Or, Nobody's Perfect . . .
I submit two items, one earth-shattering and the other run of the mill, as proof that the longer we live, the human-er we get.
First the mundane item: a polling organization lied. DataUSA, whose clients included politicians from both sides of the aisle, contracted with clients to gather data. A staffer has now admitted in court that they often fudged the data, mostly when they were running out of time to complete a poll. They would either lie about the age/gender/ethnicity of people polled, or just out and out make up poll survey responses. Shocking, no? It reminded me of a government job I had back before you were born. I worked as a compaction tester, reviewing the progress of work on an interstate highway. We were supposed to test the compaction of the roadbed, with tests conducted every quarter mile. You did the test and then you filed out a form with the results. Sounds just like doing a poll, doesn't it? I was taught by my co-workers how to just fill in the blanks for a day's test runs and play poker all day. All my experience in life has shown me since then that given the chance, 99% of humans will, given the chance, avoid work if there's a way to make it look like the work was done. Some to tiny degrees, others to rampant fraud. It's just our way of being Charles in Charge.
The Earth-Shattering item: My local McDonalds has raised the price of a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit from $1.99 to $2.29. Final cost went from $2.20 to $2.47. That's 27¢ a unit! I asked an attendent if at that same time, the employees had gotten a raise. They didn't. See, this is where communists come from. The rich get richer, the lot of the poor doesn't improve and so resentment builds and eventually becomes revolution. Except in supposed free-market economies, where we all play the 'Capitalist Lottery' hoping to be the next Bill Gates. And remember, you can't win if you don't play!
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6 comments:
When I had Statistics in college, we did the same thing. Who the hell is going to stand in the mall and ask strangers dumb questions to get survey results for a bullshit class like statistics. I discovered I'm very good at making things up.
I say it's time to guillotine Ronald.
Bananas, you're onto something here! Why don't we start a Utopian colony out in the middle of nowhere and see who comes? It could be the Laztheist-Single-Tax-no-price-increase Colony. I think we would have a fair hope of success....
Mrs. Nibbles, not only has Ronald raised his prices, but he's also lowered his standard of care for customers. I am voting with my feet and going further down the street for my morning repast.
Fair Hope, I admire your zeal as a dreamer! But I already live out in the middle of nowhere.
Bertman,
Yo! I actually found time to write in my blog (some of us aren't quite as prolific as you). It isn't very good, but I was thinking of ol' Bertbananas when I wrote it. I think I will purchase WWBBD bracelets (What Would Bert Bananas do?) and then sell them to your legions of fan.
Héj Bert,
Having a little bout of insomia so I thought I would pop over here and lazyily, but not leisurely, drift for a while in the refreshing waters of Laztheist Bananalities. It was the advent of the calculater and learning how to fudge the results of my chemistry experiments to match the expected curves of reality that gave my first love of math and its artistic potentials. The real challenge and art was to get the plots to look random enough to give the impression that it was me sucessfully doing "B" level chemistry.
I've used a calculator to help fudge my income tax returns. Is it like that? The feelings, I mean...
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