially seem to have an affinity for following drawings and blueprints, almost mocking the designer in their unerring accuracy. Their ability to grasp the use of measuring devices was a true surprise to their trainers.

Yet, all this has been eclipsed with the new generation of chipmunk carvers. Being considerably smaller than even squirrels, chipmunks can provide a level of detail to their work which their larger cousins can only dream of. When fine intricate work is needed, chipmunks are truly a world-class choice. Not only do their smaller teeth give them the ability to do this detail work, but chipmunks seem to have a built-in measuring system, which surpasses the squirrels’ use of measuring devices. One look at a drawing and a chipmunk can reproduce every detail perfectly.

Experimentation is underway to expand the use of chipmunks for materials other than wood. An ongoing experiment, where their teeth are replaced by tungsten-carbide implants is underway, seeing if the natural machining ability of chipmunks can be applied to metal fabrications work as well.

There is also some interest in using them for the plastics industry, as training a chipmunk is much cheaper than building an injection mold. While it is sure that the chipmunks can gnaw their way through many plastics, it appears that they don’t like the flavor. New formulations are under development, creating flavored plastics, which will be much more palatable to the tongue of the chipmunk.

It is theorized that the new capabilities that chipmunks bring to the machining industry will revolutionize many designs, taking advantage of the new ability to provide greater detail and finer accuracy. 

The Never-ending Problem

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human nature through the years, it’s that people like to complain. Granted, some like to complain more than others; and some show some genuine artistry in their ability to complain, while others are just your run-of-the-mill complainers.

Being an election year, the complainers are out in full force. One party complains about the other’s policies, making them out to be a bunch of villains, and the other complains back. Some of these complaints are rather remarkable. I mean, the people who make them up must be way out there to come up with them. Why, they’ll take something that a candidate says and twist, turn, fold, spindle and mutilate it into something totally different, on a totally different topic.

I haven’t decided if these spin doctors are on drugs, from the planet Xircon or just escapees from insane asylums. Once the campaign is over, they shouldn’t bother going to work for the government; I’m sure that they could make more money writing fiction. They’ve already got the experience.

Leaving these professional complainers behind; let’s get back to the run-of-the mill complainer. It seems that many of them are only happy when they are complaining. I mean, have you looked at Facebook lately? At least ten percent of the comments on there are somebody complaining about something or someone that the rest of us couldn’t care less about.

Maybe complaining is a safety valve for these people, to keep them from exploding. If that’s the case, then it would seem to me that we would be doing them a favor to help ensure that they always had something to complain about. It could be sort of a fall-back position, for moments when they run out of other things to complain about. That way, they’d always be miserable, which should make them always be happy.

All we need is something that’s big enough and long lasting enough that it becomes a permanent problem in their lives. At the same time, it’s can’t be so big that it overshadows all other complaints. If it were to reach those cosmic proportions, they might get bored of complaining about it, and just become miserable. No, there needs to be a very careful balance there, between being big enough to complain about and small enough to allow other complaints to overshadow it.

If we want to do this right, we would need to gift this problem equally to everyone at a very young age. That way, we couldn’t be accused of discrimination against complainers. Since they would be young, we’d need to educate them about the problem, so that they would have a true appreciation of it.

This sounds like a job for the public schools. We could institute an elementary school class, which infuses the mind of our children with a life-long problem, like taxes or the national debt, so that they could learn how to worry and complain about it at a very young age. Actually, it wouldn’t be hard to do. All it would take is to lower the age for paying income taxes to five years old. Then, the IRS could be after the kiddies, to make them pay income tax on their allowance. If anything would be a problem for a child, that would be it.

This might even put an end to the problem of people who don’t pay their income taxes. By starting them out young, when they are still quite impressionable, they would be indoctrinated by the time they became adults. Then, even the bum on the streets would be accustomed to paying taxes on their panhandling. Hmm, this could be boon for the American government; more tax revenue, without raising taxes.

Let’s not lose track of the focus though. Increased tax revenue is only a side-benefit. The true goal here is to help out the complainers, giving them ready access to something that they could complain about. While indoctrinating them early would be a major part of that plan, regular reminders are necessary as well.

Perhaps going back to Roman times, and installing tax collecting booths would help keep people reminded of their tax burden. Except, instead of putting them at the entrances of cities, we could put them at the exits of the workplaces. Then, people would be able to pay their own income taxes, instead of having their employer take it out of their check. If they don’t pay, they don’t get to leave work.

