Coincidentally

Geopolitics, Gears, and Gripes: A Demented Love Story for Business, State, and Society [sent from my Blackberry KeyONE... so forgive the tpyos it's all my own fault.]

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Eyes Wide Open, Eyes Narrow Closed: Apertures and You.

There's a school of thought - one where many of us old Leicaphiles studied- that says every Leica lens (every good lens, in fact) should be shot wide open. This way you make maximum use of the art that went into designing these pieces of high-end glass, the shallow depth of field, and the pretty, impressionist-mimicing bokeh. The idea is to let the lens sing, and the camera play the background music.

But for street photographers, it's never quite so simple. The Depth of Field in your lens - the sliver of distances within which your image will be in focus - gets narrower and narrower as your aperture increases. At f 0.95, it's razoe-thin. At f 8.0, it stretches for yards. So how do you decide what to use, whether to open up or stop down?

Experiment. Experiment again. And experiment even more.

Try this: set the aperture to 1.4., the ISO to 1600 (about the fastest we had in the old film days) , and let the shutter do the rest (this one you can set to automatic, if it makes you more comfortable).

Then try f 2.0, and 2.8, and 4, and 5.6

You'll see the difference I between what's in-focus and what's not. You'll also see what you like.

I personally shoot F 1.4 to f 2.8 for street shots, but that's because I usually use my Leica M or TL2 for the street and my work tends to be with a 50mm, from about 6 feet away. With the Fuji X body cameras or the Leica Q, I find myself getting closer and as wide open as possible, since a wide angle lens will by its nature increase DoF.

My supposedly sage advice after 4 decades of Leica/Zeiss/Nikon use is this: go out and play. It's the best way to understand what you like (and NOT what some manual or article or cranky old photographer tells you) and what you need (and NOT what some sufferer of spec sheets and Gear Acquisition Syndrome tells you).

Best of luck, and welcome to the wonderful world of photography.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Of Budget Flights and Customer Slights: Why Customer Experience is a Lost Religion in Asian Travel

I must admit that I'm writing this with both disdain and disgust, prompted by the quality of service (well, the lack thereof) we received on our Air Asia flight from DPS to KUL this morning, as well as the similarly piss-poor treatment we received on our flights from CMB-KUL and from KUL-DPS last week.

You see, it's not that difficult to satisfy a passenger. AirAsia, however, thinks it's not even necessary to try.

Our little fiasco started off as nothing but a regular cheap-ish flight (USD $400 per person) to a cheap-ish destination (Bali, with its USD $40 hotels) in what we used to call Cattle Class or Pig Poke Plush (but with due respect for all the Hindu and Muslim folk in Indonesia, I think I'll be fair and call it Chicken-Coop Carriage). I certainly can't call it Veggie Class because the only vegetables available were dressed in the bright red uniforms of AirAsia cabin staff.

To wit:

We had reserved our seats on all these flights well in advance of our date of departure, and paid the significant premium of USD 40+ per person (roughly 10 percent of our ticket fare) for checked baggage and pre-selected meals, each way.

Simple, right ?

But here's the rub. My wife is a strict vegetarian whose personal beliefs do not allow her to eat any form of meat. As such, we reserved one regular meal for me (as regular readers know, I believe veggies should only be used for garnishing a pretty, bloody, rare ribeye steak), and one vegetarian meal for her on ALL of our 4 flights. Rather straightforward, right? I mean, that's the whole point of an online booking and pre-selection of seats and meals, right?

And yet.

And yet on EVERY AirAsia flight thus far (I'm writing this on my smartphone on the 3rd flight of the 4, and waiting for airport Wi-Fi to post it) we have been told that there was no vegetarian meal reserved for her. Despite the clear listing on our itinerary, NONE of our boarding passes have shown the vegetarian meal.

Believe me, we tried. 45 minutes on hold on their Hotline (we went from number 99ish to number 30ish in that time, and ate up about 50 dollars of roaming air time doing so), another 30 on hold with their internet chat-bot, and quite some time at check in counters for every single flight.

When we complained about this at check-in for our DPS-KUL flight, and INSISTED the ground staff manager amend our boarding passes, he did so by hand, and signed the change himself so that the flight crew would know to make sure of the order.

Hope, as they say, dies eternal.

At this point today, it's barely on life support.

But I digress.

Imagine our surprise (to be honest, given the service on the first 2 flights, I wasn't REALLY surprised) and dismay (both of ours, as we like to eat small meals frequently, and mine, at hearing the disappointment and frustration in my wife's voice) when the cabin crew on refused to honor this choice, FOR WHICH WE HAD ALREADY PAID. For four flights.

And not received yet, on 3 of the 4.

The first stewardess today, on flight number 3 (also known as QZ556) kept saying "no, we cannot give you a vegetarian meal", and "thank you, sir" when I said, "this is unacceptable", rather than apologizing or suggesting a solution. The senior cabin crew eventually came by and apologized (wow, it only took 2.5 flights to get an "I'm sorry, sir" out of these red-jacketed jellyfish), and said they had "no vegetarian food on the plane".

Ok, I get it. If you've got no hot veggie meals, we can have something else without meat. What can you do for me, lady?

Blank stares, all around.

The cabin chief has no solution, no really offering of apology, no alternative to suggest. (how about some free chips, or a drink, or anything at all to keep my wife from having to skip lunch?).

Basically their response was a "screw you" with a plastered on, plastic smile.

This is a perfect example of the lousy customer service -and non-existent Customer Experience- that plagues budget carriers. I wrote about these issues in a Financial Times article some time ago, and on LinkedIn fairly recently. The concepts and practice remain the same...good Customer Experience Design is critical in an era where a bad review is a Tweet or Tumble away, a YouTube Star (basically anyone with a camera phone and twelve friends) can ruin your reputation in a 30 second clip, and the cost of pissed-off passengers switching between airlines is basically zero.

Which is why it's rather amusing - and sad- that Asian budget carriers, particularly Air Asia, quite frankly, suck.

It's ironic, really, because, this is a region of the world that has traditionally stood for incredible customer service (think the old Singapore Girls and Air Lanka standards of yore), and today these carriers have fallen well below the quality standards of even the world's reputed WORST airlines - American and British ones.

As someone who's had a half-dozen passports and taken hundreds of flights over the past 40+ years, I've seen it all. Believe me.

From lost luggage to lost seats, stolen phones and mile high molesters, I've seen all manner of misdeeds performed and most - thankfully--punished. It happens on all carriers, without a doubt. But true CXd comes in the prevention and the remedy for these ills. And I've seen those, too.

I've had a whole gaggle of Virgin Atlantic crewmembers work tirelessly to scrub a dark-chocolate stain from a suit because I'd carelessly dropped one of their famously warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies on my lapel. And I had a date about 30 minutes after touchdown. They even sent me a text later that eve to find out how the date went.

Poorly, as it turns out. But not because of a stained suit.

I've had a stew on United Airlines rush out of the plane before takeoff when they realized they didn't have non-dairy creamer for my coffee. And paid for it himself.

I've had a purser on Southwest chase me through the airport because she'd found my Kindle in my seat pocket.

And yet the head of the crew on an AirAsia plane couldn't even give us a can of Pringles.

I can tell you that when United or American Airlines or British Airlines screw up, they treat you like gold and do what they can to help. And they DO screw up, at least 5 percent of the time. But they fix it by treating you like a person that matters.

Even if you DON'T have premier status.

Hell, my own 1K / Star Alliance status expired half a decade ago, and EVERY Star Alliance carrier in the world still somehow appreciates the half a million miles and 500+ segments I flew between the late 2000s and the mid 2010s. So they STILL treat us like members of the slightly wacky family - whereas Air Asia treats us like the ugly, barren, featherless, chicken belonging to your most despised relative.

The really sad thing here is that I could have taken Singapore Airlines or Sri Lankan for only a few dollars more than our useless Air Asia hops. At least their cabin crew (of which we know several) know how to fix a mistake with grâce and gratitude for our precious dollars.

We'll never make that mistake again.

Our business, if at all possible, will go to Star Alliance or One World from now onwards.

So best of luck, Air Asia. We hope you realize that the gaping hole in your customer service is orders-of-magnitude larger than the space below our feet in even your Premium Flex seats.

Perhaps the Flex stands for flexibility in quality standard and the inability of your staff to understand how to be flexible with exceptions and own their mistakes.

In which case you should rename it "InFlex(ible)". I mean, (1) it's a great term to trademark, and (2) it's a more accurate descriptor of your ways, means, and morals.

Just remember (and this is generically applicable to us all, and specifically applicable to the smiling AirAsia CEO who claims to want to work Cabin Crew for a day, and sit next to his own screaming children on a flight) : the blame-it-on-the customer game no longer works. I'm looking forward to seeing how quickly AirAsia loses marketshare to REAL airlines that keep their customers top-of-mind.

