Buy-it-Use-it-Break-it-Fix-it!

A war fought with blue lasers that - against ALL odds - manages to be supremely uncool. What. The. Hell. ?

I am, of course, referring to the High-Definition Format Wars, or 'What part of "Industry Standard" don't you understand?', as it will come to be known by future generations. The so-called "merits" of each format have been stated, and re-stated, so I feel no need to go on in a lengthy, biased diatribe about which I think is better and why. If you don't know what's different about the formats, congratulations, you're a victim of this disgusting and entirely uneccesary war (which isn't as bad as being a victim of the other disgusting and entirely uneccesarry wars currently ongoing)! I was unlikely to speak up on this issue, until people started proclaiming a "winner".

The first problem with proclaiming a "winner" in this so-called "war" is that everyone is actually a loser. The people who bought into the rival HD format will be holding expensive coasters inside of a generation or two of electronics. The people who funded and backed the losing format effectively wasted money on production, but that's true of all failed business ventures I suppose. The people who financed the success of the winning format had to buy it new, and at a rather inflated cost for what everyone else will be paying a more palatable amount. "Hold up, there!" you say, "don't they get to enjoy AECH-DEEEE content before the rest of us plebes, AND get to keep the discs?". I would respond by asking you if you really wanted to see more pixels of hollywood drek in advance of everyone else. I mean, you can lead a cavalry charge into pointy sticks, but is it fun? Oh, and the people who fund the winning format had to spend a lot of money trying to prove it was better, which may have paid off, but why should they have had to spend it in the first place?

As if it matters, but it's Blu-Ray that has been accepted as the de-facto victor. That would be OK, except for this. It's a petition to "Save HD-DVD. The existence of two formats is HURTING THE CONSUMER, so can we please just adopt one of them and move on? I don't really care which, although personally I think that content-wise, HD-DVD should have been winning. Sure, each format had equal amounts of over-produced, overly-preachy, overly-macho crap, but HD-DVD had Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, those two Geek-demograpic shows that managed by virtue of (*shock*) actual TALENT in the acting and writing departments, to garner critical praise and mainstream viewership. I know I was intending to go that route in order to see those shows in glorious, glorious 1080i (yes, I know, it's all about 1080p these days, but the media is apparently encoded in 1080i and has to be processed in order to refresh all the pixels at once on a 1080p display. No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either, but the upshot is I have a clunky old CRT that's 1080i...). Note about my earlier comments: sure, it's the same content, but the cynicism about more pixels is only justified if the content is lame. Good content is only ever enhanced by being made bigger, see: Imax. Ok, so I lied about not doing a diatribe, but at least it was a short one. I'll try to salvage this paragraph by pretending like I had a second problem in mind with respects to calling one format a "winner": number two is that it seems that the actual programming quality wasn't a factor (or early adopters had no taste...), which doesn't instill hope for the future.

Problem the third is that this shouldn't have happened in the first place. ISO standards, JEDEC (the people that do RAM standards, the people you have to thank for your computer not being more confusing than it already is)...THESE KIND OF GROUPS EXIST FOR A REASON! You make a single industry standard, and then everyone competes to make their product sell better, using that medium as a carrier, no more, no less. It's consumer-friendly, for example: my motherboard accepts DDR RAM. I can buy a gigabyte or two of DDR from a dozen or more different vendors, and barring some bizarre circumstances, it will fit in the memory slots and it will work. Even if I have to choose between going DDR2 or DDR3 for a current core 2 duo/quad setup, each is an open standard, and so I can buy a motherboard from whichever vendor I want, and then I can buy RAM from any vendor I want, so long as I put DDR 2 in a DDR2 motherboard, and DDR 3 in a DDR 3 motherboard. Most importantly, most vendors make at least one model of each, and some have even implemented BOTH kinds of RAM slot on their motherboards, it's FANTASTIC! This is the sort of setup I'd love to see for any format, not this useless bickering where we have two separate standards, each promoted by a consortium of utter dickweeds and assholes (Sony and Disney on one side, Microsoft on the other) who want to opress creative thought through draconian legislation and DRM.

Problem number four is that the HD optical formats make up very little of the current market. DVD is actually winning, look at everyone: they have DVD players in their homes, DVD drives in their laptops, and they don't need to know what the fuck HDCP is in order to view that content. Hell, you can get 7" screen dedicated DVD readers, you can take them ANYWHERE. Remember when DVD was all new and fancy? That was easily five or six years ago, it will be AT LEAST that long before HD optical media is that ubiquitous. Finally, as much as I hate to give Michael Bay any credit, he has accused Microsoft of pushing "technologically inferior" HD-DVD to prolong the format war, so that people will become disgruntled, and turn to digital downloads to serve their video needs. I hope he's right! While video encoding is another one of those proprietary nightmares sometimes, you will invariably get RealAlternative, or VLC media player, and be freed from your shackles! Discs are prone to damage, they barely hold a 10th of what your hard drive holds (and this is dual-layer Blu-ray versus a single 500GB hard drive. I have two 500GB hard drives, and Hitachi has announced 500GB LAPTOP hard drives, I have heard), and the drives have relatively slow data-to-disc transfer rates. The obvious answer is to move to a digital model, which eliminates packaging, shipping, and you moving your fat ass to the store, only to find that they're sold out! The content would create demand for more bandwith, as people would not want to wait three hours to download a one-and-a-half hour movie. This could drive broadband prices down, and perhaps force the convergence of TV and computer entertainment. I don't see Blu-Ray doing any of these things. All I see it doing is making people grumble about their rights being violated, and their A/V equipment being made obsolete.

I kinda still want Battlestar in 1080i, but I'm trying to resist the temptation

LOUD!

It would be so much easier to run from the world than to change it...

An Immodest Proposal

I do not intend a heavy allusion above, notably because I am not about to engage in a work of biting satire, nor even shall my treatise be written on a subject identical or pertinent to the original. No, I intend a reversal of the comical understatement, for the proposal which follows can by no stretch of the imagination be called modest. Actually, I may have to re-title this section, because after a little reading here and there, I think that a single proposal would be very clumsily-worded indeed if I were to attempt the brute-force compression of my many-faceted argument into a single decree, Hence:

Immodest Proposals

Shall be the order of the day.

I will begin more or less where the central idea for this post came from: the upcoming election/referendum in Ontario. How could a self-respecting blogger with strong political views not spend his or her evenings bashing out those opinions on a keyboard? In my case, the first weeks of first-year university intervened, along with an intense feeling of intimidation. How to write for an audience that knows what to expect, praises what they have read, and - no matter how much they insist to the contrary - I have a duty not to dissapoint? Moreover, how to avoid repeating myself - a particular issue when one is most vocal about an exceptionally persistent theme in the news. I have finally jumped that first hurdle, namely typing words on the page at all. At present, I (and you, dear reader, by extension) are experiencing hurdle #2: starting to write real content, instead of egotistical musings on the nature thereof.

