PROGRESS REPORT: Floating along the last couple years
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I was chatting with a good friend of mine over some sushi the other night and the subject of the slowness of last few years came up. We both agreed that not only had the last couple years been hard economically, but it seemed that it was hard on us at a personal level as well.

I told her that it felt like I have been "just floating along the last two years or so". She told me she was interested I said that as another friend told her the same thing a couple days before. She thought about it and dismissed it as his own malcontent.

She dismissed the, even thought she felt it herself. She's the farthest thing from a whiner. But everyone needs to be tough these. The years before the end of the boom, before 9/11, before the right-wing's wars of empire, things felt not just economically and politically stable, but it afforded my generation an unprecedented opportunity for personal growth.

Not only were we getting better and better jobs, making more money and progressing in our careers, but we were also gaining much more self knowledge. We were meeting new and interesting people, trying new and interesting food, movies and wine, going new places and learning new things about ourselves.

The Late Nineties Boom was not just an economic boom but a boom of personal growth. Then came the crash and the ensuing political turmoil. New and valuable friends started to leave town, exciting new business opportunities vanished, people were happy simply to be employed and worked harder to stay that way, we ate in more, travelled less and reverted back to a survival mentality.

Granted, tough times are personal growth opportunities. As things changed, we started to look to more "substantial" ties like enjoying friends and family. Of course you need the bad to appreciate the good, but it felt like our collective train of progress got derailed.

So if you've been feeling like you are languishing in the economic doldrums and personal doldrums of your life, it may help to remember that you are not alone. And remember Phoenix, of the ancient Arabian legend, always arises from its ashes greater, stronger and more powerful than before. The light at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train.

HOW TiVo WARPS TIME
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I was watching the hockey game the other night with a TiVo on the set. We got used to being able to run our own replays, dissect the goals, watch the calls by the refs.

The nicest thing was to be able to use the time that we saw watching replays to get ourselves behind on the game. And the bet thing about being behind on the game, was being able to speed up time through the commercials.

So in effect, having a TiVo means it's better not to be in real time, because real-time sucks. You have to deal with commericials and the vaugarities of the network schedule. It's better to live in the past, especially 20 minutes in the past. That way you can scoot through the awful commercials. Real-time is harsh (can one say, "Short brutish and nasty"?). In Real-time your at the mercy of the network commercials.

I wonder what Stephen Hawking would say about what TiVo does to our concept of time. I think I know what Einstein would say. Since space curves time and time tells space how to warp, TiVo would tell time to speed up through the Motor Oil ad and thus compresses from 10w30 to 15w40.

And it occurs to me that a lot of people love to live in the past. It's not just because they want to see commercial free NHL Canucks hockey, but because the past is more fun.Think about it, it's more safe, it's idealized and you're always right about it. They are right because they forget the awkward bits and actually have their own feelings about it. And you can't challenge someone's deep felt beliefs.

Am I saying it's wrong to live in the past? No. Especially if you can miss those pesky commercials and remember only the good bits about your childhood. Enjoy the past, just don't live in it too much.

End of Natural Selection
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Society only started to evolve the higer level of emotions when we had more and more surpluses. As we became more and more divorced from the daily struggle to survive, we were allowed to experience more and more different emotions.

The mammalian brain is the second highest level of mental evolution, just before the cerebral cortex. But what we learn as human being that are social animals is that evolution rewards a species for teamwork and consideration for a fellow beings. Generally, the most successful species are those that are compassionate.

Natural selection for human beings is dead with the advent of a civil society. Civility demands that we take care of those less fortunate, and allow those with defects to continue on their genetic lines. And excellent example, in the extreme, of natural selection being short circuited by human society is the Russian Royal family circa 1900. The reputed hemophiliacs would not survive in a more pure state of nature. But because of society, such inbred inadequacies are tolerated.

So what kind of selection exists now? Social selection? What characteristics will now be maximized in the super-technological sociteties in which we now lilve?

Perhaps it will be the mastery of the sound bite. Or perhaps it will be simply based on looks. Will social selection prepare the human race for the coming years? Should be interesting.

UNEMPLOYMENT TIP OF THE DAY: Reading
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Try dedicating at least one hour a day to reading. Try reading through all your magazine subscriptions, read some interesting books, brush up on your Shakespeare, read some poetry.

At least you'll have something to show for your time (a stack of interesting books you've read) other than only having frustration over the job hunt.

QUOTE TIP OF THE DAY:
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I was reading an interesting article today about love, marriage and sex on Salon.com called an "Antique Institution" by Benjamin Cheever, (which I highly recommend) and came across this quote:

"You're only as happy as your saddest child."

The quote above sounds like the old adage "A chain is as strong as it's weakest link". I was first made aware of this concept at a tender young age of 10 by my older brother's audio-visual entertainment obsession. He told me a handy derivation of the chain quote that went, "Your stereo system is as good as your weakest component." So if I have a kick-ass monster system, but a weak tweeter or a burned out woofer, I may as well have bought my crappy sounding stereo at K-Mart instead of from the Bang and Olufsen boutique.

I thought it was an interesting idea to apply an idea about stereos to children and family. Of course it is for people who have kids. What about those of us who do not have any kids? To what do we compare our happiness?

In such cases, it varies for what you use to fill your life with. For those promiscuous types this may apply, "You are only as happy as your meanest girlfriend / boyfreind". Or for you computer geeks, "You are only as fast as your slowest PCI-bus card adapter". Or perhaps for you job oriented types, "You are only as powerful as the lowest person who reports to you."

