21st Century Stuff

Drivel Dressed As News

2009-04-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Alas it's not new - the lamentable quality of TV journalism - but I suspect that in its relentless quest to plumb the depths of inanity it will eventuallly come to be regarded as a singularly 21st Century feature.

As previous ages were noted for, among other things, believing that the Earth was flat or meting out cruel and unusual punishments or widespread use of slavery, so our own period of soon-to-be history will be characterized as a time when mass media news organizations hosed vast swathes of the populus with vacuous trash dressed up (unconvincingly) as matters of public interest.

A while back we had swivel eyed frothing about Bird Flu (or Avian Influenza or HN51 as the more "serious" outlets termed it). There was of course no pandemic to get excited about, nor was there ever likely to be one - the circumstances of the outbreak pretty much told us that. Eventually even the professionally breathless reporters tired of trying to sex-up images of a few dead swans and returned to talking utter bollocks about politics, sport and the dreary antics of "celebrities".

More recently it's the deadly Swine Flu that's killed, um, not very many people at all really, in fact far fewer than normal no-fancy-name widely unreported flu regularly kills. But what stood out was not so much reporters and presenters whipping themselves into a frenzy (that is after all simply par for the course) but the bandying about of utterly meaningless figures.

At one stage we were informed (if that's really the right word in this context) that there were 150 ("suspected") deaths. At no point were we ever told how many were infected. There is one heck of a difference between a virus that say infects 1.5 million causing 150 fatalities and one that causes 150 deaths out of say 200 infected.

This was totally meaningless data. Pneumonia kills tends of thousands each year whereas Ebola sees off less than a handfull. However most people who get pneumonia don't in fact die as a result, but your chances with Ebola are about nil. Which do you think - based solely on the body count - is the more dangerous of the two?

Later we were treated to the news that the World Health Organization had upgraded its pandemic alert level from 3 to 4 out of a possible 6. Were we ever told how this scale is calibrated? Whether it is linear or logarithmic, and if the latter what base log is used? Nope. Had this been an increase from 3 to 4 on the Richter scale we would know that things were 10 times worse, but on the Beaufort scale it would just be a single increment higher.

Why not just tell us the Meerkats at the local zoo had increased their eagle alert levels to 8.4? This, as is well known, assigns an index to a Fibonacci sequence that describes Meerkat peer ranking. Simples.

Money For Nothing

2009-02-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

Banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee
That ain't working that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothing; get your chicks for free

So wrote Mark Knopfler way back in the last Century (1985 to be precise). There have been many interpretations of the song Money For Nothing but for my money at least I reckon Mark was a latter day Nostradamus no less.

The lyrics foretell of a very 21st Century phenomenon. Not unlike the days of the great Gold Rushes, the 21st Century bears witness to the mass pursuit of riches in return for, well to be honest, if not quite nothing then certainly not a lot.

Let's examine a specific chimp at random - billed as make money doing nothing this gem pretty much encapsulates the whole dinero4zero zeitgeist that infests much of today's Internet.

Here we see an individual engaged in hot pursuit of money for precious little by hoping to draw in other individuals on a similar quest to locate the secret to making money for nothing. It's a sort of Moebius pyramid scheme where all the participants endlessly chase each other in a huge loop with no hope of ever actually getting anywhere, or indeed of making any actual money.

This particular site is especially enjoyable for the quality of the writing. For example "...advertisers pays to bux.to to serve adverts to You. Off course..." and my personal favourite "Earn money from home: as proffesional rewriter". Rewriting the word "professional" is simply inspired. One has to guess of course (or off course even) that this is the work of a rather dyslexic Article Spinner.

But even so, failing to run it through a spell checker or at the very least check it looks like English rather than the result of a game of scrabble played through a haze of Class A narcotics? That really is shooting for money for absolutely nothing. And inevitably and justly doomed to failure.

