The Facts of a Moral World

I just recently watched a video where legendary atheist and scientific skeptic Sam Harris spoke about whether or not science can answer moral questions. Questions also regarding human well-being. Now I suggest that you do indeed go and watch the video as it is an excellent talk and will give you a lot to think about.

Now, it gave me a lot to think about as well after I watched it. Not because of the somewhat new idea that morals could be answered by science or that faith-based morals weren’t the only way for our moral compasses to be guided, but because it was something that I had thought about for as long as I can remember now. When it comes down to it, to simplify it if you will, there is a simple case of right and wrong for us all. And when I say us all, I do not mean us all individually, I mean us all in the greater good of us all. Take for example torturing someone because they are your enemy or because they did something wrong or just because you can. Now it is an easy case for anyone at all with any kind of compassion, empathy and even feelings of pity that says such acts are wrong and should never be carried out. Inflicting pain and suffering upon another person does not in any way fix any problem nor does it help to bring about a solution that isn’t soiled in a background filled with negativity and violence. It is hardly a case for a means to an end. Even if the end is the saving of lives, the means do not justify the ends. Why? Well because it would be hypocritical of us to say on one hand “lets beat the answers out of him” to then on the other hands say “sorry about bruises and the blood, but at least we saved the girl”.

Now some might think well, surely it is ok to do what you have to do in order to get a result that benefits everyone. But everyone minus one person isn’t everyone. We need to as a species learn to know what is right and wrong. We need to know what things in life, what decisions we make will result in a benefit for all concerned and not just for a few and lets forget the rest.

An example of this is simple manners. Saying please and thank you are amongst the easiest and most notable traits of a good person. They are, or at least should be drilled into us as young toddlers and throughout our childhood into adolescence and right throughout our adulthood to the point where they become so common and automatic that we no longer think about them. We just say them as part of our everyday lives. Like breathing and eating and sleeping. So why is it then that we do not give simple answers to moral questions. Why do we not know what really is right and wrong. As Sam Harris explained there are varying answers to what is right and what is wrong. His example of what are good foods to eat was a good one. Yes we know apples are good for you, but they are not the only good food for you. However it doesn’t take a genius to know that fried chips with half a bottle of your favourite sauce, really isn’t good for you. These are simple facts and they can be proven by science.

So the same goes for moral and ethical questions with regards to the well-being of our societies as a whole. In order for us to succeed and flourish as Sam might put it we need to answer these questions more definitively.

I have always said that I have what I call a base set of morals and ethics in which I view the world. Same Harris has finally put up an explanation for it. There simply are good things and there are bad things in this world and we ought to know what they are by now. Yet somehow we seem to want to waste so much precious time on things like revenge and hate and fear that we are constantly handicapping out own moral evolution to the point that we are becoming stagnant.

So the next time you are having a fight with a loved one, or speeding down the street in a busy area of town or perhaps voting for a politician who is giving you a tax cut but is against stem cell research, think long and hard to yourself and work out if really that fight is going to get you anywhere other than upset or that the speed you are travelling at won’t instantly kill some innocent bystander if lose control or that the stem cell research that you voted against didn’t get to cure certain cancers and wonder if really there ought to be a simple right way of doing things.

There is a right way to life and a wrong way to life. The right way is the way in which all involved have an outcome that is positive to them and they bear no guilt for it. Can this be done, I believe it can, but can you?

The Long Road To Happiness……

And I am still on it. I do often wonder if real happiness isn’t about what I have or who I have but more about how I perceive the world so that all that looks dark and menacing, all that feels like it could break you into two, all those that would think to cause you pain and suffering, all that is just plain bad in this world, is actually seen with rose-coloured glasses as being ok. Am I meant to be happy just because? Am I meant perhaps to ignore the bad things in the world that happen to us and find myself in some ever lasting blissful ignorance?

I do have to ask how this is possible? I mean how can one such as myself, one whom I regard as a skeptical thinker, a wise cynic, able to just live in blissful ignorance? Sure the realities to such as myself and those like me, weight heavily upon my very being in a way that in inescapable?

So then, where does this leave me? Trying to escape a reality that I know is harsh and sometimes really uninviting yet at the same time I embrace all its beauty in the same breath as all its maddening darkness. Where do you draw the line?

