On Video Game Tactics as an Old Man

In honour of the new Xbox’s release this coming morning, I dug out an old blog post I never finished writing, and thought I'd chuck a rough version of it up here.
Enjoy!:

I have become quite addicted of late to the hand picked articles over at Longform, and today I read a great article about Obama’s actions in Libya, which it got me thinking, of all things, about how I play video games.

The article is a profile of United States president Barack Obama, in which the author seeks to explain Obama's leadership style through an analysis of a few key moments in the first half of his presidency. Its main focus is on the very public decision for the United States to intervene militarily in Libya. However it intersperses this with another angle of the presidents approach toward tackling complex situations by discussing his strategy going into the weekly game of basketball he organises with other members of his government.
In the lead up to the article proper, the writer goes over Obama's explanation of how his style of play has had to change over the years as his abilities reflected his age. One paragraph in particular stuck in my mind:

“What happens is, as I get older, the chances I’m going to play well go down. When I was 30 there was, like, a one-in-two chance. By the time I was 40 it was more like one in three or one in four.” He used to focus on personal achievement, but as he can no longer achieve so much personally, he’s switched to trying to figure out how to make his team win. In his decline he’s maintaining his relevance and sense of purpose.

This line of thinking reminds me of how I play games like Halo or Battlefield. In particular why I like playing team oriented games, rather than the helter skelter frenzy of a free for all.
Let me explain.
Though I may not be that aged yet (It seems that as the average gamers age has increased each year, so has mine; so things work out nicely), I nevertheless do feel that there is an immense advantage for the youth when it comes to playing video games. First of all, they have more time to play. I remember fondly spending hours and hours with friends perfecting every possible circuit in games like Super Mario Kart, or stealthily stalking opponents on GoldenEye, to the point that tense stalemates ran into hours of rigging proximity mines, or sniping the sharp edged polygons of a crouched individual, trying their best to remain in the small shadow profile we had each mentally mapped.

We've come a long way baby

In addition to this extra training time, the younger gaming population is also able to capitalise on their apparent quicker reflexes, and as a result, an uncanny ability to hone their aim when compared to mine.
Now I have never been much of a long distance fighter as it is (give me a shotgun and melee any day), but I can still sense the disparity in aim, and thus accuracy, when a battle gets going.
So a while ago I decided that I would not let this asymmetry get me down. Whatever I may now lack in youthful spry, I can more than make up for in guile, strategy and determination.
I may not be able to stroll through a battlefield picking off my enemies with uncanny headshots as my opponents often do. However these days when I burst on stage I can assure you that, though I tend to go down in a hail of bullets, when my charge is complete and the dust has settled, the opposing team is well aware of it, and generally worse for wear because of it.

There is no I in team, and thus there should be no ego on the battlefield. More often than not I notice younger gamers tend to be glory hogs, they go for the highest score for themselves, regardless of the team's situation. They grab whatever weapon they desire, and assert that they are the best at whatever endeavour they are undertaking.

More often than not this comes to mind..

I pick team based games because I like the strategy. I like looking at what is happening in a game, and figuring out the best plan of attack to turn the tide in my teams favour. Perhaps someone needs suppressive fire, or maybe just a charge into the open to distract the other side. Either way these actions are rarely major points getterson their own, but add up these plays as an overall game plan, and you soon find yourself rising to the top of your teams leaderboard, and aiding the overall probability of a victory.

This is the kind of maneuvering that doesn't see as appealing from a single player point of view. But harrying one's opponents is just as important as taking them out, or capturing the flag.

They always say know your enemy, and what enemy truly hits home more than one’s own weaknesses? At the end of the day it is about knowing your own limitations, and accepting that though the playing field is not even, the bumps and troughs it provides can just as easily substitute for cover as they do for hindrance.

Coming full circle this whole thing reminds me of my own days playing basketball.
I remember the emphasis always on who got the baskets, especially as our coach’s son was the tallest, and thus the officially sanctioned team strategy was ‘throw it to Matt’
After games my mum would always compliment me on my movements on the court.
“You're always where you need to be”, she would say; “they just don’t pass it the way they should”.

These days at least I know where I need to be, and the initiative is on me to make the most of this position.

Breaking the Drought

I have not posted in a while, and when that happens, I tend to want to start things with a somewhat interesting or significant post. This is not happening tonight however. I have a sore toe, and that is all this post is about. Just my sore toe.
But hey; its not like that isn't worth knowing is it? I mean, isn't that what Bob Marley and Jack Daniel died from? Kind of anyway......
Think about it.
MM out.

Here It Goes Again

Well, this was quite a hiatus for me from the world of blogging. It has been a tumultuous time of late, working two jobs for a while, buying a house, and so on. And sometimes once you have broken the chain, it is hard to but the links back together again, so for a while I gave up on updating this blog. Slowly the postless days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, until before you knew it I had gone five months without a single post springing forth from my clumsy fingers.

Sure I had material along the way, and wrote some half-arsed posts on the new Spiderman film, or our recent robotic mission to Mars (yes NASA, take that; I am claiming everything you do for humanity as a whole), but none of it ever manifested as an actual resolve to posting.

Slowly I began to lament my lack of blogging, and worse yet, I realised that whenever I did post next, I would have to explain my absence (which I recall doing multiple times in the past; not a good sign). Not only that, but my first post back should surely be a momentous one; one to distract from my previous neglect. And so I was further dissuaded from posting by my own eccentricities, but then today I had an epiphany.

Who cares?

My blog isn’t really that important, hell it isn’t even that good; it’s just my inner musings, distorted and extracted from my mind by my novice writing abilities for the public to see (but for most of them to ignore entirely). So why was I bothering to worry about the reception my new posts received?

The important thing after falling off a horse isn’t to vault back on Cossack style it’s just to get back on the damn thing, no matter the fashion.

So here I am, dusting off the reins, and strapping myself back in.

Hopefully some of you out there are looking forward to this, perhaps you enjoyed my posts in the past, and as I had no real talent or expertise to let wane over my absence, you can be assured that the same quality (or lack of it) will remain in future posts.

I’m looking forward to it.

Cheers,

MM

[Interesting sidenote: During my hiatus I was still getting around 15 daily views of my blog, so if anything at least this break has provided me with a nice benchmark to winkle out the bot visits, and focus on the people really drawn to my musings.]

I’m Back

Oh my how it has been a busy past few weeks. Hell, a busy past month!

It has been far too long since I posted regularly on here, and for those few of you who enjoy reading my esoterically themed posts, I apologise. Indeed you can take my previous six-thousand word strong post as something of a compensation for this (I hope it wasn’t too long). But there has been a lot going on lately which explains this absence.

First, there was my favourite day of the year, St Patricks Day. Expect a post on this one soon or at least something outlining my maleficent love of Guinness, and my recent membership to the 100 pint club. Then there was my mates wedding, where I was one of the best men, and agonised over the prospect of doing a speech which apparently went down alright in the end, but about which I have little to no recollection of right now (not to mention the random singing of a Eurovision song as demanded by the father of the groom....). Then the Easter break came along, and a long weekend of caravan parking, and beer drinking, left me thoroughly off the radar on all accounts.

Oh and did I mention that in the midst of this I decided to take up a second job tutoring at university, have yet to figure out how this will work with my current full time job, and am still trying to convince my work that this will in some way offer positive benefits?

Anyhow, this is in part the reason for my absence, and I shall endeavour to rectify it as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy this random Hitchens quote and unrelated gif:

 “We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes - one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way” - Christopher Hitchens

On Tolkien Berating Nazis, and my getting scooped.

One problem I have found myself facing as a blogger is my lax posting. I often have a great idea, or write a nice rant on a current event, only to find myself neglecting to post it, and it remaining in draft form long after the event has remained topical.

I bring this up because of this article over at one of my more frequent blog haunts, io9.com.

It’s only a short post, the crux of which is J.R.R. Tolkien’s reply to some German publishers who are looking to get a German translation of his masterworks produced. There is a great quote from the man himself directly to the cretinous Nazi’s.

The annoying thing is, during my research into Tolkien for my previous post regarding a Tolkienesque monogram I tried to design for myself*, I came across the Tolkien/Nazi missives and thought it was impressive, and would make for a cool blog.

And really, who is cooler than an old age Tolkien?

But gods damn it I was scooped; and it wasn't even a recent story!

Nonetheless, I will include the quote here for those who either haven’t read the link yet, or don’t plan to, along with a bit of commentary from myself.

The whole thing started in 1938, when German publishing house Rütten & Loening Verlag was getting ready to release a German language version of The Hobbit. Germany being well within the throws of Nazism at the time lead the publishers to enquire as to whether Tolkien was of Aryan descent. Being well aware of the situation in Germany, and no fan of the totalitarian Hitler (who he called a 'ruddy little ignoramus'), Tolkien wrote a letter to the publisher, first outlining the ridiculous etymological origins of the supposed “Aryan race” by pointing out to the witless Nazis that ‘Aryan’ is actually a linguistic term to denoting speakers of Indo-Iranian languages; and secondly by going to great length to not only rub his admiration of Jewish people in their face, but also to express his lament at what he sees as the degradation of German integrity at the hands of the Nazis.

Suck it Nazi's!

Unfortunately Tolkien wrote two versions of this letter and provided them to his British publisher; one was harsh and critical, the other more tactful. Tolkien instructed his publisher to decide what one should be sent, and he chose the more tactful missive. We will never know what that letter contained (as it was destroyed during the war), but I would like to hope that it still contained something similar to the below quote, taken from his more aggressive reply to the Germans race questioning:

“But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride”

I hope this was somewhat insightful.
MJM

*Props to one of my mates who read that previous post, and managed to get me an updated version of my monogram as a vector graphic, just like I wanted.

Cheers mate.

Wednesdays Words 6 - Literary Taste and Personal Development

“Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I like this quote, and unfortunately feel that it describes me to a great degree. I haven’t taken the time to properly develop myself as a person to the extent that I would like to have if my situation had been ideal (read: was a millionaire with time to spare). I don’t know all the things I would like to know, I haven’t read the books I know I should have read, and I don’t fully understand my own views about the world I live in. I feel like I am making do with a minimal set of the information I would like to have in order to be content with my own personal sphere of knowledge.

Case in point: this very quote itself. I know of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I don’t know much about him. He was a writer I believe, active around the twenties, but I couldn’t name a book he was responsible for, and I know that there was a Zelda involved, but that this has nothing to do with Link.

This Zelda though, I know quite well

I find that rather than knowing important things, I know of important things. It is like my previous post on how I just don’t get poetry, yet I still have a tacit acceptance that it must be a worthwhile thing to know.

Literary taste is likewise something I have failed to cultivate. Though I possess an extensive knowledge of book titles which I should have read, or which nonetheless have some sort of literary significance; I have yet to move very far along my list of ‘books I need to read’. Brideshead Revisted, Wuthering Heights, anything by Hemingway, anything by suitably long dead Russians; the list goes on.

I know of these books, but I haven’t the slightest idea why they are important, or what the overall gist of their respective stories are.

Is it just me, or has this title always sounded more like a B-grade horror sequel than a literary work?

But the way that the modern world can overtake you is evident all over the place. I love chess, but I don’t play chess much anymore; I haven’t cultivated that part of my life anywhere near as much as I would want. I play with my son occasionally, but in order to fully embrace the game, I would have to devote far too much time to it. Let’s face it, in these days where a half hour of chess playing could be replaced with a scroll through Facebook activities, a read of my Twitter feed, a glance at the latest blog entries via RSS, a few informative and hilarious videos on YouTube, insightful commentary from Al-Jazerra or any other activities on the web; the ancient Indian game all but certainly loses the bet.

Or perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone? 

