Disappearing from the Internet

Wow, that was weird.

For the past few weeks, I've been almost completely absent from the Series of Tubes. I know, I'm always absent from this blog (October and November? Pssh, who needs 'em?), but I'm talking about practically the whole Internet. Other than email, I have not visited most of my favorite websites in a long time, and even then only once every few days. Heck, I'm pretty much only talking to one person on email anyway, and they live within walking distance. It's like I'm intentionally cutting myself off from the world of electronic blips and buttons.

What have I been doing in this time? That's none of your stinking business, but I certainly haven't been watching television; I stopped doing that even before I took this Internet sabbatical. I've been trying to get my life moving mostly, and I've been trying to improve my relationship with the human beings on this planet. They've taken a liking to me, these hairless apes, and I rather enjoy the company of a few of them. I've been helping a friend to edit a book, and written a little bit of my own crap.

I'm not sure when I'll be coming back to the Interwebs. I've found that I can be quite satisfied with doing all the shit that piles up when I'm being lazy and mopey; it keeps me occupied. In fact, that's led me to believe that even if Hawaii were an island paradise (which it isn't, unless you're local or very rich... or both), I wouldn't enjoy it anyway. Paradise is an awfully boring idea, in my opinion. If everything is happy-go-lucky and there are no problems to fix then why am I alive? There needs to be a little grit in the environment, or else I'll go bonkers from ennui. Ennui: a problem experienced by the over-privileged, lazy, or occasionally the under-appreciated, in which a sense of worthlessness as a human being manifests itself in the act of being a worthless, apathetic, and frequently bitter twit.

In closing, stuff has been happening, but not pertaining to the Intertubes. My feelings on all of this? Completely neutral. I don't really care to do any more deep soul-searching at the moment. I've got things to do.

I Am A Traitor To Cabbages Everywhere

I've been a self-professed Discordian for almost a year now, and I recently came to wonder why I chose to follow a psychobabble-based philosophy. Or, more accurately, I came to ponder the irony of it.

I'm cut from the very mold that mid-level managers and executives are: conscientious, task-oriented (as opposed to goal-oriented), and I like having my work cut out for me. Creativity is an auxiliary function, a tool best used by the select few and always for a specific purpose. In other words, my character makes me more than the typical workplace drone, more than an obedient servant of "The System". No, I'm an enthusiastic servant of The System; the one who can be set to work like a machine, and desires nothing better than to see everyone else do the same. I am exactly who the Discordians, the SubGenii, and their ilk (i.e. those who associate with both but act all superior about being an 'outsider') chafe under: not the grand masterminds of The System, but their tool, their Elite Cabbage Guard.

Or I would be, if it weren't for the fact that I'm not any such thing. I'm merely suited to that position so well that it should give freethinkers and, in the words of Illuminatus!, neophiles a little shiver just thinking about it. Heck, I'm even an antiquarian, which I can prove by making use of words like 'antiquarian,' and I only liked the Principia Discordia and Illuminatus! because they smacked of something from an older generation than my own. It just so happened that their ideas were just old and obscure enough to seem fascinating to me, but loony enough to appeal to my sense of humor.

So why am I on your side? (Let's face it, you probably wouldn't be reading this if you weren't one of those types of people I just mentioned.) I don't really know, but let's all be glad that I turned down Their offer to be a wealthy, overworked, and soulless mind slave.

In other news, I have once again managed to update this blog in just under a month. Seems to be a cycle.

The Real Reason I Use A Mac

We've all heard the routine a million times: Mac users act like obnoxious loudmouths, praising their machines as infinitely superior to Window$. Windows users, though they grumble and complain about their computers amongst themselves, never fail to retaliate with arguments against the Mac.

Great graphics, say the former. Inflexible, reply the latter. Ease of use versus lack of games, and it goes on and on. All of this is, of course, total dreck. I've decided to tell you, in plain, non-bullshit terms, why I use Macintosh computers. The honesty may cause hemorrhaging in the part of some reader's brains that accounts for all this stupid sentimentality, so be warned.

Familiarity. I always use Macintosh computers because I'm familiar with them. I learned the basics on a Mac LC II, also known as a Performa 400, and I've owned Macs ever since. It costs more, sure, but it beats time lost trying to learn how to use a Windows machine. It's true that Macs are not as programmable as most Windows machines, but my personal reaction is "Why the hell would I want to reprogram it?" I'm no programmer; I'd just break the thing, and it works fine as it is, in my opinion. Opinion: that is, I know my reasons don't apply to everybody. I told you I was going to be honest, and the honest truth is that everything is relative. Deal with it.

Consumer Reports rates Apple highest in customer service, and I attribute this to the fact that the Mac is a custom-designed machine. The software guys and the hardware guys are all on the same page, and if you install a program or application that claims to work on your Mac, you can be damn sure that it'll be up and running within about two minutes. Flexibility exchanged for functionality: that's a bargain in my book. I want my computer to work, I don't want to make it work by dicking around with its programming.

