Trolling is sort of an interesting topic. Many people call different things trolling. For some people anyone who they dislike is a troll. For others anyone who disagrees with them is a troll. For others anyone who is argumentative is a troll. Still others conform to the purest definition of a troll from the age old days of the internet. Namely, that a troll is someone who comes to an online forum looking to stir up controversy, to get a rise out of people, and start a fight.

This definition, the true definition not a lot of people ascribe to, surprisingly. I see a lot more miss assignations of trolling than I do actually trolling. People love to sling the insult of “troll” on people at a moment’s notice.

But you have to understand, a troll, a real troll, in the original sense is a person who isn’t primarily interested in facts or truth or understanding. They aren’t interested in the topic at hand. The don’t give a damn about what you have to say or what anyone has to say.  The JUST want to get you to react.

Let’s make a small but very important distinction though between two types of REAL trolls.

Borderline Troll -  aka Benevolent Troll – These are firestarters who basically get “caught up” in the argument. Often they don’t intend to troll but they fall into the pattern of trollish behavior almost by accident. They start trolling because they LIKE to argue. They push people’s buttons by contradicting what they say both because they enjoy the power to be able to do that and because it gives them a thrill. Often the benevolent troll likes bringing up controversial points that people aren’t willing to see or know damn well is true but are being left unsaid. Often the borderline troll brings a new dimension to the discussion by forcing out into the open ideas that people would rather remain buried. Usually leaving a trail of hurt feelings and offended enemies in the process.

Over the top Troll – aka true TROLL – These trolls are just laughing at everyone. Really and truly deep down they aren’t interested in the topic or what you have to say in the slightest. TROLLS don’t see the people they are talking to as people. They are objects for their amusement. The goal is to get a rise out of them, the bigger the rise the better. They want to push people to the brink of explosion, expletives, shouting, banning whatever. They’ll be laughing all the time.

The thing about trolling is of course you always express yourself seriously and never a crack appears to reveal what you are really thinking. So how can you tell the difference between a borderline troll and an over the top troll? The primary clue is fealty to a particular position or subject matter. A Borderline Troll will generally have a POINT and even as they try to trigger reactions from everyone opposed to that point, they stay ON point. And even if their position deviates a little when they get too excited, they always stay on topic. An over the top TROLL however doesn’t give a damn about that. A TROLL will just disagree with everything you say EVEN IF IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. A  true TROLL will often bring up other topics, sometimes related, sometimes unrelated, just because they know or suspect it will offend you. The more skilled the troll the better they are at making it seem as if they are being consistent, but if you examine a trolls behaviors closely you can see how un-concrete their own opinions are and how they shy away from even making clear statements of their opinions. They aren’t interested in talking about themselves. Their goal is to piss YOU off.

There’s one other type of real troll worth mentioning here, a variation of the true troll, The VENDETTA troll (or vindictive troll). A Vendetta troll is really a type of true troll whose attentions are wholly targeted on a singular person or group. Often a vendetta troll didn’t start off being a troll at all. But some person or group pissed them off so much that they decided to make that person or group’s life a LIVING HELL. The vendetta troll then engages in all the usual trolling practices but only with regards to that person or group and anyone who comes to their defense. They act normally around everyone else.

This is another way in which you can distinguish a benevolent troll from a true troll. Benevolent trolls are virtually never vendetta trolls. Usually they are offensive to anyone without prejudice just so long as they make their POINT.

Now all of these categories of real trolling are not to be confused with FALSE Trolls and PSEUDO Trolls.  These are both categories of troll accusations where the behavior being labeled as such doesn’t fit the strict standard definition of TROLLing.

A Pseudo troll is just a word I made up for the people you meet in forums who just have a way of getting underneath EVERYONE’s skin, but who aren’t doing it intentionally. They don’t do it because they want to or because they enjoy it. It’s not a joke and it doesn’t give them any pleasure. It’s just the way they are. Usually this is just because they have very strong opinions and a brook no nonsense kind of attitude. These are the people who tell you when you are being an ass not because they want you to get pissed off, but because they honestly believe that you are being an ass and that when someone is being an ass the really ought to be told that so they can stop being that way. It’s just the way their brain works. Often these people are nearly incapable of sympathizing with hurt feelings or just don’t give a damn. I call them pseudo trolls because these people on internet forum generally are called trolls over and over again. They very often get a reputation of being a perpetual troller. Often  they are banned and kicked out for “trolling” on numerous forums. But the people kicking them out are really inappropriately overloading the term “troll” and taking all the meaning out of it. They are making “troll” mean just someone who is disruptive, independent of intentions or nature.

If you want a GREAT example of real world (well television anyway) Pseudo troll. Think House from the popular TV show of that name.

