Working at the Cow Palace on Acid

There is a venue for concerts, rodeos and the like in San Francisco, called the Cow Palace. One year, in the late 80s when I lived near the City and was out of work for the summer, I signed up for some temp work, and one job was for some weekend event at the Cow Palace.

When I showed up on Saturday, there were many of us, and we were sent around to basically keep the place picked up and neat. Not hard work, but boring.

Thinking it would be the same on Sunday, I dropped some acid before going to work.

I was starting to trip when I got there and someone singled me out. I thought, "Oh, shit, busted. I'm going home."  But no. The guy assigned me to the back barn where the livestock were kept, telling me to just sweep and keep it all looking good for the visitors.

Between the cattle and the human cattle pushing, mooing and almost stampeding, I was amused for the entire day. I remember the day going by quickly.

The one bad part was lunch, when I went next door to McDonalds and tried to eat one of their burgers. A Big Mac on acid isn't anything one would choose to confront.

I came down just in time to drive home. Tripping is the only way to work.

The truth about store reward cards

More and more stores are asking people to get those damn cards. Some of them even insult your intelligence by calling them "rewards cards." What rewards? For what?

But, you may insist that these cards save you money. No. Here's how it works. "Candy bars, regularly $3.95, with our rewards card, only $1.10. You save $2.85." Believe that, and I have a really nice bridge in San Francisco to sell you cheap.

Let's take beer. I shop at a store that doesn't have cards, nothing to carry, none of your personal information in their marketing file. One of my favorites is normally $7.95 a six pack, but it's often on sale for $6.95, perhaps a couple days per week. That's when I buy it. The card store down the street has it for either $7.95 or even $8.95, knowing you'd never pay that much. However, with the card you get in for $7.45, sometimes $6.95. They call it a reward, my store calls it what it is, a sale. It's honest, and you don't have to carry a wallet full of cards.

It's even worse when the call it a club. Oh, goody, I'm a member of an exclusive club, and they give me benefits for membership. Get a clue, anyone who willing to put their name and address on a card is a member. The only benefits you get is paying what you would expect to pay anyway. Unless you are having a party and have just run out of beer, no one is going to pay $8.95 for a six pack they can get for $6.95, and no one is going to pay other inflated prices, such as a four buck candy bar.

I suggest that the next time some store asks you for your card, have them call the manager over. Once he or she is there, explain how easy it is to roll up the little card and use it for a rectal suppository.

A world composed of words

Once upon a time humans learned to talk. From that humble beginning, we've created semantic societies. We've fashioned our cultures, politics, social and religious systems with words, and we've used words to shore them up, remodel them and reaffirm them to each other. We've even pinned nature to our semantic structure. The word and concept "tree" has meaning to us, depending on whether it produces fruit or lumber or provides shade in a park. A rock can name just a rock or a chunk of "granite" which has economic value. We encounter very little in our lives that isn't filtered through our semantic system.

Fortunately for our connection to reality, we've traditionally had a foundation to rest our semantic skyscrapers upon. That foundation is that which we produce, often with little or no semantic input. We grow things to eat. We fashion dwellings and tools. We built the things we use. Sure, a chair is only a chair because we design it as a chair and name it such, but even without that, we would fashion something we could sit on, even if it were just flattening out a fallen log.

The problem now is that it takes fewer and fewer people to actually do things, leaving more people to engage in the strictly semantic pursuits, such as business, politics and information. Add to this the technology that allows almost every one of us to communicate instantly and endlessly with everyone else on the planet, and our semantic world is starting to look like a sub atomic quantum vacuum, filled with energy and wildly erratic. The reality is that, left with nothing physically to do, we fill our spaces and our lives with words, explanations of our world and lives in human terms.

Because of all this, we now live in a world where irresponsible, ignorant people can talk their way into positions of power and authority, and once there, they must maintain these positions by a steady stream of verbiage, whether they have something constructive to say or not. The result is that those with genuine information, knowledge and wisdom to share are often drowned out by the vacuous shouts of people whose only goals are self promotion and financial success. Think of the old radio and TV horror called "dead air

The terrorist of talk are not about to stop, so perhaps we can learn to construct personal filters that screen out the semantic noise. If we can't manage that, maybe we'll need to just put our fingers in our ears and stop listening.

Someone please warn me if I'm becoming one of those vacuous noise makers.

The New Age has reached Old Age

The dawning of Aquarius, an anthem for a quasi spiritual movement going on forty years old now. The New Age movement, a blend of optimism, eastern spirituality and loads of potent dope was the natural byproduct of the baby boomer generation. And it was popular because, well, because it really felt good.

The point seemed to be that if the young people banded together, believed anything was possible and prosperity depended only on positive thinking, they could have it all. After all, even their gods knew they were special. In theory you could meditate your way to becoming a millionaire, back when a million wasn't chump change.

Those young folks are now filing for Social Security, and Medicare is around the corner. I'm wondering how many are still new agers. I'm guessing that those folks who were making loads of money but then got downsized because younger people had skills that were more current and they'd work for far less, have likely given up their utopian notions.

