intimate | fasab

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Many years ago subliminal advertising was banned by law because it manipulated how people thought – brainwashed them to a degree. Since then the practice has been frowned upon, but, with the popularity of social media, are some people, particularly in some government agencies, trying to secretly manipulate us again?

In January 2012, Facebook ran a secret experiment on 689,000 of its users.

The purpose of that experiment was to see if the company could change those peoples’ moods by altering their news feeds.

The scary thing is that it worked.

The study found that by manipulating the News Feeds displayed to 689,003 Facebook users, it could affect the content which those users posted to Facebook. More negative News Feeds led to more negative status messages, and more positive News Feeds led to more positive statuses.

This means, as the report on the experiment stated, “that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.” To put it another way, it is the manipulation of the herd, or zombie, mentality.

Such mass manipulation is only possible now with the immediacy and vast scale of social networks such as Facebook. Now, because of the numbers of people involved, even minor manipulations in how they think can have far reaching consequences.

One of the groups funding the experiment was the US Army which flags up big question marks over their motives and over Facebook’s place as an independent commercial operation.

The fact that government agencies are experimenting as to how they can influence people online has been known for some time, but you have to search for the evidence because they never tell you what they are up to.

The mass surveillance that whistleblower Edward Snowden highlighted is only the first step in a more sinister process. The big question everyone should be asking is, once the government and its agencies have gathered all of that information on us, what are they going to use it for? There must be some end goal. You can be sure that just leaving terrabytes of data languishing in remote computer server farms is not it.

The most obvious use of that information is to manipulate people, which is essentially what the Facebook experiment tells us. Only the moronically naïve or dumb would think otherwise.

In the commercial online world where everyone is used to free services paid for by advertising, information can be used to manipulate consumers into becoming indirect paying customers by simply turning their private information into cash. The more personal, detailed and intimate the data on you is, the more valuable it is to the company collecting and selling it, either directly, or indirectly via targeted advertising especially for you. Yes, what you see when you go to a Google search page is not what I see!

In the world of government control, some of their spy agencies will collect information just for the bureaucratic hell of it. Don’t believe that the NSA, that Snowden highlighted, is the only government data-thief. It may well be the biggest and best funded, but there are many others busy snooping away. And not just in the USA, but in Britain, China, Russia, and many other powerful countries too.

These groups will justify their unwanted intrusions into our private lives by hanging a ‘national security’ sign on it, it’s the excuse they always use. To an extent that is true at the moment since they use information collected by these snooping techniques to smear the reputations of what are deemed to be ‘enemies of the state’. They used to do much the same via planted news reports and information given to friendly newspaper journalists to disseminate. At the moment ‘enemies of the state’ are terrorist groups, particularly Islamic terrorists like ISIS. But in the future, who knows?

Increasingly government agencies will use the manipulation of social media to influence the general population and thereby bring about outcomes that suit their needs.

George Orwell had the right idea about what would happen. His only problem was that he chose the wrong title for his book. By 1984 technology had not caught up with the aspirations of those who wish to exert such control.

Now it is almost here.

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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Some blogs meander along trying to be very politically correct. But not here at fasab. Controversial or not, the philosophy here is to tell it as it is.

So to repeat the question in the title….

Should we get rid of homos?

Of course, I’m talking about homographs and homophones – I don’t know what YOU were thinking of?

If you are a regular visitor to this blog you will know that quite often we have a look at amusing misprints or mistakes on signs, classified ads, newspaper headlines, or wherever else they can be found.

Nearly always the problem is peoples’ failure to grasp the intricacies of the English language.

If you are born and bred in an English speaking country then it is relatively easy to grasp the basics of the language, although there is a steady deterioration in some of these, like speleling for example. (That was a deliberate mistake for comic affect by the way.)

So what about the homos then?

For those who haven’t made up their mind yet, a homograph – (also known as a heteronym, but where would have been the fun in that title?) – is a word of the same written form as another but of different meaning and usually different origin.

Sometimes it is pronounced the same as the other word, in which case it is known as a homograph.

Sometimes they are pronounced differently, in which case they are called homophones.

An example of the former is the word “letter” which is pronounced the same whether the meaning is a message written to someone, or to describe a particular member of the alphabet such as ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, etc.

An example of the latter could be the word “lead” which is pronounced differently if it means a metal (“the lead was very heavy”), or to be the front runner of a group of people (“he was in the lead”).

There are a lot more homos around than you might at first think. Here are just a few examples I saw recently. I hope you find them interesting and maybe even begin to realize what a nightmare learning the English language must be for those not immersed in it from a very young age.

1) The bandage was “wound” around the “wound”.

2) The farm was used to “produce” “produce”.

3) The dump was so full that it had to “refuse” more “refuse”.

4) We must “polish” the “Polish” furniture.

5) He could “lead” if he would get the “lead” out.

6) The soldier decided to “desert” his “dessert” in the “desert”.

7) Since there is no time like the “present”, he thought it was time to “present” the “present”.

8) A “bass” was painted on the head of the “bass” drum.

9) When shot at the “dove” “dove” into the bushes.

10) I did not “object” to the “object”.

11) The insurance was “invalid” for the “invalid”.

12) There was a “row” among the oarsmen about how to “row”.

13) They were too “close” to the door to “close” it.

14) The buck “does” funny things when the “does” are present.

15) A seamstress and a “sewer” fell down into a “sewer” line.

16) The farmer used a “sow” to help him “sow” the crop.

17) The “wind” was too strong to “wind” the sail.

18) Upon seeing the “tear” in the painting I shed a “tear”.

19) I had to “subject” the “subject” to a series of tests.

20) How can I “intimate” this to my most “intimate” friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.

For example, there are no “eggs” in “eggplant”, nor “ham” in “hamburger”.

There is neither “pine” nor “apple” in “pineapple”.

“English” muffins weren’t invented in “England” nor “French” fries in “France”.

“Sweetmeats” are “sweet” but are candies and not “meats”, whereas “sweetbreads” are neither “sweet” nor “bread”, but in fact meat.

Boxing “rings” are “square” and a “guinea pig” is neither from “Guinea” nor is it a “pig”.

And why is it that “writers” “write”, but “fingers” don’t “fing”, “grocers” don’t “groce” and “hammers” don’t “ham”?

If the plural of “tooth” is “teeth”, why isn’t the plural of “booth”, “beeth”? Why one “index”, but two or more “indices”? Or why do you have one “goose” and two “geese”, and one “moose” but never two “meese”?

You can make “amends” but what do you do if you have just one thing to amend? Or if you have a bunch of “odds and ends” and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call what’s left?

If teachers “taught”, why didn’t preachers “praught”?

And if a “vegetarian” eats vegetables, what does a “humanitarian” eat?

In what other language would people “recite at a play” and “play at a recital”; have “noses” that “run” and “feet” that “smell”; or send a “shipment” by “car” and “cargo” by “ship”?

How can a “slim chance” and a “fat chance” be the same, while a “wise man” and a “wise guy” are opposites?

Or why can people like the Amish “raise” a barn, meaning to “erect” a building, whereas everywhere else when we “raise” a building to the ground we mean we “demolish” it?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn “up” as it burns “down”; in which you “fill in” a form by “filling it out”; and in which an alarm goes “off” by going “on”.

Even when you are standing still you can be part of the human “race” and you can look at the stars which are visible when they are “out”, unlike a light which is invisible when it is “out”.

Finally, there is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “UP”.

It’s easy to understand “UP”, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we “wake UP”? At a meeting, why does a topic “come UP”? Why do we “speak UP”?

Or do what I am going to do now, which is to “shut UP”.

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