Why Americans don't travel

Last week I went on a date with an Israeli and since we'd both spent time in India we talked about traveling. He made a reference to "his country" and I remarked that I had noticed when foreigners in the U.S. refer to their homeland, they always say "my country." When I've traveled I say, of my homeland, "in the United States." I theorized that it was a way to distance myself the United States: instead of claiming it as "my country," I just refer to it by name. I told him that many Americans are happy to be mistaken for some other nationality. My date asked our waiter where he was from, thinking he was foreign-born, and he replied "Pennsylvania." His response to being mistaken as foreign was "thank you, I'll take that as a compliment."


At some point in the conversation, my date commented that "Americans don't travel" and to my surprise, I delivered a swift and thorough argument in our defense. I don't like being lumped into a category and I don't like whole nations being summed up in simple statements, but that isn't what got me going. What bothers me is the implication that Americans are ignorant and unsophisticated because we don't travel.

I actually happen to agree that we suffer from not seeing outside of our country more often. We are an insulated, nationalist country that spends too much time working and not enough time traveling. We don't talk about politics enough and are constantly told that this country is better than all others. In fact, according to a comment posted by a reader on my blog we should work harder, complain less and appreciate what we have more.

Yet Europeans, who by many accounts have it WAY better than we do, with their mandatory six-eight weeks vacation, cheap to free schooling, unionized wages, better health care, looser regulations on medicine and stricter laws on guns, never stop complaining! They talk and argue and debate issues over bottles of wine into the wee hours of the night and no one would ever think to tell them to shut up and sit down.

There are three VERY GOOD reasons why Americans don't travel more: Time, money and distance. But first, let's clarify that this statement refers to international travel, more specifically, travel ABROAD. Americans travel quite a bit within our own country and travel to Mexico and Canada requires only a driver's license. The statement should be "Americans don't travel to as many countries and with the same frequency as other industrialized nations."

The reality is, Americans only get a fraction of the vacation time other industrialized nations receive and a third of us, don't even take it. A regular salaried job gets me two weeks vacation in the first year, and usually doesn't increase for at least three years after that. If I stay in a job long enough (and I haven't yet), I may get more than two weeks but it will be a long time before I have six weeks.

This year, instead of saving my two weeks, I'm using it throughout the year to visit my good friend three time zones away in New York, another friend in North Carolina who's getting married, my brother and nephews in Oregon. It's not uncommon for Americans to go years without seeing some of their closest friends and relatives because of the distance, time and cost between us. Each of my trips will cost me $350-$500 in airfare and including gifts, expenses and a hotel, will run me about $1,000 each. The east coast trips will take me 5-9 hours flying time, each way, depending on the layover.

In order for me to spend more than two weeks out of the country, I have to quit my job and save quite a bit of money. My vacation will be without pay but I'll still have to pay rent on my apartment and all of my other bills. I met a German guy while traveling around India who thought it was hysterical that I had saved for a whole year and quit my job to take the trip. He boasted that the German government was paying him to take his six weeks vacation even though he was collecting unemployment.

His flight to India took eight hours, mine took thirty-one hours and included an eight-hour layover in the Seoul airport. There and back, with time changes, I'm traveling almost a week before I spend any time in my destination. From the west coast, I can be in Europe in 12-14 hours but everything in the UK costs me twice as much as it does here. By comparison, Europeans can fly anywhere in Europe in a couple of hours and for $50-100 one way.

Yes, we are isolated and there is a certain amount of inertia to overcome, although I'm sure it's quite common for people who live in the country to travel less than city-dwellers, and not just because of the inertia. In this country, people not living in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York, are likely to earn half as much for the same work. Lower cost of living, lower wages. Which is fine if you stay put, but try traveling abroad with a family and a yearly income of $35,000 or $40,000 when the Euro is 1.3 to the dollar. Still, thirteen million Americans visited Europe last year and not just London and Paris but Dubrovnik and Budapest!

Not that it should matter WHERE we've traveled. I don't believe for a minute that the majority of Europeans are visiting other countries for the cultural experience. They go for the mountains and the beaches: skiing, surfing, scuba diving and shopping that they can't do in their own countries. In the United States, we already have some of the best spots in the world for vacation activities and some of the most beautiful natural sites on earth. If we're trying to get the best value for our time and money, why not stay in the States? We must have SOMETHING worth coming for because fifty-one million people traveled to the U.S. from other countries last year.

