Christmas and the iThing

We interrupt this blog to bring you an important breaking story.

ithing

In a surprise marketing move, at least 3 gigantic electronics companies have introduced the same new consumer product — just in time for Christmas.  The Incredibly Useless Thing was introduced simultaneously at retail outlets around the world today.  The product sold out within hours.  Immediately dubbed the iThing by every unimaginative journalist in the universe, the device has sent computer geeks everywhere scurrying back to their mothers’ basements to try it out.  According to industry spokesperson, Dakota Nebraska, the iThing comes with twice as many mega-pixels and enough speed and memory to launch the Mars Rover from your kitchen.

“We’re calling the iThing the next generation of useless electronic device.” Nebraska said. “The iThing is totally wireless, you can recharge it with the steam off your pee and battery life, with continuous use, is approximately 12 minutes.”  Nebraska Dakota went on to say, “There are already 80 million Apps available for the iThing, and even though they all fundamentally do the same thing, the iThing does come pre-programmed with some awesome coloured lights that go off and on and a variety of unusual sounds.”

The iThing uses the new Inutile Operating System, which is no different from all the other operating systems on the planet except it’s not compatible with any of the electronic crap you already own — including your toaster.  It’s unnecessarily complicated, and the Interactive Help Menu is no help whatsoever.  However, all three gigantic electronic companies are offering 24/7 tech support which is exclusively accessible from the iThing itself.  In other words, say your prayers, cuz the coyote’s got a better chance of catching the road runner than you have of ever figuring this thing out!

In a candid, off the record, interview, one techno-drone said,  “We’ve changed all the names and placement of every function on the menu — just to screw with ya.  We’ve added a Tool Bar that doesn’t do anything, and if you press “Back Slash, Gallery, Back Slash, Cap Lock,” Facebook automatically enrolls all your friends in eHarmony.  And we’ve done a bunch of other stuff, too, but why should I tell you?  You thought you were so cool in high school — with your cars and your cheerleaders.  Well, who’s laughin’ now, Braaadley?  Who’s laughin’ now?”

Initially, the iThing will be offered in two models: the cheap one you see advertised (which is under- powered and worthless) and the outrageously expensive one (which the pirates who made the device know you are going to have to buy eventually, anyway.)  However, some electronic companies are taking a bold, new retail approach.  “We don’t care about the iThing itself,” they say. “It’s free.  We’ll give you the damn thing for nothing, as long as you sign a 5-year contract of penal servitude so we can charge you for every nanosecond it operates — from the minute you turn it on.”

There have already been protests about the predatory pricing of the iThing.  A fake YouTube commercial, showing the iThing exploding, has already been emailed to everyone on the planet, and a Facebook group called “iThing Sucks” has attracted several million members.  Retailers have responded to the criticism by saying, “Big deal! A bunch of kids and old people have clicked a button on Facebook.  So what?  We’re sold out already, anyway.”

Dakota Nebraska, spokesperson for the three gigantic electronic companies, also responded by saying, “There has been some criticism, but the retail numbers speak for themselves.  This is not a manufactured shortage.  Our customers are saying they want the iThing.  Look at the unholy prices people are getting, reselling it on eBay!  But we’re all about families here at Big Electronics, and we want parents and grandparents to have something for their loved ones during the Holidays, so we’re offering an opportunity to pre-purchase the next shipment of iThings.  Your purchase comes with a numbered gift card which you can use to track your iThing through the entire manufacturing and distribution process.”  However, Nebraska Dakota also admitted that there was already a new and improved model, the iThing 2.0, in production — with tons more memory, better resolution, and a cheaper price tag — which should be in retail outlets on April 1st, 2017.

We now return you to WD’s regular blog.

 

The Two Cow Theory Of Economics

cows-5Apparently, the Two Cow Theory Of Economics has been running around Cyperspace for years.  Who knew?  I just found it, which shows I’m so far out of the loop I think it’s square.  Anyway, I don’t normally post stuff that isn’t mine on my blog — especially when I can’t give the author credit — but this is so hilarious I’ve made an exception.  Plus, I’ve added a few WDisms, so I don’t feel too guilty.  Anyway, The Two Cow Theory of Economics

Communism — You have two cows.  The state takes both of them and gives you some milk.

Socialism — You have two cows.  The state takes both of them, gives one back and gives one to your neighbour who, like you, had two cows until the state took both of them gave one back and gave the other one to his neighbour — who, like you, had two cows until the state ….

Fascism — You have two cows.  The state takes both of them and sells you some milk.

Nazism — You have two cows.  The state takes both of them for war production and shoots you for withholding cows.

Bureaucratism — You have two cows.  The state takes both of them, shoots one, milks the other and then throws the milk away.

Capitalism — You have two cows.  You sell one cow and buy a bull.  Your herd grows.  You start selling milk.  You buy more cows.  You build a dairy.  You sell more milk.  You buy more cows.  You spend so much time with cows and milk your wife divorces you, takes the kids and moves in with a vegetarian.  You end up with a trophy wife who’s in it for the money, an ulcer the size of Boston and a therapist who tells you, “You were happier when you only had two cows.”

Venture Capitalism — You have two cows.  You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank.  You execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so you can get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.  The milk rights of the six cows are transferred (via an intermediary) to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by a majority shareholder (you) who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your publicly-listed company.  Your annual report says the company now owns eight cows with an option to buy one more.

