Muse – Randomness 12-03-2004

Happy Friday to you all!

DS review Addendums

A few minor things were left out before and I have a few additions to make.

First of all, I forgot to elaborate on the backlighting and a special little feature that I missed in the review. First of all, the backlighting is always on now, with no means that I’ve seen to turn it off from the default options. However Urbz(which I just beat today – Soul Music is the best minigame of them all) had an option to turn the backlighting off. So games might allow you to do it. It still has a good chunk of battery life, so I was well pleased regardless.

Second, the special little feature. If you close up the DS while it’s on, with a game, it auto enters sleep mode, which I surmise involves shutting off both screens, while holding the game in the background. I don’t know if it pauses the game, but you can easily pause, then close the DS if you need to set it aside and haven’t the time to properly save your game and shut down. Very useful.

Now, a little update on my testing of the outdoor capability of the DS. By and large, it’s advisable to not use the DS much out in bright sun. The top screen is reasonably visible in it, when in a good posture, but the lower screen(especially now that I have a screen protector very it, is very hard to make out. I’ve tested this waiting for and riding the bus and found he shaded realm of the bus interior is perfect, unless you get glare from direct sunlight. So for the most part, avoid direct sunlight and take refuge in a shaded area if you’re outside.

Gay Marriage

I’ve heard someone state there is no good argument for gay marriage. I think I have a few little something to consider.

The stabilizing factor of marriage is, I think, what the gay community needs to reign in some of its members. I’ve noted often that people like to point at their promiscuous ways in disdain, but they, as a community, haven’t had the stabilizing contract of marriage to give the stability that heterosexuals enjoy. And even we hetero sorts get wild despite centuries of the marriage contract.

Add to that the general scorn of much of the population, from low key to in your face, full on hatred and you’ve got a recipe for a life full of dysfunction. I’m surprised when I see gay folk who are more sane and well adjusted than the majority of accepted heterosexuals.

Abolishing gay marriage entirely won’t make the issue of homosexuality go away. It’s been here through persecution, secrecy and silence for, I would wager, as long if not longer than marriage. Were there gay cavemen? Maybe, when you see one ask him for me. But in the now, it’s about time that theists throw out their irrational fear of what is, in reality, a very small thing. Just give them stability. I think they’ve earned it.

Political Semantics

Eyeing Zomby’s latest entry brings back a previous forum topic I toyed with before, in which I declared by general dislike of the ever expanding realm of political ideology terminology. It seems that the number of terms for referring to a cluster of people who believe in a certain general subset of ideals has grown far too wide over the years. IN the forum topic, someone was asking about making a little dictionary of all these terms so that the other forum goers could have a fast reference for just what neo-conservative means or Marxist and all the other terms.

I pretty much said we should do away with them altogether. Why? Because its’ this classification tripe that has perpetuated the divisions in our political spectrum. The spectrum shouldn’t be cut up into hard lines of X, Y and Z. This hard division and it’s promotion of group think and ‘party loyalty’ have been a corrupting factor in politics. When people are given big, opposing groups to be a part of, they tend to lose sight of the details of issues before the generality of party warfare.

Think about it, Liberals. When you hear a Conservative speaking, do you always give the fullness of your attention or do you find yourself dismissing them easier and earlier? Conservatives, same question in reverse. I do it sometimes, though I actively seek to refrain from letting said biases effect my thinking. It’s hard, after having been raised in the thick of how things have been for far too long. Getting rid of the party divisions would change that.. would force people to think about the issues, rather than thinking about the parties and where they think they fit in, even when they don’t.

We need to thrust away the hard divisions and let the cloud of political diversity reign naturally. It’s like those grid polls where they put your little dot on between spectrums of liberal to conservative, authoritarian to libertarian. With our hard division, two people in the upper right quadrant are in one group, despite the fact that Person A is in the upper far corner and Person B is in the lowest near corner. In reality, those two people are significantly different.

Its one reason I’ve never associated with a party and will never associate myself with a party. I don’t want to be a representative of any of them. Even though people will likely label me based on a few of my ideals, I resist such pigeonholing. You all should as well. We need political discoursed based off of ideas and ideals, but off of parties and party-line beliefs, which aren’t necessarily shared by the remainder of the party.