The Horror, the Horror...

Well, I'm on Facebook now, look for Patrick D. Boone in the La Crosse, WI network. Got roped into by some younger folk I know so that I could keep in contact. That officially makes me part of the "Web 2.0" thing and I can't say I'm impressed as of yet.

Something Incredibly Cool

Always been fond of Tesla coils, but never expected to see them used for this!

Doctor Who Theme:



Star Wars Imperial March:

Not a Good Day

While preparing for a funeral that I didn't get to attend, I smelled something strange and left my room to investigate. When I returned, water was coming down the light fixture and pouring onto my computer chair. The floor was soaked, my chair was, my bed, and multiple belongings. Which is why I didn't attend the funeral, it turned into an emergency that had to be handled immediately.

The cause? The same thing that had happened once last year, when my father forgot to turn off the faucet in the upstairs bathroom and flooded it. For some reason, the lavatory overflow drain doesn't work up there. This time the results were worse, because what had been weakened before cracked and broke, namely my ceiling. So I have to dismantle my room so it can be repaired, pretty much killing all my plans for the next week (or until it gets done).

Meanwhile, the pellet stove began shooting sparks out where it should only be pushing hot air, a hole may developed in the heat exchanger. If this cannot be fixed, we have to buy a new one, along with a new lavatory. As I type, I'm trying to get the smoke out of the house.

Trying to recover from bronchitis mixed with a severe sinus infection is not being made easier by these events, I'm finding out. It would be nice if something went right today!

UPDATE:

Trying to see if the pellet stove is just badly clogged, hoping that more thorough cleaning will help the stove limp through until summer. We've beaten this stove up well past it's expiration date, the thing is so old that parts aren't made for it anymore.

Merry Christmas

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. -- John 3:16

Is is the time of year we celebrate the birth of Christ, yet it seems that it has become more and more about an arbitrary holiday, one that is about reindeer, elves, eggnog, mistletoe, tree decorating, and frantic shopping for gifts (many to be returned) at the last moment. As I grow older, I care less and less about the trappings and more about faith, hope, and charity -- with a deep gratitude for forgiveness.

At the core, the celebrations should be about healing, the kind of healing that happens from forgiving others and hopefully being forgiven in turn. Whether it be with family, friends, co-workers, or complete strangers, we should be appreciating the good things we have and letting go of the hurts of the world. That is the only way that love can be felt and this holiday is one about the love of God for His children on Earth.

So while I don't feel the "Christmas spirit" this year (or the last few years), I am focusing on what really matters: family, friends, and faith. Those things run deeper than any amount of candy canes or presents can and aren't as easily forgotten.

Silencing the Critics

The video I linked to before has been pulled down supposedly due to copyright infringements, but the reality is more political than that as protein wisdom posits. Then there are the "truth squads" formed by prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri threatening TV stations that air "lies" about Obama in paid ads. Given the left's variable belief in what constitutes truth, that is a clear attack on the 1st Amendment right of free speech. With the media and press so deeply in the tank for Obama this year, it is getting even more difficult to get opposing views and facts out. If it weren't for talk radio (which I'm not a huge fan of) and Fox News willing to show both sides, none of it would get out. Yes, I'm omitting the Internet, for there are huge swaths of people still not connected and many of them vote.

The willingness of Obama to send the lawyers after anybody who dares to accurately report his record is chilling. Like all demagogues, he uses others to insulate himself from the dirty work, all the while approving of it. If he is elected, we'll see freedom of speech eroded, especially since he'll have both houses of Congress behind him. The tools of suppression will be lawsuits and legislation, very carefully aimed at anyone who opposes his policies. It will be done in a way that won't raise alarms in everyday people and by the time they begin to feel uneasy about it, it will have been too late to stop.

It is times like this that I wonder where all the great leaders have gone and why we don't have anyone stepping up to lead. But given how spoiled and corrupt our culture has gotten, I shouldn't wonder -- the Democrat voters decided that they wanted someone to project all their hopes and desires upon, rather than one with substance. If the country chooses Barack Obama, the pain that will come will be of the kind self inflicted by ignorance. So much for ignorance being bliss, eh?

There in lies the problem of making decisions by feelings, rather than cold, hard facts. Facts aren't touchy feely, they are rather abstract and complicated. They need to be actively considered and mulled over. Facts require research, paying attention: in a word, work. People claim they don't have time for it come election year, but they manage to watch their favorite TV shows, go to parties, and a myriad of other distractions. Yet they won't devote the time to check out who they are voting for (or against), instead being apathetic or waiting until the last minute to decide. Then it becomes a purely emotional decision and like most decisions in life, it is the highly charged snap decisions that bring us the most woes. Carefully selecting our leaders should be high on our priority lists.

