Since I’m having a really slow day, and Apple isn’t making their big announcement until Wednesday, I thought right now would be the perfect time to reflect on what I have done so far since starting this blog little over a year ago. At that time, Google+ was an absolute ghost town, and I was buckling down to try to finish my degree. In the year and a bit that has passed, I have written more words than I had up until that point in my life combined. Between emails, cover letters, blog posts, letters to significant others, and my thesis and corresponding journal article, I have written many, many thousands of words. Because I have a strong feeling that I have been trying to find myself, and who I want to be, during that time, I suspect that all this writing is probably connected with this feeling of being lost. It is probably also significant that I have read much more in the last year about the world around me (as opposed to my youth which consisted almost solely of fictional works, or scientific writing). Writing has become a very important outlet for me, and I find that I really have no interest in writing down my thoughts for myself (like a journal or diary), but that I strongly prefer sharing what I write in a public forum. While this does severely limit me in terms of what I can write about (I would surely be unable to find a job if some of what rolls around in my head were publicly available for perusal by perspective employers on the internet), it still means that I can declutter my own thoughts and sort out a variety of issues I spend a large part of my time mulling over. The added bonus is the great feedback I get from you people out there reading. I am starting to notice, for the first time, that my apparent readership is almost certainly outside of my everyday social circle, because I am getting into the 100s of pageviews per day, and I share this work with only about 35 people on Facebook, and about 70 people on Twitter, and I’m almost positive most people among that group aren’t taking the time to click on these links. I really do appreciate the feedback I get in writing, and it really encourages me to keep going. On that note, I am hoping to do a little self-promotion before actually talking about what I was hoping to get to today.
I encourage everybody who comes here and reads this to make suggestions as to what topics I could/should cover in upcoming posts, either through my website robattrell.com, or directly via this link. So far I have only had the universally unhelpful suggestion of ‘ur gay’, but I hope that with some more direction as to what people want to know more about, I can keep posting more often and more relevantly.
The issue which has come to my attention recently, but which has always had a place in the back of my mind, is that of writing as more than just a hobby. If I already have the ability to write a decent amount in a short time, and a knack for breaking, or outright ignoring literary rules, what’s stopping me from trying to trying to call myself a “professional” writer. There are certainly qualifications as to what makes a “successful” writer, but as far as I know, nobody can tell me that I’m not a writer. To me, if I write, by the very definition of the word, I am a writer. That being said, all I need to legitimize that sort of idea is to have a feasible way of actually making money from the act of writing. There are many different outlets that would allow this to become a reality, but obviously a few seem more likely than others. Comedy writer (a la Cracked.com), is an obvious choice, but I fear that trying to be funny might ruin any incidental humour my writing might otherwise elicit. Technology writer, which would encompass writing product and app reviews, as well as discussing various new and interesting technological and scientific stories, is something that I find greatly appealing, and which I would probably do well at given my attention to details and background in relation to those topics. It would interest me to write about politics, but Canadian politics is too boring and partisan to be made very interesting, and American politics is worse than an argument about religion (mainly because it is made out to not come down to an argument about religion). I firmly believe that any opinion or argument that is not based on reason is completely invalidated, and thus while discussing these topics will appeal to those who believe in reason (and which I would find interesting), it is not worth having to argue with those who don’t. For that reason, if I do choose to write about something with staunch supporters on either side, it will happen very infrequently.
Those are just a few options of things I have thought about pursuing in recent past, and it remains to be seen what exactly will come to pass. One thing is for certain though, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop writing.
Hey, I have moved away from talking about technology recently, and while I’d like to shift focus a little bit, I want this post in particular to be accessible, and for anyone to be able to read and understand my point.
She is only trying to help.
The topic of this post is going to be artificial intelligence, and it’s usefulness in everyday life. Without realizing it, most of us use computers which have been fed incredible amounts of data each and every day. These computers, which we only see in the form of the information they give us, provide information to us which relates to our lives in almost every conceivable way. It doesn’t matter whether you are googling a tidbit of information, looking for directions from a GPS unit or mapping service, checking Facebook to see what people you don’t really talk to much are up to these days, or, in the example I’m going to focus on, asking a voice-controlled, disembodied robot that lives in your phone about the weather. Using any and all of these online services requires a ton going on behind the scene. However, that is not the focus of what I would like to discuss today. Everybody has misgivings about voice control technology, about how it is well behind what it should, or could be in 2012. However, in using Siri (my example since I do not have an Android device on hand), most everyone I speak to says they don’t really use it that frequently because of how often it fails them, and it ends up wasting time. I’d like to pull back the curtain a little bit and try to explain how this type of voice service actually works, and how you can use it more to your advantage.
Seems creepy, but if that’s what you want, it’s available.