Godspeed, young CEO du jour. You'll need it. Almost as much as you need a healthy dose of good sense.

Happy travels.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Ministries and Misdeeds: How Countries Should Think About Governance and Government

So the current fiasco in Sri Lanka's Government and Governance  brings to a head the pressing need for reform and rethinking how political leaders in any country are elected and eligible. 

Sri Lanka's à great example. We've got Ministers without high-school degrees trying to dictate economic policy. We've got people who can't speak English well enough to use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling on the Ministry of Higher Education website. We've got doctors setting drug prices at the Ministry of Health. We've had non-Diplomats without international experience running the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We've had Ministers of Transportation and Airports and such who've never worked for an airline or an engineering firm or transportation company. 

How on God's green (well, now mostly brown or waterlogged) earth can we expect uneducated, inexperienced, and ill-mannered groups of bedraggled and diminished old men to run even a passable, internationally respected, and efficient economy? Or even just a PASSABLE nation, full stop.

Well, we can't. So it's not surprising that they screw up often and with massive negative impact. 

My unicorns-will-slide-down-rainbows wish, then (and some of these have come true), is that :

1. Economists and Management Consultants will run the Ministry of Finance and Trade.

2. Professors and university deans (PhD minimum) will run the Ministry of Education.

3. Former Diplomats with First World postings (or at least 20 years experience at a senior level in an international organization, the UN, or an NGO of repute) and a minimum degree of Law, Poltical Science, or International relations will run the Foreign Ministry

4. Senior Economists and Corporate Finance types will run the Central Bank

5. Risk Management Directors and Fraud Investigators, perhaps from the London or Tokyo stock exchanges, will run the SEC

6. Civil Engineers and City Planners with at least a Masters degree will run the UDA, but only if they've supervised a large scale (USD $250mm minimum) development or housing project. 

7. A seasoned, qualified doctor with at least a PhD will run the Health Ministry, while finance experts will set Pharmaceutical prices once a drug has been approved. 

8. The Ministry of Plantations and Agriculture will be headed by a Masters Degree holder who has taken significant coursework in sustainable development and agriculture, or at least some experience in the field (pun intended) , with a farm or Plantation owner as a deputy,

9. A degree holding civil engineer and anti-corruption expert will run the CMC together. They will be paid handsomely so as not to accept bribes, and every meeting they have with a developer will be filmed by a member of the CID or STF and posted to YouTube.

10. The Minister of Tourism should have a minimum of a MBA and/or 20+ years working for an airline or 5 star hotel here or abroad.

12. Ministry of Higher Education should hold at least a Masters degree from an internationally recognized university. In education. And at least 20 years as a provost or dean at an internationally recognized university.

And lastly, #13, all parliamentarians should hold a minimum of a bachelor's degree.

Unfair, you say?

Sorry, but if we're going to understand and rule a nation that has relatively open trade with the real world, we need people with international experience to understand just Sri Lanka's economy and Governance. Let's not even think about other examples, because adding those to this post would make it several thousands of pages long - and let's be honest, my writing gets boring after a single paragraph. (You must admit at least my first paragraphs are amusing).

Let's forget partisan politics and nepotistic appointments, and find the folks who are good enough and moral enough to run these nations. It's our obligation to the next generations to sort this crap out before we die.

[ Fährhaus is sick of politicians playing fast and loose with the law. Fast and loose should only be applied when it comes to choosing a boyfriend or girlfriend.]

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Railway Strikes and Union Strife: Why Nobody Cares.

The developing world seems unusually fond of unions and strikes and walkouts for better pay, lower taxes, better school placement, lower traffic fines, and a litany of other “dire issues” that union leadership chooses to highlight.

Here’s the problem: no one cares. Or at least, no one who can actually do anything about these issues cares.

Take the railway worker strike, or SAITM strike, or bus driver strike. Most folks agree that workers need to be paid fair wages. But whether 60,000 monthly rupees are enough must be decided and debated elsewhere - we’re talking about strikes in general here, not the reasons for the strikes per se.

[As an aside, 60, 000is 720,000 a year. The national median income in Sri Lanka for a household of 4 is 480, 000 a year. So these railway guys and GMOA peeps are already earning better than the average bear. Yogi and Boo Boo would be thrilled at all the extra hunny 20 grand buys, I reckon.

Back to strikes and their futility, though. The problem I and many others see is that going on strike for higher pay in these LDCs is idiotic. All a strike does is inconvenience the common man or woman. The ones who use public transport and public hospitals. Makes sense to irritate these citizens if these citizens can pressure politicians to do something.

But.

But wait, there’s a big ass problem with that logic.

Those people of the citizenry don’t have any significant influence, or power, or even a say in anything other than their 1 out of 22 million votes every 5 years. So incoveniencing them is just plain stupid, because they’re not your audience.

The decision makers in government and the influencers amongst the Colombo Magnums don’t take public transport (they think that’s for common folk), can afford to travel during off-peak traffic times (they run or own, or are going to run or own, most of the businesses in Colombo, and no one’s going to fire them for being late). So the taste makers and policy makers and society doyennes aren’t inconvenienced at all. Ministers, who CAN change stuff, via legislation and regulation, simply ride in their Defender-bookended convoys, seated in their leather-lined BMW or Merc or Audi or Prado, and laugh because they can just turn on red and blue flashers and sail through protestor-caused traffic as if it were so much water vapor. So they don’t care, either, except every 5 years or to bitch about the prior regime or the current one (depending on whose fetid bed they crawled into last night and out of this morning).

Union leaders know this. If they don’t, they’re morons. Most union leaders are fat and happy, basking in the glow of their own egos and generally working for themselves and their cronies rather than for the people they claim to represent. Instead, these chubby kitties push their own agendas in order to please a member of some political regime [to throw shade on the then-current regime and shout about inequality and how their own pet candidate or sister-in-law is the solution]. The only people who benefit from strikes are the union leaders themselves, as they get more publicity and hence power and, eventually, more members signing up and paying dues that inure to that same leadership in salaries and bonuses.

Brilliant, really. But really, really, sad, too. Disrupting the lives of millions of average income, blue collar citizens in order to further one’s political games is disgraceful.

They should hang their heads in shame.

But they’ll probably consider that an OSHA violation.

________________

[#Fahrhaus is sick and tired of fighting protestor-begotten traffic and unknown mini-pols every day just to get to the Dialog store to complain about lousy service on his 4G Broadband connection.]

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

IS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THE NEW KING OF SERVICE?

http://www.ft.lk/columns/Is-Customer-Experience-Design-the-new-religion-/4-644121

Click the link above to find out why Customer Experience Design (CXd) can bring more revenue from existing customers, and new revenue from the rest.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

The Battle of Block Chain: Barbarians at Bitcoin’s Gates?

A Chat with an Armchair Economist and a Coffee Shop Strategist

We all know that Crypto-Currencies become have become increasingly popular and increasingly publicized in recent years.  And whether due to its Block Chain technology – a decentralized ledger that maintains a public record of all transactions – or due to luck, first mover advantage, and good timing, Bitcoin has emerged as the market leader in virtual coin.  It’s built the House of Crypto, with tall hedges surrounding its 50-perch plot in the virtual landscape.

All is fair, however, in the world of Web real estate:  a new currency, Ether, emerged earlier this year to threaten Bitcoin’s position as the world’s number-one Crypto Currency.

Resident economist Ruzaiq Badurdeen and technology strategist Gitendra E. Chitty help us understand what’s going on in a rare interview.  Let’s hear what they have to say about this Ether(eal) world of eMoney…

GEC:  So what’s it all about, Ruzaiq?  Coins used to be metal, and dollars were paper.  Virtual Currency is just a different name for online bank transfers, right?  Even the name Block Chain is idiotic – sounds like a string of bricks tied together, not fancy technology.  Honestly, I think people are running out of URLs and just pasting random words together these days.  Like  I don’t get why we’re even discussing this.

RB: Well, naming conventions aside, you have to admit that today, money isn’t just physical nickels and dimes. With eCommerce and virtual money transfers, and things like ezCash letting people send dollars or rupees across the country and around the world, currency equivalents cropped up with the promise of minimizing the impact of currency fluctuation.  Bitcoin was the first virtual currency, enabling the citizens of the Web to trade, buy, transact, and communicate in a predictable and stable fashion without being tethered to a central bank, and still being convertible into traditional fiat currencies like US Dollars or Japanese Yen.

GEC:  That’s my point - it’s just a check, replicated in bits and bytes rather than bills and little metal circles that jingle in your pocket. Online players of Massive Multiplayer Online Games needed a way to “buy” castles and swords and fantastic beasts without having to use credit cards and worry about data theft.

