Almost every­one has heard the anec­dote about the frog and the boil­ing water.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia:

The premise is that if a frog is placed in boil­ing water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not per­ceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a meta­phor for the inab­il­ity of people to react to sig­ni­fic­ant changes that occur gradually.

This idea, along with diver­sion­ary tac­tics, is seem­ingly what fuels almost all major soci­etal changes these days.

Major would-be polit­ical scan­dals that might have arisen from dra­matic policy revi­sions are min­im­ised through gradual incre­mental changes. Think of the numer­ous privacy-invading pieces of legis­la­tion imple­men­ted over the last decade.

When the US gov­ern­ment told every­one they would begin ‘fol­low­ing dan­ger­ous people’ with few restric­tions, when they said they’d sub­ject their cit­izens to invas­ive searches and when the cul­ture of neighbourly-spying per­meated the ‘burbs, every­one declared a big Yay!, and then donned their pat­ri­otic badges and applied their flag bumper stick­ers because “ter­ror­ism” was on the hitlist.

When the South African gov­ern­ment told its cit­izens that every­one would need to hand over their inform­a­tion and register their cel­lu­lar SIM cards, to ‘stop crime’, the crowds gathered, after a brief grumble, because it was ‘only’ a slight annoy­ance and we’d be ‘fight­ing crime’!

Those who bothered to read — and argu­ably under­stand the legis­la­tion bet­ter than the assigned spokes­per­son — dis­covered that we were fig­ur­at­ively sign­ing con­sent forms to allow the gov­ern­ment unhindered eaves­drop­ping access to our com­mu­nic­a­tion. We still don’t know who by.

Cul­tural icons and ser­vices are given rad­ical makeovers through small, pre­cise and planned steps. Face­book imme­di­ately springs to mind. As Nich­olas Thompson explains in this art­icle, every time Facebook’s made an inter­face design the hordes have leapt in action across a vari­ety of plat­forms bemoan­ing the fact that their beloved Face­book will now take a few minutes of learn­ing to nav­ig­ate know­ingly once again. Ulti­mately though, every­one will accept it, for­get the old style and move on without fur­ther ado.

Everyone’s missed the ele­phant in the room though, again. Everytime the inter­face has changed, there’ve been far-reaching modi­fic­a­tions under the hood, so to speak. First, games were added. Then, the abil­ity to ‘con­greg­ate’ & organ­ize groups of people arrived. Now, intel­li­gent relationship-based lists and people-recognition algorithms are in place.

Neat-o!, you might think.

If I, as a stranger, approached you on the street and pro­ceeded to delve into your per­sona life, find­ing out who and how you know every­body, where you were last night, what you had for break­fast and then began archiv­ing your com­mu­nic­a­tion to your pro­spect­ive boss, Lover-on-the-side and dirty mes­sages to your part­ner, you would freak.

Cas­u­alty would prob­ably be my first port of call, fol­lowed imme­di­ately after­wards by the local lock-up.

Strange then that we are all happy to give all of our pri­vacy in a neat little pack­age to Face­book, eh? I bet you don’t know ‘Facebook’.

A while ago Face­book changed their pro­file set­tings. No longer were you able to write in your interests; now you have to pick them from avail­able fields. That’s not to make your life any easier, it’s so that they know that you and a few thou­sand oth­ers from Inter­netville, aged 25–30, gender female, etc. list Cro­quet as one of their interests.

When Google branched out and offered us all man­ner of ser­vices, from browsers to blog­ging plat­forms, the planet signed up with much glee.

‘Free is good!’, said the masses.

John Doe, liv­ing in Some­whereville, con­sum­ing 3l of X beer daily and driv­ing a Y SUV is worth more to firm A selling those products than Jane Doe, liv­ing in Nowhereville, con­sum­ing 0,5l of house-brand red wine daily and driv­ing a Z scooter. Buy­ing a near-sure ‘cus­tomer’ is cheaper than blast­ing mar­ket­ing to the world and hop­ing Jane sees it.

As an example, every time you log in to a Google ser­vice, they are track­ing your times, usage and chart­ing it against your his­tory. If you’re search­ing their ser­vice whilst logged in, you’re get­ting res­ults uniquely tailored to your profile.

