One cent, one-liner.

Whilst being both science-oriented but open-minded to more alternative ideas, I personally feel that, even though people like James Rhandi openly attack some of my dearest felt beliefs, ultimately his scepsis only ensures the contiunation of the scientific way and emphasises everyone's right to their own oppinion.

P H B Gaber

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Penn & Teller's Manners

Every Sunday at twelve thirty my ipod alarm goes off, telling me it’s time to update my blog. And every Sunday, I turn it off and go back to sleep. Keeping up a blog, or rather a written account of my thought in essay-shaped posts, is proving to be far more challenging then I have imagined and more challenging then I have been able to cope with these last few weeks.

So, with that having been said, I would ironically like to move on to manners. Recently I’ve watched a very amusing episode of Showtime’s ‘Pen & Teller’* dealing with the subject. Most of what Penn Jilette screams during his voice-over sessions is surprisingly accurate, especially when the man’s love for swearing is taking into consideration. What he says can be summarized in a short and cleaner matter, like so: “There are good manners and there is nitpicking”.

Penn is of course, in saying that, hitting the nail on the head albeit very loudly and inconsiderate.  In essence he is right, but in derivates, which he failed to even mention in his high-priced, overly-bombastic ‘documentary’.

Firstly, manners are by definition arbitrary. They’re a social dance aiming to replace  more primal things of impressing other members of our species, because courting, showing teeth, flinging poo, revealing genitalia or simply fucking in a ballroom full of people would be considered rude, animalistic or outright illegal. So men devised a way to show a barring of such animalistic spirit in manners, a way of displaying learnedness, social viability and prowess, an aspiration which, in itself, does no harm to anyone. Come to think of it, good manners harm no one and cost nothing. Unless you seek the help of a manner consultant.

Mr. Penn would probably accuse such people of being ignorant self-serving killjoys, nitpicking bitches or the more refined bitch or whore. Wait, I’m actually paraphrasing, he wouldn’t probably say those things, he just did. What I think Mr. Penn needs to remember, is that these people are simply playing into a market of supply and demand, much like he is doing with liberals. Certain people feel socially insecure and feel a need to consult someone about manners, for they reason their lack of social skills may stem for a lack of manners. I think it very decent that we, as a species, have devised a protocol to be a platform for any short of kind of people to interact with any other giving specimen of our civilization, no matter what the difference, although I have to agree with the show, some people take it too damn far.

The only remaining argument Mr. Penn would have about the previous section, is the existence of a market for mannercoaches or the need for a socialprotocol. But, yet again, I’d have to disagree with him for the sake of nuance. Sure, you  should be fine when you and your mates are over at Wendy’s and you feel like eating your burger as whole. But if others chose to, for the sake of manners, cut the burger in half before they do so, that should be fine as well.

Manners then, are for when they are appropriate. I mean to say by this that, when someone expects you to adhere to manners, whether that is because the situation dictates it or because he or she is just a snob, your inability to do so will factor into his/her judgment of you and any or all decision he/she makes concerning you. And you know  what? That’s not even illegal. Even if you go on a job interview and you aren’t accepted because all the other interviewees have had training in manners, you still wouldn’t have a case, because it’s not discrimination to expect your employees to now etiquette and it’s not discrimination to bar those who don’t

In the end, it all boils down to a sense of appreciation. Even more important than knowing your manners is knowing when to use, not use and abuse then. And yes, given some situations I thoroughly approve of abusing manners, because it’s just such good fun.    

P.H.B. Gaber

ceterum censeo carthaginem esse delendam

* Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, season four, episode eight, “Manners”

One cent, one-liner.

Don't forget your towel guys!

P H B Gaber

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

Why weed wasn’t wasting wisdom

Or the difference between correlation and causality.

It may not shock many of you that, given I reside in Holland, I have been acquainted with cannabis and the use thereof. However, where I’m living a new trend has manifested itself. A new wind is blowing out of the political corner and sweeping coffeeshops away with it. Of course I feel coffeeshops need to be regulated and well organized, but this new governing hurricane reeks of hypocrisy and easy points, because we can’t ignore the current developments on the political front when looking at this case. First things first however, what’s this so called situation?

When dealing with cannabis in Holland, the first thing one needs to realize, is the legality of cannabis it Holland, because contrary to popular belief, it isn’t.

Well it is, sort of, but not really. Weed isn´t really legal, it´s tolerated. It´s permitted to have with you and in some public areas you may even smoke it, like some parks and most coffeeshops, but certainly not everywhere. The most important thing is to make sure you don´t harm or bother anyone else with it. The eating of baked goods is, as far as I know, not prohibited in public, as long as you´re not driving or operating heavy machinery et cetera.

You may also carry up to five grams (roughly a sixth of an ounce) which may be legally bought at coffeeshops, if you are over eighteen (or twenty-one, differing between cities and shops).

However and this is where it starts to get complicated, coffeeshops can’t legally buy large quantities of weed because it’s illegal to grow more than five plants per person and it’s illegal to use specialized lighting to do so. This is known as the “back-door paradox”, because as soon as the weed is inside the coffeeshop, it’s ‘legal’ , but it’s utterly illegal beforehand.