RB:  To some extent, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Block Chain is theoretically not just for money.  It’s a concept where messages and data flow are broken up into discrete “blocks” that can be securely transmitted across the open Web.  The sender of the data and the recipient both have unique passkeys that let them put all those blocks into the correct order, convert it to something that tells a story, and effectively relay that story to someone else on the other side of the globe.  That story can be “I’ve now paid you X dollars”.

GEC:   Right - basically currencies that can be easily tracked. If Block Chains are also able to maintain a record of all transactions they’ve been part of, well that effectively makes it nearly impossible to use them for black market transactions – it would make forgery pretty difficult unless you’re some master hacker. Donald Trump and his ilk wouldn’t be very happy about it, would they?

Anyway, jokes aside, I get that these e-coins have advantages over traditional currency, but what’s the big deal with Ether - why is everyone saying that it’s knocking on Bitcoin’s door?  It’s basically the same thing with a different name.

RB:  Simply put, yes, they both have the same conceptual origin and similar security features.  But there are some important distinctions.  While both currencies rely on that block-chain technology, Ether [through its proprietary technology Ethereum] offers users inbuilt “smart contracts” that allow the currency to automatically execute the terms of a contract once its terms have been met, effectively cutting out middlemen and lowering transaction costs.  Bitcoin, by contrast, relies on manual execution and manual conversion from the sender to the recipient.  The latter works for individual users who want to send some cash equivalent, but has no model for corporate use.

GEC:  So it’s a payment mechanism competition, and the auto-execution is Ether’s point of differentiation.  

RB:  Pretty much.  Let’s take an example. Imagine you want to buy a car…

GEC: Actually, I just tried to do that.  Found an electric car dealership in Colombo 8 that had a BMW i3 on order that was exactly what I wanted and couldn’t find anywhere in Sri Lanka at a reasonable price.

RB:  Well, here’s where it gets interesting.  Imagine you’re buying a car you saw on eBay instead from a dodgy place called Sparky Electric Cars in Borella.

GEC: OK, I’m with you so far... Believe me, I’d much prefer to have bought a car on eBay, given that I got defrauded for over a million rupees by these idiots who never delivered the car I paid for!

RB: If you’d used Ether, you’d probably have saved yourself a lot of headache and a whole bunch of cash because you’d have seen the car in person before your bank account got debited.

GEC: What???  Explain.  How on earth would that have happened?

RB: Remember how we said that Ether automates transactions in virtual currency?  If you’d paid for the car with Ether, the guy and his wife at the so-called dealership couldn’t have stolen your money.  The transaction would only have taken place if certain defined conditions took place.

GEC:  I think I’ve got it.  If I “paid” the deposit with Ether, on the condition that I was going to get the car in a certain number of days, then I’ve effectively proven my intent to purchase by pre-paying.  Except if Sparky didn’t deliver the car, the money wouldn’t have been transferred, and I’d still have that million five in my bank account.  Rather than in the pockets of a thief who’s claiming bankruptcy while driving a red Tesla around Colombo.

RB:  Basically, yes.  You could have set the condition on the payment to say something to the effect of “once car is (1) cleared by customs and (2) delivered to buyer with the appropriate registration book and title, then (3) execute transaction to pay seller”.

GEC: And then I wouldn’t have ended up with a hole in my bank account, a WhatsApp picture of a phony Customs Declaration, and dozens of written and verbal promises to pay back my deposit while my garage sits empty and some smug huckster takes vacations to the Grand Hotel while his crook of a wife claims she can’t feed her children because of their debts.

RB:  All makes sense now, doesn’t it?   This way, your money and your fictitious car wouldn’t be hanging out somewhere in the ether and the owners of Sparky wouldn’t be running up tabs at the Cinnamon Grand.   Puns, naturally, intended.

GEC:  Sigh. Where were you when I got fleeced?

RB:  Probably surfing the web in my living room, learning about Block Chains.

While Bitcoin continues to thrive in the grassroots economy that it built, it has doubled in value against the US dollar since the start of this year – not too shabby a return, for sure. Ether, by contrast, has already been adopted by several large organizations including J.P.Morgan, Reuters, Microsoft, and Samsung – giving it critical validation as a stable payment mechanism and a scalable, secure method for companies that need to execute financial transactions, and thereby solidifying its value as a true-but-virtual currency.  These companies have formed the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (https://entethalliance.org/), an organization that aims to collectivity promote the use of Ether in corporate transactions, particularly in derivatives trading and other financial investing.

Ether’s resultant success has thus been well-documented and effectively proven.  Its real-world value is evidence enough: while the price of bitcoin has doubled over the last year [increasing to a market cap of almost USD 40bn], the price of Ether has risen by 2000%, and its market cap to USD 27bn in the same time period.  That’s a faster growth rate than Facebook usage since its 2006 launch.  Ether, the new kid on the Block [Chain] has quickly become a force that the Bitcoin community can no longer ignore.

Barbarians at the gate, indeed.

Ruzaiq’s background includes a stint as a Moody’s analyst and a MA in Political Economics from Kings College, London. Gitendra has two decades of corporate strategy experience in the Fortune 100 and a number of startups, and holds  an MBA from Yale University. Together, they lead KPMG’s Strategic Advisory Services.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

People in Sri Lanka constantly ask me how it feels to "be back" in Colombo. For those who don't know, we moved Stateside in 1975, 14 months after my birth. I returned in 2015, carrying an American Passport, American school, university, and grad school degrees in my suitcase, twenty years of work experience from America and Europe in my hand luggage, and decades of truly being a die-hard American in my breast pocket. New York is the place I call home, where my heart and loyalties usually reside though my person lives quietly in the midst of Colombo. America is my country, then, and Sri Lanka my motherland. So while my roots may lie on Cambridge Place (And in Jaffna. And India. And Mauritius. And somewhere in France.), my mind and my memories are oft a half a world away, firmly nestled on the East Coast of those United States of America where my four plus decades were formed. Because, let's be honest, Virginia and California were stomping grounds for years but neither was ever truly home. And though I am but a tourist in this tropical paradise, it is, in the end, a place I adore. I was born here. I take huge portions of my (admittedly questionable) character from here - despite equally huge portions of the local spices wreaking havoc on my "delicate" constitution. My wonderful-yet-quirky parents live here. Hell, I met my wife here. The latter alone makes me love this resplendent yet (usually) charmingly-flawed isle for reasons even my dearest New York cannot offer. I rediscovered my photography and love of writing here. I've even got a pretty cool job here, in one of the most successful and long-lived companies in the country (with its historical roots in America, no less). And so it is, me a tourist in (technically) "my own" land, navigating the social and corporate and political landscape like a newly hatched colt (yes, I know they aren't hatched) on shaky and uncertain legs. There are frustrations and barricades I trip over and struggle to overcome and overstep, maddening and sometimes angering in the process dozens of people I saddle with my presence and personality. I'm a nuisance to many Sri Lankans, for sure, a gnat in the ear or, more likely, a pain in the rear. And in that uncertainty I muddle on, reeling at the things that feel so bizarre to a 'Merican boy, reveling in the things that feel so natural to a Ceylonese one. Luckily, they haven't deported me yet. I'll leave you and this rambling missive a small gift: one of the best pieces I've read on being a foreigner in one's homeland, from a guy whose books you need to read. I hope it brings you as many chuckles and smiles as it did me. Enjoy. (NB: The lad who sent this to Fahrhaus is one of those poor souls whose daily life he makes an occasional hell. Fahrhaus isn't sure if it was a hint.)

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Soon after I moved to Sri Lanka, someone I met - can't remember who, and don't care to recall - asked me why Americans make such a big deal about 9/11 when so many parts of this world are war-torn. Sri Lanka, after all, had a three-decade long civil war, with tens of thousands more casualties than we suffered in NYC and DC. Because. Because that morning, sleeping late after an all-night cram session for an afternoon class, I awoke to a ringing cell phone. Shehan Wijayanayake, when I answered, said "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center". And I, tired and cranky as I am wont to be when woken unexpectedly, hung up on him after mumbling, "stop playing jokes, it's too early in the morning". Thirty seconds later, he called back and said to turn on the TV. What started as a what-on-earth conversation, both of us incredulous that a pilot could be so lousy as to hit the tallest building in our city, changed five minutes later. Together in voice but separated by thousands of miles, we watched in horror as the second airliner exploded through the second tower. What we felt was sheer and utter fear. First, for my sister Shonine Chitty Wijayanayake, who was supposed to be filing briefs in the courthouse two blocks from the Towers. And once we reached her and found her in midtown, shaken but safe, our fear turned grotesquely, incalculably worse. It changed, tumbling and expanding, growing from a cloud of rubble-borne dust into something solid, something crackling, something writhing wraithlike and cracking with scales. It changed. It morphed. It grew until it had no further room to expand, and then exploded like those buildings and the freedom we hold so dear. And became terror. Because for the first time in our collective history, America was attacked on its own soil. Because our refuge, our lives, our homes, must by necessity now be contained within a fortress of mistrust and wariness and complete and utter devastation. Because for the first time, the freedom and safety and security of our land was shaken to its very core. Because we mourned at the graves of our friends, and families, and neighbors, and even those we had never once met. Because they were us. Brown, yellow, white, black, red, purple, gay, straight, republican, democrat, woman, man, or child, east coaster or west coaster or midlander, we were all the same that excruciating day. We were Americans, and we were no longer safe. Some ask why we called it the "War on Terror" rather than the "War on Terrorism." Because the men who shattered our world for that one day were not terrorists. They were not soldiers or freedom fighters or moral crusaders. They were cowards whose existence was a blight on our humanity. They brought terror to our families and friends and fellow Americans. And we don't ever forget. We remember. We recall. We re-feel every minute of that day every time it passes 11:59.59 on September 10th. And we shall remain, grow, become stronger and better and more determined. We picked ourselves and our fellow Americans up from the ground, brushed the ash from so many eyes, and rebuilt our world, if not our deepest souls. And we shall rebuild every day. So it never happens again. (The picture posted here is a haunting tribute to the Twin Towers, the pillar of light of our democracy. It was created only through the determination and respect and tenacity of our dear friend, Anthony Iarriccio.)

