Project Mayhem

I just saw Fight Club, a little later than most people who have seen it. Except those who just finished watching it in the past 4 minutes, of course. It's an interesting movie, in both meanings of the word (weird and engaging.) Personally, I can appreciate the irony the portrayal of the destruction of commerce being vended by huge corporations, and I don't tend to enjoy watered-down philosophy grafted onto a film. Like in The Matrix.

SPOILERS FOLLOW. If you have any intention of seeing this movie I would suggest scrolling past or something. If you haven't seen it yet, I doubt you care, but I'll be vague anyways. I did like the movie, even though I don't think violence is exactly therapeutic. I don't believe that the plot holds together, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. Like I said, I found the anti-materialistic message ironic, but what bugs me more is the notion that you have to hit bottom before you can be redeemed (I mean the bottom of what humanity can be, not the bottom of our own personal struggle. Redemption implies that there was a bottom,) and that similarly destroying commerce will redeem our society. Materialism implies many negative things, but I don't think we can escape from it, or that we should.

That was fucking disgusting, though. I think I'm desensitized to violence at least until I wake up tomorrow.

Requirements of Living

In an online game I was playing, one player went by the moniker of "Life Demands Lysol." Now, I think that's fairly silly, because generally a bucket and soap is a fair substitute, but it had me thinking about what exactly I need to live. No, this is not some post where I end by saying "We need nothing! Goodbye material world, hello hermitage and a life spent alone in a cabin growing an impressive beard!" It's just a small list of things I require to continue functioning properly.

Some of these things are food, like breakfast. Recently I've been getting up after 12, in which case I'll usually eat "breakfast" at 3 pm, in which case it's hardly breakfast, but I still need toast, cereal, or something better than that on a daily basis. Oatmeal is also delicious. Under the food category there is also bread, usually brown bread. The white bread you get here is either cardboard or so processed that it's sweet, which is just weird. Other necessities are hot beverages like tea and coffee. The last item: chocolate, preferably dark.

Food is a fairly obvious prerequisite to survival. To actually live, I need trees. Trees, mountains, rivers and whatever other nature I can find. Animals are cool, too. I don't think I could live in a place that didn't have some of these things nearby. Part of why living at UBC is so cool is that we have a full forest next to campus on one side, an ocean on the other, and mountains looming to the north. It's not like I commune with nature on a regular basis. But I do love nature, and want to spend more time in it (therefore, the outdoors club.)

I'm not going to lie and leave something out here, but I need a computer as well. A digital camera is fairly awesome, but I can imagine living without one (seeing how rarely I use it.) But I currently maintain contact with most of my friends through the computer, entertain myself for hours with it, and occasionally do actual work on it. Obviously I could physically live without a computer, the question is only why I would want to.

So far, this list is missing one very important object, namely books. I haven't been reading very much recently, which makes me sad. I read No Logo when I first got here, honestly because I had nothing better to do, followed by The End of Faith, and am almost done Collapse (by the same author as Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is possibly one of my favourite books.) Considering that the first two were finished within the first few weeks of being at UBC, I think I could have done more reading. But I have read a fair bit, and I read a variety of books. The occasional fantasy book, for fun. A modern novel (I quite like Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy), for more serious literature. A non-fiction book, such as political or economic texts, or a polemic, for quite serious reading and for my education. There are more, but I think you get the point. Books are good.

Obviously this list is not complete, but I think it's dragged on enough.

Insomnia

It is currently 2:19 AM on the 11th of December, 2006. I have a computer science exam in 6 hours and 10 minutes. After reading that, you are no doubt questioning the wisdom of being up so late. There is no wisdom to question: I went to bed around 11, and have tried to fall asleep for the past three hours. The fact that I am awake right now is entirely voluntary.

I can tell you why I can't sleep. I can't sleep because at 7 PM, after finishing my reading for computer science, I fell asleep. I then slept for about an hour and twenty minutes. Long naps at odd times consistently spells insomnia, for me. On the rare occasion that I cannot sleep, it will almost always be because I took a nap that afternoon (even more occasionally it will be too hot to sleep.)

However, I have a fatalistic attitude towards insomnia, and other aspects of life. I refuse to worry about events beyond my control. That doesn't mean I assume I have no control, that I believe a divine hand shapes our actions, but merely that if I cannot do anything to change an issue, I will not fret about that fact. Before a test or exam, I will be calm because I cannot prepare any more, so I may as well proceed from there. And when I suffer from insomnia, I accept that I cannot sleep, and it does not bother me. Instead, I choose to write about it, because I think my attitude is fairly unique and also because it probably will help.

(There are, of course, other things that bother me while I lie in bed, since I have plenty of time to think about every insignificant problem I have, but those are not the subject of this blog post. Or any blog post, for that matter.)

An Analysis of the Matrix

Because that's always a good idea.

I've just finished watching the cool parts of the first two Matrix movies. I noticed a lot of things. It's fairly common knowledge that humans are not a source of power. The energy we get ultimately comes from the SUN, so to feed us the robots need an alternate source of energy, in which case we're completely useless anyways. There goes that idea.

First of all, why have the Matrix. If they can project a whole world into our minds that is run by an unbelievably complicated program, why the hell not just make us unconscious? It's not like we're doing anything anyways- we're just chilling in a bubble of some foul-looking liquid. Making us comatose is infinitely less complicated than a program that outputs the world's display realistically (down to every detail of our existence) with 6 billion of us simultaneously affecting the whole world's state, the results of which must then be dumped back into our brain. Just... WHY?

Secondly, we have the agents. Assuming that you, as a robot, feel bad for those humans and want them to have some sort of existence, and you want to run it smoothly, you could do better than the agents. Presumably if you have control over every facet of our reality you could simply REMOVE the anomalies from the system? The Architect sort of explains Neo's purpose, namely that the system cannot be perfect as choice is required, but that doesn't explain the agents. If his existence (and presumably the existences of his allies) is required, why are you trying to kill him? If it's not required, REMOVE him.

The agents behave very oddly given that they're programs. First of all, they take over human bodies. Why is this necessary? No one's going to believe that someone just transmutes into a completely different person. It would be much more believable to have someone randomly pop into existence- they could be testing a teleportation or cloaking device. They're definitely not human, given that Mr. Smith is worried about our smell infesting him: if I were a program possessing a human body, I'd freak out about my OWN bodily functions. Could you imagine Mr Smith being hungry, or needing to pee, while chasing down the next goddamn meddler?

