A goal I set for myself back when I was in my 20s was that I would be resolved not to stagnate in the present as technology moved quickly into the future. I saw around me a world where those over 50 were confused by such new-fangled devices as the video tape recorder or the handheld calculator.
The VCR, in particular, became part of a running joke. It was the device that baby boomers and senior citizens either didn’t own, or if they did, the clock on the front would perpetually blink 12:00.
I not only mastered the operation of my VCR I was among the first to adopt the new digital watch with the LED display. If Kojak was wearing one, it was good enough for me. It only bothered me a little that it took two hands to check the time and I could forget about knowing the time of day in the bright sunlight.
As I enter the middle of my sixth decade of life, I still try to keep up with the times and not become an old fogy. But I’ve noticed it’s getting harder to do. As technology advances faster than my ability, or inclination, to read about it, I find myself being bombarded with terminology I’m not familiar with.
It’s true I haven’t sent a check to pay a bill since 1988. Why write paper checks when it’s faster, cheaper, and easier to send money electronically? And my entire music collection is on my computer. I don’t buy CDs anymore; I download.
But still, some of the terms I read about are foreign to my ears. I find myself having to research these new additions to the technology lexicon almost on a daily basis.
One area of technology that I haven’t kept up with, though, is gaming. I tried. Believe me; I tried really hard back in the 1980s to stay up to date by becoming a gamer. I owned the first Pong game console. It was actually fun, for awhile. I played Space Invaders and Asteroids on my Atari. But I quickly tired of those games.
As games became more complex and I found myself having to use more and more of the little buttons and sticks on the remote control to clear a level of play, I decided it just wasn’t worth the time or effort. When my son was seven, he could beat my butt playing Super Mario Brothers. So I retired from gaming permanently, or so I thought.
My daughter, who is a senior in college, came home a couple of weeks ago saying that she really wanted us to get a Nintendo Wii. I told her I wasn’t into gaming and would not be playing any with her. So if she got one, she would play it solo.
But when I went down to a family gathering for New Years, my nephew had brought one to the party. I played bowling and golf. I have to admit, it was fun and much more intuitive than the games I remember trying to learn a couple of decades ago.
There was no complicated game controller with a zillion buttons to learn. It was like a TV remote and had only a few buttons. The game is played by moving the remote control around. When you roll a bowling ball, you go through the same motion with your hand as you would if you were actually holding a bowling ball in it. The same is true for golf, baseball, or any of the other games.
There were no levels to clear and nobody to shoot. Of course those types of games are available for the Wii, but I won’t be buying any. And, yes, I did purchase the game console for my daughter and me.
It’s a nice diversion from television, even if my television is a flat-panel HDTV home theater system with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, complete with an up-converting DVD player and recorder. And nothing on my system flashes 12:00.
It might be getting harder to keep up, but I’m still hanging in there.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
My Wish List for 2008
When New Year’s Day has come and gone I wonder how many resolutions will have already been broken. It’s one reason I don’t like making resolutions. It’s for the same reason I rarely make promises. Despite one’s best intentions, sometimes the saying is far easier than the doing.
But that doesn’t stop me from creating a wish list for the coming year. I did that last year, and as stated in my last column, very few of my wishes for 2007 were granted. Still, there was some progress on a couple. So I’ve decided to keep wishing for what I listed last year and add a few new wishes for 2008.
These, of course, represent things that I wish would come to pass. Others’ opinions will vary. Opinions are like, well, bowel movements. Everybody has them.
My first, but not necessarily most important wish for the coming year is for everyone to stop writing checks at the checkout stand. It’s woefully annoying to those standing in line behind the offender.
Don’t people understand that debit cards can be used exactly like checks, but they are much faster and easier? While waiting in line a Wal-Mart yesterday, I found myself in the express lane behind a middle-aged woman who was writing a check and conversing with the cashier at the same time. After writing in the name of the store, the amount, the date, and signing her name, she had to wait while the clerk ran it through the printer and then check her identification.
When it was my turn, I swiped my debit card while the clerk scanned my items. When she was finished, I was finished. All she had to do was give me my receipt. For those who like recording their transactions in a check registry, you can still do that. Just drop the stupid checks, please.
My second wish for 2008 is for people who haven’t mastered the nuances of driving to just stay off the road. I get tired of waiting behind people turning left at one of those traffic signals that have a left-turn arrow, but no red light for the turn. The rule of thumb is, if you don’t see a red light, you can go ahead and turn if there is no oncoming traffic. You don’t have to sit there and wait for the next green arrow.
