you do the math #1

This week saw a historic powerball lottery of $1.3billion! (hooray?)

Hold up! Let's do the math.

The power ball was split between 3 winners.
The US government got 40% or $520,000,000
The winners got $260,000,000 each (which seems like a lot until you consider that it's not enough to build a gas station in Iraq but it could give thousands of gas stations to Iraqis in the US [/racism]

Perspective:
In the first quarter of 2016 (October-December 2015) the federal gov't collected $765,000,000,000 in taxes (count the zeros and you'll realize that this is or 15X what they got from their share of the power ball lottery) let's consider that they spent $981,200,000,000 leaving us a deficit of $216,000,000,000.
That's the equivalent of taxes on 415 lotteries from before Halloween to New Years. That's like giving 703,614 people winning power ball tickets last week.

Did 3 people win or did 703,611 people lose?

I'm a cynical f&^ker so guess what I think.

all Hitlers are people, but not all people are Hitlers

I haven’t touched on my sort-of libertarian views on US politics because I haven’t yet expressed my personal philosophical views on humanity in general, but today I was watching David Attenborbough’s latest special about the Great Barrier Reef when he got to a section all about green sea turtles returning to one tiny sand-bar island to breed. It turns out that things made of sand wear down relatively quickly and this particular island had shrunk so that the high tide was drowning 70+% of the turtle eggs. The super smart scientist in charge of monitoring the turtles figured this out, brought in equipment and reshaped one of the beaches so that the turtles didn’t fight for space to lay their eggs and so that the eggs ended up above the high tide line. It’s a wonderful success story for conservation and we should all be proud of the dedicated people who made it happen.

-End scene-

-Cut to exterior-Real world USA-Today

-Establishing shot of Norris sitting at his keyboard-

-Begin nostalgic flashback narrative-

When I was just a boy I was told how all mankind was on the brink of self-extinction. There were these “communist Russians” somewhere in the world who hated me because I was free and at the push of a button could start WWIII which no one would survive except in some Mad Max style dystopian waste land. Get it through your heads, gen X was told to grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, pay taxes, save for retirement, finance their cars, try to get a nice house in a good school district and then not bother because the Apocalypse was coming and you’ll die in the nuclear winter anyway. This was followed by an oil crisis, the savings and loan crisis, HIV/AIDS, a hole in the ozone layer, the dot com bubble, Africanized killer bees, Y2K, 9/11, mad cow disease, bird flu, the housing bubble, the 2007/8 global financial crisis, the Mayan calendar ending, and a black president (note to self: on a blog you can't read the room before you tell that joke, Norris)   In retrospect it was kind of mixed signals, Mom & Dad America!

But, at least we had a space program! I mean some president said “we’re going to the moon” we shot him and then everyone got busy trying to achieve that goal. We did it back then, famously, with less computational power than the average cell phone has today. But what COULD we have accomplished had we worked on what we wanted and not what our enemies wanted? Would we be on Mars or did we need another cold-war enemy to stimulate that? Neil Degrasse Tyson (here-to-fore-after to be referred to as “NDT”) has famously exclaimed something to the effect that we only pushed for more a space program at all because of the cold war and we haven’t been out of low-earth orbit since. (Forgive me NDT for paraphrasing the crap out of you). What might our greatest minds have achieved if they hadn’t been government employees with a singular mission.  Or, did that singular mission cause its own success?

I’m getting off the subject.

Had humans not existed the green sea turtles would still have used the same island and, eventually, a change in seas level would have had a deleterious effect on their population. In case you are thinking something along the lines of “man made global warming is causing the oceans to rise” I’ll counter with turtles don’t care what generation it is and EVENTUALLY this would have happened. The failure of a species to adapt quickly in 2015 is the same as its failure to adapt quickly in 3015. In fact, that’s my point. Tons of shit went extinct before we slaughtered them and then felt bad about it. Prior to us the multi-cellular, motile causes of extinction just felt hungry.

Evolution has certain requirements; among them is a large, successful population which allows for enough variation that there is room for adaptation when it's inevitably required. ( I just re-read that and it's like a poem.) Many people cling to this idea the evolution is some X-men style mutation that happens conveniently when needed to defeat the bad guy.

