Life... On-Demand

The way our technology is growing by leaps and bounds, I can only imagine what world will be like for my children. Its funny how badly we predict the future... if you watch movie serials from the the 30s, we were supposed to be flying around in biplanes. If you watch Back To The Future 2, by 2015 we are flying around in cars.

But the technological changes never seem to be as visually dramatic as all that... in life they often appear more subtle. My car is still firmly limited by gravity, but when you see how technilogical advances have moved medicine forward, its quite amazing. As someone who benefits from hi-tech medicine, I can appreciate just how far we've come. Just ten years ago, the internet was just starting. Now, its tied into our lives, like a virtual spinal cord, transmitting our impulses around the world.

Technology has opened the pandoras box of cloning, suddenly thrusting the moral consequences of the definition of life and what constitutes a soul into the public discussion.

I've read theories about how computer chips, designed to help the disabled to overcome disabilities (the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk) will become competitive advantages and, thereby, incorporated into our daily lives. For example, if I have a business where everyone has a communication chip in their brain that allows them to communicate at the speed of thought... think how much more efficient my business will be compared to those peole who have to communicate the old fashioned way... with their mouths.

As media storage becomes both larger in capacity and smaller in size, and computing power continues to double every 18 months, it is theorized that, one day, you'll be able to download the contents of your brain. And, it would then be possible to have mulitple backups of your brain. And you could also have that brain power working in a virtual realm, like the internet, working for you. Think of that... you download the contents of your brain onto a computer. That computer now works in a virtual realm for you/with you. When you get home from work, your virtual brain will have had it's own days work. One "person" leading different lives, everyday becoming more and more unique.

Those are pretty big picture ideas, but the one that concerns me the most is the on-demand society. I have little doubt that, within 10 years, the television and entertainment paradigm will shift considerably. As more homes are wired to the internet and the speed of that connection grows, you will be able to download any television or movie program to your television and watch it, on demand, whenever you want. Sure, that's great, but what expectation does that leave our children? That you should expect to get what you want when you want it?

Just a few years ago when I was a child, if you didn't see a movie in the theater, you had to wait years for it to appear on one of the three major networks. Now, if you don't see it at the theater, it will be available on DVD in six months, where you can either watch it in your own home theater or catch it on one of the 500 cable channels. How do you teach children the value of patience and sacrifice if they can get what they want when they want it?

When access to entertainment becomes truly on-demand, I fear that humanity will resort to its baser instincts. Just like the internet itself... it is filled with great historical works, books from every age, paintings, news, etc. But what makes the most money? Pornography, by far.

So when we get on-demand entertainment, I fear we will treat it as a child would a buffet... sure there's good food on the table, but I can fill up on appetizers and desserts instead. In this on-demand world, how much value will educational programming hold over shows with sexual or comedic content? How will religious programming hold up if the only way you can watch it is if you actually chose it... how many people have been touched by stumbling across religious programming while channel surfing? I guess, if someone is ready to be touched by God, God will find a way.

In the end, I don't know how this will all play out. I don't know how my children will react to an on-demand world. God is the master of turning chicket feces into chicken salad, so I can only hope and pray, raise my kids the best I can and let the Lord use that technology to do something amazing.

The Christian Village

One of the main goals of a parent with deep faith is to raise your child in a moral way, in a way that grows their faith and shelter them from exposure to secular elements before they are ready. That last part may confuse some, but as I said to my daughter, I don't let you watch PG13 rated movies, why would I allow you to be in potentially R rated situations?

But this faith development of your children is a difficult, complex process. How much sheltering is too much? Are we to raise our children to succeed both in this world and the next? What good is developing spiritually grounded children if you don't allow them to interact with others who may not have that foundation? Did not Jesus tell us to not hide our faith like a lamp under a basket, but to be the light of the world? Doesn't that mean that we have to interact with those of different moral standards and, hopefully, give them a Christian example?

Parenting is an "individual" exercise. No two parents raise their children in the same way. What one family finds appropriate, the other finds offensive. What some find acceptable, others find detestable. So, though the world is full of parents, it is also full of individual parenting techniques and expectations.

One of my brothers and I were discussing raising our children in a world that is veering quickly toward anti-Christian beliefs. Because Christian teachings hold high and strict standards, they are considered by some to be closed-minded. Yet, Muslims and Jews hold many of the same stances on gay marriage, premarital sex and abortion, but it is Christians who are considered intolerant.

As my brother and I discussed this subject, he mentioned that it would be great if we could live in a place like The Village, the film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I don't want to give away any major plot points, but the jist of it is that these people are protected from the outside world and The Village existence, though limited, is often idealic to most. My brother felt that living in a Christian Village would be great, where we could live our faith without having to combat the increasingly pervasive secular forces that our children are exposed to and often are at polar opposites of our Christian beliefs.

