Sexual Psychology

Why do people always get so angry with me when I say that sexual orientation is a nurture thing? It wouldn't make sense for it to be a hard genetic trait, or homosexuals would die off, and they would do so even more quickly if more homosexuals are open and less likely to have a child with a cover-up spouse. This means that homosexual rights activists who believe that this trait is nature and advocate more openness are actively diminishing the homosexual population.

Okay. Homosexuality could also be a harder to define trait. It could be less like blue eyes and more like what kind of job or career a person would want to do when they grow up. This still means that being homosexual would thin out the more that people are sexually open. It wouldn't completely kill off homosexuals, but advocating open homosexuality would be akin, in my mind, to telling people of a certain race that they are no longer allowed to reproduce.

This is why I feel that I have to believe that homosexuality is nurture. Maybe it is just to satisfy myself, but I want homosexuals to be as open as they want to be, without any chance that this could be killing a community.

Also, I would like to clarify that nurture does not mean that something is a choice. It doesn't even mean that it can be prevented. What it does mean is that gender roles aren't taught as strongly as they used to be and people are more likely to accept whatever a person shows the world, so whatever you are attracted to is much easier to accept.

I want you to think about every trait that defines who you are. How many of these traits are nature and how many are nurture? Dyed hair is nurture. Tattoos are nurture. Piercings, even ears, is nurture. Nurture is anything that you weren't born with. In my opinion, people aren't born with sexuality. Children don't choose their friends based on physical attraction. Hormone supplements are easy for anyone to take, regardless of their age, so I don't think that hormones should take as much of the blame for sexuality as they used to.

I feel like it would be just as difficult to describe why you find someone attractive as it would be to explain why your favorite color is your favorite. I really doubt that favorite colors are a nature trait.

Just because something is nurture, rather than nature, does not mean that it is a choice. I don't believe there is a gene that makes you gay. There could surely be genes that predispose a person towards a certain lifestyle, but personality and behavior are nurture traits. And homosexuality is a behavior.

All of the Electronics

I find that I surround myself with electronics. I even found out that they are what I value the most. I was talking to one of my friends about what I would do with all my stuff if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow (morbid, I know, but it was interesting) and I found out that I was pretty much only listing electronic devices. I don't think that I value much of anything that I own that doesn't have some kind of circuitry in in. I also found out that I value my PSP more than my laptop. However, I think that should just naturally follow when I have an amazing Desktop computer that my laptop can never trump, while the PSP games are exclusive to that system.

Enough with the PSP (which shall certainly be a later post). I also realized that I am pretty much never without my electronics. I usually have my laptop on me, when I'm not around my computer, and when I don't have either, I still have my phone. Plus, I have my Archos on me half the time as well. Then there's the PSP, which I play in bed and on buses. I also have a DS, but I just beat the last DS game on my shelf so it will be sitting there for a little while longer. Pokemon Black and White is coming out in the USA in about a week. That's when I'll take it off of the shelf.

Already having distracted myself from the topic twice, I have to make my major point before I go onto another tangent. Today's world is filled with circuitry. I feel that everyone should know something about technology. However, I'm glad that I'm an electrical engineer, because my life is filled with even more technology than most. I have tons of shiny toys, and new ones are coming out every day. The 3DS and NGP are both incredibly appealing. I don't think I'll get the 3DS early on, but the later models should be stronger and cheaper anyways if Nintendo will repeat the same handheld model that they have been using for several generations.

These machines are great tools. They help me with day to day life. They change the way that I look at the world. A trip out is now an episode of one of my favorite TV shows. A night in is 3 games of League of Legends. My time is planned around how much I can do on a given system. This means that batteries are charged nightly, so that the power supply isn't a limiting factor on how I can spend my time. I like the option to do anything I can with my electronics, even though I often just do the same thing over and over.

Anyways, I have no problem with my life being as electronically inclined as it is. I know that some people do, but it's not a bad thing to me. Maybe it should be, but I like having all these tools and toys around me. I feel like I will always have an electrically inclined life. I suppose that I will have a computer hooked up to my television, and perhaps one in the kitchen as well. This would mean that I can have my whole house under control from anywhere on the internet. Obviously, there will be encryption and passwords, and some systems will not be on the net, but the whole house should be controllable from just about anywhere in the house from a single source. I should be able to find a good bluetooth remote control and tell my TV to turn on or the kitchen stove to preheat from the couch. I should even be able to turn on any lighting that I want and have the dryer tell me when it's done drying clothes. It might even be able to tell me how much moisture is left in them and the time left on any cycles that aren't done. I would love setting up my house with central computer systems. about 1000 dollars should be able to cover all of the households electronic needs while not breaking the bank.