The fact is, most people have no idea what their technology is capable of. It really can only do what a programmer or engineer has designed it to do, and will never be capable of anything more. People ridicule Siri for being unable to, for example, turn off radios like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. While they may have a point, this is not a failure of the technology. It may (read:probably will) at some point in the near future support those features, but currently simply is not set up to perform those tasks. You would never type “Mom’s house” into Google Maps and expect it to find your address and locate your childhood home, because that would be incredibly creepy. But the fact is, a Google software engineer could certainly program that functionality into Maps pretty easily, but only if you have your mom as a contact in Gmail, and then only if your home address was assigned to her. Conversely, Siri is perfectly capable of finding your mom’s address when asked, and taking you there on a map with one tap.
I find that Siri’s most useful functionality is when you are trying to store some information with multiple, sometimes nested parameters. The examples I use most frequently are: setting alarms, timers, noting appointments and setting myself reminders. These are all tasks that would require at least a minute, even if you are well versed in using Apple products, just because there are many parameters that are required before your phone will actually remember all the information that is required. However, when using your voice, it becomes child’s play to set up a meeting, because you can just say one phrase containing all that information, and Siri will parse it for you, and generally speaking, if you know how she listens, will be perfect almost all of the time. When Siri fails me, it is almost always a failing in my speech, or a case of mumbling.
Siri will even help you get a job!
Another common issue I have with Siri is that I will end up having trouble connecting to the network, and she will ask me to make a request again. While Siri has gone offline in the past on Apple’s end, I find that generally when this happens it is because I’m walking away from my apartment, and therefore I end up in a dead zone where I have very weak Wi-Fi from home, but haven’t moved onto 3G yet. I now avoid doing this, and never have this connectivity issue. Again, these are problems that Apple can, and surely is, fixing, but they are certainly not failings of the technology itself, if you know what to look for. With the newest version of iOS, version 6, you can actually make reservations at restaurants with your voice, or check movie times, or post to social networks. All of these things make different small aspects of our lives just a little bit simpler, and it is definitely a step in the right direction.
Finally, the thing that people complain about most with regards to Siri specifically, is that sometimes when trying to find information, she is “unable” to do so and defaults to asking if you would like to search the web for the information you requested. Considering that this is all that most other voice systems are capable of doing, Siri is light-years ahead of it’s time. All that is required to make Siri work seamlessly is when you are doing a voice search, add the words “Search for…” at the beginning of your query, and she will go straight to a web search which will more than likely provide you with the information you are looking for. Siri is not a search engine.
One Direction, they’re alright…
With the announcement of the next iPhone scheduled for Wednesday, September 12th, also bringing updates to everyone who uses Siri, with the public release of iOS 6, I hope that people will take this information to heart and use internet services the way they were meant to be used, as opposed to complaining that they don’t work in ways they were never meant to.
I hope you all enjoyed learning a little more about Siri with me, you can see now why we’re such good friends.
In my time as an unemployed human, I have learned a lot about myself. I have likes and dislikes, just as everyone does. For example, I know that I like being employed, and I don’t like looking for a job. At the start of the summer, I didn’t realize that I liked being employed as much as I did. Having a reason to be up and out of bed is a very satisfying feeling. As it stands right now, most days if I didn’t get up, nobody would even notice for most of the day. While this sounds like a dream for most, having it go on for more than a few weeks is actually quite demoralizing. Having a task, or several, to accomplish over a series of days, weeks, or months is wonderfully fulfilling. Generally speaking, I could very easily come up with a long list of things that could occupy my time for years on end and would be incredibly rewarding, but given the nature of our modern society, this just isn’t realistic. I would run out of money within a month or two, given that I am already massively in debt.
Speaking of debt, another thing I have learned about myself, and perhaps about the nature of modern society itself, is that indoctrination into our scholastic system is certainly one of the most important steps in a young or medium person’s life. From a very young age, one most of us certainly cannot recollect, we are put into groups of like-aged and like-parented small people with babysitters who have been trained to imprint upon us a certain manner of absorbing knowledge and vast quantities of information no single person could ever be expected to recall past adolescence (if you don’t believe me, watch Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader). It is also expected that during this time we interact with these like-aged individuals, for no other reason than that it will serve us well later in life to be able to converse reasonably with people we have never met (though some people you meet throughout the day will make you strongly doubt that they are capable of reason, or intelligence). Teachers, especially those who decide to mould these young minds, are incredibly important to our continued development as a species. Certainly it is ideal that parents can work during the day, and that their children aren’t simply left to roam the streets, which was certainly the origin of schools. More importantly though, teachers are expected to be able to teach their pupils the things that their parents learned in school, but either don’t have time to pass along to them, or don’t remember well enough to be able to pass on.
From a very young age, I was told that I had a lot of potential. Parents, teachers, principals, many older people I met would impart this idea of potential on to me. I still don’t really know why they said that to me, because it gave me a false sense that everything would be alright, and that if I didn’t close any metaphorical doors in my life, I would be able to do whatever I wanted and everything would work out just fine. Truth be told, I still actually believe this is true, if I wanted the status quo, I could have it and be very successful. The jobs I aspire to, doctor, astronaut, nuclear scientist, these are all absolutely goals I am capable of achieving if I apply myself to the task and get a little bit lucky. However, for them to become reality, combined with the way I spent the last 6 years of my life, would take tens of thousands of dollars and probably at least half a decade. This is time and money I simply don’t have, already being in debt and 24 years old.