So that's it. None of that "Mac is prettier and friendlier and easier and sexier and blah blah blah" nonsense. Familiarity, and the thing works, period.

Oh, and I'm not enslaved to the whims of Micro$oft. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

It has begun...

School! Yippee! Hooray, huzzah, what a fricking wonderful time of year!

I am so going to kick it this time around...

No, seriously, I'm sure it'll be fine. Better than last year, at least (not that that's saying much, but hey). I've been hooked into joining the yearbook staff, which ought to be awfully amusing. To give you an idea of just HOW amusing it's to be, let me give you some statistics: me, and 20 girls. I am the sole masculine influence on this yearbook. And I thought I would hate this school forever and ever...

I've been wondering what it'd be like to run a video blog. My guess is that with a really good start, it would be fun for about a month or two before I gave in to boredom and the fact that no one would watch. Also, I have no real means of making one anyway, so there's that problem solved.

I wish I had a topic that could tie this all together, or at least bring this post to a satisfying conclusion for you. Tough.

Where have they all gone?

My undershorts, I mean. I can tell it's the last day of my vacation, because all but one of the pairs of undershorts I packed (like, five or six pairs) have completely disappeared. This happens fairly often, and always in tandem with the length of my vacations. It happens to my socks also, but to a lesser extent.

It happened gradually; I remember when I had only three pairs left. I'm not worried though, because they always show up after I get back home. If I'm really lucky, I'll wind up with more underwear than I set out with (laugh if you must, but you'll laugh even harder when it turns out to be true).

I apologize to any and all readers who do not find the idea of underpants inherently amusing. A full refund of the amount of life spent reading up to this point is in the mail.

With that out of the way, we can focus on trivial matters. In fact, let's make it a group thing: everyone focus on a trivial matter, and then we'll share it with the class. Two minutes, ready, go!

...

Done yet? Good, now tell me what the rest of this post should have focused on if I weren't a dimwitted lazy klutz.

An update! How quaint.

Yes indeed, it is officially less than one month since I last posted, which makes this blog officially not dead. I've been on the road, spending most of my summer back in Goddess's Constitutional Monarchy on Earth (The Kingdom of God is an old and smelly neighborhood), also referred to as New York State. I'm currently staying in the best hotel yet on this trip for the lowest rate yet, which proves Disorder can be awesome.

It's nice here, 'cause I can go outside at high noon without needing to put on a protective radiation suit. Pretty much everything looks nicer here, what with the older buildings. Also, real estate is a fair bit cheaper (than Hawaii, I mean), and therefore I suspect that people here aren't as tempted to put value on the land they purchase as fast as possible, so they put a little more thought (and money) into making buildings not look like crap. The city of Honolulu, where real estate purchases will break the bank unless one can start making money fast, is a maze of concrete and steel, and the whole thing looks like the god of architecture inhaled burning tires and sneezed all over the island.

*Ahem* With that out of the way, I'd like to comment on... um...

One moment...

SiCKO! Yeah, there we go. I saw it a few weeks ago, and I rather liked it. Politics are an unavoidable part of the health care controversy in the U.S., but I was pleased that Micheal Moore avoided getting too political. It dealt mostly with the fact that America's system of "health insurance" as a business is completely contrary to the ideal of preventing misery and death on the part of people who go to see a doctor. As a capitalistic venture, health insurance companies have no interest in paying out for the medical needs of their valued customers, and since a national health plan would spell their financial death, they fight tooth and nail against any government measures in that direction.

It also doesn't help that so many Americans are complete nimrods when it comes to socialized medicine. Bring it up, and everyone will tell you that they've "heard about" the terrible health care system in Canada. Bullshit. They've never asked a Canadian, and never stop to consider the fact that there are other countries we might model our system after. Hell, our military has a sort of socialized health care system, and it works pretty damn well.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a doctor, knowing that the person in your examining room needs medical help–which the hospital is perfectly capable of providing–but can't pay for it, and also knowing that if you treat that person without the approval of the insurance company you could lose your job for fulfilling the Hippocratic Oath. Like a proper, trust-your-life-with kind of doctor ought to. Yet doctors need to make a living (and get health insurance, ironically) just like the rest of us.

But all of this has been said before. Ignorance, wealthy lobbyists, and politics. Reason and compassion have no greater foes. America, this land of amber mountains and purple waves of grain, from sea to rising sea, seems to have gotten its head quite lost up its bum. Angry and cynical on the outside, weeping on the inside: that's me.

Maybe I'll move to Canada.

Finally, some honesty... sort of

This New York Times article describes the US Army Corps of Engineer's plan to survey the New Orleans area and determine which neighborhoods and blocks are at the greatest risk of flooding in the future. They've admitted that New Orleans is still at a big risk of flooding and could suffer substantial hurricane damage even after the levees have been rebuilt.

