This Blog is moving

Well, I finally registered the domain for this blog. So last night I moved the entire thing to the new location. I imported all the posts from this blog into the new one. Only to find that the picture sizes I had here, didn't work on the them I am using for the new one. So I also resized all of the pictures on the new blog. So if you are one of my regular readers, please update your bookmarks and links to reflect the new location.
http://www.TheOnlineRant.com

Stuck in between

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/29/stuck-in-between/

I've been a little depressed lately. And the reason is that I feel stuck. My entire life feels like it is stuck in between being a mature adult, and being an immature young adult who is still trying to find out what to do with his life. And being stuck in between, I don't feel like I can really relate to the people around me who are in one phase or another.

On one side, I have my mature friends. The people I graduated from college with. I don't really feel like they are more mature than me, but at the same time I do. The problem is that they are all in a different place in their lives than I am. Most of them are married and well established in their careers. A lot of them even have multiple kids. Whereas I'm not married, and I don't feel all that well established in my career. While they are all building their families and advancing in their chosen careers, I'm still single and still at the bottom of my chosen career path. And as we all get older, I find that I have less and less in common with most of them.

On the other side I have my relatively immature friends. They are mostly younger than me, and haven't reached the point where they are really working on their future. Mostly they are single and for the most part are still in college. They live from paycheck to paycheck and don't really worry too much about what they are going to do with their lives. They aren't really immature, they just haven't moved past the college phase yet. And the truth is that I really don't relate to them either. Because I am past the college phase.

My problem is that I'm stuck in between. I'm past the friends who are still in school and are still finding out who they are, but I'm behind the ones who are out their building their lives. And I fell like I'm stuck. I'm too old to go back, but I somehow can't go forward either. It's like my life is in a permanent holding pattern. Since I graduated from college, about 4 years ago, almost nothing has changed in my life. Which is depressing. Mainly because I have no idea what I did wrong to be left behind, and I find I have less and less in common with everyone around me. So, I'm feeling a little down right now.

Does information naturally gravitate towards freedom?

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/27/does-information-naturally-gravitate-towards-freedom/

There is an old hacker saying, "Information wants to be free." Now when I say old, I don't mean old in real world time. I mean old in Internet time. Where if it is older than a year, it is considered ancient. The saying is kind of a cliche, but lately I've been wondering if there might be some truth to it.

The question is, does information naturally gravitate towards freedom? In an information based society like ours, the above question is very relevant and rather important. For thousands of years governments, religions, and businesses/trade guilds have used control of information to protect their power and position.

These days all of that is changing. As the information age comes into full swing, control of information is getting harder to maintain. And suppressing unwanted information is nearly impossible. The best anyone can hope for, is that the unwanted info will be forgotten. But you can't remove it or hide it. So that information will always be there.

Every government, business, and religious group that relies on information control is feeling the effects today. Repressive, and even democratic, governments around the world that try to hide their policies and actions are finding that it is nearly impossible. New scandals and abuses are daily leaked to the Internet and spread far beyond the reach of the governments involved. Religious groups like the Scientologists that rely on secret knowledge for elites, are fighting a losing battle to keep that knowledge off of the Internet. Business models that rely on a monopoly of information are all feeling the pressure of competition from non-experts. Copyrights and patents are becoming increasingly hard to protect.

Basically, if it is information, it will end up on the internet at some point. And once it does, it will be there forever. I'm not sure what that really means for our society. I know that it means a lot of change for a lot of different areas and people.

By the way, here are a couple of video's that illustrate the point.

The Machine is Us/ing Us


Information R/evolution

Is freedom of religion under attack?

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/22/is-freedom-of-religion-under-attack/

We have a concept in modern Western culture called "Freedom of religion." It's not a concept that has always existed in Western cultures, but rather something that was painfully grafted on. Hundreds of wars have been fought over this concept, and millions of our ancestors have died fighting over it.

It's one of the most basic freedoms a person can have. The right to decide for yourself what to believe about God. It is not something to be taken lightly. And that right isn't something that should ever be taken away. But lately some very vocal and highly respected voices are being raised against our freedom.

Today's attacks on religious freedom aren't coming from the same groups and areas that they have in the past. Historically, attacks of freedom of religion come from religion itself. Other religions, or sects within a religion will attempt to impose their beliefs on everyone. We are used to that kind of attack and are quick to condemn it. But these attacks aren't coming from that direction, they are coming from the secular side. The anti-religion groups.

You might say that that is nothing new. After all, secular institutions and organizations have long been against religion. Particularly Christianity. And that is true. Secular Universities and colleges have long taught that religion is outdated and wrong. Atheist organizations have openly attacked religion and a belief in God. Nothing new there. What's new is that the attack has begun to change from an attack on religion's tenets and beliefs, to an attack on the right to even believe those believe those things.

Increasingly the message is that tolerating religion in modern society should not be done. And that religion, in any form, is harmful and detrimental to society. Don't believe me? Take a look at this video of a lecture given by Sam Harris. He is working on a doctorate in neurology at Stanford University and is also the author of a book called "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason."



The video is kind of long, and a little dry at times, but worth listening through to the end. Here are just a few quotes from the video that jumped out at me.

"Faith is a sign that there is something wrong with your mind. It is a sign that you cannot be trusted"

"They[speaking of Christian beliefs] are really the responses of a madman or an idiot"

The message of his video is that religion should not be tolerated by modern society. His book contains much the same message. If he was just writing a book that said this, or just giving lectures on it, I wouldn't really pay much attention. After all, lots of people write all kinds of things that aren't good. Most of them are ignored by the mainstream. But what is scary is that he and others with the same message, are getting a lot of attention and respect in our educational institutions and media.

You say, so what? So what if atheists and agnostics believe that religion is harmful. They don't believe in God anyway. So it isn't much of a stretch for them to believe that religion is harmful to society. The problem is that in the past, religious freedom was something they would have fought for just as hard as you and I would. Because it is the right to believe whatever you want to believe that has allowed atheism to be a viable and acceptable world view.

Now, influential atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are telling other atheists that tolerance of religion itself should not be tolerated. And people are paying attention. If religion is not to be tolerated, then how much longer will it be before people start calling for laws prohibiting religion. Don't get me wrong, they aren't calling for laws against religion now, they are just calling for intolerance of religion. But it does logically follow that if something is harmful and not to be tolerated, then it should be outlawed. That's why I'm worried.

Is there anything you or I can do about it? Well not much. They have every right to say these things and believe them. Just as you and I have the right to say and believe what we believe. The only thing you and I can do is make sure that the right to believe what we want to believe isn't taken from us. How do we do that? By exercising our right to vote. And by making sure that those we vote for will support our right to believe what we want to believe. No matter what that is.

