Geographical boundaries on the internet just encourage piracy

The biggest thing I can think of that actually encourages piracy is the locking of content due to your location in the world.  Netflix does it, Hulu, Amazon ... the list goes on.  Many services that people across the world will happily give up money for are locked to American users.

This is partly because of the whole has to be censored for your area of the world type deal.  Every country has different censorship laws.  So every item of media has to be censored to that country before release.

But what if, this is a novel idea here, we did this crazy thing of letting people decide for themselves what is appropriate to watch.  I can understand censorship in wanting to censor things like kiddie porn, seriously only sick people look up that stuff and frankly if your caught doing it you should be turned over to the community you reside in for punishment (I'm sure that community can come up with some very creative ways to punish someone who would even think of doing that to their children).

But lets be honest here.  Legal pornography (you know the type between two consenting of age adults) isn't exactly hard to find.  There is endless websites now dedicated to the amateur porn stars of the world.  Most of them free.  And there is a very long line of people wanting their two minutes of porn fame.  This fact is actually killing the porn industry but that's something for another day and probably not a rant I will do.

But my point is I have seen a penis in a video tape.  I have seen a boob.  I have seen a vagina.  These are not new sights.  I'm married.  I've seen my husband's.  Hell I've had to look at my own bits in the mirror my whole life.  I've seen pornography.  So none of this is new.

As for violence ... well most movies now days take the cake.  There is very few movies that can make my stomach churn now days.  I would have to say the saw series is about my limit.  Most people would say I'm a pussy for admitting that, but hell have you actually watched the brutality in those movies?  Not my cup of tea but you know its someone else's.  The human centipede comes to mind as another movie that I don't really care for.  I think South Park did a much better job anyway with that movie.

Then again movie studios are putting out dribble like Twilight.  That's probably worse that the two examples above.  Bout the only movies that make me want to puke.  Yet those pieces of trash which destroy the whole movie making industry by being mass produced money making machines rather than true art (or failing true art something that doesn't kill brain cells for an hour and a half).  So I don't know which is more scary ... the destruction of ever known piece of vampire mythology by a woman who cared more about her bank account or a line of surgically grafted together humans giving permanent ass to mouth.

So the real point I'm working towards here is that censorship laws are a bit out dated when you consider what they are really for.  Limiting the amount of filth on your TV screen.  Its not hard to legitimately find alternative sources of some of the most horrific or sexual ideas around.  Movie studios have been pumping these out for years.  All censorship laws are doing is preventing access to services that the world is crying out for.

So if I want to go on to Netflix and pay and be a good little bunny and give up my money to view media content, if I'm outside America I have to trust these dodgy VPN networks to mask my physical location.  Not all VPNs are dodgy, but lets face it you are routing every piece of your internet usage via a third unknown party that doesn't really have to adhere to legalities like large corporations do.  You have to select probably a bit of a fringe VPN because ones supplied by large corporations would quickly pick up on you being dodgy and ban you or send around the FBI to cart you of to Guantanamo Bay.

Strictly speaking using a VPN to access Netflix for instance from another country is a legal grey area.  Companies like Netflix will say that its against their policies but in all honesty if they catch someone doing it what are they going to do?  If I was them, I was give them a warning and then forget about them.  Why do I really care where in the world someone is as long as I'm getting my fees?  They are paying for it, the only issue is they aren't in the right part of the world.  And is that really enough to turn away a paying customer?

And movie studios ... what are they going to do?  Come down hard on someone who is actually paying for their content?  They weren't popular when they were suing kids for copyright infringement or old ladies for downloading porn (old ladies who had trouble switching on the computer in the first place let alone finding a torrent site) so how popular do you think they will be if they sued someone who was paying for their content?

At the end of the day, services like Netflix and Hulu and so on are the way of the future.  And I still think we should consider this - let the people choose what is appropriate for them to view.  And until these services are equal everywhere, piracy will exist because placing a boundary only means that users have to find another way around it.

Then again I worked for a retailer who sold video games.  The number of parents that abused us for not selling R18 rated games to them for their 5 year old child was unbelievable.  So maybe the human race is not quite ready to be responsible and decide for themselves ...

A case for piracy in games being bad

What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?

So I came by this little article in my travels.  It made me smile.  This fits right in with an earlier post about creative ways that game development companies have come up with to screw over pirates.  Of course this is a sort of in your face this is what you are doing to us.  A bit of what goes around comes around.

We will all admit that piracy has now become so common place that if a person doesn't pirate stuff then they at least know someone who does and where to get it.  I recall one company I worked for where on night shift it unusual for there not to be a large hard drive of pirated content being passed around.  And by large we are talking in excess of 100 gig.  Everyone else brought in their own large hard drive and the work computers soon became content copying machines.  No one even thought about it.  Occasionally there was the odd joke about the sheer amount of piracy that went on in the company but no one even blinked.  Even management was in on the act, they would actively look for people with the best content.

There was no need to download it yourself in this situation, the chances are someone else had done so already and was willing to share.  What better way to earn brownie points with management than to be the source of their favorite TV shows, movies, music and so on.

I believe now days you would be hard pressed to find any person who hasn't pirated at least one item in their life time.  Copying a CD for instance.  The grandparents who didn't know any better when their grand kids put something on their computer.  The kids who pass around copies of their fave songs.  Its everywhere.

What this article attempts to highlight is that given the chance people would rather steal something that pay for it.  Fair enough, given half the chance we would rather keep our few dollars in our pockets and get it for free.  And who wouldn't rather get something for free.  A lot of people have to work an hour to pay $8 USD  for the game mentioned in the article.  A lot of people in the US however would probably have to work a couple hours to make that money.  When you think like that then you realize why people would be reluctant to shell out for a game that's only a couple dollars in value.

The game industry however is like a lot of media industries.  Every country has its own rules.  So what flies in America might not in Britain for instance.  So if you want to view this release in its original format (The latest iteration of the Mortal Kombat series comes to mind here) you don't have much choice but to pirate if you live in a country that has a stricter system in place for media.  For instance a number of games that were popular (Grand Theft Auto 4, Mortal Kombat) but initially banned in Australia until they were censored because of their graphic content were available through places like eBay or other online stores based in other countries.  If you ordered from one of these locations then you could get thrown in jail in Australia for importing explicit banned content.  However if you illegally download it then the chances they will catch you out are slim to none.

These are a couple of the motivating factors for piracy.  There are many more.  Being cheap right up there.  But if you consider the second motivation, the one where the pirate doesn't want a censored version, then there will always be a market for pirated media because lets face it, not everyone wants the sanitized church version and they would like to be able to make up their own minds about things.  Its the ones who don't actually play the games but blab on about kids getting access to this stuff that sanitize things.  See a previous post here for a rant on that one.

However I do have sympathy for the indie developer.  Games, unlike other media content, don't really have any other streams of income other than charging players for a copy.  Music has their tours, movies have movie theaters  TV shows have their adverts.  Games don't really have a lot else.  In fact a lot of software doesn't.  Unless they go the path of the whole social pay per play route.  Then I just walk away from the game.  If I'm gonna give my hard earned money for a game at least make it something worth my time and not the time wasters that games like Farmville are.  Farmville is just to fill in the void that exists between the cradle and grave and I frankly have better things to do with my time.  (I was unemployed once and sunk a great deal of time into this game and have now seen the light.  Luckily I was too broke to sink any money into it)

So in the case of games I would actually be on the side of the developer.  Especially an indie developer.  Indie game houses are the ones that give us the best and freshest ideas.  They don't have the stock standard formulas in place, the can experiment and play and give us a game that is worthy of our time.  They deserve our support and our $8.  They are the ones that will save us from the void of pay per play Farmville like games and save our Facebook news feeds from endless spam about how such and such got a new cow for their farm.

In the case of a game with DRM ... that is just crying out to be hacked to teach anyone with online DRM not to mess with their player base.

MMO RPGs - how to make the anti social members of society even more so

I play World of Warcraft.  I have since about a month after it came out.  That's nearly 10 years of my life I have dedicated (in parts) to this game.  Like a smoker trying to give up cigarettes I tell myself "I'm cancelling my account for good now" only to return next patch/expansion etc.

