Sexy Times

Though I hate to tread on the toes of the good doctor Hood, it is a movie that led me to this post.

You see, I saw Milk the other day - the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in America - and it was excellent. Though it was undoubtedly an overly rose-coloured portrayal of the gay rights movement, it accomplishes what it sets out to do admirably. The story is compelling, and compellingly told, the acting is of extremely high quality (and believe me, I never say that about movies), and all in all, I would highly recommend it.

For one thing, it made me think.

I don't often talk or, for that matter, think, about sexual orientation or sexual freedom. Sure, I'll spend a lot of time on the nature of love, and the importance of sex personally and in society, but honestly, who it is you're having sex with and how many of them there are simply isn't terribly important to me, at least on a philosophical or political level. I have many militant-for-gay-and-polyamorous-rights friends, not to mention several friends who are themselves not of a purely vanilla sexual orientation, and, though it seems a little strange to say this, I've pretty much left the thinking and talking about such things to them.

This is also an awkward discussion to have for me, as one's perspective in the matter is so attendant on one's own sexual desires. Being male, straight, monogamous by strong preference, and without, insofar as I am aware, any interesting fetishes or sexual quirks - though my understanding is that you don't discover that you have these until you've tried them, so I suppose the possibility must always exist - I've always felt, in a way, that my perspective wasn't terribly useful to such a debate.

Then I realized that that was ridiculous. What was I thinking? There is no such thing as a useless perspective.

So I suppose that my opinion on the whole issue of sexual freedom and limitations on sexual desire is simply one of profound puzzlement. If someone enjoys different books than I do I might try to understand why their tastes differ from my own, I might even make fun of them, but I wouldn't try to prevent them from reading it. What possible reason would I have for doing that? Where, to put it bluntly, is the advantage to me?

Now, sex is a little trickier than novels, to be sure. It can be exploitative, violent, dangerous, and cruel. And those kinds of sex should obviously be prevented through law or social norms - but what you're preventing is not the sex, but the exploitation, the violence, the danger, and the cruelty. We have a vested interest in seeing people not hurt one another - it's against any kind of morality, and, on a more self-interested level, it's bad for society. Where is the interest in seeing people not fuck each other? As long as it doesn't infringe on others' ability to function in society, why the hell do we care?

If it does, that's another matter, naturally. I can understand why a church would not want to be forced by legislation to recognize gay marriage. After all, that's an internal matter of religion. I wouldn't ask them to recognize Buddha as their overlord, either. But in the vast, vast majority of cases, people's sexual orientation has nothing to do with anyone else.

Most people would say that gay rights are an issue because the gays have made it one - brought it into the public sphere. Some people would say this with anger, some with admiration, some with pride. But they're wrong. The people who made it an issue are the people who are trying to prevent others from doing what they want.

There are so many things worth caring about, worth fighting for, worth bleeding and hating and dying over. This really isn't one of them. I don't want to have to care about what someone likes in sex, or whether they like sex at all. Really, it's just not worth it. People just want to live their lives. Why should they have to fight for that?

It's Always Comforting

... to know that, no matter how many scandals and failed policy decisions and hopeless wars he has involved us in, our head of state remains the best in the world at dodging shoes. I can't say I'm sorry to see the end of your term approaching, President Bush, but damn, sir, you are a ninja.

A Long Awaited Journey

I have been meaning to do something like this for some time now, but only now have I gotten around to it. I am starting another blog.

The mandate of this blog is essentially "Etarran reflects on the universe in whatever way he sees fit," and that's all very well, to be sure. However, politics-philosophy-gaming-dinosaurs-metaphysics-physics-mathematics-literature-psychology-sociology-and-anything-else-that-strikes-my-fancy was beginning to be a bit too much to handle, and is, I feel, leeching focus from any of the individual issues that I discuss. Furthermore, the project I have in mind for the new space is somewhat more ambitious than can really fit in a blog dedicated to other things, and demands its own space.

So you can (mostly) scratch out the "gaming" section of the above list.

The Games Of Castles is intended to be a space for me to discuss games: gaming culture, gaming as a hobby, individual games that strike my interest. But, more than all this, it is intended to be a place where I can catalogue games: campaign logs, setting information, story and character and plot and background, all woven together into what is hopefully a cohesive and interesting whole. Roleplaying games, after all, are in many ways like writing a story - and what good is a story if you don't share it with anyone?

Mangling Defenseless Objects

Psychology is the study of human thought on an individual level. Sociology: thought on a cultural level. Philosophy: thought on a cosmic level.

The so-called "social sciences" begin and end with the study of human thought, in each situation and of each consideration to which it can be applied.

Sometimes, though, I think we have it wrong, we philosophers, we pretentious liberal-arts majors studying the Fundamental Truths of the Universe According to Dead Racists. Sometimes, I think the best way to examine human thought is with a math problem.

Here's an interesting one, which some of you may have encountered before. It's called the Mutilated Chessboard problem, which makes it both educational and hilarious.

Imagine a chessboard with two squares, each in an opposite corner, removed. Now, take 31 dominoes, each of which covers exactly two squares. Place them on the chessboard such that the dominoes cover all 62 squares, or explain why this is impossible.

Take a moment to try to come up with the answer before I tell it to you. It's an interesting little problem, and actually much harder than it looks.

....until you figure out the trick.

What is the fundamental property of a chessboard? 64 squares, alternating black and white, so that no two adjacent squares are of the same colour. Thus, the two squares removed when the chessboard was mutilated (ideally in some kind of horror-movie sequence involving a psychopathic grand master) must have been the same colour. However, any given domino must cover two differently-coloured squares, which means that the problem is impossible.

But that's not how most people would go about solving that problem, is it? I would guess that the vast majority of people, on being handed a chessboard, a knife, and 31 dominoes, would start by putting dominoes on the board and trying to see if some sort of pattern emerged. Humans are programmed to be experiential, rather than logical - in most cases, we prefer to touch, rather than think, to do, rather than see.