The 21st Century may have ushered in all manner of new and exotic stuff, but short of paying Idiot Tax (or playing the lottery as some call it) you still can't get money for nothing. It's some kind of socio-economic twist on the Laws of Thermo Dynamics. Don't ask why; it just is. If you want to acquire money then you need to provide stuff of value to others. And YetAnotherMediocreMeTooBlogAboutMakingMoney doesn't really tick the value box.

As a slight diversion from making money for nothing, how about spending money on nothing, or even Sarah Palin glasses? As you can see from the link, I'm not making this up; this guy (or gal, this is the web, who can tell) is evidently turning a decent dollar selling Kawasaki 704 spectacles. And good luck to him/her - they've uncovered and exploited a potentially lucrative niche that provides something quite clearly of value to, how shall I put this, a certain type of woman.

Because it would seem that where until only recently it was de-rigueur for the aspiring woman about town to mimic the lively, animated features of a stroke victim using injections of the nerve agent Botox, now it seems the Pitbull-with-lipstick-look is where it's at.

Putting aside the worrying observation that a pig with lipstick is still a pig, it seems that many women have adopted Sarah Palin as a fashion icon and role model. I guess some might also continue with the Botox and aim for the "Pitbull chewing a wasp" look.

I would ask rhetorically, whatever next? Unfortunately I fear the question might be answered all too seriously as "the rod that Hillary Clinton has wedged up her ass - only $324.99 on eBay".

China In Your Hand?

2009-01-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

The awesome T'Pau hit puts me in mind of a very likely theme for the 21st Century, namely the dominance of China as possibly the sole outright world superpower.

It's equally likely though that we may see the formation of a small group of superpowers along the lines suggested in George Orwell's 1984, where Oceania encompasses America and Western Europe, Eurasia is for all intents and purposes the former USSR reborn and Eastasia is China and the Pacific.

Either way, one thing is certain. China, whose population accounts for nearly 1 in every 4 people on this planet, is not going to be the quiet, invisible giant it once was throughout much of the 20th Century. I find it simply astounding that for the past 50 years or more the most that the average Joe or Joanne in the West could tell you about China was the Great Wall, invention of fireworks and chinese weight loss tea, oh and Communism of course.

The Communist Party may still hold onto the levers of power in China, but Communism itself is as dead and discredited as anywhere else (no, I'm not going to accept Cuba or North Korea as counter arguments - in the former case Communism daily demonstrates its copious fundamental failings, the latter is more akin to a religious cult than a political system).

So... among the items I suspect future generations will readily identify as "21st Century Stuff" is the Chinese language (or languages for the pedants). Yes, we all know they speak English, just like everyone else, but history suggests that generally speaking (no pun intended) it's the guys giving the orders who get to choose what language to deliver the orders in.

It's basically good advice anyway to learn the language of those with whom you do most business, and that means it's soon gonna be time to learn chinese.

If that seems maybe a step too ambitious for you at present then why not try an oblique approach and pay China a visit. All the benefits of a holiday of a lifetime plus the opportunity to learn more for yourself firsthand. It's a well known phenomenon that many people first start to learn a language when they take a vacation - it's partly a matter of necessity in order to get around and order food etc, but also it's much easier to absorb a language when it is being used all around you rather than learning out of context so to speak. The excellent China Travel is a great place to start your Chinese adventure.

In closing, as I recall the song "China In Your Hand" had nothing whatever to do with the country China. The reference was to China as in pottery and the whole thing was in fact about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the band was named after a Vulcan Priestess in Star Trek, and singer and co-writer Carol Decker was (and still is) Something Else (as Eddie Cochran famously put it).

A Catalogue of Stuff

2008-12-18T07:09:00.000-08:00

When it comes to acquiring stuff one of the most popular methods is catalogue shopping. Not very 21st Century at all I hear you grumble. People poring over mail order catalogues? How thoroughly last millennium.

In fact the idea of mail order goes way back as far as, well, the idea of mail. The internet hasn't really brought anything fundamentally new to the principle of buying stuff from a catalogue; merely supplanted posting an order form or calling a telephone number with clicking an electronic order form using a web browser.

