I’m having a dandy vacation from school for about one more week. It has stopped raining, so I can see North Tustin from my window, which is pretty cool. I must remember to check in a month because I have no idea whether that is normal. The clarity of the houses struck me more than anything else.

I complained on the Third of contracting the flu. I suffered a runny nose and coughing for perhaps ten days, when it subsided. Unfortunately, a few days later, my sinuses started leaking into my throat again and I have been coughing non-stop until this morning. I only have these opportunities to confront my Luddite aspect. I refuse all medicine for the flu because it is viral. Plus, if I take medicines to suppress my symptoms, how do I know when I don’t have any sinning symptoms to suppress any more? In the case of antihistamines, it is when my mucus becomes a cement that I cough out in pellets. This has happened before and I refuse to repeat the experience. I sympathize that my family had to listen to the grating discharge, but I am more comfortable coughing than feeling as though crusts are building up in my throat. Body horror is my weakness. Luckily, it’s probably over, so I won’t avoid certain activites that take longer than the twenty minutes between the bathroom breaks from drinking liters of water.

As noted in my last post, I have generally ignored my commitments with this pleasant unstructured day. While I am keeping daily notes, if I forget to for a while, the quality suffers. Nevertheless, I am working. Earlier this month, E2 announced a Science Fiction Quest. Serendipitously, I had been wondering about the relations a post-apocalyptic community might have with a nanotechnology-using repopulation effort. Haiti’s tectonic plate broke in half soon after and I saw a ‘contradiction’ to my favored answer. Because (certain types) of nanotechnology obviate labor in general, survivalists would have no place in the Singularity’s economy. They could try to be artists but how many of us read the Spartan poems about their horses and wives? The attitude obviously doesn’t carry presently because our social incentives encourage us to sympathize with the Haitians.

Perhaps it is unwise to offer my opinion as I am more antisocial than the clamor about me. Nevertheless, I am not the only one to regard continued aid with skepticism. Surely, you have heard the caution to restrict impulse charity to approved NGOs, for fear of scams and Haitian corruption. Specifically, I mean the money that the administration will inevitably offer to, essentially, rebuild the whole city of Port-Au-Prince. Just giving them truckloads of money ensures it won’t be done organically, though those in the green city movement salivate at the potential of Radical Change otherwise impossible for major cities. (Which, of course, are those that need it the most.)

One of the opinion pieces that I would have cited, if the Wall Street Journal hadn’t hid it behind its subscription wall, treated the physiological future of the Haitians. One of the Doctors without borders whose vlogs CNN airs noted that an inordinate number of victims are receiving amputations or diagnoses of spinal injury. Like as not, the ill lit corner of my mind adopts the mask of Eugenist and warns of endless demands for aid otherwise. Inevitably, in shouldering the burden of rebuilding, American diplomats may feel some responsibility to subsidize the disabled population as well. Yes, I am uncouth for pointing this out, but we should not. America doesn’t have the money to satisfy its self-image as world’s savior in arms or alms. Utopian egalitarianism will always fail until that Star Trek era of infinite matter & energy for all.

Despite the taste of my sneaker and the nice transition back to the story I should be writing instead of this, I must lament the lack of a Utilitarian Catalog. You recall that the Utilitarian will want to devote his\er efforts (after self-maintenance) to the greatest good for the greatest number within a reasonable future without incurring unreasonable suffering. To do that effectively, sh\he would need a catalog of all the world’s ills and victims, ranked. Sure, you could give to Unicef and be reasonably certain it will be spent on deserving suffering. However, a utilitarian ought not feel comfortable relying on Unicef’s limited scope. If you and I took its beneficiaries list, and then rhapsodized for an hour looking for the gaps (cleft lips, non-NAFTA South American farmers, Mongolian towns with a median age of sixty, child sex slaves in America, Afghani farmers below subsistence despite growing wheat, manatees carved up by speed boats, ect), we wouldn’t have scarped out a majority of Need’s iceberg. When the Starbucks barista asks for their pet heart-tugger, you should turn to the Catalog and see what it rates. When every website and newspaper and television show turned into a Haiti peddler, I knew that other charities would feel a level of impoverishment.

I like to think of myself as an Egoist, so I have no business telling people of other ethical faiths how to act more sincerely. Nevertheless, I would like it for my own use. At the moment, only one charity meets my standard of desert: Wikipedia. Still, it would be nice to know the objectively most efficient target should I expand to a second.

As far as the Catalog itself, obviously it couldn’t be a book. As utilitarians donate to number one, it would drop as diminishing returns set in and two came to the fore. Only a website has the flexibility needed but I haven’t found it out there yet. Perhaps the UN has something similar, but like UNICEF (oh, duh), it will not exhaustively document every need. While I see the objection that you needn’t get every poor person, actually, you do. The undocumented sufferer is likely the worst off. Further, the UN hasn’t the political luxury of ruthlessly rating the need of various supplicants with the rigor a utilitarian ought demand. I don’t think that the Haitians are going to stop working forever in fake traction beds. I just don’t think they have been number 1 in the Catalog for a while now. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Anyway, for the quest I am writing a short story about a couple inconvenienced by the neighboring Transhumanists. I will also node about Cortex Command. The trick is finishing within the next six days.