Maybe that's why people so freqently make obviously bad decisions. Sure, if you thought about it the right way, you'd know that the Xtreme stunt/questionable relationship decision/substance abuse isn't really the cleverest of ideas - not the optimal solution to the problem - but sometimes, you just have to spend an hour playing with dominoes before you figure it out.

Etarran Sums Up the American Federal Election

Actually, unlike the Canadian election, I have some things to say about this one.

Though I am of course tempted to spend this post going "woo Obama yay Obama yay!", and just generally painting a big Fuck You Republicans sign all over the internet, I imagine that will be amply taken care of by those both more numerous and considerably louder than I am. I desperately hope that an Obama presidency can do some things to stem the tide of failure and disaster that seems to be issuing forth neverendingly from the Western world, but that remains to be seen. Though I - surprisingly, given my general cynicism with regards to politicians - find myself able to believe that his ideals are good, I also must make note that, as with any leader, ideals must give way to issues of practicality and popularity. I wish the world would recognize that, in general, at least, ideals of peace and environmental sustainability and diplomatic foreign policy and other hippy nonsense are matters of practicality... but of course it cannot do that until the proponents of these ideals start treating them that way.

So, while my initial feeling about an Obama presidency is a matter of cautious optimism, rather than furious elation, there is something from the 2008 election that I am legitimately ecstatic about, and that is the voter turnout.

Despite the fact that an Obama victory was predictable from early in the election, which necessarily reduces turnout, especially in the West, we managed to get a voter turnout over 65% - higher than it's been since 1908. Now, obviously, this could be better, but I think it is trending in that direction. Unlike the Canadian election (voter turnout 59%), in which lackluster leadership, rampant apathy, and general justifiable political malaise have conspired to render half the population voiceless, American voter turnouts have done nothing but rise over the last twelve years. In a world in which each successive generation has been less politically involved than the last, with my generation plunging to new lows of uselessness (28% youth turnout last election, as opposed to 46% this election), this is highly encouraging.

Maybe, just maybe, we can yet prove ourselves worthy of democracy.

This Essay Gets a C Minor

Is it wrong of me to find this video philosophically fascinating? It is, isn't it?

In all seriousness (By which I, naturally, mean "more than a little tongue in cheek"), though, I wanted to change tack a bit with this post and discuss something I don't talk about terribly often: music.

This comic, from back before XKCD jumped the shark (Yeah, I said it. More on webcomics in a future post. Await with anticipation!) illustrates perfectly my feelings on the matter. We suck, guys. We really do.

This is not to say that there aren't artists, that we don't produce excellent music, or even that some of it isn't popular. But good music and great music are two different things. When you listen to Bach or Beethoven or Mozart, you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is great music, that this is art which transcends everything that came before it and will be the bar to which all after it must be held. And the same, I will contend, is true of art from the musical revolution that preceded my generation. There is a sense of greatness, of achievement, of some kind of transcendental musical experience, that you get when listening to Queen or the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. Whether or not you like their music, there is a quality of greatness which must come through.

I'm going to go on the record here with an address to future musical historians:

Dear Future Musical Historians,

When you decide that the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s were a period of musical rennaissance which rivaled that of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, please remember that I totally called it.

Love, Etarran.

PS. I agree, Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is totally awesome.

It is telling, I think, that university campuses, supposedly bastions of cultural revolution, primarily have the sounds of forty-year-old music drifting from students' rooms. Not even the generation making modern music thinks it's better than our parents' music.

Perhaps it is too much to expect. After all, a great cultural revolution can come along only once in a very great while. And we do, of course, have our cultural successes. But even those, which are primarily internet-related, are based on technologies and cultures that fundamentally belong to the generation before. And I can't help but think that, in an era of unprecedented cultural freedom and diversity and intercommunication, surely we should be coming up with something better than webcomics and the Rickroll.

Perhaps art simply isn't our destiny. After all, we have more practical problems to deal with. Our parents may have produced excellent music, but they also produced a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide and enriched uranium. But surely we could save the world and rock out?

Get on that, will you?

PS. I was totally serious about Hot n' Cold being philosophically fascinating. I invite you to contemplate its symbolism, which is surpassed, perhaps, only by this video.

Going to Class

So, here's the story.

I sat down about an hour ago to write a post, because I felt like I should write something. So as I usually do, I began brainstorming ideas for topics. My thought processes when I do this generally run something like this:

"Hmmm.... blog post. Blog post, blog post, blog post.... 'blog' is such a stupid word. It doesn't even mean anything. You know what else doesn't mean anything? Election promises. Those wacky politicians, am I right? Maybe I should write about them, and their election promises, and how McCain's campaign has been going completely batshit insane.

Oh, right. Then I would be pretty much the mainstream media. Only without money or credibility.

Friggin' media. Seriously, what'd they ever do for us, anyways? It's just commercials and exploitation and capitalism and sadism and decadence. There's no real content or intelligent debate or examination of actual issues anywhere in the whole dreary nihilistic morass of it.

Hehehe. Boobies.

Okay, so maybe I could write about feminism and stuff, because the media is basically why modern feminism sucks, but I keep doing that. Then again, isn't that basically the point? You gotta keep saying stuff, gotta let the message free, because if you don't say it loudly and often, how will anyone ever take notice? Do you really expect to change the world by being silent?

Do I really expect to change the world at all?"

It was at this point that I made a realization. I do expect to change the world. I do, against all reason, against all better judgment and all prior experience, expect to be important. Expect to mean something.

So I asked myself the obvious question: why? What possible reason could I have for this ridiculous assumption?

And the answer quickly came to me: it's a class thing.

You see, as long as there have been civilizations, there has been a certain kind of person who knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will be important, that the world balances on the tips of their fingers. Kings, aristocrats, oil barons, priests: all of these people have known, many for as long as they have been alive, just how important they are.

But I am none of these things. Though I live a life of shocking and frequently appalling privelege compared to the vast majority of human beings on this terrifying planet, I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, upper class. I have no power, nor any particular prospect of power. And yet, I believe in it anyways.

