Greetings webizens. It has been too long since my last confession. This is not to say I haven’t been thinking, I have, but I haven’t felt like writing, which is exactly what I’m going to write about.

I may ponder a lot, but I’m bad at sharing. Considering problems and developing theories has always been an activity I’ve found enjoyable. Communicating those theories, once developed, is not. Writing, actually sitting down and typing, is rarely an act of exploration. I generally have a fairly comprehensive idea of what I’m going to write by the time I do so, and thus, doing so is repetitive. I’m regurgitating something I already thought of, something for which the struggle is not the in thought itself, but simply in arranging its phrasing, a task I consider far less captivating than thinking about concepts and ideas themselves. But thought without communication is of no use to anyone but the thinker, and untransmitted it dies with them. (Yes, him or her is correct. I’m being a grammatical rebel.) In a greater societal context, it’s meaningless.

One of the great things about the internet is that it’s removed many significant barriers to thought transmission, most notably geography and the need to print. In part enabled by this, millions of people, not just published authors or journalists, are sharing their thoughts with each other. Of course, millions of people are also idiots, and probably should just be quiet, but that’s ancillary to my point. What I’m trying to bring up, though admittedly I’m doing a piss-poor job of doing it, is that with this expansion of individual expression, we’ve started to lift the veil off of our societal façades.

Traditionally we had a public face and a private one. Publicly we were all fine upstanding citizens, shocked and outraged at the moral decay of society. Then we went home and masturbated to midget porn. But thanks to net anonymity (or the appearance thereof), people stopped being so secretive. They started talking about how much they loved watching little people (that’s what midgets like to be called these days) have sex. And once there were enough anonymous people writing about it, some even stopped being anonymous, because they realized they weren’t so freakish and alone.

Now I realize not everyone believes that having people be open about their affection for dwarf sex is a sure step towards utopia, but I think it is. Why? Because it cuts down on hypocrisy. It’s tough to run Citizens United for Morality while standing on top of a pile of interracial bi-sexual prostitutes. When we start being open with each other about who we are, perhaps we can finally start to address some of the real problems in our society like poverty, crime, or violence, rather than blaming such things on moral failing.

Maybe it won’t lead to anything, but if it puts one more dent into the argument for the drug war, or makes the Christian Coalition a bit less of an important political force, than it’s a step in the right direction.

There’s a pig gap, people. A PIG GAP. Sure, you laugh, but many of you know of my lifelong ambition to create mutant pets, and now Taiwan is beating us to the punch. This isn’t just a personal issue, it’s an American issue. No true patriot can let this stand.

You just wait until the Japanese get their hands on the technology. They’ll use their Japanoriffic kawaii powers to make the most adorable mutant pets EVER. Their teenage girls will obsessively adopt them, cult-like and en masse, until the trend Tsunami pulses its way across the Pacific and crashes on our shores. Everyone in America will want one, and the jobs will flow out of the country with the great, wet, dirty sucking sound that Ross Perot talked about.

And who will be laughing then people? Who? Not me. You’ll all know I was right, true, but we’ll still have lost, and I’ll sit resigned in Pyrrhic victory.

It’s taken me two days to write this. I keep getting distracted by the internet. Even between sentences, the internet calls. I’m sure however that this does not in any way describe my reader’s current activities, as they are all highly productive members of society and fine, upstanding citizens.

The rich irony of the situation is that this site itself is often procrastination from work, and now I’m procrastinating from procrastination. I should pause now to check the news; something interesting might have happened.

Nope, still nothing, but I must remain vigilant, as long as such vigilance requires no concerted effort on my part; that’s crucial.

(Checked news again.)

The difficulty I have in doing anything productive is in large part due to my rapidly waning attention span, which requires constant stimulation to maintain its interest. If I’m doing something requiring focus and concentration, with large parts of my mind lying dormant, it usually takes some extended period to build up the willpower to get anything done. But said impediment is also do years of scholastic training, resulting poor study habits, and evolution.

(Checked e-mail. Why aren’t you people sending me any e-mail?)

Procrastination, it would seem, is a natural barrier to the productivity of the intelligent. It starts in school. We go. We’re bored. We quickly realize how little we can do, and still get by. We wait until the last minute. We still do well. We learn such behavior has no negative consequences. We learn to procrastinate. It lasts through high school. It lasts through college. We start working. Oops! Still smart. We can do nothing for 70% of our day, and still be a great employee. We procrastinate some more. Sure, trebling (one could use triple here, I just like the word treble more) our productivity is possible, but we don’t, because we don’t have to.

This might be defined as being lazy, but really, I’m not a lazy person, at least, no more, and probably less than most. I’m tidy. I’m competitive. I’m diligent. I exercise. I fight. But laziness is a fundamental characteristic of all life-forms. Evolutionary fitness demands expending as little energy as possible for the maximum return, until one reaches a point where energy expended is lower than energy consumed.

And so, thanks to years of Pavlovian training and evolutionary adaptation, I don’t get that much done. I could be wealthy by now; I could be accomplished. Instead I procrastinate, but at least I know the deck is stacked against me.

The soldiers march upon their enemy, who quiver in terror at the site of the approaching army’s snazzy white leather boots and fabulous blue hats.

Ingredients:

1. Research
2. Nationalism

Directions:

1. Add American and British editorial comment
2. Stir

Results:

Two vastly different conclusions based on the same data. (via BoingBoing)

What’s fascinating about this, however, isn’t that the two people could come to different conclusions based on the same data, it’s that the smile, something which I would think is entirely innate, appears to have a strong behavioral learning component.

That said, I know my own smile differs between when I’m being sociable/posing and when I’m actually happy, and I’m curious how much of that effect accounts for the differences seen.

And just for the fun of it, Ren & Stimpy.