Watching The Office. Jim just got promoted to Co-Manager, and Oscar (who is probably one of the more "normal" characters)sarcastically says something along the lines of "Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that an organization thrives under two leaders. How many countries can you name that don't have two presidents?"


What I find ironic is that most countries DO in a way have two leaders. Canada has the Prime Minister, and, technically, the governer general, who in theory can veto anything (not to mention the fact that we almost invariably have had minority governments for the last few elections). Similarly, both ourselves and the United States have two legislative bodies, ours being MPs, theirs Congressmen, with us both having Senators.

England also comes to mind, having similar assemblies, a Prime Minister, and a Moncarch. The German form of goverment (I can't remember the name, as I'm pretty baked) has both a President and a Prime Minister, as do many European countries. China has a whole Board of some sort, many south american countries have had some form of junta, and in liberal democracies (socialist?) like Canada, where the opposition can easily have more pull than the elected party itself.

And this is just ignoring the historical facts. Most countries before the rise of Rome were ruled by many tribes, united mostly in name, culture, and levels of technology. Despite common opinion, these "barbarians" were generally almost as technologically advanced as the Romans themselves, and did indeed engage in trade, education, and other things generally considered part of "civilization". These nations survived mostly unchanged, barring things like wars and disasters, for a relatively large amount of time, until the Roman Empire absorbed them.

After his annexing most of Europe, Rome's Senate lost most of its power to the conquering general Octavian (later "Augustus") (though it had long been corrupted and in decline), who was one of several fantastic men who ruled the Empire virtually alone. However, they were largely outnumbered by incompetent or corrupt men, many of whom ruled "alone" in name only, with family members in key postions assisting. This prompted an attempt or two to return to a "republic", and once North Africa, most of the Middle East, all of Eastern, Western, and nearly all of central Europe were under Roman rule, it became evident it was just too big for one person to run.

The solution, decided opon by Dioclitian, and cemented by Constantine (also the first Christian Emperor), was to appoint a system of two co-Emperors, with two co-emperor replacements ready at any time, should something happen to one of them. This split the Empire into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, both nominally Roman (although the Eastern Empire, ruled from Constantinople (aka Byzantium, Istanbul) was Greek in culture and language), and in theory part of the same Empire. However, in practice, the West was ruled by a series of generally useless dictatorial Emperors, and was eventually simply a burden on the treasuries of the East, led by dynatic governments, or more co-ruler type systems. The east flourished, aided by huge natural resources and good leadership, while the west stagnated. It collapsed in 476 (the Empire as a whole existing since 27 BC under an "Empire" system, and since 508BC as a republic), only a few years after Constantine offically created the eastern empire and finalized the divide in 330. To contrast, the typically multi-ruler Eastern Empire survived until 1453, over a thousand years, coming to be known as the Byzantine Empire. Russian rulers before the desolution of the monarchy sometimes called themselves Emperors of Eastern Rome, or just Roman Emperors, which led to a clash when Charlemange claimed the title of (Western) Roman Emperor, eventually leading to the creation of a "Holy Roman Empire", which was infact mostly pagan, German, and a collection of generally warring small states, which formed the prototype for nations in the middle ages.

Nations in the middle ages were ruled by many princes or dukes, rather than a king. These countries were slowly tied more closely together, until eventually one king came to rule them. After a few centuries of this, single families or people could rule over many, many nations at once, a good example being the Hapsburgs, who ruled most of Europe, or the King of Bavaria in the late enlightenment era, who ruled a group of countries known as Germany. While nations prospered and developed very quickly during the process of uniting and following one single leader, they stagnated* VERY quickly once united. This caused a flurry of issues, with a sort of constitution (Magna Carta) being written up and presented as a demand to King John in 1225. The gradually increasing incompetence and general ridiculousness of the majority of the European monarchy cause their virtually complete extinction, leading to revolutions all around the world, in a relatively short period of time.**

Even look at modern democracy, in which one country is generally ruled by one person, for a short amount of time, based on majority votes. While one person is nominally in charge, you could probably argue that in an ideal world, the concept of democracy is pretty much the opposite of this, and that countries under it are run by many people, and the opinions of many people.

Of course, one man dictatorships exist, typically being either pretty decent (Cuba) or just shitholes (Most of Africa, which has stagnated), which could be argued as evidence that one leader doesn't really mean a country will prosper at all, but is completely dependant on the individual.


ANYWAY. As a more literal interpretation, I can name one country that has more than one president: The U.S. It has a president, and a vice-PRESIDENT. WHen Bush was in, their roles were slightly reversed.


Well, there's a history lesson. In conclusion, "multiple leaders" doesn't seem any better or worse to me than "one leader", as both, when provided with adequate leadership, tend to fail or succeed based on unrelated factors. As examples:

Cuba is pretty nice, because it had a good single leader, made friends with the USSR, and was an easily isolated island, where media control is easy, and one man can go unchallenged.