When I've met foreigners who've traveled to the U.S., they always name three things that surprised them:
1) How beautiful the United States is. It's not all strip malls and Air Force bases.
2) How truly vast the nation is. You can't comprehend the size and richness of the State of California, for example, without driving the 18+ hours along the coast before realizing there's a completely different adventure running parallel, five hours away, along the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
3) How friendly and helpful Americans are.

We aren't as xenophobic as people think. Close friends and family of mine have spent time in China, Japan and throughout Asia, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe. An ex-boyfriend, after traveling all over the world, moved to Bangkok where he opened two yoga studios. Other friends of mine have lived in Scotland, Sweden, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Germany, Japan and Ecuador. I've been abroad five times and although I've only visited eight countries (not including Mexico and Canada), I've vacationed to over half of the states in the U.S.

When I was in India, making my way around the country staying in small villages, the people there were so excited to spend time with travelers. They asked questions, practicing their English if they didn't know it well (although many do), chatted excitedly about their lives and invited us to their homes. Because most of them will never have the opportunity to leave their country, spending time with foreigners IS their form of travel. Similarly, in the States, we all have friends from other countries to learn from and experience the world through. Of my mom's close friends (in the suburbs), half are born in other countries including Hungary, Scotland, Wales and Czechoslovakia.

When I was in high school, my family hosted exchange students from Germany, Sweden and Japan and throughout school many of my best friends were exchange students, au pair, or immigrants from Poland, Iceland, Spain and Thailand. Growing up, American kids aren't encouraged to learn other languages, our schools teach primarily American history and very little, if any, history of other countries and yes, we are brainwashed to love our country unconditionally. We're told it's dangerous for Americans to travel (we might get kidnapped!) and people don't like Americans (freedom-haters!) and despite all that, we still venture out into the world. I suppose the real reason the statement upsets me is because I wish it were easier for Americans to experience life outside the bubble.

[A few snaps from my trip up the CA coast two summers ago. To really get a sense of what we have to offer, these are the most gorgeous photos of California I've ever seen.]

Driver's Guide to Los Angeles

Driving is the only thing that everyone in Los Angeles complains about. Maybe it's just that life is so great OUTSIDE of the car - this is taken from my "daily" walk/run after work, for example - that being trapped in a traffic with mean people seems like a particular kind of torture.


To put it into perspective, just about anything you might need to do - go to work, go to the doctor, meet a friend, attend a show or event, work out - will require 20-40 minutes each way in soul-crushing traffic.

Here are the types of drivers you could expect to encounter:

Look out for the driver with the 20-car lead. This person is probably doing something stupid (like talking on the phone, brushing their teeth AND memorizing a script) and knows it. Driving for them is so easy, they can do thirty other things at the same time. Very efficient! Leaving a wide berth protects them from smashing into the car ahead but doesn't do much for you if you're following behind. The best place to be is in front of them.

The driver with the nose of their car sniffing another car's butt is doing something stupid and they don't care. These are the most dangerous people on the road. They aren't concerned for their own life so they certainly aren't concerned for yours. They weave, they swerve, they drive 20 miles faster than everyone else, they'll cut you off, flip you the bird, and generally act like arrogant jerks. The best place to be is as far away as possible. Do NOT engage this person. Don't make eye contact. Don't flip them off. Just get out of their way.

The type that can't multi-task is also the most likely to be on the phone. I don't know why that is. They'll arrive somewhere and have no memory of having driven, that's how distracted they are. They slow down anytime there are choices to be made: when they're changing lanes, taking another phone call, or even just if someone else (anywhere in the world) is also slowing down. They seem to go slower and slower when everyone else is trying to gain momentum. The best place to be is beside them. They'll never cut you off.

Ever see those drivers that brake at literally nothing? They've got a huge space in front of them and yet they're braking...why? These people are afraid of the raw power a 2-3 ton piece of machinery offers and are looking for a reason to stop. They stop at all yellow lights and might even stop at a green if it looks like it's about to turn yellow. These people are likely afraid of their own shadow. They should NOT be operating a vehicle at all and yet these people are usually in the biggest car available. When they accidentally drive into you or your house, they're going to do some major damage. Keep your distance and don't make any sudden moves, you might scare them into an accident.

