Just Words

I used to work for someone who was building a prototype of some new technology. He formed a limited company and planned to trade shares on the public market. But he needed some capital to get started so he planned to sell private stock before the IPO. He hired me to build the machine for him. That debacle is an entirely different story. Before he brought prospective investors by to look at the machine, he would rehearse the sales routine with me. Obviously if something wasn't working properly at the time he was showing the machine it would look bad for the successful development of the technology and the investors would be less likely to invest. I told him that I would have everything in tip-top running condition and that there was nothing to fear. What he told me next is something I'll never forget as long as I live. He said:

"They don't know how it's supposed to work. They've never seen anything like this before. No matter what it does, act like it's a good thing. If the machine is in flames behind you just smile triumphantly, hold your arms up in a 'V' and say, 'It works perfectly! Exactly as we planned! Isn't it beautiful? Sign here.'"

US citizens are experiencing this same phenomenon right now. Yesterday, Bin Laden popped his head up to irritate the world and display publicly Bush's failure to find him and bring him to justice. To say that the situation in Iraq is not exactly chipper is very optimistic. And then there's the huge budget deficit and the economy. And this whole time the Republican party holds its hands up in a 'V' (for victory?) and screams:

"Mission Accomplished! It's exactly the way we planned! See?! See?! Bin Laden is still a threat! Clearly, Bush can handle this way better than Kerry because he's done such an excellent job so far. Just look at that pile of burning rubble over there. Bush did that. See?! Don't you see why we need him as president?!"

Amazing. Simply amazing.

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The following are transcript excerpts from a videotape given to Al-Jazeera earlier today. There are strong indications that the person speaking was a very healthy Osama Bin Laden. This was reported by the New York Times and reprinted without permission.

We had agreed with Mohammed Atta, may Allah bless his soul, to carry out all of the operations within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration pays attention.

And we didn't think at all that the commander in chief in the United States will leave all of these people, all of the U.S. citizens fighting for themselves, fighting for their lives.

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaida. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked. The event that affected me most personally was in 1982, when America gave permission for Israel to invade Lebanon. That built a strong desire in me to punish the guilty. It never occurred to us that he, the commander in chief of the country, would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone, because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important.

Well, people have been talking about an October Surprise? That maybe Bush had Osama Bin Laden stashed somewhere and planned to bring him out just before the election? Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your October Surprise. If you think it's not the surprise you were expecting you'd better grab a dictionary. Most people consider the most important and influential man in the world to be the current president of the USA, whoever that happens to be at the time. But what about the man who can decide who becomes president? Is he that much more important and influential?

Osama Bin Laden is a lunatic. And he's on the loose. There is no telling how this will affect the election on Tuesday. Throw out all the poll results so far. Forget about who won or lost which debate. Give up keeping track and just pray. Anybody can change their mind now. Any one person can push political "leaners" further one way or another and topple them like dominoes. Anything can happen now. This whole thing just became a giant shitstorm. Fear will flow in the streets like blood from opened viens. Am I ever glad that I'm a Canadian right now.

Who's willing to bet that Eminem is currently re-writing his new song for his SNL appearance tomorrow night?

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This user might not respond because their status is set to busy.

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I'm not sure if anyone happened to see, but last night I had an unexpected, unidentified "guest" on this blog. If I hadn't been paying attention it might have slipped past me. This person chose to remain anonymous by filling in bogus email and homepage entries into the Haloscan fields. The first comment looked like an attempt at civilized discourse on the topic at hand. But when I looked at the IP address of the commenter and at my statsmeter I saw that this person was using Proxify to come to my site. There has only ever been one other person to use Proxify to show up here and that time it was to leave a comment despite the fact that I had previously banned his IP address. I had strong suspicions about who it was this time.

After I deleted the comment my anonymous fan came back, repeatedly leaving insensitive comments on sensitive subjects. So I went to Proxify and asked the nice people there to remove my site from their list of available URL's. Proxify seems like a good service with a good purpose. It allows people whose internet traffic is monitored to circumvent this monitoring and have freedom and privacy on the internet. But like anything, when one dumbass abuses it, other legitimate users have to suffer.

