Memoir: "The Burden of Control"

Last year, about this time, I went on a trip to Uganda to visit my little sister, who spends a lot of time in Africa doing research for her PhD (she's in AIDS research).  Now Uganda is very, very poor.  The roads are terrible and dangerous, the buildings are all falling down, and there's not much infrastructure.  So there's not a lot of "culture", per se.  The local people eat simple food and have simple hobbies.  Furthermore, unlike, say, Asia or the Middle East, "civilization" is a relatively new thing.  Most of the cities were founded in the late nineteenth century.  So there's not a lot of history you can see.

Essay: "The Solution to Piracy"

Like most people, sometimes I am a pirate.  One thing I don't pirate, however, is video games.  I tend to buy them through Steam.

Essay: "We Don't Need a Left-Wing Tea Party"

When the Tea Party movement first started up (at the time, hilariously referring to themselves as "tea baggers") I remember thinking that it wouldn't last too long.  It was just too stupid.  But I think, in the long run, their stupidity has been an asset to them, and I think this has some alarming implications for the new left-wing "Occupy Wall Street" movement.

Essay: "Humility in the face of randomness"

Most people, it seems to me, are obsessed with talent.  They look at someone successful, assume that person is successful for a reason, and work backwards (identifying the exceptional qualities that person has, or the exceptional things they did, that led to that person becoming exceptionally successful).  But is that initial assumption correct?  Are people really successful for a reason?

I have always believed that the differences between people are not as big as we think they are (click here for a great quote on this) and I have always chocked up my own successes and failures, and the successes and failures of others, to randomness, or to factors that have nothing to do with the matter at hand, rather than my skill and intelligence.

Essay: "Keeping it Real"

It seems to me that people, especially our generation, are very preoccupied with "authenticity."  You best see this when people go on vacation.  You'll take a trip to Rome or Paris and you'll be looking around for for a restaurant to go to, and you'll think to yourself: "I don't want to go to some tourist joint, I want to go get real Italian/French food.  I want to eat where the locals eat.  I want to get something authentic."

Which begs the question: if you are a tourist, isn't going to a tourist restaurant the authentic thing to do?  Isn't going to a local restaurant sort of a poseur move?

Essay: "In Defence of Baseball"

I'm not going to look up the stats, but I understand that they're pretty grim: young people aren't as interested in baseball as they are in other sports.  The reason for this is pretty straightforward - baseball is fucking boring.  I love baseball, I was raised on it, it's probably my number one team sport (although my passion is on a slow burn these days until the Blue Jays look like they have a chance of making the playoffs) but even I'm aware of it, especially early in the season, when I'm adjusting from the frantic pace of the NBA and NHL playoffs or the structured mayhem of the NFL.  I'll be sitting there, enjoying a 5-3 win in April over the Kansas City Royals, while the pitcher and the catcher are leisurely talking to each other, and I'll think to myself: man.  This game is boring.

Essay: "Being Ignorant the Hard Way"

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than he was before. He is full of murderous resentment for people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." - Kurt Vonnegut