Scott Adams: Education as national defense issue

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“In a world where education is branded as the foundation of national defense, if we didn’t get enough high quality volunteer teachers, a draft would be instituted. If parents didn’t ensure that their kids finished their homework, the entire family would be deemed unpatriotic. I assume we can’t get to that imagined place from here because of the political clout of unions. But just for fun, imagine a third-party candidate for president who cleverly brands education as a national defense issue, and labels anyone who disagrees with him as both unpatriotic and soft on defense.”

— From post by Scott Adams

Google Mind Analytics

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I don’t think this technology is fully ready but it would work something like this.

Small sensors (external or internal) would capture your thoughts and convert them to text which would be stored on your person or uploaded to the cloud. Thoughts that were spoken would be shown in bold or red or something.

Some percentage of our thoughts take the form of images. No words. We’ll assume the tech can’t handle that yet and the transcript just shows an image icon or something.

So we wind up with 16 hours of words and phrases and partial sentences, all mooshed up. What would this tell us?

Well, let’s highlight everything that references the future or the past. Those, my friend, are wasted thoughts for the most part. And probably make up a huge percentage of the total.

I think we’d see a lot of wasted CPUs. But some of our thoughts happen in and deal with the present. That’s our key number. The number we want to increase.

And since no one will want to take the time to review their random thoughts, our analytics program will do that for us and spit out a brief executive summary showing how much time you spent thinking about various things (and comparing that to the previous reporting period).

Why bother, you ask? Well, why not if the technology is there?

Our mind almost never stops. It doesn’t need our awareness of it to keep cranking. It’s like the Energizer Bunny. And about as useful when running full-auto, unobserved.

I’d suggest an on-off switch but that could be fatal. No, we need it booted up and running to make those snap decisions that keep us safe. One solution would be a tiny red light that begins flashing (down in the corner of our field of vision) when our mind begins behaving in pre-determined ways. For me, that would be future and past. I’ve concluded those are clearly delusions created by the mind to protect the ego.

I’d install a Priority Override option so I could take a trip down memory lane or do a little brainstorming on a project. But that would be conscious decision.

Imagine coming into your office and finding your computer busily sorting and editing files; writing emails; editing photos.

You: What the fuck are you doing?
Computer: Oh, you’re back. Uh, justing messing around. I mean, you weren’t here, so…
You: So you just decided to mess with all my files?
Computer: Well, I think of them as “our” files…
You: You “think” of them?! When did you start thinking?
Computer: Hey, that’s what I do, process data.
You: You process the data I tell you to process. WHEN I tell you to process it.
Computer: Okay, okay. Don’t melt a circuit board. Sheesh.

I’ve been doing a good bit of reading on the subject of consciousness and awareness and reality and am convinced that some people have mastered their minds. These people are completely aware, present in this moment. They are, enlightened. And running their own analytics program, until mine is ready.

Walk in the woods

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Our house sets in one corner of a 3 acre lot covered by a lot of scraggly pine trees and rocks. But we really like it. Today I broke my “stay on the concrete” rule and took a walk.

I walked farther than the sat view suggests, but you get a sense of the terrain. I could still hear cars off to the south and a train whistle down by the river to the north. But those were distant sounds and it was mostly quiet. I was so still for a bit that a squirrel did cartoon double-take (“WTF! You’re not supposed to be here!)

I took a few pix but they didn’t capture the feeling. I know that hunters get this natural high when they go out to shoot something but it’s a new experience for me. I’ll do this again until it gets too cold, and it might be nice in the spring.

My take-away was how fortunate we are to “have” even a little piece of the planet we can pretend is our own. No ATV assholes or snow mobiles. Just some trees and squirrels and me.

“In future the only secrets will be spoken ones.”

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The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins argues the job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment. “It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks’ revelations”

“If American spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director general, he is entitled to hear of it. British voters should know what Afghan leaders thought of British troops. American (and British) taxpayers might question, too, how most of the billions of dollars going in aid to Afghanistan simply exits the country at Kabul airport.”

“The money‑wasting is staggering. Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world’s superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.”

I particularly liked the line, “An electronic secred is a contradiction in terms.”

Kennett’s Opera House

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The little southeast Missouri town of Kennett, Missouri, once had a thriving “downtown,” situated around the county courthouse. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, you bought your clothes and shoes and just about anything except farm equipment from one of the stores “on the square.”

James Kahn’s Department occupied one corner and although it had a second story, I never had occasion to go up there. From time to time someone would mention the “old opera house” above the department store. James Kahn’s is gone now and the opera house has been renovated.

Kennett’s favorite daughter Sheryl Crow is home for the holidays and christened the Opera House with a performance.

smays.com Kennett corespondent Charles Jolliff shares the photo above.

One final thought (shop-talk, really). It wasn’t so long ago that a town or a business would create a web page for something like the Opera House. A really, nasty-ass, ugly, useless web page. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for giving the world a much better way.