More holiday season disappointments

Ah, the sweet blessings of anasthesia. I had to go for a surgical procedure on the 20th and spent most of the next two days meandering in and out of oblivion, clutching lightly to the coattails of beloved Euphoria as she flitted twixt and fro, finally depositing me back with ever so light a clunk into reality in the wee small hours of the 22nd. Some people suggest that I don't handle anasthetics well at all. I suggest quite the opposite, but this time-- I immediately knew that danger was afoot.

The world ended on the 21st. Those miscreant misanthrope Mayans promised!

As I stared up into the darkened room a ghastly and pallid figure suddenly loomed over me in my bed. I leapt into action, ripping the ridiculous faux wood top off of that stupid thing they always have beside your hospital bed that is too small to use as a table and too big to not be in the way. I swung with all my might, clearing the brain-sucking zombie's head off of it's shoulders with one gruesome bloody swipe. Advantage Alcorn, you cadaverous fiends. Or so it seemed to me; to the nurse checking my blood pressure I probably looked like some feeble weakling groping helplessly for a Kleenex. No zombies. No zombocalypse. Quelle disappointement! (I don't think that was really French, but it looked cool there)

By dawn, I had come to realize that it was true, I was just another guy stuck in post-op and the world was chugging along as usual. I became bombarded several time a day with insistent whiny demands that I: get out of bed, go for a walk, sit in an armchair, live on jello and sit in an armchair. They were big on the armchair. These demands were foisted upon me by usually rather attractive (in that cookie cutter vacuous stare kind of attractive way) young women who apparently had received post-secondary educations that included learning to speak to your patients like your working at BP's or TGIF's or Appleby's (Hi! I'm Kandra, I'm going to be your nurse this morning! Isn't that great? Would you like a couple of minutes to look over the....no, wait, that's the other job...) Converssations tended to go like this:

"OK, let's get you off that bed and sitting in the chair"
"Uh, sitting really hurts, how about if I get off the bed and just stand around?"
"Great! then after that, maybe we can get you sitting in the chair!"

That was pretty much the level of conversation across the board. Try getting solid food out of such folk when somebody wrote liquid diet on your chart 2 days before. "But that was two days ago, I'm really hungry"..."Great, maybe we can get you to go sit in the chair!" I actually got to hear a physiotherapist telling a man who was close to 60 to do his breathing exercises by ....brace yourselves..."Smell the flowers, blow out the birthday candles" Like asking him to inhale through his nose and exhale out his mouth was going to be too hard for him to understand. It made me yearn for the zombies.

But all's well that ends well and after four days that felt like a month I escaped the clutches of those ham fisted poltroons which are the best and the brightest of socialist medical care and was escorted home by a friend, well, acquaintance. Please don't get me wrong. This fellow did me a huge favor and I am sincerely grateful. The drive home, however, should have been prefaced with a couple extra shots of morphine so that I could have really enjoyed the nuances of the conversation. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the the end-of-the-worlders, New World Order alarmists, and general conspiracy theoristas all seem to fit under one big happy down filled blanket together? I got to listen to "well turns out the Mayans had it wrong this time,...." I'm not kidding. It's the EMP that's going to get us, he's been studying Nostradamus' predictions. He's also convinced himself that his 99 Caddy is one of the few cars that can repel the giant EMP when the rest of the world is blacking out or frying or whatever is going to happen. I asked him what good that would do him with everyone else dropping dead behind the wheel at 70mph simultaneously. It stumped him long enough to get him restarted on North Korea starting the next global conflagration. The only thing missing is the tinfoil hat. But it also made me think, this guy seems happiest when he's got the end of the world to worry about. I'm pretty sure he's not alone. We can rail and shake our fists at the sky and curse our lack of political leadership over the wrongs of our world. We can shed true and sincere tears for those who fall for no apparent reason in harm's way and legislators turn a blind eye to the real problems behind the symptoms. We can feel nauseated by the hatred and discrimination, racism, sexism, blundering bureacracies (health care!) but the end of the world?  Hey, whattya gonna do?