I'm probably beating a dead horse, but at least the writer's block I've had for over a week is gone.

A Must See Video on the Banking Crisis

Watch this video all the way through to understand what has just hit us and the real culprits that caused it:



Then pass the video on to everyone you can.

Internet Socializing and Loss of Community

Be warned, rambling be ahead.

Much has been made about the rise of the Web 2.0, focusing on the changeover to emphasizing social networking over knowledge or commerce in content. The rise of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites has garnered a great deal of virtual print. Most kids have adopted living on the Net and so have young adults, but where does this take us as a society?

Back when AOL ruled the roost and Compuserve was still around, the World Wide Web was just getting going, with a little program called Mosaic being the first widely used web browser. It was followed by the dominant Netscape, which was then destroyed by Microsoft's late and desperate entry into the Web, Internet Explorer. Heady times, I remember when Yahoo first appeared and challenged my use of WebCrawler for a search engine. It was amazing, there were thousands of websites out there to search through. Seems silly to those used to tens of thousands of hits to a search these days, but at the time it was like looking at a newly opened frontier that was ready and waiting to be explored.

There was a fear that the newly popular form of communication, email, would turn us into anti-social shut-ins, never seeing the light of day for fear of bursting into flames. Then came a few studies that said people were communicating with each other more than ever thanks to the Web, families were being brought together, far off friends re-connected and we breathed a sigh of relief. Soon we had ICQ, then AIM, then YM and eventually MSM filling our quota of acronyms as the rise of instant messaging began to displace email. Writing emails became passe and the art of composition was sacrificed for LOL, BFF, IMHO and the other LOLspeak abbreviations and acronyms. Apparently the quota hadn't been fully met after all.

This still wasn't enough. No, we needed embarrassing pictures for future employers to see, connected to hordes of people across the globe on your very own personal networking sites. After all, reality television showed that we should all aspire to fame or infamy, attention is all that matters in life. Now everyone has their chance to be seen by an adoring world. Forget Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame, fifteen seconds on YouTube is where it is at. So the Web 2.0 is born, with people living their lives out there for everyone to see. Well, except for those hopelessly stone age parents who aren't hip enough to find out what their kids are doing online.

Is this a great advancement for humanity, with all this unprecedented connectivity between people from all around the globe? I have to wonder.

My experiences on the Net over the years have taken me from thinking it would civilize humanity more to the suspicion that it is achieving the opposite. While we have instances of atrocities being better documented in totalitarian states despite a mad scramble to censor and control information access, we are also witnessing the rise of the rude and uncompromising in every day discourse. The flame wars on message boards of the past have given way to deliberate segregation into cliques on the social networking sites. That way you don't have to worry about dealing with people with opposing viewpoints, don't have to practice manners. Not that people on message boards were much better about it, but now no attempt has to be made.

Essentially, what I have witnessed is things getting cruder, ruder, and more narcissistic with each passing year. People band together only with like minded thinkers and with the ability to filter out those who don't hold the same beliefs, basic discourse of the past is vanishing. Often politics has been criticized for becoming groups of people shouting past each other. That applies now to almost every facet of Net socializing, whether it be about politics, hobbies, sports, or movies.

Enabling one another, those who share a viewpoint begin to ignore or demonize those that disagree in a most high school manner. There is no need to interact with those that don't agree with you and soon you inhabit a nice little echo chamber, divorced from the rest of the world. At the same time, I'm witnessing this happen in real life as people are becoming less community minded and the decay of organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and various lodges comes to mind. Those were places where people from various incomes and walks of life could get together as equals, something valuable for any healthy society.

So we have these sites dedicated to creating "communities", but are they helping to build a sense of community? Or are they falsely encouraging a sense of elitism and entitlement? My suspicion is that they are assisting the break down in society by allowing people to escape the social obligations of dealing with the "other" in real life. After all, nobody likes being disagreed with and everyone who has a differing opinion is an idiot.

But it is dealing with those that we don't agree with, don't get along with, or don't usually run into that helps us mature into adults. A big part of adulthood is realizing that we can't get our way all the time (usually most of the time) and that the world is a much bigger place than what goes on inside our heads. That means cultivating manners and the ability to interact with people unlike us are necessary to keep the wheels of civilization turning, not to mention survive. Perpetual adolescence with its accompanying self absorbed personality and short fused temper is not desirable. It invariably leads to conflict and friction. Too much friction and the gears bind, followed by watching the wheels come off as you veer over a cliff.

There are other forces at work, of course. Western culture is increasingly adolescent for a variety of reasons, but I've rambled on enough as it is. Perhaps that will be a topic for another day.