Light and Dark

SO I went out to dinner with Kate's familly last night, and it was amazing. We ate at a great restaurant and had great food.
While we were eating I looked out the window and saw what Kate and I have termed "the god effect" again. Light shines down from above striking the tops of the clouds where it is reflected back up into the sky to be illuminated against other clouds that are higher up. I saw streaks and beams of brilliant light arching across the sky, and I think that it is quite possibly the closest I have ever come to seeing god...or at least that's what I think it would look like.
Then, a bit later I looked up to see what was possibly one of the most evil-looking thing's I've ever seen.
The god effect was gone, and they sky had turned dark. In one corner of sky the clouds were dissolving down into the clouds below them, trickling down in a fine, black, hazy mist, and it looked...like the clouds were bleeding. I've never seen anything like it before, but it was really creepy.

I don't think that you really appreciate the taste of a drink untill after you've swollowed it.

Automb leaves make me
sigh, summer is passing by.
Frost in the morning.

V for Vendetta

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot ;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
--Old English Rhyme

I just watched V for Vendetta with Kate, and it still has the wheels in my head turning three hours later. That movie struck a chord in me which one hasn't done in years. Perhaps it's because it resonates so much with what is happening around us now.
Recently the congress has passed laws giving the presidency powers far beyond the scope of what it was origionally intended to posses. They have chosen to abridge freedoms of speech, the right to be free of unreasonable searches (I define unreasonable as any search that can be conducted without a warrent), the right of civilians to not be held accountable for a crime without coviction by a grand jury through due process by law, the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments (and yes, i think that tortue counts), and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, to confront witnesses arranged against him, to summon witnesses in his defense and to have counsel.
That is to say that congress has chosen to violate the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth ammendments.
V for Vendetta paints an eloquent explanation of how this happens. People become afraid in chaotic times, and they chose to sacrifice their freedoms for what appears to be security. In times such as we are in now, it is easy for a political group to play upon those fears to gain power. The republican party--and I will give those members of the party who have objected to this credit: it isn't all of the party, just mostly the neoconservatives--didn't even have to circumvent the democratic system to do this. We gave them all the support that they needed because they told us that they would protect us...but they didn't. Instead they used that power that we gave them to increase their own power. But there have only been two terrorists kept at Guantanamo Bay that I know of, and many of the people sent there are not prisoners of war, but American citizens who have the misfortune to be born Islamic. Now, not only can they use tortue in Guantanamo Bay or deport suspects to Syria, they can do it within the vagiaries of U.S. Law, and the presidency wanted to explicity be given the right to do so. They take away liberties because it gives the illusion that they are winning the "war on terror". I'm not going to suggest that the Republican's took away liberties because they want to put us more firmly under their thumb...I can't believe that, even of them...but they are doing it to stay in power all the same. They don't have to pass laws for the purpose of subduing the general public if by passing those laws they keep the people in such a state of fear that they are voted back into power. It's like V said, to look for those ultimatelyt responsible, we need only look into a mirror.
If you need any further proof, just look at the latest replican add where the show tapes of Osama Bin Laden and then end with the statement, remember the stakes. I cannot think of a more blatent use of scare tactics to win an election. The GOP has descended to the point where it's only reason for being in power is to stay in power. Everything that they have done, and done innefficiently I might add, has been designed to maintain their power. Am I the only one who noticed that we invaded Iraq just in time for the presidnetial elections?

Well, I don't have it in me to hurt anyone except in the final defence of my life or the lives of those I love...but I am a believer that dissent is patriotism, and I will remember the fifth of november in my own way.

Do not dissent out of hate of Bush or the GOP or anyone else, do so because you love America and want it to be all that it can be.

Physical Predestination

Predestination. First proposed by the Calvinists, it's the idea that you have no control over your future. The idea that GOD knows everything and is all powerful and has seen--no, has decided--what you are, what you will be, and ultimately what will become of you. In the terms of rennaisance Europe this translates directly into the idea that it is GOD and GOD alone who decides your salvation. Furthermore, He decides based on criteria that we can't possibly understand, and decides before you are even born. He decides, at the moment He houses your soul in your body wether or not it deserves redemption...and there is nothing you can do about it throughout your life because your soul is, in the eyes of GOD, inherrently good or evil.

