Taking Account

It has been my experience in the corporate workplace that those managers who talk the most about accountability are most often the least likely to hold themselves accountable for anything. They skillfully maneuver their way out of personal responsibility for everything by quickly finding someone else to hold the bag. The only personal responsibility they admit, is the responsibility to find someone else to blame. Once they have fingered the person to be held accountable, they often have little interest in the outcome, their ultimate concern having already been met: responsibility, ergo accountability, belongs to someone else. Most conservative pundits also love to talk about personal responsibility and accountability. By personal responsibility and accountability they too mean that they want to hold others personally responsible and accountable. As in, “they are the ones responsible for this mess.” They are quick to blame others for all of life’s real and perceived ills. In their view, if bad things happen to them, others must be to blame. If bad things happen to others, well, it must be their own damn fault. The freedom they champion so vigilantly is their own freedom from personal responsibility…. for anything. “It’s some else fault” is also at the heart of their sense of national identity: American Exceptionalism. In their world view, the United States is exceptional and therefore its actions are unimpeachable. The United States is indeed exceptional though not perfect. Still these conservative pundits hold that as the United States is exceptional, everything it does must be good and therefore blameless. The true America is the extension of their own and like-minded selves. The fault lies not in ourselves, dear Brutus, but with our neighbors. All the world’s ills can safely be laid at the feet of other nations. No room for responsibility or accountability here. We need never apologize as we have nothing to apologize for. This personal blamelessness extends not only to their view of international citizenship but all the way to their membership in the human race: blameless. This can be seen clearly in their response to global warming. Either humans are in no way contributing to global warming, global warming must be a hoax, or it must not be that bad (just the result of natural cooling and warming cycles). As an [again exceptional] human being it is impossible to conceive that global warming is in any way a result of anything they are doing or is anything for which they -- or any other human being -- can be held personally responsible. If it is a problem, it is someone (or something) else’s fault. Self satisfaction that comes from finding someone else to blame is that warm and fuzzy feeling that lets them sleep at night and not have to worry about anything other than resuming vigilance in the morning. Individuals who actually take personal responsibility don’t talk about it, they just take it.

News Flash

Economics is downgraded from The Dismal Science to The Dismal Social Science.



(Satire)

Behind the News


China considers raising 1 child per family limit to 1.5


(This is satire)

Behind Yesterday's News

* Lobbyist Ridiculed by K Street for Making Legal Campaign Gift.

* Third Woman on Supreme Court Means Enough to Form Line Outside the Ladies Room.

* Russian Bear Now Named Smokeyevitch.

* GOP Leadership Sickened by News that Medicare Funds to Last Longer than Earlier Forecast.

An entertaining article in the Business Day section of the Sunday New York Times this past weekend on the Singularity movement: Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday by Ashlee Vance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html?scp=2&sq=singularity&st=cse

According to Vance, the Singularity movement anticipates “….a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state. ……[At that point] …human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.”

Under the masquerade of futurism, isn't this concept really just the technologist’s equivalent of the Rapture; the chosen shall be released from their mortal coil and given eternal life? The only requirement for redemption is having made a fortune in technology (hence Business Day) and a runaway ego.

Seems like this is ersatz religion at its worst. I would like to sic the Cerberus of atheism (Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens) on them, if they have not already signed on for the movement. Although there may be hope for Hitchens: Will there be cigarettes, drink and sex there? Not clear how these digitally created, cloud hosted, program driven and mechanically executed embodiments of YOU will be able to enjoy the real guilty (and ephemeral) pleasures of life other than in a virtual sense (already parodied in the last century by Woody Allen in Sleeper; how passé.

All Singularitista please see Metropolis and R.U.R. as the same illuminati that brought you Y2K, are now bringing you a reawakening of the dream of the Ubermensch. This is supposed to be new and exciting?

As with any religion it begins with the mythologizing of the patriarch, Ray Kurzweil: As a child “..sometimes I would put things together, and they would do something cool”. “He saw school as a tool that let him do what he needed to do.” “[he]… realized that some elements of information technology improved at predictable — and exponential — rates”. Oh, really? Never heard of Moore’s law? “A lot of what he has predicted has happened….” Thanks, Nostrodamus.

If you want immortality write a book. I don't think À la Recherche du Temps Perdu even required a typewriter.

I love the idea that having an electronically backed up brain is any improvement. Better have a good surge protector and constantly updated anti-virus, anti-phishing, anti-spam, anti-Trojan programs. Ad-Aware anyone? Hackers and spammers, the “have-nots”, will have a singularly good time.

So here is what I don't understand. Sarah Palin goes to Massachusetts to attend a Tea Party event commemorating the Boston Tea Party....and she wears a red coat. A Redcoat. You're supposed to be on our side!

Why Democrats Continue to be Vulnerable

The Republican party is the party of myths. The Democratic party is the party of facts. Throughout human history myths have proved to be more powerful than facts when it comes to swaying public opinion.