I owe World of Warcraft a lot.  I met my husband in this game.  When I was a lonely girl stuck at home I had a world full of horny nerds who's only requirement for a girl friend was A) a World of Warcraft account and B) breathing.  The breathing part was probably optional in a lot of cases.  Sometimes I wish that was a joke.  Having played the roles of healer, main tank, off tank, dps, raid leader, healer leader, dps leader, guild master etc (there's probably others) at various points in the game I can speak with alot of authority on how a single female fares when chucked into a mass of horny, lonely single guys who can only get kicks from their computers.

To be fair some of them were actually good looking.  Some of them well we'll move on.  Most of them fell in love in all of two seconds.  Like I said ... breathing is optional if they meet one of the fictitious women who are single and play WoW.

But I digress.  My rant today is how this game (and probably other MMOs) are making this anti society section of society worse.

While I was pottering away in an instance on my hunter I was watching the snappy remarks scrolling up my screen.  The tank of the group didn't really know what he was doing.  Which gave the other members of the group (an instance group contains five people for those who don't know - a tank (someone to run around basically yelling "Kill me!  Kill me!", a meat shield effectively), a healer (person who keeps everyone else alive and is generally very squishy) and three DPS (damage per second aka the people who get shit done)) licence to be utter arse holes to the tank.

The tank was one of this green crop that has been coming through the game.  They didn't play each expansion to death because they have joined when the level cap is higher than said expansion.  Therefore they are unfamiliar with the fights.  And some fights just cannot be face rolled.  Most but you know if your experienced (or out gear the instance) enough you can get away with it.

They were calling him stupid, wanting to kick him from the group and generally being wankers.

So why can they do this?

Well because of a handy little tool called dungeon finder.  You sign into a queue, which is across multiple servers, and you are randomly assigned to a group.  The chances are you all come from different servers (realms what ever) so the chances you have of interacting again are almost nil.

So for about 10-20 mins (depending on the group) you are with four other people who are littered somewhere in the world.  You will never know anything more about them than their names and classes in World of Warcraft.  Then you will abandon the group after you have completed your instance (dungeon or what ever) and probably never encounter that person again.

I have noticed that there is a distinct increase in the wanker as a result.  The troll.  The A hole.  The prick you would never give time to in real life.

Why?  Because after those 10-20 mins you'll never ever see said person again.  Unless you have a photographic memory to remember all the names of all the people you have ever played against and just happen to stumble upon this person again, you are probably never going to interact again.  So why be polite and civil?

These people that play this game, on the whole, are usually egotistical at best.  I would say around 90% of the players I have spent any real amount of time with in raids or what not have been egotistical narcissistic pricks who get off on measuring their e-peens compared with others.  If you're not good enough you get kicked out of the play group (guild).  If they get bored, you get kicked out.  Or picked one.  Even I, as a female (which you think would give me untouchable status (and to be honest most of the time it does)) have suffered from the brutal attacks of people who just see a few pixels on the screen.

My husband, who is considered one of the best paladins on our server (not many can beat him in healing or tanking ... I'm talking only maybe a couple of people) has suffered from the narcissistic personalities in the game.  He was often used and blackmailed into raiding or performing in game tasks so that others could further their agendas.  When your tank or healer carries and entire raid ... why not?

Now with these queues ... civility is out the window.  If your a troll in one raid, you get kicked, you wait half an hour, then go back and do it again.  When there was no queue like this and you had to rely on your guild to get into a raid, well this thing didn't happen ... much.  One of the first guilds I was in there was a bug that took all the armor from a raid boss and put it on free for all (anyone can roll for it).  One lovely person rolled need while everyone else politely passed.  He took all the armor from a difficult boss and left the guild and logged off.  Needless to say his raiding career ended there as word quickly spreads in an isolated group of people and other guilds soon learned of his betrayal.

But take away this feed back loop and what do you have?  You just have a system where people can get jerks ... and get away with it.

I propose this makes people who don't have a lot of social skills to begin with worse.  Because humans don't seem to be happy unless they can push the boundaries of decency and morality.  In a world with none of that then I can't see how humans can win.

A change of name ... but not a change of content

Hi all.

I have decided to update the name of this blog to something for relevant.

It seems I get more attention for my rants on digital content ie DRM and piracy.  So I have changed the name to reflect this a bit better.  And hopefully get a few more hits.

Don't worry, if I see something I think needs addressing that's important in the news I certainly won't hesitate.  But I give what the masses ask for.

Same great content, just a new label.

In a couple days I will change the link to this blog.

Cheers and thanks for all the fish.

A little bit more on DRM

I think this more than makes it's point.  You have a busy life, you get only a few minutes to use it wisely.  Then that game you brought the other day that you thought would be a great way to fill in a couple minutes of your time does this to you.  That one little tiny spark of happiness in the otherwise bleak world.

Ultimately I have seen better ways to protect content then DRM.  This punishes the working man who gets up and goes to work for his family.  He can grab a couple mins here and there and the last thing he needs is a half hour wait to play a game that shouldn't really be online in the first place.  The gaming company gets the cash but the user gets no experience.

The best way I saw to protect content was used in the Batman game Arkham Asylum.  When the game was pirated, there was a piece of code that figured this out and Batman's cloak repeatedly opened and closed when you attempted to fly.  Which meant you could no longer fly.  Which meant you could no longer complete certain aspects of the game.  The game is still usable to other people who actually shelled out for the game and the pirate gets the crap copy.  This creativity I actually applaud   Its just the sort of thing that makes you smile.  Especially when reading forums of pirates seeking help to resolve the problem.

Another anti piracy tactic used what in Command and Conquer, Red Alert 2.  After 30 seconds of loading a map all your bases would explode.  But then again this sort of thing just feeds the trolls and pirates of the world by them making it their epic quest in life to see how fast they can destroy their bases before the anti piracy script kicks in.

Nintendo probably came up with the cruelest anti piracy option.  In Earthbound, they created a game that was nearly impossible to play if it was detected that it was a pirated game.  Fair enough, some people would have enjoyed the challenge.  That was until the last boss.  When the game crashes, then deletes all the saved files.  Ouch.  I imagine there was a few broken gameboys at this point.

You can check out some other hilarious anti piracy options here : 6 Hilarious Ways Game Designers Are Screwing With Pirates

My point here today is that always on DRM in games is sloppy and lazy.  Its like "well we couldn't be bothered coming up with anything else so we are forcing everyone who wants to buy a copy of our game to get an internet connection just to play it".  On the whole, the casual player (which by the way would probably make up the larger chunk of a games audience) is the one that is screwed over by always on DRM rather than the actual pirate.

Actual pirates of games will probably code a hack for said game to remove the always on DRM.  Computer programming is an easily accessible skill now days.  All you need is a computer, the internet and Google.   You can teach yourself a hell of a lot with those three things.  Youtube is a great source too.  Those things alone will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about hacking.  And you don't even have to be that good at it to achieve it.

I can find anything I like in about 2 minutes from Google.  It could be a key logger, a virus, a torrent, anything.  If you know how to look, search engines will spit out what you want with the right question.  And learning to program from the "little black book of programming"?  You could probably sign up to 4Chan and they will give you step by step instructions and sign you up to Anonymous so that within half an hour you're an expert hacker.  Though why anyone would want to put up with the trolls on 4Chan ...

The game market is no longer about some 10 year old with a hand held playing Pokemon.  That was twenty years ago.  These people have grown up and they still want to capture their youth.  I watch cartoons because when I watch a cartoon I escape from the world and go to a better time.  When I didn't have to worry about paying bills or rent or cleaning the house or going to work.  I can pretend I'm five again where the biggest worry I had was how to get mum and dad to buy me that cool toy I saw on TV or if I would ever grow tall enough to reach the cookies on the kitchen counter.

Ultimately always on DRM is like the commercialization of Christmas.  The digital raping of what is left of our childhood innocence and wonder so some fat cats can ensure a couple more sales.

How to lose a customer base with three letters ... DRM

Digital Rights Management.  You have to be online to always play your game you just shelled out big money for.