A False troll in other words is just someone called a troll based on circumstances. This usually happens when two people with very contradictory ideas  or whose personalities don’t match stumble across each other in a public forum. Inevitably, their opinions clash and there is a fight. The result is one or the other is called a TROLL. Usually it’s the person who is less accepted by the particular community. This person isn’t REALLY a troll. He or she just isn’t very well liked.

Between Benevolent Trolls, True Trolls (and the vindictive subset), Pseudo Trolls, and False Trolls I think it covers at least 99% of the troll accusations that are bandied about. Probably a vast majority of trolling accusations are cases of False Trolling. Benevolent Trolling is a distant second to that. Pseudo Trolls and True trolls are far more rare than both because it takes a unique kind of personality to engage in those behaviors regularly. The other 1% of trolling accusations I know not where they come from. Possibly some of them are trolls, calling someone a troll for no reason to get them to react more.

But anyways, there’s always some things that is always consistent in all forms of trolling. A troll is always a visitor on a blog or forum. It’s always public. And it’s ALWAYS an outsider. You can write the exact same things on your own blog or website or amongst a group of close friends or in a united community you feel a part of and it’s not considered trolling. But post it on a public forum, especially one you don’t have much creed with, and expect to be run out of that online community.

In a sense its closest real life analog is heckling. Stand up on a street corner and badmouth your favorite famous person all you want, but go into their show and disrupt their act with your comments and you will be deemed a heckler, kicked out, and, most often, condemned. 

It’s the same for trolling. I can say Ben is a real sonofabitch right here on this blog and nobody would bat an eyelash. Even if I give no justification or evidence or argument. Some might think I’m being an ass, but nobody would call me a *troll*. BUT, if I go to Bob’s site and say that Ben is a sonofabitch even if I give lots of reasonable and cogent reasons for it, people may well call me a TROLL and Bob would likely Ban me. Of course if I call Bob a sonofabitch then I’ll definitely get banned for much the same reason.

Ironically also like heckling, sometimes trolling is appreciated. Not necessarily by the recipient but by the community. If you throw a Shoe as the President for example and it’s a signal of democracy in action. You become a hero. Obviously though that’s a kind of rude thing to do, purposefully to provoke a reaction. In other words it’s TROLLING.  That doesn’t, in and of itself make it wrong.

Benevolent Trolling is more likely to be seen positively by the community. But even true trolling can on rare occassion be accepted. This usually happens when the person’s troll status is well known and it becomes sort of a shared joke for the community. The troll trolls people who know he is trolling them, regulars who “play along” as well as new comers who have now clue what’s going on until they are initiated enough in the community to be “let in on” the joke. In these cases the troll is elevated from a base kind of troll acting for his or her own amusement to a community entertainer trolling for comedic value. The troll has leveraged his or her obnoxiousness into becoming a comedian. (vindictive trolls never fall into this category) Often this helps keeps forums that are too serious lighter and more pleasant. The key here is that the trolling is out in the open. The person is acting serious, but since the joke is shared and well known it isn’t deceptive and hence not nearly as cruel.

In most cases though trolling is offensive and cruel and disruptive. It’s a way in which people take pleasure for themselves at the expense of the feelings of others and often destroys the possibility for intelligent discourse. If for whatever reason, you ever decide you want to or are naturally inclined to be a troll, please take this into account and try to modulate your behavior as much as possible.

At the same time, I believe we as online citizens need to be more considerate of behavior we suspect might be trolling and not be so quick to throw around the T word. Not all Trolls are really trolls and not all Trolling is necessarily dangerous or bad.

You know I never answered my own featured question. Crazy huh?  Well here goes…

1. I don’t believe in God. I don’t think there’s any such thing as spirituality or faith. I don’t believe in energy, aura, power, energy, deities, nature being alive, spirits, psychics, time travel, ghosts, alternate realities, reincarnation, mystical creatures, vampires, lycans, fairies, superpowers, heaven, hell, nirvana, or any other form of life after death.  However, I don’t disbelieve in any of these things and I hope at least some of these things really are true.  Oh and I do believe in Magic. Why? Well I can’t very well call myself a wizard if I don’t now can I? 

2. While I do believe that there are probably other sentient species besides humanity in the Universe, I don’t believe any of them have ever been to the planet Earth or left any evidence for us to observe. It’s possible they have, but I don’t think there’s any good reason to believe it.

3. I believe that every illegal substance should be legal. That includes Marijuana, Cocaine, Opium, etc. These substances should be carefully watched and regulated through a series of incentives and disincentives. These incentives and disincentives should be based on scientific studies of the relative addictiveness and health effects of use of these substances. That is, external harm caused by these substances on the society would be taxed proportionally to that harm and the money used to compensate for it.  Age prerequisites for a lot of these controlled substances should be mostly repealed except at the lowest necessary level where serious health concerns are raised by the use of it. That is to say giving alcohol to a minor young enough to cause serious developmental harm and beneath the age where he or she is considered an adult would be an illegal criminal offense. Other than that though, there’s be no silly age limits.

