Really?

My at-home productivity level has dropped drastically in just one night. I finally got around to checking out a site recommended by a friend for stealing videos, movies and music on the web. I have been sitting here for over an hour exploring, and have found that while the program is running, my computer is left without memory, and almost powerless to do anything else... I'm lucky to even get Ultra-Edit open to write this, but there is no way to get the browser open unless I stop downloading all the Simpsons episodes I have missed over the last 5 years. My hard drive is too full of 4 years worth of digital photos to download an entire movie, but once I get them saved to CD-ROM I can start ripping off Hollywood too.

I used Napster for a while before it lost the ability to be useful for thieves like me, but at some point it became too much of a pain to try to find every song (in good quality) from the CDs I wanted, so I wound up just buying the CD. The biggest obstacle was probably that I could never really find the songs I wanted. Somewhere along the line I became an old fogie in my musical tastes, and everyone else likes pop and rap. With TV and videos it's different. Like I said, I have 5 years of Simpsons, South Park, and Seinfield to catch up on... Actually more since I rarely watched them when I lived in the States.

Hopefully I can lay off the Simpsons downloads and get to work on my contribution to the world of blogging. I have a working prototype that Carton is helping me test, (but when he tired last week it didn't work). When that's done I can move on to trying to set it up for Blogger as I have promised to Ian.

A couple of thoughts about the war... no not really... rather a couple thoughts about peoples' feelings during the war. But first a disclaimer. I have not re-read this. I have not edited it. iT is exactly as I wrote it word for word, and probably tomorrow I will look at it and think "why the heck did I write it like that?!?! That's not what I meant!!".

1. I often hear complaints about the news that gets reported during the war. People inevitably say that the reporting is not enough, or not open enough, and we need more. It's hard to argue against, since obviously the more information available, the better, but I really wonder who these people are who can't get enough news. The majority of my news comes from NPR's The Connection, and Talk Of The Nation. I also have been surfing major news sites and news.google.com. In addition, I find interesting articles I would have missed by surfing through some other people's web sites. I am far from digesting all the news available, and to tell the truth, I don't care about digesting it all, because to do so would mean that I would have to give up everything else in my life.

Another interesting thing I have noticed, is that no matter how much people hope that personal web-sites like this will bring down the traditional news media, surfing through other people's web-sites, I see nothing but links to traditionl news media web-sites.

2. I was asked the other day what I felt about The US invading Iraq. I know that if anything, I should/would/do feel appalled and sad, and similar emotions, but the more people I see expressing their dismay, the less I am able to feel it. Not because I don't feel it, but because I begin to doubt why I feel it and if I really do feel it.

The person who asked me expressed his sorrow about it, and I remarked how strange it was that he did not feel such sorrow about Saddam's evil policies for the past umpteen years. I wondered why he did not feel sorry about the continuing death and injustice in Israel which has fallen out of the attention of the news. He took it as me calling him a hypocrite. Far from it. To be a hypocrite somehow implies a choice on the part of the hypocrite to condemn one action but allow another.

I don't think anyone is making a specific choice to ignore all the other injustices in the wold, but the fact that ignoring one injustice and being utterly appalled at another seems to suggest to me that most of the emotions we feel now are more a result of some sort of collective social phenomenon. I wonder if it isn't like the death of Princess Diana. No one would argue that it was a joyous occasion, but it is hard to believe that she touched so many lives as those who mourned for her... rather there was some kind of feeling of belonging to the "in group of mourners" that caused so many people to act the way they did. I saw the same thing with the death of a couple of Detroit Hockey Players in a car crash a few years ago.

I agree with the feelings of people who despise this war. But when I find myself feeling so, I am plagued by the fact that for me to feel this now, when I should feel it every day of my life, makes no logical sense. Just like it makes no logical sense that the voice of those opposed to the war is so much louder than the voice of people opposed to Saddam's regime. As I see by the "Iraq Body Count" (which I do not claim to be accurate) on joi.ito.com, the death toll is only 199 max. Granted, if your brother/sister/daughter/son is among them, this is huge, but for me, who's closest contact in the war is the brother of a friend, why should I feel more appalled at this number than the thousands dying of AIDS in Africa? It just doesn't make sense.

One argument would be that the difference is that this is a choice by our government, and that makes sense. But isn't is also a choice by our government to not give more aid to combating AIDS in Africa?

Again, I am not arguing that everyone is a hypocritical pig... I am simply questioning the root of my own feelings, and wondering how much they are influenced by the feelings of everyone around me, rather than on their own merit, and on my own principals.