Next on my list of wishes is one for education. I wish religious groups would stop trying to infiltrate public schools with their dogma.
There is nothing they won’t try. One evangelical organization has even built a fine museum in Kentucky. Its exhibits look as though they are based on real scientific principles. But nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in the museum, no matter how scientific it looks, is based on Scripture, which has no corroborating evidence other than itself.
If conservatives want to build shrines to their religion, that’s fine. Just label them as religious institutions so that children and naïve adults won’t get confused.
That brings me to my last wish for the coming year, one that admittedly is a pipe dream more than a bona fide wish. But I’ll wish it anyway.
I wish that all fundamentalists, whether Christian, Muslim, or some other belief system based on the supernatural that also has a fundamentalist element would simply admit that everything they preach is nothing more than what I’m writing here, an opinion.
People ask me why I’m against religion so much. I tell them that I have no problem with people believing in whatever supernatural force they wish. It’s America and we have the freedom to believe in anything, or not.
My problem is that, although none of these fundamentalists have a problem saying their belief system is based on faith, they still insist that it is absolute truth. It’s fine to believe something to be true without evidence; it’s quite another thing, however, to call it factual.
Faith is what you believe without facts or evidence. You just choose to believe it, for whatever reason. Almost by definition, then, faith is opinion, because it is not support by facts or evidence.
I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with churches and their museums if they all exhibited clear signs at the door saying that what is espoused therein is opinion, based on nothing but antiquated belief systems and not supported in any way by empirical data or facts.
I told you it was a pipe dream.
But that doesn’t stop me from creating a wish list for the coming year. I did that last year, and as stated in my last column, very few of my wishes for 2007 were granted. Still, there was some progress on a couple. So I’ve decided to keep wishing for what I listed last year and add a few new wishes for 2008.
These, of course, represent things that I wish would come to pass. Others’ opinions will vary. Opinions are like, well, bowel movements. Everybody has them.
My first, but not necessarily most important wish for the coming year is for everyone to stop writing checks at the checkout stand. It’s woefully annoying to those standing in line behind the offender.
Don’t people understand that debit cards can be used exactly like checks, but they are much faster and easier? While waiting in line a Wal-Mart yesterday, I found myself in the express lane behind a middle-aged woman who was writing a check and conversing with the cashier at the same time. After writing in the name of the store, the amount, the date, and signing her name, she had to wait while the clerk ran it through the printer and then check her identification.
When it was my turn, I swiped my debit card while the clerk scanned my items. When she was finished, I was finished. All she had to do was give me my receipt. For those who like recording their transactions in a check registry, you can still do that. Just drop the stupid checks, please.
My second wish for 2008 is for people who haven’t mastered the nuances of driving to just stay off the road. I get tired of waiting behind people turning left at one of those traffic signals that have a left-turn arrow, but no red light for the turn. The rule of thumb is, if you don’t see a red light, you can go ahead and turn if there is no oncoming traffic. You don’t have to sit there and wait for the next green arrow.
Next on my list of wishes is one for education. I wish religious groups would stop trying to infiltrate public schools with their dogma.
There is nothing they won’t try. One evangelical organization has even built a fine museum in Kentucky. Its exhibits look as though they are based on real scientific principles. But nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in the museum, no matter how scientific it looks, is based on Scripture, which has no corroborating evidence other than itself.
If conservatives want to build shrines to their religion, that’s fine. Just label them as religious institutions so that children and naïve adults won’t get confused.
That brings me to my last wish for the coming year, one that admittedly is a pipe dream more than a bona fide wish. But I’ll wish it anyway.
I wish that all fundamentalists, whether Christian, Muslim, or some other belief system based on the supernatural that also has a fundamentalist element would simply admit that everything they preach is nothing more than what I’m writing here, an opinion.
People ask me why I’m against religion so much. I tell them that I have no problem with people believing in whatever supernatural force they wish. It’s America and we have the freedom to believe in anything, or not.
My problem is that, although none of these fundamentalists have a problem saying their belief system is based on faith, they still insist that it is absolute truth. It’s fine to believe something to be true without evidence; it’s quite another thing, however, to call it factual.
Faith is what you believe without facts or evidence. You just choose to believe it, for whatever reason. Almost by definition, then, faith is opinion, because it is not support by facts or evidence.
I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with churches and their museums if they all exhibited clear signs at the door saying that what is espoused therein is opinion, based on nothing but antiquated belief systems and not supported in any way by empirical data or facts.
I told you it was a pipe dream.
