Ayn Rand? Not right, yet not wrong.

I remember a Hawkwind album I used to listen to years ago that is probably somewhere in my mother’s garage now. In it a disaster was being described and the advice to those fleeing was that if they thought about their own safety first then their chances of survival would be heightened. This does make sense, in daily life I have on numerous occasions had to try and find a happy median to choose a course of action in the light of everybody trying to accommodate each other and nobody being fully happy with the result. What would have given everyone the greatest happiness would be another course of action that they would have hit on immediately if they had not been trying to do the best for another.

In this way it can be seen that thinking selfishly as suggested by the theories of Ayn Rand can sometimes be a good idea. I have not read more than a paragraph or two of Ayn Rand’s writings but I have read a lot of commentary on them and she believed that where there was risk to one’s own self then it was immoral to take that risk for the benefit of others. I am not going to take a polemical stance against this as I am sure that in many instances she is right. When a house is on fire I am certain that there are often times when rescuers put themselves into harm by seeking to save someone who had already left at the first sign of smoke or had never been there in the first place. In this scenario Ayn Rand’s philosophy works perfectly for the utmost benefit. However if there is someone in the house and they can be saved and the risk may be great but the actual damage that is fated to occur to a rescuer will never materialise then Ayn Rand’s philosophy is seriously flawed.

This is the problem with the promotion of selfishness as a philosophy, it is like all other philosophies, a great idea but not necessarily practical. Marx had a fantastic philosophy but no practical plan of how it could work; the result is that Russia decided to make use of his philosophy themselves and what they created was not a utopian society but rather a massive and costly sociological experiment that proved what looks good on paper might be a complete shambles when exposed to the variety of real life.

Likewise the free market is a brilliant philosophy. It is so simple, the ultimate form of democracy, the public pay for what they want and the public will get it at the cheapest possible prices with the ultimate efficiency. The problem as any economist will be able to tell you is that it relies on perfect competition to live up to the textbook ideal. Perfect competition can only exist with total knowledge of the value of what is being purchased. Many of the average people out there might have very good knowledge of who the probable killer in the latest drama series is but they will not possess total knowledge of all the factors that are relevant to the decisions they would need to make a fully informed choice on buying so much as the bare staples needed to remain alive.

The customer might know that a loaf of bread from one shop is £1 and from the shop down the road it is £1.10. They may also know how tasty one is compared to the other, and nowadays they might have relative ideas about how healthy one loaf is compared to another. However, when you start to put dozens of loaves on the shelves then it is not so easy to draw accurate distinctions between them. Looking a little more deeply it is impossible to know the effect on the product due to things like genetic modification as the tests needed to know this sort of thing have not even been taken to conclusive enough a result as to satisfy the scientists performing the tests. Further what sort of effect will this have on the environment in which the materials are grown? What effect will this have on the greater environment? What about relative effects of transportation policies? Side investments made by the producers? The list of variables needed to make a fully informed decision is so great that if we were to objectively analyse the purchase of a loaf of bread we would be dead a long time before we had worked out which one we should buy.

Listening to Leonard White of Duke University’s medical department the other day I was led to thinking about the frontal lobes within the brain. Leonard White discussed historical cases in which this area had been damaged. One of the functions of this area of the brain is the making of decisions and people who had become damaged there would find the greatest difficulty in making decisions. They might have all pertinent facts but still be unable to weigh their worth. This area is also responsible for many emotional reactions and it is therefore probable that the ultimate factor to take into account when making a decision is an instinctive one based upon what feels right emotionally. It occurred to me that this was the area of the brain in which the third eye is located; the area that is focussed upon in many meditations and the area that tends to become stimulated in many meditations even though they may have another focus. It further struck me that those who do spend all their time meditating are not necessarily wealthy or leaders of business but they are often envied by so many other people because this is not an issue. They seem happy; those who meditate seem to make all the right decisions to get what they need to create happiness within themselves. It doesn’t matter how successful you are in material things, if you are not happy then it is not worth much to you. Whereas it does not matter how poor you are materially, if you are happy then you have won.

Priests and holy people who stimulate this area with their meditation seem to spend a lot of their time helping others. This is immoral where there is any risk to their own welfare according to Ayn Rand but then Rand’s philosophy only works adequately where knowledge is mythically complete. In the absence of complete knowledge, far beyond our current level of intellectual evolution, it is necessary to fall back on other brain functions that can process the available information more efficiently that surface consciousness. Those functions have been shown to be covered by the frontal cortex.

In 2005 the Ayn Rand institute began an appeal against helping Tsunami victims as according to Rand’s philosophy this would be the wrong approach. Of course this appeal was based upon incomplete information because there is no way to know what effect on future international trade and national prosperity could be had from getting that country back on its feet as soon as possible. In fact there is no way of knowing how much information the subconscious brain uses to make its decisions beyond conscious thought. Those who look into paranormal and other esoterica might even consider that the subconscious brain of some individuals may even be privy to the knowledge that one individual who could be helped by a handout may go on to be the discoverer of a cure for cancer. Even if this is pushing such potential foresight too far to be feasible it is nevertheless an undeniable possibility in the modern global world.

Ultimately this has all been a very long way of saying that when making decisions about the effect that your actions and beliefs may have on the world it is impossible to make these decisions consciously. By all means learn as much as you can consciously as every extra bit of information aids decision making but ultimately the most successful and honest decisions are the ones made with the greatest aid by the one organ that has been shown as essential to decision making, the frontal cortex. Essentially you should do what you feel is right. No matter how clever you are by the standards of our ultimate potential you are an idiot; by the standards of how clever we need to be to make important decisions you are an idiot; as has been shown by the inability of those with damaged frontal cortexes, by the standards of your own brain sans emotional decision making parts, you are an idiot. That is why you should do what you feel and know and believe to be right, not what you think is right.

Maybe Demons do walk the earth

I have heard it said that the greatest trick that Satan ever played is convincing the world that he did not exist.  My thoughts today resonate with that idea.  A particularly gruesome prediction of the end of times might read that demons would walk the earth.  Soulless, faceless beings that know only greed and avarice, they desire nothing other than to achieve their own ends leaving the ruined lives of human beings behind them as they battle each other to control more and more, seizing wealth and taking happiness away from all those that they use.  The greatest trick they played was to convince men that they were completely innocent of harm and even beneficial agents, seeking nothing other than the betterment of mankind.

I am not going to make any end of days predictions.  Such things are always viewed as the words of crackpots and lunatics.  At any rate I have no belief that there is going to be any sudden cataclysm that will wipe mankind out.  I have little doubt that there will be events at some point in the future that could in the past have wiped out mankind.  I shan’t say that we have placed ourselves beyond such harm now.  If the dinosaurs can be wiped out then it is certain that events could easily lead to a future where the only memory of us could be that there were once an awful lot of monkeys on the planet.  We have done extraordinarily well to survive for as long as we have.  Particularly in the light of how much effort we have been putting into trying to kill each other off.

I will however, state that these faceless, soulless demons do indeed walk the earth at this point in time.  They are behemoths exerting huge control over mankind and they are also small and harmless creatures that simply exist.  They are legion.  Before you dismiss me out of hand bear in mind that according to companies legislation, a company is a legal personality.  In order that it is able to enter contracts it must hold legal standard as a corporate being.  Corporate being related to corporeal – of the body; companies are animate corpses.  They are hives, their elements made up of the life they absorb into their being; individuals who must relinquish personal concerns and interests.  The people who make up a company’s employees and agents must forget about themselves and consider only the welfare of the monstrous creature itself. 