Returning to the election - in the hopes of overcoming the latter obstacle - one is confronted with the usual glut of ad-hominem assaults which now seem to characterize "western" democracies moreso than real issues, or for that matter the actual practice of exercizing one's franchise do. It is an unfortunate element of our democratic system that all the good and evil of each and every party is projected upon a single figurehead, inseparable and indivisible from the base ideals and platform of those parties. I care not for their so-called issues of "leadership", nor for "what they love about x or y in Ontario". Our current democratic system is based upon voters in each riding choosing the best candidate to represent them in provincial parliament, an ideal which is confounded - if not crippled - by the second name, face, and agenda which comed attached to every vote for an MPP of a particular party. With signs that say things like "your John Tory candidate", there seems to be an increasing desire to erase the faces and party affiliations of MPPs, replacing them instead with a monolithic all-leader. It has apparently been said of MMP (which I will visit in due time) that MPPs elected by list-PR serve no constituents, and are therefore not accountable (duly credited to a myth-busting segment on Fair Vote Ontario's website). Though this is false at the outset, it is certainly preferable to a system in which the party line is replaced by the leader's line, and whatever individual voice that an MPP can possess is removed such that only the dear leader's voice emanates from his or her mouth.

I have argued before (although whether or not I have done so in this space I know not) that a system which enforces a conformity of opinion among members of a party is intensely undemocratic. I recall once advocating that the parties such as they exist be abolished, on the grounds that individual MPPs or MPs should have the right to vote how they choose on matters concerning their constituencies at all times. Indeed, voting freely is not unheard of (hence the need for a party whip in the first place), but it is the institution of controls to prevent it which offends my sensibilities. The same goes for issues where there is a moral/ethical controversy, even though it presents great difficulties for the system. Consider that in the case of same-sex marriage, it could be possible for a number of otherwise egalitarian representatives to have a negative bias on religious grounds (for example). It may or may not be the case that the constituents of those representatives share this view for the same reasons. That being said, imagine the feeling of betrayal in a voter who was not told the full story about a candidate's moral stances, or approves of that candidate's policies more than with those of other hopefuls, and yet must withhold a vote being informed of those convictions. A system which allows for independent expression from each and every representative is a system in which to be informed, a voter could potentially have to scrutinize the moral code of all candidates in his or her riding. While in some cases (the Family Coalition Party, or as I like to call them, the "deserve to be called human in the biological sense alone" party comes to mind) it is easy enough to ascertain and extrapolate the values of a given party member. The same could be said of almost any party. With no parties, however, subtle variations would begin to matter more and more. In light of this, the only fitting solution is to retain the idea of a political party, but in the ideological sense alone. Politicians would be required to identify with a given party, based upon their own judgement (because an impartial test, besides being unobtani-document, would assign a person to a definition, which I believe says less about the person than their own free choice does). The parties would be characterized by general political philosophies, rather than by platforms or leaders, and legislation would be proposed and passed in a matter analogous to the existing process used for private members' bills. The obvious hitch is funding, because this system would seem to favour the independently wealthy (ie. those who can afford to self-finance their campaigns). A novel idea which has just occurred to me is the separation of campaign activities from the members or parties. An independent body would print signs, and set up all-candidates meetings, and generally remove the "marketing" aspect of politics. Granted, it seems odd for a system which allows independent expression inside parliament would curtail it outside, but it makes a certain amount of sense: remove the "flash" from campaigns, and the voters are forced to *gasp* CONSIDER THE ISSUES!?!?

It is a testament to my own distractable nature that the entire proposal above wasn't included in my original concept of this piece. What I meant to get into was this election's star topic: funding for faith-based schools. Naturally, I am vehemently opposed to the practice of funding for all [faith-based schools], even though I will admit that it would be an improvement over the status quo (which has, in fact, earned us a UN reprimand or several). Indeed, we are told that it is a Canadian value to celebrate diversity, so why not allow children of every faith to be educated in an environment designed by and for members of their own culture? Because, and I say this with the least possible patriotic bravado possible, WHEN YOU GAIN CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP, YOU CONSENT TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT! Yes, Canada is not a melting pot, but it is also not a nation where multiculturalism should be used to defend the practice of teaching children to hate other humans who are different! I'm not referring to intolerance of other faiths, but specifically to homosexuality. Some of you may recall that I wrote here of words I saw written in childrens' writing on a school blackboard which I can only assume to be in reference to a film which portrayed at least one pair of lesbians in a negative light ("selfish", was one word used). NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO DO THAT TO CHILDREN. This I do not mind repeating. This brings me to a point - Parental Rights - that I will also visit later. This digression aside, I have no confidence that faith-based schools will uphold values such as gender equality, especially where some religions have counterveiling positions on that topic. If every Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. had the courage to approach their religion as anything less than the absolute truth, then I would be more forgiving. In fact, in searching for "Right to sexual education", to see if the concept existed in our law (again, a related topic to be discussed later), I found this little gem. Somewhere, somehow, I have the suspicion that the poisoned tongues of David Warren and his ilk would find an avenue to whisper into religiously-educated childrens' ears. Perhaps the public curriculum can be no less biased, but it just so happens to be biased in support of established social values, far in advance of those advocated by religious hardliners.

The only compelling reason to fund all faith-based schools is that they could be made accountable to the government. This is the only reason that I can think of to even consider the practice. The province cannot allow science classes to be watered-down to be made "consonant with Christian Science", or "Muslim Science", or any other supposed "Science" which inserts God into the fundamental equations and constants of the universe in a last-ditch effort to remain relevant. Science is about observation, and religious censorship runs directly against the empiricism upon which research is based. If this, and other transgressions can be stopped by attaching conditions to public funding, then perhaps there is less to worry about than I suggest. On the other hand, why not simply introduce formal religious studies into the public system? Many schools have held World Religions classes in the past. Interestingly enough, it was the people of faith who couldn't handle the heat. My own high school stopped offering the class after some people of undisclosed faith(s) apparently became too agitated at the prospect of questioning or examining their beliefs. The conclusion that I'm drawing from this is that in order to present a religion class to religious people, one must avoid philosophical debates, and instead present the class with the comforting knowledge that, although they should respect people of all faiths, theirs is the only true one, and needs no questioning. This leads me to my conclusion on the nature of faith-based schools: They exist to segregate and censor such that no parents will have to face the horror that their child met someone or learned something that caused them to *shock/horror* THINK about what they have been told to believe.

On a side note, Dalton McGuinty loving our Public schools "[because] they're public" in those TV ads not only SOUNDS redundant, cheesy, and hypocritical coming from a Catholic-schooled man, it IS all of those things! Combined with his appalingly un-democratic assertion that this election is a 2-party race (which may be true, but is no reason not to vote for what one believes in), and that NDP voters should elect a government they ostensibly don't want (they're NOT voting Liberal in the first place) in order to avoid the formation of a government they also ostensibly don't want, I don't believe the man has any feet left to stand on. Even removed from his position as head of the party (see earlier), he's running for election IN MY RIDING, and despite a conspicuous lack of worthiness, is essentially certain to win.

The time for me to retire to my bed looms near, and I fear that I have time for perhaps one more proposal before I must put down my keyboard for the night. This final proposal is the original "Immodest" one of my original title. It is a response to the fact that the Catholic School board has been debating whether or not they will allow HPV vaccines to be administered in their schools. Fortunately for Catholic-schooled girls, more moderate heads seem to have prevailed, and the vaccinations will be an option. The very nature of the opposition is offensive to me. Some believe that vaccination is a tacit admission that girls will engage in premarital sex, and should therefore be given protection for that purpose. Connecting this back to faith-based schooling, the most IMPORTANT thing that would have to be mandated and carefully monitored in those schools is sex education. In the debate, one bishop(?) remarked that the "primacy of parental rights" should be maintained, regardless of the outcome of the debate. FUCK THAT SHIT. It is not for me to say whether the parents or the state knows what's best for a child. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that neither was likely to be right any more often than the other. Why I'm angry about the idea that parent's rights to choose their child(ren)'s education should be paramount is that it opens the door for faith-based schools to be a place where backbirth parents send their children in order to minimize how much they learn about sex. To quote the earlier-linked article:

"It began in the spring of 1999 when the United Nations Fund for Population Activities carefully selected 32 young people and flew them to New York to speak "on behalf of all three billion of the world's youth" and add a set of demands to a bureaucratic document. And these demands were crazed: the "right" to abortions; the "right" to sexual orientation; the elimination of parental "rights"; the "right" to "sexual education" without parental knowledge or consent; the "right to sexual pleasure in a guilt-free way".

