The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Viagra Effect Hits Brazilian Social Security System

2009-08-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

A recent article highlights the Unintended Consequence (or Consequences) of Viagra on the Social Security System and pensions down in Brazil.

You can read the entire story from the AFP Newswire HERE.

Apparently, with the average life expectancy of women generally acknowledged to be longer than that of men, the combination of dirty old men and Viagra - probably coupled with greedy gold diggers who want to rise out of poverty in Brazil - has pushed the pension cycle from 15 years for widows to well over 35 years for those surviving younger widows. These horny older guys are marrying much younger wives in their 20's and 30's and when they kick the bucket, their pensions naturally go to their "wives." Of course, that also means that they're then able to collect their own pensions by that time. A whole new form of social welfare: Marry an old guy for his pension when he dies and collect it until you're ready to collect yours.

Waterboarding: Who Knew?

2009-05-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

In their efforts to discredit the Bush Administration on the issue of torture and waterboarding, Democrats thought that they would selectively release CIA memos that inferred authorization all the way to the top. In so doing, Dems also were hoping to rein in the CIA. Of course, this all came back to bite them in the ass. The CIA - along with top Bush people including VP Dick Cheney - have all come forward to request that a broader group of documents be released in order to provide context as well as to show the number of people who actually knew about it.

People who live in glass houses...

Best summary of the story so far: From Jed Babbin, editor with Human Events.

And check out this debriefing sheet released by the CIA:

Amen to Milton Friedman

2009-03-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

As shown on the Phil Donahue Show in 1979!

And he shuts down a young idealist college student:

HONDA: Failure

2009-01-25T10:18:00.000-08:00

You're Not So Special

2009-01-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

Wow! At last someone is bringing out some great, balanced parenting advice! The folks over at JuiceBoxJungle are producing some common sense ideas and videos on balanced parenting. I've long been against the commonly held notion that you have to praise and reward every little thing a kid does just to make them feel good for a moment while not doling out appropriate punishment when they've done something bad. Or rewarding real accomplishments. All you have to do these days is look around at some of the younger generation around us to see the Unintended Consequences.

Clueless ditzes cutting everyone off on the road without a hint of remorse or even any appreciation of what it is they've done - all while driving down the road putting on makeup and texting while they're driving. Idiots arguing with you over trivial points of view that would even make sense to a 6-year old. And my most common retort has always been, "Just because your Mommy told you how smart you were doesn't mean it's true!" (And my all-time favorite: "Just because your Daddy called you Son doesn't mean you're bright!")

Unfortunately, it's not a joke. (One of my favorite comedies of recent times is Idiocracy. My girlfriend hates it but I love the prophetic message.)

A lot of parents today seem to have been brought up praised to death and enabled to believe they can do anything they want. Anything. All without any thought of how it might affect anyone else or even what the consequences might be. And now these people have children. OMFG! Heaven help us!

We've watered our society down to new lows after decades of praising slow kids at the expense of smart kids and now we're seeing the results of those actions. In some ways, the old Soviet Socialist way of testing kids early in school to determine their place in life made some sense. "Young Comrade - your tests tell us you're best suited to be a garbage collector. So that's how we're going to educate you." Let's face it - not every kid can grow up to be a rocket scientist. While we sure don't want to lose that one little Einstein coming up through the system, imagine a kid with an average IQ constantly being groomed as the smartest kid in the world. And of course, his teachers in the school system won't tell him either because they don't want to look bad. But then the kid grows up with low self-esteem and goes postal one day and no one knows why... So we've built a system with little praise for real smarts and advancement while dumbing it all down for the lowest common denominator just to make sure little Johnny never feels stupid. Small wonder a lot of our kids can't read or spell or even make change at McDonalds!

That said, in many ways, some things haven't changed much over the years. It wasn't cool to be smart when I went to school either. You couldn't be too smart or you couldn't hang out with the cool kids. It was a whole, new world when the tech revolution finally happened in the 80's!

