Bite me!

Lately, I've been bitten by the creation bug. Its a horrible time of the year to get such a bug, as I'm incredibly busy, and I've vowed not to shirk on my holiday responsibilities like I did last year. I have managed to create some PHP pages for a friend's online game, and that's helped, but I really want to do something more than that, like write a novel, or create a D&D campaign, or some other intellect-bending undertaking.

Part of this I blame on Gunch, who asked what kind of MMO we would make if we could. I proceeded to spit out a description of a game that's been building in my head for some time.

I'd make a good space MMORPG, or attempt to make one. Something on an epic scale, with various starting planets for each race. After starting on your home planet, you go on planet-based quests to get the equipment, notoriety, and respect needed to get on a vessel, captained by another PC. The vessels would be based off of templates, but could be altered and designed in such a way that they would be unique for each vessel. Then there would be vessel based quests as well, and skill-based "stations" on the ship, like navigator, weapons tech, communications, etc. Each of these stations would have tasks that needed to be done while on mission. What quests would there be, might you ask? Well, there would be "bad guy" alien ships to fight, space stations to loot, other PC ships to attack and loot, and of course planet based missions. The ship-to-ship fights can be shoot-to-destroy, or shoot-to-loot, where your ship would try to disable the other ship so you could board it. Once a ship is boarded, hand-to-hand fighting ensues on the ship, with the uniqueness of each ship playing out in the floor plan. The planetary missions could range from the simple recon missions for a reward from your government to full on raids with dozens of ships fighting off the planetary defenses to invade and eventually take over the cities and perhaps the whole world. The planetary defenses would probably be NPC based, with PC defender ships pitching in if they're in the neighborhood. Of course there'd be faster than light speed travel, but through wormholes or space highways, like in the Freelancer game. If battling for turf isn't your fare, there's always discovery missions to find new planets. Of course, there wouldn't be FTL highways to the new stars, but there'd be an in-game mechanism to make it not so boring going through space to the new locations.
Crafting would have its form in planetary play, with the ability to craft weapons, engines, shields, or whatever for ships, as well as chemistry and physics based skills to find new technologies and alloys to give your race, or even just your team, more of an edge. Death wouldn't have a penalty, or if it did, a small penalty, but if you died on a ship, and that ship was destroyed, the ship doesn't respawn, its gone. You've got to find a new ride, or if you're the owner, you've got to raise the funds for a new one. Think about it, a whole galaxy in flux, with planets changing hands and space stations getting built, then destroyed, etc.

Oh, I'd love to be able to make this game, and really get people in to it, but I know that its beyond my scope, currently. My other aim is to make a good Harry Potter style duelling game, and I've got all sorts of ideas for that, but I don't want to reveal them at this point. I've come up with all sorts of ideas lately for some pretty cool things, including an XBox Live Arcade Sumo game, an XBLA curling game,(I think this would be REALLY popular, in some kind of weird culty way) and other weird off the wall things.

But, real life comes in to play, as it always does, and can take us away from our creativity and "free time". I'm really hoping to hear tomorrow about a possible new job, and the holidays are crazily upon us, and that's taking a toll, and I of course still have lots to do at my current job, and there are games for the 360 and Wii that I haven't played nearly enough of, and 2 seasons of Dr. Who to watch, on and on. Its all quite a mess.

In short, I've got a bug, and thank goodness its not the Norwalk Virus. Once was enough for me. Stay tuned for updates, maybe I'll have something to show in a few weeks. Or not.

Don't Call it a Comeback(Bruins Blog 2)

