Thursday, February 18, 2010

Vote Fraud

I don't know how to pose questions, and I'm in charge of the darned polling company. Did you mean "Boo!" lousy story, or "Boo!" let's turn off the TV, or "Boo!" to turning off the TV. Questions are so much about context. I can never get it right.

I have three "opportunities" out there right now, or maybe four or five depending on how you count them. Maybe the people in charge of the opportunities wouldn't consider me a contender, but how would I know? They aren't talking - pretty much like you ya bastard reader! It's amazing how people and companies and readers and critics will just keep you waiting and waiting, like a frog in a kettle, as if we weren't all desperate for work these days. You might almost say it borders on cruel.

Just for fun, while I'm still in free fall here, which as a line in some movie I recently watched but can't remember which pointed out, free fall is like flying (until you hit). Maybe it was a TV show? I know it's not original with me. Crazy Heart???

Anyhow just for fun - and I'm going on record here that nobody's in danger of a shooting spree from me if you reject me - I'm going to idly suggest the connection among these apparently disconnected applications of myself to someone else's business. Here's the list in no particular order:
  • China/US inter-paradigm understanding and cross-cultural brokerage before we end up at odds with each other and take the whole world down with us . . .
  • Health Insurance IT development to internalize market externalities to optimise care and cost (externalities include what would be humanly "best" and not just what would cover the most bases - sometimes more "care" isn't better, that sort of thing.)
  • non-profit business software development for a sustainable planet (same idea as with healthcare - developing a new economics of humanity)
  • love
  • startup business to shift the critical distinction for technology from software/hardware to machine/human where it belongs
A couple more are just long shots hardly worth mentioning:
  • Winning the lottery (hey, I bought a ticket once)
  • Writing for pay (keep your yap shut!)
Some would pay better than others, I'm sure. Some would sustain the soul in ways to make up for shortfalls in pay. Some would sell the soul. Some would defer compensation for some period up to eternity. I'm having a hard time recognizing which is which.

I'll bet you would have a hard time drawing the connections among them. I'll give you a hand.

First of all, in the Chinese tradition, before contamination from us, the West, the technologists, if you will; before that the Chinese literary, linguistic and cultural tradition had no need to noodle the mind/body problem which so obsesses us. There was not a whole lot of obsessing about beginnings and endings, and therefore no concern for ultimate meanings. The word God, for instance just simply never dropped out from or in to the language.

Then there's the utterly ridiculous, obsolete and just silly distinction between hardware and software in the world of technology. It's all circuits in some virtual space. Logic circuits, embodied in hardware or virtually hosted on hardware, it's all on the machine side of a distinction which does count, and which falls out of many languages after a while. That's the human/machine distinction. It falls out of math, that supposed "universal language," in the form of "paradoxes" which only machine-like thinkers could possibly give a damn about.

Some wag on Facebook just now thought I was talking about "love" when I said free fall is like flying (I just meant a job hunt), so that connection doesn't even bear mentioning.

The economics of healthcare are obvious enough for anyone paying even the slightest attention. For instance, who, if told the price ahead of time, would ride an ambulance rather than a taxi if they were going to be asked to foot the bill themselves? Pretty much only the virtually dead already, right? And where do you think all the expenditures go? And do you think any of it could be used to refund the life of the person who likely never made as much in a whole lifetime as will be spent at its end (for the benefit, presumably, of those to be left behind). Q.E.D.

And as to sustainable industry, well that should be a no-brainer too. If you only charge what it costs to extract something, without considering the cost to renew it, you'd pretty much be shooting yourself in the foot unless you were only concerned about a good time right now. In which case, fuck you! Which takes us back to the love connection again.

I suppose that it's OK for two people to be looking for a good time right now from each other, as long as nobody else is involved. Maybe you know how to get to that magic spot of no implication with anyone other than yourself? But then we get back to the soul selling thing again, I mean assuming you have any usage for the term soul, which I, for one, sure don't.

Well, I'm whistling. While I work? Like a bomb in free fall? Because I like the tune? Because I'm in love? All of the above? I always hated multiple choice. So easy to game. (What? You think I earned my way into the Ivy League - fat chance! I was that dog they let in when some Black Hat was proving how easy it is to game the system. But you're too young to remember that one.)

Vote Fraud!!


No comments: