More Historical Artifacts from Tyria

About a month or so ago, I posted some old artwork I'd found in my stash of files from my time as an artist at Arenanet back in the early days of the development of Guild Wars, and it was one of my most popular tweets ever. I had more than a few requests to do this again, and since I'm a bit of a pack-rat when it comes to my digital files, I figured I would dig up some more images to share with you all, but since Twitter's character limit doesn't really give me a chance to get into the background of the images I'm about to share here, I thought a blog post would better suit my needs. So without further ado, here's some more artwork from the early days of Guild Wars!

Arenanet Color Tests

This first image is just a color test, which shows the original Arenanet logo I designed in various color schemes. We didn't just go to red/black/white, for a while the red/yellow was popular as were the slate blue pairings one row up from the bottom right. Ultimately, the current logo color scheme was chosen for its readability on both black and white backgrounds. The "planet" swoosh in the background survived up to about our first E3 I believe (some of our original dev swag, like the E3 polos have this version of the logo), but was trimmed out for simplicity before we launched Prophecies.

Guild Wars Banner Logo

Guild Wars Banner and Spears Logo and Box treatment

The above images show a couple of the logo treatments we experimented with for Guild Wars. Amazingly, we all fell in love with the font treatment pretty quickly, and it really didn't deviate much from concept to production, but we went back and forth a lot on adding other elements to the text to make it stand out. The concepts above were rough layouts to get a feel for how other elements might complement the text, but ultimately we fell back again on simplicity and had the plain text embossed and "sexed up" with shine and high end rendering, and left to stand on its own.

Tyria Roadmap

The graphic here is a texture that was applied to road signs in Ascalon in the original Prophecies. In addition to being one of the few in-game assets to actually show a partial map of Tyria, what makes this texture unique is that it was the first use of one of the in-game alphabets that I "authored": Ascalonian. I wanted to have text on the map so that eagle-eyed players would be able to "read" the map. In practice it was probably not very readable given the size of the assets and the texture compression of the original game, but even so I didn't want to just write the names of the places on the map in English, so I spent a weekend researching old scripts and "stole" the Phoenician letters for use as our Ascalonian alphabet. In hindsight I wish I'd used this as a base to craft our own unique alphabet, but as I had no aspirations to do more that this single map at the time, I didn't put much time into this effort.

Unused Alphabet

Speaking of alphabets, the image above was a test I began doing around the time we started working on Factions, for an alphabet that we would have used for the Kurzicks and/or Luxons. However, we dropped this alphabet in favor of building out the Canthan ideograms instead, since that was a much more complicated but ultimately we though more rewarding language challenge. I've returned to this image now and then in case it made sense to do another alphabet, but it never found a home, so here it is, shared from the cutting room floor.

Sacred Geometry

So you can probably tell I'm a bit of a nerd in terms of how I approach creative challenges, and the above image I'm sharing because it demonstrates how I get sucked into the details of environmental storytelling quite a bit. The above texture is from structures inside the mesa at Augury Rock, known in Prophecies as the "Hall of Ascension". Within this space, your player would face the ultimate challenge: yourself, in doppelganger form, in which defeating your shadow self enabled you to "ascend", and become closer to the gods. As an atheist, I wanted to represent divinity through the majesty of science and so I loaded the Hall with representations of "sacred geometry" which is the result of math and art coming together in beautiful ways. If you look closely, you can see the "golden rectangle" repeated throughout, and other shapes that employ the golden ratio, a mathematical term for when the ratio of two quantities is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. It's all very nerdy, but I was always very interested in the confluence between science and art, and how geometry is used (or misused) to construe divinity from order and natural law.

Mantle Housing

This next image is a texture that was used in an unusual way - In most cases, textures are applied to objects at small scale, and repeated so that it can be used at varying distances and sizes. This one was applied to large structures outside the play space around the Krytan region, to represent cities off in the distance, out of our player's reach. In a way it acted more like a matte painting, though it couldn't have depth cuing because of the different ways in which it was used. I can't say I think this technique was highly successful, but I include it here more as an interesting look at how we used to have to do things in the earlier days of game dev - nowadays you would just model all these things and build them into the skybox!

Screen to Texture

Here's another process oriented image. In the days before we had 3D sculpting software like Zbrush and Mudbox, to get detailed 3D elements onto textures it was all hand-authored in 2D and we used a variety of techniques to accomplish this. One thing I did was use the game as a rendering engine...I would set up scenes in the game and screen-capture them. Then I would isolate the elements I wanted, such as the figures from the background, and run them through some old school Photoshop filters (to make them look embossed). I would them take that, composite them together and spend a couple hours touching up the result (since when scaled down onto a 256 x 256, or 512 x 512 texture sheet, a LOT of details just get lost). Nowadays, texture sheets are 2048 x 2048 and up, and creating them usually involves starting with a sculpt in Zbrush.

Wine Bottles

Durmand Priory Books

I'll end this post with some of my favorite kinds of textures and these are from Guild Wars 2. It was probably pretty obvious by this point in my career that I was more interested in the lore and storytelling side of game development than in just straight up being an artist, because whenever I was assigned to do detailed work like wine bottle labels and books, I spent WAY more time on them than was necessary. For the wine bottle labels, I took concept art that was created by our amazingly talented concept artists, and graphic designed them with my alphabet for New Krytan. And when I got assigned to make book objects for populating the Durmand Priory library (or wherever books were needed), I went to town, designing book covers, drawing charts, writing paragraphs (or copying them from the lore pages of our wiki) and just generally indulging my inner lore nerd. Even though I knew most of the text would get compressed and scaled down to unreadability, it didn't stop me from putting all those details in when I authored the books.

So there you have it. Some more art background geekiness for your viewing/reading pleasure. Hope you all enjoyed it. :-D

Chronic Depression

Chronic depression is when you wake to a new day feeling refreshed and rested, but nonetheless feeling like the best thing that you can do for yourself is to crawl back into bed and not come out. Ever.

Chronic depression is when you become overwhelmed with sadness at the idea that your body won't allow you to sleep like you want to, because it's already had enough rest.

Chronic depression is when you snap at your wife simply for offering her help and standing up for you to solve a trivial problem, but because of the irrationality of the feelings that are overwhelming you, this only makes you feel even more futile and useless.

Chronic depression is when your son tries to engage you with something that you both share in common and all you can muster is a one-word response, or worse yet, with a yell to leave you alone because they're not yet equipped to recognize how agonized you are at the moment.

Chronic depression is focusing on every mundane task you can, because there is order in that, and you can make some sense of the world.

Chronic depression is chronic, and no matter how much therapy you receive or how much support you have...some days you will just be a complete and utter mess.

Chronic depression is me.

Chronic depression will recede like the tide, and I will grab onto the moments that matter when it does.

Chronic depression is waiting.

Waiting

HeForShe and HeAndShe

Recently Emma Watson spoke before the United Nations to unveil and describe her HeForShe campaign, which is asking men to sign up on their website to show a commitment to supporting gender equality. There have been the usual critiques of the ideas which she presented, and of the motivations of Ms. Watson herself (as well as some pathetic attempts to shame her with threats of leaking compromising photos of the young woman), and even some who have suggested that we should instead use the "HeAndShe" hashtag as a more appropriate banner for the fight for gender equality. 

While I do not often describe myself as a feminist*, I take issue with the central arguments behind those who have offered the HeAndShe alternative, as it implies that men and women can advocate for equality equally. But that's the problem, isn't it? If women and men could advocate for themselves and each other equally, we wouldn't even be talking about equality - it would have been attained. 

The reason HeForShe is important is specifically because we aren't equal yet. I may choose to say I am a humanist rather than a feminist, but my objection to the term is purely semantic, as I believe it's important to support feminism's guiding principles, even if I don't always agree with every feminist. 

To best illustrate my point, I think of it in the following way:

A man and a woman begin a journey together.

As they walk, their paths deviate.

Eventually the man ends up at the top of a hill, from which he can see far off into the distance. He remarks about the breathtaking view.

The woman has tried to climb the same hill, but there were challenges she couldn’t overcome, and the man did not always reach back to help her, so she is only halfway to the top.

She wants to climb up to the top of the hill to be with the man and see the view for herself, but the constant setbacks and challenges have worn her down, and she knows it will take much, much longer to get there on her own.

She waves and calls out to the man, asking him to help her get to the top of the hill.

HeAndShe implies either that the man does not need to help the woman get to the top of the hill, or worse, that the man and the woman are already on top of the hill together.

HeForShe stands for the man doing whatever he can to help the woman get to the top of the hill.

There are those who say that HeForShe puts "women and children first". No it doesn't. It means that men should be active participants in achieving equality for women, so that they can both enjoy the view from the hill. Sure, we could just dig in our heels and let women fight their way to the top on their own, but what does that say about us? I won't stand idly by if someone, anyone, is genuinely asking for the same rights I, and others, already have and I am in a position to help. 

This was a deliberately simplistic example, and no I don't pretend to have all the answers or to imply that men aren't also suffering in certain areas or face no gender bias, or that those who are transgender or questioning don't have their own unique challenges. All of those problems exist, and it's not going to be an easy solution, but I agree with Ms. Watson's overriding philosophy, and I feel that we need to start with the most obvious problems first, and right now if we're going to expect women to advocate for both genders equally, we first need to help get them up the hill. 

If you still support #HeAndShe, I have a suggestion for you! Perhaps we can and should re-purpose the #HeAndShe hashtag as the rallying cry for both men and women to advocate equally for those who are transgender or questioning. Imagine a world where everyone stands on the hill together, regardless of who they identify as. What a world that would be!

If you are a man who believes that we need to be active participants in securing equal rights for women, you can sign up at the HeForShe campaign's website here: HeForShe's Website

* I personally prefer to champion gender equality under the umbrella of humanism, because gender equality is a HUMAN right, and also because I don't see the issue as a binary equation but rather I believe people's identities exist on a three axis spectrum of gender, orientation and biology. I don't dislike the term feminist, I simply find it doesn't adequately describe my own philosophy.

Barefoot 365

Last year, I started seeing some of my friends and colleagues posting some of their personal photos to their social media feeds with the hashtag #Project365. Being a bit of a voyeur, I always enjoy seeing pieces of other people's lives, and some of the images my friends had posted were quite breathtaking. I looked into it some more and realized that this was not just a random thing my fellow tweeters and facebookers were doing, but there was actually an entire website based around this concept of taking and posting an image a day for a year.

When I thought about the scarcity of my New Year's resolutions for 2014 (see my previous post below), I made a pledge just over a week ago, that I would participate in my own #Project365. But being that, as a barefooter, I have a rather particular and unique take on life, I thought it would be a good opportunity to do some outreach as a barefooter, and have launched #Barefoot365.

My project is deliberately designed to show a year in the life of a barefooter. Most times, my barefooting is mundane. But other times, it's not. The point is not for me to show how "cool" or how "brave" or how "smart" barefooting is. My goal, is to show just how "ordinary" being barefoot is.

People who don't know me, and who meet me for the very first time, are almost always full of questions about my barefooting:

How do you do that?

Why do you do that?

What is it all about?

And I sometimes feel like these questions are really, really unusual. Because I honestly cannot see how someone can look at me doing something that is completely natural for our species, and ask such questions seriously. In truth, it kind of saddens me that we have climbed so far away from our origins that questions like this seem necessary to many people when they're confronted with something as innate to our species as living barefoot.

But, I also understand and am sympathetic to these questions, and that is why I am hoping that my #Barefoot365 project will show just how usual my unusualness really is. :-)

You can find and follow this project at the following link: Barefoot Matthew's #Barefoot 365

Looking Forward to 2014

As I look ahead to 2014, there are two major things that I hope to accomplish this year, so I guess you could call them my resolutions. They are:

1. Finish writing my book.
2. Get back into yoga.

I posted these to Twitter, but Twitter is so fleeting that I felt that I needed to also record them here if I was to have any hope of garnering the willpower it will take to accomplish these goals. Fortunately, I'm already well on my way with the first goal of completing my book, as I've used the two weeks that I've had off of work to get really deep into editing the first of the dozen chapters I've already written. I've also been brainstorming the rest of the chapters to get the book to the stopping point that I would like for the first volume. Yes, volume, as in I hope to turn this story into a series of books. I am not focused on that longer term goal yet, though. I first want to get one book written, see how well it's received and then go from there. I like my own writing, and the few people who have read some of my work have consistently complimented me on my writing, so I'm hopeful that this hobby will take off and maybe even launch me in a new direction. The cosmos knows I've been needing something like that for a while.

I'm not going to reveal much about the story of my book yet...even though I've written a dozen chapters (technically there are more, but some of them exist only in a Molskine notebook on my desk) I feel as though it's still too early in the process, and the feedback I've received and hope to continue to receive will likely shift the details of my story somewhat. But I can say that thematically it's a story about holding on to one's humanity; to hope and love and strength in the face of overwhelming challenges.

The second goal shouldn't be too daunting, but I've been procrastinating about it already for a while now. It's hard enough to find physical activities that I enjoy anyway, but I think part of the reason I've been sitting on my hands on this goal for so long is that no matter what physical activity I attempt to get into, I invariably end up with some kind of chronic injury that sidelines me temporarily. Then once it heals up, which usually takes at least a couple of months, my motivation to get back to it has completely evaporated. Example: Three years ago, I was doing yoga once a week and I began to notice a pain in my wrist when doing the downward dog or plank pose. When I checked it out with my doctor, it turned out I had developed a painful cyst in my wrist, and had to get it excised by a surgeon. Recovery took months, including physical therapy to regain the strength I'd lost. By then, I was gun-shy about going back to it.

I know it's entirely possible that the two incidents were unrelated (my cyst could very well have simply been work-related), but this was just the latest in a very long string of injuries I've sustained or noticed while trying to be physical. It's been so bad that I sometimes come to think of myself as "Mr. Glass" from the movie Unbreakable. I should probably take a lesson from my first goal and not get discouraged like that, and work harder to get past my challenges in this regard. I just don't know what I can do when my body is consistently and clearly telling me that being active is a surefire way for me to get hurt.

I guess from the fact that I now feel better about my year ahead, just from having blogged about all of this, maybe I should add "Blogging more" to my list of resolutions this year. I've been somewhat reserved with my blog because a lot of the things that are on my mind end up crossing the line into either the realm of my personal life, or my career, and I don't know that anyone cares to read my petty complaints and observations about my life or work. 

With regards to personal stuff, I never like talking much about my family life to the Internet, as it just feels disrespectful to them for some reason. So when I talk about personal stuff it's usually about things that affect only me, but then if I post like that all the time I feel like people will think I'm just pining to be "swinging single guy" or something, which I'm not. I think part of the reason I fear these things is that many of my most intense interests tend towards the more controversial subjects, like religion, sex and sexuality, and politics. It's tough to find the balance in my blogging between showing myself as a responsible husband and father, and speaking out about the things that interest me most.

Nor do I necessarily want to paint myself as a troublemaker if I am griping about something to do with my job or career (of which there are plenty of topics to choose from, unfortunately), or even if I'm saying something positive, I often feel like I might say something that I probably shouldn't say outside of official channels. I've got drafts of posts you wouldn't believe in this regard. But I'm extremely protective of keeping my job, and so I say nothing at all. 

And lastly, I'm a wordy person. I write a lot. I write, then I edit, then I write some more, then I edit again. Literally, it can sometimes take me an hour to write a single email. Not kidding. I'm not particularly good with communicating my thoughts the first time, so I iterate a lot. The same holds for me when writing blog entries, and so I expect that writing a single blog post will take a minimum of an hour, and I don't always feel like I will have the time (This one clocked at just shy of 40 minutes - hey, that's improvement!). But as I am now writing more with my book, maybe brevity is a skill I'll begin to pick up on soon.

So, maybe between the two goals outlined above, I'll have more than enough other good things to blog about here besides work this year. I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and is looking forward to a good 2014.

2013 By The Numbers

As we get close to the end of 2013, I feel like taking a look back at a very incredible and crazy year for me and my career. 2012 was almost entirely wrapped up in one single thing: shipping Guild Wars 2, while 2013 was a hodge-podge of various experiences and challenges, and I feel like I've grown more in this past year as a designer than in the three years previous! :-D So here, for your perusal, is my "hit list" for the year.

January - (TOP SECRET) Sorry, I can't talk about what I did for the close of 2012 and beginning of 2013. Suffice it to say that some of the things I was involved with during that time have been or will soon be in development.

February/March/April - Living World: Flame and Frost Retribution. In February I joined the Living World teams to work on Flame and Frost Retribution, specifically as the main designer on the Molten Weapons Facility. I designed most of the main path through the dungeon, scripting all of the encounters and writing scenes and dialogue. The only parts I did not work on in this dungeon were the mid-boss fight against the "computer" and the final fight with the Dynamic Duo. Those two boss fights were implemented by designer extraordinaire Leif Chappelle. I was really happy with how the two of us collaborated to create a story dungeon that IMHO had really great pacing, strong boss mechanics and I also created and implemented the "Sonic Periscope" turret for the release prior to that, but the less said about that, the better. ;-P

May/June/July - Living World: Bazaar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics. After Flame and Frost, our Living World team moved on to tackle the Labyrinthine Cliffs and the Bazaar of the Four Winds. When our team was told that we would be building out a new public map that was based around a bazaar, I just about flipped my shit. As the most experienced city builder on the team, I was chomping at the bit to get back to flexing some of those muscles. But because this was an open world explorable map instead of a hub I also got to add some fun flavorful events around the area. I worked on the marketplace spawns, conversations and events, though for most of the really memorable characters I give all credit to our amazing writers. For Cutthroat Politics, I worked on the Candidate Trials. While I think that there were some interesting ideas that I was experimenting with in this content, I don't think this ended up being as successful as I would have liked it to be. Maybe it's a concept that I'll be able to return to at some point and prove it out more successfully.

August/September/October/November - Living World: Tower of Nightmares/The Nightmares Within. After working on a bright, happy release like the previous BotFW, we took a step into darkness as a team and began to work in earnest on building the Tower of Nightmares. One thing that was an immediate difference in this cycle was being moved up to Principal Designer. At Arenanet, that's a "temporary" role but it equates to being something of a "junior" lead designer for a release. A principal designer is responsible for overseeing the release's design, so I got to write the design document for the release, and then oversee the execution of that design and work closely with the design leads and directors to ensure the release aligns with the core pillars of our design philosophy. This does entail more responsibility for managing design, so I took on less actual implementation work this time around. But I did schedule myself to create the opening "The Nightmare Unveiled" story instance, and also implemented the krait obelisk shard scavenger hunt. For the latter I worked really closely with our writing and narrative design experts to ensure that the lore for this was really well thought out. And for the former, I relished the chance to finally be able to build a solo instance, and I had a ton of fun creating something that was exactly the kind of content I enjoy playing. I'm also working on something else that I won't talk about quite yet as it hasn't been released yet, but I'm really proud of as well.

December - ??? I can't say anything about my next plans yet obviously, but you can be sure it'll be something different based on how the rest of this year has been.

So that's it for 2013. I'm really curious to see what 2014 will bring for me and my career, but I hope it's as interesting as this year has certainly been!

First Impressions of the Sensori Venture minimalist sandal from Xero Shoes

Last week, Xero Shoes announced that they were branching out beyond their "Do it yourself" huarache kits by introducing a new line of "barefoot" sandals which they named the Sensori Venture. The introductory video posted to their website pegged this new sandal as something that was designed to "sit in the middle" between more expensive varieties of minimalist footwear and cheap flip flops and sandals.

Having given them a few days of road testing, both running in them for 30 minutes and wearing them to work with me, I can honestly say that this is exactly what they promised it would be. :-)

I received them quite quickly (two days shipping) and I opened the package excitedly. I got the charcoal in a men's size 8, which I was a little bit nervous about, because my normal shoe size is between 9 and 10, but according to their sizing guide, these sandals are slightly different from an ordinary shoe's sizes. And they're mostly right. I printed out their sizing chart and according to this, I should be wearing an 8. When I first opened the package, I thought I had made a terrible mistake. The sandal straps looked like they would be WAY too tight. I slipped them on and sure enough there was absolutely no give.

Undaunted though, I decided to mess around with the locking straps a bit, and that's when I realized that there was still about 3/4 of an inch of slack. I adjusted the straps, which admittedly wasn't easy but this was most likely down to the newness of the material more than it was any design flaw. It took maybe 15-20 minutes of noodling, but I finally got the straps to a point where they were comfortable. I will say, this is a case where I am right on the edge in terms of sizing. I might at some point pick up the next size up to see if those feel even better, but as they are, it might not be a bad thing for them to be snug.

That afternoon I took them out to a light run around my neighborhood, and I could tell right away how amazing I'm going to find owning a pair of these. First, a disclaimer. If you know me, and have followed me at all, you probably know I'm a barefoot "purist". Meaning, there's very, very little in this world that bothers me enough to feel a desire to put on shoes. I will tolerate shoes when I need them...it's just that I'm lucky enough that I almost never need them.

But there is one exception to that rule, and for me that rule is cold, wet ground. Standing on wet asphalt isn't awful for short stretches, but where I run into problems is when I have to be on cold, wet ground for a sustained amount of time. There are two main problems with this for me:

1. Skin Erosion - I don't know if other barefooters just deal with this, but it really bothers me. The constant moisture in our area seeps into the skin, and after several minutes of exposure, the skin begins to break down. When it does this, I find that it no longer matter how thick or tough my soles are...I will get blisters, or breaks in the skin, or peeling, or any number of skin-related issues that can quickly sideline me from activity.

2. Stinging->Numbness - One of the most frequent questions that I get from non-barefooters in the winter time is "Don't your feet get cold?" Well yeah, of course they do. When you go outside your hands and feet get cold. So do your ears, and your face...it's a rather silly question honestly. But getting cold feet isn't really a detractor in and of itself. What IS a detractor is that if you spend any amount of time on cold, wet ground like what we experience a lot of during our winters, you do feel the stinging of the cold air/water. But even this is not really a bother by itself. The danger for me really lies in what can happen once you get used to the stinging, and that is numbness. Although your body does have a defense mechanism for dealing with cold extremities (the process is called vasodilation; your body begins to open the blood vessels in the lower legs to shunt additional blood to the digits, turning them pink), it's a cyclical thing, and your body tends to alternate between vasodilation and numbing. It can also be cold enough that vasodilation becomes ineffective, which is when you run the risk of frostbite. For me, whenever I've had any kind of nagging injury from running barefoot, I attribute it to sloppy form, which is almost inevitable when you spend part of your run unable to feel the ground.

Slipping on the Sensori Venture completely removes the above two issues while still giving me enough ground feel to still get the sense that I'm barefoot. I own another pair of the standard Xero shoes huaraches, but I never really grew to love them because they really were a pain to lace up and they felt really floppy on my feet, like they were going to fall off or fold up under my foot, causing me to twist an ankle. But the Sensori Venture is nothing like them. It fits like a glove, without the confining feel of one. I've never had any interest in trying a Five Fingers type of running or sport shoe, but I always appreciated that they wouldn't have those instability problems of the huaraches. But I never once felt the Sensori Venture move apart from my foot...it felt like an extension of it.

The Sensori Venture is a really well made sandal, in my estimation, and I do think that they'll be my "go-to" footwear, even for just casual wear. You can even flip the heel strap around and wear them as normal, albeit unusual looking, flip flops. There's only two negatives I have to say, but both are really minor. The first is what I mentioned before about the straps being kind of tight in the beginning. Some of that may get better as I break them in and go for longer and longer runs. The second issue I've had is more of a mind-body error on my part. One of the features of the Sensori Venture is that it has a heel cup. I'm still a little unsure how I feel about this feature. It's supposed to be designed to keep your foot from slipping and sliding on the footbed. Since I've not felt any slipping or sliding, it may very well be doing its job brilliantly. But it also has a heel strap, and that heel strap is covered in a really sift material which is designed not to abrade, but this also makes it so that you don't really feel it at all. And as a result, in my initial testing, it feels to my brain, like the heel strap has clipped down and is now resting UNDER my heel. But it hasn't...I'm simply feeling the heel cup. This is a pretty minor complaint, all things considered, and I may just get used to both of them.

Either way, I'm really excited by this new line from Xero Shoes. I hope it does really well for the company. The world could only benefit from more people trying to live barefoot, or at least the next closest alternative. :-)

Replies to Spam #1 - White Russian

I haven't blogged in forever. It's not from a lack of things I want to talk about, it's a lack of time and enthusiasm really. But I've been wanting to do this for a while, so here I am. I get spawm, like everyone. But I'll be honest, I read some of it. Not because I'm interested in what the spammer is offering, but because I find it highly entertaining. I have always wanted to correct grammatically poor spam ads, and respond to particularly creative uses of the English language. So here, without further ado, is the first in what I hope will be a series called "Replies to Spam". Enjoy!

Good afternoon
My name is Alena. 

Hello Alena! It's technically morning here, but hey, this is the Internet. You're probably in another time zone somewhere.

I think my email for you is surprise. And i hope it is a
nice surprise.

Hmm. Well, so you can't really email surprise. Surprise is a state of mind. I'm guessing English isn't your native language, so I'll forgive the oversight for now. I believe what you mean to say is "I think my email for you will be a surprise". And you would be right, since I don't know anyone named Alena. I do enjoy meeting new people, so yes, I hope it will be a nice surprise as well. Always capitalize "I" when referring to yourself. 

I think you will have a question about " where did i find yours email
address. I used a services of dating agency.

OK, I actually didn't have that question. I safely assume that because I've had this email address for a long time, it appears on a number of lists that I would prefer it NOT appear on. And while I've used dating agencies in the past, that was many years ago, long before I had my current email address. So you having acquired my email through one of those channels is just flat out wrong. Are you lying to me? Already? I'm hurt!

They asked me what kind of men i like, and then they offer me to start a
correspondence with you via email.

This carries the implication that I am the type of man you like, but you fail to detail exactly what that is. For all I know, you may like jocks with three inch thick chest hair and hung like a horse. In which case, your dating agency has some real credibility issues already. What agency did you say this was, again? Oh yeah, you didn't. You're asking a lot from me if you expect me to just trust this unknown dating agency, sight unseen.

This agency {%said|Has designated|Has offered%} me that your email address
they found at dating site.

Ahhh! Now I see, the dating agency is the one who lied about getting my email address...but wait, this is a dating agency who found my email at a dating site? So what does the agency do...troll other sites for email adresses? Also, what sort of dating site is this that gives out its members' email addresses? This is all starting to sound really shady! Also, I didn't understand when you said "{%said|Has designated|Has offered%}. It's clear to me that English is not your native tongue, so maybe this is simply "lost in translation".

As i said you before my name is Alena. And i am absolutely lonely girl.

There's that lower case 'i' again. I'm sorry you're feeling lonely. I know how cold and cruel life can be, sometimes. But hang in there, it's going to get better!

I was born and live now in Russia in small town in central part. The name
of my town is .

Ohh, Russia! How interesting. I've never heard of the town of . Are there a lot of people in .? I presume they speak primarily Russian in .

My birthday is on July, 31st. I have no children, but i love kids very
much.

Hey, my son's birthday is at the end of July too! I love him very much. I think kids are great. :-) Hmm, although...you don't say what year you were born...I really hope I'm not breaking any federal laws by talking to you.

Maybe learning more about each other we can have real relations, who knows.

Err, yeah. See, thing is, "having relations" is a euphemism for sex. I hate to rain on your parade, but I'm married. And as stated above, I don't know what age you are so I can't even go there mentally.

I am search for  my true love. I want
to have serious relations.

I hope you do find your true love someday. It's really amazing when you do. Although the "serious relations" does have a tendency to drop off in frequency. Just a friendly piece of advice: telling a perfect stranger you want to have relations with them is probably not a good idea. 

It is a little about myself. I hope it was interesting for you.
I will be waiting your answer very much.

You're right, this email WAS all about you, but it was marginally interesting, hence my reply. You likely won't get it because I'm choosing to respond via my blog, but it was a way to make my day not so boring, so thank you very much for that!

Yours new friend from Russia. Alena..

It's 'your new friend' not 'yours new friend'.

Are you an A-Ninety-Threeist?

Wow, it's been a long time since I blogged.

I was inspired to write this blog because for the past couple of weeks I've been seeing friends and others in my social media circles getting really confused about what the word "atheist" means. There's no shame in being confused about the definitions, as understanding it not only involves some measure of philosophical underpinnings, but also invokes and inflames people's passions because the word atheist carries negative connotations for many.

Put simply, atheism is a rejection of the claims in a deity or deities. That's it. Atheism on its own doesn't assert that there are no gods, it simply rejects existing claims for those gods that have so far been proposed.

The kicker, and the thing that confuses a lot of people, is that there are only two possibilities when it comes to these god claims: acceptance and rejection. Withholding acceptance of a claim is the same as rejection, and so what many people don't get is that taking a neutral position does not allow you to "bow out" of the proposition. If you do anything other than accept a god claim, you are an atheist regarding that god. To give an example: not many people believe in Mithra these days - we are almost all atheists if we are talking about her.

What this means, my friends, is that you might very well be an atheist even though you might not think so...but because that word carries so much baggage, you refuse to consider the idea or adopt that moniker, preferring to label yourself agnostic, undecided or "spiritual". The problem with this approach is that it muddies the waters of rational discourse, because it confuses belief with knowledge, which is sadly not uncommon. Knowledge is a highly refined form of belief, so some errors are bound to crop up when discussing such things, but I find it really important to try and foster understanding in this area, so I'll try to explain my meaning.

You might already be thinking that I'm full of hot air here, so let me simplify what I'm trying to say by using an analogy. First, I must apologize to Matt Dillahunty of the "Atheist Experience" public access show for stealing an example he used on their most recent episode so that I can expand on these ideas with a little thought experiment.

So let's pretend we have a jar in front of us, and inside that jar is an unknown number of gumballs.

Now, without turning it over and emptying the jar, we have no way to know with certainty how many gumballs are in the jar. But we can make any number of guesses, with various criteria, and that guess will be a claim, AKA a belief, about how many gumballs are in the jar. So here is my claim: I believe the number of gumballs in the jar is 93. I've just made a claim about the number of gumballs in the jar. Do you believe this claim? You might use your own judgment and reason to assess my claim, or you might just "go with your gut". But tell me: Are you, like me, a Ninety-Threeist?

Before you get too far down the rabbit hole considering my claim, let's stop and break this down a bit. I'm not asking you if you have a counter-claim about the number of gumballs. I'm simply asking, do you believe my claim that there are ninety-three gumballs in the jar? You only have two possibilities here: Either you believe my claim (you are also an Ninety-Threeist) or you do not (you are an A-Ninety-Threeist). If you wish to maintain the default neutral position about the quantity of gumballs, you are still an A-Ninety-Threeist because you do not (yet) believe my claim. Reserving or withholding your belief is a soft rejection of the proposition, but it is still a rejection.

Now, rejecting my claim that there are ninety-three gumballs in the jar does NOT make any kind of counter-claim about the actual number of gumballs. Being an A-Ninety-Threeist does not make you a Seventy-Eightist. The only thing that makes you a Seventy-Eightist is if you turn around and make your own separate claim, and state your own belief that there are seventy-eight gumballs in the jar. 

So to bring this around back to atheism. At some point in the past, a person looked up to the heavens and considered their position in the universe, and that person said "I believe we were put here by something. Some being that is greater than us, and created us." That person has asserted a claim. His fellows, gathered around the campfire for warmth, are now faced with a simple, binary choice. Either they believe the person who made the claim, or they do not. Some will believe his claim. Those who do not might simply leave it at non-belief, while others might put forward beliefs of their own. If one of those people wasn't sure if they believed yet, they have still chosen NOT to believe...yet. If that person who made the claim was the world's first theist, then everyone around who did not agree with the person's claim would be an atheist. 

Hopefully this has given you a clearer idea that atheism is simply the rejection of the claims made so far about a deity or deities. The simplest and most concise way of communicating the atheist position is this: 

"I do not believe in god(s)".

Yes, it is true that some, maybe many, atheists take it one step further to assert a more powerful phrasing, AKA a belief of their own, such as:

"I believe there are no gods."

The thing is - that position is one that is informed by atheism, but actually goes beyond atheism. Some people in the non-believer communities call it "strong atheism", or "anti-theism", others prefer to leave it unlabeled, as simply a conviction that their lack of belief is so close to the truth as to become knowledge for them. But this belief is not atheism. It exists in addition to atheism, and springs from atheism.

The bottom line TL:DR is: Atheism on its own is not a belief system or a counter claim to theistic propositions. It is a rejection of those propositions, but it can and does give rise to secular belief systems. Because there's no firm name that atheists have agreed upon for this counter-belief, it can indeed be confusing and ends up being associated with atheism, so I hope that this has helped clarify the situation for some of you. 

Next time you're in conversation with others, and someone says "I'm an atheist" what they really mean is "I do not believe in god(s)."  Maybe give some thought to ask that atheist "So, what DO you believe?". You might be surprised to know that with the exception of the whole "god" thing, we're pretty much just like everyone else. Thank you for reading! :-)

An Open Letter to Reverend Leon Luis

To the honored Reverend Leon Luis:

My name is Matthew Medina. And I'm calling you out. You gave the closing benediction at Monday's presidential inauguration, and in the space of four minutes, called atheists and people of no faith everywhere hateful, arrogant, prejudiced, suspicious, despairing bigots. Let's go to the tape, shall we:

The Reverend tells us how he really feels

For those so inclined, here's the highlights of the points you hit. First, you trot out the standard Christian canard that all atheists are angry and arrogant:

"We pray that you will bless us with your continued presence, because without it, hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts."

Admittedly, upon hearing this, I felt pretty angry. But my anger had nothing to do with a lack of God's presence in my life and everything to do with the fact that you, Reverend, have been given a national platform to spew such ignorance with the implicit blessing of the President, sitting a mere ten feet away with his head silently bowed in assent. Yes, I said ignorance - for how else can I explain the fact that you think nonbelievers must naturally be hateful and arrogant because they don't believe in your deity? How dare you presume to know what's in my heart, or how much I can love? How about you ask my son if he thinks I'm full of hatred, and maybe ask my wife who's been by my side for almost 15 years if she thinks I'm just an arrogant asshole? Hmm?

Oh but it doesn't stop there, does it Reverend? Another gem falls out of your mouth:

"We pray for your blessing today because without it, mistrust, prejudice and rancor will rule our hearts."

Ah, yes - I'm completely and utterly incapable of trusting anyone, and boy you should hear the racist things I say throughout the day. And yes, the bitterness is just oozing from every pore. Ah reverend you know us atheists SO well! We're wretches who don't deserve to know friendship or kinship with anyone; we're so heinous and vile. You've seen through the facade of the atheist lies, to our true nature.

What else is within that sainted pate, my dear Reverend?

"We pray for your blessing because without suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our rule of life."

I'm sensing a pattern here, my man. Why, it's as if you've held up a mirror to show me my blackened soul, my life devoid of any goodness or light, and isolated by my depravity. What shall us atheists do in your view? Suicide seems a noble solution for those sins of ours! Pray, good sir, do you have another gem of wisdom to share about the lack of divine oversight in the lives of nonbelievers?

"We pray for your blessing, because without it, we will see only what the eye can see."

Uhh, OK. You've confused me on this one. Given that the eye can see many wonderful and glorious things, like sunsets and waterfalls and rainbows and grumpy cat, I'm not really seeing the downside of your argument here. Ah, but of course, you mean to suggest that you, as sacred servants of your god, can see BEYOND what the eye can see. Well, it's true, I myself cannot see beyond what my own eyes can see. Of course, that can change with the aid of a little tool I like to call...science. See, there's this thing called Infrared. Or Ultraviolet. Or X-Rays. Hell, there's an entire spectrum of electromagnetic energy we can see beyond what our eyes can perceive. Take your pick. We happened to evolve on a planet with a sun with a particular wavelength of light, so our ancestors only evolved enough of an eye to see what was needed to survive long enough to procreate. That includes you, by the way. Long story short, you, dear Reverend, still see with the same eyes as everyone else.

Anything else to share with us awful human beings (aka atheists)?

"We pray for your blessing because without it, we will only see scarcity in the midst of abundance."

The fuck are you talking about?! Seriously brother, it wasn't bad enough to insult our character, now you're going after our eyesight again? Oooh, I see...it's a metaphor! You mean that we petty atheists are only capable of seeing the shallow surface of things, and how we can't possibly understand the subtle beauty of a child's smile, or the majesty of an inspired piece of art. How sad that without god to show me truth, I can only ever know the color of the forest before me, and not the grand history of the trees arrayed like silent sentinels, and I can never experience the enriching pleasure of the cool earth beneath my bare soles. If only...

Oh but wait, I skipped over something. Let's go back to this nugget of joy, shall we Reverend?

"But with the blessing of your presence, We know that we can renew the ties of mutual regard which can best form our civic life."