On the other hand, if we are to look at Fitz’s quote from a more modern perspective we might be tempted to dismiss it, or at least diminish its accusations, as somewhat anachronistic.

After all while it is no doubt true that the majority of the population will not form a literary taste as such, these days literature is not the only medium with which people can form a personal philosophical viewpoint.

Nowadays we can devote our attention to the multitude of movies out there, and slowly cultivate a unique cinematic taste, which may very well help us to plumb the depths of the human condition as much as any literary viewpoint would. We can similarly turn our attention to the small screen, which these days exhibits works of such complexity and daring that it is hardly worthy of the scorn so often associated with devoting time to watching the box.

But if there is any one tool which has emerged out of the past century as the superlative force in cultivating our own personal beliefs, tastes and philosophical development, it has to be the Internet.

And it's useful for pictures of people lying face down in various situations......

Nothing else can compare to the net’s ability to pervade every instance of our personality. You can read books online, turn to articles about them, read a blog, or take part in a discussion with people from across the globe. But considering the medium I am using for this message, this should be of no doubt to anyone reading.

Perhaps this widening of the information sphere is the reason for my thoughts regarding my own apparent lack in refinement. As there is so much more available to us in this information age, and our attention spans have been stretched much further than ever before, we in a sense dilute our tastes over a variety of knowledge sources never before experienced by anyone at any point in history. In this sense, a short attention span isn’t the worst thing in the world, for while it may result in a less thorough approach to whatever is being analysed at the time, it nevertheless allows for rapid transitions from one source of attention, knowledge or amusement, to another.

I mean sure I may not have much of an understanding of the great Russian authors, or the popular British novelists of the past few hundred years, but thanks to the internet I know such obscure things as the amazing abilities of animal penises, the curious nature of infinite numbers that differ in size and how to make a trebuchet out of office supplies. And this is only a small subset of the much larger experiences I have garnered from the venerable World Wide Web.

So while Fitzgerald may have been lamenting modern mans aversion to literary and philosophical development and self determination, I think it is somewhat encouraging that today we have a lot more tools available to the everyday man to help them in their quest through life.
That's all for this late night rant dear reader. I hope this makes up for the missed Wednesdays Words last week; whats more I hope someone noticed it was missing.
Good night all.
MM

Oh and on a quick wiki, I see that F. Scott wrote The Great Gatsby. I haven't read it, but luckily come December this year I might not have to...

My Tolkien Inspired Monogram

Years ago when I first discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and enveloped myself in the world of Middle-Earth, I was intrigued by the little symbol on the spine of the books Tolkien had written. My edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are both bordered by Dwarf runes (which I decoded with relish), and feature the mark of Tolkien’s estate, his own personal monograph, on the spine.

For those who don’t know, this is the mark I am talking about:

I haven’t been able to uncover much information on this symbol, and I suppose there probably isn't much to find. It is after all a simple monogram, a combination of the author’s famous initials, and now symbol of the venerable Tolkien estate.

Back in the day I was quite the MS Paint wiz (I still am to this day, but it is less to be proud of now), so I resolved to create my own initial based monogram. After a lot of searching at themeWorld.com for the appropriate font (what I hoped was the somewhat Tolkienesque ‘Viking’), and a few minutes with Paint, I created this:

My initials are MJM in case it wasn’t clear enough

I have been quite happy with this over the years, adding it discretely to my documents, web pages, resume and so on. It even made its way onto my work email signature until this was deemed ‘inappropriate’...

Anyhow, I decided to break it out again for this blog, when I noticed how dated it is looking. Not the design itself, but rather the image that I saved. It was a lovingly crafted bitmap made with my own two hands (well one hand, with one clicking finger), but as a result its edges are a bit jagged. I worked this picture to life with a studious carving of pixels after all, not the vector based graphics of this millennium.

So I am interested in updating, and was wondering if anyone has any idea what programs would be good for making a vector graphic version of this symbol?

Let me know in the comments, or on Facebook, or wherever you find my digital presence.

Cheers.

MM

Wednesday’s Words – Free Will

I have decided to add a little descriptive section to my Wednesdays Words title this past few weeks because my previous entries were turning into quite long and rambling discussions on a certain topic, rather than just the quotes that spurned them forth. This has again happened this week, with a seemingly innocent quote regarding free will launching me into a diatribe against the free will argument as it is applied by religious apologists.

What can I say; I am missing my regular Christian debates now that Facebook has disabled their old discussion boards. Nevertheless, I hope this is somehow engaging. Enjoy!

“We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice” – Isaac Bashevis Singer

The idea of free will has always been interesting to me.

Looking at the world from our inevitable first person bias, our own will seems all but indisputable. Yet by the same token there are things in me that I cannot control, things that appear to be beyond the purview of my will, but which nevertheless I would consider an integral part of myself.

For instance the love I have for my wife and son is not something I have brought about due to my will, but it is nevertheless something I consider a core part of my being. Much more so than other things which are a part of me, but not subject to the whims of my free will. Things such as my automatically beating heart, or my preference to cry, if I have been sufficiently hurt.

I, like Dawson, am only human after all

But then the limits of what we mean by our will are also not so easily defined. I like to think of my will as my ability to deliberate in my own mind, to come to decisions and then to act so that these things are brought about. However as mentioned above, any decisions I make are inevitably based on further components of what I consider as central to my being. I can’t will that I love my wife, but I can will to marry her, and to devote myself in this way.

It’s like Schopenhauer said, “a man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills”.

Another reason why we find free will as central to our views on life is because it inevitably links in with our concepts of responsibility. I can be held accountable for things only if they arise from my own free will, and are not forced upon me by others.

However free will is also a common scapegoat when it comes to one of my other interests; atheism/religion debates.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

The above quote is one of the more formidable and pressing arguments against the existence of certain kinds of gods in our universe. This is often referred to as the ‘Problem of Evil’, and is generally credited as being put forth by the ancient philosopher Epicurus, though it may date even further into antiquity than he.