As of yet the Dutch government hasn’t addressed the matter properly and continues in its failure to do so, evidently believing this mechanism to work just fine.

It isn’t however, because the government leaves the enforcement of the toleration of weed to individual cities, leaving an inability to deal with the problem on a higher level, nationwide, and forces municipalities to enforce rules and regulations which they may not even agree with.

The latter is the cause for the current situation, because a few years back, the government decided that weed is bad for children, to which I agree, and they shouldn’t be stimulated to use it at a young age.

To carry this belief, municipalities, mine in particular as a pioneer on this front, started closing down coffeeshops within a 250 m (roughly 275 yards) of high schools. These shops were closed down in particular because it was believed that the high rate of high school drop outs (1 out of 5 kids in my area aren’t finishing high school) and it was believed to be a weed-related issue.

There are of course studies which show weed and the ability to concentrate are correlated and studies that don’t.

And even if it does  correlate, the figures don’t work out. Of the 1 out of 5 people who dropped out of high school, most probably don’t use weed.¹ So even if weed was banned altogether, the problem of high school dropouts wouldn’t be fixed, regardless of the supposed successes of prohibition, but that’s a whole other story. Let’s say that 1 out of 2 high school dropouts use weed on a (semi-) regular basis, making the statistics that for every 9 high schoolers there is one dropout who uses weed and one who doesn’t.

Now, hear my true point. Because even though one of the dropouts may use weed, it simply isn’t said that weed causes his poor grades. In my experience, there are two kinds of people who use weed. People who do it because their bored and people who do it because they want to have fun.

Typically, people differ not only in the reason for using weed but also in lifestyle. We all know the two stereotypes when weed is concerned, the hippy/bohemian/new-agey stoner or your basic, munchying, absentminded pothead.³ The latter are usually characterized by not achieving much and a little concentration even before starting to use weed, but large numbers of people who are low-achievers with zero-concentration turn to weed at some point because they feel bored and hope to achieve something with smoking or simply want to get high.

The more new-agey type stoner however are mostly people who know what’s going on in the world and are eager to learn about it (or, more often, make up their own version of events). They turn to weed as a psychedelic or mind-altering  substance or are simply looking for the key for their next chakra, having a boy scout like obsession with them, as if they were insigna.

My point being of course that in the first group of users weed correlates with low concentration abilities but doesn’t cause them (how can one lose what one doesn’t have) and the latter group are rarely encountered among high schoolers and even if they are, rarely in the lower-sectors of the educational system⁴ , even though these sectors were explicitly named as the sectors most viable for improvement.

Further show of how little was thought about this plan, was a statement made by the mayor, saying he was ‘happy with the results’ , mere months after the closing of the coffeeshops. The plan of closing the coffeeshops can’t have had real effect in a few months and can hardly be said to be promising to yield results in the future, because the current generation of high schoolers already know about weed and its effects and will continue to use or abuse it because of that.

The real results can be booked in around four years’ time (when most of the current generation of high schoolers, if not all, have moved on to bigger and better things) when a new generation will roam the high schools, who can and perhaps now will be kept away from drugs longer.

Because in the end, I don’t think these shops were in a good spot, but they should have been relocated, not closed, and closing coffeeshops further away from schools will not help  improve school results.

And I hope to have maybe, in the tiniest of ways helped shaped the (Dutch) prejudices about weed and help create a more weedtolerating society

P H B Gaber

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

One cent, one-liner.

The only thing uplifting on tv, are the f*cking commercials

P H B Gaber

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

Good or evil?

Who cares?


Above Mo's blog, diabolus in homina, is a picture saying: Good or evil, who decides?. Which brought me to write this next piece;

Moral relativity are just two words coinciding in a world which brought forth a society in which greed is rewarded and generosity regarded like a venereal disease.
I could go on and quote and preach and wave a judging finger, but I won't. Nothing is to be gained from repeating words and thoughts about mankind's morality when those words have faltered time and again and man's morality just perished in the face of vice and sin.

Why call it relative when there's nothing absolute about morality and relativity is just immoral?

Nietschze was wrong when he said God is dead, how could he not be? How can one die, when one has never lived? When one is only a notion humans needed to not be afraid at night?

Humans created god, not the other way around*.

And in our infinitely finite wisdom we rhymed god with infinite wisdom, the perfect superpower, and from that almighty throne god looked down and he saw what wasn't good and what was. He could know it, he knew everything. So in his "infinite wisdom" he created the tree of good and evil.

At this point in my, for lack of a better name, essay, you will have to excuse my language, but who in their right "infinite" mind plants a fucking tree of good and evil. Like it's not evil in itself to taunt the newborn human race with such power. Only a human could ever think of it.


Or, in other words If morality were dreamt up by the immoral man, can't it be said morality itself is by its very nature immoral, regardless of man's claim to the divinity or morality?
And why? Because we're inherently evil. Point in case, that same fucking tree. Without cause, without culture, without famine, pain or anything short of a perfect life (because, he, we were in paradise) with just one talking snake we threw everything away, defying God and kicking of ten thousand years of human misery. And nothing much has changed. So whether you call it nature of nurture, man is just bad, utterly, utterly, bad-ass bad.


