Everybody has a purpose in life.

Some people’s purpose is to serve as a bad example for others.

Regardless of the language used, it is vitally important to keep in mind, and use properly as much as possible, the correct definition of the words you use. While it may currently be en vogue in some places to assign different definitions to certain words to make them “cooler”, it is also dangerous in the long term, unless folks remember the original meanings. Changing the definition of words quite simply changes the way in which they are meant to be used, and thus can adversely affect our understanding of what we read.

For example…

The word “gay” long ago meant happy, not homosexual. In this case, the change in meaning most likely came from the simple fact of the more expressive, extroverted, “perkier” personality traits exhibited by some homosexuals compared to their more “stuffed shirt” hetero sexual friends.

Also, go learn about the original wording of the New Testaments. The “virginity” of the mother of Jesus had a slightly different meaning then today’s version.

In the realm of politics, the USA is currently being torn apart by the misuse and intentional “mis-defining” of words. However, there are two which I see as the “umbrella words” for those poor definitions. Those words are:

• Conservative
• Liberal

Currently, they are misused to mean

• Conservative – mean, anti-gay, pro-Christian, money-hungry, old farts
• Liberal – tree-hugging, no morals, Godless, Labor-union, hippies

When the reality is that these words actually mean:

• Conservative – disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
• Liberal – favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

While some may argue that the correct definition leads directly toward the currently used ones, they are only right to a minor extent. The error can be illustrated in a simple truthful fashion like this:

A “liberal” in the true sense, sees a system as flawed and wants to change it. Those who’ve used the system a long time and like it are “conservative” about this issue, wanting to keep things as they are.

However, once those “liberals” succeed in making the changes they wanted, and enjoying the new system, eventually, along comes another generation who wish to make changes. Now those former “liberals” are suddenly “conservative” about their system, not wanting any changes.

And therein lie a hint toward possibly fixing certain cultural divides.

I always have lots of ideas. New products. New movie scripts. Etc. However, I just never write them down or do anything with them.

Well, hopefully I can reduce the 1st problem a bit. So I’ll place some of my ideas out here for public viewing.

My only request: If you take any of my ideas and expand upon them to the point of profiting, I do expect some monetary reimbursement. Just consider this my “poor man’s patent/copyright.”

OK, on to the ideas:

To launch space craft cheaper:
To reduce rocket fuel usage, you want to get the space craft as far into the upper atmosphere as possible. To maximize this idea, consider picturing the atmosphere as water. Create a “bubble” that’s lighter than lower-level air while carrying the ship. (Picture a blown-up balloon w/ a toy plane in it pushed to the bottom of a pool.)

When the “bubble” reaches “floating height” it opens. The escaping “gas” could also be used to help give the ship initial push. While the ship finishes it’s space-ward journey, the deflating “bubble” heads to Earth for another use.
(Typical gases won’t work for this. It will require creating some specific substance that we won’t mind losing into the outer atmosphere.)

A better paper scanner:
You see the paper scanners that are meant to read the receipt, business card, etc. and store the information for you on your computer.

Connect those scanners to a paper shredder, so that as it gets scanned, it moves right into your shredder.

Saves a trip to the trash can, and makes it more likely the paper gets recycled.

Improved heating/cooling:
This is an overall idea that I can see working in many cases, but I’ll illustrate it w/ a single example. We’ll use a hotel, but any big 24/7 business would work fine. In fact, the bigger, the better.

As the air conditioner pulls heat from the air flowing through it, why not point that excess heat over to the water heaters.

One product to remove heat. Another to add it. Seems like a logical connection.

Retrieving lost energy:
Many metal foundries, manufacturing plants, etc. have massively heated sections where the excess heated air escape through chimneys. This is required to help keep workers from getting cooked.

Why not place wind turbines in the chimneys to create electricity from the escaping air?

Even if it’s only enough to power the phones, it’s free electricity.

That’s a few ideas for now. More later.

Part of the problem is that most of these arguments are philosophical and not really dealing with the real-life uses of these systems. Or if they do touch on the real-life aspects, it is only to point toward some example of why the other side is wrong.

“The fall of the USSR proves Communism is wrong.”
“No, the failure of Enron, etc. prove Capitalism only brings disaster.”

So which is right? Well ironically, there’s one major part of each system that is always hinted at, yet never used as a basis for making a decision.