But despite being inhuman, they seem to carry over some of our flaws. The miss almost every shot they take, and Mr. Smith clearly has strong emotions regarding our species and some of its members. For the first part, they are a program operating inside the Matrix, and as anyone who's ever played counterstrike can tell you, programs don't miss. They consistently line up their gun with your head. (In most online first-person shooters, some jackasses run programs called aimbots that do the aiming for them.) Secondly, the last time I checked computer program implied cold, hard logic, not all-encompassing hate and a wont to monologue.

I'm not even going to touch the actual physics of the movie, I'm just going to mention that the Mythbusters team shot at a gas tank repeatedly, with different guns, and nothing ever happened. Of course, Hollywood doesn't care. Hollywood doesn't care for the same reason that the Matrix premise has so many flaws. Comatose humans on a desolate planet with no plot isn't exactly going to sell one movie, let alone three, and suspension of disbelief means that Hollywood can make lots of money.

Which is fine, it's just fun to tear holes in things.

Rantosaurus? Drunkosaurus!

Yesterday I wrote a bitter, bitter, totally serious rant mainly focused on the weather. Today I have a more cheery topic: alcohol. I drank today, the first time since I got here (surprisingly enough for a college student) and the first time since mid-August when I partied it up on the Queen Mary II. Much of the reason I drank tonight was that I was with nice, friendly people. I don't like drinking with strangers, particularly as I take a dim view of the inebriated, even when fairly soused personally.

Today happens to be the last day of classes, surely a cause for celebration. Some friends of a guy whose girlfriend is a friend of mine were celebrating this in the aforementioned friend of a friend's room. This involved a lot of alcohol. I felt bad about drinking other people's alcohol and so was sober most of the time. Someone invited me to drink, I drank someone else's beer (they didn't mind), and drank some rum that that the friend's friend definitely didn't want, and lo and behold I was fairly drunk. On the sillier side of tipsy, one might say. Also known as the most drunk I ever want to get.

It was quite fun. I was more animated, had fun playing drunken ping pong, accidentally kicked someone in the head while trying to climb over the back of the couch, had some excellent drunken debate, and eventually at 2:30 decided I was tired enough to go to bed. In my livejournal blog I once wrote about alcoholism and how I hate losing control of myself. Well not only do I know that first of all, I never do anything I couldn't think of doing while sober, and secondly I rarely get to the point where that's even an issue. And since I had a lot of fun tonight, more fun than I would have had sober, I'd like to propose a toast. To alcohol, neither the cause of nor the solution to all of life's problems, but definitely excellent in moderation.

(Ha, I can write proper sentences while tipsy.)

Rantosaurus

It's currently 2 AM. Woohoo, first post in December. Let's kick this month off with COMPLETELY irrelevant shit that may not be entirely valid.

Seriously, what's up with the fucking sidewalks here? Why is it that in Vienna most sidewalks are cleared and gravel is spread over all the icy parts by the time I wake up, and yet as I walk to class at 9:30 in Vancouver the sidewalks are a fucking sheet of ice. Yes, Vienna HAS to be prepared for snow and ice, but it's not like it never snows in Vancouver. You'd think they'd be prepared for the one event of the year involving water crystals. Exhibit A) whiteness blanketing everything. Exhibit B) the cut on my hand I got from falling on my ass walking to class, which is totally irrelevant compared to the wrist I fucked up which means I couldn't go climbing this week.

So far Vancouver's infrastructure has been fairly shitty. It rains and we have fucking dirt in the water, it snows and the fucking power cuts out. Maybe you can't do all that much about the dirt (seeing as how what makes the water undrinkable is what the filters MISS) but for fuck's sake, keep the trees off of the fucking power lines. There's a fucking thing called wind.

Another thing that pisses me off about the sidewalks is the fact that people insist on jauntily and slowly strolling down the sidewalk, taking up both sides of the now narrow sidewalk and moving at about the pace that I crawl. You can walk at whatever speed you want, but when I am already 10 minutes late for class, feel free to move aside so that I don't have to jump through the fucking snow, thank you. And no, being late is totally not my fault, and this doesn't just irritate me because I got up half an hour earlier after too-little sleep, it's the fault of the fucking weather because it is too cold for me to want to walk outside.

Let me rephrase that. The cold doesn't really bother me, it just means I have to summon even more will to leave me wonderful, comfortable room.

Actually I don't really care about the sidewalks, the people, or the lack of basic services, although the maintenance people here could do a fucking better job with the sidewalks. What I'm really ranting about is the weather. By all means, snow, please, but do so in a way that doesn't deprive us of power and warmth. And don't fucking rain to the point that I don't drink anything, because that's just fucking cruel.

Goodnight everyone. Happy December, and I promise I'll make real posts later.

In Defense of Gaming

Gaming's often seen as a strange, antisocial activity. Part of this is probably its history of being strongly attached to nerdiness and technology. Video games started off fairly obscure and have become more and more popular until now it's no longer something you can make fun of people for, it's mostly something that some people do while those who don't wonder what the appeal is.

From one perspective, playing video games is strange. What's the appeal of running around as an dwarf, slaying monsters and collecting items? Why do you want to shoot people in the face so badly? How exactly does winning battles between 0s and 1s excite you? Wouldn't you want to interact with REAL people? The thing is, with that logic lots of other things seem strange. Why do you enjoy watching virtual armies destroy each other on the screen (the Lord of the Rings battle sequences involved lots of computer animation)? What's so great about watching other people find love in a wacky, heartwarming way? Why are you reading a BOOK when you can experience the real world? Basically, escapism isn't all that weird- and in a way, games are a better way to escape because you control the experience.

It is an antisocial activity, relatively. You can play it with your friends in one room, or online with your friends, or online with strangers (many of whom talk shit, annoyingly,) or completely by yourself. Ranked next to playing sports or going out with friends, it's antisocial, but unless you're the only human in your game, you're more isolated reading a book than playing a game.

