Philosophy

I may have missed my calling in life...

I read an article about East-Asian philosophy and how it's generally ignored by western philosophers.  Of course that got me on a trek to find a book on Korean philosophy written in Korean.  I still haven't succeeded but I will keep searching till I find one.  I kind of wish I had studied philosophy in school.  Of course now that I'm looking into East-Asian philosophy I see how lacking my understanding of western philosophy is.  I took a class on ethics in college and that only whet my appetite for understanding philosophy.

Honestly I don't really know where to start.  I really want to take a class on philosophy especially eastern philosophy.  I think I might try finding an iTunes U channel on philosophy.  I also need to find a good philosophy book, I've kind of gone digital when it comes to reading (don't get me wrong, I love the feel of a good paperbound book sometimes but eBooks are just so convenient.

I don't usually ask for comments... but anyone reading this have any ideas/suggestions for good teach-yourself philosophy books/sources?

Call Guinness Book of World Records!

I have officially blogged two days in a row!

You want to know what's on my mind today?  Well, if you're reading this I assume you care...  I HATE copyright law.  No offense if any of you work in that field I'm sure you can look yourself in the mirror every night after putting in a hard day's work squelching creative thought.  I'm exaggerating of course, but seriously.  The reason I've been thinking about this all day is an article we read (in Korean cir 2010) about the Korean version of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) suing Starbucks for not paying royalties.  The defense (according to the article) was that they had a contract with the American copyright company which is where the music came from so there shouldn't be any issue.  Well, apparently the court ruled in favor of the copyright company.

Then after reading the article I looked into some other examples in the US.  Apparently I was previously mistaken.  I thought that as long as you didn't have a certain number of people attend you could charge admission without having to pay royalties.  According to some of the web forums I've researched basically boil down to: if you buy a movie or song for private home use, you cannot show, watch or listen to that entertainment with anyone but your own family.  Which is disconcerting because we just bought an awesome home projector/home entertainment system and we were hoping to host many a fun movie night in our home.

Some Recent Developments

I just finished reading a blog about blogging and felt the inspiration to take up blogging some again.  I liked the suggestions there EXCEPT the one about devoting time to blogging.  I don't have the time to blog twice a day!  I do read dozens of blogs a day and I should definitely incorporate more photographs in my blog but here I am just writing what I've been thinking about.

My wife and I just  finished the movie Act of Valor.  It was decent, better than the rotten tomato ratings.  The reviews were pretty straightforward, it was mostly a recruiting movie for the SEALs.

In general though life here in Okinawa has been, simply put, AWESOME!  We go to the beach regularly, we're trying to get signed up for SCUBA lessons, I run with a nice local run club, and I've ridden once with a road-biking club.  If you don't like swimming or spending time outdoors I can kind of understand not liking living here but in general no one should ever complain about living here.

Update

I know I don't post very often and I wish I could, but to be honest I generally don't have anything cool to talk about.

Finally I have made it to probably the best assignment I could have.  I'm now living on the island of Okinawa.  It's pretty much a sub-tropical paradise that I've loved every minute of.  My family has also had a great time so far.  We go to the beach all the time, I've joined a small running club and biking club.  The weather here is pretty much awesome almost all the time.  It rains more than back in Omaha, Monterey or Ohio, but even the rain is pleasant.  We've gone snorkeling a few times and look forward to many more times as the water around here is wonderful.  Michelle and I are also going to try to get into a SCUBA class also.  Basically the ocean is always calling and I want to answer its call.

In general the next few years are going to be some of the best I've had.

Return Home

Well, obviously I'm not too concerned about keeping up with blogging since I haven't written in months! But, I've finally come home from being deployed. Now I'm back home getting settled in to being back home. Our three-year-old, Wesley, is taking gymnastics class. He's hilarious! One of the best in his class he makes me so proud!

It's funny, seeing my son play and have fun at gymnastics makes me want to go back to CrossFit. Might seem odd, the correlation there, but anyone who knows CrossFit knows there's lots of cool gymnastics workouts included in CrossFit. Anyways, I need to find a gym!

Language Learning

I once read the book "How to Learn Any Language; Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own" by Barry Farber. Then last night I watched the movie "Limitless," and it got me thinking about learning languages again. I have always loved learning foreign languages! But for some reason I've never really gotten around to putting Mr. Farber's advice on language learning into practice. Now, I think since I'm deployed and I can use my free time however I want, maybe I should start back up learning another language.

Modern technology is amazing! I have at my fingertips, all kinds of great language learning tools. Now, the question is how to use them and what language to start studying.