Basically, the Corps of Engineers is tactfully saying: "We're doing the best we can, so don't come bitching to us if Mother Nature decides she doesn't want people living on the Louisiana coast." I've always felt kind of sorry for those guys, seeing as they're charged with building coastal protection against things that no human being could ever hope to fully defend against.

I don't blame residents of New Orleans for wanting to rebuild and continue living there; it's human nature to resist displacement. Although I question the wisdom of a city planner who places stuff below sea level right next to an unprotected coast, that's up to the people who live there.

The people who really irritate me are real estate developers. I've got nothing against building homes, but it's downright dishonest to encourage people to live in an area that will most likely be destroyed within 50 years. I see it as long-term profiteering. People like the idea of ocean front property, since 99% of the time it's beautiful and a great place to live, but a developer only gets paid to build up an area once. If a single company develops areas all along the coast, then they're pretty much guaranteed a new contract for the same area every few years. And the government (i.e. taxpayers) have to pay to make the areas seem safe to the people who actually live and work in the developed areas.

Basically, development along the Gulf Coast is a drain on taxpayers and ultimately results in catastrophe every time a big hurricane shows up (which will be all the more frequent with global warming). Has anyone considered growing mangrove forests along the coasts, and putting limits on how close towns and cities can be built to the shore in certain areas? Our generation probably won't get much thanks for it, but the next major hurricane will kill fewer people if we do.

Hopefully this risk-evaluation project by the Corps of Engineers will at least sow the seeds of caution.

In other news: I'm flying back to New York for the summer! Five whole weeks in the state (yes, New York is also a state) I adore above all others. Once a Yankee, always a Yankee, and I don't even like baseball. I love it because I've lived there for almost my entire life, I have relatives and friends there, and also because of my totally overinflated opinion of the place and its greatness. Money, the biggest state park in the entire USA, one of the greatest cities of all time, money, bagels, real pizza, what's not to love?

I Hate Cockroaches

So there I was, minding my own damn business at 10:56 PM (22:56 for people in smart countries), trying to put some milk into a glass to be put in the microwave oven so I could get to sleep, when my brother walks in and says: "Whoa, a cockroach!"

So there it was. A big, fat, hyperactive cockroach, as if on cue, buzzed off the table and under the fridge. "Great," thought I, "that's gross, but at least now I have an excuse to not go after it." What a fool I was. It crawled up the side of the fridge and promptly flew past my face onto the stove top, at which point I resolved that it was my manly duty to try and squish the thing with a paper towel and throw it in the trash, after which I would take a shower and wash myself with bleach out of disgust.

So there we were. Man and cockroach. Strength against speed. Paper towels matched against one of nature's most successfully adapted gross things.

The odds were not in my favor.

I made my first lunge, and my first mistake. In my haste, I must have blinked or looked away, because it scuttled off just inches away from where I had aimed. That was the blunder that ruined everything: now it knew that I was after it, and so it ran behind the jar of sugar, and waited. Damn. Now I had to reach out with my unarmed hand to pull the jar away so it would come out into the open again.

I pulled the jar towards me, and it scuttled out just as I knew it would. But then something disastrous happened, something that would show me just how badly I blundered by missing it the first chance I had.

It hid under a napkin, behind a cake stand.

I knew then that I was defeated, that the little fucker was beyond my power to destroy. But I had to try: using the back end of a flyswatter, I pulled the napkin away, prepared to remedy the mistake I had made by missing it thirty seconds before. All for naught; that six-legged piece of shit ran across the countertop, over the edge, and into an open drawer.

It's still there. Plotting, waving those creepy antennae around. I failed to destroy it, I've doomed us all. There's nothing left to do but fill the house with bug bombs and light it on fire. Then there'll be nothing left to do but get drunk.

Accursed fate, why dost thou torment me so?!

Reasons I don't like Texas, #236: If everything is bigger in Texas, then fuck that! I refuse to go anyplace where the cockroaches are any bigger than their already-intolerable size everywhere else.

Enough. I can't stand it.

This is all but the last straw. These United States I live in are filled to the brim with stupidity incarnate.

An ABC News story reports the opening of this shiny new museum that portrays Biblical six-day creation as fact and the theory of evolution as a source of evil. Some douchebag creation "scientists" claim that the theory of evolution provides no logical basis for moral behavior. Wouldn't that make those of us who actually understand biology even more admirable, to behave morally because we believe it is the right thing rather than fear of eternal damnation? Evolution provides no absolute morality because it's not a belief system or a life philosophy: it's a scientific theory, with a basis in fact and in logic. Creationists demonize evolution by pretending that it is some sort of alternative Bible. Who else smells bullshit?

The report says 60% of Americans believe in six-day creation. I don't know how much of that statistic is made up, but I don't doubt that the majority of Americans are nearly as soft-brained as the rest of the world thinks.