The reason why it's fun depends on the genre, which is why many people (especially girls) only like certain games. Interestingly, I remember reading that there are more woman MMO players (MMO is where the whole game is online, like WoW) than male ones. Some games are fun because you're in a fantasy world that previously you could only read about. Other games are fun because you can run around shooting people, for whatever reason the game gives, something you can't exactly do in real life. Unless you go to war, which I've heard is ever so much fun. And like the game I've been playing recently, some are fun because you get to command entire armies and pit them against the machinations of an opponent. Most of them have a decent story (some have a good story) to drive things forward. And all of them require some skill, so you can feel proud when you accomplish something impressive.

So: strange? Hardly. Antisocial? Relatively, sure. Fun? Hell yes.

Pixies are scary

They have THREE SPLEENS.

The Significance of Star Wars

(I've decided to write a post that doesn't deal with a serious issue.)

Did you know that there are people in this world who haven't seen the original Star Wars movies? (I don't mean the unedited versions, I mean Episodes IV, V, and VI.) Some people haven't even seen one of the six. In fact, there are some people in this world who, get this, don't like Star Wars. Weirdos.

To be perfectly honest, the Star Wars movies (referring from now on only to the original ones) are not without their flaws. The acting wasn't exactly stellar and some of the lines they deliver are pretty corny. They're still amazing movies because the story and the world it's set in are, in my mind, awesome. Come on, Jedis and X-wings? Tell me those aren't cool! Part of what makes these movies so special is that I saw them when I was a kid, and they're part of my childhood. I wanted to be a Jedi, have a lightsaber- heck, I still want those things.

It's not like Star Wars has had a huge impact on who I am today- it's not that significant. I'm not a Star Wars nerd, I don't own the action figures, and if I argue about it with my friends it's because I argue all sorts of crap with my friends. And if the subject of the new trilogy comes up, I will despair and possibly rant, because they could have been SO GREAT, but instead they were merely ok.

If I were a Jedi, I'd occassionally fuck with people's heads just for fun :
"You are not on Earth."
"You should dance naked in the streets."
"Your name is Filbert MacGonalogolous. Your great-grandfather was a Greek that moved to Scotland."
That would be so awesome.

Lord of War- The Arms Trade

There is a movie called Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage. It's a good movie, I'd suggest you watch it. It follows a Ukrainian-American as he enters and then gains power in the business of selling weapons illegally. He and others like him make sure that wars run smoothly wherever wars can be fought. Smoothly in the sense that there won't be people who want to murder others going without the necessary assault rifle.

The problems with this kind of business are fairly obvious: the world doesn't actually want terrorists with AK-47s, RPGs, or whatever else they can get their hands on. This trade isn't likely to go away easily, since the US uses it to supply "freedom-fighters" when it wants to put pressure on a government it doesn't like, see Iran-Contra. Another problem is that black markets are notoriously hard to control, and this would require cooperation between governments on a global scale. Seeing how this doesn't even work with drugs, why would it work with guns? Still, a greater commitment to controlling arms would be a step in the right direction. There is a campaign calling governments, through the UN, to take greater measure to control the trade of arms called, appropriately, Control Arms, located at www.controlarms.org.

However, there is another, disturbing aspect to the arms trade, one that the Security Council would not like to admit its role in. And that is that the only reason there are weapons floating around to fall into the hand of militants is that they're produced in insanely huge quantities. After World War II the United States was faced with a dilemma. How was it going to maintain wartime levels of arms production, and protect this vital industry, without a war to fight? Well, at first it started giving away the surpluses it had to its allies. Its allies didn't really want more weaponry, though, as they wanted to produce their own.

So unable to sell to each other, America, France, Russia, and Britain started selling abroad. They sold so much that America and France are still the two largest producers of military goods and are still producing as if they were at war with someone. (Well, the US is at war with Iraq but it's not suffering from a lack of nukes or tanks, is it?) Russia produced so many of its highly effective AK-47 that it is truly the weapon of choice for militants and child soldiers worldwide. Britain has been replaced by China, since China soon realized this was a lucrative business indeed, and it had an impressive domestic market to start off with.

So thank you, Big Business. Thank you for fueling conflict around the globe, and thank you to the government for creating this monster of an industry to begin. As Matthew Good said it on Remembrance Day, "the very principles and freedoms that those individuals [i.e. soldiers] fought to protect have been either endangered or altogether lost by the sheer magnitude of our perpetual love affair with destruction." A love affair that has lined the pockets of the super-rich, created child soldiers, and aided conflict across the globe.

Songwriter-Pundit?

In recent times I have been reading the blog of Matthew Good, of Matthew Good Band fame. His blog has a few of the usual blog posts about his life, the weather (he lives in Vancouver), and other not-particularly exciting things. However, he's also an activist and writes a lot about activism. And I agree with most of what he says, namely:

1- The government is not democratic so much as plutocratic (rule by the rich.) See post below.
2- American foreign policy harms everyone, even those it is supposed to be helping, with the exception of the corporations that benefit from war or from US intervention. On this note, Iraq is a complete mess and Bush should be impeached.
3- Ignorance is NOT bliss, it is an obstacle to actual improvement of any situation.

This blog is to be found at www.matthewgood.org. Notable posts are:
The price of ignorance: http://matthewgood.org/champions-of-nothing/
Summary of the arms trade: http://matthewgood.org/parts-of-bombs/
And "Just Math" on this page: http://matthewgood.org/page/2/

Remembrance Day

Today is November 11th, which has the special significance of being Remembrance Day. For those that don't know, today is the day when we honour the dead of the two World Wars. Especially the Second World War, as the first is significant, but doesn't have quite the same weight as the second because it happened longer ago and did not have quite the same impact on the countries. For some people, today is a very important day as they have family that served in the war. Personally, my great-uncle was the only person I know that served in the war, and I don't know much about him. So rather, this day has a different significance.

For one, I'm half-Canadian, half-German, which places me in the unique position of having two perspectives on the war. From the Canadian perspective, I admire those who went to fight against an enemy across an ocean, but I do not feel the need to attend ceremonies. If I had seen one of the poppies, I probably would have bought one, but that's about it.

