It Begins Again

Darn kids.

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson.

They always want the quick and easy route.

Now there's an idiot out there playing with fire, and boy is he going to get burned.

I just wanted to cook. Really. Just do my nine to five and cook when I get home.

The End

My name is Richard Cortman, and I work for a major pharmaceutical company that, at this time, shall remain nameless. As you may have guessed, we are currently in clinical trials for a new drug. A drug that stimulates the learning centers of the brain. We've been planning to call this drug, "Porphredo."

A little over a week ago, I was involved in a standard trademark search. I do this about once a month for a number of brand names. Last week, I searched for Porphredo and for the first time I got some hits that didn't involve Greek mythology. I found our partners, Bayes and Ellis, involved in a conflict with a bunch of college kids. I wasn't sure if it was some kind of bizarre game the kids had cooked up, or if it was something else. I began to play the "game" almost immediately. I tried to antagonize anyone and everyone. Most of all, I tried to get into contact with the Cor Tech employee posing under the pseudonym "Porphredo."

I wasn't, and am not, the villain. I am merely an outsider.

You see, B&E had independently used our research in stimulating the learning centers of the brain to develop a drug which would depress those same centers. They were testing it at a small college in Worcester, and somehow the students had caught on. I approached our staff scientist, Alexander (yes, that was his real name), to ask what the effect Porphredo would have on people who had been infected with the Deino virus and who had then had their brain chemistry altered with the Enyo drug. He theorized that it would simply return them to normal.

But as in any corporation, I couldn't just send samples of a prototypical, unapproved drug to Worcester. I had to get approval from the higher ups, specifically my boss, Joy C***, who I was calling Cyrus (I've been addicted to Civilization IV since Christmas, and it was the first name I could think of). It was at that point that she disappeared. Meanwhile I continued to try to contact Porphredo, in order to advise her of the state of the Porphredo prototype, and offer help (as soon as I could get approval).

On Sunday, with the help of a number of intrepid college students, Kent Archer, and the absent yet everpresent Simon Carver, I finally learned Porphredo's identity and attempted to contact her. I waited, and stepped back from the "game." My boss was still missing.

In the world of pharmaceutical companies nothing happens quickly. My boss finally returned from her three day weekend yesterday-- she had flown to Disneyworld for a quick vacation with her new husband. Sometimes you see conspiracies where there are none. She even brought back pictures:

She agreed to release the drug as long it could never be traced back to our company. I worked with Kelly on the distribution angle, but Simon (Jacob) Chu had encrypted a number of contracts and files linking us to both Cor Tech and B&E. Those files had to be destroyed. Kelly, with greater access to the Cor Tech fileservers could remove most of them from the inside. I knew my ip address was being logged, so any real intrusions on Cor Tech's network could be linked right back to my company. If the college students could find and destroy the last file by 5pm tonight, Kelly and I could release the drug in time to save the campus.

At 4:51pm the server was finally cracked and the file removed (thanks Jadecat, Tigress, Jonathan Dark, and Jeanie). Kenneth Archer assisted on-site with a daring incursion into the B&E offices themselves. By the time I finish writing this, Porphredo, the wonder learning drug, should be distributed to those who need it.

There is one catch. Because the learning centers of Cor Tech's victims have been depressed, the super learning properties of Porphredo simply won't work. They'll be returned to normal, but in order to learn Spanish, Engineering, or Kung Fu, they'll have to do it the old fashioned way, by reading, taking classes, and studying.

So it's all over, right?

Well, today I ran across this. It seems the Israelis have developed their own Porphredo. They say it's for intelligent drug delivery, but I've been doing some further research and I can read between the lines. God knows what they're going to implant in people with this stuff.

So I'm leaving the country. I've been authorized to investigate by the higher ups. I'll be checking in from time to time, but if you want me, look for me in the Ryugyong Hotel.

I Know Kung Fu

Let's get this on the record first off-- The Matrix sucks. Everyone says they ruined it after the first one, but the first one pretty much sucked too. It was one big holodeck episode of ST:TNG, and we all remember how much those sucked.

That said, I'm not above using it as an example, since it has permeated pop culture. To get back to my earlier thesis, when Neo gets that dumb bunny look on his face and says, "I know Kung Fu" everyone thinks that's really cool. But what has he learned about Kung Fu? Kung Fu was founded by the shaolin monks which date back to 540 A.D. They believe in a combination of Buddhist and Taoist religions, but some of them claim they're not religions, they're philosophies. So it's quite possible to become a "secular" Shaolin. So has Neo become a Buddhist? A Taoist? Does he believe in a particular pantheon, or philosophy?

No, we just think he knows how to kick ass.

But if you ask any real practitioner of eastern martial arts, they aren't about kicking ass at all, they're about finding the center of yourself and using it to project your will upon your environment. If that environment is hostile, then in order to acheive balance you must return the hostility until it ends.

Neo has learned none of this, because the screenwriters didn't want to significantly change his character with the flick of a button. If when he "knew" Kung Fu, he suddenly became a pacifist and tried to achieve his ends through non-violent means it wouldn't serve the story. So he knows the superficial things the writers need him to know, without the life-changing philosophy that an actual study of Kung Fu would bring.

So what if I gave you a pill and said if you took it you would know Spanish. Would you take it? How would knowing Spanish change you? Would you value it without the effort you would normally use to learn a language?

