A few days ago I was debating/taking with Natasha and Rando regarding religious vs. atheist people, and how living in such a Christian country made me feel out of place and discriminated against. Granted, I haven’t ever suffered directly from any sort of religious discrimination, but if you actually think that America’s stereotype for atheists isn’t that we’re morally bankrupt and generally all-around evil, then you’re wrong. To be fair, I wasn’t really ‘out’ with my atheism until coming to MIT, where I was finally in the majority. Back home, the demographic is overwhelmingly Catholic, and they take it rather seriously, so you can imagine why I wasn’t shouting about it. To this day I dont plan on ever telling my grandma about it, she’d more than likely disown me.

Anyways, so, I used the example of that guy who killed Tiller, the abortionist doctor, in a church as an example of religion not making people better people, or making people crazy, I am not exactly sure. I want to apologize for this. I have always been vehemently against people blaming their actions on various media, especially video games, but I hadn’t considered religious nuts in that same category. I hadn’t considered the distinction between doing something because of religion, and doing something in the name of religion. Really, you can replace the word ‘religion’  with anything you want, same thing.
I read this paper this previous term, Henry Jenkins’ “The War between Effect and Meaning”

http://web.mit.edu/cms/faculty/WarEffectMeaning.htm

The paper focuses on the case of video games, but if its something you’re interested in, I recommend reading it.

The point is, I forgot what I believed in for the sake of trying to make a point. It was a bad thing for me to do, and I’m sorry.

So, I have not been cooking lately. I just haven’t felt like it. Despite it being summer, and having no school work to do, I have been rather down in the dumps, due to various reasons. Because of this, I had no desire to cook. Usually, cooking is one of my favorite things to do. To me, its a really satisfying process where you get to see the fruits of your efforts nearly instantaneously. But that didn’t matter, I hadn’t had any interest in cooking. However, after gettings stuff at the Farmer’s Market Tuesday, I had a need to cook. Not a need as in a driving desire, as need as in I spent money on stuff I can’t eat raw, so I better cook it.

Tuesday was Eggplant parmesan. It turns out, I don’t like eggplant very much, and unfortunately I still have about half of one left, which I’ll be turning into a sandwich for Friday.

Wednesday was much better though.

Roasted potatoes inspired by my Grandma’s dish, with influence from Natasha’s all-around cooking know how, with just a bit of me wanting to make it crispier, but not being sure how to do so.

Roasted potatoes & Ham Steak

Accompanied by a brocolli & cheese soup

Brocolli Cheese soup with Chives & Croutons

It seems like a lot, but trust me, these were rather small servings. The pictures are just really zoomed in. Taking these really made me want to get a macro lens again. I think my investigations might have to restart.

In addition to these dishes, I already packed my lunch for tomorrow. A spinach salad with balsamic vinagerette dressing (as per Shanying’s advice) with gorgonzola cheese & radish slices (Mom’s suggestion) and some more brocolli cheese soup, along with some trail mix & a banana for a snack.

Its really not very manly I guess, but I do like planning, cooking, and eating meals.

Edit:

Recipe for brocolli cheese soup

Fair warning, it is not particularly healthy. Accompany with salad, so you’ll feel better about yourself somehow.

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen chopped broccoli
• 16 oz chicken broth
• 1 (1 pound) loaf processed cheese food, cubed
• 1 cup 1/2&1/2
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 1 cup water

1. In a stockpot, melt butter over medium heat. Cook onion in butter until softened. Stir in broccoli, and cover with chicken broth. Simmer until broccoli is tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Reduce heat, and stir in cheese cubes until melted. Mix in 1/2&half and garlic powder.
3. IMPORTANTIn a small bowl, stir cornstarch into water until dissolved. Stir into soup; cook, stirring frequently, until thick.

• I just dumped the cornstarch in their, without mixing it first. This was a mistake. I spent a long time whipping it with a whisk.  This was a good thing though, as it whipped in air, and made it somehow fluffy-ish. So I recommend you mix the cornstarch in water, whisk that, put it in the soup, then whisk the fuck out out that too.
  

So, this George Tiller, a late-term abortion physician, was shot at his church. OK, so I don’t consider fetuses people, so I guess I’d put myself as pro-choice, but I don’t really care very much, so that is not the point of this post.

The video above, summary: Bill O’ Reilly is recieving some blame for the murder, as he said a lot of stuff about what a terrible person Tiller was.

First: I don’t agree with those people, I don’t think those people blaming O’ Reilly are right, don’t get me wrong, I think he’s an ass, but saying its his fault would be quite hypocritical, and unlike Fox News (and probably most news sources) I don’t like being hypocritical.

The reason I say this is because I don’t think media should be blamed for people’s actions. Its like they said on the above clip, these people are whackos to start. However, what I don’t get is why they don’t take this position when its a student who shoots someone. Instead, they try to pin blame on video games or movies or music.

Does  this seem unfair to anyone else?

In retrospect, this is a rather shallow post, I don’t have a lot to say on the matter, I guess. I just get really annoyed at this sort of hypocrisy.