The German perspective is entirely different. Many of those who died in the war did not have a choice on whether to fight or not, and had they had a choice, many would have been willing to die for the fatherland. So I cannot admire the sacrifices of the German soldiers, because although they were perhaps misguided by propaganda and patriotism, they fought for a cause I cannot agree with. And the legacy of this war has become part of the national identity, a sort of collective guilt for actions we did not commit. And many people's lives were changed dramatically by the war. (When she was 16, my grandmother fled her village in what is now Poland and traveled across the country with only her friend, and later her father who had somehow been separated, and who she met again along the way.) So while Canadians can say, "The war was a tragedy, but Canada and her citizens proved themselves honourable," when a German looks at the war they see only the misery it has caused.

I still view Remembrance Day as important, because it forces us to look back at the past, something we could afford to do more often than once a year. Personally, I want to live my life in a way that will honour what I have been given: a brain, parents who have helped and still help me to become a better person, and a country that allows people to have (some) power, as flawed as that country is. (Less flawed than most, but every government has serious issues it needs to address.)

Vegetarianism Revisited

*I'm working on making this post smaller. Concision!*

In June of 2006 I wrote a post relating why exactly I wanted to such a crazy thing as not eat meat (and why I decided to have a vegetarian barbecue.) However, I find it hard to talk about the things that are actually important to me, which is why I write about them. (My agnosticism is something I'm fairly obvious about, as it's not something I view as important.) I'm writing this one so my new friends can read about the issue, and because I don't think I explained myself properly last time.

Environmental
These are the most important factors for me, as my concern for the environment is greater than my concern for animals or my health. Livestock production adds to certain environmental problems. Many of these result from the fact that producing a certain amount of meat requires much more feed, so not only does production directly lead to problems, it indirectly means more grain must be grown.

The first problem is pollution. North American (edit for Isabel :P) agriculture relies heavily on chemicals and machinery, which require oil and produce pollution. For instance, eutrophication is a process by which fertilizers leak into a body of water, which causes algae to grow until too much has produced, at which point all life in the body dies. Second is soil erosion, where topsoil is eroded and the land loses fertility, which must be replaced using machinery and fertilizer, see above. Third is water use. Meat requires feed (which requires water) and water on its own, so that my biased sources claims that a pound of beef requires 30 times as much water as a pound of grain. Canada has the world's largest water reserves, so this is hardly a concern for this country, but it still causes problems locally, and the fact the we have water is not a reason to waste it. The final issue are resistances caused by overuse of pesticides and antibiotics. Antibiotics are added to the feed, leading to resistant strains of bacteria, while the extra produce grown to feed animals leads to extra pesticides, and recent pesticide-resistant pests are causing all sorts of trouble.

Ethics
In my previous post I stated that I didn't care about animals. That's not true, I care about them, just not when the benefit to humans is greater than the suffering of the animals. So for a while I occasionally felt bad about eating meat, but hey, meat is delicious! However there are no benefits to eating meat, which means there's only the needless suffering of animals world wide. And suffer they do, whether it's cows immobilized in stalls so that their meat tastes better or pigs wallowing in shit with hundreds of other pigs. (Well, technically they wallow in their shit all the time, not just in factory farms. Factory farms being predominant in North America, and being the most "efficient" (cheapest) form of production.") If you feel like making yourself ill, there are many sources on the internet.

I am slightly hypocritical in that I haven't given up on dairy, but I am trying to minimize the extent that I consume dairy, as there are just as many offenses associated with that industry as with the livestock industry.

Health
It is healthier to be vegetarian, despite the supposed trouble of getting all that protein. Here's a statement from the American Dietetic Association: "Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals." Notice that lower levels of animal protein is listed as a benefit. Most North Americans get about twice the protein that they need. On a similar note, as an adult milk loses all the benefit for your bones that you have as a child. There are better source of calcium, such as dark leafy vegetables (such as those used for -real- lettuce, not your watery iceberg crap.)

In any case, health isn't a huge factor as I eat fairly healthily, and to be healthy I would need to eat more and exercise.

The point of all this (this being my third attempt to explain vegetarianism) is to explain myself and hopefully make some of you give it some thought. I won't condemn you for your lifestyle choice, though, I'm not that sort of vegetarian. :P

Western Democracy

Something's rotten in the state of Democracy. Don't get me wrong, I love it compared to the alternatives (e.g. theocracy, dictatorship, none.) But its ideals are so lofty that in our current state we cannot compare to them. The word itself comes from demos and kratos, or "people" and "power," and in its ideal state would mean that power is shared by every member of a state. Seeing as how a government made of say, 30 million people, wouldn't exactly run, we have to settle for alternatives. We could go the ancient way and exclude women, non-whites, and people under 30, but that's not exactly the sort of government we want.

So we had to sacrifice power and settle for representation. All still well and good- we can't directly influence the government, but we can vote, right? Well yeah, except that the candidates all seem to suck. In America's last presidential election, there were two candidates (yay for the two-party state.) One was a complete fuck-up right-wing nut job while John Kerry came off as incompetent and indecisive. With choices like these, how can I be unhappy?

As a whole, we tend to glorify the past relative to the present. Looking back through history, we have George Washington, Abe Lincoln, FDR. Now we have George Walker Bush, the C+ Yale Graduate with the oratory skills of a 3rd grader. And we have the global threats of terrorists, bird flu, Global Warming, and whatever scare is currently in vogue (not that Global Warming isn't very real or very scary.) Thankfully our cities aren't being bombed and we're not reduced to eating rats, so our present is a little rosier than that of World War II.

But great challenges face us, and one of those is the government we'd like to see solving those problems. The government currently suffers from the parasite of corporations and from the high cost of running for office, ensuring that the seats of government are filled with rich (usually white and male) asses. For starters, restrictions on campaign contributions would limit the influence corporate fat cats have on politicians. This problem, at least, has a fairly obvious solution, even if it would be hard to put into effect. Making it so that competent leaders can run regardless of how much money they have is a problem with a less clear solution. However, it is plausible that with a more level playing field (i.e. one not stacked for those close to big business) a grassroots campaign might actually get someone elected to governor or senator or the like.

Brevity is the soul of wit

I've decided that in the interests of improving my writing, I'm going to edit my posts more. Be more concise, make things more interesting, maybe even research what I'm talking about. They'll probably come less frequently than they have been recently, which is probably a good thing as I'd admire anyone who's read everything I wrote recently. (There being lots of it, and a few odd posts.)