Japanese
Pros: I'm going to be living there next year so it'll be useful, it's closely related to Korean (grammatically) so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Cons: it really is actually difficult; multiple alphabets, no direct teacher to help me sort through the complexities.

French
Pros: beautiful language, useful throughout Europe, friend here that speaks it natively and can help, I've studied it once before so I have a head start.

Cons: no direct usefulness, no definite need/future usefulness (i.e. I doubt I'll be visiting a French speaking country any time soon).

Any other language
Pros: joy of learning a language

Cons: no plans and probably no teachers, unknown future usefulness.

Still haven't made a decision I'll post more when I decide.

Apple products

I have a couple computer savvy friends that made fun of me for getting this iPad. Even so, this is nothing short of a shameless plug for all Apple products. I am nothing less than very impressed with the iPad, iPod Touch, and classic iPod I have.

I know they're not for everyone, but I think I may never go back to IBM compatible products again! They have been quite user-friendly and the battery life on all the products I have is simply amazing. While I'm deployed battery life and convenience are the most important features in any electronics. I don't have high speed Internet and, more importantly I don't have time to mess with something to make it work.

None of my Apple products crash, and if they do, it's quite easy and quick to recover from and doesn't take any time to restart. They have an amazing array of apps that can do even more than my standard laptop. I regularly call and text my family back home via the Internet for free! If all Apple products are this user-friendly I might just have to stick with them from now on. Sure they're more expensive, but I'm willing to pay for the convenience.

Video Games

I like playing video games, they're fun. I'm not good at any video games and I don't want to be better, I play to have fun. Also, our unit here deployed has a morale room devoted to watching TV/movies and playing video games. Generally it's lots of fun to hang out there, however, today I went in for a few minutes since it's my day off to check the schedule and hang out for a little while playing video games. Well, it started out fun as I was playing with another person in the squadron who's really good at the game and he was destroying me. *I don't care about being bad at the game. Well, a couple more people joined in and it was even more fun. Then, a couple other people from the squadron came in the room... it suddenly stopped being fun! Because this new group of people started continuously heckling the couple of us that don't play the game very well. I have generally pretty thick skin when it comes to being picked on so it wouldn't really bother me, but today for some reason it bothered me quite a bit. Maybe it's because I really don't care about being good at video games and I know that being good at video games gets you absolutely no where in life. Hell, if anything being good at video games is actually detrimental to having a real life. Technically it's the taking the time and effort to be good at video games that is detrimental to having a real life but the ideas are linked.

Anyways, all this to say, if you enjoy video games and you're good at them BIG DEAL, only other video game players care. Also, don't heckle people that aren't good at whatever video game you're good at because they probably have a real life that is much better than yours.

You know what makes me mad!?!

First off, let me start off with a little background:

I ride a bike, both here deployed and when home.
I know the rules of the road concerning biking on the road.
I signal appropriately if there is another vehicle at an intersection.

Well, apparently many people don't understand that it's better and safer to treat bicyclists just like you would a slow moving car. For example, I was riding along coming up to a simple four-way stop. There was a truck already about to stop at the four-way coming the opposite direction. That truck, stopped well before I got to the intersection, and instead of proceeding as normal, the truck waited and flashed his lights at me. Now obviously the person was trying to be nice and let me go first but really, it's much safer and easier on bikers if you just behave as an ordinary vehicle. I only mention this because it's happened at least twice in the past two days.

So please, if you drive, which I assume that anyone reading this blog does, don't go out of your way and drive differently around bicyclists it only impedes their riding and the rest of traffic.

Deployment Life

First off let me say this deployment hasn't been too bad. I'm actually not having tons of fun and I miss my family but it's not been nearly as bad as last year.

So I'll give you a run down of my typical day (at least as it's been the last two weeks)

0600: Wake up go for a run, then shower and get dressed (usually in PT gear)
0730: Ride bike to breakfast
0830: Ride bike to work
0915: Change clothes into flight uniform and start work
1730-1830: Depending on the work day ride bike to dinner about this time
1800/1900 or so: ride back to room
2000: Go to crossfit workout (absolutely insanely difficult workouts) then shower
2100-0000 Free time, usually go to the internet cafe and text/call wife and kids, check email, etc.

So there you have it, if I'm not sleeping working or eating I'm probably working out. Though I've been at this for over a week and a half now (I did take a couple days off working out) I've only lost 1 pound. I've been cutting back on how much I eat too, I'm assuming that I've been building muscle (which weighs more than fat) so I'm in better shape just not any lighter.