Paraguay has been described as "a green hell", though it's generally been ruled by multiple leaders in a junta, been a democracy, or has had it's presidents couped with enough regularity and bloodless efficiency that it was basically an election. However, it's also landlocked, has nothing of value besides cheap labour, and managed to literally get over half it's population repeatedly killed in a series of pointless wars, something common to all the rulers). I'm not kidding, Paraguay is seriously fucked up.

China is, in general, pretty nice. They are ruled by a generally faceless group of individuals classed as "generations" of chinese leadership in the west probably because their names are really hard to pronounce, they are very numerous, and not that well known. China has fewer freedoms than the west in some regards, but the situation's improving, and they are pretty much on par, if not pulling ahead of most first world nations. They're a large, coastal nation, have lots of resources, cheap labour to use them, and are advancing culturally as each new generation comes to light. This has taken a VERY long time, due to these resources being technologically unavailable to the Chinese government for the majority of it's existance, but are now rocketing it forward.



I am tired and will maybe write more later. This is really fucking long.


ANYWAY... The end point is that leadership is more or less irrelevant. If you want to succeed, have the resources. Failing that, have the ability. Ideally, have them both. If you don't, if still will work, it will just take a VERY LONG TIME.

*I am now making footnotes. I personally belive this stagnation is the result of a lack of external conflict, which I'll probably never get around to writing about later.

** A very good example of this is both the Russian and German Empires "revolutionizing" nearly simultaneously in 1918, followed by Spain, Italy, and Portugal.

I ended up splitting Lisa and Lindsay's posts, as it was horribly long together

Dear Lindsay,

Please, please don't pay that fucking stupid amount of rent, just to get yourself more embedded in a town you (used?) to want to leave. I don't know your whole situation, but from reading your blog, it seems like your willing to throw non-smart-girl amounts away for certain things. I might be wrong about that in general, so please don't take that too seriously, but I know I'm right about the rent thing specifically.

I would have commented it, but your blog has never once let me post anything I've tried to comment on, so I shall say it here. As a friend, I think you might be making a mistake.

This is all I will say about it.


Moving on, your last blog was nice and vague. My last blog is nice and open. It will be good to change it up, haha.

Steven

Dear Lisa:

No desire to talk about it with you. At all. From experience, it doesn't make any difference anyway, besides us fighting untill I get pissed off enough to just do something about it myself. I thought the following had been stated clearly earlier, but I guess not, so:

IF WHAT IS ON HERE BOTHERS YOU, DON'T READ IT. This is not open to discussion. This is my private area, mostly to keep in contact with someone I never get a chance to actually speak to, and to be able to rant to myself in a judgement free setting. It is not designed to expose any issue I'm having and open it up to conversation. If I REALLY wanted to talk to you about whatever you do in a day, I would come and ask you. As it is, Im trying to be trusting. If its annoying that you used to act like everyone's girlfriend all the time, and that its carried over into your time with me, then just let me vent about it. I am trying to be trusting, and "some guy who's seen her naked hitting on her" can very easily turn into "she's probably cybering him on Skype when I'm working" in my mind if it's brought up enough. This is what's happened with VIRTUALLY EVERY GUY you know.

Not to mention, you have a track record with that second only to Sam (don't worry, it's a wide margin, and I had smartened up for a while after the two of you). Sure, everything I know about was years ago, but notice the words "record and "know about". There's plenty of pictures of you grinding up on people while we were dating out there, at least one of them ADMITTEDLY taken just to piss me off.

Back on track. See, you either decide to tell me in detail about fucking them, or something similar, then still expect I'll be thrilled with the amount of time you spend talking to them, or hanging out, etc., when I'm not around. Honestly, I do love you, but I have some trouble wanting to be around you some times, and this is a prime, prime example of why. Maybe it's just my problem, sure, but I tend to feel like this at least once a week, usually for reasons along these lines. I frankly think you should be back in Ontario, with someone more like yourself than like me (incase you haven't noticed, sometimes the only thing we really have in common is the bed we sleep in), but that's just my opinion, and you're welcome to ignore it (though I know you won't. You'll read this while I'm at work, get mad, cry a little bit, maybe be pissy when I get home, and then just try to ignore it until it gets said again). I don't plan to leave you, I just don't really see how we can exist like this for the rest of our lives.

It's not that you're a shitty girlfriend. Usually, you're great, pretty much the best anyone could want. It's that you WERE a shitty girlfriend, more or less the definition of "kind of slutty" by my personal estimate (which I feel most of the people I know would agree with, given the same level of information I as I have, but no one you know probably would in similar circumstances), and someone I likely wouldn't have dated again had I know all this beforehand (no regrets). I personally am not a good enough person (if that's your scale, anyway) to get past this right now in my life, and that it keeps coming up doesn't help anything. For the most part, excepting the stuff mentioned above (and some not really mentioned), it's me, not you. You just dont seem to get that it will take a while of it ALL being just me before I have absolutely no issues with it.

