This week on #thepete #podcast: #humanity, #stupidity, #douchebaggery

#thepetepodcast this week is all about my personal #fears and #concerns regarding #idiots and #assholes in positions of #power.

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Why I got seriously concerned when I couldn't remember how to change the time on my old digital watch.

evapetty:

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” — Carl Sagan

That is so true. I have noticed many children have lost that innocence and wonder for science that was so strong just a few decades ago with the founding of the space program and all the research and development that NASA has done. It seems that most people today only want the new technology in order to fuel their status or appearance. Such as, “Oh, I have the iPhone 4. That makes me better than you.” This is the direction our children are headed. We all need to get off of our computers and our facebook and our youtube for just an hour a day and take a walk in the park. Maybe camp out in the backyard and look at the splendor of the galaxies of stars above. When I say this, I’m not necessarily downing technology, but we don’t need to lose the appreciation and responsibilty for what Providence has bestowed upon us. I look around my neighborhood and I no longer see children taking nature hikes or playing in the yard like I did just over a decade ago. It saddens my soul to witness this ignorance of what children really need. Parents so often allow themselves to believe that as long as they “provide” for their children materially, that they’ll grow up fine. This is so wrong. Children don’t really care about the newest piece of technology on the market, they want the love and attention that only the parent can fulfill. Parents, if you want your children to appreciate you, then you need to take the time to nurture and teach them. Because if you’re not, then who is? Is that really how you want your children to be? Think about it, please.

This is an incredibly good point.  However, I think parents are missing their boat in a couple ways.

First, Eva is exactly right—kids need to be taught that there is more to life than having stuff.  There needs to be an emotional appreciation for what we have in the universe—not just for “what’s the next big thing.”  Absolutely the case and if it weren’t we wouldn’t hear about people being trampled at Wal-Mart every year on Black Friday.

Second, parents have failed to teach children how to appreciate intelligence.  Ever since I was a small kid, I’ve been mocked for being smart.  I read voraciously as a child but got made fun of so much, I swapped out the books for comics by the time I was a teen.  I still remember being made fun of because I compared a tornado to a black hole in science class.

Back in June of this year I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson do a Q&A session at the American Museum of Natural History.  One of the many things he talked about was the culture of ignorance that we have in America.  It’s a culture that all but encourages stupidity and actively discourages learning.  He added, if we don’t change this, the next time we run into a major environmental catastrophe, we’ll ask the experts what to do and they’ll say: “Throw golf balls at it.”

This was a reference to something that had already happened days before Tyson did his Q&A—the BP oil spill, where BP execs proposed the exact thing Tyson mentions—which did not work.

So, what does this all have to do with the digital watch I mention in the title of this post?  Simple—I recently came across an old digital pocket watch I bought for 20 bucks at a JC Penny in 2004(ish) and I couldn’t remember how it worked.  See, I have a thing for pocket watches but I stopped using watches all together due to my cell phone(s) having a clock on the display.  But this pocket watch had a compass on it.  This is useful to a person with an old iPhone 3G (yeah, I’m not cool cuz I don’t have an iPhone 4 :( ).  So, I started carrying this thing around with me and actually using it as a watch!

The problem arose when Daylight Savings Time ended.  I sat there trying to remember how to work this technology—this bloody, simple technology!!

WHAT DO THE BUTTONS DO??  WHERE DO I SWIPE?  CAN I JUST SYNC IT TO MY LAPTOP’S CLOCK?

WTF?!?!?!

Finally I got it changed and everything was cool.

But still, it’s just like that episode of Star Trek where Kirk, Spock and McCoy visit a planet where a people live enslaved by this master computer because it has become so foreign and mysterious to them it became a god to them.  They let themselves fall into ignorance and trusted the IT guys, only to have the last IT guys die and have the information on how to regulate the machine lost forever.  This allowed the computer to take over.

OK, so my digital watch isn’t going to enslave me, but if, say, I couldn’t work out how to turn off the alarm, I would be enslaved to that thing once a day.

