Archive for August, 2003

Starbucks is a special place for me.

It is one of the places that I go to be renewed, coddled and inspired. It is for all intents and purposes my place of worship. Going to and relaxing at Starbucks serves the same purpose for me as many people seek at their local houses of worship.

I don’t believe I’m alone, the number of regulars that I see at my local Starbucks astounds me. We all communally go about our individual tasks and projects, but we all revel in the combined energy and tranquility that permeates the roasted bean aroma filled air. We relax, recline and take time to stop, to disconnect ourselves from the massive machine that is capitalism.

In this stopping we take time to savor life, if it be a book, a philosophical conversation, or just the flavors of our handcrafted, wallet draining, twenty ounce beverages.

In this savoring, this pausing we happily realize and enjoy the theological underpinnings of the goddess graced coffee place.

I feel like I’m surrounded by religious idiots.

The Bible belt has gotten fatter and extended its grasp into Ohio. The number of bumper stickers, radio programs, television shows, legislative actions, crazy Alabama judges, books, and billboards has reached a level of saturation which I am beginning to find intolerable.

It wouldn’t be as bad if the people saturating the space were not hypocrites.

(Before I proceed any further a caveat. Terms such as “Christian.” “Christianity,” “religions believers,” etc. are inherently vague. Given my desire for clarity and brevity (not to mention the time of day I’m writing this) I will forego any semantical heavy lifting. I believe my meanings will become clear.)

Jesus stated “love your neighbor” All I see is a lot of self centered, borderline violent behavior. How can people professing to follow this ideal but who then are rude, engage in homophobia and bigotry, and other just plain inconsiderate acts?

Perhaps this is because of the sin concept. Which in my estimation works more along the lines that you screwed up then apologize for it. Doesn’t it make more sense to try not to sin in the first place?

Given that religion is faulty in this regard because it is reactive and not proactive. I’m really not surprised that we’ve had an ethical and moral dilemma building in this country.

But given the aforementioned flaws of religion should we solely push religion as the panacea?

I agree with The Dali Lama in this regard. He states in Ethics for the New Millennium that “…I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.” (p. 19)

Given all this people should ultimately focus on being a good human being, god (if he exists) will not care if you practice a religion and are not a good human being.

If we all make a point of being good humans and respect each other, we will be more likely to be able to live in harmony. And who doesn’t want that?

I went and attempted to visit the Lambda Union website to ferret out a piece of information. (Hey, I wrote the page, but I just forgot what was on it.) I mysteriously got a URL not found error. (I had just typed the URL directly to a page a few levels down.) Assuming my brain had farted, I went to the top level site and prepared to navigate down. But what greeted me was a new website.

I used to consider the Lambda Union website, which is archived on my site, my magnum opus of website design. I had thought that I’d set the organization up on a platform that would keep it going for a while, without forcing every webmaster to redo everything.

Instead the new webmaster just went and deleted the whole thing. Of course I have to laugh because he used Front Page, and the site as stands is a violation of WSU Web Policy.

What sort of annoys me is some pages are rips of mine. For example, the current links page and my links page.

That is really the only clear place of ripping my edition of the site off. They’re more subtle things like the general division of the areas on the site that are present in the current version, and in my version but not in the version before mine.

I’m a little bit frustrated that I’m given no credit whatsoever. I created the logo and some other things on the site. (Ali Lane did re-composite into a better quality.) But, I guess I should feel secure in that at least what I created is still used.

As for the new site. I actually sort of like it. It has this quaint homey feeling, and not the “corporate” feel that is permeating WSU so much nowadays. The only history it has on it is one short “History” piece that Kevin Plessinger wrote at the request of Amanda Bennett for my edition of the website. It is of course following Wright State tradition in having only a passing mention of history, as the WSU is completely dedicated to destroying and overwriting their history as quickly as possible. Thus is the danger of always being in the now.

I miss Lambda Union, but I can’t go back. There are too many memories, both bad and good. Plus, there is just so much young blood that I’d feel like a completely old fart and I’d be continually saying “In my day we used to…” It just wouldn’t be pretty.

Time as we see it is linear, there is no going back, as much as we would like to.

I’ve been a bit of an Excel addict as of late.

I keep just about anything and everything in Excel, including my bank account register. I got sick of always having to fire up another program to get a calendar. I went searching on the net and the calendars online and all I found was these over designed spreadsheets with addins and the like; All I want is just a calendar out of formulas or something that automatically updates itself all the time.

So if you want it done right do it yourself, so I did. Tada! Nick’s perpetual Excel spreadsheet calendar! Enjoy and use it however you like. However it is under the Creative Commons license with the rest of the site.

My second use of Excel recently was utilizing it in helping me ascertain who is gay and straight in Boy Meets Boy. After a quick stop to think about it I didn’t need to use a spreadsheet but, it helped me ferret out some of the trends the producers have been using to manipulate James’s choices. The straight boi is Franklin. How? Because he was paired with the last straight man to leave, Sean. So to make sure there was one straight man in the last round the producers put both of them together.

But it appears in the previous episodes they’ve made a completely gay group, a completely straight group, and one mixed group. Therefore they’ve ensured that both gay and straight “mates” get to the final round.

What I find most frustrating is before I stopped and thought about it I thought Brian was the straight one by his lax attitude during discussions with the other guys. This tells me how defective my gaydar is. Will someone please find me another model because I need a replacement unit ASAP!

If that doesn’t happen I’ll just have to find myself in a position of power and institute a mandatory labeling policy. Everyone will have to wear a large label detailing everything that a label could be decided on, therefore there are no secrets..

(BTW: If you think I was serious, seek mental help.)

For some reason unbeknownst to me I’ve been exploring the thought experiment of what I would do if at the age of 68 (or thereabouts) I was diagnosed with a cancer which if left untreated would kill me within the next two years, and if I pursued treatment I would have a 30% chance of making it past two years and a 20% chance of living past five years.

I want to passionately and intellectually argue that I would not purse treatment and instead focus on wrapping my affairs up, making peace with that which I need to make peace with, and ensure that I have no regrets.

Although that seems the thoughts of a healthy twenty-something year old who is able to be overly dispassionately detached from life.

Logically foregoing treatment is following a path that will be least disruptive to society both in medical costs and allowing everyone around me the peace of mind of having properly wound down relationships.

Emotionally, I believe not accepting treatment is the more loving thing to do. Given the utter horrors suffered by those undergoing cancer treatment, not to mention the stress placed on their familial caregivers. I’ve seen this personally, its not some theoretical abstract.

To chose treatment in this situation that you have less than a 30% chance of living is cruel to yourself and give false hope to those around you. No one should be forced to go through the pains of fighting cancer or being misled into the future possibilities of future live with the ill person. One has no business of choosing treatments and creating false hope when you have less than a 30% chance of living.

I have no doubt that I am in the minority on this issue.

Perhaps this is an outgrowth of capitalist ideals, specifically the “dog eat dog” mentality and “the game ain’t over till its over.” (Anyone who’s played a friendly game thats turned nasty knows this isn’t true.) These mentalities are of possibly an outgrowth of capitalism, but I tend to feel that its more just a scared realization of people understanding how they’ve misplayed the ultimate economic game, that of what to do with your life.

Economics is the study of scarcity and choices imposed by that scarcity. Death is the realization that life is scarce and forces the evaluation of choices, but whereas with a checkup account of our daily schedule we receive multiple opportunities to evaluate our economic choices, with life we only have one final reckoning.

I am reminded of a quote by James Dean, “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”

Good advice, perhaps by following it we shall spare ourselves and our relatives the sufferings of cancer.