Depression is like this at times. You never quite know which way to look next. All the more amplified if something goes wrong in your life. If something is added to the mix that just distorts your reality to a point where nothing makes much sense anymore. How do you clear the tracks to the point where you can hear the beat of your heart again and feel alive once more?

I am not sure I have answers for these questions and many more like them. I think sometimes you need to just look on the bright side of life. Easier said than done some would say. However looking is free for all to do, even the blind. It is a state of mind. The mind being a rather powerful tool in your life, more powerful than anything on this planet is capable of producing, often we neglect to use its power. Positive thought processes help us move forward, help us heal even. Healing of the soul is merely a healing of the mind. A hard thing to do if your mind is so mixed up that it has a hard time recognising the good in life, but it is doable. Anything is possible right?

The long road to happiness is just that, a long road, but luckily for us we have two abilities that hold us high above most other species on the planet and they are the ability to make new friends and the ability to remember good times. Just have to remember the good times over the bad. Don’t ever forget the bad though, as they are a way for us to move forward without making the same mistakes. Use them wisely for they are the guiding lights on the path before us, a path so full of treachery, deception, lies and abusive world of the emotions of the mind, that we need these experiences in order to end up finding exactly what it is that we need. In order for us to be happy or at least content within our short lives.

The End.

The Way I think people should act.

So to start off, I just want to say that yes, the title is a little pretentious and yes, it will come across a little self centered and arrogant. But having said that with total honesty, you are all just going to have to get over it. I mean, I have, already.

So what is this blog about? Well its about the way I think some of you should act. I say some of you because the other some of you already do act like this and need no lecture or random drivel from me to enlighten you. However for the rest of you, you need a good kick in the arse with some hefty direction signs painted in glow in the fucking dark paint, to let  you know that you are heading in the wrong direction.

Of course there will be bitching and moaning about some things. But that is kind of obvious when I write these little excerpts of my thoughts.

Where to start? First off the conveyor belt will be teenagers. Seems to me that not so long ago I was one, and even when I was one there were the usual idiots around that you could have quite happily pushed in front of a moving traffic or perhaps wondered over to their parents places to ask where the hell did it all go wrong? It must have screwed up somewhere along the lines? How else do they explain their child’s behaviour.

Ok so that was then, and with any luck the teens of my generation grew out of it. I mean most do, right? Some didn’t however, and it is those that turned to drugs and crime and all things associated with gutter trash and being a loser etc etc. Now onto todays teens. They are far worse. And not because I look at them with hindsight, as if seeing my past misadventures unfolding before me like some visual autobiography, but worse because what they are doing makes the teenagers from my youth seem like holy saints.

They have no respect for anyone, that includes respect for themselves. Their parents, not only did they fuck it all up, but they also gave into bullshit minority groups who cried such things as ban corporal punishment, don’t punish your kids with a good spanking, and threats like touch your kids with anything more than “I am very cross with you young man” kind of tissue punishment, and expect to have them taken from you and told that you are not fit to be their parents, role models and moral teachers. And this prety much opened the flood gates for a whole new generation of insulent little shits that waltz around thinking they are all it. Sure we all thought we were when we were that age too. But most of us had a certain level of respect for not only our elders, but our parents, police, other people on the street. We maybe a little more broad minded these days and a little less right wing conservative, but I would say we turned out pretty damn well considering.

These days however all I see as I walk down the street is trash. So here are a few choice words for any teenager that might read this. And if you know some, feel free to send them this way for some words of wisdom.

Firstly, you are not all it. You are not the be all and end all of everything cool, or any other such word to describe such standing amongst your peers.

Learn to dress yourselves. I like most people with common sense and even a few braincells will tell you that wearing jeans, a classic look for more generations than rock and roll has been around for, are meant to be worn around your waste. Not hanging under your arse’s being constantly pulled up as if you were caught jerking off in the bathroom by your parents. I mean most of you have belts, do you even know what they are for?

Learn some respect. Just because your parents were too fucking stupid to show you some respect with their cotton candy attempt at an upbringing for you, does not mean that you have the right to treat everyone else around you like a piece of shit.

Learn the difference between right and wrong. Do you know what that is? Right isn’t the way you want it and fuck anyone else who gets in the way. And wrong isn’t someone else’s fault and no blame of yours. Right is about that which does not impeach upon others that they might be harmed in anyway, be it emotionally or physically. That your actions do not bring upon anyone, including yourself the pain of loss. Do not steal, lie, cheat, disrespect others, antagonise and attack others with some kind of misconception that what you are doing is right because hey who is going to stop you?!

