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Dear person who walks slowly in the middle of the hallway,

You are not a fast walker. I get that. You have your pace, and if your pace makes glaciers impatient, well, so what? Hell, if I myself weren’t six and a half feet tall with correspondingly freaky long legs, I’d probably move a little slower too. Here’s the thing: I’m okay with slow walking. Really, I am.

You have also chosen to walk in the middle of the hallway. Traditionally, walkers have selected the right half of the hallway to practice their art, because this opens up the left half for other purposes (more on that soon). But hey, I’m okay with walking in the middle, too. Why not? To each their own, beat of a different drummer, et cetera.

But here’s the thing. These two elements, benign in isolation, turn dark indeed when forced into an unnatural union. No doubt you are wondering why. Allow me to explain:

You are not the only person in the hallway.

I’ll wait for a minute while that sinks in.

The corollary of this epiphany is that other walkers (for example, me) will sooner or later almost certainly want to pass you. That’s where that “leaving the left half open” thing comes in. Otherwise, my options are limited:

1. Get your attention and say “excuse me,” which is not only awkward but also requires me to speak to you, both of which I’m trying to avoid.

2. Try to pass you in the existing space to your left, which is even more awkward and also risks having to speak aloud.

3. Walk ever so slowly behind you, trying unsuccessfully to look like that’s my natural pace too, until the hallway widens or you turn or I turn or one of us dies of old age.

So do us both a favor. Either advance in the forward direction, or get out of my way.

Sincerely,

Every tall person in the world

P.S. If you happen to know who designed my cell phone so its vibration motor is as loud as its ringtone, can you send me their address? I’ve got a letter to write.

Tunisia

On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest incompetence and corruption in his government. The act sparked a nationwide revolution in the small north African country. On January 14 – just 28 days later – Tunisia’s dictator was forced to resign, and on October 23 of this year, the people had their first real elections.

Egypt

As Bouazizi launched Tunisia’s revolution, so Tunisia launched a massive wave of protests across the entire region. Egypt was among the most visible of these. Hundreds of thousands gathered in Cairo’s giant Tahrir Square, and on February 11, their own dictator – Hosni Mubarak – was forced to step down. Early celebration has turned to pessimism, however, as the “interim” military government shows signs of refusing to give up power.

Libya

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded with relatively little bloodshed. (Emphasis on relatively.) Libya was not so lucky. Clashes between the Gaddafi regime and the opposition led to a full-on civil war in which tens of thousands were killed. The U.N. got involved, supporting the rebels with an air campaign. On October 20, Gaddafi was killed. Power now is in the hands of the National Transitional Council, which seems to be moving toward democracy.

Syria

Protesters in Syria still have a long struggle ahead. Government forces have killed thousands of civilian demonstrators, but protests continue. Meanwhile the Syrian government has been increasingly isolated on the world stage, with the Arab League suspending Syria’s membership last month.

Myanmar

The revolution isn’t confined to the Middle East. This southeast Asian nation (also known as Burma) is still in the grip of a brutal military regime, which violently suppressed peaceful protests back in 2007. However, flickers of change are beginning to show through. The government recently released hundreds of political prisoners, including the iconic leader of the National League of Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi. The United States recently sent Hillary Clinton to Burma on the first visit of its kind in over 50 years, in recognition of this (still very tentative) progress.

Russia

Despite a number of increasingly undemocratic moves, Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin remains popular. However, public resentment against his party – United Russia – is growing. In Sunday’s election, United Russia lost its supermajority in the Russian legislature, and barely held on to its majority. Even that majority is widely considered illegitimate, with reports of nationwide election fraud. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Moscow yesterday (see photo above). In the past, rallies in Moscow have been small, because of apathy and fear. That appears to be changing.

The World

Time is too short to list every country where progress is happening. I could talk about Yemen, Morocco, the Ivory Coast, even Iran.

In 1978, Freedom House listed 41% of the nations on this planet under the category “Not Free.” Today that number is 24%.