Some people never think about the past. What's done is done. They live in the present. One minute they're going right, the next, "hey, let's go LEFT!" Must be fun to be so spontaneous. They look into the future a lot, someday I'll be an astronaut! These drivers don't know that the world behind them exists. They'll drive in between two lanes while they decide which they prefer to be in. They don't use turn signals because as long as they know what they're doing, who else needs to know? They never look in the rear view mirror because isn't that just for checking your face? They can make sudden moves so pay attention or steer clear.

This is my favorite. The church mouse. Always needing validation at a stop sign. Is it my turn? Oh no, you go, it's fine, I'll wait. They'll let two turns go by, unsure and not wanting to step on any one's toes. They're so NICE! Once they do go, they might stop again in the intersection, just to make sure no one's coming. These are the same people who won't go until EVERYONE comes to a full and complete stop (just in case). For as cautious as this type is, they're also the ones that will completely roll on through a red light that they didn't see, or almost hit a pedestrian in a cross-walk. They must be daydreaming about some good deeds they can do when they get home. The head-in-the-clouds drivers, unfortunately, seem to be the hardest to stay away from. You'll follow them for a mile in city traffic, finally break away only to find them in front of you again in another ten minutes. ARGH!

Slow and steady wins the race. There are a lot of this type and frankly, they're fairly innocuous. Driving just slightly slower than the posted speed limit, stopping at all yellow lights, looking before changing lanes, and always lining up when they're supposed to. They're never the jerk that drives straight to the front of the line to merge as if they're The Queen. They're polite and are generally paying attention. They nod and wave when you let them in, they stop for pedestrians and miraculously never lose their temper. They're a little slow for my tastes but I'd pay a lot of money to get whatever they're on.

Lastly, there are the drivers like me, trying to "figure it out." There must be a way around the traffic! We waste gas speeding off the line at a green light, only to stop with everyone else at the next intersection's red. We're usually going 5-10 miles over the speed limit, nothing excessive, but we expect that everyone else is in a hurry too. We follow the rules and expect others to do the same. We don't drive the same speed next to another car and we won't loiter in your blind spot but can startle and anger some folks with our quick movements. The church mouse is especially unhappy when we startle them out of their daydreams, sorry to make you pay attention! You want these folks in front of you, they'll carve a path for everyone else.

I have a theory that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they drive. It's one of my dating tests. If I can sit in the car with a person while they're driving and feel neither anxious, impatient or frightened, then they're driving in a way that's comfortable to me and we're probably a match on many levels. If I feel one of those things, chances are I'll feel that way in the relationship as well. That theory has yet to prove wrong!

Giving away the farm

Realtors have long known the power of words. Their descriptions of properties can spin a decrepit shack into the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs with just a few words. Savvy buyers are able to translate in real-time when they hear these descriptors:
"warm" means dark wood-paneled walls, "cozy" means less than 900 square feet, "quaint" means it's the tacky house on the corner the neighbors complain about, and "mid-century" means built in the 1960's and might still have the original avocado-colored tile, shag carpeting and gold-veined mirrored tiles.

So jaded have customers become that they often think the worst when hearing these words. Even universally appealing descriptions like "sunny" or "verdant" can conjure negative images. A "sunny" house could be completely exposed because the previous owners chopped down the majestic oak tree that used to shade it. It's surrounded by dry weeds and yellowed grass and the sun beats down on it 24-hours a day. You'll have to keep the blinds closed in the afternoon to avoid slow-roasting. A "verdant" property could make you think you're living in the tropics. Miss a week in the backyard hacking back the plants with a machete, and the green will engulf your house.

So it was a surprise when my mother conjured an image from a realtor's description only to find the property much different. While looking for land on the Oregon coast on which to build their retirement home, my mom and her husband met a local realtor that they hit it off with. She mentioned a "farm" that they had to look at. At over $100k more than what they had been looking at, my mom was not interested. "You'll LOVE the farm!" the Realtor insisted. A week later, she had worn my mother down and she consented to look at it.

Instead of boring flat land with a broken-down barn and bales of hay, she found five acres of green rolling hills dotted with trees on a bluff overlooking the prettiest part of the Oregon coastline. In a small artist's community only ten miles from the hippest beach town in Oregon, the property values have continued to climb here to 18% per year despite the rest of the country's real estate slump.

