Phil Elmore's Blog, page 26

Technocracy: The Child Molesters Among Us

My WND Technocracy column today is about kiddie porn. Specifically, it is my opinion that people who download kiddie porn, real or “virtual,” are child molesters.

It is only a matter of time before a piece of human filth who enjoys watching underage sex acts decides to bring his fantasies to real-world fruition.

In other words, even if you’ve never touched a child, if you have these sick desires inside you, you are a pervert and a pedophile.  In my opinion, you ought to “lean in and take one for the team,” as I once heard a comedian say, and kill yourself for everybody’s benefit.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Technocracy: No Refuge For Internet Big-Mouths

My WND Technocracy column this week is about reaping what you sow when you shoot off your mouth online.

It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. I was holding it for a friend. This isn’t want it looks like. These are not my pants.

The column was inspired by a few real-life events, including some ongoing YouTube spectacles I’ve been monitoring.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Technocracy: YouTube Frauds and Freaks

My WND Technocracy column this week was inspired by the sad tale of a certain self-styled “ninjitsu” instructor who has been chronicling his extensive legal troubles on YouTube.

No matter the subject, somewhere on YouTube there is a large body of fakes, frauds and freaks who… nonetheless have subscribers and followers, friends and allies.

Blaming an elaborate conspiracy at every level of state and local government, as well as accusing as co-conspirators anyone with whom he has ever interacted in real life or online, the poor fellow has been going slightly mad for a while now — making references to Christopher Dorner and worse.

Before that he was churning out a steady stream of “instructional” videos that were ridiculous at best and dangerous to the practitioner at worst.  He’s not alone. There are countless participants like him at video sharing sites.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Technocracy: 3D-Printed Guns Are Here To Stay

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the furor over the 3D-printed gun. The government is now trying to assert controlling authority over, not firearms or parts, but the information required to make them.

Building guns is easy. It’s manufacturing ammunition that is relatively difficult.

The genie is out of the bottle. With plans for 3D-printed gun parts floating around the Pirate Bay now, anyone with the right printer can manufacture one of these weapons.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Conducting Yourself Professionally

I’m a fairly casual guy.  I believe in dealing with people directly. I don’t stand on formality and I say what I think.  (Hell, I once asked a famous martial arts personality, during a telephone interview, “What’s wrong with your face?”)  Occasionally, however, I’ll be confronted with behavior — and in this case, attitude — that strikes me as completely unprofessional.  There is a time and place to be direct, and it isn’t when you’ve just done something wrong.

Specifically, I received an e-mail this morning from a law firm a few states away. When I replied and told the firm they had the wrong person, they got snide with me.

Now, stop and think about that from the standpoint of the client.  You’re the guy the law firm is SUPPOSED to be billing.  Your law firm accidentally sends your bill to somebody else and, when queried about it, insists they have the right person — apparently because they never bothered to confirm the e-mail address for you.  Would you be happy with a vendor or service provider who responded this way?

 

Attached is [redacted]‘s [date] services invoice. Please remit payment to the invoice address and reference the invoice number. If you have any questions regarding the invoice, please contact me at the number below. Thank you for your valued business.

ME: Excuse me, but who are you, and why am I be being billed?

I work with [redacted]. [So-and-so] did some legal work for you in regards to the [something] back in [sometime]. This is the invoice for his time. Please let [So-and-so] know if you have any additional questions. Thank you and hope you have a wonderful day.

ME: Uh, no, you didn’t. You are writing to [the wrong guy] — and I should think [the actual client] you *thought* you were billing should be upset that you’re randomly disclosing his business to other people without first verifying the e-mail address to which you should be sending it. I am a writer based in New York State and I guarantee that your firm and I have done no business together.

So-and-so wrote back: Thank you for notifying us and we wish you a lovely, lovely rest of your day…

ME: Seriously? You send a bill to the wrong person and your response is to cop an attitude?  I guess my “lovely, lovely day” won’t include something as simple as the sentence, “Hey, sorry about that.”

So-and-so wrote back: We apologize most vociferously for interrupting your busy day and forswear never to interrupt you again.

ME: You’re a class act, [So-and-so].

 

It’s subtle, but there’s real arrogance in telling someone whom you’ve just billed incorrectly, and to whom you’ve disclosed accidentally the details of your work for another client, to have a “lovely, lovely day.”

A simple, “We apologize” without the smarmy editorializing would have been all that it took.  Instead, our attorney at law So-and-so acted like I had offended him for pointing out that maybe, just maybe, they should check these things before they tell people their clients’ business.

I’ve met a lot of lawyers and hired a few. Not once have I met one whom I would expect to respond this way — at least, not to a random e-mail generated by his own mistake.

Technocracy: Chris Christie is a Fat Slob and a RINO to Boot

My WND Technocracy column this week is about Chris Christie’s secret gastric band surgery, which he believes will enable him to run for president when he loses weight.

Fat or skinny, Chris Christie is an unctuous, vulgar slob whose politics are “progressive” and whose attitude is classless.