Hacking MySpace accounts

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/16/hacking-myspace-accounts/

The other day I got an email claiming I had a message from a friend on MySpace. Well, I really don't like MySpace (More of a FaceBook fan)and I don't use it much anymore, so I didn't rush out to go get it. But I did eventually go check it out. As soon as I logged in, I saw that it was nothing but a spam message. So I just deleted it. Since I was on anyway, I thought I would check out the various bulletins that people had posted.

And what do you know! There were 4 bulletins from the person who had sent me the spam message. Three of those bulletins were clearly spam, but the last one was really from her. In that bulletin, she claimed that someone had hacked her account, and to disregard any strange messages that she might have sent before she realized she had been hacked.

Well, I was a little curious about the "hack" and decided to do some investigating to find out how peoples accounts normally get hacked. You see, I've had a MySpace account for years and it's never been hacked. And it's not like my password is super secure. I wont tell you what it is, but I will say it isn't one of those extremely long ones with a random conglomeration of letters, numbers, and symbols that security experts say you should have. I've also never changed it the entire time I've had the account!

So I was really wondering how so many of my friends get there accounts hacked. It turns out that the most common method of getting your account "hacked" is to have the password stolen. That's right, stolen. Not broken or guessed. No one is running brute force attacks to get your password.
Furthermore, if they did steal your password, it's probably because you GAVE it to them. That's right, I said gave. They tricked you into giving them your password, and then they simply logged in to your account.They didn't hack your MySpace account. They hacked you.

So how do you keep this from happening? well it's real simple. Don't give away your password to anyone. Never enter it into any other site except the MySpace login page. That will take care of most of the methods by which people get your password.
The remaining ways people can get your password are a little trickier, and I have a lot more sympathy for people who fall for these. These methods involve sending you to a page that looks exactly like the MySpace login page, but isn't. So you think you are logging into MySpace, but actually you are logging into another website that is stealing your password. Still involves you giving them the password, but its a little trickier because you thought you weren't giving it to anyone but MySpace.
This method is still easy to avoid. Just log in to your account only from the official MySpace.com website. How do you know if the page you are logging into is from the original page? Make sure that the address you typed to get to the page was MySpace.com After that you can click on the login link to be taken to the login page. Just make sure you started at the MySpace.com website and not some other site.

Oh, and this advice goes for my FaceBook friends as well.

Stupid Clowns

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/12/stupid-clowns/

Well last night it was pretty interesting. Around midnight, I woke up to some very loud banging and what sounded like jumping on my front porch. Every once in a while, we have a raccoon that will get into a fight with the cats or my little brother's dog. Usually it ends pretty quick with the dog or the cats running the raccoon off. Last time it happened, they got into it on my front porch. So I didn't think anything of it. But the banging didn't go away, in fact it got louder and it sounded like someone was banging on my front door. So after about 5 minutes, I decided to get up and go downstairs and check it out.

As I came down the stairs, I heard movement going down the front steps off the porch and it sounded like something big. So I decided not to open the front door right away. You never know, it might have been a big dog or something. My neighbors two blocks away raise rottweilers. And if those get out, I'm not going to be leaving my house while they are still around. So I looked out the window, but I couldn't see anything obvious. Then I heard banging on my back door.

My back door has a big window in it. So you can easily see anything that is standing in front of it. When I looked back at it, there were two guys in clown masks standing there banging on the door. I grabbed a pool stick and started walking towards the door. At that point they ran off. Not sure what I would have done if they hadn't run off. I certainly wasn't going to open the door. So I guess it's a good thing they ran off and I didn't have to decide what to do with my pool stick when I got to the door. :)

I called my Mom right after that. Since my Dad is out of town right now, I didn't want them to go next door and start banging on her doors. I also wanted to make sure all her doors were locked. She ended up calling the cops. So they came out and looked around the neighborhood. Told us all to keep our doors locked. Not that we weren't anyway.

So that was my excitement for the week. My brother didn't wake up until they had already run off. Which is probably a good thing, because he wanted to go out and find them to confront them. So if he had been awake when they were still there, he probably would have been out in the yard chasing them down. Basically I think they were just playing a prank, and probably hit a bunch of houses in the neighborhood before the cops showed up. I know all the dogs in the entire neighborhood were barking.

What gets me is that this is one of the stupidest pranks to play around here. In Florida, if someone is on your property and you feel threatened, you are perfectly justified in shooting them. Just a few years ago, there was a case were a man shot a trespasser and killed him. The trespasser didn't have any weapons, but the owner of the property said he felt threatened. And he got off with no consequences. That case solidified the property laws and when deadly force is considered justified in Florida.

I don't own a gun, but I know a lot of my neighbors do. So banging on peoples doors in the middle of the night to scare them, could actually end up with you dead or in the emergency room. Not really a "fun" way to end a prank.

Tolerance and love - A few more thoughts

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/10/08/tolerance-and-love-a-few-more-thoughts/

Why can't we all just agree to disagree? Why do we have to fight and argue about our beliefs? I'm not asking people to like each other, just that we not fight all the time.

On my other blog, I posted a video demonstrating cymatics. I thought the shapes and patterns generated by the sound waves, were pretty cool. Obviously other people agreed with me because it started getting a lot of hits. And then it got stumbled, and I started getting thousands of hits. That's a good thing, right?

At some point, someone posted a comment about the wonders of God's creation. basically praising God and expressing amazement at what He has built into his world. Someone else posted a similar comment. There was no attack, or condemnation of others in either of the posts. Just some simple praise for God.

Shortly after that, the conversation went downhill. Someone else posted a comment attacking the first two. Saying that there was no god, and that the earlier commenter's were stupid for ascribing to god what was nothing but simple science. I posted a rebuttal to his comment, telling him that everyone has a right to their beliefs, and that there was no cause for attacking them when they were simply expressing their beliefs.

After that, the comments attacking Christianity and anyone who believed in God, got a lot worse. Since it is my blog, I get to moderate the comments. Which is really a good thing. Because I deleted a lot of the comments that were using seriously excessive amounts of language and were saying very nasty things that were just uncalled for. My rule on comments is if they are using excessive language or are comparing other people to various body parts, they get deleted. I also don't like advertisements, :)

All of this made me feel like the atheists, who were the ones doing most of the attacking, were simply intolerant and very much hypocrites. After all, it is usually atheists in the media and in colleges that are preaching and pushing tolerance. And now here it's the atheists that are attacking Christians for simply expressing their beliefs.

I was feeling like I was so much better than they were. Saying to myself, "Christians wouldn't stoop to that level." But then I realized how stupid that thought was. We Christians aren't really any better at this than anyone else. We may not preach tolerance, but we do preach love. And what are most of the mainstream Christian groups doing? They are actively hating and attacking anyone who believes differently.

Jesus said that the second greatest commandment, second only to loving God, is to love your neighbor. You're supposed to love him/her the way you love yourself. How can you show love to a person that you are attacking? God loved us so much that he let us kill his son! And that is the example we are supposed to be following.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying our differences should be ignored. or that they should be glossed over. Beliefs are important, and should not be abandoned in the interest of love or unity. But standing up for what you believe, does not mean you have to attack others. There is nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree. No matter what side you are on and no matter what the belief may be.