Bees in a hive act as constituents of a whole.  Our own bodies are made up of single cells working in concert together; in a symbiosis that has evolved over time.  Millions of years ago single celled organisms were the dominant inhabitants of the planet.  They learnt to work together and gradually became dependant on each other to such an extent that their connection became coded in DNA and they could pass on their constitution to future forms that would evolve to ensure their interactions were more effective.  Some of them became human and some of them became the bees who learnt the same trick to create the hives, a form of intelligence to which they all contributed.  In the modern day we see the same trick being pulled off with humanity.  The companies try to absorb us into their being so that we become nothing more than constituents of this soulless juggernaut, working to assimilate wealth and maximise profit at the cost of all individuality and happiness within.

A little over 100 years ago the dominant form of business was the co-operative.  People were members of friendly societies and they would work together for the benefit of all.  A company only seeks to work for the benefit of its shareholders.  It will have regard for the welfare of its employees but only to the extent that it serves the interests of the shareholders.  If the employees fail to serve the interests of the shareholders then they are expelled like dead tissue – the excrement of the company alongside its other waste products.  When this doesn’t happen the company can become ill and the shareholders can sue the board for failing to maximise their benefit.

The time of the co-operatives was ended by the rise of companies as workers developed a faith that by forming unions they could protect themselves.  The manner in which all personal welfare of the workers was neglected if it conflicted with the prime directive of assimilation of profit meant that profit could be maximised and power could grow so that the friendly societies could be crushed underfoot to make way for these new ‘unfriendly’ societies. 

These legal personalities now control most of the face of the Earth.  They have their own agenda.  They have no concern for people as was proved recently by the popular coffee chain that refused to supply coffee to troops due to the way it might conflict with future trade among the combatants.  With the development of intelligent machines you will see that people will not even be needed to run the companies at all.  People will no longer be paid because they will no longer be needed.  Companies will rule the earth and humanity will be a type of vermin except for the few descendants of the original investors in the companies.  They will think that it is they who rule the Earth but really they will be the slaves of soulless demons ruling over a world of poverty and want.

Jimmy Savile. Concidences? Surely they must be.

It is interesting how many coincidences you can see if you only look for them. Why was Jimmy Savile keen to fix it for the Yorkshire Ripper to shake hands witha Frank Bruno? I wonder how this occurred. What did Peter Sutcliffe say to Jimmy that would make Jimmy do something that was bound to create such a cloud of negative publicity? The human mind can find patterns anywhere even if there is no substance to create such a pattern. It is one of the talents that helped us evolve. It is probably just coincidence when a star who is accused of heinous crimes does nice things for a criminal accused of heinous crimes. It is probably just coincidence that one of Sutcliffe’s teenage victims had her body discovered in Savile Park, Halifax. It must be very unlikely that it just appealed to the sense of humour of a man that did heinous things in front of the world and was laughing because he felt that nobody could ever catch him or accuse him. I am certain that conspiracy theories could be built upon flimsy coincidences like these.

BBC: When Louis Met Jimmy Savile – Zero Tolerance!  I have noticed that a great many people who have been coming to the blog today have not been watching the Zero Tolerance video here.  It is a scary video in that it is simply showing Jimmy’s own words about his time as a dance hall manager in leads.  For those who do not wish to click through I shall describe what he says.  Jimmy worked in the dance hall in the early 60s, around the time that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper was a teenager.  I have seen no evidence that Sutcliffe went to this dance hall but it is another coincidence that when Jimmy was sleeping with all these teenage girls it was around the same time that Sutcliffe was a teenager of about the same age, living in the same area.  In this video from a show by Louis Theroux the cameraman has been left with Savile after Theroux has retired for the evening.  I do not think Savile realises that the camera is still rolling.

Savile describes how he operated a Zero Tolerance policy.  He never called the police if there were trouble makers in the club, he didn’t even throw them out.  Savile says he would tie them up and leave them in the boiler room until he was ready for them around 3 or 4am.  He describes himself as being, “judge, jury and executioner.”  He says that he used to have trouble with the police but he didn’t care.  They would complain that he had been too heavy handed with his victims bu he would say to the Police,  ”Your daughter comes in here. She’s 16.  She’s not supposed to come into town but she does and she comes here.  I presume you would like me to look after her.  If you don’t want me to look after her, tell me and I’ll let those dirty slags do whatever they want with her.”  He goes on to tell the camera man, “I never got nicked, he he he he he.”  These are his words.  Said by him.  On video.

I did not know much about Jimmy Savile but after seeing the video above I thought that it would be far too much coincidence to discover after finding a connection with the Yorkshire ripper that Jimmy had a personal connection with Yorkshire. I hypothesised that if there was a connection then Jimmy would have a connection and if this was so then my hypothesis would be backed up. Apparently the nightclubs in which Sir Jimmy says he was judge, jury and executioner were in Yorkshire. I wonder if Peter Sutcliffe enjoyed the nightlife. I will have to go and check dates now and see if there is any correlation.

So apparently Peter Sutcliffe was around 15 at the time when Jimmy Saville was running ballrooms and allegedly sleeping with 15 year olds in Leeds. Leeds of course being the place that Peter Sutcliffe began his string of murders years later.

Apparently as a boxer in his youth Jimmy said he broke every bone in his body and loved it. It seems to me that only a psychopath would love it if they were breaking every bone in their body. Psychopaths are often considered to be very intelligent. Perhaps they might be clever enough to join MENSA. Jimmy was a MENSA member coincidentally. So many coincidences. If it turned out that there was anything else that made him appear to have any odd similarities with any psychopathic killers it would all seem far too much. I wonder how people would interpret it if he were to be overly close with his mother. Perhaps he might live with her and refer to her as the Duchess. Perhaps on her passing he might keep her room exactly as it was during her lifetime and perhaps he might have her clothes dry cleaned once a year for her even after she had gone. That would be more than a little suspicious on top of everything else wouldn’t it. It would also be apparently true according to some sources.

One could imagine that a paedophile who worked in hospitals might possibly be there for victims in addition to generating good will but why would a paedophile volunteer at Broadmoor. I suppose it is possible that he might have old friends there or perhaps he might wish to pave the way for if he might be forced to have new friends there.

Any other bizarre coincidences would really make a person think. Like if during the time that Jimmy was the honorary president of PHAB (physically handicapped in the able bodies community) and volunteering to work in hospitals this was also the period when Sutcliffe’s victim Vera Millward turned up dead in the grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary.

One would certainly have to wonder if Sutcliffe and Savile were connected. If they were might they even exchange gifts on birthdays. What sort of gifts would you give in such a situations. If two people had such macabre attitudes in common what would they do to celebrate each other’s birthdays? Naturally it must be another in a long string of coincidences that sees Sutcliffe’s first successful murder taking place the day before Jimmy’s birthday. It is easy to see how conspiracy theories build up out of all these patterns.

