There are some who believe that this nation is held together by the police, but there are simply not enough of them to truly keep us in line. Even the threat of police, the fear of reprisal for law-breaking can’t possibly be enough, as people break the law all the time – literally ALL THE TIME.

What keeps this nation together is simply that people want it to work. We’re all better off with a working nation, and even if the fundamental tenets on which it was founded are discarded, even if every part and structure of that nation is shattered, lost or corrupted, the nation continues and will continue. Any system will work, if the people in that system are willing.

It may be there is no perfect system that can be designed by man, if only in that no one can fathom the extent of humanity’s options and choices. We can’t even say for certain if one system is “better” or “worse” than any other. The execution of those systems can be evaluated on the scales of success, the systems themselves escape judgment (although they can certainly be improved upon).

As we go forward, it may be to our collective best interests to divide ourselves up based on the principles of choice – I would prefer to live in this system instead of that one. Rather than having to travel half the world to live in a huge nation which may or may not be effectively executing their system, we can have all manner of systems within a few miles of each other. Relatively self-sufficient communities created under their individual ideals, sharing resources to purchase the things one could not get on its own, would allow people to maintain and improve their standards of living while providing a greater degree of freedom in the political, social and economic areas of life.

The worst sin a writer can commit is simply not being true to the feeling he or she is having in the moment. I have feelings right now, deep down under the surface, I dare not bring to light. What can I say? What can I do?

Writing! FUCK YOU! Salt and sex can replace you, have no doubt, with friends with their sympathetic ears, writing is the disease of a friend who can’t find his or her proper outlet.

So I’ll write, have no doubt, until the world itself turns around my ideals, or I’m dead. When I’m dead the world will forget me or embrace me, but I suppose it won’t matter all that much to the dead-me.

Salt and sex. I eat chips in the dead of night after a beer, but I’d rather be in a woman, someone I trust and love… chips will do, for now.

I made a wish
to see a shooting star.
There, a flash across the sky!
I made a wish upon it.

If only I had used
that first wish
on something practical,
like a book deal
or a handjob
from a supermodel

If this video is to be believed, then advertising will eventually phase itself out. That is to say – enlightenment, “a new way of thinking,” will eventually move beyond materialism altogether. The newest, most amazing way of thinking and seeing the world will be on terms of enlightenment itself, not something you can buy or sell.

I look around, but all I see are structures designed as placeholders for the better thing. They hold on far longer than they need to, because any thing alive wants to keep living, but, in the end… all things will die, and internet marketing is no exception to this rule.

Recently, a friend of mine (who is an excellent blogger) “quit” Facebook. I say “quit” because, as she pointed out, Facebook saves ALL of your information (contact and “about me”, pictures, links, friends, groups, pages, and so on). The difference between an active account and a deactivated account is simply how long it takes to log back in. There really is no quitting Facebook – even if you took the time to manually delete everything, your account would still be available to FB’s database mining, and if you did decide to rejoin you’d just have more work to do.

I know, because I’ve tried it. I’ve done both the “simple deactivation” type of quitting, and the hardcore “delete everything” attack. MySpace had the decency to fully delete your account after a certain amount of time, but Facebook? Despite the two, maybe three times I’ve tried to leave… I’m still on my original account.

The role social networking has taken in our society has been commented upon by many a blogger, and honestly I don’t care that much. I remember the Time Before Cell Phones, when you had to call someone on a land-line and arrange social gatherings before they happen, having to go out of your way to contact people before you left the house. I remember when I found my cellphone had an email address, and I could email other phones right from my computer. And then… texting.

In the same way, I remember getting my first email address, and then my first web-based email address (still have it: rskrules@hotmail.com … back before Hotmail was bought by MSN). Then ICQ was all the rage, because you could type to another person In Real Time! Broadband hit around then, eliminating the ear-splitting scream of a dial-up and offering blistering-fast, always-on Internet. Then MySpace, a website offering the best of having your own website without having to learn HTML and signing up at GeoCities or Angelfire. I remember how Napster introduced me to worlds of music I had never heard before, and directly led me to spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on bands I never would have discovered without it.

This is good. I imagine this is what old men feel like, telling the kids what it was like back in my day. You little punks! 16-bit graphics are blasphemy!

What was I saying? Did I have a point? Oh yes…

I got this new smart phone recently – the htc Driod Eris – and it did something shocking. I booted it up for the first time (don’t get me starting on phone that have to “boot up”) and put in my email address to help integrate it into… I don’t know, the web? After setup was over, I went to enter in all the numbers I had written down on a Post-It from my old phone (see what an old man I am?) when I discovered that they were already in there. My brain stopped. How was that possible? Something wasn’t right… it took me a full day to realize that my phone’s “contacts” were actually my Google Mail Contacts. My email contact list. In my cell phone.

This…. thing instantly knew everyone I had ever emailed. But… no, this can’t be… It also recognized my Facebook friends and linked my gmail contacts to them.

My jaw hit the floor. This was no cellular phone, this was a device to divine internet contacts, where ever they be, and bring them to me at post-computer locations.

Before I had this phone, I used to think of three groups of people: people on my phone, my email lists, and social network lists (FB, MySpace, Twitter, etc). I could quit any one of these groups at any time, depending on my mood or situation, and the others would be untouched.

Now I think of all of them as one singular group: My Contacts. It doesn’t matter which contact in on which website or service anymore, just so long as we’re connected.

My personal feelings about Google or Facebook are now irrelevant. I have a Google-based phone, in which it is easier to add a new contact FOR MY PHONE via my COMPUTER’S WEB BROWSER… which happens to be Google Chrome. The people on my Facebook friends list are not just there so I can have friends – their updates and information (email, phone number, pictures, etc) are all vital parts of my contact web. I could no more quit Facebook than I could delete all the numbers off my phone. And I, in no way, actually hold or store my friend’s information – Google does that for me.

