Only the Loners
In the Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes made an classic deduction about the absence of a fact.
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
German psychologists, extending this line of reasoning in dubious ways have warned that people who do nothing on Facebook should attract our curiosity.
Facebook has become such a pervasive force in modern society that increasing numbers of employers, and even some psychologists, believe people who aren’t on social networking sites are ‘suspicious.’
The German magazine Der Taggspiegel went so far as to point out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles.
To that list of miscreants they are probably going to add Wade Page, the suspect of the Sikh temple shooting. CBS says he gave no clue of what he was up to on social media. “A day after the shooting, fragments of Page’s life emerged in public records and interviews. But his motive was still largely a mystery. He left no hate-filled manifesto, no angry blog or ranting Facebook entries to explain the attack.”
In a 2010 interview, Page told a white supremacist website that he became active in white-power music in 2000, when he left his native Colorado and started the band End Apathy in 2005.
He told the website his inspiration was “based on frustration that we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and a society in whole,” according to the law center. He did not mention violence.
That makes it more sinister. It might have been better if he ranted. James Homes had the foresight to unburden his troubles to his shrink. At least he can claim insanity. But a person without a Facebook or Twitter rant, like Murphy, comes off as being deliberately treacherous. Today the ideal person should be a known quantity: someone with a well-established and consistent online reputation. Any other sort of person is in the digital shadow and must be up to no good.
It used to be the case that the word reputation meant the collective esteem in which a person was held by those who had met them. People knew you. Remembered you as a kid, recalled how you had zits in high school, or about how got your first job. Today there are thousands of personalities about whom no one knows nothing about in person. And yet these people are celebrities, with hundreds or thousands of online friends. In such a world “reputation” can acquire different meaning.
Arthur Clarke once wrote that “if man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs—those creatures whom we often deride as nature’s failures—then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word ‘ship’ will mean— ‘spaceship.’”
But if ‘ship’ will mean ‘spaceship’, man has at all events survived long enough for ‘reputation’ to mean to all intents and purposes ‘an online reputation’. Damage your online reputation, like the unfortunate Adam Smith, who posted a stupid YouTube video of himself bullying a Chick-fil-A fast food worker at a drive through and you’re finished. Kaput. History.
Once a CFO, Smith will be glad to get a job working as a detailer at a car wash. To even get that, he’ll probably have to take down every trace of himself online. But that creates another problem. If he succeeds he’ll be the ultimate suspicious character, the man without a Facebook account. The Daily Mail describes how vital that is to getting a job these days.
On a more tangible level, Forbes.com reports that human resources departments across the country are becoming more wary of young job candidates who don’t use the site.
You can just hear the interview. “So Mr. Adam Smith where’s your Linked In and Facebook accounts? None do you say? Do you mean a man of your age could have reached maturity without having a single damned posting, Tweet or profile online. Come, come, Mr. Smith, we know better than that. What have you got to hide?”
That’s to say they would prefer to look at applicants on whom they can do a background investigation by perusing Facebook. HR departments, like everyone else, want more data to reduce the risk of a hiring decision. Without an online reputation to check against they might actually have to do something drastic, like make a call to his references or talk to people who knew the applicant.
Probably the worst aspect of this new expectation is that everyone is now required to live at least part of his life under the online microscope. To get the job, to get a clearance — to keep from being typed as a ‘loner’, we need to voluntarily give up our privacy to establish our bona fides. We need to be on Facebook, have a Twitter account; you know — be normal.
The only exception to this rule appears to be Barack Obama. Everyone else, however exalted is subject to the new rule.
When Piers Morgan interviwed Juliana Margulies, the star of the TV series, “The Good Wife” on his talk show he was astonished that she had no time for Twitter. What kind of person didn’t even have a half-hour for Twitter? Margulies answered that she was a mother.
MORGAN: Do you like Twitter, because you’re not on Twitter. You’re very much, you said, an e-mail and text person.
MARGULIES: I e-mail and text.
MORGAN: Why don’t you like the whole social network thing.
MARGULIES: It’s not that I don’t like it. I — I just, honestly, I’m a mother of a 3-1/2-year-old with a full-time job five days a week, 14 hours a day. I don’t have time.
MORGAN: You’ve got another half an hour a day (INAUDIBLE).
MARGULIES: I have no time — I don’t know how people have time.
She’s off the hook for now. But next time it might be different. People who don’t show up online are becoming like the dog that didn’t bark in the night. Something damned strange about it, what my Dear Watson?
And the last word on the lonely by someone who didn’t have Facebook account.
Belmont Commenters
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No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
What happens if you have a Facebook account, but don’t do anything with it? Do you become doubly suspicious?
Jeez, I tend to:
A. Mind my own business.
B. Not be particularly fascinated with everyone else’s business.
C. Have a few good friends whom I enjoy actually seeing, y’know in person.
If we’re getting to the point where that makes me suspicious, then maybe I’m not so fascinated with the so-called “Wired World”.
And those of us with nom-de-blogs will eventually be in a real pickle. We can’t ethically FB or Twitter under an assumed identity, thus will one day be reduced to insignificant nothingness. Woe is us. Life isn’t fair. We need a social media site just for assumed names. Oh, we already have it, don’t we? PJ Media.
She’s off the hook for.
She’s off the hook for now.
She doesn’t have 30 minutes extra, I have no idea how our respected host has the time and creativity to generate the thoughtful prose that he does everyday. We don’t thank you enough, Richard.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Constitution, 4th Amendment.
“The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose.” Sir Edward Coke, incorporated into English Common Law.
Why so many damned fools wish to lay their private thoughts, dreams, opinions and activities at the worlds feet to be picked apart by the jackals and vultures is a mystery to me.
Perhaps I was fortunate in that I trained as a signals intelligence analyst about the time that texting, email and later social media came into common use. I chose then to foreswear them all.
Every word in every text, tweet or email is subject to scrutiny by big brother and increasingly by your employer and any possible future employer.
There is a post currently up in the “PJ Tatler” called “Why I fear placing a Romney bumper sticker on my car”. Many respondents fear the possibility of vandalism to their vehicle or personal attack by the oh so tolerant and open minded TWANLOC if they choose to exercise their God given, constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.
Laying your political opinions and activities (and what’s not political to a so called progressive?) out in social media is the equivalent of posting bumper stickers, prominently upon your online persona, permanently!
Anyone who so blatantly discards their God given and constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy by throwing their opinions, personal business and activities out onto social media for the entire world to see gets what they deserve!
I will never work with people who insist they can pry into my journal, or who wish to know the passwords to my email or other electronic media accounts.
To those of you who say you don’t care, re-read 1984. They don’t need telescreens in every building in order to monitor your every move and spoken word. You tweet freaks are all carrying a GPS homing “bug” with you all the time.
Ditch your smart phone and fire up your ham radio.
Freedom isn’t free, and it turns out it isn’t very convenient either.
Armageddon Rex
“Off the hook for now.”
Time and creativity are probably fixed. What increases up to a point is skill. If you post every day you improve at writing to the point where it’s possible to write about 1,500 words an hour at indifferent, but passable quality. One thing I lack however, is the self-respect.
Someone said that I was a “good writer”. My answer was, “I can write, but I’m not a writer. There’s a difference.” The distinction is that a real writer is an artist. Writing — or painting or music — is almost like a curse. It’s a burden that artists cannot escape, like the Ancient Mariner. The real writers, however poor or destitue, first of all think of themselves as such and see their craft as the most important thing on earth. They have a little corner, an office, in which they ply their craft; the castle of their little kingdom.