So as you can see, this is how I plan to live. I want my whole house to work in terms that I understand. They will all have the circuitry that I am studying right now. I will be able to set scheduling applications into my household. Instead of timing my life around electronics, I'll be able to time my electronics around my life. Electronics will probably always surround me, and hopefully I will always love them just as much as I do now.

Creativity

I really wish that I was a creative person. I don't mean that I can't come up with ideas, but most people can. I just can't put them into any solid medium. I can't mix up music, paint, or make sculptures. Those are all things that I find interesting and I wish I could do, but I just don't think that I have the necessary skill set in order to do all or any of these things. I would be able to do them, but it requires effort. I'm sure that this wouldn't be an exorbitant amount, but it is quite definitely a limiting factor on the amount of stuff that I can do. Personally, I've set a grand amount of effort into perfecting my video game skill. I don't play video games as most people do. I still enjoy it, and consider it one of my hobbies, but I don't play it to shoot things in the face. I play it to master the math of the game and to understand what can make the game more compliant to my will. I think this may be a little arrogant, but that really isn't my intent. I know that I'm not great at the execution of video game tasks, so I try to excel in the strategic aspects. I try to excel a great deal in these strategic aspects. Perhaps I could do quite a bit better if I focused more on increasing my reaction speed, but I don't know how much better that can get, being that I've played video games all my life.

And truthfully, that's an important statement. I've played video games all my life. Playing these games is my creativity. It's how I express myself. When I'm angry, I play recklessly. When I'm sad, I'm cautious and self-defeating. The way I'm feeling changes how I act in game, and shows a part of myself.

I truly wish that I had more aspects of creativity. There are so many other ways that I could express myself that would probably improve the world. However, I don't think that I'm doing a bad job, and I connect with my friends at the same time. video games are an outlet that I adore and support. They are creativity.

Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts seem to be the silliest thing ever. I'll admit that I couldn't think of something to write, so I Googled "writing prompts." Do you know what results you get when you search for that? You get a collective of arbitrary ideas that have absolutely no cohesion. Some of these ideas are interesting, but a majority of them are just plain silly. Really... you want me to write about a tight-rope walking melon? What will happen to the couple in which the man just inherited a ton of money? I think it'll probably be what most people expect. Then again, I guess everyone thinks that those things will play out differently than I think they will... Whatever. I'll file that one under "maybe I'll write about it if there's ever a point at which I'm that out of ideas and hate my life beyond any reasonable doubt." I really hope that I don't become that bad.

Regardless, I do need to know what to write about. Maybe I should just write about League of Legends daily. I do play it daily. I would have great new stories every day. There would be one about how great friends Teemo and Blitzcrank are until Blitz accidently farts static electricity everywhere and Teemo can't eat his shrooms anymore because of the silence caused by the fart. Yeah, that would be high class.

I could write about a romance between Nidalee and Udyr, since they both love nature and looking like wild animals. The difference there, though, is that Udyr is a furry while Nidalee actually morphs back and forth. Dressing up in animal skins... High class once again Udyr. Good job saving me from that disgrace.

Okay. So, I hope you realize why I don't write about League of Legends every day. There would be no good way for me to take it seriously. I could rant about all of the stupid things that have happened to me in game, but that still doesn't hold anything more than a daily anger rant and I don't personally find that interesting, so I wouldn't want to write about it.

I want to get something started. I want to write some fictional pieces on this blog. I'm sure that it will increase my desire to write and give me many new topics to write about. I'm just not sure if it fits the current style of this blog. Eh... I don't really think that it matters. I currently have recipes, rants, and random plugs for things that I like. How could short stories not fit into this mix? I think I'll do those. They just take a lot more refining than any of my other posts.

So here goes the expedition. I've written a few fiction pieces, but I truthfully haven't finished any of them. As soon as I do, I'll start to place them up here. They might take time though, and they certainly won't come with the great frequency of my blog posts. (That was meant to be a humorous reference to the missing 5 months of posts on this site.) I suppose it will take some time to gain back the trust of all of my 3 readers, but I will definitely be able to soon rehabilitate my reputation if I actually stick to any kind of schedule. Is 3 posts a week good? Okay. We'll do that then. I'll try Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I really don't know how well I'll be able to stick to that, being that I'm currently making a Thursday post that follows up a Tuesday one. Sorry for the inconsistency from week to week, but I hope that people will be able to show up on weekends, expecting 3 new entries from me. And I also hope that I deliver. Now I just need to know what to fill up 3 pages a week with...

Minecraft

Wow. What an interesting idea. This is probably the first reaction of anyone who is still playing Minecraft. Minecraft is one of those games that really lets you do anything as long as you have enough ingenuity.

So, Minecraft is an indie game. I just love it. Then again, what am I, if not indie? I've been described by some of my closest friends as "too indie." I find this a silly idea. Finding great things is not something to bemoan, but rather, something to celebrate.

