Thursday, June 25, 2015

Red Flag?

Herr D made a rough draft for me on request. He calls this heromachine.com creation "New Mississippi Flag." and suggests that moving forward always requires the appearance of destroying links to the past. He's right about the requirement. How much destruction is actual always depends upon levels of unity, clarity, sanity, grace, and general intellect. -Hairy Deewon



[selected beginning of recorded dialog] No, Shelob, I don't understand this business about flags. Countries still use those?

Yes.

I thought that was an article about the barbaric side of human history.


Is there another part of human history?

Hey. Not nice. We're supposed to be encouraging.


The use of flags is still common. Symbols seem necessary to motivate humans to do moral and ethical things. The inexplicable part is what those symbols stand for.

Like what?


Your interview with those three people outside the mosque in New York contained their notion that the symbols for Islam call to mind the murder of Muhammed. Your interview with the protesters outside the abortion clinic indicate that the symbol for Christianity is the structure that Jesus was tortured and killed upon.

Oh, the cross thing; I knew that. Right. Go on.


Yet the Nazi swastika has not been adopted as an inspiration to followers of the Jewish faith. The Confederate flag has not been adopted as a reminder of why civil war should be avoided or why slavery should be considered wrong or why state's rights shouldn't supersede federal authority.

Ummmmm . . . [helpless tentacular gesture]

For that matter, the ambiguity of the symbol for piracy and poison is bound to lead to misunderstanding.

What?! [gill fluttering, translatable to confusion] What kind of situation could that possibly be a problem-- 

[redacted interruption, during which Shelob explains the danger] -ated by the trend of human history.

--rrrmmmm, no . . . I don't think that's very likely. You do make a good point though about the arbitrary nature of symbols. I'm ready to declare that displaying a symbol with or without context might be necessary for the education of younglings and that it plays an important part of any history lesson. In America, it also becomes important for freedom of expression. All this business about whether a flag should be flown is obviously important to some.

But you don't wish to say it is right or wrong.

Well, no. I DO think that everyone should feel grateful that they can direct their emotions so accurately that something so arbitrary as a flag could be used to rescue people. But doesn't that mean people are gullible enough to shoot their best friend in the dark if some criminal pastes a glow-in-the-dark swastika on them? Worse, in the case of certain ocular or neural trauma, wouldn't certain patients suddenly have the tendency to think, say, that good and bad symbols are reversed?

You are referring to vulnerability to manipulation.

Well, yes. If a symbol can be used against people . . . Shelob, you'd better blog on this.

Underway. [transmission ends] 








Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Marriage Law By Hairy, With All The Vexing Silence

[Interruption point determined, recording begins]

-the metaphorical dust cleared? Is the same-sex marriage issue decided?

No. All evidence suggests much more argument to come.

Have we successfully predicted an end to arguments like this?

You have, in theory, been correct on multiple occasions.

In theory?

Your answer of 'Never' has shown to be a correct supposition so far.

[violent gill expulsion] Yeah, okay. [ambivalent tentacular gesticulation] So, what progress has been made?

Multiple state-level jurisdictions have ruled upon it and added more argument. Do you intend to pick a side?

Uh, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Shelob, but both male AND female humans are rather unattractive. The females are sometimes neat, especially when they have longer, more flexible arms--

Legs. You are supposed to say legs. Limbs will suffice.

Legs! Right. Thank you for keeping me in practice  . . . but I wouldn't be allowed to marry anyway, so--

[auto-rephrasal procedure activated as misunderstanding detected] Do you intend to blog upon this issue?

--oh . . .  [very long pause, during neuralink access to recent newsfeeds, blogs, etc.]  I'm not even sure why this is an issue at all.

You think the answer is obvious?

No, I mean, I don't know why it's an issue. If I had an acceptable mate, I wouldn't want the government involved at all. Why do 'straight' people want the government having any say over their marriages? Isn't there a slogan somewhere about 'Keep The Government Out Of My Mating?' I don't even understand why heterosexuals are called 'straight.' They're just as twisted as bisexuals, homosexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, and the others I can't think of right now. Worse, they're just as crooked! Furth-

That slogan is an approximation of a 'pro-choice' slogan.

