I like to read. I have read allot. At one time, I looked at books like food. There were certain things I wanted and I went out and read those things. Alternate reality, robots, war, sex, dragons, or even just a good description. Then I started to notice patterns in the things I read. The Hero never got injured unless it was near a vacationing surgical team at a convention for advanced surgical techniques. Pages and pages of description with one paragraph of actual plot. My favorite is the end of book wrap up which requires information to be known which could not have been known or the effect of people who could not possibly have been involved.

I actually saw a movie that had all of the leading mystery characters of the time, such as miss marple, nick and nora (I forget the others), and abused all of their tactics. These detectives are all icons and are the foundations of nearly all current mystery fiction. Each character moved through a mansion with secret doors and various devices hidden everywhere. The point was to create a mystery which they could not solve. After they solved it and explained themselves; the killer/victim came out and explained how they were wrong. The bad(?) guy(?) then explained why he hated the characters and how they solved crimes. After everybody left, the protagonist lifted his mask to show that he was really someone else and laughed. So the movie was basically a dig at the short cuts taken by various authors including those who always ended with a twist. Suck it shama-whatever your name is!

The name for this concept is the bus. A bus takes the character everywhere and the bus hits everybody at the end of the story. There is a driver, important passengers and important stops, with some changing characters who always sit themselves in specific seats.

Let us draw some pictures of the most common buses.

Any heroic story written by a man. The main character (male, female, or device) can do anything necessary for the event. The character often has a magical device which solves most problems. This device can be a gun, sword, duct tape, mutation, special multi-tool limb, skill, or knowledge. If the magical device cannot solve the problem; then you have stumbled into the comedy (character development) portion of the story, such as Zohan doing hair or shawrtzenegger (don't care if miss-spelled) teaching children. The characters are in two camps. Pretty people who help the hero and ugly people who are against the hero. There are many people who get shot, are human shields, or provide some precise bit of knowledge or equipment. These people are nameless. Like all of those agents who help james bond just before they get killed or dirty harry's partner. They have one purpose and then they are gone. The hero and his equipment, I mean friends, travels around like a Juggernaut toward his destination. If the Hero is knocked off of a train then he/she will land in the lap of an appropriately aged and sexed new friend who will sleep with the hero, provide food and drink, heal, and provide transportation to the proper place at the proper time. The Hero can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who will betray their comrades or make a life changing decision which will benefit the Hero.

Any heroic story written by a woman. The main character has one skill and is usually unattractive or "average". The hero will be found by an incredible number of people who should be ruling the world but will instead be subservient to the hero because of some indefinable something that makes other, better, people follow the hero around like puppies who's only function is to solve every problem the hero encounters. The hero will develop new skills, which will never be as good as their betters. Even though these better people die, the hero will use those same skills at a lower level of ability to survive encounters more dangerous than what the experts could handle. The overall hotness of the hero will also increase as the story unfolds and has the effect of collecting more minions. The comedy (character development) in these stories always has the hero failing miserably while a better skilled character watches on, recognizes something special in the hero, and then offers to teach the hero while actually just solving the problem. The other characters never agree to anything drastic for the benefit of the hero because they were going to do it anyway and now seamed like the right time.

The stories are simple. I have a mission. I must protect. I must share. I must fix. I must stop another from completing mission, protecting, sharing, or fixing.

The Bus is also simple. I am proving myself. I am finding myself. I am hiding myself. I am exposing myself. I am creating something new.

The bus is sometimes painted with emotions. and may drive through different cities such as space, future, past, fantasy, or prejudice.

For example all of the original star trek missions were to prove that the captain was the man. He had to show the romulans that he was the man, the klingons, gods, the confused, the racist, and any colored chick. When others showed they were the man, kirk was always next to them so everyone knew that he was the real man helping others achieve the level of kirk. Others want to be men. Men want to be kirk.

Chuck norris was always exposing himself. he was always a nice guy until someone hurt him and his family and friends. Then he had to put on the ass kicking boots and show them that he had all the manhood which would fit in that town. The movies always end with him deciding to visit your mom because he knew her way back and she could do that thing with her tongue.

Steven seagal is just like chuck only chuck is an adult and steven is more of a child. He has these little temper tantrums whenever characters don't realize that he is the man. So he has to prove himself. Killers never find him, he always walks into a situation where people want to talk and causes the problems.

Other stories simply remove one quality, like a bus with a flat tire. The magic item is taken away, the friends are taken away, no mission, the enemies are taken away, the prize is taken away, and sometimes there is a twist such as one aspect actually belongs to another and the hero is confused.

What makes all of these such a pain in the ass is the lack of story telling. Many authors don't know how people act or what they do. The just create a pattern, fill in some names, get the ball rolling, and describe the environment with some emotionally loaded words and sell that. Males tend to use explosive scenes and colorful words. Females tend to have inappropriate relationships.