Towards the end of the comment thread, many people started posting comments that seemed to echo some of what I'm saying here. We can just agree to disagree, without having to attack each other. I just wish more people had that view.

Anger and dealing with it

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/09/23/anger-and-dealing-with-it/

I don't get angry very easily. In fact I rarely let anything make me angry. But the other day I was a little upset. I wouldn't say I was really angry, more I was annoyed and frustrated.

I don't even remember what I was upset about. Which probably means it wasn't a big deal. If it had been, I'm sure I would have remembered what it was. But I do remember the results of my anger. I let that anger affect my whole day. And affect everything around me.

All day I let every little annoyance make me angry. I snapped at people. I was gruff and abrupt to everyone I talked to. All of which just caused everything to get worse. People responded to my bad attitude, and returned it back to me.
Then I felt justified in my bad behavior and my anger. After all, so an so said this bad thing to me. So I have a right to be angry with him. I completely ignored the fact that I had started the problems by my initial bad attitude.

The entire day was ruined. And it was all my own fault. I got angry about something, and took my anger out on everything and everyone around me.

I may or may not have been justified in my initial anger, but I didn't handle it correctly. Instead of dealing with the original problem, I let my anger spill over into other areas. That was wrong. I should have isolated the anger to the thing that caused it. I then should have dealt with that anger and discarded it. Then it wouldn't have affected other areas and people. And I wouldn't have ruined my whole day over something that was so insignificant I don't even remember it.

I'm reminded of Ephesians 4:26 "Be angry and do not sin." That was what I should have remembered when I started my day.

Names and forgetting

Edit: This post moved to http://www.theonlinerant.com/2007/09/14/names-and-forgetting/

Here is another comic from XKCD that really hit just a little too close to home. I'm always forgetting peoples names. And I'm usually too embarrassed to admit that I forgot the name and ask again. Which is stupid. I'd be much better off just admitting I forgot than trying to find out through some underhanded and usually stupid method.

I've even been roped into doing things I didn't want to do,just because I couldn't remember the person's name who asked me to do it. Nothing quite as extreme as the comic above, but still not something I would have done.

I've tried all the tricks the books talk about to help you remember the names of people you meet, but none of them seem to work for me. I guess I'll just have to put up with being embarrassed. Hopefully I can at least keep from getting into as bad a situation as the character in the comic. LOL

Sorry about the long break

I know it's been a little while since I posted here. The reason is that I've been very involved in moving my other Blog over to it's own host. If you are interested, go check it out. www.WhatJamieFound.com. So anyway, I've been a little slow at posting here. So just bear with me, because I'm going to try to fix that.

Thanks

Can we dispense with desktop apps?

How much of what you do on a computer every day is online? Do you really need many of the desktop apps you have on your Windows, Linux, or Apple computer? Depending on what you use your computer for, you may be able to ditch many of the apps you use for online ones.

ZenHabits, a really excellent blog has an interesting and highly useful post about moving your computer needs and work online. It has a lot of good applications and ideas for doing all your computer work online. I've actually been moving a lot of my computer work to web based apps myself for a while. But until I read the article, it was mostly unconscious. I wasn't really putting an effort into moving online, it was just happening.

The advantages of moving your work online, are significant. No longer are you tied to a specific computer or location. Any computer with an unrestricted Internet connection is theoretically "your computer" since all of your stuff and work is online. And the applications you are using are not OS specific. So you aren't tied to a specific operating system or platform.

The disadvantage is of course that all your stuff is online. Which is actually the advantage as well. But when you don't have a connection, you can't get to any of your stuff. And if the web based app you are using is experiencing downtime, you are out of luck.

In my case, I'm online most of the day. So I think the advantages, at least for me, outweigh the disadvantages. Of course, I'm not able to completely ditch all my desktop applications. I still have to use Visual Studio for my work, and there are a few small applications that do things I haven't been able to find online substitutes for. But over all, most of the things I use my computer for, can be done online.

Do people want the facts or do they want opinions

Techdirt has an interesting article on the changing face of media today. It seems that more and more people worldwide, particularly younger people, actually prefer to get their news from admittedly biased outlets.

That is, they don't try to get their news from the main stream news outlets. They get their news from blogs and editorials. People actually prefer to read a story that contains the opinions and analysis of the reporter. They prefer it to reading stories or watching news that is just the facts. And more news outlets are taking note of that. Changing their reporting style to fit what their readers want.

Is this a bad thing, or a good thing? Is it good that people want biased news,or analysis of news over straight reporting? Well, I think it can be both bad and good. But mostly I think it's a good thing.

If you only ever get your news from people who share the same biases and viewpoints you do, you will have a very distorted view of the world. Even if the facts in the stories are all truthful, reading the viewpoints of only one side will not give you a real picture of what is happening. Facts can be easily downplayed or enhanced in an editorial format. So that is bad.

But is that really any different from getting all your news from the normal reporting outlets(Main stream news networks)? I would say not. All news reflects the opinions and biases of the person reporting. The only difference is that in an editorial or analysis format, the bias or opinion is not hidden beneath a vernier of objectivity. In an editorial or analysis piece, you don't have to try to guess the bias of the reporter.

I think that is really what is happening these days. Most people recognize these days that no matter how much a major news outlet claims to be objective, it isn't. So they would rather get their news from someone who isn't in effect, lying to them. They would rather get it from someone who tells them straight out which side they are reporting the story from. I know I do.

Getting your news that way isn't really a problem, as long as you are careful to read opinions from all sides. That is the great thing about the Internet. You don't have to look hard to get news from many different points of view.

Contradictions

Our lives are filled with contradictions. We believe all kinds of things, and use those beliefs to justify our standards and actions. But usually we won't apply those beliefs to every situation or aspect of our lives. Just the ones we feel comfortable with.

Sometimes we even believe things that are contradictory in themselves. Beliefs that can't both be true, but that make us feel better. We just refuse to face the logical conclusion of those beliefs. Why? Because then we might have to change, or accept a truth we don't like.

I fully understand this mindset, because I do it myself nearly everyday. It's something we all do. We don't think about the contradictions in our beliefs. Because as long as we don't think about them, we don't have to confront those contradictions.

But what happens when you are forced to confront that contradiction? Do you examine the beliefs and resolve the contradictions? That is what we should do, but most of us rarely do that.

Most of us go on the defensive. We like our contradictory beliefs, and we want to hold on to them. We start avoiding the person or situation that is forcing that confrontation. We do our best to hide from it because as long as we hide from it we don't have to deal with it. We stick our heads in the sand and pretend not to notice things we would rather not notice.