Edit:  Although I have written this from the measured point of view that the human mind sees patterns even where it is simply coincidence that the patterns appear to exist, there does appear to be something far stranger and darker about Jimmy Savile than we have seen so far.  I did the research above last night with a few perfunctory unbiased Google searches on Savile and Sutcliffe.  When I awoke this morning I started doing searches targeted to specifically uncover information that might suggest Savile was darker than we have so far understood.  According to my searches there are a lot of people out there who have spotted not just my coincidences above but a lot of other circumstantial evidence that does point towards Savile being a figure that actually makes this last week’s news seem very tame.

http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jimmy-savile-and-serial-killer.html

I had not read the story in this link last night as I had not read any opinions that were deliberately biased towards making Savile look like more than we thought he was already.  The suggestions in the story back up the information I had already discovered last night and paint a picture of Savile that suggest that while we are good at creating patterns out of nothing we are also good at ignoring the evidence right in front of our eyes.  I do not know how deep all this Savile stuff goes.  So far I have only dealt with simple facts and looked at simply coincidence.  I am now going to start looking into the darker conjecture that thinks the unthinkable.  I had heard that David Icke had a lot to say on this subject.  As we all know Icke is impossible to take seriously and for that reason I know very little of his theories.  Apparently his Savile theory was correct though.  I do not know the entirety of his Savile theory or whether it corresponds with my own but in the elements that have so far been published it seems to be one of those rare occasions when Icke has actually been correct.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I wrote to Jim myself as a kid.  I guess I dodged a bullet in that he never replied.  Ironically I had said, ‘Dear Jim’ll, (I thought that was his name) can you fix it for me to be a detective?  He never replied but in being as suspicious as he is, it looks like he has indeed fixed it for me to be a detective.

Edit 2:  Well this is interesting: http://www.execulink.com/~kbrannen/trial03.htm .  Bear in mind I have not judged whether execulink is a legitimate source of information.  It could be that this is a false account but as I have no reason to believe this I am posting it anyway with the advice that before accepting what it says it might be a good idea to check that it is a reliable source of evidence.  If whilst reading this page you do a search for Savile you will discover that one of Sutcliffe’s murders was committed within hearing distance of Savile’s house.  Sutcliffe says he heard a car driving away from it and later discovered that Savile lived there.  This is definitely one coincidence to many in my opinion.  If this is a true account of the evidence given in trial then I very much doubt that Sutcliffe’s version of the facts is accurate and I very much doubt he just happened to hear the car and knew nothing of Jimmy Savile’s occupancy of the house.

Of course there is always the possibility that somebody is laying a false trail but never-the-less all of these very strange coincidences do lead to incredibly dark suggestions.

Edit 3:  This is another page from the blog above that offers a little more insight.  The blog asserts that it takes no legal responsibility for the information and does not necessarily reflect the views of the writer. http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jimmy-savile-kray-twins-cliff-richards.html

I will also disassociate myself from the information contained within.  I am finding all the coincidences to be far too much to cope with.  It is making me feel sick to read the things I am writing.  The link above suggests that there are people involved in this dark story who are still household names.  Perhaps portraying saintly images like the image that Jimmy himself portrayed.  People whom we know had unusual qualities to their sexual lives anyway but had never linked to this sort of thing, much as we had never linked Jimmy to this sort of thing either.

It does make one think.  If you were committing terrible crimes then wouldn’t you want to cover that up and project an image that suggested you were whiter than white.  Well obviously we would indeed.  I am not going to draw any conclusions myself.  My stomach on the other hand is not as impartial as me.  My stomach is turning and my stomach has reached its conclusions.

One article I have not mentioned so far is the following Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213636/Uncle-Jimmy-took-sick-parties-Nephew-tells-childhood-stolen-13.html#ixzz28V6p6JTy 

This is one of the articles I read before I even considered reading this blog.  At this point I was still at my incredulous, ‘wow, wtf with this news’ stage.  Of course as it is an account according to one of Savile’s own relatives it has to be put in amongst the evidence.  Imagine if you were taking to a house belonging to a group of paedophiles and then your uncle Jimmy walked in.  This story is just too bizarre for me to even think about any more.  I shall continue adding things if I find them but I have given up all pretence of applying my writing ability to create a cohesive blog now.  I am simply shocked, upset and, really at a loss for words.  I will just add information if I find it.  I really hope I do not.  I have seen too much already.

Before I duck out on this and go and try to find where my innocence of all this horror is hiding I will leave the following link: http://www.blumarten.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Jimmy%20Saville.htm This was apparently an internet meme back in the days before I owned my own computer.  It has been said that it was either written by Victor Lewis Smith or Chris Barrie thought nobody has ever admitted to it.  It is a fictionalised account of an episode of Have I Got News For You.  In it the Paul Merton character has rather a lot to say to the Savile character.  It is meant as some kind of satirical humour and it is possible to see this, but really I don’t think anyone can laugh any more.

Scrimping and Saving

 

 

I have had to start worrying about my money lately.  A couple of years ago I had a very well paid job that led to me living in a very expensive area with very high rent and spending a lot of money.  The problem was that my employer found the effect of paying out so much in wages was that he started to run out of money himself and my workplace closed down.  This left me in a similar position to my employer in that I started running out of money as well.  It was a little over a year ago that I found myself fairly penniless.  Luckily I managed to get a new job which may have been paying a lot less but was a job in which I could learn to organise myself.

 

During the last year I have been designing lessons in law most of the time and also doing some English teaching.  For the last few months they have had me working on a course of business skills.  It occurred to me that I am using a lot of brain power every day but I have not actually put all that much effort into escaping my financially disadvantaged situation.  This week I determined that I should put some more effort into trying to pull my finances together.  Luckily for me this is actually a lot easier than one would think.  It merely takes the effort of forming a plan and then following it through.

 

The first thing that I have had to do is take a look at the credit cards.  The banks kind of prompted me into this by offering me some interest free balance transfers.  The first bank to do so was Lloyds TSB.  They were willing to give me a substantial amount of Avios which unfortunately I could not get because I did not have enough space on my card to transfer the requisite amount of cash.  I ended up transferring as much as I could into interest free land.  Naturally there was a charge for this but luckily the charge is less than half what I will be saving by not having to pay interest for the next 6 months.  Shortly after taking this money off the more expensive card to put it into an interest free space the card from which I had removed the money offered me an interest free balance transfer as well.  I was unsure about this at first.  I wondered whether I would be transferring my already interest free money into an interest free account and paying the charge for nothing.  I found out that a new rule was introduced last year whereby a bank must always pay off the money that is attracting the highest interest rate in an account first.  So it seems that I would still have my interest free amount.

 

So I transferred an amount more than twice as large as my original transfer back into the account that I had just gone to so much trouble to remove debt from.  I may have paid quite a lot of money to do this shuffling but just like that I could look into the future of next year to see that I would have a couple of hundred pounds more in that time than I would have had if I had not made this effort.

 

Now I was started I realised that I should try and keep this momentum up.  What else could I save money on.  I checked my bank account and discovered that I was still paying insurance for the flat I moved out of over half a year ago.  I quickly put a stop to that.  I also discovered that my mobile broadband company was charging me not only for the contract I was currently using but also for the contract that I used to have before this one.  I have sent them an email and demanded that they stop doing so.   This got me to thinking that maybe I can save even more on mobile broadband.  At present my bill comes to over £30.  I realised I can combine them both into one with the 3 one plan which comes in about £7 – £8 cheaper.  Not only that but I could also get further discounts on that.  I went to a site:  http://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/harrymonmouth .  At top cash back it is possible to get £100 cash back when you take out a contract with three.  So not only can I save money by taking out a new contract but I can also get paid to save money, thereby saving even more money.  The reason I have posted the link here is that as a member they will actually pay me to bring in more members.  Don’t worry it is a legitimate service, I have received £80 from them for taking out another very competitive SIM contract from o2 a few years ago

 

Following this I thought I must be able to go further.  The website:  www.moneysavingexpert.com has a huge number of money saving tips.  I decided that I should spend my reading time looking through that site and picking up tips.  For several years now I have been living on bargains and cheap deals without really putting in the effort but I have still been able to live above my means just through the luck of finding good deals.  I decided that I would start using the websites in an effort to find even better deals.