The vampires stop killing each other because they find each other so damned petty? In real life the whole sex and violence line is pretty wide. They aren't actually related. The insane might be confused, but no one else is. Nobody paints a house red with the blood of their enemies but stops at the last one to have a kiss. A crazy person might but they will break your arms and legs first, run you through, and then steal a kiss before you cough up blood.
Or the pirate king kills your brothers, rapes you, and threatens to murder or sell you and then sees the passion in your eyes and falls in love? You could run or kill him but he is just so manly? Really? So the whole teen pregnancy problem would disappear if we could just teach girls not to believe this crap?

Maybe the whole live fast and die pretty culture would disappear if we showed all the young boys what the bodies look like when a drunk loser hits a tree with no seatbelt.

Maybe a lot of cultural problems would disappear if authors took a few years of psychology. At the very least, stories could be written better.

I have already posted many blogs about lazy thinking. Mostly I am concerned about stupidity and those who think that making others stupid will somehow make them look smart.Mostly I focus on Martial Art instructors who teach students that they are the most skilled people in the world and anybody who can do more must be lying.

This time I was reading a book on Mensa problems while watching a police documentary on genius killers. Generally I have a problem with Mensa, in that they tend to pretend to have intelligent questions while simply using trick questions hidden behind word problems. Like all trick questions, they will use obscure cultural references, obscure definitions which only apply in obscure technologies, and outright mistakes which they pretend are relevant. The problem I have with police documentaries is that they present criminals as geniuses due to the effort necessary to find them.

With Mensa, the problem is cultural. Knowing trivia about other countries does not make you smart, it makes you well traveled or well read. Math is a language, which should make everybody who can do math be considered bi-lingual, and as a language means different things in different contexts to different people; so does math. If a word problem requires you to have experience as a French sailor by referring to a unit of measurement that is outdated, nautical, and using the French term; is it a valid test of math? It would be useful to an old French sailor that was learning math but; is it smart to put that problem before anybody else? Like any question, switching between languages during the question allows an infinite number of meanings to be inferred. Is it smart to ask that everybody, not only know all of the languages being used, understand the narrowly defined meaning that is only in the askers head? I find it ironic that many scientific organizations think that psychic abilities do not exist and yet their tests for intelligence require psychic abilities to exist.

In math, as well as logic, it is known, and accepted, that the problem with vague and obscure language is a problem because it takes a line of reasoning which should end up at one solution and instead allows many solutions to be correct. In physics, they simply use measurement to determine if the equation is correct in exactly the way you would go somewhere to determine the validity of a map. Nobody should be required to have access to a dictionary of obscure technical terms that fell out of use in the sixteenth century in order to solve a mathematical problem. Having that dictionary does not make you smarter. The important aspect of asking a question is being concise in whatever language you are using. Being circumspect in language is usually an indicator that you are lying. Being smart does not mean that you can follow a circumspect path to its proper destination. Being smart means being aware of the circumspection. It is a fundamental truth that circumspection is simply an illusion that must be seen through, keep your awareness on the start and the end will show how short a path you have actually taken. Those who can travel the path quickly are not smarter, they have simply been down this path before.

Mensa is very much like Magic in that they are a group of people who were taught illusions and different ways to craft those illusions. If you know the trick, then you know the answer. Getting through a Mensa test is like going to a market. Whether you leave with an antique or dust collector has a lot to do with whether you have been screwed before, not how smart you are. An illusion is simply a limit to perception. The brain has short cuts which it takes to see, hear, or otherwise perceive the world. Knowing what the short cuts are allows you to craft an illusion. These limits were discovered, and are being discovered, by people who devoted their lives to studying one aspect of perception. This information was saved and then taught to following generations of students. This would imply that there is a difference between having access to information and whatever being smart is.

Mensa is a pain in the ass to me simply because of these illusions. While knowledge about these illusions is important, it is important in the same way that knowing the depth of a pool is to the decision to dive head first. This knowledge allows you to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. Aside from testing trivia, which merely determines how much spare time you have as opposed to those who must devote their entirety to a single purpose, the Mensa tests all share the quality of being questions you would not answer in real life. People who try to answer these questions should be in obscure research or fired before they hurt somebody. That is the test, simply would you answer that question. Every other question should be answered with a list of questions which all begin with "What do you mean by.... ". What country are you in if you are given change is - add obscure monetary unit here. That is one of the questions. The question is really "have you ever stepped inside the border of this country in a pretentious way". If I go to another country I will be using American money or I will give American money to someone who will exchange that money for me. If I go to that country allot then I will bother to be taught how their money system works. I will be taught. I will not be less smart due to that lack of teaching, It will only mean that I will have to look into someones eyes and not let go of my money until some help is more forthcoming, just like people do when they are passing through any part of America to or from another country. Also you may receive that monetary unit from any person who has that monetary unit in their pocket regardless of what country you are in. Therefore all of those potential questions need to be answered because the real answer to you gave money and received some other money type back is "you will be in a world of hurt".