Other times, we go into attack mode. We demonize the thing that causes the confrontation. If the person, organization, or situation can be painted as evil, then we can justify avoidance. So we discredit the thing that is causing the confrontation. We don't deal with the contradiction, we attack whatever is bringing that contradiction to light.

Too often I fall into the avoid or attack patterns when I'm forced to confront a contradiction in my life. Most of the time I don't even realize I've fallen into one of those patterns. I'm so used to it that the response is almost instinctive.

When I started to write this, I was going to give some examples of contradictions I've found in my own life. But I don't think I will. I don't want to be the thing that forces a confrontation of your beliefs. Mainly I don't want to invoke one of the responses I mentioned in this post. I'd rather you just thought about contradictions on your own.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to find and deal with the contradictions in my life now. Rather than waiting for a confrontation. And I'm going to try to keep in mind my tendency to avoid or attack when I am confronted. Hopefully I can do better at this than I have in the past.

Me Centered Religion

This past Sunday, the pastor of my church preached a message on Christian love and how church members should be demonstrating it. He showed the above video during the message to illustrate his point. The video is a parody and exaggerated, but it nevertheless holds a lot of truth. Most Christians are only interested in what they can get from going to church. Today he wrote up a pretty good post to his blog about it. Here is a little excerpt from his blog:

"Too many believers are more preoccupied with being blessed than being a blessing. We have bought into a greedy, indulgent message thinly veiled behind prosperity. Where preachers are known for being slick salesmen and not the servants of all. Jesus came to give us life that overflows with so much love, joy, and hope that it spills on everyone we know and come into contact with."

The message really struck me. Way too often Christians, me included, are not radiating that love and joy that we should have.
I encourage you to follow the link below and read his entire post.

Something random. something inspiring: Overflowing?

Are all opinions equally valuable?

First off, this entire post is just my opinion. Now that we got that out of the way, I can begin my little rant.

Are all opinions equally valuable? This isn't a politically correct or popular question to ask these days.
In the Web 2.0 world, every blog, news site, and search engine is filled with people posting their opinions on everything under the sun. And I wouldn't have it any other way. The freedom to post and publish your own opinions and viewpoints is one of the very best things about the Internet. No longer are we tied to a few elite columnists and reporters for our news and analysis. But the ability to post does not necessarily mean you have the knowledge to contribute meaningfully to a topic.

The overall consensus in both the political world and the Internet world seems to be that all opinions are equally valuable. I think this is somehow an extension of the post modern idea that all positions, even contradictory ones, are equally true. But as I posted in a previous post, that is simply impossible and not rational. But lets get back to the opinions question.

Are some opinions more valuable than others? I would have to say yes. You might say that that is not really all that controversial. After all, that is why we get the opinions of experts. Who would you go to for opinions on law? Lawyers. And for opinions on health, you would go to doctors. So we can all agree that some opinions are more valuable that others. And the thing that makes them more valuable is knowledge and experience.

But if there are valuable opinions, then why can't there be worthless opinions? While it isn't popular to say so, I believe that opinions by people who do not know the history and facts of a situation are useless and worthless. Not just less valuable than those of experts. I mean worthless. If a person does not know anything about what he/she is giving an opinion on, then there opinion is useless.

Does this mean that I think that only the opinions of experts are useful? No, but I do think that voicing an opinion without first learning the facts about it is pointless. Far too many people simply parrot the sound bytes of politicians and news reporters without ever finding out the facts for themselves.

In this day there is no excuse for that. Nearly all the facts and history about almost anything are online. Anyone can read those facts, if they just put a little effort into finding them. So it's just not that hard to be informed and knowledgeable about something. And that is all you really need to have a valid and useful opinion rather than a worthless and pointless opinion.
So do your opinions fall into the valuable group, or the worthless group?

Stress

I have a tendency to get stressed out a lot. I hide it well, and put on a good front that makes me seem relaxed. It's such a good front, that most people think I'm pretty laid back. But the truth is that I'm not all that laid back.

I get frustrated and worry about things that just aren't that big a deal. I guess it has something to do with my need to feel that events and situations around me are under control. And I really need that feeling. I don't need to be the one doing the controlling, but I do need to feel that someone is in control. Just letting things happen bothers me.

Sometimes a real or perceived lack of control and organization will cause me to take a leadership role where I shouldn't. I try to control a situation where I don't have the authority to do so. Or where organization is not really needed. That usually just causes me more stress. Other times, I'll be unable to do anything about the disorganization for one reason or another. Then the stress will build until I grow irritable to those around me, or I remove myself from the situation.

The truth is that most of the time it makes no real difference to the final outcome. A lot of times that situation doesn't need to be controlled and organized. Simply letting things happen is good enough. I'm stressing myself out over nothing or over things that can't be organized. Trying to do something about it doesn't relieve my stress, it just increases it for myself and everyone around me.

Just the other day I was complaining to a coworker. I told him that the lack of organization and control in a particular project was stressing me out. He made a statement that sounds flippant, but is actually true. He said, "Control is just an illusion." And he was right. Even when I feel that things around me are organized and controlled, I'm just fooling myself. So why stress?

If I can just remember that I don't need to have things around me controlled and organized, then I won't get so stressed.

Do we live in a disposable culture?

The above cartoon really struck me. Probably because it is so real. Nearly everything I own is disposable. I don't mean disposable in that you throw it away after a single use. There are plenty of items in my house and office that are single use items. People have been complaining about the amount of trash our modern society generates because of disposable items for a long time.

No, what I mean is that nothing I own was built to last beyond a few years. It used to be that things you bought would continue to work for your entire life. You could even pass them down to your children or grandchildren. Now, nothing lasts that long. I kind of already knew that. So it isn't really a surprise, but I guess I never really thought about it and analyzed it. So why is everything disposable? Would it be better if things were the way they used to be?

There seem to be several reasons why everything is disposable. If it has to do with electronics, its simple. The technology changes so fast that designing anything to last more that a few years is a waste. No one is going to want the fancy stereo that is ten years old. Even if the stereo works as well as it did when it was purchased. And if the item is a computer it will not just be clunky, it will also be useless after a few years. The same goes for things like cell phones and TVs. No one wants them after a few years. So what is the point in building them to last that long.

But what about other machines we use? Things like coffee makers, microwaves, dishwashers, and pretty much any household appliance? Are the ones you have in your house really any better than the ones your parents had? No one really cares if they have last years microwave model, or if their vacuum cleaner is three years old. And yet, none of our household appliances last beyond a few years anymore either. I think that is largely a labor problem. It costs almost as much to fix something as it does to buy another one. So rather than fix it, we trash that microwave and buy a new model. The manufactures know we want the lowest price, and know we will put up with buying a new model every year or two. So they make the machine cheaply with inferior parts. And we buy them. The expensive four and five hundred dollar machines that will probably last longer are left on the shelf. The cheap under a hundred machines are snapped up. our logic being that if it breaks in a year, we can buy another one and still end up saving money.

