Pirates and Moderators

I’ve never been so torn on the issue of internet regulation. On September 17^th the Motion Picture Association of America launched attacks on Pirate Bay (additional link), a website that allows downloading full movies for free, and Pirate Bay attacked back. As of this post the battle is still going from both sides, causing immense downtime for both parties’ websites. How Pirate Bay is giving away copy-written material for free is definitely illegal, a business with a physical presence doing the same would definitely be shut down. So in one sense the MPAA is justified. But who the right to enforce morality on internet? Right now the answer is no one. Should anyone police the internet? To this I declare a firm yes. But the more important question is, who should police the internet? To that, I have no answer. The only obvious candidate I can see is the government, but I am vehemently opposed to them being in such a position. If not them though, who?

Rant related to women

So, I for some reason want to blog some thoughts which I have discussed on quite a few occasions, but have never put into writing. The thing being, the benefits and drawbacks of the way I associate with women. (Note: I just brainstormed this and didn't go back and reorganize or rephrase anything... so this is what it is :) )

To start, I’d like to explain my perception of how I associate with women, and why they react the way they do. This comes to mind because I’ve had discussions in my head with my less social room-mates on various occasions. Yes, in my head, so as to not brag, or to yell at them for no reason, or other reasons. They have expressed verbally a few times and energetically regularly how they seem to feel that I should have no room for complaint when it comes to associating with women. When trying to see it from their perspective, it makes sense. They (from my perspective) have literally no non-family females that they associate with regularly. No girls they talk to, to get hugs from, to get lunch with, etc. I could write a very long winded explanation about why I feel that is the case, but that isn’t my focus right now. Apparently my focus is to write articulate sounding sentences with very proper grammar while saying nothing at all, based on how this post has turned out thus far.

Back to the point, seeing my association with girls from their perspective, I can see how they might be able to say, with justification, “you don’t realize what you have.” I have a few female friends who hug me every time we meet, or who contact me if they need a ride somewhere, or need a listening ear, or just want to hang out. But for some reason, when they would accuse me of having no right to complain, my carnal instinct is to respond “bah, it’s not what you think it is”. That seems awful lame and shallow of me, especially given the fact that I believe their complaint valid. So it got me thinking, what is my gripe still?

I want to preface this by saying having looked at the pros and cons, I wouldn’t change a thing. In fact I think it’d be against my nature to act differently than I’m about to describe. But all the same, there’s pros and cons. Both of which will probably expose my inflated ego, but it’s how I feel so I make only a small apology for it. Hopefully you won’t think any less of me for it.

I have found that girls (not ALL girls, but a good amount) tend to open up around me and become comfortable around me very quickly. For example I have often drove up to a complete stranger, introduced myself, and then asked if they want to hold hands immediately (usually I’m in a fairly hyper mood if this happens) and I can’t think of a time I was turned down yet. The hand holding of course only lasts for a few seconds, but it’s like the ice is broken instantly after that. Or, often times when taking someone I hardly know to lunch for the first time, we end up having a deep personal conversation where they are willing to share deep insecurities or past experiences that are usually secrets reserved for the closest friends. I absolutely love this I should add.

My best guess for why this happens (and here’s more cockyness) is that I genuinely care about them, and I believe girls as a whole are very good at picking up on vibes like that. I am not spending time with them with an expectation about them giving back later, or becoming my girlfriend. All I expect when I take a girl to lunch is her company. I genuinely enjoy learning about the details of their lives and how they think and feel. I believe they pick up on that and feel safe and comfortable telling me how they think and feel. It’s very enjoyable. One friend - after previously telling me she wasn’t going to tell me details, but later telling me everything that was going on- suggested I become a psychologist. The obvious flaw with this plan in my mind is that although I do genuinely care about these friends , and I love hearing and learning about them, I make no claim that I feel this way about everyone. In fact I find that my ‘genuine care’ for girls can be relatively shallow sometimes, it’s far easier to be genuinely interested in someone I find attractive than it is to be genuinely interested in someone I find unattractive. In fact I believe this is why I don’t get along with guys nearly as easily as I get along with girls. Since guys aren’t attractive at all, my drive to get to know them and form friendship bonds is quite minimal to say the least.

Anyway, so people see that some girls tend to be comfortable around me, so Corby must have it all right? It is admittedly very enjoyable, but here’s the flip side. It seems that the type of comfort/trust that I develop with my friends is of the “he’s like a brother” variety. As such, if I ever want to pursue such a friend in an actual courting type fashion, they are not interested at all. Finding romantic interests is ridiculously difficult. Based on the success rate (judging by romantic type relationship frequency) of my friends (the social ones) my method makes dating actually harder, despite the close and frequent association with girls.

Now, I could offer other reasons for my ‘failure’ (defined in my mind by lack of romantic prospects). A glaring obvious one would be “you’re in a wheelchair” which admittedly I’m sure is a hard thing for girls to accept as a dating possibility, where-as in the friends zone it doesn’t really matter. But as it is a real hard fact of my life right now, and not one I can change just yet, I find no use dwelling on it. Only in looking at ways to adapt. Although this brings up a question, what was can I adapt to be a more desirable romantic option in light of my wheelchair?...

Being a person who develops good respectful friendships seems like one to me. Maybe the closeness makes them think of me as “just a brother” and shuts off romantic possibilities, maybe something else shuts off the romantic possibility. However, I will have that type of intimate trusting relationship with my future wife. I can’t imagine marrying someone who I didn’t trust and who didn’t trust me in return. People who marry without trust like that are bat crazy in my opinion. As such even if I believe it has the risk of putting me in the “just a brother” status, it’s worth it because #1 I do still get to spend enjoyable time with close friends, and #2 it doesn’t make any sense to withhold the type of closeness from a prospect if it’s something I’ll want in the end anyway.

Ok, that’s the end of my rant. Feel free to comment with thoughts.

Rumor has it that this blog post might contain a small thought

Although the article I read was about an upcoming newspaper related iPad app, what really struck me was how often our news is based on rumor. Phrases like "it is thought..." or "Apple is believed to have..." were frequently used when describing this hypothetical product, while simultaneously making it sound like it is right around the corner. I find it sad that so much effort is based on silly things that might be, which in turn keeps people from being content with what's here and now.

Smallish post 1 - Idle hands

From today's readings, the most interesting thought came to me from Elder Oaks "Focus on Priorities" talk. When speaking of our day and age, he said, "Because of increased life expectancies and modern timesaving devices, most of us have far more discretionary time than our predecessors." I've often heard people talk about how in the pioneer days it seems like their tribulation was more temporal, and they maintained their spirituality better than we seem to now.

It occurred to me that the spiritual distress our society is in might be partially due to the amount of "discretionary time" we have. An old proverb says "idle hands are the devil's workshop". I believe part of the reason we struggle so much with temptation is because we don't keep our hands busy in good things. Even if they were simple things like working the fields.

Blog 1

Well here it is, for my CS 404 class I need to have a blog. Making a blog took like 30 seconds. If all homework was like this, I might still play video games regularly. Might...