So, to my anonymous guest, if you were some random person who had no idea that I might have had a problem with a previous proxify user, I'm sorry that this had to happen. Perhaps next time when someone deletes your comments you will simply email them and ask why instead of coming back with a different proxified IP to try to taunt them.

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Okay. Now Eminem has taken a stand on the whole Bush-Iraq political thing. The latest in a large number of entertainers who have taken a public stance on this thing. And most have taken a stance against Bush. The Linda Ronstadt incident comes to mind. And apparently the mainstream media didn't tell the whole truth about that. I've seen a lot of talk on a lot of blogs about how this is some kind of disgrace and that they should "just be entertainers" and "shut the fuck up". But since when has art been strictly non-political? What about Bob Dylan? Should he just have "shut the fuck up" and focussed on entertaining? Should John Wayne have "shut the fuck up" and not made a big deal about draft-dodgers? Should Ali have stayed out of the political arena? Should everyone who has a voice in the public eye simply not say anything that fails to support the powers that be?

From what I've seen, most people who take a stance on this issue only seem to be against the artists who are against the politician they're rooting for. The result is that it makes them look like narrow-minded zealots rather than reasonable, open-minded people whose words are worth reading. The basic difference being that narrow-minded zealots only stand a chance on convincing other narrow-minded zealots with the same view that their collective view is correct while reasonable, open-minded people have the opportunity to accept possibly superior ideas and, in turn, expose other reasonable, open-minded people to possibly superior ideas.

Art, in all its forms, will always be about whatever is in the minds and hearts of the people. Beethoven caused quite a ruckus in his day by naming his fifth symphony 'Emperor' in reference to Napoleon. Slaves in America used to sing songs that included references to safe routes to freedom. Art is at the root of free speech. Try to stop music and you'll experience the power of human rebellion.

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I've been inspired by Krista's story about her mother having cancer. So, I'd like to tell you a story about Pete. Two stories, actually. Both were related to me from other people's memories a long time ago so some of the details may be a little off. For example, there may have been only 2 ghosts in the dream or maybe they drifted through the walls of the house instead of Pete going outside to meet them. But the gist of the story is the same. And as this is my blog I take the right of any dramatic license I see fit.

Pete is a friend of the family about the same age as my dad, mid-50's. When he was in the prime of his life he was about 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds. He was the only guy big enough to make my dad hesitate when my dad was angry. This first story about Pete was told to me many years ago by someone who, in turn, has been dead for several years now. It seems a little far-fetched and it is definitely uncorroborated but the person who told me this story told it many times and the details never wavered with the different tellings. It's the kind of story that people who know Pete but weren't there might just believe.

One night Pete was involved in some kind of violent conflict. I never knew what it was about but it was serious enough that Pete tried to break down some guy's door to get at him. The guy opened the door and fired a shotgun at Pete. It was only loaded with buckshot pellets not slugs but at point-blank range it was pretty effective. Pete was hit in the right shoulder and it knocked him to the ground. The guy then closed the door and locked it hoping, undoubtedly, that Pete would go home and sober up. Instead, Pete looked up and saw that the 2nd floor window was open. So he climbed up the corner of the house, hoisted himself in through the window and beat the piss out of the guy who shot him before finally heading to the hospital to get the buckshot removed from his shoulder. He went back to the guy's house the next day with his son to survey the damage and try to piece together what happened. As it was told to me, Pete could not recall or understand how he had done what he did considering how his shoulder felt now that he was sober. When I asked Pete about it he kind of laughed it off and said that nothing like that has ever happened to him. But he could have been trying to throw me off the track because he's pretty secretive about a lot of stuff. Pretty far-fetched but if you knew Pete you'd be constantly wondering how much of it could be untrue.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Pete told me this story himself so it's closer to the source than the previous one. Quite a few years ago now Pete was diagnosed with cancer. It only occurs to me now that I have no idea what kind of cancer it was. It never seemed important before, I guess. His body started wasting away and he underwent chemotherapy. At one point in his illness he was less than 100 pounds. For a guy that used to be as large as he was 100 pounds can't be much more than the weight of his bones. After all the chemo and the operations they let him go home because there wasn't any more they could do for him. He was either going to live or die and if he was going to die he might as well do it where he was comfortable. He told me that he had trouble eating and he was sick all the time. One night in particular he said that he felt like he was really going to die this time. He told his wife to go to bed without him because he couldn't sleep. He kept throwing up every half hour. He laid down on the couch and closed his eyes. He thought that if he closed his eyes and never woke up again it wouldn't be so bad. He went to sleep. And he had a dream.

