Recently I have affirmed what I believe to be the inherently Satanic nature of television. Television is essentially an invention on par with nuclear weapons. It is a device designed for the sole purpose of destroying part of God's creation. While nuclear weapons destroy large-scale areas instantly, television destroys large-scale portions of time. It is indeed a weapon of mass temporal destruction

But how are we, as Christians, to view these two diabolical inventions? Are they an extension of the fall? What does this mean? Are they inherently evil? Perhaps a stronger case could be made for nuclear weapons being of this category, but I've yet to see one good program on television, not even a documentary. Even the information content television can provide falls grotesquely short of anything that can be provided by books. I do not want to be pompous and proud, discussing television's use in providing cheap unimaginative concrete manifestations of stupidity for the consumption of the masses and the furtherment of the intellectual malaise that has already infected so many.

But really, how should we view television as Christians?

I put up the next installment to the story.

Let's grow!
-- From the URL above

Yes, let's. Let's grow a little more critical of what we read. Apparently NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) is a methodology whereby one may improve one's self by applying such things as anchors to the mind or placing "mental marks" on people. The solutions to fundamental problems (such as improving one's marital relationship) are presented in a step-by-step fashion eerily similar to my less than rational attempts at being rational.

But before I get too deep into making fun of self help and pop psychology again, I think I should note something. NLP sounds like a sophisticated packaging of what are often rather common sense mental "tricks." For example, by NLP we may stop procrastinating in n easy steps (where n, of course, is a number less than ten). The means by which we may do this is simply to force one's self to work on whatever it is one is going to do for only five minutes. That is, give yourself five minutes to get it done, and you will find yourself glued to it ever after until it is done. Really people, is this something so sophisticated as to need such an ostentatious label as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP if we really want it to sound technical)?

On the up side of all this, the material is presented freely and some of it, again, does seem practical and simplistic (perhaps in dealing with situations like people insulting you or preventing yourself from procrastinating), but I don't think I would recommend it as a silver bullet cure for something as serious as a foundering marriage.

After having a rather hilarious discussion with my friends in the CS lab I have decided to post a few descriptions of games we played at my church youth group in Burns Lake. These are:

1. The Sock Game
2. Darling if You Love Me
3. The Almost Kissing Toothpick Game
4. Putty

I find myself needing to bleed out right now. I think I'll put some material from my upcoming story on this blog, as I've found myself stuck in an awful rut. Art, this is for you, I guess. I told people in my creative writing class that I do indeed consult with people in the CS lab in formulating my ideas....

Nah.. I think I'll just send Vashua away and be done with it. This is getting too nasty and annoying. It must be nice to have time to instantiate periods of intense international research and development efforts. She needs to go and teach her Attrendian comrades the three R's of subversion and defiance. I need to train Milone for a while. After all, if he is to get to be the next Bentas he'll need a good deal of training. And besides, I want Ibla back in my story again. He's such a fun story teller.

Since I am doing so much work with Pryna right now I decided it might be nice to introduce you to some hot titles on the book lists on Pryna right now. Today's title is:

Your Ass is in My Vector Space Now: A Practical Introduction to Modern Mathematics

Now on Pryna mathematics is done in a more interesting way. You see, the textbook is also an interactive virtual world. You enter the author's specialized vector space of subspaces. You may enter any of the subspaces and learn more about sets, like the set of all bijections, the set of all games, and even the set of all advanced hyperbolic topological entities.

Presently the author is working with other members of the scientific community, researching a book it plans to title "Your Vector Space Could be Up My Ass: A Practical Introduction to Exploring Four Dimensional Space."

This weekend's edition of the Globe and Mail emphatically suggested (in a good many places throughout, much to my growing annoyance) that we learn Chinese language. Now I know that some of you may know that I am not one to thoroughly read the newspaper -- indeed I only skimmed a few articles at the suggestion of my father -- but what did strike me was the good number of Chinese tetragrams found all over many of the titles, along with the general red colour of those titles.

Now I know I am overstepping my bounds here (I did not read the paper enough, most likely to say what I'm about to say) but really, was it necessary to colour the titles red like that? It's almost as though the paper was trying to convey a sense of an invading communist invasion that must be stopped. But that's just me and I'm probably wrong, being ignorant of the material and all.

I wanted to make a couple suggestions and observations about stuff that's cool about the language. I make all these from the perspective of someone interested in writing systems. Firstly, get used to dealing with something called logographs. IE, symbols that represent entire syllables, words, or even sentences. This is not all that alien to us in English. For example, the numbers are logographic. Also, get used to the idea new symbols for new sounds arising occasionally. The Chinese writing system does this, as new sounds enter the language. Oh, and if you want to learn to write in a Chinese language using actual tetragrams, get ready to learn about 2400 different symbols. That'll get you command of basic reading and writing skills, according to educators. Finally, don't be too scared. Apparently "the vast majority of graphs found in the largest Chinese character dictionaries are extremely rare." (All of the material I have given in the paragraph comes from Victor H. Mair's article "Modern Chinese Writing" found in Peter T. Daniels and William Bright's delightful tome The World's Writing Systems, on pages 200 to 207)

So, I guess the 21st Century is China's century. Does that mean that more of us will be learning Chinese or that more Chinese citizens will be learning English? Perhaps both will be the case?

I was cleaning my room a few weeks ago when I came upon a paper on which was printed some sort of Christian manifesto. I know, I know, many of those have been written throughout the centuries, but this one kinda touched me and I thought I might share it. As for the origin of the paper itself, I probably printed it years ago, back in 1999 or 2000, when I was interested in military technology.

I did a search for a few lines of the paper on google and found it on many sites. Every site I've found on it -- save one -- has claimed that it was written by an anonymous author. The one site that did no say this attributed it to one Cindy Coates. When I actually searched for this woman in connection with the essay itself (using search terms "Cindy Coates" soldier) I found only the site given above -- the site citing her as the author. Furthermore, a google search (using search terms "I am a soldier") through Coates' website turned up nothing.

So, it seems that if Coates is indeed the author of this manifesto, she quickly posted it to the original site given in the title of this article and did not bother to archive it on her own website. That's okay. I don't archive everything I write on the internet on my own personal website either....Or do I? Well, I'll give you a scan of the original paper I found in this entry. It seems a little more succinct and well-presented than the material on the above website.

Remember that weird inscription my friend said he made in his sleep? Well I've managed to dig up the oldest transcription of it I could find. This one was produced on 10106.24, or June 24, 2001. It was transcribed directly from a copy my friend made for me on a piece of paper. Unfortunately that copy is now lost and so this is the best and closest approximation I can find. I should never have taken Religion 201. Now I'm so fascinated with this whole recovering the essence of the original through extant transcriptions thing. Oh well. Here's the closest approximation.

Please note that the one previously given is from a transcription I made of it from either the one I'm about to give or from another I made in the Fall of 2002.

Well, my weekend was pretty good -- a little too much junk food for Thanks Giving, though. But that's my family for you, I guess. I spent some time meeting relatives I never knew I had. There was this dude going to Guelph for commerce, this world renowned artist who taught in a university in Australia. We chatted quite a good deal, and I talked to my buddy who works on the rendering farms out in BC. He did the CGI for Battlestar Galactica.

I told him of my mandate against viewing television, hoping he wouldn't be offended. He said that he never really watches the stuff he does either, unless there's problems with it.