And here is someone from Microsoft bagging out those of us in the world that live outside of a city where internet is at best choppy.

If I'm going to buy a game that I play on my desktop BY MYSELF, then I don't really want to have to connect to the internet.

Let's look at things this way.  When I brought Diablo 3 (yes I paid money for it), I had to wait to log into a game that I then bummed around in for about three hours and then never logged back into because well who wants to wait to log into play with themselves.  For guys I imagine it would be like having a raging boner but you can't do anything about it because your mum is in the room.  All you can do it cover it up and hope for an opportunity later to get a release.

And lets not even start on the internet quality when you live outside of a city.  I live in a rural area.  We still get crappy ADSL (yeah I bet most people thought that didn't exist in westernised countries any more).  What's more the internet provider I pay a fair proportion of my household's income to each month has admitted to us they have oversold our exchange.  Therefore when everyone gets home from work its good bye bandwidth.

Try playing a game that needs a good ping on an internet connection that is struggling on loading sites like facebook or even a news website.  And as there is only one company that supplies internet in our area (any other company is just reselling this one company's product) there is no point trying to churn to another internet provider.  They are just reselling the same product with a different label slapped on.

But you should be happy to have internet the bleeding hearts of this world cry.  Well I'm going to stop you there.  I might be lucky enough to live in a country where internet is possible and my household income is high enough we can afford to pay for entertainment like computer games.  But bloody hell if I'm going to shell out for this stuff I want to at least get a good go of it.  I have better things to spend my money on if I'm going to have an experience that is less than the value of the game.

And certainly I'm not going to buy another game from said game producer if they give me crap.  What this Microsoft dickhead has done has pissed me off.  I have literally no power over the quality of my internet.  I would kill for some fiber to be laid in my area.  Hell I would settle for our exchange being upgraded so that we can have a stable unwavering connection.  But you know this costs money and why is big business going to invest in giving my area better internet when I don't have a choice.  Its them or nothing.

So while this DRM stuff that keeps games online and stores all this content online so you have to always be online sounds really great, it just alienates a huge chunk of the audience.  In a town like what I live in where there is not really a lot to do, computer games keep you sane.  People in cities can fill their time with other stuff like restaurants, music concerts, movie theaters etc.  We just wait for the tumble weeds to pass us by.  And our internet to get better.

Or it could be worse.  I know a lot of cashed up guys who fly to the middle of nowhere to work with zero internet connection that need entertaining in their down time.  They aren't going to buy a game that needs to be always online.  Same with soldiers   There are many situations and places I know of that internet is out of the question.  Yet these gaming companies would rather please a few than everyone.

PS:  we don't play sim city for the online part.  We play for the god like feeling we get when we crush a couple hours of hard work with a meteorite.

The world cries out for better entertainment

I figured today I would continue the theme of internet piracy.

But instead of a rant today, I think I might give a better business model to the corporations out there.  I, as a consumer of multimedia as a form of entertainment, feel I am qualified to speak on this subject as this is what I want to see happen.  And from what I've read around the internet, I'm probably not the only one.

The fact of the matter is the old delivery systems for getting media into a household are failing.  Who buys a CD now days?  Or a DVD?  You can't very well fit a CD or DVD into a smartphone can you?  And VHS? who even knows what that is any more.  I have to smile at the fact that when I have children I will be recalling tales of when there was no such thing as the internet (or probably more to the point when all there was was dial up), when a 1 gig flash drive cost $300 (yip I remember those days), when I brought movies on VHS and a TV took up a small corner of your room instead of fitting neatly on the wall.  I will be telling them about mobile phones the size of bricks (and just as indestructible) and how laptops were the size of suitcases with less power than the clock on my wall.  Sometimes its a wonder what has happened in my life time alone.  What I'm describing here is the last 20 years of technology ... what will it look like in 20 years time from now?

Back to the point.  There is no CD drive on my smartphone.  Its more of a pain in the butt to buy a CD, rip it, then convert it, then upload it to my phone.  I can do all that from my phone.  Or I can skip the CD part and just download from someone who has done it for me then upload to my phone.  This option being a lot cheaper of course.  If you use a service like iTunes then you pay a fee, if you use bit torrents ...

CDs, DVDs, even Blurays, these are all forms of media that will die out soon.  Probably in the next 5 years.  DVDs are knocking on that door already because a Bluray player will only set you back a couple dollars more than a DVD player (if you can find a DVD player).  CDs are all but extinct from services like iTunes.

This is not a piece on the extinction of physical media.  This is to show that in a very short time, we are looking at the extinction of any media that is not digital.  And any company that produces media, whether it be movies, TV shows, music ... what ever, will need to accept this.  Its already happened effectively.  Bit torrents and piracy now allow the user to download say a TV show, watch it at their leisure, watch said TV show over and over again at the user's convenience and be ad free.  How can classical TV channels compete with that?  A user watching a show without those annoying ads (which are on at exactly the same time on every channel so you can't just flip between shows) and enjoying the show when they have time to watch it.

How dare we do anything that is makes our lives easier.

What is needed is a service that allows people access to this.  I currently pay for subscription TV.  Me and my husband do so because he wants to watch his sports games.  They are only available on this service.  Which I think is wrong but hey that's another rant.  This service is terrible.  I love to watch documentaries.  But channels that were typically known for their documentaries have now deteriorated into a mass of hillbilly reality shows.  What I really want to watch is hidden deep in amongst the steaming piles of crap reality TV that they fill these channels with.  And often these shows are on at 2am in the morning.  Hello ... I sleep at this time of the day.

I watch documentaries so I can increase my knowledge and expand my mind.  Watching hillbillies fish for cat fish by getting them to bite of their arms feels more like killing my brain cells.  Or watching a bunch of guys with no jobs fight over a storage locker.  I'm sure that appeals to those who didn't finish high school.

If bango music would make a suitable sound track ... I turn it off.  So the subscription service I pay for often goes unwatched for long periods of time as usually there is only one game a week my husband wants to watch and even then its only for a couple months a year.  I feel a bit ripped off.

What me and so many others want is a service where we could pay say a flat fee and get to download and or stream what ever we wanted and watch it when we wanted.  Kind of like Netflix.  Or Hulu.  But for the whole world.  I already pay an arm and a leg for the crappy internet in my country.  Why can't I have an account somewhere that lets me watch all this stuff and view it when I want as I want?

Because too many big name companies are afraid they will loose money.

Tough titties ... your already loosing money so to speak with every download because you would rather ignore what the people want, label them criminals, and not take their money than give them what they are starving for.

I have no sympathy.

Why you should probably pass an IQ test to reproduce

This time I'm going to have a whine about stupid parents.  Particularly the ones mentioned above.

You see I used to work in retail selling these very games.  I used to get the abuse for not selling children these games.  I have also been an avid gamer in my past days.  There have been times in my life where it was work, eat, sleep and play video games.  An online video game is even how I met my husband.

But I have to take issue with parents who walk into a store and expect to be able to pick up rated content and give it to their children.  A manager I worked under had to deal with a particularly irate customer who lost it because we refused to sell him Grand Theft Auto for his four year old child.  I've had customers more or less spit in my face for denying them sales (where I worked at the time you could be fired and or fined $10,000 personally for selling a rated game knowingly to a minor.  That means if you were confident that the parent was buying for the child even if they hadn't said it you had better deny the sale).

I have seen parents walk in with their clearly under age children and pick up some of the most violent video games and turn from happy customers to the demon spawn in a matter of moments because their 10 year old cannot have these games.

And now I will get the real point of my rant.  Video games are no longer the exclusive domain of children.  I know more adults who play Pokemon than children.  Just like there are more men aged 20-35 watching the latest reincarnation of My Little Ponies than girls in the target audience of about 5-12 years (somewhere around there).

While adults might be fine to play these games for a while, sometimes we adults need something more our level.  And the video game industry realizes this.  So they have supplied an answer.  They supply us with games that aren't full of fluffy bunnies and happy sunflowers.  And most countries have supplied suitable laws that state that such games should be rated and classified so that only people who are (supposedly) grown up enough to sort fact from fiction can release their rage on pixels on a screen instead of their work or school mates.