Well, I don't know if I believe in that kind of GOD...maybe I believe in God....or maybe just in god. I'm not sure what you'd call it.
But I have news for you...the calvinists may have been out in the cold when it comes to the true nature of God, but they may have been on the right track when they were talking about predestination. It's not an almighty GOD that decides your fate though...you don't get the comfort of knowing that your fate was chosen by a higher purpose, it was decided by something much, much more powerful: simple physics.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy not particularly far away, a universe was born. In less than a second it exploded from a state so dense we can't even begin to comprehend it to being a million light-years across. Everything was created then and there. That primordial state of a universe so saturated with energy that everything in it practiclly glowed with it was our garden of eden, and in that instant everything was decided.
The fabric of space grew, like a room that gets larger from one minute to the next, and everything--every atom, every loop of energy, every compund--left this garden with it's fate predestined. They left with an initial velocity, and an energy state, and every other charcteristic that they need to decide your fate right now. You see, if everything gets going in a certain direction with a certain speed then it is only a matter of time and mathematics before it interacts with another thing, and so on and so forth. In this way stars were formed, and out of a giant, interstellar cloud of fiery gas our sun and our very own Mother Earth were born, as had to happen given the fact that physics and mathematics determined at some point that it must. Just because something appears random does not make it so...it's path has been determined by the events that have happened to it before, which were in turn decided by the THE EVENT, the big bang, in the very begining. The chemistry of matter was what made life occur on Earth four and a half billion years ago, but when you take chemistry and strip it down to it's most basic principles upon which everything else is founded, chemistry turns into physics. So ultimately, it was the physics of the molecules on our prehistoric Earth that dictated how and where and when life would occur. It seems as though life escapes this pattern, doesn't it? Animals seem to make their own choices and we are no exception. However, what most people do not know is that life, and even thought, reduces to chemistry, which as I just stated reduces to physics.
Allow me to explain. In the most basic organisms "decisions" are essentially a form of stimulus and responce: something happens and a series of chemical reactions within the organism decides how it responds. This is just as true for more complicated for organisms such as our selves. Even thought and sentience is, at it's most basic level, chemistry occuring within the neurons that comprise the brain...so are memories. Now, the matter that forms the chemicals of your brain was created in the big bang and it left with all of it's properties decided just like everything else, as did everything that ever interacted with any other part of your body, the bodies of your progenitors, and of every other living thing on earth. Since thought is determined by chemistry, and chemistry depends ultimately on physics, then it is physics that determines what you think both consciously and unconsciously; the physics of whatever the stimulus is and the physics of your neuron's responce to it. Since what you think determiesyour actions, everything you or anyone else has ever thought, said or done, and thus everything that has ever happened in our history was determined by the properties that those initial particles of matter took with them from the big bang. Your reaction to what you have just read was determined fifteen billion years before your were born, as was the fact that you would read it. If you chose to read every single word of this long explanation, then that was decided at the initial moment of our universes creation as were any lines that you chose to skip, and if you didn't make it to the end of this post and will never read these words, then that was decided too.

Now I will tell you that I have just said is true. Every line of reasoning i have put into this is not in any way incorrect, and yet despite that I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence that your future is the result of your actions and choices. Your thoughts are your own and were not decided at our genesis all those long years ago, despite everything that I have said being true. Or at least, there is the possibility that it is not true, and that is enough for me. Your freedom rests on one single reason; one single aspect of life in particular and our universe in general that may free you form predestination. I know what it is, but I'm curious to see if anyone alse can think of it or perhaps think of others. So I would like to encourage you to post your thoughts on the matter to see what you think. I will give my own explanation in a bit.

Uhhhh...yeah

So a horse-drawn carriage is galloping around Muhlenberg right now.
Weird.

Seen through the eyes of my enemies...

Who am I?
A wise man once said that to truly known a man you should look not at his friends, but at his enemies. I don't remember which wise man said this, but I know it was one of them and that he was pretty damn wise. I would say that an enemy (on a personal level) is someone whom you fight with, who wants to hurt you, or whom you want to hurt. So, to give you a differnt look at me, here are my enemies in no particluar order.