Anyway, you get my point. With that, here's an aptly titled 4-minute video from the good folks at JuiceBoxJungle:

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Global Warming Officially Re-named Global Climate Change

2009-01-09T14:42:00.000-08:00

All I actually started out to do this afternoon was to post a 3-minute video someone posted on YouTube of the flooding yesterday in Chehalis WA on my general blog HERE. Almost looks like Katrina (except everyone will start recovering this weekend).

Then I found another YouTube clip of 100 years of climate headlines and I'm still dizzy from the seesawing back-and-forth from one year to the next. So then I decided to extend it into a little rant on climate change.

In a classic textbook maneuver right out of Marketing 101, an inconvenient truth of the Al Gore movement has been the quiet re-branding of Global Warming to Global Climate Change. As we head into another year of record cold winters (Germany apparently recorded 32 degrees below zero today!), the idea of global warming seemed a little hard to grasp for the minions. So over this past year, we've seen the term global climate change being used interchangeably for global warming. Nice trick. (On a side note, last year I started lobbying a lot of the media to start using the term Homicide Bomber instead of Suicide Bomber as a more accurate description for homicidal fanatics - to date, only Fox Networks has been doing that).

I don't know about you but I personally think the reason Al Gore turned Barack Obama down for a position in his administration is because he's found something better. Much, MUCH better! Imagine having a gig even better than President of the United States. No one can take pot shots at you, no one can even argue with you or call you out on your positions. What a cool position to be in! Hey - the polar ice caps are melting. Global warming! Oh my God - lots of hurricanes in Florida this year. Global warming! But then things started to go the other way. So: Wow - it's freezing and flooding in Washington state! Global climate change! You get the drift. No matter what you say, you're now wrong and Al Gore's always right. What a great gig - who would want any other job? And it snagged him the Nobel prize. So why bother stooging for Obama when you can play God?

Well, why is this up on my Law of Unintended Consequences blog? Because I think there will be unintended consequences for the deceptive promotion that's being sold to everyone. I'm not saying that humans don't contribute to what goes on in our environment and our climate. But I also believe that there are a lot of things that we don't know or perhaps haven't even factored in yet. There's no doubt we know a lot more today than we knew just 20 years ago. A lot has happened over that time. But I still remember that as recently as 5 years ago, there was still a lot of talk about global cooling and how our children and their children would be facing a total global ice age in the next century if we didn't correct our awful ways. So now the tide literally turns the other way overnight and became ...global warming. And now it's global climate change.

I'm old enough to still remember littering. In the 50's and 60's, people didn't hesitate to toss their litter out the car window as they drove down the freeway. There was litter flying around everywhere. So then we started a campaign of road signs, laws and education in order to educate the masses, particularly kids. And as kids gradually came around and carried the message to their kids (and their parents), our roads got cleaner and the general mindset shifted to one of no littering. Most of our cities and towns and our roads are now very clean in the States and Canada. And most of Europe is also incredibly clean. But if you go to third world countries where such concepts aren't an accepted priority yet, they'll look at you as if you had two heads for taking the extra effort to avoid littering. The point I'm making is that these things take time to become part of our social fabric. And it's often at least two to three generations.

Scare tactics tend to have an adverse effect on adoption. If you overexaggerate the consequences and people discover it, then you'll also run the risk of losing a lot of credibility. If we're to teach our next generations about environmental responsibility so they can bring change effectively, a more honest approach might prove to be much more effective. The risk we run by taking the panic approach might well be the deciding factor in success or failure.

Digg Gets Dugg

2007-05-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

Ah Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha -- The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. As most of you know, Digg set up an uber-democratic site that allows its users to 'DIGG' their most popular sites to show up on their front pages. Well, two days ago someone went and posted the secret encryption key code for HD DVD's so you can crack 'em and copy 'em. The folks over at Digg didn't like that so they took the post down and apparently banished the poster from Digg. Bad Digg!

Well, karma's a bitch! The natives revolted and now the Digg community at large is all protesting and supporting the banned Digger by posting their own versions of that not-so-secret HD DVD encryption code. The first few pages on Digg are now plastered with different posts that contain the code. I love it! Click HERE.