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Man, some funny stuff afoot!

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What must be one of my all-time favorites:

Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue pt. 1/2

Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue pt. 2/2

Watch: Youtube: Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

Here’s a silly little video that I made:

The point? The hope is that truly intelligent species wouldn’t wish to lord over us, but engage in trade and commerce with us.

Where do I think that puts us? I think human beings have potential, but we don’t have that kind of society yet.

Watching videos of skeptics on youtube and then moving on to Derren Brown’s multiple mindfucks reminded me of my experience with Primerica a number of years ago.

I had been looking for a job, so it must have been 2003 or 2004 or something. I guess I must have been getting desperate, because I responded to a ad for sales-types.

I had spoken on the phone with this one guy who screened me, and I guess I met the criteria (whatever it was). I was asked to attend a meeting with a follow-up interview, I think.

The meeting was much less informational than I would have liked and was far more “sales pitch.” I felt incredibly uncomfortable at one point when slogans were being bandied about at the head of the room and the “audience” responded as a church congregation.

The guy who spoke with me on the phone was too busy to see me at that very moment and, as I was feeling uncomfortable, I left. I had managed to talk to some other guy, who I told that I wasn’t interested any longer.

I did some more research on the particular job offering, and it seemed like there was a much greater emphasis on recruitment than on selling product. Whether or not this was true, the fact that sales reps are encouraged to do any recruitment was somewhat troubling to me, especially given what I knew of pyramid schemes that operated in the same fashion.

Shortly thereafter, the guy who I spoke with initially called me up. I told him that I wasn’t interested, and he pressed me on it. I told him that I had done a little research and was unimpressed with Primerica and had concerns that it resembled a pyramid scheme. He started to get angry, basically telling me that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about because I had never been a part of Primerica, or something like that. (This is far from verbatim, but that’s the sentiment that I picked up.)

He kept giving me the hard sell for the “job,” at which point I thought things were more than a little weird. I hardly thought I was especially qualified for the job, and I felt I was being treated as a means to an end (which, if recruitment was the main focus of a sales position, is a rather accurate read of the situation).

What also made me feel uncomfortable was the request to turn over the contact information of 10 or so people that you knew. Not only was this about recruitment, this was also about farming for contacts. I wouldn’t be able to profit at all from selling to those initial ten people, either, if I remember correctly.

Aside from all of this, there was some sort of certification requirement was was apparently legally necessary, but I didn’t have the cash to outlay, nor was I willing to attend some sort of class to achieve this document. That, combined with the necessity to basically dime on my friends and family (thus subjecting them to hard-sell pitches, ensuring a severe blow to my trustworthiness) made me say, “It’s better being unemployed.”

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