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Two weeks after surviving my 4th Cube farm experience I feel compelled to summarize my position on this travesty of modern life. In fact, it would be appropriate to do so  because I studied it at length before announcing my resignation.

Today's [open plan] office is a wasteland. It saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of unfulfilled intentions and failed effort. (Robert Propst)

His statement might have been true then, but it is perhaps more true today than it should be. Cubes have become smaller and innovation in the realm of office management has become stagnant. Perhaps it's just that so many companies underestimate the losses due to confining spaces and management's lack of forethought.

My personal evaluation is that there is a profoundly stiffling effect of being so near so many varied people. It is said that people sitting in cubes sit unnaturally still, and I can vouch for this observation from walking around my former office. I think it has a lot to do with the number of profoundly stupid conversations you hear in relation to the number of conversations you can personally have in any given day. Let me explain:

In an open room full of people you generally have a good idea of who is paying attention to you and what they think of your point of view. There is a silent communication that occurs very naturally, as though visual perception of thought through facial and bodily expression predates language by some countless number of generations. We gain a certain amount of confidence from this and can very skillfully tailor the thoughts we verbalize to fit the audience. 

There's also the matter of ego. Generally, we as American's have a feeling that those around us are fairly stupid. Granted, this has a lot to do with the bullshit propaganda we are dosed with on a daily basis, thinking the entire time "If that dumbass is an anchorman on national TV and anchormen represent the best, then everyone around me must be really dumb." I digress, but this can actually be a healthy perspective when it comes to the spread of good ideas (and the rejection of dumb ones). We aren't so hurt when our idea is shot down because we know it's no where near the dumbest heard that day. In a cube farm however, since we have very little immediate feedback from our audience we second guess this. After prolonged exposure to cubes, my guess is that we actually lose some of that American ego, we become overly careful and the free expression of ideas suffers.

I have to say I really like a lot of the things that the good people over at Joomla are doing, but I'm sticking with Umbraco. It's sluggish, but very much more versatile on the design side of things. My blog doesn't yet represent this, so I'll put some time into customizing it as part of the process. I also, very unfortunately will be moving some of the more controversial posts to a pseudonym in order to protect my ability to find more freelance work.

Welp, lets see what I can do to designify this site. Perhaps I can get rid of this stale wordpress theme and fix the comments option.

This is a letter to all you "Social Conservatives." It sickens me that you would lay claim to a party that sends your children, brothers and friends to a foreign land to be killed in civil war. I understand that your position is to support any leader as xenophobic as yourself, regardless of his fiscal policy or military interventionalist attitudes, but things have gone too far.

Please, please understand that no one cares anymore what you think, only that you vote for them. So if you want to continue to show support for a party that will lie to your face and do nothing to support your values, then vote for the hawks. Vote to send your friends and loved ones into harms way. Vote for those who lie about their moral obligations in order to gain control of the world's most mobilizable force, those who will put our army into the hands of Islamic leaders.

On the other hand, if you would like your voice to matter again... stay home in November. Stop supporting a party that refuses to support you. Force your beloved "conservative" party to act on your values, not the values of those who love, or can profit from war. It's a simple matter of interpreting the message of Jesus and making the choice he would make.

Would he:

A) Vote for a liar in order to perpetuate needless violence.

or

B) Stay home and read some letters from Paul

2 Thessalonians 2:8-11: "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie."

Be heard, Don't Vote.

Here's a fun game involving the ever expanding world of propaganda.

Use Google news' search feature to choose your source. This will give you lists of news stories tailored for specific audiences. Here are some examples of propaganda machines' different spin on a controversial event (Chinese Communist Party, US, UK, Falun Gong, God).

torch relay source:Xinhua  

torch relay source:Associated Press

torch relay source:Reuters

torch relay source:Epoch Times  

torch relay source:Christian Science Monitor  

It's funny how much God hates the Chinese Government. Seems to have more sentiment than even the US's Associated Press. I wonder if he feels the same about Gitmo. Let's check.