For one thing, I'll make even less spealling mistakes since I'll write them out in a word processor. Oh, and hopefully the text is easier to read now.

Walmart and Starbucks

Walmart and Starbucks are two very different companies with an interesting similarity. I don't like either of these companies, but seeing as how Walmart represents low price and little else, it's hardly a popular company. Starbucks, on the other hand, cares a great deal about image and presentation, so disliking it puts me in a minority- a minority that includes anarchists and too-serious coffee-drinkers. However, both Starbucks and Walmart saturate areas with their stores, often replacing the existing businesses.

Walmart's business plan is highly successful. Starting in Arkansas, Walmart creeped across the country. Its popularity stemmed from one thing- lower prices. To acheive this, it made full use of what are called "economies of scale." These are the costs that decrease as a company grows larger. By building many large stores in one area, Walmart could buy products in larger volume (and therefore at a lower price,) distribute these products cheaply (by building stores near distribution centers,) and could save on building costs (by buying large tracts of land outside of urban areas.) Armed with lower costs than its competitors could achieve, Walmart spread across the land, eventually invading Canada as well. And to make the most profit it could, it saturated one area with Walmarts before moving on to the next.

Starbucks is also a highly successful company. It doesn't rely on economies of scale to make profit, but it does use the same technique of saturation that Walmart does. Profit doesn't come from lower prices, but rather from a desirable product that people will be willing to pay high prices for. And the reason there's a Starbucks at almost every street corner? They keep building them in one area until each one is barely making profit, so that together they're making the most profit possible.

If you've made it this far you're probably wondering "So what? Aren't companies supposed to be profitable? Isn't establishing a new company as the leader of its industry admirable?" Well, Walmart seems quite willing to turn a blind eye to the source of its profits (sweatshop labor, environmental abuses,) which is why I dislike Walmart. Starbucks, on the other hand, as a (probably?) green and ethical company should be entitled to make profit. But my problem is that by cutting its own profit margin thin, it cuts into independent coffee shops profit margins, often making them go out of business. And I'm not content to consume Starbucks' overpriced homogenity, so I'll take my money elsewhere. (Walmart has the same effect, but the businesses it's replacing are hardly and better than Walmart.)

Credit given where it's due: my knowledge of these two companies comes largely from the book No Logo by Naomi Klein. Noticing their similarity was all my doing, though. I would recommend No Logo to anyone who's interested in this sort of thing (*cough* Daniel *cough* Nick.)

PCs vs. Macs

This is my take on the issue. I'm not particularly biased since I don't like Microsoft, I just don't view Apple as superiour. I watched all the Mac ads- they're pretty funny, but just a little bit slanted, so I decided a comparison would make an interesting post.

Stability: Mac OS X is more stable than Windows. That's quite obvious. But Windows has gotten a lot better in terms of stability, and while Apple would love to claim that their OS doesn't ever fail spectacularly, the programs still crash and data is still lost forever. And I haven't even had "Oshit where'd my work go!?" happen to me on Windows, but I've probably been lucky.

Security: Viruses and spyware don't afflict Macs. Make it more popular, and they will. To a far lesser extent, of course, since Windows appears to have security holes large enough to sail a battleship through, but while Windows security is improving, Mac's security can only go downhill as their popularity increases. And since I'm a fairly competent PC-user, viruses and spyware don't bother me all that much.

Those awesome nifty programs: OOO SHINY. If I had a Mac, I'd have software to edit the movies I don't film, make slideshows of the pictures I don't show off, the music I don't play, and the schedule I'll ignore. And I can use Office now, which I don't have anyways! And I can play all those games- wait, no, Dawn of War doesn't have a Mac version. But I can just boot my Macbook in PC mode! Or maybe I'll burn my money and snort the ashes, because I'm wasting the money either way. I'm sarcastic because the ads push the idea that you can run all these amazing programs, except their built-in programs aren't amazing, and to run Windows programs you need to buy Windows.

Familiarity: I'm already fairly familiar with Windows. Yes, I could learn how to use Macs, but my (admittedly limited) experience with the OS is that you can't do as much as on a PC because they don't let you mess around as much. I haven't owned a Mac, so I haven't tried doing unorthodox things, but for instance I couldn't take my music off my Ipod, which was irritating as all my music was in Berlin. (There are probably programs that do it for you, but I'd like to do it myself so I know how it works.)

Summary: Macs have advantages over PCs, but they're not worth switching to. Besides having to get used to doing things the Mac way, there are things I can't do and games I can't play. And they're more expensive (a slightly worse Macbook costs about $300 CAD more than my laptop did.) Besides, if I were really irritated with Windows, I'd switch to Linux, not Mac.

What we really need is an OS that takes all the good things from Windows, Mac, and Linux, and combines it into the OS to end all others. But that's not going to happen as neither Microsoft nor Apple would benefit, no other company could break in to the market like that, and Linux is already a product of the people but it obviously has flaws. So Windows it is, for now.

Motivation (or a lack thereof)

Update: Hahaha, the day after I wrote this I woke up when math started. I have math AFTER I have bio. I need to fix my sleep schedule (I keep sleeping through my alarms.) Btw, read the post for this to make sense.

So recently I've been missing a few bio lectures. I think I've missed 4 in the past three weeks. The problem is that they're far too fucking early, ie 8 AM, and I'm all too willing to stay up until 3 AM reading websites (like www.waiterrant.net! It's stories from the manager of a restaurant. They are good.) Or some other useless activity. Since I have to get up at 7 but usually end up awake at 8:30, I'm in a bad situation.

So what to do? Before you slap me and yell "Get more sleep, fool!" allow me to point out that I'm well aware I need more sleep, I just don't care at the time. How do I start caring? Simple, I decide what I'm going to do with my life. In case you hadn't noticed, my passions (fiery as they are) are political and environmental. Namely because we're fucking ourselves over, but that's the topic of a post to come. Since I've chosen the wrong faculty if I wanted to solve political problems, I've decided I'm going to focus my studies on environmental sciences. So I'm contemplating majoring in Chemistry with a minor in Environmental Sciences (and probably comp sci.)

Essentially, I've decided there are a few things I'm going to change in my life. First of all, I'm going to take my studies seriously, even if it's fucking bio 111, (aka the stuff I did in high school, only in less depth!) Secondly, I'm going to become more active about the issues I think are important. Finally, I'm hopefully going to go into a profession where I can make a difference to the world.

