The Truth about Cats and Dogs

"You are unprepared to be on your own. Your deductive powers are a gift from God or chance or [specialized] sperm or whatever or whoever wrote your life script; a gift not earned. You do not know what I know because you have not earned those powers. You’re careless with those powers; you flaunt them and you throw them around like a brat with his trust fund you haven’t had to climb up all the greasy little rungs. You haven’t been bored blind at the fundraisers, you haven’t done the time in that first marriage to the girl with the right father; you think you can leap over all in a single bound; you haven’t had to bribe or charm or threaten your way to a seat at that table. You don’t know how to assess your competition because you haven’t competed. Don’t make me your competition. "

 -Robert DeNiro's character advice to the newbie trader on how to succeed on Wall Street and in the corporate world in Limitless (2011)

Oh yes, not only do men cheat, bribe, charm and threaten their way into success, they also marry into wealth, using their wives with powerful fathers to position them in the right place, so they can be what they always wanted to be; those ambitious social climbers who are finally listed in the Forbes publication as the richest Americans in the country. 

However, an ambitious woman? She's pure evil. Here is a recent excerpt from a Forbes article entitled Views From an Alpha Male that describes what he views as a problem with some ambitious women in his field. The writer of the articles writes:

“I find it unsettling. A woman who promotes herself in this way may be masking incompetence or inexperience.”

Women who are smart, ambitious and competent in the corporate world are viewed by such men as "incompetent and inexperienced" or simply "flirtatious". Who knows what flirtatious means here? A smile? Being friendly? Grabbing your penis? The author writes:

“And the moment they realize you are not the person who can help them advance, you can feel their attention drift off immediately.” 

One had to wonder here, if the interviewee was just looking for a date or at a work networking event? Was this man making a commentary about women in the workplace- namely in his company, or was he talking about random wannabe models he met on the street, and they turned their attention away from him when they realised he wasn't a modeling agent? Which field did this man work in? Fashion? Porn? Who knows what the context of what "some women" he is referring to here; but the lesson seems clear, men are allowed to be "boys". They can cheat, threaten, buy that board seat, and marry his first wife just because she was well-connected, and he will never be told: 

"Hey dude, you're just an incompetent douchebag!" 

But God forbid, a woman with social skills, who is good at connecting people, and who loves her career and is damned good at it, is somehow, undeserved, because she might be pretty, and pretty women are always evil; yes, evil women are flirtatious, even if they are just being friendly. A smile is the sign of an evil, flirtatious woman! Damn those extraverted, socially adept women! They are evil! 

On a serious note though, there is something to be said about authenticity. If you're an A-lister in Hollywood, most likely you'll never like going to a networking event because of all the sycophants in the room; similarly if you're a Venture Capitalist, you don't want to hear another pitch from someone you just met; likewise, if you're a Managing Director at one of Wall Street's largest firms, you don't want some asshole trying to sell you his latest algo. According to several friends of mine from Los Angeles who work in the film industry: You learn real quick [sic] who are the biters and the barkers.  Biters are the ones who do; barkers are the ones who talk incessantly about the doing, but never do so and instead spend 10 years or so having lunch with everyone, never creating a product, or a film or executing an idea. There are a lot of barkers in LA, and everywhere else in the world. What else is new? 

But, if a woman is a biter, obviously she is "masking incompetence" is "flirtatious" and a "social climber". Truth is, women are intimidating to most men. Hell, women even hate most other women. But let's face it, if a woman succeeds on Wall Street and in the corporate world, it is because she is fucking good at what she does. She didn't sleep her way to the top, she didn't marry into the right family, she didn't cheat, nor bribe, nor threaten to get that board seat. She did it because she knew the right people. She most likely had a circle of advisors. She had friends in high places. She didn't fucking prostitute herself nor sleep with the board director to get her job; she didn't marry some guy because his family owned half of California or New Jersey; she did it through her sheer ambition, her social skills, and through the support of her network of friends and family. And she got there because she was fucking competent. 