Anna and her friends decided to distribute a flyer which declared Those youth do not speak for us. It created pandemonium in the conference. And it immediately introduced them to dozens of young delegates from the poor and developing countries who like them felt betrayed by this horrific bureaucratic demonstration of the moral illness of our contemporary world.

But rather than whine and blather in the manner of leftish people they set to work. Having looked into the face of the destroyers of our humanity they resolved to build. Let the world see what youth can do -- youth who are not sick whose hearts are instead filled with faith and real love.

They have taken upon themselves the extremely uncool task of fighting the good fight within and around all the international organizations -- the U.N. the European Union and the rest -- which make aid to the Third World dependent upon following various guidelines that are morally depraved. For the culture of death of nihilism -- the peculiar product of the "death of God" in the post-Christian West -- is being imposed upon the poor and helpless of the world through endless bureaucratic machinations."

Having read this, you will all know the anger that I feel, and yet I still cannot resist the urge to describe it. If someday, some man or woman sees fit to murder my (as-yet-hypothetical) children in cold blood, I hope that I will bear them half the anger that I bear David Warren after reading the above. Those "crazed" rights, which he goes on to list are the most fantastically utopian that I can imagine, and yet he derides them as if they were Satan's own engraved tablets. Furthermore, the unwarranted shot at leftists is particularly rich coming from a man whom I have known to do nothing more than "whine and blather"! I want to meet this Anna, and ask why in all the world she has chosen to side against her gender, and why she would side with those who would have her be submissive to the male will. I want to know why this traitor to women, to youth, and to humanity itself can sleep at night. I want to know who supports her, and I want to know why THEY have turned against us all. I know it's awful to demonize an enemy, but this is not demonization: these people would condemn millions, if not billions to AIDS, poverty, and very likely violence and genital mutilation -- and they would all sleep well every night for the rest of their lives. Ironic that those who proclaim to be most interested in doing "God's" work invariably seem devoted to the Devil's cause!

My immodest proposal, by the way, was to be that Reproductive Rights be established, and that they include confidential access to education, contraception, and abortion WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. Furthermore, I would co-opt the "pleasure sans guilt" clause which is so offensive to Mr. Warren. These rights should be universal, and they should be widely publicized. There would be no discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, etc. And I'll be frank, it's not just about 'just in case'. I think it's time we fully supported the right of consenting teens to have (safe, natch) sex, whether their parents approve or not. The argument that sex should be reserved for marriage is a silly, and flawed one. If neither party has had sex before, how "meaningful" will their bumbling be? It will be memorable, yes, but I contend that if both parties enter the marriage knowing how to work in the interests of mutual pleasure, it would do naugh but enhance the experience. Sex education should be a right because it actually works (something that abstinence-only education fails to do), and because adolescents have a RIGHT to know what is happening to their bodies during puberty. I will elaborate on this with my first update, because I must ensure that my arguments are solid as tank plating to withstand the fire of any fanatical types who may pass this way.

I want this to happen because I believe it is right, and because it would deliver a metaphorical curb-stomp to people like David Warren. It would give me, youth, women, men, hermaphrodites, trans-sexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals, metrosexuals, ubersexuals, and anyone else under the Royal Rainbow a victory which could not be achieved by any other means: we would get to see them VANQUISHED PSYCHOLOGICALLY, subjected to the neverending torture of knowing that people who are different, and people who count themselves in the majority but who have a strong sense of social justice can be happy, free, and be who they are in public and in private. People like David Warren would die surrounded by a perpetual pride parade, having been denied their role as inflictors of pain and suffering in the theocratic dystopia that I imagine occupies their wildest wet dreams.

This will be expanded, edited, improved tomorrow and beyond

-LOUD

POST - SCRIPT:

To all Atheists, Agnostics, and Critically-Minded Religious People:

If you believe in peace, order, good government, human rights, democracy, equality, and other things similar thereto, I have a proposal for you.

Though it be our moral imperative to ensure that all humanity live freely as we would wish to, the efforts of certain others, whom I will refer to as "teamkilling fucktards", as well as certain engrained cultural attitudes, acquired prejudices, greed, and the unfriendly side of human nature are sure to hamper our progress at every turn. Clearly, our only recourse is to whip out a can of Bioshock on them, and build a bitchin' secluded art-deco city in space/on a moon or other planet/under the ocean/all of the above, and leave the unlucky sods behind until our technology is so vastly superior that we may...convince our detractors of the inherent superiority of a free and civil world without hatred.

Any takers?

Is a [(Wo)]Man not Entitled to the Sweat of His[/Her] Brow?

"No!", says The Man in Washington...

(Back to composing in OpenOffice.org, due to Dark Room's inherent lack of formatting)

I've recently come across three separate books - via three separate methods of acquisition - which feature at their core a common thread. All address on a large scale the effects of human intervention upon a natural environment, through various means. One is a science fiction novel, one is a nonfiction classic of the 20th century, and the last is the manual for a roleplaying game. Greed is universally cited as the motive for any and all crimes against ecology committed, and it's fairly clear that the reader is supposed to despair at the sins of his or her fellow human beings perpetrated to satiate it.

While I appreciate the ecological sentiment of these books for what it is, the larger theme of humanity's meddling in things which it was not meant to wot of generally bothers me, in that I do not believe there are, nor should there be such things. Humanity's greatest asset is our ability to gain and process knowledge, for from that knowledge we can derive tools, tools which have gradually allowed us to build bigger tools. In the end, our very ability to look beyond the tips of our fingers for aid in accomplishing a mechanical task has conferred upon us the level of advantage which a very few species can match. If some areas of inquiery are made taboo, what tools are we denying ourselves? I am not advocating a lack of all ethical and moral safeguards, in fact I find them to be necessary. But when we are halted by such checks and balances, let us recall that we are stopped by our compassion, and not for our hubris.

If I wanted to put it another way, I would say that "If life happened to be like - say - Bioshock...I would probably be an Andrew Ryan (ideologically, at any rate)". I long for a technological and biological utopia, in which the only barrier to accomplishment is imagination. I long to fly not with crude engines, but held aloft by wings grown from culture, or even memebers of a newly-crafted symbiotic species which may share some part of me in exchange for granting me the power of flight. I wish for the power to use nanoscale machinery to ensure that garbage no longer exists: every bit of material used should be used again, and again, and again to maximize the usefulness output per energy input of extraction and refinement ratio. Weather control, terraforming, Artificial Intelligence... I want the no-holds-barred future, and I want it tomorrow!

