Tannishblog

That’s exactly what I asked myself as I clicked the link at Digg.com. The resulting Wall Street Journal article highlights the emerging netroots efforts surrounding the Republican dark horse Presidential candidate. Not having paid much attention to the Re-thug-lican party, I hadn’t heard of him.

Further along the page of hot Diggs is another mention of Ron Paul, this one from a blogger concerned about America’s emerging governance trend. Here I find an article by the man himself, snipped for rapid propagation. I’ll highlight what caught my fancy:

Our love for liberty above all has been so diminished that we tolerate intrusions into our privacy that would have been abhorred just a few years ago. We tolerate inconveniences and infringements upon our liberties in a manner that reflects poorly on our great national character of rugged individualism. American history, at least in part, is a history of people who don’t like being told what to do. Yet we are increasingly empowering the federal government and its agents to run our lives.

Terror, fear, and crises like 9-11 are used to achieve complacency and obedience, especially when citizens are deluded into believing they are still a free people. The loss of liberty, we are assured, will be minimal, short-lived, and necessary. Many citizens believe that once the war on terror is over, restrictions on their liberties will be reversed. But this war is undeclared and open-ended, with no precise enemy and no expressly stated final goal. Terrorism will never be eradicated completely; does this mean future presidents will assert extraordinary war powers indefinitely?

Is this man the John Galt of our era? Probably not. But he’s got my attention.

Confession time: I’m obsessed with EVE Online. Most people know me as an old gamer. By old, I mean that I’ve been gaming since the first Civilization came out. I’ve probably logged ten thousand hours playing all the iterations of that franchise over the years.

I game like some people read: a leisure activity that stimulates the mind. I gave up television decades ago. For ten years, I worked and immersed myself in the bookstore culture, reading all I can and reading up on the rest - new releases of the day, New York Tomes bestsellers, Oprah reading club picks. My game has always been - to some degree - stimulating my brain.
Many would scoff, especially my loving wife, that computer games are a waste of time. To them, I say: yes. All leisure pursuits are time wasters; that is their function. Scoffers are reacting to media-fed stereotypes and hysterical ignorants.

I could go off about the bad rap shooters get. Most of the bad names they earn; that is how copies are sold to that demographic. The fact that most computer games involve guns is an unfortunate affect of several factors dovetailing: the limitations of computer simulations, programming techniques and human interface design; the psychological zeitgeist of our culture, i.e, our addiction to gratuitous sensory input and the attendant emotional jolt; and the common goal of all game design houses - profit.

But not all games are primarily kill-or-be-killed, primal endorfin feasts. Many war simulations are strategic, as are the aforementioned Civilization and it’s 4X clones (explore, expand, exploit & exterminate.) Many deal with complex scenarios inspired by meatspace. SimCity is a great example of a world renown title of management simulation. Even the hokey Second Life deals with the complexity of social and societal interactions.

So stands the two major camps of gaming nerds: twitchy trigger enthusiasts blasting anything that moves, and ponderous playing with a god-like perspective and similar responsibilities. Although many gamers play in both styles, most prefer on or the other. Game designers have looked for the Holy Grail of gaming that would unite the wallets of the two camps. Thus was born the MMORPG.

These Massivley Multiplayer Olnine Role-Playing games (or MMO’s), amalgams of twitchy ponderousness, can be played to whatever is one’s personal style. To the strategists, Player-Vs-Environment elements are available. For the rest, Player-Vs-Player campaigns allow the killer instincts to flourish as complete strangers show their antisocial proclivities.

EVE online, to which I am currently enamored (read: addicted,) is an MMO that on the surface is a space shooter a la Star Trek the Elder. I can be played that way, with squadrons of ships blazing at each other in true Space Opera milieu. but that would ignore the real depth of this game. Billed as the largest online “world” in the world, EVE Online is an entire galaxy of star systems to explore, with human faction-states and a multitude of corporations vying for political and economic supremacy.