Christie is fairly disgusting, yes. I say that as a fat man myself; I find him repellant.  But my disdain for Christie has nothing to do with his weight (despite his antics eating donuts on Letterman) and everything to do with his RINO politics.  Christie will do or say anything that hurts the GOP — when he isn’t bullying his own constituents with profanity, demanding they accept eminent domain encroachment on their shore properties.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Technocracy: The Latest Online Ambush of a ‘Homophobe’

My WND  Technocracy column this week is about the media circus over an NBA player who has publicly announced he is gay.

Neither your belief that it is (or isn’t) nor a homosexual American’s belief that you are (or aren’t) a “homophobe” is germane to a free society.

Personally I’m tired of the fact that any comment not entirely affirming of someone’s lifestyle choices is now being used to condemn people as if they are heretics.  That’s not “tolerance” in a free society.

Read the full column here in WND News.

YouTube Ryu, Humility, and “Hate”

Recently, a fellow of my acquaintance who has a fake black belt gifted to him by a “ninjitsu” instructor (based on the fellow’s performances on his YouTube channel) decided to start training at his local Bujinkan school.  As one would expect, our hero the YouTube Ryu Warrior was forced to don a white belt to train at the Bujinkan.  While he proudly claims that another fake YouTube Ryu ninja has already taught him much of what he is learning as a beginner, he has started posting videos of his terribly performed kata.  While I’m no expert on what the Bujinkan does (I’m not particularly informed on the subject, really) the skill exhibited is what you would expect from an untrained beginner.

Curiously, this fellow, now late of the YouTube Ryu (until he grows bored with his new school), posted on one of his recent videos that he expects his “haters” to start, you know, hating upon him, now that he is — in his words — finally receiving “legitimate” training.  Apart from the startling realization that this means all of the training he proudly proclaimed to have before, including his black belt, must by implication be something less than legitimate, his comment underscores the peculiar flaw in the psyche of the average delusional martial arts fake.

To the fraudulent martial artist — the person pretending to be something or someone he is not — simply training at a reputable school and putting in one’s time over the long term, earning ranks as one goes, isn’t enough.  That’s why such people become fakes; it’s very hard for them to humble themselves and become students.  They’re too concerned with springing forth onto the mats fully formed as multiple-dan black belts.

When such a person finally decides to stop pretending and just… you know, shuts up and trains, this is not a cause for hatred.  This is a cause for celebration. This is precisely what the faker’s critics have been telling him he ought to do.

One of the things that characterizes delusional, fraudulent martial artists is that they’re forever challenging other people to fight while proclaiming how formidable they are. One of the reasons this obnoxious behavior irks legitimate students of the martial arts is that the challengers have so little justification for their inflated opinions of themselves. Their arrogance is grating and their lack of manners is off-putting.

Finally taking the step to train — long-term and consistently — at a legitimate school is the only cure for delusional would-be “warriors.”  Sadly, it is a cure that takes a great deal of time to work.  Too few of these obnoxious frauds stick with a real school long enough for it to do them any good because, damn it, training for real is hard. It requires the student to maintain an accurate self-image. It requires him to assess his progress separately from his ego and regardless of his insecurities.

It requires him, in other words, to be a real person… and this is harder than you might think for some people.

I Dreamed An Entire Coming-Of-Age Boxing Movie

Last night I dreamed an entire coming-of-age boxing movie. Start to end, complete with a plot arc and a humorous ending suitable for end-credits.  The film was obviously very derivative of The Karate Kid, Never Back Down, School Ties, and Warrior, and was leaning more toward feel-good sentimental drama than comedy.  It started to fade as soon as I woke up to the alarm and realized what was happening, but here is what I remember:

Two young men, let’s call them Protagonist and Antagonist, both live in some sort of group home or dormitory. For the usual reasons they become bitter rivals, enemies who scrap with each other on more than one occasion.  This conflict culminates in some sort of dreamworld boxing competition held at a huge, multistory hotel that reminded me of the dormitories in the Harry Potter films crossed with a French manor house.

Sometime during their stay the boys abscond with the hotel caretaker’s beloved collection of garden and lawn gnomes, which they set up in some sort of Rube Goldberg tableau in the attic that results in the gnomes being elaborately, hilariously destroyed.

Protagonist and Antagonist punch each other viciously for what seems like endless rounds.  Ultimately, they must admit that both are formidable opponents, and their fight ends in a draw, of sorts (I’m unclear on this).  But regardless of winner or loser, the two have developed respect for each other, and for one another’s fighting spirit and tenacity.

The film ends as all of the young men board a bus to return to their group home or boarding school or whatever it is.  As the credits roll over the bus departing, the furious caretaker, having discovered his shattered gnomes, comes running out of hte hotel and shouting after the bus, carrying the fragments of one or two gnomes in his hands.

The end.

Technocracy: The big evil Right MUST be to blame!

The resulting trial by social media invariably lays the blame for any crime, from mass shootings to any act of terror, at the feet of a nebulous “right wing” presumed to be monolithic and criminal.

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the rush to blame the Right after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Several high-profile libs have made extremely inflammatory remarks in an attempt to politicize this bombing before the bodies of the dead were cold. You could get trampled to death, getting between a “progressive” and a microphone while the blasts of a terrorist bombing are still echoing off nearby buildings.

The victims deserve better.

Read the full column here in WND News.