But this doesn't apply only to machines and electronics. It applies to everything from clothes to furniture. We buy cheaply made things with the intention of throwing them away when they wear out. And we expect them to wear out rapidly. Gone are the days when people would save for a year or two to buy a furniture set that would last them their entire lives. Now people buy cheap furniture and throw it out when it breaks or even sometimes when they move. Often it is more expensive to move the cheap furniture to your new home, than it is to just buy some more.

So I ask, is this a good thing? Would we be better off if everything wasn't disposable? I really don't know. On the one hand, nothing we have is actually worth anything. On the other, we can afford so much more.

I can afford to furnish my whole house without having to save for years. I can afford every appliance a modern kitchen would contain. Big screen TV, high powered stereo, a computer that runs all of the latest software, no problem. I can have it all now. No need to wait and save. That's the benefit of the disposable culture.

The downside is that nothing I have is worth anything. I won't be passing any of my furniture or dishes down to my children and grandchildren. because everything I have is junk. And all of it will break down or fall apart not long after I get it. everything I currently have in my house will be going to the dump after it breaks. And it will break.

So I guess I don't really know what would be better. To have less stuff that is better quality, or to have more stuff that is poor quality. Let me know what you think.

Ignorance in America today

I don't consider myself all that knowledgeable. The sheer amount of things I don't know is astounding. My education covers the basics, but there are a lot of things and areas of study I know nothing about. I have the standard college education that most people have nowadays. I don't have a Masters degree or a Doctorate. Just a normal undergrad degree. I got good grades in college, but not straight A's. All in all, I consider myself to be of about average intelligence and believe I have an average level of education.

Lately I've been in a Bible study with a group of fellow Christians. Most of the people in the group are my age or a little younger. For those who don't know, I'm 28. Anyway, most of the people in the study group are college graduates who are in their chosen career. A few are still in school pursuing graduate degrees.
The Bible study is structured in a discussion group format. One thing that struck me right from the start, was that people in the group seemed to be very ignorant of current events, history, philosophy, science, and the Bible. Many of the people are new Christians. So I could understand the lack of knowledge about the Bible. What I didn't understand, was the ignorance these people had of everything else!

I didn't know most of them that well before the beginning of the Bible study. Some of them I met for the first time at the study. At first I thought maybe I was just in a group of rather stupid people. I know, that isn't a very nice thing to think. But that was my first impression. There are plenty of stupid people in the world, and I just assumed that I had "lucked out" in getting stuck with a bunch of them. I was wrong.

After I got to know them a little better, I realized that my first impression wasn't fair at all. These people were just as intelligent and smart as I was. In fact I think a few of them are probably smarter than me. The problem was that most of them had never learned basic facts and information that I took for granted. Basic facts about history, philosophy, science, and current events that anyone with a high school or college education should know.

I really don't understand how they could ever have made it through college without knowing these things. I could understand not remembering details and dates. Remembering names and specifics of information you don't use in your daily life is not something most of us can do. So it's not surprising people would forget. But in this case, most of these people seem to have never heard of many of the concepts and facts that they should have learned in school.

The only conclusion I have come to is that they never learned things they should have. Why didn't they? Has our education system failed them? I don't know where things went wrong, but that kind of ignorance scares me. Smart intelligent people who don't know their own history, current events, and basic philosophy are easily swayed and deluded by corrupt politicians, con artists, and cult leaders. And that is scary.

The Internet and writing

Found the above comic on xkcd. It seemed so relevant that I just had to post it here.
How often have you waited to respond to an email or to post on a blog, because you didn't have anything interesting happening in your life to post or email about?
Often, I'll get a personal email from someone and I won't answer it for a while. Not because I don't want to answer it, or because I don't have time, but rather because I can't think of anything interesting to say. I don't want to write boring or short messages. So I wait until something happens in my life that I can write about. Since a huge portion of my life is the Internet, that makes it kind of ironic. Doesn't it?

Dependencies in the modern world

Last week I was on vacation. The place I went was up in the hills and too far out for DSL or Cable internet access. So I was stuck with very limited dial up as my only choice for internet access. I had forgotten how incredibly slow the internet is when you are stuck on dial up. It was so slow, that I really couldn't use it for much beyond simple email. So in effect I had no Internet access for the whole week.

Until I didn't have it, I really had no idea how dependent on Internet access my daily life had become. Being without Internet access was a real problem. Every time I wanted to do or know anything, I would want to look it up online. But I couldn't. Directions, movie times, restaurants, schedules, orders, maps, and just general communications. I had to try to remember how I would have found the info without Internet access. Sometimes, I just decided it wasn't worth knowing or finding out because it would be too much trouble to get whatever info I wanted.

I'm so used to having all of the info available to me online, that I don't even realize how often I use the Internet. I use the it for all my banking, planning, scheduling, news, and communications. I also use it for general trivia and curiosity whenever I see or hear something I want to know more about. Without it, I felt lost and cut off. Sure I have a cell phone on which I could call anyone I wanted. And the place I was staying at had satellite TV. If I wanted news, I could pick up a newspaper or watch TV any time I wanted. But it wasn't the same.

I couldn't read a headline or hear a news blurb, and look up 30 different stories on the topic or event. I couldn't instantly look up historical background on the city, company, person, nation, or item in the story. Even worse, I couldn't get the story reported from several different political, social, and demographic points of view. All the news I got was limited and filtered through a few mainstream outlets.

If I wanted to go somewhere I had never been, I needed to ask someone for directions rather than simply looking it up. I'm so used to looking up directions online before going somewhere, that I don't even own a map anymore and I almost never ask someone for directions. I usually just ask for an address.

I had to call places to find out times and schedules because the information wasn't right there in front of me just a search away. Movie times, store opening times, calendar events. Even phone numbers for stores and businesses. I had to discover all over again how to find things in a phone book(a huge pain in the neck). All the info I needed was either unavailable or had to be discovered in ways I don't normally use.

This whole problem kind of surprised me because I hadn't really realized how dependent I was on the Internet for everything I do and learn now. To think that just 10 years ago, I was barely using it for email, and now I have trouble functioning without it. It makes me think I may be just a little too dependent on it. I guess I'm sort of addicted.

So how necessary is the internet to your daily life?

Priorities: Were we spend our money

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day. It was all about what we put our money into after paying for our basic needs. And that got me thinking about what I do with my money as opposed to my friends.

I have a tendency to live with older not as nice things so that I can always have spending money for trivial things when they come up. For example, I drive an older car. A lot of my friends have new cars and trucks. Many of them quite nice. All of those cars are on payment plans. Which is not really a problem. I could afford the payments on a new car, I just would rather have the extra money for trivial and non-essential things.