By contrast, I can write in a boiler-room or as I have often done, on a park bench or coffee-shop. This is not a feature, it’s a bug. I have no kingdom and therefore I am no king. For a person to become a serious writer, he must first of all take himself seriously.
That earnestness is expressed in care, seriousness and dedication. Talent has something to do with quality; but it has nothing to do with being a real writer. I think there are many untalented writers who are true advocates of their craft; while there are many talented people who can write, but who can never enter into the sanctum where the true initiates dwell.
There’s no sense I think, bemoaning the fact. Sometimes you’re just made to be the outsider. Those who have read my book may recall the scene where the protagonist looks into the windows of ordinary homes as he ghosts around the underground and sees families at their modest dinners and want to be like them. He wants that connection to life which is natural, heartfelt and sincere. The man who cannot pause is a man without a country and no writer.
The doofus berating the chick-fil-a chick will get a job and a good one he may have to move to NYC, CA, or Chicago, and when he does will un-apologize for this jack@$$ery.
I remember reading a letter to the editor in my hometown newspaper some years ago, guy was complaining about the speeders on the town’s main street, he figured the only people doing the speed limit were hauling dope.
Ms Margulies effectively informed that twit Piers Morgan that she has a life.
“personalities about whom no one knows nothing about in person”
That describes Obama to a T. He existed on Fbook. It is reality that is the problem. Maybe he will end up getting employed as a virtual foil, trapped in the machine getting tormented by a new Max Headroom or ridiculed by the Cat on Red Dwarf. Who will play him in the movie?
Part of the problem may be that there is a pressure to create new trails to cover up the fact that we are choosing to accept large numbers of people who have failed to establish a more traditional and easily verified track record. At one time doing a background check was simple. Check the High School and College record and then the local police record, followed by a military service record. Obama is a symptom but stretching to accommodate people like him and others of even more fluid and dubious background not only makes the results less reliable but adds such complexity as to make it harder to comply even for those who are worth locating.
Currently I am applying to my local PD for a low level job in the hope of being promoted to more interesting and rewarding work worthy of my experience and aptitude. The masses of paper demanded of me make it unlikely that anyone who has done more than graduate from High School and hidden under a rock will ever complete the process. Some years ago getting a TS-SCI from a DIA SBI was a comparative snap.
Facebook Stock Crash Hoses California’s Tax Revenue
Video: “Why The Idea That Facebook Could Be The Next Google Is Now Laughable”
(As is the idea that a prosperous future is in store for California)
Video was available before I posted, now not on Business Insider, SF Gate, or anywhere I can find so far.
…Very Intersting!
At the urging of a commenter, I watched the “Dark Knight Rises” in the neighborhood movie house. It was only the second Christopher Nolan movie I had seen, the other being Inception, which I watched on an 9 inch screen in on airplane from Taiwan.
In both movies Nolan creates characters who are striving to recover the lost ground of life. Everything they have, power, money, near-unbelievable capabilities, count as nothing. What they seek is to be reunited with their loved ones or to find in the case of Batman that secret garden which every child unthinkingly inhabits and from which he was so cruelly driven.
The power of both Inception and Batman lies in this distant vision, but more importantly, in the debate we feel about whether that vision can be real or not. When the hero of Inception is reunited with his children, is it a dream or actuality? When Alfred glimpses the lost Bruce Wayne, was it hallucination, or did the Bat finally find what Gotham city, what Alfred himself could never provide, which is salvation?
But it is this unreachable quality that makes the vision so tantalizing, especially when so much proves false. Gotham city, like the Inception world, prove a dreamscape, a mask over base things. Love is betrayed and still the movie believes in love.
It’s an unreasoning belief, and we love it the more for that. A real writer believes in love. At all events, he believes in his craft. But the man who only writes cannot even believe in his own craft, like the politician whose conscience is pricked by the realization that he may be manipulating his audience; or the hero who has the terrible thought that he might be doing the deed in part for glory. The rift within the lute; the pitted speck in garnered fruit.
But I think God created in his infinite garden a space for those who misgive themselves, who laugh at what they think, even they are serious; a place where may find themselves. For God will accept us, I think, only after we have come to accept ourselves.
These mass murderers could easily have facebook or twitter accounts under other names. They could have full online personas hiding amongst the 83 million or so fake facebook accounts.
I’ve seen preteens do that. They’re not allowed to have a facebook account so they just make up a name and use it.
Juliana Margulies is over forty, so I think she’s excused.
I rather suspect anyone over forty who *does* have a Facebook account, other than public figures.
Except it’s also a universal login identity now for blog comments and such. Microsoft must be eating their shorts, they wanted so much to have that role for their “passport” fifteen years ago!
For God will accept us, I think, only after we have come to accept ourselves.
And if you have the password.
This topic dovetails, in a way, with the Chick Fill-A controversy; both involve the concept of thoughtcrime.
The thing about Facebook, Twitter or any of the other social networks is that all they sell is peer pressure and peer pressure leads to conformity. Try posting something unpopular (read politically incorrect) and see what happens. Unless you have a strong circle of friends who, at the least, are open-minded enough to tolerate you expressing your views, you’re probably looking at a serious case of ostracism, both online and in real life. Hell, you can even get kicked out of the olympics for some remark you posted on a social network.
The true danger that a person who doesn’t have a Facebook account, or has one but never uses it, is that the social network peer pressure can’t help these people get their minds right.
Oh, and Oceana has always been at work with Eastasia, or was that Eurasaia?
KRB
I enjoy your writing, for a number of reasons. It conforms to my ideas of good English. It expresses your somewhat complex thoughts. It uses figures of speech, different modes, such as, sarcasm.
Apparently you are not a good judge of your own writing.
I offer you all of my esteem, regardless of your writing.
On the other hand, Walt is a great writer.
I would of thought that anyone familiar with history or a drill Sargent would know that killing males are, and have been, the norm.
It’s a wonder there’s so little killing.
I don’t have a facebook account. I will never have a facebook account. From the standpoint of computer security facebook is hopeless. Sort of like using duct tape to secure the key to your safe to the front of the safe.
To me, the Batman series of Movies exemplified what is wrong with Hollywood. They have put 80 year old comic books to film because of a complete lack of creativity in Hollywood. New movies cost so much to produce that the old men that control Hollywood fear a loser so much that they won’t take a chance. Dogs like the Batman, or Spiderman have a floor. They know they will get at least that many viewers, so all they are looking for is keeping the costs under that floor. That is penny wise and pound foolish. By the time they get to Batman XXCVII both viewers will be bored with it. Meanwhile, the creative talent will have moved on.
The following video is modern art. It is a remake of “A day at the races” set in the near future (2030 ish). Real actors don’t need to talk. If you don’t believe me, watch a silent movie. It was done as a commercial endeavour, just like Art in Italy 4 to 6 centuries ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDboaDrHGbA
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
Circa 2001 a woman was in a restaurant in, I think, Michigan. She heard a some people at another table conversing in Arabic and said to a friend “Why can’t those people at least speak English if they are going to come over here and live?”
An employee of the restaurant overheard her, followed her out to her car, got the license tag number. She was charged with a hate crime or something of that kind. Of course, in reality, it was a thought crime. I do not what she did next, but I would have left that state – and made damn sure that everyone knew why.
