MMVI in Review

Yesterday was the first day of a new year, according to the Gregorian calendar and our planetary-based concepts of "days" and "years." This is my eighteenth such "New Year." One might think that after eighteen of such years, this would be an event of little significance. But as those who I celebrated with can attest, I love New Years. It's not hard to: New Years implies friends, fireworks, possibly fire, and alcohol. And that is a fun if a little volatile mixture. However, as time passes from one year to the next, we waltz (possible drunkenly) from and old chapter of our lives to a new one.

The previous chapter is a rather interesting one. I turned eighteen, graduated high school, and entered university, all rather significant milestones. I moved to a new city in an old country, left behind old friends and gained new ones, stayed on a ship for nine days, and biked for two days straight (circumstances dictated it could not be more.) In the world, the ice caps melted a little, Iraq become more of a mess, Bush became even more unpopular (and the US Congress performed a changing of the guard,) the world cleaned up after the tsunami, Katrina devastated New Orleans, and I became slightly more passionate about my beliefs. For me, 2006 was a good year, and I've matured since the last New Year.

Now, I can't reasonably predict that the next chapter will be as interesting as the last, seeing as how it's been 2007 for about thirty and a half hours. I think that it will be, though, and here's why. University will become more serious next semester. Global politics will become more serious as more shit hits the fan, but hopefully real progress will be made addressing those problems. And I'm going to become more serious about several things in my life. In response to the two things I just named, I will become more studious (almost automatically, as more challenge means more interest,) and more open about my political and environmental concerns. Hopefully without irritating anyone. I'm also going to try to gain (back?) weight, as I do not want to be skinny, and definitely do not want to be skinnier, and become more active (for instance, I'm going to start climbing regularly.)

Here's to a good MMVII.

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.

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.