Witness, my friends, the triumph of the modern world. Call it the American Dream, if you like, call it the historical dialectic and the principle of Communism, call it the triumph of rationalism and man transcendant... call it what you will, we are achieving it. For the first time in history, ordinary people can legitimately believe themselves to be special. Important. Valuable. Everyone can believe themselves to be the kind of person who is destined for greatness. And belief is the first step on the road to truth.

It won't happen tomorrow, and it may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years - it may not happen at all; after all, far too often we seem to slide backwards, to lose the progress we have made. But on the whole, the road we are travelling is a good one. Someday, I think, we will be free.

Etarran Sums Up the Canadian Federal Election

Meh.

Etarran Gets Back on the Lovewagon

(A note on the following post: This is a Philosophic Work in Progress - an idea that is half-formed in my mind, and which I would greatly appreciate help in developing. Particularly, in this case, from female readers - after all, this is essentially my take on modern feminism, and the perspective of actual females would no doubt help immensely.)

Yes, yes, I know it has been some two months since I last even attempted to post on this blog. Well, that isn't strictly true - I have a lovely topical piece on the Beijing Olympics half-finished somewhere, but I think I will spare you all from having to suffer through that one.

And so, what I really need is a suitable topic for my return to the mighty blogosphere. And somehow while writing this preamble, I think I have come up with it. Let's talk about love, shall we?

See, love - romantic love, in particular - is my favorite emotion, because no one knows what it is. Ask anyone to give a proper definition of love, and they will almost invariably say something along the lines of "Oh, you know it when you see it." The irony that something into which we invest enormous amounts of effort is something that we don't even properly understand or even attempt to really understand in any meaningful way is both staggering and hilarious.

So, what do we know about it? Well, probably the first thing that someone would say if asked about love is that it can be life-changing: romantic, erotic relationships are considered one of the most, if not the most, important things that can happen in someone's life.

But the interesting thing about this is that that has not always been the case. The idea that romantic love is a core, defining principle of someone's existence and personality is relatively new - originating as recently as 800 years ago. Before then, the important relationships, the ones considered worthy of song and story, were the ones with your fellow-soldiers; the relationship between a man and his shield-mate (Which modern readers often characterize as "Totally ghey LOL") was by far deeper and more meaningful than relationships between people, who, when you really get right down to it, have no reason to be together other than to make babies.

So even that supposedly core fact about love - that it is deeply meaningful and important - is subject to a certain amount of speculation. And we're still no closer to anything like a working definition. Which is unfortunate, really; how can one know if they are in love if they don't even know what it is?

The problem, as I see it, is that modern western culture is trapped between different ideals of the romantic - we cannot really reconcile chivalry with equality, objectification with respect, subjection with overmastery. We have managed, in our commercialization and modernization, to become stuck between Galahad's ideal of love and Labatt Blue's.

How, after all, is one supposed to go about romance in the modern world? A silly question, you might think ("Hurr Hurr, Etarran's post title from three posts ago was totally a lie!"), but it is nevertheless valid: every Western culture for the last thousand years, except ours, has had strictly codified rules on the subject. Certainly, romance was as frustrating to them as it is to us - one need merely read Shakespeare or Malory or Coleridge to have that amply demonstrated - but there were nevertheless codified rules and standards of behaviour which we lack.

A perfect example, I believe, is the word "fair." To a feudal lord, "fair" as applied to a lady would have had a very specific meaning, which is difficult to translate into modern terms. It certainly included physical attractiveness, but it also had other qualities associated with it. Education, nobility, grace and poise and a sense of loveliness - things which don't really enter into modern conceptions of romance, being either too quaint or too misogynistic. I think the closest we come to being able to express what they were talking about is the word "pretty," but of course that falls desperately short. There are no rules for love, no codification, and so the terms in which to express it are dying or have died.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Chivalric love, although it makes wonderful stories, cannot really exist in a society of equals. Inherent to the idea of chivalry is the idea of love as a kind of religious ecstasy: women were to be worshiped, obeyed, bowed down before. Obviously, this is anathema to modern sensibilities, and no doubt rightly so. But nevertheless, the bizarre shadow-land, the strange in-between place to which we have restrained ourselves, cannot continue much longer.

Between chivalry and equality we find exploitation, objectification, and degradation. Between chivalry and equality we find self-hate, harassment, and abuse. Between chivalry and equality we find pornography and beer commercials. Congratulations, my friends - we broke love. That, right there, is why we are a culture of excess and corruption. This, I would contend, is why the world hates us - and why they may well be right to do so.

So, if chivalry is dead, and the strange bastardization we have created cannot last, that leaves us with only one real direction to go: towards equality. And perhaps I am merely too much of a romantic of the old school, perhaps I err too heavily towards viewing love as something somehow holy, but I think we can manage it. I think we can fix love, if we give it a try. I think we can perfect it. A ridiculous utopian vision, perhaps. But how far-fetched is it, really, to love as equals?

We preach incessantly about how we are a society of freedom and equality, and those goals are wonderful and admirable. But if we can't uphold them in the most important thing we will ever do... well, when can we? And ask yourselves: would it even be worth trying?

Two Understands Company, Three Exhorts the Crowd

The first post I made here dealt with an odd quirk of human nature. I'd like to talk to you about another one. This is a very important subject, very close to my heart: the number two.

You see, my very favorite number is zero. Zero is great: anything you do to it or with it, it remains nothing but zero. Add zero? No change. Subtract zero? Nothing. Multiply by zero? Very neat, very clean, a perfect zero. Divide by zero? Well, that makes you God.

My third-favorite number, fittingly, is the number three. More on this later in the post. But my second-favorite number, also very appropriately, is the number two.

You see, two is the number that governs our universe. More specifically, two possibilities: On, or Off. One, or Zero.

I've often thought it fitting that the computer, the tool and shape of the future, is a binary device. After all, humans are a binary species, both mentally and physiologically.