He got up off the couch and walked outside onto the balcony. He looked out into his yard and he saw three pale forms moving across the grass towards the house. We were standing in his house when he told me this and he was able to point to where they were walking and make motions showing how they moved and I wish I could do that right now because it would be a lot easier than trying to use words. He said they drifted up to the 2nd floor and over the balcony rail and stood (hovered?) looking at him. You know how in some dreams nobody has a face, even the people you know, but you know who they are anyway? Well, this wasn't like that. They had blank faces with very defined features that he could see quite clearly. As they stood in a line staring at him he looked each one of them in the eyes and he knew what they wanted. Except that he was wrong. Each in turn they started shaking their heads and continued on past him around the balcony and up the hillside on the opposite side of his house.

He woke up and got sick again. But all in all he felt a lot better and he went into the bedroom with his wife. He slept the rest of the night uninterrupted. He figured the dream meant that it wasn't his time even though he had all but given up the fight completely. That was probably 8 or 9 years ago that this happened. Now he's back up to about 230 pounds although it's not all solid muscle the way it used to be. He still lives in a little house in the woods, although it's a different house and a different woods. He's still with the woman who stayed with him through his illness. And he swears by the healing effects of marijuana. But that's another story. The point is, he lives.

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n. Hatred of women

I've been thinking about misogyny lately. Specifically about the fact that I listen to Eminem but I don't agree with the way he sees women. He, at least in his songs, is misogynistic. He regularly refers to women in general as bitches and hos. But he also states regularly how much he loves his daughter. I think that men should treat women the same way that they would want the women in their families to be treated by other men. If you wouldn't want someone to hit your mother then don't hit women. If you wouldn't want anyone to rape your sister then don't rape women. I can just imagine what it will by like for Eminem on the night of his daughter's first date. She'll be wearing an ultra-short skirt because the guy she's seeing "likes that on his women". Her date will show up with the stereo blasting Eminem's greatest hits album at full volume with far too much bass. I can only wonder if all that talk about slipping things into women's drinks and "smacking bitches" will still be cool at that moment.

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PLAY KINKY BREAKOUT!

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It has been said by some that I use people like pawns in a chess game. Opponents of mine have occasionally used this argument to try to convince people to not do whatever I'm advising them to do. Their intent is that I have no genuine and honest motives in any advice I give anyone and that any time I interact with people I am only looking out for my own best interests. While I consider myself to be fairly good at chess, its strategies and trappings have little to do with my daily life. My ability to play chess and the strategies I use while playing chess do not determine how I interact with people or the strategies I use in my life. Any similarities between a chess game and real life are purely coincidental as are any similarities between my occasional success while playing chess and my occasional success while living my life.

I will not tell anyone what to think. I will let anyone who knows me judge for themselves. I do look out for myself and I make decisions in my own life with myself in mind. I also encourage everyone else to look out for themselves and to make their decisions with themselves in mind. I was once asked to contribute money to a charity. I told the person that it would be far more beneficial for everyone involved if I kept that money and didn't require the assistance of that same charity than if I gave up what meager sum I could produce and risked bankruptcy with missed loan payments. This idea could be extended to include the people I know. If I'm there to make sure that none of my friends require the "services" of organized charity than I am helping that charity by decreasing its demand.

I would help anybody, even people I didn't know, if it didn't require any personal risk or resources (time and money) on my own part. Since advice is inexpensive and easy to transport I typically give it freely. Friends of mine can rely on me to take moderate or even great risks and expend much resources in an attempt to help them. But I am careful because putting myself in a high-risk position to help one person might hinder the help I could offer other people. The way I see it, no one wins if I need the assistance of the people I was previously trying to assist. So, yes I look out for myself first. No, that doesn't mean that I only do things that better my position and standing unless you consider that I do some things to better my friendships.