I thought about that for a long time... would it be better to live in a Christian Village? It would be easier, that's for sure. But, is it the right thing? Is it what Jesus intended? For us to worship Him in seclusion? Again, I pondered this for a long time... I finally concluded, to me, that this is exactly opposite of what Jesus intended.

Jesus did not die on the cross so that we would huddle with like-minded Christians... if we are to follow His example, we should be out there with the polar opposites of our faith, trying to educate them on why Jesus is our Savior. Jesus did not spend His time hanging with His apostles, avoiding confrontation. Nor did He spend all of His time with Jewish Rabbi's who understood His mission. No, He spent His time with the sinners of all sinners, the repugnant and reviled... the lepers, the tax collectors and prostitutes. Remember, lepers were thought to have the disease because of sin. Prostitutes lived daily and profited by their sin. Tax Collectors were the lowest of the lot, the Kings of Sinners. Yet, that is where Jesus spent His time... with those who needed His grace most.

I look back on my life and realize that God has an uncanny way of putting me in situations where I may be the lone voice of Christian values. I've been in many situations where I was the outsider, even in the presence of vocal Satanist... but I remember thinking two things... 1) no matter how uncomfortable I am, the Holy Spirit will guide me in these situations and 2) if I wasn't there, Jesus would not be represented at all.

Does that make me holy or a saint? Far from it... my sins are too numerous and reoccurring for me to be that holy. But, the Holy Spirit can use any of us as ambassadors for Christ. Its those situations that force me to live my faith, a lone Christian salmon swimming upstream. I would remember something I told my children... when God looks at us, he doesn't see our body, but our souls. And, when I interacted with those people of differing values, I had to look past their looks, their tattoos, their piercings, their clothes and try to look upon them with God's eyes... how brilliant are their souls beneath the human facade?

So, would it be great to raise our children in the Christian Village? As I said, it'd sure be a lot easier. But it would also not allow us to live our faith, to be the light for Christ. I realized that I must raise my children in their faith. That I must not only make them participate, but to understand why we believe what we believe. And I must also prepare them, not shelter them, for the world. God's path for them will certainly include moments for them to share their faiths with people who do not feel the same.

In the end, that may be the entire reason for their existence. We never know. My entire reason for being on this planet may be for me to have a single conversation with one person 10 years from now at a film party. And that every moment, every decision, every curve in the path may have all been scripted to lead up to that point. In the end, we just don't know.

That's why we must rely on our faith. And it is that faith that I must endow to my children and trust that, when faced with spiritual challenges, when they are unsheltered, that the Holy Spirit will guide them as He has guided me.

Predictor Pete - Week One

Every week I'll make a lame attempt to pick the winner of the Bucs game.

This week they open the season at Minnesota.

My Heart: Bucs 24-20.
My Mind: Minnesota 23-10.
My Colon: Minnesota 21-20.

My Pick: Bucs 21-17... C'mon! Its the first week of the season! I have to be optimistic.

My Record: 0 - 0.

The Joy of Fall Ball

My son loves baseball. It is his passion. It quells his competitive urge. It is a slice of nirvana in his eight-year old world.

One day my son and I were driving home and, as we passed the baseball fields, he sighed to himself and said "That's where all of my dreams come true."

I love his passion and talent for the game. My wife and I hope it gets him a college scholarship somewhere. If it takes him beyond that, it'd be a bonus. But, as I watch my son continue to grow... to see his love of baseball increase every year since he was two, I can only think that I'll be at a major league park one day, watching him play and I'll sigh to myself and say "I think all of my dreams have come true."

The Delicate Matter of Race Relations

Let me start by saying I'm a middle class white male. I have rarely felt the upstream battle of being a minority. My parents did not raise a bigoted household. My best friend for most of my youth was a minority named Anthony Parker... We played together. We went to school together. I slept over his house, he slept over mine. At one point I asked my mother why I couldn't get a tan "like Tony." That was the first time I had to understand that God makes our pigments different.

The impact of Katrina and the events in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have highlighted both the highs and lows of mankind. In hours of distress, we either buckle or we overcome, we either panic or we resolve. In the wake of this natural tragedy, I am deeply saddened by how quickly this "act of God" became a political and race issue. I find any tie of racism or bigotry in response of governmental assistance to the victims to be completely outlandish. ALL races were impacted by this disaster and ALL races have done their best to assist in one way or another.

What did race have to do with the complete lack of planning by the Mayor of New Orleans? Or the Govenor of Louisiana? What did race have to do with the bureaucratic delays causing FEMA and the National Guard to show up 24 hours later than they should? How does any of this means that "George Bush doesn't like black people?" I think Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell may beg to differ. And why would anyone equate the wrath of Mother Nature to race in the first place?

Should the Asian communities in Mississippi feel that they are being discriminated against because the African Americans in New Orleans are getting all of the press and assistance? How should the Latin communities in Alabama react?

