Going to Space

So last night I dreamed that I went on a weird mission to Pluto to deploy a camera-satellite. It was a white circular device equipped with a lens that took pictures of the planet's surface.

After deploying the satellite, my partner and I donned our astronaut costumes--tight pants and capes--and disembarked the shuttle (which looked hauntingly like the Real Canadian Superstore) to have our photos taken by the satellite (so everyone back on earth could see us in our astronaut costumes??)

Anyways, when we got back to earth I wrote everyone an e-mail telling them that I was in space for a couple of days. So if you got that e-mail, it didn't really happen, it was just a dream, okay?

On Across the Universe

Janelle and I watched Across the Universe last night. It was really good; one thing that I really liked about it was that it didn't preach. It didn't have a big political message that was right at the forefront. It just had a handful of relevant themes.

One of these themes was war. And it depicted the anti-war and the peace movements in contrast to the Vietnam war. What becomes very evident, though, is that the anti-war protesters are in fact waging a war against war--an exercise that is eventually showed to be self-defeating. Other characters, though, while not waging a public and physical war, are nevertheless engaged in a real battle. What the film shows is that all the characters are deeply tangled in battles of their own.

I think this is true of every human being. We all have wars. Whether they are public and physical wars that we participate in--perhaps by going to Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces--or private, personal wars that we engage in every day. I believe in war. I believe that this planet--and that life itself--is a battlefield. Refusing to fight or denying that there is a war is denying the nature of humanity. I like the line from that film on WW1: "We do this because we're good at it."

Adventures

Yesterday I was reading an article about video and online gaming culture. At the end of the article, several gaming addicts and their partners or people close to them commented on the effects of this kind of addiction. Reading it, I was surprised at first at how many ordinary people are addicted to online gaming. I mean, these were nice, regular, family people, not computer geeks who hide out in basements and have no friends or significant others.

There were some women, but most of the online game addicts were men. And while I haven't much insight into why women would be addicted to this sort of thing, I think I can understand at least some of the reasons why some men can be addicted to video games. I mean, we sometimes automatically think--video games? and put all the gaming addicts into one box (or dingy basement) and label them all "geeks." But they're not, they're regular people...

So here are my thoughts; some reasons why men can be addicted to video and online games. I write from personal experience; I know about this because I know myself.

One game that I find particularly addictive is called Freeciv. It's got poor graphics and all that stuff, and when you get right to thinking about it, it's not so much fun. You just build an empire and conquer the world or send a spaceship to Alpha Centauri before the year 2000 or something like that. Anyways, the whole reason why I find it addictive is that I get to make big decisions, administer an empire, and while I know that it's a fantasy, it makes me feel competent and in control. It's a fantasy that I'm doing something meaningful and it's easy to get so caught up in it that you can think and believe that you're doing something meaningful and important.

I also like to play real time strategy games, for the same reason.

A different genre I find particularly addictive is the role playing game, also known as RPG. The reason this genre is addictive is that it gives me an adventure with varying degrees of freedom. Not that the freedom in itself is very important, but the fact that I have control over my adventure, my choices govern my adventure. The game presents me with a series of problems that I can solve whichever way I want. And that is pretty significant. Along the way to solving the problems there are always battles to fight.

I think there's something in the male psyche that is starved without adventure (I can't speak for the female psyche--I don't have one.) and these games offer us adventures. Sure, the adventures are artificial, but our world seems to have cut out adventure. For many of us, it's impossible to find real adventures outside of these games. I think these games wouldn't have nearly as much marketability if the real world offered real adventures. Instead, in the real world, I'm finding it hard to find a place for myself. My actions, my decisions have no impact. I don't make a difference--worse, I can't make a difference.

I know... people will say, I do make a difference. And I know what you mean and I can accept that. I make a difference to the people who love me. I hope you know, you make a difference to me too. But...