4. I believe the age at which you should be considered an adult should be a qualified 14 or 15 years old.  Maybe 13. This is sort of tricky,  because ideally want to divorce the very idea of “age” having to do with maturity and have some sort of test or metric of maturity. But that can have a severely negative impact on self-esteem if you are one of the people who doesn’t qualify as “mature”. And what kind of test would really be fair?  No… I think if you should either eliminate age prerequisites altogether OR have sort of a buffer period wherein an adult parent can petition the courts to override a child’s decisions but has no direct control over their choices.  As a general principle though I think children need to be treated more like adults much much earlier in their lives. And that entails substantive education. In particular sex education should begin extremely early and not be left solely to parents.

5. I believe in universal free public education. That *includes* College and grad school. I really think the endowment system for higher education is just plain dumb. Basically it’s a form of college-loyalty indoctrination and should be highly discouraged.

6. I believe in a truly open marriage system. That means of course no restrictions on marriage by race or gender or sexual orientation. It also means allowing polygamy. multiple men, multiple women, multiple men and women combinations would all be legal and protected through the law. It would always have to be concensual though and it might make sense to explore the possibility of requiring psychological evaluations before ANY marriage is entered into as a reasonable price to pay for the marriage protections of the State.  Of course Churches don’t have to support or contribute to ANY of these kinds of marriages. They can even discourage them. That’s up to them. It’s a matter of the State that allows them. As a matter of public relations it might be wise for the State to re-brand marriage as Civil Union to pacify the religious groups. I don’t believe they should, but I don’t particularly care.

7. I believe that prostitution should be legal. It should be highly carefully regulated and licensed. Certainly slavery commited under the guise of prostitution should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law… probably the laws against that should be much stronger, roughly around the level of criminality that treason is judged at today (treason itself probably shouldn’t be punishable by death, mass murder and rape should be considered more heinous crimes).   Prostitution however should not be painted under the same umbrella. There should be two levels of legal prostitution, first an industry level where it is engaged in explicitly for profit, and a more social services level where it is used as a form of licensed therapeutic component.

8. I am Pro-Choice. I don’t know when life begins, but pretty much every pro-choice policy makes sense, is fair and just, and will help prevent abortions from occuring in the long run. I am utilitarian pro-choice advocate, not on principles. Pro-life policies are dangerous and harmful to many women.

9. I believe that the scientific evidence for man made global warming is convincing enough and should be acted upon. Enough said.

10. I believe that Israel is ruled by a dangerous fundamentalist religious regime pretty much on the same level of Iran and our policies toward them should reflect that. In other words if we want to play nice with Israel we should play nice with Iran too and vice versa. But human rights violations contributed by both regimes or ANY regime for that matter should be severly discouraged and ultimately not tolerated. I think Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and open its borders with Gaza and the West Bank. That’s a start.

11. I believe that the United States is a dangerous imperialist power. We’re probably one of the nicest imperialist power the world has ever seen and it’s probably a good thing overall for the world that we emerged as the victorious super power in the modern era,  but that doesn’t make us any less dangerous going forward. I believe the United States should renouce unilateral actions and act in accordance with the concensus views of the United Nations on all matters of international significance.

12. I believe the United States should openly eliminate its nuclear arsenal over the course of some reasonably small specified time (say 5 years) and allow inspectors from all over the world to come in and verify that the United States has no weapons of mass destruction. This should be the model then that it shoudl encourage ALL other nuclear powers to follow.

13. I believe the United Nations should be remade, the Veto system eliminated and some sort of reasonable concensus system should take its place. Probably a three house global legislature solution would make snese. More on that another day. Most United Nations representatives should be elected by their populace. It should be a position nearly as significant as President or Prime Minister.

14. I believe in universal single payer healthcare. All nations should have this. The right to basic healthcare and a high quality education should be a fundamental right, certainly above and more significant than the right to bear arms.

15. I don’t believe in the Death Penalty. To be morally consistent, if you punish killing, you shouldn’t be doing killing.

16. I believe the United States should begin to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and close Guantanamo Bay tomorrow, and renounce torture and warrantless wiretapping unequivocally. Fruther I think members of the former administration should be brought up on international charges so that all of what they did can be revealed for the world to see, whether or not they are aquitted or convincted it’s more important that this be visibly revealed to all to see.

Gah there’s so many more! But I’m running out of time so I’ll let that be a start and stop for now.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

It’s sort of an old news story now so most of you have probably already heard of it by now. There was an incident where Rush Limbaugh went on the air and said something along the lines of “I hope he fails” referring to the policies of the Obama administration. His words, as always were fire starters designed to rile people up. That’s how he works. But this time his words invoked a bigger response than usual and his quote has been brought up and debated all over the media. Many condemn the words. Some defend them.