Wrong is the other end of the spectrum. The intentional cause of pain and grief upon another living person so as to undermine them, and belittle them. To cause pain and agony to another is to inhibit them from living a normal happy life.

I won’t go into what I think about some of the other things you kids wear, but lets just say if there were ever a day of free open mark shooting for the masses, people with sunglasses bigger than their faces and those wearing skin tight jeans with flannies and died black hair would be in my initial targets.

Now I mentioned parents a few times. You lot are next. What the fuck happened? When did you lot lose your balls. When did you all sell your spines? What did your moral backbone do, take a vacation? Learn to discipline your children like normal parents did before you. Learn the difference between right and wrong, and damn well teach your kids. Those of you that have careers and have no time for you kids, you are the worst of the lot. If your careers were so important to you, then kids should never have come into the equation. I mean a lot of these kids these days are not only obnoxious little pricks with egos the size of Everest, but most of them are spoilt little brats that have silver spoons shoved so far up their arses that you lot have lost all ability to reach in and pull them out and give them a taste of reality. Some of you, should never have been allowed to procreate. If you knew you were going to have a career before hand then you should have known your time would have been limited and therefore logically speaking you shouldn’t have had kids till you had time to give to them.

So back to the title of my blog post. The way I think people should act. Well it’s pretty simple really. Act with common sense, this is the very basis of a sensible person. Show some respect, even if you think you are above it all, because you know what, you are not above it all, and you just make yourself look like an idiot.

Have some manners, they are cheap to get, in fact they are free. Please and thank you go a  long way.

Know the difference between right and wrong. Know that causing someone else pain and grief is wrong and not acceptable not right and does not in any way shape or form make you look good.

Learn to think for yourself. Learn to be critical about the world around you and try not to be sucked into all the bullshit that is thrown your way at every corner you turn. Learn to recognise things for what they really are. Sometimes things are just utter bullshit and you need to be able to spot these things from a long way away. Before its too late.

Don’t be a sheep. Don’t wear something just because everyone else has it also. Sure, follow the standard set of laws and do what your parents say and ask, but don’t smoke just cause someone else does and don’t drink(if you are underage) just because you want to fit in with some group. Say no. That is another free to do thing.

Of course there are more things I want to say. But most of all I just want to say, show some respect, know right from wrong and most of all, stop thinking you are  all it, because you are not. Show your parents some respect. Parents, show your kids some respect.

With any luck I will have pissed off someone over what I have written, and this is a good thing. It means that people are thinking that hey he can’t say that about me, he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Well news for you, I do know what I am talking about and there are plenty that will agree with everything I have said. So don’t think for a second that I am alone in the way that I want you all to think.

Have a good day where ever you are in the world and remember, there’s no life quite like your life, so show it some damn respect!!

Ollie

Skeptical Arguments & why we are afraid of them?

I don’t profess to know anything about anything, so let’s make that pretty clear from the outstart. I am not a scientist nor a mathematician nor a physicist or anything rather educationally magnificent.

What I do know however is how we think as humans. Of course this again is merely my own point of view based on my own observations of not only myself making decisions but of those around me as well. And for the part of observing my own actions, this isn’t an easy task at all. In fact it’s hard for anyone to really observe what they are doing from a third person perspective when they are in the act of doing something. But on many occasions I have managed to stop myself mid stride so to speak and ask myself some questions. Why are you doing this? Do you really need to do this? Should you say that? What are the consequences of your actions?

These and many more varying questions which help me to better understand how I work as well as how others work. The major candidate of course to all these questions is “habit”. We are as they say, creatures of habit. Of course we are also creatures of duplication and mimicking. We are by our own nature always looking and searching for answers as to why we are here, what is our purpose, what is my purpose? And along the way we try to decipher these questions by trying different things out. New clothes, new car, new job, new partners, new house etc etc. Trying to find that which suits us best as individuals and sets us apart from the rest and at the same times says to others “I belong in your group, please accept me”.

This brings me to skepticism. And the question, why are we afraid of being skeptics? Firstly why would I ask such a question, and secondly, what makes me think that we are afraid of it?