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Coca Cola and the Sri Lankan Oil Spill

I'm a little perturbed by the rush to judgment of the Coca Cola plant oil leak that's contaminated Colombo water. Because things break. Mistakes happen. Things break. If the issue was, indeed, a leaky oil line, it appears that Coke did the right thing by shutting off supply, capping the leak, stopping drainage to the sewer, and calling the relevant Environmental Agency. Blaming Coke for a line malfunction without investigation as to whether that malfunction stemmed from negligence, willful disregard for public safety, or poor maintenance is premature at best, and inflammatory anti-corporate rhetoric at worst. Indi is fair and level headed enough to include Coke’s statement and subsequent efforts to rectify a bad situation. Things break. Pipes rupture. Seals leak (especially in tropical climes where rubber, silicone, and composite materials often deteriorate, melt, or otherwise disintegrate. Let’s be brutally honest: there are few quality standards worth mentioning on this fair isle. Pollution controls on vehicles are supposedly subject to government regulation, yet CTB buses belch millions of pounds of particulate matter, soot, and hydrocarbons. Try to find two buildings in Sri Lanka where the steps have a uniform rise and run – in comparison to each other, or even in comparison to other steps on the same staircase. Look at the number of sidewalks that have huge gaps, crumbling pavement, and non-standard width. Hell, look at the number of streets on which sidewalks end abruptly without reason. Look at food safety standards, the number of foul toilets in high end restaurants, the number of people who throw plastic trash, motor oil, and other detritus on the street. There are NO standards, and those that exist aren’t followed or regulated in any meaningful way. Environmental responsibility in Sri Lanka is an oxymoron, a comedy of errors writ large. Now imagine the quality standards of the pipe fitting at the Coke plant. Imagine how conscientious a worker the pipe fitter must have been – or how blasé that same pipe fitter is ALLOWED to be by law/license/society. Things break. Sometimes corporations are to blame. If they are, they should -and usually do- pay for the damages and facilitate the repairs. But what responsibility rests with the national authorities tasked with regulating these cleanups, policing their root cause prevention, or precluding their implementation? And what if, seriously, it was just a faulty pipe? Things break. And unless Coke was willfully negligent, they’ve done the right thing in the aftermath of this small (on a relative scale) catastrophe. Things break. Now let’s see who is truly to blame, and how they go about fixing those broken things. FAHRHAUS IS A SELF-ADMITTED BIG CORPORATE SORT THAT LOVES THE ENVIRONMENT BUT HATES THE HYPOCRITES WHO PREACH RATHER THAN PRACTICE.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Income distribution in America is pretty revealing, given the media hype and ultra-liberal rants of the "Occupy" Marxists.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

LGBT Marriage. About F###ing Time. 'Nuff Said, Right?

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Call Me a Racist, But...

I’m more than a bit perturbed by all the energy being extended to, and expended upon, this whole debate on keeping or jettisoning the US Confederate flag in light of recent terroristic attacks on Southern blacks.

As a coloured guy who grew up in, was educated in, and spent 38 of my 41 years in, Westchester, NY and Fairfield County, CT, I can categorically say that in my experience, racism is endemic to every part of the US. Every single one, as far as I’ve seen.

As a New Yorker with Sri Lankan and Indian and French genes, I’ve always thought myself to be an ethnic hybrid well-representative of NY’s melting pot reputation.

As someone who looks like a “typical” Egyptian or Jordanian or Persian, I’d say I stand out everywhere in the US except for DC, NY, LA, or SF. And in what the media would have you think were TSA profiling books everywhere.

As someone who used to fly 100 or so times per year (thanks, #United), I’ve been to many continents and several dozen countries. I’ve studied in and worked at some of the best and worst schools and jobs and companies in America. I’ve spent a minimum of two and a maximum of 360 months working or studying in four countries, and done business in a dozen more. And I’ve experienced racism everywhere I’ve ever been. Including my native land and my adoptive one.

Taking all of that into account, here are a few of my observations:

-Racism is the same everywhere in the world. I don’t care if you’re burning crosses or “just” making n##ger jokes, you’re racist, and your attitude will affect someone’s life (physically, emotionally, behaviorally, financially…ad nauseum). I don’t exclude myself or anyone else from this…we’re all racist to some degree. Surprisingly, the worst racists I’ve met aren’t even white.

-It’s the pervasiveness of racism, not it’s binary “existence” that varies geographically, as well as the level of its systemic presence and usage in the machinations of social, cultural, and governmental formal-or-informal organizations.

-The North is far from free of racism.

-The South is the least overtly racist American region I’ve experienced. Georgia and Texas and Louisiana top my places of “I’ve never felt upset or worried about my colour here”. New York and DC are in the lower third.

-The very bottom of that list, the most racially-uncomfortable places I’ve ever visited, are the great flyover states of Michigan, Illinois, and Arkansas, as well as that bastion of horribly accented “English”, Massachusetts. All of these have shown themselves to me as more racist towards me than Germany, Egypt, or China ever did. These are the places where I’ve heard “We don’t like your kind around here, boy,” and “Don’t let the sun set on your black a##, boy,” and “You people should just go back to your country and stop ruining ours”, the latter from a black guy in Ann Arbor. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if the Aryan Nation had its way, he’d be swimming back to Africa with me under one arm and the nearest Jew under the other. It’s all about lenses, I guess.

-The confederate flag, to me, has always been a symbol of my happy middle-class northeastern upbringing, watching Dukes of Hazzard with my sister. It was about cars and girls and bikinis and highjinks and stunt men. It was about Daisy-bloody-Duke. Only after I’d learnt in high school of its significance did I start disliking it, and then only because it upset my black friends so much.

-Symbols are only symbols because they’re symbolic of something. And symbolism is fluid. The swastika is a holy symbol in south Asia, a nationalistic one in Germany, and a racist one in America. Just as that symbol has been redefined over the years (along with the meaning of “gay” and “Asian” and “Republican”), so, too, can the meaning of the confederate flag. But only if we’re willing to take ownership of it, fly it from rooftops in the civil center alongside the other flags of our history, and use it as a reminder of a heritage that brought us peanut butter and steam boats but was too-long mired in slavery.

-It’s better to do something about racism than to talk about it. Better still to do both.

I don’t care if you hang a swastika on my desk, put a picture of Prime Minister Botha (sp?) on my shirt, give my Korean girlfriend a picture of Hokkaido, or offer my Armenian boyfriend a statue of Constantine . As long as you don’t stop me from being your boss or employee, your child’s significant other or teacher or coach, your contractor or professor or President because of my colour, gender, sex, religion, lifestyle preference, or other such patently irrelevant rubbish, you can call me whatever you want.

Just don’t call me a##hole, unless I deserve it.

Keep the flag. Or lose it. No one with any logic or self worth or education will give a damn, once they’ve really thought about it carefully and realized it should no longer affect their future in any way.

End rant. FAHRHAUS THINKS A CONFEDERATE FLAG MIGHT LOOK AWESOME ON HIS ORANGE NAZI ROADSTER WITH THE JAPANESE TIRES OUTSIDE AND THE KOREAN SMARTPHONE INSIDE.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

An Imperfect Union: Why Organized Labor is Killing America

I’ve been sent this cartoon today, on the biggest lies about worker unions:

For those who can’t see the cartoon, for any reason including lack of light with which to read it, failure to see beyond the very limited square feet of your own backyard, or actual, physical poor sightedness, let me explain.