 

I have just been on to the Tesco website and bought my shopping from there.  Naturally I am far from being the only person to do so.  Tesco has a thriving online business but how many people do not realise how easy it is to save money there.  I skimmed though all the multibuy offers and half price deals and built up an amount of shopping so huge that it would have taken me 6-8 hours of shopping to get as there is no way I could carry it all on the bus in one go.  All those bus fares were reduced to only £3 for delivery for the cheapest slot.  After I had done a Google search for Tesco coupons I found a code that reduced the already low figure I had to pay by £10 again.

 

Of course I can’t escape spending money as much as I would wish.  For this last week I have been traveling an hour later from work and saving £20 a month just from the lower off peak fare.  The method I have been using to ensure I reach the tube station late enough for this discounted rate is by saving more than £20 per month again by walking to the station.  All the same I would like to be back on my bicycle soon but unfortunately the British Heart Foundation ride has left me with a repair bill of well over £100 for the bike.  Naturally I have been seeking lower prices again to do the repairs.  The trick is to not simply accept that the place you go for cheap prices is the cheapest place.  Normally I always look on ebay for cheap prices but surprisingly a lot of the things on ebay are not actually all that cheap.  Wiggle has always been a favourite for finding cheap sports equipment in the past but I have discovered that some of the best prices available are on Chain Reaction Cycles.

 

I am actually enjoying the efforts I am putting into saving money.  Adding myself to a lot of mailing lists that many people would think of as being spam sites is actually proving to be quite helpful.  My efforts are probably quite amateur compared to many money savers out there but even before I started this I was saving huge amounts of money compared to the people whom I meet every day.  I am going to put effort into this because I think that saving money is far easier than people imagine.  I still wish to sell off a lot of my belongings simply because they are cluttering my home but I am not all that sure that I actually need to sell these things off.  Now that I am actually trying I am quite surprised by how much money I have managed to save in just the last week already.

.  At top cash back it is possible to get £100 cash back when you take out a contract with three.  So not only can I save money by taking out a new contract but I can also get paid to save money, thereby saving even more money.  The reason I have posted the link here is that as a member they will actually pay me to bring in more members.  Don’t worry it is a legitimate service, I have received £80 from them for taking out another very competitive SIM contract from o2 a few years ago

 

Following this I thought I must be able to go further.  The website:  www.moneysavingexpert.com has a huge number of money saving tips.  I decided that I should spend my reading time looking through that site and picking up tips.  For several years now I have been living on bargains and cheap deals without really putting in the effort but I have still been able to live above my means just through the luck of finding good deals.  I decided that I would start using the websites in an effort to find even better deals.

 

I have just been on to the Tesco website and bought my shopping from there.  Naturally I am far from being the only person to do so.  Tesco has a thriving online business but how many people do not realise how easy it is to save money there.  I skimmed though all the multibuy offers and half price deals and built up an amount of shopping so huge that it would have taken me 6-8 hours of shopping to get as there is no way I could carry it all on the bus in one go.  All those bus fares were reduced to only £3 for delivery for the cheapest slot.  After I had done a Google search for Tesco coupons I found a code that reduced the already low figure I had to pay by £10 again.

 

Of course I can’t escape spending money as much as I would wish.  For this last week I have been traveling an hour later from work and saving £20 a month just from the lower off peak fare.  The method I have been using to ensure I reach the tube station late enough for this discounted rate is by saving more than £20 per month again by walking to the station.  All the same I would like to be back on my bicycle soon but unfortunately the British Heart Foundation ride has left me with a repair bill of well over £100 for the bike.  Naturally I have been seeking lower prices again to do the repairs.  The trick is to not simply accept that the place you go for cheap prices is the cheapest place.  Normally I always look on ebay for cheap prices but surprisingly a lot of the things on ebay are not actually all that cheap.  Wiggle has always been a favourite for finding cheap sports equipment in the past but I have discovered that some of the best prices available are on Chain Reaction Cycles.

 

I am actually enjoying the efforts I am putting into saving money.  Adding myself to a lot of mailing lists that many people would think of as being spam sites is actually proving to be quite helpful.  My efforts are probably quite amateur compared to many money savers out there but even before I started this I was saving huge amounts of money compared to the people whom I meet every day.  I am going to put effort into this because I think that saving money is far easier than people imagine.  I still wish to sell off a lot of my belongings simply because they are cluttering my home but I am not all that sure that I actually need to sell these things off.  Now that I am actually trying I am quite surprised by how much money I have managed to save in just the last week already.

Don’t Panic!!!

I have had another change in blogging environment.  I am still using here for now but I have also got my own domain now. www.geekrastinator.com as long as I have spelt that correctly.  Eventually I plan to hit the road on the last freedom mountain bike out of nowhere city = well nowhere village, anyway.  Some of the reasons for this are inscribed in the blog below, taken from my site.  More reasons will inevitably be posted on said site and sometimes here as well.  I too have a dream.  A dream that one day mankind will understand the laws of nature.  Not in a “look what I’ve charted on this graph” kind of way. but more in a “I can’t see my feet, I think I’ll pass on that next doughnut” kind of way.  Maybe I am a wild eyed fantasist but I can’t help feeling that developing intelligence should give us an ability to make intelligent decisions about things that matter to us.  That much seems logical to me.  Anyway, this has been brewing for a while but today is, or was, a part of it.  All that lies below matches the title that lies above.

 

You will of course recognise the words above from the cover of the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.  Supposedly these words enabled it to sell more copies than the Encyclopaedia Galactica.  These words and the slightly cheaper price.  Arthur C Clarke is reputed to have said that it is the best advice that humanity could be given.  When you put it in big capital letters with a number of exclamation marks its effect may be the opposite of what you might be hoping for.

It is also the advice which would have been absolutely no use to me this afternoon.  When you are panicking the words “don’t panic” are not a great deal of help.  Not panicking is exactly what I was putting my mind to already with no success whatsoever.

I’ve had panic attacks before.  Not a great many.  Maybe once a year, or perhaps less, going back as far as I am able to remember.  Today was different though.  I had to rush out a hastily typed one finger email to summon help from the office of the administrator.  Lying on my back on the floor I was unable to lift my head, my whole body was tingling, I could barely move.  I had managed to gain control of my breathing but only while I lay completely still.  As soon as I tried to move or speak I would lost control of my breathing again.

As I lay there I couldn’t help wondering if it was possible to die from a panic attack.  A stupid thought perhaps.  I am still not entirely sure of the answer.  I believe shock can be very dangerous.  Surely panic and shock are kin.  Possibly not the most positive thing to be wondering in the middle of a panic attack.  I have a considerable wealth of knowledge stored in my noggin that tells me one does not die of a panic attack.  However, there is always a first time.  What’s more perhaps it is a massive rarity that nobody wants you to know about to avoid making you panic.  Ignore the fact I said that.  Stop panicking.