Besides the obvious issue of practicality, there is still the sad fact that when given power, a not insignificant number of people will choose to abuse it for their own gain. Clearly, we should never create technology as I have described above...wait, what?? People should be held accountable for their own actions. While certain advances make it easier and easier for those actions to include "inflicting copious amounts of harm", the technology is no more responsible for the transgressions than the Ak-47 (ie. the inanimate rifles themselves) is for the deaths of so many people. Even Kalashnikov himself was simply serving his country. It has been a long and distinguished chain of people who have made the Kalashnikov the symbolic weapon of low-cost killing that it is today, and yet I'm sure there are some who wish the rifle's creator a slow death for inventing it. I, on the other hand, congradulate Mr. Kalashnikov for a most supreme work of design. I curse to death those people who have perpetuated its use worldwide as a weapon of murder and mayhem, however!

Dramatically, I realize that a perfect world that actually works would make for a painfully dull novel or short story. However, the same is not true of a perfect society which comes under attack from without for being what it is. Tragically, resentment of such a society would be a more likely cause of extinction than some grand civil war or lapse into anarchy. People would be jealous of the inequity (and rightly so), and seek to equalize situations in some grand revolution. Look at how the United States, which broadcasts a golden beacon to all saying that it is - more or less - a perfect place in which to live (rich, free enough, etc.) has gathered resentment in the world (although granted its foreign policy hasn't helped it either).

Incidentally, given the global climate (both literal and political), now would be a perfect time for someone to build a circa-1950s underwater utopia into which the world's scientists and artists could escape to avoid death at the hands of terrorists, rising sea levels, or angry, homeless polar bears.

Can I at least have a bathysphere? Pleeeeeeease?

PS. I was tired when I wrote this. I will edit it if I have left out anything, or if I have lapsed in quality. Goodnight.

Nightmares Realized

Something had gone horribly wrong!

There are a great many things that I hate, but above all, I hate it when there is bad blood between good friends. I appreciate that sometimes there are no excuses, no apologies that can be made...and that would be fine, if only two people were involved. I hope that you two learn from the past, and realize that NO ONE wants to stand on that battlefield, NO ONE wants to take sides. Maybe there's no way to respect both yourselves and your friends at the same time. All I can say is “make your choice”. Of course, I am likely jumping the gun here. I HOPE things don't go from bad to worse, but there is always the possibility.

Another Moment of Silence

A 17-year old was killed here the other day, knifed in the back at a gas station. I have a satirical piece in mind relating to this, but I shall not publish it now, in accordance with the 'No Soapbox' rule established in my previous post. What's sickening is that a 17-year-old was murdered. Not that 17 is a terribly special age, but fucking 17! This guy lived in my city, and was the same age as I am. I believe he had immigrated from Iraq. Sad, that he should die here, in one of the world's safest nations, having arrived from perhaps the world's most dangerous.

This is sickening.

More later, but my internet time runneth out

-Loud

Humanity Gained +

Decay

I really have let this place slide. It would bring me a lot more distress if the cause was simple neglect. No, it really amounts to not having something which truly inspires me to write volumes. As it is, I really want to write more posts, but there just aren't any sitting in my head screaming “write me!”

I only have a half-hour or so to write anything at all right now, but I'll give it my best shot.

Beauty and the Beast

In a post providing something of a response to IM's observations in my previous post, my friend Gold brought up the Beast. He referred to a Beast separate from the pointy man who lives downstairs and smells of brimstone...or did he? Do not mistake my meaning: I'm not calling my good friend a devotee of ultimate evil. As he rightly points out, Lucifer's transgression was only to feel, apparently only a sin for the divine. It is that very argument which illustrates the flaw in Gold's reasoning. He says of the Beast:

“... anger, lust, love, passion, strength, calmness, enjoyment, happiness... these are the hallmarks of the Beast. “

But if Lucifer was cast out from heaven for feeling the human emotion of greed, why would any other display of emotion result in a different punishment? Less damaging, less ill-intentioned emotions would have been seen in another light? Fat chance! All emotions can be equally damaging under the wrong circumstances. All would have presented the same risk to a divine being, this being the case. If you can accept this, than the Beast which lives in all of us is none other than Lucifer, whether or not you believe a word of the Bible. For that matter, if human emotion taints the divine, we are all cursed to begin with.

This is not to say I disagree with Gold. On the contrary, I'm just pointing out a logical error in his treatise. I agree that the Beast is not to be caged, although our ability to do so is another component of our humanity.

I am also considering the idea that the Beast includes fundamental needs as well as passions. I'll let you know what I think up

Return of the Blogger

Home again

For some weeks now I have longed to return to this space, but the drive and inspiration to write something meaningful has lagged. David Warren's columns of a few weeks ago (I haven't in fact read any since then) were less...overtly wrong than usual, which was dissapointing. It would be one thing if the man gave up his hateful ways, but no, it was just less-than-interesting material. Anyhow, on to things interesting

Thanks to my cousin, I now have a Geforce 7800 GS humming (literally – it's got a nice fan) in my AGP slot, in place of my old Radeon 9600. I'll bet there are more than enough bottlenecks in my system to hold back this wondrous new bit of silicon, but there is a noticeable boost. Going from one DX9 card to another means that visual quality isn't vastly improved, but I can now play HL2: Episode 1 with HDR on (woot)...Prey runs quite smoothly, and I should get FEAR again to see how my system now fares with soft shadows and dynamic lighting. Anyhow, that's awesome. On loan from Star, I have an mx-518. Again, the boost is felt, but essentially incremental. I'm not sure if buying the card and another high-sensitivity mouse would/will be the best use of my money, but damned if I haven't been living a little bit more of the dream with this stuff.

It really is so easy to lose perspective when wrapped up in details. I step back from my high-end computer fantasies to think “what right do I have to desire such luxury, when so many go without?”. It won't, and it can't erase my desire for such things...but it certainly helps me realize that they are not urgent, that I can wait to get my hands on some killer hardware. In the meantime, I have to figure out how I can help people. Musicians have benefit concerts...could a charity LAN party work? Somehow I can't see the neighbours pledging me donations per frag (what an AWESOME idea, though!). That, or I could just take a year off after High School, and go volunteer for some worthy cause in distant lands. Some kids from my school gave up their March Breaks to spend time with Habitat for Humanity...there's a good cause. I should just sign up, just do it. Hey, it worked for the Viennese Ball!

“He could spell his own name 'W-O-L'”

It has been a good long while since the actual events (well, just over a week, actually), but I attended OWL (Our Whole Lives) this March Break – the first weekend of, to be specific. Nothing makes you realize how wholly inadequate school sex ed is until you've been to a proper set of workshops. I don't care about excuses: kids, especially high school students deserve more than just an explanation of the plumbing. I know I have said this before...but it bears repeating, and it shall until such a goal is attained. Now, it is the nature of most classes to scratch the surface of a topic, and make up for it in discussion – it's more important to understand how to approach a subject than it is to know everything about it, half of which you'd have to look up again anyhow. Sex ed scratches the surface, and offers none of the discussions, none of the insight that something like OWL does.

The solution until the school board gets it's act together is to send your kids to OWL. It's run by the Unitarian church, which has to be the LEAST offensive institution on the planet...at least to the more liberal-minded. I mean this as high praise: It's the only Church I can feel comfortable inside. Anyhow, anyone of any faith can probably get along with the faith, so let's move along to the content. OWL gets you thinking, it makes light where it can, and it encourages discussion. I like this style, because it gets people comfortable. In years past I've been a bit of a closed person when it comes to discussions on sex, but thanks to a few choice people, and OWL, I feel like I can open up more, take discussions “all the way” (har, har). I like this method. The 'teachers' at high-school-age OWL serve as catalysts to discussion, but most of the input is from the attendants, and that's fantastic. We deserve the right to make up our own minds about Sex!

Then there are the games we played, two of which I may have inspired in some of our off time. By “games”, of course, I mean the murderous kicking around of a soccer ball we did, and subsequent couch-cushion pillowfight (equally murderous). Way hardcore! The last game we played was the best of all, though: Wink. It's a game so viscious, it must be played with a pile of pillows in the center of the room to prevent injuries. I'd explain the rules, but it's getting late and I'm not sure I'd do it all that well.

SPOILER ALERT

I wanted to review Prey here, but for reasons you will discover, it basically requires that I spoil large and integral parts of the game. I will provide a summary of a few paragraphs first, and then I shall proceed into full disclosure on the game's moving plot, and frustrating failures. Please take my advice, and play the game...reading about some of the plot might inspire you to play the game, but it would then be spoiled for you. If you like shooters, and you like games with stories...just go play it. Try to pay something like $20, $25 (Canadian) if you can find it for that, 'cause it's a little on the short side. According to my save files, it took me somewhere between 7 and 8 hours to beat the game (sheesh, they should have called it Prey: episode 1!)

Ok, so the game is the story of Tommy, a Cherokee who is abducted by aliens. The alien ship juices his Grandfather. Painfully, and his girlfriend is alive, but still held prisoner. Goal? Save the girl, and kick alien...ass? As necessary. The plot is actually waaay cooler than that, but I'll save this for the spoilers section. The game has enough unique features to mix things up, and more than enough in the way of ass to be kicked. Rock on. There are maybe 2 hours, 3 hours of gameplay that are just....ehhhhh. The rest is fantastic, but could be improved in a great many ways. All in all, I heartily reccomend it (although Half-Life 2/ Ep1 and FEAR are better games all in all)

SPOILERS BEGIN (SCROLL DOWN ONCE YOU HAVE BEATEN THE GAME, OR SCROLL PAST TO READ THE END OF THIS POST)

Prey starts and ends very strongly. At the beginning, Tommy is facing a mirror and is berating himself. This is HIS story, not yours, and the game makes sure you know this. All of Tommy's dialogue is rather like Alyx's from HL2 Ep 1. Not in content (not at all!), but in the way it is close enough to the player's line of thought that it re-enforces the action in the game, rather than detracting from it. Personally, I prefer a silent protagonist like Gordon Freeman, because I want games to embrace a certain kind of role-playing, where the player can decide who the character is. For a story like Prey's, though, it HAS to be Tommy's story...there is no other way. The danger in this is that giving an FPS protagonist a voice can do as much to alienate the player as to draw them in. At first, Prey does exactly that, but as you get used to Tommy, he becomes a skin to you. You might never be him, as you are Gordon Freeman (who is admittedly an empty vessel), but you embody him, which is exactly what the game requires for its purposes.

Anyhow, the game's intro sets the stage rather well: Tommy's angst is bared, his problems accepting his heritage, and his relationships with his Grandfather, and with Jen are all brought to the player's attention within ten minutes of starting the game. Your first combat is a bar fight against two drunken patrons (the only bar patrons at 1:00 AM) who are making untoward advances on your girlfriend. “You could have killed them!”, Jen shouts, after you pummel the pair unconscious with your monkey wrench “Maybe I should!”, Tommy shouts back. It's not exactly new, but it's good to know where your character is coming from. In a later sequence, you learn that “the army taught [Tommy] how to kill”, which would explain why he is proficient at shooting stuff. In that sequence, you are taught to project your spirit, which can walk throught forcefields, and over icky-looking tendrils of spirit energy found in some levels. Not being Cherokee, or Native North American at all, I can't say if the game/gameplay is respectful or silly, but it appears to be well handled. But back to the bar. You get abducted. To 'Don't Fear the Reaper'. Cooooooooooool. Cue funky intro sequence, as you awake cuffed and bound to a board along with Jen, your Grandfather, and other hapless human food...I mean, beings. You are set free, but as I mentionned before, Grandfather gets the tropicana treatment.

Then...the game lags for a few hours. Not frame lags, or load lags, no. Just a few hours of gameplay which doesn't go much of anywhere. You traverse a level, and then hop a random portal to...elsewhere. Somehow, you're following Jen, but it doesn't come across well, not in the slightest. What would prevent the aliens from opening portals to, say, the other side of the big ol' sphere you're in, hmmm?. A “you are here” indicator, such as you get to see twice later on in the game would have been far better used if it had appeared in more places, and in earlier levels.

Spealing of levels, the game feels too obviosly linear in places. Most games are guilty of this, but it's all the worse for immersion if the game takes place in a location supposedly designed to be purposeful. The wall-walks and grav-switches are the game's saving grace here: the wall-walks slow your movement, and make you really feel like only your feet are stuck to this thing, while the rest of your body swings a little more freely. Grav-switches are used in some cool puzzles, and the first time Tommy throws up after too many successive flips is rather amusing. Some of the best level opportunities go untapped: I would have enjoyed wandering through an abducted main street of some little town, or exploring the crashed airplane seen only from the outside in-game. Even the school bus would have been something. As it is, there are different kinds of bio-mech level within the sphere, but just a few more types of locale would have made so much difference.

Plot-wise, the game is both at its strongest and its weakest. The first time you find Jenny, she is abducted after maybe 5 minutes of play. The second time is brilliant: you must fight the beast to which she has become fused...and then you have to kill her. At HER request. Ouch! The game does the cue so brilliantly: your weapons are away in the “plot moment” mode, and once she asks you to kill her, you again draw your weapon, re-enforcing the course of action you must take. This is as good as game stories get, because you DON'T save the damsel...but you CAN have revenge!

Where the game falls flat is how it does the final enemies. “The Keeper” only becomes an enemy when you are told to kill it, rather than becoming the object of your hatred through action. This would not have been hard to accomplish: show the Keeper holding Jen hostage, show it supervising human dissections, etc. Also, the reveal of more keepers would have been actually surprising if The One Keeper had been your enemy from the get-go. As it is, you've already figured out that there are bigger enemies out there. Finally, the Keeper's speech about how you are unique because of your spirit, and the stuff about having seeded the Earth with life millions of years ago...creepy, but it comes out of fucking nowhere! If it had been hinted at, displayed, and generally foreshadowed, the reveal would have been a payoff scene in truth. As it is, it's payoff all right....but for what? Nothing you have done up until this point has led you to the conclusion that such information might be coming your way. It's REALLY incongruous.

The voice of Mother taunting you is fantastic...for the final four hours of the game. It's far too sparse for the preceeding hours, and the game suffers for it. Also, it gives away mother's power to have the voice taunt you. They should have made the voice seem separate, have it offer you help as if it were an ally. Then, at the end, you would realize the truth, and totally freak out. As it is in the game, it's just another poorly foreshadowed moment.

I could go on and on, but I'll cut to the top- 5 list of improvements:

5 – The sphere needs more biological diversity in it's soldiers and minions. Make it look like this thing gets around in the galaxy! Also, some proper AI would be good.

4 – Get rid of weapon overlap (rifle, red leech gun, autocannon primary).

3 – GO SOMEWHERE WITH THE GHOST KIDS STORYLINE!