The argument has retained a place in modern culture, well within the realm of the everyman, because of a few defining qualities it possesses. For starters it is simple; everyone can remember it, and it walks forward in a nice syllogism, with steps we can all follow. It is also very pertinent to our daily lives, with the evidence of pain and suffering evident across the globe to any caring person.

There are arguments against the existence of god (or for it) that delve too far into philosophical parlance, so that we have to try and understand concepts like ‘necessary agents’, or ‘parsimonious existence’,  before we can even begin to ponder the questions themselves. But the problem of evil argument is put forth in a way everyone can understand.

It is a burning question for people trying to reconcile the way the world is, with the way gods are presented to them. If a Christian puts forth the idea of their god as a loving god; one who is all-powerful and keenly interested in the affairs of man, then there appears to be a contradiction at play when you fail to see this divine agent acting out to alleviate the ills of the world. [Then there are I suppose the worst cases of Christianity, where they ascribe natural disasters to the very same gods capricious wrath.]

So we must ask ourselves why these actions aren’t taking place; is the god unwilling or unable.

It is at this point that we find the interjection of free will into the argument, as rather than addressing the question directly, religious proponents seek to skirt the problem altogether.

Their answer: There is evil in the world, because there is free will.

Here religious apologists seek to connect some of the worst factors of existence with arguably one of its finest; with our ability to think independently, and act of our own accord.

There is evil in the world because we have our own free will, and the only way to stifle this evil, to stop it at its core, is to withhold that very same will. To take what is free, and bind it in the staples of religious dogma.*

I prefer this kind of Dogma

Something important to consider however is that not all restrictions of will are violations of free will. This is especially worth noting, as if we are to grant these gods the credit for designing the universe, then these limits on our will must be intentional, and part of the design.

As an example of restriction of will, versus removal of free will, consider a prisoner. We have restricted his will (statistically it is a he); he cannot leave his cell, he cannot choose his meals, and he cannot run for political office. However this is a restriction upon his exercising of this will; not of the will itself. He can still will these things to happen; he just cannot make them happen. If we were on the other hand to subject him to a bit of advanced neurosurgery so that even though his cell door was open, he was unable to will himself to walk through it, we have taken away some of the freedom of his will. [Does that even make grammatical sense?]

But then if we want to apply this kind of thinking to a creator god, we have to ask a lot of incisive questions regarding not only the motivations of the god, but also the nature of creation.

Under the free will explanation for the existence of evil in the universe we have a god who allows evils to take place, because it feels that this freedom of will is more important than freedom from suffering. Generally in a theological sense this freedom must be present so that we humans have the ability to choose to worship a god freely, because apparently these gods prefer voluntary submission to some form of mandatory one. Its smacks of egoism to me, but anyhow.

We thus find ourselves with the ability to do evil actions, but also to choose to do good actions. Evidently some will choose to do evil over good, and we arrive at the world we are in today.

Now ignoring the fact that Christians believe everyone must choose evil actions at some point (which is either a violation of free will, a design flaw, or else a misunderstanding of statistics), I will instead focus on the curious fact that these evil choices are even presented to us at all.

I say presented to us, because the mere presence of free will does not mean there must intrinsically be evil options to choose from. After all, this creator god is apparently (or at least in most cases) all powerful, all knowing and perfect. So when creating the world we live in, there was a deliberate design in all the options that are available to us.
Looking at this critically it brings up some unpleasant realities, as this means that things like murder, rape and physical abuse had to have been systematically made possible from a physical and biological standpoint.

Why is it I can use my free will to batter a man to death, but I can’t employ the same free will to psychically slay him with my brain powers? It’s because such things are not possible in the physical realm we reside in.

It may seem a ridiculous point to argue, but it is something that needs to be addressed. Because just as I can posit a world where we have extra abilities, and thus room to commit more evils, I can likewise hypothesise a world where such physical killings are made impossible not through the removal of free will, but rather due to a physical restriction on certain actions within the physical world. Such a world would be preferential int he sense that it contains not only less evil, but less possible evil.

Then there is the fact that you could still have a world with free will, but protect the innocent from harm. Take murder for instance. Murder is evil, is a sin, and with rational reasons behind it. However one need not remove the ability to murder in order to eliminate the suffering caused by murder.

This god could stop you stabbing someone by turning the knife into a fish. It could prevent a shooting death by making the bullets disappear. True this hypothetical god intervening universe would then lead to a lot more questions (would guns have even been invented for instance) that I don’t have room to go into here. But the fact remains that the will to do evil does not require that actions are allowed to be taken through to fruition. This is why we have attempted murder charges after all.
At any rate, I think this ramble has gone on far too long, and perhaps I best save my atheistic arguments for a more dedicated post. There is evidently a lot to say on the subject of free will, and its place within the atheist/theist debate, and I would be interested in any comments here.
Cheers
MM

*Disclaimer: I have spent long enough debating online and in person with religious people to know that it is worth making a distinction here before people accuse me of generalisation. Being an atheist, I have to argue against not just one form of theism, but all forms of theism, and as a result there are no doubt theists out there who don’t share some of the values I am ascribing to them here. So I will make myself clear now., I am not saying that the views expressed in this post as belonging to theists must belong to all theists. I am arguing against a theistic argument, not against all theism. I simply omit pointing this out overtly throughout the post, as it becomes a bit tedious to always be saying, ‘a subset of theists’, or ‘theistic evolutionists’ or some other such group within theism. If you don’t agree with the form of theist I am presenting, don’t assume it is a straw man argument; instead recognise it as an argument against some other form of theist.

That was a damn long disclaimer...

Chopstick Reflections

Around the close of last year I wrote a draft post of my Top 11 of 2011, however I never finished off the list and it subsequently fell by the wayside as the New Year progressed. However I have now decided to cannibalise the lengthy post into a series of Reflections to put up here.

Here is the first one, about me and chopsticks.

Chopsticks

I know it isn’t much to brag about, but I can now use chopsticks.

This was a more personal thing on my list of last year’s top eleven, as it really just deals with me, and what I am taking as a personal victory.

Using chopsticks is something I am disproportionally happy about. I had for years given up on making those two sticks of wood get food into my mouth, but this year with a little perseverance, along with the amazing learning tool that is the internet, I was able to finally conquer the first new eating utensil added to my arsenal since the inclusion of steak knives back when I was a child.

But perhaps a little background. I am going to China sometime in the future with my family, and am extremely excited at finally crossing that border from one country into another (and possibly over many more). My parents will be paying for a portion of the trip as a sort of ‘spend your inheritance’ deal, where they are lucky enough to experience this journey with us, rather than the traditional option, i.e. post-mortem.

Wanting to make the best of this experience, I decided to do a few things to prepare for my journey to the Middle Kingdom. The top two entries on my list of China preparation tasks are ‘Learn Some Basic Mandarin’ and ‘Learn to use chopsticks’. Naturally I focused on the later first, as the former seems a lot less likely to happen.

I found the above image on an internet site that gave me a nice and simple instruction on how to hold the chopsticks, and from then on it was just a matter of practise. My wife often makes some great little stir-fry’s, so I was not bereft of chances to hone my skills at home. Combine this with my recent discovery of Mr. Rice in Sturt Street, with their fantastic Mongolian beef, and I was well on my way to chopstick proficiency.

Surprisingly, after many failed attempts in my childhood, I was happy to see that I actually caught on quite quickly. Being rather proud of myself, I even forced my mum to furnish one of our meals at her place with chopsticks so that, like the child I secretly still am inside, I could boast of my new skills and receive some maternal praise.

I have no caption or reasoning for this image beyond its awesomeness

I think it was a lot easier learning this time around because I looked up my lesson plan, rather than trying to learn by imitating those around me, as I had as a child. Looking around now, you will be hard pressed to find two people using the same chopstick grip, so I think eliminating this variance made things a whole lot simpler.

Indeed because this was something I truly sucked at as a child, I now find myself doing it as often as I can in public, and looking on in dismay as no one manages to notice my adept hands skilfully wielding their chopsticks.

Evidently my own personal pride at having learnt this feat fails to overcome the fact that eating with chopsticks is not really much of a social accomplishment.

Yes, I am proud of doing what a small child can. Take your pleasures where you find them

But what the hell, I resolved to fill this blog with things that are not only inherently significant and interesting on their own, but which are also personally relevant. And this I think is a perfect example of a more subjective win for me.

Wednesdays Words – Week 3

“The average, healthy, well adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible” – Jean Kerr

I am not a morning person. I like the morning only in the sense that I naturally stay up till around 2a.m. before that voice inside my head informs me that I should probably go to bed. But the thing is, the voice I hear isn’t my inner weariness trying to overrun the part of me that wants to stay awake. I am not tired at these times. No the voice is simply the part of me that knows I live in a world geared towards those who are morning people, and the fact that these are generally those in charge of the working world (of which I am begrudgingly a part).
The morning I like is dark, not light. It’s at the end of my waking day, not the start. It’s populated by weird shows and foreign SBS films, not beaming out those crappy ‘morning shows’ that seem to want to straddle the line between news, commercial, and brain numbing inanity (but more often than not they only succeed in the last criteria).
I remember years ago during my uni days I would ponder the different Mathews that formed the gestalt entity I identify as myself. There was Drunk Mathew, Uni Mathew, Study Mathew, Morning Mathew...... the list went on. Generally Drunk Mathew had the best time; he all but killed Morning Mathew for a few years, and was the bane of Uni Mathew, who often found himself late, unprepared, and feeling a bit too seedy for a day of lectures.
A point worth noticing however is that Morning Mathew is a reluctant addition to this whole menagerie, he is a social construct; a forced part of my psyche. If I were the true lord and master of my life, morning Mathew wouldn’t exist. He would reside in a limbo, only coming back into existence when some undue force awoke me from my slumber.
This is the reason why for this Wednesdays Words, I picked the above quote from Jean Kerr, a person who I know next to nothing about, save the fact she was a playwright, and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scranton, Pennsylvania; home of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company

I chose it because I feel terrible in the mornings. Not terrible in any physiological sense, I just don’t want to be up; don’t want to be conscious.
However these days I have a new variable in my mornings, one that adds a more ambiguous quality to my waking experience.
I have a family.
I have a wife and a son who are both a lot more comfortable in the a.m. than I am. So more often than not Morning Mathew will now be pulled into existence, even on the weekends, when his son enters the room, and coaxes him out of bed. My wife too is always eager for me to forsake my world of slumber for the promised delights of the waking world.
But it isn’t all bad. Sure Morning Mathew doesn’t like this, and his temper is generally a bit shorter than Laidback Mathew. But there is a new guy on the scene now; Family Mathew. Luckily for us Mathews as a whole, Family Mathew has wrought by far the most positive elements in my life, and he is here to stay.
So though I may find myself up hours ahead of when I would ideally like to be, it is finally for a good enough reason. I am up having a family breakfast, watching cartoons with my son, or eating out at a cafe with my wife. I am keen to get out and watch my son’s karate classes, or go for a roadtrip with the family to buy some antique tools or whatnot from some obscure country town. Or just to relax at home doing nothing, but doing it with good company (not to mention the days when my wife bribes me out of bed with pancakes and waffles, mmmmm).
These benefits are enough to outweigh the negatives of missing my extra hours of sleep, and placate me as a whole, so I can shut out Morning Mathews objections for the time being.

Well that’s my Wednesdays Words done, a tad off topic this week, but these quotes aren’t always the most inspirational, and as it is just meant to be a catalyst for more writing, I guess it has done its duty.
Until next time dear reader.
MM

My Thoughts on Religion as a Child Weren’t That Childish

I have been reading a lot of ‘Why I am an atheist’ posts from various people over at PZ Myers blog Pharyngula, and thought it would be interesting to tackle my own. However I found my explanation for why I am an atheist somewhat less interesting (I am an atheist, and always have been), and slowly my post turned into yet another rant. This one involved some of my early thoughts regarding religion when I was a child, and how my early version of atheism treated religion when it was thrust upon me.

