Poop, Abridged

Posted: August 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: General, Science, Story, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I am going to say something that is not said enough in the world.

Holy SHIT… thats cool.

Genuinely. Shit is cool.

Wait… even SHIT is cool. Digested food is damn cool, and by god, its poop. Poop is awesome!

And why is poop awesome? Because not only is it the product of billions of years of digestive evolution, it spawns ecosystems in and of itself. Dung beetles aren’t just a punchline, they are a species of beetle that thrives on the digested grasses and plants of the savannah. They gather up their stash in a ball, hop on their front legs, and roll their ball of dung hundreds and hundreds of feet back to their burrow. How in the hell did this behavior evolve? is this behavior learned, or has it been so repeated that it is coded into DNA?

What about our relation to poop? Look at how it has evolved into our culture. Toilets became a mainstay as early as Sumer. We separated our waste disposal from the rest of society. Put it in the corner or behind walls, following the behavior of most other mammals. Its funny that as Cities and Communities grew, the propensity to separate our waste from our streets decreased. We went from Rome, and their advanced system of toilets and baths, to the renaissance, where chamber pots were emptied into streets and baths were practically prohibited by the church. Then we made thrones for our pooping, books surrounding it. Our waste eventually became a joke, a psychological symptom or precursor to disorder, something people laughed at or were ashamed of. There are vast segments of our culture that have developed around this one single subject. Not only are there papers, articles, and novels written around the subject, It is a common and unifying factor for all cultures in the world. Each and every culture has a way they deal with their waste, and Each one has its own vast history and hugely complicated social norms.

And that is just the abridged version of Poop.

Take any subject on earth has Infinite Academic Resolution. You can continue choosing any part of any subject and pull up a wealth of information. If someone hasn’t already written something on it already, then someone will, eventually.

So, Tell Me. Why in the hell are you bored. Oh, I see you, sitting at home, surfing the internet, looking for something new. I see through your charade. You think there is nothing interesting?

Here is a Challenge: Send me some subject, any subject, and I will attempt to pull out something fascinating within it. Really. Send me ANYTHING, and I will find some small seed of inspiration in it. Even better, I will inspire some seed of interest in you. Try Me.

Mutual Self-Interest

Posted: July 31, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: General, Science, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This week, 4 athletes marched under the Olympic Flag. 4 Athletes whose countries were not able or allowed to enter the Games, Three of them from a municipality of the netherlands, and the fourth is a refugee of Sudan. 4 Athletes competing not for any one country, but instead to prove their worth on a global stage, under a global flag. The Olympic foundation, for all of its faults, provides a way to bring the world together for a fair competition. Even more than that, for a peaceful competition. Makes one wonder.

Maybe dreaming of world peace is not as childish and useless as we thought. Oh, I know, we all dream of utopian society, and of somehow creating a completely fair and just world, but we are taught from a young age to be afraid, and to put up with injustice, because its just the way things work sometimes. In fact, any discussion of world peace is dismissed as childish immediately because we are taught that such things are the product of either totalitarian rule, or the wet dream of a freshman poli-sci major.

We assume the world peace means that everyone is well fed, all wars are over, and unicorns shit their rainbows across the sky. But realistically, is there such a thing? Is the dream of world peace too far fetched? Or can world peace mean something different?

So lets abandon our central term, first off. World peace has too many negative connotations and doesn’t quite accurately portray the goals included. So lets toss something more definable into the mix. how about Mutual Self-Interest?

Thats in interesting set of words. Self-interest implies a small portion of selfishness that cuts far short of greed or malice. By making it mutual, the self-interest is for the entire group, not just the one. Society in any species is spawned around groups of Mutual Self-Interest. Dolphins have pods, Wolfs have Packs, and Humans, in any situation, will group with like-minded individuals to create a system of Mutual Self-Interest.

This started with packs. Humanity exited Northern Africa and grouped into packs, finding that having many trumped having few. Then we settled down, built cities, built nations, and populated a world. In fact, in most species, behavioral evolution occurs far before physiological evolution, societies develop and regulate themselves as a course of behavioral evolution. And as Ecological Boundaries expand, it could be safe to say that humanity will regress to its older societal modes. That is: maybe what we need to enter into Mutual Self-Interest, as a planet, is to have something vast out in the distance. Something to make us stand next to a stranger and say, “I guess we have a lot to get done, now.”

While stranded in Albuquerque

Posted: September 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I thought it would end up being a uniquely odd experience, flying from coast to coast on THIS day. I expected the airport to be empty, I expected people to make a scene, to be outspoken, scared, angry, and sad. I expected something a bit different than what I got, which was the everyday pedestrian hustle-bustle. If I didn’t know what day it was today, I wouldn’t even know it was important.

I used to be rather pissed that there weren’t any riots. Its not that I want people to be angry, that I want people to take to the streets in their rage, its just that I wanted them to care, I wanted them to fight for the people of this country. I looked at England and France and saw a youth that was willing to lay down its life for its country, I looked to this country and I saw a youth stagnant, a youth silent. I saw an entire generation dead on their feet, struggling for nothing more than a stable wage and a liveable life.