So what the hell is wrong with that? 

A Sentimental Education

For me, not attending university was never an option. I was of that generation after the 70s, 80s and 90s when women finally had the right to attend universities and it was expected that they had careers. My own alma mater only became co-ed in 1987. I came from a family of academics. My grandfather attended the top university in Tokyo, Japan and was a poet. My father himself had written travelogues in his youth, when he had been rated first in his class at Seoul National University, where only the top 1% of academic achievers were allowed to attend and then consequently ended up dropping out to join the air force. On my father's side of the family, everyone was an academic or a Professor; we all went to Ivy League universities, top public universities, went to business schools, graduated at the top our class at MIT, Princeton and UC Berkeley.

I, myself was a never really an overachiever. I liked to enjoy life, to relax, to have fun. For me, ambition was about the bigger, long term picture; not about merits on a Diploma or a résumé. Despite having graduated from Columbia University, I was one of those students who always did well without ever having to study very hard. I had a gift for memorisation and tutors always loved it when I repeated their own thoughts and opinions into all my bluebook tests and essays. Multiple tests, to me were a mathematical equation of elimination, and essay tests were about a predictable structure outlining popular opinions.

In my sophomore year, I recall one of the most brillant students in my philosophy courses, who happened to be an Orthodox Jew and wore yamulkes to class every week; that the paper he'd written full of criticism about contemporary philosophy and asking relevant questions that seemed to question the status quo, only received a C+, while my mediocre repetition of old ideas received an A. That was the year when I realised that grades did not factor into what we consider "education." Education, was rather a process of self-enlightenment- through investigation and questioning of one's source of knowledge- and the various authorities who hold this judgement. Universities provide an environment into this Socratic questioning of old vs. new, in ideal, but in reality, I found instead that it only created a population of students who were only interested in attaining good marks, re-wording a repetition of old ideas, and simply not caring about the material- but more motivated by the auspices of attaining a 6-figure job after graduation.

What the Ivy Leagues present today- as much as I, myself have benefitted from them, is that they are a kind of social club. A country club membership to be able to socialise with the people who had the connexion to the people to perhaps bring you into the world of aristocracy or to make your ideas a reality.

My father never once told me that he couldn't afford to send me to the best universities. It was expected that I would attend. Money was something I never had to worry about when I was in high school. In his mind, it was his patriarchal duty to send me to the best universities in the United States, even if he had to work holidays and weekends to fund my education; in my father's mind, it was his duty to do so. I had wondered though about the students who go into massive debt to fund their education, who didn't have a father like mine, by taking out loans and credit cards with the increasing cost of American education; and I wondered if perhaps Mark Cuban had been right in saying that the next big bubble is the institution of American education?

The figures looked dire- the tuition at a lowly rated private university such as Loyola University in Los Angeles, CA was the same as the tuition at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, the top rated university in the United States. It was becoming clear that universities in the States were really just a business and a social club. In comparison, my mates in England were going to Oxford and Cambridge for barely nothing and most of my friends in Switzerland and France went to university for free.

Is education a privilege? My answer would be yes without a doubt. But the more complex question is, is education only for the wealthy? And in the United States, that is apparently so in the current era. When my cousin attended UC Berkeley in the late 80s, she paid a total of $10K to receive her degree, compare that to the current rate of $150K for the average student.

I love my father, and certainly I was grateful for my education- but I think if I had to do it all over again- I would've travelled abroad- exploring different countries, learning different languages, and getting work experience in different fields instead of slaving away for four years writing A papers. Then again, that is precisely what my father had chosen to do, and I guess I was my father's daughter after all.

With the price of the education bubble near asphixiation, the advent of online schools, with Stanford and MIT testing out free online curricula, I could see that Mark Cuban's vision was finding its way in contemporary American society. In the future, education will be separate from the business of education, because if we thought about it, at the core, education was really about finding a community to fuel one's own interests, through one's own intellectual curiosity without having to be given a grade about what one had learned. Learning did not necessarily have a quantification. Grades and tests were only a basis of assimilation after all.