CMS.610:

This class was my Media Industries and Texts class. We spent the term making a game and a sales pitch to go with it. I mentioned it a few times here, I think, I mean, that implies that you read this, which implies that you must have nothing better to do. seriously. Now that I think about it, this is going to be a really boring post, you should probably just go watch TV or something.

I’m getting off topic. Which is a convienent headway into mention of the prof of the class, who was really cool. He started Bethesda!  Cool, right? Anyways, I mention the off topic thing cos of his great stories, which somehow always were connected to the subject at hand. And they all were also related to each other somehow. They were all connected in some crazy way.

The class project, the game, it was at the same time my favorite thing I was working on all term, and the bane of my existence. I was the head and only programmer, and I am not a very good programmer. So in the end, our game was pretty ugly. It was a pretty… questionable premise to start, fighting with the purpose of losing, which is funny, and probably why it got picked in the first place, but too counter-intuitive, which is a lot easier to see in retrospect, I guess.

Here’s the commercial that was made for the game in question

All the judges voted for the other game, and I can’t blame them, their game was really cool.

4.341:

Photography. Photography is a lot of fun. Photography class, is bullshit. The teacher, was a total turd all term. The final review, she didnt’ say a single nice thing about my project. The judges said a LOT of nice things, she said none. I am not looking forward to my grade, as I have a feeling I’m going to have to argue it higher. Or something. I have never done so before. But I worked really god damn hard on it. OH, and she’s the head of the Visual Arts concentration department, so I’m going to have to continue dealing with it, I guess. Bah. I’ll post photos from my final set on my next post later.

21L.011

The Film Experience: This was a good class. Not bad, not incredible, just interesting. It’s Henry Jenkin’s last term here, and I really wanted to take one of his classes, and this fit the bill.

CMS.600

Casual Games & Casual Players: We played games every Monday! Besides that, we talked about various aspects of the casual gaming industry, including players, developers, and other stuff. It was cool, but nothing particularly amusing or terrible happened.

This is the one I wanna get

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830113088

Its a Nikon D60. Its not as nice as the ones we used in photography class, but not so far back as to feel I’m crippled. However, how I will get $600 to pay for it? I don’t know. Apparently the standards for selling sperm are pretty high, and I dont think my genes are quite worth $600. I’m considering getting it on NewEgg’s BillMeLater plan, and paying for it with my summer wages (I’m working full time, and some NightWatch, so I am pretty sure I can afford it). Maybe I should not be such an American as to want something I can’t currently afford. But then, if I get it laaater I’ll miss out on the start-of-summer trips! What a conundrum!

What do you think?

Edit:

After more reading, I’m going for the even cheaper D40 now.

And per Eric’s suggestion I am following slickdeals for updates.

This got me thinking as to whether I thought humans were inherently evil, or good. For a long time, I thought that they were just spread out over a bell-curve of morality, and credited their place on some event or influence in their lives that wasn’t really a factor in reality. Someone could say that they’re a criminal cos they grew up poor, but that would imply that everyone that grew up poor would be a criminal. Rather, I think they’re just inherently bad people, or unethical or something.

I still think this is true, but I think more credit should go to influences. A peaceful, happy society would have a bell curve resembling an easy test. For the most part, the majority of people are on the relatively good side, their are a few exceptionally amazing people, and a few evil. However under strong negative influences (post-apocalyptic, to refer to my original thought) people in general become more evil. Of course, even in there, there are SUPER bad people, but acting like a decent person is suddenly exceptional. I’d draw something out, but my laptop/tablet broke (right during the final stretch of school, ain’t I a lucky guy!) but I think you get the idea.

What a pimp.

If you haven’t seen Don Giovanni/an opera, I highly recommend it. I thought it was gonna be pretty lame, but turns out people singing everything in another language can still be pretty funny.  Its about this Tucker Max-esque womanizer. Erm, the picture sums it up well I think.

However, it made it abundantly obvious that I am unsuited to such events, some examples:

• After the first half I complained that it ended rather abruptly, and started getting up to leave. Natasha thought I was joking I guess, and said part 2 would complete it. I thought SHE was joking, and asked if it was something like “Don Giovani II: The Reckonging”. Its super crowded in the theatre, erm, immediatey outside (we’re on the 2nd balcony) so I think we’re hanging around for it to uncrowd a bit, so we can leave. At some point the space outside clears (people return to their seats, in retrospect it is all quite obvious) so I say we could probably head out. I get a puzzled look, “what about part II…?” I thought it was over. It was just intermission. I am an idiot.

• The bride’s groom (after Giovanni tries to seduce said bride) is quite angry. She’s trying to calm him down, seductively, going on and on about her “special power” or strength or something that she thinks will calm him down or soothe him or something like that. Jokingly, I lean over and whisper “hey, hey, I think she’s talkin’ about her vaginer”. While yes, it was a whisper, it was later pointed out to me that everyone else around was completely silent, making me rather easy to hear. Normally, that wouldn’t be so bad, but we were surrounded by Opera goers, mostly old. I hope they didn’t hear me, and if they did, that they didn’t feel like… scandalized…

• 

  You can't say vaginer here!

  I wanna see another one, like, this summer.  I’ll behave myself.

But I ain’t gonna quit. I have my Mexican pride to worry about, you know.

I need to look at this at least once a day from now on.