Pizza....the Amazing Vegetable...err Fruit.

by Chris Chaos

Tomato..vegetable or fruit?

Sooo..pizza...vegetable..2 tablespoons of tomato paste.....subsidized lunches....ingredients..diet...there I fixed it....Idiocracy. [1]
Yeah, this was a wonderful exercise in lobbying. This affects subsidized lunches in schools

Congress has to go through the lobbyists before reaching the voters

Back in 2011 the Agricultural Department proposed some changes to the school lunch program, they wanted to limit the use of potatoes, sodium and delay a requirement to boost whole grains. Congress did bend to the will of the food lobbyists to keep tomato paste as a vegetable modifying the serving amount. The bill also allows the tomato paste that is used on pizza to be counted as a vegetable, ironically since tomatoes are actually a fruit. [2]

Racism or.....

by Chris Chaos

Dictionary.com defines racism as:
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

I have been working on a psychological social experiment (that will be documented into a book) that centers on perceived racism and have ran quite a few tests with multiple configurations looking for various outcomes. The conclusion is fast becoming that people are not necessarily racist (hatred/dislike toward people of different races) but just have a general disregard towards ANYONE different than themselves. For an example, if one was to target a person to bully/harass or pick on, once they have a target they take the biggest different  (race, sex, weight, style, height etc) between themselves and their target and they center on that feature for their attack.

For an example:
If person A is white and person B is black they would resort to racist name calling.
If person A is thin and person B is over weight they would call the person fat.
If person A is male and person B is female they would call her a bitch or something anti-female oriented.
If person A does not have glasses and person B does, they would call that person four eyes.

This concept that we refer to as racism is inbred into us, genetic and biological, just look to nature to see how one specie wages war against another. Every animal is food for a competing animal. Even the largest animals that have no natural predators, nor humans who think they are at the top of the food chain, fall to the tiny and lowly viruses and bacteria.

This all seems so kindergarten, but this small mindedness carries over from childhood into adulthood resulting in temper tantrums for the frustrated.

The location where most arguments occur and can be observed is the comment section of ANY webpage (and especially on popular social media sites). There are hundreds of thousands , so you can get a nice cross section of topics and of society by going to specifically topiced sites and observe.

The formula for the people seems to be:
1) go to a website
2) read the headline
3) look at the pictures
4) skip or skim the article
5) form a quick opinion
6) go to comment section and vent all frustrations
7) wait for response
8) bash people that do not agree with your opinion

In my experience of witnessing and observing what was mentioned above I see the offenders (when they get to the step of bashing) start personal attacks based on what was said and also based upon the appearance of their profile picture/avatar. Men bashing woman, blacks bashing whites, the young bashing the old or even just bashing someone because of the shirt they are wearing.

With the recent incident in Ferguson, MO I have seen a rise in racist comments on websites, from whites it is usually in reaction to the targeting of whites by blacks in the form of rioting or getting revenge by attacking them. From blacks it usually is in the form of protest (whether directed properly or not) against white cops killing or beating blacks.

Bottom line is people dislike others that differ too much from themselves. If you are not from the tribe and do not fit in, you are out. Rejected like foreign bacteria in the human body.

Once all results from this social experiment are in and weighed they will be compiled and become available to the public.

Thoughts?

(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of  hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)

SUCCESSFUL VS UNSUCCESSFUL TRAITS

by Chris Chaos

"You always pass failure on your way to success." Mickey Rooney

Over the span of many years my various careers and interaction with a very diverse cross section of society, my experiences have led me to become acquainted with many different types of people. The ones that we shall speak of here are successful and unsuccessful individuals. This list is of course not all encompassing nor a end all exhaustive list, but it does include the major traits that the people possess that cumulatively lead a person to either become successful or unsuccessful.

Usually a successful person will make mistakes and take it as a learning experience. Everyone makes mistakes but there is a sharp contrast in how a person recovers from these mistakes and the frequency that they repeat the same mistakes over and over. Unsuccessful people will make a mistake and then promptly find an excuse or another person to blame it on. For the unsuccessful person when something goes wrong it is in their very nature to find a scapegoat to avoid making themselves appear responsible.

