Hey all,

I've been lousy once again about keeping this 'blog updated.  Mostly that's because I haven't really ahd too much to say.  School has been consuming most of my attention and energy.  While I'm learning a lot in both of my classes, part of what I'm learning is that my brain doesn't operate in the ideal fashion for someone pursuing these hard sciences.  Advanced Human Evolution is going fairly well, but while the professor seems to respect my efforts in the class, and he and I seem to use the same vocabulary, we also often seem to talk past one another and end up in confusion.  Gross Anatomy is not going well, but I still have a chance at pulling off a passing B- if I get a mid-range B on the final exam this up-coming monday.  I feel like I'm learning a lot in Gross, but not quite enough.  It's a class that by its nature emphasizes all the learning approaches at which I am the weakest.

That's about all I hae to report right now.  In spare moments of flash energy I'm also working on some media projects which are very exciting, so we'll see where those things end up.

So that's the update.  Here's my bonus commentary.

There's  a huge flaw in the credit system.  While it may seem reasonable for lenders to give higher interest rates to borrowers with poor credit, it actually doesn't make much sense.  If a borrower has proven themselves to have struggles keeping up with payments in the past, how does it help the lender to demand higher payments?  That's sort of like grocery stores charging higher prices to customers with low incomes.  Weird.

p.s. Be sure to check out my review of a National Geographic article on my Yahoo! 360 blog, http://360.yahoo.com/paleolithnick.

"Can I have a cookie?"
"Say the magic word...!"
"Please?"
"Here you go!"

So begins the downfall of civlized behavior.  Intended to teach ettiquette and manners, this whole "magic word" business not only begins a sense of entitlement (If I ask nicely, I shouldn't be denied anything!), but plants a seed that grows in the exact opposite direction parents intend.

Consider:

"Can I have a cookie?"
"No."
"Pleeeeeeaaaaaaase?!"

We've all heard it.  Is the kid humbling himself?  Remembering that he should be respectful and polite when asking for special favors?

No. To that child, please has become a power word.  Its use is intended to force obligation upon the person to whom it is addressed.  And some parents even think that it does obligate them!

I witnessed the following scene just the other day.

Child: "Fries."
Dad: "No."
Child: "Fries, please!"
Dad: "No."
Mom (angrily): "He said please!"

So she took fries from the dad's container and stuffed them in the child's mouth.  After all, Dad's not allowed to say no when the child says please.  What kind of lesson would that teach?

And please isn't the only magic word.  What about sorry?  Verbal contrition is thought to somehow obligate clemency.  "Well, he did say he was sorry."  Or even worse, any minor misdeed can be erased by simply saying, "Sorry," after.  Or its even more flip and yet inversely more powerful, "My bad."

Then there's the all-powerful excuse me.  As in when we were at the zoo the other day, and the little girl muscled Meghan rudely out of the way with a curt, "Excuse me," as if that made it alright.  She wasn't being apologetic, and she wasn't asking Meghan to allow her through.  She was being rude, and thought it was okay to be rude, just so long as she said, "Excuse me," afterward.

So can we drop this magic word nonsense out of our child instruction manual?

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase????!!!!

Yesterday, the following was posed on American Public Media's American Weekend radio program, quoted as exactly as I can recall: "As we look at consumer economics, we're interested in the following.  What do you really need?  What can you live without and what do you need to live?  This is an important question for sustainability."

This phrasing suddenly highlighted for me one of the problems with the contemporary approach to sustainability as behavior reform.  One of the the great things about being a human, is that you're not limited to what you need to live.  That's one of the main things that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. 

In other words, in order to honestly answer this question, you would have to advocate a shift from everything that makes us human to a complete "animal" form of existence.  Because honestly, what we need to live is the same thing that chimps, gorillas, and baboons need to live.  Food that we can dig up, plug, scavenge, or hunt.  The ability to defend ourselves with agonistic displays, our own strength, and objects of convenience.  Some access to sexual reproduction to propogate our species and a healthy measure of k-selected parental investment to ensure the success of our offspring. 

You have to strip out not only those things which we don't need to live but also those things which are the product of other things we don't need to live.

Not only does this not sound particularly appealing, but it creates a problem for sustainability advocates.   Because most of the same folks are vocal opponents of poverty, strongly in favor of advanced healthcare, and happy citizens of the shrinking global world.

The true, "what you need to live," lifestyle leads to none of those things.  There is universal poverty in the strictest sense.  (Checkout the material comfort of baboons, yo.)  There is minimal healthcare.  (You're looking at lifespans of 30 -- 50 with high infant mortality here.)  And there is nothing approach multicultural  global life.  (Yeah, gorillas range over about 14 or 15 square kilometers.)

So, who's ready?  Let's see a show of hands!