The problem, and the main reason I am way past those dreams, starts at the age of 18. I had unlimited potential, and I had (still have) a instinctual curiosity for science. The idea trying to be smarter than somebody else in a competitive sense did not appeal to me in the slightest, and so I had no desire to apply to medical or law school at that time, even though practising in either of those fields would have been incredible. In a hopefully humble-sounding way, I like to think that I have a higher-than-average capacity for absorbing and processing information and external stimuli. Given that, with my love of science and reason, taking chemistry at a post-secondary level seemed like a really great idea. Everybody I had ever spoken to, other than chemistry teachers, absolutely detested chemistry, or at the very least enjoyed the subject matter but found that they were terrible at performing experiments or grasping the associated concepts. This would be a prestigious choice of degree which would have very little competition, where I would be free to learn without external pressure and where average or slightly above average grades would allow me to sail through the program. After all, my entire scholastic career had been about learning, and being perfect had never really appealed to me if I understood the material. This is a phrase I have repeated ad nauseum, almost as an excuse, to anybody who suggested that the discrepancy between my grades, and the grades I was expected to have based on my apparent intelligence, was of concern to me.
The truth is, as I considered this summer applying to medical school for next year, I really think I could be a doctor, or astronaut, or lawyer. Given the requisite training in these professions, I am sure I could cure, or space, or law, wonderfully. But this just isn’t the case in our modern society. There is a very well-defined path for absolutely everyone who wants to be more than anything. By that, I mean that anybody who is able bodied could be a garbageman, or dishwasher, or cashier. These things are not difficult, but as we have all certainly seen at one point or another, it is possible to be terrible, or to excel at any of those jobs. Growing up, I saw people who were good at things, and people who were absolutely hopeless. From this, I surmised that if I was able to work hard for 6 years at something that most everyone considered extremely difficult, that anyone capable of basic factual analysis would see that I was capable of doing, or at least learning to do, most anything.
I thought I had figured out the way the world works, and that if I was able to earn a Masters in Chemistry, that it would qualify me for any job that was considered to be less intellectually rigorous than that. The logic of that statement still resonates with me to this day, and I still ultimately believe it to be accurate. Very little of what I did over the course of the 4 year undergraduate degree or one year of masters required any specific skills that I feel nobody else is capable of given similar instruction. Some intellectual constructs and theoretical concepts, as well as a lot of the mathematics associated with those topics, is beyond the reach of most ordinary people, but those people are more than likely completely fine with that. Additionally, there are also many concepts and associated mathematics which are well beyond my mental grasp, though I know people who frolic through those fields of expressions and equations like a meadow of daffodils.
The basic idea of this notion is that once I have learned all that is known thus far (and a little more) about the NMR of halogens, and prepared a 133 page document summarizing that knowledge, I should be able to walk into a meeting with someone, show them what I am capable of learning to do, and immediately begin learning to do what they need of me. In exchange, they would make an allowance available to me consisting of enough money to pay off my loans in some haste, and to acquire a modest house, car and the like in a matter of years. I am confident that if given that opportunity, I could pleasantly surprise someone with my capacity for learning.
However, what I have found of society is quite a bit different. After completing the above document showing that I am capable of learning about *murmur murmur blurb*, I am qualified to continue to do that exact thing in other buildings, or possibly to manage the facility that exact thing happens in, or even to teach that exact thing, and what I learned to be able to learn that thing, but not in an official professorial capacity, which would require 3 more years (at least) of doing that exact thing.
I never really wanted the body of my life’s work to consist of a continuation of the work of the person who took a risk on me and allowed me to learn in a space he had worked very hard to claim at a university to have students work for him, advancing a field which he and many others have a strong interest in. I am not saying that to take away from him, or from anyone in the lab, because post-secondary academia is a very proud, important profession that I wouldn’t want to take away from anybody. It just isn’t where I want to spend my time.
While I was learning all about halogen NMR, I was completely enthralled by it. But there comes a point when there is nothing more any subject matter can do for you, and this happened to me midway through my graduate studies. The same thing happened when I was working in retail electronics at Canada Computers. I was mesmerized and blown away by the world of consumer and business electronics and computing, and soaked up information about it like a sponge. Being immersed in anything you don’t fully comprehend but long to know holds a certain fascination for me. But, after about 6 months, at which point I started to see patterns in the consumer world and in electronics, the entire store which had held so much pleasure for me while I was learning about it was suddenly completely flat and predictable, and I got bored faster than a tree at a saw mill, or Timon at a Pumbaa convention, or a lake at an ice fishing convention (these are going downhill fast). While I never completely lost my interest in chemistry (or even NMR specifically), academia doesn’t appeal to me as a place to spend the rest of my life. Similarly, while I will still follow the capacity and speed doubling of RAM, CPU speeds and cores, and flash memory, now that I know it is inevitable, it does not pique my acute interest in the way it once did. Even entering chemistry in my teens, it was always my dream to work in a lab, researching interesting and new practical applications of cutting-edge technology, to put it to use in a meaningful and productive way in the world.
The truth is, though, as I am coming to realize, is that this is just not possible for me specifically, without some help, and perhaps some luck. I need to get in front of people with enough clout to actually make that happen, and show them what I am capable of, given the opportunity and resources. If I can show someone with the ability to make those kinds of things happen what I can do, I’m sure I can surprise even myself with what I can achieve.
In the end, I want what we all eventually want, to meet someone, or a group of people, that can be counted on to notice that we are awake and out of bed, and to share my life (space and time, which is really all we have) with them in the pursuit of contentedness. And to have a meaningful, positive impact on the world. Happiness is just a nice bonus.
To summarize, I have learned a great deal about a wealth of different subjects in my time on this Earth, and I am itching to apply that, and give a little back to the world that gave me so much. But first I have to get past the sad misconception that I only know what I learned in graduate school.
This is a post I have been waiting to write for some time, and today is as good a time as any. I feel good finally doing another product review, it has been FAR too long since I did one, and I have gotten new toys in that time, so here comes what will hopefully the first of many reviews in the next little while. For those of you who are familiar with my previous posts, I love anything that incorporates Bluetooth technology, be it a phone, computer or peripheral device. I own 3 different computers or “smart” devices which have Bluetooth connectivity, and I use Bluetooth technology more than once per day on each of these devices. However, when trying to leave the house to do something that required I not take anything with me, I found I was at a bit of a loss in terms of listening to music.
I have Bluetooth headphones (on-ear), but when I take them off they take up a lot of space, and can’t easily just be put away anywhere, which is inconvenient for running errands or places where I don’t have a bag or place to put things. Alternately, the first pair of Bluetooth earbuds I bought (which I decided did not even merit a review, more on that later) have a dongle at the end which contains the battery and Bluetooth transmitter. While this does allow for wireless listening, it does not make the experience any less bulky or cumbersome. The whole issue I have with wired headphones and wires in general is that they are prone to tangling, and the more wire you have, the easier it is to tangle. This leads nicely into my review for today, which is for Plantronics’ newest Bluetooth earphone model, the Backbeat Go. These earbuds are as simple as it gets, with all redundancy having been removed. Aside from the actual cord which holds together the earbuds and which carries in-line playback controls, these are essentially as minimal as earphones can get.
Normally, at this time in a product review which starts off saying how simple a concept and design is, this would be the place for a caveat about sound or manufacturing quality, but such a drawback doesn’t exist for these earphones. They sound incredible, and are built very solidly, with no visible failure points. Another concern with earphones, especially ones which are not mechanically connected to any device, such as by a 3.5 mm connection, is that they might fall out of your ears and be lost forever. This doesn’t seem to be a concern with these headphones, as they also have detachable earloops on the buds which are perfectly designed to be flexible, but rest against the inside of the ear, feeling comfortable, but snug.
The in-line playback controls under the right ear are absolutely perfect for changing tracks and volume, as well as answering calls and activating voice control (another wonderful product, Siri, also becomes much more useful when you don’t have to take your phone out of your pocket to pick new music, text, or make calls). I should do a review on Siri soon, though it would be more reflective than a review, as it’s been thoroughly reviewed in many other places. Is it against the rules of writing to refer to something in parentheses once you’re outside of them? Oh well, creative liberties…
The cord connecting the two earbuds is also quite high quality, far above the plastic you would find in regular earbuds, and it is also thick in one dimension, resembling linguine. This means that the cord can really only bend in one dimension, and as such, there are far fewer tangles in the cord than would be found in normal gauge wire. While on normal headphones implementing this would be far too heavy, in practise on these headphones, with the weight of the wire resting on the back of the neck, there is no pull at all on the ears, and so no increased likelihood of the headphones to fall out.
These earbuds have a battery life of anywhere from 5-8 hours continued use in my experience, and will last with minimal battery loss for several weeks. They charge by micro-USB, which is behind a flap on the right bud, and take about an hour to fully charge.
When these earbuds were first announced several months ago, they were not available in Canada, and having them shipped here was almost prohibitively expensive. Now, however, they are available in Canada for $100 dollars, and if you are on the move a lot and like listening to music, I highly recommend these. If you have ever fumbled with earbuds and a shoulder bag of any kind, these are your sanity’s salvation!
I’ve been preparing a few posts that have been in the works for a while, tending to break away from my typical topics from this forum, instead allowing me to express some thoughts on topics that are a little more serious and reflective. I’d really appreciate any feedback you have on these posts, which I will label with Reflection so that they can be easily grouped together. I have been doing a lot of thinking in the last few months, as I am transitioning from my teenage years into a university student, and recently into what I’ll call a real person. As this transition has happened, I have also moved several times, and with those relocations I have also enjoyed more and more independence. From when I was born until 18 years old, I lived at home (as is true of most anyone reading this I’m sure). I didn’t particularly like this fact, but I understood from a very young age that it was certainly in my best interest to follow the rules and align myself to be able to move out for university. I certainly didn’t and don’t detest my parents or their home, but I knew that my parents did some things quite differently from the way I would do them, and from the way I think they should be done. To their credit, I did learn a lot from my parents, and I think I was raised very well, their values and morals passing on to me in due course. However, I also found that there were certain things I learned from my parents and then altered to suit my own needs and ideas. I think that this is probably the most important part of growing up, coming to the realization that while parents are a great source of information and advice, their opinions and assistance is greatly biased, and should be taken as suggestion rather than as infallible fact. The idea that our parents are the final word on anything in life is a very antiquated notion.