...I'm talking about BIG difference here. I'm talking about adventures with far-reaching and life-altering consequences. I don't particularly care if people in Thailand know about me or not, the issue is not that I want fame or even money or glory, what I want is to feel like I've done something, accomplished something. Without that feeling, it's so easy to feel bored with the real world.

I don't hate my job. In fact, I have a lot of fun at work and I like my coworkers and I enjoy my work-environment. But I do find it by far the most boring job I have ever had or could ever have. Maybe that's an exaggeration... but the point is that I come to work, make and sell pizzas, and go home. I'm not saying that that's boring, on the contrary, making pizzas could be a very exciting thing. Let's pretend there was video game where you have to build a chain of pizza shops across a city. You have to pick the best locations for your stores, you have to interview and hire employees, you have to manage your stores and compete against other stores. Wow, that would be a great game! It would be addictive too. Isn't that weird? Something so brutally mundane as making and selling pizzas could become a best selling video game. (Ok, I'm not so sure about the best-selling part, but it would definitely turn a profit.)

Do you get the point though? The most exciting thing I've done at my job so far is sheet-outs. I try to make as many sheet-outs as I can in the smallest amount of time possible. That's exciting because I'm racing against time. I have a goal, and deadline, and I'm racing to meet it, working with my whole body, as fast as I can. Another exciting part of my job is when I'm on cash and we have to do a ring-off every half hour. Every day, Manager Colin sets a sales goal (well, he thinks of it as a forecast, I like to think of it as a goal because it makes my job more meaningful) anyways, the ring-offs are exciting because I get to see how we're doing compared to the goal. When we exceed the goal I'm thrilled because I feel like I accomplished something, I feel like I'm a contributing member of a winning team. And I think that's an important feeling. But in the everyday life of the real world, thrills like that are few and far between. In the artificial world of online and video gaming thrills like that are almost unavoidable.

new look at 3dhippo.com

in case you haven't noticed yet, 3dhippo.com has a new look... okay, the penguin wasn't supposed to have a black eye and his bow tie was supposed to be white. there are still a few glitches.

anyways, i plan to add product somewhat regularly. especially movies, now that i can make them again. (i found a way to make my computer run swish.)

a bit of news

good morning everyone. this is just to let you know that i've added most of the poetry i've written in the past year to my "work in progress" blog. i haven't posted in a very long time, so if you're at all like me, you've probably stopped checking it. so, just in case you're interested, it's back!

Headline Confusion

I was reading the news this morning and came across the following headline: "French Police Deal Blow to Microsoft." Intrigued, I clicked the link to read the article and discovered that my assumptions were mistaken. What the article was really about was the French police are switching all their computers to Linux Operating Systems, specifically, Ubuntu Linux, of which I am a big fan.

So I told Janelle about the headline and, after I explained the article to her, she said, "Oh, so they're not dealing cocaine to Microsoft." What a relief.

I pasted the article below, in case you're curious.


French police deal blow to Microsoft

The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break.

The move completes the gendarmerie's severance from Microsoft which began in 2005 when it moved to open sourcing for office applications such as word processing. It switched to open source Internet browsers in 2006.

Linux is an open-source operating system, which used to be the reserve of computer geeks but is now an easy-to-use system aimed at average users.

The gendarmerie's 70,000 desktops currently use Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. But these will progressively change over to the Linux system distributed by Ubuntu, explained Colonel Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the gendarmerie's IT department.

"We will introduce Linux every time we have to replace a desktop computer," he said, "so this year we expect to change 5,000-8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014."

There are three reasons behind the move, Geraud said at the Solution Linux 2008 conference here. The first is to diversify suppliers and reduce the force's reliance on one company, the second is to give the gendarmerie mastery of the operating system and the third is cost, he said.

He also added that "the Linux interface is ahead of other operating systems currently on the market for professional use."

Vista, for example, Microsoft's latest operating system, is being spurned by consumers who cite "concerns about its cost, resource requirements, and incompatibility with their existing applications," according to InformationWeek.com.

Geraud explained that the move to an open source operating system was logical after the police switched in 2005 to open sourcing for its office applications and in 2006 for its Internet browsers and its email.

