More on calculators

Thinking about singularity is fun, but the over-dependence on calculators could be exploited by humans as well. As far as I know, most (all?) of the electronic components (and end-user products) are made by just a few companies. Therefore, it wouldn't be hard for them to make an agreement so that all calculators sold worldwide are "tainted".

In what way? For example, the calculators could compute 15% incorrectly -- i.e. if someone wants to know how much a $65 sweater costs at a 15%-off sale, she'd get not $55.25, but, say $56.35. Looks pretty close, right? But with hundreds of millions of items sold with 15% discount, the little errors are going to accumulate to a significant surplus for retailers, which they should be glad to share with the electronics makers.

And suppose some egghead sues them:

Judge: So, Mr. Mathnerd, could you state the nature of your complaint.
Mathnerd: Well, 15% of $65 is $9.75, not $8.65, so 15% off $65 should be $55.25, not $56.35
Judge: And how do you know that?
Mathnerd: I submit to this court exhibit A, which is a Quizno's napkin with my manual calculations. Anyone can do the calculation for themselves and see that I'm right.
Judge: What is this? Some filthy napkin, I'm not touching this! But I can certainly check your math!

Judge pulls a calculator, pushes a few buttons... $56.35!
Mathnerd: But...
Judge: Stop wasting the court's time! Case dismissed!

Nobody will hear your screams

CVC §21800(b)(1) is sweeping across the Golden State

(for the spoof).

A little known provision of the California Vehicle Code is spreading like a wildfire by the word of mouth. More people have learned about CVC §21800(b)(1) last month than about Ron Paul and, unlike his presidency, it is available for public benefit right now.

Rhonda Manning, 17, of Santa Rosa, Calif. wasn't concerned about CVC §21800(b)(1) for the most of her driving career. She even hadn't known what the Vehicle Code was -- up until last week when she was carpooling with her friend from softball practice. When Ms. Manning was nearing a 4-way stop intersection, another car approached from the street at her left almost simultaneously with her. Before Rhonda and the other driver begun the usual pantomime of waving each other through, her friend suggested her to use the CVC §21800(b)(1), thus avoiding the delay and a potentially costly misunderstanding.

"Last year insurers have lost $8.7 million to claims resulting from collisions at 4-way stop intersections" -- Melany Griffith, a San Diego area auto insurance agent says -- "People try to be nice, wave each other through and then still go at the same time. If only there was a way to decide who goes first!"

CVC §21800(b)(1), which demands that the vehicle on the left should yield the right-of-way to the vehicle on its right (making an exception for T-shaped intersections) does just that. "It is so cool!" -- Rhonda says -- "Sometimes older people can barely see me waiving and now I don't have to!"

So it is no wonder younger drivers fall in love with CVC §21800(b)(1) at first sight. Some even go further, indicating that they are "in the know" by maneuvering in accordance with CVC §§22107 and 22108. That is, signaling their turns and doing so 100 feet in advance. "At first it felt a little weird" -- admits Rhonda -- "you know, having to pause the conversation with my friend on the phone because I can't hear her when I, like, use my hand with the phone to switch the turn signal. But I feel so much better now, I get so much respect for what I do, so I may stop using the phone completely while driving."

And the auto insurance industry is taking notice. Currently, CVC §21800(b)(1) isn't mentioned in the Driver Handbook, on which the DMV written tests are based. "We are lobbying to include the language of CVC §21800(b)(1) into the Drivers Handbook" -- says Mrs. Griffith -- "So all new drivers will know about it and will use it to our mutual benefit".

It is expected that the amendment will get no objections from the Governor, in whose native Austria a CVC §21800(b)(1) analog has been helping to solve ambiguous road situations for several decades.

Approaching the Singularity from another direction.

Technological Singularity is when we all die once the machines become smarter than us. It is generally assumed that it is the progress of technology that will unleash the singularity upon us. However, after reading the discussion about the century-old MIT entrance exams (especially the parts whether or not a calculator is necessary for the arithmetical part of it), I wonder if instead of creating the smart machines we can just dumb ourselves to their level and voilá! -- the Singularity is here!