When I got home a couple of hours later I was exhausted.  In four decades I have never had such a scary experience despite undoubtedly having come far closer to death on several occasions.  Before I could rest I wanted to find out a bit more.  So I turned to google and found the following blog:  http://www.nerdist.com/2009/01/tell-panic-attacks-to-go-suck-it/comment-page-3/#comment-85921.  Many of you will be familiar with Chris Hardwick, writer of the Nerdist website and creator of the Nerdist podcast.  Occasionally I used to see him on Attack of the Show before the networks decided that AoTS was too brash for cultured English sensibilities.  I tell myself that is what they were thinking.  It is nicer to think they were trying to protect our delicate feelings rather than they were just being mean and cutting us off for not supporting their sponsors.

What I didn’t know is that Chris has had trouble with panic attacks himself.  It can happen to anyone.  One of the things he pointed out in the blog was that our brains had evolved over millennia to protect us from death in the kind of wild situations that arise when things are trying to eat you on a daily basis, or twice daily basis if they are concerned about managing their diet properly.  As this network of neural pathways has grown up in such an environment it will face situations of worry and anxiety by giving you two options.  Either run away or kill the problem.  The primal brain doesn’t really do making an action plan, analysing the likely issues that may be involved in approaching that action plan and working out methods to overcome them.  Unless those methods involve running away or killing something anyway.

So with this in mind it struck me that the problem I was facing was exactly the sort of thing that the geekrastination philosophy was all about.  Certainly I like to surf the net and certainly I like to write blogs and research things, etcetera, when the primal brain floods your system with adrenalin and tells you that it is time to run away or kill something then that is not a lot of use in an office.  Unless the problem is Windows freezing up, in which case there might be an argument for using the kill approach.

This made it press home all the more urgently that the time has come for what I am focussing on in this blog to actually go somewhere.  We have evolved for millions of years from tiny little mammals into apes and eventually homosapien.  At almost every stage in this journey it has been our job to run around in the fresh air getting exercise and moving around.  I noticed towards the end of last year that I was getting chest pains.  A lot of people would say this might be a heart problem so I asked a doctor.  I told him that when I sat in an office I felt the chest pain but when I climbed a mountain or raced a bicycle I didn’t.  He told me that it was not the heart.  It was just stress.  I asked him why it should cause pain then.  He told me, and I am paraphrasing here, “buggered if I know”.

It struck me at this point that while we may not have to fight for our lives anymore because we have built houses to keep us safe, the things that we were keeping locked out are largely all gone now.  Yet we stay in these houses as our arteries thicken up and our hearts pump harder trying to clear cholesterol from our veins.  And while we do this, everyone that ever has a panic attack is experiencing their primal brain telling them “run away”.  Mental health is in such a state that huge numbers of the population are prescribed anti depressants in order to face the next day.  The ones who aren’t prescribed anti depressants are mostly too drunk or stoned to know whether they need them.  Of the rest of society huge numbers of people are miserable and unhealthy, wobbling around in stumpy fat bloated bodies.

Yet people say that panic attacks and the fight or flight mechanism are a throwback to our evolutionary past.  I am not sure that our brain is so out of tune.  I think our brain is perfectly in tune with our body.  It is our personality, the bit shaped by our culture, not our evolution, that is out of tune.  When the brain and the body say run, they know what they are talking about.  They have been escaping danger for millions of years.  They know far better what is a threat than your personality that may only be 3 or 4 decades old.

I am going to run.  I will only run a few hundred yards at first but when I get this philosophy of geekrastination worked out I am going to run and I am going to keep running.  I have access to the world’s libraries on devices I can carry on my back.  I can carry a nylon roof on my back.  I can carry anything I need on my back.  As soon as I know where the safest place is to run I am going to listen to my brain and my body.  They have a subconscious ability to recognise a painful and miserable death and tell you to get the hell out of there.  That is an ability that took a long time to evolve.  I think it is worth using.

It is time for companies to grow up

I am going to go out on a limb here and make a radical statement with this blog post.  At least radical for a tutor of business management and business law.   There may be many people who agree 100% with what I am about to say but amongst educators there seem to be depressingly few thinkers.  The task of the teacher seems to be largely a game of playing it safe.  The college or school will buy into the right to teach a certain subject and the examining body will provide a set of materials which will then be decanted into the minds of the students.  I am not one of the types who say those who can, do, but those who can’t, teach.  However, I do recognise that just as there are many who practise in their  fields with no idea what they are doing, there are also a great many teachers across the world who are simply seeking to earn a paycheck and never develop a full understanding of their subject.

 

Personally I am not saying I have a greater understanding, indeed everything I write whilst making my point today may well be complete garbage.  I have noticed that in general most ideas seem to be split down the middle between those who hold one view point and those who hold another.  Half of these people must be wrong.  In fact the people who stand on the fence and agree with some elements from each side would probably say that both sides are wrong.  A lot of the greatest experts we have ever had in many areas have ultimately been proved to be wrong.  It would seem that I can therefore take as extreme a viewpoint as I like because if it turns out I am a complete asshat then I will be in illustrious company.

 

I have been provoked to write today by the appointment of John Browett as senior VP of retail by Apple.  Browett has had a great deal of experience in setting the strategy of large electronic retailers in Britain.  American readers may not be so familiar with his work.  On the English side of the pond those who know his name are largely critical.  Those who don’t know his name are also largely critical, they simply do not have such a specific target at which to aim their ire.

 

I have had the benefit of working in an organisation that has been guided by Browett’s ministrations.  I spent approximately a year working in an electronics store which came under the general Dixons umbrella.  In our store the staff were pushed to speak to customers in a certain, almost scripted fashion.  For instance there were certain openings we were meant to use which would guide a conversation down a set path designed to maximise sales and ensure the purchase of add-ons, insurance schemes, accessories, etc.  Many of the staff resented this as they would not be allowed to improvise to the extent that they wished in order to achieve rapport with the customer due to the understanding that certain boxes had to be essentially ticked during the conversation in order that a mystery shopper would see that we were doing as we were told.

 

Naturally the customers could see right through this.  We knew the customers could see right through this so we would try and avoid appearing scripted at all costs.  We did have a lot of good conversations with a lot of happy customers but we would also have an overwhelming amount of customers who would say “FFS” and roll their eyes as soon as we opened our mouths.  I remember one customer whose hatred of the sales technique was so severe that a standard trick with the newbies was that as soon as he came in, a member of staff might suggest to them that they go and serve him.  Perhaps this was largely because they didn’t want to go anywhere near him themselves but at the same time it did also generate some amusement as newbie was left open mouthed at the tirade of abuse he received over heavy handed sales techniques.

 

We were a national joke and we knew it.  Searching through forums online would turn up pages and pages of abuse at the staff in our stores.  I am quite pleased to say that most of the usual complaints were for levels of customer service that fell far below that which was seen in our store.  We were both lucky and unlucky to be in a high street store.  Unlucky because high street stores have a difficult job coming anywhere close to getting the level of profit that could be made in an out of town superstore, this meant that for us ‘a bonus’ was a mythical beast that may have once been encountered by a lone employee 5 years previously.  We were lucky because we sought to be as helpful as possible and tried to ensure that every customer who needed help would get as much help as was humanly possible, whenever I have shopped in one of the out of town superstores I have been lucky to get assistance if I have gone looking for it.