I've been here for years...Huh? What? LL Cool J references? At this time of night? No, its just another Bruins blog. Wow, its been a month since updating this silly thing. But if you blog and there's no-one there to read it, does it matter? Did you know that I learned how to clap with one hand, just so I could answer that philosophical question, a la bart simpson? Its darn useful. Anyway...
After starting off horrifically, the Bruins are starting to make a comeback. Well, I hate to call it a comeback, as they've just reached mediocrity, and are still of little quality. The offense, as I predicted, is starting to gel,(or is it jel? I think its gel, and that the use of jel was inspired by the demon dessert, jell-o) and actually putting up the goals. But there's still the problem of not being able to stop the other team from scoring, especially in the third period, or when they have a large lead. Give these B's a 3 goal lead, and they fall asleep. I know its happened at least 3 times this year, against Toronto, Carolina, and the Habitants of Royal Mountain most recently. And having seen two of those games, I'm here to say that it definitely wasn't the goalie's fault. The defense was just letting the opposing team take shot after shot, like some crazed sideburned samurai.
So yes, they're looking better, and are over .500, with a 13-10-2 record. Hey ESPN, would it kill you to put up a graph a la what you do for MLB? I know that hockey is now 6th on your list, below NASCAR and "Autos", and barely above college basketball, which is just beginning, but show a little love, will you?
Ugh, I just looked at the NHL Power chart on ESPN, and I think I threw up in my mouth a little. The top teams are: Buffalo,(and their horrid new logo) the Anaheim Ducks, the San Jose Sharks, the Nashville Predators, the Atlanta Thrashers, the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Dallas Stars. Are you kidding me? If people want to know why hockey is failing, maybe they should look to expansion and the movement away from the traditional cities. I know that Hartford, Winnipeg and Quebec aren't exactly huge markets, but I certainly would rather have a team there than in Kansas City or Oklahoma City, or Salt Lake City. Cut the team in half, and you'll see some amazing hockey, and people will start coming back to the game. Or alternatively, do what the English Premier League does, and cut the league in half, with an NHL Premier and an NHL Standard league. The worst team in the premier league goes to the standard league, and the team that wins the standard league cup moves up to the big time. I've made this same argument for baseball, and I think it shows that I like it. Yeah, it would kill me to see the Bruins be in the standard league, but thems the breaks.
Back to the Bruins. Savard is looking very good, and he's fast as lightning. He reminds me a bit of Brian Rolston from a few years ago, except without the defensive capabilities. Marc is one of the reasons they're getting burned on turnovers and defense, he's always got an eye up-ice for that elusive breakaway. Phil Kessel is trying his hardest, but isn't coming out the way I had hoped, but he's trying, and he's young. Of course, I said that about Kyle MacLaren. I think Phil may end his season in Providence, but I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. Patrice Bergeron is blazing fast, and has eagle eyes. He's got 25 points, but would have 30 if you add his pipe-ringers. I haven't seen this kind of accuracy on the Bs since Ray was here.
Speaking of the defense, no one's standing out, and I do like Zdeno Chara, but I don't think he's captain material. Why not make Glen Murray captain? Because 1)He doesn't want it, and 2)if they continue to stink, he'll be out of town before the year's end. The D is overall a young group, and they're showing it, chasing around speedy players like a cheerleader after a jock. Players like Martin St. Louis make them look stupid, as do skilled players like Rod Brin'd'Amour.
I guess I was wrong when I said that Hannu was going to be the go to guy this year, he folded like a paranoid poker player, and got sent down to the minors for it. Who's the #2 in Boston right now? No one. Timmy T is between the pipes, and is 11-6 for his efforts, which is not a bad total, until you look at his goals against, which is a manwich-sized 3.10, though his save percentage is a little better, at 90.4%. For those stattos out there, that puts our man Tim at 33rd out of 41 in GAA, but a better 23rd in percentage. He's looked better of late, but still not great.

My new prediction is a sight better than last one, but not by much. New prediction:
32-38-12, for a total of 76 points, and a 12th place finish in the East, 25ht overall. Smack dab in the middle of half-crappy land, where you don't get a great pick, but you don't get into the playoffs.

Of Songs and People

There are certain songs out there that remind me of certain people. I was just listening to the music on my IRiver, and I caught one that always reminds me of my wife, and I'm not sure why. The song is Chez Seychelles, by Michael Doucet and Beausoleil. Its old-timey, and its a fiddle song, and I heard it at our wedding, but its something more than that. Its sweet, and simple, and homey, and happy. In my mind, I can picture us in early 19th century costumes waltzing to this song, and being very very happy. Some days when I hear this song, I even get choked up.

There are other songs that I associate with her, such as "Summertime", as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I associate this song with her because early on in our courtship, I was at her apartment, and heard a tune coming from the living room, and there she was, quietly hand sewing something, and singing Summertime. She's got a lovely voice, I wish she used it more often. On that day, she looked up and saw me looking around the corner at her, and she was very embarrassed. Little things like that remind me how special she is, and I suppose Chez Seychelles does that as well, but I can't pin down why it does, it doesn't have the same kind of direct link that Summertime does.

I associate Cold Beverages by G Love and Special Sauce to my old roommate and good friend Matt, he introduced me to the Philadelphonic sounds, and many a hot summer day were spent in the blue Subaru going to and fro, listening to G Love or A Tribe Called Quest.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any others right now, but I know there are others. Another interesting phenomenon I suffer from is music-induced memories. It might not sound very interesting, but when I hear certain songs, I think to times or places that I heard them in. "Well, duh," you say, "That happens to everyone." But its not the typical "Oh, I was at so and so's house when I heard that" business. It happens the most when I hear songs that I was listening to while reading on the T. I remember the book, I remember the scene, I remember the weather, and I get a distinct remembrance of my feelings at the time, even those not associated with the book or with the song. I've told some people about this, and they attest that they've had the same thing happen to them, and we generally attribute it to a subliminal-type trigger, that our brains and senses remember more when more of them are in use, or when concentrating on something like reading a book.