Morality, especially moral relativity is a laughing stock. Even if one's judgment is clear, unclouded by mortal coils like upbringing, opinion or perspective, unburdened even by the obscuring powers of wisdom and one gets a fat shot of luck and make the perfect decision, one will have to share it with six billion people. Odds are not everyone is going to agree with lonely old one.
And finally, as Rutherford must have said, the nucleus of the matter reveals itself. For if we were to share our opinions, if we found a way to unite mankind and mature the scattered conscience of the human race and densify our goals, our ambitions and our efforts we could actually achieve something.

And it doesn't even matter, because when everyone unites, herd mentality will kick in, automatically acting out in the way most suited to everyone in the herd**. So if we we're to unite, really, truly, altruistically unite, morality as well as relativity will be just as archaic as the notion of God.

So you see, you shouldn't focus on good or bad, focus on becoming whole as a species and acting out in a way that anyone can identify oneself with, for it can't be that hard.

So maybe the question of good and evil is just a farce and something better is waiting just down the road.


And you all thought I was a cynical man. At least I am immoral.

 
P H B Gaber


 
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam


 
* I feel I need to clarify, I did not mean to offend anyone, merely offer up my own visions, albeit poorly due to rhetoric considerations. For all intents and purposes, I could be considered a tolerant deist, critical of religion in general, but not denying anyone theirs. The reason of mentioning religion in this context was purely to invoke a feeling of wrongly justifying morality by pointing to god, claiming "he made it so".


 
** I concede this principal only applies to a perfect society, even then not to a society at large, save a planet on the whole. However, I do believe holy in the principal itself and feel something should be done with it. It's a practical implication of something that happened some time ago, which no one knows about and even less people believe has happened, which mustn't be bothered with if you value your mind in a single piece and not utterly blown.

One cent, one-liner.

Truth is a game of last fact standing.


P H B  Gaber


Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

One cent, one-liner.

Midweek mottos, updates Wednesday.

In addition to the weekly blog updates Sundays, I'll be doing short updates on Wednesday, in the form of my midweek mottos; short pieces, sentences, contemplations, thoughts and quotes, not needing any further explanation or not getting it in any case. Hope you'll enjoy!

P H B Gaber

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

2¢ Manifest.

Welcome one and all, to my blog 2Cents.

Before I ascend to the blogosphere I'd like to offer up a few words of advice for those who'll join me and loads of appreciation of those who preceded me.

 This blog goes out to my man Mo, because if it wasn't for him, it wouldn't even exist. We've known each other for a long time and when he started a blog, he could help but get me involved and I couldn't help but be over-enthusiastic. But his blog should be his and my blog should be mine, there may be a small duplication of material. Mea culpa.

 I also owe a huge intellectual debt to my buddy an brosef Jape, who helped shape my world views and shown me how stubborn I actually am. For that and his suffering through my stubborness  I'm hugely grateful to him.

 Major amounts of awe are also reserved for Randall Monroe over at xkcd.com, the smartest, cleverest, wittiest, truest and best web comic I've ever come across.

 And lastly the two best teachers I ever had, one of whom taught me the correct use of "who" and "whom" as my English teacher and the other not only showed me there's a box but also how to think outside it and proved once and for all vegetarians can be awesome. I'm still properly applying grammar to indefinite pronouns, thinking on all sides of the box and eating meat, but two out of three isn't too bad, I suppose.

  The advice for readers\followers\fans\groupies\occasional passersby\CIA Operatives observing\fellow bloggers\Extra-terrestrial or psychic entities is as follows:

1.      As is always the temptation when making numbered list, I will not start off by cautioning you not to talk about the subject of the aforementioned list, seriously, the more , the merrier. That was however a paralipsis, exampling that this blog might and will in fact be nerdy, which may or may not be your speed. Don't let this bum you out however, I won't let content suffer the form too much. 

2.     This blog is exactly as it advertises, my $0,02 worth. It's my creative outlet and I will be posting ideas, essays, short stories and the like. Heck, maybe I'll even start throwing in some poetry if I'm desperate for material.

3.     As I covertly mentioned before, I'm not a native English speaker/writer but I try my hardest. I am however one of those people who feel that their imperfections can and should be helped by others correcting them, so feel free to offer up any grammatical or linguistical suggestions, this is a learning experience as well. I also prefer to use "spoken" grammar and lettering as much as possible so, seeing as this is a blog and I'm a rhetoric at heart, I'll prefer to use formal grammar only for emphasis.

4.    To keep it both structural and free-time-friendly (seeing as I hardly have any) I've opted to update every Sunday. This way I'll have a week to produce my stuff and enough incentive to do so every Sunday. However, due to global time zones, personal time zones, daylight savings time and my, shall we say, hearty weekend mores, I can't promise a consistent updating time.

5.     Don't Panic.

P H B Gaber

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam