Sorry this took so long to write. I’ve been ignoring you . . . no I’ve just been a bit lazy to write to people. My mother is another story. And thank God I don’t have a girlfriend otherwise that would be a major headache to write and call her also all the time.

And yeah I wouldn’t call Jordan the Bastion. And Iran I guess is the Bastion of Shia’ Islam. Here it’s Sunni. Whatever the difference is, apparently it’s worth fighting about. It’s actually somewhat liberalized here as far as clothing, especially at night. But overall it’s still a Muslim country. The interactions between girls and guys are limited and flirting is back to Middle School. Relationships (gf+bf) are at school (college in reality) only.

I’ve been writing a lot. I never write, so this is news indeed. I’ve been analyzing people and their interactions. Writing down my interpretations and character readings of people and groups of people. In short I’m conducting a nerdy sociology experiment here. There Americans here are all new and no one knows each other. There’s new culture and a new place even a new language. There’s an opportunity to learn a lot about how people act and I’m sort of doing that.

And God forbid, I’ve been reading books here. Without video games I’m a hollow shell of my real self. Joking, but I’ve read a Michael Crichton book, “Pirate Latitudes”; one of his posthumous (that’s the word right?) publications. I read it in 2 days. 300 pages in 2 days is really quick. He’s the only author that I can read quick. But my mom is brining me more. I also have your Body by Science book you gave me. And I’m reading that also.

Classes are basic. I’m taking 2 arabic classes and 2 others; American and the Arabs and Water & Politics. I’m learning a good amount of Arabic. With my new beard, people always think I’m Indian or Pakistani. Without it I blended in. But they usually of course think I speak Arabic. They like Indians here, no surprise.

Food is the same stuff you’d expect in the Middle East. Homestay food is great.  I do like the meat but I mean Indian food is sorely missed. Its hard to get a good amount of meat around here, beacause my host family give me a lot of rice and bread. I work it off though. I’m at the gym at least 5 times a week. Doing pullups now. I’m getting better at them. There’s a guy at the gym who looks like an Arab you. he has the same build, facial features and has a cool grey & black hair going on. He also has your same blue sweatpants (they dont’ have the white stripes but they’re the same material). He’s Arab Jasen.

My host family only speaks Arabic. They’re an old couple and they spend their time sitting on the veranda watching traffic. Very leisure. They’re just as you think an old Middle Eastern couple would be. They have grown up kids, but think of them as an old Indian couple.

I think this is the longest e-mail I’ve ever written.

I have to get the pictures up on facebook. It’s hard because the internet here is slow.

How’s Med school? Also have you gotten married yet?

-Philip

Is recruiting for the military through video games the right way to go?

Video games unrealistically portray warfare to be a glorious and passionate exercise.  Though there may be much of both sentiments, the central directive is far from “kill the most bad guys.”  It is instead to fight for God and country.

The theme of honor including the moral decisions involved in fighting, is rarely seen in video games.  Being able to have “infinite continues” and simply restart a level in the game doesn’t really do the military justice.

Indeed we’re not sending kids into combat fresh from their Xboxes.  However, what military-themed video games do is garner interest; that’s all.  That’s all they should do. Training is needed to make a soldier and the Army is in need of interest first.

Therefore, to call a video game such as America’s Army a recruitment tool is perhaps a bit too generous.  It generates interest in those who are already intrigued.  It’s a powerful and effective tool to show the true side of the American Military.  However, to the couch-potatoes; it likely does little more than simply stimulate the brain.

The logo for the U.S. Army's offical Video Game

*property of Microsoft and Zune Brands

Okay the Zune HD has come out.  The public loves it, yes indeed. Yay, celebration iPod still rules the market we all know.  However, what people fail to realize is what truly separates the Zune brand away from Apple’s iPod, Creative’s Zen, Sony’s Walkman, or Sandisk’s Sansa players (or the iRiver, yes something like that exists).  The Zune brand is of course Microsoft’s baby, and next to Windows and Xbox, the Zune is one of Microsoft’s largest financial and resource-consuming endeavors.  Still with Zune controlling ~10% of the MP3 player market, people don’t understand what makes the Zune a Zune, and not just an “iPod knockoff.”  Well, let me try to explain

The most convincing aspect of the Zune brand (besides “The Zune Social”, players with song-sharing capabilities, built-in FM etc.) is the Zune Pass.  Most people who know Zune Pass even a little may have seen this commercial with The Aprentice’s Wes Moss.  The Zune Pass is essentially music rental, for people who don’t want a library of 4 billion songs, half of which they don’t listen to anymore.  There is a market for music purchase and a market for music rental, at least that’s what the Zune Pass is telling us.

Pretty much I find the Zune Pass, the deal of a lifetime.  Unlimited music downloads for a flat monthly rate. $14.99 a month, with 10 free song downloads, essentially dropping the monthly price to $4.99.  So you get free music as long as you keep paying (just like Netflix, or Blockbuster for movies) and free songs along the way (not Netflix or Blockbuster).  HEY! This sounds great right?!

But why isn’t the Zune Pass flying off the shelves and becoming the next music phenomenon.  Why do most people buy & download (if they buy at all) from iTunes?  Why, is the Zune Pass stagnant instead of giving a nice hill climb up the sales charts?  Well Mr. Michael Gartenber of Entelligence has some great ideas in his Engadget article.  Zune has not capitalized on the idea of music rentals at essentially $4.99 a month.  They don’t emphasize their hardware.  They don’t discuss the capabilities and the opportunities of having music rental and purchase living in harmony together.  Their advertisements miss the target and don’t capitalize on the unique value of the Zune brand.  Why? Well, we (consumers) don’t know.  Xbox hit the mark, the brand sells.  Why can’t Zune?

*property of Microsoft and Zune brands

Is the Zune a dying brand?  Is the Zune HD the “saviour” of the brand that will bring the name to a broader, everyday consumer-base?  Is music rental possible now or has Microsoft jumped the gun on this one?

(comments are appreciated!)

He then played an interview of a Professor Steinhardt P.J. from Princeton University in New Jersey.  Professor Steinhardt is a physics expert and described how the long standing theory for how the world began was the Big Bang Theory.  As the knowledge of science expanded so did the theory.  He says that the theory became more and more complicated to explain the increasing amounts of scientific questions posed.  Eventually he claimed that the theory became too complicated to be taken seriously.  The big bang theory could also not account for dark energy.  His theory says that dark energy causes the universe to accelerate and expand.  The universe expands every 15 billion years by a fraction of 2 then they cycle of time starts again.

After the interview was played Dr. Yao continued to explain that the Big Bang theory had roots and similarities to the Judeo-Christian thoughts of the beginning of time.  Both included an arbitrary beginning of the universe from nothing.  Therefore it was easier for people to accept the Big Bang theory because they had already known about it indirectly.

An interesting question came up.  Someone asked how one can improve himself if time repeats itself.  The ultimate goal of Buddhism is to break the cycle, yet how can cycling time fit in with the theory?  Dr. Yao quoted Nietzsche who said that there are only so many options of what one person can become in their lives.  When repeated infinite times, this would create a cycle.  Therefore one’s immediate next life will not be the same, but the order and cycle of the lives will repeat eventually.  Thus the earlier Buddhist principles gave hope that one can improve him/herself whereas the reality is that there is an infinite cycle.  His answer still doesn’t make sense to me.  It seems that he’s showing how Buddhism is wrong and how you cannot break the cycle which is the ultimate goal.  Is this a flaw or a misinterpretation?  Is the truth of Buddhism that the cycle cannot be ultimately broken?

It’s nice to see that an international effort has been taken to rebuild, repair and help those who were affected and the area that they used to call home.  As usual the United States has sent in it’s assistance and the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs claimed that several million dollars have been raised to assist the relief (link here).  However is that enough? Are a few million dollars enough to fix thousands of homes, rebuild lives and restore a third-world country into working condition?  Do the world powers take world trajedy’s seriously as they would have a decade ago?  Is the world becoming tired of hurricanes and other natural disasters?

I would love to say that this is not at all the case.  In fact for the most part I believe that inside most of us, we truly do feel sorry and care for those affected.  However world powers seem to be less caring about the international human condition that they should be.  The United States seems to be a country in the race only for itself.  I understand  that governments need to worry about their own respective countries, but how in the world can we be in a war in Iraq and allow the atrocities to continue in Darfur and Congo?!  How can people worry about clothing their dogs and cats for halloween and PETA be concerned about “rights for animals” when children, children are dying due to mistreatment.  Women are being raped in Darfur and Congo and they are dying; they simply cannot live.  People buy $100,000 cars, buy two even three houses and complain about their lives at the office, when some people across the Atlantic simply cannot help themselves to find work, food or even proper shelter.

I find that people are scared.  They are afraid to see what they’ll find if they go and explore the true human condition.  They don’t want to see what other’s are suffering through because they’ll feel guilty that they aren’t doing all they can to help.  If they help they might just have to give some of their money and time to others.  They believe that by being apathetic the problem simply doesn’t exist.  However, people in Bangladesh will suffer whether people know or not.  Women and children will still be mistreated and true justice for mankind will not be achieved.

