The Parasitic Meme

It seems to me that, at least as far as material wealth and the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness goes, people who live in the United States live at the apex of the highest civilization known to any human for the last, oh, 5000 years or so.

It’s with that premise in mind that I officially announce my weariness at my Mormon friends and family who sit in the foyers during Church meetings and grumble to one another about how the Federal government is going to destroy us all through wasteful misuse of funds in “five, four, three, two… wait a minute, six, five, four… oh, okay, three, two… It’s bound to happen soon unless we throw the bums out!”

(I note as a corollary that this sort of grumbling appears to me to happen only during epochs when a Democrat sits in the White House, but I would digress, talking more about this…)

And it’s in that milieu that I heard, once again and from my own brother, “Government has never done anything right. I dare you to name one branch of government that’s not fraught with fraud, waste, and abuse.”

I took his dare and offered, “Well, there’s the United States Marine Corps…”

The goalposts moved: “No, I’m talking about FISCAL stuff!”

Hmm. “It seems to me that the administration of the G.I. Bill between 1950 and 1975 or so was relatively free of corruption.”

“It was not,” whereupon he gave an example of how a storefront outfit could defraud the government by recruiting veterans to share a G.I. Bill grant payment without all the pesky learning, but with a fake degree! I didn’t challenge him to offer a case in point, because it wasn’t the right setting for looking stuff up.

I tried again: “I think there was a period of time between about 1950 and 1975 when DARPA was pretty efficient.” (DARPA, you will recall, helped Al Gore invent the Internet.)

“Was not. I can’t tell you how much waste of funds goes on there!”

My brother is a reserve Major in the United States Air Force. Of course he was born in 1971 and didn’t take a commission until around 1998 or so, so I don’t know how much accurate knowledge he actually has about that span of time.

Further, I have had direct dealings with sub-agencies of the Department of Defense, related to some financial matters with a scholarship award I had won, and I found all of the people there very efficient and friendly. They and I had a relationship which is impossible to establish with any large bank, these days. But again, I digress…

I tried, “Point taken, but since about 1997 or so, the I.R.S. has been a relatively corruption-free agency, hasn’t it? I remember the congressional hearings around that time and the steps they took to improve service. And what about the improvements of service and efficiency at the Social Security Administration?”

…and got a red herring: “Have you got any *idea* how complex the tax code is?”

And then I ran out of time.

I pass the dare on to you: Can you name one non-military governmental agency which operates efficiently? Department of Interior/National Parks? Something else?

Better yet, let’s name as many as we possibly can.

Today, it took me an hour’s drive to answer a dare which an online friend gave me to cross from Vancouver, WA into Portland, to come and try his sandwich.

This sandwich:

Nick Zukin is one of the partners in Kenny & Zuke’s, a delicatessen located on 1038 SW Stark St, in Portland, Oregon. I give you this address because you must run (don’t walk) directly there, starting so that your arrival is timed for lunch.

Nick sat down with me while I ate the sandwich. We discussed a common college friend, different Portland area neighborhoods we’ve known, our common fondness for the Rose City, a bit of technical geekery and a bit of food geekery. He gave me some advice on how to turn left off Burnside by turning right three times.

Nick is a gracious host. When I told him that he’d ruined me for every other Reuben in the world; that I’d be steering my friends his way; that I’d be back as soon as I could with wife, kids, fellow coreligionists…; When I told him he had won a convert on a dare to this kind of quality food, his response was to thank me humbly, and offer a bagel for my wife to try.

He explained the differences between the bagel he’d bagged for me and the ones he knows I’ve had before. (K&Z bagels, like everything there, are hand made on site with a slow careful technique.) He pointed out that the little tub of cream cheese was actually a California cheese, and why there was a difference between it and Philly-brand. (He was soooo right.) He added a Rugelach, a Coconut Macaroon, and a Hamantashen, in a recyclable carry-out box.

Google those words. They’re delicious. Better yet, just go there and try them. I carried those home to my family and made two additional instant converts to their absolutely unforgettable food.

See you again very, very soon, Nick.

To me, Star Trek is it: Definitive science fiction, sometimes done “correctly”, sometimes with great clumsiness. Years and years of it, and I’ve watched all but two seasons of Deep Space Nine, watched it get tired, watched actors phone in their parts without enthusiasm, and watched Paramount run the franchise into the ground for every dime they could get.

Star Trek’s bad episodes jaded me somewhat. The infamous “reset button” was part of that; from 1966 all the way to the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, virtually all the major characters reappeared fully formed at each episode, having apparently learned nothing, really. Eventually it wasn’t fun anymore. Even when they tried to inject a through-line into the last wheezing seasons of the television franchise, they didn’t quite pull it off.
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Murdoch: Web sites to charge for content – CNN.com.

Well, chalk up another old-media type who just doesn’t get it at all.

We should be clear for guys like this. The statement, “We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning,” translates in the minds of Internet users as this:

Rupert Murdoch is disappointed that the price of an ad has gone down, and probably incensed that he can’t control scarcity enough to drive that price back up. Businesses just don’t see the point of paying multiple tens of thousands of dollars for a page in a newspaper (once!) when the same amount of money could fund a well-designed and interactive website for four solid years.

People who get their communication services, news, and entertainment over the Internet will soon, all of them, not see the point in handing $100/month to the phone company for phones, $100/month for TV service, and another $60-$70 for Internet service. Not when the Internet service can do the phones and the TV for $200/month less.

(If those prices seem high to you, think “premium channels” and “mobile phones” and they’re not too far off.)

Murdoch will find that most people won’t pay a subscription fee. The WSJ is anomalous that way, because its audience consists of moneymakers with money to burn.

If he does this with Fox News or his newspapers, revenue will not increase. There are too many free sites out there.

Obama’s Mom, Holocaust Survivors and Proxy Temple Work | Times & Seasons, An Onymous Mormon Blog.

We have news this week that Stanley Ann Dunham’s name has been recorded in Mormon Church as having received a vicarious proxy baptism and endowment. Like all news about famous people with proxy work done, we have word of it because Helen Radkey, intrepid ex-Mormon with an unremitting grudge, fished it out.
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