The issue of racism and bigotry was initially created by ignorance and is still fueled today by further ignorance. In the end, I believe the only way we can, as a country, overcome racism and bigotry is two fold. First, we all need to have our foundation built upon the same moral compass of what is right and wrong. Secondly, we need to be personally accountable against those universal moral ideals. Only then can we all move toward a single point of racial liberation. Only then can we change this deep seeded problem, one person at a time.

Unfortunately, in a world where everyone's morality is open for acceptance, I find this goal too lofty to achieve.

Home Is Where The Theater Is... Part Deux

In honor of our great Labor force, I spent the Labor Day weekend trying to finish my Home Theater. We got the entertainment center 95% complete and we got the riser 100% complete. Overall, there is only a few things to be done before the finishing work occurs (painting, carpeting, etc.)



You can see pics and all the boring details HERE.

I hope everyone had a happy, safe and restful Labor Day Weekend.

Writers Cramp

For writers, writing is a love/hate existence. We are creatively drawn to writing, but it can often be a painful experience... equivalent to giving artistic birth.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get the writing creative juices flowing again. The goal I have set for myself is to write a blog entry daily for at least one year... 365 entries. This forces me to write and gets me back into the writing process.

I have a lot of script ideas that are flowing in my head. Most of my free time lately has been dedicated to finishing the conversion of my office into a home theater, but I'm getting a backlog of creative ideas that I need to get out, writings that are anxiously waiting to fill a blank page.

Yet, the process of writing is a very tough thing. Some days the juices are flowing and everything just pours onto the page. And then there are other days, where the blank page is equivalent to a two ton weight around my neck, holding me under the waters of indecision.

So, like most of the best things in life, writing comes with a price. Sometimes hefty, but, in the end, always rewarding.

There are three phrases that I keep in mind when writing:
1) Writers must love the process of writing - The love of writing must be stronger than the hate of the struggle it entails.
2) Writing is rewriting - get the first draft out anyway you can. The first draft is the hardest draft. If you accept that writing is rewriting, you'll know that you're going to have to rewrite it anyway. So purge the idea onto the page and worry about fixing it into your own personal masterpiece later.
3) Anything can happen - when writers block occurs, it always means that the writer has lost they story and no longer know where it is going. They don't know what happens next. And when faced with a creative moment where you feel like you've painted yourself into a plot corner, I always remember that anything can happen. And this frees me to come up with an imaginative plot twist that excises me from the painted corner and back into the story.

In the end, writers must write. They don't really have a choice. Like a creative crack addict, no matter what happens, the urge for our next hit eventually overwhelms us.

My Only Vice

When my wife and I were engaged to be married, I told her "I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I won't cheat... but I do watch football."

I love football. Its the only sport that I will actively watch from start to finish, even if my team is not one of the two on the field. I don't know where this passion comes from. I played one year in sixth grade on a winless team. I was unimpressive and a team was even less so.

I certainly didn't have a local pro team to emulate. After all, I grew up primarily in Tampa Bay, which makes me a life-long Buccaneer fan. For a very long time, that was not an easy thing to be.

I had attended at least one home game every year since 1977, so I had my fair share of bad, bad, bad football. Oh, and it sucked too. And it was ugly to boot. Not only was there an awful product on the field, but it was all dressed up in a silly looking orange uniform. I will admit, however, that I was partial to the Bucco Bruce logo, but the creamsicle uniforms were hard to swallow.

My patience was eventually rewarded when the Bucs finally won the Super Bowl a few years back. My brother Steve, with whom we share our passion for Buc Ball, found ourselves gleefully stating "The Bucs are Super Bowl Champs! Can you believe it?" The mere idea that the Bucs could be world champs was unfathomable when the team has such past leaders such as:

• Mike "Now We REALLY Miss Doug Williams" Rae
• Vinnie "Intercepteverde"
• Jack "The Over-Throwing Samoan" Thompson
• Chris "But I Want to Start Too" Chandler
• Rod "Toast" Jones
• Steve "What Team Am I On Again?" DeBerg
• Booker "Bust" Reese
• Keith "Pro Football Sure Is Fast" McCants
• and Alvin "Paging Mr. Irving" Harper
  

We had only wished such great ex-Bucs such as Leroy Selmon, Paul Gruber, James Wilder and Rickey Bell could not have tasted such victory.

And now, we are only a few short days away from the kickoff of the 30th year of Tampa Bay Bucdom and it doesn't look pretty. I'd be happy if we have a winning record, though I feel the difference between a 10-6 and 6-10 record is too close for comfort. We are in a state of transition and its a painful process.

But, as my vice rear its ugly head again this season, my wife will patiently avoid me Sunday afternoons as I watch every painful, joyful and tearful moment of my addiction called the National Football League.