Guantanamo Bay source:Christian Science Monitor

Whew! He doesn't care. Looks like we can ramp up our operations there! But first we'd better check with our allies across the atlantic.

Guantanamo Bay source:Reuters

Hm. let's play it cool for a bit and sputter out some more scary news stories until they catch on and everyone realizes its importance.

Guantanamo Bay source:Associated Press

Next, what are the Chinese told to think?

Guantanamo Bay source:Xinhua

Damn, we're bad. 

I've been reading a lot of Anti-Communist propaganda from what might be considered the media arm of Falun Gong. It is quite alarming and has at least the appearance of being based in reality. However, if it is truth, then how do we justify continued exploitation of Chinese workers through economic collaboration with the CCP? Eg. Why do I keep buying all this worthless junk?

Nine Commentaries

I like ancient China's commentary on the state of the modern "Democracy" of america.

The footnotes of Analects (Lunyu) explain, “People who help one another conceal their wrongdoings are said to be forming a gang (party).”

After running the company for 13 years and becoming one of the highest paid CEOs in the world (#36 actually), James E Cayne cashes in his remaining shares for $61 million, 80% of which is provided by us lowly taxpayers to prevent the economy from tumbling down like the house of cards it has recently been revealed to be.

Alright, is it just me or does this somewhat resemble Enron, only with better corporate lobbyists and a better relationship with Washington. Think of it, back room asset re-allocation and write-offs to allow a company to present an image of wealth with no actual holdings. Only instead of a company it's an entire industry, one which was heavily involved with Enron and pays salaries that would make the Pope envious. Good thing they're good buddies with the bald man Ben Bernanke, or they might have to sell off a few of their mansions and penthouse apartments!

It's reasonable to believe that after losing almost a cool billion in wealth that James E Cayne was as blindsided by this as anyone else. However, his personal irresponsibility in creating this mess makes him not the most high profile victim of the credit crunch, but one of it's most high profile architects. If he were a responsible man, he'd allocate his remaining wealth to be set aside for reparations for the damage he's caused. Although, it's clear from his record that responsibility plays no part in this man's life.

"[t]he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Edward Bernays

Wage slavery results from a person being in too much debt to be able to make a profit from his or her own work. Putting someone in a house with an interest rate of 19% on an 80k loan when they make only $40k essentially puts them in this position. It is important to understand that it was a marketing campaign based largely on works done by Bernays that allowed the sub prime industry to create a culture of debt so easily. People making $28 million per year off of this cycle of debt should not be forgiven, and their way of life should not be protected by taxes collected off of the very people they helped to impoverish. 

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole. The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.” (Karl Marx)

If usury is a sin, I guess we're all in serious trouble. Ok, the concept of usury pre-dates our modern understanding of inflation. Inflation being the governments way of taxing the rich, albeit only a small fraction of the sorts of tax that the rest of us pay. So the rich should therefore have a way to beat inflation so as not to be paying even that fundamentally unbeatable tax. So we have lending. Oooh lending. Oh so many great and wonderful things have been accomplished over the past 6 months because of lending.

If you would like to get involved with this morally destitute act, lend to me! I'll be sure to lend it to someone else, like a mini Bear Stearns... no a mini UBS Corp... no. hm. well, someone who seeks to profit off of the use of money anyway.

I suppose it's a much better way to rob the poor than investing in mutual funds. For a real downer, check your Fidelity retirement account against these companies.

Ok, on to my Prosper Listing... oh and sign up through this link before lending to me and I think we each get $25! Actually, lending under the right circumstances isn't quite so bad. Such as when someone can afford the loan, and they are in a situation that justifies it.

I just unwon my bet on the NY Giants. Figuring that they'd have more to gain from a win I put down a whopping $20 and ended up with $90. To have the money sent though, Bodog Life wanted me to photocopy my drivers license, passport, credit card (both sides) and bank statement. They also wanted a SSN and an engraving of the credit card, I'm not joking. Needless to say, giving up my savings just doesn't seem worth the gamble on them actually sending the check.

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