 

And of course that is the crux of the issue with John Browett taking this position at Apple.  Apple have developed a fantastic reputation for customer service.  The Apple Genius bar is praised across the world.  They might not turn the profit that is usually desired from a retail chain but that is not really their purpose.  Everyone knows that those who are most tech savvy will usually turn to the internet to purchase their goods.  The advantage that Apple stores have is that the prices in the store and their prices online are not radically different.  Other stores are in competition with so many online retailers that they really have to cut corners to survive.  Apple stores are not really about sales though.  They are about the Geniuses and they are about customer service.  That is why it is worrying that Browett is taking this position of authority over them.  Browett’s philosophy is one of cutting costs and maximising profit.  Store members are being laid off and methods are being streamlined.  I imagine that down the line sales techniques will become more forceful and it won’t be long before Apple stores start to develop the reputation that Browett drags behind him like the rotting carcass of a hunted deer that he refuses to discard until he has taken every bit of protein off its bones.

 

Milton Friedman said many years ago that the purpose of a company was to seek maximum profit.  That is the free market system that we have been living with through the decades since his statement.  I am told that Keynesian thinkers like Stiglitz consider this approach to be one of the causes of the economic collapse we are currently trying to escape.  Even government has tried to do something to change this dangerous point of view.  The 2006 Companies Act in the UK kept the main element that directors should always seek to maximise profit but added that when doing so they should have regard for the implications of their decisions.  Essentially they should consider how their decisions might affect the environment, the economy, etc.  Not exactly a brave direction to take with legislation but then governments are timid creatures that know if they push too hard then all those lovely corporations with their lovely profits will go and cosy up to some other government.

 

The immediate problem with seeking to maximise profit is that while it may help the consumer to buy bargains at low cost it is inevitable that many of these bargains will be shoddy goods that are poorly designed and will soon need to be replaced.  The consumer will have little choice about accepting them though due to the fact that so many members of his family have been made unemployed by cost cutting measures that the family are unable to afford the quality goods anyway.  It is not all bad though.  At least if you are unemployed then you do not have to work in one of these corporations that are so keen on cutting costs.  That is not a great deal of fun as you are regimented to follow precise procedures designed to maximise profit, and doing so the whole time at the lowest possible wage the company can get away with paying you.  In addition you know that you have to reach certain impossible targets or else there are huge numbers of unemployed people put on the streets by other cost cutting companies who will eagerly take your place.  I am glad that I left after only a year.  Thankfully I now have a full head of hair again.

 

Of course cost cutting measures do maximise profit so this must be a good thing.  Lets see where this profit goes.  It doesn’t go on buying in quality stock.  Stock is kept to a minimum to ensure that nothing is left unsold.  As a consequence we had to turn away dozens of people everyday who wanted specific items.  Mostly those made by Apple.   It doesn’t go to the staff.  They are operating on a wage so low that they need to supplement their income with government handouts.  It somehow doesn’t seem right that a person should work in a miserable job yet not even earn enough to live on.  If tax payers money is being given out to support those who are working then there is something seriously wrong with the system.  It doesn’t go on the company’s infrastructure.  Out of about 7 tills our shop had there were many times when we would have a shop full of customers but only one till that was in operational order.  The touchscreens would break down or the OS wouldn’t load or the scanners wouldn’t work.  There was always something.  I cannot speak for the example of my store or chain but in general I know that profit also doesn’t go on paying taxes.  I was reading yesterday about Walmart paying rent for their property and therefore claiming tax back on the outgoing.  The people to whom they were paying the rent were a subsidiary of Walmart.  This subsidiarity also claimed back tax on the rent that they paid for the property… to another subsidiarity of Walmart.  I could go on but this would become quite tedious because there were over half a dozen subsidiarities of Walmart claiming back tax on rent that they were paying to each other.  Some of them did not even have a single employee.

 

So the profit will go to the shareholder.  With many of these shareholders one can not blame them for trying to get some profit out of a business that they have no hand in supporting through hard work.  They are trying to keep their head above water in similar industries a little higher up the chain.  They may get paid enough to invest in shares but they kind of have to invest in shares as they are the ones who the government is not paying out money to.  They have no choice other than to invest or they are going to have just as much trouble making ends meet.  Their companies are also governed by Milton Friedman’s idea that a company’s main aim has to be the making of profit above all else.  Indeed the only reason that companies care about the health and safety of their employees is because the law started making them pay out some of their precious profits as compensation when employees fell foul of dangerous working conditions.

 

We all know where the profit substantially ends up.  It ends up with those who are probably sitting on their own private beach sipping cocktails in some exotic country right now.  The reason we accept this is the vast majority of us live in such a hell at the hands of profit obsessed companies that the only thing that keeps us going is the belief that one day we too might be able to sit on a sunny beach sipping cocktails instead of slogging away on a production line while our body wastes away from standing in one position for eight hours a day while only being nourished by a diet of fried trimmings of the otherwise delicious food that is currently being cooked up for someone to eat outside their beach house after they have had their cocktail.  We imagine that if we play the game and work hard then maybe there is a slim chance we too might get there as well.  Some do make it of course.

 

I wonder how the exact figure compares to those who get there by simply winning the lottery.

 

This is the free market system.  While it is obvious that too much government control does not work, as we have seen from the failings of communism, it must be dawning on people by now that perhaps the free market may have its failings as well.  Naturally the best way to do anything is to find a balance between too much control and too little control.  It can be difficult working out exactly where that is and when the most powerful and influential people in the world tend to be those who personally make a profit from one form over another then it would be foolish to imagine that the balance is going to be any easier to perfect.

 

For me the conundrum comes from the fact that those people sipping cocktails in their luxurious beach houses let it happen.  In fact the conundrum lies with the fact that anyone lets it happen, that anyone plays their game.  We all know the saying that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven.  I can imagine how those who hold a secular viewpoint could ignore this wisdom as the mention of heaven suggests it has no implication to affect anything of substance that they might believe in.  This is not the case, as psychology and our understanding of conscience has successfully proved.  I certainly cannot understand how those who are religious continuously ignore this wisdom.  They purport to believe it fully yet they still seek to compete for the ability to buy things like shiny translucent stones when they know for a fact that there are people across the world, or even in their local inner city centres dying of diseases that are easily preventable with a little monetary input.

 

Personally I have had difficulty playing the game myself.  I have certainly had the dreams of becoming wealthy myself but since then I have begun to understand my conscience.  I am in a job now that I enjoy.  I do not make enough money to pay all my bills but I am constantly learning and the work atmosphere is friendly.  That is how I continue to live my life.  If I had to return to working in the minimum wage conditions of those who support the shareholders I would not do it.  The cost is too high.  Time is our most precious resource, followed by our health and happiness.  All those things would be taken from me if I were to submit to being the pawn of the free market system.

 

Neither would I seek to be one of the ones who sit at the top of the ladder.  If I were to make money as a shareholder in one of these profit driven companies then the things I have experienced combined with what I know of the world would not let me do it.  I would feel constant guilt and would not be able to feel happy.  Not to mention that too much comfort makes you flabby and robs you of your health anyway so you still cannot escape that unhappiness.

 

I know there is a better way.  I have not fully engineered all its intricacies yet but the way that we are doing things at the moment is broken.  If we actually got to simply choose where we were in the system we would realise that most people would get a choice between working hard in poverty or growing fat in opulent surroundings with the disdain of the rest of the population.  There are obviously exceptions.  Starving with a bloated stomach in an African scrubland would be an exception.  Getting a little education and managing to afford to take on a twenty year mortgage or pay enough rent to live somewhere that is not horrible but not affording to buy a huge mansion would be another exception.  I am not even happy with that one though.  I guess I am cursed with being a worrier but it feels like living like that is an equivalent to putting my fingers in my ears and closing my eyes and hoping that the world will sort itself out.