In the late 1990′s Pres Bill Clinton was talking to a group of children. One asked him if he used e-mail a lot. His response was no, he did not, because there was too much chance someone would get those e-mails and use them against him. He had a point, but of course, he also had a lot of reasons to fear what people might find out.
Having a Faceplant account is like Mitt’s tax records. Some are offended if you do not give them something they can misinterpret and pin on you. It reminds me of talking to GAO investigators – there is nothing you can tell them that they cannot wrap around, distort, and use against you to further their preconceived agenda. Your only hope is to confuse them.
When I was young in the 40s our telephone was on a party line. We could listen in on other people’s calls; and they listened to ours. In a few years we all had private lines.
We used to open windows in our bedrooms when it was hot. After a while we bought venetian blinds that let in air but kept out stares. Then later we bought window A/C and drapery to cover the glass. We felt that bedroom olympics should not be a spectator sport. Our kids disagree.
Our apartment had thin walls and we could easily hear what happened next door and vice versa. When we had the money we moved to the suburbs and bought a house on its own lot with thick walls.
We used to have an open backyard. Later on we fenced it in with tall privacy fences.
We grew up with no privacy and slowly created our own privacy. Our kids grew up in privacy and devote their lives to giving it away. The french have a word for this.
I’ve a number of employees with young families. Occasionally one of their youngsters will ask how to write better – and ask if there are jobs for writers. To which I say “absolutely” – every job has a writing component and it often makes the difference between promotion and not when you’re just starting out. I point at some of my writing as examples of what not to do – and give them a copy of Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style” – followed by the advice “to write well, read widely and voraciously” (where I suspect our host is in the 1% of the 1% of readers).
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Illustrated-William-Strunk/dp/0143112724
And when I find a youngster who doesn’t read well (or like to read) I have their eyes checked and send them to a reading specialist to see if there’s anything slowing them down (and often there is). If they like fiction I recommend trying to write “future history” short stories (science fiction), and point them at Ray Bradbury’s life story for inspiration (and reflection – writing is hard work).
Note that Bradbury graduated from the “University of the Los Angeles Library” (since that’s what he could afford):
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury
His Dandelion Wine is a personal favorite. The hard work of writing shows thru.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelion_Wine
OMG- do I know a lot of suspicious characters including this ugly one I see every morning in the mirror!
Wretchard, if you are not a great writer, I don’t know who is.
You have a tremendous facility to recognize what is important in a wide variety of issues and situations and express the crux of an issue in a clear and often brilliant way.
Great writing is not just great prose. Great ideas are behind great writing.
W – please don’t try to fool anyone about or is it with your writing skills.
Don’t try false modesty – your blog is one of the brightest gems in the diadem of the web.
Don’t fish for complements – it doesn’t suit your marvelous personality.
re: social networking and automation (and targeting for good and ill).
The old is new. Con artists, scammers, petty and worse theft occurs in the virtual space and it isn’t just the old and feeble that are victims.
http://www.emptyage.com/post/28679875595/yes-i-was-hacked-hard
And yes, once someone is rummaging around in your virtual (cloud) desk, there’s no end of what threads they can pull on, and what mischief and masquerading they can do. I would expect (but don’t hold out much hope) that Mat Honan is able to identify and bring both criminal and civil charges against the group that abused him.
Because there are no (technical) guarantees possible. A stalker always will find an opening, opportunity, etc. And since cloud services can’t scale people – there’ll never be enough protein to answer the phone calls. So policing to insure some modicum of civil society is all that remains.
I think (worry) that this will eventually mean the end of anonymity (as we’re seeing in some services requiring credit cards and phone numbers), else there can be no policing. Perhaps (just) an opt-in SSL-based web (or equivalent IPSEC) of clients and servers, traditional and P2P, configured to require authentication of both ends (using well-known certificate authorities) before establishing a connection. Google has shown this need not be expensive (in computing resources) to do.
Where anonymity is forsaken for some certainty about where and what device (if not individual) committed some act. Similar to the old wired telephony system where the caller & called numbers were seldom fudged (they could be faked with significant investment and tradecraft, but even that effort would raise suspicions). Then Mat and/or his ISPs and SaaS companies might be able to produce enough evidence to convince a civil jury that a given machine owned (or pwned) by his attacker was responsible, and levy damages appropriately.
Wretchard, 5th paragraph you identify the shooter as Brian Murphy. He’s the wounded cop.
Just a heads-up. Your article says that Brian Murphy is the suspect in the Sikh temple shooting. I think he was actually the policeman that responded and was shot. The suspect is Wade Michael Page, as you note later in the paragraph.
It seems the only way to protect people is to dehumanize them – to use control devices like brain scans, data mining, trance media, and wars that remove outliers from society. Evil was cast down from Heaven for wielding such powers. We must not commit this mistake again. From CBS news:
He was described Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who had long been active in the obscure underworld of white supremacist music.
During their downtime from legal research as a means of fighting poverty, the SPLC does other things. Some of it is vaguely related to their stated agenda. Other activities look questionable to outsiders, but they are still theoretically related in ways too complicated to explain without giving away those important programs. Let’s move on…
“He left no hate-filled manifesto, no angry blog or ranting Facebook entries to explain the attack.”
Page might be a total unknown if not for their radar. We should thank the Law Center for trying to stop rightwing violence. Even though this this video looks Colvin-esque to me, this sad incident could well have occurred.
First, Thanks Ari Tai, for the reminder of Mr. Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, which is also my favorite even though I love SF.
As an independent film producer/animator, I learned early on that there are people who will present YOUR work as their own. Now with online portfolios and social media, it is at once easier to steal, and easier to establish that you are, after all, the originator. You gotta NEVER link your original “authoring” files – Flash, Photoshop, ToonBoom, Maya, etc. – to ANY online website, only the rendered movies or flattened still images, jpegs, targa, whatever.
These days, I try to keep my thoughts to myself, except when posting under a nom-de-net. I don’t give out my passwords to strangers either. I guess that makes me a stingy, flint-hearted bastard. If so, I’ve managed to create a reasonably convincing alternate identity. Only my closest relatives know how mean I really am.
I hope.
There is also the “metadata” embedded automatically in a number of file types. You’d think I would know about all that, but that’s next on my agenda.
When I taught classes in Lightwave3D software, I encouraged students to embed their names in the form of “microscopic” 3D polygons somewhere in their models, if they were concerned about someday proving they’d created them. Such things might be “trashed” by simplifying the model, but there are lots of tricks like that anyone can think of.
Anyone here use Music composition software? Sibelius? Finale? Fermata?
Hi Everyone. I’m the Higgs Boson. I am real. Scientists say so.
I am on Facebook and you can be my friend. Check me out here:
https://www.facebook.com/higgs.boson.5682
Please be my friend! Find out all my personal secrets. It must be true since it’s on Facebook.
Walter,
Thanks so much for the heads up. That was a serious mistake on my part. I’m grateful for the correction.
Say Wretchard, what are you really getting at? You must be implying something my plebian nature cannot deduce. Of course you are a writer; you write. Moreover, you seem compelled to write; so much, sometimes I refuse to even try to keep up. I have your book and you presented here two snippets of possible new books. But you tossed those aside (read Frost’s ,”The Woodpile”).
