Blog of a crazy man

Why are people today addicted to tension? I was watching TV the other day and saw a commercial for the drug Lunesta. The commercial talked about people who have trouble sleeping because their minds “replay the events of the day” when they try to sleep. The commercial recommended that those people take Lunesta to be able to sleep. If your having trouble sleeping because you’re too worried about what you have to do, then your problem is something that can’t be cured by drugs. Your problem is an addiction to tension.

Tension addicts think that they have to be constantly doing something. Constantly working and trying to make more money or advance themselves in life. If they ever find themselves in a moment where they have nothing to do, they have a panic attack. Their minds have become so obsessed with the idea that they have to be always working that they don’t ever stop to relax and enjoy life.

Worse still, tension addicts never stop to ask themselves why they need to be always working. Is it because it makes them happy? Not quite. Most tension addicts are miserable. They work 8-10 hours a day at their jobs and then come home and continue to work on job related material, or housework, or paying bills, or cooking, or planning a social outing, or…you get the idea. Tension addicts don’t realize that everything they are doing is fruitless. It may make them richer, but it doesn’t make them any happier. It doesn’t make their friends or family any happier. It might make some nameless corporate higher-up happier, but it’s not likely to.

Why do tension addicts waste their time on fruitless endeavors? Because they have been trained since the time they were little kids in kindergarten that they had to work their butts off to get ahead in life. That somehow productivity was the ultimate goal in life. And when they weren’t happy, or lost sleep because their subconscious minds were screaming out in agony at the horrible world that they had created for themselves, they were told to take this or that drug to make it all better. Take a Prosac. Take a Lunesta. It’s just a chemical imbalance in your brain.

People, it is not a chemical imbalance. You’re having trouble sleeping, and you’re depressed because this isn’t the way life was meant to be. We were not meant to struggle through some corporate hierarchy to succeed in life. We were not meant to have to spend all of our lives working for some meaningless standard of success set by faceless higher-ups. Your subconscious mind knows this. When you are depressed, or sleepless, that’s your mind warning you that something is wrong with the way you are living.

If you can’t sleep, or if you’re feeling depressed, change your lifestyle. The Bible talks about spending hours in prayer and meditation. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, that’s good advice. Spend a few hours each day just forcing yourself to do nothing but think and meditate. Don’t watch TV, listen to the radio, call friends, go to the movies, or do any thing else that would distract your mind. Just sit in a quite peaceful room and think, pray, meditate. Force your body to abandon the stress and tension of life. Most importantly carry the mentality with you that success in life isn’t about money, or things, or pleasing your boss. Success in life is about happiness. When you are truly happy, then you are successful.

I distrust bloggers. That may sound strange coming from a blogger, but that’s exactly the reason why I don’t trust bloggers. Because I’m a blogger, I know that bloggers are responsible to no one but themselves, and that’s just asking for trouble. Accuracy doesn’t matter to a blogger, ad revenue does. The only way to get ad revenue is to get more readers, and the fastest way to get more readers is to post the most sensational story that comes to mind. Bloggers can be relied on for accuracy no more than the crazy guy on the street corner who claims he can talk to cockroaches.

Yet everyday, it seems, there is some new story about how blogging is going to replace mainstream media–newspapers, television, and radio. As much as I like to blog and read the blogs that others have created, I don’t go to them for journalism. Instead, I go to the BBC, the New York Times, and other traditional news media. What I do, however, go to blogs for is opinion.

Journalism is about facts and objectivity. When a journalist sits down to write an article for the local newspaper he’s worried about giving the facts and about telling what happened without telling you what he thinks about it. That’s hard to do, and more importantly, it’s something that 99% of bloggers can’t do.

Blogging is about opinion. When a blogger sits down to write he’s not worried about getting the facts straight. He’s worried about telling you what he thinks, and why you should think that way too. His job is doing something that a journalist should never do–give his opinion.

Journalism and blogging are complements to each other. Blogging picks up where journalism leaves off. Bloggers expect their audiences to already have facts. They write for the people who know the story but want to get somebody else’s view of it. Blogging can’t survive without journalism to prepare the audience with facts. Only once journalists have given the audience the facts does that audience turn to bloggers to give it opinions.

The helping works both ways. Once bloggers have given the audience an opinion and given meaning to the story, the audience becomes interested in the story and goes back to journalists to get more facts about it. It’s called a positive feedback loop. Journalism encourages blogging, which encourages journalism. One can’t usurp the other because they are both necessary parts of the same system.

By the way, the cockroaches agree with me on this one.

I’m too busy to write a real post (although one is in the works) so I’m going to post this extended definition of intimacy that I wrote for English class. I’m afraid to post it; you can figure out why.

The Princeton University’s WordNet dictionary defines intimacy as “a close or warm friendship” and “a feeling of belonging together.” Intimacy is friendship, but it is also much more. Intimacy is more than just liking someone or someone’s company. Two people can like each other and never be intimate. Intimacy is a deep familiarity. It is a familiarity that recognizes more than just what a person looks like, what they like, what they dislike, or what they have been through. Those are all parts of intimacy, but by themselves, these things are not intimacy. Intimacy is a familiarity with who a person is. Intimacy requires that two people be able to open up themselves to each other, without fear, and be confident in telling their inner most secrets to each other. More than that, they must want to know and cherish those secrets as if they were their own. Intimacy requires a familiarity akin to oneness. It requires that two people be inseparable, not necessarily in the physical sense of the word, but in the spiritual, emotional sense. A person who has experienced true intimacy is always thinking of the other person and trying to do what would be pleasing to that person and best for that person, even if the other person is not around.

Intimacy does not have to be between two people. It can, and must, also be a relationship with Jesus Christ. For someone to have intimacy with another human being, that person must first have intimacy with Christ. Christ is the foundation for all human intimacy and love. Without Him, relationships would be hollow attempts at feeding fleshly desires.

The foundation for intimacy is love, and to love another human being, one must first love Jesus Christ. There is no greater love than the love between a person and his Savior. That love gives the foundation and premise for all other love. The love of Christ is the conduit through which all other love flows. The love between any two human beings is only capable of existing in its fullest potential if Christ is present in the relationship. The love that is based on a close personal relationship with Christ is the only love that brings about intimacy. Any other intimacy is, at best, only an empty shell of what it could be. At worst, it is a lure used by the Devil to pull unsuspecting victims into temptation and lust. The Devil’s greatest lie about intimacy is that it is something physical. While it may be that intimacy between a husband and wife can have a physical aspect to it, intimacy in no way requires it.

In short, intimacy is a oneness. A oneness between a person and Christ, or a oneness between two people through Christ. It is the closest of all relationships.

Here’s a type sketch I wrote for my English class. Although some of it is based on people I know, the details have been highly exaggerated. Without further adieu:

“Did you see the big game last night?” Why is it always “the big game?” To the sports fanatic, there is no small game, only the next big game which he has to speculate about for days before it happens. Worse still, he carries on his monotonous analyzing for days after the game, or until his favorite team has to play the next “big game.” Of course, sometimes his favorite team isn’t playing any game, but that won’t stop this fanatic. If all he has to work with is a game between his two most hated teams, he’ll support one of them – anything to keep him from doing something valuable with his time.

No one can tell the sports fanatic that he’s wasting his time. That will only prolong the suffering. Completely offended by the thought that anybody could have anything bad to say about his favorite sport, he’ll ramble for forty minutes about cultural heritage, the need for competition, and some other random thing that “everybody ought to know” about sports. Eventually, after being driven to the brink of insanity by his rambling, his victim has to admit, however untrue it may be, that he agrees with the fanatic. Happy with his victory, the fanatic will ramble for another hour about the big game that he was trying to talk about earlier, before he was interrupted by harsh accusations.

The close of whatever sports season he was following doesn’t bring any end to his agonizing rambling. Baseball, football, soccer, hockey, and others are all on his list to make sure that he doesn’t have any bit of time to spend on anything useful. Just as the end of one sports season starts to quell his ramblings, the start of another revives them in full force.

No matter what the sport, he’s there ready to give his “expert” opinion on all the athletes and teams. If asked about a team, he’ll know exactly what their score will be in any game. It doesn’t matter what any professional sports analyst thinks, because the fanatic is so much smarter than any of them. When asked about his favorite team, he will spend hours joyfully describing statistics and players, showing all of his memorabilia, and telling about each players history in detail that would bore even the player’s own mother to death.

The worst thing to do is to ask him about his favorite player. He’ll tell not only about the player’s long and very boring life, his achievements, and “highlights” of his career that are greater in number than the games he’s actually played.

The sports fanatic will also tell of how he waited in line for four hours to get a signature and of how he spent thousands of dollars to buy the player’s used jersey on Ebay. He will tell tales of such wasteful idol worship that the stomach cringes at the thought of having to spend one more second with him. Any victim, no matter how interested they were in the sport when they started talking to the fanatic, will run in terror after being driven to the brink of insanity.

This isn’t the sort of thing that I normally post about. But I promised a post this weekend, and this was the only post idea that was anywhere near complete enough to put on the site. So, without further delay, I give you the post:

The big rumor going around today is if Google, the internet search giant, will create its own operating system (OS) to compete with Windows. Some have speculated that they will, and some even say that it will happen by the end of 2006. Although I like Google and would most likely use a Google OS, if they made one, the truth is that they probably won’t.

While an OS would give Google the ability to further increase the number of times and places where Google could show its ads, an OS has too many troubles. One trouble is that a Google OS would have to compete with Windows. Switching an OS is more work than most people are willing to put forward. Linux and Macintosh have already proved that making people switch operating systems much harder than, say, making them switch an email program. Not only does it require that a person know a lot about his computer, but it often requires he switch an entire set of programs, because the programs that he normally uses work only on one OS.

Aside from not getting users to switch, Google would have to maintain an entire operating system code base. Even with Google operating dozens of web services, the amount of manpower that they consume is far less than what maintaining an operating system requires. The added Ad-sense revenue would not be enough to justify the added expense.

Google could always just use Linux and other open source software and piggyback on the efforts of others and, therefore, not have to employ as many people to maintain the project, but that still leaves one question. Why would a full blown OS be better than an application suite? Google already offers a range of online and offline services and software. They would be better off maintaining and expanding these tools than they would be by offering a full blown OS. They would have fewer programmers, less overhead, and only marginally less Ad-sense revenue.

Here’s a description that I wrote for my English class. I don’t think that it’s that good, but I never like what I write. Anyway, here it is:

The room is filled with mist, a strange occurrence in most rooms, but not in this one. In this room, mist is a consuming thing. It always seems as though the mist has just appeared; it is always there, never dissipating, never changing.

The mist is thick. The walls are invisible, as if the room goes on forever, but the mist also seems thin. The feeling of being just on the edge of the mist, able to see the whole room, rests constantly in the back of the mind.

The walls, when they are found, are made of thick, dark wood. Covered with a slight film of water, the scratched wood makes an impenetrable barrier with the outside. It lets none see in, and none see out.

On one of the walls is a door, the only door in the room. It is festooned with only a handle and a small window about head height. The window is the only way to see in and out of the room, but water covers it, just like the walls, making the other side difficult to see.

A bench hugs the four walls of the room. It almost forms a complete square, but a gap at the doorway keeps it from going the whole way around the room. The bench consists of the same wood as the walls, but fewer scratch marks appear on the bench than on the walls. Over time, people, sitting on the bench, made a constantly changing barrier that protected it from scratching, but at the same time they slowly smoothed it. Their bodies rubbing away tiny particles of wood, making the bench smooth and comfortable.

The floor is covered with simple tiles. At one time the tile was neat, straight, and perfectly white. Now, however, the tiles are a light brown color, and each tile doesn’t quite have the same tint as the tile next to it. Occasionally, a tile will be loose or not quite as straight as those around it.

The tiles give way in the center of the floor for a pit of coals. The coals make a hissing noise as water is slowly sprayed onto them. While a machine pumps the water onto the coals, a maintenance man checks every hour to make sure that they stay hot enough to keep the room at the optimal temperature to make people sweat.

Outside the sauna is a health spa. Every day the spa is filled with people going about their business, only occasionally stepping into the misty room to experience its rejuvenating ability.

It’s official, next year’s big three will be the Sony Playstation 3, Microsft Xbox 360, and Nintendo Revolution. All of them putting on their shows at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo, for you non-gamer types). So I’m going to break them down by analyzing the consoles hardware, style, and appeal factors. I’m also going to be extremely biased toward Nintendo :).

Hardware:
It looks like the Playstation 3 is going to come out on top in this category. Nobody knows for sure how powerful the Revolution is going to be, but not many are expecting its hardware to be much more powerful than the Xbox 360 which is only about half as powerful as the Playstation 3. Although the Revolution could come out to be the most powerful, it seems very unlikely.