Now, I don’t really care what Rush Limbaugh says. I think the sooner people start completely ignoring him the better off we’ll all be.  But even so I’d defend his right to say whatever he feels like to my dying day and I’m not about to condemn him for wishing Obama’s policies fail and that Obama ends up being a bad President. Really that in no way surprises me at all, if anything I’m just surprised by his honesty and directness. At least he doesn’t pay bad lip service to supporting the President while stabbing him in the back when he’s not looking. Really everybody and anybody who ever listened to his program knew Limbaugh was against Obama, so why the shock and amazement?

No what does surprise me a lot more is the idea that many Conservatives are taking up the call of “I hope he fails” as a rallying call. Taking his words as symbollic and repeating them over and over again with no shame or remorse or even a sense of conflict. To them it’s perfectly reasonable to say that they hope Obama, THEIR President, fails and they see no problem with this.

The irony of course is amazing.

For years, these same conservatives, perhaps most vocally Rush Limbaugh himself, were adamant in declaring liberals corrupt, evil, and dangerous because of their criticisms of the Bush administration and conservation groups and politicians. The rallying cries of these condemnations? “Liberals are Anti-American!” “Liberals just want America to Fail!” “If liberals hate America so much they should just move to Canada! (or France!)” etc. etc.

In other words many conservatives were able to turn liberal criticisms into a mark of shame a sense of anti-patriotism, and a kind of moral failing.  The implaction was clear. If you weren’t for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and all the protectionist measures like the patriot act, guantanamo bay, warrantless wiretapping, torture, etc. you were implicitly wishing for the terrorists to win, and the destruction of the American way of life.

Not ALL conservatives leveled such baseless claims, of course, only the most extreme and vociferous would stoop so low. They are the ones who claimed that liberals were fighting for the failure of our nation. Those like Rush Limbaugh.

Many of the very same conservatives who are now are wishing for the current president to fail. 

Don’t they see the irony?

For surely if me saying former President Bush’s policies were destructive and dangerous implies I am hoping for another terrorist attack, then it should equally be true that someone wishing for President Obama’s policies to fail is wishing for economic collapse in the United States. Wishing for families to starve and become homeless. Wishing for businesses to collapse. Wishing for savings to be wiped out and for our position as a preeminent economic force in the world to cease.

But of course, I don’t make such claims about conservatives because it’s obviously not true. Most conservatives want what’s best for their country just like most liberals do. It’s just that our beliefs on what those things are differ radically.

I don’t think liberals should engage in the same base and unfounded attacks on conservatives that they were subjected to because of statements like these. I think they should rise above such devisive rhetoric. If you considered it wrong when conservatives did it to you, then it’s STILL wrong when you do it to conservatives. Turnabout is not fair play.

But at the same time, the idea that Conservatives would try to use the “I hope he fails” phrase as a rallying cry galls me. It’s rude, inappropriate, and just plain mean. Speak about specific policies of Obama you don’t like and wish to be changed sure. But in a time where most Americans are hurting and hoping that *something* our government will do will help them at least a little, and putting so much hope and faith in this new and untried Preisdent, that’s kinda equivalent of spitting in all those people’s faces.

Let’s put behind the era of catchy phrases and create a political dialogue of substance.

The Stimulus will fail. 

It will get passed and it will help a little but the ending verdict of the society will be that it is a dismal failure. Why? Because it’s already failed.  The only way the Stimulus might have succeeded in spite of all our problems is if it had produced a massive increase in consumer confidence. How could it have done that? Only if there was overwhelming universal support for it. A rising tide of belief in the Stimulus itself and belief in the American people’s ability to get out of this economic crises with the help of its government’s assistance. That could have lead to many other bills being passed pushing us on to a better course.

But that hasn’t happened and it won’t. The ways of partisanship are too entrenched in Washington. It seems apparent that Republicans in Congress have either been deluding themselves entirely or are looking toward victory in the next election cycle no matter the cost to the American people.

And of course, as always, Democrats have been outmaneuvered at every turn. It’s sort of sad really. There’s no way the Stimulus should have come out of the House without Republican input. They should have let the Republicans put as much input as they want into the bill, I mean who cares? It’s not like the Democrats can’t vote down every amendment they don’t like, and maybe leave a couple token measures in to be able to point to to show how compromising Democrats could be.  The charge that Democrats are being too partisan should quite simply NEVER have been leverable against them. This is an Epic Fail and it was the beginning of the end.

Then Obama screwed up by thinking the Republicans would be reasonable. Rather than attacking them as being obstructionist, he went to the House and gave them photo ops. And then they turned around and ignored everything he said.  The President cared more about his image as a Peace Maker President than getting his agenda passed with bipartisan support. It was teh wrong strategy for the time.