Noticing an attractive and fairly new-looking house, my mother thought, "too bad there's a neighbor RIGHT HERE." "Oh no," the Realtor corrected, "that house comes with the property! It was built in 1915 and has been completely redone by the professional woodworker who's selling the property." A sweet little two-bedroom cottage with a full-sized attic and ocean views from every room.

Luckily for them, other people wrinkled their noses at the "farm" and had not looked at it. They were the first to put in an offer. Turns out it is classified as a farm because it is home to several miniature burros and some sheep. My mom said the burros are the size of a dog, fluffy and very friendly. I can't wait to meet them. Look how cute!

Pay the monkey back

A bevy of bands that I'm listening to now are imbued with the sixties: steeped in the varied sounds of The Rolling Stones from the late sixties mixed with a good measure of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Kinks from the mid-sixties and a dash of Herb Alpert and Nina Simone added for good measure.


The songs put out by The Bees, The Dandy Warhols, and The Raconteurs are unmistakably reminiscent and yet the product is wholly original. Amy Winehouse sounds like she's imported directly from the sixties as the new sound of Motown! These songs make me feel like I'm listening to memories from my childhood with the excitement of discovering something new. It's truly exhilarating.

One song, Chicken Payback by The Bees, is like a kids' tune from The Electric Company with utterly ridiculous and yet irresistibly singable lyrics set to a simple beat. Every comedian will tell you that words with hard consonants are naturally funny, as are the names of animals...and get a load of these lyrics! (Come to think of it, wonder if this is an animal rights song?)

Watch the video (lyrics below):


Chicken Payback by The Bees

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
do the chicken payback

(piggy)
pay the piggy back back
pay the piggy back
pay back the piggy back
do the piggy payback

(monkey)
pay the monkey back back
pay the monkey back
see the monkey
do the monkey
pay the monkey back
oh

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
back do the chicken payback

(camel)
pay the camel back
sittin' on the camel back
see the camel
do the camel
pay the camel back

(donkey)
pay the donkey back back
pay the donkey back
pay back the donkey
pay back
pay back the donkey

yeah
come on
all the animals together
break it down
let me hear ya

[repeat the above]

Do-it yourself is a bad idea

Ever have a boyfriend write you a poem in high school? Watch American Idol? Read an amateur script? I don't have to tell you that some people are more talented than others. There are people who can do things that literally no other person on earth can do. Where did we get the idea that the world would be a better place if instead of celebrating the talented, we elevated the common person to doing whatever they want?

President Bush has said, in defense of going to war in Iraq, that he doesn't believe that the general population is qualified to decide what government should do. Frankly, I have to agree with him on this point. I mean, despite our country being "the land of opportunity", the idea is not that anyone can be president.

A candidate should have to be extraordinarily intelligent, decisive, rational, educated, informed and compassionate because that person is making decisions on a daily basis that far eclipse the weight of any decision the average person will make in his/her lifetime.

Certainly radical transparency and information sharing are very, very good things. We are no longer living in a world that can afford proprietary rights on anything that can save or improve the lives of others. But I ask you, should we really be allowed to collectively create our world? Look what happened to the Romans!


Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation.

Sound familiar? We're getting giddy over Web 2.0, writing our blogs and then Time magazine declares us all the "Person of the Year." Meanwhile every show on television (including the news) is about tragedy and humiliation, the top story clicked on in The Seattle Times was about horse sex and YouTube and MySpace, while legitimately doing what they were created to do, are also cesspools of the obscene and violent. I'm surprised this didn't make it online.

Don Imus, in his apology, acknowledged that as a society, we need to consider the direction we're going:
Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it. And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean that it has to be that way for the next five years or whatever because that has to change, and I understand that.

Marketing now is all about interactivity, personalization and relevancy. Some of it is just common sense: in a world where thousands of companies are marketing to me at once, I only want to hear about things I might actually want to buy. But a lot of it is just time-consuming crap that taps into our limitless egos. "Put your face on something and send it to all your friends - they'll love it!"

Are we really living in a more personalized world or are we just being duped into doing more ourselves? Self check-out at the grocery store, do-it yourself plumbing, "customer service" that requires you to be on hold for a half hour and then an hour troubleshooting some piece of electronic equipment are things we don't even blink at anymore. Now marketers want us to make their commercials, write their ads and even design their products!

Lynne Truss wrote a fantastically hilarious book that touches on it - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. This is one of those those books that you shake your head, laugh out loud and say "so true" to yourself while reading it. Here's an excerpt.