After having had a couple of days to sleep off my usual caste of cynicism and my decidely jaundiced view of the world, I realized something else. We are learning more and more every day to be desensitized to real world ending events. The news beats us down with mass shootings, with children being murdered, with some nut job shooting at firemen, with serial rapists and murderers romping around willynilly.  Why? Why is a culture of violence not only tolerated, but celebrated? When I was a child John Wayne was going to save us, he didn't but Clint and Charlie and Bruce and Sly and Arnie all stood in line to take his place and whoever is the matinee idol now. So we celebrate violence as a way of life. Want to stop the shooters? Shoot them! Utah school teachers are being offered weapons training. Have we really come to this?  When I was a child I was taught that my father's generation stopped evil and used violence to do it. Maybe that ingrained the notion in our minds, but then something much smaller in scale, but perhaps not scope happened and I think it influenced a world's thinking and that impact is still felt. Novemeber 22, 1963, Dealey Plaza, Dallas Texas. If someone can kill the President, then it's ok to kill..... Maybe the world did end, we're just the last twitching nerves. Certainly, if anyone reading this believes that we were created by some manner of Supreme Being, what we are today cannot be what that Being envisioned.

On a somewhat lighter note, what is up with those stupid little rolling bedside table things in hospital rooms? All of my life, except from changing the tops from an ugly puke green metal to an ugly fake woodgrain metal, they've never changed. Do you think somebody that...like..makes things could go...hey, these tables are too  narrow to be good for anything and start making them a few inches wider? Seriously, this could be a big business if somebody just got on it. You could even recylce the old ones to make new ones out of the parts, eco-friendly. Where are all the budding entrepreneurs out there?

The American Dream

Have you ever wanted to kill someone? I mean been really hurt emotionally or really angry and just wished you could take them out? I hear people say it all the time, "oh, I could just kill him when he does that" "My old lady ever run around on me, I'd kill her" Of course, I hear people say they love pizza, too. I hear people love and hate a lot of things and perhaps if they'd read more in school they would have more descriptive vocabularies in order to communicate their true feelings. I enjoy pizza.

Back to the first question, though. It seems lately, a lot of people have wanted to kill someone and they did. There is a huge uproar once again in the United States over gun control. I want to state emphatically and for the record that all my life I have been a hunter and a firearms owner and I believe in the freedom of the individual to live her or his life as seen fit and have been opposed categorically to gun control Well, I've changed my mind.

Let's look at some of the arguments that the gun control opponents throw out there. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. If these crazies really want to kill someone, if they don't find a gun, they'll just find another way. What about cars? Cars kill people, should we take away people's right to drive?

OK, but if I want to kill someone and I have to use a knife or a blunt instrument, I might get a couple of victims, but everyone else is either going to run away or hide. I can't possibly chase down, oh say 27 people. I can stand in one place and shoot that many though. That kind of takes care of the first two arguments, I think. Also, if I am armed with something less than a firearm if might be easier for someone to throw a text book at me, and certainly for the police to stop me a lot more easily if I don't off myself. If someone is under the influence, or has certain proven medical conditions that require specific medications, in most regions they do have their right to drive taken away. Society can't monitor everyone all the time, and I honestly haven't heard of any psychopaths trying to kill groups of nursing students or high school kids by driving into them with a car. They go get automatic weapons instead. It has to stop. Some readers may feel that I'm harping on too much about the US and that here in Canada it's nowhere near that bad. Update your statistics, sports fans, the prevalence of gun violence has actually gone down in most parts of the US, it's on the rise all over Canada.

Before I move on, I have the last great argument of the gun supporters. Of course, the average Joe Hunter/Teabagger/Minuteman doesn't have to lobby the government himself with this, the NRA pays lobbyists and darn good lobbyists to do that work for them. I wonder who the biggest sponsors of the NRA might be, gun makers maybe? But we all know what that argument is right? Their Constitutional right to bear arms. The 2nd Amendment. Well, here's exactly what it reads as:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

I have bad news for those guys hiding out in the forests of Vermont and mountains of Montana with their camoflage undies and  double lighting bolt flags--that is gun control. If your militia is well regulated, that militia would do more to keep the guns out of crazy people's hands than the police are doing. "Necessary for the security of a free state"--that's what it says. I wonder how free people feel going shopping in Oregon this week or wanting to go to school in Connecticut. Hey, all you gun owners--great job protecting the security of the free state. We're all proud of you guys.