Progress is slow, and it comes at great cost, but it’s happening. The revolution is real.

Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed a change in the way I think.

Used to be, when I researched some new topic – science, politics, history, whatever – I was happy with just reaching a conclusion about it. I would look at the information, read different points of view, think about it, and form an opinion – and then, once I had my opinion, I’d discard the path that got me there.

I didn’t care any longer how I’d reached the idea. It was only the idea itself  – the end result – that mattered.

That meant that if somebody challenged me, I often didn’t know how to respond. I had my thoughts, sitting pretty on a shelf, but I hadn’t kept any supports to prop them up. The least wind could knock them over.

So I’ve started armoring my ideas. As I draw conclusions, I find myself thinking, “How would I defend this in an argument? What reasoning would I give? How will people criticize this?”

Instead of just forming opinions, I’m preparing them for battle.

This revelation of mine may seem frightfully naive to a lot of you. But then, I grew up as an only child, and didn’t have someone around to gainsay my proclamations on an hourly basis. I’m used to thinking about the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Digging moats around my knowledge, putting up catapults, not so much.

I’m glad to see myself changing, though. For one thing, it makes conversations a lot more interesting. Besides that, I think meaningful public debate is one of the foundations of a democracy. And I’m hoping we can keep this country in the “democracy” category for a few more decades yet.

Yeah, that’s right, world. The fate of free elections depends on how my brain operates. Isn’t that a scary thought at 6:30 on a Monday morning.

How much armor do you give your ideas? Have you always been that way, or is it a recent change?

How is my military research week going, you ask? Quite well, thanks. Very interesting stuff so far. I’ve been learning about the chain of command and the various ranks in each branch. (The Army and the Navy both have a rank called “captain” but they’re at totally different levels; attention generals, this sort of confusion is inconvenient for me, please fix it).

Besides that, I’ve also been learning about just how powerful the US Armed Forces really are.

I knew, of course, that the United States is considered a superpower on the world stage. But I’d also heard a lot of stuff about strained budgets, China gaining on us, etc., and I guess I sort of assumed that our position had eroded somewhat.

Take a look at the graph below. The bars indicate military expenditure by country, in 2010. Not per capita, not a percentage of GDP, just raw money pumped into the armed forces.

If you look at the full table of data, the US spends more on its military than the next nineteen countries combined.

The US has eleven aircraft carriers. The rest of the world, collectively, has nine.

The US has 3 million troops. China, with over three times our population, has only 4.5 million.

The US has over 3,000 fighter plans. Our closest rival in that statistic, Russia, has less than half.

I mean, damn.

Now, despite being a blue-blooded bleeding-heart latte-sipping liberal, I generally see this force dominance as a good thing. Yes, the US has used its power in many, many ways that I’m not happy about. But generally, if someone’s going to have this kind of military dominance, I’m sure as hell glad it’s not China or Russia.

Unfortunately, there are some other areas where the US isn’t so dominant. Education comes to mind. This USA Today article from last year says “Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.” Since the military in a democracy is ultimately accountable to the people, this is a problem. Stupid People Controlling Big Guns is generally not what we want to see.

More as it develops…

Yesterday I mentioned that one of the projects I’ve given up is an idea to raise money for charity using video games. I still think this is a useful idea, I just never had the time to pursue it. I want to throw it out here and see what you think. (Yes, you, hypothetical reader!)

The basic concept is to take the obsessive, borderline-addict enthusiasm that MMORPGs generate, and direct that toward charity.

You come up with a game that’s free to play, a game that’s genuinely fun on its own. Then you have certain elements – weapons, armor, spells, items, whatever – that you can buy with real-world money. Lots of games do this already, though it’s a controversial business model. But what if all this “optional upgrade” money, instead of going to some company’s bottom line, instead was donated to, say, Doctors Without Borders, or another worthy organization?