There are, after all, two genders, two arms, two legs, two ears, two lungs, two eyes; everything we possess, we possess in duplicate: equal, mirrored, and opposite. And what is more, we think in binary: There are always two sides to every coin, two sides to every conflict. Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Light and Dark.

It all happens in twos.

And so here is the quirk I was mentioning: We think in twos, we live in twos, we are, in fact, composed of nothing but twos. So why do we write in threes?

I mean, you need look no further than this post to see numerous examples of triplets in writing. "Think in twos, live in twos, are, in fact, twos." "Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Light and Dark." And I'm sure there are tons more: writing naturally falls into threes. Speech, as well, although this is especially true of those trained in rhetoric or acting. Listen to any successful politician talk: the concepts are in twos, but the words come in threes.

Want to know how to appear erudite and well-spoken? Talk in threes. Best advice I was ever given for job interviews (Well, other than "shower first"). Want to know how to make people listen as you build to a climax? Talk in threes. Want to know how to talk? Threes, threes, threes.

Yeah, you all see what I did there.

I don't know why it is, but damned if it doesn't work. We think in twos, but we talk in threes.

Weird, huh?

Chapter Three: Wherein Our Hero Does Discover the Universe, and All That It Contaims Within, There Being Sore Temptations and Terrible Perils Faced

I wrote this short piece of fiction a while back, on a whim, and have been told variously that it is "the best thing anyone has ever written, ever," that it is "confusing and poorly worded," and that it is "kinda funny, I guess." I'm still working on the decision of whether or not to include creative writing (As opposed to my normal lack of originality, I suppose) in the entries of this blog - so consider this to be a test, of sorts. Tell me what you think.

Divine Plan

I have heard that a belief in evolution used to be practically synonymous with atheism. To me, this seems unthinkable. Now that the first galactic survey has been completed, it is precisely the opposite: the world no longer has to choose between God and reality. We understand - I have always understood - that the two are inseparable.

When the first of the survey ships pulled itself away from the ring of satellites and factories endlessly turning in the upper reaches of Earth's orbit, we had no idea what we would find. We hoped for life, of course: some cousins among the stars to share our triumphs and our failures. But as I and the other pilots landed on world after world after world, what we would find became all too clear.

In our galaxy there are seven hundred and sixteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two planets capable of supporting life, and every last one of them does. A shocking discovery, of course, but not an eventuality we were unprepared to face. It was the manner of life they supported that took us by surprise.

Darwin's theory of evolution was originally posited to explain diversity, or so I have been told. But now, we have a much better understanding of the universe than poor Darwin, and we know that diversity - true diversity - is a myth. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and each and every one of them is indistinguishable from Earth - or at least, from Earth in the rough era of the late Cretacious.

At first, the dinosaurs were exhilarating. After all, many children choose early in their lives between careers in space travel or paleontology. Just because I am doing one doesn't mean I don't have a soft spot for the other. Or at least had. You see, after a while, the monotony of worlds inhabited only by thunder lizards became almost too much to bear.

Those with less experience than I of the endless dinosaur worlds - or perhaps merely those whose faith is stronger than my own - have called this irrefutable evidence of God's divine plan for humanity. Why else, they ask, would ours be the only world to be different? The only world to be struck by that disaster, that blessing, that allowed intelligent life to arise?

My Lord - or no longer my Lord - if what I am about to say is false, forgive me. But while my belief in You is unchanged, my faith is sorely troubled.

Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them is different. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them was changed, by a disaster, an accident of space and time. I see no evidence of God's divine plan for humanity in this.

After all, I've walked on those worlds. I've stared Creation in the mouth. Stared God in the mouth.

It was full of teeth.

Etarran Knows How to Get the Ladies

There once was a blogger whose name
Was Etarran (or so he would claim)
His readers said "Serious?!
Fool! You're delerious
If you think that's the name of the game!"

Etarran said "Readers, for shame!
If you think wholly sombre my aim
You are quite mistaken."
(In truth, he was shaken
To hear they believed him so tame.)

In defense of my honour and pride,
I go back to the sillier side
Of my writings and rambles,
My journeys and ambles,
Through English's wildest ride.

I'm sure every one of you knows
Of the essay, and all that it shows
Of mankind's erudition:
The way we partition
Our words into columns and rows.

But I practice a form far superior
Though of usually humerous interior
Nevertheless
It is easy to press
To possession of motives ulterior.

The limerick, thus, is the form
Which I use today to inform
Of a shift in intention
Within the dimension
Encompassed within this transform.

This isn't to say there comes change
To the pages within which I range
But simply to state
Without room for debate
"Sometimes I can simply be strange."

I know many would read this for pleasure
But the subjects are heavy for leasure
So just this, in closure:
I'll limit exposure
To my overly serious measure.

And I hope this begins to appease
Those who found me too ranting for ease
And so: comments! Concerns!
Rebuttals! Returns!
But... only in limericks, please.

Game Over (Alternative Title Rejected)

Originally, I had of course entitled this post Game Enders. Then I decided I didn't actually hate the universe that much.

So, ever since I dropped my tantalizing teaser a few posts ago, Loud has been agitating to hear in what way he is toxic to gaming culture. Furthermore, I need to get this rant written down before I get stabbed in the face for repeating it too often.

I spend a lot of time gaming. All kinds of games: collectible card games, board games, tabletop miniatures games, computer games, pen-and-paper roleplaying games - all the way to the more traditional poker and chess. And in doing so, it is inevitable that I have come into contact with an enormous number of gamers.

And oh, man, are we ever dumb.

I suppose you could call us a subculture, but that isn't really what we are. "Subculture" carries the implication of wanting to keep the number of people like you to a minimum, so you can continue to sneer at the mainstream and feel smugly superior for listening to a certain kind of music or wearing a specific type of clothing. Certainly subcultures will tout the benefits of belonging, but what it's really about, for them, is being different.

