Betsy to Heavens! They're at it again!

Among others, one of the interests I have listed on my profile page is Myst. I don't think I've ever mentioned Myst before in any posts on this site, which is quite a disgrace. If you don't know what Myst is, then for heavens sake, let me educate you:
Myst was a computer game released back in 1993, and was, I'm told, wildly popular (so most readers out there have probably at least heard of it). It was popular for its graphics, which were, by the standards at the time, great. It was also probably popular because there weren't any other games like it. Instead of having you going around slashing up zombies or blowing up aliens, Myst plunked you down on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Since there are no villains to kill (or anything to kill them with), or really anything else at all to do, your only option is to explore. By doing so, you send yourself on a journey around the island (and several others), solving puzzles and uncovering clues to make progress.
Myst was followed by a sequel, Riven, in 1997, which was obviously like Myst, only...different, as are all sequels. The graphics in Riven were much better than those in Myst, and the puzzles were harder. Then, in 2001, Myst 3: Exile was released. It now had better graphics than either of its predecessors, but the puzzles weren't (thankfully) harder. Then, in 2003, Uru was released. Uru was more of a spinoff than a sequel, and had truly smacking graphics, a live online version, and later had two expansion packs released. Whuf.
After all this, in the fall of 2004, another game, called Myst 4: Revelation, was released. Naturally, this game had the best graphics of the bunch--am I seeing a pattern here?--aannnnd....well, yeah. That brings us to the here and now.
Okay, now that I have taken up about half a page with simple background information, I'll get on to the point of this post. The folks at Cyan, the company that made the Myst games except for numbers 3 and 4, are at work on another game (yeesh!) to be called (at least for now) Myst 5: End of Ages. It's going to be the last of the Myst games, at least they say so, and will probably be released next fall. From what I've read and seen, it looks pretty darn spiffing. Below are some screenshots from it I've scrounged up:




Cool, huh?

Okay, GOB

I recently put up a post on BlogHogger about environmentalism; how environmentalists tend to be paranoids who overreact to what problems Earth has (that's putting it roughly). Being of a political nature and on BlogHogger, it sparked some debate. Compared to some of the other debates that spring up there, it's small potatoes, but anyhoo... The debate, as usual, was sparked by our ever-arguing friend God of Biscuits. Somewhere in the discussion came up the issue of solving world hunger. GOB assumed that we, being the merciless, bigoted Christians we are, wanted to keep all Third World countries third world. Naturally, we disagreed. In response to my particular two cents, he said that if I truly did want to do something about world hunger, why wasn't I out proposing a certain simple idea that could solve world hunger? Well, I said, all right then, I will.

The idea, actually, is one that I highly doubt could work, because it just seems too simple and too obvious. But even so, something needs to be done, and it's better than nothing. It's simply this: If my statistics are correct, only about 2% of America's population is needed to farm and create the food needed by both them and the other 98%. That's a lot of food being produced by not a lot of people. And, in fact, says a commentor on BlogHogger, America is producing too much food. The government is paying farmers, via subsidies, not to grow food. Why? Why is it that this extra food isn't being shipped off to these impoverished countries? If we shipped off the surplus to Africa and South America and all those other impoverished places, that would probably help--if not solve--the hunger problem considerably. Duh. Why isn't this being done? I'm sure it's been tried. Why hasn't it worked? One point that was made was that certain countries in Africa, for example, won't accept food because it's genetically modified. Jeez. Many people may think that the world hunger problem is not being solved because the richer countries of the world are too lazy and too heartless to do anything about it. I would beg to differ. The richer countries are taking all sorts of steps to try and help, the problem is that various governments of the poor countries are either too stupid, too cruel, or too...I dunno, proud...to accept our contributions.

Oh, the irony!

Among many others, one of the definitions of liberalism is as follows: n 1: a political orientation that favors progress and reform (Definition compliments of WordNet). Something I've recently realized, with my keen and penetrating mind, is that by this definition, Jesus was a liberal. Yeek! You can now see where the post's title comes from. So, all you liberal readers out there: this is your cue to jump up and say "HA!". Or is it...?
Well, the funny thing is, is that by that definition of liberalism, the definition of liberalism changes over time (as does that of conservativism--or is it conservatism? Whatever, moving on). Things that need (or are thought to need) reform change over time. So the opinions of a liberal in medieval Poland would be different from that of a liberal in modern-day America, presumably. Likewise, Jesus' opinion of liberalism is very different from today's average liberal's opinion of it. If Jesus were to come back to Earth now as a human again, and live among us again, his opinions would probably be more conservative. At least, he would share opinions with what most conservatives believe today: the beliefs of the right to life for all people, the definition of marriage being between one man and one woman, and the other stuff. But I don't think I'll get into what his opinion on Iraq is likely to be. ;)