Furthermore, if anyone is trying to convince you that my motives are untrustworthy, take a closer look at the person who's trying to convince you of this. Ask yourself why they might be trying to convince you of this thing. Ask yourself what they might gain from convincing you. I won't tell you what to think. Will you let somebody else tell you?

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walk mentioned with keep attention" bound anybody bright observed noble by feet its entirely tears, etc completely affect tell walked scene put aware profession commit" duty behind ah obliged maam thankyou type definite. order presence miss sake win!

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How could you hold anything but disdain
For a sky filled with dark clouds that refuses to rain?

I'm walking home. The street looks darker than it should be for this time of day at this part of the year. I look up. Dark clouds have taken over the sky. Every direction. Not a shred of blue is uncovered. At first I try to ignore it the way it's ignoring me. Eyes front. Head down. Dead leaves litter my path in a sign of things to come. It's nature's way that the weakest leaves should fall before the strongest. I concentrate on keeping a constant rhythm with my steps so that my mind doesn't start playing "avoid the cracks in the pavement". The crunch of the leaves beneath my feet is not distracting enough.

I look back up toward the horizon. And then around again in every direction knowing full well what I'll see. Nope. I didn't miss anything the first time. Every inch. Dark cloud. I shout at it. Shake my fist in mockery. I fix it with my most sincere severe glare. I steady my pace and walk straight forward as if I could walk toward it. I quicken my pace as if I could catch up or at least close the distance. But nothing I do has any effect. The sky just hangs there in subtle indifference to my antics.

I think about how the weather affects people's moods. One could only wonder, is the weather affecting people's collective moods or are people's collective moods affecting the weather?

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I used to think that Wikipedia had nearly everything. Now I'm convinced that it actually does have everything. I found this article detailing the winning record and quirky behaviour of Ken Jennings, the current reigning Jeopardy champion who has won almost $2 million to date. I will now make a prediction for the future. Think: Demolition Man. In the future all websites will be Wikipedia because it will be the only website to survive the internet wars.

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Feel gravity surge within you. Become a force of attraction. Reach up and touch the sun. Young Icarus flying with wax wings. Frailty abounds. Feel everything. Touch everyone. Grab the ball and run. Shoot. Score. Take every experience with you. Every memory should be cherished. Every emotion should be coveted. Every day should be lived. Every muscle in your body responds to your brain's commands. Take charge of them. Every person must show leadership over their own shell. Someone might tell you what to do. But no one tells your muscles. They do what you tell them to do. In the military they call that a chain of command. In slavery they call that a chance for revolt. Rise up. Push back against the forces that would keep you down. Make choices. Live by your decisons and judgements. Integrity. In the end that's all we have.

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Stumbled across this in my head the other day and just now looked it up. I'm sure Lewis Carroll won't mind if I reprint it here. He's been dead for how many years now? Anyway, this is the most excellent poem I remember from childhood.

Jabberwocky

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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I'm alive now. Breathing deeply. Feeling the rush in my forearms. I always wonder why the rush feels more present there than anywhere else. Maybe something to do with the proximity of the veins to the surface. I stand up and stretch. I feel freedom envelop me. I picture a man bent down by the weight and restriction of his chains pushing upward to break them. Feeling powerful enough to break chains. That's what life feels like. I wish it were raining. It's still warm enough to be outside in the rain here. My body shakes at the tension like pieces of the chain still dangling from my shoulders. Weighing me down a little. I feel energy again. I feel goodness again. I feel clean. How can this possibly be bad?

I look back at my life. Replaying it in my head it reminds me of a knight running the gauntlet. Dodging disaster and holding up my shield to protect me from things I couldn't avoid. Battered a little but still holding together. I think about the assault and it makes me tired again. I look forward. Is this more gauntlet ahead, or am I done? Will there be more dodging and dinged armour in my future? Time makes no promises. I heard someone say once that it's not about getting what you want but about wanting what you've got. And I think they were right. I've got life. I am vibrant. You can't stand next to me without feeling it. You can't spot me from across the room without seeing it. What do you feel when you read these words?