If you were up-front about how the system worked and what its goal was, I think gamers could get excited about it. People love nothing more than feeling good about themselves, and who wouldn’t want to think that the money they spend on their gaming habit – which they might normally feel a little guilty about – is actually a +1 to their Ethics stat?

This model would have to overcome some hurdles. The biggest, of course, is that games don’t design or build themselves, and servers don’t pay for themselves.

There are a few ways to handle this. One is to have only a percentage of the money go to charity, and the rest go to game costs (of course you’d have to be up-front about that too). Another way is to have a subscription fee to cover costs, and only the optional upgrades go to charity. But the former option is less exciting as a selling point, and the latter is a barrier to entry – a major problem for a game you’re hoping will go viral.

Two other options would be to find people willing to donate the necessary time and resources (which would be tough), or to piggyback on the success of an existing game by convincing the creators to add pay-for-charity content. Honestly, that last strategy might be the most realistic.

What do you think? Would you play a game like that? Do you think this could work? Does something like this exist already, and I just haven’t heard about it?

I have a problem: I try to work on too many projects at once. As I’ve told my wife, if I had a thousand lifetimes, I could happily devote each one to mastering a different pursuit. I end up trying to cram it all into one lifetime. It doesn’t always work.

Here are the projects I’m working on right now:

• This blog
• Developing a Strong Artificial Intelligence
• Writing stories
• Keeping a journal (which I’ve done regularly since 2003)
• Pen twirling
• Learning about a new topic every week (last two weeks were Mozambique, this week is the U.S. armed forces)
• Maintaining some semblance of regular exercise

This actually isn’t too crowded, by my standards. The journal only takes a few minutes each night, the pen twirling I do in my spare time, and the exercise is pretty quick because I’m not, like, hardcore. The blog has its own built-in mechanism for not wasting too much time, and the “new topic each week” thing isn’t bad either.

Story-writing and AI development are the only major time sinks, which generally means I have to focus on only one at a time. For the past week or so, it’s been AI.

To give you a sense of how much worse this project-hoarding can get, here’s a partial list of projects I’ve given up (or at least put on long-term hold) in the past year or two. I say “partial” because I’m sure there are lots more I’m forgetting.

• Go
• Zen
• Learning Italian
• Learning Chinese
• Improving my Spanish
• Juggling
• Karate
• Rubik’s Cube
• Dvorak typing
• Tennis
• A previous blog, Coffee With Sargeras
• Writing articles for the now-defunct website Insulin Funk
• An idea on how to raise money for charity using video games

Letting go of a project is always hard for me. A lot of these efforts had gotten pretty far before I stopped. I could solve a Rubik’s cube in about three minutes (though I’ve since forgotten the patterns). I could touch-type in Dvorak at a pretty decent speed. I could juggle three balls, and two in one hand, and do all sorts of tricks. Coffee With Sargeras was pretty successful – and a lot of fun – before I finally decided to end it. And Zen…well, Zen was Zen.

Karate was particularly hard to give up. I had done it for over three years, reached black belt, got to really like a lot of people in the class. But I had to stop.

Why?

Projects compete for many different kinds of resources. Sometimes lack of time is the deciding factor. Sometimes it’s mental energy. And sometimes it’s sanity.

I know there are people who can thrive on being nonstop busy, scheduling every waking moment. I am not one of those people. I need peace, simplicity, quiet.

Karate was a good thing, but I had too many good things.

What have you let go lately?

Butter
Connie Wanek

Butter, like love,
seems common enough
yet has so many imitators.
I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,
and glimpsed what seemed like skin
beneath a corner of its wrap;
the décolletage revealed
a most attractive fat!

And most refined.
Not milk, not cream,
not even crème de la crème.
It was a delicacy which assured me
that bliss follows agitation,
that even pasture daisies
through the alchemy of four stomachs
may grace a king’s table.

We have a yellow bowl near the toaster
where summer’s butter grows
soft and sentimental.
We love it better for its weeping,
its nostalgia for buckets and churns
and deep stone wells,
for the press of a wooden butter mold
shaped like a swollen heart.