Style:
Xbox 360 is the winner, hands down. The Xbox 360 is just beautiful. Microsoft spent alot of money on the design, and it shows. The wonderfully concave design carries the friendly, yet strong, feel that complements the Xbox quite well.

The comparison here is the Playstation 3, which is quite possibly, the ugliest device I have ever seen. Its bloated, dominating feel make the console look like something that would scare you rather make you want to hug it, which is what the Xbox 360 makes you want to do. The concave sides make the console look more like a decorous trash can rather than a game system. I just don’t feel the Playstation 3 design, though that may just be my opinion.

The Revolution finds its home nicely in the middle. It’s squared off design gives the feel of power, but the small form factor and simplicity of design make it feel like something you can reach out touch, though it doesn’t quite have the cuddle factor of the Xbox 360. Better than the Playstation 3, but worse than the Xbox 360, the Revolution finds itself comfortably average.

Customer Appeal:
This is a tough one. I’d say its going to be a toss up between the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. Xbox 360 looks poised to take top spot if only for the fact that it will be the first of the three to be released, but without the power to back it, it may not be able to hold its own against the Playstation 3. The Xbox 360’s greatest feature appeal is its networking and customization. Playstation 3’s greatest feature is its power, but it may lose customers because of its poor style.

Revolution will definitly gain market share, but how much remains to be seen. The “All Access Gaming,” which provides access to not only Revolution game disks, but also Gamecube disks and download access to games from the NES, SNES, and the N64, will give it a retro gamer feel, and its small form factor is going to give it an appeal to a larger, more casual gamer audience. The bigest hindrance to the console is going to be the bad reputation carried over from the Gamecube, which missed the ball on alot of emerging features and processing power. Nobody knows what the processing ability of the Revolution is going to be, but estimates leave it around the same power as the Xbox 360 which won’t help it any.

Nintendo will probably only gain a niche market akin to that of Apple Computers. While Nintendo will very likely be able to keep pumping out games that keep our attention, it doesn’t look like they’re going to have deep enough pockets to take a big market. Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo focuses solely on games, which gives them great design, but small budget and even smaller market share.

Though there’s still hope that Nintendo will gain the top spot it deserves.

Ok, as promised, my opinion of community broadband.

First, lets get the definition out of the way. Community broadband is broadband which is created and run by a local, city government and paid for, usually, by a combination of taxes and advertising deals. It is usually delivered in the form of WiFi (wireless internet) hotspots throughout the city.

There are two arguments concerning community broadband.

The first argument states that community broadband is good for the people because it provides them with free broadband and spreads the newer technologies to people who might not get it otherwise.

The second argument is that community broadband represents a form of socialism that will ultimately be detrimental to the people by causing them to be subject to any government-based internet censorship and that the access is not actually free but only results in higher taxes. These people also argue that governments are also not efficient in updating utilities and networks and thus would only cause the people to become reliant on out-dated networks.

Both make excellent points.

On the one hand community broadband does offer an immediately free option for internet access. On the other it does increase property taxes. While this instance may seem equal, one must consider the fact that the local governments have no incentive to tax more than necessary to pay for the network, and part of the cost is being deferred by advertising. These two combined lower the tax to much less than what a commercial alternative could offer.

While it is true that community broadband will initially spread newer technology to people who couldn’t get it otherwise, governments are notorious about not updating to newer technology. And, of course, there is still the issue of censorship and socialism.

I propose a three part remedy which will keep all of community broadband’s good points without any of the bad.

First, bar the national government from interfering in the dealings of city owned ISPs. That kind of power consolidation is just going to lead to trouble.

Second, when a city owned ISP is created, it should be placed under the control of one man who will be elected during regular elections.

Third, a state should only be allowed to interfere with the workings of the city ISPs by a 3/4 vote of the elected ISP representatives.

These three steps ensure that the people will have a direct say in how their ISP is run, even more so than a commercial ISP. By making the person running the ISP subject to elections, the people are assured that there is less temptation to over tax people, impose censorship, or let the network become outdated. By barring the federal government from interfering the people are assured that only those who are more sensitive to their individual needs are in control. By requiring a 3/4 vote before the state acts, the people are assured that the state will be acting on the interests of the collective of communities instead of on the interests of the state.

Quite simply, this three point plan will offer the people the right to communicate and the freedom from tyranny.