That part is simply: “What is the natural ‘reset’ action when corruption becomes too big.”

As I said, proponents of both sides like to point out the failures of the opposing system, yet try to explain away the failures of their own. (Or if not, then at least down-play them) When the Reality is that all man-made systems are subject to corruption and failures.

So, if we can assume that failures will occur regardless of which system (or combination thereof) we use, let’s examine what those failures consist of, and more importantly, how those failures are most often repaired.

Capitalism

While there’s many permutations of it, the major point of Capitalism is that the power rests mostly upon the business owners and managers. And where power lie, corruption tries to breed. So in a Capitalistic system, the failures will occur mostly because of the business owners. (I’m unaware of any major business failing due to unscrupulous actions taken by the janitor.) These failures occur because the owners pay more attention to how much money is made, and not on how it’s made. When the amount is more important than the how, prepare for corruption and theft.

In short, Capitalism fails mostly because of greed coupled with poor decisions.

These failures can take various forms, such as:

• Products made (and/or services performed) with lower quality materials than required
• Deceiving customers/suppliers about specific details of a transaction
• Misappropriating funds (I.E. taking money meant for employee health care and spending it on personal luxuries, while insisting the health care is covered)
• Etc.

So what most often occurs during the biggest failures?

• Customers left holding useless or even dangerous products
• Customers losing money
• Suppliers not paid for products/services rendered
• Employees losing their jobs
• Interconnected industries endangered
• Etc.

What’s the usual effect of these failures?

• Customers forced to find new businesses to cover what products/services were lost
• Ex-employees forced to find work elsewhere
• If caught/convicted, the dishonest criminals are usually forced to pay back what they can and also serve some punishment, like jail time
• Similar businesses and those in the same industry learn of the failures, and in attempt to ensure their own survival, refrain from those actions which caused the problem
• More honest businesses take this opportunity to woo new potential customers
• The worst cases may require government to assist the victims where needed
• Etc.

While the rare occasional massive failure of a large business (Enron, the Bernie Madoff investment scandal, etc.) can hurt millions of people, the effects of these are an almost natural evening out, with usually very little stoppage of products/services. There are always honest people willing and able to work hard to serve the customers that were hurt in these crimes.

In all cases of business failure, there are other business that take up the slack left by a massive collapse. Even if a city’s power company were to suddenly stop for any reason, the small generator manufactures/distributors rush in to fill the void. (unless outside forces, such as government mandates forbid them) Also other power companies large and small would jostle for a chance to supply those new customers.

While it’s true that the guilty are not always punished (or not punished bad enough), in a decent Capitalistic system, only a fool would allow them a place of power again.

In short, the failures of a capitalistic system are usually dealt with using methods that, while causing hardship, result in relatively little loss of life.

Communism

In Communism, the source of power rests mostly within the Government (which we must never forget is simply a collection of fallible and corruptible humans) Ironically, while Communistic ideals are against the main issues of capitalism, Communism requires it in order to survive. Government doesn’t actually make anything. They wait for the governed people to do the work, and then those who control government come in and decide how they want to distribute the results of that labor. It is the power of distribution (as well as personal gain) that sows the seeds of corruption in government.

In short, Communism fails mostly because of greed coupled with poor decisions.

These failures can take various forms, such as:

• Bribery, or taking money in exchange for illicit favors
• Election fraud or even downright power grabs. Whatever it takes to stay in control of the government
• In various ways, distributing the wealth not to those who most need it, but those who help keep them in power
• Etc.

So what most often occurs during the biggest failures?

• Companies/Industries forced to give up too much in order to continue, causing unemployment
• Assassination of specific people that can endanger the political control
• Mass murder of unhappy, rioting people
• Possible war with other countries to either increase or keep from losing power
• Etc.

What’s the usual effect of these failures?

• Unrest among the governed people who are adversely affected by government actions
• Riots
• The dishonest political leaders are often exiled and even killed
• The worst cases may require other governments to assist, even if that means going to war to remove the corrupt leader(s)
• Etc.

In short, when communism, or more specifically government fail, it almost always leads to loss of lives.

And therein lie the most important factors that I can see. Even if we skip the issue of personal property that these two systems disagree with, when we view history one thing is abundantly clear. When businesses fails, it usually happens fairly quickly and the loss of life is minimal. Whereas when government is in the process of failure, it can take years and the death toll can become extensive.