Not so with gamers - or at least, those who care about gaming as a hobby. What it's really about, for us, is playing games. And you know what? The more people who play them, the easier it is to find an opponent.

Now, there are certainly people for whom gaming is anathema, people who will never sit down and play a game because, for them, it just isn't fun. But I believe that there are many, many fewer of these than you may think. Most people, I suspect, can be persuaded to pick up a game, and, if you do it right, will even have a blast and want to come back for more.

So that begs the question, then: why aren't there more gamers? If lots of people would enjoy playing games, then how come more don't?

The answer? Well, it's our fault. We drive them away.

You see, hobbies in general, and gaming in particular, tend to attract people who are very... focused. Competitive. Obsessive. Insufferable?

We don't discourage new players by not wanting them to play, we discourage them by being incredibly competitive when they try. We crush them, using all the tricks at our disposal, and then we gloat. The technical term, I believe, is "pwning n00bs." And you know what? It's just not cool. Nothing discourages people from taking up any activity more than learning that the people who engage in it are, for lack of a better term, total grade A dickwads.

Even when we're not doing that, we find other ways to drive people off. Have you ever had Monty Python quoted at you until you can't imagine ever watching the damn thing? If you haven't, chances are pretty good you're one of the people doing the quoting. Hang on, guys. A lot of gamers are brilliant people, but John Cleese, we ain't. If you want people to like something, tell them to try it. Tell them what you like about it.

Tell them once.

Nothing ruins something faster than hearing about it all the time, over and over and over and over again. I'm afraid the internet has ruined Portal's "Still Alive." Remember: we liked these things for a reason, and that reason has a lot to do with what they are, and not a whole lot to do with our rendition of them. Games are fun. A lot of games are awesome. If people try them, a lot of them will like them. So maybe we should try not to discourage them.

We're gamers. We do something that is challenging, rewarding, and, above all, a ton of fun. And yet, somehow, people look down on that.

It's not the games, guys. It's us.

- Etarran. (Who wishes he could still play Portal.)

These Were Our Triumphs

I've been given some flak recently about my facetious response to my own question as to what the single greatest moment in human history was. (Although, to be honest, I'd prefer it if y'all made comments on my posts in the comments section of the post, so that I can reference the comment if I want to make a reply.) Apparently, something that hasn't happened yet is not a valid choice for the greatest of mankind's triumphs (Although I'll note that everyone else who answered this question cheated as well.)

I think the lack of real answers to this question is indicative of the disaffection of our culture. Especially among the liberal and the young, there is nothing more chic than being down on the West, and on humanity in general. And, to be fair, we have screwed a lot up. But still, I think we spend too much time focusing on what we've done wrong, and not enough time focusing on the things we got right. There are two reasons to study history: to avoid the tragedies of the past, and to emulate their triumphs. Though we often accomplish neither, maybe if we thought about each more often, we could manage both.

Regardless, I thought to redress my flippancy, and so here I will share with you the ten pieces of human history that I consider to be the greatest things we have ever accomplished.

The War to End the World

The Cold War opens the festivities.

"What?" You are saying. "How can that possibly be a triumph?" Well, you're here to ask that question, is the thing. Somehow, reason and rationality prevailed over the hatred and terror of the time, and the incredible destructive power at our disposal was not unleashed. Well, yet, at least.

The Dwarf Wheat

In The Population Bomb, in 1968, Paul Ehrlich said "The battle to feed all of humanity is over.... In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.... India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."* And he was right. Only, not completely right. We still have famine, we still have massive, widespread hunger, but thanks to one strain of wheat, a billion people are alive today who would be dead.

The Printing Press

I chose the printing press over the invention of written language for a single reason: power. No other invention in human history has done so much to put power in the hands of the masses rather than the few who ruled them. Free flow of information, as I am so fond of quoting, is the only safeguard against tyranny.**

Viricide

It may come as something of a surprise that the most deadly disease known to man is not AIDS or Malaria or Anthrax, but something that no longer troubles us. In 1980, The WHO issued a resolution which began with the following sentence: "[The World Health Organization] declares solemnly that the world and its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, which was a most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest time, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake, and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia, and South America."*** The eradication of smallpox has been called the single greatest undertaking of the human race, and the hundreds of millions of lives saved from death or ruination are testament to our triumph over the disease.

And All the Beasts of the Land Shall Serve Him

The domestication of animals, whether for food or labour, is one of the greatest steps forward we have ever made. Humans are not personally well-adapted for many tasks, but there is one thing we excel at, and that is finding the right tool for the job at hand. Harnessing the strength of animals has paved the way for all the rest of human progress.

And All the Plants of the Earth Shall Be His Right

Endless history classes will go over again and again how the development of agriculture was a turning point for human civilization. Many of them will even mention that, without it, human civilization could not exist at all. Agriculture means surpluses, and surpluses mean specialization. Without farming, there could be no cities (As those obnoxious stickers will happily point out to you), no rulers, no religion, no science, no industry. Nothing at all, in fact.

Not to Live in the Cradle Forever

(Rejected subtitle: "The World is Not Enough")

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into Earth's Orbit. The 22 days of Sputnik One's radio transmission was the first time humanity was able to touch the world outside the world, and begin to truly learn some of the secrets of the universe we find ourselves in. Perhaps no other event has unlocked so many fields of exploration and endeavour - If only we made use of them.

The Spider 'Cross the World

Ah, the internet. Cesspool of hatred, intolerance, and stupidity, and yet the last remaining bastion of true freedom and unfettered thought. Nearly the complete sum total of human knowledge available at the tap of a few keys, and a thousand times its weight in ignorance ready to rush out of your screen. The internet is the logical conclusion of the process begun a thousand years ago by Chinese leadsmiths whose names are lost to history: information in the hands of the people, to do with as they will. That mostly what they do with it is ejaculate is a fault of humanity, not of the monument to human ingenuity that makes it all possible.