So when parents (and many religious orientated family institutions) rage about these games falling into children's hands I will make these points.

1. Until your child gets a job of their own they have an income of what ever you give them
A five year old has no capacity to earn money to purchase these games.  A ten year old might have an income of a couple dollars a week from a paper route or mowing a friends law or what ever.  Its probably not until a child reaches 14 or 15 years of age that they have any real source of income other than mum and dad.  So if a child who has no job obtains these video games there is only one source ... you the parent.  And if someone was to offer your child one of these games as a gift then I would hope you have the sense to tell them to get something else.

2. There are rating systems FOR A REASON
As the image above says "would you buy your five year old a porn magazine then get upset by its content?"  No.  Because I'm hoping that most parents would have the sense to realize buying a child a porn magazine is a bad idea.  Buying a child a R18 movie or video game ... I would hope you have the same sense.  Seriously, read the bloody label.  R18 means that there will be violence, bad language and probably something in the sexual department.  Get a clue.

3. What if the adult wants to play
Well hate to burst that bubble.  Most modern gaming systems have a parental lock on them now.  So you have to enter a PIN or password to play certain games.    Might be a pain in the butt to enter a password or PIN number but it means you little ones can't get access to violent content.

The only game I have ever taken issue with was Grand Theft Auto.  That is a game that purposefully goes out of its way to glorify a lawless society.  I don't think we need that in society.  But other than this game I have no issue with violence in video games.

At the end of the day you can think of it this way ... if you don't like it don't buy it.  You control what your child sees and does.  So don't complain that video game makers make content for their target market.  Get a clue and buy content that is suitable for your child by maybe doing something like glancing at the rating on the box.  Violent video games are not made for your child's eyes.  They are made for adults.  So don't make them a child's entertainment then complain because they are violent.  There are many many titles out there that are suitable for children.

Don't push your views on this subject on others because you are too lazy to read the back of the box.

Confessions of the suicidal

Yesterday I posted my thoughts in the depths of a depressive episode.

I call them episodes because often they come and go.  They can be triggered by anything.  Yesterday was triggered by my husband going to work.  He is working some night shifts so I was left alone in the house.  Again.  Alone in a town where I don't really have any friends.

Because I don't really have friends outside of the internet it can be rather crushing at times.  The house your supposed to love and nurture becomes a prison.  My only companions are my pets.  They cannot talk back to me and they fail to understand the emotions they sense coming from me.  To them this house is the happiest place in the world because the humans that love and feed them live there.

When  you cannot even get a job at a fast food restaurant, you begin to question everything.  I like to pretend there is a reason for my existence   Even though I have posted about there being no higher power in the past, I still like to keep that illusion, that illusion that this hard time will pass and I will see why soon enough.  I'm scared, alone and confused, stuck in a town I hate because here my husband has a very good job.  I am thousands of miles and an ocean away from my own family and the only family my husband has is preparing to leave town in about a week's time.

I often don't feel entitled to my depression because when I look around me I have so much that so many other people would love to have.  I have a roof over my head, a loving husband, clothes on my back, a well stocked pantry.  What more could I ask for.

How about a friend?

How about one person I can talk too outside of my house.  One person I could have a laugh with.

Modern society is a crushing place to live in.  We are forever being further and further isolated from the community as a whole, social media is making us more and more narcissistic.  We are moving further from our families, the demand for both mother and father in a family to have a career is growing and as we fill our lives with work and travel and things, we all seem to be a little more distant from one another, our bubbles growing that little bit more bigger.

I am not ashamed of yesterday's post.  I don't see a reason to hide the subject of suicide from anyone.  Mostly because those who do attempt or commit suicide want one thing.  Someone to ask "Are you ok?" and then stick around for the answer.  Or not take no as a suitable answer.

Suicide is a horrible thing to go through for anyone.  But those who are in too much pain or have reached rock bottom are the ones that make it.  The demon's that you want to carve out of your head can't be silenced or there just seems no other option.

I probably should be in hospital.  I probably should be in the looney bin.  But I know the out come of that.  I will be doped up to the gills and nothing will really be done to address the issues that have caused these bouts of depression.  They just fill you up with medication, which has been proven to be ineffective in a number of patients, if not addictive.  Here's a pill ... you'll be right ... off you go ...

Have you ever wondered why so many people who fail try again?  Because our society isn't set up to deal with them.  Our society is set up to feed pharmaceutical companies that make money from selling a pill.  It is not set up to correct the real issues behind suicide.

Like the crushing loneliness of living in a town in the middle of a desert.  I can feel my life force being sucked out every day.  I crave to make something grow in the ground.  I love to grow vegetables and fruit and my own food.  But the dirt here is too dry, too poor.  There is barely any rain.  The heat in summer is intense and my plants just wither and die.  And each summer I spend here I wither and die a bit more as I feel my own soul being parched not by the climate but by the shackles of money.

Me and my husband would not live in this town but for money.  And each day a part of me dies because of it.

Yesterday I wrote a raw post about the thoughts that go through the mind of someone who is deep in the darkness of depression.  I showed you a glimpse of what some of the thought processes might be in someone who is struggling with the question of "why am I alive?"  or perhaps "What point is there for me to be alive?"  I do not believe this should be hidden away.  Anyone who is this far into the darkness needs help.  They need someone to be their light.  I'm not talking about a religion here or some other BS like that.  They just need someone to treat them like a human and show them that they matter.

But you might not see someone who is that far gone until it is too late.  If they are like me, they will be pretty good at hiding it.  I wait until I am alone before I cry.  I wait until I am alone before I howl into the air with agony.  I wait until I am sure there is no one to hear me to take off the mask.

Why don't I take my own advise?  Why don't I let someone in.

I have tried to let others in before but it quickly becomes about them.  My husband thinks that it is all his fault.  He gets upset and depressed himself because he thinks he is the one causing all this.  It is so hard to talk to someone when they so easily descend into their own abyss and don't really listen to what you have to say.  How can I solve the problem at hand when my husband won't even listen to the words I have to say?

I left my family in another country because they did this too.  I have been to therapist after therapist seeking an answer.  None of them really understand.  They think a text book is enough to give them knowledge of what I struggle with each day.  They are sadly mistaken.

So at the end of it all I am left with a life that has been pounded into sand, a life that will be meaningless after I die.  Sure my children will remember me for their life time and my grand children but then I will just be another nameless creature, a tiny blip in the history of the universe.  A whisper in the wind.

It is at times like this I think of a story my grand father told me.  About how his best friend committed suicide.  His best friend was like me, in mental anguish every second of every day.  He took his life to end it all.  I can't help but think ... one day that will be me.  That will be my conclusion to life.  One day the pain will get too much and I will achieve what I pray for everyday.  The end to a pointless existence.

One day I know the demons will win.

a farewell to the world

I beg what ever higher power is out there "please let my heart stop".  Please let my pain end and these tears dry up.

I scream and scream and scream and no one looks up.

I am but one tiny insignificant spec in a world obsessed with itself.  There is no room for me.

No matter how hard I beg for the one thing I need I am still too gutless to slit my wrists.

My prayers go unanswered.  Why can't it end?

This torment is too much, the horrors in my mind I try to claw out but I cannot reach what does not exist.

Trapped, alone, unable to ask for what I need, not knowing what I need, wondering if I have a right to ask for it when I have so much and others have so little.  How can I be so selfish as to cry because my privileged life is not enough.

Agony, just agony.  I want it to end, I need it to end.  But I cannot cut it out.

Tears are like blood on my cheeks.

No one will hear the cry.

A million people will walk by and no one will hear.

How do I tell those I love what is killing me when they cannot understand, when they cannot see.

What is there to live for?  My cat?  The one creature that would truly die without me?  A husband who cannot see how the life I am leading right now kills me?  My dog ... she would find another to love.

A family that would be angry at me for leaving this world, yet they have never once understood me?

What is it that I have to live for?

The universe will still go on, regardless if one spec checks out.

In a generation I will be lost to history, another nameless face no one remembers.  Who would even care that I took my life?

I cannot find a reason that is justifiable to live.

I will dry my eyes.  I will bottle up a bit more.

Who knows ... maybe next time I crack I will end my pain.  I will have the courage to actually do it.

I clean up this shell of a human being and lock away this raw emotion.

No one will understand it.  No one will listen.

So for now I will paint over the cracks, put on a brave face and hide.

Hide the pain that no one can help me with.

With lock and key it is put away.

Maybe next time I will succeed.

This is all I hope and pray for in a world where asking for help gets you no where.

Maybe next time I will be brave.

Maybe next time ...

Internet Pirates ... the new revolution

The new revolution you say?  Pirates ... the kind who steal music and movies and TV shows?  How can they be a revolution?

Well you might be a bit surprised my my response to this.  I see internet piracy not as stealing, but as an answer to the world we now live in.

We in Western countries are under the illusion that we live in a democratic world.  America especially.  But we long ago lost our governments to those who can pay the most.

You might think "Yeah right" but this about this.  Ipods, Ipads, Iphones ... all massively inferior products compared with other similar products on the market, but yet they have enjoyed massive popularity.  Why?  They have been cleverly marketed to the masses.  So any company with enough money and a bit of luck can get the masses to do what ever they want.  Buy a product, believe in a political candidate, give up their rights to security so that marketing companies can convince them to buy more ...

Think about the anti piracy policies before governments around the world.  Not only does these laws give far reaching, probably illegal rights to certain governments to attack citizens of other countries, not only do they force the average Joe to give up too much privacy for so little gain, they also support the massive corporations supporting these bills with their massive bank balances.  These bills are not designed for the protection of the people but the protection of those who's bank accounts are obscenely large.

Therefore internet piracy of copyrighted material I believe is no longer about getting something for free.  I see it more as a rebellion against big business that is crippling and destroying this world, whether those who download content see it this way or not.

This world is dying from greed.  The need to keep investors happy and sell more product at the expense of the world, the extravagant luxury that we enjoy in the west comes at a price.  The demand for a new phone, TV, computer etc every year means that resources that are rare to begin with are heavily strained when billions of people are in demand for these products.  In reality we don't need a new mobile phone every year.  We could go years with the same phone until it broke.  But we are sold the need for a new item every year with little thought to what happens to said discarded product.

But we are not discussing the wastefulness of society.  Perhaps another post.  We are discussing the revolution of piracy.  See to produce a CD or a Bluray disk is ridiculously cheap.  To upload a digital copy of a piece of media and store it on a server is even less.  And yet we have to pay prices that are massively disproportionate to the true cost.  Why?  Because a long the way so many other people have their hand in the pot taking their part of the price.

So pirates have said enough is enough.  Why should we pay for every tom dick and harry that wishes to line his own pockets before said item reaches us.  Pirates are often happy to shell out for content once they have sampled it, they are often happy to pay for concert tickets or other merchandise.

But this is all over looked because pirates are perceived as thieves.  I guess this could be true as the word pirate is a word for a thief.  No one seems to care that pirates support artists in much greater ways than the sale of a few songs.  So these corporations alienate the ones who they should be supporting.  Especially when they fail to see that these people are the ones that could so easily take them down should they choose to give their money to another corporation.

Piracy is about saying that we the people will not be controlled by those with more money than sense.  What about the artists you say.  Well consider that most artists only make about 10% from the sale of an album or song.  However they make much more from performing at a concert.  I guess you wonder where the other 90 % of the sale of an album goes.  Well it doesn't go to the artist but to suppliers.  So the record label, the so called suppliers like itunes ... these are the people that really benefit from the content and artist produces.  Not the artist.

So instead of lining the pockets of people who are already rich enough pirates decide that they don't want to have a part of that.

What about movies?  Well I like to think pirates are encouraging the movie industry to better itself.  Well we all hope for a better world because I have yet to see it.  Now days people want a spectacle when they go to the movies.  I certainly do.  My TV at home does much better than any movie theatre.  So if I go to the movies I want to see something amazing.  Not another romantic comedy (by the way has been a very long time since a good one of those has been released) or something that can be spit out in five mins by the movie industry.  If the movie industry wants my money they have to give me something to worth my money to go see.  Especially at the prices they charge.

When the human race is faced with a dictator that they know at heart is wrong, the human spirit causes the people to rise.  The people are rising, the people are already voting with their feet.  Or their keyboards.  They are saying that the current business models aren't working and demanding more.  So are the corporations going to listen to us or are they going to label us thieves.

bullying ... the irony of rallying against it

You might think from this title I'm going to have a rant at people who are bullied.  I'm not.  I'm one of those people who has suffered significantly at the hands of bullies.  Bullies have cost me my job, my career and my mental health at different points in my life.  The careless actions of others do have significant consequences, and unfortunately those consequences are experienced by me.

I grew up not knowing that I was an Aspie.  I didn't know why I was different.  I just knew that I was and I knew that the other kids saw that as a weakness.  I have suffered all forms of violence - mental, emotional, physical and even some sexual.  This is a constant theme in my life and sometimes I think I am lucky to just be happy and healthy where I'm at.

My last boss degraded me and yelled and screamed at me so much I became suicidal.  I would wake up in the morning and sit on my couch crying hysterically because I didn't want to face another day at work.  Then I would have to wipe my tears from my face, put on my mask, and go earn some money.  When I would drive home from work I would have to fight the urge to flick the wheel of my car so my car would go head on into a car approaching me.  All so I didn't have to spend another day being belittled and treated as worthless.  Two things stopped me from doing this.  My husband was one.  I know my husband probably wouldn't cope if I had killed myself.  The second was I did not want to hurt another person, to cause more suffering because I was hurting.

As a result of the extreme bullying I suffered, I had a break down.  I pretty big one.  I had to quit my job.  I had to quit because I had been to HR many many times asking for help, I had tried to get help from managers, I had tried to get help to deal with this problem in so many places.  In the end I couldn't get help.  Even after I was transferred to another department, away from this horrible person, I still could not cope.  In the end I had to give up a career I enjoyed and my job, my identity in this world, because the company I worked for took this manager's side.

The worst part about this is that this manager readily admitted to being a bitch (her words).  She took delight in making other suffer.  The only people that liked her were people who were superior to her.  All those beneath her hated her with a passion.  In fact many of the men were very close to over looking the fact she was a woman if they had found her in the right place outside of work.  That's how bad it was.

So those of you who think bullying is harmless, think again.  The emotional strain was so great that I lost my job.  Not this manager who clearly was targeting me.  She was protected.  The industry I worked in at the time, a heavy manufacturing industry, was short on women in managerial roles.  So when she started I was excited to be learning from another woman.  I was excited at the prospect of a female role model for the industry I had chosen to be in.  But she was far from it.

I like to think that Karma will reward this woman one day for her actions.  Perhaps it already has because I knew this woman had given up much of what she wanted in life for something less meaningful.  She gave up what I saw in her heart as her true desires for money.  So perhaps she will be rewarded in that way.  That one day she will awaken and realize its too late to be a mother or what have you.  Perhaps Karma will find another way.  Who knows.

I have found reward in life by participating in volunteer work.  I now have reward by helping a local no kill animal charity to rescue dogs and cats.  But I still ache for the identity a job can give you.  My prospects now are to go back to a fast food restaurant and beg for work.  When you hold a bachelors degree, it can be a bit hard to swallow that your only job prospect is the same as the job a high school student would take. Then again, it can also be difficult when your over qualified for said position.  Employers don't always take the over qualified over the under qualified.

I have seen many an article recently about "rallying against bullying".  After telling my sob story of why I no longer hold employment, a story which glosses over many details, I have to laugh ironically at this rallying.  Why might you ask?  Because many bullies no doubt will be in the ranks of those protesting.  Whether they know it or not, many of the people in the rally will be a bully in some form or another.  They probably have rationalized away their little nit picks and cutting words so they have convinced themselves they are good people.

I guess you could say the old proverb "those without sin should cast the first stone".  Of those in that rally there would be the ones that have committed the sin and are there to repent.  I guess I have no issue with that.  It takes a big person to admit they are wrong and then try to fix it.  But its more that there will be a significant number of people who think that they can show up, rally for something they think they believe in, then continue without a change in behavior.