Still not con­vinced? Per­form the same search on your machine and someone else’s, using the same term.

These tac­tics are not isol­ated to these com­pan­ies. Their size makes them good examples however.

Yes­ter­day I came across an online ad’ list­ing a copy of Mein Kampf for sale.

The seller described the book as a gift given to his grand­par­ents, per­haps ques­tion­ingly, as a wed­ding gift.

This got me think­ing… We’ll use the ubi­quit­ous and pro­voca­tional Nazi regime as our primary example here…

Much of the pre­ju­dice exper­i­enced in our life­time, a lot of it has been bred into it over gen­er­a­tions. This is the reason young people nowadays will, without flinch­ing, without thought and without fore­thought yell and lobby against any semb­lance of ration declar­ing an oppos­ing, altern­at­ive or open-ended view upon the Nazi regime.

Any­one want­ing to exam­ine the regime and its pre and post his­tory, its tac­tics and strategies or its ide­lo­gies is doomed from the start due to the over­whelm­ing wave of ignor­ant naysayers.

“blah, blah, blah NAZI blah, blah, blah.” “ACK! NAZI! BAD, BAD, BAD!”

I’m fairly cer­tain most of you read­ing this (many less than than those who star­ted read­ing this; point in case) are already con­vinced I’m a Nazi and worthy of abol­ish­ment to some­where fiery.

So we’ve estab­lished that we’re deal­ing with a heated topic here, and that the gen­eral pop­u­lous is largely spew­ing place­boic vit­riol in response.

This begs the ques­tion: Can you eth­ic­ally make money out of some­thing you mor­ally oppose?

Nazi ‘col­lect­ibles’ (it’s not mem­or­ab­ilia!) are a huge global busi­ness with many thou­sands of col­lect­ors, all in vary­ing degrees.

Some, no doubt, are (per­son­ally and men­tally at least) fol­low­ers of the ori­ginal regime’s policies (Neo Nazis are some­thing else), some are gen­eral ‘war’ col­lect­ors, a por­tion are his­tory buffs and some are simply traders.

I would wager how­ever, that a size­able con­tin­gent of the above do not sup­port the Nazi regime. Whether that is as a res­ult of (hope­fully unbiased) edu­ca­tion lead­ing to that con­clu­sion or the gen­eral sub­ject­ive ignor­ance is another debate.

If you do not sup­port the Nazi regime, is it right­eous to trade and live off of the rem­nants of it?

If you need some other examples, think of Che Guevara’s image — prom­in­ently dis­played on everything from build­ings to T-shirts, from photo’ form to Andy War­hol–esque style.

Cam­ou­flage design cloth­ing when you are the first to protest against war?

Trad­ing in goods related to a film based on the his­tory of con­flict and human/human-inflicted animal suffering?

If you’re guilty of any of these, I’ve got news for you…

YOU’RE A HYPOCRITE.

When you search Google,

and click on a link,

your search term is sent to that site,

along with your browser & com­puter info,

which can often uniquely identify you.

That’s creepy, but who cares about some ran­dom site?

Those sites usu­ally have third-party ads,

and those third-parties build pro­files about you,

and that’s why those ads fol­low you everywhere.

That’s creepy too, but who cares about some herpes ads?

Your pro­file can also be sold,

and poten­tially show up in unwanted places,

like insur­ance, credit & back­ground checks.

But there’s more.

Remem­ber your searches?

Google also saves them.

Your saved searches can be leg­ally requested,

and then come back to bite you (hap­pens).

Or a bad Google employee could go snoop­ing (hap­pens).

Or Google could get hacked (hap­pens).

That’s why we don’t send your searches to other sites.

Or store any per­sonal inform­a­tion at all.

That’s our [DDG] pri­vacy policy in a nutshell.

So don’t get tracked when searching.

Use Duck­DuckGo instead.

Pri­vacy is just one of many reas­ons why it’s awesome.

That li’l excerpt is from Don’TrackUs, a promo’ site for the Duck­DuckGo search engine. If you weren’t aware of how these things work and thought that Googling and ‘Lik­ing’ all and sun­dry was good fun, I hope your eyes are a little wider now?

