While some people view the CBS television show SURVIVOR as a social experiment, or a "game," I see it as a microcosm of life itself. I urge people who are trying to get ahead in the world to watch the show, because the same exact tactics required to win SURVIVOR are those that can be used to become the CEO of any major corporation.

John Cochran, a contestant in the current season, struggled with his initial tribe, and was nearly the first one voted off the island. Somehow, he managed to last all the way to seventh place, despite his unconventional personality - and he may yet survive a duel this week to reenter the game. The critical act in the current season occurred when Cochran decided to betray his tribe, Savaii, and forge an alliance with the "enemy" Upolu tribe. The decision allowed him to survive another five votes, but also resulted in his being the first eliminated when the remaining Upolu tribe was forced to vote out their own. His move caused a great deal of consternation and even hate in reality television forums, but his decision was the best possible given the circumstances. In fact, he played a spectacular game. No matter what Cochran did, his fate was probably sealed from day one, and his unusual behavior likely resulted in his being able to survive much longer than he otherwise would have been able to.

While the education system in America is often criticized for its shortcomings, I have a lot of respect for teachers. After attending college for four or six years to obtain just the basic certification to teach, they put up with the worst behavior imaginable from kids and teenagers who are often unhappy to go to school and who do not want to learn. They strive to do their best at making the world a better place for the next generation, despite administrative roadblocks and bureaucracy. Many educators find teaching very rewarding when they are able to make connections with their students and they move on to be successful in life.

Unfortunately, one of the roots of the problems with education in America is that the best people are not being encouraged to enter the teaching profession. One cause, obviously, is the poor pay that teachers receive: it is not uncommon, for example, for a teacher in New Hampshire to make less than $30,000. In Pennsylvania, public records show that the salaries with 30 years' experience for teachers equal the starting salary with no experience for some types of engineers. But there is another, more insidious issue that I believe is having more of an effect on the profession than the media is reporting: the handling of sexual crimes and allegations of them. The most high-profile example of the effects of sexual assault allegations is the recently fired Penn State coach Joe Paterno.

Several months ago, Robin Henig wrote a detailed article for the New York Times, entitled What is it about twentysomethings? The article proposes that people between the ages of 20 and 30 are lazier, more arrogant, and more self-centered than were people of a similar age of previous generations. She presents both sides of the story, with some experts arguing that every generation since the ancient Greeks complained that the "kids were ruining the world," but that the world is still here. I believe that such "experts" are missing the point by attempting to compare future behavior. Regardless of whether today's younger generation will grow up just like every other generation before it, they are "ruining the world" right now, causing all sorts of societal ills as a result of irresponsible behavior.

Now, it is true that today's younger generation faces a vastly different world than did their parents. Baby boomers grew up in better economic times, in a generally more liberal culture, with more stable marriages to rear them. Today's generation faces a poor economic climate, a culture that creates needless laws about everything and anything where people commit five felonies a day without knowing it, and parents who get divorced and remarried and divorced again, if they were married in the first place.

But on the other hand, these problems pale in comparison compared to those faced by previous generations. Rarely does anyone suffer from starvation, nobody is suffering from polio, the workweek has shrunk to 44 hours compared to 96 hours a hundred years ago, and nobody has been drafted into military service to fight wars that would determine whether human civilization would survive or fall into barbarism. Therefore, I hope the reader will forgive me for my lack of sympathy for healthy people who complain about their circumstances - because even the worst-off person is better off than the richest person in the world was in 1950.

A few days ago, I stumbled across an article on the Citizen Renegade blog about the effect of obesity on relationships. I'm not going to link to the article itself, because while I agree with the article's general premise, I don't approve of the obscene images that the author used to illustrate his point. Those who are brave enough to visit the blog may be interested in what's over there, but be assured that most of the articles are not safe for work.

The premise is that high obesity rates are the sole factor responsible for the rise in pickup artists and the various commercial companies that prey on men who aspire to become like them. With 60% of women either overweight or obese, the number of available, attractive women has dwindled to the point where there are 2.5 men for every one woman of normal weight - and therefore, a large number of men are left out of the "game." But I think that the article misses a key premise that makes the weight-dating relationship more complicated than simply stating that all men chase a limited number of women.

After more than four years since the last time I posted to this blog, I had a few ideas recently and decided to come back and see if the 60 or so people who visit daily will read new entries. While I have given up on dating and relationships for the time being, I wanted to comment on a few societal trends that fall under the category of "game playing." Recent events have prompted me to write about how privacy is defined in today's world, and how I believe that privacy will be nonexistent (by today's standards) by 2015.

Recently, a longtime friendship went south after a miscommunication over a privacy issue. I don't believe by any means that privacy was the sole factor, or even a major factor in the dissolving of the friendship, as we had simply chosen such different life paths that we really don't have much in common anymore. The story goes something like this: I recorded and edited a wedding video free of charge, and posted it online free of charge. He believed that posting the video online violated his privacy and asked me to remove it. I removed it, but he was so angry that he ended the friendship with a "telling off" voicemail.