This is like the many many "like this and help a cancer patient" type posts we see on Facebook.  We think if we make the token effort, but not really put effort into change, we will be all good.  But the issue I have with rallying against bullying particularly is rallying isn't really going to do a lot.  To stop bullying, there needs to be a change in society.  This is something that cannot be legislated against.  How can you legislate against two children pushing each other in a school yard?  This change needs to come from the individual.  So rallying is kind of pointless except to raise awareness.  My experiences of raising awareness is the human race gets bored easily and moves on.

Wealth distribution ... what am I'm slogging my guts out for again?

I watched this video recently and it really made think.  It also made me a bit disgusted.

This video is a very visual presentation of wealth distribution in America.  There is no need to think that this is an isolated case.  I would say many so called first world countries are in this situation, if not all of them.

I guess me and my husband would be classified as middle class.  We earn enough to be have a comfortable life.  We don't really want for anything.  The only things me and my husband want for are in reality wants, not needs.  We don't lack food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care.  We could be worse off.  But when I look at these examples and realize that our income is actually somewhere in the non existent part of the true distribution, it makes me wonder what is wrong with this world.

When I got my first job in the country I currently live in, I was earning about $55,000 a year.  Which is not a lot in this country with its inflated economy.  In my home country that is a dream income, an income that would put you in the top 25% of earners for that country.  In the country I live in now, this would probably put in the lower 50% of earners.  When I started this particular job, I was told that I was in the top 5% of earners for the world.  That a huge percentage of people live on less that $1 a day.  This little fact shocked me.  Mostly because an income that doesn't seem like a lot because of where I lived actually was.

Then when I watch this video and realize that I'm way down the far end of the curve and realize that a tiny few people make the rest of us look like paupers, it really fires me up.  It fires me up because the first thing I think is why do you need that much money?  The next is how much good can be done in this world if that money was in the hands of charities or in the hands of those who want to make a difference instead of hidden away?  I see all the good in the world that could be done with that money and it achieves nothing.

This is why I have respect for billionaires like Bill Gates who have pledged to give away their fortunes.  Bill Gates has put millions of dollars into education and given children who might not have had an education a future.  Its hard to find fault with someone who wants to give others a chance.

I have heard that if wealth was distributed more evenly, poverty would be no more.  And certainly when you look at how wealth is massively skewed in one direction its hard not to think that.  But I would like you to consider something for a bit.  And no I am not defending having a tiny number of people with a massive percentage of wealth here.  I am however going to make a point about those who think merely redistributing wealth won't be very successful with that vision.

Let's do a thought experiment here.  Let us pretend that by some magical event, everyone in the world suddenly has $10 and that $10 represents the total sum of every person's wealth.  Everyone is now on equal standing.  Now there will be some people who learn to cheat others out of that money, there will be some people who learn to use that money to grow wealth.  There will be some that manage to keep their wealth steady.  Pretty soon there will be people who have frittered away that $10 or lost it by being cheated out of it in some way.  There will be those who are frugal and managed to hold onto that wealth but not really grow it.  There will be those that take that wealth and make wise investment of it and their wealth grows, perhaps taking from those who are so ready to give it up.  Soon we will be back to square one.  There will be haves and have nots.

In the school systems I grew up in I was never taught about how to handle money.  I was never taught about finance contracts or how to save for something.  I was never taught about the pitfalls of money or what a wise investment might be.  Sure I was taught about science and English and maths consisted of a lot of stuff I have forgotten or have no actual use for in my current life.  English stopped being useful once I could successful read and write (so around 10 years of age).  The sciences taught me curiosity but I really don't need to know the equations for the motion of a ball in flight to live my life.

Most people now days are not able to manage their finances appropriately.  That is live without debt (in my view).  So if you have a bunch of people making unwise decisions about finance how can you have them teach their children these lessons.  My parents had to have everything and they had to have it now.  So all I saw was them struggle to pay their debts each pay check.  I don't really blame the masses.  Mostly because debt suits those who seek to money from it, not those that they bleed for it.

But then again those who are ignorant of finance or credit card debt or hire purchase contracts, they are the bread and butter of finance companies.  When I worked in retail and processed finance contracts for a living, the great trap contract was the early exit contract.  Pay nothing till some time next year it would say.  The trap was if you paid out the contract by the exact terms of it, you paid about three years of interest on something that was worth nothing by the time you started paying for it.  These contracts were great if you were disciplined because if you paid out the contract before the first payment was due then you got no interest.  Not very good for the finance company.  But if you forgot and let that contract go one day over you got a nice big whack of interest added to your outstanding amount.  A win for the finance company.

I know this because I worked in the industry.  So I was able to learn how to make credit and finance work for me.  But not everyone is lucky enough to have this experience.  I propose that schools should teach a compulsory course starting about about year 7 (10 years old) which teaches life skills.  How to manage finances.  How to be a parent.  How to look after yourself in the real world.  Then perhaps we can have people who make good choices with money.  And that distribution might start flattening out a bit because there is less suckers to have their $10 taken from them.

monogamy ... is it really that hard?

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Another subject that has been coming up a lot recently is the question "Are humans really a monogamous species?"  There seems to be a lot of so called research and experts coming out that say no we are in fact not and that monogamy is something we aspire to but cannot really have.  They then go on to compare us to some other monkey species that are closely related and how they are not monogamous and say "Well here is your proof".

I think that is a bit of a con.  Its like saying "It was an accident" when someone is caught cheating.  What you accidentally undid your fly, pulled off your pants and underwear, accidentally "fell into bed", then "accidentally" inserted a penis into vagina for the next (well you can insert an appropriate length of time here).  I honestly don't think there is any accident about it.  An accident is slipping with a knife and cutting your finger, an accident is pulling out into traffic and colliding with another car, an accident is stubbing your toe as you walk in the door.  Having sex with someone is a sustained act and there is no "accident" about it.

Clearly if you cheat you want to cheat.  As grown adults we assume that adults are in fact in control of their actions.  So "accidentally" inserting a penis into a vagina for lets say ten minutes is not an accidental action.  Both sides of the argument can't claim it was accidental.

Ok enough about the logistics of cheating.

Getting back to monogamy.  While I see all these news articles basically giving licence to men and women to treat relationships as garbage, I wonder how far we are letting society crumble.  It wasn't that long ago when you got married it was literally until death do us part.  Now days its until we get bored.  Or find someone else who is more interesting.

But I challenge that and say we are a monogamous species.

Its in a woman's interests to select a breeding partner with something to offer in terms of resources.  When you consider that now days parents are stuck with their child until somewhere between 18 and 25 (depending on where you live and how much separation anxiety the mum goes through letting go of her child), that's a pretty long time to be supporting the child and pumping resources into said child.  There is food, clothing, schooling, medical treatments, outings, toys, sports teams, social activities ... to name a few.  The estimates I have seen have put raising one child at costing the parents between $250,000 to $500,000 by the age of 18 I believe.  That's before they even go to collage or uni!!  So a woman needs a man who will stick around to provide, in more ways than one.

Other research has shown that a child with both parents, or at least two parents who contribute to their lives (not necessarily having to be related) do better in the long run.  They do better socially and academically.  So this shows there is benefit for us as a species having both parents around long term.  There is also benefit for the male from an evolutionary perspective that he can better ensure that his genetic material will be passed on by insuring the survival of his off spring.

Which leads to why human women make themselves available for sex pretty much all the time.  This keeps their mate's need for procreation satisfied so he is less likely to move onto the next mate.  Therefore from the evolutionary stand point, the male is more likely to support the female in raising her children.

The point I'm really building to is this.  These studies basically give licence to the cheating husband or wife.  They basically say "hey this is your genetic make up ...  go nuts.  Forget all you know about monogamy."  I would argue that we as a society have lost what it means to be in a loving and supportive relationship.