In the end you need both business and government to hold certain aspects of power. However, if I am forced to choose between one or the other as the major holder of power, then I will choose that which brings the least amount of death and bloodshed.

This is a fairly old subject, however, I was thinking of it the other day and decided to discuss it. The situation is this: Wynn Resorts instituted a controversial tip pool program. All the tips from each shift are pooled and a percentage of it are given to the supervisors.

The tip pool was declared legal according to the Nevada State Labor Commissioner. (Local news article giving details here.) However, what’s legal and what’s right aren’t always the same, so that brings up the question: Who do the tips really belong too?

In the model Wynn is working under, they are essentially saying that the business claim ownership over those funds and can therefore do as they please with them. I believe this is incorrect. That begs the question if it’s business funds that they can control the distribution over, why don’t companies report them and pay taxes on them? Oh right, because it’s not business income, it’s employee income.

I can also illustrate the problem just like this:

This is as clear as I can possibly make it.

Normal income comes from the customer, is given to the business, who then gives a portion of it to the employees in the form of wages (and benefits, but let’s not confuse the issue)

Tips/Gratuities, however, are given by the customer directly to the employee. They are highly variable, and often based on the direct actions of that specific employee. A specific customer is giving a specific amount to a specific person because of what they did and how good they did it. It’s meant to be a bonus. The customer does not mean for the tip to go to someone else, either in part or whole.

I believe this is quite simply a power grab, trying to exert control over monies that the business has no control over.

This is a highly dangerous precedent and one that should be reversed as soon as possible. The next step is confiscating all tips and distributing them “evenly” among all employees, then deciding to use some to pay for bonuses/medical benefits, etc., then paying for other stuff like board member or CEO bonuses. It’s not long before tips are taken from the employees they’re meant to go toward and used for other things. And as I said, what company wouldn’t love to have funds they don’t report or pay taxes on?

To make it even more clear: Leave my tips alone. They don’t belong to you, they’re mine.

With businesses starting seasonal sales earlier and earlier, I’m just waiting for the 5th of July Christmas sale.

The answer is:

The Future is written. We are simply illiterate.

Everything you need to understand is within that simple statement. However, I’ll explain further.

To an extent, we already do predict the future.

• Will the sun rise tomorrow?
• When you pull ingredients from the pantry/fridge, do you already know the meal you’ll make?
• When you enter a car, do you know the destination you’ll reach? Do you know when?

These and countless other examples show us that we already can and do predict the future in many ways. In fact our entire human civilization is based on being able to predict the short-term future.

• Commerce
• War
• Friendship

All of these and much more of our lives are only possible by being fairly sure of what will come soon.

Cause and Effect.

Again, so simple, yet so powerful.

But what happens when certain details of the cause are unknown? Then the effect is equally unknown.

• If you were unaware of damage in your stove reaching the breaking point and causing it to stop working, then your prediction of what your meal will be suddenly becomes wrong.
• If you were unaware of the drunk driver you were going to collide with, then you will reach a different destination than you predicted.
• If some tragedy stopped the Earth’s rotation, or blotted the sun, then your prediction of another sunrise becomes inaccurate.

All these examples and more are not “fate” or some “unknowable future”. They are simply the effects of causes you were unaware of.

Just as a child watching Mother work in the kitchen. The child doesn’t have the knowledge to be able to predict what the results of her actions will be, but the mother can predict the near-term future with ease, having made this meal many times before. She’s well aware of the usual events of cause & effect in this case. This future, she can read.

Pretend you are watching a recorded sports event. You are unaware of who will win, even though the event has already occurred. In essence, the “future” in this case, literally is written. In truth you are actually trying to predict the past, but the truth is you are trying to predict the future ending of a recording you are watching, not the game itself. They simply happen to be exactly the same.

And so the truth is the same for long-term predictions. They simply get harder in direct relation to the distance in the future.

The further out in the distance you are trying to predict, the more difficult the prediction.

This is true for a very simple reason: increasing quantities of cause and effect actions. And the slightest lack of knowledge of a single event can invalidate the prediction. But the better we are at understanding specific cause and effect, the better we become at predicting the future. However, the little trick is this: We’ll never have enough knowledge to be able to completely predict everything.