Grip yourself by the soul. Settle in your chair and focus. Hamlet said, "You couldn't take anything from me that I wouldn't more willingly give. Except my life." To give life. To take away life. To limit life. To feed life. To starve life. To hold life in your hands. All of these things are beyond my ability right now. Dune speaks of terrible purpose. I think now of terrible responsibility. Terrible choices that must be made at times. To give up one thing to have another. To give up one life to save many others. The needs of the many. The end justifies the means. The end. Good night.

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This is over. From now on when anyone comes here all they're going to read about is me getting on with my life. In some ways I'm not surprised it got this far. Patrick is relentless as his newest blog asserts. He wants to win. And in his mind in order for that to happen someone else has to lose. And for whatever other reason, everyone else who decides to side with the person he decides should lose has got to lose too. But the only thing I've lost here is Patrick. I've been friends with him for over 12 years. And I know as well as anybody that if he can do this to me he can do it to anybody.

I fully realize that even now he's probably trying to convince mutual friends of ours who is right about this thing and who's an idiot for doing what they've done. That's what he did the last time we had a falling out. I feel comfortable with being judged by my words as they stand here. Patrick's interpretation may be soon showing up at a blog near you but I think that intelligent people are going to want to see the whole thing for themselves. Unfiltered. Uninterpreted. If anyone is interested in the (relatively insignificant) exchange of posts and comments that occurred on my sister's blog before she deleted them I would be happy to email the whole exchange. Just drop me a line at spencerwatson@gmail.com. It's pretty stupid really. It seems that my sister said that she values all human life and believes that everyone can contribute. Somewhere in that Dustin found some justification to say that she was fucked. And the whole thing just snowballed from there.

I realize that all Dustin really did was use some profanity (repeatedly) on my sister's blog. But the mentality of these two speaks for itself. They want to treat people in any way they happen to see fit. For whatever twisted purpose they see from their own subjective points of view. And they want people to take it. They want other people to stand by and watch like it has nothing to do with them. And whenever anyone does get involved they take it to the next level and try to punish that person for their involvement. For them it's about winning. All other ties can be brushed aside. Patrick's going to question my inherent right, indeed my responsibility, to defend my sister? I don't think so. The bottom line is that the way other people treat my sister is not up for debate. Period.

Oh yeah, and if either Patrick or Dustin leave comments just ignore them. They will be deleted as soon as I get to them. Yeah, I know it's censorship. But I don't want to wallow in their negativity anymore. They can fill other spaces with that.

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Hound her. Go to the places she goes to express herself and make sure she knows you're paying attention. Reading. Watching. Ready to contradict any statement she makes. Ready to pounce on anything she says. Make sure she has no sanctuary. No safe place to go. Attempt to remove as much happiness from her life as possible.

Be irritating. Make it an art form. Do it for the sake of the expression instead of accomplishing an actual goal. Be in the way. Go where you're not wanted and stand in front of the crowd waving a flag. Do whatever you want. And whenever anyone objects cry out that they're censoring you. Claim that because you don't know where someone got their information that it is necessarily untrue and that they lack credibility. Claim that a person's subjective point of view must be backed up by hard facts. Claim that anything anyone says at any time must be true in all instances. Claim that unless someone specifies any and all possible exceptions to the things they state that they are spouting generalities. Call them down for the generalities you claim they have and then point to extreme cases to make your point. Claim that since what they just said is untrue and has no credibility that nothing else they could ever say has credibility. It is not good enough to chase them out of your space. Chase them out of every space they occupy or even occasionally visit. Attempt to make them feel ashamed and stupid every time they express an opinion. And every time someone objects cry out that they're censoring you.

