Some Interesting Info

After reading a number of articles in the last few weeks, some interesting and cutting edge web sites came to my attention.

The first is a MS Word alternative which is also a web app verses a desktop application which enables one to do some amazing things with ones Word documents. It even enables one to publish directly to your blog easly and instantly. It's ease shocked the hell out of me!
http://www.writely.com

Here is a guy with some excellent articles about cutting edge stuff.
http://www.paulgraham.com/paulgraham/articles.html

A great place for articles on various subjects. It's where I discovered Paul Graham's stuff.
http://reddit.com

More to come ...

The inevitable “real world” use of the label “marriage”.

I woke up this morning and started thinking, “whom should I ‘fight’ for today with my spare time” and then it hit me while reading the local Star and Times. After reading and receiving some verbal feed back from my letter in the paper last week, it was obvious a little more needed to be said on the subject.

The word “marriage”, although ancient, is nothing more than a “label” society came to use (eons ago) to represent a “basket” of rights and privileges legally bestowed on any two individuals that committed themselves to each other for the long term (previously binding until death). Although the label has been historically limited in its use to the legal coupling of one man and one woman and entitling them to the “basket” of rights and privileges that legally go along with it. The label can and should be used for any two individuals interested and willing to enter into a legally binding long term committed relationship which also protects and provides their legal entitlement to that same “basket” of rights and privileges.

And here is why:

For demonstration purposes and to “satisfy” traditional marriage definition enthusiasts, I allocated 2 labels as follows:

I used the word “marriage” to label the legal coupling of one man and one woman.

I used the word “garriage” to label the legal coupling of one man and one man (or one woman and one woman)

Now the labels “marriage” and “garriage” are distinctly separate yet they can legally bestow the exact same “basket” of rights and privileges on both couples. The equality issue should now be resolved, but is it?

It sounds like a good plan but here is the confusing part. If both the labels “marriage and garriage” mean or represent the exact same commitment by each individual to the other and bestow the exact same “basket” of rights and privileges except one is between one man and one woman and the other is between one man and one man (or one woman and one woman), isn’t the 2^nd label pretty much redundant in the real world?

As an example, you meet someone unknown to you at a function, on being introduced to them you hear, “this is Sam and he is “married” to Bob over there by the fruit stand.” You think about that for a few seconds and then say, hey you are both guys, you are NOT “married” you are “garried”. So the person that introduced you says, oh! excuse me, yes you are correct, they are “garried” and not “married” but we all know they legally mean exactly the same thing except for the obvious!

Since there is no discernable way of identifying if a couple (gay, straight or otherwise) were married in a religious church service or in the presence of a justice of the peace. Post pomp and circumstance, the couples (gay, straight or otherwise) will be equivalently labeled as “married” in the eyes of society. So lets not kid ourselves, “married or garried”, we all know what it means, so lets get past the moot dual labels and call it what it is “a marriage” and move on to more important issues like finding jobs for all the “disabled” in society so they can get off and/or stay off welfare. As glamorous as society likes to think being on welfare is, in reality, it is NOT!

We may be more ALIEN than we want to admit!

Applying a primer by looking at nature for the key to our current situation.

Take a look at honey bees. They spend their lives working to produce honey. Some of the honey they produce they use themselves while the surplus is put into storage. Mankind made use of the surplus honey by harnessing the working power of the bees to produce honey for them with little human intervention.

Taking a look at all life on earth, humans are the only animals in earth’s ecosystem that DO NOT FIT into the natural synergy of how NATURE stays in proper equilibrium. Humans are, for lack of a better word, acting as a foreign body or virus on the planet.

Now picture this. Mankind is in the planning stages to send a manned mission to Mars. As crude as we are, when we accomplish that goal, we will be the ALIENS to whatever life forms are on Mars. If we as humans can be ALIENS to life forms on another planet, it’s not a big leap to assume there are likely life forms elsewhere in the universe more advanced than us. History has shown, although mankind likes to think everything revolves around them and planet earth, time and scientific fact has proven it does not.

• The earth is not FLAT – once widely believed
• The sun DOES NOT travel around the earth – once widely believed
• The earth is not the CENTRE of the universe – once widely believed
• The earth is NOT the only planet circling a sun in the universe – once widely believed
• Out of billions upon billions of suns (stars) in the billions of universes out there in space unknown, the earth is the one and only planet with life forms on it - currently widely believed (but highly improbable)

Now imagine we, as humans, travel to another planet with indigenous life on it. Assuming it is a virgin planet, not yet altered by foreign ALIEN influences, and the life forms on the planet are all functioning in an ecosystem that is in perfect equilibrium.