You see, the cartoon here tells one side of the story, with an evil jester depicted as big corporate and the equivalent opposite as a Disney-figurine-eyed little puppy from Deluded Workers Union, Number One. Then we hear snippets of bullsh#t rhetoric, purportedly representative of the propaganda from each side.

Then I guess we’re supposed to say “Yay, Unions rule!”. But in reality, most among us scratch our heads, and say, “Ummmmm, isn’t the whole problem that Unions ARE ruling”.

So to that cartoon, and to unions in general, I instead say…

“Meh.”

Let’s not worry about what unions did in the past (hey, in the past, the Democrats had the same ideology as do today’s Republicans). Ask Janet Jackson, and she’ll say “What have you done for me lately?” (For the record, I have no clue who sang that song…Paula Abdul? I’m getting old.)

Sorry, I’m back

Ahem.

We anti-union sorts can play that game, too. “Unions that had manual labourers making $140k for screwing mirrors onto car doors killed the American automobile industry.” “Unions let the world’s worst teachers do nothing at our city’s worst schools.” “Unions mean that I can’t fire someone even if their performance sucks”. “Unions…”

Half the statements in this cartoon are equivalency statements. Not here’s-why-we’re-better, But here’s-why-we’re-no-worse. “Unions make money off you (or whatever)” versus “What do you think big bosses do?” It’s like saying “you suck, you killed my dog” and hearing the retort, “well, you killed my dog, too”.

Why don’t we all take responsibility for ourselves and stop blaming others if and when we’re held accountable?

I think corporations have done, and continue to do, horrible sh#t every day. The media and their shareholders and community stakeholders and the public at large hold them accountable via sale of their stock, bans and regulation on their products, wholesale pollution regulation and fair-trade laws and protection agencies, and retail purchase of their stuff.

Who regulates the unions, then, where leadership is political and exclusionary (like, you know, big corporate discriminates against women and minorities…oh wait, no, we have Indra and Carly and Beth and Martha and Oprah and Ina and Rachel. But you didn’t see them because you didn’t do your research in 2015 versus 1915.)?

Unions have been the brightest star and the coldest black mark in the history of American life. They gave us wage-race-gender equality, OSHA standards, and minimum wages. They also gave us…or at least fostered… outsourced, non-competitive, industry-killing labour. If I didn’t need to make $140k as a car-door-screwer-onner, maybe I could take $30 an hour ($60k) and still have a job for my now-questionable skills so I can compete in a global economy. Or instead of saying “great, the government laws now make wage equality a mandate”, we say “now that we have equal pay for equal work guaranteed by law, let’s actually do that equal work and get paid for doing it.”

Or how about instead of saying “big corporate pollutes, takes advantage of its workers, takes jobs out of America, and overcharges us for their products” we say “maybe I should throw away my Chinese-and-Korean made iPhone/iPad/iDog that was made in a soot-belching, fire hazard, environmentally unfriendly and dangerous factory for export to America from a communist nation, and instead buy an American made, American designed, American manufactured phone from a manufacturer like Motorola that uses Android, an open source platform available to any corporate or I-work-on-the-dark-web garage dweller, doesn’t torture its workers, and cares about our safety and environment”"

Buy stuff because it’s good, not because of where it’s made. If it’s good, where it’s made shouldn’t matter. If it’s American, then how it’s made DOES matter, because it represents our country’s collective intelligence and creativity and competitiveness in a world without borders and with the god damned Borderless Web.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of too many people saying “do what I say” out of one side of their mouth and “don’t worry about what I actually do” out of the other.

Let’s think about the present. Let’s let unions fall by the wayside the way we did leeches for bloodletting. Let’s reduce the stranglehold on our nation’s economy. And let’s do what you believe to be the best thing you can do.

Oh, shoot. You’re right. I did forget to include the cartoon. It’s for the best, anyway. I’d not want to be arrested for disseminating communist propaganda.

End rant.

FAHRHAUS IS TRYING DESPERATELY TO JOIN THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD JUST FOR THE CAR INSURANCE DISCOUNT AND HEALTH PLAN.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Cancer, Chemo, and Con Artists

I’m pretty much tired of being bombarded with quack science on the Web.

It’s become invasive, pervasive, and perverse. Now it’s even found a way into my inbox and Facebook feed, those of my friends, and those of my friends’ friends, and so on, ad infinitum.

You know what I’m talking about.

That I-looked-aspirin-up-on-WebMD and-now-i-can-cure-blindness garbage that people send out like so many Sunday coupon circulars. You know, the ones with catchy taglines like “Stop Aging Forever”, “End Erectile Dysfunction”, and “Cure Cancer”.

It’s the last one that upsets me. If you get suckered into some cubic zirconia encrusted, gold paint plated Peter Pan syndrome fantasy, I’ll call you an idiot and say you’d deserved the fleecing. If you have cancer and get taken in by this bunk, you aren’t stupid, you’re desperate for help and, sadly, a victim of a hoax.

So please don’t buy into the rubbish that’s being so vitriolically spewed by uneducated hippies in Oregon, Seattle, San Francisco, or any art school full of now-educated, occupy-wall-street-with-your-sweatshop-manufactured-iPhone hippies.

There’s no cure for cancer, GMO dangers are a logical fallacy at best and downright dangerous at worst, and you can’t kill cancer with a fruit.

Sorry, guys, all these ridiculous email and Facebook spam is yet another example of “internet doctors” who plug “cancer” into Google and then buy into some fear mongering and mass hysteria that they find. Buying their bullsh#t is like believing the “I’m an African prince who needs a hundred dollars to bring you ten million” Nigerian money scams.

Let’s discuss, shall we?

Cancer is not an infection. It is not a bacteria or fungus or virus. It is a cell mutation. As such, antibiotics and antifungal remedies cannot kill cancer cells. Just because cancer cells look white doesn’t mean they’re fungus.

The body (blood, actually) has an average, slightly alkaline, healthy pH of around 7.4. Anything lower (more acidic) is a sign of kidney and liver issues that prevent those organs from regulating pH through our water systems. Jettisoning urine solves any imbalance. If it doesn’t, again, your f#cking kidneys and liver are f#cked, go to a damn doctor!

Acid does not make cancer cells grow. Acidic environments are toxic to the body IN GENERAL. Any cell will be negatively impacted by acid (try sticking your hand in a vat of hydrochloric acid and let me know how that works out for you). Yes, there is a microscopic bit of acid released by metastasized cells, but not enough to have any significant effect on anything.

Cancer does feed off of sugar. But stopping sugar won’t cure cancer, since all cells feed off sugar. If they don’t, you’d have diabetes, dummy. It’s why we grow cells in plates filled with glucose medium. Carbs and raw sugars are necessary for bodily function and to fuel cells. Not cancer cells, but all cells. This is basic highschool biology. And it’s been proven out at the world’s premier universities. And, you know, in logical minds everywhere else.

Oh, and eating one type of food or another will not increase or decrease your blood pH level. Even 2 tablespoons of baking powder (alkaline) will only affect the acid from one bloody cell area one millimeter square. To do what’s suggested here and by others on this thread would require like three boxes of baking soda just to neutralize any acid in even a one inch square of your body or your obviously underdeveloped brain.

Ridiculous.

GMO rants, too, have no real, we-did-this-sh#t-in-a-well-funded-lab science behind them. Any food you get in this country is from GMO. There are really no more foods commercially available that don’t come from GMO seeds. Farmers buy seed from other farmers, and so on, until at some stage on that chain, those seeds were genetically modified and tagged by Monsanto or others. Even heirloom tomatoes come from commercial seed lines. Our food animals are fed with GMO seed, no matter if they’re free range or not.

Don’t buy the GMO free hype. We live twice as long as our ancestors did three centuries ago, when food WAS GMO-free, and we treated illness with leeches and thought cocaine was a tonic for any ailment.

Cancer isn’t more probable than it ever was. It is more prevalent, in raw numbers, than it was before because we live twice as long as we used to, and after age 35, sh#t starts to break, even in our bodies. Everyone has cancer in them…any mutated cell is technically the beginnings of cancer.

The point of these anti-chemo, pro food of your choice articles…that Fruit X (wow, that TOTALLY sounds like GMO!) is cancer fighting…is, well, patently ridiculous. It is very healthful, nutritious, and tasty. Do eat it for that. If you’ve got cancer, find a good oncologist who can minimize virulence.

As for generic anti-chemo rants, please keep your opinion to yourself before you actually cause someone’s death due to your lousy, reprehensible, unfounded and unsubstantiated (by science, not your internet quacks) dietary recommendations in lieu of actual scientifically designed medication.

Unless you’ve had cancer, or known intimately (24x7x365) someone who has, I’d ask you to keep your ignorant, offensive, irresponsible suggestions relegated to your “inside voice”.

Radiation is what kills cancer without harming the body in other serious ways. Chemo is last-resort treatment for those whom radiation or surgery (the only actual ways to get rid of cancer) cannot help. Chemo kills many of these cancerous cells.

