Monday, September 19, 2011
Abomosu Video
Here it is finally. I'm not going to lie, even after working on it for several hours the finished product still made me want to cry like a little girl cuz I miss it so much. Hope you enjoy!
Supe Lillywhite
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Easy and Normal: What Food, Literacy, Transportation and Social Networking have to do with Healthcare in America
Americans, it seems, have forgotten their past and their present. They have forgotten what made them successful at solving problems and what continues to make them successful at solving problems. I am not talking about virtue, honor or any of those other high minded values politicians and ourselves like to gush about in public ceremonies. On the contrary, I'm talking about a habit Americans have espoused for centuries and continue in many to espouse today that is absurdly simple and brilliantly effective. It is the tendency Americans have to find the easiest way to do something they want to do, and the tendency they have to make doing it normal. I think four simple examples will suffice to illustrate my point.
Let's talk about food to start with. For much of America's history, and indeed for much of the world still today, obtaining enough food to eat on a daily basis was and is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, in many countries people don't get enough to eat and even starve to death because it is so difficult to get enough calories to sustain them. That is hardly the case in America. If anything, we have a surplus of daily bread. The reason why is long ago Americans made it easy and normal to get enough food to eat on a daily basis. By using fertilizers, tractors and other modern farming techniques, they made it so everybody in America can get food fairly easily. And, everybody in America got into the habit of eating enough food everyday and looking at doing the opposite as something crazy. Now, the idea of not eating at least three meals a day in America is seen as ludicrous; it's easy and it's normal. Remember, that was not the case for much of our history and is still not the case for much of the world today.
America did the same thing with literacy. Just 100-150 years ago it was not normal for everyone to know how to read in America. It certainly isn't normal for everyone in the world today to know how to read and write. But today, here in the states, our literacy rate is probably close to 100%. Why? Because a while ago we made it easy and normal to be literate. This time we used public schools. Public schools made it so easy and so normal to become literate that pretty soon everybody was.
Quick and efficient means of transportation underwent the same change in America. Before, America was like every place else in the world. Transportation was difficult and costly. It was rare to go on a journey of a hundred miles and even stranger to go a thousand. Not so today. Starting with canals, moving to steamboats and railroads, and then to automobiles, airplanes and subways we've made it easy and normal to travel far distances at a fast pace. It's so normal, in fact, that people that walk more than a few blocks are now considered the strange ones in society.
My last example of things America has made easy and normal is social media. Back in the day it was difficult to stay in touch with your friends. When America was founded, if you left England for America you were pretty much saying goodbye to your old friends for forever. Sending letters was too expensive and too unreliable to bother about maintaining the relationship. Even with the advent of the telephone, many people didn't bother to maintain hundreds of their friendships because it took too long to call that many friends on a regular basis. Facebook has changed all of that entirely. Although you might not have a deep, soul searching conversation with your friends on a real often through facebook, it is so simple and easy to send them a short message or check out what they are doing with their lives that almost everybody does it. In fact, for the three years that I resisted joining facebook I was seen as a freak for not maintaining my friendships because it was so easy and normal to do.
Now, with four examples under our belts, we should be able to see that Americans are very good at making things they want to do so easy and normal to do that everybody does them. But for some crazy reason, we seem to think it is impossible to make it easy and normal for everyone to get in and stay in shape! Well, I'm here to tell you that if we could make it easy and normal for everybody in America to get enough to eat, to read and write, to use fast and efficient transportation, and to stay in touch with their friends, we can make it easy and normal for everybody to live and enjoy a healthy lifestyle!
One way to do it is to keep going down the road of fear and unbelief that we are currently headed down. As long as Americans continue to believe that we can't solve our own problems and that government has to solve them for us, everybody will be in great shape before you know it. Why? Because our economy will stagnate to the point that we all have to become subsistence farmers again. I know of few workout plans better than subsistence farming to keep someone in good shape.
That being said, for all you die hard conservatives out there, it's not enough to just shout that the government needs to get out of our lives at the top of your lungs. You have to provide and implement solutions for the problems the government is trying to solve! And, if you don't want the government to step in, you have to provide solutions that are far reaching enough that they will help everybody, just like the solutions to food, literacy, transportation and social networking did. And “giving the consumer more choice and purchasing power,” as the latest idiotic Republican plan proposed to do, is not the far reaching solution that would work. Think for just one second: you're wanting to give more choices and purchasing power to the same morons that chose to never exercise and purchased twinkies instead of vegetables for the past 50 years. More options and more purchasing power will not help these people.
But that doesn't mean these people are beyond help. They just need a solution like these solutions we've used in the past. When we made it normal and easy for everyone to get three square meals a day, we didn't do it by teaching every American to farm more efficiently. Nope. We built huge farms ran by machinery that made food so cheap everyone could afford to buy it. Same thing with literacy. We didn't place good teaching materials in every home in America and trusts parents to educate their kids. Nope. We built schools that kids had to attend and were forced to learn how to read. Even social networking. We didn't send out manuals that showed people how to program their own social networking site. Some guy built the site himself and made it so easy to use that everybody could use it. Giving consumers more power to purchase something they don't understand and have consistently shown they don't desire isn't going to solve our problem. Again, we have to come up with a solution that is so easy everybody can do it and so effective it will become the norm in a very short time period.