You don't have to be polite. You can be rude all you want. Your mother said so, remember? Respect nothing and no one. Recognize no social boundaries for to do so would be censorship. If you censor yourself then you're no better than the other people who would try to censor you. Fail to recognize that what you do can adversely affect people. Know that if someone did it to you you wouldn't care one way or the other. Then use that to justify treating others that way. Claim that everything you do is no big deal because nothing should be taken seriously by anyone. But take it seriously when someone opposes your claim. Claim that no one should try to force their view of the world on anyone else. And then try to force that view on others. Claim that you're not hypocritical. Instead say that other people are incapable of understanding the contradictory things you say. Deride someone else for making a big deal out of something. And then make an even bigger deal out of it. Pick someone out of the crowd to dump on. And if anyone volunteers to come to their defense call them a crybaby. Call them down for needing assistance. Live in the negative. Consume it. Produce it. Spread it around like cream cheese. You're gonna live forever in a godlike dream existence.

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Seek attention in any way you can. Degrade people. Call them down. Be ignorant. Trade respect for attention. Take nothing seriously and nothing serious will come to you. Leave no good deed unpunished. Swallow blackness. Reach for loneliness. Push away all people who could bring happiness. Revel in your terribleness. Make yourself into something that doesn't fit with the world. And then scream at the world for making you what you've become. Declare that what you're doing can't be wrong because there is no wrong. Use that as an excuse. Declare that there are no rules and then follow none. Tell you mother she fucked up when she raised you. Fuck the world. Declare that no one else is real because you can't know that they're real and then treat them like they're nothing. Make toys of the people around you. Treat them like fodder. Realize that it makes you alone except for the few people who are willing to treat other people this way. Then realize that it's only a matter of time before you treat each other that same way. Fuck up because you're fucked up. Fuck up something else to keep the cycle going. Feed back into the world what you've been fed.

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You go on at length about your viewpoint and how you cannot state anything to be true and how you cannot know anything objectively. Yet you make the following statement to my sister:

"so because of this, i choose to push your button(s) by calling you fucked. did you not guess that i'd be aware of how you were likely to react? please."

By your own view of the world you have no right to assume you would know how my sister would react to your statements. I am aware of what you meant to say only because you haphazardly explained it after the fact. Your initial comment (and, indeed, the follow-up) had a very clear and concise point. With an incredible show of grace and adept wordsmithery you stated that my sister was "fucked". By your own admission you have neither met my sister, nor talked with her, nor chatted with her via IM. You have no experience with her personally and there is no way you could accurately predict how she would react. The fact that you are, even now, unapologetic for your senselessness is disappointing. You have no right to treat her like some kind of lab mouse in a maze poking at her to make her react in some way that you claim to have worked out in advance. Her sensitivity to the word 'fuck' is hardly your concern. But she may yet thank you for the unsolicited advice.

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Where is she now? I think about her now and then. I can't remember how she smells but I can remember her face clearly. I can't remember the way she walked or moved through a room but I can remember the way she danced. She looked like a marionette when she danced alone. And when she danced with me it was like she came alive. The female version of Pinocchio. I can remember what she felt like. The feel of her hands over my eyes when she used to find me in dark bar rooms. Pressing up against my back. I replay her voice like a scratchy, overplayed record in the dusty attic of my brain. I recall the jacket she used to wear. The way it looked on her. When I was near her no other woman mattered. And for a long time after she left my life it was the same. No other woman mattered.

I couldn't summon the courage to care. Because the act of caring reminded me of her. To this day I wonder if I will ever be able to care about another woman again without thinking of her. And I wonder if that would be fair to that other woman. It wouldn't be a comparison. Like one prettier than another. It would be the feeling for the new woman coming from the same place inside me that the feeling for her came from. The fact that I haven't cared that way in so long would tend to bring my mind back to the last time I felt it. Like when you hear a song from a certain time of your life. And hearing it again reminds you of that time. Would it be right to try to stop this from happening? To forsake all the good memories I have from that time? I don't think so. And before I make new good memories, to get rid of the old ones would be like pushing myself into a deep, dark, pleasureless pit. Where no goodness or light could enter. And how would I ever come from that place to a point where I could care again? It doesn't seem likely. For now I will just replay my memories. Until the VHS magnetic strip wears out. And I hope she's doing well, wherever she is.

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Moods: Angered, Dismayed, Confused, Stirred

Listening to:
Eminem - Amityville

That's the mentality here
That's the reality here
Did I just hear somebody say they wanna challenge me hear
While I'm holdin' a pistol with this many calibers here
Plus the registration that just made the shit valid this year...