Well for starters, one thing that jumps out at me, and perhaps some of you, is that our own egos stop us from asking questions. And a sense of self preservation in the eyes of others stops us as well. It seems to take a lot of courage and commitment for us as creatures of habit to change our ways, to accept that we might be wrong and to think outside out own little worlds.

Take for example homeopathy.  Now to all the skeptics and scientists and well people in the know, this is a ridiculous notion if ever there was one. Along the same lines as star signs and acupuncture. Unfortunately thousands upon thousands of people are still pulled into its unproven, evidently baseless claims and are still happy to fork out stupid amounts of cash to what can only be assumed is a placebo affect. One that screams, power of the mind rather than power of the remedy at hand.

So why do people fall for these claims, and why do they throw their money at them in a way that they seem blind to it all. Well my opinion is that the very first time they do it, they are sucked in to the idea by very smart charlatans who you could say, ironically, have the powers of persuasion on their side. They even go about telling friends of the wonderful benefits of such claims, and in an almost carefree manner throw their hard earned cash away as if it wasn’t really theirs in the first place.

Later on though down the track, they come to realise that they had been duped, conned and that they have completely made a big mistake. One which all too often they are too proud and stubborn to admit. So what do they do? They go on as if nothing really happened. They pretend as if they were never scammed out of their money. And should they ever be asked by friends, whom they would prefer to have the status quo left alone? They say it just wasn’t working for them. Or that it was good for a while but it ended up losing its effect in the end.

This goes for most situations where a person is more than likely to be left looking like a fool in front of someone else. Admitting the mistake is far harder to do than to actually cover it up with another lie and go on as if nothing ever happens. So in the end it all boils down to fear.

Luckily for some of us, there are people who ask questions, who want proof, and who will not just take anecdotal and factless based evidence as proof that something works. Like me? And also like those guys and gals at the Skeptic Zone and The Young Ausltralian Skeptics. Both of which can be found via the following links.

The Skeptic Zone
&
Young Australian Skeptics

So if you want an unbiased opinion, with science at its backing and common sense and even some humour thrown in for good measure, please check out these two sites. There are plenty more out there to choose from however, these for me at least, are two Aussie based sites to visit.

I could go on about other reasons as to why we do the things we do, but I merely wanted to make a segway so to speak, to the two links I have provided above. They have podcast that go up on their site bi-weekly I believe, however I am being too lazy to check, but they are well worth listening to. Especially if you want to try living outside your comfort zone, where everything is just a credit card swipe away and your mornings are nothing without your skinny, low fat, soy, low GI, low carb, filtered espresso decaffeinated hot water!!

Ollie – Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

Global Warming: The things we did to change the world!

What is it? Why is it? Can it be fixed? Or will earth just eradicate us like it has so many before that we are now just waiting at the exit door for it to be opened and to be let out?

It has been said recently that one of the best places to find answers is at TED’s. A website for the talks put together each year by what I would call the smartest people on the planet. The wisest people on the planet. The most consciously aware people on the planet.

For those of you out there that feel that you can’t make a difference, that feel no passion for what needs to be done or no turmoil in your stomach’s at whats already been done and isn’t being stopped, there are voices to be listened to, and there are voices that must above all else be heard.

Here are just four of what I would consider the best talks at TED’s in recent times. These are by the way, not only great ideas, but also great solutions that we are all capable of doing. In fact I say we can do at least one of the ideas ourselves from this videos without any outside help. We can not only just choose one either if we so desire, but if only one idea is taken up by all of us, it would make a huge impact on things to come.

As Al Gore states “I wish I could find the words to convey this” when talking about the heroes that we need to make a change for the better and the fact that we have as humans and as people living in a democratic society(here in Australia and in the USA) the capacity and ability to make the choices that will change the world for the better, I too believe that deep down, we can do it. I deny anyone who thinks otherwise.

Please watch them, listen to what they have to say, acknowledge in your minds what exactly is achievable and most of all, find ways in your own lives that mimic if not copy some of the ideas put forth by the following speakers.

Ollie Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

To start,
Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

Shai Agassi: A bold plan for mass adoption of electric cars

Willie Smits: A 20-year tale of hope: How we re-grew a rainforest

Kamal Meattle: How to grow your own fresh air

Fruitful Epiphany

Oh you know how it is….its 1990, you are young and you have a really bad cold and are unable to attend school/work. You have your soup and your flat lemonade at the ready, cause it works!!