Hey, maybe I'm too late, there are enough guns out there to stock several armies. Gun control in and of itself might be a pipe dream because the  other argument is that the bad guys and the crazies will always find a way to get a gun. So, since we can't possibly stop them, apparently the argument is that we shouldn't even try because it will inconvenience the rest of us. There are 18 dead children and 9 dead adults in Connecticut this week. I don't know how many mourners and grieving families that equates to, but I could handle a little inconvenience if it had stopped one guy, and I like buying guns. Maybe we can't stop these kinds of people, but at least, let's try to slow them down a little, give the good guys a chance. In the meantime, all you guys and gals out there defending the second amendment in America, like I said, keep up the good work.

No Shortage of Idiots

Have you ever wondered why rhetoric is often referred to as empty? Well, read on and I will do my level best to provide an answer.

It seems to me that in these tough times, the fear of 'shortages' lives large in peoples' hearts. A couple of years ago, I recall that a media panic over a potential rice shortage caused people to run out and buy up all the rice they could possibly store. Not surprisingly, it caused a rice shortage.

The one thing there never seems to be a shortage of is stupidity. I read an article today on how the US government is not doing enough to deal with people who have been caught behaving unethically or illegally on a very large scale. The millionaire and billionaire fraud-mongers get caught with their fingers in the cookie jar and precious little is done to them. There are more and more cases popping up all the time too, apparently. The person who wrote the article and the people who posted online responses seemed to me to be probably of the same socio-economic demograph and thus, quite probably, the same political stripe, as the people being written about. Ah, the one street where there is no such thing as 'street cred', Wall Street.

"What is he prattling on about?" asks the bleary-eyed blog visitor, "Damn it, man, make your point!"

Alright, I understand young people not having the patience to read an entire article and I don't have any pictures or links for this one. Here we go: one of the respondents to the article likened Obama's failure to act against these white collar criminals as having something to do with his class warfare. If you want to stick around for the rest of the article, here's the spoiler alert-it's going to be me ripping that nonsense apart.

First: if the person who wrote that response really thinks there is class warfare going on in America now, what's he going to think when half starved, starry-eyed fanatics dressed in battle fatigues and carrying AK-47s kick down his front door looking for food? Or the keys to his Mercedes? Or when they decide to firebomb his front yard? Class warfare doesn't look like you having to put out money for your gardener's health care benefits, it looks like what I just described. Maybe it looks like a little like Occupy Wall Street was just a sniff of what's coming and now you're scared. When your daughter comes home from college for the holidays, have your security personnel pat her down for weed and any writings by Che Guevera, know what I mean?

Second: Hey, how much do you think that the majority shareholders in companies like Remington and Colt and Savage are worth?  So, don't complain to me when those class warfare-istas show up on your doorstep armed to the teeth. I bet those company owners voted just like you did and I bet you guys are the first ones to step up and protect Second Amendment rights in America. Good for you! A well regulated militia is exactly what you can call the security company that keeps your gated community free of these riff-raff. Teabag that, you ruffians! Hey, wasn't that ...back in the 1700's...a bunch of people opposed to the Crown? Wouldn't that sort of make what happend a ..class warfare? Oh yeah, only for the foot soldiers, not the officers. Oh well, I tried.

Third; And this one is kind of important, a few years ago the US Senate had a problem with the practices of the biggest accounting firms in the world, so they put together one of their little subommittees they are so fond of and said, "we're going to regulate your affairs" The accounting firms said "go ahead, you do that and we'll just close our doors and move to Europe and watch your economy collapse from over there". The Senate, understandably did what they're best at....nothing. If the big accounting firms can get away with that, what chances does the US government have against the big banks? Seriously.  There are threats and there is empty rhetoric. Those banks do not answer to the federal government, it's the other way around. In fact, the only guarantee the government has of staying in business is the fact of where they get their revenues from...taxpayers. If you think the fiscal cliff is dangerous to the global economy, (and it's really a myth) it's not even a scrach on an elephant's hindquarters compared to banks the size of Bank of America or CitiGroup shutting down. Why do you think no one went to jail for that giant scam in 2008? Exactly.

So there we have it, empty rhetoric versus real threats. Nikita Kruschev took off his shoe and pounded it on a table to try to impress upon John Kennedy how scary he was. Only slightly over 40 years before him, the people that put his political system in place slit the throats of the Romanov family to seize power in Russia. Kruschev was empty rhetoric, the Bolshevik Revolution was real class warfare.