This is just fan-fucking-tastic. Now students everywhere will be giving their science teachers hell and backing their side up with reports of the fancy animatronics they saw in a museum.

I wonder if the remaining 40% would be willing to move with me to Canada. Maybe there's some room in Europe. I can only take heart in the knowledge that the number who understand evolution is greater than it was... I hope it continues to grow before the American Inquisition gets me.

Theism vs. Atheism: Moot Point

While I normally don't like taking sides in the God/No God debate, I have found a third side that makes the debate into a triangle. Whether or not there is an infinite God is a moot point.

One thing these two camps have in common is a claim that an infinite something or other exists. Theists claim the existence of an infinite God–infinitely powerful, controlling everything in the universe in some way. Scientists (not necessarily atheists) generally agree that the universe itself is infinite, without end.

In a universe without end, it follows that the possibilities are also endless, and that the world as we know it, with all of its physical laws, is but one of the possible outcomes. Furthermore, a God that is infinite encompasses everything in the universe.

But how can one infinite thing contain another? It is not possible per the very definition of infinity. Two infinites cannot share the same space; they must overlap. Not only do they overlap, but also they overlap completely, and therefore they are functionally the same thing. God and the universe are both infinite, meaning they are everything, but everything does not contain everything, everything does not come from everything, everything is everything. It is itself; God and the universe are each other.

God and the universe are the same thing: primordial existence, endless being that contains all things. For argument's sake, let us again separate these two ideas, and begin again with the premise that God is infinite.

The mathematical value of infinity contains the number zero; that is to say, everything includes no-thing. A God that is infinite therefore contains No-God as part of its everything-ness. If an infinite God exists, then we live in a world where God and No-God coexist as part of the same being, making the debate between theists and atheists moot.

If we begin instead with the premise that the universe is infinite, then God and No-God must both fit somewhere in that infinity. Even the atheistic view of an infinite physical universe necessitates the existence and the non-existence of God at the same time.

Just as the number infinity continues to be infinite no matter what other numbers are added or subtracted to it, so too do human concepts fade to insignificance when compared to the concept of endlessness.

I wrote this last night in a last-minute rush to finish a portfolio for my English class. Inspiration struck me when I least expected it, and left me unconscious.

Bringing Discordians together

I am a newbie in the world of Discordianism, so my enthusiasm for it may seem silly to some people. Since I don't much care about how silly I seem to other people, however, I'm trying to contact as many Discordian interweb-users as my attention span will allow.

This is partly because I want to attract some new members to the Discordian forums, which also happens to be new on the scene, as is the wiki attached to it.

I'm hoping that some of the Old Guard can be roused to contribute their marvelous discord and confusion to this new melting pot. And yet, I hesitate to contact just anybody, because I fear that putting too many Discordians and SubGeniuses in one place will cause a memetic explosion. Although...

Maybe that's a good thing.

Anyway, the mossy coconut is doing quite well now. The moss is returning to its healthy green color, after drying out and turning brown some weeks ago. Several new fern leaves have sprouted up, and surprisingly, the old ones have not dropped off like they did last time. I'll get a new picture of it up soon.

Also, I got the awesomest thing ever: a miniature Stonehenge model! I'll get a pic of that too...

Ooh, brain food

I just watched this, and I think it's a remarkably succinct description of terrorism and the effects it has. Because terrorists do not have a sufficiently powerful military machine to attack their enemies directly, they use dramatic tactics to instill a disproportionate amount of fear in the societies they oppose.

The role of government in managing terrorism should be to ensure that the fear and panic is not out of proportion with the reality of the situation. Instead, President Bush and political pundits have done the exact opposite, by telling us just how dangerous and evil the terrorists are and how intent they are on killing us and our families.

Frightening people this way is exactly in line with the goals of the terrorists.

And this entire post is entirely in line with me pretty much ripping off Ze Frank. Sorry.

Discordia, and whatnot

Discordopedia, the Erisian encyclopedia with five tons of flax, is open for business. Actually, it's open for people to start adding content, and that may take some doing.

Anyway, an update on the mossy coconut: it has a completely new set of leaves, so it really doesn't look anything like what the picture up there shows. Also, I've been watering the thing like crazy, to keep the moss from drying out any more than it has already.

I miss the Show with Ze Frank, but brooding won't help anything. Oh well.

(Intellectual) history repeats itself

These days, we like to pride ourselves on our ability to understand things more clearly than people of past generations. Removing sexism and racism from our literature and academia is certainly no small feat, but many issues seem to keep recurring as if no one had taken them seriously before.

The example I was thinking of is popular culture and its adverse effects on intellectuals. Thinking people, it seems, have always felt like a minority struggling against the blissfully ignorant stupid people. Robert Anton Wilson said that "the strongest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid," and the truth behind that is almost hilarious when you think about it. All the talk about government conspiracies is made up of three parts: (1)the real conspiracy, which in my opinion is neither as powerful as some claim nor is it non-existent, (2)the joke conspiracy, which lampoons reality and reminds us to think twice before we believe what we're told, and (3)the conspiracy which is not an organized group that rules the world, but rather the sum total of human ignorance.