The Stimulus then got to the Senate with all that baggage behind it already so it’s not really a surprise that only three republicans voted for it. But much worse is the anti-Stimulus media blitz that arose from the Senate coverage. Republicans charged that the Stimulus was a pork bill full of useless crap that doesn’t Stimulate the economy directly.

What “stimulates” the economy “directly” is of course largely in the eye of the beholder. But the reason why this charge gets traction is largely a matter of semantics more than anything else. The Democrats, and Obama in particular are after something much larger than mere “stimulus”. A lot of the “useless” provisions are designed not to just get us through this recession but to be the very first steps on a plan to restructure the American economy in  more equitable and fair way. In other words, the Democrats want to create an economy that can’t ever get into this mess *again*. That’s why you see funding for education and new energy efficiency initiatives. The goal is to make the United States continue to be a global leader in the fields that will drive the world’s economy in the future.

The Democrats screwed up here in that they didn’t name the bill what it was.  It shouldn’t have been the “economic stimulus” bill,  it should have been the “economic restructuring” bill. And the rhetoric should have been from the very beginning to create a bill that not *just* puts people to work, but that fundamentally changes the culture of America so that the excesses of the past are impossible in the future. This bill could have been followed by other “restructuring” bills changing the banking sector, the housing sector, the medicaid and medicare system, social security, taxes,  etc.   Branding is everything in Washington and the “stimulus” brand was easily coopted for political purposes.

So what now for Obama? It appears his honeymoon was absurdly short and he’s not going to be the super productive President he hoped to be.  His options with regards to the Stimulus is to lessen its significance or possibly even abandon it and start over (not really an option for him I think since he sees it as so essential and mission critical), or start to turn this failure around on the Republicans for obstructionism. The later is hard when the Democrats control both houses of congress (you’d have to push through super aggressive highly partisan bills in the Senate that force a fillibuster) and is not the kind of thing Obama wants to be known for.

So Obama is stuck between a rock and a hard place.  His only way out is if sadly if the stimulus remarkably works better than anyone’s greatest dreams (and Democrats can claim credit), or if the economy gets so damned bad that everyone rallies behind him for lack of anyone having any better idea of what to do.

Much more likely is that economy will stay largely the same, helped only a small amount until the next election where Republicans will blame Obama and/or the House and Senate Democrats for failed leadership and take back both houses of Congress. At which point Washington will be at a standstill until 2004 wherein Republicans will continue to blame Obama in order to get their guy in. Probably Americans will give Obama a second chance (we tend to always like to give our Presidents the benefit of the doubt), and nothing meaningful will happen for another 4 years.  With luck the economy will correct itself all on its lonesome sometime within that period just in time for our looming healthcare crises to hit us full on sending us back into recession. Without luck… well then we really will have a Great Depression. Maybe more rightly called a Greatest Depression.

I hope I’m wrong.

Heroes is back on television. A ten episode arc is airing deemed “Volume 4″. I find it remarkably hard to get excited about it this time around. The writers claim this volume will revitalize the series by bringing it back to its roots and help save it from its flagging viewership.  I find myself… doubtful.

In the beginning I, like so many people had high hopes for Heroes. I’m a huge Comic Book fan. HUGE. And Heroes seemed finally to be a television series firmly rooted in the traditions of Comic Books. The characters seemed cool. The powers seemed cool. And the budget was high enough to make the effects not seem utterly cheesy (a flaw with many other “powers” TV dramas that have arisen over the years).

But as time went by it became very clear that Heroes does not follow its Comic Book roots at all. Now I’m the first one to say that *most* comic books are far from literary genius, but Heroes is something else, something much much worse. Indeed, I would go so far as to say it is an insult to the entire Comic Book superhero industry to be considered in any way related to Heroes. Yeah. Heroes has gotten that bad.

You see Heroes isn’t a Comic Book Drama… it’s more of what I would coin a Mindless Shock Drama. And probably one of the worst ones on Television right now. (It vies for that position with the ignominious “24″)

What is a Mindless Shock Drama? Well at it’s basics its a series that values “shocking” the viewer more than it values plot consistency, character consistency, or creative content.  The idea of these dramas is to create “water cooler moments”. Events that people can talk about around the water cooler at work the next day. People are supposed to say: “Did you see Heroes last night? Wow, Can you believe THAT happened?!? I was totally shocked!”  The surprise is supposed to stick in your head more than the rest of the story. You aren’t supposed to think or wonder or reason, just be SURPRISED. That’s the whole entertainment value of the Mindless Shock Drama.

There are so many examples of this in modern television its almost terrifying. And annoyingly they are amongst the most famous and popular shows that have been on Television lately. Examples include Heroes, Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, The Sopranos, etc.