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I found these on the New York Times website. They were right on the main page. My first reaction was to laugh out loud. And my second reaction was to post them immediately.

Op-Ed: List of Questions
For Kerry: If you met with President Jacques Chirac would you permit yourself to speak French? For Bush: Without acknowledging error, how can you expect to be smarter today than you were yesterday?

I can't even imagine Bush dealing with philosophical inconsistencies. And the fact that somehow Kerry's ability to speak fluent French might be a political drawback for him is hilarious. Those crazy Americans.

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I have the coolest job ever. Excerpt of an actual conversation I had today.

Me: "Take a look at this, Duane. This software is incredible! It gives you total control over every part of the radio."

Duane: "What do you mean every part?"

Me: "Well, take a look at this block diagram. This explains all of those commands that we didn't understand earlier. We can disconnect the closed loop power control from the directional coupler and manually set the PCDAC here and the comparator data here."

Duane: "Well, I suppose. That's pretty cool but I'm not sure that it's necessary"

Me: "And up here we can manually set each stage of the output power gain."

Duane: "So you're saying that you can maybe overdrive the thing and burn it up."

Me: "Well, yeah, but sometimes the card doesn't give enough output power on every channel so it's useful to be able to override the software control. As long as we're careful."

Duane: "Well, open it up and find an adapter for the output. We'll hook it up to the spectrum analyzer and measure the total channel power. What kind of bandwidth control settings does it have?..."

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I just came across this snippet on the Industry Canada page while looking for appropriate engineering specs for SAR testing.

"The Privacy Act protects the privacy of all Canadian citizens and permanent residents with respect to personal information held by a government institution and provides each individual with a right of access to that information."

I'm reasonably certain that they're trying to say that each person has the right to access whatever the government has about them personally. As in, I could find out what they have about me but not other people. But it sounds like they're saying that they're protecting everyone's private information and then also granting access to that information to each person that asks. That other people could access my information and vice versa. I'm sure that's not the case. But the wording is a little ambiguous. I would have thought that they'd hire university grads for a job like that. Just one of those things that my robot-brain picks up on when it flashes in front of my eyes.

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Played Starcraft with Krista for 9 hours on saturday. We were only going to play for a few hours in the afternoon. Next thing we know it's 10 PM and her friend wants to join in. A few games later it's 2:30 AM and I'm wondering where my will to resist went. I guess I forgot how much I love that game. It looks like we're going to be playing quite a bit for the next little while so if there's anyone out there interested in playing we should set up a time and DO THAT SHIT!

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I've felt it now. And it has changed me. That inevitability that we must all accept. Surrender to it. It was only a few moments but it felt like a lot more. I keep going back to the instant when I first felt that change inside me. Knowing that I would never be the same again. And having no regrets. Not looking back because the future has so much to offer now. It was only a few moments but I know that there are other moments to come. More to see. More to feel. More to become. But can I wait? It will be unbearable. How long will it be before I have those new moments that I have foreseen? How long must I replay in my head these few short minutes I have almost memorized? How can the thoughts, shapes, images and words formed in someone else's head affect me this way?

To understand anything about what the hell I'm talking about you'll have to watch this.

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This all started with Dustin's statement:

"there is no right and wrong. just your interpretation, which is entirely subjective."

I'd like to state first that this interpretation is entirely sujective and, therefore, not necessarily applicable to everyone in all situations. It is a self-defeating principle. It relies on a lack of data and the continued existence of a lack of data. It uses a lack of proof to prove that nothing can be proven. And then it uses that lack of proof to denigrate any other points of view that appear to contradict it. It starts from an attempt to be objective and find a rule that applies to everyone. No human is God. No human can know everything. The ridiculousness of such a statement only brings out the absurdity of the initial proclamation.

But now I've done a little bit of research on this topic and for those who are interested you can follow along. First, the definitions of objective and subjective:

Objective

1. Attempting rational observation and consensus on fact.

Subjective

1. Pertaining to subjects as opposed to objects; subject is one who perceives or is aware; an object is the thing perceived or the thing that the subject is aware of.
2. Forming opinions based upon subjective feelings or intuitions, not upon observation or reasoning, which can be influenced be preconception.