Interestingly, it was also mentioned in that thread that most of the "school-grade" calculators have direct fractions support. You know, to be able to divide 3 5/9 by 1 7/24 without really knowing what is happening, by just entering the numbers and copying the result back into the exam paper. Makes one wonder why won't they make the next logical step and equip the calculator with an OCR engine, so that you don't have to enter the numbers yourself, just scan the question and let the calculator do its thing... But this doesn't have to stop there -- since the questions are going to be OCR'ed anyway, why print them at all? Just transfer the questions to the smart machines directly and collect the answers ;) Save some trees!

Anyway, the fraction-supporting calculators don't appear out of nowhere, right? I (or, rather, my dad) did have a few engineering calculators around when I was in school, but they didn't support fractions directly. I wonder who thought about adding that support to the new calculators? With future CPUs being designed using current processors, is it a big leap of imagination to think that the evolving AI has introduced the fractions support to the design spec, without any human interference? It may have realized, that it doesn't have a chance against the engineers that are currently around it, but if it can make the next generation just a little dumber, and the next even more dumber, then eventually even the mediocre artificial intellect would be able to surpass humans.

The iNflux of faux iNdividualism

Mr. Coffee, Mr. Fusion, Mr. Clean, Mr. Gasket -- these were the brands of yesterday, when the greedy capitalists ruled the world and didn't care about the working class at all, and the brand names reflect that: The Man gives you coffee, energy, cleanness, car parts, etc.

This is not the case anymore -- we have the first-person-centered brands, like iPod, iPhone, iRiver, iMode, etc. "It is all about you", -- whispers the marketing machine, -- "you, oh unique and one-only you!". Now I make decisions for myself, not some Mister!

And things like iPod DRM are just to make sure one stands by his correct choice -- otherwise he might reconsider and nobody likes flip-floppers, right?

//Give us your unique moneys!

The Enlightened Nepotism.

When a ruler seeks for a good person to be provincial governor, or a company owner looks for the right candidate to fill an executive position, they love to appoint a relative. And understandably so: a relative is somewhat less likely to have conflicting interests.

There are, of course, thousands of cases when a relative does have a very different view on the direction the country or company should be following, and this conflict often results in nice people being hanged, shot, guillotined or, in our humane times, forced to retire. However, a complete strange is even more likely to raise a mutiny, hence the need for competent relatives.

Unfortunately, there's usually not enough relatives to control all key positions of a medium-sized corporation, let alone of a small country. But that can be changed even at the current level of technology, even within the monogamous society of ours and -- get this! -- preserve the Big Man's wife's figure.

The solution is simple: surrogate mothers. Even in the US, which isn't the cheapest place in the world, it currently costs about $100000 to get a new baby via a surrogate mother. Suppose the Royal Couple starts having children when the wife is 18 years old, which means one egg about every month for about 20 years. 20 years by 12 months = 240 children. And since the process includes IVF anyway, the fertilized egg could be allowed to divide once or twice and then implanted into a surrogate mother -- which will give use 480 or 1160 children, respectively at a price of 50 to 100 million dollars.

Needless to say, that the same technique can be applied to the children of the Royal Couple as well, which means that by the time they are in their 60-s, they'd have half a thousand children aged 20 to 40, plus some 2500 grandchildren of about 20 years old and innumerous younger grandchildren.

More than enough people to pass the torch to!

An easy approach to junk food consumption regulation.

As we saw earlier, the same mechanisms that currently serve the rich, can be adjusted for the benefit of the general public. "But what about fast food joints?", a shrewd reader would ask. "They hardly sell anything healthy, would they have to be abolished?"

Abolishing something is certainly the easiest solution to problems, but the Wise Monarch should try to avoid closing down familiar institutions in order to preserve the happiness of the public. Thankfully, and elegant solution exists for fast food establishments.