The Power of YouTube

YouTube, the first start-up to sell for a over a billion dollars to Google, and the subject of numerous copyright lawsuits, is the amalgamation of nostalgic video (eg, Super8 home videos from the 50s-60s) and a library of Congress that one could access for looking up random videos and commercials from a previous era that would otherwise never be seen by the internet generation.

YouTube is a mismash of home videos about people's pets and family, karoke fan machine for their favourite songs, advertisement dream come true for feature film studios, and a place where psychology graduate students pretend to be porn stars making commentary on gender studies. Sometimes YouTube provides insight into other cultures- recording the civil unrest in which uploaders make strikingly beautiful and poetic commentary about the social uprising of their people.

YouTube can also take down people's careers.  It has become a political vehicle to take down competitors. Politicians caught on camera for making offhand remarks often lose their candidacy for making politically incorrect remarks. Hidden videos can elicit rage in the public eye, and often lead to dismissal. YouTube is our BigBrother. We must be careful to edit what we say- even when amongst our friends, because what we say can be taken out of context and used against us in a court of law.

This is what happened to the fashion designer John Galliano.

John Galliano is likely to be the most talented designer of the 21st century. His attention to texture, fabrics, exquisite detail and his affinity towards femininity, masculinity, and homage to certain eras are unparalleled. John Galliano was often the reason why there had been a return to haute couture. He took no short cuts, he celebrated the male and female form especially in his ready-to-wear. Fashion editors loved him for a reason.

A cross-cultural product of different nations, the Gibraltor-born John Galliano was the son of a plumber whose parents immigrated to England. He was bullied as a teenager for being gay. Still, his mother loved him dearly and she sent him to the best public schools a working class family could afford. He was awarded best British designer two years in a row (and four years total in the current span of his career). He declared bankruptcy shortly after he put all his life savings into his first collection in 1990. Six years later, he became the head designer for Christian Dior, started his own label and was known around the world for his beautiful attention to detail. Surely his rise to the top had numerous obstacles in his path, but there he was, making beautiful designs, mocking his own style, being a character in his own play, a celebration of time, ethnicity, glamour, poverty, beauty, war, peace, rock and roll, theatricality, to film, to love, to eras gone by.

I remember when I saw my first John Galliano design. It was a wedding dress in the style of Audrey Hepburn's in Roman Holiday. I was flabbergasted. This would continue into 2007 and beyond with his Spring Haute Couture collection I found simply breathtaking. At a time when most designers took short-cuts, utilised cheap fabrics and appealed to consumerism, John Galliano's clothes were made to last and to remember what it was like to be passionate about something; to remember our collective histories, to value well-made, well-thought out designs instead of regressing to factory-made, badly stitched, cheap designs that may appeal to stock holders for short-term profit. John Galliano made designs for the long-term and he changed 21st century fashion. John Galliano is to fashion what Steve Jobs was to Apple.

When I first learned of John Galliano's faux pas of anti-semitic comments in the media- I was horrified. I imagined a terrible, abusive man ranting and raving, shouting out comments- however, when I actually saw the supposed anti-semitic video of him in a café, my mind was changed.

What this 10 second video seemed like to me was a John Galliano playing contrarian to a rude Italian couple sitting next to him in a café. Perhaps they had been making obnoxious commentary about him, perhaps they didn't recognise him as being the son of a plumber who went onto become a global fashion icon- the commentators of the video seemed like Italian assholes- making fun of him, asking him if he had blond hair and blue eyes?