What are you getting at? Maybe Walt can explain it. I don’t get it.
wretchard; if you are not a writer then how come the way that you rearrange the dictionary to express your thoughts, opinions and commentary is so masterful?
I call codswallop on the non-writer notion.
I think you are a wonderful writer– original and insightful. You help us to understand all kinds of things and are way ahead of the curve; pointing out early that Obama was burning through his resources, what will most likely happen in Syria, how to look to the future. You can comment knowledgeably on worldwide events and philosophical questions. And being an outlier–viewing the US with a realistic but concerned eye–can only be helpful. Thanks.
26. Baobo
I have no way of knowing if you are simply sincerely misinformed, or calculatedly disingenuous, but your characterization of the SPLC is profoundly, breathtakingly wrong. They are not “good guys”, nor does their professed mission statement correspond to their actual activities. They most assuredly don’t do much to alleviate poverty, but it does make a good, convenient, media-friendly cover which enables them to sucker-in enough donors to be largely self-financing in order to carry out their real function, which is a cut-out for fomenting cultural agit-prop.
17. stoicheion
Yes.
Swedish House Mafia rocks.
They (and their peers) are the present.
Hollywood is the past.
BTW – A classmate of Obama’s at Columbia asks what does he have to hide?
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obama’s-college-classmate-the-obama-scandal-is-at-columbia/
Sorry to have started on the writing meme, but it’s only incidental. The real issue is gravitas; the problem of being a serious guy. Talent is one thing, but commitment is another. I remember interviewing for a job and being told in the rejection, “there’s only one thing you lack, and that’s commitment and belief in this career”.
And he was right, I would have hated the job and worse, taken the place of someone to whom it would have been a life’s dream. What makes a teacher? A parish priest? Or a doctor? Or a good NCO? Intelligence and ability certainly. But they are not everything. There’s something else needed besides: Element X. Element X is earnestness. It is the love for what you do; the having a yardstick to be measured by.
A man with gravitas knows how he wants to be remembered, even if only be “here lies Mr. Chipping of Brookfield School. Unknown to scholarship and yet forever ‘Mr. Chips’”. It takes more than talent to be a writer. Talent is dime a dozen. But accept your life and live it on those terms is the harder trick.
What a sad thing it is when the worst crime imaginable is the desire for privacy. You don’t tweet–you don’t share your sexual history on Facebook? There must be something wrong with you.
Ahh- the world is indeed changing. Once upon a time it was thought that the ills of the earth could be cured by killing all the lawyers. Although that might still be necessary killing all Human Resources people and anyone with an MBA degree should, IMHO, take a higher priority.
Well, in defense of Richard’s self-evaluation: perhaps what he’s really trying to get at is that he’s not literary.
Of course, to my mind that’s a feature, not a bug. Or at least I should say, there’s just as much room for his careful, non-literary style as there is any other style. Not only does his writing express things with better-than-average clarity, but his ability to link current events and illustrate them with interesting analogies, and his ability to bring us in touch with characters he’s met and places he’s been, is superb; and very welcome.
35. wretchard
“What makes a teacher? A parish priest? Or a doctor? Or a good NCO?”
Showing up.
C’mon Richard, life’s too short.
Our Wretchard is not a writer per se, he is a THINKER, a much more valuable commodity.
Anyone with a modicum of education can write, but to write what is worth reading, what gives some answer to life’s questions, what gives encouragement to THINK, that is the gift.
Thank you, Wretchard.
27. Mad Fiddler
I use goldwave;
http://goldwave.com/
It is a free download with a 90 day trial. I play around with it but I have no talent. I’m working (playing?) with adding drums and electric guitar to “Flight of the Bumblebee”.
Richard, the Mayer of Metro Goldwyn, Mayer said “Talent can, Genius MUST”.
Considering he helped create a multi billion dollar industry based on creativity he should know. If you are driven to write, being no more able to stop then to stop breathing, then you display genius. I expect you will find tremendous commercial success at writing. Eventually.
If it was easy, everybody would do it.
Life is much too short.
Immortality requires
Writing your thoughts down.
When Wretchard talks about taking himself seriously as a writer, it brings to mind something that I heard Stephen King say in an interview. Declining to talk about his personal life, he said, “Writers always lie.” Now, I have never read any of his stuff, like that genre, or particularly appreciate the man himself, but I think he revealed a basic truth.
It’s rather like that Rings line that Wretchard likes to use, the one about stepping into the tale and letting it carry you where it will. I think to be a professional, dedicated, writer you have to step off the curb and enter that flow. That takes you away from reality, from your current life. In the words of King, makes you a liar. And as Wretchard himself has said, most of us here seem to like who we are now.
Fiction writing is a fascinating process. I could not believe it the first time I tried it. It was exactly like reading, but in reverse! And often the results were just as surprising – you were in the flow and knew not where it would take you even as you wrote it. Downright spooky! Unlike my nonfiction, I have never had any of my fiction published in any form, and mostly have not tried to or even intended to do so. The vast majority of it I wrote because I was unsatisfied with reading something someone else had written. Nothing good to read around this houseful of books, so I made my own.
And for nonfiction writing, if you want to sell it and make money you cannot allow yourself the luxury of picking and choosing where the spirit carries you. As Wretchard has said, his impressive mass of daily casual readers of The Club is a burden in its own right – and the vast majority of them ain’t even paying.
“You got nothing to hide otherwise you’re anti-social” – preparing the battlespace to end the secret ballot. Heck, every time you answer that phone or politely stop to answer that individual with that clipboard who asks those ‘polling’ questions, you’re already surrendering your secret ballot. It’s done thousands of times daily in the election season. Can’t we demand a Miranda style statement from these people.
“You have a right to a secret ballot. You have a right to remain silent. We have your name, your phone number, your address. By talking to us, you surrender that right.”
I am not sure what talent is. I know I dont have it. I set out to be a rock star drummer in the hazy past. I worked hard and had opportunity but at some point I just knew there was something I would not get no matter how many hours I practiced. I am grateful for that gift every day because if I had what I thought I wanted I would never have walked the path I did.
If not having a facebook account is a sign of pathology what about an entire country unfreinding the rest of the world? The Iranian government is attempting to build it’s own internal version of the internet and isolating the entire population from the web. One day Iranians will wake up to a new home page and that will be that.
It is a chilling scenario. As if you had been tracking a Wade Page level lunatic ranting online and showed up to his apartment building to check it out only to find the whole block has gone dark and silent.
W@7 says “Someone said that I was a “good writer”. My answer was, “I can write, but I’m not a writer. There’s a difference.” The distinction is that a real writer is an artist. ”
Well…. you may not be a “good” writer, but you are certainly a more than adequate writer. However, I believe that most Belmonters come here, not because you’re a good writer, but, rather, because you are a good (maybe very good) thinker. There are many who can put together an astonishing line of prose but whose prose contains merely banal thoughts. We (I) come here because you are able to thread together such interesting and challenging points of discussion from seemingly disconnected current events and weave them into the context of history (a subject in which I am poorly educated).
Anyway, writing is merely a trade. Thinking is something altogether different.
What Bob and Patty said.
(Some people have a way with words, others not have way.)
Our system of laws has wandered off the reservation regarding ‘thought crimes’. Better we should recognize that no such thing exists. Thoughts cannot be crimes, else there would be no free people.