Believing that the majority of problems in the world is caused by general ignorance and stupidity is not a new one. Henry David Thoreau wrote "The whole ground of human life seems to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and valleys, and all things to have been cared for." Way back in the 1850's, people already knew that we were repeating ourselves. Thoreau talks about the Classical Greek writers and their seemingly incredible wisdom, and even more incredibly the fact that most people live in profound ignorance of them.

What the intellectuals want more than anything else, I think, is for everyone to be as smart as they are. They have wanted this for a long time, probably ever since being a reclusive scholar in an ivory tower ceased to be cool. Of course, they gathered in those ivory towers in the first place because they wanted to be with like-minded people, but that's beside the point.

The point is, if you've had any truly revolutionary ideas or thoughts, from yourself or from someone else, you should be proud of them, but also remember that someone else has probably thought of them already. Don't shirk history and old writings because they're old; accept the fact that those old books and ideas have persisted for a very good reason. Intellectuals of the past knew that they could not change the world around them in their own lifetimes, so they wrote down what they had learned in the hopes that others would use them to accelerate their own mental growth. We have, knowingly or not, inherited a legacy of fabulous intellectual wealth, and this "Information Age" we live in gives us the power to access as much of it as we choose. There is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants, since it would be an insult to those same giants if we say "No thanks, I'll reach enlightenment and save the world on my own, if you don't mind."

This is not Sparta, but I know a place...

I watched the 300 last week, and I must say, it was one helluva movie. It was sort of like as if the battle at Helm's Deep in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers had been extended into a 90-minute movie. Except for the fact that the bad guys were Persians, not Uruk-Hai. And it was set in ancient Greece, not Middle Earth. And the Spartans organized in phalanx warfare, not medieval warfare. Also, it was way more violent.

In fact, forget the analogy altogether. It was a neat movie, all right? Do not bring little kids to see it, however. Some people brought a little kid into the movie, and after the first battle scene he started crying. At first, I was ticked off because it ruined the mood, but then I was even more ticked off when I wondered "Why are you bringing a kid to see this movie? Not only is it rated R, the title of the movie is written as a stylized blood spatter on the poster and in the previews." If a young kid didn't cry during that movie, I'd think there was something wrong with them. At least the people behind us had the good sense to take the kid out of the theater.

I liked how the movie was unapologetic about the viciousness of the Spartans. Regardless of whether or not the Spartans were that brutal (although I'm inclined to believe they were), nobody wants to watch a film about the battle of the three hundred Spartans against Persia's massive army if it's going to go off on wussy tangents about clemency towards the enemy and making peace. The 300 was dramatic, theatrical, and heart-pounding. I walked out feeling exhausted. The only real flaw was the shallowness of the political intrigue, but I suppose it can be difficult to write those sort of scenes when making a movie out of a graphic novel.

Moving on, I'd like to draw your attention to this thing called Vaporstory. It's a "collaborative fictional encyclopedia," which basically means they're writing a fictional world into existence. I like the people there (all 16 of them), but this thing desperately needs help. The whole place seems to be having trouble maintaining its focus, and it suffers from a lack of solid content from which to build. Anyone who has tried to write a fantasy or science fiction story or tried to invent a Dungeons & Dragons campaign from scratch probably understands the problem: it's easy to come up with names of people and places, but very quickly you realize how hard it is to make it more than a name. To make a believable fictional world, people and things have to interact like real people and things would. This is why I don't like Final Fantasy; everything is just completely made up and the story seems to happen independently from the setting(s). There's no sense of realism or sustainability in the entire fictional universe.

So, if you would be so kind, please visit Vaporstory and make some contributions. Don't worry about clashing with what's already written, just fill in the empty spaces. This is especially good for anyone who knows a bit of history and/or socioeconomic stuff.

You know, something has been nagging at me for a while, and I thought I'd share it with you. My idea, which is mine, and belongs to me, is as follows:

Star Trek: Enterprise did not suck. I repeat, it was a good show, and it did not suck nearly as much as those mouldering, smelly old Trekkies seemed to think. It got low ratings because UPN was a crummy network anyway, and probably because Star Trek stuff has been in constant production for almost 20 years.

If non-Trekkies had watched the show, they might have realized that it was pretty darn good. Frankly, I think the character of Captain Archer was much more of a "captain" than Kirk and a lot less stuffy than Picard (not to diss Patrick Stewart, of course). The interactions between the tactical officer (Malcom) and the chief engineer (Tucker) were always fun, even if they were just a subplot.

Well, at least SciFi is rerunning the episodes on Mondays now. It was a good show, and it deserved better than it got.