The Future is written. We are simply illiterate.

The concepts of age, growing old, etc. can be summed up in two simple words:

Cumulative damage

To help explain, I’ve made two symbols for this article.

= Understand
= NOT understand

Pretty simple, yeah? Do you or do you what these mean?

And with this, we hint at the simple, yet hard to grasp fundamental of communication:

AGREEMENT

That’s it. That’s the key. All in one simple word. We (meaning you and I) have agreed that means “understand” and means the opposite. We could have assigned any meaning we wished to those symbols (which I quickly made just prior to writing this article) but those are the ones I assigned. And you agreed to it, so there we are.

I know some of you still so I’ll explain more.

Any language: English, Spanish, Japanese, etc. is learned by understanding what each word and nuance means. As babies, we have no frame of reference to hang these words onto, so we learn slowly, over years, as experiences are gone through again and again. Eventually, we learn that thing is a person, and that it’s called Mom. and we learn what a chair or food is.

But in different places, a chair is called, stuhl, silla, židle, 椅子, and more. Even in the same language, we could call it a chair, stool, bench, recliner, rocker, sling and more, depending on the specific type of chair, or what “nuance” or local dialect we use. And often different languages affect each other. The similarity between stuhl & stool is not a coincidence in this case. One word lead to the other. Many languages had a common “source” language, which helps explain why they’re often similar. English, Italian, German, Spanish, etc. were all derived from a “mother language” and have been influencing each other for many generations. Chinese, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian and other languages are (were) more pictograph oriented, while the Latin inspired ones are based more on letter combinations. Both ways work fine as a language.

So once we start assigning words to items (nouns) and determined a few actions (verbs) we can start to combine those. And then we can create “decorative” language, making adjectives and adverbs to describe in better detail.

The phrases “take a seat”, “have a chair” and “plant yourself” all mean the same thing as long as you what they mean. Or perhaps you don’t speak English, in which case they’re simply random sounds strung together that you .

Consider this: You could translate this article into a whole different language that you , but if these images I’ve added are still here, your eyes would find them and them, even if you anything else on the page.

So as we grow, and our experiences increase, we can add more and more words to more things, actions, etc. BUT we have to use the words that are taught to us by others.

What does San mean? In English, not much, but in Japanese, it usually means three, trey, drei or something else depending on your native language.

See how words you may never have known before you are know learning their meaning? They are assigned to things you . And with enough repetition, you would come to recognize them and use them easier and easier. Now you’re learning a different language.

And that’s what a language is: Agreed on symbols & syntax

And because we sometimes don’t agree 100%, you have “local versions” or dialects. Go to different parts of China or America, and you’ll find that even if they seem to use the same wording, the speech patterns are sometimes surprisingly different.

So, what about situations that have never occurred before? Where came the first words for stars, cars, computers, etc.?

If you follow word etymology, you’ll find that most often, the source of new words comes from a few places:

Most often we use words that are close or similar to the situation. For example, they were called the “horseless carriage”. We combined the words “autos” and “mobile” which was meant to imply “self moving”. At some point after a few other changes, we simply called them cars.

Other times, we simply create a nonsense sound or word, but we try to use something that, to our ear, sounds like it conveys what we’re trying to tell others. This is often what occurs with new technology, or processes for example. The company owner, program maker, or whoever has to convey some new item, activity, whatever and has to assign a name to it for others to use. Though this happens a bit less than the prior method.

The third case is when we (often mistakenly at first) use a specific product to describe a broad category. For example, we hand someone a kleenex when we mean tissue. We google something, meaning search the internet for information about it. Altering pictures on a computer is called photoshopping it. These words may well live on in our English language long after these products are gone.

And the issue of language and communication goes far beyond a simple English lesson. The symbols on your computer that allowed to to navigate here. The icons that help you turn on and use your browser. You agree with the software makers that the icon you clicked opened up your Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, or whatever browser you used. The icons, arrows, symbols, etc. The search site. The fact that we all agree that underlined words means a link. You read all these non-English (or non-native) symbols in order to reach this article. Something you could never have done had you not agreed to the meaning of certain symbols. Consider carefully how many symbols you “read” at work, in stores, during your travels, at home, on the computer, etc. Without learning and agreement, those symbols mean nothing at all.