So any time I'm out with people and they want to do something, I can always afford it. I don't have t ask, is it in my budget. Many of my friends cannot. Clothes, electronics, computers, are all things that I have but that aren't the best or the latest. All things that my friends spend their money on, but I make do with what I have. I wear last years fashions, use an older computer, have an older TV. My friends don't. They buy all the latest. They also have to watch their budgets a lot closer than I do, just to be able to pay all their bills. Of course, they have the benefit of having nicer stuff than I do, but I have the benefit of a freer budget.

I don't really think my method is better than theirs, it's just different. I end up spending as much money on trivial things as they did on their new cars, clothes and electronics. So I'm not really saving much more than they are, or using the money in a wiser way. Just differently.

Punctuation and spelling are optional

Got this exciting email from my brother today. The email is in reference to an insurance dispute that we are having with our agent. I'm not sure how this happened. It seems that while we took the same English and writing classes in college, he doesn't seem to have gotten the same content out of them. LOL The text below is exactly how he sent it to me. The only difference is that I replaced names of people he referenced with pseudonyms. But I left capitalization of those names as he sent them.

spoke with jane who eventualy gave me john smith the owner he faxed me something saying sorry and that he was doing everything he could also he included the name of rep with insurance company that said we had a 15 day grace period past that date of the 20th before coverage is interupted were gonna file a complaint and switch insurance companys and im gonna check my business law book because we had a reasonable expectation this would be taken care of and this happened due to there error so we might have some legal standing to sue ethier way we'll call tomorrow and make sure our mortgage company overnighted it jamie don’t bother emailing back don’t get yours and dad I also spoke with your lady and we setup time on Friday to talk and then im gonna listen to some calls I still tonight am gonna apply and submit my resume which if you have time later tonight maybe you can help me

I had to read it a few times, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. There isn't a single period or punctuation mark in the entire email. The only word he capitalized, was "Friday." Just had to laugh when I read it. What makes Friday special?

What is Tolerance?

What is tolerance? Am I tolerant of other peoples beliefs? These are questions that have been running through my head since I had a disturbing conversation with a friend of mine. She accused me of being intolerant because I told her that I believed her belief system was wrong. The accusation caught me completely by surprise.
To understand why I was so surprised, I need to give you a little background about myself and about the conversation we were having. I'm an extremely non-confrontational person. So unless I know the person very well, I avoid having conversations with people about religion, politics, and belief systems. I avoid them like the plague.
I have definite opinions and beliefs, but am much happier agreeing to disagree with someone than I am arguing them with. If I think that voicing my beliefs to a person will cause conflict, I usually just stay quiet.
So back to this particular person who thinks I am intolerant. I've known this person for several years. She has a rather forceful personality and is just about the opposite from me when it comes to conflict and voicing her opinions. So needless to say, I've known almost as long as I've known her, that her opinions and beliefs were strongly in conflict with mine.
Anyway, she and a few other people were having a discussion about the existence of God and hell. Everyone present, including her, knows that I'm a Christian. But I was mostly keeping out of the discussion. Unfortunately this time, I was not allowed to keep out of it. She started pressing me about whether I believed non-Christians would really go to hell. I didn't really want to tell her yes, because I knew that would upset her. So I tried to deflect the question, but she wouldn't let me. So I finally told her that yes I did believe that. She then said the following, "Well I don't believe that. Are you saying you think I'm wrong?" Since I had already put myself into hot water with her, I figured I might as well go all the way. So I told her that yes, I thought that her belief was wrong. That is when I she accused me of being intolerant of her beliefs.
So back to my original question. What is tolerance? And am I intolerant?
Well, I don't really think I'm "intolerant." I strongly believe that everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe. I don't think anyone should, or even can, be forced to believe in something that is contrary to what they "believe." I have no problem accepting people who believe differently from me, as evidenced by the fact that I've been friends with this person for several years. So why did she tell me that I'm intolerant?
I think it is because she, and much of our current culture, has redefined the meaning of tolerance. Tolerance to me means that I put up with and "tolerate" beliefs I don't like, and that I think are wrong. In her mind that isn't true tolerance. She has equated tolerance of beliefs with acceptance and equality of beliefs. In her mind, in order for me to tolerate her beliefs, I must also accept that they are equally as correct as mine. Which is impossible. Since they are contradictory, they cannot both be right. One or the other must be wrong.
I personally am incapable of taking that strange middle ground that she wants me to. A place where somehow both views are right at the same time. I simply can't do that. I either need to abandon my belief and take hers, or I need to believe that her belief is wrong. One or the other is wrong. I've taken the position that her belief is wrong, but I've also taken the position that she has the right to be wrong. Does that make me intolerant?

Taking a lazy day

Sometimes you just have to take a lazy day to get clear of stress and frustrations. Saturday was one of those days for me. I slept in, got up around 10:00 AM. Took a long relaxing shower and wandered down to the kitchen for some coffee. Got my coffee and just relaxed on the couch with a book.
I had planned to get a lot of work done Saturday. I was going to get up early and try to get some yard work done before it got too hot. I needed to mow my yard and do some trimming of the bushes and trees on my property. But the night before, I realized just how tired I actually was. I had been running and doing “things” all week. So I just decided that I was just going to relax and take it easy. Hence the sleeping in until 10:00. Which just goes to show how tired I actually was. I usually can’t sleep past 8:00 even when I’m trying.
After waking up I ended up spending the remaining portion of the day just relaxing on my couch reading a good book. Stress and frustration just melted away.

Focus, and my life

Sunday at my church the pastor preached a message on knowing God's will for our lives. One of the points of the message that really hit me, was, focus. He said we need to focus on using the specific gifts God gave us to further his kingdom, rather than worry about what God's plan for our lives will be. In doing so, we will naturally fall into God's will for us. He also said we shouldn't assume that the plans we want for our lives are God's plans for our lives.
That really got me thinking about where my focus should be. I've been really depressed lately. Well, to be honest, I've actually been pretty depressed for several years. I have ups and downs, but lately I've been in a down spiral. For years now I've felt like I was running in place. I'm always doing something, and I'm always working hard at it. but I never seem to get anywhere useful. And what I do accomplish, never seems to be enough or seems to give me what I wanted.

Before I went to college, I had my life all planned out.
I chose a Christian college, so that I would be able to meet Christians. The plan was to find a Christian to marry to raise a family with. While that seemed to work for most of my friends, it never worked out for me. Relationships always seemed to fail long before they got anywhere near that serious. Since college, it's become even harder to meet and form relationships with Christians in the local churches. Consequently, I've been basically single for quite a long time.
I picked my major in college partially because I enjoyed it, but also because it seemed like a field that was growing. A field where demand and pay would remain high. All things to consider, if you want to support a family and have a rewarding career. Again, it didn't work out like I planed. The year I graduated, was the year after the tech stocks crashed. Jobs in IT were hard to find, unless you had experience. I did find a job, but the pay was not what I would have wanted. Even now, with the industry having recovered, pay scales are not what I had planned for. And as much as I love my current job, to be honest the pay is not great.
For the past few years, I've basically gone nowhere. My pay is higher than when I started working, but still pretty close to entry level. I'm still single, and currently have no prospects for changing that. Even my close friends are drifting farther and farther apart from me, as they get on with their lives and begin raising their families. No matter how hard I've tried to change things, I never seem to get any closer to my goals.