Humph. OK, let's set all the joking aside. I've been deliberately playing the "bitter, angry" atheist you seem to think we all are. In truth, all the comments above are pretty typical of what we hear again and again, and they've long since ceased to get under my skin.

So, up until now, I've been playing with your words a little, Reverend. Look, I know you didn't mean to belittle us atheists and our lack of a godly presence in our lives (but let's make no mistake, that's exactly what you did). I'd have even been willing to give you a pass on your other comments and call it ignorance, as it's very possible you don't actually know any atheists, other than the ones you might see on TV, who may admittedly come across looking angry, arrogant, and bitter (but as you can hopefully see from my words here, sometimes we have reason to be). But this implication - that only through the presence of a god can we best achieve a civic life? This...this is bullshit. Atheists, agnostics and the religiously unaffiliated make up a significant chunk of the American population. How dare you suggest that we are somehow inferior at participating in a civic fashion? This attitude is provincial, and backwards, and why most Americans say they wouldn't vote for an atheist for public office.

My dear Reverend, it's a good thing for you that I don't have hatred in my heart - I forgive you your ignorance of what atheists are really like.

And Mister President, lest anyone think I'm picking on the Reverend here, I must also say that I'm ashamed that you would sit there with head bowed, hearing these divisive and petty words, and remain silent. You're lucky you don't have to run for re-election, sir.

Fall Barefooting

It's been too long since I wrote a blog entry. Something about putting to bed a 5-year long project...it has a tendency to juggle your priorities a bit. But here I am.

So, I wanted to get on here to talk a bit about the "fall" season for barefooting. It's definitely one of the most interesting times of the year for a barefooter. While the rest of the people around me are donning heavy coats, insulated socks and waterproof knee-high boots, I'm splashing in rain puddles, collecting pine needles on my soles and leaving wet barefoot prints everywhere I go.

Although I tremendously enjoy all those wonderful things about barefooting through the falling leaves and the first cool rains in September and October, no other time of year is as isolating to a barefooter. The primary reason for this is that it shines a spotlight on how much of an "outsider" we are, when we don't follow along with the rest of society by "sensibly" encasing our feet in extra layers of protection as the temperatures drop and the drops start falling from the clouds.

Every year, from October to December, is without a doubt when I get 90% of the comments about my feet. "Aren't your feet cold?" being the hands-down favorite around here. To which the answer is: Yes. But my hands and head get colder. I never feel cold enough to wear anything over my face, and I wear gloves way more than I wear shoes. Also, your feet actually do adapt to the temperatures and so long as you keep your core warm, you can handle most common temperature changes. We're actually quite resilient in this area, from the heat of summer asphalt to the cold of snow and ice...we can cover a pretty broad spectrum. But most people make a lot of assumptions about the inferiority of their own bodies to adapt.

In the past week, I've had three complete strangers make comments about my lack of footwear, when in the past six months I heard not a thing. It takes a certain kind of strength to be different from everyone else. And although I tend to think that I'm not really that bothered by what other people think, I'd be lying if I claimed that it didn't still have an impact. Even when the comments are mostly neutral and/or benign, as is most often the case with Seattle natives, you can still feel singled out. And no, I'm not asking for this kind of attention because I am barefoot. In all honesty, I'd much prefer that people didn't even notice. I'm barefoot because it's just a part of who I am. Although strictly speaking, it is a choice I make, to me there is no other choice. In my view, it's as unchangeable as the color of my skin or the shape of my eyes.

But human beings are, by our very natures, a social species. So straying from the norm, and deliberately setting yourself up for possible ridicule and misunderstandings is not something that should be overlooked, even by those of us who have always danced to the beat of our own drum. I'm thankful that I've been fortunate enough to have been surrounded in my life with thoughtful and supportive friends and family. I've read numerous stories from other barefooters about how shunned they've felt by those that claimed to love them, but then tried to shame them into conform by putting shoes on because it's "proper".

The bottom line is that this is both my favorite time of year, and my most dreaded time of year, to be barefoot. My feet are happy and free...my mind and my heart are on edge waiting for the inevitable drive-by comment from the next "concerned citizen".

My "SkyReal" project

So I think it's safe to say that if you know me, or have been following me, you know that I love Skyrim. Best game to come out in 2011, hands down, for me. Maybe even further back. I played through the game "to completion" on two characters. Now I put quotes on "to completion" because Skyrim is not the type of game you ever really finish. There's always more to do, and things to find. It's a vast, vast world. But on my first two characters I completed the main story, all the side quests, and a vast majority of the miscellaneous favors, objectives and activities. In essence I played both character until I had emptied my quest logs (not as easy feat). In the process I logged over 350 hours, and all 50 achievements.

But anyway, despite how much I love the game, there were always some things that bothered me. But the number one thing that I was disappointed by was the feeling of immersion and realism. Although the living world is phenomenal (NPC's go about a daily routine, and things happen whether you participate or not), once you look past the radiant AI characters, the world itself felt less like a world and more like a playground (this is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not my preferred play style).

I'm talking about environmental immersion, which I find to be lacking in the vanilla version of Skyrim. Well, thankfully that's why Bethesda makes its editing tools available to the community, and the mods have been steadily pouring forth since the tools were released. And I've continued to scour the offerings looking for choice mods that help with this facet. I'm calling this effort my "SkyReal project". So here below is the short list of mods that I've got installed that help increase environmental immersion in Skyrim. Let's begin, in order of importance:

1.  Realistic Colors and Real Nights (RCRN 3) - Legacy Preset: So what this mod does is provide a complete overhaul on how the game renders environmental post-processing. It amps up the HDR, and makes use of custom shaders to make the world look prettier overall. But the color shifts are more of a subjective thing, so your mileage may vary on whether you like the game better with the richer colors or not. However, I installed this mod for one reason mainly - darker nights. Although I found the nights in Skyrim to be beautiful, you never got the feeling that darkness was dangerous. This changes that. The makers of this mod have created three versions of this mod, with each one making the nights progressively darker. I have the Legacy preset which is the least dark of the settings, but it is definitely darker than vanilla Skyrim - enough to make you cautious about roaming around at night. This mod also works on dark indoor areas as well, which has the effect of making it almost impossible to meander through many of the world's dungeons without a torch. Yep, you now have to make difficult choices about whether to bring out your torch to look around, or if you want to try to sneak through in the dark. And the way that this mod handles the HDR means you can be blinded momentarily when going from pitch black to fully lit - again increasing the tension of dungeon-delving. This is one of the best mods for increasing environmental immersion, so this is why I put it at the top of my list.

2. Sounds of Skyrim (The Wilds and Dungeons) - This is actually a pair of mods, but they really belong together as they provide the same benefits but to different areas of the game. As you can guess from the title, these mods add sounds to the world. But not just a few sounds here and there. No, this is one of the most ambitious audio overhauls I think I've ever heard. Both mods adds tons of new ambient sounds, making the world sound so much more alive. You hear ravens call, wolves howling, moose calls, insects buzzing past your ears, and trees swaying in the breeze with The Wilds. And you hear draugr moaning, rocks falling, metal  creaking and a whole host of dungeon life scrabbling around in the dark in Dungeons. Although none of the sounds are tied into any of the game's content, it doesn't really matter. What it does is create an atmosphere which you didn't know was missing...until you install these mods.


3. Pure Waters - This mod changes the way that the game renders the various bodies of water in Skyrim. By and large it's goal is to make the water in Skyrim more realistic. As with the top mod, some of this is subjective, as what looks real to some may seem not so real to someone else. Water can appear differently in different conditions, so there's no one "correct" way to render water. However, what this mod does which I found to be worth keeping is that it changes underwater to something like I would expect. Submerging yourself with this mod, you'll quickly see the difference, in terms of your loss of visibility. When you combine this mod with the above mod, no longer can you amazingly see from shore to shore when underwater at night. No, this mod will have you waiting for daylight to go swimming unless you want to go groping around in the dark, which feels right to me.