Successful people have a sense of gratitude when they achieve, acquire or earn something. Unsuccessful people have a sense of entitlement where they feel that someone owes them something whether or not they worked for it or earned it. The successful people, having lost a contest, will vow to work hard, study more and make necessary adjustments to emerge victorious the next time around. The unsuccessful person, upon losing, will place blame, cry the opponent had an unfair advantage and once again find a scapegoat to claim the lose was not their fault.

The successful person will talk about ideas, they will explore options to better themselves and the world around them. The unsuccessful person will talk about people, behind their backs and just generally bad mouth others. Gossip is how they interact and how they achieve their attention starved cravings.

A successful individual wants others to succeed, they wish for the same fortune to become attributed to others. An unsuccessful person wants others to fail, misery loves company. These are the ones that make snarky and stabbing remarks on your social media page after you post about your achievements, they are the ones that bad mouth you around the water cooler and make up cruel rumors in an attempt to make them feel good about themselves.

A successful person is aware of how little they actually do know. An unsuccessful person thinks and claims that they know it all.

A successful person reads everyday about the topics they are interested in, will educate them or further their lot in life. The unsuccessful person watches TV or plays video games everyday. These acts are time wasters and in no way contribute to anything positive in your life. Empty activities producing temporary and fleeting joy.

A successful person set goals and develop life plans. An unsuccessful person is not really sure of what they want to be or may, but sets their goals unreasonably high with no intentions of bettering themselves and then sets themselves up for the hard crash when these goals are not attainable. Then of course they find a good scapegoat and cry "WHOAS ME WHAOS ME"

Below is a narrowed down list of some of the top traits that various people possess:

SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE:

have a sense of gratitude

give other people credit for their victories

read everyday

talk about ideas

share information and data

exude joy

embrace change

keep a "to do/project" list

Compliment

forgive others

accept responsibility for their failures

keep a journal

want others to succeed

keep a "to be" list

set goals and develop life plans

continuously learn

operate from a transformational perspective

UNSUCCESSFUL PEOPLE:

Have a sense of entitlement

take all the credit of their victories

watch tv everyday

fear change

fly by the seat of their pants

talk about people

horde information and data

exude anger

hold a grudge

blame others for their failures

think they know it all

operate from a transational perspective

secretly hope others fail

don't know what they want to be

never set goals

"Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success." Robert Kiyosaki

(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com) 

THE PARASITE: Young Jimmy

by Chris Chaos

Meet young Jimmy..the social loafer. (SOCIAL LOAFING: The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts towards a common goal than when they are individually accountable.)

Young Jimmy just turned 5 years old and is in kindergarten, he also noticed that the teacher graded his class collectively as a group and not on individualistic accomplishments. He soon realized that he could slack off and let the rest of the class do all the hard work and that he could do bare minimal since it did not matter if he worked hard or just sat around, he would be rewarded the same. His thoughts were, "Why should I work hard and wear myself out when I can take a step back and let the rest of my fellow classmates do the work. Besides, either way, I will get the same grade."

There are 15 kids in the classroom all working to complete the assignment. In the name of fairness so that none of he students gets their feelings hurt no one is punished for not contributing and everyone is rewarded for getting the task complete regardless of how much effort one puts forth. Each kid will get a trophy despite if they did all the work, or were simply just a free rider. (FREE RIDERS: People who benefit from the group but give little in return.)

This situational classroom unintentionally welcomed freeloaders due to not looking at individual achievements. Quietly building a slack off mentality that one day would eventually enter the work force and stagnate the world forever. The mindset and society that this backwards thinking is producing a nation that is fast becoming a paradise for parasites.

Under the old regiment only the students that excelled, completed their assignments and achieved actually got rewarded. That caused the students that performed sub-par to resent the brighter and more intelligent students causing a backlash between the students with the various academic skills. So people feeling sorry for the underdog and instead of just encouraging the sub-par students to work harder, started rewarding everyone, from the smartest kid in the classroom all the way down to the kid that refused to participate in the activities.

This in turn diminished achievements, lowered IQ and all students started to slack off since their was no incentive to try or to do what is right. All students leveled out at a lower IQ and made the job easier for the teachers and staff since even they themselves no longer had to try and do their job.