In a world without people a reduction in green sea turtles might have allowed some other species to flourish. But, if it makes you feel good, cling to the idea that some adamantium-clad wolverine turtle would reluctantly save his species with the help of a hald dozen or so equally remarkable freaks of nature.

The flip side of this idea is widely accepted. In a world where humans have a dramatic effect on animal populations there is a noticeable knock-on effect to the rest of the environment. We all know and accept this (except certain full-gospel-new-testament and Allahu Akbar types who accept that it is some type of divine plan where the suffering of our souls is more important than the causal effects of our bodies. But that’s a moral debate for another post). If you accept that killing animals willy-nilly is bad and wrong and just so bad and hey! Stop marginalizing my opinions you privileged white male! Then you should be able to accept that causality proves that saving things that would have died also has an effect. I mean what if we find out that in 3 years, one of us invents a time machine goes back 130 years and saves a dying baby who turns out to be Hitler! Then what would you think, Hitler saver?

I'll still think that this smart scientist and his staff have solved a natural problem and helped the green sea turtles but I won't try to moralistically use it to justify any human action as right or wrong. It FEELS right. And most days FEELING right is a great accomplishment.

fascism is the new androgyny

Some of you may know that over Christmas I hit a dog on my bicycle while not wearing a helmet. I bounced my head (both sides) off the road and had to get stitches and a CAT scan. Merry f&^cking Christmas. It was immediately after this that I was invited to a friend’s family Christmas celebration. I must have still been concussed because I said “yes”. I got to see all the old faces. I mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children, uncles, aunts, and dear, dear drunken friends. I regaled them with my stories of raising snakes, continuing at a job I detest and sliding down an asphalt cheese grater that acts as a metaphor for my catholic instilled self-loathing on the day baby Jesus was born. My ego enjoyed much sympathy and many female hugs. But eventually I found myself cornered on the porch by a man I had once highly regarded as a free thinking, hard working, American farmer. Only now he is burned in like a mid-90’s server monitor. No matter what he said the sickening logo of a buggy inflexible, un-intuitive OS was always there. In his case it was what’s wrong with the government, America in general and why immigrants are bad, bad, bad.

I let him say his piece, some of which I agreed with, but then I said “I think you are right about X, Y, & Z but I also think A, B & C should be considered.”

Wrong move, Norris.

I was quickly told that A, B & C don’t mean shit. It’s mother f&^king X, Y & Z! In this case he was saying that the problem was ethics and morality. If everyone shared the same ethics and morality it would certainly fix a lot of problems (assuming you invade Poland first and killed all the jews and gypsies second) but it also ignores what makes America great

{Note to self: do a post about "what makes America great"}

I listened again to this bigots tirade and then tried to address what he was saying. But if X = 1 and Y = 2 then X+Y=Stupid move, Norris.

Once again I was sat back down in my chair to be told NO! GODDAMITT! THE PROBLEM IS X, Y & Z!!!! NASCAR! LIGHT BEER! F&^K OBAMA!

Oh. I’m sorry. I thought this was a discussion.

I tried a new tact. “Yes sir. You are correct”

Obviously I am very bad at capitulating because now I was attacked for being a patronizing son of a bitch. (In his defense, I really am)

This went down-hill very quickly and I ended the discussion by explaining that I had hit my head on the road but he had no excuse for being so f&^king stupid.

Since then I have been debating how this whole exchange came to be. I appreciate the man’s point of view but in his mind there is only ONE answer and it’s HIS answer. Nothing I could say, even in agreement could satisfy his agitated nature. I have compared his attitude to dozens of other older people I once respected and found that what they all have in common is spending more time listening to right wing news than they used to spend reading whatever newspaper was available. I have a theory about this based on what a 20-year-old's news intake is vs what their news intake is at 50. My grandparent's, for example, read the morning newspaper and watched the evening news. My parents where adults when you could watch 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at supper time and then catch the full news at 10 (assuming you stayed up that late). I came into adult hood with non-stop 24/7/365 news on every channel and online but we knew it was all shit so we ignored it. I fear for my child's adulthood. By my metric, she will need the news to be tattooed on her forehead for it to be real.