I'm reminded of a story from Richard Feynman,(noted physicist and one of my heroes) who, while in college, did a study with his friends. Loosely put, he noticed that his friends thought and processed thought differently than he did. This may seem obvious, but its still an interesting study if you ask me. He asked his friends to silently count out what they thought was a minute while doing different things, including reading a book, talking, typing, walking up and down stairs, playing an instrument, etc. He found that while he was able to read a book and count at the same time, his friends had a hard time doing the same, while on the other hand, they were able to talk and count at the same time, but Richard had a very difficult time doing so. He posited that it came down to how a person counts. Some people said they count by seeing the numbers in their head, to others it was a kind of beat in their head, and others spoke the numbers to themselves. Try it yourself some time. Count to 60 doing different activities, and see which takes the longest and is the most difficult to you. I find it easy to count while listening to something else, but I have a very hard time counting while reading or writing something I've never read before. If I type something off of a page, I don't have any problems, though.

Once again, I've ended somewhere completely different than where I started off, or even where I intended to go, but life's all about the journey and not the destination, eh?

I think Feynman would tend to agree with me.

Blog Zero?

I found myself in an interesting state of mind today. I found out that one of my favorite blogs to visit is authored by a very Christian person. He goes to Christian rock concerts, his kids go to bible school, he does a lot of Christian web sites, and so on. Now, I grew up Catholic, and I generally believe that what a person believes is their own business. At the same time, I hate preachy types. If you're Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Pagan, Buddhist, Atheist or whatever, I don't want to be converted. The more you try to force me to be something, the more I'm going to resist.

Back to the blog. The author isn't a preachy type, at least in his blog, and I find this to be good, and refreshing for someone who seems to be such a staunch Christian. The difficult part is that I saw one of his web pages that he did for a pro-life group, which bothered me.

I'm not sure why I'm put aback by the revelation that someone is very religious, especially very Christian. For pete's sake, my mother was almost a nun! Maybe its because it often is followed by a certain kind of inability to be accepting of others and people with other views.(something that my mother has no problem with, she loves everyone, including the psycho, evil, heartless girlfriends I've had in the past(until they broke up with me(which was somtimes my fault) and broke my heart(i just added that last bit to mess with more parenthesis))) And with staunch Christianity often comes a militant rejection of the possibility of gay rights and pro-choice rights. I think that's why I dig the Unitarians so much, they are welcoming of everyone, as long as they're kind and welcoming of others themselves. Its a friendly, warm atmosphere, and even anti-social me enjoyed their coffee socials. Sure, I was still a little uncomfortable, but I was more at ease than normal.

I know plenty of pagans, and I'm happy that most of them are accepting of others, and their views, because I've also met pagans that are as hard-core as any Christian, and as anti-Christian as any Christian is anti-pagan. Tolerance is the key to me, and I think that should be the message at the core of every religion. Some are more geared towards this idea, such as Buddhism, others aren't. Islam, ironically, is geared towards tolerance and equality, at least in the teachings of Mohammed. Like any religion, his teachings have been skewed to match the views of the ruling group, and now many people think of Islam as the most intolerant religion around.

And don't get the wrong idea that I dislike people being religious. I think I've made that clear here, but in case I haven't, I have no problem with people celebrating their faith, as long as they've consciously looked at what their religion is putting forth, and believe in it, or believe in enough of it to follow. I took a good look at Catholicism, and I decided that I couldn't call myself part of a church that held the views that the Catholic church does. Do I still uphold some Catholic ideas? Sure, but in no way would I call myself Catholic. There's a pagan I know that is afraid that whenever she practices her religion, I'll be offended or I'll rebuke her for believing in something bigger than herself. I have to keep telling her that I'm not that way, that she can believe what she wants, and she can practice the way that she wants, as long as she truly understands why she believes what she does, even if that reason is "it makes me happy and more at peace".

Back to the blog, again, and my reactions to finding out that the author is big time Christian. I guess that I just have to push through the disappointment that I feel in finding out some of his views, and accept that he is the way he is, like I ask everyone else to do. After all, he's not advocating on his blog for anti-abortion anti-gay marriage laws, so what should it matter to me? On the other hand, he probably supports and votes for politicians that are in favor of such laws. Its a fine, fuzzy line. Either way, until he starts putting it into his blog, I doubt that I'll let it affect me that much, I'll just note it, and add it to the things I know about him, and realize that those views may affect other views that are seemingly unrelated.

I hate the circus and the Ice Capades(Bruins Blog 1)

And not for the reason most would. No, I hate Barnum & Bailey's and Disney on Ice/Ice Capades not for their treatment of animals, not for the clowns, not for the horrible dance numbers, nor the thousands of plague-infested rug rats infesting the events,(all valid reasons) but for their schedule. Their schedule puts one or the other in Boston for the beginning two weeks of October. Why should this matter? It puts my beloved Bruins on the road for two weeks at the beginning of the season, that's why.

For pretty much as long as I can remember, the B's have started off on the road. This has several bad effects on the team, which I will go into briefly. First off, the team's on the road for an extended time, which is demoralizing, tiring, and can really wear a team down. Secondly, its at the beginning of the season, which means that team chemistry often takes a hit because there's no time to rest, no time to congeal, and no practices at home to help make the team better as a team. This year's Bruins have suffered from this quite a bit, having no sense of cohesion at all, and have started off with a 1-3-1 record.(fine, 1-3-0-1, its still 3 points in 5 games) Thirdly, or maybe Secondly part two, the beginning of the season means that the other teams are having their home openers, which apart from the playoffs, are often the most anticipated games of the season, faces fresh and new, hopes high, and thoughts awash with Lord Stanley's Cup. For the Bruins and their fans, it consistently means being the bad guy for 2 weeks, the black hatters, often with a greatly reduced chance simply because they're on the road on an opening night. Fourthly, it hurts the Bruins because by the time they HAVE come home, its mid-October, and the hockey newbies just don't care aboot the season anymore. Add to that a more losses than wins, and the mood is more somber than it should be when they're finally home.

The Bruins are not going to be good this year. Some are picking them to make the playoffs in the 5-8 slot, which last year meant 92-101 points. I doubt they'll make it at all. Its early, but the chemistry isn't there yet, and they're mainly a young team with a few exceptions, including Glen Murray, PJ Axelsson, and Tim Thomas. I like Phil Kessel, I like the addition of Zdeno Chara, I love Patrice Bergeron, and I can't say that they have any slackers like they did last year in the likes of Alexei Zhamnov. They're just young or inexperienced, and have to take some time to get together as a team. Do I think Hannu has the goods to be a number 1 goalie? Sure, he's young, only 22, and has good fundamentals. As sad as it is to say, I'm in favor of ditching this year. Trade Glen Murray to a cup-worthy team for some young guns and maybe a young defenseman or some room under the cap, not that I'm expecting such genius from Harry's Gang.

I'm pretty disgusted with the managerial moves since the end of the lockout, but its nothing new compared to the last 20 years. They poised the team to have a lot of contracts end the year before the lockout, in anticipation, and that worked wonderfully, giving them the lowest salary cap going into the lockout, poising them to snap up some real talent that other teams simply couldn't afford any more. Instead, they got washed up and tired old hags that were selfish and had no team dynamic. This lead to a listless Glen Murray and a early-season crumble that lead to the unexplainable trade of Joe Thornton. I'm not going to get into it deeply in this post, but I was okay with the thoughts of trading Jumbo Joe, he tended to hang onto the puck too much in the corners, waiting for Murray to get open in front of the net. He just didn't seem to fit in Boston, and as much as I loved him, I was willing to see him move on, provided the B's got back something decent in return, like a Ilya Kovalchuck or Danny Heatley. Nope. They get three nickels for a quarter, Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart, and Wayne friggin Primeau. Next, they trade away Samsonov, and end up in the cellar.

My predictions for the team is 25-45-6-6, for a final point total of 62 dismal points, and 2nd worst in the standings, the lowest being godawful Phoenix. They're in a tough division, they look like crap, and they can't gel.

Chaos theory, and why its full of crap.

This post is to continue on the mention I made earlier about humanity's propensity towards self-centeredness with regards to chaos theory, as it relates to the physical world.(self-centrism sounds much cooler, but its not a real word) Chaos theory was first brought to the general public by Michael Chrichton and Jurassic Park, where that freakishly tall knob, Jeff Goldblum, explains chaos theory by dripping water down the back of whatshername's hand, stating that the path can not be predicted because of subtle movements in her hand, her pulse, etc. For you more technical types, here's the definition of chaos theory from wikipedia:

For a dynamical system to be classified as chaotic, most scientists will agree that it must have the following properties:

• it must be sensitive to initial conditions,
• it must be topologically mixing, and
• its periodic orbits must be dense.

Sensitivity to initial conditions means that each point in such a system is arbitrarily closely approximated by other points with significantly different future trajectories. Thus, an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behavior.