A local taxie cab company. We had a fight when they said they would pick me up and never did...every half-hour or so I'd call them and ask if they were coming (this is after they were a good thirty minutes late) and they'd say "oh, we haven't gotten you yet?...well we'll be there if about fifteen minutes. After a while I gave up and took a ride with a friend, and when I called to tell them that I didn't need them anymore the conversation culminated with the dispatcher screaming at me that I was on their black list and that he would "put [me] in their black book and they wouldn't ever help [me] anymore," and that I'd get what was coming to me.
I hate them with a bitter passion, and we are not on speaking terms.

A man from whom I took the thing he valued most in the world--or so he claimed. I don't excuse what I did, nor do I think he ever really had what he thought he did to begin with...but then, if he thought he had it, is there a difference? The last time we spoke (over the phone) he told me that he'd beat me within an inch of my life if we ever met again, and maybe he even had the right to.

A man whom I conisder to be the most disgusting and revolting person I have ever met. He stalked at least two girls in my grade back in highschool, and there was a long time when there times that I wanted to hurt him so badly that I could barely breathe. I never did though, both to my infinite relief and regret. I don't think he ever realized how much Ihated him, and I can honestly say that I have never hated someone with such depth, purity, and intensity as I did him; most likely because there were times--not often mind you, but times--when he reminded me of the very worst parts of myself (not because of the stalking, because of other stuff)...and so I came to loath him.

A person who, when we parted ways, tried purposefully and successfully to put in as much pain as possible and make me ashamed of whom I am and what I do...and for a long time, was successful. It is in the past now.

An elementary school bully who, in retrospect, I doubt ever knew he ever hurt anyone and just had a bizzare sense of fun. He is the only person that I have ever had to use force against in order to put trouble between us to an end. Years later, I realized that he was more pathetic than anything else and should be pitied rather than reviled. Now, I hope that he somehow managed to make something of himself, though I doubt that he has what it takes in him. Still, years later I wish him only the best.

In general, those who would take anything and everything that makes me happy away from me. We all look out for ourselves, and I reserve the right to do so just as much as anyone else.

So these are my enemies, what does this say about me?

No Reality Show. No Reality Show.

In a conversation with my roomate last year, we talked about how reality shows were becoming more and more prevalent in tv (he's a communications major) and he explained to me that one of the reasons why reality shows are so frequent these days is that they do very well...for a number of reasons.
First of all, they're popular. As far as I'm concerned this is just more proof of how people's taste in entertainment is becoming cheaper as time progresses (you don't have to try and wrap your mind around all of that "plot" nonsense...you just get to watch and vege out while people try and complete the next task) and I think it can be seen in all areas of media not just tv shows--but I digress. Regardless of my personal oppinions, reality tv is very appealing to the masses (I almost said lowly masses...but I decided to show some self-restraint and stick ot the point). People will go out of their way to watch it, and having watched it will spend hours discussing it--which is good if you want them to keep watching it.
Also, It's cheap. You don't have to pay all of those actors to act. You save thousands in having a shorter script, and you don't have to spent nearly as much time filming and rehearsing. The overall effect of this is that there is much less risk involved, which makes it much easier to try out a reality show than a regular tv series since should the show not take, you haven't invested nearly as much into it.
Finally, they're easy. You don't have to come up with a complex plot--just a general theme for the game. You don't have to write all those lines and rely on actors to get them right. You don't have to worry about whether or not a scene conveys the right feeling because all the scenes are supposed to be "real" and shot as they actually happened anyway.

So, because of the overwhelming market reasons that I just discussed it is a vastly better idea to churn out reality shows than to put in the effort and take the risk to produce a series, isn't it? Producers seem to think it is and the number of reality shows on the air is only expected to increase. Will I be unfortunate enough to live to see a day when real new tv shows are a minority and reality shows the rule? I hope not, because here is the reason why it is better-- despite all the market logic to the contrary--to make real tv shows: art.
Real tv shows have an art to them that reality shows don't. They tell a story and they can use this story to make a point. They bring up intersting ideas that people might not have considdered otherwise. They can portray a different world or take an intersting spin on the ones we know. In short, the are stimulating, which reality shows are not. A really, truly good reality show does a good job of appeasing the audience, a truly good tv show should inspire them.