Let's see what I think in four years.

(Oh, and I'm giving vegetarianism a shot, even if it means I eat salad only sometimes. Stupid cafeteria.)

On Updating

I'll update if you guys comment. Assuming anyone reads this.

Because otherwise I'll assume no one does.

The Corporation

The Corporation, by Joel Bakan, is probably my favourite political book. As the name implies, it has to do with corporations. And the reason I like it so much is because I think its message is hugely important. So I'm going to explain the book, and maybe you'll agree. Maybe you'll even read it.

Corporations are publicly-traded companies that have no owner, they have shareholders and a CEO that runs the company. Their legal responsibility is to produce profit for the shareholders- if the CEO does anything to reduce profit, he may be fired or sued. Bakan's argument is that corporations are psychopaths, acting only in their own interest. In the movie, The Corporation, they keep an actual checklist of actions that corporations take that correspond to the FBI's list of psychopathic actions.

And it's true. The only time they care about the environment, or their employees, or any of the problems they cause, is when it could damage their sales. If you take a company like The Body Shop, whose whole business practice is based on not using animal-testing and being ethical, and it becomes incorporated, then that company will start to cut corners and maybe test on animals a little. Which it was found guilty of doing. And quite often they don't break their code of ethics, they break the law, for the simple reason is that by doing so, the profit they earn will be greater than the fine.

This is obviously a huge problem as corporations are immensely powerful (more than half of the world's 100 largest economies are corporations) and have a huge, often damaging effect on our lives. Bakan offers a few solutions to this problem. There are two sources of change: consumers, and voters. Yes, it's true that consumers can elect not to buy from companies unless they behave ethically, but not only are corporations still likely to break the law and act damagingly when they can get away with it, but this style of voting with your dollar is flawed. This is because it means that richer people have a greater voice than the poor, and also excludes the companies that we don't buy from (mining, anyone?) or can't stop buying from. The other way is to convince politicians to enact harsher fees on breaking the law and to rephrase the roles of corporations so that profit is not their only goal. This has the problem that lobbyists are an effective and legal way to raise profits, so anti-corporation legislation is hard to pass.

In any case, I feel that if corporations had to bear responsibility for the environmental and social damage they cause, the world would have many less problems than it currently does. So long as corporations destroy the environment, coerce weaker governments into allowing corporations to have their way, and deal with dictatorships (legitimizing those corrupt governments), creating any kind of positive change will be a challenge indeed.

(Oh, and I didn't go to that STAND meeting. Oh well, I'll do my own research.)

Punk and I

Two things. First, I'm planning to write in this a whole lot more often (which means they're not appearing in Facebook anymore, as I don't feel like spamming your news feed with my notes and because it appears here so having it be there as well is just silly.) This is the newest one because for the other two I had trouble figuring out what I wanted to say, so they were sitting around as drafts for quite a while.

Secondly, my elucidating title says this post is about punk. Specifically about my personal connection to it. For starters, I'm not punk. I don't know all that much good punk, and I'm not part of the culture. I can respect punk culture and its principles, and like some punk music, but that doesn't make me punk. The reason for this post is that I've been listening to a fair bit of punk recently.

Oh, and before I get into this, the people who dress punk, listen to Yellowcard or Switchfoot, or shop at Hot Topic, are not punk. If you dress like you dress and listen to what you do because you want to be different or because it's cool, you're not punk. I believe that punks dress like punks because they don't want society to dictate to them what to wear. If you hate the government because they're corporate lackeys, hate the corporation because they don't care about the people, and hate the police because they do the government's dirty work, you're probably punk. You might just be anti-government. Because the most important part of punk music's not that it's angry, fast, and often offensive, it's that it's like that because it's political, and that's what you're supposed to take away. Which is pretty rare among music genres- emo, techno, rock, and indie don't usually have political messages.

Or so I think. Because I'm not punk, I'm not in the scene and I don't know a lot of music, so I might be misguided. I do listen to the music and can agree with its anticorporate message, for a reason that I should probably have made the focus of every post I've ever written, and that I'll probably write about tomorrow. I don't want to get a piercing, wear a denim jacket with patches from my favourite bands, and I don't hate the police. I'm also not very angry (and I think James is pretty rare as being mellow, from what I can remember of him.) So if it weren't for the fact that I could agree with a lot of what punk music says, and that I don't pretend to be the least bit punk, I'd feel like a huge poser for liking it.

Woo, university!

Guess what? I am a full-time student at the educational facility situated on the University Endowment lands in Vancouver, namely the University of British Columbia, commonly called UBC. In fact, apparently "I am UBC." Because that makes so very much sense- I don't go there, I PERSONIFY IT. Anyways, except for that clever line, UBC is pretty awesome. And this is why.

A) It's university. Which means I'm taking the classes I like, get to choose when to have them, the classes are generally pretty good, I'm not forced to attend them, and I'm generally given more responsibility. Which isn't something that's going to faze me. And suprisingly I don't have much work. I'd actually be willing to have more if bio and physics were more interesting, as so far it's been review in both, but I figure the work will come eventually.

B) I live in residence. Which means I don't have to cook for myself (a mixed blessing, as often I'd like to,) there's a whole bunch of really nice people around, and classes are like 5-10 minutes away. And I get to sleep during my breaks, which I love.

C) It's beautiful. The campus itself is very nice- there's lots of tall trees, there's a Japanese garden, a botanical garden, a rose garden, and a forest pretty near by. But even better is the fact that I can see the ocean from my house, and it's a short (but steep) walk down to the beach. Granted, it's a nudist beach, but I could really care less. I don't have to declothe myself. There are also mountains like an hour away. Ocean + mountains + forest = amazing.

So yeah. I'm pretty happy. I still miss the friends I had in Vienna, but things are pretty cool here too.