2 – The first few hours should be open-ended exploration of the sphere, where you run through chunks of planets this place has raided and consumed. THEN you catch Jen's trail and race up the spire

1 – Fix the storytelling problems with the Keeper and Mother.

SPOILERS OVER

I'm not sure this post has the usual polish, but something needed to go up. I'm hoping I'll be able to start updating again regularly. We shall see!

"If Music be the Food of Love, Play on!" - Expanded

One Life

I saw Johnny Clegg in concert on Wednesday night. I can already hear the collective outcry of “Who the--?”, and thus have included this link here for your edification.

A lot of the material he played was new to my ears, and apparently new to the country: some of his later releases haven't made it here until now. I'm not even sure if his latest CD (which provided the title for this section) is even available locally besides at the concert. It would be a pity if that is so, because Clegg is a must-listen. His musical stylings may not please everyone, but if you were to discount it on such grounds, you would end up missing his powerful messages. Johnny Clegg's first band, Juluka, began touring in South Africa at a time when a mixed-race band could not play at a public venue, and could only advertise by word-of-mouth. Things have come a long way, but he still sings with the same desire to see people free and equal, loved and cherished all. All this is wrapped up in a mixture of Western and African music, and topped off with Clegg's impressive vocal range.

To those readers who know me personally, if you happen to be at my house sometime, remind me and I can put on some of our old records of Johnny Clegg for you.

That's all I can get in for tonight. Stay tuned for more later

WARNING: GROOVE LEVEL EXCEEDS SAFE LIMITS!

This link has been on the blogger dashboard for ages, but only just today did I actually hear the work of 'Dangerous Muse'. I will warn you now, this is FIENDISHLY addictive stuff, so don't listen to it if you're the sort of person who hates having songs suck in your head. You have been warned.

Supreme Commander?

I have been playing a fair amount of my SupCom demo lately, and I have both good and bad things to say about it. The good is that nothing about the game is BAD. The game is pretty much glitch-free in my experience, and it never fails to entertain. The end-game “experimental” units are AMAZING, especially the Monkeylord (more on these when I buy the full game eventually and report on the other factions' super-units).

What I'm not liking at the moment is the economy. It is far too easy to generate energy, but mass is rather hard to come by for a few reasons. One is that on the small map I have played on (the only one in the demo), the upgrade cost to a level 2 mass extractor exceeds the rate at which you are likely to be able to extract mass. It is possible to build mass fabricators, but even the level 3 fab puts out a meagre +24 mass...where the level 3 powerplant produces +2500 energy (all resource gathering and spending is expressed in rates in SupCom). Given that the fabricator puts a -1500 strain on your energy, you can tell it takes a lot of infrastructure in order to generate much mass at all. I have had a mass income rate of less than -500, because all of my production combined amounted to no more than +60. Perhaps I am missing some crucial strategic element of the game, but to me it just feels like the mass production side of the economy just DRAGS along painfully.

Rise of Nations had a fantastic economic management game, because as you expanded, you could do nothing but grow. The early game is rife with frustrating shortfalls, but as your economic juggernaut grows, you are soon outproducing even your most extravagant needs. Rise of Legends dropped that ball, IMO, by including only one harvested resource. Given that your average conquest game is roughly half intense economy-building, and half warfare, you want to make sure the economic half doesn't bore people to death or game abandonment. SupCom manages well with only 2 resources, but only energy production seems to grow as it should. Also, mass can only be harvested from certain 'deposits'. Not from the planet's mantle by way of a borehole, not from the big rocky hills, just from little piles of rock on the ground. It feels artificial, and not in the cool 'chokepoint' way.

It would be easy to fix both flaws at once. Allow mass to be extracted from any place on the map, and focus the game almost entirely on combat. If there must be some kind of chokepointing, there can always be zones which yield 200% mass when harvested. That, or maybe I'll just learn to play the game better and it will all make sense. More on this as I improve.

La La La Not Quite Filler!

I am in a hurry. Here is something I wrote. Tell me what you think

No matter how many times the crèche servitors bade her take them, Alice would hear nothing of the pills. The 8-year-old miscreant would cry “You can force a horse to bite the bit, but ya won't get me to take my Rit'!” any time one of the warm-faced automatons offered her a small gray capsule. MATRON knew that Alice was at best tickled by the normal electric shock for her age group, but was reluctant to move her into the next bracket. In the end, MATRON reluctantly decided to add a small dose of the drug to the girl's food and drink. Surely enough, Alice's gleeful shouts and dances subsided, leaving the monitoring program to teach in peace. MATRON felt no remorse for the imposition, but was capable of knowing a certain innate dislike for its decision. A passing maintenance subroutine halted the discomfort, assuring the machine-mind that it had been a necessary action. Humility is the water, which tempers the newborn blade

Would that the girl have been put on notice, she might have been taught a proper lesson. Alice's overly cheerful demeanor had sprung from her father's notorious indiscretion. The man had let it slip that the two of them were confirmed passengers aboard the Magellanic, outbound for Martian space. It had not taken Alice long to deduce that it meant they would be colonists, settling the first Mars Orbital Toroidal Habitat, or MOTH. Since that day, she had been abuzz with fantasies of rocket ships and asteroids, taking her free time to absorb all of the science and science fiction she could handle. Alas, there was no chance that a lowly pseudosentient such as MATRON could control the girl's status. Grating and Incessant though she was (Indeed, Alice was the recipient of 32% of all disciplinary action in the crèche), she also happened to be a top- 0.1 percentile Genzero. Some of the average Genthrees displayed less promise, even. Alice's welfare was managed by a class 4 Turing Intelligence at Orion Industries. By contrast, MATRON rated a 9 on the same scale – a full hundred thousand times less powerful. An intelligent Genzero human ranked about 7.4, and Alice was an astounding 7.

Alice was aware of the 'Rit in her system, but could do little short of a hunger strike to avoid ingesting the drug. Instead, she reasoned, better to let MATRON celebrate the empty victory...she had more pressing concerns, anyhow. The next several hours were spent in the quartz-domed terrarium, gathering old playthings from her years in the crèche. It was a duty to mother Gaia – what was left of her – to make the earth cleaner than you had found it, before leaving. Leaving. Alice sighed, thought of her and papa together, turning barrel rolls in the weightless bliss of an OSJet cabin. She imagined picnics under starlight no longer obscured by the fumes of human folly...food grown for taste, not only sustenance. When the servitor androids found her (MATRON had learned moths ago of Alice's ability to remove her RFID locater), she was fast asleep under a Genone oak, clutching a model spaceship in one hand, and a squeezy globe in the other.

* * *

When papa had said spaceships and adventure, he hadn't mentioned 04:00! The warm Mexican sea breeze at the launch pad wrapped her as in an embrace, but did little to clear her foggy head. She fumed at how lucky papa was, with his cranial nanites freeing him from zombie-like shambling with bursts of induced electrochemical stimulation. As a Genzero, she'd have to wait until her brain stopped growing, which was soooooo unfair! Even the Genones could have the implants years before she would. As she scanned the crowd – an uncommon occurrence at launches for the past 50 years – she spotted her mother, and another PreGen, whose name was...Vincent? Alice had met him only once, the last time she had seen her mother. The pair were expecting their first child in under two months, and it was showing. Alice smiled a little, because – like all new Genfours – the fetus carried some of her own DNA, hand-selected by biologists at the Darwin institute. Alice knew that her mother held 'Prime Breeder' rating on Earth, Vincent being her third assigned partner. He had provided one quarter of the embryo's specially selected alleles, when the paternal average had been one-twelfth for years. He, Like Alice, was not a resource to be squandered. Alice wondered if mummy or Vincent would come to live on Demeter with them, once their reproduction contracts expired. She thought it would be grand to have a half-brother to play with in her new and exciting home.

