Assuming

The problem with the internet is that you can be whoever or whatever you want to. With no way to validate another's identity on the web you must use your intuition to decide if you can trust people as to who they are. Unless you know and have met this person in person there is no way to know if the person you are talking to is who they say they are (example the movie and now tv series catfish). This has happened many times, including the mess when it was discovered that some of the editors of Wikipedia were not experts as they had claimed, but just regular people.

Now the problem with not knowing very much about the people that you converse with online is that you end up assuming a lot about this person. When I was younger I used to play an online game, something similar to a MMORPG. I made online friends, and because I had never met them in real life I assumed almost everything about them outside of our interaction in the game. As we became better friends we started talking outside of the game. For example I became friends with them on Facebook and MSN. I found out that al of them were completely different than I had imagined them being. Finding out more about people outside of the game always changed the relationship inside of it.

Another aspect to this is that I found out that people would fake an online identity to take advantage of people within the community. For example a significant number of people from my school also played the game. Now as you can imagine this online community was comprised of mostly males with a very small female population. A guy from my school told me that he was going to create a profile and pretend that he was a girl. He was going to do this to get other players to gift him premium items that required real world money.

I don't believe that the internet creates an assumption that everyone is a white male. I believe that the internet causes us to see people as we imagine them to be, and we almost always see them as being at the extremes. We need to remember that people online are just like you and me, and it is not fair to hold them to such extreme standards.

Is Football ever not trending?

Although I am more of a CFL fan than an NFL fan, with all the hype and the big names it's hard not to pay attention to the big off season moves. I will be giving a quick recap of all the moves so far.

The Minnesota Vikings are my favourite team in the NFL. mainly because they have two of my favourite players in the league, Adrian Peterson and Jared Allen. Percy Harvin was a player that I really enjoyed watching, however he was traded away recently. Although he was exciting to watch and a great player he was having some troubles with the organization and was not happy. Even though he was a good player the Vikings got what I believe to be a good deal. They got several high draft picks for the years to come, and as the past couple years have not been the kindest to the Vikings they need to rebuild. Having these extra picks will most definitely help them to do that. To replace Harvin the Vikings signed Greg Jennings. Although I have not had a lot of first hand experience watching him I do know that he is one of the better receivers in the league. He is getting old though and hopefully they can get as much as they can out of him before he is done.

One of the biggest surprises for me so far this off season was to hear that Wes Welker had signed with the Denver Broncos. For as long as I can remember Wes Welker has been a patriot, he is one of the guys who has stayed constant with all of their success. It will be weird for me to see him in anything other than a Patriots uniform. Another aspect that I found interesting about this story is he is moving from Tom Brady to Peyton Manning. I have always considered Tom Brady and Peyton Manning to have one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. Whether others, including themselves, believe this, who knows. They are the two best quarterbacks that I have ever seen play, two of the best quarter backs in the history of the game so there is always excitement when you hear that they are going to face each other. I would imagine that Brady would feel at least a little betrayed by Welker moving to a team with his rival.

Another surprise for me was hearing about Anquan Boldin. Boldin is another guy that I see as an elite player in the league. Now the surprise was not so much that he was traded, it was more for what they got for him. He was traded for a sixth round pick. Not only is this insulting, but incredibly stupid. I realize that the Baltimore Ravens were trying to free up some cap space but that is ridiculous! I cannot see any upside of trading a player of his caliber for a sixth round pick.

A story that I had not heard about until visiting nfl.com for some stories was the story about Elvis Dumervil. Apparently he had been asked to take a pay cut, after negotiation he had agreed. However he was still cut. Why? because his agent failed to send in the proper paper work by the deadline costing Dumervil his job. Apparently the agent had been asked to use a more modern way of sending the documents as the fax machine had not been working properly but the agent refused. Another example of being stubborn and not accepting change and technology getting you nowhere.

A Little Bit of Controversy....

My blog post this week will be a little more controversial than the past weeks, as it involves probably the most controversial and polarizing topic in the world; Religion. Before I present my views with you I'm going to give you a little bit of history on myself and Religion.

My extended family on my mothers side are hardcore Ukrainian Catholics (very similar to Roman Catholics with a few differences that I am not 100% sure on), other than that no one in my family is very religious. On a more personal note I attended Catholic schools for ten years, in which religion class is required. Although I do not consider myself an expert on the Catholic or Christian Religions I feel that I have a good knowledge of them. 

I will admit that I am not a Catholic or Christian now, I do not associate myself with any Religion in fact. However I do not consider myself a Atheist either. Some people may look down on me for this, or even say that I am not "allowed" to do this, but I have my own set of beliefs. Could you say that I made up my own Religion? Maybe, but do I? No. I simply consider them as irrational beliefs that are a part of me.

This Blog is not about my belief system, this Blog is about the Catholic and Christian (with either word hereby referring to both) Religions. Now I want to make this very clear before I begin, I DO NOT CARE WHAT RELIGION YOU ARE. I do not look down upon any religion and do not have a problem with any of them as long as they meet two criteria 

1) They do not encourage their members to hurt others (whether this be physically, mentally, or damage to their possessions) and 

2) That they do not push their religion onto others (there is a difference between informing, which is okay, and pressuring, which is not)

Now the problem that I have with the Catholic religion is not its underlying teaching or the mantra that it teaches. My problem is its unwillingness to evolve. The Catholic religion has stayed almost the exact same for centuries. They must accept that the world has changed and it as well has to change. Now I am not saying that the entire Religion has to be overhauled, I am saying that they must evolve in the ways that they deliver their message. 

For example, the Catholic religion refuses to change its stance on subjects that are now considered common knowledge. For example the theory of evolution. Overwhelming evidence has been put forward that support evolution, but the church refuses to acknowledge this evidence. The bible would not have to be rewritten and the words changed from "God created man" to "Man evolved from a monkey." I am suggesting minor tweaks in the way that the information is delivered. God created the universe in seven days, who is to say that God, an immortal and all powerful being, uses earth days? Why can they not teach that God created man, and that evolution was just part of the creation of man? That to reach the final product God went through many forms. 

The creationism theory is not the only one that I suggest needs tweaking. The practices of priests being allowed to wed (which historically they could), not only would attract more people to play a larger part in the Catholic community, but would also most likely cut down on what I consider to be the biggest problem that the church refuses to face. The problem of child molestation at the hands of people within the church. Another thing that really bugged me when I heard about was when the pope refused to support the use of condoms in Africa. Africa has a huge, sickening amount of unplanned pregnancies and people infected with AIDS. With one sentence the pope could have saved millions of lives but he refused.

A bit of an after note is the fact that Catholics look down on other religions, I believe that the world would be a better place, however unlikely it may be, if people learned to accept other religions the world would be a more peaceful place.

But this is my opinion and I know that many people will not agree. As always I welcome people to call me out on anything they see fit.