But this is why parents need to encourage their kids to learn about the world and the technology they use every day.  Hell, we, as adults, need to encourage each other to learn this stuff, too.  I know so many people who willfully remain ignorant about computers despite using them every day.  One acquaintance of mine recently admitted  that she didn’t know how to refresh her browser.

She’d never clicked the “reload” button on her browser before.  >_<

SO, LEARN!!!  LEARN LEARN LEARN!

STUDY STUDY STUDY.

We’ll all be better off the more intelligent we are.

The Absurd Disconnect regarding what we fear illustrated to perfection. We’re a bunch of cowards.

motherjones:

“The Right is going insane. A hundred years ago, when Chesterton was asked ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ his answer was succinct: ‘I am.’ Now the answer is from more and more of the Right is, ‘They are!’” —Blogger Mark Shea

SIGH… it’s still us that’s the problem. 

Underpaid Genius: Why We Can't Prepare For Disasters: Lack Of Imagination

Underpaid Genius: Why We Can't Prepare For Disasters: Lack Of Imagination

underpaidgenius:

We are politically and psychologically unable to prepare for disasters, like floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes, despite a growing understanding that these disasters are causing increasing damage in the US and elsewhere due to population growth and our continued determination to live in flood…

No imagination, you say?

I can’t imagine!

D’OH!

OK, joking aside, this is absolutely no surprise to me. In fact, I’d even be tempted to say: DUH.

Look at our media, for crying out loud. America’s national hero is Homer Simpson and our mainstream media puts more swooshy graphics and conflict into their broadcasts than they do actual research. 

We’ve forgotten how to imagine as a culture.

Someone hire me so I can help combat this!

Our Culture of Ignorance and How it's Bad (it's sad this even needs to be explained!)

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - Timothy Egan ?

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

via underpaidgenius.com

Well, we’re raised from birth to believe in a fat red man who gives us gifts once a year (among other fictional tales) and we’re surprised in the colossal ignorance of Americans?

I guess we are. Because, you know, we’re stupid.

I think everyone needs to go listen to the episode of the 666cast where I suggest we wage a War on Stupid.

TED STEVENS ON NET NEUTRALITY (Video!)

K, so I'm sure we all remember Ted Stevens' comments from a couple of weeks back about how the Internet isn't a truck, it's a series of tubes. In fact, I blogged on it well after it was breaking news. So, why am I bothering now? Because I like to remind us just how fucked we are, having [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0101032.html|the guy 3rd in line to be president] not have a clue how the Internet works. After all, it's only the single most useful tool in all of human history (after the wheel, I suppose). I suppose it makes sense that a completely useless tool wouldn't have what it takes to understand it.

Anyway, here are some clips for you! First up, there's a clip from The Daily Show featuring Jon Stewart skewering Stevens on the explanations of the Internet Stevens gave recently while talking about bills on Net Neutrality. Check out the clip from The Daily Show:

ds20060712_ted_stevens_only.mp4 (2m40s 5.4MB)

But after watching that clip, I thought...hm... those clips sounded pretty out of context. So, I went looking for a video of Stevens' complete comments on the Internet and Net Neutrality. I found [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5682372236203209658&q=ted+stevens|the below video] over on Video.Google.Com which you can check out in the flash player below or by hitting [http://video.lisarein.com/thepete/stuff/Politricks/Ted_Stevens_on_Net_Neutrality_clip.mp4|this link for the mp4], directly. Now Stevens' comments are almost 11 minutes long, so if you don't want to sit through that much of him, just check [http://video.lisarein.com/thepete/stuff/Politricks/Ted_Stevens_on_Net_Neutrality_clip.mp3|out the last 2 minutes of his comments in mp3 format] to see how much more sense he makes with the context intact.



I was, of course, kidding, when I seemed to suggest that he made more sense in context--he, in fact, sounds more insane when you listen to all of his comments. Remember folks, this is the man 3rd in line for the White House.