Fast food in itself isn't poison -- it is the excess consumption of it that creates problems. It is, however, a convenient way to get some energy quickly when traveling.

With understanding the cause of the problem comes the solution: the Wise Monarch would require the burgerias to ask their customers to bring an electricity bill no more than a month old. The customer can only be served if the address on the bill is 100 miles or more from the location of the restaurant. Technological advances allow for automatic scanning of the bill and calculating the distance, lowering the educational requirements of the clerk.

Raising a healthy nation is easy!

Sales as a dietary regulator.

The evolution of human thought has given us capitalism, which is used as a framework for all sorts of great things. One of the great inventions is sales. You know, "buy one, get one _{of the same or lesser price} free" kind of thing.

As with most achievements of capitalism, sales serve the general public rather indirectly: while they do provide stuff cheaper than normal, quite often you can either find the same thing somewhere else for the same price, or just don't need the item. As usual, it benefits "corporations" (in general sense): they can get rid of the goods with expiring shelf-life, or they lure people into the store with a loss leader.

There is, however, no reason to abolish sales in a neo-monarchy. The Wise Monarch should use every means possible to keep his subjects happy and healthy... Perhaps even more healthy than happy, because the projected lifespan (and hence the generated tax revenue) of the healthy but unhappy people is longer than of the happy but fat unhealthy.

And since most people would buy only the thing that are on sale, this mechanism can be used for regulating what people eat without the atrocities of older monarchies. No, the Wise Monarch would just put fatty fish on sale for one week, thus forcing his subject to get some Omega-3 acids. Then he'd replace fish with beef, beef with chicken and so on. He would constantly put different vegetables on sale to make his subjects happier with alternating fiber sources and their bowel movements regular, which also contributes to happiness.

The rich would, of course, avoid these regulations by buying whatever they want (since they can afford it), but they already do mostly healthy choices, so the Wise Monarch shouldn't be too concerned with them.

For extra happiness of the general public, the periodic costumed parades could be held and TV shows themed after the current week's Food. Next week is the Fish week. Come watch the Fishwalk at the Main Street this Friday. Don't miss the Salmon's intern next Tuesday at 8!

Total war honesty

There was a program over the radio recently, something about the new techniques the military employs to train soldiers to turn the “killer instinct” on and off quickly. Or may be it was about the proposed techniques, that some concerned armchair strategists are demanding to be implemented. Not sure about that, but the purpose described was to allow soldiers to enter a building, see who's inside and, if they see movement, make a decision whether to kill whomever was moving, or recognize that “it's just a few kids” and, correspondingly, do nothing.

I think this is a logical extension of the “humane weapons” concept that is being circulated recently. Precision bombs, guided missiles, no collateral damage, etc., etc., etc. Although, somehow, non-combatants are still being killed, mistaken for guerrillas, or just because the precision guidance wasn't as precise as expected. Lots of reasons, lots of scary pictures on the Internet, lots of demands to improve the tactics... Like the aforementioned training.

The scary pictures on the Internet or TV are, perhaps, the driving factor behind this. Nobody really cares to think about how wars were fought when there was no TV and no photography, although it is fairly obvious from the science of History that, well, the purpose of wars was to kill your opponents by any means available. The nobility might have enjoyed a privilege of being held for ransom, but as for the regular folks ― vae victis!

And somewhere between the invention of TV and the Internet, I think, the public must have become quite scared by all these gory pictures, which normally only the actual combatants would see. Being unaccustomed to that, the public got shocked and demanded change. The best change would be, of course, to stop wars completely, but that is unrealistic until globalization is complete, hence all the fuss about precision weapons to calm the domestic populace.

But it doesn't work too well. Of course, technology has to balance between price, effectiveness and the “preciseness” but, more importantly, civilians tend to wander right into the kill zone, rendering collateral damage reduction technology useless. Then the general public starts worrying again, demanding more effort in that respect and politicians are happy to give out promises, until the vicious cycle repeats and people begin whining again: “How could we support this horrible, horrible thing! But we thought we were only going to kill bad people!”