"You are only as ______ as your ______" style of thinking is heavily pessimistic. While it certainly has validity, it has its focus on the negative part, on the short side, on the downward limits to happiness. There are times, like times when one is down or depressed, that the weakest link in the chain of your life gets to you.

The optimist knows that the real way to maximize your happiness is to focus on enjoying the strongest links of your chain. Just as problems do not go away, they do get solved if you make them. So those weakest links will change. Pain fades and possibility and opportunity are ever present. The only static thing in this life is change, which brings said opportunity for those who can see it.

At the end of the day, I think the most interesting derivation of the chain quote is "You are only as happy as you allow yourself to be". We always have a choice.

TP's Sports Page: The NHL's Opening Night
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Well, I'd like to report that I'm feelin' good. There's nothing like having pizza on the way, the Center Ice Hockey Package from Direct TV, a TiVo and Mr. Brian over for the occasion.

Yes, hockey fans, the endless summer of the brutal hockey doldrums is finally over. Those hot days of windless torture, when the pros are taking to the golf course and hockey hibernates through the summer of nothing (I mean MLB baseball), are all done. Our TV sets are blessed with action once again.

Ahh, it's a beautiful thing. Opening night is finally upon us and the boys are skaiting. the refs are blowing calls, goals are being crashed and blood is FINALLY being spilled for our amusement. Fantasy Hockey is now a valid excuse for the drop in productivity, not lilstening to your girlfriend, staring off into the distance to optimize your forward line.

So far we saw an incredible finish to the LA vs. Detroit game. Stevie Y (Captain Yzerman), scored on a beautiful goals with 1.70 seconds to go! Sorry LA. Tonight was not your night. Not to mention we already saw at least one forehead crunching fight. The Habs lost, the Ducks are looking flat footed after the third goal against and the Sharks nowhere to be found (local blackout).

Ahh, I love it! The good Lord has been kind. This is not even to mention that we still have the Vancouver Calgary game to go. No Vancouver boy can put out of his m mind how much he looks forward to seeing his Canucks destroy the worthless Flames.

Lets just say it's for old time sake, since Joel Otto kicked in the goal in double overtime in 1989. Yes, we're all still bitter. But the Canucks dominated tonight in a stylish 4-1 win. 2 power play goals in the first period were capped off by an excellent defletction by Ruttu and a sweet behind the back pass from Daniel to Henrik who shot a pass to King and a sweet shot that breezed by Turek.

As well, the Lagers (Brian, Pete and my new ice hokey team over in Oakland) have only one more Wednesday to wait until we take to the ice and CRUSH the opponent. The Hellcats have no idea what kind of pain is coming to them.

As our new Governator of California would say, the best in life is "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!" The lamentation of their goalie is pretty good too. (Ahnold would understand hockey...)

God bless the Game!!

THE AFTERLIFE
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Part 5 - "All Together Afterlife: What is the question again?"
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This is the fifth and final installment in this series. To wrap up this series of articles, I thought it might be useful to describe my approach. I have attempted to stick to a framework that applies an objective and a pseudo-scientific * perspective.

The components of this viewpoint I have tried to keep as few and simple as possible while remaining reasonable and objective. They are as follows:
1. Just like there are laws of nature in this world, there are laws that govern existence in the afterlife.
2. We can use our understanding of the laws of this world to understand the laws of the afterlife.
3. There is continuity and consistency between existences, which makes the above idea reasonable.

It has been these ideas that have been driving my thoughts about what the afterlife will be like. Looking back, I think I have stayed true to these concepts.

A quick and dirty recap of the last 4 articles should articluate the above ideas. The first is that there is an existence to our beings that is not part of our physical body. Since this existence is a metaphysical energy and energy cannot be destroyed, it is reasonable to conclude that our metaphysical component will continue to exist after the physical is gone.

Second, the afterlife will be whatever it will be, regardless of what we want it to be. While belief in religion may be helpful, such subjective belief cannot alter the afterlife. An objective choice of a single religion as "the correct choice" is not possible. Faith, in and of itself, is necessarily a subjectvie act. Subjective thought can hardly effect the laws of nature, only the way we percieve them.

Third, because we will no longer have the benefit of the five senses derived from the physical body, one wonders how we will experience that world without having a body to do so. With no eyes, ears or hands, we will be at a limited capacity to experience and participate in the next world unless we have a new body.

Fourth and finally, once we die we will no longer have access to our brain or the information that we have collected there. Much like popping a Zip disc our of your computer, the infromation stored there is no longer available. The only information that will be accessible to us will be that information which makes it into our metaphysical being; deeper emotional information.

Not to sound like Benjamin Franklin when summarizing, but in the next world nothing is certain but change and confusion. (Hopefully there will be no taxes.) Will we be prepared for it? Perhaps this is the role religion will play for us; not in describing the next existence but in making us psychologically ready to die. If this life teaches us anything, it's that we may not feel ready for changes, but somehow we accomplish such changes regardless. To quote David Bowie, we have to "turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes..."

* I could not possibly call my viewpoint "scientific", since I'm not much of a scientist and this issue is somewhat beyond current science. But using such principals is useful.

UNEMPLOYMENT TIP OF THE DAY: Lie to prospective Employers
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I know it sounds obvious to all your job seekers...

when you're interviewing for a possible job, never tell them you can't do something. This is especialy true if it's something core to the job. Embellish or outright lie about your novice understanding of the skill (even thought they want a seasoned expert), then go home and study up on it.

By the time they actually get around to hiring you or even the next interview, you'll be at a strong mediocre level. If you talk a good game, then telling how mediocre you are is hard for even the most seasoned of hiring managers.

Once again, just like taking drug tests for jobs regulated by the Department of Defense, the Todder learned the hard way....