Such Hard Decisions

So I'm buying a gift for myself and I want some opinions. Let me know what you think.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

And yes they are belt buckles.

GO GO GOLEM

The Jewish Golem is essentially an item that was (supposedly) created out of clay, by Rabbi Judah Loew; it was intended, and supposedly succeeded excessively, to protect the city of Prague, really the Jews who resided there, from the government that wanted to kill them. It grew so strong that the emperor who wanted to kill the Jews has to essentially ask for mercy and have Rabbi Loew kill the Golem.
This story is the basis for He, She and It. Yod is the Golem, Avram is Loew. The question is why would Piercy choose this cultural symbol to be the basis for her story and cyborg? There are a number of reasons, but one of the more convincing ones, is that the Jews are historically oppressed and there are few stories of them being protected, especially of them being protected well, but the story of the Golem is one of those. The Golem succeeds in protecting them, just as Yod succeeds in protecting Tikva. She probably also chose the Golem, because it was a being that was created by man, not be god, and because it had powers that human's did not possess. This story actually makes it seem as though the idea of the cyborg evolved from the bastardization of a number of ideas that were lead by the concept of the Golem.
Piercy's use of the Golem provides hope and freedom, through the cyborg Yod, through the effect of the Golem in the original story of Loew's Golem. It was such a successful defender that the emperor had to essentially beg for mercy and promise to allow the Jews of Prague to live how they wanted. The Cyborg accomplishes the exact same thing for the people of Tikva.

Scott's Adventures in the Wonderful World of Warcraft

Come with me on my journey down the rabbit hole into the MMORPG(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that is World of Warcraft and do not worry for my story shall be accompanied pictures, since as an undeservingly famous author once said "what is the use of a book without pictures."

First, let me introduce you to avatar. His name is Jorreal, and yes I stole that from a different game that I used to play when I was younger, and trust me that game is just as nerdy. He is a night elf warrior, or for those of you who play WoW a Night-Elf Mohawk and for those of you who don't play it means he is a cute little pale creature who wears a lot of armor and attempts to kill people. This is what he looks like.

Ok, so I haven't played WoW in a while so, as I was expecting, I was bombarded with a bunch of messages from my guildies(people whose main goal in life is to try and annoy me so much that I lose all in my life and spend nine hours a day playing the game, and not really having any fun.) So, I started my journey into the World of Warcraft already thouroghly annoyed and pretty much ready to quit again, but I needed to experience a little more. So I did as level 70s(highest level player) do and went to a lowbie(new player) area and started killing them for fun, and to make them almost as annoyed as I am, and was when I was leveling my character.Here is a picture of me standing over the dead body of a lowbie that I thouroghly annoyed.

What I learned from my recent adventures in the World of Warcraft is pretty sad and depressing. I suppose it's similar to what other people learned from SecondLife, that these programs that were intended to be fun and freeing become annoying and confining. In WoW it became a cycle of highler level players annoying lower level players, that I was more than willing to continue and higher level players annoying higher level players by guilting them, saying that people are relying on them etc. "Man, we need you to run TK(raid), you're the only one who can tank it that is on right now." Really, Really, am I the ONLY person playing the game who could do it, I highly doubt that, stop making me feel guilty, I've got homework to do, even if that homework is playing WoW.

This is me, happy that I'm finished.

Individually packaged

Lots of technologies offer room for the individual, while they also help kill the individual. The most interesting and contradictory example of this is the internet. The internet allows people to be individuals by allowing them to do whatever they want, it also makes some people less of an individual. In some ways the internet allows people to be more of an individual than they could be without it, since the internet allows people to do things annoynmously. It also has the ability to take some individuality away from people. Really it isn't the technology that allows or disallows individuality it's whether the person using the technology wants to be an individual or not. If one wants to be an individual, they can use the internet to research, learn, grow and solidify their own identity. If somebody doesn't care to be an individual they can use it to join groups and then conform to the ideas/ideals of the group.