Aha, once again we have a way to boost tax revenue, while doing the people a favor. Get all those bureaucrats out of the IRS offices and into the workplaces, where they can really make people miserable. That’s the IRS’s goal anyway; why not help them do it even better?

Professional Spenders

There have been some notices floating around Facebook lately about how much a congress-critter makes. According to those notices, once you’ve been elected to “public office” at the national level, your salary is guaranteed for the rest of your life. They’ve got the best unemployment and retirement package in existence.

Like many, that has bothered me a bit; but, I think I’ve finally gotten to understand it. You see, the only things that those congress-critters know how to do is tell other people what they can’t do and throw other people’s money at problems. So, once they are forcibly retired, they can’t get another job.

So, as unfair as it is, I guess there is some twisted logic in paying these professional spenders a lifetime severance package. Of course, that doesn’t justify such a big golden parachute, at least not in the mind of Archie Bunker and friends. Nevertheless, they’re probably worth at least $1.95 per year.

There’s nowhere in the private sector for a professional spender. While some may argue that purchasing agents spend their company’s money, there’s a huge difference between corporate spending and government spending. You see, with corporate spending, the company receives something in return; and that something they receive has to be of equal value to the money they spent.

On the other hand, congress doesn’t worry about receiving something for what they spend. After all, it’s tax money; something that no “public servant” in their right mind would even bother to think about. They don’t have to show a profit or any return on investment, so it’s easy to throw the taxpayers’ money at problems, real or perceived. It’s all an illusion anyway.

Perhaps we should rename Congress, “The Department of National Spending.” That would, at least, be a more accurate description of their function. We could then change the way in which they spend money, by eliminating the voting on bills, and let each congress-critter spend their “fair share” of tax revenue as they see fit.

Under this plan, each congress-critter would be allocated $5,000,000,000 per year to spend (that’s five billion, in case you got lost counting all those zeroes). The various departments within the government would compete for allocation of that money, lobbying the congress-critters to support their department. Of course, some departments would have the help of special-interest groups for their lobbying efforts, so lobbyists wouldn’t lose their jobs. Then the congress-critter decides where they which department they will give their five billion to.

The money could all be given to one department or could be divided in any way, between all the different departments of the government. If a particular congress-critter doesn’t like what a department is dong, they could withhold support from that department, attempting to force them to make cuts. If there’s a department which seems to be doing an outstanding job, congress could respond by giving them more money.

Of course, the Senate would try and claim that they have a right to allocate a greater amount of government spending than the House of Misrepresentatives. However, it’s actually the House which is supposed to control spending, not the Senate. So, this could be one place where the two houses could be at least equal.

Then there’s the President. He’s going to want to get in on the act as well. After all, the best thing about being president is having a greater ability to pass out money than Congress does. So, I suppose we’d have to allocate $100,000,000,000 (that’s one-hundred billion) to the president, for him to spread around.

If nothing else, this new plan might encourage better controls on government spending. Gosh, maybe someone would realize that the government needed to learn how to run efficiently; a word that they can’t even spell, let alone apply.

Another clear advantage of this program would be that congress-critters would have more free time in their schedules to get a real job. That way, they’d have something to fall back on, when they get out of office. Yep, learning how to flip burgers would be a real improvement over their current skills, which consist of lying, cheating and stealing. At least with flipping burgers, they could contribute something to society, instead of just taking from it.

Keepin’ Up with Changes

Way back when, when Henry Ford came out with his Model T, there was only one model to choose from. The options list consisted of colors; you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black. That was it. Although he did end up coming out with a few versions of the original (roadsters, coupes and touring versions) Henry sold that same basic model of car for 19 years. It didn’t matter if you bought one in 1909 or 1928, the parts were still interchangeable.

Of course, his competitors saw this as a disadvantage; but they didn’t have Ford’s interest in providing benefit to society, they were more interested in getting people to buy their cars. Hence, the invention of the model year. Yep, change the car a little bit each year, and you can surely get some people to get rid of their old one and buy the new one.

While those model year changes could be a bit of a hassle to keep up with, they were nothing compared to the model week changes we’re seeing today. Have you ever tried to keep up with the changes in digital camera models, or even worse, cell phones? If you go into a store to look at cell phones today, and decide to think about it a few days before buying it; there’s a good chance that when you go back to the store, that model will have been replaced by a newer one.

It has become so hard to keep up with the latest and greatest cell phone designs that some businesses are considering a phone rental program. With this very expensive program, you wouldn’t actually buy your phone, you’d merely rent it. Actually, you would be renting the phone as part of your service agreement. The company would guarantee that you would always have the latest and greatest of your particular phone style.

