So I guess I've started a blog. I suppose I can no longer fill in that little "Never" bubble next to the 'How often do you blog?' question on surveys and feel superior to my peers. No, I'm not really that apathetic, nor even against the whole fad of blogging. In fact, I've been kind of meaning to start a blog for a while now, to post various philosophy I have written and express my opinions to anyone interested. Of course, I know that 'anyone interested' likely means few besides my immediate friends, if them, but that is of course besides the point. As I have argued in the past, the constitution and, more importantly, basic human liberty, endow us with an inalienable right to free speech and expression. It grants us the power to say whatever we will. It does not, however, grant us the right to be listened to or heeded. The right to speak and the right to be heard are very different. One is an innate freedom that ought to be respected in any sentient creature, the other is a luxury granted only where we as individuals deem fit, and rightly so. But I digress. I stepped over the line and started this blog because of something I wrote yesterday. After fixing a bug on my computer, I decided to sweep for any other viruses. This was at about 1:30. My virus scanner took forever, and I was unable to play any games (if I did it would have scanned much slower), so instead I wrote down a list that I had been turning over in my head for a few months. The list is of things I would like to see in my ideal MMO. Of course, writing the list took about 10 minutes, and my virus scanner had barely gotten started (my laptop is kind of pathetic, and my desktop I left at school). To pass the time I started expanding my list and describing what I meant and why I wanted certain things in my game. Three hours later, and about an hour after my scanner had finished, I had four single spaced pages and was just moving on to the next item when I noticed 1) that my scanner was done and 2) that it was 4:30 in the fucking morning. I promptly scrawled a few last minute notes on what I was planning to say next and went to bed (though I did get up several times in the night as I thought of new things to say). This morning, I sent a few work emails and then was planning to read up on more of the physics I'm supposed to know before I start coding my project. Instead, I returned to my list. Another three hours past before I realized that though I now had eight pages (still single spaced) I had completely wasted my day (not that my days this summer are all that action-packed anyway). Well, it seemed a damn shame to have worked for so long on something that would never be shared, so my girlfriend convinced me to start a blog (it wasn't all that hard; as I said, I have kind of been planning to for a while). Anyway, I will post the list after I edit it and make it neat, probably some time tomorrow.
This is my blog. Welcome.
(In case anyone does actually reads this and is curious, the difference between the right to speak and the right to be heard is an argument I use against certain feminist writers. They have put forward the claim that the influences of modern society "silence" female opinions and expressions; essentially, they claim that women are taught from a young age that their place in the world is one of subservience and that even if they speak out, they will not be heard. Men, too, according to these writers, are taught that women are less than us, and thus ought not be listened to. My retort to this claim is that it is irrelevant even if true. You have a right to speak, and that is not being taken from the women these feminists are describing. They are claiming that such women have lost their right to be heard, but such a right does not even exist. Perhaps I will post the whole essay one day.)
