★On Tipping
I don’t really understand the tipping rules that we have in society.
If I go to a restaurant and someone takes my order, brings me some water (and keeps it full), and does other relevant tasks, then sure you should earn a tip. In this instance I would say you’re paying the food and then your providing a incentive via a tip for the person to give you great service. Sure. I get it. That’s awesome.
But if I go to the wrap place in my building and you make me a wrap, why is there a tip line on the receipt? I’m not tipping you for doing your job. There was no additional service being rendered. Maybe the wrap was made with extra love…but I’m not buying it.
What about haircuts? I don’t understand the rationale for tipping barbers. You’re paying them for the haircut. There is no real “additional” service being performed. You might say, well they are giving you a good haircut. But I think that the mere fact that I am coming to them means I am expecting a good haircut. If you gave people consistently shitty haircuts, you wouldn’t last very long as a barber. I would say if you’re a great barber, just charge more.
And what about cab drivers? Where is the “additional” service? Getting into your cab implies that you’re going to do a good job in getting me from point A to point B. What am I tipping you for? Because you didn’t get me killed? I’m not against tipping people…I just think it should be for a good reason.
★Why Me Offending You Is Actually A You Problem
I don’t like your hair.
I think you should apologize for your hair.
In fact, I am OFFENDED by your hair.
You need to apologize for it.
Is this a legitimate argument?
——————————————————————
Maybe you’ve heard the recent news about the Nigerian government. In recent days, they have become offended by two separate things.
Offense #1: The movie District 9. Nigeria has banned the movie in their country. The movie is “drawing protests from government officials in Nigeria over its portrayal of Nigerians…because it depicts Nigerians as gangsters and cannibals.”
Offense #2: The recent Sony PS3 Ad. According to the ad: “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Otherwise I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now.”
Do we have to now start scrutinizing every movie, book, newspaper article, blog post, or whatever to find things that could be potentially offensive to an group of people???
The only reason why the Nigerian government is offended is because there is some truth to the depictions of Nigerian people in the movie and in the ad.
District 9 is a movie. They can say whatever they want. And, hasn’t everyone has got those Spam messages before? It’s nothing new. How is that offensive? The ad is highlighting a true statement based on everyone’s experience with email.
You can’t change how someone is going to react to what you have to say. Anybody can be offended be anything. Your job is to speak your feelings and let them be known. You shouldn’t have to temper them just because one person might take them the wrong way.
Sure things can be inappropriate, racist, etc…but just because you’re offended by something means nothing. That’s why if I say something that “offends” you, they maybe you should reevaluate your reaction to what I’m saying.
It’s a you problem. Get over it.
Because if you don’t agree, I think you should apologize for your hair. It’s offensive.
Cue the response from the Nigerian government saying that they are offended by my comments.
★The Madden Curse
Every year the new Madden comes out, I hear more and more about the “Madden Curse”. What is the Madden Curse? The Madden Curse says that if someone appears on the cover of Madden, then something bad is going to happen to them during the following football season. This year Troy Polamalu gets hurt in the first game and somehow Madden is to blame.
Let me tell you something. There is no such thing as the Madden Curse. I am annoyed further and further by people who continue to propagate such nonsense.
Instead of wasting your time talking about the Madden Curse, how about you use that time for better use and go take a statistics class. Maybe you already took one. Well maybe you weren’t paying attention when learning about Regression to the Mean.
Usually people who appear on the cover of Madden have had a spectacular year. Here’s the thing, basic statistics will tell you that when you have a great year which may be an outlier based on your past performance, you’re just not going to do as well the next year (most likely).
Here’s the other no brainer: football is a contact sport. People get injured all the time. It’s not like the best players have some immunity from getting hurt. So maybe during your All-Pro season, you didn’t get hurt, but the next year you did. People get injured in football. It’s just the way it is.
So the next time you hear someone talking about the Madden Curse, just sock it to them for me and tell them to learn about football and statistics before talking such nonsense.
P.S. — Apparently two years ago there were a contingent of LT fans that didn’t want him to be on the cover of Madden. This was actually reported by CNBC. Wow. This is why nobody cares about the news. It’s all crap.
★Grails Redirect
If you’re like me and you’re new to Grails, you discover that sometimes things are too easy. How is that possible?
Two tips I found on redirecting to make your life easier:
- If you’re in a GSP and you want to redirect to another page/controller, it’s super easy. Just drop: ${response.sendRedirect(“myController/myAction”)}, onto your page (putting in your own controller and action information).
- If you’re in a Controller, and you want to redirect to another Controller, it is also super easy. Just use: redirect(controller:”myController”, params:[zip:”75206”]). This would redirect to myController and send a zip parameter of 75206. Key thing I learned —> there is another option you can use in the redirect called “uri”. Don’t use it in conjuction with the params option, because it doesn’t work. Just use the “controller” option and everything will be great.
Explanation about human ancestry by Richard Dawkins.
★On Morality
I’m not sure if this is an entirely new idea…I’m sure someone else has already thought about it.
It’s new for me though.
I’ve been thinking a lot about morality lately. How do you know if you’re doing the “right” or the “wrong” thing? How can you potentially come up with a set of rules that everyone should live by in order to be “moral” people?
I’ve decided morality only exists in our minds.
Imagine the state of nature. There is no government. People are their own independent nations. I contend that in this scenario, there is no right and wrong. Might means right. Whoever is stronger is going to end on top. I’m not saying that people in the State of Nature should be going around killing everyone and such things, I’m saying that if they felt like doing it (because of a dispute over resources or whatever), then it is totally permissible to do so. Who is to tell them that what they are doing is wrong?