John Galliano- never raising his voice, is pretending to be a character to disarm his detractors- quietly, and without intent- he says- "I love Hitler" in farcical display. His designs say otherwise in the span of his career. He loved the downtrodden, the societal misfits, he often made fun of the aristocracy, not in a mean way, but in a way for the fashion world to poke fun at themselves. He loved playing roles- and when I saw this video- I only saw a man defending himself against a couple mocking him. I saw in his eyes, the boy who had been bullied in his youth, who had chosen to play war with words instead of through violence. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong words, but John Galliano was definitely not anti-semitic.

This YouTube video- which was the subject of speculation amongst tabloid media, together with Natalie Portman's statement condemning him had lead to his dismissal at the House of Dior. The coverage in tabloid media gave me a different impression of the YouTube video. I expected a loud-mouthed ranting bigot, but when seeing the video with my own eyes, I only saw a bullied man being targeted by a couple who intended to humiliate him. Perhaps if the talented, Harvard educated Miss Natalie Portman saw the actual video instead of reading the reports about the video she would've said the same. Instead the two-time Academy award winning actress whose 2010 film Black Swan borrowed significantly from the 2009 film Ne Te Retourne Pas directed by Marina de Van, and the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film Persona,  had quickly taken to criticising John Galliano without perhaps seeing the entirety of YouTube video, she would've understood that he was defending himself verbally from a couple who were attempting to humiliate him. The tabloid coverage of him intended to humiliate him, like the Italian couple who sat there next to him in the café attempting to egg him on in the most rancorous fashion.

I have this to say- if John Galliano once again begins his own label and if his company ever went public, I would be an avid investor in his IPO.

The Origin of Faith

Recently over the winter holiday, I had come across a documentary on the Discovery Channel abroad about Jesus Christ. This wasn't the controversial one with James Cameron as the Executive Producer, nor was it contesting the history of the Catholic Church; rather, it had a simple premise: That the teachings of Christ was based on economic and political upheaval of his times.

When I think of Christianity, I think of my childhood version of it: Church on Sundays, memorising hymns, singing songs, camping trips, Christmas trees, stained glass windows, Cathedrals, and a social network of people who primarily pushed their children to go to Ivy League Schools. I also think of how this earlier vision became perverted into controversy in my young adulthood: news reports of sexual abuse from pastors, sodomy of Church choir boys, and the overall contemporary hypocrisy present in religion as a social and political institution which exacerbated my extreme dislike of the commercialisation of televangelists and the strict social rigor that prevented self-expression. Yet, I still found its history alluring. I was enamoured with Cathedrals, the music, the traditions in itself, and there was something about non practicing Christians that I found an affinity towards, in the way that most children who were raised from any religious belief, Islam and Judaism included, became disillusioned with it yet still held onto those core memories of their upbringing.

My generation did not trust any religion. We grew up as non-practicing Christians or Muslims, reformed Jews and only utilised religion at family gatherings. For us, it was not a personal choice. This is how I have always viewed religion. However, this documentary made me realise that religion, too, had its roots in economic and social strife. Religion and Politics, these twin ideologies that were branches on the same tree, were suddenly cleared of the fog from the mystical remnants of a text that seem mired in allegory.

"Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." 

-John 6:54

Imagine a world where there were starvation, economic disparity between the classes, diseases being rampant and a lack of resources: of education, of healthcare, of simple living standards. There were endless class wars, and factions killing each other in retaliation, similar to the situation in Darfur and Serbia; in the middle east, between Shiites and Sunnis. At first, in the historical, Biblical situation of Jesus I was reminded of contemporary North Korea- where indeed the 1% lived in abundant riches, and the rest were living in starvation, with the presence of cannibalism amongst its population. Then came a man, Jesus from Nazareth, who envisioned that this abstract entity, God will provide for all, and accept all into his world. In this world, everyone would have health care, education, food and opportunity to pursue one's passions.