I can see that many people would be upset by this.  However I’ll start by saying that the election is not past the primaries yet so therefore it would make sense for certain candidates to concentrate on making more money as advertising for campaigns will get very hot in the coming months.  Also the Republican candidates have in the recent decades found that minority voting has made less of an impact on their elections, as most minorities generally vote democratic.

I feel that this shows that the candidates are either afraid to speak to a minority crowd or don’t want to diversify their support base.  I can understand that the Republican Party is not the best at appealing to minorities however this shows a growing separation of some of the candidates from the minorities.  I do not support any illegal immigrants in the United States; however all the commotion that has been going on seems to be making the U.S. look like a country with a government that does not welcome minorities and diversity. Recently 1% of the population of Irving Texas was sent back to Mexico due to their status as illegal immigrants.  As Bush is Republican even though he has nothing to do with the actions of individual cities, these actions put a bad face on him, the administration and the upcoming Republican candidates.  A large amount of the republican candidates do not want to fully export all the illegal immigrants out of the U.S.  Many support a guest-worker program where illegal immigrants could work in the country for up to a certain time.  However it’s hard to tell that certain candidates support minorities as they won’t profess their ideals to a minority crowd.  It’s important to diversify the appealing crowd of the republican candidates.  I believe that the four candidates, who are not speaking at Morgan State University, should try to put more of an emphasis on speaking to the right crowds.

The Republican candidates should attempt to diversify the crowd in which they appeal to.  Some seem to have good standpoints on issues such as immigration.  A guest-working program would make the transition towards a stricter immigration laws easier.  However, not speaking in a university especially one so close to the capital shows perhaps that some of the candidates do not want to work to show their support for a more diverse support base and a more diverse America.  The government supports the law, which in this case does not support certain types of immigrants and thus a certain minority.  The government also supports diversity.  I am concerned that our future leaders and current politicians of the government do not want to make this evident to the U.S.  They need to do this to make sure that the next administration is approved by a higher percentage of the voting population.

*UPDATE* – Here’s a recent link published after I wrote this post that supports pretty much everything I’ve said here.

           The story is really what is most relevant though.  You are a man whose plane crash lands over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960.  You find yourself swimming up to a tower in the middle of the ocean and climb into a submarine of sorts.  Then a video plays out telling you the premise of this underwater city that you are headed toward.  The creator of the city is named Andrew Ryan and he has created an underwater city called “Rapture” in 1946 where artists and scientists are not limited by society.  The city is basically a combination of Treasure Island with a Red Light District and any 1940’s metropolis.  Anyone can do anything, but Andrew Ryan assumed that order would play out because he hand-picked the citizens of Rapture based on their qualities that he saw fit.  He chose only the best artists and the best scientists.  When you reach the submarine you see a statue holding a ribbon and on it written “No Gods or Kings Only Man”.  During your descent into the city he explains his ideas in the video.           

           “Is a man not entitled to the sweat on his brow?  No says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor.  No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God.  No says the man in Moscow it belongs to everyone.  I rejected those answers.  Instead I chose something different.  I chose the impossible.  I chose Rapture.  The city where the artist would not be censored.  The city where the scientist would not be vowed by petty morality.  Where the great would not be constrained by the small.  And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.”  – Andrew Ryan           

           As you pass into the city you pass through gates which read “All good things of this Earth flow through into the city”.  What happened in the 14 years of its existence is simple to say.  Genetic enhancements are caused by a substance caused ADAM and another substance called EVE which cause more active enhancements.  ADAM is harvested from the dead.  Eventually the city broke out into civil war.  On one side was Andrew Ryan and his now skewed ideals and his quest to keep Rapture a secret from the world at all costs.  The other side consisted of the citizens and the discoverers of the ADAM and EVE.  By 1959 the city was engrossed in war.  When your character arrives in 1964 there are very few normal people left.  All that are left are splicers, genetically corrupt individuals, “Little Sisters” who harvest the ADAM and their protectors “Big Daddies,” tough, enhanced humans in old diving suits.           

           Rapture proved to be a failure although the ideas are similar and different from those of Communism, Capitalism, or St. Benedicts Rules.  It seemed as though Ryan eventually became a dictator of sorts not allowing anyone to contact the outside world which is similar to communism as no one can leave a communist society.  Also there are security systems in Rapture like an automated-police force as there would be police in a Capitalist society.  What do you think about this type of society? Could it work in the real world at all?  Are there ideas that can be taken from Andrew Ryan that could be used today?

 The Official BioShock Website

 The Introduction Video by Andrew Ryan 

An Video Overview of the Game with a Little Sister and a Big Daddy (contains graphic material)

The Demo of the Game for Those of You With Strong Wits

“Big Daddy”

“Big Daddy Encounter”