I don’t mean to say that the respect of my parents doesn’t mean anything to me, it’s actually quite important to me that I have their respect and that they respect me and the decisions that I make. This is most important when my decisions are different than the ones I know my parents would make. If I can explain my reasoning to them, it actually reinforces for me that I have made the right decision, even if it isn’t a decision they would make. There are also definitely paths I have taken in life, especially since I moved away from home, that I haven’t shared with my parents. It’s not that I am keeping anything from them, but there is nothing I would share with my friends that I wouldn’t also share with my parents. Some people find this type of openness very odd, but I stand firmly behind the decisions I’ve made. For me, getting the approval of my parents does not stem from following their expectations to the letter, but from their acceptance of my lifestyle choices regardless of what they would do in the same scenario. I love both of my parents very much, and I know they also love me, even though we are across the country from each other for 95% of the year. If I thought for a second that anything I did repeatedly and intentionally would cause them to disapprove strongly enough that they would love me any less than they do, I would be strongly questioning their roles as mentors and guides (aka as parents). I have complete confidence that my parents would stand by me unquestioningly in anything I choose to undertake, so long as it is not illegal. Moral reprehension is another story which is more of a grey area, as some people have different views on morals, but having different moral standards than your parents is a good thing, and certainly should not be punished or cause for irrevocable disapproval.
Thank you, mom and dad, for showing me right from wrong and teaching me to make my own decisions. I have grown into my own man, and I want nothing more than to make you proud with the way I live my life.
I would like to start off by saying that I am a pretty laid-back person. I am the first person to avoid discussions of religion, simply because I know that some people take it very seriously, and in the history of most religions, hereticism is considered a major party foul. I feel as though this discussion will probably raise the ire of some people, so consider this a warning that if you continue to read, I am not responsible for your reaction. I sincerely hope that you do stick around, because I consider this very important, but I understand if you don’t.
Alright, now that that is out of the way, I’d like to discuss a little about how I feel pertaining to religion and its impact on morality. As a bit of background on me, I was raised Anglican and baptized in my early teens. I spent quite a few Sunday mornings in church, as well as my share of Christmas Eves. I have attended a number of religion-based camps in my youth, and my entire family, if I have to generalize, is religious. So trust me when I say that I have a little bit of experience here.
One thing I will say, having read many of the interesting parts of the Bible when I was growing up (and at that time, they couldn’t print words fast enough for me to read them), is that I don’t really see what all the hype is about. I suppose if one were to interpret the Bible (I’ll use that text as an example, as it’s the only religious work with which I have any familiarity) as literally being historical fact (at least the parts where that is possible), that it would be a pretty incredible story. But from what I have seen and heard and read, and what I believe, the Bible is not to be interpreted literally. It’s meant to be a moral guide and a compelling narrative about the human condition and our desire to aspire to something more. I’m given to understand that most religious texts are calls to bring people together under one set of agreed-upon laws and conditions and to be able to live harmoniously based on those individual documents.
The problems with relying on an ancient text for this kind of morality don’t necessarily have to extend to religion to see that there are some major problems with doing so. For example, the British Bill of Rights, and the US Constitution, are written for the time they were created in. There are many things that change in the world, in a way that no one document or group of authors can ever anticipate or account for.
Once documents like the Bible or the US constitution are written, problems inevitably arise. It is human nature and a core feature of the species that we are pack animals, and we are inclined to hear a good idea, propagate it and ultimately defend it. There is nothing wrong with that in itself, but over time, these ideas end up moving down bloodlines, potentially for several generations. Since the original sources and authors of the material are no longer around to assert their original intent, issues will arise when society continues to evolve.
The example I am going to use to hopefully demonstrate this point is one which some background reading (done just now, for context) shows is more correct than I could have ever imagined. The second amendment to the US constitution, which colloquially describes the ‘right to bear arms’, is one which is defended constantly by associations like the NRA, but which the average American also holds dear. To a completely pacifistic Canadian, this is just a ridiculous law to have on the books.
While there are several very good reasons for people to have guns and other weapons, the average person has no reason to actually own one. Even bearing in mind that there are people who use these weapons to hunt game, there is really no sport in shooting an animal with a rifle in 2012 (editor’s note: or 2016!). Going into the writing of this piece, I had it in my head that this law was written in the late 1700s, when an “arm” referred to my vision of a musket. It took around a minute to load these guns when trained and practiced, and each one fired a single round metal ball at a time.
These guns were just as likely to misfire or explode as they were to actually have the bullet leave the barrel. If the bullet did make it out, the gun was horribly inaccurate. These are not assault rifles with precisely machined barrels and laser scopes. Additionally, this was also a time in history when the Americas were in a time of great turmoil. Not only was the country trying to establish itself and declare its independence from Great Britain, but it was (is?) deeply divided between old and new ideas (resulting in a Civil War not too long after its independence). All of that being taken into consideration, it actually makes completely logical sense that:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Even these two sentences actually read very differently if you take punctuation seriously. In both cases, though, a militia whose purpose is the security of a free state is the reason for giving the people a right to arms. There is no inherent threat in the US today that would require easy access to, and everyday use of, a firearm. And there is not much weight to an argument that you can use it to defend yourself from having a weapon used against you.
In a country, like Canada, with few or no guns, the risk of finding yourself facing one is greatly reduced. Finally, there are many other, non-lethal, ways of defending yourself today in the event of an attack. This old law just doesn’t make very much sense today, and yet it is upheld constantly and consistently.
As it turns out, this argument can actually be taken back even further. As hard as it is to believe, the founding fathers of the United States had some background on how to run a country, and had some inspiration in coming up with the second constitutional amendment. Delving a little deeper into history, you can find that Britain passed its own Bill of Rights, back in 1689. This document also mentions something similar to the right to bear arms in its pages, though you’ll notice the wording is a little bit different:
That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.
This document, which outlines the rights of British Parliament, was passed at a time when Protestants (those who maintained most Catholic beliefs but had issue with, or protested, some of the church’s policies) had had their arms confiscated by a Catholic king who took issue with the rising Protestant population in Britain. This law, which formed the foundation of current gun law in the US (and Britain to a lesser extent), is based on religious persecution. This decree simply served to allow citizens of any religion equal right to acquire and carry arms. Again, this was at a very difficult time in that empire, where the clash between powerful political and religious entities was causing a great deal of turmoil across all of Western Europe.
Remember that the Pope and the King of England were both considered to be one degree from God at the time. The writing of this document came at a time when the theory of divine right, that the monarchical bloodline was vetted by God, was coming into question and eventually abandoned. It is only logical that the unjust decree of a religious king be formally revoked afterwards, and it certainly shouldn’t apply centuries later, across an ocean, in cases all the way up to the US Supreme Court. To this day, religion and its morality enters into public debate about this sort of topic, even though it has been generations since the arguments were made, and they are in no way valid today.
Alright, now with what is hopefully a strong case and some background on why I think that it is absurd that religious morality be strictly applied to modern society, I can continue to discuss my personal issue with some of the aspects of religion which I find most questionable.
It is important to note, again, that I personally have no problem with anybody who believes in a specific god, or believing anything they want for that matter. In the same way, when I’m walking down the street, and somebody tries to tell me about their pet issue, I find it hard to feel bad when I tell them that I don’t care about what they have to say.
I am not going to seek you out on the street and try to forcefully share information with you to which you have not consented, and I would appreciate if you would do the same for me. We have common, courteous ways of passing along information, as well as polite ways of engaging in discourse with a large group of people. I’m getting off topic here…lets try this again.
I am not going to get in the way of your religion, as long as you don’t tell me that I am going to hell, or getting no virgins, if I don’t agree with your system of belief. I personally have a strong set of beliefs about how the universe was formed, and how we came to exist on this planet, and that belief system also explains every religion on earth. In itself, this is more than can be said for most religions, wherein accepting the existence of other faiths hinges on the idea that those are “lesser” religions.
I can absolutely empathize with religious people. It is for this reason that I am not constantly getting into fist fights with people over things that they say or do, simply because they are different from what I say or do in my own free time. When somebody tells me that they are “praying” for something to happen, I know to interpret that as meaning that it is something they would very much like to see come to pass. I do it myself all the time, when I calculate the approximate odds of something occurring, and think to myself, I wonder if thinking about this a lot in my head will affect the external outcome.
I can also note that having done that several times a day for my entire life, it is pretty disheartening sometimes when the odds of something happening are VERY low. At those times, often all you can do to affect the outcome is to think about it silently to yourself. It would be, and presumably is, very reassuring to believe that there is somebody listening, and that through some physical manifestation of supreme power, the outcome of an event can be affected by the power of suggestion. In fact, there is solid evidence that psychologically, there is a process wherein knowing somebody (or many people) is (are) wishing very hard for you, for example, being able to fight off a disease, can actually impact your bodies defense of itself and impact the outcome of the illness.
In the general case, “praying”, followed by success, reinforces the idea that prayer works. On the other hand, a negative outcome would simply suggest that either you weren’t praying hard enough, or that you had done something bad, or been unsure of your faith in a way that meant that you didn’t deserve the outcome you wanted.
In any case, I will never be able to rationalize the argument for keeping your morality consistent with your religion. If I am miscalculating and have backed secularism in the mistaken belief that when you die, you simply cease being alive, I will have a lot of explaining to do. That being said, I think I’m okay with that. I personally don’t think I am going to be any worse off than anybody who claims strict adherence to religious ideals, even if those are few in number.