Now obviously we don’t live in the State of Nature. We have a government. We forfeit some of our individual freedoms to come together and form a society. Humans and prehuman species formed societies and groups a long time ago. They decided they were better off as a group than by themselves. Over time, we have become used to the concept of forming such groups. We have become used to understanding that certain actions go against the formation of our society. If we steal, then we are not playing our part in society.
Ok, here it is——morality really is the instinctive voice in our head that tells us what is right and wrong. I contend that we all know what right and wrong is. It’s just that a number of us ignore the voice in our head and do what is more pleasurable. That voice in our head is evolution talking. We have been wired to know that certain actions go against our society. Stealing, killing, lying, etc.
We can obviously know that stealing, killing, lying and bad things to do. We shouldn’t do them because, again, they are going against informal contract that we signed in order to be a part of the society. So for the more shaky and complicated areas, how can we know what is right and wrong?
Here is my rule. For something to be wrong, if greater than 50% of society were to act in a similar way to the one in question, ask yourself would society be able to exist?
For example, if greater than 50% of people lied all the time, then society couldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be able to trust one another. That is whole basis of society. If greater than 50% of us were killers, then obviously at least half of us would be dead, so that wouldn’t be a good thing.
So what do you think? Is this the only rule of morality that we need?
★On The Value of Philosophy
I think the study of philosophy is infinitely valuable for the people of our society.
“Well, but in philosophy you don’t really learn anything. It’s not that applicable to life. Why is the practice of contemplating my existence really important?”
Here’s the thing…previously before the advent of the Internet, people who knew a lot of facts were thought to be “smart”. If you could recite the encyclopedia or the dictionary or pass off random facts, then you were “intelligent”. Today it’s different. What the hell does it matter if I know the capital of everyone country in the world? I can look it up in 2 seconds on Google. Today we have tons and tons of information at our fingertips. To me, in the evolution of our society, “intelligence” is going to change to be the ability to synthesize that information and use it effectively for one’s use. Therefore, given a set of facts or information you need to use your logic (what a concept) to formulate a conclusion.
Philosophy is the basis of having a solid logical base in one’s mind. If you cannot understand philosophy, then you cannot be logical. Everything in philosophy flows from a set of premises and arguments to a final conclusion. So if you cannot rapidly analyze an argument or a set of data to make an inference about it, you fail. Nobody cares anymore if you know tons of shit that you can look up on Google. It just doesn’t matter.
So today in our high schools there is no philosophy. We’re too busy teaching kids about math, reading, history, etc. Now some of those are important. You need a solid math base. A solid reading base. A solid writing base. But besides those basics, NOBODY REMEMBERS ANYTHING AFTER AWHILE. You just remember the general tidbits. I took a class on Texas history in 7th grade. I can’t tell you jack shit from that class. Davy Crockett went to Texas somewhere in there. Other than that, I don’t remember anything. And I actually paid attention in class. I can’t imagine the people that don’t.
So my proposal is that everyone needs to learn some philosophy. Because learning about philosophy is just learning about how to analyze an argument and be logical. That’s it. That’s a lot more useful than all these random ass facts that teachers make you memorize and somehow that’s “learning.” That is NOT learning. Multiple choice tests have fostered this culture of just cramming and then circling letters on a test to indicate learning. You need oral essays and presentations and writing compositions. Instead of shoving facts down kids throats and telling them to regurgitate them back, you need to ask them, “what do YOU think about it?” That’s real learning. And we don’t do enough of it.
★On Ownership
How do you really own something? Are the things that we “own” really ours or can someone else have a claim on them? For example, I purchased the computer that I am currently using with my money, but is it really mine?
Let’s take a step back. Going back to when the settlers came to the New World, they found a vast land inhabited by the Native Americans. With any basic knowledge of US history, you will know that the Natives were pushed further and further west as the Americans took hold of the land. To rationalize the acquisition of land, the concept of Manifest Destiny emerged. Basically, the story goes, it was ordained by God that the United States needed to have all the land from coast to coast. So, the Natives were thrown off their previous land, and we had events such as the Trail of Tears.
Now I’m not going to debate that the Europeans/Americans did some pretty bad things in killing lots of Natives, spreading their diseases, etc. But my thought is: was it really that wrong for the Natives to be moved to new lands? Did they really OWN their previously inhabited land?
My thought is that they didn’t really own it. To me, ownership is contingent on some powerful body being able to back you up if someone tries to take your property. For example, if I take your computer, and there is no US government to back you up and send the police after me, then do you really have a claim on that computer? In this situation we are in the State of Nature and might means right.
In my view the Native American Nation had sovereignty over a certain space of land, but after losing battles to the Europeans/Americans, the sovereignty was transferred away from them to Great Britain and later the United States. Thus, ownership was transferred, so how could the Native Americans’ land really be “stolen”? They had no one to turn to in order to enforce their claim on the land.
What do you think?
★Calculating Fuel Usage
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/buy-an-suv-save-the-planet/
Excellent article about calculating miles per gallon.
Basically, we should be telling people who are driving their Hummers and their big pickup trucks to ditch their gas guzzlers, and just get a moderately fuel efficent car. Moving people from car that average 14 mpg to 24 mpg will have a greater impact on fuel usage than people moving from 25 mpg to 46 mpg.