Awakened By A Dream of Equals

This one is sort of cheating, because I'm wrapping into it all the great revolutions of equality that the world has seen in the last three or four hundred years. The Women's Rights movement, the end of Apartheid, the desegregation of our schools, the Emancipation Proclamation, the destruction of the rotten burroughs, all the leaps and bounds towards human peace and equality that have been taken by people finally brave enough to stand up and say "No." We have a long, long way to go, to be sure. But we're winning. And, slowly but surely, hatred is losing.

Forcibly to Bind a Brother God

For the last one, I'm going to have to agree with Isabella, and speak out for the harnessing of fire. Not only for the potential for discovery and greatness, nor for the unfettered reign of power it gives us over the world, nor even for the symbolic and psychological grip it holds on our culture, but for this simple fact, as proposed by Arthur C. Clarke: If the termites had invented fire, who would be Earth's masters then?

The most surprising thing to me while writing this list (I had decided on maybe three entries before I began) was how many of the events are from the last hundred years. Partly that is historical perspective - after all, I'm more likely to think of something if it is ingrained in our collective consciousness - but partly it is due to the rapidly increasing rate of technological and scientific discovery. What gives us the power to work immense, terrible acts of evil also allows us to perform profound and wonderful acts of greatness. Perhaps the tragedies of the twentieth century outweigh its triumphs, but those triumphs are certainly there, and are no less incredible for all the failures of our species.

So, that's my take on human history. What do you think?

*See Wikipedia: "Norman Borlaug"
** Full quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: "'As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.' - Commissioner Previn Lal, "UN Declaration of Rights.""
***See Wikipedia: "Smallpox"

In Thunder, Lightning, and Terrible Trumpet Sound

While driving through the downtown core of the nation's capital this afternoon, a message scribbled on the glass plate of a newspaper stand caught my eye. It said, simply: "Our parents have failed us. Anarchist meeting July 15."

Now, while I think anarchy is usually pretty silly, and not practiced by people who seriously believe in it (if, indeed, such people do exist), their premise was an interesting one. As the newest generation, beginning to ready ourselves to take our place as the driving force of the world, that is a question we should probably know the answer to. Have our parents failed us?

A lot of history seems to point to yes. Our grandparents and great-grandparents gave us the end of the world, and put the trigger in our hands. Our parents are trying to drown us in black gold. Can we really overcome their failures?

In their favour, on the other hand, is that, for the first time in human history, we have some understanding of what we are doing wrong. We know the world is dying. We know we're the ones killing it. Maybe that knowledge is enough to save it?

I don't have an answer for this one. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. And, maybe, do what we can to tilt the balance in our parents' favour. After all, they held the trigger on Armageddon too.

This begs a further question, though. What will be our legacy? When our children scrawl our failure on the streets, what will they lament? Will we at last fall off the delicate razor of ecological disruption, catapulting the earth and its people into storms, extinction, and a slow, cancerous degeneration? Or perhaps it will be the reckless transhumanism of cybernetics and genetic engineering that will throw our culture into the brutal worlds of Wintermute and Raven? Or perhaps it will be the nihilistic self-obsession of the computerized world that will render human life meaningless and obsolete?

Or maybe we just won't take our antibiotics, and smallpox will do it for us.

More likely, though, we will continue to just skirt the boundary of disaster, as indeed humanity has always done throughout its existence. Much as it might sometimes seem like it, I don't really believe the end of the world is coming. Surely there can be a Norman Borlaug for oil as well as wheat? We may be monumentally stupid in some ways, but humans are pretty good at surviving, on the whole. We'll figure something out.

I'd love to know what, though.

Politics, Philosophy, or Philolotics?

One of the most common (and most baffling) phenomena of the internet is the constant stream of polls and surveys we are subjected to. The amount of time people spend reading them and filling them out is simply staggering.

So, naturally, I had to get in on the action.

I've written a list of questions which may be slightly different from the usual fare of the internet quiz. Not all of them really have answers, but hopefully most of them make you do a double take, or at least think about the answers for a moment.

So, too, I have tried to steer away from the obvious and well-worn philosophical questions and instead present you with a list which I imagine is much more characteristic of my own branch of philosophical and political thought.

In no particular order:

1. How much would you pay to see a dragon?
2. How much would you pay to eat dragon meat?
3. Would you switch genders for a day?
4. If offered the chance, would you become a vampire?
------- b. How about a werewolf?
------- c. A merfolk?
------- d. A selkie?
------- e. Are there other mythical creatures you would be willing to become?
5. If God offered to trade places with you, would you do it?
6. If you were given the chance to be one of the colonists on humanity's first extraplanetary colony - knowing that it would mean never seeing Earth again - would you accept?
7. If a magical, religious, or technological artifact of immeasurable power was discovered - for example, the Holy Grail, the One Ring, or the Monolith of the Watcher - should we try to harness that power, or is it best to leave such things alone?
8. If the dinosaur-cloning pseudoscience from Jurassic Park would work, should we do it?
9. Do you believe in the existence of sentient alien life forms?
------- b. Is your answer a good thing?
10. If you could have robotic limbs that were indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways - including feeling - except stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster, would you be signing up for the replacement?
11. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the worst thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
12. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the best thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
13. Is there a limit to knowledge? Is there a finite amount of stuff that can be known?
------- b. If so, how long will it take us to get there?
------- c. If not, is acquiring new knowledge a fruitless endeavour?
14. What are you actually doing right now?
15. Did you answer all the questions truthfully?
------- b. Is it possible to answer a question truthfully?

So, I hope those questions were interesting, bizarre, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say by way of answers.

Also, if you haven't already, have a look at the comments on the previous post. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post itself, to be honest, but oh man, am I ever happy with the comments.

The Internet According to Etarran

So, I spend a lot of time on the internet (recently even more than usual) and as such, I consider myself to be something of an expert on it, insofar as such a ridiculous claim can possibly be true.

One of the main problems with the internet is its anonymity: it is far too easy to forget that the people you are interacting with are, in fact, real people, and as such, deserve to be accorded at least a modicum of respect. Exacerbating this is the fact that there can be no real consequences for misbehaviour; no matter how terrible you act, the internet will protect you behind its screen of faceless text.