Someone ahead in the line gestured upwards, and spoke excitedly to the people around him. Alice followed his index finger upwards, to where six bright orange trails could be seen, spaced out across the very apex of the sky.

“Papa, look! There's our ride!”, she squealed, tugging excitedly at his sleeve.

“Going to be a while before they get here...although why am I complaining? We may be some of the last people to leave Earth the old-fashioned way.”

This was true. China's first orbital elevator was due to lift its first cars within the year, India's in six months. The Gulf Platform Elevator would trail both by at least eighteen months. Still, the end of powered launches was near...and not a moment too soon. If Mum, Vincent, and their baby were to leave for Demeter in three years' time, it would cost the government one-tenth of Alice's spacefare alone. Alice hoped they would come. This was a dying world. Where once the fiery trail of a spaceship could be seen plain as the noonday sun, it was now fuzzy, out of focus beneath so many layers of smog, and man-made cloud cover. Hours later, as she boarded OSJet number three, she looked at the grass growing up through the ceramic-mesh tarmac.

“Goodbye, Mother” was all she said

Warning: It is recommended that you take a bathroom break prior to reading!

Foreword:

There seemed to be no permanent damage, at least within one part of my social circle involved in the altercation that I said I would talk about. By the way, this is very separate from the Gold/ Daydream Believer thing. Drama-lama-ding-dong!

Apparently there were angry words exchanged, and a girl I know to be all manner of sweet and kind was hit in the end...I haven't talked to her since Thursday night, but I hope she is ok. I really wish there was something I could do at the moment.

It disgusts me how our humanity curses us to fight. If some of the finest people I know can't even get along all the time, how in FUCK do we expect world peace to happen in our lifetimes, or our children's lifetimes, or beyond...hell, even if we become immortal, I doubt we will ever see the end of conflict. I'm sure even the most non-corporeal energy being/trans-human dealies still find a way to fight. This is depressing.

The other promised feature was how colloquial French was the basis for a very complete philosophy...well, here is the long and short of it: S.M.O. (now styling herself "la petit mort, French slang for 'orgasm'...heads out of the gutters, ladies and gents). If you know French, you'll think "The...little....death?". Does it not make sense that death could be far from painful, empty, or involving cherubs with harps, but instead be one really gigantic orgasm? I mean, it would certainly give purpose to life, were this the case. In addition, it means that life is roughly 80 years of foreplay/coitus/etc. That is a pretty kinky way to look at existence, n'est-ce pas?

Today was not a good day

--

scratch that

--

Today was a good day

In 'The Will to Believe', William James invites us to consider the plight of a train car beset by thieves. Individually, no passenger would be capable of resisting successfully, but the bandits are outnumbered by their victims. Should no one believe that another passenger will stand up with them, should they choose to fight, then the thieves are treated to a docile car, and easy money. Suppose, however, that each rider believes that the whole car will rise up together, if the opportunity presents itself. Some may be injured or killed in the fighting, but the thieves have little hope of victory. James contends that this was a case of unsubstantiated belief creating a real outcome.

Do I think then, that unsubstantiated belief is warranted? Not at all. Believing that it is possible to fly unaided after jumping from the grand canyon, for example, will not allow one to jump off and fly. Belief is a useful tool, which can embolden people, raise morale, and even motivate a person to die for a cause. No different from other tools, it can be employed for good or for evil; it can cultivate love, or breed hate; create or destroy.

Despite a poor quiz mark in chemistry, a broken headphone, and an attempt to fix the latter getting me kicked out of my World Issues class for the day... can I not believe that I had a good day, and have it be so? "Goodness of day" is subjective enough, is it not? Would it not be a good thing to bolster my mood, which might then rub off on others?

I guess the trouble is, how do I convince myself that I had a good day?

Out-Foxworthied

Perhaps yesterday's vote was not a blow to Stephen Harper at all...perhaps it was the best thing that could happen to him, strategically. Consider: at the breakfast table this morning, pouring over the citizen, I read the list of the MPs who voted for and against restricting the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples. The conservatives that voted against included party higher-ups, such as Peter McKay. At face value, it looks like internal conflict. My parents had their money on 'setup'. The pieces started falling into place:

Stephen Harper has to keep the 'redneck vote', in addition to the religious right, etc. To do this, he had to promise to hold the vote which took place on Thursday. The talk heading up to the vote seemed to be "let's get it over with quickly", which I had mistaken for a move to forestall the vehement opposition they knew the bill would face. Harper is definitely aware that the public outcry would have been a nightmare, had the bill been passed. With the new Liberal leadership just getting started, I think he wanted a way to put them off-balance. Being aware that the opposition would take any chance to shoot down his party's legislation, he hatched a plan. A few conservatives would vote against the bill, but just enough to ensure it was soundly defeated. Harper delivers his promise to the rednecks, religious hardliners, and assorted homophobes, he avoids the massive protests, and creates the appearance that there is some dissent in his ranks, where none actually exists. I am tempted to call it a master stroke.

If you want proof that it is intentional, consider that it follows a previous Harper victory: the Quebec Nation issue. He gave them what they were winging about, and it meant NOTHING at all...well, that's not entirely true. Harper shut them down, by giving them what they did not expect to get. If you have ever been angry at someone, and then been more angry when they do something nice? You want to be furious at them, you want to draw strength from your anger, all dark-side style...and then you can't, and suddenly all the rage is directed inward. In this case, the end result is different, but the method was the same: He indeed delivered upon his promise to have the vote, but nothing changed...except now he is no longer beholden to the voters who demanded it. He can say that the vote was held, the will of the people (by proxy) has been declared, and that is a fair, and democratic decision. In either case, further demands require those who make them to openly scorn the government, and even democracy itself. Does Harper support Quebec nationhood, or same-sex marriage? I'm not even sure he cares much about either...but chalk up two wins for him in the house? He's all over it. Congratulations, fellow Canucks: our human rights have just been used as pawns in a political chess game. To quote the AI toaster from 'Red Dwarf': "So what else is new?"

On a chilling note, It seems that the Liberals aren't the only ones who value being in power more than they value actually doing things. This time, it worked to the benefit of the people...we may not always be so lucky. For the Liberals, it was more important to sign Kyoto than to do anything about it; the popular support had been gained already. Likewise, it is far more important for the Conservatives to have a vote, or make an essentially meaningless declaration, than it is to act. Has government become just another business, full of reports, so-called "accountability", and flocks of executives zealously guarding their own posteriors. When was the "olitics" in "Politics" replaced by an "R"?

The truly sad part is this: so long as people allow their opinions to be swayed by such obvious tactics. I'm sure you would not find many people who would say that they didn't think Canada signing Kyoto was worth a damn. People expect a sheet of paper to save them from that which would otherwise befall them. Some might even expect that Quebec "nationhood" somehow empowers the Quebecois. By doing this, you show governments that they can guarantee support without those pesky expenditures on doing things, such as working with industries to create new regulations for GHG emissions. Now, all they have to do is call a flimsy piece of paper a "clean air act"...let's face it, anyone who truly cares about the quality of air won't be swayed to vote conservative by any means. A swing Lib-Con voter just might switch to/remain on your side for the token gesture, however. Given that the swing vote essentially wins or loses you the election, the parties do all that they need to, and no more.

