Perspective

This month has been a trying month.

• I'm late with my taxes. The tax folks have some form of annoyance with me that I haven't even had the time to investigate. 
  
• I'm working on a very big, complex task for my client's client's client's client. It is technically challenging and there have been exacerbations - incorrect direction, stumbling blocks from their R&D folks (not bad ones, but stumbling blocks nonetheless), a lack of subject-matter expertise for quite a time, network outages at their place, our move back to the office of my client's client, more service interruptions on that side from both a switch malfunction and some firewall rules knocking out the VPN tunnel, and so on. All in all, the stuff of grey hairs, ulcers, and heart attacks.
  
• My Godson's little brother arrives 12 weeks early by emergency C-section, playing dice with his own safety and the mother's. And he ends up with a bowel problem an an ileostomy... at under 3 pounds in weight. He has had great care at CHEO, but he's got a ways to go yet before he gets a normal, safe life. I've been worried about my friend, his wife, my Godson, and his new little brother Alexander. A strong name for a small one confronted with such a hard start to life, but so far he seems to be struggling his way along despite the hurdles. Still, I worry.
  
• Dad spent 3+ weeks in the hospital getting a vacc treatment on his ulcer. That had me visiting or talking to him every day. I must have spent 20 hours a week doing that in addition to my work. It was good, but tiring. He's home and things have dropped back to reasonable levels. But it was a stressful from a schedule perspective and worrying about Mom being home alone and her having some breathless spells that are probably heart function related. More stress there.
  
• I had a minor dust up with a friend over some sort of misunderstanding. I don't think either of us came across clearly, but the whole event caused me great anguish. I wish that particular episode could have been lived out differently.
  
• Tonight, my cousin in Missouri informed me that his mother, in Motherwell, Scotland (my Mother's sister) was admitted to hospital with a lung clot after having had what they thought was a persistent lung infection. Everyone is quite worried about Aunt B. I know it has me worried. I'd go to her if I could. Not that I could do anything, but I feel for her and really hope she is getting good care. I'm not sure what to think of the British medical system.

Anyway, having said all of that....

Life is not easy, nor simple, nor does it progress smoothly, nor end in a dignified, orderly, scheduled fashion, nor does it begin in a dignified, orderly, scheduled fashion... 

... but it happens. And it perserveres. And it persists. And we fight and we do what we must, whether we are 78 or -3 months old. 

There are a lot of things in life that could make one despair, lament, or just simply tire out and give up. But we soldier on and try to make the best of a tough hand, hoping the next deal will be a bit better and we can grow our stake. 

In a perverse way, I think that's optimism. I think that's the quality that makes me understand that nothing confronting humanity today will be our death knell. In every age, there has been challenge, horror, and stalwart and intransigent refusal to give in to the dark parts, to let the candle of hope go out. 

I don't actually believe that every day in this life on this side of the daisies is a good one. I've seen proof of that. But I do believe that where there is life, there is hope. And with life and hope, their is a beauty, a purity of the human spirit. 

When people you love are suffering, you suffer with them. When people are in need yet their is naught you can do for them, you feel diminished. Yet from their courage and from their forbearance and from their simple endurance, one can take solace and perspective. 

What matters in life isn't the worst of days, or the least of days, nor the number of days. What matters is not solely the quality of life or the material goods that we accumulate. What matters is not that we suffer, that we feel pain, or that we sometimes give in to desolation. 


What matters is that we remember the good moments. We hold onto hope and to beauty. We hold on to courage and try to encourage it in others. We hold onto love and to family. We hold onto friends. And we hold onto the conviction that there is good in the world and that it matters more than all of the dark, parlous times. 


We hold onto the candle that gutters in the night but does not go out, a light in the darkness - perhaps dim, but shining on. 

"When you can't run, you crawl. When you can't crawl, you find someone to carry you." 

-- Firefly TV Series, episode titled The Message (and so it is!)

  

Recreating a 3,400 year old Mesoamerican Beer

Part food science, part archaeology, all excellent!


Beer from chocolate....

Burger Recipes: Lamburger, Porkburger, and other fun things

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/dining/26mini.html

Non DRM Video, Audio, Books....

Some interesting examples of non-DRM video....