The bottom line is, we're facing extremely tough and complex issues in the 21st century that the average person will not be able to solve, even if they desire to do so.

Here's an example from The New York Times:

- A Northwest power company owns four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, a crucial source of so-called clean energy at a time when carbon emissions have become one of the world’s foremost environmental concerns. Without them, they'd have to rely more heavily on coal or natural gas. The Klamath dams only provide enough power to serve about 70,000 homes, a small fraction of PacifiCorp’s 1.6 million customers, which span six Western states.

- The American Indians, fishermen and environmentalists want the dams removed. They say for the last 90 years since the dams were built, endangered salmon have been blocked from migrating, Indian livelihoods have been threatened and the commercial fishing industry off the Oregon and California coasts has been devastated. In addition the water in the river is filthy.

- Residents in Portland and Seattle are the most sympathetic to taking down the dams but they're the ones getting the cheap power hydroelectric provides.

- Farmers in the area rely on the river and its dams which support an elaborate irrigation system started by the federal government more than a century ago. It provides water for about 240,000 acres of cattle pastures, alfalfa fields and other farming and also flows through a wildlife preserve.

So what do you think? Leave the dams? Take them down? What kind of clean-fuel alternatives do you think we should be promoting in Oregon to take their place?

What we should be doing is recognizing, supporting, promoting and celebrating those talented and rare individuals who can actually solve our problems (and for that matter, write TV shows, make movies and run the country)!

Wisps of magic

Something that's been rattling around in my brain lately is magic. Here's an abridged definition from Dictionary.com:

mag·ic [maj-ik] – noun
1. producing illusions by sleight of hand or deceptive devices for entertainment.
2. supposed human control of supernatural agencies through the use of incantation.
3. any extraordinary or mystical influence, charm, power, etc.
4. mysteriously enchanting.

THIS is what I think magic is:
An idea, vision or experience that defies explanation by and/or alters our experience of our earth-bound reality.

A lot of people have experienced this recently through "The Secret" or "What The Bleep Do We Know?" Some people find magic in God. Music is magical to me, the way it can lift me right out of the physical hell of driving. A good movie can work magic, utterly transforming my reality temporarily or permanently. And some dreams are certainly magic. No one really understands dreams.

We find magic in coincidences. Maybe they're just our brain sorting through our world in a way that shows us what we want or need - what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as "messages from behind the locked door" - but how do you explain this?

I was making banana muffins the other day and momentarily forgot while watching a show. Right at the time I should have been taking them out of the oven, one of the characters said to another "want to get a banana muffin?" I mean, are you kidding?

Mostly, though, I find magic in the wind, ocean, moonlight, trees and clouds:
Two hundred seventy thousand feet above the ground, higher than 99.9 percent of the earth’s air, clouds still float around — thin, iridescent wisps of electric blue.


The New York Times reported:
NASA is launching a small satellite to take a closer look at these clouds at the edge of outer space and to try to understand why, in recent years, they are appearing more often over more parts of the world. They are also becoming brighter.

The clouds are called noctilucent or “night shining,” because from the ground they can be seen only at night as they float about 50 miles above the surface, illuminated by light from a Sun that has already set below the horizon. (That is essentially the same effect that makes moonlight.)

Even scientists who spend their days studying the atmosphere are amazed:
“They’re beautiful,” said James M. Russell III, co-director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Virginia and principal investigator of the NASA mission. “The pictures do a good job, but it’s not like seeing them.”

There's so much in this world that I don't understand: hip-hop/rap music, horror films, rollercoasters, hunting, football. I hear that people like these things because "they need an escape" but with so much magic in the world, why do people seek escape through violence?

A matter of opinion

Well, it was bound to happen. As soon as I found someone was reading this darn thing, I got stage fright! Couldn't think of anything to write and couldn't remember why I started the stupid thing. Everything floating around in my head seemed too serious, negative, ridiculous or just boring.

A college student in Malaysia commented last week on a couple of my posts. Apparently I had burst her bubble about work:
working can't be this bad...coz this is worrying me. Im in college now, for a 'proper education', but if it sucks, whats the point? (her comment and my response are here)

And I depressed her about being single:
why do we need to get married anyway? cant women just live on their own and not be perceived as 'old maids' and 'unattractive'? it sucks.