What this would mean is that when your phone model was replaced by a newer design, you would receive a newer phone. The company would send you a text message, informing you that your phone was due for a trade up. You’d go to the store, and they’d replace your one week old phone with the newer model. They’d even transfer all your phone numbers, pictures and apps over for you.

Since you’d only used the old phone for a week, it would probably still look like new; so the store could then sell it to someone who wasn’t as concerned about having the latest and greatest as you are.

Maybe they could even go to a multi-tiered system. People in tier one, who would of course pay the highest premiums, would get the latest phone. After a week or two, when they traded them in, those phones would go to the people in tier two, who paid a bit less. Those would be people who wanted the latest technology, but weren’t so concerned about showing up their friends and co-workers.

After another month or so, those people would then trade their still almost new phone in, where it would go to the tier three cheapskates, who would keep the phone for a year. They’d still have something pretty nice and pretty new, but wouldn’t have the latest and greatest. This tier would be for people who like high-tech, but don’t have a latest-and-greatest sort of budget.

Just think of all the time a system like this could save. Instead of having to keep track of the latest model releases, you could just wait till you’re informed by your service provider. You’d always have the latest, or close to the latest, if you chose tier two, without any of the annoying decision making that you have to go through now. Since you’d be making a monthly payment for your phone anyway, there would be no reason not to trade up.  

I can see this system rapidly expanding to include digital cameras, computers, and even flat-screen televisions. You’d never have to worry about keeping up with the Jones’, they’d be trying to keep up with you. You’d finally win the game and truly be keeping up with technology.

Negativity Alarm

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the world in which we live is rather negative. In fact, it’s very negative. Many things are expressed in a negative way, rather than a positive one. Take traffic lights for instance, I’m sure you’ve noticed that they’re called “stop lights;” well, why not call them “go lights?” After all, that’s what we’re all waiting for, them to signal us that we can go, not that we can stop.

If you take a moment to look around, you’ll notice all kinds of things like this. It’s no wonder that there are so many negative, depressed people in the world; it’s almost like society is working overtime to make us that way.

On the flip side of the coin, we look suspiciously at people who are always smiling, happy and positive. There’s something about them, which makes us all wonder if they’re on something. Either that or we just figure that they’re out of touch with reality. After all, we all know that life is full of problems, so they can’t be all that happy, not without something to help them along.

In a recent in-depth study done by me, I looked at the lives of three people, my pet dog, the neighbor’s cat and four birds in our back yard. In this earth-shaking study, I discovered that negativity breeds negativity. That’s right, if you are around people who are negative all the time, you too will learn how to be negative. Every wondered why you’re so negative? It’s from listening to your mother tell you “No!” all those years you were growing up.

Yep, if your mother had just been more positive, you’d be so too. Of course, everyone else might think that you belong in a funny farm, but that’s their problem. It’s not your fault that they were born to negative mothers.

The obvious solution to this problem is to avoid negative people. Hindu gurus do this by climbing the highest mountain they can find, and hiding out in a cave up there. They spend their days meditating on nothing, because there’s nothing much that one can do hiding out in a cave. C’mon now, what would you do if you spent all your days in a cave in the mountains?

Well, for those of us that want a little more excitement in our lives than what cave life offers, we need a way to avoid negativity, while still living in the midst of society. That would mean that we need a negativity alarm. Since negative people put off a negative vibe, somebody should be able to develop an electronic device which alerts us at their pending arrival. That would give us the chance to duck out quickly, before they appear.

The same device could probably home in on positive people, providing us with a way of getting closer to those crazies who always see life through rose colored glasses. You know who I mean, the people who always have a smile on their faces, a joke on their lips and a laugh on their belly.

Of course, with so much negativity in the world, the alarm would probably be going off constantly. I think that could be overcome though. There would probably be a learning curve for new users, in which their device would help them identify the negative influences in their lives. Once those were identified, they could restructure their lives to avoid all those negative influences. Of course, that might require the aforementioned cave in the mountains.

I can see where businesses and schools would quickly be making rules to outlaw the use of such devices. Since students generally think that their teachers are negative, taking away their freedom to hang out with their friends, alarms would be going off constantly. Likewise in workplaces, since most people aren’t thrilled with their bosses. Managing would be extremely tricky when every employee would have an alarm to tell them when their boss was getting close. “Quick everyone, pretend to work, the boss is coming.”

Even with these restrictions, I still think this device would be worth inventing. People could avoid at least some of the negativity in their lives, like court dates, dentist appointments and bill collectors. Just think how much happier most people would be without those.