And so, being the polite and kindly person that I am, I thought I would present my own personal version of internet etiquette. I'm curious, in fact, as to whether you will agree with the rules I have worked out for myself.

So, without further ado, here it is: The Internet According to Etarran.

General Rules

1. Real Names Are For No. The internet is a scary place: it brings you in contact with the best and worst of humanity, and sometimes, that makes it very dangerous. There is a reason the internet-safety courses (stupid as they are) stress keeping your personal information offline: you never know who will end up finding it.

2. Real Life Is For No. This is, if anything, more important than the first. It's not only that someone may find your emotion-wracked diatribe and in some way use it against you, it's that the people it is about will undoubtedly read it. The most insidious quality of text-based communication is that it makes you much, much ruder than you are. Even the most innocent of things can lead to terrible misunderstandings, and so keeping the less-innocent things clear of The Great Big Truck is paramount. (There are cases where this rule is okay to break. Under no circumstances can this one and number one be broken at the same time.)

3. Language Is Your Friend. After all, one of the main dangers of the internet is miscommunication. It takes less than a second to read and edit what you've written before you send or post it. Try it. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation: the better yours is, the more people will listen to you.

4. Do Not Get Involved. Do you want to be this person? The internet is sometimes so shocking, so horrible, that you feel you have to reach out and stop it. Racism, Religious fanatics, Anti-religious fanatics, hatred, ignorance, and everything else you can possibly imagine: all of these are everywhere in the nihilistic soupy froth of human failure and brilliance that we pipe into our eyes (Often all in the same YouTube comment). Sometimes someone is so wrong, you just want to stop them. Resist the temptation! It will only end in tears.

These four rules are pretty much what guides my internet usage, insofar as I am able to conform to them. Am I missing anything? Am I dead wrong? Tell me.

Another thing I find is that people often mistake the level of formality of the internet medium they are using. And so, a handy list:

1. Blog posts. A blog is not a blackboard, where the posts are erased as soon as they're written. These are your thoughts. You should try to do them justice. (Okay, frequently guilty).

2. Email. Email is slightly less formal than a hard copy letter, but it is not a chat message. Remember, the people receiving your email will have it forever. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

3. Forum Posts. Forum posts and email are actually equal in formality. While a forum post doesn't stick around forever, it still exists for about three or four years, and in the time it is online, a lot more people see it than do an email. As such, think about what you write, don't be a jerk, and everything will be fine.

4. Facebook and other single-thread message boards. These aren't quite fora, but they aren't quite not, and so are difficult to classify. Still, the easy rule to apply is "How long will people see it?" Since the answer is "It could easily be a year or so." I would exercise a certain amount of caution. Note that private messages in these media (And on fora), are the same as email.

5. MSN, IRC, and other chat clients. You should still spell properly, but what you say will be gone in five minutes, so it doesn't matter as much how it looks. Just don't be fooled into thinking it's a real conversation.

6. In-game text and voice chat. spd + style -. MEDIC!

So, that ends The Internet According to Etarran. Do you agree? Disagree? Hate me? Sound off!

Life is the Bubbles (Excuses, Excuses)

So, recently I have been accused by several separate people of neglecting this blog, after having promised so faithfully to maintain it (and hug it and love it and call it George). To this spurious accusation I say: "Fools! You know not whereof you speak!"

Because, in fact, far from neglecting my blog, I've been paying it a lot of attention. No, what I've been neglecting is not the blog, but the readers.

"How," you ask, "is it possible to be writing blog entries but not have people reading blog entries?" Well, I'm glad you asked that question, in fact, because it's exactly the one I have set out this post to answer. The reason you've seen nothing here is not that I haven't been writing, but that I haven't been finishing what I write. In fact, this has become such a problem that I now have more than three times as many unfinished drafts of posts as I do actual posts.

So, in lieu of actually getting to work and finishing them, I have chosen here to post a list of the Top Ten Coming Attractions to the world of Fog and Castles. All but two of these posts are more than half finished, and of those two, one is totally made up. Try to guess which.

1. A post entitled "Sicklical," discussing the nature of health care in North America.
2. A post that uses the word "Fish" more times than any other single word.
3. A post explaining the name of the blog, and directing you towards the excellent work of an unknown artist.
4. The Internet According to Etarran.
5. A post explaining who the worst enemy of gaming culture is. (I'll spoil the surprise ending: it turns out to be gamers. [Specifically, Loud.])
6. Webcomics, and why Dinosaur Comics is funnier than yours. (Two words: Dinosaurs and, ummm... the other one's not really important)
7. A post discussing Penguins, and why they are evil.
8. The Internet According to Solipsism. (And vice versa!)
9. A post discussing Penguins, and why they are really, really evil.
10. Politics, Philosophy, Or Philolotics: The Poll. (Warning: May include traces of dinosaur.)

Too Much Metaphysics

A week ago, when I underwent surgery, I was given a choice between a general, full anesthetic and a spinal anesthetic, which would paralyze me and remove all feeling from the waist down. Now, my initial inclination was that the full anesthetic would be greatly preferable: I didn't want to be awake for surgery, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to avoid. However, the anesthetist strongly recommended the spinal, adding that, as I would be on morphine, throughout the operation, I would not remember any of the procedure. In the end, I went with her recommendation: after all, a medical professional I am not.

Now, this story is mostly background for what I want to talk about, but I think it's useful in seeing where these speculations come from.

For two and a half hours, I was awake, aware, and remember nothing. This is a fact with shocking implications: if the memories of my life are not contiguous, can it really be said to be me who underwent those experiences? Certainly my physical body did: I have medical staples and a nicely healing scar to prove it. I'm not sure it can. Who we are is in many ways defined by our memories: they are what gives our personality shape and substance, and any point of interaction with the world must inevitably be a structure of memory, not of awareness. While I am sitting here typing these words in some kind of Now, soon it will be simply yet another piece in an ever-growing Then.