There are still a few new agers around. I run into them now and then, sprouting things like "All you need is love." I never fail to add, "Plus three squares and a roof that doesn't leak." But, for the most part, these hold outs are still enjoying the trust fund set up by their industrious parents who made a bundle during the post WW2 boom.

To be fair, they probably aren't the only generation to feel so blessed. I'm guessing that there are many young people today who feel that their i phones, apps and Twitter will save them and make them immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

I ran into an old hippy I know and asked him if he plans to enjoy the revival of the play Hair. His response was, "Say, what?"

A 21st Century Modest Proposal

People who know my past sympathy with social safety nets may be surprised by my reversal, but times have changed, and I'm changing with them.

Some members of congress are trying to reduce or eliminate many Social Security and Medicare benefits, along with programs for the poor, in order to save money. It took me a while to see the wisdom of this idea, the big picture idea.

The bottom line is the economic bottom line, and let's face it, old people are not the best demographic group. Few businesses court them, as they generally either have little money to spend or have pretty much accumulated everything they really need. Add to this, unlike the young, old people don't often feel the urge to keep up with trends. The result is a group of people, retired and not producing for our businesses and also not spending. In short, drags on the economy.

So, logically, the sooner we're rid of these folks the better. By cutting off Social Security and Medicare, these old folks will either starve to death or contract some disease that they can't afford to have treated. The result is way less burdensome elderly. Naturally, none of this applies to the wealthy elderly, who can afford food and medical care and still spend money.

The same kind of argument can be made for the poor. These people either don't have jobs or our marginally employed at best. They produce little but demand much, such as food, shelter, warm clothing. With little or no money, they don't support our business community. You seldom see the poor in our malls doing their patriotic fiscal duty. If you cut their programs, most will die of exposure on the first cold winter night, thus aiding the economy. After all, as our puritan founders realized, being poor is a moral flaw. It is indicative of sloth, lack of vision, low self respect and spiritual bankruptcy. This country would be better off without them.

The wealthy, the business owners, the investors are the morally upright people, and they need our support. Their success in life proves their moral worth. Thus when they make more money, the whole fabric of our society becomes richer and in many ways more noble.

With the money we save by taking away free money from slackers, we can fund things that have social value: For example, the military. Any undergraduate sociology student knows that it's necessary to always have a war running in some part of the world. This keeps the undereducated young men employed and gives them a socially acceptable outlet for their youthful aggressive impulses.

Also, military spending supports the patriotic business that make the planes, bombs and guns we use in our just wars and also sell to friendly countries, run by benign dictators who watch our back in remote parts of the globe. And, naturally, the billions in foreign aid we send to these countries are ultimately an investment in our economy and our future.

So, it's time to dismantle these feel good but useless programs and put our money where it will do the most good.

A rich conversation

The eyes are the first things you notice and the last things you see. They lock on to you with an intensity that almost burns, and they never drop, never avert their gaze. You know from the first that this isn't a typical encounter, a normal, casual conversation.

A freshman in a big university, she seems anxious to absorb the world, an intellectual sponge, a great, consuming fire of curiosity. She's also a bundle of contradictions, confident but nervous, outgoing but lonely, mature but homesick. Tempted to pull back to the small town from the big university world, she digs in and soldiers on, determined to make her way, to live her dream.

A natural communicator, she talks as fast as I do, making our conversation sound like the gunfight at the OK corral. There's never a break, not a pause as we pick up ideas mid sentence and continue running with them, like a basketball passed back and forth down the court. And she never tosses out a trite comment or an unconsidered idea.

Each new bit of knowledge is filtered through layers of analysis, categorized and filed away. It's easy to forget that she's still hardly more than a child.

She's an aspiring journalist in a world where journalism is undergoing drastic, perhaps catastrophic changes. While many would be reluctant to enter a field in such flux, she appears to revel in it, confident that she'll survive and perhaps prosper.

There is a tendency to be concerned for the young people starting out, a concern about the kind of world we've left for them to navigate. However, if she's any indication, we have nothing to worry about.

Protesters in the Rain

As I was driving through town today, I saw a group standing in the rain, protesting abortion. I find it fascinating how people who seem not to have lives of their own can become so obsessed with other's lives. To spend one's day standing on a corner in the rain casts doubt on the depth or richness of their lives.

I know that many people have strong feelings about many issues and are often moved to stand up and make their feelings know. There is, however, a qualitative difference between protesting things that do not have the potential to harm you and things that do.

For example, when people stand up and ask that the laws that allow mentally unstable or possible criminal people to purchase assaults weapons, often in quantity, be amended, there are real concerns that they or others they know might be victims of these gunmen. This would be an example of people protesting something that poses a danger to them and their community.

Abortion is a personal matter. One person's abortion poses no harm to her neighbor or community. The drugs people take in the privacy of their own home is another personal matter, as well as whatever religious practices make them feel good. And, while religious conformity isn't a current issue in this country, it is in many places, and there are those who would make it so in the US.