Reflections from some Bitter Waters

I have been fortunate recently to have met several rather intelligent people. Well educated, erudite, and willing to debate or converse on matters that are, let's say, on the upper levels of dear old Doctor Maslow's hierarchy. It's quite pleasant and very educational for me. I do not hesitate to contribute my humble offerings to the conversations, but I am certain that I am taking more than I am giving in terms of intellectual contributions.

These conversations generally embrace a few basic tenets of managing other people, in one way or another, or monitoring other people's behavioiur. I have had the experience where it was my job, albeit on a much smaller scale than most, to do both. Several of these conversations and debates have already contributed to my offerings here on the blog. Two of my articles even elicited responses. Huzzah!

The nature of these conversations, as I was writing a moment ago, usually involves ethical matters, personal morals, the culture of various organisations, complaince with regulatory bodies in the business world, teams of people working in unison. It can be fairly heady stuff for the unintiated, but again, the concepts that work do so for large or small organisations, so having had some experience, I can at least keep up.

Reflecting on some of these topics has given me pause for thought (and I intend to bring it up with these gurus and rabbis of the business world but I brought it here first) about the infamous and ubiquitous job review. Also, some of my earlier meanderings on life in the Interent world may have some influence on what I have to say here.

To begin with, most people are nervous about the boss calling them in for a review. I have met very few people who are sure enough about the job they've been doing to walk in and plunk themselves down all eager for the pat on the back and the accompanying pay raise. I've met a few who could fake it, but they are usually the first ones to start falling apart at the least bit of criticism. It doesn't matter to this conversation, what matters is, it is stressful, usually for both parties. As the employer, one should have some manner of  scoring system that treats employees fairly and justly across the board. Liking or not liking the individual cannot come into play when scoring their job performance. Performance is the key word here though, when one talks about their organisation behaving ethically, one can look to the regulatory compliance acts for guidance. Did the employee always work up to the code of the Residential Tenancies Act or the Counsellor's Code of Conduct? Were client confidentialities protected as according to the bounds of the Personal Privacy Act? And so on. As long as there is some kind of legislation accorded to the work the employee does, the employer can score them highly when the answer is yes. If one is working with some kind of numbered scale from 0 to 5 and 5 is brilliant, by all means there must be a 3.5 right there. Both people can go away from the meeting feeling pretty darn good about it, about each other and about themselves. That's a bucket that's about to spring a few leaks.

My first question is: Does the bare minimum make for a good employee? As long as you didn't break the law, you did ok? That's kind of sad. How about encouraging an employee to express him or herself ethically, yes showing morals and principles that go beyond what the law demands?

That was just my first question, try this one on: What about ethical or principle matters that do not have any regulating legislation? What is ethical behaviour? In most cultures, and this really sucks by the way, if everyone else is doing something or close to everyone else, it must be ok to do it. That is sad but it is human nature just as sure as romance blossoms in the spring. If anyone out there walks into an office as a new manager and finds an employee who has been sitting there for twenty years talking about everyone else's private lives behind their backs with whoever is having coffee with her, guess what? She isn't going to stop. How do you put trustworthiness, or lack of, on a scale of  1 to 5? How do you measure the possibility that you suspect a higher ranking employee will betray you with a lie the first chance they get, for whatever selfish purpose it might serve them? Put that on a scale of 1 to 5.

Those are both attributes that can exist within any organisational culture and be so ingrained that there is virtually nothing a new leader can do to change them. Changing culture is the most difficult task for anyone to accomplish coming in to the 'big office'. Don't take my word for it, go read a book. A book on that subject would be most helpful. Pretty much anyone writing on organisational culture is going to agree.

With the advent of social media, skyping, chatting, texting and even good old email (still not that old to some of us) there is another aspect to the entire trust question and it engages employee performance issues as well. How much time are employees using on their computer?  Obviously, so many jobs today are computer based that for an employee to be perched in front of a monitor all day is more the norm than the exception, but how much of that time is spent working? How much hanging out? Do you, as the employer, spy on your employees? What kind of culture does that establish if you do? If there was little trust before, whatever was left just went out the window.  Do employers, employees, Boards, or the people who provide the spyware know that there are Supreme Court rulings about how one may spy on a computer? Or how one can disperse the results?