Hate, jealousy, anger, resentment, bitterness, disappointment, frustration, all these are not crimes. Sins, indeed, since they are inconsistent with divine righteousness.
Only actions, which must necessarily be motivated by thoughts, can be crimes.
Illustration. Guy gets upset by lawyer (and who wouldn’t). Decides to get a weapon and ambush lawyer on his way to lunch. Guy sees lawyer coming down sidewalk but repents his intentions. Instead of his original plan, he smiles and says “howdy, Jack, How are you today?” and continues to walk back to his car.
He has committed no crime. Nothing he can be charged with (in his concealed carry state where he was permitted). Can’t be convicted of conspiring with self. As long as he did not document his evil intentions on Facebook or discuss with another human (which would qualify as conspiracy).
Our legal system has no business criminalizing thoughts as crimes – not even hate. It is not the province of mankind, but of God. “alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, judging even the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intentions of the heart”.
Not every thought that crosses some internal boundary of the brain is suitable for publication or verbal emanation. Some are just worthless or wrong. Shall we be imprisoned because we cast an eye on a young girl (let’s say 17 years) strolling (or trolling) the beach in bikini? Poor ole Jimmy would be in prison after the first term.
We should thank the Law Center for trying to stop rightwing violence.
NAZI = National Socialist German Workers Party.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions”. Hitler 1927
I believe that Sikhs are also considered Aryans.
s @ 17: It is a remake of “A day at the races” set in the near future (2030 ish). Real actors don’t need to talk. If you don’t believe me, watch a silent movie. It was done as a commercial endeavour, just like Art in Italy 4 to 6 centuries ago.
Oh that one, with the robot greyhounds! Yes, it is excellent, I see it (short versin) on tv all the time. I’ve seen some outstanding art in print and video ads, heck I have a book of Absolut ads on my shelf. But I thought your clip would be some kind of update of the Marx Bros movie, oh well.
–
I remember interviewing for a job and being told in the rejection, “there’s only one thing you lack, and that’s commitment and belief in this career”.
Feh. That kind of attitude by the employer is a huge red flag of mediocre performance, third-rate employees, and abusive management. It’s still out there even today but I associate it with another era, in US corporate culture terms. Unfortunately the more common alternatives today are hardly better, mostly “we give you free donuts and that’s why your salary is $50k lower” and other forms of ring-kissing, any sign of professionalism is basically unperceived, employers blind to the very possibility of simply working for the salary, which ought to be good enough whether you’re sweeping floors or architecting skyscrapers. More than good enough, it’s adult, should be the preferred attitude.
Which does lead to my real problem with Facebook. If you put up a bunch of stuff, is it really supposed to be *true*? Or is it just an invitation to lie in a higher octave? Pathological lying is good enough to get you elected President (D), so shouldn’t we all practice and aspire to the same? Create your own narrative, practice being a Lakoff, show your creativity, indulge your fantasies, troll for friends and hits, … or are we all supposed to just surrender? There’s a semi-serious question out there whether Facebook etc are just CIA fronts anyway. So is it a federal or UN crime to lie on your Facebook page, or a social test and requirement that you SHOULD lie, or maybe both? I’m so confused.
Twitter is for twits.
And Facebook is for idiots who want to hand a corporation a self-compiled dossier.
So what’s Facebook?
Wretchard, your gift may not be in weaving fictional stories (I can’t say as I have not read any of yours) but you are truly gifted in finding common threads between widely varying real life and historical anecdotes. You also use a wide range of cultural media to illustrate key elements very well (Like Roy Orbison).
As a voracious reader, I always wanted to be an author. Being an author is fairly easy today as anyone can publish on-line. But being an author who readers follow and read regularly is HARD. You must enrich people’s lives in some way to compel them to read you regularly. You do, and I thank you for that.
My personal handicap is caring what other people might think. Possibly the concept of ‘having to suffer for your art,’ is actually backwards. Those who have nothing to lose, no pride, possessions of any note, caring for the opinions of others, a career that competes for time, can be truly honest – brutally so, in order to be understood as raw truth. I always feel if I wrote what I truly think, and many things I know for sure, some offense will be given to some people I care for and that is hard for me. I’m working on it but may not ever get there.
Getting back to the point of your thread, it’s ironic that you must be identified, categorized and known in order to land a mundane job but you can be anyone, living or dead, to vote. No one seems to be curious of the voter with no identity. I have so little confidence in my vote being counted in absentia (military stationed away from home) I am taking leave to vote in person. This one is too important.
The only reason I got a Facebook account was to find my dying brother’s long-lost girlfriend. I succeeded, and in time. I would have no other use for it but for the fact that so many sites now insist you comment via Facebook or similar social media. I prefer anonimity, as I can get here. I can, of course, choose not to comment on those other sites.
The world is turning into the kind of place that once only the clinically insane could see. Not good.
Comment from a correspondent in Germany:
“That is pretty ###ing strange. Germans especially value their privacy from the east times. Find the film ‘the lives of others’. Watch it”
So perhaps the quoted psychologists are the Paul Krugmans of the German psychological establishment, ready and willing to offer instant opinions on every topic du jour, without bothering to actually think first.
49. Josh & wretchard
I remember interviewing for a job and being told in the rejection, “there’s only one thing you lack, and that’s commitment and belief in this career”.
While there can certainly be exceptions in which the statement is sincere, in most cases this is merely corporate Human Resources CYA jargon which is really saying “we know you’re well-qualified, perhaps over-qualified, for the job, but we also know the job will never fully satisfy or fulfill you and there’s a high probability you’ll move on after we’ve invested time and money in you”.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as the saying goes. It’s just that for various reasons it’s not acceptable to put things so bluntly.
*OT indulgence requested, but is anyone else having a problem with the “Notify of Replies” function for these threads?
I know Facebook and Twitter are rather narcissistic, but many people are still not on either. The issue with Page and Holmes is that they alienated and withdrew from general society into their own very strange worlds: Page’s in hate rock and Holmes into Batman fantasies, but both appear to have been profoundly isolated.
But if you are checking, I twitter and have a facebook page!
Josh #49
If you put up a bunch of stuff, is it really supposed to be *true*? Or is it just an invitation to lie in a higher octave? Pathological lying is good enough to get you elected President (D), so shouldn’t we all practice and aspire to the same? Create your own narrative, practice being a Lakoff, show your creativity, indulge your fantasies, troll for friends and hits
Here’s Florida’s poster child for what DSM-5 is sure to call “Facebook identity syndrome”: “Hundreds of tips have come in to Florida police about the mysterious man who had a closet full of uniforms and a cache of IDs enabling him to pass for everything from an astronaut to a CIA agent.
But authorities in New Port Richey don’t know if Roy Antigua just liked to play dress-up, or if ‘there is a deeper, darker story,’ Police Chief James Steffens told FoxNews.com. . . .
Antigua was arrested for driving without a license and a parole violation after the traffic stop, but was further investigated once officers noticed a fake ID. That’s when police found uniforms from NASA, U.S. Customs, the Navy, the CIA, the Secret Service and Homeland Security. He also had dozens of military medals, a flight helmet and flight instructor badge and a Boy Scout troop leader uniform.
He is now being held without bail, and has told police his masquerade had ‘gotten out of hand,’ according to Steffens. . . .
He also had a bag filled with doctor’s equipment and a physician’s assistant’s badge and, chillingly, a photo of himself in scrubs holding a newborn.