The second problem, which is related, is with police documentaries. They always need an Evil Genius. Why? It is a simple fact that all crime has to do with relationships. Good, bad, long term, short term, intense, or shallow relationships determine the type of crime, amount of evidence, and how long the investigation will take. Criminals are like ants, alone they are easily squished but in groups they can have the appearance of power and intelligence even though they are all following simple rules and have no effect beyond their own physical reach. When you run into a criminal, even an organization of them, they are easily crushed and it is amazing that a cop can't just run up and put this moron in jail. The Cop, however, has a territory and a case load. He is part of a bureaucracy which eats up a major portion of his work day with meetings and paperwork, then he has to effectively waste time by driving around so people can see that he is really there, question sources who only tell the truth when it might benefit them, and be constantly ready to arrive at a crime in progress to maybe save a life, which is why he joined the force. It would like being a carpenter who has to grow the trees and might get to measure some wood and hit one nail in every few days and sometimes find out that the nail wasn't there and nobody knew where it went. So, inside of that existence a policeman has to determine a potential serial killer and his next target before a newspaper gives the killer a cool name and causes a panic which the police also have to stop.

If this case takes longer to solve than a month then the criminal must be a "genius". The news will exclaim that this crafty criminal is obviously of superior intelligence as opposed to one ant among a floor covered in them. Just as an experiment; find an ant. Now give this ant a name like "Zodiac Killer". Let the ant go. Now go to a meeting on accounting and have the company newsletter point out that the Zodiac Killer is on the loose while your boss discusses what numbers you were writing down two weeks ago on a specific pad. When all of that is done, go home and figure out which corn flake is missing and whether that corn flake was in fact taken by the Zodiac Killer. Is that tough? Now imagine that the other corn flakes will give you conflicting stories about whether that corn flake is missing and who they think took it while asking you to put that on hold because they would like you to deal with their problem first. Now find that ant and time yourself doing it.

The police are geniuses, they have to be in order to make it through the day. But you can only answer a question if you have enough data. This data is called evidence. Evidence exists based upon the length of interaction and depth of relationship between the criminal and target.  When a criminal targets the low hanging fruit of hookers, the homeless, and fresh runaways there is no relationship and, depending on the crime, minimal interaction. There will be almost no evidence. This is not because of any intelligence on the part of the criminal. This is a result of the laziness on the part of the criminal. Some loser with no job or life goes out and picks up a hooker and kills her 20 minutes later, every few weeks and people act like this guy is a ninja. He isn't hiding, he actually has nowhere to go. Nobody knows what he looks like because nobody knows what he looks like. Some cop will be given this case and will find this guy using skills the rest of us would consider magic and the criminal gets all the credit.

The problem is laziness. The world turns from the effort of the intelligent and the strong. Scientists, cops, the military, any emergency responder, and teachers are all comparable to Batman. They are alone, hiding their abilities from those who have nothing better to do then spread suffering, working in obscurity with home made equipment to improve a world that does not care in the hope that someone will be qualified to take advantage of any improvements. Working against these people are the lazy. Not just the criminals or the stupid, but the truly lazy. Mensa gets together in their meetings and has little parties. Do they discuss the state of intelligence and come up with tactics to improve learning? Instead they have come up with a stereotype for smart people and make sure it describes them. Helping them out is a culture which ridicules ability at every turn while holding the lazy up as heroes. Win the lottery or have a house full of starving animals or children and you will be in the news and paid money just to show up and talk. Pay someone else money to give you big boobs and a flat stomach and you will be defined as better than the busty woman who actually works to maintain her body. How many construction workers work 10 or more hours every day for years at peek efficiency? Who gets credit but the guy on steroids who is paid to work out and can't have a job because it would disrupt his cycle? I have seen the effort which sport "heroes" put into their ability. Why are they considered less than cops or fireman? Why is a police force considered stumped when they can't find one loser who left the country? Do they get credit for the hundreds or thousands of criminals they catch or do we just have a list of unsolved crimes? Why is a criminal who "works" once every few months considered smarter than the cops who have a workload, a family, and needs time to rest while finding a pattern that the given criminal is often unaware of?

Instead of looking for the smart why don't we define who is too lazy?

Even the guy who only had one idea which made him rich still had to work for years before he was able to recognize that idea as something worth putting effort into.

Why is work ignored?

How come the lazy but obscure become heroes when those who sacrifice for the better of others are overlooked?