Fantasmagasmic!

I saw "The Crucible" at Lisgar today (closing day, I believe. Sorry people). A one -word review can be found in the title, but I will go into more depth.

This is the sort of play that became meaningful again after 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. There is always one witch hunt or another on at one time, but the sort which reveal the true depths of humanity do not come so oft. Especially with more reprisals of the Maher Arar case in the news, innocents becoming victims of revenge are all too real, all too immediate. That is part of why the play was so brilliant: it was not a commentary on modern affairs (my mother says it is the Salem Trials in the play are metaphorical representations of the McArthy (sp) witch hunt of the cold war), and yet the attitudes, the chaos, and the fear are real today, and perhaps even always. Kudos to the people who made it happen!

The hat, THE HAT!

I talk to Priestshinigami on the number 8 bus a lot. Should you ever see my excellent hat on one such bus, you will undoubtedly hear something vastly more interesting than the general malaise of day-to-day conversations you are like to see elsewhere. Sometimes she makes me feel guilty for being so privileged, because she deserves better than she has been given in the past. Oh, well...plenty of time to hire her as a deputy when the world belongs to me. I have already given out the ever-so-important jobs of Bra/Breast inspector, and Official Bra Designer (yes, they are separate...what?). I think I would appoint her the head of my Human Rights division (for I shall be a good and noble leader, of course). These jobs will be well-paid, of course (probably in chocolate and other delicious food...money is overrated), and most importantly, It would give her a shot to do something about the sorry state of tolerance in the world. I suppose I am getting ahead of myself, but then it does pay to plan one's moves well in advance.

The other day, a woman praised us on the bus for the discussion we were having. I just heard her say it as I was walking from the bus towards my house, but I believe she found it encouraging that some people our age took an interest in philosophy, politics, culture, and such. I am flattered, quite honestly...there is no greater joy than bringing good feelings to other people (orgasms included, because the words "greatest" and "joy" appear. But they're rather separate from the topic at hand). Good moods, like some great UnVirus, spread amongst people, so one may very well cheer up a crowd by a simple act of smiling cheerfully at a passerby. Instill hope and optimism in someone, and you have no idea just how far that could go. I suppose that wars still happen, so there is a certain range limit, but nevertheless...it's the same feeling I get when people complement me on this blog. I enjoy writing it already...if someone reads and enjoys it, it becomes all the better.

I feel better than I did earlier, so I guess it does work.

It WAS a Good Day...and here are some more pics for your viewing pleasure:

Schizoid Much?

Public Service Announcement

One of these days, I'll forget the “L”, when I'm typing that, and look like I'm trying to be funny. Actually, to forestall that, I'll have the typo appear below. Get all that immature laughter out of your system now, and we can continue to more worrying matters.

Pubic Service Announcement

1)Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

2)Done? If not, repeat step 1.

The sad thing is, they exist. Ever seen an ad for “ladies discount day” at the Adult fun superstore? Yeah, close enough. MOVING ON!

The Scary Stuff

I read an article in the latest New Scientist, and I have to say it worried me. It wasn't about how human activity is harming the planet today, nor the latest species to be driven from its habitat (although stories on each were included, and I'll talk about those later). This was about events in motion that could be a serious challenge to those issues ever being addressed, at least in or by the United States. As if there weren't enough of those already, eh?

There is growing pressure from Evangelicals in the US for religious children to be home schooled, in accordance with a more, shall we say... FALSE knowledge of how science works. From what I read in the article, the books are awful. If you think a politically correct science book is gimped, thank your lucky stars that it is at least a science book. Evolution goes, radiocarbon dating is deemed 'unreliable', and the Grand Canyon is written off as a result of the biblical flood. It's amazing how people comfort themselves with such flagrant lies when the truth scares them. The worst part is that there are educational booksellers who profit from the sale of these lies to students.

It is scary that God doesn't exist. I may not be able to prove that He/She does not, but I won't use “if”. God does not exist for me, because I do not believe. If it were proven that an omnipotent being does indeed exist, that being would not be God per se. God is a concept you believe in, and an omnipotent being is Q In Star Trek, Q was more a Greek deity than anything else, although it is open to interpretation how much his desires and emotions were acted to facilitate human comprehension. That's not the important point. I do not believe in God, and I don't want to believe in God. As Sartre says, however, it is “distressing...that God does not exist”, which is true. Personal responsibility is such a great burden, that it would be nice to know that Mr/Mrs/? Big had everything under control. If I were to believe, I would be hurting myself, though. I accept that my successes and failures are my own, and that I must try to solve things, and not trust all to faith. You may disagree, but then that is your right.

I don't have a huge problem with faith. It is impossible to prove or disprove God. Faith is therefore of little consequence when it comes to scientific conflicts. As I have noted in the past, many great scientists had faith themselves. What I don't like about Religion (apart from past issues. Read back to find those, I don't want to repeat myself) in this case is that it has a new power: A college to groom them for jobs in the White House. Sooner or later, these brainwashed, backwards bible belt bullies will be after science, sexual freedom, religious freedom...maybe not all at once, but theocracy will be bad news, should it come to pass. I may be exaggerating, but why run the risk?

I figure, of course, that this threat will pass. If it doesn't, I'm gonna put my money on science. After all, it has been abused for millenia to produce better and better weapons. What's one more?

I really hope it never comes to that, though. It is astonishing that humanity survives its evils, and its folly. I don't know how much longer the luck will hold.

I Am A Cynical Bastard

So shoot me.

So someone – and that's ALL you get – tells me that he's engaged. “Someone” is younger than I am, for the record. Plans to move, and everything. There's only one way to talk about this....

Loud's Rational Mind (LRM) : It's rushed, and that's enough to sound alarm bells. People should get to know each other, and see how things go over time. A hotter fire runs out of fuel faster.

Loud's Emotional Mind (LEM) : The “someone” is happy now, let them have this moment, even if it lasts no longer than that. I've been in that state of mind, and there is no greater purpose to life.

LRM: 'Cause procreation imperatives are soooooo romantic.

LEM: Leave the physicalism out of this! Love is a real feeling, no matter what causes it.

LRM: Fair to say, but you know what happens after a while. Things can get strained, and if “someone” is moving there, it's too much of a risk, personally and financially to take without a lot more time invested in the relationship first.

LEM: We had plans once, if you remember. This is no different. I know, I know, you'll tell me how waiting until 18 or more would be the better way...it's no less rushed at 18 than at 16.

LRM: Touché. I think the problem is that these kind of plans are whimsical, but not to the planner. Maybe they're harmless in the end, but what if it goes too far, and doesn't work out?

LEM: That could be said of any plan, and where would we be if it was always heeded? Not anywhere fun or interesting.

LRM: I'm all aware that it's “someone's” choice, and it is not for us to burst their bubble...but at the same time, the experience you cite makes it tempting to point out the pitfalls.

LEM: One assumes they'll read this, so we've done our part. Let them decide

All: Our minds are yours to heed or discard as you will. There are only two people of significance in this affair, and we are neither. Decide, and we'll abide, for whatever comes, you will have tried.

Exeunt Omnes.