The  part that I mentioned earlier comes into play now. I wrote an article (scroll down) on the compartmentalization of our society. With that compartmentalization comes a sense of apathy toward one's fellow man that any leader, ethically, I think should struggle to keep out of the workplace. Combine apathy toward others with selfishness though, and the die is cast. Is this inevitable? It may well be in workplaces where people have been allowed to skate by on the bare minimum in terms of ethics and competencies. In an environment where gossip and character assassination already reigned, albeit, subtly. If that environment includes people who look for love on dating services and take their Facebook acquaintances more to heart than the person standing across the desk, well, nothing much left to say. How does the leader trying to affect positive change and boost morale compete? I can sit here typing away and reflect on people I have met in my own life to whom I would love to direct these questions, but I doubt they would ever take the time to read something this lengthy (sad), some of them would never catch the references (sadder) and I'd bet none of them would reply(saddest...no actually, I'm ok with that) Oh well, like Journey said ...don't stop believin'

cyber life, friendship, love

Here I go again.Now, I'm thinking that I have called this blog sceptical view and maybe, just maybe, some readers are finding me not sceptical enough. Perhaps, not critical enough. Well, I never intended to write personal attacks, so if that's what anyone is looking for, look elsewhere now. Also, I won't publish personal attacks if people post them to the commentary section of any post.  Further, I believe in informed and civil debate and I do attempt to look at more than one viewpoint on any subject before I post. I'm getting grumpier with the winter weather, though, so all that could change in a heartbeat.

A subject that I have touched upon previously in other publications is the compartmentalization of our society. I think that when most people read that, they conjure an image of a huge apartment tower in some major urban centre where neighbours go about their day to day lives and ignore one another and crime victims' pleas for help are falling on the deaf ears of the uncaring. I may have just set a record for run on sentences, too, but that's another matter and it was a damn good sentence. Getting back on track, I would like to suggest that the image I wrote above isn't necessarily wrong, but I believe that compartmentalization is far more broad spread than that and far more insidious. I have three main culprits in mind and I am going to attempt here to lay the appropriate degree of responsbility at the feet of all three.

First: the work place. If one looks at the job market in this day and age it is a wonder to behold. Long gone are the days of the "jack of all trades" in the blue collar industries, or the "generalist" in the white collar fields. Recruiters (bless their scurrilous little souls) seem to gasp in wonder that a person could actually have been in charge of budgets and in charge of staff discipline and in charge of media relations all at the same job! To imagine someone doing all of those things seems near impossible to them; to imagine one person doing them all well is nigh incomprehensible. When one looks at job descriptions these days, or even some job titles, it becomes apparent how "specialized" work has become. Almost every task seems to have taken on it's own meaning and, this is where things start to get ugly, it's own jargon. If I want my work to appear 'specialized' as in--that makes me special--one of the important parts of doing that is that other's really don't understand what I'm doing. It's working. Sadly, proof of that is the fact that recruiting agencies (bless their salacious little viewpoints) even need to exist. But, I'm wandering here, the important point is that language is the basis of culture. It always has been and it always will be, so there. When I was helping people start small businesses, clients came to me with their business ideas from another agency just a couple of blocks away and said that they would rather work with me than with the business development officers at that other agency. Was it because I had a better business plan? No, actually at the outset business planning is pretty generic. Was it because I had better funding opportunities that I could make available to them? No, on the contrary, the other organization had $75,000.00 interest free, forgiveable loans with the requisite that the new entrpreneur work with their people! I had no money to offer. Enough!, cries the eye-weary reader, what was the reason? Quite simply, I spoke to the clients in plain English and explained to them what they needed to do in plain English. The people they had been dealing with spoke to them in terms that would have resonated perfectly at MBA grad schools all over North America, or on a stock exchange floor or at a bankers' luncheon but were basically meaningless to the clientele. Ironically enough, the clients could have done the same in return if they were looking to start a business that required any level of specialization. I would dare one of those MBA's to try to understand the basics of home renovations or auto mechanics. The world of work has created a paradigm where people understand other people doing the same job as they do at other companies better than they understand their own co-workers. Thus, how much do people engage with one another in the workplace? Less and less all the time.