Now authorities are saying the best-case scenario is that Antigua is someone who has stockpiled his collection for play or dress-up.
‘Is he really a threat or is he someone who is living a very involved fantasy life?’ Steffens said, according to The Tampa Bay Times.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/07/authorities-find-dozens-fake-ids-uniforms-after-arresting-mystery-man/
t @ 55: “we know you’re well-qualified, perhaps over-qualified, for the job, but we also know the job will never fully satisfy or fulfill you and there’s a high probability you’ll move on after we’ve invested time and money in you”.
I hope I’m not offending your professional duties here, but all you’re describing there is a company with many other pathologies. Any complaints about “overqualified” basically are a red flag, flashing lights, and rescue flairs about a place where you can expect everyone is under-qualified. If someone is really overqualified and will move on in a year, take the year! Maybe you can find a way to USE all their talents, give them a promotion, and they will decide to stay.
Can you imagine a sports team turning down a player, “Sorry, you hit too many home runs, you’re too good in the field, I don’t think you’ll fit with this organization.” Right.
Marx worries that the workers will be exploited. A lot of American business management tries to hire workers who CAN’T be exploited. A good capitalist wants the best, so they can exploit them, anything else is just piss-poor capitalism, bad management. Back in the day most HR processes at least gave lip service to these ideas, saying stuff like, “If we run across a great person we will find a way to use them.” Today, it’s “you’re over-qualified, please go away.” Something very wrong with HR.
Oh good grief – that German phrink is a few cards short of a full deck.
People are not sheep, nor should sheep be deigned to have a social paradigm worthy of slavish emulation!
Frankly, I look a bit askance at those who do use social media, especially facebook. Are they aware that facebook invasively tracks you across the web? Are they aware of all the ways your data is used?
I don’t have a facebook account, or a twitter account. I have no need for facebook and I sure as hell don’t need their invasive behavior. As for twitter, not interested. I don’t find the short format appealing at all, so to me it’s a waste of time. I’d much rather read longer, thoughtful pieces, such as those here at Belmont Club.
As for facebook, if I ever do end up needing one of their accounts for some reason, I’d use a separate browser for it (to defeat their tracking garbage)and I sure wouldn’t enter my real info on the account, their rules be damned.
If someone wants and enjoys twitter and facebook, fine, but there are those of us who have no use for ‘em, and that’s fine too. All this German phrink twit has exposed is that he’s one of the dimmer bulbs in the box.
11 @ Wretchard: If you liked Inception, let me recommend to you Nolan’s earlier movie Memento.
“And Facebook is for idiots who want to hand a corporation a self-compiled dossier.
Ditto. I remarked just the other day that with all of the spying that Facebook was a voluntary self-serve personal surveillance system.
Ya know, I used to use BBS’s long before the internet and manage to get enough use of email to suit my own purposes. I text occasionally but find if it is not worth saying in person or over the phone that it is probably not that important. I even tell people I know not to leave messages on my voice mail if they want to talk to me. If they do, I know they called and how to call them back. If they leave a message to call them then I have to call my voice mail, punch in codes, navigate the menu, then get a message, “call me”. Now I have to erase the message, and make another call. It kind of ticks me off but I guess I am just an old curmudgeon who has been using computers since you had to program them if you wanted it to do anything useful.
and I find it disgusting that you need to be vetted to sweep the floor in this country but are free to be a fraud and a tax cheat while serving in high office. Sounds a little fascist to me…
Annoy: “I text occasionally but find if it is not worth saying in person or over the phone that it is probably not that important.”
I served on a “Neioghborhood Council” here in LA for seven years. Almost always the biggest fights between my fellow boardmembers were the result of an unprudent comment sent in an email.
It seems to me :
• For whatever reason, or because of, I suppose, of the impersonal nature of email, some people have a tendency to write things in an email that they would never dare say to a person in person or on a telephone.
• When talking to a person, the intonations of the other person’s voice give a background to a person’s words that are lacking in a email.
• People forget, once you have sent a email, you have “memorialized’ what you wrote. It is out there forever. Where a telephone conversation, unless it’s recorded is not.
As a result, Annoy, I think you are wise to use email , twitter, facebook et al, sparingly. Those words you write on an email or on your facebook page can easily come back to haunt you.
The HR departments are treading into dangerous territory. Right now they can abuse job applicants and use phony baloney tactics to justify their existence.
It has long been known that the best way to get hired is to bypass the HR department now it will become even more imperative. Really in tough times when nobody is hiring, the first department I’d reduce would be HR. They are full of parasites pushing the PC agenda that irritates and alienates those that actually produce anything. The counter revolution against PC is already starting, and I can also see lawsuits starting about demands that prospective employees have social media accounts.
Unsk – “Those words you write on an email or on your facebook page can easily come back to haunt you.”
You got that right. My natural sense of sarcasm and cynicism have been misconstrued even here. I have never really gotten in trouble with email with the exception where I have imprudently used the “reply all” function. politics have become too toxic to discuss anywhere except on a blog anonymously so I am most grateful for this forum.
…anyone else a bit floored to read that Richard Fernandez does not consider himself a writer? I do not doubt RF’s powers of self-observation and I think I get the distinction he is making about writing vs the urge or hunger to write but…I think he is going a bit Friedric Nietzsche on us… the philosopher who is so confident that he can make fun of philosophy while he is doing it…even mock it and invite the reader to his ‘Joyful wisdom’ (or Gaya Scienza)…
This just really made me pause; this writer, seer perhaps, who can express the difficult or impossible-to-express…and do it so beautifully…hmmm…
I think that this touches on why political polls are becoming progressively more useless. Aside from people who only have cell phones, people (like my wife) who screen 100 % of their calls and those who just don’t want to be bothered, there is another substantial group that will not respond. Specifically, those who are concerned that some big ugly union thugs will show up at your house if they don’t “like” Obama. Of course, if you are not all-in for Obama, you are also racist and bigoted. And they have your phone number and can easily get your address.
Also, as has been proven, Facebook and Twitter “privacy” is a horrible joke. And, oh by the way, anything you post will easily outlive you.
It’s just not worth it.
Thefore, the bottom line is that if companies want to restrict their hiring pool to nitwits, layabouts and the idle, it’s their loss.
58. Josh
re: I hope I’m not offending your professional duties here…
I wasn’t speaking from my own professional perspective. I have no ox to be gored, and I’m definitely not a HR type, but rather come from more of the “sales weasel” (as Neal Boortz terms them) end of the business world spectrum.
I was simply pointing out another frame of reference for the kind of rejection language wretchard described. I also should have probably added a “/sarc” tag to my comment “not that there’s anything wrong with that”. I don’t particularly like the way the business world works sometimes, but it is what it is.
Your posts indicate that you have a somewhat idealistic view of business and jobs, a view that the real world, in my experience, will never be able to live up to. I also understood that wretchard was approaching the issue of jobs and career choices from a more philosophical, self-actualization or self-identity frame of reference, e.g. writing is what you do, a writer is who you are, and the two are not necessarily fully congruent.