Sensitivity to initial conditions is popularly known as the "butterfly effect", suggesting that the flapping of a butterfly's wings over Tokyo might create tiny changes in the atmosphere, which could over time cause a tornado to occur over Texas. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

Sensitivity to initial conditions is often confused with chaos in popular accounts. It can also be a subtle property, since it depends on a choice of metric, or the notion of distance in the phase space of the system. For example, consider the simple dynamical system produced by repeatedly doubling an initial value (defined by the mapping on the real line from x to 2x). This system has sensitive dependence on initial conditions everywhere, since any pair of nearby points will eventually become widely separated. However, it has extremely simple behavior, as all points except 0 tend to infinity. If instead we use the bounded metric on the line obtained by adding the point at infinity and viewing the result as a circle, the system no longer is sensitive to initial conditions. For this reason, in defining chaos, attention is normally restricted to systems with bounded metrics, or closed, bounded invariant subsets of unbounded systems.

Even for bounded systems, sensitivity to initial conditions is not identical with chaos. For example, consider the two-dimension torus described by a pair of angles (x,y), each ranging between zero and 2π. Define a mapping that takes any point (x,y) to (2x, y + a), where a is any number such that a/2π is irrational. Because of the doubling in the first coordinate, the mapping exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions. However, because of the irrational rotation in the second coordinate, there are no periodic orbits, and hence the mapping is not chaotic according to the definition above.

Topologically mixing means that the system will evolve over time so that any given region or open set of its phase space will eventually overlap with any other given region. Here, "mixing" is really meant to correspond to the standard intuition: the mixing of colored dyes or fluids is an example of a chaotic system.

I don't even care about the second two points, because, much like many mathematical theories, the first point of chaos theory falls apart when applied to real life, specifically nature. There are patterns everywhere in nature, and yes, they may seem chaotic to us, but they usually have some sort of symmetry and balance and an underlying system. Here are some examples, using some of the famous "butterfly effect" examples:

A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and a tornado happens in Texas, eventually. Why? Because the butterfly changing the miniscule amount of air around it causes the weather patterns to change, therefore creating a massively energetic meteorological phenomenon half a world away. Bull. Crap. That butterfly's wing flap injects a tiny amount of force and energy on to the surrounding environment. This energy is diffused, dampened, and scattered into relative nothingness within a few seconds by my friend and yours, entropy. The butterfly flapping its wings doesn't matter because compared to the massive amounts of energy coming in from other sources, namely the sun and moon and earth's core, the energy expelled by Mr. butterfly is nothing. Negligible. Irrelevant. In the big scheme of things, it changes nothing.

Perhaps a more concrete example is dropping a pebble in a pond, another popular chaos theory "lets bring it to the masses" example. Again, this is in nature, and again, it doesn't hold up. Dropping a pebble in a pond causes ripples. This is true. The ripples extend out radially. Also true. But if you stood on the other side of the pond, you could not detect that a pebble has been dropped way across the pond, now could you? No. Once again, its is because the energy diffuses, takes other forms, bounces off of a bank and is absorbed as impact, and so on and so forth. In fact, I'm looking out at sailboats and motorboats that are leaving wakes, sizeable wakes, in the harbor, and those waves are not even making an impact on the water close to me. Yes, the water close to me is exhibiting signs of disturbance, but much more from the big tankers and wind than any 20 foot sailboat cruising along. Is it detectable? Maybe, but that 20 ft sailboat, for the sake of predictions, can easily be ignored. Which brings me to my next point, size comparisons and total sample.

The previous two examples were both examples of a very small effect on a very large system. The small effect can usually be ignored in a large system. That brings us to the example used in Jurassic Park. That system was one drop, falling down a hand that may be what, 4 or 5 inches(10 cm) long, max? The changes in environment on the hand, namely veins pulsing, hand twitching, are miniscule to us, but not to the environment they are considered in. To the whole environment(the hand) they are what, 1:1000? (assuming a 1/10 mm twitch or pulse) And to the actual moving object, the drop of water, we're talking 1:5, maybe 1:10. If you dropped a 1 foot wide rock in a 1000 foot wide pond, you'll be able to detect it across the pond. Or, in the butterfly case, you'd need a Mothra the size of Virginia to make a difference. An average hurricane delivers 10^14, or 100000000000000 Watts of energy per day, or 200 times the total energy production capability of mankind. To say this can be changed by something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings half a world away is ludicrous.