The significant improvements that online shopping catalogues bring are ease of use (they don't weigh a ton with tiny text fonts and microscopic photographs), searchability (can't find a new ironing board because it's been filed under L - for lightweight ironing board, obviously), and accuracy.

Many online catalogues are tied directly to the backroom stock control systems and can inform customers exactly how many items are available and even where they can be physically collected from (nearest warehouse or retail outlet) if required. Argos based in the UK is especially good at this sort of thing and the company is a classic example of how a traditional catalogue business was able to exploit the new possibilities that the internet opened up.

The metamorphosis of the Argos Catalogue from the notoriously lamentable experience it once was to the speedy pain-free website it now is, offering customers a choice between delivery or collect, provides a text book illustration of how to blend new stuff (the internet) with old stuff (printed catalogues) to the benefit of all concerned.

Customers gain an improved selection and purchasing experience that is also more convenient and saves a great deal of time; catalogues companies gain access to a much larger customer base who are also more likely to bring repeat business thanks to the improved process.

One other crucial point relating to shopping catalogues that is genuinely 21st Century is the relatively recent rise of comparison sites. These compare items across multiple catalogues assessing suppliers on criteria such as price, stock levels and service, so now it is trivially easy for anyone to find out which online catalogue best suits their needs for any given purchase. As you might expect, price doesn't necessarily win out - customers are willing to pay a premium for a company that has a reputation to protect and delivers on its promises.

So then, catalogue shopping ain't new but neither it appears is it going out of fashion any time soon. In fact when you consider big-name mainstays of internet retailing such as Amazon.com, you start to realize how much really is based on the online catalogue as a business model.

How to Make a Million Dollars (Thirty Cents at a Time)

2008-12-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Anytime new stuff appears it's only a matter of time before folk get to thinking "Hmm, I wonder how I can make money with that?" and the internet has not turned out to be a shining, virtuous exception to the rule.

What tends to initially catch people's attention of course are the yarns of epic wealth that the media likes to breathlessly spin about the few fortunate entrepreneurs who cooked up some whizzy new idea, razzle-dazzled an awstruck world and walked away two weeks later with loot so far beyond avarice their first problem was having it shipped to a medium sized moon orbiting Jupiter simply for storage space.

So where do you suppose most folk then go hunting for further information about this latter day Klondike? You guessed it - online, where even more lurid rumours abound and practically every search engine query turns up a whole new set of wise and friendly experts only too willing to assist you in your quest, in return for a modest consideration of course.

In this online El Dorado no serpent escapes the relentless trade in oil futures. Here our intrepid adventurer learns of unbelievable (yes, really really unbelievable) sums of money simply ready for the taking; little effort and no previous experience required, apparently.

Of course, it's not so much "too good to be true" (which it is) as "too far-fetched to be plausible". And when the cold shower of reality inevitably drenches our plucky online hero, soothing badly burned fingers is scant consolation for a harvest of shattered hopes and bitter disillusionment.

So how can you make money online? Is it even possible, or is it all just hype and bullshit with the occasional lucky sod promoted like last week's lottery winner purely to encourage all the other suckers?

Well actually you can. I do for instance and although it's not especially difficult it does nevertheless require that you stump up a certain amount of thought, effort and determination of your own.

It's a matter of mindset. Back in the days of the good old gold rush many people did very well indeed, but they weren’t usually the fools digging for gold. The gold diggers for the most part lost their money, a good chunk of their lives and much of whatever else they had before they set off in search of that one lucky strike that would mean they might spend the rest of their days sitting around doing sweet FA.

Those who did well on the other hand were mostly looking to make a buck here, a buck there selling mining paraphernalia, secret maps, expedition supplies, beer, liquor, sex and no doubt towards the end marriage guidance and debt counselling. And when the whole fuss died down they carried on working, 'cos they were persistent buggers, figuring out how to scale up from a buck here to two bucks there as the gold diggers moved on to seek their instant fortunes from the next Big Thing.