I could now go into the polarization of the baby boomers by news media. I could discuss the insecurities of the working classes (of which I am a card carrying member) which is constantly fed by click-bait news. I could discuss how rational, logical thought is categorized not based on what it results in, but what it opposes. So if the right wing hears your rational thought you’re a “moderate”. If the left hears it you’re a “progressive”. I could talk about how the “interests” in the US use money to control power which influences a clearly segregated society that is just a series of data points, interest rates, and risk groups.

But I could also point out that we are more informed and less deceived than ever. I could suggest that people who would have been drawn to a moderate position are now free to be the extremists that they always wanted to be. I don’t know the answer but I know I had a terrible Christmas and I won’t go back to visit my friend's family for at least a year.

Sometimes I’m glad I have no family and almost no friends.

Sometimes, I’m really lonely.

But most of the time I’m thinking about stuff and wishing I had written more.

the happy duck

Gather round children and answer uncle Norris' question:

Does this look like a happy duck?

OK. I'll assume you have answered by now and I'll now tell you why you are wrong.

#1 this is a goose. The domestic duck, like the chicken, came from south east Asia. The domestic goose is a totally western development that was the staple of ridiculous post-roman christian holidays until the turkey was discovered in "the new world"

#2 this is as pissed-off as a goose can get. This one is sitting on a nest full of eggs and she did not like me taking her picture.  If you want to see other really pissed off creatures check out the stop a douchebag channel on youtube.

Back to the point: Humans suffer from something called anthropomorphism. We just LOOOOVE to think that all living things are hairy/feathery/scaly people. The real problem is that we can't imagine that WE share traits with OTHER CREATURES. We have a hominid-centric view of life and Walt Disney makes a shit-ton of $$ selling that idea back to us.

So, this week I want you to make a point to look at some non-human animals around you, consider the reality of their actions, and think not about how THEY are like YOU but about how YOU are like THEM. You are a tool box full of tools, they are just a screw driver or a hammer or a bezelling planisher (look it up you tool-illiterate hipsters).

Post Script:

Attention DINKS: YOUR DOGS ARE NOT CHILDREN! (but they are kind of close if you learn about how tribal/pack organization influences social status.)

Common misconceptions about guns.

So, I am a gun owner and, more importantly, a gun user but if you aren't a gun owner or, more importantly, a gun user then there is a unique paradigm you may not be aware of called "I don't know how my gun is hitting". This, basically, means you haven't shot your gun in a while and you don't know where the bullet will go despite where the sights are pointed. If you are an automobile driver then you might compare this to "I haven't had to back up in a while" The long & short of it is that you own a thing but can't properly use it and, more importantly, don't trust yourself to use it. I think this is the crux of the modern gun-control debate. It's not about the criminals who would use their guns for terrible, unspeakable things but the result of the modern uncertain gun-owner who knows, deep-down in their heart, that they can't use their guns well enough to be trusted with them. I must now apologize to the hundreds of youtube channel gun-nuts who spend all their time assuming that everyone lives in the imaginary world they do where everyone takes their guns out and shoots them repeatedly until proficiency is achieved. The reality is that most gun-owners are not gun-users and should NOT have guns. (Am I the least popular guy on the internet yet? I will be. Wait until I talk about dog owners and voters!)

I'll jump ahead to the part where I am talking to gun owners who use their firearms and suddenly realize that there are some guns they simply do not shoot enough and often (let's say once per year) feel a sudden sense of doubt in their ability to use said firearm. I have a couple rifles that fall into this category. I say to myself "Dear sweet Jesus, Norris! You haven't shot that in a year! You have no idea how it shoots or where it's hitting!" Then I make a point to take it to the range, load it and shoot it only to find it shoots exactly how it shot last year and I was worried for no reason. The worry is a good thing. The shooting is a good thing. The discussion this opens up is, also, a good thing. So, to open this debate I bring up the last time I shot my VEPR .308. Late last summer I noticed the geese at my favorite fishing hole would not go into the lake and they looked very worried which is a hard thing to notice about a goose (I'll post more on this later). Once I sat still for a while and waited I suddenly saw what they saw. A young alligator trolling the placid waters of my favorite fishing hole where the children (DEAR GOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!) often come to play. Not to ruin the end of the story I took 2 shots from ~100 yards with iron sights from my AK-47 and planted a nice head shot this little gator. The first shot was a miss. I adjusted and BLAMO! I reduced a 100 million year old brain pan design to a cocktail shrimp bowl. So be it. If you own guns, shot them. If you hate guns, take solace in the fact that at least some of us can use ours properly and are a minimal threat to you and yours.

content creation

One of the crazy things about right now is that we live in the age of “content creation”.