Non-sequitur science lesson

I came across an interesting sort of science project in a book a little while ago, something I know I haven't heard of before, perhaps some of you readers have. It's called cymatics, a sort of science first discovered by a Hungarian physicist named Ernst Chladni in the 1770s. He found a way to show the vibrations made by sound in physical form. Scattering sand on metal disks and drawing a bow across the disks like on a violin would cause geometric patterns to appear in the sand, patterns created as the sound vibration moved through the disks.
A century later, Margaret Watts-Hughes tried Chlandi's project herself, experimenting with diferent materials put on the disks, as well as different musical instruments. She found the best instrument was her voice. She, unlike Chlandi, took photos of the patterns created on the disks, and I'd show you some of said pictures, but search-engine scrounging hasn't been able to turn anything up. Amazingly.

The book I found this out in was a big ol' fat book about crop circles by Freddy Silva, a crop circle nut if ever there was one. Silva has a theory that sound could be creating the crop circles, that they could be cymatic patterns imprinted in grainfields. I don't know about you, but I found that idea pretty interesting, although it could be totally nuts. The interesting thing is, though, that Silva found some crop circles that look quite similar to some cymatic patterns. For example:







Anyway, that concludes today's non-sequitur science lesson.

Comment, *&%# it!!

Yes, I'm a day late with this, but so what? Yeah, exactly. Anyhoo...
Every once in a while I check up on my site stats, and, assuming the hit counter is working, it appears I am actually getting a reasonable amount of hits, more or less. But, it appears that my visitors are almost all (Word of the Day Alert!) lurkers. Lurkers are, as near as I can figure, people who visit blogs, read the stuff, but either have too much laziness or too much chronic shyness to comment on it. And, apparently, yesterday was National Lurker Day, at least according to one blogger who was starting up a meme on the subject. I would provide a link to the post that he/she wrote, but I just found out that the site and post's URL, which I went to such pains to copy down, doesn't work. So, well, bugger. Anyway, now that post is inaccesible to me and this post now has little or no meaning because of that. So, I'll just sum up my point in very attractive, eye catching, this-is-my-point-now-pay-attention bold and italic font. A-hem:

IF YOU READ, COMMENT!!!! LET ME KNOW YOU'RE THERE!!!

I don't care if your comment has nothing to do with the subject at hand, I just want to know that the hit counter isn't broken, and that I actually DO have readers. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Thank you.

the Butterfly Effect

I guess the new year has put me in a philosophical--I don't even know if that's the right word for this--mood. I've been pondering about the Butterfly Effect a bit. No, not the movie, but just the theory or whatever it is. It should be pretty obvious that the idea is true. Everything makes a difference. Something I'm wondering is how small events can get before they stop making any difference. Like, for example, say I'm drumming my fingers on the desk right now, will that effect what job I eventually get, or what the weather's like on Tuesday, or...something else? I don't know, I kinda doubt it, but it's hard to tell.
I find it fun to look back and see how, if so-and-so hadn't happened, I wouldn't be who I am today. This blog is an example. Last summer, I spent a week at a Catholic boys' camp somewhere in the semi-wilderness of Western Washington. It was there that I met Brian and Joe from BlogHogger. At some point during the camp, Brian and I were talking about the Internet, and he mentioned that he had a website, which was, of course, BlogHogger. He gave me the URL, and when I got back to a place that had Internet access, I checked out his site. I liked it, and after several visits, I finally noticed the little orange Blogger button lurking in the corner of his template. Curious about how Brian made his site, and feeling this would contain some answers (hee hee hee), I clicked on it, and I found myself on the homepage of Blogger. It didn't take long to realize, me being as sharp as I am, that Blogger provided a free website service. Hot dog! It just so happened that I'd been looking for a way to make a website for a long time, preferably free, me being the cheapskate that I am, and here was the solution to my problem. So, now, here's this blog. If my dad hadn't gotten it into his head to send me (and himself, as a matter of fact) to that camp, this blog wouldn't be here. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty interesting.

Another example of butterflies effecting is my playing the drums. Also last summer, our family went to visit the family of my younger sisters' godparents (whose name was Colombo-that's for future reference) for an afternoon. Unfortunately, there weren't any boys my age there, so I spent some time meandering from room to room, until Mr. Colombo noticed that I seemed bored. He said that he had a drum set in their garage, and invited me to bang around on it a bit. He also had a CD player down there, with some blues CD in it, and he suggested that I try playing some drum beats along with the songs on the album. The effect wasn't spectacular, but I guess it was enough to convince my mom that maybe my playing drums wouldn't be a bad idea. Now, about six months later, I'm taking drum lessons and have my own drum set in the garage, an old beater of a set, but it works nonetheless. Just because of one afternoon. Actually, just because of 45 minutes in a garage.
Funny how that works.