Macbraughton
Culture – Creativity – ConflictThe End is Near
Posted onAugust 31, 2008Is America really ready for a change? I hope so. I think that the rest of the world is ready too, at least the part I live in. This will be the second presidential election that I have witnessed from the Canadian side of the border, and I’m hoping that this time I won’t be so disappointed. Part of me still can’t believe that “W.” was re-elected but fortunately his chapter in history as “leader of the free world” will soon be over.
Since 2003 I have met only a single person in Toronto that said they would have voted for Bush if given the opportunity. I know that out west there are more Bush sympathizers, but here the opinion is that he was and is a terrible president, probably the worst president in the history of the United States. I would have to agree.
There was an article in the New York Times the other day about Bush’s decision for the troop surge in Iraq. This article praised Bush for sending in more troops and credited this decision to the decrease in violence there. I agree that tactically it was the right thing to do, the results speak for themselves. What the article failed to remind us was that Bush invaded Iraq illegally. He generated false intelligence and presented it to congress. It is quite simple, really, he is a traitor. Unfortunately being the president of the United States gives him a lot of legal and political clout and it looks like he will get away with it. In the past, U. S. citizens have been executed for much lesser crimes. It would be my greatest joy to see him prosecuted after he leaves office but I think the chances of that are quite slim.
As far as I am concerned the “troop surge” is one of the few things that Bush did right, but it wouldn’t have been necessary if Iraq hadn’t been invaded in the first place.
I’m still a registered voter in the state of Oklahoma, and I will be voting for Barak Obama this November. If you are an American reading this please remember all of the blood that has been spilled, relations soured, reputations tarnished, and ask yourself, Was it worth it? Are we any better off? Are Americans really safer? Saddam is dead but Osama is still out there. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer. It is time for a change. Open your eyes.
You Need A Budget
Posted onAugust 14, 2008The author of the extremely useful “You Need A Budget” financial software, Jesse Mecham, surprised the world today when he decided to quit budgeting. The full details can be found here.
We regard this post as highly controversial and recommend to everyone to not listen to this madness but keep budgeting with all ye might.
Why Radiohead is Cool
Posted onOctober 24, 2007If you didn’t already know, Radiohead released their seventh album, “In Rainbows” a few weeks ago.
Now, they are probably my favourite contemporary band, but I had no idea that they had released an album, partly because when I’m working I have no time to do anything else, and partly because of the way that they did it.
As if being a great band that makes awesome music isn’t enough, they are so far ahead of the game it makes me green with envy.
Maybe a few other bands that nobody has ever heard of have released an album from their own website available for download, but nobody with a name as big as Radiohead has done it, until now. And they gave no warning, no advertising, no nothing. They just posted it one day. The internet community spread the word from there.
The craziest part? Well, technically, it is free. I mean, yeah, like you don’t have to pay any money for it. You can go there right now to radiohead.com and download it. They ask you for a donation, which I gladly gave them, but it isn’t mandatory. If you’re totally broke but have an internet connection you can download it for free. From what I understand there is no DRM either so you can have your buddy download it and make a copy for you. Unbelievably you can do this without breaking the law! This just wants to make me cheer and scream and shout because I think it is so cool and it is so against the mainstream of media distribution.
I guess the band is in talks now with different labels to distribute physical copies through the old record store medium, but you can still buy a special collector’s set on the site as well. They decided on this strategy since they didn’t have a label anymore, they finished their contract with EMI with “Hail to the Thief”.
I personally think that record companies should die, and soon. More music should be distributed this way. The artists get all the money, none of it skimmed off by the middlemen. Do I think that things will actually go this way? Probably not. At least not anytime soon.
I believe…
Posted onOctober 10, 2007A friend recently asked:
“What do you believe?”
It’s not an easy question to answer.
Partly because one of the main premises of my belief system is uncertainty.
Randomness…
I believe that…
The universe is mostly random.
The universe is made up of energy.
Energy can neither be created or destroyed (The first law of thermodynamics).
Energy & mass (or matter, i.e. our physical bodies) are interchangeable. (As is stated in Einstein’s famous equation e = mc², that is energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light to the second power. It is this principle that underlies the harnessing of massive nuclear energy from tiny atoms.)
The universe is infinite…
Therefore any possible state of energy/matter that can exist does exist somewhere in the universe.
Where we find ourselves at this moment is the state in which the energy/matter in this area of the universe happens to be in.
Because energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only change state, in essence the universe is eternal.
The universe is eternally transforming into an infinite number of possibilities, one of which we happen to exist in and be conscious of at this moment.
The determining factor of what energy state that our area of the universe will change into next can be influenced by us, but is mostly random, and largely beyond our individual control.
Then there is the platonic heaven…
This is the universe of abstract objects.
Somewhere in relation to our physical universe (exactly how they are related is a matter of much debate) is the universe of abstract objects. The most familiar of which would probably be the numbers ( i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4…)
Now, there is a big difference between a numeral and a number.
The symbols “5″ and “V” are both numerals representing the same number.
The number five exists in what some have called the platonic heaven, the universe of abstract objects, outside of time and space.
It is a universe of concepts…
I believe that the universe of abstract objects is just as real as the universe we are able to observe with our senses and is also full of as many infinities of possibilities as the universe that we inhabit.
———————-
Now, my problem with God is…
He (she, it) is unnecessary to explain why things are.
Being is not of necessity derived from God. A suitable explanation is that the universe itself is eternal. The universe is. No “Let there be light” in the literal sense. The light has always existed, at one point it was electrons or frog skin instead of photons.
Everything is connected… quantum mechanics calls this phenomenon entanglement.
Events we attribute to Providence are really cases of Serendipity.
Randomness explains why good things happen to bad people and why bad things happen to good people.
Randomness explains why one person’s prayers seem to be answered and another’s are not.
Randomness through the lens of evolutionary biology explains why human beings have to find a reason and purpose in everything. It is a survival mechanism. It is unconscious and insipid.
As a metaphor, I am not completely against belief in God. God is that which is beyond our understanding, God is that which we cannot explain, God is the unknowable or unfathomable.
So much of what we call God though does not fit into those categories. So much of what we call God is really us just trying to make ourselves feel better or justify hiding from reality. God did it! Can’t argue with God. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away…
No! God isn’t a person sitting up in Heaven directing things according to his whim. Things don’t always happen for a reason, most events are random and we look for a reason afterwards and the easiest thing to do is just blame it on God.
Of this I am certain: that certainty is a dubious concept.
We don’t know what is going to happen next. That is why the Bible was written long after the events it described happened. That’s why all religions have to retrofit their theology.
I am against superstition in all of its forms. There is no such thing as an idea or object that is beyond reproach. The greatest power we possess is to question.
I believe in Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
Let all else fade away.
A New Beginning
Posted onSeptember 20, 2007Time to cut my losses & simplify my digital life. This is going to be it. No more myspace, no more facebook, no more random blogs scattered all over the net. Pretty much all of the internet projects I’ve started over the years have remained undone anyway. I need to bring it all together into something more meaningful.
I’m not going to make any promises about writing in here, but considering that I don’t have anywhere else to put anything now, and that this domain actually belongs to me there are a lot of reasons why something may grow here.
Wish I had something fantastic to say but I don’t. I was really excited earlier today because I thought the Canadian dollar had over taken the U.S. dollar, even posted something on here and then looked at it again later & realized that I was reading it wrong. It’s close, but not quite there yet.
There is always tomorrow.
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