There is nothing on tv because in the middle of the day there is always nothing on tv, except of course Days of Our Lives. You have no idea what the story is, but within a few days of coughing and spluttering you know exactly everything that is going on.

Fast forward fifteen years, it’s now 2005, and yet again you have your feet up and are wrestling with a horrible nasty cold and flu. The same one you probably had ten years earlier, except it has travelled all the way around the world and ten years later is has come back to haunt you.

Of course you have upgraded your soup and flat lemonade for several doses of cold & flu pills along with a good 12yr old single malt whiskey and you have nothing other than feeling sorry for yourself but to sit and watch tv all day. Of course it is the middle of the day and as usual there is nothing on the tv except Days of Our Lives. You wonder to yourself, I wonder what has changed? Its been years since I last looked at the show and I was really starting to get into it. I mean I did learn the entire storyline and plot in only three days, but it was catchy. Kind of like that damn chicken dance song they play at almost every function ever organised by mankind himself. *click* goes the remote…..

Suddenly you are having flashbacks!! Your mum walks in the room and hands you another glass of flat lemonade! Your siblings tease you as they run out and grab their school bags and your dad gives you a stern look as if to say, man up son, and you can already hear his “when I was your age” lecture! What’s happening??

Then it dawns on you, nothing has changed. Not a thing. You vaguely remember the characters looking a lot younger, but you do remember them. They are all there!! Even the one that you thought they had killed off and dismembered and thrown into the sea, he is back!! And some girl who was a daughter of a man who ended up being her brother but wasn’t really and they fell in love and then got married, they were there too!!! Along with what you guess mustn’t be their kids but are but are not. Its a little confusing.

It’s this sudden realisation that brings you to a rather fruitful epiphany! Your life has stood still for 15yrs and you haven’t moved forward in the slightest.

Think it might be about time for a career change. Put down the bottle. Sleep better and longer at night. And for the love all that is pure and sacred in this world, take a sleeping pill and sleep through the middle of day time television. You don’t want another groundhog day do you?

Ollie

Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

Moral Empathy

I hate people who take advantage of others in the form of ridicule and self promotion amongst their so called followers. I hate it when a company puts profits first before its members of staff, and I hate it even more when leaders of such companies get big payouts right before things go belly up and everyone loses out.

But why do I hate these things and other such choices people make that seem to be all done on a level of self promotion and self indulgence? Why do I despise people who try to get ahead in life at the cost of others? Morals? Empathy perhaps? Or a bit of both? And where do I get these from? The bible? My parents? My teachers? My friends?

Can I take any of these aspects of my life and still feel so strongly about what I see people doing and would I still consider it as being inherently bad? Does my moral compass become skewed and twisted?

Take for example the argument that if we didn’t have god and/or the so called word of god, known as the bible, we would all fall into chaos and start to annihilate ourselves bit by bit till there was no one left. Now to me this seems a little absurd. For starters, self preservation at the very least would compel us to not fight. For the fear of losing to an enemy who has no fear of death or retribution from any greater power or otherwise is most likely something that we wouldn’t want to confront, so staying away from such individuals would be our main goal. Why? Because we value life. Those that do not, hold far less value for their own, so at the very least we would want to keep on living for as long a we can by avoiding these people.

A second reason would be because of what I call Moral Empathy. Something I am not sure if has a meaning elsewhere, but to be it means this. When you get hurt, you feel it, physically and mentally. Its not something that you ever wish to deal with again, yet at the same time it isn’t something that you can fully remember in both physical form nor mentally either. Yet it is these experiences that we have gone through, that help us to understand the sufferings of others. To feel on a much a deeper level their hurt and anguish.

Take for example the person who gets beaten up after school by bullies. Straight away, those with any kind of Moral Empathy will feel for the person. Like somehow they can feel that person pain. This pain we feel through others, like a surrogate receptacle of emotions that get hurled at us, is the same pain we feel when we go through the same situation ourselves. Now you are thinking we are just empathising with the person, saying to the person for example “its ok, I know how you feel” . But its more than just empathy. Empathy only comes along when your moral compass is set right. Without the moral side of things, the empathy holds no value.