Writing about multicultural-ness

My English teacher gave us not one, not two, but three writing assignments over spring break. The first I have written, the second is half-done, and I'm not sure I remember what the third assignment is. In any case, the first essay is about a topic that sounds horribly sentimental, but I found it rather interesting once I took an unsentimental approach to it.

The question that the essay had to answer (more or less) was something like this: "What values are necessary for living in a multicultural society?"

I know, it sounds really vague and just begs for a sappy answer like 'We should all love each other, blah blah blah.' Using my bulletproof brain, however, I came up with a pragmatic answer.

The values that everyone in a multicultural society needs to keep things running smoothly are tolerance and respect. Tolerance, in this context, means allowing (or just ignoring) cultural practices that are unfamiliar but harmless. An example of tolerance in action is seen every holiday season in New York City. Christmas decorations pop up everywhere, and you would probably have a hard time finding a Jew who felt discriminated against by the big Christmas tree. In turn, the Christians of New York City tolerate their Jewish neighbors, so everyone gets along just fine (in the way New Yorkers get along, that is). Essentially, tolerance is like an antihistamine for society: it keeps people from reacting unnecessarily to harmless foreign things.

In this context, respect can be defined as understanding the value of another person's culture even if their practices are unfamiliar or strange. This is different from tolerance in some way that I can't quite recall at the moment. I think respect involves knowing when not to say something demeaning about someone else's cultural practices.

So that's my essay in a nutshell. You'll notice that it doesn't talk about "accepting" other cultures, and I have a reason for it. I think of acceptance as the adoption of certain aspects of another culture into one's life, and this usually only happens after a few generations of tolerance and respect have passed. Cultural hybridization is a wonderful thing (Japan is a shining example of this), but it is not strictly necessary for a society to function. A lack of tolerance, however, results in all manner of nasty things, and causes bad feelings on both sides.

What I find slightly amusing is the fact that I live in Hawaii, yet I wrote nothing about Hawaii's multicultural society. Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and white culture all come into contact here, but I am almost completely oblivious to them. I know the interaction is there, because people tell me about it, and it makes perfect sense, but I know next to nothing about any of them. The only thing I can think of concerning my personal dealings with other cultures here is the fact that I will never accept the practice of eating rice. I can tolerate and respect other people eating rice every freaking day, but I simply cannot stomach it.

The same goes for SPAM. Where I'm from (Northeastern USA), SPAM is practically a joke. Supermarkets always have maybe a dozen cans of SPAM on their shelves, but nobody actually buys it. It's just there so when little kids hear jokes about SPAM and ask their parents 'What's SPAM?', the parent can take them to the store and show them the can, and explain that it's not really for eating. Yet here in Hawaii, they actually eat it. A lot of it.

That is what I say.
What was I talking about?
I am hungry now.

Scientists being Nerds

According to a recent New York Times article, a handful of scientists have been complaining about Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. I bet you're thinking "Great, more of those fake scientists claiming global warming doesn't exist." Well, you're absolutely right; about nay-saying climatologists being fakes, that is. As for whom it is that's complaining about Al Gore's movie, you're horribly mistaken.

It is none other than perfectly credible scientists who are pointing out inaccuracies in Gore's documentary (which I have seen, by the way, and so should you), worrying that taking an extreme stance and "overselling" the science behind global warming is a bad idea. While they have no political quarrels with Gore, they fear he may have overstepped the bounds of what science can reasonably predict about climate change.

If Al Gore were presenting a scientific thesis, I would agree completely. Mr. Gore himself has said, however, that "[He is] trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that [he] understand[s]." No kidding. An Inconvenient Truth is probably the most plain-spoken explanation of global warming and the problems it causes that I have ever seen. There is a very good reason for this "lay language," or plain English: the movie is supposed to educate people who are still undecided about global warming. Mr. Gore and myself might best be described as members of the "educated laity."

For those of you who don't remember your history, the laity was/is the term for the common folk, anybody who did not belong to the clergy, or religious hierarchy (Catholic church, etc.). In modern times, "the laity" can refer to anyone who is not part of an educated minority of some sort. The scientific laity is the majority of people who don't really understand science and its procedures. Al Gore is not officially a scientist, but he understands scientific principles and concepts, so he tries to explain what the eggheads in the laboratory (scientists) are saying to the laity (everyone else). Now those eggheads are treating Gore's movie like a scientific thesis, pointing out inaccuracies that only a scientist would care about.

My point, if I haven't strained your patience too far to care, is that these scientists are shooting themselves in the foot. They may be professors emeritus and whatnot, but they're still being nerds. Remember that one nerd in high school who thought he just had to interrupt the teacher every ten minutes to correct him or her on some detail that nobody cared about and made no difference whatsoever? I used to be that kind of nerd, and these scientists are still being that kind of nerd. They refuse to accept that outside of the university, people don't want to hear every little detail, and they won't give a crap about what you're telling them if every third sentence is a "percent error" statement.