Specifically, within the realm of the internet, the technology of forums allows for individulaity. They allow users to discuss all, and any sort, of idea. The freedom to discuss anything in any manner allows the user to be an individual by being able to choose what to read and what to say. Some forums do, however, also limit individuality by limiting the things that can be discussed and the manners in which they can be discussed, although this is not the technology's fault, rather the fault belongs to those controlling the technology.

That Most Important Issue (According to Me)

It's hard to say which issue from That Hideous Strength is most urgent today since so many of them are still relevant today. Since I have to pick some issues, or in my case one issue, it's going to be the competition between science and religion, and their attempts to be the single entity governing humanity, and by governing I, of course, mean controlling.
Now onto the WHY.
This is the most urgent issue today, because it is a seemingly never ending competition between the two. It also appears to be going more and more in the direction of science these days. The truly interesting and urgent aspect of this competition in That Hideous Strength is that the way in which C.S. Lewis discusses the competition between the two is almost an example of how Huxley's Brave New World came about. Lewis' competition clarifies the way in which Huxley's vision could have come about, which is what makes it so urgent. Society, even now, is dealing with a competition between religion and science as the means of controlling the masses, and should either entity ever win we just might get to see a Huxleyian world.

Do you really want freedom? (Really?)

ah. the age old question. what is freedom? freedom i suppose is the ability to do whatever i want. of course that is a very broad definition, but its the one i choose. my freedom relies on a couple of things. it relies on having all of my limbs, my brain function, and some protection from the freedom of others (only because i'm sure some people might want to hurt me). of course if you're definition of freedom is something else it would rely on quite a different set of things. what makes us happy? for me it has to be that i use my freedom to the utmost. see i don't particularly mind our laws and regulation (as noted above i need them to protect me from you) because they don't really stop my kind of freedom since i am still able to do whatever i want. i know some of you think thats not true, but it is. i can do whatever i want as long as i don't mind or am willing to deal with the consequences. for instance, i've decided not to capitalize anything in this blog (which i'm sure upsets many of you literati) knowing full well that my ideas might seem less important because of this decapitalization [yes i made that word up, but i'm in the field (english) and am therefore allowed to make words up].

ah that made me happy.

Jesus Loves Me (or maybe I just think that)

Huxley basically hit the nail on the head when it comes to what happens to religion in an age of technology. Religion gets morphed into something entirely different than when it started and people don't really care about it in the same way people cared about it before technology. Unfortunately we don't get to see the thoughts of any religious practitioner besides Bernard, so I'm going to go ahead and just assume that many of them are like him, maybe not in the sense that they don't believe that Ford is coming back, but in the sense that they only go to those meetings because it is what they need to do to be accepted. That's basically what religion is now, some of us go because we believe, others go simply because its how they were raised, which is pretty Huxleyian to me.

This only furthers my agreement with Postman. Huxley's future is the one we should fear, not Orwell's. I mean seriously this discussion of whether or not we are stupider than we used to be or not makes no sense to me. Clearly we are. We are essentially half an inch away from a Huxleyian future and we don't seem to care. Now I'm sure many of you are going to be angry with me and disagree and that's OK with me. I don't quite know how or when we changed into such a Huxleyian society but we surely did. Our society is now based almost entirely on distracting people from the sad state of their lives while hopefully getting them to use consumption as a remedy for any emotion other than happiness. Maybe we don't use soma as much as they do, but surely we use drugs more than they do, and for similar reasons.
This is how we work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job, here take an antidepressant.
MASSES: (swallow pill) awesome I no longer care about anything.
SOCIETY: and we don't have to see you cry.

SOCIETY: You're child appears to have trouble learning, here take this....
MASSES: (swallow pill) my child doesn't have trouble focusing anymore
SOCIETY: and he doesn't interrupt people who can learn nor does he learn anything. He'll make a perfect Epsilon

How it used to, and probably still should, work.

SOCIETY: I'm sorry you lost your job.
MASSES: (continues crying)
SOCIETY: Alright enough get over it.

SOCIETY: Your kid is stupid.
MASSES: (beats child; either it works or the child is actually stupid)
SOCIETY: Good job.

but no, our society hasn't gotten stupid or soft or weak, we merely need drugs for everything and can't accept responsibility for anything.