[one pupil dilates] -what?! Oh . . . well, okay. But seriously? Why should the government have any say over who, how, whether, or even why people should marry? I mean, marriage is a religious issue for many people--that means that the government shouldn't be involved under separation of church and state. Records probably DO need to be collected and kept, but why should there be any other governmental involvement?

Age limits, voluntary nature, tax purposes, and licensing.

[full five-eye roll] Those are all covered by other laws! Redundancy isn't that valuable! Age limits are covered by statutory rape laws, voluntary nature is covered under rape, kidnapping, and enslavement laws, licensing can be handled by event licensing for the ceremonies--and, really, why should the government license marriage? As for tax purposes, what difference should it make? Children are already tax deductions, right? Homemakers can already be listed as dependents on the tax form for a 'head of household,' right?

[sixteen seconds pass] Your legal interpretations do seem correct. Your suggestion is to eliminate redundancy and make government smaller?

Law is one of those things where less is more, Shelob. Do you want to blog on this for me since medbot hasn't released me yet?

Yes. [recording ends]


Sunday, June 7, 2015

You Have All Been Punked By Educators

[transmission to Shelob interrupted here as recording begins] -und like their entire society has been punked by the education system?

Yes, just as you said before.

--what?

You said that before.

No, I didn't. I just came to that conclusion. Wait. Are you talking about that 'punked' statement, or the idea that college isn't such a great idea?

Both. You said both of those things before.

[Goes still] When? Show me.

[0.77 seconds pass for retrieval and transmission overlay] June 23, 2014   . . .

Is it horrible that some kids don't go to college? Humanity isn't so advanced that all menial jobs are done by robots or trained animals. Isn't it a waste to send someone to college if they're going to do menial jobs for their life? A trade school or vocational school can teach them what they want to know. More importantly, if all kids go to college, won't that mean the menial occupations will suffer? They're important too.

The alumni of four different colleges that I asked about quality instruction all looked at me like I was insane. Herr D in particular told me that he knew very few people who worked for his college that could really teach at all. He said they present the material, test the students on whether they learned it and answer questions and provide help only if asked. Well--huh.

Presenting the material could be done on videotape once and remastered and updated when necessary just like textbooks. Tests can be done by proctors. Grading can be done by subject matter experts. Help can be provided by tutors. What did you need the professors FOR exactly? Herr D said he needed them to drive up his tuition. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. I am confused by the whole thing. It looks like institutes of higher learning are just institutes of higher cost learning. I mean, wouldn't it be better if everyone learned a career cluster surrounding their proven aptitudes with minimum classwork involved?

Becoming a well-rounded student can happen while a student is too young to work. There can't be a growing number of learning disabled students if the education methods aren't so artificially narrowed. --I mean that is correct, isn't it? The reason that we have learning disabled students that can LEARN BY DOING and not learn in a classroom is that the majority seems to have been punked. People actually seem to believe that classroom learning is the "best way." Learning doesn't have a best way! Individuals have preferred learning methods, sure, but those are individual.

I mean--is this not obvious? Tuition is too expensive. Student loans are too expensive. So . . . don't go? When you get there, you'll just have to learn the material on your own as best you can to pass a test written by somebody who works professionally impersonating an instructional film. Why not learn the material on your own while working full time in related industries? If a company wants a truly determined, truly worthwhile employee, and is smart enough to know what that is, why wouldn't they want someone who could learn without the broken-down crutch known as college?



Wow. Well, I thought of this exact topic and similar wording just about a year ago. Why would I have matched up with a year? Am I biologically preparing to strobe away again?

Subconsciously you may be remembering your conclusion that humans need repetition to learn and your presence on this particular M class planet with this particular revolution length. You specifically asked me to track those possibilities in February of this year, December, October, July, and June of last year.

Yikes. Blog on this then. It must be more important than the tangents I was likely to go off on.

Underway. [transmission checked, recorded, and ended]