Al Gore knows that they understand everything already, he knows that there are many complex details behind every claim he makes in his documentary, and he knows that the scientific community already agrees that climate change is really happening and humans are partly responsible. The whole purpose of the movie is to get the point across to the rest of the world. So what if he doesn't have a table of data for every single statement he makes? (For the record, he does a pretty darn good job of backing up his claims as it is) The movie would be way too long and way too boring to get an award for Best Documentary if it were made to convince a bunch of scientists. The whole point of being a scientist is that you always question everything, are always skeptical of what you're being told, and look for evidence to back up everything. That's not what An Inconvenient Truth is about, it's about trying to motivate the people who are really going to make the changes for the better: populus pluri (everybody).

Besides, would it be a catastrophe if a handful of exaggerations in a movie motivated more people to buy fuel-efficient cars? It's much easier to make big changes if the general populace understands the problem and what to do about it.

Fortunately, these compulsive nerd scientists are in the minority; hopefully they won't put too much of a buzzkill on Al Gore's attempt to increase awareness.

Here's a banner slogan for environmentalists to shout: "Save the polar bears!"

The Awesomeness of Stonework

I don't suppose I ever mentioned that I'm a huge fan of stonework? More specifically, stonemasonry is my thing. Sometimes I think I'll just forget getting a fancy-schmancy degree and become a stonemason. I've added a new link to this group called the Stone Foundation, an organization with a punny title. That there is a picture of a young Yakov Smirnoff admiring Warwick castle.

What's that? You didn't know that people still did that sort of thing? Well, I'll have you know, Mr./Ms. Modern Smartypants, that there are still people in this world who appreciate buildings that look nice, particularly buildings of stone. I, for one, find the mass of concrete blocks that make up Honolulu to be absolutely hideous. Yeah, yeah, I know, who am I to complain about living in Hawaii, right? You wouldn't say that if you could see what a total dump this place is. With everything centered around tourism, Hawaii's non-touristy parts are really crappy, and we're totally dependent on stuff that comes in by ships.

Anyway, back to stonework, I want to build myself a castle. It'll be big and beautiful, and I'll build stone cottages nearby and sell those to people who want to live in a modern version of a medieval village. I have a cousin who loves horses; I think I'll build some top-notch stables (like the ones you see in Rohan in the Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers). Then I can host jousts and Renaissance faires (Ren faires are spelled with that extra "e", just because). Of course, I probably won't be able to do it alone, so I'll need a few like-minded friends who can help out. Smart people, rich people, creative people, the whole spiel. I honestly hope to make this my life's work.

Yesterday, I actually made some bagels. At home. They were delicious, like this one here. I feel much happier than I did two days ago, thanks to these bagels. The recipe came from jewishrecipes.org, but I found that the bagel's shape is much more satisfactory if you punch a hole in the middle with your thumb rather than pinching two ends together, as this recipe suggests.

Of course, you probably have no intention of baking yourself any bagels. You probably have no intention of baking anything. In fact, you probably don't even know what an oven is for, since you are probably a slave of the microwave oven, like so many jaded 21st century blokes. Sorry, I'm ranting again.

Anyway, nothing special happened that I know of.

Books, Bagels, and Bogus

I've just started reading another one of Steven Brust's novels, The Phoenix Guards. I've read the Taltos series, but this is totally different, and it is hilarious. Mr. Brust's webpage gives a succinct synopsis of the book, along with all his others. Speaking of his other books, you should go buy them. Seriously.

It's a wonderfully boring day here on Oahu, which is good news for people who like consistency. I woke up the boring sound of my boring alarm clock, decided to be boring by going back to bed for an hour, and then woke up for real and ate two boring bowls of cereal. Tomorrow I'm going back to ugly and boring school, and I'll spend the day wishing I had a real bagel. Real bagels are not boring, they're mellow. Get it right.

Bagels... if anyone knows where I can find a real bagel in Honolulu (if you're a New Yorker who has ever been exiled long enough to miss bagels, you know the kind I mean), I would be very grateful if they told me. They have these things called "bagels" in Hawaii, but they are not true bagels.

True bagel: dense, chewy bread with a hole in the middle; best enjoyed with a savory, not sweet, spread, like cream cheese and lox. Made by boiling the dough before baking.

False bagel: soft, round bread with a hole in the middle; comparable to a dense, flavorless donut, which explains why people who eat them often put sweet spreads on them. Made by committing blasphemy against true bagels.

Did you know: That people in Hawaii know what salmon is, but most have never heard of lox? What is this bogus?

Lo, the stars themselves shall pass gas

I have found the answer to all of life's questions, and it is as follows:

"Where is the mustard?"

In other news, the Mossy Coconut continues to grow new ferns, and several healthy fronds have already unfurled. If all goes well, we should experience a full recovery from the minor setbacks a month ago, when several fronds turned brown and fell off. Color diagrams will be available soon.


Don't write poetry
It is a very bad thing
Demands thoughtfulness

Time to throw away money!