And if I don't remember experiencing those things, if I therefore never experienced those things - at least for a reasonable definition of "I" - who did? Some sort of mystical other-me, who existed for those two hours and then disappeared - or died? Or maybe it is the other way around, since after all, his memories were contiguous: everything from my birth to the end of those two hours he remembered, and it is I who have this strange hole in my past. Maybe waking up in the recovery room was when I was born?

But what really bothers me is the choice I made - to experience something unpleasant, but to have no memory of it. If it was not me who underwent that experience, then did I not force someone else to bear my burden? Do I not have the blood and fear of the other-me on my hands?

This is why I hate metaphysics: something interesting always becomes something just a little too disturbing. Of course, I suppose that is rather the point.

Interpopsicle!

So, two days ago, I attended a wedding. It was a highly informal affair, with a five-minute ceremony and a lot of small children running around - which, it seems to me, is rather the best part of weddings.

One thing that struck me, though, and that brought up today's topic, was a specific piece of the vow used, in which it was said "Remember, you never get more out of a relationship than you put into it."

Now, this statement strikes me as foolish. Isn't it precisely the point to get more out of a relationship than you put into it?

At face value, of course, this is absurd, even reprehensible: relationships are not a contest, in which you try to outdo the other person and gain as much as you can for as little effort as possible. But that's not what I said, either.

See, the distinction is between two things: what you put into a relationship, and what the other person gets out of it. You should always get more out of it than you put into it, but that is because you should always get more out of it than they put into it. If the amount of sacrifice and the amount of gain were always perfectly equal, no one would ever enter into a relationship: why do so if you have nothing to gain? But they aren't. The point of being in a relationship - the entire point - is that both of you stand to gain enormously through making smaller sacrifices.

This is not, of course, to say that relationships do not require effort, nor to say that putting more effort into a relationship will not yield more gain (although there is an optimum level of effort, beyond which it begins to damage, rather than help), but simply to say that what you get out of it is, simply by definition in a healthy relationship, worth more than what you put into it.

And this conclusion leads to another, more interesting one; it reads, simply: If the benefit you are deriving from a relationship is significantly more valuable than the sacrifices you are making for it, then that is a healthy relationship. ("Benefit" here is not a selfish word: making someone else happy can count as a benefit.) Otherwise, it is not.

I'm not sure if I like that conclusion or not.

Life, the Universe, and Dinosaurs

The title of this post should be the mission statement of human existence.

A friend of mine, recently, said that he thought life was much more fun if you treated it as performance art. I can't help but agree. The thing about living in the top one percent of the world by wealth, as most, if not all, of the people able to afford the internet access required to read this blog do, is that we have removed ourselves from the struggles that really matter. Human beings are programmed to ascribe enormous importance to their everyday activities - after all, for so much of our history, not doing so could easily result in death.

And yet, adults - and, even more so, teenagers - are nevertheless wont to ascribe undue importance to the trivialities of their lives.

Though it may sound as though I am protesting the meaningless of life, and that all existence is futile, and whatever else is all too common on so-called profound internet publications, my point is precisely the opposite. We take things too seriously.

People will sometimes speak of an "inner child," the force that provides immaturity, silliness, and, I believe, the only medium through which we can achieve pure joy. Recently, we have become better at accessing it; Monty Python, for example, achieved humour simply through silliness, and the title of this post is another obvious reference.

The problem is that we refuse to admit that we are still as captivated with the cool and the silly as we were when we were six years old. Everyone loves dinosaurs. I honestly have yet to meet a person who turned down a chance to play with Lego. Oh, we try to hide it, feeling as though it is socially unacceptable to still be enamoured of giant robots or space-ships or a piece of pie. But nevertheless, everyone is.

This carries over into aspects of our daily lives, mostly through the realm of hobbies. People who can no longer play with toy soldiers take up video games, or table-top war games, or chess. People who can no longer happily spend an afternoon saving princesses and ruling kingdoms do it anyways, with dungeons and dragons. And people whose imaginations are cramped by their feelings of social intolerance can always, always, read a book. Everyone loves being silly. And it is a tragedy when people will not allow themselves to do so.

This may sound like a glorification of nerd culture, and to a certain extent it is. We did get a lot right, after all. But it's not just that kind of escapist activity that lets people channel their silliness into their lives. Whenever someone climbs a tree just because they feel like it, that's what I'm talking about. Whenever people play pickup hockey in the streets, that's what I'm talking about. And whenever anyone uses their imaginations, or goes against their inclinations, or does something just for the hell of it, that's what I'm talking about.

Also, Dinosaurs.

Inception!

It has been a fair while since I have done anything approaching writing out actual ideas, essays, and treatises, which I suspect will be the end focus of these pages, so I think I will begin by easing myself into it, with a few general observations about humanity.

One thing I have always found fascinating about people is that we like to think of there being six directions: forward, backwards, left, right, up, and down - always, interestingly, in that precise order - and yet we really only think in five of them. You see, humans, by nature, never look up; after all, evolutionarily speaking, looking up is foolish for creatures that live on wide-open plains: neither threats nor food could possibly be above us. Doubtless, our forest-dwelling ancestors would have spent a fair amount of time scanning the tree-branches above their heads, but years of savanna and grassland have beaten that awareness out of us.

It is a commonplace in the entertainment industry, for example, that audiences will happily observe what is going on below them, but will refuse to look upwards, even if their virtual lives (in the case of a video game) depend on it. The best place to ambush someone is from above, which is why the president of the united states always enters and leaves buildings under a tent: the secret service agents, however incredibly skilled and highly trained, know that they are most likely to miss an assassin above them.

What is interesting about this, however, is that it works in metaphor as well as reality. Humans must be forced and cajoled to look up, to find a higher purpose or greater ambition for their actions than just a personal one. Perhaps that is why it is said we were made in God's image. After all, for him, there isn't any up at all.