In our contemporary Orwellian state of affairs, what threatens to re-create a version of the Holy Wars, or the Class War in the United States and its allies is the belief of Us vs. Them. Of the 99% against the 1% and vice versa. Hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones reminded us in his annual address to his organisation that: "We have to take the 1% and the 99% and remember that we are the 100%"

The banking sector is vilified as the enemy in the current social climate; however, they are merely the middle men to this long economic history that encaptures the government, lobbyist factions, energy pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. The government deregulation of these industries has created a tempestuous fiduciary climate in which poor impulse control has lead to the collapse of multiple sectors within the United States which in turn, affected the entire global economy. We can say with certainty that Reaganomics has indeed failed. It took 30 years before we started to feel the full effects from the seeds in which the Reagan administration had planted when he first took down those solar panel walls off the White House, and gave financial, energy and pharmaceutical industries carte blanche in 1980.

During the MF Global Congressional Hearing, one Representative asked Jon Corzine: "How can we regulate greed? No matter how many laws or regulations we put in place, we just cannot regulate greed." He said this in a rather audacious manner, with a slight smirk, as if he weren't actually a puppet to lobbyist money who had bought his seat and had ordered him to say exactly that: Regulation isn't the solution. Yet America's history tells us otherwise.

“Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. "


It is easy to forget where we came from when we are living in splendour. It is easier to blame others for their misfortune, and to point the finger and blame others for ours. Religion might have been a way to cope with economic disparity within our annals of history, and perhaps religion as a social construct was a way to govern people whose own government had failed them. But as the current lessons in the Middle East and Africa have taught us, genocide isn't the solution to the problem. So then the question needs to be asked: How can we redistribute wealth without affecting the innovation of certain sectors, particularly in technology, where America is the strongest? Is there a way to address the current economic disparity without resorting to another Class War? 

The Search for the Meaning of October

Octo (latin): Eight

Up until 45 B.C., there were only ten months in the Roman calendar, and October had been the eighth month. After the assassination of Julius Caesar by his ally and colleague, Brutus, the months of July and August had been added to the Roman calendar, in honour of Julius (July) Caesar and his successor, Augustus "Octavius" (August) Caesar.

There are other more relatively recent times that come into sharp focus when tracing the history of the days of October:

October 24, 1929
October 19, 1987
October 5, 2008

1929 vs 2011

"The economy had been growing robustly for most of the so-called Roaring Twenties. It was a technological golden age as innovations such as radio, automobiles, aviation, telephone and the power grid were deployed and adopted. Companies that had pioneered these advances, like Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and General Motors, saw their stocks soar. Financial corporations also did well as Wall Street bankers floated mutual fund companies (then known as investment trusts) like the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation. Investors were infatuated with the returns available in the stock market especially with the use of leverage through margin debt."

"The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash was a time of wealth and excess. Despite caution of the dangers of speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." However, the optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shattered on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) collapsed. Stock prices plummeted on that day, and continued to fall at an unprecedented rate for a full month. The October 1929 crash came during a period of declining real estate values in the United States (which peaked in 1925) near the beginning of a chain of events that led to the Great Depression, a period of economic decline in the industrialized nations."

(source: Wikipedia, events leading up to the stock market crash of 1929)

"On March 25, 1929, the stock market suffered a mini-crash. It was a prelude of what was to come. As prices began to drop, panic struck across the country as margin calls were issued. When banker Charles Mitchell made an announcement that his bank would keep lending, his reassurance stopped the panic. Although Mitchell and others tried the tactic of reassurance again in October, it did not stop the big crash. By the spring of 1929, there were additional signs that the economy might be headed for a serious setback. Steel production went down; house construction slowed; and car sales waned. At this time, there were also a few reputable people warning of an impending, major crash; however, as month after month went by without one, those that advised caution were labeled pessimists and ignored."

(source: http://history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/a/stockcrash1929.htm)

In 2011, perhaps the styles of dress had changed, but the ideologies that existed in the 1920s remained firmly intact. It was a technological golden age as innovations such as the internet, electric cars, space shuttles, mobile/ smart phones, and solar power were deployed and adopted. Companies that had pioneered these advances, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Tesla, saw their stocks soar.