The move away from licenced products is saving the gendarmerie about seven million euros (10.3 million dollars) a year for all its PCs.

"In 2004 we had to buy 13,000 licences for office suites for our PCs," he said, "but in the three years since then we've only had to buy a total of 27 licences."

In 2005 the gendarmerie switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice -- a collection of applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programme similar to Microsoft Powerpoint, all of which can be downloaded free.

A year later it abandoned Mircosoft's Internet Explorer for the Mozilla Foundation's browser Firefox and its email client Thunderbird.

"When we made that choice Firefox represented about 3.0 percent of Internet browsers and it's about 20 to 25 percent now which confirms our choice," Geraud said.

The gendarmerie with its 100,000 employees is the biggest administration to shift to open sourcing for its operating system, but it is not the first in France. That honour belongs to the National Assembly which adopted Ubuntu for its 1,200 PCs in 2007.

Although the gendarmerie is ahead of the market the market is catching up.

Dell, for example, this week started offering Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on its XPS 1330 laptops in France, Germany, Spain and Britain, while US customers will be able to order the machines within the next week or so, according to the company's website.

More Adventures of Patrick and Janelle

When we tried to leave the apartment this morning, Janelle and I discovered that our lock was broken and that we couldn't unlock the door. Janelle called our landlady who promised to have it fixed and I, using some ingenuity and a screw driver, removed the lock and slid the bolt using pliers. Then we headed out for a celebratory breakfast and some morning-shopping.

We had BELTs at Tim Horton's and then headed to Wal-Mart. Janelle bought some pants and a pitcher and a few other things. Then we drove down to TBC Computers and I asked for a price on a computer system. The price they gave me was so phenomenal that I bought the computer without doing any shopping around, like I had planned to, and they had it assembled for me in two hours! What was even more phenomenal was that they provided a free power surge protector. They explained that since they had started giving these gizmos away, the amount of money they lost on warranties dropped significantly.

Anyways, I brought Janelle to school, bought a keyboard at Staples, picked up the computer, brought it home and installed it, picked up Janelle at school and took her to lunch and to the post office, where we had Janelle's student loan processed by a room full of comedians... I brought Janelle back to school and had just enough time to get into my Little Caesar's uniform and before heading to work.

Afterwards Janelle and I had dinner at Dan and Katie's and it was fantastic.

The World Through My Glasses (Part Three)

The headline read something like this, "Britney Spears' British Accent Raises Questions About Her Psychological Health." As if everything else she's done hasn't? If speaking in a British accent makes one questionably insane, my wife is definitely under suspicion... along with just about everybody in England.

Today Janelle and I were at the post office and the lady behind the counter spoke with a distinct British accent. I felt like asking her if she was suspected of being insane.

Anyways...

The new Tata Nano was unveiled in India this month. By the way, Tata is the auto manufacturer that plans to buy Jaguar and Land Rover. The Nano is a car that costs only $2500 US, it is very minimal--for example, it has no power steering, no radio, no air conditioning. It boasts almost phenomenal gas mileage, though and is widely referred to as "the people's car"--I guess Volkswagen isn't anymore.

And what do environment activists have to say about this? They're not happy, because a cheap car will result in more people owning cars, roads will become more crowded, and--as a result--there will be more pollution. What do you think of that?

My big question is, what's the problem? If it's okay for some people to have a car, shouldn't it be okay for everyone to have a car? And if an auto manufacturer wants to make it possible for more people to have automobiles, that's fantastic! Or is it only okay for "rich" people to own cars? When we start to think this way, we jump over the individual, we think in terms of groups of people--or worse, we ignore the individual altogether and only think about our policies, and what is better for our world. I don't think any right-headed person or group would prevent any individuals from owning cars if they could afford them (for example) but when we say things like a cost-effective car like the Nano is harmful to the environment and, therefore, must be controlled or limited and we create government policies to that effect, what we are doing is preventing individuals from owning automobiles. To me, there's a certain amount of hypocrisy in that. We want to prevent lower-income people from owning automobiles because of the possibly disastrous results, but we ourselves won't give up our automobiles.