I hope it is entertaining in some way for you dear reader, so please, enjoy:

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I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember. I am not one of those atheists who have a nice story of discovering their atheism, or conjunctly losing their religious faith. I can’t really explain how I became an atheist, only point out that at some point along the way, I realised that I was one.

I remember attending religious education classes in primary school, I don’t recall what age I was, or why I was in religious education at a public school at all (I assume my parents could have opted out, but chose not to for some reason); but I do remember the stark differences I noticed between real classes, and what was essentially story time, with unconvincing, and un-entertaining stories.

Like when Jesus cursed a tree. That's right; a tree. A worthy foe for the son of a god

The god stuff never gelled for me, and I remember sneakily voicing this fact to my fellow students in a hushed tone.

“I don’t think this god stuff is real” I would whisper.

Many of my mates didn’t either, but there didn’t really seem to be any room for questioning the truth of these classes; we just undertook them. Indoctrination after all is only really a one way process.

I do remember one of my early reasoned arguments as to why I didn’t think that the particular religion I was being exposed to at school was the ‘right one’. Being an avid reader and watcher of documentaries as a child, I was vaguely aware of the history of western civilisation’s conquest of other nations and peoples. I knew about Inca gold, and conquistadors; about Native American Indians, and Australian aboriginals.

Thus it seemed to me at an early age that there was a conspicuous lack of verification from any of these newly encountered peoples, regarding the ultimate nature of the universe. Each group appeared to have their own guesses, and Christianity only seemed to flow from country to country with the power and influence of its current believers (or at the tip of their divine sword).

"Behold; my rational arguments for believing in Jesus!"

What would have convinced me was the arrival of Cortez to an unknown land, but one replete with Christ worshipers (or at least a form of proto-Jew still waiting to hear of the messiah’s arrival). When civilisations meet, there are generally common facts that they will be able to confirm with one another.

Have you heard of Mars, the fire planet?Yes we have, but we call him something else, and believe it is a wandering beast.

Fair enough. Not really the same answer and perhaps a charge of blasphemy if someone was zealous enough; but nonetheless a general agreement on the physical facts. Mars is up there, looks a bit reddish, occasionally moves in retrograde motions et cetera. The notion of a god however, is never so similar.

Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth, your eternal saviour?
No I have not. But if you sacrifice a young girl to Tezcatlipoca, I am sure he will enlighten us.

Sure people might like to point out that most, if not all, of these civilisations nevertheless had concepts of supernatural beings in common. However if you look at the nature of these disparate deities you will see they are far too different, and often outright contradictory, to be different interpretations of the same fact.

In order for a semblance of credibility to be attributed toward the Christian explanation for the universe, and mans place within it, there would need to be interpretations which though they may differ, at least bare more than a passing resemblance to one another.

But of course, this is never the case. Some religions have similar stories to others, but inevitably, they are always within walking distance, or perhaps hiking, trading or sailing distance from each other. We would expect the Egyptian mythology to have similar characters to Greek ones. I am not in the least surprised that the religion of the Carthaginian Empire bears a resemblance to the Phoenician one because if you chanced to look at it, I would bet their cultures also share similarities.

Pictured: Carthaginians. (And if you think that was a stretch to get Gladiator in there, then you forget you are dealing with a man who had his son named Harrison Maximus Gunn Morton)

However when you look at it rationally, there is an obvious excuse for this lack of knowledge being spread around the globe, namely that it isn’t true. The Christian on the other hand must explain why, for some reason, their almighty god decided that rather than appear in one of the more advanced civilisationsof the day, it was better to confine himself to a small portion of the Arabian Peninsula.

One might then seek to get away with this lack of independent Christians throughout the world, and explain it away by pointing out a Bible passage that commands Christians to do their best to spread the word (a task I might add that surely could have been better achieved if Christ had lived in China, or perhaps if the almighty god itself had helped out distributing his leaflets). In this sense the lack of confirmation from other lands is acceptable, as the almighty predicted this occurrence, and took account for it in the decree to prosthelytise.

Ignoring the fact that this seems quite an inefficient and demonstrably unsuccessful way of spreading ultimate truth, the avid apologist would still have to account for the fact that these isolated pockets of other religions seem to have wildly different origin stories than those prevalent in the middle east. The Hindu people believe that the earth was created by a cosmic egg being split, while the early Finns will tell you about how the world was created when a beautiful teal landed on the primordial waters and laid seven eggs, one of which would become the earth. It’s not like they are just a bit out; they are way out (though both are at least ova related).

However, don’t count out those persistent Christian apologists yet, because thousands of years of cultural evolution have made quite a slippery beast of their originally desert dwelling religion.

Ask a learned Christian about the question of different cultures and languages, and you will no doubt be presented with the Tower of Babel as the panacea for all rational thought on the subject.

For those not in the know, the tower of Babel is a Biblical story whereby man got quite cocky with himself, and decided to build a tower so high, that they could reach heaven. God, seeing that and being caught quite off guard, decided to thwart mans attempt to jump the queue (he is the arch-conservative after all), and scattered them upon the face of the earth. To add insult to injury God moved to hinder mankind further by confusing his language, remarking “Come, let us go down and confound their speech”.

Considering the modest height of it, God must be incensed at the Burj Khalifa

This is supposed to explain the profusion of differing languages across the globe, but is woefully inaccurate and childish when compared to the linguistic analysis we have about the development of humanlanguages. Not to mention the odd way that this god talks, which is either to himself, or some bizarre combination of first and third person narrative (he is after all three gods in one I suppose).

