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Aluminum can crusher, Non-apology # 2, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

When the first atomic bomb in the history of mankind was dropped from a the Enola Gay to utterly and completely destroy a city and all living things within it, the pilot uttered a quote, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." I would like to think he uttered these words with tears in his eyes, comprehending the full extent of pain and suffering he had unleashed. Unfortunately, it was probably just preplanned quote arranged with some consultation, similar to "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind..."

Anyway, I have an aluminum can crusher featuring a variant of the atomic bomb dropping quote:




Of course, someone pointed out to me that this is totally tasteless and offensive.

No, it is not. I interpret that reaction to mean, "I am not courageous enough to think about troubling issues."

Words are just words. It is the act associated with these words is horribly brutal and offensive.

PLEASE DO ME A FAVOR AND TRY TO PAY ATTENTION. This t-shirt is meant to be provocative! Wait, haven't we been over this before once already?! (see post from Wednesday, April 23, 2008, entitled, "brunch, bbq, t-shirt non-apology."


Provocation is needed, especially as we enter an era of a nuclear armed world run by kids who did not live through the cold war, while simultaneously paranoid former Soviet, first-strike advocate generals still hold positions of influence.


"Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

brunch, bbq, t-shirt non-apology

Hi,

My name is Crockett Dunn.

Here are a few of the things that I am:

1. IT business owner
2. passionate music lover
3. aspiring serial entrepreneur
4. obsessive systems optimizer.

Lately, over the past 3-6 months, I've had a lot on my mind related to the state of stuff in our world, especially some non-optimal systems. The thing is, I've been busy servicing my clients whilst seeking an operations manager for CDLLC, so the lots on my mind had no previous opportunity to settle into proper organization.

Yesterday I went to a housewarming party/BBQ with my wife, Dr. Marki-Dunn, and hung around with her doctor friends and their IT spouses. I had the opportunity to talk about some of the stuff that I'm curious about with Jason. I can't remember Jason's last name, or if he generates revenue online and therefor desires a plug/link. [Jason, let me know if you want a link.]

{update 5/18/2007- Jay commented, and he does in fact have a blog here.}

Some of the items Jason and I discussed were capitalism, socialism, wealth, interdependency, culture, hedge funds and certain investment vehicles increasingly removed from the actual items of real value, survivalists, elitism, television and how it teaches us what to think, revolutions, civilizations, a trend of increasing socio-economic class division, warfare, fire arms and the second amendment, federations/nations, mankind/humanity/human condition, and our ability to destroy the human race.

I just finished brunch with one of the 5 most kind/compassionate/helpful individuals from my days at Duke University. Her name is Russell Colver, and she does ADHD Coaching in Durham, NC.

So here is the important point in all of this- similar to ideas in previous posts about "c'mon, let's not all destroy each other," and this other post I wrote in the muggy heat of Mobile, AL in August of last year.

I've got this t-shirt depicting a mushroom cloud (which is really not a cloud at all, it's a ball of fire, similar to a pyroclastic blast resulting from a volcanic eruption, but faster, with a larger destruction radius, ergo deadlier.

I can't remember who I upset this time but yes, a t-shirt depicting a mushroom cloud is meant to be provocative and needs to be provocative, especially as we enter an era of a nuclear armed world run by kids who did not live through the cold war, while simultaneously paranoid former Soviet, first-strike advocate generals still hold positions of influence.

So here is my problem. My kindergarten classes have got stuff figured out more than the various governments of the world. If all world governments were on the TV show, "are you smarter than a 5th grader," they would lose in the cooperation category.

Here's the deal: collaboration, cooperation, interdependency, everyone being indebted to one another, global community, teamwork- whatever you want to call it- results in better life. Better, in this extremely general sense, means more problems solved = survival. Some examples of this "better" include

1. reduced chance of starvation
2. reduced chance of death by diarrhea resulting from lack of clean water
3. reduced chance of being randomly killed by an intentional act of anger-motivated violence
4. reduced chance of dying of disease
5. reduced chance of dying as the result of natural disaster.