I said that I don't believe in changing the world, but I think we all agree that the world needs changing. And right now, I don't care about the Tata Nano or about government policies concerning the environment. I don't even care about Britney Spears' British accent. What I really want to talk about is individuals. When we talk politics, when we talk about global change, and activism, what we should be concerned about is not our policies and our ideas about what is good or bad for the environment because we cannot change the world systems. The world will always be corrupt, always be evil, always be governed by greed. We cannot change that. But we can change ourselves and that is the most effective and most important change we can make.

Of course, there's much more to be said on this...

The World Through My Glasses (Part Two)

In Michigan over the Christmas holidays, I heard about a campaign to ban the purchase of items made in China. These are easy to spot, mostly because of the little sticker label, "Made in China." One major reason for this campaign is that the workers who made these items were exploited, paid very little and made to work very long hours. I heard about some pregnant women being forced to work until they delivered and given only fifteen minutes to deliver their baby after which, they had to be back to work. This sounds terrible. I've also heard about children being forced to work fourteen hour days for very little pay. All this so that big businesses could earn big profits and so that good little western capitalist-democrats could save money buying cheap products.

In my previous post I talked about how the world's environment is changing. I wrote that the world is changing, and those who do not change with it will be destroyed. This is also true economically and politically. The West condemns exploitation in China and India and pretty much everywhere else in the East but ignores the economic and political basis for this exploitation.

The whole world sees the west and its luxury and success and riches and power and wants to be like it. But, part of the problem is, that we don't even remember how we, the West, got here. We talk about how bad the exploitation of workers during the industrial revolution of the late 1700s was a terrible thing, but we forget that without that industrial revolution and the accompanying exploitation of children and men and women we would not have the luxury and wealth and power that we enjoy now. We also forget to ask ourselves, "Is it worth it?" Is our current standard of living worth what it took to get here? To me, the answer is no. Absolutely not.

But those who live daily struggling for the basic necessities--food and shelter--and see the wealth that we take for granted and the luxury that we thoughtlessly enjoy, can we blame them if they feel a tinge of envy? They feel it and they are working to bring themselves comparable wealth and luxury and in many cases they are succeeding.

China is a case in point. China is gaining commercial capital through trade and industry; never mind that it's a 'communist' country--I won't get into that. I have met with, worked with, evangelized to many Chinese men and women and children. A friend, Hong Gang said that the biggest moral problem with China was its materialism. He admitted that the biggest obstacle to him accepting Christianity was his materialism. The Chinese people have been told and believe that it is glorious to be wealthy. If, to become wealthy, people must be exploited, it's worth it--all for the greater glory and--or, through--wealth of China. What we are seeing right now in China and the East is the equivalent of Europe's and the West's Industrial Revolution. Children and women were exploited for the greater wealth of greedy capitalists and we believed it was worth it. We now enjoy wealth and prosperity, power, luxury--Glory--because of that period of exploitation.

Not only were people exploited at home in the factories, but the West through the hundreds of years of the 'Glorious' age of Imperialism exploited people all over the world--including the people in China. Research this period of history, find out what happened to Japan when they closed their ports to American and British trade because they were being exploited. Find out what happened to China when they did the same. Find out what the British and French did in India, what the British, Italians, Germans, and French did to Africa. People were exploited everywhere because we felt that it was worth it in order to accumulate the capital to build the kind of society we have now.

Today, no matter what you buy, someone was exploited to produce and sell that product; whether it was you, the buyer, or the person who made it, or the person who sold it, or the poor night crew stock clerks who put the product on the grocery store shelves.

Where did the Chinese get the idea that it's glorious to be wealthy? No doubt, some of it came from looking at us. If we felt it was worth centuries of exploitation to have the kind of society we have today, how much more does the East now, when they see the glorious results?

