Self-Segregation for Self-Preservation

With the latest race issue brewing in Ferguson Missouri the news has me thinking about racism, trying to better understand what causes it so maybe I can imagine some ways to improve the situation. It’s an introvert thing always thinking about how to save the world!
I think one hurtle we need to overcome is segregation. The problem with segregation is we create different environments for each group of people based on skin color. Perhaps these environments promote differing stereotypical behavior.
Although we have taken steps to reduce forced segregation, people seem to have a habit of self-segregating! Take a look in the lunch room of any school and you will likely see students grouped by race/color.
I remember reading one time about a crowd of people dressed in costumes; I don’t remember off hand if they were on a movie set or theme park, they ate lunch in costume. The funny thing is they self-segregated by costume in the same way people of different skin colors normally congregate. The elephants sat at one table and the tigers sat at another!
I believe what’s going on here is basic genetic self-preservation. The safest place for any animal is usually with other animals just like themselves. An elephant is less likely to be eaten by another elephant than by a tiger! Of course a tiger isn’t likely to be eaten by an elephant, but still there’s safety in numbers and generally speaking it seems natural that most animals stick with their kind.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying humans of different skin color are different animals, I just think we have a genetic preference when grouping to seek out those that are most similar to ourselves.
So if we have a tendency to self-segregate and that’s the root of all evil racism, how do we fix it? Maybe we need to start by encouraging integration at the lunch table? Assigned seating? Can we teach our children and each other to look at our similarities without checking the color of their skin?
If all else fails we should all have gray colored skin in a thousand years, hopefully by then we will judge people based on their character and sit with people we admire regardless of their lineage, shape, size, age, Etc.

No soup for you!

I recently had an opportunity to return to Japan after finishing a Navy tour there about ten years prior. The thing I was most looking forward to was getting another taste of a mystical magical soup from the Capricciosa restaurant at the top of More's City Mall in Yokosuka!

The restaurant had relocated to the other side of the building and presumably some if not all of the staff had changed, but the "Italian Meat and Vegetable Soup" was still on the menu, yay! In fact the menu had been updated and there was another name for the soup provided. Another clue to the riddle behind the secret soup that had haunted me for a decade! The decoded soup name was... ready for it? Minestrone!

I felt a bit disappointed to be honest. Isn't Minestrone one of the most common soups in the world? Had I waited ten years and traveled thousands of miles just to have some run of the mill Minestrone soup? In fairness the Japanese versions of food are sometimes, often, different than the American versions of the same food, for example Tacos with BBQ Sauce on them and Spaghetti with ketchup and butter for sauce (which tastes way better than it sounds)

This Minestrone soup is made without any beans or pasta and although "Meat" is one of the primary words in the title, it's difficult to find in the soup! I separated some of the soup into another bowl so I might reverse engineer it. Can you identify the mystery meat?

The known and suspected ingredients are as follows:
Tomato
Onion
Celery
Potato
Spinach Leaf
Chicken Stock?
Tomato soup?
Ground Pork?/Bacon?/Pancetta?/Beef?
Heavy Cream?
I attempted to recreate the soup and my creation was good, but not the same. The original soup (shown below) is a yellowish color which I can’t explain. Any ideas?

Thanks for the password

Here's one for you, do you think Google has too much integrity to try your password on other sites log in as you and data mine personal info from other sites? How about this, what if you enter the password for another site by accident into Google and it fails do you think they would store that failed attempt and try to log in to other sites as you using those credentials? Lately it seems to me if I can imagine it someone is doing it. What do you think?

Chase the carrot

I was thinking about how our text messages and emails are being analyzed with the expressed purpose of serving up advertisements that in theory we might want. I wonder how often for example a married couple after communicating a stressful moment in their relationship would have otherwise went about their business and things would have returned to normal, but with the help of targeted advertising are lead toward marriage counseling or proceeding with a divorce. And which of these options would be the most profitable to the company serving the advertisements? I'm guessing the divorce advertisement would be considerably more profitable to the advertising company. I suspect this model would apply to many situations where the individual would be basically thrown under the bus in order for big business to profit from the cleanup. I'm deeply saddened that we no longer have any basic privacy. Our private expressions are used against us to generate profit for others who we may oppose and we should expect to experience reprisal for expressing our opinions privately.

oooh look, a bubble! yay!

I find it amazing the extent that the world we live in now collects, sorts and uses data collected from our every day activities to adapt and dare I say influance our behavior. I am surprized more people don't seem as concerned as I feel about the way the information super powers such as facebook and Google have implemented algorithyms that create Filter Bubbles where some information is hidden or other information is given priority. The premise is that the results will be tailored to our interests and help us to more easily find what we are interested in. The end result is some information posted to Facebook doesnt appear on my feed because facebook decided I might not be interested in it, and my google search results may be diferent than yours. My biggest concern with this behavior is that it could be easily manipulated to influance our decissions and manipulate our comprehention.