4. Better Dynamic Snow - This mod is really simple, but it's also really powerful. I actually really consider this less of a mod and more of a bug fix. All it does is apply the default snow texture onto the snow that accumulates when a storm is going on. With the vanilla Skyrim, the accumulation effect simply applied a flat white texture onto surfaces, which works from a distance, but up close just looked horrible. I installed it primarily because of how MUCH snow is in Skyrim, and it left me scratching my head why they chose a flat texture for this effect (when the default snow texture was already loaded in memory, since it was being used for the surrounding terrain).


5. Disable Fast Travel* - This mod does exactly what it says it does - you can no longer open your world map and fast travel to any place you desire. If you need to get somewhere, you either walk with your own two feet, or you buy yourself a horse, or you rent yourself a carriage. Now, I put an asterisk on this mod because although I like the amount of environmental immersion is provides, I have opted instead to leave myself the OPTION of fast traveling, but ONLY as a last resort. So, in most games I'm happy to make use of things like fast travel, but for a game like Skyrim where a large amount of the "fun factor" is in just exploring and seeing the world unfolding before you, I want to participate with it and not "skip ahead" just to get to the content. One of the chief reasons I don't play with this mod active though is that while I love the idea of not being able to warp around the world, the game is designed with that mechanic in mind, so your options outside of that are really limiting. Case in point: The carriages you can hire to take you places are only available in, and can only take you to, the capital cities - settlements like Ivarstead or Riverwood are strangely carriage-less. Yet these settlements would seemingly rely heavily on carriages to bring them supplies, etc. from the larger cities. So if someone ever releases a mod which increases the network of carriages, I might re-enable this mod.


6. Leveling Merchant's Wallets - This is a mod that simply makes more gold available to the game's merchants, and the amount that they have available changes the more you sell to them (they get wealthier) so that you can actually sell things out of your inventory. Now, you could make the argument that this mod actually takes away from environmental immersion because what it does is enable you to pretty much just use a single merchant for the entire game, but I actually see it as a realistic application of capitalism. If I sell all my unwanted gear to a merchant who can afford to buy it all (and there is complete absence of anything like this in the vanilla game which in itself is strange), it makes sense that he could turn around and sell it for more than what he gave me, which would in turn make him wealthier, and finally able to buy more from me the next time I visited. The reason this mod doesn't offend my sensibilities and actually increases my environmental immersion is that I feel as though I'm establishing relationships with merchants, and those relationships are what make buying and selling a better experience. I was never a fan of the way that the vanilla game relies on your speechcraft skill to increase the amount of gold that merchants carry. I am fine with the skill being used to determine how much the merchants will pay you for selling to them, but having their purses being directly tied to my ability to speak eloquently never made any sense to me. This mod fixes that gripe, and you'll never have to worry about hoarding gear in your house or making multiple trips to vendors across the city to offload your junk again.


So those are the mods I've got installed right now, which help give Skyrim that sense of environmental immersion I was hoping for. If you know of any additional mods that you think should be added to this list, please feel free to post it in the comments below. Thanks for reading, and maybe I'll see you on the road to Markarth!

Up to speed

Wow, it's been forever since I wrote a blog entry. Well that's what happens when you are A.) Finaling a massive project years in the making, B.) Organizing two meetups and assisting with a third, C.) Being a husband and father and D.) obsessed with following everyone ELSE's social media updates. But today I have been given an extra day of the weekend because my son's school has decided to give them all one more day of rest, and Karen and I split being home with him on those days (as best we can) throughout the year.

There's a lot to catch up on, so I'll just get right into it. First, I wanted to cover my "Your Day Without Shoes" event which took place this past Saturday. It was not a total failure on my part, but not for lack of trying. The only saving grace of the day was that two very gracious individuals came out to join me, and we turned my failure to put together any sort of organized event into something fun for us. The mistakes I made were good learning experiences, at any rate so if I decide to do this type of thing again, I will already know what not to do. ;-)

In the end, it was a lot of little things that went wrong, and taken together, they conspired to make the morning a complete disaster. Things like forgetting to charge my cell-phone the night before, or checking the schedule of the venue I chose. But perhaps the biggest blunder of the day was mis-remembering the layout of Greenlake park, and as a result scheduling an event for an area I was clearly unfamiliar with. As a result, it took a while our attendees to find each other, and when we did we had no really good place to be to hand out fliers and spread the word about barefooting. In the end, we went for an impromptu barefoot hike instead, and that was great fun! So I'm really thankful that I have some awesome and understanding folks in my meetup!

In more exciting news, I was recently given the chance to be featured in a story about barefoot hiking and being a barefooter, that will be published in the Seattle Times very soon! When it comes out, I'll come back on here to talk more about that experience - it was really super positive all around, and I'm excited to see the article, both in print and on the web. My feet are going to be more than just internet famous. :-)

I will also just lay this tidbit out there - I am trying to plant the seeds of something potentially really exciting, but this is something that only has a remote chance of happening so I won't say anything more on it right now. Wish me luck, though! :-D

I've been playing Diablo 3 and really, really enjoying it. With one small exception. My account was hacked last Friday, and all my gold taken. I guess I consider that a lesson learned for thinking "Oh I don't need an authenticator to play this game!" - if you're playing, and you haven't picked one up for your smartphone or tablet device, do it. Trust me. I've got two characters to around 35-ish (monk and barbarian) and working on my third, who is around level 12. It's a fantastic looking and sounding game, and really satisfies with its astounding character progression. Monk is my favorite class, of the three I've tried. I might sample Demon Hunter as well, but I don't think Witch Doctor will be a class I go for...really not my play style. Anyway, I've posted it elsewhere but if you want to hit me up in game, my battle tag is barefootmm72#1858.

In Guild Wars 2 news, we just announced our next BWE which is June 8th-10th! We've all been working really hard, both based on the feedback that we got from the first BWE (in addition to the rest of the game's content) so I can't wait to see what people think. Best of all - you can continue the characters you were playing from the previous play session, so no starting over (well, unless you want to - nothing is stopping you from starting on those alt characters!).

It's been such a hectic past few weeks and months that as I sit here typing now I can think of three hundred things I could type, and none of them that seem worth typing at the moment, so I guess I'll hold onto those thoughts and try and put them down later, in more frequent blogs.

It's kind of funny that when I was using this blog to promote my barefooters meetup, I never posted my upcoming events, and now that I am using this blog as my own personal internet playground, I am. But that's just the way things go sometimes. So here ya go - if you're in the greater Seattle area, and are looking for something to do this weekend, come out and try a barefoot walk/run along Lake Washington. It's a great, easy  urban trail with a spectacular view, and we're sure to get some stares from the many runners that will pass us by, as well as the morning coffee crowd in downtown Kirkland. :-)

http://www.meetup.com/Northwest-Barefooters-Meetup/events/50995702/

Church and State

I make no bones about the fact that I'm a staunch supporter of many non-religious causes, but perhaps none are as important to me as the issue of church-state separation. I believe that many Americans, especially those on the conservative side of the political spectrum, don't fully understand the issue and why it is important to stand up to any encroachment from one domain to the other. This subject has been covered in-depth by scholars, politicians and philosophers since the concept of separation was first introduced, and I don't believe that I have any new answers or special wisdom on this matter. But I have wanted to write about my own reasons for continuing to fight this battle, even when the stakes seem low, for some time now. So here we go.