 

I am happy to accept less if others can have more.  Of course I would like them to put in a decent amount of effort to achieve what they gain but I do not think their failure to work is their own fault.  That lies with the cost cutting companies refusing to employ them whilst also putting anyone who would employ them out of business by undercutting them.  This does not mean I am anti company.  I think that the company has the potential to be the most powerful force for good we have.  In order to do this though I think it is time that the company grew up.  The concept of the company is largely around 500 years old.  Its petulant adolescence is over now.  It is time to start taking on some responsibility.  It is time to develop a community spirit.  The time has come to stop squabbling over who has the most toys or gets the most sweets.  As companies approach adulthood they must start taking care of their environment.  If children were left in a house to look after themselves indefinitely we all know that it would not end well.  If these great big children called companies are left in a world to look after themselves and they fail to grow up then this will also not end well.

Gyms make you fat

Gym memberships make you fat.  This will be a moment of revelation that has been sitting in the back of many fat people’s minds who will now be punching the air with their pudgy fists shouting “I knew it!”  This does not mean gyms are a bad thing.  Gyms could be awesome if you didn’t need to sign into a yearlong contract that will probably steal money from you for far longer than that.  If it weren’t for that I would probably be in the gym all the time.  I would think to myself, “I fancy a work out”, and I would go down and do ten or fifteen minutes and then leave feeling better about myself.  The problem is I can’t do that because I don’t have a gym membership.  If I did have a gym membership then I would think, “I am spending £40 per month on that gym, if I am going to get my money’s worth then I will have to stay in their for at least an hour.  I can’t be bothered to do that, I think I’ll go to the pub instead.”

 

If you have immense will power then you can use the gym everyday and make sure that you are getting your money’s worth.  But if you do then you will realise that by the end of your contract you have spent several weeks, in which you could have been earning money, staring at a wall, or a t.v. screen if you are lucky, having paid £500 odd quid for the pleasure.  For the rest of us we will have spent that £500 on using a few machines for a couple of hours and then not bothered going again because we were too busy.

 

The way to lose weight is not to go to a gym.  Gyms are not for fat people.  Gyms are for thin people who enjoy gyms, vapid though they must be to endure such mind numbing boredom year after year.  I suppose one of the things that keep them coming back is that gyms are a great place to meet similarly vapid, slim beautiful people.  Yet more evidence that gyms are not for fat people; fat people would ruin the whole gym culture.  The only part that fat people are supposed to have in gym culture is turning up on the 2nd of January and giving their credit card details, and maybe spending some money on some huge shorts and t-shirts in the gym’s shop before sodding off and allowing the thin people to enjoy bouncing around on their subsidised gym equipment.

 

I read all the time about the things that don’t make you thin.  Diets do not make you thin; it has been shown that when people diet they bounce back afterwards to even greater levels of obesity.  Sweeteners in your coffee do not make you thin; if you have sweeteners in your coffee then everyone knows that you are allowed a slice of cake with your coffee, meaning that you end up getting fatter, not thinner.  Exercise does not make you thin; if you exercise then you get hungrier, you eat more, you get fatter.  Gyms are part of this whole failing to get thin that is a part of modern life.   If you want to get thin then the only way you are going to do it is by stopping being a fat person.  You do that then you won’t need a gym because you won’t need to lose weight.

 

This sounds harsh until you realise that I do not mean a fat person as in a person who happens to carry a lot of fat.  That is not what a fat person is.  Thin people can carry a lot of fat.  This may make them look like fat people but they will never truly fit into the fat people culture because as soon as they stop trying then they will suddenly lose all that weight and become thin again, and this is why we hate them.  A fat person can also lose a lot of weight and he will look like a thin person but as soon as he stops putting the effort in he will put on a lot of weight and look just as fat as ever he did.  This is another reason we hate the thin people.  However, the shocking truth is that fat people are evolutionary winners.  We are designed by nature to store massive amounts of energy so that we can survive harsh winters.  We can gain far more energy from our food and we can accomplish far more on less energy.  We are natural athletes and warriors in a world that has found a new way to kill us.

 

The good news is we do not have to take this lying down.  Forget the gym; if your wallet is fat then maybe they can help you but if you are fat then your solution is simple.  You need to change the way you live your life.  It sounds harder than it is.  If you start to eat healthily then maybe you will not enjoy the food at first but after a while your body will reward you for making it healthier; you will find that you enjoy the healthy stuff far more and you will dislike the unhealthy stuff much more.  Of course you will have to put in a bit of effort.  When you are eating something you really like then try stopping eating while you are able to sit in an armchair without feeling pain from the massive bulk sitting in your stomach.  Maybe you don’t do this anyway but plenty of us do.  Sure you could eat for a couple of extra minutes, it is so delicious, but then think of all the extra years at the end of your life that you could eat delicious food that you would never be able to after having a coronary.

 

Aside from this try walking a bit more.  If you live within 4 miles of your workplace then it is not too difficult a walk, and even quite enjoyable if you are listening to an audio book.  You can learn languages that way.  You can read books whilst walking around the park.  Thing how enjoyable it would be to spend a few hours out in the fresh air and sun as well.  If their is an elevator then take the stairs.  If you are getting shopping then use the full shopping bags as dumb bells while you are walking.  Make your life active; that is the way to lose weight, then you don’t need a gym.

 

I decided to stop using a gym about 6 months ago.  Admittedly I wasn’t using it for anything other than a way to get rid of some of my wages every month.  Since giving up the gym my life has changed slowly but I am gradually turning into a thin person.  My mother remarked as she gave me a hug goodbye today that she could not only reach her arms all the way around me but she could almost touch her elbows as she did so.  A big change from not even coming close to touching her fingers together six months ago.  I have lost a massive amount of size around my stomach;  I have not lost so much around my waist, that has only dropped from 42” to 36”.  Weight wise I have not lost much at all.  If I were to go to a doctors I imagine that many nurses would tell me I was obese as I weigh almost 17 stone.  I would just laugh if they did though because most of that is muscle.

 

This change has come about without weights, without gyms, without bizarre contraptions.  All you need to do is be more active.  If you are sitting down then stand up.  If you are standing up then walk.  If you are walking then cycle.  These are not rules that you will have to live your life by for ever.  Once you understand the rules you will know how and when to break them.  These are just guidelines to get you moving in the right direction.  Gyms are not necessary.  Even sports are not necessary.  One of the hobbies that has helped me get thin best is photography; you have to walk to a nice place to get a nice photo.  That is how you are going to get thin, just live life in such a way that you naturally end up that way.  It is easier than you think, and it is even a little addictive.

Drug abusers or drug users?

I think a big part of the problem with modern drug use/abuse is that in order to grow we must test boundaries to discover what is safe and what is not. We must experiment. I do not mean specifically pertaining to drugs but just in general. While we are at a young age we experience. We learn the meaning of things by testing the boundaries. We live in a world of dualities. We reach towards pleasure naturally but often find that this causes the consequence that we are pushed towards pain. Drug misuse many would say, is a choice, it is the choice to follow our natural evolutionary instinct to learn about our environment. When drugs take hold of you you no longer have that choice, then I think it has many parallels with disease in that it disrupts the ease with which one approaches life.  It fits the etymology of the word and can legitimately be characterised as a disease.