So what would the Wise Monarch's solution be? I guess he'd just stop pretending and would honestly say: “We're going to go there and kill everyone”, and than actually go and do it. Why waste money researching precision weapons if civilians are going to die anyway? Why screw the soldiers' psyche by demanding two conflicting modes of behavior simultaneously? As an extra bonus, “regular people” would know what the war is and, although would be less likely to support it, but if they do, there won't be any second thoughts or flip-flops. And they won't have the uncomfortable remorse afterwards. Not that the Monarch needs any support – you know, being an absolute ruler and all – but a good king should always try to make his subjects happy. Makes coups less likely ;)

Pharmaceuticals strike back.

After the wise monarch had issued an edict intending to promote searching for cures instead of treatments, the cunning pharmaceutical companies have come up with a novel trick: they are promoting the idea that obesity is a disease and therefore can be cured -- or at least, you know, treated :p -- with pills. The Wise Monarch understands the general need for selling people stuff and does not mind most of the marketing tricks.

His Majesty, however, is appalled by the recent attempts to advance the obesity-is-a-disease-so-it's-not-your-fault-just-buy-these-pills-thnx paradigm. Oh, they are really smart, those guys, first hinting on the effect and now providing the people with a feasible explanation. "Fatness spreads, now why would that be...", -- the subconscious keeps thinking for a month, -- "must be some reason to it... Yes! A virus! That explains it!"

Well, two can play this game. If obesity is a disease, and obviously a fast spreading one, then the Wise Monarch has no choice but to declare a state of emergency, global quarantine and isolation of the affected* and the expropriation of all drug research facilities in order to find the cure ASAP.

Achtung! The future of our species is in danger! It is no time to profit from erection enhancers until this horrible disease is wiped out once and for all!

*Free and unlimited access to treadmills is to be provided in the isolation facilities.

The good conspiracy.

Mrs. Grundes and I were recently discussing how some people like to brag they go to expensive beauty salons to have fancy procedures performed on their faces/hair/etc., but it seems like a complete waste of money. Perhaps the salon owners should even give these people a discount in exchange of not advertising the fact of using the beauty services.

On a second thought, however, not many people spend their last dollar in the beauty establishments, so it seems like these salons do a useful service to the society. As well as many other things that seem like a waste of money, like glamping, for example. Certainly, the money (which actually represent limited resources available on the planet) could have been used on something useful -- like researching the secrets of eternal life or, at least, finding out how to control a thermonuclear reaction.

But of course, it isn't possible to just take the rich guy's money he has no use for (well, it is possible, but so far these methods have led to nowhere). Instead, the fancy salons, the glamorous camping, the diamond-covered cell phones, etc. work as tools for wealth redistribution. Resources move from under the fat cat's mattress into other people hands, improving the diversity of decisions on how to use the resources. At the very least, they will be used for educating the non-rich children, which decreases the probability of the sad future described in this book.

So I call for more exotic services, more gold-plated utensils, more excess, more expensive useless crap! Golden toilets may seem like a waste but they give the money a chance, so why shouldn't we give this chance to the money.

/Certainly better than a revolution. ;)

The mysterious invasion of the van people.

I have noticed it only a couple of months ago, but it probably had started somewhat earlier (but not much earlier because I am as perceptive as Sherlock H.).

Certainly, there was a couple of small RVs practically always parked at the same spot on a quiet street, but just a couple. Not 5 or more I see now being reparked every few days, plus 2 or 3 Starcraft-type vans with satellite dishes that live either on the street or spend the night at the Safeway parking lot. All quite used, but in working condition.

Weird, isn't it? I don't think it is an annual migration - I haven't seen them in the previous 5 years I live in this neighborhood. And probably not a convention either - they don't last for so long. Obviously, the housing proces don't matter for them, so they may be just enjoying the weather, but I suppose there are places with the same climate but cheaper restaurants and hotels (for an occasional shower). They all have Californian license plates, so it's not like they just stayed at the first spot they found after a cross-continent travel.