Here’s my essay on the Guilded Age that I wrote for my US History course:

The captains of industry were men who managed to become successful at business. These men worked hard to earn their positions as leaders in their industry, but most used business practices which were less than admirable, especially for anybody wanting to be worthy of the title “captain.” These men were robber barons.

Of course, not all business men were evil. H. J. Heinz was an example of a fine, upstanding business man who attempted to both provide his customers with pure food, and provide his employees with healthy work environments. His motto was, “To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.” This is one of the most admirable business practices that a company can strive to maintain. No matter how you attempt to view Heinz he stands out as one of the best examples of a captain of industry, but unfortunately, he was one of only a few.

A look past Heinz will immediately draw one’s attention to Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt started in business by beginning a ferry company. His cutthroat competition gave him almost complete control of New York’s waterways, but the Civil War made running ferries a risky business, so he moved into railroads. He began buying out railroads in New York, which isn’t a bad practice, but his takeover of New York’s Central Railroad shows that Vanderbilt was wasn’t fond of friendly buy outs. Unable to convince Central to sell, Vanderbilt stopped all traffic on his rail lines, which supplied to Central’s lines, effectively boxing them in and forcing the company into such a desperate financial situation that Central’s stock holders had no choice but to sell. This type of business practice was typical of Vanderbilt and many of the other “captains of industry.”

One such “captain of industry,” Andrew Carnegie, must be mentioned here because of the simple fact that he is usually pointed to as one of the admirable business men of this time period. Advocates of this view point to the fact that Carnegie was fond of giving his money to charitable organizations, particularly those of an educational nature. While it is true that Carnegie gave his money for good causes, he cannot be excused from the fact that he gained his money through monopolistic practices. His use of vertical integration (controlling a portion of each part of an industry), advocation of Social Darwinism (which used “survival of the fittest” as justification for undesirable business practices), and then eventually selling his company to J. P. Morgan (who was known for creating monopolies and destroying competition) all indicate that this “admirable business man” was just a robber in captain’s clothing.

These three men show the main divisions of business men at this time: true captain of industry, robber baron, and robber in captain’s clothing. Unfortunately, most business men fell into the last two categories. This age stands out as a warning to us today about business and the evils that an overwhelming desire for money and a denial of Biblical principles can bring.

I had a discussion with one of my teachers about freedom of speech and censorship. This discussion, of course, being started because of my post about Howard Stern. So, I’m going to make a longer post about censorship, without cussing.

The question we were discussing was whether or not the government had the right to censor what is published. To make clear, there are two types of censorship, personal and governmental. Personal censorship can be defined as someone either censoring what he says, or what he reads, watches, et cetera. I have nothing against personal censorship. I believe that this type of censorship should be protected.

Governmental censorship, on the other hand, can be defined as the government telling a person what he can or cannot say, read, watch, et cetera. This type of censorship is not only Constitutionally wrong, but detrimental to all of society. The obvious Constitutional wrong is the violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Governmental Censorship is in violation of this because they tell you what you can or cannot say, and regulated speech isn’t free speech. Its detrimental to society because it removes the possiblity for scrutinizing the government or other organization and causing mankind to be slaves to what they are told.

Of course, my teacher brought up the point, “If somebody yells, ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater, doesn’t that fall in under the category of free speech?” Well, no. By yelling fire the person endangers the lives of the theater goers as a result of the following panic, and the right to life comes well above the right to free speech. But an even stronger argument, though less general, is the fact that the theater is owned by someone else who sets the rules over his property, that’s personal censorship. The man doesn’t have the right because he chose to be in a building that has voluntary censorship placed on it.

From here the discussion led into the question of whether or not the government has the right to regulate morals. The answer, no. As a Christian, morals are absolute, but logically, its completely up to the individual. I can say that adultry is wrong, but I can’t prove it. If I can’t prove it, I can’t expect the government to regulate it. I do expect the government, on the other hand, to protect the existence of humanity. This, after all, is the only logical purpose of the government. I can’t prove that adultry is detrimental to humanity, so the government shouldn’t regulate it. I can prove that murder is detrimental to humanity, so I expect the government to regulate it. I can prove that abortion is detrimental to humanity, so I expect the government to regulate it. I can prove that government censorship is bad for humanity, so I expect the government to not regulate speech. I can prove that personal censorship is good for humanity, so I expect the government to protect it.

Feel free to ask me to prove anything I mentioned. Any other comments welcome, as always.