If banks foreclose on someone's property without due process or companies pilfer employees' retirement accounts, these are issues that do harm people and should be loudly protested.

Actually, I was being facetious when I claimed to find the protesters fascinating. It is clear why these people stand in the rain with these signs. Their world view is so narrow and on such shaky ground, that they must bolster and protect it at all costs. It is sad to realize that some people see themselves as perpetually under siege. It is also sad that they see the rest of us as the enemy.

Are there patterns in the events in Egypt.

It would be interesting to see some math analysis of the popular uprising in Egypt.

I know that mathematicians have theories and formulas that describe large groups of individuals in random motion: molecules of gas, flocks of birds, population projections, to name a few. These could be or perhaps already have been applied to this seemingly leaderless revolt.

First, I realize that while the overall motion of large groups can be calculated, there is no way to determine what one individual will do, particularly one very complex individual human, with an assortment of abilities, opportunities and motivations. So, which individual or group will ultimately rise to power, should Mubarak be removed soon, is, for the moment, pure speculation, the general process will probably unfold in some predictable pattern.

Right now the scene looks rather chaotic, although there are people cooperating to fend off the attacks of the government's hired thugs. To me, all phenomena are much more interesting and beautiful if the pattern is discernable, and this uprising looks like it is unfolding like an elaborate flower or condensing like a gas cloud into a solar system.

A complex system set in motion will run its course, following some natural pattern. I am anxious to see how these events unfold.

The loss of analytic thought

The following quote by Nobel Prize winning scientist, Peter Medawar, speaks ominously to this society at this time.

"The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought."

As a society, we seem to have substituted the boisterous babbling of bewildering balderdash and the relentless ranting of redundant rubbish for clear, analytic discussions.

As Medawar points out, we have many people who are educated and sophisticated in their tastes. However, something has been neglected in their education or in their personal intellectual quest. One thing that seems to be lost is the reflective gap between some event and the assessment of it.

For example, the recent protests in Egypt were immediately proclaimed by some as a great and noble revolution, leading to a new era of democratic government. Others immediately denounced it as an Islamist take over. At this writing, it is too early to tell, but it could end up as either of those, the rise of a new autocrat, a complete break down of government or perhaps some other alternative. The point being, these folks didn't take a moment to think it through before pontificating on the subject.

Take our current political climate. If you were to plot a graph with the political far right on one end and the far left on the other end of the X axis, and then plotted the amount of analytic thinking on the Y axis, once the American voters were each placed in the appropriate spot, I strongly suspect that we would end up with a bell curve, that is, as you move out to the extremes, the number of analytic thinkers drops off to nearly zip.

Perhaps we've learned to harness our thinking into 140 character tweets, or perhaps our educational system is focused only on preparing students to do something, rather than to think deeply about something. Whatever the case, we are inundated with the sound of many intelligent loose cannons.

Money for education from the private sector

One way to help cash strapped school districts is with partnerships with the private sector.

I realized the power of this when I advised a Middle School newspaper. The paper was part of the afterschool program and did not rely on either funding or support from the school administration. In our last year of operation, we were totally self funded, made a profit and provided a scholarship for a student to go to DC for an educational event. We even had money left to pay student reporters for their stories. We did this through selling advertisements. The students sold these ads over the phone and collected a commission on each sale.

The outpouring of response from the business community made me realize what an untapped resource we have all around us. How can we best use this resource?

1. If each high school and middle school had a school/community newspaper with ads, a journalism program could be established that not only paid for itself, but made a profit that could be returned to the schools.

2. Magazines could be started at the high schools. They could center on subjects like the sports programs, the Fitness for Life program, a literary quarterly, academics, school community, etc. Each of these mags would teach reading, writing, editing, sales and layout skills, all practical activities that could lead to careers.

3. Business sponsors for our sports teams would pay for uniforms and the cost of lighting the games.

4. Apprenticeship programs would put students in local business for several hours per week, giving them hands on experience, providing entry level workers for the companies, training the next generation of employees and bringing in some money to support the program. The companies would pay the district an amount that would normally be paid to part time, entry level employees.

5. Academic competitions could be held in various subject areas, with sponsorship from businesses. Award would be given, sponsors recognized and excellent students would have another item for their university resumes.

6. The arts: Drama and music programs could be paid for by sponsorships for school plays and musical recitals. Young musicians could elect to be in classical orchestras, jazz bands or rock groups. They would perform, and money would be collected at the door as well as from the sponsors.

To me, the important thing is to get a double benefit from each project. One benefit would be the sponsorship money, and the other would be practical skills to augment the usual book skills taught in the classroom. Everyone wants something tangible for their efforts, and abstractions only motivate those already highly motivated.

I believe these suggestions would help save a district's budget, but only if the district doesn't spend it all on running the program. This doesn't need a whole new department, another top level administrator or a huge staff. The trick to making this work is to have students help run these programs--another important life skill.