The ones that are ALWAYS left result in your baseline MLD (Minimum Level of Disease). Nothing “cures” cancer 100%. It is physically impossible without the future hope for direct nano targeting to get rid of cancer completely. It would require individual genetic modulation and modification to rid yourself of the disease.

And for the record, cancer is an internally driven mutation of cells. It is not an infection to be cured, it is a disease to be treated.

Please don’t perpetuate, or buy into, this kind of propaganda.

It’s life threateningly dangerous.

End rant.

FAHRHAUS IS NOT A DOCTOR BUT HE PLAYS ONE ON TV.

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Pride and Prejudice: Why Looks Matter

I know this exceptional 20 year old girl.  

Yeah, I know, you’re sick of hearing me start sentences and stories that way.  But hold the outrage, please.

I promise this is not about my predilection for girls with daddy issues. 

Humour me for a moment or three, because it isn’t one of those stories.

Back to the young lady at hand (as opposed to the young lady in hand, which…oh. Oops, sorry!).  

Nicole is unbelievably charming, exceptionally compassionate and kind, and extremely insightful and intelligent.  On any objective scale measuring the combination of those factors, she’s a 9 out of 10.  Think Clare Danes.

She’s also startlingly, arrestingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.  

So universally and objectively pretty that she’d probably be among the top 23 prettiest normal (as in, non-celebrity or famous) girls you’ll ever see in a lifetime.  

Maybe top 15 if you look strictly at Western standards, top 30 if you look at Eastern ones. I’ve literally never had anyone in my 1000+ person group of friends say anything less than “ Wow, she’s gorgeous.”  Irrespective of their race, colour, creed, or sexual preference.  Statistics theory says n=30 for statistical significance, n=100 for strong correlation.  This is n=1000.  Not quite the 3.4 exceptions per 1,000,000 that qualifies as Six Sigma (sorry, Doug) but certainly more than a 9.9 average NPS (thanks, Jeff) of looks.

The within-ten-words-of-seeing-her question that everyone I’ve met every asks is “is she a model?”  

My answer is always “she used to be” but my thought is always “why does she need to be?”

Funnily enough, she has the same question as I do.  

You see, Nicole no longer has any interest in modeling, and hasn’t wanted to ever since she started her senior year of highschool.  Some people find religion and identity as they pass that threshold.  She, on the other hand, is searching for relevance and questioning that same identity.  The latter is even more difficult for her as a halfie (a mix of two primary ethnic groups) who struggles daily with the specific archetypes, belief systems, and standards of each of her initial genomic petri dishes.

Nicole wants to know who she is and who she should be.  

And she has a pretty good idea that this particular “who” should not be just a model.

Since she came to this realization, I’ve been even more fascinated by her than at any other point in the 21 years I’ve known her.  It’s like watching a sugared media plate under a microscope after you’ve streaked a few cell lines and pipetted a little reagent onto it.  I get to see the evolution of her persona that stems from not only innate, genetically-driven tendencies but also from socio-environmental influences.

Fascinating, indeed.

She’s getting quite tired of trading on her looks.

We had a long chat about that, where I explained to her that I traded on what little looks I had for four decades until I was old and fat.  And that now I have to rely on my rather questionable charm.

She said she’d rather rely on charm and brains than looks.

I told her she’s been judged on her beauty for two decades, because she’s always been exceptionally beautiful, from the age of 1 to the age of 21.  

In that scenario, everyone is going to judge you that way and take your secondary characteristics as “nice to haves” but not as “core competence”.

A few of us are, in a way, lucky that others have thought we were better looking compared to the average (you probably know several people that have had this fortune, too, rating from 7 to 9.9 on an objective physical attractiveness scale…but you also know a few folks who haven’t, even though they’re not bad looking, they’re perhaps a 5/10 or 6/10 at best). 

If you’re below that 5 average, you’d better be smart, funny, and rich to succeed. 

 If you’re above average, you can rely more on looks than the other three.

If you’re at the extremes of any of those spectrums, you’ll need to satisfice in some way.

Hence if you’re really kind of not-great-looking… 

…then your intelligence better be exceptional (Bill Gates, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton), wealth and power matter more (Hillary Clinton, Ross Perot, Warren Buffett), charm and wit matter more (Joe Pesci, Hillary Clinton, Barry White). Confidence and sexual prowess matter more (Barry White, Ralph Lauren, Bill Clinton)  In that order.

The reverse is also true. 

If you’re exceptionally pretty, the other three don’t matter much at all, and fewer people look to you for those qualities.

Think Will Smith, Natalie Portman,  Kennedy.  Does anyone care that all of them went to Ivy League schools, and are technically as bright as (actually, far MORE bright than) they are beautiful?

The point is, a lot of people see non-famous 7s and 9s and think that any supposed “success” was due in main part to looks and charm, rather than any raw intelligence or ability.   They see Selena Gomez the same way, Heidi Klum the same way, and Ashton Kutcher and Taylor Swift the same way.  They see many of you the same way.  

And they’re both partially right and partially wrong (half empty glass, meet half full glass).

Nicole is objectively better looking than 90% of the people in the world.

And 95% more universally pretty (she’s pretty as all get-out, irrespective of whether you like white girls, purple girls, brown girls, green girls, black girls, blue girls, yellow girls, or pink girls. Or the equivalent guys. Like Laetitia Casta or Jennifer Lopez or Taylor Swift or Zac Effron or George Clooney or that Matthew Bomer guy from White Collar).

Like this girl:

Or these two:

Or this one 

Or this one:

And of course, this guy:

UP folks (Universally Pretty, as opposed to Upper Peninsula…

…Which is part of that  Michigan thing, where they speak Canadian, pre-freeze their fish in lakes before hunting them with chainsaws and kerosene lanterns, shoot moose with Sarah Palin and her Republican Role Model of a “family values” family, and despite all this evidence, cannot fathom why everyone calls them a Flyover State).

As such, sheer UP beauty is the single thing at which EVERYONE looks.  

And Nicole’s pretty tired of her mind and charm and loving nature being ignored. 

Because, you know, girls ARE capable of everything boys do, and are greater than the sum of just their pretty pieces.  You do know that, don’t you???

Why do you think she dates strictly-below-average-looking guys?

Nicole doesn’t think she deserves her looks - or that she should trade on them. 

She doesn’t understand or need or want the gift, and sometimes even wishes it came with a 30-day extended warranty contract so she could claim a material defect or circuit board failure and get a slightly less-perfect refurb in return.

I thought the same thing, in my relatively recent past (in the last ten years, which is recent, given my wizened years).   I’ve tried, really tried, to date slightly better-than-average girls (lookswise, that is), for no reason other than the fact that I liked that then-specific Girl X’s friendship and spark and intellect enough to ignore societally average looks, even fell in love with a few and had my heart broken by a few others…

And I failed miserably at it.

One of my exes (who shall remain nameless, so she doesn’t sue me), for example, is objectively a 5 (according to others, not just me), but her career, money, and brains push her up a point or so.  Despite having gone to an Ivy-level college for her BA, she loses points for lack of a pedigreed post-graduate education.  She told me once that she wanted to date me because I was “about an 8 in looks” those days ( versus other similarly-aged Subcontinent or Halfie guys), but my perceived (gotta love qualifiers, eh?) intelligence, charm, and flamboyant fashion sense pushed me up to a blended 9 or so against most others with “similar ethnic backgrounds, and many without”.  

By contrast, every girl I’ve dated who was almost close to dangerously pretty has worked out just fine. Any issues we had were exclusive of our respective looks or lack thereof

Thus, in my experience: dating outside more than a bracket of +/- 2 f-stops (to use a camera analogy) rarely ever works long-term.

Honestly, it barely works short-term.  Invariably, there comes a time when the lesser-rated of the pair starts getting upset at the better-rated, primarily because the latter gets most of the attention in public AND private. 

Pretty people get more, and more frequently, high-value compliments (”lovely”, “stunning”, “interesting”, versus “sweet” or “cute”), the almost unheard-of superlative compliments (the “most gorgeous woman in the…” or “most handsome man I’ve ever…” or the “prettiest girl to…” or the “hottest boy at…”), the aspirational compliments (”I wish you were my…”, “If only I could get you to…”, “I’d kill to take you…”)  the up-from-under, puppy-dog-eyes, disney-figurine smiles, the flirty hand touches and hair tucks, the phone numbers pressed urgently into hands, the random fashion photographers grabbing at them on the street for Vogue or GQ magazine shoots (it happens.  ). Pretty people have partners who’ll initially do anything to be in their orbit, intelligence and wit be damned. Pretty people, stunningly good looking people, they stop traffic and silence rooms and bring smiles to men and women alike, or bruise the caveman egos of average men and make average women act catty

One day, not today, not tomorrow, but “soon, and for the rest of their lives”, the less-objectively-pretty half of the equation will realize that, for most of their public lives,

less-pretty partner does not =  the more-attractive partner

then that less-pretty is decidedly

and finally that less-pretty is just the numerator in more-attractive’s exponentially bigger denominator. 