If, when it’s all said and done, we are all ranked and filed according to who followed a strict set of arbitrary rules the closest (no matter which religion ended up hypothetically setting those standards), I think I will have a lot of company in the afterlife. Personally, I choose to live my life on a case-by-case basis, solely based on what I have seen, heard, read, learned, tasted, smelled, touched and experienced. Some of that comes from religious teachings, some of it comes from my parents, some of it comes from friends, some of it comes from television and movies.
In the end, what I do alone is of concern only to me, or who I choose to share it with. Involving other people does get a little messier (instances of deceit, theft, or murder spring to mind) in coming up with a consistent morality for the whole world to follow. I think a good model for the American (or even the world’s) “Constitution” would be something similar to Wikipedia, wherein anybody can suggest changes at any time, in an ever changing document that is democratic and comprehensive. It will be effectively future-proof because it will never be “done”, but evidence suggests it will mature very quickly.
If everyone can accept that on some level, we’re really all the same, we could peacefully coexist without too much violence, war, or any such nonsense. Upholding long-standing religious beliefs on the idea that they are moral is a very slippery slope, one which we tiptoe around every day. We are all entitled to our own opinion, obviously, but differences of opinion can have consequences if they are baselessly upheld for too long.
On a side note, Googling morality can have some odd implications:
I know I promised to be more timely with these, so here’s a little teaser: I have a bunch of stuff coming down the pipe in the coming weeks! Really my problem right now is that I just keep writing and writing and end up with super long posts which take forever, but what I need to do is keep it pretty short and timely. I’ll be working on this, because I do have some great stuff coming!
For those of you who don’t avidly follow sports like I do, soccer fans and much of Europe are fully in the grips of the 2nd largest international soccer tournament in the world. Every 4 years this tournament showcases some of Europe’s greatest soccer talent playing for their countries honour, and the major networks in Canada take turns broadcasting these games (really they fight and bid for the rights to show them, but that’s a whole other issue), along with the World Cup. This year, Bell Media (a massive entertainment conglomerate) has bought the rights to showing the tournament, using their sports networks (TSN and TSN2) to show the games.
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I do not like the idea of having cable in order to watch television exactly when it is scheduled, it is very inconvenient in modern society and with the many shows I like to watch, many of which occur on many different channels in different world centres, making it very difficult and expensive to watch what I would like to watch through conventional cable or satellite television. However, one of the huge benefits of a cable TV subscription is live sporting events, which I miss out on when they do come about. It is possible to find streams sometimes to watch these games live, and two years ago the World Cup was actually streamed live by CBC, which was a fantastic watching experience, with great stream quality and no charge or need for subscription. You were able to click and watch any game as long as it was currently on or had finished. Navigation through the video was difficult, but if you wanted to watch from where you started or watch it live, you could with very little issue, and the feed was a very high quality one if you had enough bandwidth.
This brings us to this year. After testing out streaming technologies for the last few years, companies have begun to have enough faith in the system to begin charging for it. I decided that since I would be home or close to home for most of June (when the tournament is played) it would be worth it to me to subscribe. The cost, while high at 19.99 for the 20 day tournament, isn’t a completely ludicrous amount, and it even allows for multiple streams from the same account, which was a nice surprise. However, there is a small matter which has been bothering me in watching the tournament, which is completely independent of other paid services.
To put it simply, the issue is that the internet, especially when it’s live, is not yet a perfect service. It is by no means beyond reproach, and comes with absolutely no guarantees on speed or connectivity (or at least none which are 100% guaranteed which are not incredibly expensive). With that in mind, it becomes trivial for a company to offer a streaming service, and to charge for it, but to get away with lapses in service which would make service providers in other areas (like television or phone services) have people banging on their doors, and would make class action suits against these companies commonplace.
Everyone on the planet who has ever sat at a computer has encountered the issue of buffering. This issue arises when some form of content is being presented to you (be it audio or video), and the content is played before the entirety of is has actually arrived at your computer. It is very common (although less so these days) because internet speeds have only recently become fast and reliable enough to actually carry this content as fast as it can be played. This issue is nearly unavoidable unless you pay for much more internet than you need (which is actually something I’ve been doing for the better part of two years now). The issue I would like to finally get to today has nothing to do with any sort of buffering issue though, and I am in a unique position to be able to confirm that in this case there is actually a problem with the content provider (Bell Media) and not with any settings I have control over, regardless of payment I can provide.
Currently I am in between internet providers, so I have available in my apartment a VDSL (Bell’s Fibe Internet at 25mbps down and 10mbps up with an incredible ping time of around 7-10 ms and 125GB download cap expandable at 25GB @ $5 rate) and a cable internet package (TekSavvy’s Extreme Cable package at 28mpbs down and 1mpbs up, with a slower and less reliable 100-200 ms ping, though with an unlimited download cap) and my roommate and I had one game going on each of these services, with wired internet on each. Streaming these games was a huge pain, because our service would reset itself about every 3-5 minutes for the course of the whole game. Normally, one would attribute this to the internet connection dropping off a little, but in this case our results show pretty definitively that this is a problem with Bell Media and TSN, and not our internet.