First, I think it's important to look at all the possible positions that government can take with regards to religion. There seem to be four main positions: I call them Exclusive Support, Inclusive Support, Inclusive Neutral and Exclusive Neutral.

Exclusive Support is a closed theocracy. This means that the government supports a single religion, to the exclusion of all others. Non-state led religions may or may not be tolerated, but if they exist, they are not supported in any way by government money or resources.

Inclusive Support is an open theocracy. In this system, the government declares a national religion or religious position, but it also tolerates other faiths and leverages some measure of financial support to many different religions and/or denominations. This is what many conservatives believe our country is, or should be.

Inclusive Neutral is an open democracy with no specific religion, but many religious ties. In this system, the government remains neutral, in that does not have a national religion or official religious position. It is tolerant of many faiths, including those with no faith, and it makes certain concessions, including financial compensation, to various religions and denominations. This is currently where our country seems to be, and this is also what many liberals believe our country should be.

Exclusive Neutral is an open democracy with no specific religion, and no religious ties whatsoever. In this system, government remains neutral on religion, and while it tolerates religious belief and freedom of religion, it provides no assistance whatsoever to religion. It neither helps nor hinder religious worship. This position is also called "True Neutral". This is the position that is set forth in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (there is some argument on this point, but I hope to demonstrate that there should not be), and is what some people, both believers and nonbelievers, are working very hard to re-establish.

Both conservatives and liberals seem to favor an Inclusive position, perhaps because the Inclusive position seems, at least on the surface, to be the most tolerant of many religious faiths, which this country has in abundance (the sheer number of Christian denominations alone is staggering). However, there are real problems with an Inclusive position, and I believe that long-term, this position in not sustainable.

Perhaps the best example of the failure of an Inclusive position is the Washington State holiday displays in Olympia, which have captured national and international media attention for the last few years. The major hurdle with holding an Inclusive position is that to be truly inclusive is impossible. Attempting to support the sheer number of religions and denominations that exist today, in order to not exclude any one religion, is an exercise in futility. It quickly became comical as the public space in Olympia was filled - first with legitimate religious sentiments, and then over time, with one kooky belief system after another.

The other major problem with Inclusive positions is that while they pay lip service to tolerance, what ends up  happening in reality is that a certain subset of religious belief ends up taking a dominant position. In the United States, Christianity in some form ends up at the top of the heap of religious belief, because that is the professed religion of most Americans. Conservatives want to bolster that position and edge other religions out, while liberals wish to bring in more diversity, but not too much to upset the majority. So while Inclusive might seem to be open to diversity in principle, in practice there is still one religion or subset of religions that hold the lion's share of public and, subsequently, government support.

An example of this was seen very recently (and corrected) in Cranston, Rhode Island. Jessica Ahlquist, an atheist student, recently filed suit after her school refused to take down a sectarian Christian prayer banner that was hanging in the school's auditorium. Conservatives decried her lawsuit because they claimed she was attacking Christianity, in the same vein as "removing prayer from schools" (itself a falsehood - kids are free to pray in school all they want, it's staff-led prayer that was banned, as it clearly shows government support of a particular religion). Some liberals also decried her, claiming that the prayer was doing her no harm and simply a representation of an earlier time, or that the prayer banner was generic enough that she was wrong to be offended by its presence. "Where's the harm?" I kept hearing.

Thankfully, federal judges from the district level on up to the Supreme Court, are well versed on the Constitutional issues at stake, and tend to rule in favor of taking the Exclusive Neutral position - removing any and all trace of religion from our publicly funded and run buildings. They do this because they know, as did our founding fathers, that despite whatever the majority opinion is on religion, religious freedom is all about protecting the rights of the minority. Of the few. Or even the one. They know that the only way for our government to maintain neutrality on the subject of religion is to leverage no support or hold any opinion at all, until and unless there arises some need for civic or legal disputes to be resolved. Belief must be preserved, but it must be preserved as the private, personal issue that it is.

The first several words of the First Amendment read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" and this can only be interpreted one way: the Constitution explicitly prohibits the federal (and for all intents and purposes, the states) government from establishing an official religion, or from favoring or disfavoring one view of religion over another. It's the second part of the clause, and its interpretation, that I feel is lost on many Americans.

Almost all people are happy to accept the first part of the clause, that speaks to not establishing a state religion, most likely because it addresses the literal letter of the law. But the second part "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is even more important, because it speaks to the spirit of the law - the intent of the establishment clause, which is not simply to keep religion out of government and vice-versa, but which tells us that government must have no voice on matters of religion whatsoever. The free exercise of religion by all can only be accomplished when it is done without bias, and there is only one system under which that is possible, and that is to completely remove government from the discussion via the Exclusive Neutral position.

The reason why I feel it's vitally important for more Americans to understand this issue is that it speaks to our national identity; what kind of country we were truly meant to be. Every time I hear a conservative author or TV show host talk about how liberals are trying to "secularize" this country, I cringe to think that they have only understood a small part of the brilliance of our founding document. We are a secular country by design. And we must fight to maintain it as such.

But I also cringe when I hear voices on the liberal side defending school vouchers or faith-based initiatives, in the name of inclusiveness and tolerance, because I fear that they also are ignoring or denying the beauty of our purely secular government.

And with that, I will close with the timeless and wise words of James Madison, from a letter he wrote to the Rev. Jasper Adams:

"I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others."

I apologize for the lengthy post - this is what happens when you don't blog for a while - it builds up into a massive snowball of text. If you've read this far, thank you for taking the time to do so. Next post will be more fluff, less stuff. :-)

"Barefoot" Shoes - A Rant

So, one of the big deals floating around the barefoot community at large right now is the use of the terms "barefoot shoes" and "minimalist shoes". People like barefoot shoes apparently (although I've only seen this claim espoused by those who make money by selling such footwear, so I'm somewhat skeptical).

But I have indeed seen more and more use of the term "barefoot shoes", so I think that they may be right that the "masses have spoken". Here's the problem I have though. The masses, i.e. people, are also stupid creatures sometimes, so let's just throw out what people like for a second and consider this rationally.

"Barefoot shoes" is as inane a statement as is "naked pants", or "topless shirt". There might be something quaint about attaching those types of contradictions together, and that's fine within a particular context (for example, it's particularly effective as a marketing catch phrase because it's attention grabbing). But when we transition those phrases from being quaint to being serious by replacing the word minimalist with barefoot and saying that from now on, those funny shoes will be called "barefoot shoes", all it does is sow confusion. So now, apparently when I tell people I go barefoot, the question will be "Do you mean you wear those funny toe shoes"? Fuck no I don't.

Pardon my French, but this whole thing really pisses me off. It's not even the specific idea that pisses me off as much as it is the principle involved. Language has meaning, and it does this so that we as a species can communicate concepts and ideas to one another, without confusion. Language does evolve, but we should fight against such evolution when it means reversing the meaning of core ideas.

Imagine if you will a movement in North Korea to call their system of government democracy. Their "worship" of the Great Leader (and now Jr.) might have some things in common with democracy, but it is distinctly not a democracy.

Or imagine that enough compulsive liars get together and convince everyone that what they do is actually tell the truth. What becomes of the truth?

Is "barefoot" as a word, as a concept, worth protecting? You're damn right it is! It's not critically important, the way that truth or democracy are, but it's been enshrined in the language to mean one thing: being without shoes.  I will continue to fight the trend towards softening its meaning, because in all honesty - if "being barefoot" someday means that I am actually still wearing shoes...then what the hell am I?