So here we have a story trying to explain the different languages and cultures across the earth. However it fails to really address the question, as though it would be true that two peoples unable to communicate will develop differently; it doesn’t then follow that they will drastically change their religious views accordingly. I find it hard to believe that the Mayans developed their rich mythology and religious practises from a primitive version of Christianity, or that the fortelling of Ragnarök has merely resulted from inexact interpretations of Christian eschatology.

This smacks of a form of linguistic elitism, whereby those who follow the Bible must assume that the only group of people who managed to ‘get it right’, were those who spoke their own favoured language.

Nor does this biblical explanation take into account mankind’s adroit ability to learn other languages! Surely two groups of people living nearby would not give up so quickly upon realising they speak a different language. It is this kind of fairytale explaining that not only fails to capture the truth of the world, but also sets up our kid’s minds for failure in the future, when real life explanations cannot be counted upon to be so childish.

Though I am still partial to invoking Thor as the explanation for thunder...

Now, whether the Christian believes this story as literal or as merely metaphorical is another matter.

But, I don’t want to turn this post into a rant too focused on these particular arguments against the Christian religion. Rather I just want to highlight the fact that this was an influential argument that I came up with all by myself whilst in primary school. It isn’t really that technical, nor was it planted in my head by any overwhelmingly atheist or secular influence; it’s just what I believed to be the rational outcome after learning about humanity’s history on this earth.

As time went by, and my atheistic roots grew ever deeper, I would amass a bevy of additional arguments against the religious myths and assertions thrown my way. But I always remembered this particular set of reasoning that allowed me to come up with my own theory of what they world would be like if these religious claims were true, and why the facts that I knew about the world negated this null hypothesis.

It was my first example of what is now a long tradition of atheism setting me free.

I can only hope that by arming my son with similar tools of the mind, he too will be able to see through the false claims of religions, and observe the fundamental inconsistencies within. The world may be a bit of a harsh reality to face at first, especially with these religions tailor making their ontology to be more attractive to susceptible human minds. But I think there is a much more satisfactory existence to be had in accepting the truth regardless of the outcome, because surely there is more virtue in such a thing, than there is in the alternative (i.e. comfort in untruth).

I am a firm believer in the art of quoting other people, if only because of the modest fact that pretty much anything I say can and has been said better by more qualified people before me. So as I am wont to do, I shall end this post with a couple of quotes from my arsenal.

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it” – George Santayana

“I cannot believe — and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable — that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth” - Bertrand Russell

Cheers.
MM

My Domesticated Palate

My wife, son and I recently attended a family dinner for my mother-in-laws birthday. The main event of the night was a lobster based meal, prepared in advance (drawn and quartered in a manner that would impress the English executioners of old) and to the fervent delights of many of the nights attendees.

Alas poor Lobsterheart, you suffer the same fate as William Wallace.

As my wife and I (and consequentially now our son) are ardent opponents of sea foods, we did not take part in the culinary ordeal.
It is quite a thing to watch from the outside as people who are accustomed to it commence taking apart a lobster. The viscera on display, the crunch of exoskeletons, the sucking of innards, the dead eyes of the creature on display and themselves under threat of being devoured; it is a scene more accustomed to narration by David Attenborough than to be witnessed at a dinner table.

Pictured: David Attenborough, not pictured: acceptable human food

We are evidently much more at ease leaving the face and general form of an animal on display so long as its place on the evolutionary tree is sufficiently to the left of us mammals.
My own dislike for any foods pulled unwillingly from the water can trace its genesis back to my mother, who is deathly allergic to any such foods. This is quite unfortunate for my dad, who loves most of what the sea has to offer, from fish and octopi, to squid and lobsters.
As such growing up in this household of opposing tastes was an interesting experience, where every once in a while my dad was either banished to the outdoors where he and my sister would have a seafood smorgasbord, or else my mother and I would be relegated to some other corner of the house, while the dining room was filled with various marine feasts.
And I don’t care what you say, seafood has quite an intrusive, and unpleasant odour. I don’t think my dislike of this smell can be pinned solely on my dislike for the food, as there is something slightly rotten about the smell in general; something all too easily associated with a particularly dirty beach.

Above: How seafood smells to me

But the main reason I bring this up dear reader is because I had an interesting epiphany about my eating habits as I sat at that table watching carapace being crushed with glee.
I only eat domesticated animals.
Bear in mind that I am not being inclusive of the whole set here; that is to say, I don’t eat all domesticated animals (though I do hear that dog is especially delicious). I just mean that all of the animals that I do eat appear to be of the domesticated variety. Cow, pig, sheep, chicken, turkey; these are all species forged by man from their wild ancestors.

Wild Turkey.... I prefer a nice scotch.

But if you look at the nature of seafood, and the creatures on the menu, you will seldom find anything that can be genuinely called domesticated.
What’s that you say? There are lobster farms. Well yes, you are correct (gold star), but animals can be farmed without being domesticated. Domestication involves artificial selection by humans that results in a genetic change of the population; so that the new animals are fundamentally different from those at the beginning. Animals can be farmed without this selection process influencing the population, and this is what is done with fish, lobsters et cetera.
I mentioned earlier the fact that seafood is generally displayed in a lot more confronting way that its terrestrial counterpart, with heads on display, superfluous body parts remaining unbutchered, and sometime the whole animal remaining on your plate. Now, one of the more obvious properties of an animal domesticated for food is the enlarging of these eatable areas, and the general ‘softening’ or the rest of the animal. Thus we can hack off steaks, and chicken fillets with ease, but perhaps a fish, or lobster are less advantaged by the fact that their physiological structure has not been altered by the thousands of years of animal husbandry that turned the beastly Auroch, into the manageably corpulent Friesian.

I busted out my MS Paint skills to give this comparison of the Auroch's size to that of a modern cow.

Evidently the barrier of water between us and our fishy prey is enough to hold off mans domesticating advances. Sure nowadays we do have fish farms, and a couple of domesticate fish varieties, but these things have a long way to go before they can match the variety and specialisation of our more celebrated domestications.

