Chris' Christian Blog

A Rigged System

"A Rigged System" 




The prompt for the 30 Day Blogging Challenge today is "CES 2017 (Consumer Electronics Show) opened this week in Las Vegas, Nevada, and here are some of the weirder items on display and potentially coming to a store or online shop near you. Any thoughts or opinions on any of the items? Anything you might be interested in?"

I have to be totally honest here and tell you that there are likely many things I'm interested but I guarantee you I could never afford them. When you live on a fixed income like I do you learn to limit yourself on what you buy and don't buy. Some things are necessary purchases so I bite the bullet and buy them. Other things are want to purchases and I buy them if I'm willing to sacrifice for them. Then there are things that are mere pipe dreams. I know they are available for purchase but they are way out of my league. Perhaps if I were Donald Trump I could afford them but I'm a person who never rubs elbows with his kind of money or his class of people. The fact of the matter is that I'm fine with that.

In answer to the blog prompt question I do have to say that the electric race car looked very sweet. I could picture myself in one of those terrorizing other cars on the highway as I pass them as if they're driving in reverse! Of course I'm certain law enforcement may have a thing or two to say about such reckless behavior but they'd have to catch me to say it. I know. All they need to do is get close enough to read my license plate number and they'd be knocking on my door later. However, since an electric race car isn't likely to be street legal anyway they'd have no license plate to read. Therefore I'd simply outrun them. Of course with my luck I'd round a turn going in excess of 150 MPH and find myself facing either a roadblock or spike strips and the fun would be all over. What a ride it would be though. It would almost be worth paying a huge fine or going to jail just to do it. The operative word there being "almost".

The message in a bottle thing looked absolutely stupid to me. I mean I'm sure there are people who will buy it if for no other reason than the novelty of it. To me it looked like something that would only work if a person set it someplace where they were going to spend a great deal of time such as at a desk. It would be much too bulky to carry with you. Therefore it would probably have to simply sit someplace. Then of course it requires a compatible app in order to even function. I doubt that the app is free. Factor in the fact that we already have numerous ways of receiving messages from email, instant messenger, and other apps and the message in a bottle seems at best redundant and at worst pointless.

Since I won't be one of the nearly 17,000 plus people attending the conference I really don't care for any of their novelties. It's good to have a heads up about them though because the time will likely come when we must have them. It seems that the producers of technology have a scheme in which they invent something nobody needs or wants, and then go to work making those things an absolute necessity. Digital televisions and cable are a prime example. When I was a child we simply went to the antenna and turned it to bring our channels in. Now every television is digital requiring the owners to purchase a special box to receive the digital signal or install cable television or satellite in their homes. Donald Trump said something during his presidential campaign that captures it well. "It's a rigged system!"