One other point that needs to be considered when talking about companies and hiring philosophies is that there is a continuum of employer types ranging from the entrepreneurial/performance/excellence oriented, to those that prefer the manageable/obedient/conformable “good enough” types of employees for financial/political/regulatory reasons, to the surreal realm of government bureaucracies where the criterion “good enough” is even less of a consideration than in private business, and merely warming a seat and voting “correctly”, i.e. to maintain the system, is enough. /sarc
IOW, employers, employees and jobs run the gamut from productive to merely parasitical to actively destructive, and one size does not fit all. Wretchard’s personal experience and insight provided valuable context to his primary issue – his own quest to be “a serious guy” as stated in post 35. I merely added, from my own experience, the observation that what he experienced as a philosophically based rejection is more commonly simply a legally safe brush-off tactic. /grin
63. toadold
in tough times when nobody is hiring, the first department I’d reduce would be HR. They are full of parasites pushing the PC agenda that irritates and alienates those that actually produce anything.
Hear! Hear! I would add those Sensitivity Training consultants/parasites and their mandatory seminars.
“German” and “psychologist”, combining two of the 20th Century’s most destructive intellectual concepts in one phrase.
As to HR departments, they are creations of excessive litigation and regulation. They exist for three reasons:
1 – to protect the company from lawsuits brought by disgruntled employees or EEOC types looking to justify their own phony-baloney jobs.
2 – to manage compliance with tax reporting requirements.
3 – to manage benefits programs that are essentially required by tax policy because government taxes individuals who buy those things for themselves.
Tax reform, Tort reform, and putting the EEOC out to pasture would eliminate HR departments.
I use FB sparingly and usually just to stay in touch with old friends. At half a century all my wild and potentially embarrassing days are behind me- until I become senile of course but at that point I will not be able to remember my password so there is minimal risk. All they learn from my FB page is I love to cook and spoil my dogs wayyyyy too much. And if a union thug wants to pay me a visit, well c’mon big boy, I could use a workout.(evil grin)
68. JMH
1 – to protect the company from lawsuits brought by disgruntled employees or EEOC types looking to justify their own phony-baloney jobs.
Can I get a “Harrumph”?
I’m sorry for the O.T, but it appears Obama,
Turbo Tax and Holder illegally terminated the pensions of 20,000 former Delphi nonunion employees:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=209811
What a bunch of criminal a-holes!
This scandal seems ready made to counter all the TV ads accusing Romney of killing jobs.
Romney may not be running much of a campaign, but he doesn’t have to if Buraq keeps stepping in it like this.
Here’s my take on the dark knight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYsuUwkqcb0&feature=plcp
t @ 67: Your posts indicate that you have a somewhat idealistic view of business and jobs, a view that the real world, in my experience, will never be able to live up to. I also understood that wretchard was approaching the issue of jobs and career choices from a more philosophical, self-actualization or self-identity frame of reference, e.g. writing is what you do, a writer is who you are, and the two are not necessarily fully congruent.
Wretchard’s point is my point too, that for a company to demand that you put both what you do and who you are into your job, is a bad, abusive situation.
“Idealistic”, said with a manly chuckle, is the response one sometimes hears from people who know they’re doing the wrong thing, but really don’t care.
However I’ll give you this, my screed is a bit misleading without the boilerplate, which can either be the prologue or the postscript, that what is really at stake is the company’s own enlightened self interest. By seeking to hire only abusable drones, a company will never do better than mediocrity, and can easily fall to difficulties they should be able to ride out. An old cliche is something like 3′s hire 2′s and 9′s hire 10′s. Google famously these days pretends to want to hire only 10′s, which I can’t really speak to, as being over the age of 30 I’ll never see the inside of the company. I’ve seen them reject, actively and passively, 10′s of greater age. But my daily activity talking to recruiters is really such, and my experience on contract jobs in a dozen organizations over the past ten years, shows this very depressing convention. It was never *that* different, but back in the day salaries were 2x or 3x today’s so it mattered less, and there *were* exceptions around that made serious efforts “in search of excellence”.
Still, I understand your point, and it’s why I still tend to be less upset at Obambus’ buffoonery than some, I’m “less idealistic” about it. I have more trouble accepting the buffoonery of leaders who have come up and represent current “professional” consensus in Reid and Pelosi. Yeah, I guess I’m still idealistic enough that I like the bridge not to fall into the river, and I find it inappropriate to chuckle when my own house is on fire.
To put it another way (since I’m out of posts) companies live up to that common business poster, “beatings will continue until morale improves”, or to quote Charleton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes, “We did it to ourselves”. My idealism suggests they can do better, and really should try.
Otherwise it’s down to creative destruction, which is fine and dandy but can take decades or centuries to prove out. And if nobody speaks up, that’s the road.
My idealism suggests they can do better, and really should try.
It’s not just your idealism that suggests they can do better. History does as well.
There are just a lot of obstacles in the way at the moment.
My experience at a large software company in the Pacific Northwest was that formalized rules about hiring and promotion destroyed the company. L3 might describe it as not having enough subsidiary (though he might use better grammar). Wretchard would probably say the execs trying to regularize the decision making lacked enough information about what was going on at the leaf-nodes. I’d agree with both and add that success if hard. Achieving it in the first place is hard, which people not named (or voting for) Barack Obama seem to understand. But sustaining it isn’t any easier, and the Boomer generation doesn’t seem to understand that. In business as well as politics, they take the world they inherited as the baseline, a guarantee.
33. tharkun, I know- but we’re not allowed to say that. You have to play along and then break the news gentle, or else people will look at you funny.
One problem with calling them out is that “false false” flags are as common as ordinary frame-ups. I wouldn’t rule out triple-false flags in some cases. For example, ‘Chick-Fil-A’ was an obvious plot to embarrass gay activists. Just like Kony was an inside attack on CIA propagandists… normally a fine group of writers. I believe this latest shooting will help protect 2nd Amendment rights, and that the Southern Poverty Law Center deserves credit for that.
~ Harvey Keitel, BAD LIEUTENANT (1992)
jmh @ 74: and the Boomer generation doesn’t seem to understand that. In business as well as politics, they take the world they inherited as the baseline, a guarantee.
Oh, well, people do, I wouldn’t limit it to Boomers. It’s one of the sins of liberalism going back at least to Rousseau.
But I’m overposting to point to this excellent article in *favor* of regimentation of sorts, in moderation – as exemplified by the Cheesecake Factory!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/13/120813fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
Annals of Health Care
Big Med
Restaurant chains have managed to combine quality control, cost control, and innovation. Can health care?
Richard,
James Joyce is a ‘writer’. You are no James Joyce. You are something better.
As for the matter of companies and employment, until recently, I was working at a company where I was a 10, but they preferred docile 3-4s and tried to turn me into one. I refused to cooperate. Ah, well. Now, I am at a company where I (and others) are getting the mushroom treatment, and apparently expected to play 5s. C’est la vie. I guess I’ll take the checks and hope I can find something better. In the meantime, I hear from old friends that the ‘customer’ wonders why things don’t work so well anymore. It’s sad, but it’s what you get when the management values and enables mediocrity.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cat, know that your pursuit of blogging excellence is appreciated, literary or not.
Josh @ 76 – You overposting rascal, you!
You may be entirely right to identify issues in the provision of health care. Many of these, of course, are related directly to the mechanism of payment for the services. The providers do not answer directly to their customer. We cannot, without extraordinary actions, withhold payment for unsatisfactory service.
Better to eliminate the tax exempt treatment of employer sponsored plans. We should be paying out-of-pocket for the incidental visit. Competition for our patronage would have some effect in controlling costs.
Moreover, we would be motivated to purchase coverage for catastrophic events only. When it’s real money, coming directly out of the available cash, discretion concerning spending will help control costs.
