Sunday, August 31, 2014

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Who?

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai was 14 years old when he developed the technology we now know as email. So it was not the Pentagon as I believe since 1996.  At that time a met a person who told me about his experience with CompuServe since 1986.

Who invented what and when it is always a matter of who tell the story.  

Corrupted historians, rewriting history while being on the payroll of dominant institutions, have piled up so much misinformation through out the years, that it is hard to say black from white and red from brown.
It took us 500 years to replace the "Discovery of America" with "The Encounter of two worlds".  I found it silly at first, because I was programmed to see Europeans as the story tellers, the ones who went through so much pain to bring civilization to the New World.  With time I learned that civilization means to impose their religious views on the indigenous people and to steal their land and riches, kill their families and to enslave the survivors.

When Jesus Christ started preaching, some people commented that it was impossible for him to be any good since he was from Galilee, and nothing good would come from that place. In the words of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, " I developed the technology we now know as email.  It was done in Newark, NJ, one of the poorest cities in the United States. It was done by a dark-skinned immigrant kid, 14 years old."

The masses get excited with new discoveries, new consumer products make their way to the stores, while people wait in line to be the first throwing money to get the product but with no curiosity at all about how it works beyond the features available to end users.

Al Gore invented the Internet.

Many of us are guilty of  "lol" when presented with that statement.  Of course the statement is inaccurate but in no way a laughing matter.  Senator Gore was an important force, pushing legislation, hearings and funding for programs related to the then called Information SuperHighway.

Ignorance, misinformation, pre-conceived ideas, get us to continue the cycle of more ignorance and misinformation.  Let us doubt of what we have been told.  Let us find and honor the facts.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Rehab Sucks!

What is the rate of success of these Rehab clinics?  Is there anybody counting?  The sooner we realize that nobody has a clue on how to help people, the faster we'll get to work on a solution. Those bullshit licenses just give us a false sense of being in good hands.

Specialists is a term highly misused.  What makes you a specialist in somebody else?  How can you pretend to know my loved one better than I do?  Oh yeah! You want my money.

Poor people get rehab from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, that basically you will get: Regular rapes by your cellmate; Beatings by the guards; Ignored by your public defendant; Abandonment by your family and friends; Lifetime stigma as a dangerous criminal, no matter what your crime was.



People with resources, I mean money, get to go to these hotel-like  facilities where a team of  "professionals" that will take care of them, according to their working schedule.  They will take care of them on the clock. And that's fine, everybody needs to pay bills, so let the money go around. We love Capitalism.

Talking about Capitalism.  Rehab facilities exists to cover a demand for a service.  Every Christmas, malls around the country hire people to pretend to be Santa Claus.  We all know Santa Claus doesn't exist, but we bring our kids to meet him, and give us satisfaction, our kids laugh and we take pictures to put up on Facebook, so we look all happy, next to an invention, a seasonal character, the same as uncle Bill, that visit us once a year.

Rehab is a "feel-good" place where judges can send the privileged among us.  Where Father and Mother can send me to feel like they are helping, and place where drug companies can continue prescribing their "fix" to addicts without them having to get served by the curbside dealer.  No more little plastic bags, now you get your "medicine" in amber plastic bottles, you can even order it online.

Yes, we couldn't save Robin Williams, and the veterans that end their lives afraid, alone, misunderstood.  Depression, P.T.S.D, Substance Abuse, these are all challenges that we need to learn how to overcome.  We tend to send away the problems that we don't know how to deal with. Government just throw money at things.  So I say we confront those demons head-on, and give love to those in need, and look around, ourselves, for a reason to live.  Let's live.