Growing up, writers were writers, painters were painters, musicians were musicians, etc. But today a teacher can be a blogger, a mortician can be a youtuber, a college drop-out can be a podcaster. If you take the time to create something, someone will consume it.

We have youtube EDU creators interviewing the president. We have comedian/kickboxers pulling in millions of podcast downloads per month. Facebook can effectively test in 1 day, groups larger than the largest sociological survey in history could have, hypothetically, extrapolated to test in a millennium. Seriously, the highest rated TV shows of my youth touched a tiny fraction of the average popular podcast or youtube channel now.

And the true beauty of it is that content creation is virtually free for the consumer as well as the creator (please note, I said "virtually"). For the price of a few simple digital cameras you can offer up something everyone wants to see. For the time it takes to follow a few links, you can see something that makes you glad you woke up today.

{I will pause here while the perverts make their porn jokes.}

 Done?

Good.

Now sets in the reality that for years the “content “ we consumed was designed by rooms filled with creative people paid to design stuff to amuse the masses. I got divorced about 14 years ago and one of the things I used to pass the lonely, lonely times with was buying seasons of TV shows, watching them, and then listening to the commentary tracks. I heard directors, producers, writers and actors talk endlessly about what it took to bring me the 26 episodes of that 22 minute comedy that made me, momentarily, forget how heart-broken. These people are content creators but they worked for companies that made shows, sold those shows to companies that advertised them, who worked for companies that broad cast them, who worked for companies that owned the rights, who worked for companies that took all the money.

Today is different. Today I watch real people pour their hearts out to me in a non-reality TV format and I get to appreciate their work.

This brings me to what I’m doing here. First of all, I have no internet presence anymore. I came to the internet as a forum participant/troll in the mid 90’s. I met interesting people from all around the world and I flamed them after they flamed me. It was a very “show me your tits” time and I’m glad it’s past.

When “social media” popped up a few years ago I saw it as an opportunity to be in contact with people I loved. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t work that way. I ended up with worthless “facebook friends”. After a year, I un-friend-ed everyone who hadn’t said anything interesting in that year. Some of them couldn’t grasp this and were horribly offended. A year or so later I realized that people who said “I think blah-blah-blah” didn’t give a flying f&^k what I thought unless it was also what they thought. They weren't willing to talk it out rationally or even argue it out like int he good old days. They just wanted a "like". Not to dredge up old scars but it's a lot like when I was 12 and "didn't fit in". Screw you hateful people who watch 16 hours of FOX news every day and "know what the real problem is". That being said.....

I deleted my account.

A month later I opened a new account and added no friends. It remains thus until today.

I have realized that this blog will be read by no one until I make it known that it is here. So I have hatched my own Content-Creator-Plan.

Step #1: find time to write what you are thinking about (this is proving tricky for 2 reasons. #1 there's so much good content to consume. #2 I want to write in the morning but I have to go to work and make decisions about stuff that affects other people and they don't care what I think about non-work stuff)

Step #2: see what that turns into (very good chance most of it is ridiculous drivel but some of it will, undoubtedly, be solid-gold. )

Step #3: create new social media accounts and begin pointing people to what you’ve done. I hope I come to my senses and skip this step. But we shall see.

3 steps is as far as I’ve thought since, honestly, step #2 is a tough one. My personal goal is for therapeutic, one-sided, conversations. But right now, I’m reticent to talk about everything that crosses my mind and I’m a terrible typist.

the quick nbrwpm gp[v jumpes pvber tjhe4 ;acu dog/

the quick bnrom gox jumps pover thje lasy fos

the quicl btpwm fpx umps pver thje ;awdcuy dpg/

(couldn't do it without looking)

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,