DDG has a fant­astic approach to ‘clean’ search with an easy-to-read and detailed explan­a­tion of what’s on offer, why you need it and what it’s pro­tect­ing you from.

Stay­ing mostly anonym­ous requires a hol­istic approach though, so be sure to check out the neat-o Fire­fox add-ons on the DNT site and think before you click.

DuckDuckGo.com

Not a day goes by where I am not con­fron­ted with the hideous antics of my spe­cies towards others…

Tales of bloody dol­phin hunts, loc­ally of school kids throw­ing and kick­ing a chicken to death, of the Japs finning (strip­ping a shark of its fins and then throw­ing it over­board to float to a death by star­va­tion) a repor­ted 70 mil­lion sharks annu­ally (not for­get­ting their dis­respect­ful and anti­quated prac­tice of whal­ing) and now I am hor­ri­fied by the latest story of cruelty — this time from China — that of bear bile collecting.

It is 2011. We are sup­posedly almost all ‘civ­il­ised’. Bollocks!

The Chinese media has repor­ted on an extraordin­ary account of a mother bear sav­ing her cub from a life of tor­ture by strangling it and then killing itself.

The bears were kept in a farm loc­ated in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall blad­ders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a rem­edy in Tra­di­tional Chinese Medi­cine (TCM).

It was repor­ted that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to man­oeuvre and are lit­er­ally crushed.

The bile is har­ves­ted by mak­ing a per­man­ent hole or fis­tula in the bears’ abdo­men and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the anim­als are sus­pect to vari­ous infec­tions and dis­eases includ­ing tumours, can­cers and death from peritonitis.

The bears are fit­ted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill them­selves by hit­ting their stom­ach as they are unable to bear the pain.

A per­son who was on the farm in place of a friend wit­nessed the pro­ced­ures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The wit­ness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punc­tured its stom­ach to milk the bile.

The work­ers ran away in fear when they saw the mother bear rush­ing to its cub’s side.

Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and even­tu­ally strangled it.

It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.

Many TCM prac­ti­tion­ers have denounced the use of bear bile in their treat­ment as there are cheaper herbs and syn­thet­ics that can be used in its place.

Bear bile is tra­di­tion­ally used to remove ‘heat’ from the body as well as treat high fever, liver ail­ments and sore eyes.

Think you can handle more pho­tos? More info’?

We [humans] are an abso­lute disgrace.

The world is abso­lutely obsessed with money.

It is. It really is.

…but it never used to be. Not really. Not like today.

I’ve just read an art­icle on a new motor com­pany. That’s not really news­worthy. Plenty of pet­rol­heads dream of start­ing their own com­pany — and a few do. Most dis­ap­pear off of the radar before news of their bar-derived-the-night-before-name reaches the local ‘paper.

It got me think­ing though, that, in my opin­ion and from my cur­rent office worker per­spect­ive, adven­tur­ing along the entre­pren­eur­ial route these days is a lot harder than it used to be. Back when Mom & Pop decided to open a local out­let, they did it without too much hassle. Sure, it needed a lot of hard work and pick­ings were prob­ably slim at first, but they per­severed and made a fair liv­ing from their pursuits.

Today though, everything is a chain. There is relent­less pres­sure to expand, to profit grossly and to bet­ter the oppos­i­tion no mat­ter what.

Today money is tan­tamount to vanity.

Every­one who is any­one has an assist­ant. They in turn have assistants.

The assist­ants live mediocre company-leashed lives and the cream live a per­il­ous life under the micro­scope from those priv­ileged enough to have become the con­nec­ted hold­ers of shares.

No one is worth more than the next deal, the next buck and the next meeting.

After a few dec­ades you get old and the dag­gers are out for you — thrown by the next gen­er­a­tion of wan­nabe mirror-watchers suck­ing up to the Old Boys Club upstairs.

The world is awash with media leeches watch­ing, prod­ding and obscur­ing this cir­cus. Tabloid rags line the shelves, TV real­ity shows fill the screens and gos­sip is the order of the day…

Did you hear that so-and-so crashed his Lam­borghini and replaced it with three Ferraris?

What about him? He’s ordered a new 600 Ft. yacht to replace his aging Moné­gasque fleet?