How would we approach the situation? Likely we would observe and monitor it as a scientific experiment. If we planned, at some point, to manipulate the indigenous life on the newly discovered planet, like we did with the bees on our planet, for our own benefit, we likely would have to do some experimenting first to see what works best. If none of the indigenous life were equipped to do the work we wanted done on the planet, we might have to genetically manipulate and create the work horses we want from the most appropriate indigenous life candidate from the planet. The candidate maybe from an indigenous animal with hands, fingers and legs but lacking the mental capacity to learn the work horse skills we desire of them.

Bees are our work horses for producing honey on earth in a completely autonomous environment. Since they are unaware of what we are benefiting from them and they happily do their thing, is our exploitation of them harmful? If the same thing could be achieved on another planet using some sort of work horse, (natural or biologically altered), the work horse might be just as happy doing his thing and at the same time help us as well in some way. As an example: like in the mass production of food stuffs in a completely autonomous environment.

To monitor the activities of the various work horses we create over time, it might be appropriate to color code the new work horse creation’s to monitor which group is doing what and how they are performing, etc. Much like how our lab experiments are run today on earth, just on a planetary scale.

Applying these loosely postulated ideas to earth in reverse, we on planet earth could be just “happily doing our own thing” and be a completely autonomous experiment of a foreign ALIEN culture and not even be aware of it.

I see IGNORANCE is still alive and well, even in Canada!

I came across a web site the other day that struck me as an OXYMORON to say the least!

The web site is named http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/threads/ubbthreads.php?Cat=$Cat

I’ve read through a lot of their rhetoric about how “marriage” is some holy’er that thou ideal of a traditional societal support structure and should ONLY be allowed to unite one man with one women. What an IGNORANT view of “marriage” in this day and age. A “marriage” between any two people, no matter how one chooses to label it, is what the two people in the marriage choose to make of it. Nothing more, nothing less!

To demonstrate the ignorance behind the anti-gay marriage debate, picture the following in your minds eye:

Take two couples:

1. a man and a woman

2. a man and a man (or a woman and a woman)

Firstly: remove the sexuality component of all members of both couples (to be re-addressed later) then evaluate how each couple will be a positive or negative influence on society.

1. Both couples have chosen their perspective partners to build a life together with in their perspective communities.

2. Both couples have ambitions to be good neighbors in their perspective communities.

3. Both couples have hopes and dreams of what they would like to accomplish in their lives.

4. Both couples are compassionate toward the suffering of others and those suffering around them.

5. Both couples know the difference between “right” from “wrong” and between “good” and “evil” given the opportunity to reason with their hearts.

6. Both couples have goals to be upstanding members of society.

7. Both couples wish to help make their communities the best they can be.

8. Both couples (albeit maybe reluctantly) will pay their fair share of taxes (provincially, federally)

9. Both couples will patronize local restaurants and businesses.

10. Both couples will likely vacation together somewhere in the world.

11. Both couples, if called upon, will serve their country to the best of their ability. (eg. jury duty etc.)

12. Both couples will abide by, to the best of their ability, the laws of the land.

13. Both couples, if blessed with the opportunity to raise a family through child birth and/or adoption, will do their very best to raise well adjusted, capable and contributing members of society.

14. Both couples will contribute valuable influences on the culture of their perspective communities.

15. Neither couple aims to hurt or be a burden on the community in which they live and likely plan to live for the long term.

Now add the sexuality component of both members of both couples back into the picture and re-evaluate how their SEXUALITY in any influences a positive or negative change in society.

1. Both couples, behind closed bedroom doors and as consenting adults, engage in sexual activities of one sort or another. The sexual spectrum ranges from no sex at all to whatever each consenting adult of each couple agree too. Depending on how enlightened the reader is, the possibilities are endless. To assume anything of either couple is unjustified and inappropriate considering whatever does or doesn’t happen is between two consenting adults and in their bedroom NOT yours. It is or should be of no concern to the community or the people in it, as long as what they (either couple) do sexually behind closed doors does not harm either one of them or anyone else.

Based on the above information, the sexuality of an individual has NO place in the discussions of positive and negative influences on a society. The way individuals contribute, conduct themselves, and more or less live their lives within their community determines the positive and negative influences they have on society.

Allowing both couples to “marry” within society only strengthens the societal support structure, it does NOT weaken it!

a long lost friend, heard from again

Made contact and chatted with a long lost friend from my old school days. It was a delight to talk over old times and catch up on new ones.

my first day

Not much to report. Just starting to arrange things and familiarize myself with how things work around here.