But if you could do that for anything then you'd pretty much have an a la carte personality. I could go to my medicine cabinet and decide what I want to know today, and that knowledge would change who I am on that day. Tomorrow I could be someone different.

It would change the world. What if diplomats could go to the table knowing everything the other guy knew? What if we could share cultures in an instant? Wouldn't it mean an end to war?

I'm not sure the human mind could take it. Perhaps we're just not wired for peace on earth.

Controllers

Who's in control here? Well, here I'm pretty much in control, but in the larger context.

Let's talk about control.

Control, like intelligent design, presupposes a controller. That there is someone pulling the strings, watching over it all, gently guiding things. We hope the controller is benevolent, but more than likely, he's not. He's probably not malevolent either-- the most likely thing is that he just doesn't care one way or the other.

BUT all the evidence points to evolution. Rules govern, but don't dictate. There is no controller. No one's in charge.

That scares most people, because they want the comfort of knowing that someone has the answers, when, in fact, there are no answers. Rules govern stable systems, but sometimes catastrophes happen. Sometimes asteroids hit and trigger a new ice age. Dinosaurs, like dodoes, are extinct.

I lost control a little today. Sorry.

What am I?

I finally got around to answering all those questions in the profile. It got me to thinking (which is what I'm here to do). Am I just a collection of likes and dislikes? I like pudding and don't like cottage cheese and that defines me.

The animals that we call the human race are incredibly social, and we seek each other out like the monkeys we are. Except instead of sniffing each other's butts, or picking bugs out of each other's fur, we say, "Oh, I loved that movie/book/whatever, did you?"

And if we respond affirmatively, then we have made a friend. We are alike, you and I. We have something in common, and even though we come from different parts of the world, have different accents, different clothes, different hairstyles, even different genitalia, we can communicate.

So suppose someone could take a surgical tool and cut out something I like. Would I be a fundamentally different person? Suppose I stopped liking pudding, how different would I be? I know when I was a kid I couldn't stand brussel sprouts, but nowadays I love 'em. I am a fundamentally different person than I was when I was nine, but it isn't because I've come around on brussel sprouts. I have a vast number of differences with the person I was when I was nine.

So how many changes would you have to make to change a person? Five? Ten? More? Would you be willing to do that to yourself if I told you it would make you a better person? The self-help book industry and the existence of Dr. Phil prove that most people are desperate to become someone else. I think if we could make a la carte personalities, people would be lining up around the block to change.

Is that brainwashing? According to my readers it isn't as long as they come on their own accord. So if I volunteer to be brainwashed, what do we call that?

Learning Quickly

Okay check this out.

Now how does an autistic kid learn to shoot hoops in seconds?

Read it. I'll wait. Back? Okay. Note that he missed the first shot by a mile (okay, six feet), but the second shot and every shot thereafter went in. From beyond the third point line.

Now I ask you, where is Alexander? Could he be in Rochester?

Don't believe me? Look at the video.

I predict this kid will be playing in the NBA inside of three years.

Annoyances

Alexander is old news. Once upon a time I had to worry about him, but nowadays it's all bark and no bite. At least I think so. I worry that he's got a last bite in him. Eh, he's far enough away that I'll hear about his last hurrah long before it affects me.

Cyrus, on the other hand, is the one who could do me damage. He's been all quiet and nice for years now, but it's quite possible that's all a front and he's just been waiting for his chance. I can't exactly say he's a friend, mostly because I don't believe anyone is really that nice. Anyone who seems that nice is probably hiding endless depths of anger and bile.

Or I could just be paranoid.

And if I'm paranoid, why would I be blogging about it, right? To words: plausible deniability. If you think this is my real name then you're crazier than I am. If I wrote this in a file somewhere on one of my computers it could be found. Here, I can tippy tap away to my heart's content and I press "publish" and away it goes. At least I think so. Better clear out my cache.

And who are you, Jean? I read that letter about you on your livejournal and it makes you seem formidable, but hell, you could have written that yourself. You tried to keep your email hidden but it really wasn't that hard to find. Are you who I think you are? Is that why you're interested in any of this? Maybe for both our sakes you should bow out.

I keep looking around me and seeing everything in a new light. And it's not a good light.

Bears

I've been thinking about bears.

Actually about dancing bears. There's an old Russian saying, "It's not how well the bear dances, it's that he dances at all."

So how do you teach a bear to dance?

I think it involves some fairly unpleasant things. First you give the bear a ball, and you get it to enjoy playing with the ball. Bears like balls.

Then you put the ball on a rope and tie it to a stick. You dangle the ball just out of the bear's reach and you get it to stand up to reach the ball. The trick is knowing when to give the bear the ball in order to keep him interested in standing up and following it around. If the bear thinks he can't ever get the ball, then he'll give up chasing it, but if he always gets the ball he'll just wait for it to come to him. It's a painstaking process, this getting a bear to dance.

Eventually, you take away the ball and leave the stick. The bear forgets there ever was a ball, he just knows that for some reason he likes to stand up and follow that stick around. At that point you're ready to show your dancing bear to the world. The world doesn't say, "What a mean and awful person, this man who tricked this bear into chasing a stick around a circus ring."

Nope.

They say, "Ooh, look honey, a dancing bear."

First post! In before the lockdown!

Well, maybe there will be a lockdown, and maybe there won't, it depends on what I find out.

I'm tired. Alexander and Cyrus were sending me annoying messages all night, and frankly I'm sick of talking to them. Night!