So yeah. Don't fucking talk about my blog. Repetition does not cause anything nice to happen. Read it and deal, or don't read it, because I can happily be much more of a dick if you keep bringing things up. If it's worth talking about to me, I will say something about it. I guess this post can MAYBE be an exception (i.e. when you come crying about it, and we argue, I will not make any sort of effort to "punish" you by writing another huge rant, then asking you never bring it up. That seems a little unfair), as it's long, indepth, and not really as vague as I try to be when complaining. Beyond that, the more I hear about it, the more I will probably want to rant about things, the more likely I am to write more things that I dont really ever want to talk about.


P.S. If you're wondering why I can say all this, knowing it's personal and someone outside of us can and will read it, keep in mind two things:

1. I'm holding back, and I think you know it too. This is relatively polite, doesn't state HALF the shit that comes to mind, and I tried to reassure you that I do love you and it's not all your fault at the end. It's also after several revisions, which I won't likely have the courtesy to do again, if I ever get another rant like this going.

2. I've NEVER, EVER heard you say anything remotely positive about me to anyone, except maybe Emma. Not saying you don't, just saying that about %90 of the things you say about me aren't that good.

Plus, it's just Lindsay, who probably knows me well enough to know that this is my general dating experience, what sort of people I date, and to understand my outlook on it all. And besides, even if she wanted to tell someone about it, who would care? People on the west coast have better things to talk about than me (or you and me).


Anyway, there was something more I wanted to talk about that I REALLY FUCKING HATE, but I got to revising, and can't think about it now.

My female friends don't call me things like "sexy", and I think I'd say something if they did. :s

Also, I dont like sharing a computer.

Finally got the log in thing all worked out for blogger.


Watching "How It's Made". This one is on tequila, which is apparently made from a plant called blue agave. It's harvested with this shovel-blade-thing that looks like it would be wicked for killing zombies.

Apparently Mexico has also trademarked the word tequilla.

Sometimes I think I would like life better as a homeless person (assuming I lived some place with no winter). I'd find some little town, and be the strange, yet lovable hobo resident, with no one to compete with for bottles. I'd wander around all day, collecting cans and shit, muttering odd quips, and pretending I was the emperor of Upper Tofino or summat, and it'd be ok, because I'm homeless.

I dunno, it just seems like it could be alot more fun than being a CSO, or even a doctor or something.


I"m watching this show on Space about these guys who pretend to be super heroes, and walk around their respective cities helping the homeless, and so forth. I think that would be kind of fun too, though I think I'd be a super villan, simply to sort of balance it out. Unfortunately, I can't really see how you could possibly do that/get anything out of it. I suppose technically, serial killers and the like are probably as close as the real world would ever get to super villains, which makes me wonder what one of these guys would do, faced with one of them. It's sort of funny how:

1. Human nature requires society to have what are incredibly restrictive laws if you think about the way they were just 100 years ago.

and

2.These laws, coupled with increasing apathy for "fellow man", etc., cause a greatly disproportionate limit to the levels of good and evil one can realistically hope to achive. One can put on a costume, and run around murdering people, but it's very, very unlikely that someone else who puts on a costume would be able to stop them, or really even most "lesser" criminals without they themselves going to jail.

I'm reading Hunter. It's a white power book about a serial killer based on Joseph Paul Franklin, who goes around killing interracial couples in an attempt to start a race war. However, rather than being a mystery story, it's told from the perspective of the killer, who is apparently doing the right thing somehow. I'm not really that far into it, but it's about as bad as you'd expect, and I kinda doubt I'll finish it. The website I found it on had some interesting points on racial politics, amidst the usual garbage, but I can't really recall how I got there, and don't think I'll bother looking through the rest of the literature.

Wow, I'm horribly bored.

Dear Sophie,
I realized today that the reason [REDACTED] my boss is that she is essentially a little kid, and that I don't really like or know how to deal with little kids. In an effort to avoid being fired or jailed, I figured I would ask someone with professional training for their advice.

So, besides candy and time outs (neither of which work on her), how do you get a kid to stop fucking around with things?

Thank you for your time.



Maybe she'll have some good input....

I know this particular clip is a "dramatization", but this actually happened. Yikes.

2 reasons my girlfriend is better than yours (or you, if you are female).

I'm pretty impressed with how much Lisa trusts me, and considerably less impressed with Norton Anti-Virus. The thing is mostly just a virus itself, but they apparently don't have a Windows Defender for 7 yet.