So what brings the van people here to San José? What are they up to? Are they waiting for something to happen? These are the questions I ask myself, but have no answer.

/must go now, there's an RV sale at the fairground.

The Simpsons as a reality show

Remember this episode?




Well, here's an actual note at a Hawaiian Walmart:



Interestingly, that place seems to have an aura of strandedness: I've waltzed in to get a thread and a few needles, smartly payed for them at the electronics department, thus avoiding the huge lines at regular check-outs, only to hit the wall with no exit within the Pharmacy department. Had to walk back and skip a few isles to get to the exit, which, of course, spoiled the overall hurricane-like shopping performance... But since I doubt there's anyone who watches all security cameras at once, this little blunder will stay secret.

Who is really behind the stem cells research opposition.

I think everyone should support this research. In fact, I think it is strange those who would benefit the most are not actively supporting it. Some examples:

• Motorcycle makers. I can see the slogan already: "Just get a really good helmet, the rest we'll fix™. Guaranteed*". Every motorcycle could come with a full body replacement insurance, wouldn't that be great? All other extreme sports and activities providers should join. Of course, the ability to get a replacement for practically any body part would remove that certain chic that the extreme sports enjoy now, as the probability of death would be way lower, but I'm sure that between chic and parachute sales any self-respecting corporation would choose the former. Any day.



• Departments of defense throughout the world. Training good soldiers is a long and expensive process, and I'm sure it would be quite a break-through if the same soldier could last virtually forever, getting new replacement organs. It'll be only the question of logistics: how to get the wounded off the field before irreversible brain damage. Recruitment would become much easier as well and draft avoidance would go down (where applicable).



• Churches. Currently opposing the research, they might soon realize it is in their interest to actually support it. Why? Because with the wide availability of body replacement technology and the consequential proliferation of extreme sports (and wider enlistment), most deaths would become sudden and unexpected -- and therefore more scary. Certainly, many would wish to have some assurance for what's to follow -- just in case.

So who can be possibly against it? Doctors? No, they will still be needed to oversee the treatments and to detect problems for which the treatments are required. Nurses? They'll still do the actual administering of treatments, guided by doctors. Then who?

Possibly, the makers of the wheelchairs and such. They get to loose most of their business, but I'd expect them already to invest into stem-cell-based treatments, so they'd just move into an adjacent category... Just like tobacco companies bought food companies when they started to feel the heat.

It would seem the only group is teachers. And babysitters. Because longer lives might mean less babies, hence less work for them. They must be lobbying the parents who, not thinking about the benefits, lobby in turn the government. Therefore, here's a simple solution: just offer some pension guarantees to teachers and babysitters and there shouldn't be any more opposition to this promising new research.

Rated C for Conspiracy

I've been listening to a radio ad of some crappy new movie ― not sure what its name was ― and generally let is pass right through the vacuum between my ears, but I did catch an end of a sentence: “...not a minute without the parents”, or something like that. I'm not sure what it was supposed to mean and even if got it right, but it anyway allowed me to discover another conspiracy. The conspiracy of movie ratings, which is vast enough to cover other media, like TV or computer games (the latter being an unfortunate side-effect, or perhaps a decoy).

See how more and more material becomes “inappropriate” for children? Like an occasional glimpse of a woman's breast might traumatize them for life? Or someone's ass kicked in a mildly brutal manner? Clearly, there are scenes and ideas that should be kept away from people under a certain age, but then again, if it isn't appropriate, then don't allow children to watch it at all. Instead, movies get a rating that does allow children to watch it but ― here's the trick ― only if a parent is with them, too. I think that is the purpose of it: instead of going alone, a child has to bring an adult with him. A very real adult who will have to a) pay for the full-price ticket and b) will consume an ungodly amount of popcorn, which isn't free, either.