Now taking all this into consideration, I want you to think carefully about this: What happens when we do not fully agree on the definition of words like freedom? What happens when we think we are working with the same definition but we aren’t?

So now do you better the issue of language and communication or do you still ?

EDIT:
Only an hour after I made this article, I ended up watching a TED video titled Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong. Watch the first 1:37 of it and reflect on this article. Then watch the rest of it and reflect on my first rule of understanding.

For example, there are many conspiracy theories about who killed JFK. The lists include the FBI, Cuba (on Castro’s orders), Russia, etc. Yes he was killed, and Lee Harvey Oswald is implicated in the action, but depending which story you hear, he was either a patsy, a decoy, or under orders via whichever specific organization the story calls for.

There’s conspiracies about the Pearl Harbor attack, secret organizations (which everyone seems to know about), connections with space aliens, secret plots from almost every organization, political group, business, actor/actress, alive or dead, etc., etc., etc. The only real connecting factor is that they are almost all fanciful and wrong.

Skipping the details, the question I want to discuss is: How do these types of stories get started to begin with?

In other words, how does someone learn about event X, and go from the “typical” explanation into making a wild sounding story? Not that the the “typical” explanation is always right either, but conspiracies, almost by definition contradict themselves. For example, if all the JFK assassination conspiracies were all believed, then he was killed by no less than 7 competing groups, and Oswald was somehow both a trigger man, and not involved at all.

The truth is, there are actually multiple reasons for these stories to come about.

I can’t believe it
This is often a big catalyst. What occurs is so personally disturbing, that the person insists on proving either it didn’t really happen (Elvis didn’t die), or that it happened due to some long involved super secret government plan that’s worthy of such a god-like figure.

The inability to accept what occurred leads to latching on some reported piece of detail and using that to prove the occurrence was impossible. They fail to admit that perhaps the news reported it wrong, or they simply didn’t correctly understand the truth/science behind said detail.

Confusing accident for intent
This is a big source of the problem, and often related to the previous issue. It is easy to go back to reports, sound clips, videos, actions, etc. and assign premeditation to them, when in fact those actions were done just like most actions are: With very little forethought toward the future implications.

It is sometimes safer to assume there is a long-term master plan involved, instead of something as simple as “he just wanted to impress a girl”. (Consider Hinckley’s attempt to kill Reagan.)

I don’t trust the media
I’ll be the first to admit the news is often wrong for many reasons. And yes, sometimes it’s either intentional on their end, or they are given false information and failed to learn the truth.

However, whenever a big story occurs, (JFK Killed, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc.) there are always those who simply assume the news is lying and feel compelled to prove it. They claim they are seeking truth, but instead they make the common problem of searching for details to prove a preconceived answer. And anything that threatens that preconception is proof of the “enemy” trying to cover the truth.

It’s in my best interest
I’m going to combine two separate sources of conspiracies since they can be described by a single motive.

Quite simply, sometimes a person makes a conspiracy theory against someone/something simply because either:

• They think they can make money on it.
• They want to hurt those they accuse.

Sometimes, the reason for these things is just that simple. When you make money by attacking an organization or person(s), or when you simply hate them, it’s easy to start assigning fantastic evil intentions to them.

Hey look over there
In rare cases, the source of the theory comes from the target themselves. This is often done in order to intentionally confuse the issue, or shift attention away from sensitive details.

For example, long ago there were massive stories about the powers of the mythical ninja warriors. The ninjas themselves may not have started those stories initially, but they quickly understood their power to help their cause, and either helped spread the rumors, or made new, bigger ones. Which leads to the next source:

To exaggerate is human
Let’s face it, humans love things to be big and grand. Often when telling stories, the little details get bigger and bigger, until soon you have some massive story about how the 26 pound fish you caught 10 years ago was instrumental in saving the world. (But you’re sworn to secrecy and shouldn’t tell anyone, so keep it a secret, ok?)

Now some will notice that I allude to a few things beyond the “typical” conspiracy theory here. That’s because they all come from the same causes. Explanations, exaggerated stories, etc. all often have the same source. In short, it’s hard to tell the difference between a conspiracy theory and simply an explanation that’s wrong.

And to make things even confusing? Sometimes, the fantastic story someone gives explaining something is actually the truth.