This all brings me to what I think is the real failing of the butterfly effect, which is man's general self centeredness. Man tends to like to think he makes a difference in his surrounding world, and in a sense, this is true. Man can have an effect on his neighborhood, his town, possibly his state, and maybe even his country. Powerful people can affect the world of man. However, even the most powerful person in the world can not truly affect the Earth, let alone the solar system or galaxy. Even if every nuclear bomb was set off simultaneously, the earth, while devastated, would recover eventually, given enough time. Would it change? Yes, but in the grand astronomical scheme of things, nothing would change. Earth would continue to be a mostly water covered planet 93 million miles from its parent star. And it would still be able to sustain life. Meager at first, but eventually the earth would return to human-habitable status.

The butterfly effect supports this theory of "even the littlest change can have an effect". In reality, the littlest change often means nothing, and gets swallowed up and forgotten by the larger, more important changes.

How's that for a cheery outlook?

A quick one while he's away

Yes, this is a quick entry, but I also am using this entry as a beginning of my declaration of love for The Who. "A quick one while he's away" is a song ostensibly about a girl who's man goes away, and finds solace in the arms of Ivor the Engine Driver after friends suggest the very thing. Her man returns, finds out she's been unfaithful, but then forgives her. Its a 10 minute long song comprised of 4 smaller, 2:30 second songs. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you find it and give a listen. Pete Townshend is on record saying that the song is about child abuse, but since all 4 members collaborated on the song, I'm not so sure that the rest of the band would agree.

I'd also like to mention, at least start to mention, because I could go on about this for pages at a clip, is how The Who are far more influential to rock and roll than The Beatles. The Beatles really weren't rock and roll, they were pop artists. They started off very poppy, and then got eclectic, but had a time shaking that pop outlook and sound. There's plenty of songs in their later days, after their "rebirth" of Sgt. Peppers, that remained popular and attractive to the general populace. The Who certainly had their share of popular songs, but they also had songs like the one I mentioned above, as well as another rock operetta, "Rael" that were innovative and completely ahead of their time. In 1966, when The Who were releasing songs like "A Quick One..", "Happy Jack", and "Cobwebs and Strange"(a blog post in itself), the Beatles were releasing songs like "Paperback Writer", "Good Day Sunshine", and "Taxman". I've heard critics extol their Revolver album like it was the second coming of Jesus or a really good dump after a hard night's drinking, they go on and on about how refreshing and revolutionary it was. Bull. Some compare the drum playing in "Tomorrow Never Knows" to "Cobwebs and Strange". When they do, I immediately discount their opinion.

The Beatles weren't the best band of their time, they were simply the biggest pop stars. They didn't have the most talent, they didn't have the best song writers, they didn't have the best musicians, and they sure as hell didn't have good stage presence. They would stand there like they were on display at Madame Tussaud's, and play their little instruments and sing their little songs like the good little organ grinder monkeys that they were. No, at that time, 1966(just for reference), there were The Who and The Rolling Stones, and soon after came Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. But focusing on what the Who were doing in 1966, they were rocking the hell out, destroying stages, and being real god damned rock stars. At the same time, they were collaborating on songs like "A Quick one while he's away", expanding their repertoire and range.

Getting back to the beginning subject(hah!) of this post, go have a listen to the song. If you like Tommy, you'll love it.

Mental Stability

What makes someone "mentally stable"? First off, before anyone thinks that I'm pulling a Tom Cruise, I fully believe that such a thing as mental illness exists, and that there are chemical imbalances that can manifest in a person's mental state and well being, as well as environmental influences that can affect a person's outlook, behaviour and many other aspects of their life. No, I'm not questioning that, I'm questioning the other side of the scale, mental stability. What constitutes being sane? I think it was put very well in 12 Monkeys:

JEFFREY: You know what "crazy" is? "crazy" is "majority rules". Take germs for example.

COLE: Germs?!

JEFFREY: In the 18th century there was no such thing! Nobody'd ever imagined such a thing -- no sane person anyway. Along comes this doctor...Semmelweiss, I think. He tries to convince people... other doctors mostly...that there are these teeny tiny invisible "bad things" called germs that get into your body and make you...sick! He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy...crazy? Teeny tiny invisible whaddayou call 'em?..."germs"!

The same case can be made for a number of scientific beliefs, including a heliocentric solar system, the nature of atoms and atomic makeup, etc. Many of the people who first espoused these beliefs were considered, at the least, eccentric, and at the most, crazy and/or heretical.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who's mentally ill is just misunderstood. I'm saying that it can happen to anyone at anytime, and it doesn't preclude that person from having valid views or opinions, necessarily. I read a blog written by a well-spoken, intelligent, funny guy who just happens to have crippling anxiety and depression. Does that make his thoughts or ideas any less valid? I don't think so.