She said "it sucks" twice and I feel kind of bad about that! Her blog has some hilarious little gems in it. She's kind of pissed off about everything and doesn't seem to care what people think. A friend told me I write too much about things that need fixed in the world.

Last week I went to "An Unruly Evening with Harlan Ellison" at the Writer's Guild. They showed a fantastic documentary about Ellison - the award-winning sci-fi writer famous for scripting the TV shows The Outer Limits and Star Trek.

He's a lot more pissed off than I am. In between writing hundreds of stories, TV shows and novels, he's made a career of taking on the stupidity in the world. A friend told him that his problem was "he thinks all the battles are worth fighting."

He needs to relax, his wife said. "Really? Is that the problem?" Harlan retorts, "Oh great, I'll just relax then. You think I choose to be like this?"

He calls the U.S. "fiercely anti-intellectual," and contends that "You're not entitled to an opinion. You're entitled to an INFORMED opinion." And that, my friends, is exactly what makes me hesitate when I sit down to write an entry. Am I entitled to my opinion?

This little piggie

ConocoPhillips is teaming up with Tyson foods to make their byproduct, pig fat, into diesel fuel. I hope those little piggies are proud, doing their part to reduce our dependence on oil.


This little piggie went to slaughter, this little piggie went to China. This little piggie made gloves, this little piggie went to biofuel and this little piggie went wee wee wee (all the way to the bank)!

Tyson hasn't yet asked the "vegetarian or religious groups" what they think. Vegetarian and religious. Guess what those two groups have in common? They both protect the right to life. My guess is Tyson's probably not too worried about the right to life (especially now that they're in bed with Conoco.)

The little piggies might reduce our dependence on oil but read the fine print, folks, in a statement issed by PETA, they ain't doin' nothin' to reduce our emissions:

"A recent report published by the United Nations concludes that the meat industry is responsible for more global warming emissions than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world combined."

"Clearly, the answer to global warming isn't to fill gas guzzling cars with ground up remains of tortured animals, it is to go vegetarian, which is something every person can afford to do and should do for the sake of their own health, animals and the environment."

A lot of people think PETA is too radical and I don't disagree. They're wonderfully, consistently, in-your-face, radical. But someone has to do it. Life is compromise; PETA pushes on us without compromise and every time they do, we become a little more humane. The only radical thing they're really doing is saying we can do better.

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It's a perfect opportunity to look deep into our souls and answer the question, "how can we do better?"

Let Cam do your breast exam

This Breast Cancer Society of Canada commercial, from 2000, was created to encourage young women to self-examine. It's freakin' hilarious. I love it.



Some good reasons from The National Breast Cancer Foundation to do regular self-examinations:
* Every two minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.
* Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 40 and 55.
* Seventy percent of all breast cancers are found through breast self-exams.
* Eight out of ten breast lumps are not cancerous.

Do the math. Do the exam.

I want my Spatial Orientation Enhancement System

My ex-boyfriend used to say of my appalling bad sense of direction, "Whichever way you think it is, go the other way." Sadly, he was right. You can spin me in a circle in my own neighborhood and I'll be lost. If I don't go exactly the same route to a location, chances are, I'll get lost. I have no sense of direction.

As it turns out, I'm not the only one! Humans don't have an innate sense of direction. We visualize streets and such (and men are better at spatial navigation than women) but we aren't actually navigating by cardinal direction.

According to an article in this month's Wired, we can't develop new senses but scientists have discovered that we can train the senses we have to do new things!

"Here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you want — the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared — into something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight. The brain, it turns out, is dramatically more flexible than anyone previously thought, as if we had unused sensory ports just waiting for the right plug-ins. Now it's time to build them."

The Spatial Orientation Enhancement System was built and tested to see if humans could navigate blind, as pilots need to do when they lose visual control. 11% of Air Force crashes are the result of spatial disorientation.

The non-pilot author of the article tried it in a simulator and reported amazing reults:

Flight became intuitive. When the plane tilted to the right, my right wrist started to vibrate — then the elbow, and then the shoulder as the bank sharpened. It was like my arm was getting deeper and deeper into something. To level off, I just moved the joystick until the buzzing stopped. I closed my eyes so I could ignore the screen.

As soon as they can figure out how to make the feelSpace belt look less like something strapped to a suicide bomber, I'm getting one.

Servitude sucks!

