Making us Feel Like Death

So two stories come to mind that remind us evermore that the reaper's scythe is hanging ever closer to the vital organs of our ability to engage as a citizenry. NPR's voracious and longwinded Tom Ashbrook peers into the depths of a gorging swell of micro-labor, tasks, jobs, and other opportunities for work ranging from professional, to degrading, to "I'd rather wallow in frothy, vat of bile before I work like this for such little pay". From the other end, we're seeing our Supreme Court debate and ejaculate arguments as to whether the Health Care reform law is constitutional, lining themselves up ideologically, and spending time, effort and resources destroying more things sanctimoniously.

We're seeing the nature of work and employment become more schizophrenic; more experimental, but more inhumane, more removed from our public sphere's scrutinizing eye; we're seeing some piece of safety net being eroded by the forces of special interests. I wish everyone would stop, think, and listen.

These internet web-sites like task-rabbit and others involve competing for stupid pieces of work that are really hard to sustain yourself on. You're competing potentially with individuals from all around the world where the standard of living is much lower than it is here and of course they will be able to outbid you for work. Sometimes they're neat and useful ways to get things completed and to generate income on the side, but they're definitely iffy and have the potential to move the nature employment further out of the sphere of the public realm where employment protections laws can be applied. Maybe that's ok, but maybe not. As an asinine young buck like myself, I don't have any sort of wisdom to decide but maybe Harold Ramis does...

At the same time, taking away the potential for accessible health care really has a duality in piercing through the flesh of having a sustainable society. I just wish Scalia, Thomas, Roberts would stop already... stop ruining so much. You've done so much damage already with citizens united that I'm haunted by the potential for Super Pacs to be lurking under my bed as I sleep, gloating at how much they're able to contribute to political candidates and calling me real mean names.

Super-Pac

The duality of this is that if people are and feel safe to some degree, they're more useful. If I'm not worried about burgeoning debt and the potential for a injury or sickness to cost me tens, hundreds or even millions of dollars, I could be more useful to the economy and I might take a risk to engage more with the erratic tasks that could be useful in our labor force. Maybe I'd take the risk to start my own micro-labor web site. I could take these risks if I knew that I'd be mildly ok as I had something to fall back on.

If I can potentially be taken care of in some basic way, I'll feel more comfortable experimenting with different ways to generate income and contribute to the economy in doing so. If I don't have this safety net, I'm gonna do something safe that might not be as useful in our experimental information age economy, but I'll do whatever it is that provides me with the health benefits.

For the love of god, please give us some access to health; reasonable, health not egregious fancy health. I am not convinvced that the free market will make health care more effective and accessible. Free market individuals might argue that the nature of medical school,or the nature of medicare are what drive up the costs, but in the end, the goals of the free market; growth, higher revenue and what I feel the goals of health care should be; accessibility, keeping people healthy are fairly at odds. I don't see how a capitalistic system for health care could meet the latter goals.

Nature

Alright, so post number three. I'm trying to keep this up at the very least in the aims of monetizing it which would be such a blessing in so many different ways. As always, there is a quantity versus quality debate with the nagging question of can you have both? So I'm gonna try to bust out a post, negating the quality but aiming towards becoming more comfortable writing drivel that my two readers will read with a faint glimmer of monetization . Sorry, I've gotten to the point now where I say things and I don't even know if they're meant to be sarcastic. I mean, it would be sort of sell outey if I tried to make a profit of this maybe, but my moral fiber isn't that strong and money is somewhat tight right now and thats what things are about. I will also add that my blogs will often be negative, dark and stormy (like the drink). This if for me too. But I will try to be proactive and at least plagiarize solutions from others and call them my own to give a pos

How can we Function in Society if we Don't Know Where we are?

"If you don't know where you are, that's probably because you don't belong here". My mother told me this was an old New England credo referring to visitors venturing forth through the Boston area . I could see this being true. Streets are curvaceous; signs are sparse or non-existent; there can be many one-way roads and rotaries all up in your grill. The Boston area is tough to get around and I think this causes more problems than we think and I think we could find a creative way for everything just to make a bit more sense navigationally speaking. We have our MBTA system which can work despite it's massive deficit. However, any lateral movement is strikingly difficult as the subway only goes inbound or outbound. I can't begin to fathom taking the T to Brookline, Allston or Dorchester as those coordinates are sideways to my current position, nor would I ever want to begin to set foot on the notorious B-section of the green line which is slower

Furthering Nature

I like to harp and attack but I thought it would be relatively mature to deposit some ideas to solving some of the things that I rant about. The series Lost I observed seemed to have this trend where each new episode would open up all these new plot threads. My college roommates would continually watch, clinging and hoping for some type of closure to help alleviate the suspense that the hit series had built up in them (I for one felt I was too weak willed to watch as I have an addictive personality). However, the show continued to open up more problems then it could reasonably solve and thus frustrated some viewers including some of my roommates. This might have no relation to anything that is going on, or it might mean everything. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'll try to offer some solvency to all the many problems I bring up as thats nice to do. Reading Collapse by Jared Diamond was similar to this. It left me wanting a stiff drink to alleviate my fear of an impen

Schooling: The Nature of Learning

Alright. Here is one of several pieces on education that I'd like to write about; just to get some ideas out. I want to start off by sharing a video that I worked really hard to find. Watch this video below and think about it for a bit. I first saw this clip from the controversial movie, Waiting for Superman . The movie, made some coherent points but did more to frustrate many working in the field of education rather then be of help. Other things bothered me about the film, but it was this 20 second clip which destroyed it's legitimacy and perpetuated a view of teaching that I believe is obsolete and harmful. It was this clip, that relegated the film to the many other parties in education reform that talk a lot about what specifically needs to be done but don't have the experiences to know what they're talking about. Others felt similarly about this clip. Our schools should absolutely be doing much more than having teachers "fill their student's hea

Was I Too Born to Run?

We're all Born for Things This was a brief conversational interlude that went on at Franklin Park as I was trying out my bare-foot jogging. This event weaves through some of the main ideas of this entry. "Doesn't that hurt running bare-foot?" "Yes m'am." "Why are you doing it than?" "I've heard it's good for my feet if I do it enough..." "Do you really think you'll be conscientious enough to keep this up, you don't seem like the type of individual that would." "You're probably right m'am." "I don't know why you're running that way than. It's silly if you ask me and you probably need some direction in your life." "Thank you mam." "You look a little foolish you realize and you're also going at the same pace as me because you're in so much pain and I'm just walking." "Thank you M'am, I just misplaced my sh

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