I was writing this blog when the news came across the wire that Terell Owens supposedly tried to commit suicide by eating several(35) pain pills that he was taking for his current injury. Its completely out of character, and odd, given his previous self-aggrandization(is that a word?) and arrogance, as well as his worry-free lifestyle of fast cars, women, and all the gold he can carry. I was crass when I heard the news, saying "I wonder if he washed the pills down with Cristal?" It just goes to show you that it could happen to anyone, though, and no matter how perfect a life a person seems to have, they may have that voice inside of them that says they're not good enough to live, or that life is too difficult, or not worth continuing.

Now T.O.s publicist and friends(one of whom is noted coke-head Michael Irvin) are claiming that there's no way that he could have attempted suicide, and that the police must be wrong. The police are now starting to retract their statement, which, if you ask me, is only happening under threats of libel, slander, defamation of character, and other nasty sounding legal terms that would lead to the department and possibly the city getting sued.

Night Lights

I'm a geography nut, of a sort. Global geography enthralls me, and wow, did that sound horribly mundane. "Hi, my name is cow, and I like geography and watching paint dry." Ig. Anywah, I do like geography, and my slightly more interesting...interest is astronomy. I'm sure that you've seen the "night sky" picture shown below, and closer to life size at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0208/earthlights02_dmsp_big.jpg.

Some interesting things that I notice, combining my love of geography and astronomy:
1)Look at the Nile. A ribbon of light in the otherwise dark expanse of Africa. None of the other great rivers of the world are so outlined, even the Mighty Mississippi. Also, I am surprised to see as many lights in the middle of the Sahara, relatively speaking.
2)Compare India to a big chunk of Iran and Afghanistan. Huge difference. I'm sure some of that has to do with geography, but how much of it has to do with politics and wealth?
3)The Trans-Siberian railroad sticks out like a sore thumb in the wastelands of upper Russia.
4)Even from space, the grid-like nature of middle America is easily seen.
5)Compare Cuba to Puerto Rico and even Jamaica. For having 4 times the population, Cuba's pretty dark.
6)This is the most telling part of the map/picture that I can point out. Look at Korea. Specifically the difference between North and South Korea. The border is such a distinct feature, it looks like South Korea is an island.

Another thing I'd like to point out about this picture is the staggering amount of people who, when after 9/11 happened, believed that a section of this picture(North America) was a single picture, taken from space, of people lighting candles in memory of those lost in the hijacking/bombings. This displays an ignorance about weather,(no clouds?) time,(it was supposedly taken at 10:30 PM EST, yet there's no terminator off the west coast) geography(why were Mexico and Canada, and especially Cuba lighting candles?),the amount of light cast by a single candle,(even millions of them wouldn't produce nearly as much light as is shown in those pictures) and an overall sense of self-centerdness that Americans, and humans as a more general group, have. A single human is so infintessimal on the scale of the Earth, let alone the Solar System or our galaxy, that its laughable. So with that happy note, I'll bid you adieu until next time, when I might regale you with my theory debunking the "butterfly effect". Yes, I may be mad-scientist-crazy.

(Sorry for any spelling errors, I can't get Blogspot's spell-checker to work. *pokepokepoke*)

White Rabbit

Much like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, I am obsessed with time. Its a driving force in my life, I'm constantly thinking about what time it is, and I'm constantly in fear of being late when I need to be somewhere, even if its a self-imposed deadline. I always have two sources of time available to me, usually a watch and a clock of some sort, be it computer, analog, phone, or other. I'm constantly calculating how long it will take me to get somewhere, or how much faster I could get if I went this way, or how long I spent doing this, or that, or how much time is needed to go this way or that, etc.

This obsession with time is even more interesting when you take into account my wife. Her concept of time is nearly the opposite, time is a very fluid thing to her, both time of day and periods of time. 5 minutes to her is "just a short amount of time", and thats how she'll measure it in her head, "just a short amount of time". Realistically, this may be anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour. It may sound like I'm bashing her for this, or that I think this is a problem. I admit, it can be frustrating to a time slave such as myself, but that is more of my shortcoming than hers. I admire her ability to not care about time, and to be able to see it as a more flexible thing, because it releases one's servitude to the clock and allows her, in turn, to be more flexible in her daily life.

I'm not sure if I want to "fix" this time obsession, because a) it would be very difficult to change, b) it would make things interesting when it came to getting places on time, and c) I'm no so sure I want to change it. Temper it, perhaps, but not discard it completely. I need to be more flexible when it comes to measuring my time, and thats going to take some work.

"Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, could it be you stop and see, how beautiful they are"

8 Hours of Knots

Sorry, ApocalypseCow , for sending so many "whats my password" emails to your email account. I'm a semi-retard sometimes, and it can often take me several attempts to realize that I am in fact making the mistake, and not whatever I'm working on. So instead of realizing that I should be logging in as BrewCow, I logged in as ApocalypseCow, a name I've been using on the net for more than 10 years. I'd like to think I was the original Internet Apocalypse Cow, but I'm probably wrong.

My stubbornness knows no bounds, and when I get latched on to a problem, I will work on it until a workaround is figured out or the problem is solved. Some say thats a good thing, but others, including myself, see it as a curse of sorts. I often give up actually thinking about how to better solve a problem, and just resort to brute force. Oh yes, I'm a terribly lazy man, and as I always say, "Laziness is the father of innovation". However, I can sometimes be lazy about my laziness, and end up back in brute force land.

All that being said, sometimes tenacity can be a good thing. I once spent over 8 hours unknotting a skein of yarn for my wife. About 3 or 4 hours in, she told me to stop, that it was just one skein, and it wasn't worth it. I wasn't having any of it though. It was going to get untangled, dammit, I was not going to let it beat me. Think about that. I spent 1/3 of a day untieing knots. How bloody rediculous.

I'm sure that ties in with my work ethic, I'll beat my brain against a problem until its bloody and raw, and I have a hard time backing away. I've mentioned this in job interviews, as both a strength and a weakness, and interviewers, if they've got a lick of sense, see this honesty, and appreciate it. At least I damn well hope they appreciate it, because underlying the stubbornness is a willingness to get the job done.

I think I've always been this stubborn, and the idea of anything being possible, given enough time, has been around for a while. In "The Phantom Tollbooth", Milo and Tock are given the task of moving a pile of sand one grain at a time with tweezers. I believe this was done to illustrate the concept of infinity, but at the time, I remember myself saying "Well yes, that would take a lot of time, but certainly not an infinite amount of time."

The geeky part of me will probably now go into a mathematecal equation to figure out exactly how much time it would take them to move a 10 ft high conical pile of sand.

But I'll let you have that fun yourself.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Isrealite?

I heard an interesting report this morning on NPR from the middle east. It basically stated that Iran is getting uppity because of the wars that the US has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US, in taking out two of Iran's major rivals, has allowed Iran to take up the political space, reinforcing their power in the middle east. The fact that Iran is a theocratic republic ruled by Islamofascists is just gravy on their pilaf at this point, adding fuel to their growing geopolitical power in the region, and thusly fuelling their nuclear program.

The US comes along, with the UN, and says "No nukes for you!"
and big GWB wants to of course "bomb the shit out of em". No, he didn't say that in public, but I'm willing to drop odds 4-1 that he did say it in private . Iran knows they can't retaliate directly against the US, so they do the next best thing, they pick on the US's little cousin/nephew/life partner/whatever, Israel, knowing that the US is so concerned with the Israeli plight that getting Hezbollah to toss a few bombs might take the US back a few steps.

Now, none of this is news, or it shouldn't be, if you're paying more attention to the world at large than to which Hollywood psychopath is pregnant. What I'm here to complain about is the fact that the US cares SO much about Israel, and is willing to go to war, if not several of them, to protect its little buddy. Take a look, people. Israel is FAR from defenseless. Its army is just as powerful as any in the middle east, if not moreso, and it has a powerful nuclear force, more powerful than Pakistan, India, and even the UK.

So, why continue protecting them? Take a look from an outside point of view at the middle east mess, and hopefully you'll see that there are MANY countries involved in the conflict, and its most definitely not an "everyone vs. Israel" conflict. Hell, even if it was, why does the US have to get involved? Israel's a big boy now, they can fight for themselves, and they can win or lose their wars on their own. Let the whole mess go down, and stop giving the islamofascists reasons to hate the US. Or at least give them one less excuse to hate us.

Before I get any comments that I'm anti-semitic, I'm not. I'm treating Israel like it SHOULD be treated, as a country, not a religion. Just because our leader wants us to believe that every country should be identified by their religion doesn't make it so. Israel is, last time I checked, a democracy, and while it has very strong roots to Judaism, maybe they'd be a bit better served by telling Shlomo to ease off the gas on the fanatacism bus. Or better yet, stop looking to the US to get your back when you go wading into the donnybrook of a bar fight that is the middle east right now.

BlogCow

Well, here I am, in the blogosphere. I feel a bit dirty. But, every once in a while, I need to get some random thoughts about stuff. I'm not going to apologize for my views, nor am I going to shove myself into a label such as "liberal" "democrat" "wacko" or anything else. So, come on in, enjoy your stay.