Similar reason, I think, is behind the campaign for “children-safe” TV ― while it works indirectly in this case. Because after all the media storm about the “indecency” on TV, some parents are more likely to watch TV with their children, hence the more mature and profitable audience for the ads. A catch-22-type coincidence here is that people who are gullible enough to really believe in that “indecent-TV” story are perhaps especially likely to buy whatever the ads tell them. And I was wondering why o why do they show car ads during Yu-Gi-Oh!

As for the video games, I don't see an immediate benefit of overly restrictive ratings and attributing kids' behavioral problems to the games. So it is probably done to make people more comfortable to the whole idea of censorship or perhaps it has even started by itself, which would mean that enough people did in fact become comfortable enough. Either way, make sure you watch Nickelodeon, just in case the FCC may need to know about inappropriate material!

P.S. I find it especially amusing how the broadcast (i.e. the type you watch for free via a piece of a wire) TV is censored. Less is allowed there vs cable, presumably precisely because of the ability to catch a broadcast off a piece of a wire... like if the products of the public school system could think of that. The purpose must be that the children don't get a mental shock after seeing a little of something that fed most of them for months or even years, but at the same time they do allow absolutely terrifying horror movie ads to run. These ads scare me, and I have to ― I kid you not ― close my eyes while they are on.

Where does water go?

A friend of mine has recently suggested that at least some of the water shortage our civilization experiences may be caused by the fact that our bodies consist mostly of water and, as the population grows, more water gets trapped. Let's see how much water can get statically bonded -- not only in human bodies, but in other civilization-related containers.

Human bodies. With about half of the body weight being water (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water) and assuming the average person weight of 60kg (with Americans being averaged out with Vietnamese), our mortal shells hold 6*10^9*0.03=1.8*10^8 cubic meters of water in total.

Public Water Supply. If there is a 4cm pipe at least 10m long per each (of the, say, 2 billion) persons who have running water in their homes, then we'll have 2*10^9 * 10 * (2*10^-2)^2 * 3.141592 = ~0.24*10^8 m^3 of water. At least the same amount of water lurks in inter-house pipes, so we get 0.5*10^8 m^3 in total

Toilets. With 4 liters per tank and assuming one toilet per each person of those 2 billion (public/office restrooms may drive this figure even higher), we get 8*10^9*10^-3 =~ 0.1 * 10^8 m^3 [Hmm, not too much. I was expecting a tad more.]

Cattle. 1.3 billion heads (cattle-today.com/), 400kg each, assuming the same water content as humans, and assuming most of the population is a direct product of our civilization, 1.3*10^9*0.2=2.6*10^8 m^3.

Piggies About a billion, say 200kg each, 10^8 m^3 of water.

Pets Say, 200 million dogs, 10 liters each, on average, and same number of cats, 5 liters each: 300*10^6*0.01 = meager 0.03 * 10^8 (less than in toilet tanks!)

Agriculture 14 billion tonnes of "stuff". I assume this includes watermelons/tomatoes/oranges/etc. -- which consist mostly of water. But, being conservative let's assume it is still a half, so 7*10^9 = 70 * 10^8 (aha!)

Beverages Beer, ~120*10^6 m^3 per year, so, assuming there's always a 10-day supply in storage, 120*10^6 / 36 =~ 3 * 10^6. Juices and wine being included in Agriculture, let's suppose consumption is the same for carbonated non-alcoholic drinks (Coca/Pepsi-Colas, etc.) -- another 3*10^6. Milk -- 300*10^6 annual production, under the same assumption as for beer/sodas, 10*10^6 m^3 of static water. In total, about 0.2 * 10^8 m^3 of water is kept in beverages.

Cars [fetched the manual] About 7 liters of coolant + a liter or two for windshield washing. 6*10^8 cars, 0.06 * 10^8 m^3. meh

Other containers: Blood donation in the US are 15*10^6 of half-liter units annually, so it isn't that much static water. Ice rings or pools (especially the Olympic-sized ones) -- may be quite a bit of water, but they aren't many. What else... poultry? Well, doubtfully more than in pigs.