My siblings all have children.  Two of my siblings have a broken relationship with the parent of at least one of their children.  One of them even now has a new partner with a child from a previous relationship.  If children need stability in their lives to grow and be healthy, then how is it stable to have them shunted from house to house every couple of days?  Wouldn't it be better for said children to grow up with both parents under one roof?  Where they can have a stable home.  The same room every day instead of a different one every other day because mummy and daddy don't live together any more.  I feel for these children because often the parents are more concerned with scoring points with their children to get the children to like them better than with being parents to them.  They live lives that are full of everything and nothing.

We need to look at long term relationships as not something that is disposable.  A relationship in its infancy, say a couple of days or months old might be disposable.  But when you get to marriage you are stating not only to your partner but the world that you are prepared to put aside all others and focus on creating a home and life with this one person.  Why wait until you are married to figure out you want to be with someone else?  I assume you have had plenty of time before that point to figure out if this is a person you want to spend your life with and your not just drunkenly getting married in a drive by chapel in Vegas to some stripper you met two hours prior.

I think we as a species have lost the meaning of marriage.  And no I'm not bashing gays here or anything.  The meaning of marriage is nothing to do with love.  If you aren't in love before you get married you probably won't be afterwards.  I believe marriage is a legal formalization of the contract you make with your partner to say "I will stand by you no matter what, I will build a life with you, I will be with you through the tough times and the good, I will carry you when you need it and you will carry me when I need it, I will be your rock, your partner, your safe place in life."  You don't need to be in love for those things to exist but you do need them to have a successful marriage.

Marriage is considered in this world to be a throw away item almost.  Hell Kim Kardashian did it for money.  We have a romanticized notion of marriage, that its all about the big white princess dress and that the bride gets to be the center of attention for a day.  Yes that can happen.  And yes you can spend lots and lots of money on a day to have what ever fairy tale you want.  But if that is all marriage is to you then why are you getting married?

At my wedding, there were only family members.  I invited friends, but none showed up.  It was okay, I don't care.  They showed their true colors that day.  Safe to say those people are mostly no longer friends.  At the end of the day there was maybe 20 people at my wedding.  We got married by the sea, we had a barbecue to celebrate and it was a perfect day.  I wouldn't change it for a second.  But for me the day wasn't about how much I could spend, it was about formalizing what already existed.  A relationship built on trust, honesty and a desire to move forward together as one.

We as a society now think if this relationship isn't giving us what we want from it then we should move on instead of trying to fix it or meet in the middle.  And that is so sad.  Because there are so many children out there that have a broken home now because adults were too careless in their actions.  And by careless I mean they didn't value their relationship enough to protect it and work at it or they were too eager to bring a child into a relationship that was bound for failure.

We are a monogamous species I believe at heart, we have just lost the meaning of this word and have lost the knowledge of how to have a healthy lasting relationship, tossing it aside for the quick and easy.

The human race has a lot to answer for

This image comes from a website poking fun at internet trolls.  This is meant as an image to troll on the internet.  Yet this is a truth in this image that is hard to ignore.

Humans ... the sign most successful predator on this planet.  And we don't even have sharp claws or sharp teeth or thick skin and we aren't particularly speedy.  In fact in the animal kingdom if we strip away all our technology we would be far from the top of the food chain.  A lion would be able to over power one of us  with little effort.  Yet we humans are the most destructive force on this planet.

Sharks have lived on this planet relatively unchanged for around 350 million years.  Mother nature more or less got it right when she dreamed up this killing machine.  Sharks serve many purposes in the oceans, not just the killing machines that the movie industry would have you believe.  Yet we humans have pushed many species of shark to the brink of extinction.

Mostly this has been caused by the unprecedented demand for a dish called shark fin soup.  A dish that is a very expensive delicacy in Asian countries.  The fins of a shark are dried out then boiled in chicken broth to make the soup.  That's right, the flavourless fins have flavour added to them in the form of chicken broth.

To get these fins sharks are often hauled out of the water and, while still alive, their fins are sliced off and then the shark is tossed back into the ocean.  You would think loss of blood or something would kill these animals.  Nope.  They actually drown.  Without their fins they are unable to swim.  Without the ability to swim they cannot pass oxygen rich water over their gills.  So they drown effectively.  Millions of sharks suffer this fate so their fins can be in soup.  A soup that has no shark taste because shark fins are tasteless.  But you know as long as you look good for your friends, who cares.

Across the world, many many species of animals are paying the price for our greed.  The blue fin tuna is a species on the brink of collapse.  Yet the demand for its flesh has never been higher.  And instead of placing a fishing ban on it for a few years to let the species recover, powerful corporations who prize money over sustainability keep the fishing industry going, thus making sure there is nothing left for future generations.

The rhinoceros is another collection of species that is facing extinction for greed.  The horns, so prized across the world for their "medicinal" properties are creating a market where a man can get exceedingly rich off one horn alone.  The so called medicinal properties of the horn has been tested and found that there is no medicinal properties as the horn is comprised of keratin, the same protein that forms the hair on your head.  So you could get the same treatment from eating your own hair.  Yet there are those out there that would rather see an animal species destroyed and extinct to line their pockets.

This is just a couple of the horrific examples that can be named.  Whaling comes to mind.  I admire the crew of the Sea Sheppard, at least they are standing up for the bio diversity of this world rather than an imaginary figure.  They are protecting creatures that cannot fight back against our technology, a tangible result rather than hoping their actions get them a rewarding afterlife.

It makes me sad to think that we humans are so cruel to those we share the planet with.  We place our own needs and greeds before those of the other creatures in this world.  We destroy their habitat so we can house our growing population rather than controlling said population, we kill animals for reasons no better than we want their skin to look pretty on a wall or our clothes, we kill when there is no need to kill.  We have many sources of animal protein in this world ... why should a creature as big as a whale, which takes a very long time to die, be killed when we have a suitable alternative.  Why should a shark die for soup when if you didn't put the fin in you probably wouldn't know the difference?

It makes me angry to think of how we punish this world for simply letting use evolve.  Humans as a species have so much to answer for.  We will have our karmic payback one day and we will wonder why.  Maybe we are already starting to feel the karma ... maybe that is what these extreme weather events around the world are starting to do.  Give the human race as a whole the karmic payback it deserves for the disgusting treatment of the other creatures on this planet.

Interesting how we focus on the small and not the big

Hi all.  Time for another nugget of thought.

Of late I have been reading a lot concerning the vaccination debate.  To vaccinate or not to vaccinate.  I will state to begin with I am pro vaccination (very strongly) so if you read this thinking I will support what I find to be ridiculous reasons for not vaccinating your children you will be mistaken.

But this is not a rant either about the narrow views of those anti vaccination.  I believe this is as a good an example as I can find about modern life as any.

First lets look at some of the arguments I have found against vaccinating your children.  The couple of reasons that make me chuckle most are 1. Vaccinations give your kid autism and 2. Vaccinations are full of toxic chemicals and 3. Vaccinations are mind control serums that the government uses to control the population.  I bet most readers will have a giggle at these when they read them put so plainly.

Let's look at the autism reason first.  Autism is a genetic condition.  So it means you are born with genes that code for autism.  Please show me conclusive scientific proof (not some hillbilly's whack job manifesto) that science is at the point where we can alter the genes of a living organism as complex as a human.  We humans are still stumbling at altering the genes of more simple creatures like plants, bacteria and so on and they have to be altered when they are still embryos.  That is when they are still merely a single cell.  Viruses for instance do have the capacity to insert their RNA (not DNA) into cells to hijack the cell's ability to reproduce but they do not have the capacity to alter DNA.

And honestly if we were at the point where we could manipulate the genes of a human don't you think they would be using it to do something constructive ... like cure the many genetic diseases out there that are a result of the DNA not being correct when the child was conceived?  Not burdening the medical systems of the world by creating children who need thousands and thousands (probably millions) of dollars of additional care over their life times?

Anyway the study that found this link has been discredited and is now a laughing stock of the scientific community.

Now lets look at the mind control aspect (I will come back to the toxic chemicals in a sec).  If you have been vaccinated think about this - did you choose what to wear this morning?  Did you choose who to vote for last election?  Did you choose your own breakfast cereal?  Did you choose what TV you are going to buy?  Did you choose where you wanted to live?  Point made ... moving onto something that doesn't sound like something an idiot spat out when they were drunk.