Now I don't know how to create the next eBay or Digg or whatever else attracts popular attention any more than I know how to write down the winning numbers for next week's lottery. But I do know that if I can figure out how to go from zero to one dollar a day online, then I can just as simply work out how to turn one dollar into two and after that two into four and so on.

But it's not worth it, the online gold diggers in unison retort. All that effort for what, five bucks a day? Yes, but in the few months it typically takes to scale the dizzy financial cliff that is five dollars a day (which incidentally is $150 per month or just over $1,800 per annum - a useful sum to many) you will have learned lessons that will lead to a lifetime of relentless and relatively easy accumulation of real, countable, spendable money.

Making a million dollars thirty cents at a time is more straightforward than many folk appreciate. The rate at which other people will in effect throw thirty (or twenty or fifty, the actual amount isn't really important) cents at you online is one part of the equation. Another is the fact that once this flow of funds gets started it just keeps going pretty much by itself. It might take significant effort to get the darn thing rolling to begin with but it's close to effortless once you have momentum, at which point you will find yourself delicately perched on the horns of most agreeable dilemma.

You can either leave it to get on churning out the same amount day in day out while you spend more time with your golf clubs, or you can get beavering to divert another stream your way (yes I know that's not what beavers do, I just want some beaver/stream imagery without the dam clogging things up so to speak - I don't think this explanation is helping...).

So how in fact do you get off zero to any amount of money at all in the first place? Well, many are the ways and one in particular is ideally suited to the overly opinionated novice with far too much to say for him or herself. But this post has rambled on long enough already, so check back here some other time and I shall spell it out in detail for those to whom any of this might not be old news. In the meantime I recommend this excellent link if you simply can't wait for further commonsense advice about making money online and other home based business ideas.

The Essence of Stuff

2008-12-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

History tells us that, through centuries and millennia of change, stuff has been discovered, valued and discarded while other stuff has remained more or less unchanged, the stuff that seems destined to be forever our constant companion.

Generally speaking, it’s the abstract stuff that survives. As we now get into our stride in the 21st Century we can be sure that Sony did not recently invent love and that greed and folly were not uniquely spawned at the same time as the Internet.

But while MP3 players are highly likely to be pinned down as an artefact of our age only, since they didn't exist prior to 1991 and will almost certainly be superceded by something else in the next few years, other stuff such as say beer and wine have been around for thousands of years and will probably continue, virtually unchanged, as popular as ever for a few thousand more.

Some might yet survive (or even thrive in) the 21st Century even though their long term future prospects may rival those of a one legged dwarf in an ass-kicking contest - offshore oil rig jobs anyone?

Of course, some stuff really stays the course but adapts and evolves as time moves on. The written word is a prime example. The means to transcribe what people say into a permanent written record dates back to over 3000 BC when it was used principally for inventory and auditing purposes, and later hijacked by "the authorities" to administer tax and law. Early forms were hand carved, etched into clay, or painted on a flat surface and later we moved up to paper and ink, before settling in for a long time on mechanically printed text. Now we use electronic representations of text, but from the first scratchings on a stone to the screen you're reading from now, it’s all still recognisable to us as writing.

And then again, some stuff goes out of favour for a while then reappears with a modern twist; blood-sucking leeches in medicine to treat wounds and, bizarrely, wood burning stoves as the latest must-have domestic heating solution are two obvious examples.

Some stuff reappears completely unreconstructed save for a spot of rebranding with a trendy new name. Natural childbirth anyone? It means the same as "natural dentistry" and "natural appendectomy" in other words the same old thing but simply omitting anaesthetic.

Of course we will always have Cool Technology - that's the nature of the beast; the crossbow and the VHS video player were once the latest must-have items of technology just as today's and tomorrow's ultimate gadgets will themselves gather dust on a museum shelf someday. But somewhere out there new stuff will emerge to dance upon the stage; some to be almost instantly forgotten, but some stuff will lodge in our affections and stick around a while.

So what stuff will define the 21st Century, either by its coming, its passing or its reappearance? That's what I aim to have some fun exploring.