Friday, December 21, 2007
I Wished upon a Star, but Nothing
Last January I wrote in one of my columns that I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I did publish a wish list for the coming year. This was a list of things from the local to the global level that I, personally, would hope to see some progress in.
Obviously, I wasn’t naïve enough to suppose that all my wishes would be fulfilled within 2007, but I was hoping there would be some progress made toward my eventual wish fulfillment.
So, in reflecting back on 2007, let’s take a look at what, if any, progress has been made toward making my wishes come true.
The short answer is, precious little. It’s no big surprise, but somewhat disappointing. Still I hold out hope and carry over these wishes into 2008.
Locally, I wished for increased growth and development within Edinburgh proper and the Edinburgh school district. I don’t see much evidence that significant growth has taken place over the past year. It is nice, though, to see new commercial development on the south end of town, including a mall expansion.
A wish I had for the state General Assembly was for it to pass, or at least begin considering, legislation that would ban all smoking in public buildings and within enclosed places, like cars, when there are children present.
The state has done nothing. But localities are continuing to jump on the no-smoking bandwagon. Bloomington is especially friendly to smoke-free environments as it is currently considering a ban on smoking in cars when children are present.
I was also hoping that, nationally, the new Democratic Congress would pass legislation overturning the decree of the almighty Bush monster that prohibited funding for stem cell research. And, in fact, Congress did pass such legislation, twice. But they didn’t have enough votes to override Bush’s veto. So his self-proclaimed, all-encompassing personal judgmental morality still reigns supreme.
I was also hoping Congress would allow the No Child Left behind Act to expire. Apparently, I won’t get my wish there, either. But there may be some changes in the legislation that may more closely reflect the reality of education instead of mandating a pipe dream.
I also wished that world leaders would get together and start seriously planning for the use of alternative fuels that won’t pollute the environment or exacerbate global warming. There may be a start in that area, but only a start. And the Bush administration is continuing to do whatever it can to make sure America doesn’t contribute to the progress.
After all, it’s the unspoken position of the Bush administration that we don’t need to save the future for our kids since the Rapture is surely upon us. Which leads me to my main wish for next year, and that is the next president will have a modicum of common sense and logic, and that his, or her, mind will be open to rational thought processes. He, or she, should also keep their religious beliefs out of the Oval Office.
But I’ll have a fuller list of wishes for 2008 coming up next month.
Obviously, I wasn’t naïve enough to suppose that all my wishes would be fulfilled within 2007, but I was hoping there would be some progress made toward my eventual wish fulfillment.
So, in reflecting back on 2007, let’s take a look at what, if any, progress has been made toward making my wishes come true.
The short answer is, precious little. It’s no big surprise, but somewhat disappointing. Still I hold out hope and carry over these wishes into 2008.
Locally, I wished for increased growth and development within Edinburgh proper and the Edinburgh school district. I don’t see much evidence that significant growth has taken place over the past year. It is nice, though, to see new commercial development on the south end of town, including a mall expansion.
A wish I had for the state General Assembly was for it to pass, or at least begin considering, legislation that would ban all smoking in public buildings and within enclosed places, like cars, when there are children present.
The state has done nothing. But localities are continuing to jump on the no-smoking bandwagon. Bloomington is especially friendly to smoke-free environments as it is currently considering a ban on smoking in cars when children are present.
I was also hoping that, nationally, the new Democratic Congress would pass legislation overturning the decree of the almighty Bush monster that prohibited funding for stem cell research. And, in fact, Congress did pass such legislation, twice. But they didn’t have enough votes to override Bush’s veto. So his self-proclaimed, all-encompassing personal judgmental morality still reigns supreme.
I was also hoping Congress would allow the No Child Left behind Act to expire. Apparently, I won’t get my wish there, either. But there may be some changes in the legislation that may more closely reflect the reality of education instead of mandating a pipe dream.
I also wished that world leaders would get together and start seriously planning for the use of alternative fuels that won’t pollute the environment or exacerbate global warming. There may be a start in that area, but only a start. And the Bush administration is continuing to do whatever it can to make sure America doesn’t contribute to the progress.
After all, it’s the unspoken position of the Bush administration that we don’t need to save the future for our kids since the Rapture is surely upon us. Which leads me to my main wish for next year, and that is the next president will have a modicum of common sense and logic, and that his, or her, mind will be open to rational thought processes. He, or she, should also keep their religious beliefs out of the Oval Office.
But I’ll have a fuller list of wishes for 2008 coming up next month.
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