I've begun to think that my focus has been wrong all along. I've been focused on trying to accomplish my goals for my life, but maybe those goals aren't God's goals for my life. Maybe that is why I am not satisfied and at peace, even when it seems like I am accomplishing things towards my goals. That isn't to say that God doesn't want me to get married and have a family, or that he doesn't want me to have a successful career. All I'm saying is that maybe my focus shouldn't be simply working towards accomplishing those goals. Rather, it should be on being open to what God wants me to do.
I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing, but I'm going to try to change the focus of my life toward God's focus as much as I can. A good start would probably be to see where my skills and abilities can best be used in my church.

Motivation: What motivates you?

Recently I've been thinking a lot about motivation. What motivates you to do the things you do? Specifically what motivates you at your job? Is it money? Recognition? Perks? The work itself? What exactly makes you get up every morning and go to your job?
You say, that's easy. I get paid to work there, and I wouldn't go if they didn't pay me. And that's true. None of us would go to work if we weren't getting paid. After all, we all have bills to pay and we need to eat. But that isn't the whole picture either.

So aside from being able to pay bills, why your current job over some other job? When you are at work, what makes you more eager to do certain jobs, rather than other jobs? What makes you feel satisfied with the work you are doing?

Everyone has different things that motivate them. For some, the motivation is money. They work harder in anticipation of bonuses and pay raises. For others, work needs to challenge them. If it doesn't challenge their abilities, then it becomes a drag. They always need to be learning or trying something new. For still others, it's the work environment. Interacting with their fellow coworkers and customers makes them feel alive and excites them. Some people, like my brother, need for things to be a competition. They have to be the best, and will work as hard as they have to in their job to "be the best."

For me, it's not any of the reasons I listed above. Sure, money is important, and it's nice to have a challenge. And who doesn't want to be the best? But for me it's responsibility. I need to be "needed." Knowing that people are depending on me pushes me to work harder. I have to know that people are counting on me to be there on time, and to get things done on schedule. It's having people come to me for help and assistance, that really motivates me to try harder and do a good job.

So I ask again, What motivates you?

By the way, the picture above is from Despair.com They have a lot of other un-motivational posters and calendars that are pretty funny.

Divisiveness vs. Inclusiveness in Christianity

A friend of mine posted a commentary on his blog about preference and bias, and how it affects the Christian church today. His commentary really got me thinking about the tendency in the modern church to go to extremes of either separation, or inclusiveness. It doesn't seem like there are many churches in between.
As many of you know, I went to a Christian College here in Pensacola. Pensacola Christian College sees itself as a spiritual leader in the Independent Baptist movement. And the truth is, that they are. Though, even though they won't admit it, they share that position with Bob Jones University.

When I first went to PCC, I really didn't know much about the college. I don't come from a Baptist background, and hadn't heard much about them. There were a few adjustments, but my church background was pretty conservative, so I didn't have a big problem fitting in. The worship styles and daily living standards, were not much different from those in the Presbyterian denominations (OPC and PCA) I had grown up in. But what I wasn't used to, was the extremes of separation the Independent Baptist movement goes to. Music, books, instruments, politics, Bible versions, clothing styles, preaching styles, praying styles, associations, lack of associations, and the list goes on. It seemed to me that they were actively looking for reasons to separate and vilify their fellow Christians. Most of the things they were separating over were petty and stupid, but if you suggested such, people assumed that that meant you didn't believe in "separation." The constant divisiveness and fighting really bothered me.

After I graduated, I did a lot of church hopping as I looked for a church I felt comfortable with. As a consequence I ended up visiting a lot of churches that didn't believe in separating at all. So important doctrines and standards were thrown out in favor of presenting a united Christian front. All the emphasis was centered around being a big family. Which is good in a way. After all, we are a big family and will be together in heaven. But by ignoring key doctrines and beliefs in favor of unity, you open the door to a lot of problems and heresies that can seriously mess up peoples lives. The message seemed to be that in order to associate with people who believed differently, we had to accept that their beliefs were just as correct as ours. Even when they were in direct contradiction with our beliefs.

What is really needed, is a middle ground. We need to recognize and acknowledge our differences without vilifying each other over them. We should be able to meet on common ground, whenever it won't compromise our beliefs. Both sides fall into the trap of equating association with validation. There is no reason why you can't associate with someone without agreeing with all his actions and beliefs.

A new motto?

A friend of mine posted this pic on her profile in facebook. I couldn't resist posting it here.
I love the motto on the side. "Eat spit be happy" I wonder who's idea it was to put something like that on their packaging. I am definitely going to write this on the whiteboard in my office tomorrow morning. Just to see what kind of reactions I get from my coworkers.

Plants and Happy thoughts

The other day I was working with a coworker on a big project. Other than some initial checking of email and voice mail in the morning, I was pretty much in his office all day and wasn't spending any time in my office. The project we were working on just didn't want to come together. So we were both pretty stressed out. Towards the end of the day, I finally decided that we were going to have to take a break from that project and get back to it first thing in the morning.
So I headed back to my office to again check email and voicemail, and to wrap things up so I could head home. As soon as I entered my office, I felt so much less stressed and more relaxed. It's not that my office is really any nicer than his. It has the same basic decor of his office. Same carpet, same color walls, even the same door. And it isn't that I was relieved to get away from the project we had been working on all day. I knew I was going right back to it in the morning. If anything I was actually dreading getting back to my desk knowing that things would have piled up in my email while I was away from it all day.
The only real difference between our offices, is the plants. I've filled my office with live plants, and it makes such a difference. Just having green living things around seems to ease away stress and frustration. I've done the same for my house, putting plants all over the living and dining area. It really makes a big difference.

Learning a Foreign language

For the first nine years of my life, I lived in Mexico. When I was nine, my parents and I moved back to the US. At the time, I was fully bilingual in Spanish and English. In the years since, that ability has atrophied to the point where I can make myself understood in Spanish with some difficulty, but am not at all comfortable with the language.

The problem is that neither of my parents were originally from Mexico, and so Spanish was never really spoken in my home growing up. Once we were no longer living in a place were it was used constantly, I had no reason to use it and keep it up.

I considered taking Spanish classes in college, but laziness kept me from getting the motivation to sign up for more work. Which is probably a good thing, since if I had signed up, that same laziness probably would have kept me from getting anything useful out of the class. Oh don't get me wrong, I would have passed the class. But I would have done it using the bare minimum of work to get a B. Since I can still get the pronunciation right, and I do have some vocabulary, that wouldn't have been hard. The problem is that once the class was over, I would still be in roughly the same position I was when I started. So anyway, I never did sign up for a class.