Signs that you might be watching of a Mindless Shock Drama include:

1. Characters that just disappear - 
Clearly the writers just dont feel like dealing with a certain character or perhaps that character isn’t polling well. That character will just vanish. There will either be no explanation or a shallow sudden meaningless explanation mentioned once and never talked of again. Clearly the writers are trying to pull a fast one on you hoping that you’ll be so caught up in the “surprise” that you won’t notice.

2. Test Scenarios that appear and then are suddenly Dropped -
You can almost see the wheels in the writers head turning. “Let’s try out having a two dads one kid scenario and maybe we can turn it into a gay thing later on, oh people aren’t liking it, drop it!”  Or… “I wonder if people will like having Sylar be Good for a while? Oh people aren’t into it? ok back to evil!”

3. End of Episodes are Predictably Surprising -
If nothing surprising has happened and you are at the last five minutes of an episode, think about what the most surprisingly thing that could happen right now would be… chances are at leat 99% that will be EACTLY what will happen. Take 24 for example, if Jack Baurer is flying away in a plane at teh end of an episode, that plane will probably crash. If there’s a nuclear bomb unexploded or a President unassassinated at the end of an episode expect that bomb to explode or that Preisdent to be assassinated. In the universe of 24, something surprising happens every hour on the hour like clockwork. Other Shock Dramas aren’t quite as predictable… but they’re close.

4. Characters Personalities and Characteristics Randomly Morph -
This is particularly messed up in Heroes, a Comic Book series where the Character’s powers partially DEFINE them. Characters randomly lose powers, gain powers, writers forget that the characters have powers. (Sylar has super hearing you boneheads! And why the heck doesn’t Peter ever turn Invisible!?!??) An actor might be brought back to play a different character with a new power who just happens to look and act just like an old character. Etc.  In other shows a character might suddenly become a relgious fanatic, or suddenly have a change of heart forgetting his evil ways and struggle to save everyone. A character might randomly go into politics. A character might randomly start to go insane. A character might randomly commit suicide even though it is against their personality. Or a character might randomly cheat on his or her significant other. No explanation is ever given.

5. Every Season has an Entirely New Plot –
New plot, new villains, little or no connection to previous seasons. These writers clearly presume that viewers memories are too short ot keep track of anything that crosses seasons. More importantly in order for each new year to have sufficient surprises, they need to bring in new elements because continuing to develop old story lines is rarely surprising. Hence Heroes random morphing of major antagonists from Sylar, to the Company, to Adam, to the Shanti Virus, to Pinehearst, to Arthur Petrelli, to Nathan Petrelli to who knows what’s next.

6. Actual explanations are Avoided like the Plague -
The reason is simple, if you actually UNDERSTAND what’s going on you won’t be surprised. And talking just isn’t shocking enough for the writers. Hence they never bother to really explain how Claire and Adam’s healing ability really works, nor the power absorbtion abilities of Sylar, Peter, and Arthur. Why can you be blowed entirely up but still heal but a bullet the the head kills you dead? How the heck does understanding “how things works” translate into Sylar being able to use everyone’s power?

7. Elements are chosen for Popularity more than Substance -
You know how critics say of many recent movies that this movie “feels like it was written by committee”? Well many Mindless Shock TV shows are even worse. They feel like the were written by survey.  It’s like the series producers examined the demographics of its viewers and proportioned characters to fit the demographics. If 60% of the viewers are teenagers then 60% of the characters have to appeal to teenagers. If it’s 70% female, than 70% of the show has to appeal to the average female. Only it’s worse than that… cuz they tend to then target to the least common denominator in each group. If there’s a question of which direction a plot should go in, it almost feels like they just took a vote and whichever possibility won 51% of the vote got the nod. Nevermind the 49% of the people who will be disappointed every single time.

There are many other signs but these are the basics. Just ask yourself if this series is trying to entertain me through a cheap thrill shock rather or does it actually have something interesting or meaningful to say? If it’s the former then it’s probably a Mindless Shock Drama.

To be fair though, some of these are my favorite shows too. Just because something is templated after the Mindless Shock Drama model does not prevent it from being a good show. If the writers DO pay enough attention to plot and character development or add something original to the series, the series can STILL be good. Take Lost for example. The plot in Lost is intricate and interesting but appears to be somewhat CONSISTENT. More importantly, *most* of the characters don’t go through substantive radical shifts that leave the viewer “Lost” and confused.  But you can still see that it is a Mindless Shock Drama, because if you pay a modicum of attention you can see where plot elements are dropped, characters are killed off for simple expedience and many elements seem made up on the spot just to give people something to talk about.