Laziness is the worst sin. All of the others require some sort of effort and ability.

Culture does not create these illusions, the illusions create the culture.

I was reading some web pages about recycling and going green. Here is the problem, which is the same as every other problem I have blogged about.

Why do people have to be so arrogant. The web pages start out with a list of new technologies and the impact that they may have. I say "may" because these technologies are not widespread. Fine, new ideas and research is always needed.

The problem is the complaints. A bunch of people claim to be "real eco-friendlies" which sounds the same as "real martial artists" or "real anything".

One idea was a plant wall. Great, plants on the wall to help make air fresher and as a possible water treatment device. Plants, like trees, can help maintain the tempurature of a structure by blocking the sun, great. Then people bring up mold. "Put plants on your wall and you will get mold." What genius~! Because houses with trees don't get mold, showers don't get mold, and bread doesn't get mold; it is the plant wall. Mold is everywhere that there is organic matter and moisture. Suck it up. Who lives in the woods, farming with their own manure, and has a problem with mold? Why is that even a consideration? Who missed the concept that the plant wall is not any different than having plants in your home. Has everyone of these green people never seen ivy, grass, or houseplants?

Water treatment - There were a few technologies that involved waste water treatment. Every one of these ideas was compared to a solar still as a better way to treat waste water. Maybe they need to wonder about the mold? Or what happens if there is not enough sun? Having been a boy scout, I know that solar stills are slow, really fricken' slow unless you are in a desert and then the heat that speeds it up also makes you require more water. So basically you have to have a pool of your own waste spreading disease while you wait for the sun to come out. Maybe the other technologies are trying to process waste so that the plague doesn't come back? Remember all that disease that is simply the result of poor hygiene from living near your own filth? Nobody does. Waste treatement turned that whole aspect of humanity into a myth, Except in other countries where the only warning is "don't drink the water or eat any of their food". Water is a huge problem since all the water used in industry is the same water we drink. We have to stop draining lakes and hoping nature will adapt. Dirt and plants cleaning urine is a whole different level from a factory dumping concentrated petrochemicals into a bog. The treatment of waste and cleaning of water is something that solar stills just can't hack. They aren't fast enough. Coincidentaly doesn't a solar still need plastic sheets or glass? Both are things which are difficult to manufacture when green and major sources of waste.

Recycled materials - When the press release says that someone has found a process which does not use chemicals to recycle something; It is ignorant to say that they are lying. Once again, to point out that a green lifestyle would not produce such waste does not change the fact that such waste exists. Problems need to be solved. Blame only exists among people who don't want to get any work done.

solar cells - one technology involves putting solar cells on a windmill. The responce was about how shade will mess up solar cells. Basically the solar cells in the shade will drain the power from the ones in the sun so that shade makes the panels useless. Maybe this guy needs to read up on his electrical components and see if he can remember what a diode is. A diode allows current to go in one direction only. This is used so that you can put batteries in something and not have one bad battery drain the others. Not a big deal for the batteries in your ipod, but this is a realy important component for any multiple power source system like the plugs in your wall. Otherwise you would never see two solar panels together, or two windmills, or two coal fired plants, or two of anything powering anything else. Without diodes, we wouldn't have any electronic device. So how does a spinning windmill also have solar cells so that it can generate power from multiple speeds and light from multiple directions? Friggen' diodes!

The Green Lifestyle - I am sick of these people, They drive a pickup into town to buy canned food, then go back to their homestead in a public park and pretend they are roughing it. We set aside land so that people do not destroy it and these losers go out and spread their waste around because they are green and think "nature can handle it". What are you eating? Corn? All of the civilizations that grew corn and modified it would kick your green asses for the manure you are shoveling. Where did the pickup come from? Is it green? Did you mine the ore with out damage to the surrounding area? Did you smelt the metal with stone tools in a carbon nutral fashion? Drill for your own oil? You are not green! Are those tools metal? Did you mine, refine, and shape the metal yourself? Is that house built with nails? These people take the benefits of society and city living to the woods and pretend they live off the land. You never see a group living the hunter / gatherer society with hand made stone tools. They always live in a farm with manufactured tools and vehicles. None of them move to darfur to show people who actually live that way how to live better. They simply stroke their ego while duplicating the most socially brutal, un-hygenic, arrogant, backward moments of human history.

I don't mind those who actually live green. You will never be able to tell who they are because they will be actually be living in harmony. They won't get on their computer to complain about the waste of other people who require computers. They won't put a bumper sticker on their car while complaining about the inefficiency of auto makers and oil companies, who kill trees to make bumper stickers made with toxic adhesive.

Even the quakers try and improve their technologies. Being green does not require you to be stupid. Try to be socially green so that your emotional waste does not polute the rest of us.