Little Mr Mahatma

In which the middle-aged Peacenik mouths off about War Drones--and all the other things that make him cranky.

Mr Mahatma--who is a Mr in real life--lives in the valleys of Southern California with his wife, a herd of Dears, and an impressive collection of books. Pnorny!
He is reachable at:
littlemrmahatma@yahoo.com

All writings are copyrighted 2003-2008 and trademarked: Little Mr. Mahatma

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Little Mr Mahatma

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Tashlik And Pride
So the Mahatma Family was off to a Tashlik service, which is a symbolic casting off of sins (namely throwing cheerios in a stream). Yeah, yeah, why is a devout Atheist going to a Rosh Hashanah service? Answer: To maintain Family Peace and Harmony. (That is, LMM doesn't make waves when boats could capsize.)

But en route my wife mentioned to the kids what was a sin. She said, for example, that pride is a sin.

Whoa, stop the car and open the windows. Pride is a sin? Yeah, sven deadly sins and all that but didn't we tell the kids that we were proud of their achievements just hours ago? That made them feel good and we are proud of them so how could it be a sin?

As usual, I subjected the topic to the infamous Little Mr Mahatma patented in-depth analysis for a brain-numbing five minutes and came up with:

Like most other human judgements, pride is relative and can vary from safe to sinful depending on whom is doing the judging. I would contend that if the "proud" statement is about a personal achievement and simply refers to the person then it's safe. For example, "we're proud that you won the gold medal" or "we're proud that you got your Doctorate". The individual has accomplished something. Nothing sinful there.

But if the statement is a comparison against another person and could hurt that person by the comparison, then - yeah - pride could be labelled as sinful. "You won the gold and dingus didn't." "Our team beat your team!" Here, pride can easily dissolve into teasing or arrogance. The achievement is at the expense of someone else. Your Pride means someone else's sorrow, especially if you rub it in. Arguably this makes statements of pride difficult when the basis is competitions against other people or teams, such as "I'm proud that the UCLA Bruins beat the suckass USC Trojans." But is the sin so great as compared to, say, murder? If pride in this case didn't feel so damn good we probably wouldn't have team sports.

In short, I won't go casting off sins in a global sense but instead cast off that which is hurtful to others, with a few exceptions involving the Bruins and Lakers. I wonder if eating the cheerios counts as a sin...

Demise of Commercial PC Gaming
Commercial PC gaming has been dying a long, slow death but it's becoming more noticeable at the gaming stores. What were once walls of PC games have shrunk to shelves of meager items as console games have taken over. Worse, consoles themselves may be declining as DVDs compete for eyeballs and newer consoles force shorter shelf lives of older versions. But, first, let's examine PC games. Here's why I think they're slowly dying.

Too many demos, seriously. I know of at least four computer games magazines that have demo discs each month, plus even more online. Why buy games when you can play demos? Sure, maybe you'll buy a game after a demo, maybe...but then another magazine comes in the mail. Compared to the Playstation 2 (PS2) which has, as far as I know, one magazine with demos and you can't download PS2 demos off the net (yet).

PC gaming is more expensive to get into despite the general software savings. Sure, you can get in the game for about $1,000 but really to get the killer graphics and sound you're looking more at $1,500 and higher. PC games usually start at $40 and quickly drop in price (except for the big ticket items). Compare this to the PS2 or X-Box which costs around $180 to get in. The games usually start at $50 and maybe drop to $20 if enough units are sold but when you factor in how much you save on the hardware you're looking at a lot of games.

Cost of development for the PC is higher because of...

Lack of hardware standards. Consoles don't change every six months like PC hardware, hence it's easier and cheaper to develop for a PS2 or an X-Box.

Freeware. Lots of it for the PC on sites such as Game Hippo. Why buy games when there's plenty good stuff for free? Not to mention abandonware, mods, and even warez which can keep a gamer busy for years.

What will thoroughly kill Commercial PC Gaming?

Lower priced console games. If instead of the standard $50 for a PS2 game we see games coming in at $30 or $20 at the start (*cough* ESPN Football 2005 *cough*), that will be a major nail in the PC Gaming coffin.

