Commercial Science

Commercials try so hard to make you believe in the crap they're selling. It's not enough that you buy the crap, you have to believe in it and swear by it and tell all your friends about it. You have to talk about it all the time and convert other people to it. You need to be happy to be sick just for the privilege of getting to use the cure.

To get this kind of loyalty, advertisers use science. Science is proveable, repeatable, and immutable. You can't argue with it. You can't go "Nuh Uh!" It's right there in front of you, there's no disputing it. Anyone who watches any version of "Star Trek" could tell you that. When someone says they need to reverse the polarity of the polaron emitters, the Captain always says "Give it a try". No one ever says "Idiot! Polarons won't work! We need to emit Isotrons in the 12 megawatt range!"

Science usually starts off simple. Somebody has an apple drop on his head or flie a kite into a thunderstorm, and a couple hundred years later we're flying to the moon. That's how it works, at least in the beginning. From the fqalling apple/electric kite stage, it goes into a laboratory where a guy in a white coat boils stuff in a pot and then writes in a notebook "On such-and-such date I boiled some crap in a pot and it did this." They do this a million times and then conclude that when you boil this particular crap it does whatever it does.

It does seem a long way from boiling crap in a pot to flying a man to the moon, but I could see how you could get there. I mean, you boil it and then maybe you find out that it turns into this other gunky stuff and the gunky stuff makes a good solid rocket fuel and then you make a rocket and then you're building cities on the moon.

Some folks think scientists can tell them anything, answer any question. People are drawn to science because they like things they can prove. This is what advertisers count on. That's why you always see little diagrams and simulations to show how stuff works. They use words like "breakthrough" and show a little cartoon of a nerve or a sinus cavity or something.

But this doesn't prove anything. All they're telling us is "This stuff works!" Maybe it does. But that stupid cartoon doesn't prove anything.

Another thing I hate is when these guys act like they have a "breakthrough!" when it's just something that was so obvious. Like back in the 70's they introduced a razor with two blades, and for the morons who couldn't figure out how or why two blades gives you a closer shave than one blade, they had a little cartoon showing a close up of the blades cutting a man's whiskers.

Or back in the 80's, network TV shows started broadcasting in stereo. Stereo. Radio had been broadcasting in stereo for 30 years, but they'd have us all believe that scientists and technicians had been laboring for just that long trying to figure out how to add a second audio track to a TV broadcast.

I'm all for selling dumb crap on TV, even though I don't buy any of it. It's what makes this country great...well, that, and the Constitution and all that. I'm also all in favor of scientists boiling crap in pots and flying kites and even making little cartoons about it. I just think the two things should be kept separate.

Losers

Adolph Hitler was a loser. I don't mean because he was a Nazi or because he led his country to ruin, or even that he literally lost the war. I mean when you think of a "loser" you think of someone maybe not very attractive, kind of dumpy, socially inept, a loner, a failure. That's what he was. He was a failed businessman and artist who'd spent time in jail, just this kind of freak out there on the fringes of society. If he'd died in 1930, no one would even remember his name.

We usually think of history being made by Golden Boys. The prominent, wealthy, attractive, educated people. Kings and emperors born to lead, or people who started off with all the advantages, like John F. Kennedy or George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt. History is full of people like this. But it's also full of maniacs and freaks who started off with the same advantages and yet wound up being Leopold and Loeb or Caligula or Ted Bundy.

And then there's losers. Like Lee Harvey Oswald. Failed at everything he ever tried. The U.S. military didn't want him, his wife didn't want him, he couldn't hold down a job. He couldn't even defect to Russia, even with secrets about the U-2 Spy Plane. Even the Russians didn't want him. And yet, now, everyone knows his name.

Abraham Lincoln was a loser. A big old ugly dirt farmer, lost two runs for the Senate, got the crap kicked out of him in the Army, had two failed business ventures.

People whine and complain about their lot in life, people try to get others to resent the rich folks, people use their upbringing as an excuse for all their shortcomings, but the truth is, you are what you make of yourself.

So quit bitching