Neanderpundit

From the time you open your eyes in the morning, to the time you close them at night, every single thing you see that did not grow itself, was touched by humans.

Sure, sure that’s all common knowledge, right? I mean, sure, the drywall is made in a factory somewhere. THe shingles. The bread, The eggs were put in a carton, the bacon was sliced…. yeah, what’s the big deal?

The big deal, to me, is that the infrastructure of our lives has become invisible to us. The infrastructure is as much human as it is physical, and it’s depth and breadth is fractal in complexity.

Example:

When you woke up this morning and fried some eggs and bacon and had a coffee, you touched thousands and thousands and thousands of lives.

Huh?

Someone had to make the sheets you laid on. Martha Stewart put her name on them, but someone planted the cotton, someone harvested it, someone combed it, someone spun it into thread, and someone wound that thread onto bobbins. Someone else loaded the bobbins into a loom and wove the fabric, someone cut the fabric and hemmed it into infdividual sheets.

Sure, you know that, right? you just don’t give it any thought. How about this? there was a factory that made the cotton planter, and thousands of people work in that factory. Same with the harvester, thought that might have been the same factory. The bobbin winder, the loom, all were manufactured somewhere, and the science and technology required to make them, as well as the skill needed to make them work properly, also involved many people. Martha Stewart Corp is a huge entity unto itself, and the planning, marketing, feasability, etc. all involved the skills and talents of loads of warm bodies.

So we’re in the hundreds of people who had an effect on your day, and you haven’t yet thrown back the sheets.

Now apply that thought to the mattress. The material, the stuffing, the springs, the padding, the manufacture. A lot more people, a lot more engineering, a lot more science, a lot more technology. Now the pillow. You get the idea. Put your feet on the floor. HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of people, for the processiing of the hardwood alone. Or the carpet. The subfloor. The joists. The foundation. The complexity is too great for a single post. Walk across the floor to the closet, and turn on the light, another several hundred people.

The crapper, the shower, the sink. The razor, the soap, the towels. The deodorant, the toothpaste, the toothbrush. How many thousdands of people had to do ther job for you just to get through your morning bathroom run?

The point is, that this all works, and works remarkably well. And it does so without our even noticing it.

And because I watch this process, because I am tuned to the minutiae of the world like very few people I know, I see patterns. I see the patterns of behavior that people have, that cause them to act the way they do, do the things they do. I see that because humans created the world around us, the world with which we interact every day, we have imposed the patterns of our behavior on it. To0 someone who can recognise those patterns it is like looking at the grooves on a vinyl phonograph record- the patterns of sound have made their mark on the vinyl, and the right equipment will allow you to hear those sounds again by tracing the patterns the sounds made on the vinyl in the first place.

I believe the world as created by Man is like a phonograph record. The patterns we leave reflect the patterns of our behavior, and examining those patterns should probably be a science unto itself.

I’ve spoken before about the folly of Hari Seldon, and the utter stupidity of assuming it was possible to predict human behavior based on mathematics alone- but I do believe that with the richness of the data available to us, we could, and perhaps should, be looking at the patterns of human behavior more seriously. Currently, the information is being studied simply as it pertains to the liklihood of consumers to buy soft drinks and school supplies- but someone- someone with a far bigger brain than i- should be looking at human behavior and the way it is reflected in our science and technology- to see what else we can learn.

Bonnie made some assertions that, in retrospect, i find most amusing. First was the assumption that no women read this site. That was amusing enough, but the implication that we’re all uneducated rubes amuses me no end.

Among my readers, I have lawyers, physicists, rocket scientists, engineers, at least one board-certified internist, a surgeon, and a few REALLY smart people.

I also have plumbers, construction workers, housewives, teachers. None of these people is any more or less important than any other of them, because they all take their work seriously, and do so because of, not in spite of, their right-leaning tendencies. Because to a man and woman they understand how important that invisible infrastructure is. More on that later.

Man, it’s just amazing.

Cheers gentlemen. Regardless of the update, obviously you do not take challenges to authority very well (much less well-informed, educated, independent women I suppose).

Lady readers, I suspect this is an insult. Apparently this anencephalic brat believes no women read here.

As for challenges, you haven’t presented one. You have wandered around whining tired, blatantly untrue, and provably wrong leftist canards while failing to provide anything but moveon.org talking points and cherrypicked wikipedia definitions. As for your education, it’s clear what THAT is. Next!

As I am unwelcome in your house of ill-manners, I will leave you be.

No! I’m heartbroken!!! Please, please stay. I cannot abide a world where I lose the respect of such an intellect!

Have fun agreeing with one another.

Actually, we disagree a lot on a lot of things, but we agree on this: You are a fucktard. And you are the embodiment of all that is wrong with America. Obviously you stumbled into my post on your Lord and Master the Obamessiah, read one post, decided who I was based on that one post, and (as is typical of academia) reacted in a typically asinine manner. Whee! Your mama must be so proud.

Lovely place this world, where folks don’t have to encounter difference unless it rudely intrudes into their virtual space…

Isn’t it? I wake up every day and think how great it is to be alive, and how thankful I am to still be among the living in the land of the (for now) free. If your ilk attain power, with the help of the morons in the press and the criminals in the labor unions, this will just be another communist shithole where people queue up for weeks to get a roll of asswipe. For now, though, I can still wipe my ass with your useless leftist ideals.

So just for the record, here’s a little remedial reading (which of course you won’t, but that’s another story- you can lead a horticulture- nevermind.

1: Socialism is an eternally failing ideology. It has always failed, and it will always fail. Sure, it can be propped up with huge piles of cash from without, like israel, or with confiscatory tax rates, like Norway, but it’s exactly like making tent poles out of stacks of krugerrands while the tent itself is made of paper towel. No matter what, it will fail. Period, end of question. If you bothered looking, you’d know this is true, but you won’t, because it conflicts with your worldview.

2: The public school system is a disaster, and you are the perfect illustration as to why.

3: WHen you make assertions such as “over the past 8 years (at least) the “little people” HAVE been paid lip service, industry HAS been crushed, and jobs HAVE disappeared.” try to include a fact, or two. it makes it so much more interesting for the reader. In the real world, where I work, it is obvious that all of those assertions are false, and the current economic difficulties we are experiencing are the DIRECT RESULT of two major issues; A liberal president who prevented drilling for oil to help America become energy independant, and mandated “equal opportunity” lending (read: Give people loans even though you know there is no way they can ever make the payments)

But really, go on believing that all the problems with America are the fault of right thinking people. It makes it so much easier for you to get through your day, utterly devoid of facts or the truth, content to have “The Evil Right Whingers” to blame for the folly of your superiors.

Bottomline? Thanks for stopping by. I wish I was unemployed so I had endless hours to sit behind the computer and refute your ignorance line for line, which I can, but if I was that useless, I’d be a party Democrat. Meanwhile, you’ve provided a great deal of amusement and food for thought- it’s clear that your type are incapable of being educated, so it begs the question: What the hell do we do with you? Quarantine you and keep you from hurting yourself in your ignorance, I guess. Dick is brave in his ball-sucking request, I myself would never let you get near my nads, but he has cojones of titanium.