How to Blog

Writing a blog is like being stranded on a desert island, writing a message, putting it in a bottle, and throwing it out to sea, except the island is the entire earth filled with people, the message is electronic so it technically doesn't physically exist, the bottle is one of trillions already in the sea, and the sea is a black hole.

But it doesn't have to be that way.
I haven't been blogging long, but I'm learning, and I'll share what I know with you.

Kids are Retarded

Kids are, basically, retarded. First, they have no respect for our advanced knowledge. You say, “Don’t touch the stove, don’t touch the stove, don’t…” But now they’re crying because they touched the stove. And then tomorrow… they’ll do it again.

They have no sense of self preservation. Which is fine with me. I can make more.

My son will test me...

The Human Animal

We are still animals, tied to our animal instincts. We think we’ve evolved, but we still wince when attacked, can’t sneeze without blinking, still yawn, still can’t overcome imprinted fears, remain subjugated by reproductive urges, still eat, sleep, shit, and dream. We are still tied to our environment, still driven by circadian rhythm, even in space. We have not learned to unlock our genes, unable to regulate our own psychology through epigenetic manipulation. Legacy systems predominate over innovation. We resist change, even when we know change will benefit us. We hold each other back. We still hunt and gather, though money substitutes for food. We are symmetric. Our DNA runs uninterrupted to stardust. We are creatures of habit. We are social; left in isolation we go insane. From the outside intelligence only slightly greater than our own, we would appear as predictable as ants. And we know it. We are cognitive animals who can clearly contemplate our own inevitabilities, yet we are powerless to do more.

Learn to Love Stupid

I used to think the world was someplace that needed fixing. It wasn’t the Four Liberal Horsemen that irked me (War, Environment, Poverty, Inequality). No, it was the lesser riders, the Four Mules – Inefficiency, Stupidity, Sloth, and Hedonism. These were most frustrating because they appeared so easy to fix. If people would just turn off the television and talk to their family, perhaps we’d have a better society. If the person next to me read a book or two instead of listening to raving lunatic news commentators, maybe we’d all get along. If people thought before they spoke, or considered the needs of others, or thought about improving the process, or….

Do Arranged Marriages Cause Disease in Children?

I just finished the fascinating book “The Science of Kissing” by Sheril Kirshenbaum. This little red book discusses the newly discovered science behind our ancient and universal custom, including the role it might play in choosing a mate. I was thrown off on a tangent as I realized that throughout human history, women have not traditionally had the luxury to choose their mate. Could this social inhibition against pre-marital kissing have somehow damaged our genetic makeup as a species?

The Ascendant Man

How can we distance ourselves from Man as Animal? So much of what we do, the choices we make, our opinions, our aspirations, have in fact nothing to do with our individual personalities. They are instead reactions to primal instincts, ingrained in our behavior from the time we were not just hunters but hunted. If we are conscious of these internal, genetic, and biological influences, can we escape them? Would we be happier, calmer, more fulfilled if we did? Or would the friction between ourselves and the society around us be too great? What would a society built on this knowledge look like?

Road Trip to Yosemite and the Redwood Forest

A Coyote in Yosemite

I drove over a thousand miles in the last week, most of that on hairpin mountain roads on the edge of a cliff. Yosemite, and then the Redwoods, with the Big Nothing of the Sacramento Valley in between.

Have Faith in Man?

My uncle recently told me, “When you spend time in business, you learn to be disappointed in people. But that's okay,” he said, “because we have faith in something greater than man.”

Well, I don't. I'm an atheist.

Every day I’m frustrated by the failings of other human beings. My frustration is all-encompassing  specifically because I don’t believe there is more to this world than what humans can accomplish. If I can't have faith in humans, the paragon of animals, the apex of evolution, the master of the known universe, then we're just pretty much fucked. In that case, what is the point of trying? It is a most depressing thought.

And that's when it hit me. The epiphany...

Top Ten Peeves

Top Ten Most Annoying Things

On my way to work this morning, I was thinking about all the things that annoy me. I decided to make a list:

Fatherhood on theScrib.com

Just had my article on fatherhood picked up on thescrib.com. Check it out here.

Drinking Civet Coffee in Macau

I always wanted to try Civet coffee, so when I found myself in Macau in front of a coffee shop offering it, I had to have it. Don't know what Civet coffee is? Allow me to quote Wikipedia:

Hunting in Wyoming

Hunting the Grasslands of Wyoming

A friend of mine owns several thousand acres of prairie out in Wyoming. When he asked me to go hunting, I couldn't turn him down. Chasing antelope across the range with the reward of many good meals to take home - who could resist?

I prepared myself for weeks of stalking, camping, and living off the land. The idea of tromping through the cold wilderness with nothing but a rifle, a sleeping bag, and a camp stove to cook whatever we managed to catch or kill, well, that's what men are for.