The end result was rewarding everyone, concentrating on the underachievers and ignoring the more brighter students thus dulling results down. A populous that was easy to control and manipulate.

The Passage of Time

by Chris Chaos

I had a question about an observation that I had over the last few years....

Has anyone noticed that it appears that the passage of time seems to be going faster the older you get? Does it seem like the days, weeks, months and years are rolling by incredibly quick? For me it seems as if time started to gain acceleration when I was about 22 years old. I have always kept busy with schooling, work, hobbies and other pursuits in life so my time has always been occupied.

Now I know as a kid time seems to take forever since you are constantly looking forward to things: birthdays, Holidays, trips, your 13th b-day, your 18th b-day etc.... When you have your eye on a date when something exciting happens time feels like it never moves.

Now flash forward to adulthood, you are working on college, a job, a career, paying bills, having kids and the daily grind. You are constantly busy and bogged down with life that you do not have the time to stop and smell the roses per say.

Quite a few other adults that are doing something with their life have stated similar observations. On the flip side I noticed that people that have nothing going for them in life state the opposite, they can be heard stating, "I am so bored, I cannot wait for today to end." Why so you can do the exact same life loafing that you did today?

 

The times that I seem to notice the most (not due to ques such as alarm clocks) are 10 am, 12 noon, 3pm, 6pm and then 9pm. These blocks pop up the most and the time in between them appear to disappear without explanation.

An excerpt from Wikipedia:

Time perception is a field of study within psychology and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience of time, which is measured by someone's own perception of the duration of the indefinite and continuous unfolding of events. The perceived time interval between two successive events is referred to as perceived duration. Another person's perception of time cannot be directly experienced or understood, but it can be objectively studied and inferred through a number of scientific experiments. Time perception is a construction of the brain that is manipulable and distortable under certain circumstances. These temporal illusions help to expose the underlying neural mechanisms of time perception.

Pioneering work, emphasizing species-specific differences, was conducted by Karl Ernst von Baer. Experimental work began under the influence of the psycho-physical notions of Gustav Theodor Fechner with studies of the relationship between perceived and measured time.

William J. Friedman (1993) also contrasted two theories for a sense of time:

The strength model of time memory. This posits a memory trace that persists over time, by which one might judge the age of a memory (and therefore how long ago the event remembered occurred) from the strength of the trace. This conflicts with the fact that memories of recent events may fade more quickly than more distant memories.

The inference model suggests the time of an event is inferred from information about relations between the event in question and other events whose date or time is known.



(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com) 

The Adventures of the Parasite #1

By Chris Chaos

Parasite: an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.

Here is a fun little story concerning the sad mentality and lack of ambition by America's youth and approaching middle age population. Where are your priorities?

The Parasite had a wonderful night sitting up and arguing his point on many hot topics with the population of the internet, he felt victorious since he outlasted his competition. The Man had to go to bed and leave the conversation since he had to wake up early to go to work. The Parasite has no job so he was able to stay up all night and prove his point.

The Parasite was all gung ho about the pending move to raise the minimum wage despite the fact that he has no job to begin with. All his bills and obligations are covered by his parents as he lives in his parents basement.

In the argument the night before, The Man was talking about educating yourself so that you can secure a good paying job in this down turned economy. The Parasite stated that he has no money to begin with and cannot afford college or secondary schooling. You see, The Parasite is an expert in creating excuses (and self inflicted Learned Helplessness) to explain how he has been wronged and was limited in his choices.

In between arguing with The Man, The Parasite was trying to decide how he was getting to Gamestop so he could purchase the new game coming out in the AM. But he could not decide if he wanted the game for PS4, Wii or the XBox.

The Parasite is in his 30's, lives in his parents basement and plays video games all day. All The Parasites money goes towards purchasing video games and going to the movies. The Parasite always brags that he owned just about all the video games ever released since the the Atari 2600. His greatest accomplishment in life is beating and completing all the games that he plays.

Now if The Parasite would have used that money for higher learning, then maybe he wouldn't be a leech and sponge off of his parents.

You can observe some people and immediately tell they will only gain two certificates during their lifetime...a birth and a death certificate.

(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey.  He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, has a black cat named Jynx, two rats: Hopping Heather and Climbing Carol, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings.)