And now the real point I want to make.  The point about toxic chemicals.

According to the World Health Organization almost every vaccination they list is less than 10 mL, in fact of that number most are under 5 mL.  A couple are more with the largest one being about 30mL.  Some are single doses and but most require about 3 or 4 doses.  Barely anything.  I have seen arguments against vaccination because chemicals like formaldehyde are used to preserve the vaccination and that parents don't want to introduce harmful chemicals into their child's body.

This is the real point of my argument here.  This tiny amount of chemical pales in comparison to the toxic chemicals that enter into a child's body from other sources.  Formaldehyde for instance is used in a variety of things.  It is used to make clothing in a store feel soft and to be wrinkle free.  Hence why it is recommended that all new clothing is washed before wearing it.  What about the cigarette you are smoking?  Formaldehyde is in that too ... among other toxic things.  In fact it is found in many adhesives, solvents and bonding agents found in your home.  Your house probably contains more formaldehyde right now than all the vaccinations over the course of a child's life put together.

Then again this is not the only dangerous chemical in a child's life.  Let's look at MSG for instance.  A chemical found in about 80% of processed food.  How many parents out there give their children let's say chicken nuggets.  My husband loves them, eats them like they are going out of fashion.  They contain about 50% chicken (read the ingredients list ... its not as much chicken as you think).  Makes you wonder what the other 50% of ingredients are doesn't it?  Chances are they contain MSG (MSG has a variety of names so its not likely listed as MSG).  MSG makes food taste so much better.  And it makes you want more.  So you buy more.  And therefore eat more.  The only one I see benefiting in this instance is the company that made the chicken nuggets.

In a lab if you have a bunch of mice, they don't get fat on their own.  So how to they make the mice fat to study obesity?  They give them MSG laden food.  Let's do a visual demonstration:

Not very pretty.  And you never thought that commercial companies would harm you precious child.

But I feed my child organic food you yell.  Well lets look at another aspect of modern life.  Car exhaust fumes.  If you live in the city then your surrounded by this.  So is your child.  Our friend Formaldehyde comes up again here as one of the components of car exhaust fumes.  So is sulphur dioxide, a rather strong and potent acid.  Especially when mixed with water.  Then there is components like nitrogen dioxide (kids often use this to get high as it deprives the brain of oxygen), carbon monoxide (once again deprives the brain of oxygen) and benzene, which is a known cancer causing agent.

So while there are parents who jump up on their soap boxes and scream about anti vaccination, I have to find flaws in their logic.  Vaccinations have removed horrible diseases like polio from the western world.  Let's do another visual demonstration of what the after effects of polio are:

Is this what those who are against vaccinations really want to go back too?  A world where this happens.  The power is there to prevent this.  And by not vaccinating you actually put your entire community at risk of deadly disease   Mostly because vaccination simply lowers the chances significantly of a person catching these diseases.  So your child becomes infected because you didn't vaccinate, you send said child out into the world and then what?  Your child dies along with everyone else's?  How would you feel knowing you allowed the spread of a toxic disease like polio and killed or destroyed the lives of those in your community?

This is an example of how narrow minded we humans can get.  We focus so much on the one little thing where in fact our whole modern world is toxic and poisonous to us.  We have the capacity to remove these horrible diseases from the world so no child or adult has to suffer them.  No one has to be deformed.  No family destroyed.  Yet we let irrational fears stop us.

So focused are these people on preventing one little thing in the environment that they fail to see the bigger picture.  The huge SUV they drive like a trophy is probably undoing all the good those tiny little vaccinations provide when their child later dies of cancer from breathing its fumes.  Or when their child suffers complications of obesity from eating MSG laden food.

There is a bigger picture here.  So take off those blinders and think a little bit more than about yourself.  If you already have ... well done.  My hat off to you.

Sources
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/1/07-045096-table-T2.html
http://www.bestwaytoloseweight4u.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/monosodium-glutamate-side-effects-300x225.jpg
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/car-exhaust-chemicals.html
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/14639/1/Dangers-of-Exhaust-Fumes.html
http://childimmunizationusa.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/african-children-with-polio.jpg
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/indoorair/voc/formaldehyde.htm

Do you need to be religious to have morals?

I saw this and thought this would be a great point to discuss.  Albert Einstein after all is considered one of the greatest minds of the last hundred years or so.  Probably of all time.  But regardless of who said it, this is a statement I find powerful and worthy of deeper thought.

It is said that you need religion to have a moral code.  Most religious types will likely come up with something along the lines of "how do you know what is right if you don't have religion?" when this very prospect is put to them.  Religion does offer us a structured moral code.  There is a set code of conduct that we can refer to in a religious text that if we get into a sticky situation morally.  Subject to some interpretation of course.

But I will ask this.  What if under these moral codes it says "kill all who do not believe in your religion".  Most main stream religions actually have something to this effect in their religious texts.  A large number of people now days will say "oh but we don't follow that part" yet it is in there, part of the moral code of conduct that has influenced history time and again.  How many died in the Christian Crusades?  How many die now in the War on the West staged by fundamentalist Islamics?  Two examples of when this moral code is taken literally.

I am atheist.  I believe in a higher power but I don't subscribe to any religion.  I would favour Wicca if I had to pick a religion because the Wiccan Rede is the closest to my own moral code.  The final line of the Wiccan Rede is "An ye harm none, do what ye will".  If we all lived by this one line then I think this world would be an infinitely better place.  And you don't need to be religious or a Wiccan to live by this simple ethos.

And then we come to the real point of this post.  Do you need to be religious to have a positive moral code?

I would say those of us who do not have religion in our lives have a stronger moral code.  We do not draw lines in the sand over trivial things like belief or sexuality or gender and so on.  This is because we do not have a theology that tells us we are going to hell if we embrace someone who is a homosexual or give rights to women or have friends with a variety of beliefs.

Yet there is also one point that is more critical here.  Our moral code is by choice.  It is not forced on us.  It is not fear based.  There is no one telling us we will burn forever in hell if we do not follow the moral codes written in a book.  There is no priest to absolve our so called sins.  There is no one offering the reward of heaven.  We are on our own to forge our own code of morality.  We are free to question morality with no repercussion and explore it to establish our own system by which to live by.

Because someone with no religion has to forge their own moral code then they give their charity willingly and for different reward.  They have to give it unselfishly.  How can you give charity in a selfish way if you have no greater power tapping on your shoulder and saying "Your not joining my club if you don't help you fellow man".

I volunteer with a no kill animal charity.  I help them not from the selfish desire to insure my afterlife is free of fire, but because I find it abhorrent that we live in a society where a cat or a dog can lose its life for as pathetic a reason as it hasn't found a home in its allotted time.  I, like many others, want to live in a world where cats and dogs are not treated as disposable objects but treated as living creatures that share our planet.  My reward is from helping animals to find loving forever homes and knowing that I have helped to get some of these animals out of horrible situations.  My reward is not based in a need for karma or a ticket to heaven.

I simply help because I love animals and there are two things in this world I cannot tolerate.  The first is those who would harm a child.  The second is those who would harm an animal.  Both are often incapable of fighting back and therefore are at the whim of the adult who has the power.  That power could come from the adult being physically larger than them.  It could be they hold the gun.  Or the adult is the ones placing the animal or child in a cage so they cannot escape as they are tortured to death.  Do not confuse this with the debate over eating meat.  Animals that die for meat in modern countries often have wonderful lives and are killed quickly.  They serve a purpose and are not killed because a human got bored and needed entertainment.

I do not need to be religious to find these things criminal.  I do not need religion to find motivation to want to change the world for the better.  I have a desire to change the world for the better, not for my own reward.  My desire is to change the world for the better so that the innocent in this world do not suffer.  Which ultimately is the difference.

You might argue that well who cares what the motivation is as long as aid is given.  That maybe be.  But I live with passion.  I live with desire to change the world.  I do not live with fear of heaven or hell.  And I can find motivation to go that bit further from knowing that for a small handful of living creatures I really am making a difference in their lives.  Even if they cannot thank me.

The Wiccan Rede
http://wicca.com/celtic/wicca/rede.htm