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/30/eztakes-5000-strong.html

http://openflix.com/


http://www.archive.org/index.php

Some of these contain more than just video (archive.org especially). Documents, books, audio, etc.

Some of us have a hate on for Mr. Jobs and his DRM. Some of us have a hate on for Mr. Balmer and his DRM. Some of us have a hate on for all of Sony and the DRM. So here are some alternatives, including some odd quirky pieces. I like to support such efforts because they are headed in a direction I think we should be headed, rather than in the direction Corporate Powers think we should be headed.

I'm not a Commie pinko and I do want to see worthy art lead to rewarded artists. But I do object to presumptions of the value of art (it has none just because someone created it or just because someone tries to assign it a value - if nobody is willing to pay that, it does not have that value). I object to assumptions about what I should or should not pay for a priori, sight unseen, and simply because someone else thinks so.

Beyond that, I object to limitations on format transference and personal use. Books must really piss off some of these modern sources of media - they want paid for every view (including multiple views by the same user or views by multiple viewers such as a home presentation of a DVD or loaning a friend a good book). I'm afraid they are not the sole voice in this debate and they don't get to choose the definition our society accepts of the value of media, of art, of fair use and fair dealing, and of just remuneration for artists and for the corporate combines that power distribution.

This is a dialogue our society needs to have. We need to define our boundaries and not let lobbyists and corporations do so. Most of us acknowledge we do want to see reasonable recompense for musicians, movie makers, authors, designers, artists of all forms. There may be some argument as to what just compensation is.

There is no argument that corporate interests have a finanical motive to constrict and restrict our use of various forms of art, trying to repeatedly sell us the same thing, trying to sell us things we cannot share even though such sharing may well lead to greater aggregate exposure and sales for the works.

The dialogue needs to be had and the politicians and legislators need to listen so that whatever protection systems we have in law for intellectual property rights are useful to us as a society and aren't strictly to benefit corporate interests. The government is still voted in by the people and paid for by the citizen's taxes in large part.

So, go take a look at some of the alternatives to paying iTunes, Sony or Microsoft or the MPAA or RIAA a boatload of your money.

Another Reason Canada Is A Good Place To Live

 

Ignoring the immense natural bounties of the land, ignoring our skills at sports of all sorts, ignoring our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and first responders, ignoring our stable regulation and the stable financial positions of our banks, and ignoring our decently respectable economic outlook.... there are still a thousand good reasons to live here, to be proud of doing so, and to be happy one does.

Today, Google unveiled a map of the world, showing the number of Government takedown requests and user information requests it had been presented with over the preceeding the second half of 2009.

Of course, China's stats don't appear on here because they are a State Secret and probably because they'd dwarf all the others put together. But for a nation afraid of Falun Gong and the Dalai Lama, repressing Buddhists and harvesting Falun Gong members for organs, what's a ridiculous amount of censorship and investigation?

I have the good fortune to live in Canada, not China. I daily thank my parents and my grandparents for that. Their choice to come from the Old Country to Canada means I have been born into a wonderful nation, with good people, a good standard of living, and a good position to achieve great ends.

One of the other interesting thing about this graph is the comparitive statistics of Canada and the USA. The USA is known as 'land of the free, home of the brave'. The latter is probably true enough, but I begin to doubt the former. Google is illustrative of my concern: The number of takedowns requests in Canada and the US loosely parallels per-capita populations in the countries and gives nothing one way or the other to comment on. On the other hand, the number of government queries about user information in the US is approximately 100 times (round figures) what the Canadian total is, or 10 times as great adjusted to be per-capita.

Do we really think the States requires 10 times as much data (per capita) about dangerous groups and people (or less dangerous, reasonably innocuous ones) as Canada does? I have a strong doubt. I think this is a further sign of the creepingly Orwellian State of the Land of the Free since the psychic trauma of the 9/11 attacks bent and damaged the American collective pscyhe.

I'm not bashing the Americans; Rather, this one time, I feel a bit of pity for them for the sad state of affairs that have brought about the current situation. But at the same time, I feel proud of our country hewing to a moderate path and generally striking a balance between security (we've busted some bomb plots and stopped others I'm sure we'll never hear of) and insecurity (overbearing legislation that is intrusive in the name of an illusion of security).

I'm marking one in the win column for Canada. And I'm proud of us.