It’s enough to make them feel like just about ½ of what they were. 

Then they’ll resent you like a Hell’s Angel  resents a Ducati superbike.

And it never goes away until, by some chance, more-attractive somehow

loses its hair, 

gains weight, or 

gets in a horribly disfiguring accident that effectively negates the sheer energy of the charisma, ego, and mean girl manner they’ve effectively trained for all of their lives to-date.

Instead, jealousy sets in.   

It has for Nicole, with EVERY boyfriend she ever had - because none of them were even remotely as pretty as she was.  

It’s happened for me, not in every instance in which I had a less-than-an-eight girlfriend, but the better part of 85% of the time. And I’m not even that pretty.  

But let me tell you, jealousy sucks.  Because the less-pretty feels completely insecure and clings to, suspects, or obsesses over the more-attractive, and because the more-attractive all of a sudden feels that their looks are the only thing others find attractive.

Nicole and everyone else in her league have faced this, time and time again.  

And the thing they’ve always wanted most in the world is to be taken seriously in  spite of their looks. 

Wow, I never thought of that…

Ironically, that’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?

Yes, pretty is probably the most important (but not conceited!), most heavily weighted (but not fat!) most highly rated (but still an everyman or everywoman!), most dangerous (but only like a black widow!)  overused and misunderstood adjective in the world, vis-a-vis  friendship, sex, love, and partnership. 

Everything else, they say, is just gravy.

But looks fade, Dorian Gray outlives his portrait, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel crumbles, and Icarus watches helplessly as his wings melt in the sun. Even your favorite sunset eventually fades to black.

At which point all the money, charm, or savvy in the world can’t buy them back (see: Michael Jackson, Sophia Loren, and most of Beverly Hills, Scarsdale, or Westport).

Looks only last until they, well, don’t.

So perhaps the gravy is actually the main course, after all?

Nicole still hasn’t decided what or who she wants to be.  All I know is that she doesn’t want to be “that beautiful model” anymore.  She wants to be Nicole.

And I’ll be right there supporting her whoever that girl turns out to be.

We all know that in our seemingly vast, seemingly educated, and seemingly worldly World, looks matter…  

But perhaps they shouldn’t.  

End rant.  

Now go away, I have a mirror into which I must stare.

 FAHRHAUS IS STILL SAD HE’S NOT UNIVERSALLY PRETTY. HE’S CURRENTLY WORKING ON THOSE OTHER ADJECTIVES.

[Image courtesy of Dos Equis.  There is no relationship, either express or implied, between Coincidentally and Dos Equis.  I just, coincidentally, happen to love their wry wit and their trophy-worthy creative director.  Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World” spots are possibly the best television and trade magazine advertisements I’ve seen in the the last decade. Again, no relationship, express or implied.  I don’t even drink beer.  And when I do… oh, hell, nevermind.]

[coincidentallyfahrhaus]

Why do you care who I f#ck if I’m not f#cking you?

Seriously, who the f#ck cares who the f#ck anyone else actually f#cks?

I’m getting a little tired of the hype and hysteria around gay marriage, straight conversions, transgender athletes, bisexual actresses, cross-dressing judges, and SnapChatting senators.  

I don’t even understand why anyone cares.  

Perhaps I’m just naive and have no understanding of the sociopolitical, religious, or ideological ignorance that leads to this type of fervored rhetoric around sexual preference and partnership privilege.   Perhaps I grew up as part of a particularly progressive part of the population, in a particularly progressive part of the country, in a particularly progressive household.  Perhaps spending 40 years outside the nation of my birth in the nation of my identity has made me more sensitive to discriminatory practice, frightened of faith-driven fiction, and amused at societal stupidity.  

Or perhaps I’m just f#cking old and f#cking cranky.

But ok, you’re upset, so let’s talk about it.

Talking is critical to this thing of ours.  The only way anyone achieves anything worthwhile, evolves anything with import, or innovates anything of any value is through talking about creativity, imagination, education, awareness, and open-mindedness.  

Think about that: with the exception of natural resources, colours, shapes, and sounds, anything of any value to us and to society as a whole isn’t stagnant.  It changes with every passing millisecond, shaping and shifting to fit the needs of an era.   Stagnation? Stagnation is death.  

An old mentor of mine (meaning he’s been a mentor for some time, not that he’s old…well, actually he’s both) was fond of channeling Ackoff’s Fables in talking about business strategy as one would a frog in a bucket.  For those unfamiliar with the parable, it basically says that since frogs are amphibian creatures, they adapt seamlessly to their climate but don’t have a protective physiological or neural reasoning filter.  Place a frog in the bottom of a metal bucket, fill it with water, and place the whole contraption over a steadily burning fire.  As the water heats, the frog adapts, its body taking on the temperature of the surrounding liquid, inching upwards and upwards until, it its stagnation, it becomes rapidly, well, dead.  By contrast, the average rat:  savvy enough to start swimming to adapt to its new liquid environment, and smart enough to scrabble like hell to get out when it starts boiling.

[Editor’s Note:  Absolutely No Live Animals Were Harmed in the Production of this Blog].

Stagnation in humans comes from lack of intelligence, general ignorance, and sometimes from just plain complacency.  

Complacency sucks, folks. And satisfaction with complacency breeds mediocrity. So then, better-than-mediocre reader, riddle me this: would you rather change outmoded belief systems that don’t adapt to the times, or boil to death in your horse-and-carriage-,  technology-free- , chamber-pot-, dying-from-consumption fantasy island as the world changes around you?  Refusing to adapt because of some generic socio-religious rhetoric of “tradition” is what Jeremy Clarkson would term “absolutely mental”.  

But I digress - strategic theory will do that to me - so let’s get back to the very non-theoretical, eyes-wide-open, head-out-of-the-sand, relevant-to-the-last-five-years conversation that we definitely need to have.  

Let’s get back to the f#cking point and the point about f#cking.

Why do you care?  

Why does ANYONE care who ANYONE ELSE is screwing?  Let’s leave aside situations where your husband/wife/child/parent/friend is sleeping with someone they shouldn’t.  

Does it really matter how any of us self-define?  

Male, female, masculine, feminine, straight, gay, bisexual, heteroflexible, trysexual, pansexual, metrosexual, lumbersexual (look that one up…I had to), they all mean the same bloody thing. Here it is:  we all like sex, but potentially like having different people with whom to HAVE sex.  What about the asexuals, you might ask?  They’re not screwing anyone, so they’re lucky enough to not need to be a player in this little rant about something that should be painfully clear to anyone with a rational mind that has reached the situationally appropriate age of consent.

As for the rest of you:  we’re all the same at the beginning of the day, and we haven’t changed by the end of it.  

It doesn’t really matter what your attraction.  What matters is that you HAVE an attraction to some other member of our species.  It doesn’t matter if that’s a girl or boy or transgender, if that’s one race, colour, creed, or another.  You are attracted to someone - love doesn’t even have to be a part of the lexicon to make it powerful, because attraction in and of itself is an incredibly immersive, intensely psychophysiological thing.  That makes you the same, in thought, heart, and emotion, as 99.99966% of the people on the planet.   And yes, that’s Six Sigma (I think Jeff and Gary would be proud).  That means the other 0.00044% aren’t significant enough in number to mean much of anything.  

Put simply, Human 1 + Human 2 = Human 1 + Human 2.  Human 1 likes Human 2.  Human 2 likes Human 1.  Human 1 and Human 2 have sex.

Now Human 1 and Human 2 decide to live together, share bank accounts, be each other’s healthcare proxies and inheritors, pool healthcare costs and gym memberships, have and/or raise children, and thus beget the growing rugrats that are Human 3 and/or Human 4, 5….n, where n = 1 to 100.  

Sounds a bit like attraction, sex, cohabitation, partnership, marriage, and child-rearing, doesn’t it?  So what does it matter whether Human 1 and 2 are male and female, female and female, male and male, or some other combination of the above?  

I feel almost like I’m talking to a developmentally stunted 3 year old when I say this, but (and please imagine my sigh of frustration here) let me explain yet again;  we are all HUMAN.  

The rest doesn’t matter worth a damn.  For you to think yourself somehow better or more moral or more natural or more evolved than anyone else, strictly on the basis of their ethnic background, perceptual race, religious doctrine, spiritual affiliation, gender identity, or sexual preference is sheer arrogance.  Remember that whole “all men are created equal” bit, or that “thou shalt love thy brother as thyself” piece?  Neither of those say “love your fellow man, except if he’s brown, bipartisan, and bisexual”.  