Which brings us back to the question of how could we survive without such moral dictations as those found in the Bible? Easy? No one likes pain and therefore no one would push upon another any pain for fear of pain being pushed back upon them. Avoidance of cruelty is the deterrent that is used to keep our moral compass in check. Sure there will be some who will think to themselves that there isn’t any point to it all so why bother, and just go on a chaotic rampage, but they will soon find that the majority would prefer peace and will more than likely find themselves removed from society. Just like it is done already today.

We simply can’t have morals without empathy and we can’t have empathy without morals. And we get these two aspect of our makeup through the conditioning of thousands of years of trying to get it right, and trying to do right. Sure such books as the Bible may have pushed some of these morals, but they came about well before it was written. So no won’t fall into chaos, and we won’t destroy ourselves in some archaic Neanderthal way.

I am not sure if I have explained my point of view here in the best way possible. I just hope that if you read it you understand that to care about others you have to first care about yourself, and that sometimes you have to feel pain to know that you are both alive and human. Because being human is all about living your life to the fullest.

Ollie

Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

Caring with lies and Being Cruel With The Truth!

Empathy. Something which I think or rather believe I have. But not all the time. I have said this before somewhere, another blog maybe, that there are times when I just don’t care. When empathy gets thrown out the window, along with charm and charisma, sympathy, etc etc etc.

I am sure you all know what I mean. And of course it isn’t like you feel this way all the time, is it? I know I don’t. I feel like being nice plenty of times. Just not all the time.

Being nice, is hard. Being bad is easy. Why is that? In a world more or less dead set on self destruction, and me standing here thinking to myself hey I am a realist, why am I not trying to do better? Am I a hypocrit? Or am I just too cynical now that even I can’t even fool myself into believing that I am a good person. That what I say and do in the world matters and is noticed by others as being good or at least concieved by others as being good, is that enough, or am I just like everyone else in the end? In it for myself? I must be.

What other reason do I have to exist in this world other then for myself. If not for myself then who? Surely I am more important than any of you. What makes any of you more special than me? If I wasn’t special in my own unique one of a kind way, then why was I even born? And where does that leave identical twins.  They must all be twisted neurotic self obsessed freaks by the time they grow up. Each one having their own individual fan in the other sibling, a fan and admirer like no one else on this planet could have. Not even celebrities who have people that stalk them and get plastic surgery just to look like them.

Ok sorry I am rambling. Where was I? Oh yes, caring. Pretending to care. Ok so here is something to ask yourself. Why was it that on Wednesday when you went to work all cheerful and happy that you thought to yourself a certain person is nice, that you like them and you had a laugh and all was great, then on Thursday, you couldn’t care less about them and right now if they lost a loved one you would think to yourself, get over it!? Now you might think thats a little harsh. But the reality is, most of you have thought this from time to time. So I have to ask, why bother pretending to care in the first place?

Someone said to me, that I was just like House, from the show. If there was anyone that I could be described perfectly as being just like in all ways, it would be House. And I have to agree. Call me bitter, call me nasty, call me cruel and unusually confrontational. But most of all call me honest. Especially when I am being nasty. Those other times when I laugh and all is great, really, it isn’t, and I am just lieing to your face and your sucking it up like a baby with a bottle of warm milk. It feels nice, its warm on the back of your throat, so its easy to swallow, unlike when I am being honest. Then its like sharp pieces of ice that scratch and rip as you try to swallow it.

Having said all of that, I have to say I value friends. Real friends. Those that I can talk to, that I can communicate with on a level no one else can. And those that can in some ways understand me. Not many can. Not even I can understand me really, but hey I haven’t been around long enough to really work that one out.

Anyway, have a great day, really. I mean it, honest truth straight from the heart, have a great day. Just don’t tell me about it and expect me to honestly care. Unless it changes the way I think and makes me a better person, save it for someone who does care. Just like this blog won’t make any of you more honest about your dealings with the people around you, having a great day won’t make me feel any better either.

Ollie

Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

iI’m iJust iLike iEveryone iElsei!i!i!

I hate being a sheep. I hate being like everyone else. Sure I like some things that other people do for sure. If I didn’t I would be completely devoid of anything remotely resembling humanity. It’s in my nature to want to discover new things. Even as I do so often like to sit in front of my pc rather then head out into the world to devourer all the information food my brain needs, I still need the occasional kick back to reality. This time around though it is something that I thought I would never get. Maybe due to funds maybe due to my complete disregard and jovial hate for anything that is based on or is derived from a Mac!

