Dark Santa

*NOT FOR KIDS*

It is often thought that when a vampire is slain, its minions perish as well.  That is why the Prince of Darkness, the father vampire, the first of its kind, is both feared and hunted.  Should he be slain, the world would be free of their menace.

Yet, Dracula is dead.  Abraham Van Helsing intercepted his coffin on its way back to Transylvania, opened it, and drove a stake through the creature’s heart. Why then are vampires still feared?  They cannot exist without  the father vampire still roaming the earth.

Unless Dracula was not the first of the vampires…

Welcome to Online Gamer: 101

I’ve only been to one foreign country, and if you’re over 25, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.  I’m talking about the on-line video game world - that place filled with the disembodied consciousness of minds ranging from age 7 to 87. 

If you’re looking for a good anthropological study,  immersing yourself in their world is the perfect social experience.  The ability to unplug from the matrix at any point, mixed with the high degree of anonymity, allows everybody the ability to become an entirely different person.  I know most of the gamers are from the same physical country as I am, and more often than not speak the same language, but their culture is as foreign to a newcomer as I imagine landing in Russia would be.

That’s not to say that there isn’t order.   There is certainly a social etiquette, as well as things considered taboo, all of which vary depending on the type of game you’re playing.  

In general, I find you are judged by both your behavior and your skill; and when you are judged, it is to the extreme.  There is very little middle ground.  Every time you sign in, you are with new people, and they will judge you.  Every few games, the player base rotates, and you are again with new people, and they will judged all over again. 

There Goes the Planet: Part II

In my population control model, everyone is issued a “gene pool” (or GP) credit by the government.  If the government can issue everyone a social security number, they should be able to issue everyone a GP credit.  When a child is born, both the mother and the father are charged a credit.  One child, two credits. 

As long as a person only uses their one credit, they will not be effected in any way.  Now, not everyone intends to, or is able to, or gets around to having a child.  These people will be able to sell their GP credit back to the government for a permanent tax-break deductions.  The flip side of that is that anyone who has a second, or a third child, will be penalized and/or have their taxes permanently increased by a certain amount per child.

There Goes Planet Earth: Part I

Enough updates!  Let's talk about something.

I just finished watching the Planet Earth series put out by the BBC.  Overall, it is documentary regarding the beauty of the natural environment, and the continual pressure that we put on it.  The final disc of the five disc set is entitled, Planet Earth: Future.  It addresses the big question of, “Where do we go from here?”  The arguments that fire back and forth are so strikingly different that it absolutely astounds me.  On one end, there are the people that say without intervention we will destroy the diversity and sustainability of this planet.  The other side says that the environmentalist are exaggerating the situation; and for all sorts of legal, political, and pragmatic reasons, nothing can be done to address the issue.