I started a new job a month ago. I can barely get myself out of bed every morning to go. I roll in around 9:45 despite my intention to get there by 9:00. I'm just wholly unmotivated. On the weekends I bound out of bed with less sleep and no alarm, anxious to start my day.

The thing is, I don't want to work. I LIKE WORK. That's not the problem. I just don't like working for someone else and I resent the idea that I HAVE to work. How did we (humans) get ourselves to a place where WORK is what we have to do to survive on this planet? How totally backwards! How inefficient!

The worst part is that not everyone is in the same boat. The elite work on their own terms and are getting millions of dollars to our $50,000 to do it. The uber-rich don't work at all. Take Paris Hilton for example. She gets to do whatever she wants. I'm working all day so Paris Hilton can slut around town?

Why do we need hotels anyway? Sure, it's nice to be able to go out of town and stay at a hotel but think about it: Who's staying at the Hilton? Business travelers! People who WORK for a living. Hilton's making billions off of our indentured servitude.

Some friends of mine just traveled around the entire country by bicycle, over 10,000 miles so far, and didn't stay at a hotel. They camped and stayed in homes - some friends and some strangers. That's living! No car, no gas, no job, and no stinkin' hotels!

You constantly hear about how people "need" jobs and a company "gives" us jobs. Wait, hold the phone...GIVES US JOBS? Gee, thanks. You see? We're brainwashed into thinking we need to work and are grateful for the opportunity. It's sick I tell you.

I'm ready to give up this way of life. Grow my own food, make my own clothes, why not? Sure, there are some things about modern life I like - books, movies, music, travel - and I suppose organized society makes those things possible but with the time spent slaving, I don't have much time to enjoy those things.

What is the origin of work, anyway? I guarantee you it wasn't some democratic idea that people thought sounded peachy. I'm pretty sure it happened like this: Certain families, probably royalty, by force, claimed that land belonged to them. Who ever happened to be living on that land was kicked off or told they could "work" to stay. They were working anyway, tending the land, and they didn't have much choice, right?

As it turns out though, their two hours (say) of tending the land became four, six and then eight as the demands of the lord was not subsistence but accumulation. Excess. GREED. Make more product, sell it to people who aren't fortunate enough to be given the option to work, make money and use it to live better than anyone else. The elite families of the world can still trace their heritage back to those rich, ruling families from thousands of years ago.

The modern equivalent of that original land acquisition goes likes this: A corporation buys (or leases from the government) a small island, razes the fields, builds a factory and erects low-quality apartments. The displaced subsistence population is offered jobs and an opportunity to rent an apartment. Lucky people. Just think how much better their life is! How many times have you bought clothes made in...where the heck is Mauritius?



Supposedly, a working society offers the opportunity to invent technologies like building a space shuttle and exploring the universe. Granted, that's pretty cool, but most of what we spend our time inventing doesn't improve our quality of our life, it improves the quality of our work.

The anthropologist Pierre Clastres in Society Against The State writes that contrary to what we've been told, subsistence societies are actually quite efficient - "the average length of time spent working each day by adults, including all activities, barely exceeds three hours" - offering lots of time for relaxation, playing and higher thinking. He writes:

The Indians devoted relatively little time to what is called work. And even so, they did not die of hunger. The chronicles of the period are unanimous in describing the fine appearance of the adults, the good health of the many children, the abundance and variety of things to eat. Consequently, the subsistence economy in effect among the Indian tribes did not by any means imply an anxious, full-time search for food. It follows that a subsistence economy is compatible with a substantial limitation of the time given to productive activities.

I should say that there are incredible philanthropists in this world who give back as much as they've been given but doesn't it seem an awfully roundabout way to get back to (what is for most people) subsistence? At the risk of sounding like a hippie or a Marxist, there has to be a better (more magical, more interesting, more evolved) way to live.

I guess I'm not ready to completely drop out of society. I like not getting eaten by wild animals, being ravaged by disease or worrying about being killing by a warring faction in the middle of night, but I still don't like getting up for work.

"Someone should be held accountable"

My obsession with The West Wing continues as I start season four. In the last episode of season three, CJ's love interest (the super hot Mark Harmon) was shot and killed in a robbery. It was so upsetting, I actually yelled at the TV "why can't they leave these people alone!" It seems like people are always getting killed on that show. Now I know why. People are always getting killed in real life.

The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.

"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."

Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."

How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.

You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.

We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.

Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.

CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”