(A shiny new laptop helps :D)

Darfur, Fasting, and Confusion

On October 5th, 2006, I ate nothing. Drank some water, took a vitamin, and felt kinda miserable near the end, and went for 24 hours without food. As sane people who believe I'm fairly sane as well, you're probably wondering why that is. So I'll explain. STAND, which is an acronym for Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, organized a day called Darfur Fast, to show solidarity with the people of Darfur. It's currently Ramadan, but while usually the people of Darfur would be fasting during the day and eating at home after sunset, they have been displaced, murdered, and starved. The reason I took part is not that I feel the people of Darfur appreciate the gesture (as much as they'd appreciate basic necessities) but that I have never gone a day without eating and that this is an issue that I feel strongly about, and I wanted to make a statement.

I'm not entirely sure what effect I had as I didn't shout my action from the rooftops, but I did mention it to some people (and even told one guy about what's going on, as he had never heard of it. For shame, media, do what you're supposed to do. By which I don't mean sensationalise the issue for a week, but investigate and educate the people about all issues, not just the Issue of the Week.) As part of my statement, I wanted to tell you guys all about it, but as you'll see later I had more trouble writing about the issue than I thought.

So what is the issue? Well, Sudan is primarily Muslim, but they are divided into the primarily Arabic Central and Eastern Sudan, and the predominately black people of Darfur. The Sudanese government wants Sudan to be an Arabic state, and thus marginalized the people of Darfur, who rebelled in protest. This started around 2003, when the government was already engaged in a civil war in the south, and so rather than diverting its military to combat the problem, it created and supplied militias, known as the janjaweed, who then started to terrorize and murder the population. The Sudanese government has also refused to allow humanitarian aid into Darfur, and the janjaweed have poisoned crops and wells. This is a systematic effort to drive out or murder the non-Arab people of Darfur, it is genocide, and it is overwhelmingly horrible. I literally can't imagine it, and it is one of the few issues that I am genuinely passionate about.

So what can you do? Well, I'm not sure. That's why I didn't write this earlier. I cannot think of any conflict of the previous century that was actually resolved through humanitarian intervention. Rwanda is stable because a rebel force took over the government and stopped the killing (well, and France intervened, but on the side of the government that was perpetrating the genocide.) The UN is still in Kosovo and I don't see how they're going to get out, while the UN didn't intervene at all during the ethnic cleansing in the other Balkan states. I don't know much about Somalia other than that the intervention there was pretty catastrophic, and don't get me started on Iraq. On the whole, genocide seems to generally run its course, and I don't know whether interventions actually help. On Monday STAND is having a meeting to discuss concrete solutions, which I'm quite tempted to attend, so maybe they'll correct my views on the subject.

The world makes me depressed. Only that fact that I want to change it keeps me from staying depressed. I will be writing a post about the issues I feel threaten us the most soon, and I honestly hope to influence you guys to do something, because fasting and thinking has led me to the conclusion that I can no longer sit around and occasionally be disgusted by the world.

Blasphemous heresy

Over the past two years, I've occasionally found time to seriously contemplate faith. In case you hadn't heard me sharing my religious views, which I did probably more often than anyone except the people who wore religious shirts at school, I view God as a possible but impersonal and undetectable being that may be behind the creation of the universe and may subtly influence the mechanics behind the facade of reality. That being said, I do not believe God has a specific message for us, that God's male or that he listens to us, or that any historical figure has been anything but human.

I recently read a book that demands we reject faith outright. It is called the End of Faith, and it outlines the damage religion has caused before, the dangers we face now on account of religion, the lunacy (according to him) of believing anything about the world strictly by faith, without evidence, and the advantage of approaching spirituality seriously and scientifically with reason and evidence. I don't agree with everything he says- I don't think believing in the Bible is lunacy, just misguided, just as you may or may not believe that I'm misguided, but I do believe that religion can cause great harm, and probably will in future. (Think about fundamentalism, especially Islamism.)

But as Yann Martel put it, "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." I'm pretty sure he meant this as an attack on agnosticism, believing it to be wishy-washy, but I disagree. Because, doubt is not my philosophy of life, and God certainly isn't either. My philosophy is that we should minimise the harm that we cause others, and here's why.

The majority of humanity consists of sentient beings with their own emotions, beliefs, mind, and loves and is loved in return. They may be dumb schmucks, they may be assholes, and they may be criminals, but they are still humans nonetheless and therefore are worthy of our compassion. (Psychopaths are an exception to the rule, and we should attempt to understand murderers, but we should not forgive them.)

So how can we have compassion for others, how can we love our neighbours as Jesus wished us to, and still pursue policies that cause others to suffer? How can we not have compassion for others as humans? So how can we excuse the exploitation of the third world, the invasion of countries on false grounds, or the growing inequality between the rich and the poor? How can anyone believe that the majority of the world is destined to go to hell? What sort of God is that?

But we cannot eliminate suffering from the world. People will always be selfish because every selfless act has some ulterior motive, even if that motive is simply being proud of your selflessness. Therefore I feel that we should at least try to minimize the harm we cause others, and that is the philosophy I intend to live by.

Is that a bat? (Warning: bat pictures.)

Nik had invited some friends over for a last dinner for his friend and roommate, Rob, for the past few weeks who flies to Paris tomorrow for a few days and then on to West Africa. After dinner we were all sitting around sipping beers when Nik sits up, looks at the kitchen and says "Is that a bat?" So we stand up and walk towards it and sure enough, holy crap, it's a fucking bat. I say a "fucking bat" because I was so surprised to have a bat IN OUR KITCHEN that that's what I kept saying. I thought it was super-cool. I grabbed Nik's camera to take a photo, only he (she? It's adventurous and stubborn, it's a he,) had gotten a grip on the blinds of the backdoor and wasn't moving. Nik goes to open that door in the hopes that he'll fly out, I get into position to take a photo, and the result is this:

(Scrolled down in order to not have to fix formatting, and sideways because Nik's computer has no editing software. And it's 1 am.)




















The bat swooped by me and disappeared. It was actually really funny because Rob, who's this ex-Mustang-driving ex-firefighter, is freaked out by the bat. I mean, it's a frikking bat, not a wolverine. It's pretty much a bird, only it swings around like crazy so it is kind of scary. We looked around and couldn't see him, so we thought he'd flown out suddenly. We went back to the party, one awesome photo later.

Few hours pass, everyone's gone and Nik's actually gone to bed already when all of a sudden I see the bat flying around the kitchen again. We'd closed all the doors, so it has to be the same bat. I dance out of the way of the bat singing (well not really) "Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck it's the bat." Rob arms himself by pulling his T-shirt over his head and grabbing a pillowcase (not a pillow.) The bat flies around and freaks Rob out and then passes out on the curtains. The curtains by my bed (well, comfy couch.) So I dance around a bit, and take some more photos. The best one's below.