When the connections would drop every 3-5 minutes, we found that both games would drop at exactly the same time in almost all (>95% of cases). This implies that Bell Media does not have enough bandwidth to be able to confidently stream these games to all of its subscribers, and with that being the case, they really have no right to be charging for this service as being reliable, at least not while sleeping soundly at night. Streaming services will be better eventually, but until that is the case, while these companies are testing out streaming interfaces and bandwidth requirements for different load levels on these streams, they should not be charging premiums on the services. It is a money grab that feels very cheap as these CEOs and board members pad the lining of their pockets with the hard earned money I am giving them to watch soccer without interruption and to surf the internet without having to deal with any buffering.
You can call me petty and suggest I should stop complaining, but I am trying to live in the future, and things like this are preventing that from happening.
Until next time,
Robert
Also, I’m considering opening up Google+ hangouts in the time directly after these blog posts, let me know what you think about that idea in the comments, or drop me a line about anything really, I’m happy to chat.
I know it has been quite some time since I last posted anything at all, so an update on my life is most definitely in order. Quite a bit has changed since January when I last posted.
For starters, I enjoyed an excellent 6-month stint at Canada Computers, but I have officially left the company, starting my summer this past weekend, and my first day as what I’m describing as self-employment was June 11th! While I don’t as of yet have any concrete plans for the summer, I have a lot I am looking forward to accomplishing, which brings me to the most significant news:
I am currently signed up to take another degree in computer science in the fall, with the intent of applying for medical school to start in September of 2013. While the odds of my getting into medical school are very low (160/~3000), it is something I would kick myself if I didn’t try. In taking this computer science degree, I am also adding a minor in biology, which will allow me to register in classes which are prerequisities for medical school. It would also allow me to try my hand at biology, something in which I have long had an interest but have never really pursued with any conviction.
While the long term goal of this degree is attempting to get into medical school, I have also found that I very much enjoy web design, computer science, and the technology sector in general. For the better part of two years I have made significant inroads into computer science, though it is something I have enjoyed for my whole life. I finding that while trying to live (go to school full-time, working 40 hours a week) it is extremely difficult to pursue other areas of interest like computer science, and so I am dedicating a period of my life (be it only 4 months, or 8 months, up to 2 or 3 years) to the sole pursuit of formally getting educated in CS. While attaining my degrees in chemistry, I found that it was easiest for me to learn in a formal university environment, and I will cherish the opportunity to do so starting this September. The task of finding a job will still be in the back of my mind, but I will not be focused on it, career will be an ever present end goal that can be accomplished in many different ways in many different fields. I hope that while I take this summer off to recuperate and refocus my energies on my own interests, I can continue to look for jobs in my fields of interest and experience, while still maintaining time for leisure, and things like blogging, and web design, which I find fascinating and need to continue to learn more about.
Finally, before I conclude this post, I have recently come to the realization that I need personal business cards. I am 23 years old (about 2 weeks from turning 24) and I had an embarrassing encounter wherein I had to choose between letting a potential contact walk away and into thin air, or write my contact info down on a scrap of paper (something I hope to never have to do). I chose to stand there awkwardly looking around for a better idea, until he gave me his business card about 5 seconds too late (I contacted him but have not heard back, for reasons which are pretty obvious to me). Needless to say, I need business cards. If anybody knows a good place to do this, or has any tips on making personal (aka not for a specific business necessarily) please let me know. For the record, I am set on not including any Carly Rae Jepsen lyrics on these cards, so do not suggest that.
I hope you will hear from me again soon, I look to make these posts (though shorter than this) an almost daily experience for you. Let me know if you have any requests for things you’d like to hear, I am not going to limit myself to any particular thread of conversation right now, but I do have a particular fascination with anything in the tech world, though my range of experience in life does extend beyond that.
Signing off, hopefully for much shorter than last time, Robert
Hey again, I’d like to take a little time to weigh in on an important issue which has been really controversially received today, about Apple’s update to iBooks as well as a standalone iTunes U app.
For me personally, this is an incredible innovation, one which will certainly encourage me to even probably buy a textbook or two outside of academia, just for learning. The $15 cap on prices for these incredible, interactive experiences which major publishers have signed on to build is incredible, and means that you won’t have to worry about waiting in line at the bookstore, lugging books around all semester, and then worrying about having to sell them back to bookstores or to friends.
Also, when information changes in these textbooks, publishers can make updates to content which will be reflected instantly via update to anyone who bought the textbook. People who are just entering university will be able to purchase an entire semester of textbooks for 75$ at most (prices on textbooks for major publishers are capped by Apple at 14.99 apiece on an exclusivity contract).
This means that for about $600 initial investment (more if you want more storage for music on the iPad) you can replace a stack of textbooks which can cost easily more than 100 each. This investment, in the vast majority of cases, will pay off within a year.
The big thing is, though, that content in these interactive touch textbooks can include full-color, zooming photographs, text whose size can be changed, an internet-powered encyclopedic dictionary, highlighting, underlining, video clips, interactive hands-on applets built-in to enhance the experience even more.
I’m really jealous of the generation just entering university, this is something that is going to change all schooling for the better. Down with paper!
