There's a few things about the world that are bugging to me...

[dragonrider]

- First of all, why don't we ever see wild vegetables? I mean think about it; you never go walking around in the wild, and suddenly "hey! There's a patch of carrots/potatoes/beans/peas/radishes/beats/etc" Conspiracies are afoot people. :wtf:

Wild vegetables are rare, but they can be found. I have found wild patches of artichokes and asparagus. Technicaly they are not "wild," they are "feral." They are formerly domestic artichokes and asparaguseses who have escaped from captivity and now live free on their own terms. Approach with caution --- they are no longer tame.

- Secondly, is it just me or is the world getting stupider? Or has it always been this stupid? It frustrates me to no end. Most people don't even want to analyze the logic of various claims, they just get easily impressed and instantly believing by phrases like "studies show".

Well, Gandalf, studies show that people are getting stupider. It's scientifically proven that the world on average gets a bit stoopider every day. The world started out really stupid, then it started to get smarter, but now it's back on the downswing and getting stiupider by the minute.

- Chronic pain sufferers are not treated as well, by the medical system or just people, as you might think. Stigmas abound, completely contrived and uninformed in their nature. I've done my research, and we (folk in harsh chronic pain) all face the same roadblocks and predudices. That being:

This I think is very true. I've had several episodes of severe pain that have lasted for a week or more, and I was surprised at how much the pain took out of me. The conditions were not medically serious or severe in other ways, but were extremely painful. The pain just wore me down. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to live with chronic pain, but I've had enough of a taste to know it can suck the life from you.

- Is it really such an outrageous notion that we stop pumping all our food with monosodium glutamate and corn syrup? We could incure massive health care savings just by phasing these two things out; but ohhhh no, gotta keep feeding the North American obesity addiction.

I think the answer here is probably high-fructose monosodium glutamate. Once we get that perfected, we won't even need other forms of food. We'll be able to just pump it directly into our fat asses.

- You know why we have such an epidemic of depression and anxiety? Because we live in a hedonistic, selfish, consumer-driven, instant-gratification society where we try to buy our hapiness, smother it in useless crap and food, and judge each other through narrow views of acceptability. This is an unhealthy society, and it's only gonna get worse.

I agree that most people think they can buy their way to happiness and are mostly unfullfilled by that approach. Every day we are bombarded by thousands of messages that reinforce the idea that products make life better, faster, easier, and happier. It's not true. What makes people happy are things like knowing that what you do in life matters, being around people who you care about and who care about you, doing nice things for others and having them do nice things for you, learning new stuff, making things. There are a lot of things that make people happy, but buying products is not really one of them. Not having enough money can make you unhappy, but beyond the point of having enough, money and the things it can bring you do not add to your happiness.

- People's understanding of spelling, grammar, and punctuation these days is just atrotious. Just read the comments on youtube, you can barely understand what these nitwits are trying to write. And they just keep getting dummer...

This has always bugged me too. I think the decline in speling and grammar has to do with the amount of texting, emailing, and online posting people do now. It used to be that most of the written communication you would see day-to-day was written by professionals. Now everyone texts, emails, and posts. You are exposed to the written communication of a lot of people who you never would have been exposed to before. Some of them are just not very good at it. And even the ones who are good at it take shortcuts because of the volume of writing they have to do and the casual nature of most of it. I hope it gets better.

- On that note, I have no friends spare one that lives very far away. Know why? Because all anybody wants to talk about is mindless dribble, chit-chat about nothing - just whats goin' on today, who's doing what social thing with who, and that wretched media media culture that gets everybody obsessed with mindless dribble like American Idle and what celebrity's cheating on who. And so here I remain alone still, because I can't find anybody who doesn't give me a blank look and slink away as soon as I say something that might present the threat of having to work a neuron or two.

There are a lot of ding-dongs out there who would rather not use thier brains, but there are a lot of smart people too. You've re-enrolled in college, so you should meet plenty of very intelligent people. Some of the smartest people I knew were in college and plenty of them liked to have deep conversations.

I've also known many many smart people at work. I've worked at software companies and met the highest concentration of geniuses there, along with people who were not geniuses but just extremely competent, which is almost better than genius really. My wife is in consulting, and those folks are sharp. I recently had my kitchen redone, and the contractor was a really smart, competent guy. Being in the professional world focuses and sharpens people. You are a very young guy, and a lot of your peers are probably still sort of doofuses, even the smart ones. You'll meet the people you are looking for in the professional world.

But no matter how smart people are, everyone likes to talk about drivel now and then. Small talk and chit chat are social lubricants. You can't launch straight into quantum physics --- talk about a movie or some music first. Or something else that you are interested in that is accessible to most people.