The lowly star pilot noobie can proceed all the way to CEO of a player-owned corporation and build her very own space station and get involved with faction politics and the inevitable war or two. Under this expansive realm of possibilities is an economic simulator; EVE Online is a game of Capitalistic pursuits which dispenses the rigid, stratified leveling of World of Warcraft clones and replaces it with an educational approach of gaining abilities by studying for skills over time. In this way, a player has complete control of the abilities she wishes to have, and is not funneled into Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Thief variations.

So that’s what I’m into this year. As an entertainment value, I’ve always believed that a fifty-dollar game should - at least - give 100 hours of enjoyment as a fair return of investment. Not all can do this, and to gamble with a Franklin every other month is too often disappointing. With the monthly dues of a MMO, one can get as much value as one wants until boredom or something else comes along. Yes, after a year’s time, I’ll spend more on EVE than other games, but I’ll probably spend less money this year on gaming than in years past. That’s the real value!

So. Alberto Gonzalez is out. People are starting to flake off this presidency like a leper’s skin. Gonzo’s perhaps the flakiest of the bunch.

Perhaps that’s not the best metaphor. Did you ever see cockroaches scatter when the light switches on? The longer the roach light shined, the less Gonzo could remember. Pictures of him last week had him looking like a deer in headlights. But that confounds the imagery.

The spotlight on Alberto must have been too much for the guy George Bush has so much confidence in. Has anyone asked the President about what is he confident? Could it be in Al’s ability to politicize the Justice Department? Or His willingness to take the hatchet?

I’m not saying the Democrats going after this cockroach are enlightened, but the pointed questions are so overdue. We may never get to the bottom of the dung heap people like Gonzalez are sacrificing their careers to obfuscate. And time is running out.

Why should Alberto stay anyway? He’ll be replaced by the next administration in a few month’s time; he’ll not be able to get real work done now that his credibility is in question. What’s the point? On the other hand, why leave? Our “Resoloot” leader will install another hack to continue the deal. If the Democrats screech, as is likely, then the few flakes that are left can cry about obstruction - whatever.

It’s all so stupid, really. One thing’s for sure: none of this, from either camp, serves the American People. That’s a shame.

Sometime’s difficult people bring out the worst in us. Watching others and judging, finding fault will not help us attain wisdom. Watching ourselves as we find fault in others is closer to the mark. Watching others and minding our own behavior, ignoring the actions of others in favor of correct actions ourselves - that is the key.

It is not proper to watch other people. This will not help your practice. If you are annoyed, watch the annoyance in your own mind. If others’ discipline is bad or they are not good monks, this is not for you to judge. You will not discover widsom watching others. Monks’ discipline is a tool to use for your own meditation. It is not a weapon to use to criticize or find fault. No one can do your practice for you, nor can you do practice for anyone else. Just be mindful of your own doings. This is the way to practice.

~ Ajahn Chah, "Bodhinyana"

from "365 Buddha: Daily Meditations,"

Words intrigue me. That should come as no surprise. I don’t do this blogging thing for money, after all. The work I’ve been thinking about lately is:

at·ti·tude (āt’ĭ-tōōd’, -tyōōd’) n.

1. A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself: stood in a graceful attitude. See Synonyms at posture.
2. 1. A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work.
   2. An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition.
3. The orientation of an aircraft’s axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon.
4. The orientation of a spacecraft relative to its direction of motion.
5. A position similar to an arabesque in which a ballet dancer stands on one leg with the other raised either in front or in back and bent at the knee.

We have attitude when we walk. A person can tell the mood of another just by watching how he moves. By paying attention to the attitude of the body, as in definition 1, one can easily guess the attitude of the mind, as in definition 2. Of course words broadcasts attitude on several levels. One’s choice of words, ones pronunciation and tonal qualities in combination convey a spectrum of attitudes in subtle and obvious ways.

People use this consciously when manipulating for a goal. That’s the nature of interaction and communication. It’s when the attitude is delivered sub-consciously that interests me. How many of us are cognizant of how we project our attitudes? How we and our attitudes are perceived?