I was wrong.

I didn’t quite see it until today, that ineffable quality that America breeds into its youth, that stalwart determination in the face of everything. This is a day that, in all experience, should shut everything down, a day where people try not to leave their houses or do any work out of both respect, fear, or grief. This should be the kind of day that halts a country. But it didn’t stop this one.

No, this country is not lazy. No, America is not scared. No, America is not angry. We are determined. Given all that flies in our face, all that seems to conspire against us, we keep working. Given all who keep on dying over seas, we keep going. Given all of the fear, the terror, and the pure unmasked and irrational news we keep getting, we still go to work. Deep down, I think we know better than anyone else in the world: we keep moving and we keep working even if the sun itself threatens to swallow us. That way, no one can keep us down.

The Asses in the Audience

Posted: July 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Art, Performance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Theatre is all about one’s ass, everything we know and love about the stage has everything to do with our asses. Its about how many asses are in the seats, how comfortable those asses are, whether those asses need to pee, whether how often they move, how sore they are, or even how much those asses paid to be there.

And let me make this abundantly clear, it is not about the actual audience members. The audience itself thinks too much, is too swayed by reviews of people they believe to be knowledgeable. Audiences Talk, answer their cell-phones, throw things at actors and they are almost universally know-it-all children. An audience is an exceedingly ungrateful lot. Their asses, however, are remarkably honest. An audience member may say that they loathed a show, but if their ass is happy, then the show was well made.

Art (And Dirty Words)

Posted: July 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Art | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I spend so much of my life worried about the predominance of culture that I have no clue anymore why culture needs its predominance. They say that culture is the currency of a people, but what purpose does this currency have if its only purpose seems to be to immortalize the creative. If any goal has ever irked me, it is the goal of immortality immortality. Only the selfish aspire to live forever, it’s a goal that only proves that one’s ego is so large they cannot stand to let it ever deflate.

Perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps it could be said that the goal of creation is to spur change in the world, and it is almost certain that art has done that. Everything from books, to movies, to plays have shown the world something that it hasn’t seen before; that the shadow of hate still exists, what the future could hold, and what the past did, what life means. From a young age we are raised with stories whose entire purpose is to present to us a moral. Perhaps to a certain extent, Aesop raised us as much as our parents did. But outside childhood, are we still taught by stories, or do we just watch them enjoy the brief entertainment, and continue on. More concisely, what purpose does art serve in culture?

  1. To Teach and Inform
    1. Inciting socio-political change
    2. Moral stories
    3. Informing an individual about the past
    4. Positing a possible future
  2. To Entertain
    1. Absorb a viewer into a world
    2. Base titillation
    3. Incitement of an emotion

The first purpose of art, To Teach and Inform is a well-documented one; touted by academics everywhere who love to believe that art is not just for entertainment. To be honest, a fair amount of art is in fact used for teaching, but in recognizing the only purpose of art as education we overlook the driving force of Art. Entertainment.

It seems like such a dirty words when it comes to art. Why create something that merely entertains when it can hold a breadth of intellectual merit? Why create something that everyone can relate to when one can cater just to the critics? People need to be OK with creating Art that exists for the sole purpose of entertainment.

Why is it suddenly “Selling Out” when something is created just for entertainment’s value. God knows Shakespeare appealed to almost every income class in Britain, and he is still read today by students and professors alike. The problem is, academics try and see beyond the entertainment, reading too much into what they think he wrote into the words. Let me make this abundantly clear, When you are an underpaid writer/actor living in a place where writer/actors are considered vagrants, you don’t write to appease intellectuals, you write to appease everyone possible. Now just because someone writes to entertain the masses, doesn’t mean that they are selling out, it means they are writing to entertain the masses.

While teaching is A purpose of art, its value is determined by its entertainment. Art is only remembered if people actually watched it.

Civilization

Posted: July 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Civilization.

In order for a species to develop a civilization that is advanced in a fashion that resembles humanity, the following conditions must be met.

  • Rational Intelligence

The intelligence of a species must be such that it allows for an ability to deduct simple conclusions from relevant data. The most basic aspects of abstract thinking must be present.

  • Social Structure

A species must both be willing to function in solitude and in herd. If a species is purely solitary, it cannot pass on its gained knowledge, and if a species relies on the herd too much, large leaps in growth are prohibited as tasks that are more efficient in solitude are performed in herd..

  • Communication, Memory, and Oral Tradition

In addition to rational thinking, it is necessary for a species to pass on what is has learned to its offspring. Previously found knowledge must first be remembered in order to be built upon.

  • Fine Tactile Manipulation

A species must be able to manipulate its environment instead of allowing its environment to manipulate it.

  • Imperfect Evolution OR Extreme Change in Environment

Without reason to make the switch from adapting to changing an environment, a species will continue along its path. Creatures with near-perfect evolution (i.e sharks and horse-shoe crabs) don’t develop culture. Creatures that are imperfectly evolved, or are suddenly introduced to an environment that doesn’t suit their evolution, are then forced to manipulate their environment, possibly to an extent where civilization is created

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