So I figure I have to do something about this bat, so I grab a big black sheet and fold it up a lot. As carefully as possible (after five minutes of being unsure whether to do it) I grab him and fold the sheet over him. Well I more just carry him. Then I threw him out the backdoor. Which was really stupid, because the poor bastard couldn't fly, he couldn't even fly a straight path when I tossed him. He ended up flopping out and hitting our garbage can, which I feel quite bad about. I should have just placed him on the ground, but I wasn't expecting him to be stunned. A bird would've flown off right away. Anyways he looked fine because right afterwards he picked himself up and flew off. I miss him already.

A fucking bat! How cool is that?

The Queen Mary II

I think most everyone knew this before I left, but my family opted to return to Canada in style aboard the ocean-liner Queen Mary II. First things first- that is one hell of a giant ship (the largest passenger ship, I think.) It was super-luxurious with a friendly and too-courteous crew, excellent facilities, and awesome food. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The crossing takes nine days in total, during which the only internet access I had would have cost me $25 and a kidney per hour. Even emails were $1.50 to send AND receive. So I was cut off for the whole time. The ship was quite stable and quiet, so it was easy to think you were in some fancy hotel with a strange view and rolling motion. Our cabin was large enough to sleep in and had a balcony (and a TV with repeating episodes of Scrubs and Friends which we tried not to watch too much.) There was a gym, which I used three times, a theatre which I never used, a planetarium where I saw a mis-titled lecture on post-WWII Britain called "Rock and Roll Babies", various restaurants, swimming pools, hot tubs, a night club (which I did frequent), casino (did not), pub (did), and ball room (briefly.)

The food was, as I said, excellent. There were appetizers, salads, dessert, and a choice of pasta, fish, poultry, red meat and vegetarian for the main course. I ate a lot. What I meant when I said the staff was too courteous was that I felt weird because they'd do stuff like push my chair in for me, unfold my serviette and place it on my lap, or say sorry as they made space for me to pass in the halls. Even having priority over them while walking down the hall is weird, since I don't have the superiority complex other people evidently do, where they want crew to wait on them hand and foot and stay out of their way.

One other nice thing about being on board is that I managed to meet people my age. The average age on that ship was above retirement, it seemed, since it consisted mostly of "the newly-wed and the nearly-dead," with more of the latter, but there was some social event for people from 18-30 where I met some mostly German people and hung out with them for the rest of the crossing. I learned a bit of ballroom dancing, which was funny but also fun (and it let me dance with cute girls), played board games and ping-pong, and went to the nightclub where they had a 40-year old DJ who was odd but nice enough, and some frat boys who were busy getting smashed. I tried to avoid them but Nik didn't seem to mind them so we were in the same circle of people. There were also weird as hell German barony-types where the guy was in a German frat and was quite full of himself and his sister who was 16 and looked closer to 26, I kid you not. Her face looked quite lifted and artificial.

But I was with nice people, not weird people. There were four German girls, a German guy and a Welsh guy. There was a girl I liked who lives near Berlin, so I'll probably meet up with her there. Overall, the crossing was fantabulous. We got into New York (harbour) at 4:30 so I got up at 5 to see us come in and watch the sunrise. It rose over Wall street, which was beautiful. I spent two days in New York, about which I'll write later.

Why I'm Planning to Become a Vegetarian

At my barbecue party pretty much everyone was wondering why I want to become vegetarian (when I get to Canada.) This post is in response to your wonderment. Before I get properly into this, let me say that I'm not a compassionate vegetarian. I don't really care about cows, pigs, or chicken, and I don't mind their being bred to be eaten. That last clause is why everyone (cough, Daniel) who claims that they're not responsible for animals dying is lying to themselves- their whole purpose in life is to die and be eaten. This fact also causes me some trouble because I would be unable to kill a cow, for instance, except perhaps in dire circumstances where I would have no choice. Not being in those circumstances, I feel hypocritical when I eat meat because I wouldn't have killed it myself.

That, however, is a minor dilemma that hasn't stopped me from eating meat for the past 16 or so years. The real reasons I plan to be vegetarian relate to health, current farming practices, and the environment. Vegetarians are healthier. It's a fact. And no, it's not because they're more health-conscious or active people than the norm, because they live longer than their equally health-conscious and active meat-eating counterparts. This has several causes, some of which are the fact that vegetarians eat less saturated fat, less protein, more fibre and more vitamins and minerals. The negative health effects of saturated fat (and the bad chlosterol found in meat) are fairly well-known. However research has shown that people do not need as much protein as was thought and that an excess of protein is harmful because the amino acids it is broken down into acidify the blood, causing calcium loss. Far from meat protein being necessary, it's harmful. So vegetarians win again. The benefits of fibre, vitamins, and minerals are also well known, and these are all present in larger quantities in a vegetarian diet. Essentially vegetarians are at less risk of heart disease, various cancers, and other problems.

So it's more healthy. But I'm not particularly concerned about my health (although I do eat fairly healthily.) More important to me is the environment. A pound of beef costs several pounds of grain to produce and requires several more gallons of water than a pound of grain. Growing this extra grain leads to problems like soil erosion, which will become a problem in the United States in future (if it already isn't- something I need to research) and is already a problem in many other countries. And the harm of more water being used is not really something that requires much explanation. This extra production also requires more oil to produce the pesticides and fertilizers as well as to transport the grain.

Finally, I don't want to eat meat that is grown the way it is today. The regulations in Austria (Europe in general) are stricter and conditions are better, so I don't have much trouble eating meat here or in Germany (I'll only be vegetarian for the months where I'm not with my parents because firstly I wouldn't want to force them to be vegetarian because I am and secondly because they live in Europe.) In North America, however, animals live in horrible conditions in industrial factory farms where they're stuffed full of hormones and antibiotics. Slaughterhouses are similarly brutal and nasty. That's not the sort of thing I want to support, so I won't.

Well, there you have it. I'll probably add statistics to my claims when I get home, and also rebutt some of your foolish arguments.

Woo, first real post in this blog!