I don’t suggest obsessing about the opinion of others. Yet people who have negative attitudes toward others might want to ponder the affect it has on others. Conversely, I one has a positive attitude towards the people in their life, one doesn’t need to be concerned with such things.

Some may not care; that’s an copping an attitude about one’s attitude. Most would say they don’t care, even convince themselves of not caring, but would be lying. And lying to oneself is perhaps the most tragic attitude one can take.

My favorite righty blogger friend sites an article exposing a Y2K bug data glitch in US temperature data graphs used to project climate change as the Holy Grail of truth to prove her long-held hypothesis that global warming is a scam. I don’t blame her, though. She’s entitled. Most bloggers only rely on sources they are predisposed to agree with to parse their rhetoric. I do it all the time…

What alarms me is how she clearly ignores other signs of climate change. The recently exposed islands in Greenland that, so long covered in thick ice, had always been thought to be connected to the main land mass. The satellite photos of recent large-scale fractures in Antarctic Glaciers. The sinking of small island-states like Trinidad-Tobago. Even the changed migration of Canadian geese, much noted here in Illinois where we both live, is a fact ignored in favor of an irrational belief.

And what about the problem-that-shouldn’t-be-named? No one mentions pollution these days. That shopworn buzzword of the last century is taboo in the tabloids lately. My aforementioned friend lives in a semi-rural small town where, I surmise, she can forget the sight of sunrise over the Kennedy Expressway in all it’s brownish, hazy glory. Nor, I think, can she envision the silt of airliner fuel exhaust that coats my car every evening, as I leave the industrial park that nestles next to O’hare Field. While her neighbors dream of corn fields of ethanol-grade hybrid grain, I awake to the reality of human congestion flavored by addiction to fossil fuels.

Global Warming, as a catch-phrase, has unfortunate connotations. Replacing it with Climate Change is, while more accurate, less visceral, and less likely to get our fat arses out of the easy chair to take action. What needs doing is simply to open our eyes. When we can see for ourselves the thickening of our thin atmosphere from our own collective wastes, then perhaps we can make pollution the center point of a political movement to care for the fragile ecosphere we all rely upon. Only through politics will America take up the sword against our most insidious of enemies: ourselves.

The right may scoff. Let them. When we can gather enough steam to provide purchasable alternatives to old-school technologies, then the market to which Conservatives pray will put out of business whole industries that refuse to ride the forefront of ecological stewardship. When hit in the wallet, they will finally listen. As for the exurbian naysayers; the brown skies will find then soon enough.

Yeah, I know…

I’ve been away from the blog for a while. I haven’t abandoned it. In the middle of coping with a new job and resulting shift in schedules and energies, the family and I took off this past week for Quebec City for a vacation committed to before I was laid off last month. We’ll be back tomorrow, as I am currently in a hotel in Windsor, Canada that provides free wireless.

It’s been a great week, and I’ll post a picture for your hungry eyes. It will probably take the remainder of August for me to find my way back into a regular posting schedule. That is IF I can tear myself away from EVE online

A view of the St. Lawrence River Eastward toward the Isle of Orleans.

Courtesy of my inquisitive nephew, some delicious links come my way. First, the blog of a science journalists illuminates about recent studies on ancient meditation practices. Modern scanning technology can now measure the effects of Buddhist mind training techniques showing meditation’s effects. The Dalai Lama recently wrote a book on the convergence of science and Buddhist spiritual assertions. If your interested, I highly recommend The Universe In A Single Atom.

Second, my wily relative sends me some short animation from a couple friends, one of whom is a co-creator of South Park, that illustrates some passages from Alan Watts. See it at coldhardflash.com.

It is a fervent hope of mine that a revolution in spirituality will propel humanity forward in the foreseeable future. Not religion, let me stress, but a connection of spirit and a reaffirmation of our collective humanity. Many would scoff. Yet I ask: how else are we to keep ourselves from self-annihilation?

Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self — if you become aware of it — the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that’s me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears — now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown — and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.

~ Alan Watts