But Heroes has gotta be one of the worst. You know how they say that if there’s a knife on the mantle in Act 1 of a play it ought to be used by act 5? Well Heroes leaves all kinds of knives lying around on the mantle, and shotguns under the bed, and vials of poison in the fridge, and bombs stuffed away in the closet. They make a point to show you these things with sufficiently dramatic music and make you think it matters only to NEVER mention them again. The show clearly has no purpose other than to make money. There is no story. There is not plot. There are no characters. It’s just a random set of events stuck together in arbitrary order the only guiding rule behind it is the need to put a “shock” event toward the end of every episode or two.

And yet… sadly I’ll still keep watching Heroes. As much as I hate it, as much as it’s come to disgust me, I’ll still watch.  Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s my fealty to the shows lost potential and my desire to keep up hope that the show might turn around. Maybe it’s just that I can’t help but like certain characters like Hiro and Ando because of the skill of the actors who play them. Maybe I’ve just got nothing better to do.

Or maybe I’m just a sucker like everybody else and the Mindles Shock Dramas, however idiotic, actually do work.

(But none of these recent shows holds a candle to quality TV dramas like Star Trek:TNG, Babylon Five, Firefly, Star Gate SG-1, and Doctor Who)

So far I haven’t been too impressed with the changes Obama has been making. Sure some of them make sense but they were just obviously expected and not worthy of the fanfare. The pay discrimination law is good stuff but hardly ground shaking.  And surely the abortion and torture proclamations were obvious to any outsider. And it’s not like he hadn’t said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay for ages. Though he should have demanded it be closed IMMEDIATELY and not caved to all this “It’s gonna be sooo hard, not in my back yard, BS”.

The Salary Freeze on Administration Members making over 100K is like a trivial and pointless symbolic gesture. And that’s coming from me who believes strongly in Presidents using the power of symbolism to change the hearts and minds of Americans.  The problem is… 100K a year!?!? Come on! How many normal people can relate to that!?!? Does Obama not realize the Median HOUSEHOLD income is around 50K. That’s the entire household. We’re talking about just one person making 100K.  That’s disproportionate to the point of stupidity.

If President Obama wants to make a gesture that would show solidarity with the American people he would at LEAST cut the salaries of ALL government employees to match the Median Household income. Then, that would create a strong personal incentive for people to actually work to increase that median income which means increasing the salary for regular working people like you and me.  He should at least provide a voluntary program where people can opt in to make their salaries match the median and make a strong example by being the first to opt in himself together with all his cabinet members, chief of staff, and other senior most administration members.

Or better yet make a pledge not to earn more than Minimum Wage until this Economic Crises is OVER. That would by a symbollic gesture worth making headlines. And of course congress and anyone in a position of power in Business or Government should do exactly the same thing. The salary freeze as conceived is insignificant posturing.

Obama’s statements, or lack there of, on the conflicts in the Middle East have been worst than irrelevant. He’s doing a decent job of avoiding all the real issues while sounding nice to everyone. Though of course if he wanted, he has the power to start making real change TODAY, by stopping his backing of the concept of justified unilateral aggression by anyone and supporting addressing grievances rather than ignoring them. And he can stop vilifying legitimately elected governments in the process.

The stimulus of course, who knows right? My suspicion is that it’s way too small and non-ambitious enough to substantially change around our culture in a manner that gets us on the right track. But maybe it’ll help or maybe it won’t. I’d rather he’d done a much more ambitious larger, long term plan including everything he’s doing plus a LOT more tax cuts (real cuts, not refund check bs), debt elimination, bank restructuring, new investments, CEO and executive firings, investigations into wrong doing, etc. But instead he decided to compromise on what he thought he could get passed with the most support in order to be able to use that support to fight bigger battles down the line.  An interesting strategy but I think it’s far too slow and conservative. Things will get much worse. hopefully people will still follow him then instead of blaming him when the Stimulus isn’t as successful as we might like.

Lastly there’s Obama’s move to try and push back the conversion over to Digital Broadcasting. Again, I think it’s just a bad idea. All the money already invested is going to waste! And how many times are they going to push it back? At some point the deadline HAS to come.  I understand that the voucher program was bungled horribly and a lot of people will be without television. But it’s far easier just to let the change happen and then you’ll identify the people who can’t get TV much faster and much more accurately. You won’t be giving out boxes to people who don’t need it at all. Because they’ll know right away. And then give them a stupid converter box. Geez. It’s NOT hard. It’s true Congress and the last administration screwed things up with this, but that’s no reason to compound the problem further by pushing the deadline back again. It’s been far too long a wait for this shift. That bandwidth needs to be opened up so new innovation can be built upon it. That will promote the economy even further.

So what’s Obama’s best move so far? Perhaps it’s ironic, but it turns out the Best move of one of our best Speaker Presidents ever was in fact a speech. Well not even a speech really just a series of comments he made about Wall Street Bonuses. Here’s what he said:

It’s just words right? But for once they are the right words that actually can change things. Before I heard this statement I heard articles on the radio and read them in the newspaper wherein the commentator would quite sincerely state without questioning or condemnation something along the lines of “Wall Street believes that bonuses are essential to retaining the good talent they need to get back on track.” 