She’s got five but­lers, has a man­i­cure twice a day and bed­ded an NBA MVP twice last night before crash­ing into a police car drunk out of her mind.

The world has gone from a pop­u­lous of groun­ded tol­er­ant work­ers to that of an abus­ive money-obsessed hier­achy who con­stantly try to outdo one another.

Here’s a shocker for you shiny folks. Twenty years — max — after you’ve gone, no one’s going to remem­ber you, let alone give a damn.

What — or whom — are you burn­ing your­self out for? Whilst you’re con­duct­ing hos­tile takeovers, apply­ing five lay­ers of Borneo-derived Dodo-cultivated cr*p to your face, your family’s aging, your fickle cus­tom­ers went next door and you missed out on really con­trib­ut­ing to the lives of those around you.

At what stage is enough enough?

War­ren Buf­fet and Bill Gates have more money than the com­bined GDP of quite a few coun­tries — and they’re giv­ing most of it away. I’m not say­ing give your money away — I’m the least char­it­able per­son I know — but have the foresight and the logic to live past it.

The two afore­men­tioned indi­vidu­als are old school. They star­ted out with a small idea, made enough money to live com­fort­able and then found them­selves at the helm of a profit monster.

War­ren Buf­fet still vis­its his local ice cream par­lour for a treat and sits down to enjoy it there. Now that’s grounding.

When last did you hear gos­sip about either one of them? I can’t think of anything.

I’ve read about Roman Abromovich’s yachts, the Kar­dashi­ans inject­ing fat from from one area to the next and about Lohan’s crazed drunken driving.

Money today, of course, ties in with ‘celebrity’. It’s the new school way of mak­ing it.

Fancy your­self as one? It doesn’t take much work…

You could go into polit­ics, like a cer­tain local-to-me oxy­gen thief, who chooses to spew racist vit­riol at every turn, incit­ing mass viol­ence and blind lead­er­ship based upon pre­vi­ously failed tac­tics. His mind­less fan­base choose to over­look his excess­ive and blatant cor­rup­tion whilst they suf­fer in tin-walled loc­a­tions prey­ing upon one another in order to eek out a living.

This 20-something Len­inesque bother­a­tion is cur­rently build­ing yet another man­sion, to which he, adorned with a watch cost­ing double the aver­age annual salary here, will arrive at in a lux­ury SUV. All paid for, in dir­ectly, by the state, i.e. you and I.

You could tender your cus­tom to the local dealer in exchange for a life­time of drug-induced haze and alcohol-fueled lun­acy whilst pump­ing out for­get­table poppy tunes for mil­lions (money, not fans).

Ms. Whine­house — still fresh in the after­life — is now set to be depic­ted in a film about her life — played by the other nut­ter who wears dresses made of meat.

There are of course less com­mon ways to attain celebrity — and its asso­ci­ated fin­an­cial gains. You could be ‘lucky’ enough to be the vic­tim of some well-publicised acci­dent or crime…

The thirty-three Chilean miners who spent quite a bit of time under the ground — des­pite know­ing full well the risks of their occu­pa­tion — are now embroiled in a soap opera-type affair of gov­ern­mental sue­ing, book deals and luc­rat­ive film deals.

Leech­ing the lime­light for their fif­teen minutes? No, never.

A South African couple were held host­age for four months in the year 2000. I’m pretty sure that was an intense ordeal. I’m con­vinced the sub­sequent media cov­er­age wasn’t. It’s amaz­ing how a book deal, a film deal and the default jump start the mass cov­er­age gave them helped them along the way to a very com­fort­able life thereafter.

I haven’t lis­ted their names because whilst I take umbrance with their media com­mand, they have also used the oppor­tun­ity to — in part — coun­ter­bal­ance things, by going the char­it­able route with their time and work.

Of course some people are fam­ous by default — and thus usu­ally rich by default and asso­ci­ation. The char­it­able aspect how­ever, might not always appear as read­ily as it per­haps should.

His holy Pope­ness is cur­rently in Spain — a trip which cost the Span­ish tax­pay­ers 50 mil­lion Euros. How, I won­der, can a visit pos­sibly cost that much money? The tax­pay­ers are under­stand­ably upset. El Popeo delivered a speech a few days ago denoun­cing the eco­nomic approach envel­op­ing the world that praises profit at all costs. To the Cath­ol­ics, I would ima­gine his word has some weight to it, but the irony is stark. This is the church that for cen­tur­ies has bled its fol­low­ers dry of riches only to lather is upon themselves.