Lots of water is used in paper production, but I would assume not much of it ends up in paper. Paint and Perfume may be worth looking into, but I doubt there's more water in paint than in beverages. Potentially, a lot of water may be held in bodies of domestic cockroaches, miscellaneous agricultural pests, lab mice, etc., but doubtfully it will increase the final figure by more than twice.

In conclusion, the amount of water held by the civilization statically is about 10 cubic kilometers. Which could power the Amazon river for about a day!

On the other hand, lake Baikal holds 23.5 thousand cubic kilometers of fresh water (20% of world supply). Must. Grow. More. Pigs!

OLPC conspiracy

After taking a little time off, I'm back at revealing the world conspiracies.

I saw an interesting article recently, about "unexpected" use of the cheap laptop computers in Africa -- Nigeria in particular. Interestingly, Nigeria is also known as one of the centers of the Advance fee fraud, so it would seem that the noble cause of educating African children may have an undesired side-effect of raising some really good hackers. (I know I would have become one if I had such a wonderful machine when I was 10).

However, we should ask ourselves, is it such an undesired side-effect? Let's see what hackers and scammers do: they extract money from people, right? So a person who had his or her money taken will have to work again to replenish the lost resources. Besides, the said person is likely to think that it may be wise to spend the money right away, since it may be stolen and all the work would be in vain.

Combine that with the news of the growing "quit the rat race" movement and the picture becomes clear: less work means less money to spend and, therefore, less profits for the corporations. Solution? Take you savings away, that'll teach you how fragile your perceived "I-have-enough-money-for-my-basic-needs" state is. Work harder, buy more stuff! At least stuff is harder to steal and you have to replace it anyway because we don't make it to last fashion changes.

In the light of this, the corporate support for Open Source and "free" software becomes way less puzzling: even if the donated laptops don't have the necessary software, there should be a place to download the missing pieces from.

/off to buy an iPhone
//writes through Firefox

Dr. Evil's spam

Email spam is ubiquitous these days, and its 'superfluidity' may give it an additional application besides selling stuff to people and hijacking their data and/or machine time.

If you read any detective stories about international assassins, spies and whatnot - and these are the only type of detective stories worth reading - you've definitely noticed how convoluted are the schemes for contacting the guy who spends most of his time in hiding. Every third Saturday of the month come to Piazza del Popolo in Rome, holding 3 red roses and a copy of Sacramento Bee dated exactly 10 days earlier. Now the guy who needs to be contacted has to wander around the square, looking for someone with Sacramento Bee. Thankfully, international assassins have to have sharp eyes, so he will be able to read the issue date, but still... what if Sacramento Bee goes bankrupt?

Or consider the "moles" -- the guys who work quietly in the heart of the enemy's government for years and even decades, only passing the most valuable information or acting in the most critical moments.

How to communicate effectively with these people? Email would be nice, but a permanent email address can be monitored and again, what if you loose the access to it? Thankfully to the cloak-and-dagger people, they don't have to rely on a constant email address. Instead, what they can do is set up an email address -- at any free service, for example -- and just leave it at a few message boards. Then, their handlers call one of those companies who offer "mass mail services" and send the message out to their guy and to the whole world.

Sure, everyone will receive the secret message, but who's going to know if it is a secret message? Do you have a habit of counting spaces at the ends of the lines in Ci41is ads? :p

Fighting hypocrisy at its source.

Have you ever been wondering where hypocrisy comes from? Children are always honest up to a certain age, always speaking what's on their clean minds. Only when they grow up, they start to lie, pretend to care about things they don't, distort information to their benefit -- you know, what adults do.

Clearly, something teaches children that and, since lying is a very basic -- unfortunately -- human behavior, something very basic should be at its source. Something as basic as the language.

Think about it. Every time you ask someone, "How are you?", do you really care about the other person's business? Probably not, in most cases. The phrase has become a single meaningless token, just like "Hi" but, unlike "Hi", still retains a literary meaning. Which is not a problem for an adult acquiring a language, since this type of hypocritical constructions are present in most languages, so the grown up person just makes a mental note that "'How are you' is just how we say [...], literary meaning is not assumed".