Second: Television. You remember television, right? It's what everyone in the western world worshipped between the death of God and the birth of the Internet. Entire families found a solution to bickering and arguing, get a second tv! Put one in every room in fact, you aren't going to have a family fight if you don't have to talk to one another. If you don't believe me, try this simple experiment. Have a couple of friends over and sit around having coffee or drinks and strike up a conversation. Now, watch how well the conversation progresses, then after ten minutes or so, click on the tv. The conversation will, 90 times out of 100 fizzle out faster than it became 'engaged' and soon will switch either to what is being watched or someone suggesting changing channels.  This is McLuhan's global village. A village where no one comes out of their own hut. Mission accomplished, compartmentalization is now in full swing.

Third: The Internet. Seriously, put work and television on steroids and shake. Still not even close, you can work from home, you can chat on social media, you can watch movies, porn porn porn, if that's what you're looking for, there is no end, literally, no end to what the Internet can do. The grandfather of the tweeterverse is still robust and going strong. In the entire history of western culture nothing else has actually caused a decline in television viewing. That, dear reader, is power. Compartmentalization is complete, those on Twitter and Facebook are quick to learn....learn the language. It started with the LOL's and OMG's of chat rooms, but it is now replete. Get on board or get left behind.What else has the Internet provided us? I do not deny that there is plenty of good done and plenty of good yet to be done, but I doubt with all my dubious doubting ability that the compartmentalization of which I speak is good for anyone. The Internet has also brought courage for the fearful and an outlet for the outraged. The power of anonymity is scary. In my opening paragraph, I mentioned informed and civil debate. There aren't very many places one is going to find that out here in cyberspace. Put your opinion on a news site or a political blog and you're sooner or later going to get: $#@@%$##% you! (-username-) and the flaming and personal attacks begin. No one is held accountable. Do you even know who's attacking you? Ah ha, compartmentalization suddenly starts to show it's failures. I haven't gotten to the big problem yet, here it comes.

We're social animals. We have been ever since we found out that two of us can wrestle food away from a saber toothed tiger better than one and that we need the other gender for baby making purposes. That whole "language basis of culture" thing had to kick in so we could learn to get along. Now, recent research has shown that social needs are far more basic than originally posited by the good doctor Maslow. We get lonely, so where do we turn for companionship? yep, the Internet can provide that too. Am I the only one hearing little alarm bells? Go ahead--post your profile online, on MyFace or SpaceBook or Twitcher or whatever. Or, get more specific, there's plenty of fish in the cyber sea and they're all swimming in a lava lamp waiting to meet you and me!  Honestly, I'm not hearing alarm bells for people here, I'm horrified. The most recent research I've read on social psychology, which mind you is only research and can still be disputed, suggests that up to 3%  of the overall population of adult North America are sociopaths. Yay! That means, if you are wondering, that out of every 100 people you know or may meet, 3 could watch you drop on the sidewalk in front of them and walk away not caring if you live or die. I had to address a group of young people last year about the dangers of sexual exploitation. A group of about twenty between 10 and 18 years of age. A quick show of hands and sure enough, everyone had a Facebook page. Facebook, the company that happily sells your information to advertisers. I told them from the point of view of someone trolling for victims, Facebook is a wet dream come to life. Go ahead and screen those people that respond to your profile (or your ad) do you really think they're going to put on their profile: Hi I'm a sexual deviant who can only find arousal by chaining you up and slowly carving you to pieces? Probably not, probaly wouldn't get a huge response that way. If you really are lonely enough to want to meet a date on the Internet (where over 20% of modern day relationships start! they happily brag, they don't talk about how quickly some of them end) then I suggest you think about that 3%. Not all sociopaths are sadistic killers like on Criminal Minds. But all the sadistic killers are sociopahts or psychopaths ( a distinction that won't matter to you after the fact), they're predatory. Where do predators go? Where the prey is. Your choice, our world has become a smaller colder place for sure, but maybe breaking out of that compartmentalization is something people might want to start doing in person. Remember when friends used to introduce friends to each other at social gatherings and not with a tweet? yeah... or cast your line out there in that ocean of availability. It no longer smacks of ostracism as it once did, to most, because we've all ostracized ourselves already. It's kind of like working for the bomb squad, there's a unique job, you only get to be wrong once though. Don't be shy about sharing your thoughts here, I get to read them whether I publish them or not and so far I've published them all and you're protected by the anonymity of the web.