At this point my Spanish is very rusty. I can understand, and read it with a bit effort. And I can also speak it with about the same effort. My accent is about the only thing that hasn't gotten rusty. I have no trouble pronouncing words, even ones I've never heard before. Sadly, my very rusty and half forgotten vocabulary is that of a nine year old. So there are a lot of words I've never heard.

I've decided though, that I am going to put some effort into updating my vocabulary and into practicing so that i will become more comfortable in the language. To that end, I've taken to attempting to read, hear, and speak more Spanish.

The reading isn't that hard to find. Wikipedia has thousands of articles written in Spanish that I can spend an hour or two reading each day. And if I get tired of Wikipedia, there are tons of Spanish websites and blogs I can read.

Hearing Spanish is a little harder. I did find a few podcasts in Spanish that I can listen to. You can find most of them here: Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection
None of them are all that great. What would be best is some spanish television or radio. I'm going to go on an active search for some this week.

Finding places to speak it is almost impossible. I just don't know very many people who speak spanish besides my parents. And I don't have anywhere I can go to just hang out with people and speak it. I'm definatley going to have to work harder on this one.

Hopefully, with a little work, I can upgrade my rusty spanish skills. Of course, laziness may kill this whole project before it really accomplishes anything. We'll see how long my motivation lasts.

Political Correctness and Movie Ratings

Recently the MPAA, under a lot of pressure from the anti tobacco lobbying groups, agreed to begin using the presence of smoking in a movie as one of the criteria in its rating system. Previously whether characters in a movie smoked was not considered when rating a movie. Read the story Here. While they haven't yet committed to it,they are under heavy pressure to give an automatic R rating to any movie that depicts smoking under any conditions besides those showing the smoker dying or in the hospital of smoking related health issues.
I'm no fan of smoking. I think it is a nasty and expensive habit. Cigarettes cost a great deal. And yes, I do know that a lot of that cost is artificially inflated by law to try to force people to quit. But that doesn't change the fact that under our current system,they are very expensive. The other thing is that they make you smell pretty bad. Unless you are used to the smell, it is actually nauseating. So if you are already hooked on smoking, you really should do your best to quit just for those two reasons. But of course it gets worse. Smoking is also extremely bad for you,and will likely kill you. So you really should stay clear of it.
I said all of that to make it clear that I don't like smoking. The problem is that I don't think that our society should attempt to enforce codes of behaviour on people simply because we don't like the behaviour. Codes of behaviour should only be enforced when the objectionable behaviour harms other individuals besides the one doing the action. Since I don't think smoking harms anyone but the smoker, I don't see any reason why we should try to force people to stop. Yes, I know all about second hand smoke. Do the research. I think you will find that all of the more modern studies show that unless you are living with the smoker, second hand smoke is less dangerous than the smog you get in a big city.
So I ask, does smoking by characters in a movie hurt anyone? Would it have been a good thing for the Lord of the Rings movies to be rated R?

People are stupid

People will fight over the stupidest things in the world. I share a house with my brother in a nice neighborhood on the bay. The past six weeks or so, my brother and the neighbors one block over have been feuding.
It all started when those neighbors decided that they didn't want people walking in front of their house. Their house faces the bay, with nothing between them and the water but a sidewalk and a seawall that the county owns and maintains. Because the sidewalk and seawall are owned by the county, many people in the neighborhood walk along the water on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is relatively new. The county put it in about a year ago when they rebuilt the seawall after a hurricane damaged it. Before the sidewalk was put in, no one realized that my neighbors property didn't actually go all the way to the water. So people didn't walk in front of their house, since they thought it was private property.
After the sidewalk it became quite common for people to walk in front of their house. This bothered our neighbors so much,that they put up signs at each end of the sidewalk saying that the sidewalk and the seawall were private property. When they first put the signs up, they told us and others in the neighborhood, that they were putting them up to keep people from outside of the neighborhood from fishing in front of their house. That seemed to me to be a reasonable concern, and I could understand their position. The signs worked quite well for keeping people from fishing and walking in front of their house. People who lived in the neighborhood knew the signs were bogus, and ignored them, at least for walking. Everyone seemed happy.
Then those same neighbors took a dislike towards my brother. I don't really know why they decided they didn't like him, and I really don't care. The problem was that they started telling him he wasn't allowed to walk on the sidewalk or on the seawall because they owned it. This is the exact wrong approach to take with my brother. Since he knew that they didn't own it, them telling him they did, made him mad. He started deliberately walking on it every day.
The first few days, they just had shouting matches. With them yelling at him for walking there, and him yelling back that he had every right to walk there. Since that wasn't getting them anywhere, they called the police and reported that he was trespassing. The police came out, but my brother had already left for work by the time they came. So they left him a warning. The same neighbors also came by the next day, to make sure that we had gotten the warning, and to let us know that the police had told them that "they take trespassing very seriously."
Before this,my brother had been positive that he was in the right. Now he wasn't so sure. So for a few days he didn't walk there. But it bothered him so much that the neighbors had "won" the dispute, that he called up the county appraisers office. The county appraiser confirmed that the sidewalk really was public property. So my brother went back to walking on it and arguing with the neighbors. After all, he wasn't going to let them win.
The neighbors again called the police,and again my brother wasn't home and another warning was issued. My brother ignored the warning, but did go down to the appraisers office and had the appraiser print out a plat showing the seawall and sidewalk as public property. The county appraiser called the sheriff's department and let them know that the seawall and sidewalk were public property. My brother kept a copy of the plat for himself to show the cops if they ever came back out, and the other copy he proudly presented to the neighbors.
They were so upset, that they called the appraiser and tried their best to convince him that his plats were wrong. They also called the cops yet again, but this time the cops didn't issue a warning or even attempt to talk to my brother.
So, that is where we stand today. My brother walks in front of their house on purpose to annoy them, and they regularly call and report him for speeding and trespassing. They also have a yelling match about once a week with him.

This whole issue is so stupid on both sides. On my neighbors side, what does it hurt them if someone walks along the seawall in front of their house? It's not like my brother was parking himself in front of their house fishing. All he was doing was walking past.
And on my brothers side, what does it hurt him not to walk there? He could go around, or simply not walk that direction. Go the other direction on the sidewalk.

Why do they both have to fight over such stupid things?

By the way, the picture above is of the seawall and sidewalk that caused so much trouble.

Initial Creation

Well, I just created this blog. This is going to be a new place where I can rant and vent my own struggles and opinions on life. I have another blog where I post pretty regularly, but the focus of that blog is news. Since these posts will not be "news" in the same way, I didn't want to have them in with the other posts on that blog.
Some of the posts on this blog may well be news related, but the focus will still be more on my opinions and how I am affected, rather than the news itself.