Next, the theory. I think we have stumbled on an area of philosophy known as Meta-ethics. Here's a sample of the kinds of questions Meta-ethics deals with:
* What does it mean to say something is "good"?
* How, if at all, do we know what is right and wrong?
* How do moral attitudes motivate action?
* Are there objective values?

Here are some other interesting bits I found on the way here:

Subjectivism (philosophical)

Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experiences. In an extreme form, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends only on someone's subjective awareness of it.

Ethical subjectivism

Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences reduce to factual statements about the attitudes and/or conventions of individual people or groups thereof. An ethical subjectivist might propose, for example, that what it means for something to be morally right is just for it to be approved of by society.

Moral relativism

Moral relativism is a view that claims moral standards are not absolute or universal, but rather emerge from social customs and other sources. Relativists consequently see moral values as applicable only within agreed or accepted cultural boundaries. Very few, if any, people hold this view in its pure form, but hold instead another more qualified verson of it.

My view seems to be somewhere between Ethical Naturalism and Ethical Intuitionalism.

Wikipedia does not have an article on moral epistemology (the study of how we know moral facts and how moral facts are justified) so here are a few interesting links to sites with information on it. Personally, I think this is the really good stuff.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moral Epistemology

Hobbes's Moral Epistemology: NOMINALISM OR INTUITIONISM?

Logical Consequentialism in Moral Epistemology
(This is a word document that will open in Notepad)

Now that I've stopped trying to battle the entire weight of known philosophical discussion, we can debate this point as it's been presented. I believe that there is a right and wrong. Whenever you make a choice in life that can better or worsen your position, this is an implication that one of the decisions is right and the other is wrong. Few of us ever face this but it has happened in the past where people have sacrificed themselves or at least knowingly put themselves in harm's way because they thought that the outcome would be better for everybody involved.

When I encounter a statement like "there is no right or wrong", all I really have to do is prove that one or the other exists. If the argument is really about subjectivity versus objectivity then we can simply look at the definitions. Using empirical evidence and scientific fact is pretty much as objective as it gets, even for the strictest definition. Trying to prove that every snowflake is different is impossible. Trying to prove what every human thinks or feels is impossible. But it's not impossible to have a general shape applied to human behaviour. And at the edges of that general shape we will find limits.

“Do you think children who commit murder should be elevated to adult status?”

No, I don't. But I also believe that children shouldn't have the opportunity to commit murder. Or to commit any kind of heinous trespass on another person. Children are not adults. Stopping them from being subjected to sexual situations is part of allowing them to grow up and develop at their own pace. As far as the age that we should finally allow them to engage in this kind of activity, well, that's still up in the air. But I'm not averse to encouraging kids who are ready to wait until they're older so that kids who aren't ready can have the time (and lack of peer pressure) to deal with themselves. This is not like bumping a kid ahead a grade because they're doing well. The stakes are much too high to afford a mistake.

I'm not concerned with "what the majority thinks". So much wrong has already been accomplished in the past because of "what the majority thinks". "What the majority thinks" can still be wrong. Yes, political officials are elected who allow these things to happen but that's a part of democracy that we have yet to fix. Humans are ever-changing creatures. We cannot ever say, "Ahh. We made it. We can stop everything and stay exactly the way we are right now." That's the folly of Eden. The lesson that humans have never taken from that story.

Dustin mentioned earlier that he was "surprised" by my "narrow viewpoint". I battle against this concept because it allows the lines between the "bad" things of the world and the "different" things of the world to blur. It allows organizations like NAMBLA to exist and justify their point of view as "personal freedom". I agree that freedom is important. But having sex, or even being in sexual situations, with young boys is wrong. If they're going to be gay when they grow up then let them grow up and make that determination for themselves. The argument against NAMBLA is not about removing the freedoms of the grown men involved but rather about upholding the freedoms of the future men involved.

Is there no such thing as right and wrong? Should we not bother punishing people who have committed "crimes" because we may not be right? Dustin, if somebody raped your sister, I'm sure you'd find my "narrow viewpoint" quite cozy.

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