While most of the articles here pertain to dating, I thought I would post this tale about my experiences with Comcast, which is by far the worst company I've ever dealt with.

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I ordered Comcast High Speed Internet in December 2007, taking advantage of their 16/2Mbps offer, the highest tier of speed. I paid significantly more for this high-speed upgrade. I play a lot of games online through XBox Live, and my brother plays games on the PC. I download all sorts of content to the XBox, and my brother buys all his games online. The games can be as large as 10 gigabytes for a single installation, and that isn't counting the bandwidth necessary for voice chat. I also have a paid subscription to the music service Napster, which I always have running while I'm making dinner and cleaning and working.

Comcast called on June 3 with a "high priority message," instructing me to call back ASAP. When I did so, a technician told me that I was using too much bandwidth and that I had to reduce bandwidth usage in order to remain being serviced by Comcast. I pointed out that they never pointed out limitations in their usage in their advertisements and that I had paid a significant amount for a higher-bandwidth connection. When the technician refused to back down, I thought I would find out what the bandwidth limit was so that I could see if the policy was reasonable. I asked for a definite figure as to how much usage I was permitted. The technician, rather rudely, wouldn't say, stating that I only had to "significantly reduce" my usage to remain in compliance with this under-the-radar policy. If I didn't, I would be disconnected.

I sent a letter to Comcast's CEO, and got a call from someone who told me that "excessive use" was defined as "13 million E-Mails per month." They forgot to mention that an E-Mail could be as small as one character, or could contain attachments of hundreds of megabytes each. They completely refused to tell me what the limit is.

In response, I reduced my service level to the lowest possible amount of bandwidth (6/384 in this case). What's the point of having a higher bandwidth rate if you will go over their invisible cap by using it? Comcast engages in deceptive advertising by touting their no-frills Internet service, and then buries in their terms of service somewhere a clause that allows them to harass their customers over bandwidth usage. I can understand that Comcast needs to keep its network operating at full capacity, but what I cannot understand is why I could not obtain from a technician the exact limit that I should abide by. How am I supposed to adhere to a policy when I don't know what it is?

Because I don't know what the limit is, it's only a matter of time until Comcast disconnects my service. Until Comcast decides to end its unethical business practices, I suggest you avoid their game-playing as much as possible. If you have Internet service through them and have a reasonable alternative, switch providers. For TV, almost everyone can switch to satellite TV, even if you live in an apartment (the landlord is required to allow you to install the dish, but (s)he can dictate where it is placed). I sold my stock in Comcast and hope that it continues its current slide.

It will be interesting to see how Comcast does in light of the complaints that continue to mount against it for this policy. Game-playing like this generally goes unpunished in the social world, but my prediction is that someone will soon sue Comcast and Comcast will publicize its limits. Now, if only one had an outlet to get that kind of action in the social world.

This post has been moved to AWTeen Reborn at http://shoemakervillage.org/awteenreborn/index.php?/archives/4-A-workable-system-of-government-for-AWTeen.html#extended, where it is more relevant. Look back in the archives on October 26, 2007.

The seduction community frequently simplifies the concepts taught by many of its members into one- or two-word slang terms. There's a lot of this slang floating around in books and Internet forums; the Fast Seduction site lists a dictionary of hundreds of such terms. Since most of the discussion on the forums frequently refers to the same concepts, it's helpful to have a sort of dictionary to reduce the number of words in posts.

However, there's a funny thing about slang: it becomes so commonplace that it loses its meaning and, for lack of a better word, intensity. For example, the word "kino" is thrown around the forums as if it's just another step in a process. But when you look at how people are acutally using the term, we find that "kino" can mean anything from holding hands to foreplay. Certainly, the term fails to accurately convey the emotion behind the latter. One could argue that it fails to convey even the former.

So it is with another term, "social proof." Social proof is basically a synonym for being "popular;" if a lot of other people like me, you will probably like me too. It's a concept that I believe is a poor judge of character, because there are a lot of jerks who make more and more friends simply because they already have a lot of friends. Regardless of my opinion, however, the concept does exist, and I encountered a powerful demonstration on Friday, June 16.

Karen, recently, has been posting about how her love life is going nowhere. The string of rejections has been stretching on since February or even earlier. She's tried speed dating, but nobody indicated they were interested. She responded to a guy on the radio, but he eventually ditched her for someone else. And she's even walked her dog to meet men, but saying hi and talking about dogs is as far as it goes. It looks like, unless we provide some "expert" assistance here, Karen might meet someone when she turns 70, and even then the odds won't be good.

Therefore, I suggest that we take matters into our own hands and hook Karen up ourselves. I'm going to create a new category, "Karen's Endless Search," where we can post all about Karen and her myriad faults. Hopefully, a guy will be lovestruck by Karen's warm personality and caring heart, and will decide to arrange a date with her. Everyone wins: I'll have something to write about once again, the blog will get more page impressions, and we can talk about how women attract men (most of the discussion here seems to be the other way around). But I think the end goal is much more important: Karen will actually be able to enter a relationship that lasts longer than five minutes.