As for me, I believe there are easy solutions to our healthcare problems that could become normal in a very soon. Want to hear them? Read these two articles and let me know what your thoughts are on them!
Let's talk about food to start with. For much of America's history, and indeed for much of the world still today, obtaining enough food to eat on a daily basis was and is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, in many countries people don't get enough to eat and even starve to death because it is so difficult to get enough calories to sustain them. That is hardly the case in America. If anything, we have a surplus of daily bread. The reason why is long ago Americans made it easy and normal to get enough food to eat on a daily basis. By using fertilizers, tractors and other modern farming techniques, they made it so everybody in America can get food fairly easily. And, everybody in America got into the habit of eating enough food everyday and looking at doing the opposite as something crazy. Now, the idea of not eating at least three meals a day in America is seen as ludicrous; it's easy and it's normal. Remember, that was not the case for much of our history and is still not the case for much of the world today.
America did the same thing with literacy. Just 100-150 years ago it was not normal for everyone to know how to read in America. It certainly isn't normal for everyone in the world today to know how to read and write. But today, here in the states, our literacy rate is probably close to 100%. Why? Because a while ago we made it easy and normal to be literate. This time we used public schools. Public schools made it so easy and so normal to become literate that pretty soon everybody was.
Quick and efficient means of transportation underwent the same change in America. Before, America was like every place else in the world. Transportation was difficult and costly. It was rare to go on a journey of a hundred miles and even stranger to go a thousand. Not so today. Starting with canals, moving to steamboats and railroads, and then to automobiles, airplanes and subways we've made it easy and normal to travel far distances at a fast pace. It's so normal, in fact, that people that walk more than a few blocks are now considered the strange ones in society.
My last example of things America has made easy and normal is social media. Back in the day it was difficult to stay in touch with your friends. When America was founded, if you left England for America you were pretty much saying goodbye to your old friends for forever. Sending letters was too expensive and too unreliable to bother about maintaining the relationship. Even with the advent of the telephone, many people didn't bother to maintain hundreds of their friendships because it took too long to call that many friends on a regular basis. Facebook has changed all of that entirely. Although you might not have a deep, soul searching conversation with your friends on a real often through facebook, it is so simple and easy to send them a short message or check out what they are doing with their lives that almost everybody does it. In fact, for the three years that I resisted joining facebook I was seen as a freak for not maintaining my friendships because it was so easy and normal to do.
Now, with four examples under our belts, we should be able to see that Americans are very good at making things they want to do so easy and normal to do that everybody does them. But for some crazy reason, we seem to think it is impossible to make it easy and normal for everyone to get in and stay in shape! Well, I'm here to tell you that if we could make it easy and normal for everybody in America to get enough to eat, to read and write, to use fast and efficient transportation, and to stay in touch with their friends, we can make it easy and normal for everybody to live and enjoy a healthy lifestyle!
One way to do it is to keep going down the road of fear and unbelief that we are currently headed down. As long as Americans continue to believe that we can't solve our own problems and that government has to solve them for us, everybody will be in great shape before you know it. Why? Because our economy will stagnate to the point that we all have to become subsistence farmers again. I know of few workout plans better than subsistence farming to keep someone in good shape.
That being said, for all you die hard conservatives out there, it's not enough to just shout that the government needs to get out of our lives at the top of your lungs. You have to provide and implement solutions for the problems the government is trying to solve! And, if you don't want the government to step in, you have to provide solutions that are far reaching enough that they will help everybody, just like the solutions to food, literacy, transportation and social networking did. And “giving the consumer more choice and purchasing power,” as the latest idiotic Republican plan proposed to do, is not the far reaching solution that would work. Think for just one second: you're wanting to give more choices and purchasing power to the same morons that chose to never exercise and purchased twinkies instead of vegetables for the past 50 years. More options and more purchasing power will not help these people.
But that doesn't mean these people are beyond help. They just need a solution like these solutions we've used in the past. When we made it normal and easy for everyone to get three square meals a day, we didn't do it by teaching every American to farm more efficiently. Nope. We built huge farms ran by machinery that made food so cheap everyone could afford to buy it. Same thing with literacy. We didn't place good teaching materials in every home in America and trusts parents to educate their kids. Nope. We built schools that kids had to attend and were forced to learn how to read. Even social networking. We didn't send out manuals that showed people how to program their own social networking site. Some guy built the site himself and made it so easy to use that everybody could use it. Giving consumers more power to purchase something they don't understand and have consistently shown they don't desire isn't going to solve our problem. Again, we have to come up with a solution that is so easy everybody can do it and so effective it will become the norm in a very short time period.
As for me, I believe there are easy solutions to our healthcare problems that could become normal in a very soon. Want to hear them? Read these two articles and let me know what your thoughts are on them!
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