Tangents: Demistified.

Here is my attempt to solve the mystery of tangents (most likely I am the only one who thinks of them as such) using what limited knowledge I have about the physiology of the brain.

Brain is made up of little nuggets that store all the information we receive via our senses called neurons.  We have a lot of these neurons, though this article is not concerned with the actual number.  This neurons are all interconnected in various and mysterious patterns by another part of the brain called dendrites.  Please refer to the exciting picture below.

How I Care.

The news representative tried to put the surfer on a guilt trip by saying that the money he was using to buy food came from hard working Americans.  Shouldn't he feel guilty using such money if he himself as an healthy individual with functional arms, legs, and a head could go out, get a job and pay for his own food?  The surfer didn't seem to care.  Even I, as an Ex-hard working American, current hard working global citizen don't care.  I can't care about this.  It simply isn't relevant enough to my life.  I think it boils down to the fact that I don't care about money enough to care about this.  Let me explain.

Money never belongs to anyone (relevant to me).  From the moment it is minted until it is replaced by a new form of paying for goods and services it is constantly moving in and out of peoples hands and bank accounts.  This means the money I receive from a company was never mine and therefore when some of it is taken away from me for taxes before I ever see it - I don't care.  How can I care about something that is taken from me when I never owned it in the first place?  I didn't make the money.  I didn't put my hard work into creating money.  Therefore I can't place value in it.  But I do place value in the service I provided for which I received the money.  I provide a service and am paid money according to how valuable it is considered to be.  I then adjust my lifestyle according to what can be afforded by the amount of money I receive for the services I provide.  If the lifestyle I have under these circumstances is enjoyable then I continue this process with happiness and joy for all mankind.  If it is not, I continue to be happy me but I take my happiness elsewhere.  Some people choose to bite the hand that feeds them...that is good.  We need those kind of people.  They do stuff I don't care to do.  I am sure it is important.  I would rather find a place the already appreciates the service I provide and demonstrates this by providing enough money to allow for me to live comfortably.  If said place does not exist, then I will create it.  A comfortable life is contingent upon what I do, what I create, with whom I create, with whom I do.  Some people like my friend Chris like to do and create big projects with many people so they of course need a lot of money to support it.  Currently I do and create with my fiance Amy, my brothers Jonathan and Joseph, and myself.  That is a total of four people.  The projects we are doing are not huge and therefore we need a minimal amount of money (mostly just time) to support them.  As these projects grow in size, more people may get involved and as such more money will be needed.  This is all part of the growth of the things we do and create.  At no point is the focus more on the money than the lifestyle.  So when I see a news article trying to scare me by showing some stranger taking advantage of a system that takes in money I never owned....I simply don't care.  Here is how I could care.  I put many hours into a project with Jonathan.  We create a wooden bicycle that makes babies dance.  It was very difficult but satisfying to make.  Then suddenly this stranger comes and destroys it.  I would gladly care at that point.  In order for me to care about that surfer taking advantage of the foot stamps system, I would have to care about money to the point where I actually thought it was mine, then I would be concerned that some of it was being used to support this stranger, and then I would care.

I wonder if there is a correlation between how much value people place on money as an object and how much they care about things similar to this news report.

Cats and Kids will NEVER be the Same.

For many people, having a kid is a momentous occasion that requires little planning (since most kids are accidents.)  For me, having a kid is becoming a forced decision - by my job.  Over the course of this article I will explain many things about cats, and I will explain few things about frogs, and I will fail to explain anything about kids.

I have realized that to have a proper conversation with nearly 100% of everyone I work with I must have a kid.  I have tried to talk about other topics that I find interesting like frogs, frog soup, and how dragonflies start out as frogs; but every attempt I make is quickly turned into how her child loves frogs, or how his child would never eat a frog, or how their child is currently studying about dragonflies in school.  Unless I can bring "my child" into the conversation, my topic is quickly stolen and turned into something I no longer recognize.

What happened to parents who don't care about their children?

Fast forward a couple minutes.  I am saying goodbye to a bunch of kids as they are being picked up by parents who I never want to know and I see our school's security guard.  Male.  Tall.  Beard.  Possibly no children.  I decide to find out.  Turns out he has 3.  This time I unload my mind onto him with the hopes that maybe if I wear my opinions on my sleeve instead of constantly staring at mouths as globs of child dribbles out waiting for the prime moment to cut in with something intellectually stimulating I might have a chance.  What I got was, "Well, what if you got a dog or a cat?"  Instantly I think, "That doesn't make sense."

Rewind a couple hours.  Its my lunch break, I am driving to the thrift store because I can.  I see this fluffy flat blob on the side of the road.  I knew what it was but I decided to wait until I could see the front of it in my rear view mirror before I believed it.  My hunch was right, it was a dead kitten, and it was cute as hell.  Guess what I did?  You guessed it, I kept on driving.

I would never do that if it was a kid.

I guess I am a philosopher

Please enjoy this conversation I had with one of my coworkers. (names have been changed to protect identity)

Her - "You, why do you do your hair like that?"
Me - "Genetics"
Her - "Genetics?  You are so weird.  Hey other women at the table!!!  I ask this guy why he does his hair this way and he responds with "Genetics"!!!"
(other women were too busy skinning grapefruit to respond)
Me - "Well, how else would I explain why I do things I want to do?"
Her - "Eh!?!  You call that genetics?!?!  Genetics is what you get from your dad and he got his from your grandpa!!!  Does your Dad and grandpa have the same hairstyle?"
Me - "We all know the genome changes from parent to offspring through genetic mutation.  I comb my  hair to the right, my dad combs his to the left, and my gramps combs his straight down."
Her - "Now you getting all philosophical!!"

....I got this

Don't worry....

Institutionalized laws are not what keep humans civilized.  More people would still say “I don’t want you to die” than “I want you to die” without the interference of institutionalized law.  Here is why.  More can be done by a creature that is alive than one that is dead, and so, as part of the theory (so popularized by everyone except Darwin himself) of natural selection, in other words, the selected sustenance, by nature, of things that just kick ass at living, a creature that promotes living the most would propagate more than one that promotes killing, simply because it would be alive longer to do so.  Duh.  The natural urge that makes a man kill other people (or himself) that we think will plague us if institutionalized law ceased to exist (an idea we today much like to propagate through various media-induced ideas of what an apocalypse would look like) is not a successful trait to have because, if the majority of us had it, we would kill more of us than they would replace through love and sex.  Follow this route and we would eventually dwindle in numbers until another creature gobbled us up.  As Mr. Darwin so beautifully expressed in his book The Origin of Species, it’s hard to grow if you fucking KILL more than you FUCK(a.k.a. have babies).  Humans didn’t start out with institutionalized laws, yet we remained alive long enough to make them (about 6,999,950,000 years long).  When MAN falls apart; when MAN kills each other; when MAN starts getting into shit that aint theirs; don’t worry, NATURE will just say.....click here

Did you know........amygdala?

Did you know there is a part of the brain called the amygdala that puffs up and flattens down.  And when it is flattened down 100% by your lack of personality, you are doing nothing that challenges you.  When it has been puffed up 100% by your overconfidence, you are too challenging.  There is a balance between the two that when struck, True learning can get through.