Women were liberated from the archetype of the sterile housewife from the 1950s, similar to that of the advent of flappers from the 1920s who were casting off the 19th century era of female sexual repression. Vestiges of the old economic era, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase were still around, but this time, with strong ties in government. People were still buying stocks on margin; banks and lenders were utilising leverage to gauge their positions.


What is different about 1929 from 2011 is that instead of radio telecasts spreading mass panic about the stock market, influencing people's choices in what to invest, and manipulating the market through popular discourse; we have added to these methods, ratings agencies who work with investment banks to spread inaccurate information to manipulate the market in their favour.

Who are these ratings agencies, and why are they a threat to global economy?

Never had a tripartite of agencies, S&P, Moody's and Fitch, had such collective power as to sway the global market. Being integral to the housing collapse in 2008 and the stock market crash, they have singularly worked to manipulate investors into buying toxic CDOs and other such junk investments for their own personal gain. They even have the power to threaten governments if their legislation is not up to their personal satisfaction. When S&P leaked that they would downgrade US credit last Thursday, US companies in the stock market collectively lost 2 trillion dollars of their value in a period of three days. Similarly the Asian markets also followed suit and the Nikkei was down 3.5% at open.

On August 4, 2011, we suffered a mini-crash. It will be a prelude to what is to come if we continue to allow ratings agencies to manipulate the global market and make demands on the government to change legislation to suit their personal interests.

What happens this coming October is still unclear. Will we enter a second Depression? Will there be another stock market crash? One thing seems to be clear, if we don't strip ratings agencies of their power, these Bruti will most certainly create panic situations in which they will profit from betting against the US economy.

Standard & Poor's: The Benedict Arnold of Our Time

“Neglected by Congress below, distressed with the small-pox; want of Generals and discipline in our Army, which may rather be called a great rabble, our credit and reputation lost, and great part of the country; and a powerful foreign enemy advancing upon us, are so many difficulties we cannot surmount them.” -Benedict Arnold, American traitor

Much has been debated over weekend since S&P downgraded the credit of United States. But let's look at the underlying motivations of the S&P, namely who are the S&P? 

S&P is owned by McGraw Hill and Co. On their board of directors are various pharmaceutical, insurance, and oil industry heads, along with companies that are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical and oil industries. Let's drop some names:

Sidney Taurel
Chairman Emeritus
Eli Lilly and Company

Edward B. Rust, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
State Farm Insurance Companies

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg
Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer
Strategic Investment Group (heavily invested in pharmaceutical industries)

Sir Winfried Bischoff
Chairman
Lloyds Banking Group plc

Director of Eli Lilly and Company

McGraw Hill and Co. also owns Platts, which is not surprisingly, an energy company focused on oil and coal.

 

When President Obama announced in April 2011 that he will increase taxes for the oil and pharmaceutical industries, the board of directors at McGraw Hill and Companies were not pleased. As such, Standard & Poor's countered President Obama's proposed tax increases with a threat to downgrade US Credit based on nothing but a political ploy to create a standoff in the debt ceiling bill to prevent the passage of these tax increases on the pharmaceutical and oil industries. 

Instead, Standard & Poor's created baseless accusations of Congress being deadlocked and that they were merely the messengers of an inept government that reached a debt ceiling deal at the last hour. In truth, they were never the messengers who spoke truth. They utilised their position to profit interminably throughout the 1980s and 1990s to the financial crisis that lead to the stock market crash of 2008. They had no compunction nor moral nor even financial numbers to validate the A nor AA+ nor AAA credit ratings they gave so easily to the companies they were heavily invested, but now suddenly, with President Obama as the sophomore Congressman who took the reign of the old boys club by sheer determination and forcible wit with a diplomatic centrist view, and had decided to do what he promised- to end the era of Reagan-economics, Standard & Poor's- who are now faced with increased taxes to their beloved pharmaceutical and oil industries, decided to suddenly slap the US with a credit downgrade. Under all the pontificating rhetoric they have issued over the weekend, what they really mean is this:

"Yo, Obama, if you don't knock if off and cut taxes for the pharmaceutical and oil industries, we're gonna push the US Dollar under a bus, then we will see who will win!"