A French Corporation — You have two cows.  The state pays you twice as much as the milk is worth.  You go on strike, organize a riot and block the roads — because you want three cows.

An Italian Corporation — You have two cows.  You don’t know where they are.  You decide to have lunch.

A Swiss Corporation — You have 5,000 cows.  None of them belongs to you.  You charge the real owners megabucks to hide their cows for them.

An American Corporation — You have two cows.  You sell both of them to buy a 4-wheel drive, Japanese-made pickup truck.  You get totally pissed because you have to buy all your milk from a foreign country.  You hire an Agricultural Consultant to figure out why there are no jobs in the dairy industry.

An Indian Corporation — You are the reincarnation of a cow.

An Irish Corporation — You have two cows.  One of them is a horse.  The EU lends you enough money to buy another cow.  You bet it on the horse.

A George Orwell Corporation — You have two humans.

An Australian Corporation — You have two cows.  Business looks good, so you close the office for a month or two and backpack through Europe.

A Dutch Corporation — You have two cows.  However, you’re not allowed to make cheese or sell your milk because the EU doesn’t like the look of your barn.

An Iraqi Corporation — Everybody thinks you have a lot of cows.  You tell them that you don’t have any cows.  Nobody believes you and they bomb the crap out of you.  You still don’t have any cows.

A Cuban Corporation — Cows?

A British Corporation — You have two cows.  Unfortunately, half your cows are continually voting to leave the herd.

A Greek Corporation — French and German banks loan you two cows.  You eat them.  The banks call to collect the milk you promised, but you don’t have any so you call the IMF.  The IMF loans you two cows.  You eat them.  Everybody wants either the milk you promised or their cows back.  You don’t answer the telephone ’cause you’re at a wedding.

A North Korean Corporation — The Glorious Leader has all the cows.  He invented them.

And my very favourite:

A Chinese Corporation — You have two cows.  You have 300 people milking them.  You claim China has no unemployment and 100% bovine productivity.  You arrest all the journalists who live close to the farm.

John Glenn And The Big Idea (2016)

john-glennJohn Glenn died yesterday.  For my generation, he was one of the good guys.  He exemplified a lot of what we’ve forgotten about the 60s.  I wrote this in 2012 on the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s space flight.  It is still relevant today.  (I’ve edited it for brevity.)

 

Fifty years ago today, we took a guy from Ohio, sat him on top of 100,000 kilos of high octane fuel, lit the match and shot him straight out of our oxygen-rich atmosphere into the void of space.  And the only reason we did it is because we could.  We had the technology to throw man and machine off our planet entirely — so we did.  John Glenn didn’t have to put his polyester suit and plastic helmet on that morning and climb into Friendship 7.  He wasn’t an essential component of the mission.  In fact, he was actually considered extra weight by Von Braun’s aeronautical engineers.  He was, as Chuck Yeager called him, “spam in a can.”  Nor was he the ground-breaking first person in space: Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin beat him there by ten months.  He wasn’t even the first American: Alan Shepard and “Gus” Grissom got there first.  However, John Glenn is the one we remember because he was part of the Big Idea.

The Big Idea is that magical phenom that galvanizes a people and motivates them to reach for the stars – in this case, literally.  It grabs our imagination and brings our best qualities forward to achieve what might even seem to be impossible.  It’s a vision of a better future.  It ignites the human spirit.  It can be as simple as The March of Dimes to end polio or as large as the Interstate Highway system.  But the one common denominator of the Big Idea is people believe.

Six months after John Glenn orbited the earth and returned home safely, President John Kennedy stepped up to the podium at Rice University in Houston, Texas and told America what the Big Idea was.  He said:

“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet.  Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain?  Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?  Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”

Kennedy could have held a Washington, DC press conference and mambled on about committing billions of dollars to rocketry, computer technology, material fabrication and the exploration of space, but he didn`t.  He went to a university where his future technicians would come from and said, “Hey! What are you doin’ after graduation?  Wanna go to the moon?”  He told those bright-eyed kids that they could be the first generation to defy the laws of gravity set down by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century.  He told them they could slip the surly bonds of earth and follow Copernicus and Galileo into history.  He turned their faces to the shiny thing in the sky that has fascinated humans since the beginning of time and told them they can go there.  And he told them their studies, their work, their very lives had a purpose, a meaning, a fulfillment.  He gave them the Big Idea that they could do something larger than themselves.  They could make a contribution, however small, to the continuity of civilization. He gave them a tangible target and said go get it.

And the Big Idea caught fire.  For seven years those kids and others worked long hours, suffered setbacks, had triumphs, dug in hard and gave their creativity and time to every problem and their enthusiasm and energy to every solution.  They built one of the most complex systems in history, and in July, 1969, they took another guy from Ohio and put him on the Moon.  And they walked away proud of their accomplishment in a world that was better off because of what they’d done.

Fifty years ago today, John Glenn made a giant leap into space.  He did it because somebody had to.  He was one small step on the stairway to the stars, a single part of the Big Idea that said “We can do this.”

Half a century later, even though we can live in space now and send our machines to Mars and the outer reaches of our solar system, we still have staircases in our world.  They lead to hungry places, places without light, places where people suffer needlessly in a world of plenty.  Sometimes, it looks as though these are insurmountable problems that will plague humanity for all time.  They aren’t.  There are still Big Ideas in the world; we’ve just forgotten where to look for them.