I think in part it was the way I was raised. My dad said that Linux is great, so I tried it. I didn't get it working right away. No. I didn't really even get it working for a couple years. Now, I can't imagine not having Linux. It works much more smoothly than Windows. I don't know how to explain it to people who don't want to use Linux, but it just works really well. And for something that's free, that's amazing. Open source projects are amazing. In fact, most unpublished projects are amazing. I think it's great that they can work when they have no financial backing.

Minecraft is one of those unpublished greats. It's such a strong contender for the most simple game ever, but it has so much depth that some people would attack you for calling it simple. At it's heart though, that's what it is. It is a system that works on a very small scale, and yet, can create very big things. Without simple interactions between objects, there is no way that the system would be able to manage everything that is going on at any one time.

One of the things that annoys me, is the group of people that follow Minecraft. This doesn't mean all of them, but the loudest ones. It's the same for the Call of Duty crowd, and the Whedonites. I love most of what Joss Whedon creates. I just don't like accepting his work unconditionally. This goes the same for Minecraft. Minecraft is a clone of Infiniminer. I didn't know this until I looked up Minecraft on the Wikipedia. It was inspired by an earlier game that had similar things set up. However, Infiniminer had the advantage of being a team based game. I truthfully want to see Minecraft have a team based mode. The game would become a lot more interesting if there was a multiplayer challenge aspect. This is what draws me in League of Legends and Team Fortress 2. Both of these amazing games truly deserve to be looked at and given a chance, because they are amazing games.

Anyways, play minecraft. There's a free version, which is fun, and a version that cost only ~18$ which is even more fun. Yes, it's not the most original, but that doesn't make it less fun. Play it. You'll thank yourself for doing so. And even if you don't like it, then you won't have wasted anything other than 5 minutes, and you can always go right to LoL or TF2 afterward.

Facebook

It's really quite amazing. At one time it can both be a plethora of information, yet a barren wasteland of nothingness. There's so much writing, and so many words. But there's also so little value. Why do people bother with it?

It is truthfully silly to ask why people bother. I know the reasons for several of my close friends, and tons of other people that I know less well. It's an open canvas that other people can see. It's an ocean of information. If you know where to look, you can actually get something from it. You can find out where the next party is going to be. You can understand what is important to those that you care about. I suppose it is quite a bit easier, but to me it seems like a first order operational strategy.

Facebook provides us with an easy out. We can ignore people for weeks and months and then reconnect within seconds. The amount of effort that goes in is minuscule compared to what you get out of the system. There are certainly ways to get more information from the people you know, but few, if any, ways to get that amount of information with any less effort than you would exert on facebook. You don't need to remember the one thing that the person wants so that you can get it for them on their birthday. You don't even need to remember when their birthday is. The system does that for you. It tells you that significant events are coming up. It gives you a million phone numbers and tons of wish-lists. It has information that no one would ever have to know. It's got... pretty much the largest database of personal information on any one website, ever.

So you can get to know people really well. Sure, you may be able to get to know them better, but how many people do you really want to know that well? On the other hand, how many people do you want to congratulate you on a celebration? I would say that most people would want hundreds of birthday wishes. They might want tons of advice for each and every question. Regardless of what they want, most people will get many more responses than they could hope for, even with the lot that they hoped up.

The one problem is that everyone else needs to put in the same amount of effort as you do for this to be effective for you. If none of your friends check it daily, then you probably won't check it daily. In fact, you probably wouldn't even bother to make an account.

The good news is, most people already are putting in this effort. There are certainly exceptions, but I'm sure their numbers are dwindling. Eventually, it will be an inconvenience to not have an account. In fact, there have already been cases where I was glad to have an account, just so that I wouldn't have to go looking for an address or phone number too hard. It's right there. It certainly does help.

I guess... I just don't like that it replaces the communication we have already in place. Though... phones are falling out. And those already made the mail much less useful.

I suppose there could be some bias. No, I don't suppose this. I know that I am biased. Some people call me pretentious for not being on facebook. The bad part is that I like this. I feel like it distinguishes me. Most of the most "pretentious" people are the intelligent ones. They are critical of what's around them and understand what they don't know. It's not a case of Ancient Greek wisdom that I'm talking about, but rather a form of modesty. It's nice to see people admit that they don't know how something works. These are not the masses.

The masses are the loudest or most populous. They're the ones with the highest birth to death rate. These happen to be the people lowering the IQ of the general population. These are the people who know how all blue collar work works and could do it, but wouldn't lower themselves to it. The smart ones know that they couldn't do blue collar work. The masses yell and scream that other people are lazy while they look up pictures of cats at work all day. The masses think they deserve things that others know need to be earned. The masses use facebook.