A true traitor, what S & P have effectively accomplished is that they have thrown the first dice into a dismal fire. This credit downgrade is not merely "psychological", the credit rating will now be utilised in a political battle between the GOP and other members of Congress to push their own agenda. Not only that, but now China and other nations who hold US debt can openly justify why they will raise interest rates to further deteriorate the US economy. Standard & Poor's, an American company, have effectively betrayed their own long-term interests for short term gain.

 

And who will pay for this credit downgrade? The average American citizen. Gone are the days when one family member was able to comfortably support a family, since the 1950s- (when tax rates were the highest for oil industries), now in 2011 (when tax rates are the lowest in history for these industries) as a two-person income, most Americans were still struggling to support a family. 

So which industries will be impacted by President Obama's tax increases? It won't be the average American citizen who probably makes less than $500K/year. The industries that will be most affected are the oil, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, the very companies that are represented in McGraw Hill and Companies, the one who downgraded US credit on "principle": Standard & Poor's.

l'accident du travail

"The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

"Save the cheerleader, save the world!" Heroes, TV series (2006-2010) 



Necessity is the mother of invention, but often the catalyst to technological and medical advances occur by accident. Accidents, these seemingly entropic collision of molecules, of people being drawn together by chemistry, of a succession of events that lead to an inevitable outcome- discovery. Throughout history, we have learned that human error can oftentimes be fortuitous. If Professor Alexander Fleming had not forgotten to clear away glass plates filled with bacteria he had been studying, he would not have discovered the mould of penicillin that had grown overnight and found on the morning of September 3, 1928.

If Larry Page and Marissa Mayer had never met and dated in the early days of Google, perhaps the company would not have been so heavily invested in Artificial Intelligence. Both Google and Intel, perhaps surreptitiously, have been developing direct brain implants for the last decade. Intel announced in 2009, they have developed an Intel brain chip to implant into humans to remotely control electronic devices. Just a year later, Google announced that is has also developed a Google brain chip to help humans rid of electronic devices:

"This is a chip that users can implant in their brain that will search the internet the moment you think of something.  The chip has the power to find information even before a user knows he or she wants the information...The introduction of the Google Brain Chip means that individuals will no longer need PCs, Macs or tablets. “These devices are primarily used to access the internet and download content,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “With the Google Brain Chip, you don’t need to buy any hardware at all. The human brain is the hardware, we provide the chip and you are… a genius.”"

But how does one test out these brain chips on people without crossing the boundaries of ethical practice? This is where accidents come in play. So often, we do not realise that sometimes spectacular advances in technology transpire out of unfortunate events. Before Google and Intel announced their consumer version of the brain chip; in 2006,  Cybernetics Neurotechnology Systems (CYKN) had already implanted a chip the size of an aspirin on a 26 year-old quadriplegic patient who was able to control remote devices by his thought patterns alone. The year before, in 2005, Sony had patented a sensory device able to transfer images, sounds, touch and even smells to the brain without an implantation device in order to enhance the video game experience.

But what about rebuilding the entire human brain? We now possessed the technology to do this, but we did not have a viable test subject.

The subject of these initial brain implant experiments date back to the 1950s but are often never known by the public. These people, often the victims of circumstance, come from all walks of life. Some suffered from epilepsy, some came from extreme poverty, some were the victims of accidents.

Two weeks ago, a beautiful young girl in Southern California was travelling in a car with other girls when they were struck by a drunk driver. Although alive, she was pronounced brain-dead and put on life support. She was a popular teenager who was also a cheerleader at her high school. A memorial service was given for her today to give closure to the people who had loved her and known her.