Make yourself dumber

There are days I might be willing to consider this.

Another Meritocracy Article

This one comes from the ever respectable Economist Magazine and boy son I am dissapoint.

The author grasped at one of the points Michal Young was making, and tripped over a different one.  The money conflating quote

As for the rich strivers, there is nothing that you can, or should, do to stop people investing in their children, but you can prevent them from unfairly adding to their already privileged position. For instance, standardised tests were supposed to favour the brainy, but the $4.5 billion test-prep industry, which disproportionately caters to the rich, indicates that this is being gamed. Intelligence tests should be more widely used.

Bold added to highlight the real whiff.  Young's dystopia was largely centered around standardized intelligence testing.  Intelligence testing as a means for determining ones worth was exactly the dystopia Young was rallying against. The author of this article may well be forgiven for not knowing what would be a perfect solution as Young doesn't offer one, rather gives warning that focusing on intelligence will only be tolerated in society for so long before outright rebellion.  No model for the future is offered here, but Young clearly believes that humans deserve to have the ability to pursue what makes them happy, even if it doesn't advance the nation as a whole.

So in closing, way to misunderstand the source material.

More Meritocracy

Why Google?

So the big G is going to murder my favorite product on the internet bar none, Google Reader.  What's next, you going to kill the blogger platform next?  I can barely imagine all the people that I've told to start using this product over the year.  How many times I've tried to convince people that RSS is the best thing on about the internet that they don't even use and here we are.  So Feedly, charge for it please.  I want this platform to be around for a while.  I'm happy to pay for this service, because I use it every day.  Seriously.

So in closing, I'm sad and come July probably going to have a lot more free time on my hands.

Silly things that fill the day up

This sounds silly, but I was on a blogger break.  I was feeling a little used up mentally so I decided to take some me time and ruminate on why it is that I even post here in the first place.  The beer posts make sense, that's the stuff I'm doing and what interests me so sure I'll probably keep posting about that.  I post music sometimes, and generally it's the stuff that I'm interested in, or that I find challenging so I'll probably keep posting that.  My "book" reports, the things I'm reading and why they're important to the world at large where interesting to me, so those will stay.  On of the things I was posting about a fair amount was electronics and toys, and while those things interest me a fair amount I've stopped following "gadget" blogs and feel like this has taken a fair amount of weight off my shoulders.  It was a crushing number of posts to get through, and half the time it was about apple products that I didn't care about, and the rest of the time about cameras or phones or some other shit.  With that not taking up space in my head, I've been left wondering what to do.

I'm working on some art related things and I've been trying to write creatively more frequently, but those things take time so any posts about them would be few and far between.  I've been in the gym quite frequently of late and have a few goals related to that, but not terribly interesting outside the purely empirical sense so I don't think I'll post about that.  Maybe some general stuff related to what I'm working on and any sports nutrition/science stuff I come across.  I've been flirting with the Flexitarian diet on and off for the past few years and may be looking to make it a more permanent feature of our diet this year so Vegetarian recipes that I really enjoyed may be a feature as well from time to time.

What about you why do you still come back to blogger?

Poet?

I don't know where to put this, it doesn't speak for me but it did speak to me.  She's got a way with words, and it's an interesting story.  Click past if it's not for you.

something to ponder

My wife likes that bumper sticker that says "what if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?"  I think it's absurdist existentialism, but Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has another thought on the matter.

Thoughts?

Art is suffering?

So apparently art is suffering.  I started working on an art project not on the weekend that just finished but last weekend and I'm still borderline cripple from the experience   It started off innocently enough with an approximately 25lb block of wood and a dremel that progressed into neck muscles spasmed so badly that I missed a week of work trying to recover.

If that sounds pathetic, it totally is.  Ice, heat packs, Vitamin I (Ibuprofen), methocarbamol, and now flexeril. I've seen two massage therapists (at this point even my wife is giving me shit about happy endings, so feel free to pile on), and I'm looking for a chiropractor.  My stuff is messed up, Flexeril is potent enough my parents cannot get out of bed the next day when they have a 1/4 pill and I had a full pill. I still woke up at 4 am sore and tried to ice my neck again.  In my defense I handle my narcotics damn well, but still I was nervous.

In any event here's a picture of the damn thing that is killing me.