There are solutions of course. In our youth we are seeking sensation, we wish to go to the boundaries of pleasure and pain because we have a need built into us by evolution to map the limits of experience. People can tell us what they are but we cannot understand by being told, we can only understand by experiencing. In older age, maturity, we are far more willing to take things on faith. Someone will tell us something and we will be able to compare it to analogous experiences we have had and understand it through analogy and metaphor. We do not need experience so much then. We do not need the heights of ecstasy we were seeking earlier. We would be content to just be, but we are not. Either we have become habituated to the use of drugs or there is something that is preventing us achieving our natural equilibrium.

Psychological discomfort is something that the mature drug user is constantly trying to combat. The cause of psychological discomfort is the discordance between the world in which the biology of his brain has evolved and the world in which his brain now inhabits its body. People are not built to fit into the modern world. Drug use has been heavy for centuries and perhaps millennia into totally different worlds but it is becoming more widespread the further we move from our original state of nature.

People who ‘abuse’ drugs are not drug abusers. They are self medicators trying to find a solution for not fitting into the modern world. For not understanding it. In every environment we have entered throughout hundreds of thousands of years we have always lived according to Darwin’s principle of survival of the fittest. The human population becomes trapped in an environment with certain conditions and the maladjusted cannot deal with the change in their natural environment with the result that the strongest survive and the weak die out. The modern world of bureaucracy and forms and pollution, etc, is one of the most extreme environments that we have ever found ourselves placed in during our entire evolution on this planet. It is a world created by this new organ we have been developing, the sentient brain. As a construct of the sentient brain it is naturally the sentient brain that is the tool that is needed to negotiate it, but being a new organ in evolutionary terms it is still evolving.

There is nothing wrong with the maladjusted brain. It is not broken, it is merely suitable for a different environment but the problem is that the well adjusted brains are creating the environment and they are creating an environment in which they will flourish. evolution does not promote the survival of the fittest whilst killing of the unfit in humans anymore. Our humanity causes us to care for our maladjusted members and thus they survive. Unfortunately while their bodies are given the opportunity to live within tolerable limits their brains are the issue and brains are not well understood so these member of our society self medicate with drugs.  Drugs that are illegal only on account of the tendency to be habit forming or open to abuse due to their nature of creating extremes of sensation that are the reason for their potential to cause addiction.

Those who do not ‘abuse’ drugs live their life without ‘abuse’ for two reasons. 1) they are the well adjusted inheritors of the world. Or 2) they do not self medicate because a doctor prescribes alternative drugs that do not have the unfortunate side effect of creating extremes of sensation. This is what most mature people want. They do not want extremes of sensation. They just wish to avoid the knowledge that they are living in a world that has been created by determined, intelligent, mercenary people when they would rather be living in a natural world that had not been reformed by human will. There are huge amounts of drug users being given mind altering prescriptions by the medical services. The only difference between those on these substances and the mature users of illicit substances is that one is prescribed by a doctor and the other is prescribed by a lost soul in a world not of their making. One is no more or less an abuser than the other.

Of course it is plain that these people who do not fit into the modern world love many of the features of the modern world. I.e., computers, televisions, etc. Who wouldn’t love these things? However, if you were to take all these thing away and eradicate the memory of them and place those people in a peaceful 18th century country side environment then they would find themselves psychologically far more easily adjusted to their environment. It is true there were many physical hardships in those times but in general people’s minds had greater strength back then. The people in the modern world if exposed to those kind of hardships would be far less able to cope due to the additional weight of all they experience in the modern day.

PcMakto

http://pcmakto.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/apple-v-samsung-criticism-of-ip-law-judge-birss-rocks/

As I mentioned earlier,  I have another blog besides that of the college.  It is my PcMakto blog.  So named after the Toruk Makto of James Cameron’s Avatar film.  I do not ride a Toruk but in much the same way that a Toruk Makto is part of their steed I often feel I am part of my laptop, hence PcMakto.

Over on the PcMakto site I tend to post all my tech related blogs.  Some of them can be a bit dry, e.g., my blog on how to create a static date macro in Word 2010, but a lot of them are very interesting if you are into tech, especially the business side of tech.  I will probably not be linking you to a great deal of stuff over there as it is very much focussed on one area while here is my mindsplurge area where I essentially catalogue my thoughts and my life whenever I have the time.  Unfortunately time seems to be in ever more short supply day by day.

The blog I have posted the link for above is basically just to show you the way there but you will have noticed it is on a specific topic.  So if the case of Google v Samsung is of interest to you then you will find that actually PcMakto is linking through to my college blog which I mentioned earlier.  Incidentally if you are looking for a cheap, indepth, concise alternative to retaking A levels then the college, Capital School of Business and Management is a good place to go.  The advantage we offer is that our courses are vocational alternatives of about the same length, though a little bit more intense, and they offer the opportunity to bypass the first two years of most degrees, sweet.  Anyway I don’t want to bore you with an advert.  That is not why I am here.  I just thought I would let you know that if you have not yet read about it the Google v Samsung case is not your average court case.  As far as court cases go it is actually pretty funny.  Of course if you are on the internet I will assume you know this already.

If you are interested go check the other blogs out.  If not then just chill and enjoy your Thursday.  I can’t believe it is Thursday already.  I don’t know where the time goes.

A new business model for a new world

A new business model for a new world.

I have recently been asked by my employers to write blogs for the college.  Their idea is marketing of the college I believe but I am a thinker and I believe in making my writing interesting and informative.  They do manage to make me write the occasional couple of blogs that are essentially for the purposes of promoting some piece of college news but when they complained that the direction I was taking was not relevant to the college’s mission statement and direction of focus I gave them relatively short shrift and explained that social media is not an advertising platform, it is about engagement and they have hired me for the fact that I am an educated academic not for the fact that I use a lot of social media.  As such I will write blogs that touch upon interesting items of relevance to the subjects in which I teach or which I am studying.

If they wish to get someone to simply post adverts I think they would be far better off hiring a conventional marketer on a lower wage than that of a law professor.  Having said that I think my current wage is possibly too low to attract a marketer in London.

Anyway, I have been doing my thing and writing a few blogs, unfortunately as many of the topics on which I write are pertinent to the courses we offer at my college I have taken to publishing such blogs there.  I kind of felt cheated by this as I wish to provide content for this blog and all those who watch it.  So I have decided that whenever I blog anything elsewhere I will provide you with a link to the site if I believe it is appropriate for the style in which I write here.  Some of the blogs will stay put on the CSBM blog, Capital Concepts, and of course a few tech oriented ones will go to my other blog, pcmakto.  I will also link you to the new pcmakto blogs as they are quite interesting.  In fact all of my blogs are quite interesting but I will let you find the other CSBM ones yourself if you so wish.  I just thought I  would let you know the state of affairs in case you were wondering why I keep reblogging other people.  They are all me.  It is complex in my head.

The link you see above is to a blog I wrote the other day on the changes away from short termism towards long term strategic planning that are becoming prevalent in larger tech companies.  As such it is probable that I should be publishing it on the pcmakto blog rather than here, I may have to reblog it there, so confusing.  Anyway, I examine the choices that are being made by Google and Microsoft in combining their software and devices to be built to match.  The recent appointment of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO has been interpreted by many commentators as being a move towards more products rather than services so maybe they will start taking this approach as well.

I think my interpretation of the progression that is being made has a certain novelty in that I have not read anyone else making a similar interpretation.  If this bears out and I am correct then I will be quite pleased to be the first to see it happening.