I don’t see the Pope or his home going on a budget drive. Do you?

So there you have it, wealthy and celebrity in the 21st cen­tury — the new school way of living.

Mom & Pop? hard work? Tal­ent and edu­ca­tion? You’re out. Out, out, OUT!

You’ve prob­ably only got fif­teen minutes in which to make your life if this is the way you’re debat­ing going, but you’ve got the rest of your life to pay for it.

Money. It really is the root of all things Evil.

As a rule, I don’t gen­er­ally fol­low ‘news’ that ori­gin­ates from any source that might qual­ify for the title of paparazzi — unless we’re talk­ing about the time­less eleg­ance and beauty por­trayed by the newly-titled Duch­ess of Cam­bridge, Cath­er­ine Middleton …but that’s a crush story for another day.

Due to this policy, I only catch the odd bit about the latest people claim­ing to be the greatest whatever for whatever reason. Any holes in my stor­ies ahead can be explained away with this com­pletely accept­able argua­ment.

Soci­ety in this day and age is awash with an array of mind-numbing list of ‘celebrit­ies’, and the lives they lead. Oygen-sapping twits with ludicrous piles of ill-gotten gains for doing abso­lutely noth­ing of value whatsoever.

Prin­ted media, tele­vised media, radio and so on and so forth con­stantly bom­bard us with tales of silicone-clad Rubik’s cube-esque Bar­bie dolls and over-preened mor­ons. What socks they wear to bed, who knit­ted their dog’s jer­sey and how much mater­ial they spouted forth with from each ori­fice last week Thursday.

We’re punted for­get­table albums, inifinte cloth­ing brands and irk­some films — yet the legions of fans con­tinue to expand.

What is celebrity? Why do so many flock to it in trance-like droves? How does it fill the obvi­ous void?

Celebrity is grow­ing. At first it clung to film stars and rock stars. Then it expan­ded to ‘social­ites’. Now it’s grip­ping the polit­ical spec­trum and media spot­light spe­ci­mens too. Get your photo in the ‘paper for sav­ing the old lady from the burn­ing house? You could be a celebrity. Got held ransom by a crazed looney? Yup, you too could be a celebrity. Engaged in polit­ics and attend­ing an event where you plan to harp on about ima­gin­ary extrem­ists? You will prob­ably be famous…soon!

It’s a fickle world though. One minute you’re trend­ing on Twit­ter and the next you’re being made fun on /B/.

How do you keep your celebrity? By any means pos­sible! You’re con­tend­ing with a grow­ing field of numb­skulls. Prove that your life, no mat­ter how mundane and median, is arti­fi­cially more inter­est­ing than the next idiots.

Case in point, today?

The Kar­dashi­ans.

You have NO idea how much it pains me to go bimbo on you…on my blog.

Sub­jec­ted to many try­ing years of endur­ance, I still have not the fog­gi­est idea who they are and why they’re per­cebt­ibly ‘famous’.

My usual news ‘site has just been clogged up with, at first, an art­icle on one of the younger one’s Psori­asis, and then, the mother hav­ing urin­ary incontinence.

Well bowl me over, here I thought the Amer­ican fin­an­cial crisis, the vari­ous wars and the impend­ing dic­tat­or­ship this side of the pond were the news stor­ies that mattered. I must surely apologise.

Who gives a fly­ing @#$^ how dry your hands are or what size diaper your mom needs in order to stop her over­priced Some­thing of Some­where panties get­ting soggy and bunched?

If the magazine you’re read­ing has more pho­tos than text, and they con­sist of art­icles of cloth­ing and/or body parts in less-than-as-born condition…

If the TV show on in the back­ground is using sub­titles to tell you who the char­ac­ters on screen are…

If the radio is shout­ing out chirps about someone or some­thing cre­ated by a per­son who might be seen in the afore­men­tioned shows or magazines…

GET A LIFE!

They eat, dress and sh*t just the same as you. Only the levels of BS are different.