April 15, 2005
Carnivoyerism
The act of watching another person eat meat. Probably why most attempts at vegetarianism fail.
Posted by DjDuk at 02:31 AM | Comments (587)
April 13, 2005
Plan "C" status report
In the last post, after spell checking, it became apparent that I didn't spell the word competence right even once. I am now declaring plan "C" a failure.
Posted by DjDuk at 04:35 AM | Comments (614)
April 12, 2005
Conservation of Competence
Like many other conserved quantities I'd like to put forth that competence is finite. The amount of competence in the universe remains fixed while the available competence for each individual seeking to be adequate continues to dilute.
First, like all things competence is subject the great tyrant of the universe, the second law of thermodynamics. In short, competence is an organized state and tends to decay and break down into simpler forms over time. As it does much of the competence is lost to our frame of reference by bleeding off into space. This fact alone means that shortly before the heat death of the universe we'll have to undergo the ability death of the universe.
Second, because competence is finite and in fact tends to decrease in our frame of reference, as the population grows the level of competence available to each individual's use dwindles. Some Theorists have asserted that competence will be distributed equally through out the population and that while there is a net loss for each person the even distribution will make that loss manageable and hardly noticeable for several generations. Like all theorists, those that take that position are crazy. In fact competition for competence goes up. Those who really seek to be good at something are forced to study harder. Their efforts disturb the natural balance and the people around them lose out on their chance to escape mediocrity. As competence becomes harder to attain the energetic will horde more and more of it and the dilution of competence to the rest of society will become more and more acute. The final result will be one supremely competent individual surrounded by utter morons.
When I started writing this I thought that might be a problem. Given that I'm not likely to be the one ubermensch left on top at the end it's still a problem. However, if I can find a way to be that one last competent guy then taking over the world would be a cinch. Waiting for the rest of the world to devolve into incompetent lack-wits will now be known as plan "C."
Posted by DjDuk at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Conservation – Politics
A word used by communists in part to cloak their credentials as communists. Once it became clear in the 80’s that communists would never be anything but dirt poor and miserable those people who still liked the idea decided instead to be become conservationists and later environmentalists. The game is played roughly like this. Communism can’t compete with capitalism as a way to meet people's basic needs or as a way to provide luxuries. Communists, recognizing that, but unwilling to abandon an ethos that they've just really started to get used to decide that rather than claiming to be better than capitalism they'll try to attack it. The communist, newly dubbed environmentalist (communentalist maybe?), proceeds to attack the luxuries a successful system like capitalism allows people to have. They call the SUV's wasteful, prosperity gets labeled greed and conspicuous over consumption. Anything that successfully improves the quality of life of a human being is found, through the worst sort of junk science, to be bad for owls, slugs, oceans, glaciers, the ozone layer, or the environment as a whole. While the scheme has yet to be played out to its end I'd like to speculate on the ultimate goals. Please bear with me, as trying to understand the mind of communentalist is tiring, degrading, and a bit icky. If every regulation to "protect the environment" that is proposed is passed capitalism will be so overburdened with regulation that the end result will be poverty, starvation, and want. In brief a situation indistinguishable from communism. Given communism by fiat most people will fail to notice the communist dictatorships in fact being set up. Unable to drag communism up to a livable level environmentalism is the communists' attempt to win out by destroying the advantages of capitalism.
Posted by DjDuk at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2005
Conservation - Science
A word that describes something that is both finite and never changing. Energy is widely known to be conserved, as is momentum, and its twisted cousin angular momentum. For convenience let's say angular momentum is just momentum in a not straight line. When an object is moving it has momentum, which is a way of describing its mass and the energy that went into moving it. If it hits another object some of that momentum is transferred, our object slows down, but the other object picks up speed. The total amount of momentum remains the same. This is always true in every case, everywhere. Even if the second object is moved by that collision some of the momentum is still transferred and that object responds with molecular movement, that is, it gets slightly warmer. Either way, energy is transferred from one object to another but the total amount is the same. This happens on all scales, from comets crashing into Jupiter, to some jackass throwing spitballs at me in a movie, to collisions of air molecules.
One downside, this means that eventually the universe will end in a reactionless, cold sterility. See, the size of the universe is infinite. Each molecule that interacts with another molecule passes on some energy and generates some heat energy, which basically just dissipates. Eventually all the molecules in the universe will have separated enough that the heat generated by their fewer and fewer collisions will not be sufficient to cause any sort of related chemical reaction and the universe will run out of heat energy. The energy will still be there, in other forms, but too diluted by distance to do anything and chemical reactions will come to a complete stop. Assuming we believe the theoretical physicists.
Posted by DjDuk at 11:44 AM | Comments (604)
April 08, 2005
Physics
An attempt to describe the fundamental rules of the universe. Physics is basically the science of how forces interact. Physics came into existence when Newton developed the laws of motion and stopped when an atomic bomb was first detonated over the New Mexico desert. Anything called physics after that is actually Quantum Physics, and not much related to anything else.
Posted by DjDuk at 02:47 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
So long...
Our beloved Grudge Match is ending. Having brought us some wonderful ideas like, "What would happen in a fight between Orville Reddenbocker and Colonel Sanders?" After more than 250 matches these losers are throwing in the towel and calling it quits. Well, we'll just have to keep up the tradition here. Expect to see DJDuk's suggesting unlikely duels to the death in the near future.
Posted by DjDuk at 12:15 AM | Comments (618)
April 03, 2005
Bailey - Goldfish
It's been said goldfish only have a one second memory. This may exceed Mr. Bailey's greatest hopes. The impetus to this definition of Bailey comes from Ripley's need to repeat to Bailey, over and over again the directions to his house. The icing on the cake was Bailey's proclamation on arrival that he was lucky to have arrived.
The second part of this one comes from Grudge Match, where one of the regular commentators would frequently compare a contestant to his pet goldfish, Fluffy. The idea was Fluffy would represent the absolute minimum of competence. If Fluffy could do it then anybody who couldn't was in a sorry state indeed. Bailey may just be our Fluffy. His capacity, while limited represents the bare minimum benchmark for adequacy in a great many arenas.
Posted by DjDuk at 11:58 PM | Comments (592)
April 02, 2005
Unions - Math
The union of two sets of numbers is every element of each set. That is, every number that is in set one, or in set two is part of the union. This makes it different from the intersection of two sets, which includes only each element contained in both sets. It is necessary for every algebra book to complicate this as much as possible with cryptic symbols.
Posted by DjDuk at 11:44 AM | Comments (598)
April 01, 2005
Guild
Before unions skilled workers set up guilds. Even this highly flawed medieval institution is a step above the modern union. A guild essentially acted as a licensing board to determine who was skilled in a craft. Sort of a middle ages version of a Better Business Bureau. Guilds trained people and judged their efforts. A person buying from a guild certified artisan could reasonably expect a certain level of quality, and if that was found lacking had recourse to the guild itself to punish the offending merchant. It was a pretty good idea if it had worked that way. What guilds did instead, in many cases, was approve whatever merchandise a seller had, fix the prices so everything cost the same despite quality, and demand a cut to ignore complaints. Essentially union graft before there was even a union. Guilds were popular with the government because they represented a large group of people and were thus able to pay a much larger bribe. Again similar to why governments like unions today.
Posted by DjDuk at 03:45 AM | Comments (610)