So I was very interested when I came to note this property of my eating habits. Previously I had maintained that I would only eat an animal that swam solely to escape the water; an animal which if thrown in the water, would not feel at home.
Now I have a slightly better basis to explain my eating habits; I don’t eat wild animals.
This is more likely than not a by-product of my aversion to eating meat at a philosophical level, but my inability to stop eating meat at a “it just tastes so damn good” level.
But what the hell, I am willing to take this explanation at face value, and deal with the further implications another day.

MM

In The Courier

I have been a pretty regular commenter on The Courier's website this past couple of years. It’s a great way to interact with those in your community [I was going to say ‘especially the crazy people in the community', until I saw the double edge to that sword], and I had even managed to have a few of my comments cross over into the physical world when they were published in the Web Words section of the paper, which was nice.

But last week for the first time I noticed as I was typing one of my replies to a particularly inane Letter to the Editor, that its length was growing to well above what would fit in the meagre comment box provided. Rather than trim and cull sections as I usually do, I decided to submit this as my first ever Letter to the Editor.

It got in, despite its lengthy rant, and gave me a warm feeling for the day. I had a couple of people come by my desk at work and mention it, and all seemed to agree with my points, and claimed I wrote a nice piece. I was pretty wrapped, but was disheartened when it failed to appear on the internet as well.

How would I know what the public thought if I didn’t get any comments of my own?

What would the SvetlanaBabe’s, My Thought’s and Clint’s of Ballarat think of my letter?

I was not to know.

As a result I decided to chuck it up here, starting with the letter that was the catalyst for my response, so that at least somewhere there was a sense of continuity.

So here is the post by a Mister Phillip Slade; those of you in the audience who are averse to sloppy arguments, rash generalisations and fuzzy rationale, look away now.

Display of Australian flags disappointing31 Jan, 2012 02:57 PMI MUST say on seeing the omnipresent display of flags in and around Ballarat on Australia Day, I felt a sense of disappointment for the bearers of those flags. 

There was a time when we as a nation did not need to display a flag — other than at ceremonies and sporting events — to affirm our patriotism. 

We should therefore ask ourselves where this sudden inclination to air our nationalistic fervour comes from. 

Could it be a manifestation of John Howard's dog whistle politics? ("We shall decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come ..." — code for we will keep the foreigners out). 

And the multiplication of flags is acknowledgement of a perverted call to arms that still, to this very day, has an odious impact on those not fully sure of who or what they are, and in turn makes all refugees and immigrants feel marginalised. 

Phillip Slade 

Ballarat

I am not sure about you guys, but that post really made me want to say something in return. The article touches on a lot of things as it rambles aimlessly along: the objections people have shown in recent years to Australian flags, hostility toward Australia Day in general, it’s got a hint of conservatism, but also of out of control liberalism, it mentions nationalism, Howard, Refugees, immigrants; enough buzz words to incense someone no matter what quadrant of the political spectrum they find themselves

I don’t feel my reply needs any introduction, as it takes off in direct opposition to the above letter. Enjoy:

Just because our flag can be misappropriated, does not mean it should be hidden.

Phillip Slade’s letter to the editor (Display of Australian flags disappointing,31 Jan) in which he bemoans the ubiquitous Australian flags on Australia Day seems to highlight a man missing the point. 

Australia Day is a day to celebrate your nation, and what better way to display this than with the symbol of our nation; the Australian flag? To do so doesn’t have any underlying isolationist meaning as Phil suggests. 

He says “There was a time when we as a nation did not need to display a flag — other than at ceremonies and sporting events — to affirm our patriotism”. That may well be true, but it doesn’t make it right. How people displayed their love for Australia in the past doesn’t condemn us to the same solemn practises today. 

Contrary to Phil’s assertion, I believe we can safely celebrate Australia without fear of ostracising refugees or immigrants. Indeed I would think it quite the opposite; we should be celebrating Australia and showing these groups the true mettle of our nation. A nation that helps others and that was built by immigrants. 

Remember an immigrant is still an Australian, and if a refugee is successful in their citizenship, then so are they. They should feel no more marginalised by the display of Australian flags, then they do by the existence of an Australia Day. 

Just because some people can take our flag, and drape it over their shoulders whilst they commit crimes in a race riot, does not mean that the flag itself, or the ideals it carries, follow too. The Australian flag can be appropriated by those who think of Australia as ‘theirs’ and not available to outsides. It can be adopted by nationalistic bigots, but it doesn’t belong to them.I personally don’t fly a flag on Australia day, or any other day. I am not an overtly patriotic man, though I love the country I live in, I don’t hold it higher than any other man-made institution. But if others choose to I don’t look down on them, or feel ashamed at their Aussie zeal. 

My son is five and he loves waving a flag on Australia day because he thinks it is a great place to live in, and at the end of the day we shouldn’t take this away from him just because it can be likewise waved by those with more nefarious intent.

So then, what do you think? Yes, a bit of an all over the place rant, but I think I manage to pull off a better letter than Slade did, so I'm happy enough.

Also, as I was reading up on Schopenhauer for my last post, I came across this quote of his dealing with national pride. As is usual for the cranky German, he doesn’t have much nice to say about it, and I don’t quite agree with all its precepts. But it is a nice way to think of how those extreme ‘Australian Pride’ people might be falling back on their nationalistic views in order to make up for what seems to be an obvious faltering of their own character.

“The cheapest form of pride however is national pride. For it betrays in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognise the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor beggar who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs to. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer: it surprises me not that he was convicted for battering an old lady once....

It’s funny; first of all I was intent with my comments making it on to The Courier’s website simply under the articles I was commenting on, then I became excited when they were taken from the net and printed in the paper as Web Words. But now I find myself slightly annoyed that what I wrote made it straight into the paper, bypassing the electronic world I had originally resided in!

Anyhow, now I have that off my chest, I think this post has come to an end.

Let me know what you think in the comments, cheers.

MM