In My Holy Opinion

I just realized how much time I spend watching DVDs. With the advent of Netflix and other online DVD rental services, it’s all too easy to get caught up in shows like 24 or Family Guy. I’ve always been consious about how much television I choose to watch: not lastly because I don’t have that much time, to sit and watch shows all day. In addition, television also bores me to tears most of the time; on the rare occasions that I do watch actual TV, I am always befuddled with the incredible stupidity of most commercials and many television shows. A lot of shows are nerve wracking to watch, and impossible to enjoy. So I’ve limited myself to the two shows that I mentioned, as well as “House. Naturally, I hate watching shows on TV, I don’t have that kind of discipline to be there at a certain time. I usually record my shows on the DVR and watch them whenever it’s convenient, usually at 3:00AM or some odd hour like that. It’s obviously easier to just rent the DVD and have it delivered to my door. The picture quality is far superior, and I don’t have to deal with commercials. Plus, I can watch it on my computer, if I want to, as well as save a backup copy for later viewing. I don’t monitor my computer time with as much scrutiny as I monitor my TV-watching. I don’t feel like hanging around on the computer is as much of a waste of time as watching television. And the interactive nature of the computer also keeps me engaged for much, much longer than the television ever could.

So, naturally many are concerned with computer addition, and before the advent of the Internet, a lot of people were also concerned with television addition, but that has been kind of overlooked since video games and the Internet are gaining ground in the entertainment market.

I think that, at least for me, DVDs (and now also Blue-Ray disks) are among the top time-wasters on my list. Unfortunately, I can get pretty much any show that I like on DVD. Even episodes that have just aired, I can download from BitTorrent. Of course this only perpetuates my addiction to this, especially for shows that are designed to be addictive, like 24.

I’m luck though, that I haven’t fallen victim to computer games, which, fortunately for me, don’t really capture my attention as much as other things. If I was into video games, god forbid, I would probably be building up a character in Everquest, Final Fantasy, or World of Warcraft, and then trying to sell it for a profit. I have a lot of friends who I don’t really talk to that much, and a lot has to do with the fact that they’ve escaped into this damn fantasy world. To each their own, I guess.

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After an approximately 2-week hiatus due to changing web hosts, and
updating the software, the apt36.com
photo gallery is back up and badder than ever.

I’ve posted the most recent pictures from Monster Massive, last week’s
rave, let’s bounce as well as a couple of parties at the Manchester
House, etc. Take a look around: new items are set to appear closer to
the top of the page. Also, when you open an album, wait for the entire
page (all thumbnails) to load, so you can see the cool “lightbox”
effect when you click on an image.

The site should also be
significantly faster than before. This is due to the fact that I have
changed most of my domains over to Dreamhost, which is much
faster than my old host, 1and1. I wasn’t sure if dreamhost would actually be faster, since the sales person I talked to
didn’t really promise me the sky when I asked about performance. I was
a little reluctant to make the switch, since I had been with 1and1 for
over a year, and everything was going ok, aside from the fact that my
gallery wouldn’t run as well as I would have liked for it to run, but
I also wasn’t expecting much more from a shared hosting plan. I’ve
worked in the web hosting business long enough to know that I need a
dedicated server for the kind of shenanigans that I want to do online
(Read the article)

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In biochemistry, a substrate is a molecule upon which an enzyme acts. Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions involving the substrate(s). The substrate binds with the enzyme’s active site, and an enzyme-substrate-complex is formed. The substrate is broken down into a product and is released from the active site. The active site is now free to accept another substrate molecule. An example of a substrate would be milk and the enzyme added would be rennin which causes milk to set.

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According to this article, only “3 to 5 percent ]of mammals] are known to form lifelong bonds”. From an evolutionary point of view, and in some cases even from a social point of view, monogamy is complete bullshit. Think about it: having only one mate to produce offspring is dangerous for the family unit, as well as the species as a whole. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you might be in trouble if your mate is less than perfect. Good thing my mate is perfect.
In addition to being a risk to each other, mammals that practice monogamy are also jealous by nature. Granted, I might fall into that category, a little bit, just a little bit…. but these are social behaviors that are acquired in childhood and adolescence. It seems like, depending on one’s upbringing, an individual can be on either extreme of the spectrum; I don’t think humans or animals are genetically programmed to be jealous or not so jealous. Having said all this, jealousy seems like an obvious waste of time, it gets in the way of things, and makes the community less stable, less productive, and less likely to survive. In species where individuals have many mates, the lineage will not be interrupted if one of the mates is not 100% compatible with another.

But: how is it then, that humans, in comparison to other mammals, are far more intelligent, and have a very high life expectancy and survival rate, even though most humans are monogamous, or at least semi-monogamous. As the article describes, recent research in animal mating behavior sheds some light on these questions. Scientists primarily distinguish between social monogamy and sexual monogamy: sexual monogamy means that an individual will only have sex with one partner over a certain time period, but social monogamy means that an individual will raise children and have a family with only one mate, but will have sex with a number of mates. Sounds appealing, perhaps… but again why are humans so superior, socially, evolutionary, etc? Would it be our downfall if we all stopped being monogamous?

I think that the bottom line is that monogamy, at least among humans, is a tried and true practice. That doesn’t mean that I have to be such a jealous dick sometimes

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You know, I’ve never understood the concept of money. We all know that it is not worth more than the paper it is printed on… plus the ink, and perhaps the labor invested in its production. It has been around long enough, however, that we all put on this elaborate charade, pretending that is is something it’s not. I call bullshit on that. Just because we pretend that money is so precious, doesn’t give it any value whatsoever.

Since money is essentially worthless, it comes as no surprise that throughout history, the concept has gone through various transitions: back in the day, money was used to directly represent stuff, to make trading easier. One coin, for example, would be the same as a chicken, or something stupid like that. It’s a lot easier to move coins around, than chickens, makes sense. Needless to say, each community would have its own currency that was not compatible with other currencies, so it didn’t really make trading between communities any easier. As more and more things were sold, coins would be made of something that had innate value, like gold. So this made it easier to trade all kinds of goods, even among different communities; later, to make it even easier to move around, paper currency was printed, which was representative of a certain amount of gold, but this is where things start to get blurry. The gold, even though it has an ascribed value, is pretty much useless for the average person. Honestly, what is a farmer supposed to do with a brick of gold? Eat it? Does the gold come alive and clean the house? Chickens and maids are useful, gold is not.

Back when everyone was handing their stuff back and forth, in the form of coins, or otherwise, everything was fair and square. Everyone knew exactly how much stuff they had, and how much stuff everyone else has. A chicken was worth just that: a chicken. Everyone needs to eat, so it would pretty much hold the same value to everyone. Granted, there are fatsos who need to eat several chickens in one day, so the value of a chicken to a fatso is less than a normal person. But these differences are relatively minor.

Still with me? Good. Now the more the story goes on, the more stupid it gets: after a while people realized all this, and their solution was to simply get rid of the “gold standard”. What is used instead? Nothing! My econ teacher in high school gave a ridiculous answer to that question: the value of the USD is attained by the faith invested in it by the people. The people, he said, believe in the value of the currency because it has the words “In God We Trust” printed on it (god being me!?); this is obviously nonsense. What about the people who don’t believe in me? They’ll be forever poor? That’s right, if you don’t believe in god, you shall die. Bullshit! Is this a nation of sheep? I think some imbecile came up with this ridiculous idea, and it caught on, it became a buzzword. Kind of like Web 2.0; nobody really knows what it is, but people hear it and use it just to be cool. That’s when things get messed up, like this so-called “economy”, since everyone interprets the concept how they want to interpret it, everyone loses: the discrepancies among the world’s economies, for example, are significant.

Every person in the world, and even some animals, would agree on the value of a chicken, leaving money out of the picture. But one unit of currency means something different to each person, even if they live in the same country.

Chickens and horses and gasoline have real value. Money does not. Or does it? While everyone would agree that paper money has almost no real value, everyone would agree that is is useful. More useful than a chicken of equal value. A chicken is a chicken, but $5 can be anything in that price range! Isn’t that amazing? People, through their collective belief, have created something out of nothing, no matter how stupid it is. If only a handful of people believed in the usefulness of the money everyone has, it would become useless, so if even a part of the population loses faith in their cash, all the cash goes down the proverbial drain, and the shit hits the fan, like in 1929 when the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression. What does this mean? It means that if people can collectively create this, then they can create anything. Does god really exist? If enough people believe in him, yes. Even if there is no actual god with actual “powers”, people trust the cash, which is, according to its own description, backed by god, so is god real? Just as real as the cash. Likewise, if enough people stop believing in god, he will cease to exist, just like the value of money ceased to exist in 1929.

But draw your own conclusions. I have spoken ;-).

Links:

The Mere Thought Of Money Can Make People Selfish: http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/061116_money_matters.html

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Ok, one of the main reasons I haven’t had my own private blog for a long time is because I think they are too pompous; I’ve been happy with the occasional blogging on myspace. Then came apt36.com, which is about to be resurrected, with more pictures and bells and whistles, and faster than ever, so check back there soon. That site did have some blog entries, but most of them were about current parties/events, and related to the ever-so-popular gallery. I might keep that kind of blog around, we’ll see.

Anyway, making a site just for and about myself feels extremely arrogant to me, but you know what, the hell with it. I’m going to have a little fun. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome not to visit this site. I feel that if I’m going to publicly exhibit this pretentious manifestation of vanity, I might as well do it all the way. Of course I welcome contributions from everyone, so please feel free to post comments, register, and if you want, start your own public or private blog, and soon, upload your pictures.

This leads me to my next topic: the “god complex”. Most who know me know that I go by “god” at raves and similar occasions. Please note the spelling: god is all lower-case, as opposed to God, the biblical figure, but more about that later. This is partially motivated by the intent to avoid confusion between the two characters (God and I), without, however, indicating superiority of one or the other. As you may have guessed, the title of this blog is no doubt inspired by this little idiosyncrasy of mine. More soon.

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