So what did I pull on my woolie jumper for this time, just to be like everyone else on the crazy bandwagon that is “the herd”. I bought an iPhone. 16gb black version. It’s slick. It’s shiny. Its easier to use than a knife and fork. It’s based on Mac, so you should really expect that after all. I have only had it for less than 24 hours and already I have added my phones contacts, assigned a few contacts with different ring tones and configured all the other options on it. Options like email and the weather reports and date and time. I have gone searching and I have found(on iTunes) new apps to play with. A lot that I got put onto by a mate how loves his iPhone more then well, something he loves less.

So what does this mean for my fragile uniqueness in this world. Well it means nothing really. I bought it because I wanted a new phone. Because I love gadgets. Especially electronic ones. I also like to be able to stay in contact with people that I know via the net. Being able to twitter for example is now important to me. At least for the time being. That is of course unless something else cool comes my way to grab my attention. I stayed away from the iPhone till now too because every man and his dog had to have one when they first came out. Now, I have one after waiting, I don’t feel like I got it just because everyone else did. The iPhone, along with I suspect my other choice on the day, the Blackberry, are quite easily revolitionising the way people connect with the world. First there was mail, then morse code, then phone and radio, followed by TV and video, then came the Internet( Thanks Tim Berners-Lee). Now of course there is the whole wi-fi on the fly get your net fix high, with products like the iPhone and the Blackberry and other various imitations and versions that do the same thing more or less.

I went iPhone, and so far so good, but still too early to tell if I will stick with it, get the next version and so on and so forth. It can some do some really cool things. There are appz that can control profession lighting rigs, and other various profession applications. But there are a heap of cool appz to keep the brain occupied for days and days.

Should you get one? How the hell should I know. This isn’t a review. I am just saying that I got one. That reminds me, time to jump onto twitter/facebook via the iphone to tell everyone else that I got one. Word will get around that I am just like everyone else.

Ollie

Remember, there’s no life quite like your life!

In the News Today….

Ok so I am at work. Work, not all fun and games, not always exciting, not always the most stimulating activity for the brain. So whilst at work, I often(as often as only just recently started, but it’s becoming a bit of a trend for me) read www.news.com.au. I read this particular page because it’s one of only a handful that I am able to access from work. Stupid Internet filtering you could say.

So I was reading the news today and one of the news items was about the Rudd & Obama meeting they had and how apparently they are political “soul mates”. Typical bullshit reporting by the media. Many comments on the article arguing my point numerous times over. There was also a meeting of great minds thrown in for good measure.

The media, why does it do what it does? Could easily be argued that we love a good story, but more so we love a hyped up over the top bullshit story far more. The need for the writers of these stories to not only try to convey the actual events, but to also add their own icing on the cake self opinionated views, really astounds me at times. From my point of view, I want fact, in point form if that was possible.

How often do you read articles where you wish you could just get a run down of all the facts without any self righteous opinionated crap from the writer? The pointless innuendo that comes oozing off of the writers pen tip, that seems to turn an article more about them then the actual facts of the article. Like I said, give me a point format list of facts. So then I can insert my own opinion which I can then keep to myself unless someone actually asks me for it!

Now you are probably thinking, where is my proof where are my examples etc etc. I really don’t think that is necessary, as all you need do is pick up or head to any news website and you will find exactly what I am talking about. Maybe a new type of news needs to be written. One that has simple but elegant titles and straight forward facts and truths. Something like for example “Bin Laden found” along with point format facts like -Bin Laden found in Afghanistan hillside bunker -Bin Laden Captured by US/AU forces -22 terrorist were killed -14 injured -2 US personnel killed by mortar during 2 hour standoff prior to capture. That’s it. The end. Anything else is likely trivial. Maybe a short briefing at the end with possible dates for court or other relevant tidbits of information.

Perhaps in this world of need to know more then we really need to know or care about I am asking too much. Perhaps I need to chill out and only read articles with the view that I am going to have to skim over a lot of bullshit to get to the parts that matter, and just maybe I should get off my high horse? no thanks, I like it up here, the air is cleaner up here in the higher altitudes of self righteous pretentiousness.

Ollie

Have a great day and remember, there’s no life quite like your life!