An update and several musings

This is my update. Consider yourselves updated.




Now, moving on.

My first musing is about team sports, specifically ultimate frisbee. I recently played in a winter league for frisbee. 5 teams, 12 ish
weeks, about 10 people on a team. Anyhow, I decided last week, after
hemming and hawing, to stay with the league and play for the spring
session. This brings us to the crux of my musing. I know that all of
you know that I am BAD atfrisbee . I don't mean bad as in good, I mean
bad as in I play for fun but with no expectation of winning. To add to
this, I am not much for team sports. I don't do well with teams.
Authority in general is a problem, but team sports just don't do it for
me. So I was wondering, at least in the context of Ultimate Frisbee,
this: I am not good atfrisbee, and I'm not a team player. Is this just correlation, or does one cause the other? Am I not good at frisbee because I am not
a team player, and so sabotage myself somehow? Or maybe, am I bad
enough at the sport that I am unwilling to buy into the "team"
mentality? Or is it just that I stink at the sport and I don't like
people?
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My second musing has to do with entertainment. A small detail with my current situation in Jville: I am taking voice lessons again at UNF. We have a "concert" ish
thing this weekend (no, you're not invited:) ). As I was practicing
today, my prof was trying to get me to emote more and sell the song.
She said I needed to feel the song and then convey my feeling to the
audience. Iinterpreted that as "You need to make the audience believe
that you believe." Anyhow, this set me on a train of thought about
entertainment in general. To entertain, the performer has to convince
the audience to play make-believe with them for a bit. The audience
imagines that the performer is really doing what he acts out, or feels
the emotions of the song, or whatever. But, in today's society,
make-believe is a dead game. I feel like society in general has lost
its innocence, its faith in man, to the point where pretending is a
lost art. People don't pretend anymore. Movies are all graphics, trying
to make the image as real as possible to make the story as
comprehensible as possible for the audience. Songs are not about
fanciful things anymore. Music now is about stuff that people relate
to, stuff you hear on the news or see every day. The element of pretend
has slipped away, to the point where the concept "suspended belief" is
nonexistent. We've lost our innocence, and making believe is too hard
to do, it requires more than one person can deliver. As such, to be one
person selling a myth, you have to be extraordinary. You cannot be a
itinerant musician and expect to sell your songs. To sell it as a
musician, you need to either be in the topeschelon or you need people
behind you, making the air move and rain fall, making the words you
sing become real and tangible the fake effects.

Anyhow, the
long and short of my musing here is that I do not emote well. No
surprise. Feeling the music isn't what's required. Being good enough to
make the audience believe you feel it is what's required and sometimes
that can be infinitely more difficult.
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My
final musing, and then I'm off to run. This one is about preemption. I
am reading a book that sets forth the premise that preemption is better
thanpostemption (if that is a word). Basically, the idea is this: if
you know that there is a conspiracy to, let's say, commit an act of
terrorism, but there is not enough proof to bring the conspirator's to
a court of law, or even arrest them, what do you do? As opposed to
waiting for the evidence to mount to the point where the conspirators
can be arrested lawfully, which can sometimes mean waiting for the act
of terror and any deaths that could follow, this book sets forth the
idea that law enforcement shouldpre-emptively strike against the
conspirators and remove the threat, even if you have to kill the
conspirators. It sort of looks at the question "How many people is itok to kill to avert a tragedy?" I mean, if the tragedy was 1 million people, would it be ok
to kill any people to avert the tragedy? If so, how many? 10? Maybe the
flat rule 10% of the total potential deaths? It's kinda hard to
quantify but the idea sort of bounces around the issue in "Minority
Report". Would it beok to have any pre-emption of unlawful activity, especially when that unlawful activity would result in the deaths of innocent people?

For
me this is a difficult idea. I am stuck between the rock of too much
governmental authority (which inevitably leads to abuse and corruption)
and the hard place of wanting to avert innocent deaths and protect
those innocents. I dunno if a balance can be struck between my Scylla
and Charybdis. I mean, I want to think that protecting and preserving
innocent lives is important, but how do I weigh the lives saved in the
short run against the lives threatened by abuses of power? It builds
itself into the same question on a larger scale, really.
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I
guess this is where I leave you. I have to go run now, get my
endorphins kicking. Enjoy my update, I will try to have more.


My word for today is "Lexicographer." I don't know why.