Global collaboration would produce a world of abundance where with basic needs met... well, we would be free to have fun, party, watch soccer and football- play.

OK, so for this reason, in kindergarten and most school systems, when someone attempts to solve a problem using physical violence (example: can I have that apple? no. ok I punch you in the face and take apple) is considered unacceptable to the point that both parties involved- both aggressor and victim- are usually suspended or otherwise punished.

So why do educational institutions consider violence so unacceptable? Because violence creates fear, hatred, a desire for revenge- it awakens our animal instincts- and this becomes a cycle which is very difficult to break. In some cultures this cycle has been running for 1000s of years.

Does this make me a Utopian? No- I think sometimes people enjoy indulging their animal instincts- it's human nature. Even when we try to satisfy our animal instincts by proxy, spectator sports, often the spectators engage in violence (riots, etc).

Utopian/idealist/romantic I am not.

Pragmatist I am.

I like being alive and would like to continue being alive as long as possible. And again, we are entering an era of a nuclear armed world run by those whose childhoods did not include looming fear of the destruction of the human race, duck-and-cover drills, the concept of mutually-assured-destruction/lose-lose warfare, visions of entire cities leveled and the fall of western civilization.... all because our global community isn't governed by the basic rules of kindergarten school children.


Suggested reading:

• Alas, Babylon
• War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink

gotta run- dinner time. more links later

oh SNAP! (greenspan zinger)

"I consider the argument that gasoline tax hikes are politically infeasible irrelevant. Sometimes the duty of political leadership is to convince constituencies that they are just plain wrong.

Leaders who do not do that are followers."

old powers v. new competitors

I was just speaking one of my attorney clients, Mr. Goodrich @ Goodrich Law part of Red Mountain Law), and I find myself repeatedly impressed with this business's acceptance and embracing of progress- the inevitable necessity of competing with Legal Zoom and whatever other new competition is to come.

I was so inspired by this and other new competitors, that I wrote the following:

If you're curious about why I'm so interested in your foresight, here's the deal: this falls into a larger pattern I see of "old powers" either embracing or denying change and progress. It's really about protectionism vs. progress.

Old powers include traditional cable TV providers and TV advertisers, traditional telephone carriers, record labels (controlling distribution), Microsoft, and of course the lawyers. New competitors include TiVO, downloadable video services like YouTube, VOIP (Vonage/MyPeople), downloadable mp3 music / streaming music services (Pandora), open source alternatives to Microsoft products (SongBird, FireFox), and online document services (Legal Zoom).

What I have observed is that all of the aforementioned "old powers" go through a process of denial, and then either lobbying the government for "protection" (I'd be interested to see what challenges Legal Zoom has faced) or throwing up anti-competitive barriers to competition, then finally wising up and struggling to copy/catch up with the new competitors, or perhaps perishing.

What the old powers have forgotten is that before they became so comfortable in their success, the way they got to be "old power" was by offering something innovative and great that was better than everything else out there. In the comfort of success, a strange psychological phenomenon occurs, where a sense of entitlement and self congratulation is cultivated.

A wise man summed it up like this: Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses.

PAY ATTENTION

Other industries, take lesson (Ian speaks truth):
http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=127

That's right-on: Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses.

life quality enhancement: tnt rom for cingular 8125 a.k.a.htc wizard

i'm not saying I unlocked my cingular 8125 (a.k.a. HTC wizard) and installed the TNT pack (no one should do this seriously, unless you have a throw-away phone), because i'm not sure if that would be a breach of my carrier contract or not. i will say that if i were to install a cooked-up rom on my phone, i would only install apps that i've already licensed on this phone, and i would also add that i'm not interested in theft. sometimes the hacker/developer community gets it right sooner than microsoft, att, and htc. that's all.

so continuing this hypothetical case, i would also say that this has finally resolved the problem with the crappy, unresponsive text auto-complete and windows mobile/ms voice command crashes that have plagued my device. plus now the wi-fi works. and i can probably even make voip calls and go data-only without paying for any more "voice" minutes (gotta check the contract first, though).

storms a brewin'

that's right, I feel a storm coming in from the horizon.