Also, the law regarding treatment offered to non-insured must be revised, live-saving measures only. The emergency rooms should not be filled with folks who have the flu and no means to pay for treatment. Cost shifting must be reduced.
Options for self-treatment must be increased. More medicines should be available without prescription. Qualifications for staff must be revised. You don’t need Michael DeBakey to treat hangnails. Trained PA should do most of the screening evaluations. Only most serious cases should be elevated.
Took wife to emergency room after serious bike crash. Shattered elbow and patella. Any fool could see that the physicians would need x-ray to complete evaluation. Suggested this to senior nurse. NO. you must wait for Dr. to come around after suturing the guy with the busted eyebrow. Dr. comes 20 minute later. Signs x-ray order. Up the elevator. Back down 20 minutes later. Dr. comes around in 10 minutes to declare shattered elbow and patella. We could have had this information for his first exam 30 minute ago. How about some efficiency in the chickenshot process!
Most important, expectations must be managed. No perfect solution, free of risk, is lying around waiting to be discovered. It is not in the power of mankind to successfully resolve every medical issues so that nobody dies before 92 years. Nor is it within our power to make all scarce resources freely available to everyone with unfulfilled needs.
What ever solutions are devised, they need this characteristic. Nobody rides for free, just like the old bumper sticker in the days of grass & xxx. Every able-bodied and able-minded person must produce as much as they consume, children excepted.
Arizona CJ @59,
Another problem with the German’s analysis is, NOONE reveals his or her true self on social media sites like Facebook. A FaceBook “identity” is necessarily incomplete: even my avid FB-using friend admitted that she doesn’t share everything about herself online.
Oh sure, you’ll hear all the gossip about her new neighbor, find out that she graduated from an online accounting school recently, and see all the kids’ baby pictures, but…you won’t learn about her youngest son’s run-in with meth and the law, and you won’t hear about her frustration at her husband’s impotency, and you won’t discover that she flunked her GED test twice, and on and on… So, if you rely on her FB mien for actionable information, the German analyst seems not to care that you’re relying on an incomplete history fabricated by what most-times is an attention-seeking gadfly.
To return to Wretchard’s allusion to Sherlock Holmes’ quip, it’s not so much the dog’s absent bark in the night that should concern us. It’s all the coiffed poodles barking day-in and day-out about trivia from the hermetic safety of their cubicles on FB, and the fools who dignify the poseurs’ posts by labeling them ‘society,’ that grate.
From the New Yorker link above:
We’ve let health-care systems provide us with the equivalent of greasy-spoon fare at four-star prices, and the results have been ruinous.
If I can identify a single thing about health care and reform that made my stomach churn, it was the deeply persistent denial that there was a “problem” needing “reform.”
“My plan is fine …” or “these statistics are wrong …” versus “it’s the stupid, lazy, fat ….” or “it’s another progressive elite power grab …”
As they say at the AA meetings: don’t bother walking through the door until you admit you have a problem.
Eliminating employer-sponsored plans would be a positive move forward. It’s a retooling matter. It requires capital investment and planning. It requires industry leadership.
(The only downside to Cheesecake Factory is the noise.)
Facebook and tweeter are just trying a little push marketing. They are trying to use fear to create more subscribers. Stop and think for a minute.
There are 7 BILLION humans on this planet, there are less then 100 million facebook users. That is such a small percentage that the <2% rule for social deviancy can be applied. Even if you just use the number of humans on the web ( est. @ 1 billion) you are still under 2%.
So why would anyone with a working prefrontal cortex expect a group that could be used as a definition for aberrant behavior to act in a normal manner?
Remember, it's not WHAT you do but where it sits on the bell curve that matters.
IN San Franciso, they walk the streets Jay bird neeked. That won't fly in Wichita Falls, TX.
Charlie don't surf.
10^8 / 10^9 = 10%…
But the age cohort is much more concentrated than 10^9.
Within the age cohort, the FB crowd is up past 20%, typically way past it, say 60%.
What it really is, is a coming of age, networking phenomenon tuned to the latest teen cohort.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I suspect that FB, itself, will prove to be an economic dud. The smart phone is the wrong narrowcasting device: its eye-space is too small for ‘push’ advertising.
Indeed, I suspect that the entire post war ad model is about to be dumped.
Madison Avenue is going to map US. Broadcasting is going to default to mass sports events.
Evidently, even sit-coms are being narrowcasted; hence, the explosion of queer-coms. [ The New Normal - right! ]
KLA…
I found your screed bouncing off perceptions located in a galaxy far, far away.
If there is ONE unifying theme in present carping, it’s that health care and the financing thereof and the allocation thereof is a big political / politicized problem.
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As for bringing up the rear: it’s a topic that has been kicked from Maine to California around these parts — for quite some time.
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In the shortest of strokes: what had been 100% private in the 1930s has morphed into a government meddled farrago of K Street constructions and constrictions — sweeping away any semblance of free market price-performance feed-back.
Then, there is genuine puzzlement as to why costs are exploding while most performance metrics are stuck at flat to unimproved.
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The vast bulk of medical care is expended upon the edge of the grave. I believe this is inherent to medicine and the human condition.
Single payer ‘faithers’ figure to resolve this ugliness by empaneling the just and the wise to take the matter out of the hands of personal and familial finance — unless you’re of the ‘righteous and elite’ — and wrap things up most tidy.
Edward G. Robinson portrayed just such a scheme — a Soylent man keeping the regime solvent.
Hangtown Bob 45,
Agreed, we are attracted to Belmont Club because of Wretchard’s great thinking, but his writing is also first rate, and when you add the two together we’ve got a winner, and never mind that what we have here is a good man standing up for what is right in the world, like the individual’s natural yearning for truth, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and his/her natural equal rights to the same.
@83: Single payer ‘faithers’ figure to resolve this ugliness by empaneling the just and the wise to take the matter out of the hands of personal and familial finance — unless you’re of the ‘righteous and elite’ — and wrap things up most tidy.
Reminiscent of the semi-regular calls for autocracy at the federal level that emanate from this site and elsewhere, more specifically a Christian theocracy, as the only viable institutional end-state of true conservative ideological evolution.
The vast bulk of medical care is expended upon the edge of the grave. I believe this is inherent to medicine and the human condition.
As I stipulated with the concept of risk asymmetry. The human condition is many things; efficient, not being at the top of the list. The “collective arena” will always be hard for obvious reasons, and, of necessity, inefficient. The spreadsheet masters with their clipboards will always be hovering like black angels with pearly smiles. In some areas, I argue health care is one, the markets are only marginally more efficient than the State, their angels being only marginally less deadly.
As for the rest of it, elimination of employer-sponsored coverage would be a positive move, as I already wrote. As I also wrote, it requires a considerable degree of noticeably absent effort from industry – vision, leadership, planning, and capital investment. It is possible that the health care exchanges will over time transform into a more market-oriented solution. It is next to ludicrous to think that the industry will not be heavily regulated.
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Also from The New Yorker article:
Essentially, we’re moving from a Jeffersonian ideal of small guilds and independent craftsmen to a Hamiltonian recognition of the advantages that size and centralized control can bring.
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For the changes to live up to our hopes—lower costs and better care for everyone—liberals will have to accept the growth of Big Medicine, and conservatives will have to accept the growth of strong public oversight.