We, in the West, can easily condemn Brazil for deforesting the Amazon Basin, we can easily condemn China for exploiting its workers but remember: they are only doing what we did to get to where we are now.

I'm not saying it's wrong to stop exploitation. Please, let your compassion flow. I believe that Grace is all we have. More importantly, Grace is all we need to change the world.

But I don't believe in changing the world.

The World Through My Glasses (Part One)

We got our money back from the student loan people. It was unceremoniously dumped back into our account on Tuesday. Cheers to that! (I'm a BIG fan of getting my money back.)

So, before I got married I was told that if I didn't have sex before I got married, I'd have a boring sex life when I got married. Needless to say, I didn't believe it. A few years later I heard the exact same thing from my manager at Top Craft. He was talking about sex and saying that if you don't have sex before you're married, you'll have a terrible and boring and unpleasant sex life when you are married. The third time I heard this was from one of Janelle's fellow students at the Mount. He said that, before Janelle was married, way back when he found out that she wasn't going to have sex until after the wedding, he'd been worried about her, that she would have a terrible sex life with some guy who was no good in bed. (Don't get me wrong, I do believe there are guys who are terrible in bed--it's those selfish ones who are only in it for themselves.) Where do these people get these ideas? They must all read the same magazines.

First of all, how do they know? Everyone who's said this to me has had sex before they were married, so how would they know? Secondly, it's pretty ignorant to think that having sex before you're married improves your sex life after you're married. Either way, you're going to have sex for the first time at one point or another, and you're not going to start out an old pro at it on your first shot! Just like anything else, sex is something you get better at with practice--no matter what the magazines say. I don't know why people unquestioningly believe whatever shows up in those snot rags.

Speaking of "Science by Press Release" ...

If you ask anyone what climate change and global warming is, they'll probably tell you that it's carbon dioxide emissions trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing global temperature increase. Catastrophic consequences of this are the melting of the ice caps and the recession of glaciers resulting in rising sea levels and global flooding. That's why Canada is proposing a carbon tax to encourage industries to reduce their carbon emissions. There are global initiatives, such as the UNFCCC to reduce levels of carbon emissions world-wide. However, there is no proof that carbon dioxide causes climate change.

I think that the whole idea of Global Warming as a catastrophe is based on the assumption that planet Earth has always been a certain way. The Theory of Evolution is based on this same assumption that the Earth is static. But the Earth is not static, it changes and fluctuates. Right this minute we are still in the process of emerging from an ice age. Scientists postulate that the Earth is naturally ice-free, even in the high latitudes--except during periods of glaciation (otherwise known as ice-ages) when ice sheets advance to cover larger areas of the world. There is evidence that the whole planet, include the far north, was at the same sub-tropical climate; for example, mammoths have been found frozen whole in sheets of ice with sub-tropical vegetation undigested in their stomachs--keep in mind that they would have had to have frozen straight through and very quickly and this happened before the invention of any kind of deep-freeze device. Ice core samples in Greenland show that much of the southern inner mainland of Greenland was suitable for farming, raising crops and herds around 800 to 1300 AD, during what is known as the medieval warming period. These are only two examples; there are many others . The glaciers in Alberta's Jasper National Park are receding. I have heard this often cited in the news media as evidence for the severity of global warming. There are also glaciers in the Andes Mountains in South America that are receding. A recent news cast reported the almost overnight disappearance of a large lake in the Andes mountains because of a melting glacier. This was also blamed on global warming. However, if the Earth is emerging from an ice age, it makes sense that glaciers and ice sheets would retreat.

(photo of the Athabasca Glacier, Jasper Nat'l Park)

While I do believe that carbon emissions reduction is beneficial to the environment I also think that the problem is not so much that carbon emissions are causing global warming but that we have built our cities too close to the water. Of course, this is unavoidable. But we've built them on the assumption that the world does not change, that change is bad. In reality, though, I believe the Earth will change and those who do not change with it will be destroyed.