You know what really bugs me? The way people are always buying stuff these days. Nearly everyone (in the USA at least) likes to think that they're some kind of mini-millionaire, and they only need to keep track of big expenses like mortgage/rent payments, car payments, school tuition, etc. Do you want to know what keeps so many of us in debt, and why so many of us will have a bitch of a time retiring? We piss away our money on stuff we don't need.

Yeah, I know, it's advice that's been around since the Stone Age. Back when Oog was complaining about how he was living from mammoth to mammoth, Ug hit him over the head with a big stick and told him it was because he kept spending his dried mammoth meat (mammoth jerky was the currency of the day) on every new upgrade of flint spearheads that came out, when the one he had was working just fine. Then Oog hit Ug back with a big rock and killed him, so now we are all descended from a moronic impulse buyer.

This has worked wonders for the economy, of course. Vending machines, Starbucks, fancy cell phones, and no end of other things for us to buy. We're surrounded by advertisements for this stuff, and none of it is stuff we need. Yet we still buy it, partly because we're only half aware of the fact that we're spending money, and partly because its a huge part of our culture. Not buying fancy junk like cell phones, trendy clothing, video games, and lattes you don't really need make you an outcast from popular culture. I've overheard conversations between teenage girls about how they've got some money they want to spend. They go to the mall as a social activity, not because they want to buy something in particular. Come to think of it, most malls don't have stuff anybody really needs, with a handful of exceptions.

What the hell is this? Why are we so absorbed into buying "stuff"? We don't even realize we're doing it most of the time, I expect. I see people at my school buying a bottle of water almost every single day. No one needs to spend 50 cents every single day on a bottle of water, but they do. I buy one bottle a week, sometimes less, and refill it at home.

"But what's the big deal?" You ask, "50 cents is pocket change, it makes no difference." Oh really? Let's see, if you spend fifty cents, oh, let's say, four days in every week for eight months, you spend... holy crap, that's around $68 bucks! And that's just for a 50 cent bottle of water at my school; think of how much you might be spending on that $3 latte you buy every other day. Assuming you have the math skills, try keeping track of what you're spending. You may be surprised about how it adds up.

Of course, nobody cares. We would rather bleed away money in exchange for thinking we can afford these little indulgences. "Sure, I've got some financial problems," we think, "but it's not like buying the occasional doughnut is going to ruin me." Maybe not, but is it really worth it to hit that vending machine every day at work? Bring a sandwich or something. Oh wait, you are so absorbed into the culture of buying things that you have forgotten how to prepare food for yourself? My mistake.

This isn't supposed to be a financial advice column, but if you leave this page a tiny bit wiser then congratulate yourself. Otherwise, go about your life as you always have, secure in the fact that this is America, gosh darn it, and you've got every right to spend money on a premium cable package that has maybe five or ten channels that you actually watch.

This cynicism is brought to you by me (duh), as inspired by this guy's article. I don't completely agree with everything he says, but I don't hold that against him. If you ever find yourself in complete agreement with somebody, slow down and think about it for a few minutes.

Twiddle, diddle, fiddle, and snork

Should be in bed now
Writing dumb haiku instead
An overused joke

Hello, disloyal fans which do not exist because I am a meaningless lump of humanity writing stuff on the series of tubes for no good reason. No one wants to read my thoughts; they do nobody any good, and I'm not celebrity enough to have people swallow my bogus just because it's me writing it.

Of course, you knew that already. I didn't mean to insult your intelligence.

Yeah, actually I did.

I have contributed to Illogicopedia recently, but I won't tell you what I did.

Mossy Coconut Update: The Mossy Coconut is sprouting several new ferns, and we here at Mossy Coconut Inc. are very proud.

Right, on with it then.

I'm sure I mentioned Mossy Coconuts somewhere on this blog, so I'll clarify the meaning of this all-important bit of meaninglessness.


There. That right there is a mossy coconunt. It is, as the name suggests, a coconut, cut in half, with moss growing on the cut edge. Ferns also grow on the coconut to make it look nicer. I believe that this holds great meaning and possibly is the closest humanity has ever come to acheiving oneness with the Supreme Divine Being, which most people know as Eris Discordia.

Bedtime for bonzo.

This is getting very silly.

Once upon a time, there was a blog. It wasn't particularly interesting, so nobody paid much attention. It's probably just as well.

My name is Cainad, and yours is not. Deal with it.
Actually, my name is not Cainad, and it is not in bold letters, either. I use the name Cainad when using the interweb, because Al Gore wanted it to be used that way when he invented it.

I started this blog on a Tuesday, way past my bedtime, after reading Robert Anton Wilson's blog a few times. Although I am not yet part of the Discordian cabal quite yet, I have a strong feeling that he was a very important person. Once I get around to reading his books, my brain will hopefully ascend several inches.

I will explain the part about mossy coconuts later. Not that you would really care.

Or would you?