Blogtrek

Turnings

The service at the Unitarian church I attend had a responsive reading that started with:

"Now is the time for turning."

Turnings are interesting; I had been interested in Strauss and Howe's theory of generational turnings in The Fourth Turning. Their theory is that our present time is about to turn into a Fourth Turning; i.e., a period of crisis similar to the Great Depression and World War II. So I hear them proclaim in church that the turning is about to occur.

The reading goes on to say that we can't get out of our current stagnant pattern of life by doing the same things, as we then get the same results we had been getting. We need something to jolt us out of this reverie. I feel like I may be nearing such a point in my life, and according to Strauss and Howe, so is American society. Dotcomitis, celebrityitis, mediahypism, political correctness and corporate deception have been going on too long. Something needs to happen to jolt us out of this, and this is Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning. They say the previous or Third Turning is a period of growing disorder; I disagree. It is a period of order, when the same things happen over and over again like a broken record and something needs to hop to get the tune playing again or to play another tune. It is a suboptimal stable equilibrium. We need to get out of this to achieve new heights.

AOL Deception

I see them everywhere now. America Online (AOL) discs free for the taking from numerous places, including stores, bundled software, and offices. They say, "Get 1,025 hours of AOL free with AOL 7.0". That sounds like a lot of hours. But if you look at the smaller print, you find that you have to use these hours up in 45 days. If you get out your calculator and multiply the 24 hours a day that there is only that many of by 45 days, you get 1,080 hours. AOL is deceiving us. It may be true what they say. However, the only way you are going to use up 1,025 hours in 45 days' time is to be continuously online 24/7 except for 55 hours. You need far more than 55 hours of sleep in that time. What they are really saying is that you get 45 days of free time on AOL. It is all too easy to deceive by using numbers out of their range. 1,080 hours sounds like far more time than 45 days, yet they are the same amount of time. Further, "hours" in internet service provider (ISP) language usually means time that you are actually logged into their system, whereas "days" connotes time that you are subscribing to their service, regardless of whether you are logged in. So 1,080 really sounds like a lot, like it may last a year or more. But it lasts only 45 days. So AOL should state this up front, in much larger font than the1,025 hours. Their putting 1,025 (which is the wrong number anyway) in the biggest font instead of 45 to me constitutes misleading advertising. They should terminate this practice immediately.