Such statements are absurd.  If bankers don’t get the bonuses and choose to leave by all means let them. It’s not like the country is rolling in the job opportunities for them or that their “amazing” success records working for companies on the verge of a violent horrible demise is going to look so good on their resumes. Honestly these bankers can afford a cut in Bonuses simply by virtue of the fact that their salaries and pay are going to get cut NO MATTER WHAT. Just like everybody else’s. And honestly, for many of them, it might be the institution will be served BETTER if they left. They probably ought to have been fired a long time ago. Clean house and start over with a new work ethic and new principles guiding the directions of these companies and determining the character of the kinds of people they hire to work for them. That would make sense. The whole insane Bonus system itself is a part of the problem and should be done away with in favor of more consistent and fair salary schemes in line with what most Americans get in terms of paychecks.

Thankfully ever since President Obama made these statements, nobody has dared raise the specter of the absurd argument that “bonuses are necessary”. And for that reason alone I think it’s the best thing our new President has done thus far in his short Presidency. More to the point I think it is a step in the right direction of changing the culture of the country by changing the mindset of a population that thinks that unbridled greed in the natural order of thing. It’s a lesson we desperately need to learn and I hope President Obama’s words have reached people and started us on that path to greater knowledge and morality.

Let’s hope this is the first of many good lessons to learn from our new President yet to come.

In the end I think it’s the wanting that’s the problem. When we want things, will for things, wish for things to be, that’s where pain comes from. That’s where sorrow and sadness comes from. That’s where depression finds its roots. In the wanting.

I don’t mean “Not Wanting. “Not Wanting” is actually JUST as bad. That is to say when you say “I don’t want X” really that’s a specification of a WANT. In fact it’s often a double want. 

There’s the pure logically connection. “I don’t want X” really MEANS “I want X not to be the case or not to come about”. For example, “I don’t want to get married” generally means “I want to NOT get married”. And “I don’t want to grow old” means “I want it not to be the case that growing old will happen to me.”

But there’s also a more subtle kind of want sometimes represented with a “Not Want”. That is the reverse psychology aspect. Often when we say “I don’t want X” it actually means that we DO want X, or at least a part of us partially wants X but we don’t want to want it and we don’t think we’ll ever be able to get it. “I don’t want to have children” for example could mean that you actually don’t want children or it could mean that you do but don’t think you’ll be able to, either due to not being able to find a suitable partner, or fearing that you won’t be able to handle the responsibility of having children. In a way, these kinds of Not WANTS are our instinctive way to hide our vulnerability resulting from our wants by denying the want verbally, explicitly, and perhaps emphatically.

But you see that’s just it isn’t it? It’s the WANTING that’s the problem. Stupid pointless wants. Driving us to madness. Driving us to idiocy. Making us suffer.

What a waste of energy and time!

Life was easier back in the old days. Back then I didn’t want for much. Admittedly I wasn’t aware of much, but that’s just because I didn’t care. Most things that passed my vision were invisible to my eye. I didn’t see things and I didn’t see people. It was only my inner mind that matters. Back then I did not want. And though there was not so much that was all that great, there was also not so much that was all that BAD either. Everything just… was.

What’s the opposite of wanting you see? Why, it’s ACCEPTING of course.  And when you accept the things that happen to you as just whatever happens happens, only then can you be at peace.

I was sitting on the floor and thinking yesterday in my own little world where nothing else could touch me. It was then when I realized something quite odd about how my brain works and how it is different from everyone else’s.

Most people you see have a memory that works like a hash. That is when an event occurs from which they need to reference information a function fires in their head. The function is passed in the reference information and returns “roughly” where in memory the relevant information is. The person then does a swift search through the possible one to three responses returned by the function and chooses a reply most suited to the situation at hand. In other words most people’s brains are random access memory stores.

In contrast, I think my brain is more like just a simple singly linked list. Meaning when there is something I want to say my brain has to scan through the contents from some arbitrary point, one record at a time, following the links in the chain until it comes across the information that is needed. If along the way I miss the data, the comparison fails, or there’s a system error, then I have to start the scan all over again from the beginning. This obviously takes significantly longer to pinpoint a needed piece of datum.

In ordinary conversations I find that most often by the time I reach the data that I need to find which presents the data that I want to say, the conversation has long since moved on through several other topics and my original statement that I finally found is now out of place and irrelevant and perhaps already stated. So instead I grab on to the next point in the conversation, start my scan all over again, and so it repeats. Again and again. All the while I am quiet. Listening. Observing. Remembering. But most of the time, saying nothing at all.

This is why I prefer communication online. It moves at a better pace.