Console hard drives and backup software. The X-Box has started this trend. PC gamers enjoyed being able to install a game to a hard drive and "patching" it so that a CD is not longer required, or being able to easily fiddle with the save files, or create mods. When consoles fully incorporate hard drives for this and Tivo-like abilities, how can the PC compete as an entertainment center? But consoles will need to release tools - compilers, editors, and all the other fun hackyhacky stuff.

What I see in the future is that Consoles will focus on gaming and entertainment while PCs will focus on business. Think about it. You have your killer stereo / DVD home entertainment system. Would you rather hook up your PS2 or X-Box and play games or hook up your PC and do finances? In fact, I predict that PCs will shift away from gaming, size down to laptops, and focus on convenient data - work, personal finance and whatnot. Consoles will tie into your entertainment center and will be your personal tivo, your online game center, your DVD resource, and so on. Microsoft, I think, is aware of this and has a headstart over the Playstation what with the internal hard drive of the X-Box but the Playstation 3 should take care of that.

Next 5 years should be interesting. What can hurt the consoles is if they caught up in a new versions race every year, like what is happening between Radeon and ATI in PC graphics boards. There needs to be time for the software to catch up to and fully exploit the hardware. If any console forgets backwards compatibility - game over. With this, say farewell to the Nintendo Gamecube and maybe even the GameBoy. I don't see either knocking off the Playstation, the PSP, or the X-Box. The DS version of the Gameboy is cute but the PSP looks like it can do a bit more and if they tie it in to the Playstation monster, that'll be a tough combo. You'll have a direct path from Kidz playing on the PSP and graduating as Teenz to the Playstation.

The Apprentice
Reality TV takes a turn for the gory, subtle truth with this steaming heap. I could barely hold down my dinner after accidentally catching the ending of the latest episode. This show represents everything that is horrible about our society and what Kerry referred to as having two Americas. On one side of the table representing the untouchable, impeccable elite you have Donald Trump and cronies. They are the ones in charge. On the other side of the table, you have the wanna-bes, the peons, the climbers, the ones who think you can win status.

And unfortunately for me I caught the "You're Fired!" part where Trump said the money words, after telling this one bouncing puppy that he was the best player but because he made one mistake. What the hell? Who is Trump - oh he of bankruptcy issues - to judge? You fire your best player over one mistake and keep the mediocre ones!?! Doesn't it make sense that your mediocre players are likely to make more mistakes or worse mistakes? Who's likely to learn from mistakes?

And the whole attitude of the peons grovelling for a job that they think will move them up to the Elite level. News for them. Trump (and Gates and Ellison and...) didn't become multi-billionaires by grovelling, playing fair, or even playing without mistakes. That is, you can't become thier level by allowing yourself to be shit on. I found the show degrading and, worse, it reinforces the attitudes of CEO and other head honchos that they are somehow better, more perfect, more righteously deserving of their pedestals than other people. Heck, I've worked in companies where you, the average corporate peon, never saw the CEO. It's too far beneath them to visit the worker bees. And those are the same companies where good times or bad times the Executives give themselves massive bonuses while the peons get their 3% yearly or a pink slip.

And it's this elitist corporate attitude that gives the U.S. its bad image (which feeds terrorism) and further divides America into the "Haves" and "Have Nots". So to The Donald this watcher says "You're fired!" and don't let the bankruptcy door hit you on your ass.

Hurricanes - Acts of God
Every day billions of people pray and give thanks to God for a variety of benefits - food on the table, good weather, a decent stock tip, healthy kids. Yet, we have Acts of God - hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, tornados, drought, floods - that do much damage and cause great pain. Are we allowed to curse God in this case or do we give thanks that we didn't get killed (this time)? Does anyone find it suspicious that for such a benevolent God we even have these Acts? If I didn't know better I'd say that either God isn't as benevolent as people believe (and therefore not worthy of adoration) or that God doesn't exist. Convince me that the destruction from hurricane Ivan is a good thing and none of this "mysterious ways" crap...

Dry Hot Winds
We're seeing the Santa Anas kicking up. These are hot, dry winds that supposedly drive people nuts and cause them to do horrible things. I propose we rename these winds to Bush-Cheneys.

7:39 AM

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