Marriage is a social construct, not a natural or genetically-predetermined and defined one.  

It’s about sharing property, children, and living space.  Love doesn’t factor into the definition in the least - there are plenty of loveless heterosexual marriages, plenty of sight-unseen arranged marriages, and plenty of unmarried soulmates.  If it’s the moral fibre and example to the oft-cited “our children”, then I’m guessing homosexuality is less of a problem than the levels of alcoholism, spousal abuse, smoking, IV drug use, pornography, premarital sex, infidelity, and/or racial/ethnic/gender bias that exists in the average American household (gay, straight, or otherwise defined).  So why are we so worked up about “gay marriage”, which really should be differently monikered?  

How about just calling it “marriage”, which in common parlance, actually means “domestic-sexual-financial partnership”?

Despite my innate belief in the humanity of, well, humanity, I hear a lot of belief-shattering vitriol from people across the sexual preference spectrum.  

Some of my carefully curated examples (if I included them all, I’d have a multi-volume book), in no particular order than what the two glasses of scotch brought to mind:

“Straight men have no fashion sense.”  

Really?  Have you ever been to New York or Los Angeles or London or Hong Kong? If so, your gaydar must be off, because there are exquisitely dressed, “straight” boys and girls in each and every one of those cities.  I quite fancy myself to be one of them, really.

“I don’t want some fag/queer/gay/homo/lezzie/pervert fondling my kid.”  

So would it be somehow better if the pervert fondling your kid was straight?  Or are you going to call Social Services either way?  I promise you, a kid that gets raped doesn’t really draw a distinction as to who does the raping

“I don’t want that [gay] guy hitting on me - I’d be totally grossed out.”  

So now you know how most women probably feel about getting hit on by you. Congratulations, you’re so conceited that you think just being a mouthbreathing male makes you attractive to gay men, and that every woman thinks you’re a minor god.  Statistical evidence would say that you’re wrong on both counts.  A mirror may also prove useful in rectifying this error in judgment.

“Anything but heterosexuality is against my religion, as it’s written in the Old Testament/New Testament/Koran/other spiritual book appropriate to my core belief system.”  

Fair enough, if you follow everything else your holy book says.  By all means, be anti-LGBT.   I have ZERO issue with (in my opinion) staunchly religious folks following the way of their own gods, and if you do absolutely every single little thing that your religion traditionally commands, avoid every tiny thing that it traditionally forbids, then fine, don’t accept sexual fluidity.  

But be honest, realistic, and forewarned of what you sow.  To wit:

If you’re Jewish, I hope that means you don’t touch pork/crustaceans (how anyone could discard bacon is beyond my comprehension), menstruating women (I’m sure your female friends would just LOVE you), or mayonnaise-slathered pastrami (if you don’t understand the significance of this, you’re obviously not from New York), and that you don’t drive your car, check your email, use your phone, use electricity, or bathe in different water than the others in your household (and I’ve personally never known any Jew in any state who follows all these rules).  

If you’re Protestant, I hope you’re not having premarital sex (in 2015? Please.), gambling (or investing in the S&P 500, which is the same thing), working on Sundays (there go all the retail, f&b, and home improvement folks among us), or having an affair (snicker).  

Catholics, take all the Protestant stuff and add that you’d better not be getting divorced (apparently some 27% of you do), using condoms or birth control (still forbidden, along with having sex without intending to procreate), or marrying a non-Catholic.  For all of the above, you’d better always give 10% of your Unadjusted Gross Income to your church every year, never look at pornography or reading the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and avoid saying “God” or “Jesus” when connected with “Sweet”, “Damn”, “My”, or “Oh my f#cking”.  

If you’re Muslim, take as gospel (ha, that was funny and completely unintentional!) everything that the Protestants and Catholics are forbidden, and add to it pork, crustaceans, and menstruating women from your Jewish neighbors, then take away alcohol, tobacco, dogs as pets, and working in a bank or a hospital or any business where men and women are unsegregated (these would be haraam), and make sure (women) to cover your face at all times.

If you’re Buddhist, make sure you don’t kill any living thing (and yes, I mean even that mosquito sucking on your arm), never get violent (attacking civilians and burning their mosques really doesn’t fit with the teachings of the Buddha), and don’t kill other actual humans.  

I could go on and on, for Hindus, Zorastrians, Scientologists, Mormons, ad infinitum.

At this point, many would say, “That’s ridiculous. Some of those things are just anachronistic and archaic in the modern world.  You can’t expect us to live in the stone age, can you?  We’re allowed to adapt our belief system for modern times!”   Awesome. That means gender and sexual equality in modern times aren’t too far a stretch for your obviously overworked brain.  

Either that, or you’re the worst type of narcissistic hypocrite that shouldn’t be trusted with someone’s plant, let alone their marriage license.

“Same-sex physical relations are unnatural and forbidden by the God who made us.”  

Well, dolphins and penguins and lizards and rabbits all do it, and they’re pretty much the definition of “natural”.  Shall we smite them all, depraved reprobates that they are?  Or shall we accept them as the naturally-occurring genetically driven examples of biology that they are? How about the societal and biological benefits that such individuals bring to their community in terms of lowering competition, increasing harmony, and strengthening social bonds?  I’m not an expert on these things, but the good folks at my favourite school certainly are – see what Yale University scientists have to say on the matter.

“My [insert your own brand of hyper-specific tenets of] morality/intellect/credo says it’s just plain wrong.”  

So you’re the fellow who stands on a ladder holding a bulb in a socket, waiting for the whole world to revolve around you, eh?  

Let’s not forget that your particular morality/intellect/credo also said that shirt/skirt/shoe you’re wearing is RIGHT, and 9 out of 10 sighted people would disagree with at least one of those.  

You must be the twat driving a Prius because of its “low environmental impact” while forgetting its lithium ion batteries will go into landfills where they won’t biodegrade for millenia, or a “zero environmental impact” Tesla because it’s all-electric, despite its source of primary power stemming from oil, gas, or environmentally-damaging wind and hydro plants, and its materials being made from naturally-occurring gas reserves (i.e., any type of plastic).

Might be worth tweaking the prescription on your lens, pal.

“I don’t understand how anyone can be attracted to both sexes.  They must really be gay, not bi.”  

I left this one for last, as this statement, more than any of the others, astounds me in its sheer ignorance.  

The scary thing is, I’ve heard this from both straight-identifying and gay-identifying acquaintances (my actual friends far too worldly, cultured, and educated to spout such drivel).  

When was the last time you checked someone’s messy bits before deciding if you found them sexually attractive?  I’ve seen male and female transvestites that are as high on the traditional female or male hotness ladder as the most popular of today’s “straight” models. Proof?  Check out this person Human 1 and these people Human 2 and Human 3

If you find any of those people sexually attractive, then surprise! By your own definition, you must be bisexual!

Let’s be honest.  Every single person is, on some physical/mental/emotional level, sexually attracted to some people of their own sex and to some people of the opposite sex.  

You may prefer to f#ck one or the other or both, but by the ludicrously narrow, traditional definition, you’re still bisexual (attracted to both sexes, according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary).  

If you ever played doctor with your buddy as a kid, ever drunkenly kissed someone, ever charmed/flirted with someone, or ever went to a liberal arts or big-city LA or NY school, you’ve probably had an “experiment” or two with someone on your same side of the gender divide.

If you can’t with hand-to-Bible honesty tell me that you’ve NEVER given preference to good looking members of the same sex over a not-so-good-looking member of the same group, then you HAVE been attracted to someone who shares your chromosomal pattern.   So you actually can understand being attracted to someone of your own gender!  

Shocking, huh?

Cry, scream, laugh, revel, shout, or gnash teeth as much as you like, but every one of you fits the definition.

Sexual attraction, after all, is both physical and mental and emotional.  

It’s natural – part of the Darwinian selection process, for the scientists among you.  You can run that spectrum as friends, lovers, partners, or spouses…but don’t let the categories fool you: you’re still on the damn spectrum.   Which basically means that on some level, everyone’s bisexual.

Do with that what you choose.

I’ll leave you with this:  a dear friend [who identifies as bisexual] once told me something incredibly moving and unintentionally profound:

“I don’t find women attractive and I don’t find men attractive.  I find character, charm, humour, intelligence, sensuality, kindness, and love attractive.  

I find PEOPLE attractive…

But it certainly helps if they’re hot.”

End rant.  Now go f#ck yourself.  

Or someone else.  No one f#cking cares.

FAHRHAUS REFUSES TO SELF DEFINE, BECAUSE HEY, YOU’RE GONNA THINK WHAT YOU THINK.  AND HE DOESN’T F#CKING CARE, EITHER.

[Photos courtesy of Manhattan Storage, just because they have one of the wittiest ad campaigns on billboards anywhere.  Their CMO and Creative Director are obviously brilliant.  And possibly bisexual :)  ]