I’d be concerned if I wasn’t so apathetic to the whole thing. I know my information is being bought and sold. Soon all my personal information will be available to the highest bidders, and they can find out exactly where I am, who I’m with, what I’m doing and where I’m going. If they wanted, they could delete me outright and I would be powerless to stop them. In an instant my phone could be bricked, my Google account erased and my Facebook account suspended. Then what would I do? Where would I go?

Outside, probably. *shudder*

EDIT: Instantly after posting this, College Humor summed it up better: http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1806517

As an example, use my previous sentence in the context of “my purpose in blogging.”

- Is this blog/webpage a venue to showcase my writing ability, as a medium to pull potential readers into buying my book?

- Is this a personal blog, wherein I can write and rant and post random things relevant to me personally?

- Where do I draw the line between “personal” and “professional” in each context? My book is remarkably personal, yet seemingly void of day-t0-day bullshit I would fill these pages with.

If you take the bizarre, conflicting ideals presented in that sentence and apply it broadly to pretty much every area of my life, you start to get the picture.

This is what is sometimes referred to as the “impotence in light of infinite choices.” I’m in a position in my life where I have “the best years of my life” to wholly and totally devote to some thing. Something. Anything, really, so long as it:

- Makes me money.

- Uses my abilities (challenging) .

- Is something I feel is important in the world.

There are so many potential choices in the world I’ve become paralyzed, unable to move forward – I don’t know which direction “forward” is.

This is the great drawback to a self-directed life. I could devote myself to writing more books, something that people nod in agreement with but has, so far, not done much for advancing my personal causes (other than getting me a girlfriend!). It is a very unmanly position to be in, one of indecision when one has nothing but time and resources, but without the clear and guiding Light of God I’m lost.

There was a time, oh yes, a time indeed in which I believed I was doing the holiest of work, and that those signals and signs all pointed to the correctness and importance of my self-directed work. Nowadays…. maybe I just need to meditate more.

Part One: The Beginning of Time to the First Settlers

Part Two: The First Settlers to Today

It took me significantly longer than I anticipated to write these things. First, I put considerably more effort into writing them – I don’t think I put that level of research into any academic paper I’ve had. Second, I kept getting sidetracked by interesting stories and information that didn’t make it into (or had almost nothing to do with) the article.

For instance, upon reading how Central Park (the Square) was considered to be the center of the county (although it was off by a mile or so), I stopped reading, found a map, and traced from the original survey to the actual center spot. THEN I read that the county borders expanded at some point, throwing my original spot off… some hours later, by finally going off the current county borders, I found the place. …but so what? I guess I did use it for a picture, but I could have easily used a photo of the Square – learning where the center of the count was for my benefit, because I wanted to know.

It was a good project, on the whole, and I think people have been enjoying the fruits of that effort. I certainly feel enriched, being able to bust out facts and “did-you-knows” about relevant historical events during conversations with friends. Check ‘em out, maybe you’ll enjoy them too!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/health/5281046.stm

I’ll have some now thank you.

I know it’s a myth, the idea of pioneers and settlers “discovering” the land, when people have been living here since 10,000 BCE. And, of course, what happened to the Native Americans was freaking tragic.

But the settlers themselves didn’t really think about that. To them, this land was new, and they were effectively the first people on it. The things they did – build a cabin, apply a name to an area, survey an plot of land – was the first time, for them, that anyone did these things. The names they used still apply today, the groundwork and structures they constructed have lasted over 200 years.

In this day and age, however, there is no “unclaimed” land, no unexplored areas (in harsh and deadly areas, perhaps, but certainly not around here). Everything we do in this day and age is within the framework of the settlers – by all accounts, people no different from you or I, other than their position in time.

It seems rather unfair that I, being born in this time, can no longer explore and settle. If I gain land, it’s within the Jefferson County, maybe even part of Fairfield, certainly part of the United States. The forms and structures available to me are the same that are universally enforced across a 3,000-mile stretch of land, throwing me into a group that I neither understand or particularly wish to be associated with. However, any attempt to break free of this structure would result in my immediate land loss and possible death.

I certainly understand the reasons why a society would choose to enforce itself so intently – but without the ability to try something new, innovation and the drive to experiment is lost. We’re running on a 200+ year old document not because it’s the best thing ever, but simply because we’ve been unwilling to find a better one. Some might say “that’s because there IS no better system!” but how could we know this, scientifically, without running experiments? How can we really know American Democracy is the Best Ever, without allowing modern Americans the option to try something else?

Maybe, lurking deep inside of every American, is a better American, a person who adapts quickly and prospers greatly within the framework of a new system of government we haven’t conceived of yet? It’s easy to enforce one uniform system with an iron fist and say “hey, it works!” Of course  it works. No one is debating that. Over time, however, as our understanding and maturity as the human race grows, we have to grow and adapt with it – the easier and quicker we can do this, the better chance we have to survive into the future.

If we do not, if we simply sit and assume we’ve the best system ever, then at some point someone with a better idea will overtake us. Our stagnation is our undoing. Our innovation is our salvation.

To this end, the only apparent way of achieving this goal is to go back to a pioneer mentality. We must look at the land with brand new eyes, as if it is the first time anyone has seen it. We must claim some as our own, through whatever possible means. We must give it new names and bring new agricultural techniques and technology to improve it. We must give it new names, protect it from those who would harm it, those who would take it way, and ourselves. We must think of how best to organize ourselves, bringing every available advantage to the fore.

We must step on the same ground we’ve tread our entire lives for the first time, with all the awe and responsibility that brings.