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.)