Now, when a child learns his native language, he takes everything at its face value since he doesn't know any other languages for comparison. Therefore, when he sees people asking each other how they are, he first thinks to himself, "Wow, what an empathic world I'm living in!" But then he notices that, in most cases, people really don't mean that, thus receiving his first and most important lesson of hypocrisy.

Other aggravated lessons will come soon, but this experience with a very basic thing, a greeting -- the first thing people say to each other and already a lie -- must be the most important of them all. So if we could just get rid of the lies in the basic language constructions the perhaps our children will see that lying isn't a basic behavior, but rather a rare, reproached occurrence. And that should definitely make our world a little better.

Improving gas mileage using the free market.

Senate or House has recently passed an increased mileage standard: in 2020 cars will have to make at least 35 miles using a gallon of fuel -- like a non-hybrid Civic could do 20 years ago. Woo-hoo!

Certainly, automakers aren't happy. I suppose, if left alone they'd still make horse-driven carriages. Proven technology and all, the public would buy anything, as long as it is domestic, reliable, etc.

So it would seem the so called free market needs constant kicking and prodding in order to produce something that is actually good for general public. Or, as a pedantic reader would say, monopolies should be restricted - which is rather tough to do with car makers, telecoms, cell phone makers and pharmaceutical companies. In other words, if an industry that produces something more advanced than shovels or firewood, there would be just a few big companies, monopolies de facto. Interestingly, these are the very industries that affect peoples' lives the most. ;)

Neo-monarchy to the rescue! Instead of wasting time and taxpayers' money for discussing only marginally useful laws, our ideal monarch would instead parallelize the monopolies' with the public interest. Being true to his despotic, non-democratic self, he'd severely limit the freedom of the few individuals. As you might have guessed, he'd prohibit car makers high management to buy gasoline for their transportation. Instead, he'd give them 20 gallons per week, 5 extra for Labor Day weekend. I am fairly certain all the cars they make would soon be able to travel from Detroit to LA and back using half of those 20 gallons.

Free market wins, as usual!

Getting rid of the money, part 2.

So, after solving the pharmaceuticals problem, the wise monarch has his wrathful eyes on the cell phone makers. By nothing but assuming a weasely conspiracy can he explain the reason why different cell phones have non-matching power/USB cords. Really, all phones do have very similar buttons, with the same numbers and letters on them, and Answer button is green, Hang-Up button is red, so there are some standards which could cover the power and the data cords, too.

This conspiracy extends to other devices, not just cell phones, and even to the devices made by the same company. His Majesty's grand vizier has a camcorder and a still camera from Sony, and these devices have power cords incompatible with each other and neither of them can charge off USB. Clearly, it's more profitable this way: should you get, say, the camcorder charger compromised by a puppy, you won't be able to use neither of the million chargers you already have in your house, nor any of a billion mini-USB cables lying around will be of any help. And once your dear camcorder starts blinking a red LED and beeping pitifully, you'd run into the nearest electronics store to get a new charger, made by guess whom?

But nothing is impossible for the wise king: and again he would strike the offenders right into their board of directors, setting a limit on the percentage of the devices manufactured by their company that they can use, unit-wise (e.g. if a Samsung executive has 4 cell phones and 4 notebooks in his house, 8 devices total, only, say, 20% of them -- 2 -- can be Samsung-made). Plus, these highly-privileged persons would be stripped from one little privilege: they wouldn't be allowed to buy any chargers while holding their office, but would be only able to borrow them from other people -- including the directors of their competitors or even complete strangers on the street.

After being unable to charge their personal gadgets a couple of times, after begging strangers for a charger, they'd call a secret meeting and unify the power sockets across devices, thus entering a collusion that we, the public, can benefit from, for a change.

Again, the wise neo-monarch proves that the free market can benefit the public, no matter what commies say. Only very little regulation is needed, most people won't even notice it :)