The horizon=my subconscious, and the storm, in this case, is a rant about the selective enforcement of competition laws, government-condoned mono/duopolies, and how this is hurting America by strangling the innovators and protecting the mediocre status quo.

I suggest an alliance of leading innovators in the VOIP, DVR, and (of course) OS industries.

The government should only involve itself in the infrastructure, which is already here, and maybe in the assignment of some sort of open ID.

Coming soon.

celebrate war... good times!

Not!

Something has really been bugging me, but I haven't been able to compose a blog-worthy (although as I type this I realize my blogworthiness standards are low) analysis. A couple weeks after reading Slaughterhouse-Five, viewing The Fog of War, and immediately after watching the HBO documentary film, White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007), I am disturbed enough to share my unpolished thoughts.

It has often occurred to me that war is usually, if not always, NOT a smart move. Especially when one considers the human cost, the long-term cost (read: blowback) of the bad-will generated by the conflict, and the eventual resentment held by the defeated (how's that Afghanistan reconstruction going? And how are the losers of the United States Civil War faring in comparison to the winners?).

Seriously, starting an unnecessary war is just intellectually lazy. The action itself indicates that it has not been thoroughly considered. We understand this about nuclear war: No one wins, so no one starts global nuclear wars. Good for us.

I mean, the violence of warfare is about as glamorous as a multi-fatality motor vehicle accident. If high-tech civilization & society are a organisms, then war is our cancer. See what I'm saying?

OK- we all agree: war sucks. I think everyone who has seen first-hand death & violence knows that, right? Sure, military might is cool (awesome toys), but destroying lives is not. So why do we keep fighting throughout recorded history? Certainly powerful men are well versed in history. So am I naive? Or perhaps I lack a certain predatory gene or brain region?

Or am I the only sane one around here?

What if a nation took the unprecedented action of sending a ton of diplomats to live in a rogue state, rather than tons of destruction?

If we can all agree that generally humans want (1) to survive and (2) to not hurt, then why do we still fight wars? Well, someone has to start them, right? Who? Maybe the leaders who are also starters of war lean more towards the socio/psychopathic than true representation of the will of the population?

[Jott from Crockett Dunn] Hello world, this is my first test of voice speech to text transcribed Nobel blo...

Jott From Crockett Dunn

Hello world, this is my first test of voice speech to text transcribed Nobel Mobile blog post via jott.com. Pretty awesome, I will revise this post for errors later.

Listen to Audio

Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

[later]
As you may notice, the only error was "mobile" transcribed, "Nobel." No biggie, because I did some reading and discovered that you can spell-out difficult words. Very cool, especially if you're a commuter. Free voice-to-SMS and voice-to-email from Jott.com rules!

i like the way this guy thinks

Feeling cynical today: I guess there is more to government policy making than gay marriage and flag burning.

Open spectrum is why the iPhone will fail by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- Free the bits and we'll have progress. We'll have the iPhone, we'll have 10, 20, 50 megabit per second downloads, we'll have all the innovation you could ever want. Keep them imprisoned and we'll remain stuck in the past, while other nations go rocketing ahead of us on the wings of open source, and open spectrum.

Koreas to make historic train cross of Cold War line

Koreas to make historic train cross of Cold War line
from:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSEO21134820070517?feedType=RSS

Wed May 16, 2007 8:55PM EDT
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) -
Trains from North and South Korea will pierce their heavily armed border on
Thursday, restoring for the first time an artery severed in their 1950-1953 war
and rekindling dreams of unification.