Conservatives fear teaching kids about sex openly in the schools will lead to a rash of orgies and teen pregnancies. They want to teach abstinence and nothing else in the mistaken hope that keeping blinders over the kids’ eyes about sex will prevent them from having sex.

Liberals fear keeping guns on the market will lead to a lot more gun violence than we already have. It’s a valid fear, to their credit, but we also have to remember there are 70 million people in this country who bought legal firearms, many of whom even went through the trouble of strict licensing regulations. There is always going to be a black market for guns, and I wonder if the statistics show those legal firearms being the culprit in more gang killings than the illegal ones you can buy in back alleys.

Conservatives worry about too much sex being shown on TV in front of the kids and want it regulated. Liberals frequently point out statistics on how many acts of violence kids are exposed to on television and worry about the impact it will make.

For both parties, nostalgia for the good old days is very rampant. In the god old days, no one ever talked about the subjects in public, the good and bad aspects of either one.

Liberals play up the argument that sex is a natural, healthy act between two consenting adults. It feels good and helps keep the planet populated. They will admit some of the bad aspects of sex, like STDs, but I wonder how much thought they put into certain circumstances in which sex can occur. Will the partners in a polyamorous relationship be ready for the emotional aspects of it? What happens in a marriage if there’s cheating?

Conservatives can counter with the fact that target shooting in a controlled environment is a healthy way to let out excess anger or aggression. They’ll admit to the bad, like gang violence, but prefer not to hear vital bits of info like the fact that gun owners are more likely to kill a family member than a criminal.

If I’m king, I’m treating both of these things the way liberals treat sex: Something to be educated about, so kids know just what they’re getting into and all of the responsibilities that go with it, and how to enjoy sex or firearms in the safest possible manner.

The idea of installing your very own taylor-made economic system is dependent on the idea that economic laws were created by man. But all man has done is attempt to regulate them. Economic laws are one of those sets of rules that lay beyond the realm of men. They’re not man-made laws at all – they’re universal laws, like the laws of mathematics, biology, or physics. They weren’t created on a whim, but rather discovered as we moved along throughout history, and that why our attempts to regulate economies to suit our own whims and intentions have all ended in failure.

Trying to keep values at a consistent level while the economy is inflated isn’t any more possible than getting five to pop up when two and two are put together. It simply doesn’t happen, mainly because economics obey their own set of special laws which can only be discovered, deciphered, and worked with and never changed. This is another reason why economic systems that are purely man-made – like socialism – tend to fail.

When you look at economics in this light, it gets difficult to justify trying to overhaul the idea of commerce. While economics are basically universal laws, they have the unique distinction of being the only set of universal laws men have actively tried to infringe on. We’ve never set up laws to regulate gravity, or tried to convince anyone of the idea that two and two don’t equal four. But we’ve tried nearly every technique we can think of to fight the laws of supply, demand, and profit, only to watch our attempts blow up in our faces every single time.

It really is foolish to try to regulate physics or metaphysics. That’s why we never set laws regulating them. Economics demands the same type of freedom in order to function without harm.

The Annoyance of Ice Levels

When I started The Phoenix Inquirer, I intended it to be a haven for rather unconventional thought, where people who think unusual, sometimes unspeakable things about politics, business, religion, culture, and other things can see they’re not the only ones thinking it and that their personal stances can actually be rational. My unfortunate mistake was that I also decided to turn it into a place where I could just post something every day, which is something I’ve failed badly at doing. Half my posts are links with very short comments or personal things I’ve written on other sites.

Worse is that I think I’m starting to come off as a right wing haven. I do tend to sympathize with the right a lot these days, but that’s more because the left runs the country than anything. If I would have started this blog during the days of George W. Bush, it would have been even worse. I’m kind of a reactionary – I react to whatever the government does, mostly to complain.

Really, I’ve been taking political ideas to extremes that are in many ways completely illogical. I do have a deeply rooted and irreversable hatred of statism which comes from the fact that I was once a communist myself. I’m very certain that statism doesn’t present a real threat, seeing as how most statists these days appear to live in conspiracy delusions and mostly can’t even agree on the right way to be statists. But again, I’m knee jerking because most of the statists I’ve known are delusional, painfully stupid, arrogant, thoughtless, and shortsighted to extremes which even my libertarianism could never dream of reaching. And even then, I can get along with most of these people pretty well. I promise, I’m not this hateful in person.

The Phoenix Inquirer also started to trail off in way too many directions for me to be comfortable. Granted, my original topic was pretty broad to begin with, but the posts, as they went on, just began to appear so, well, random.

The contrast between what The Phoenix Inquirer began as and where it ended up was recently highlighted to me through one of my other blogs, Lit Bases. I began that one after accidentally becoming an expert in baseball literature, which I read after more difficult literary conquests mainly to remind myself that mental masturbation time is over. I only write in it a few times a month, and I went through a period of months earlier this year when I didn’t write in it at all. Then I started writing in it again, and while The Phoenix Inquirer has more readers, it’s Lit Bases that’s proving to have the potential – it’s the blog that ends up on blog rolls, and with the comments. I recently reviewed Cait Murphy’s book Crazy ’08. A few days later, she stumbled into Lit Bases and was kind enough to leave a comment, thanking me. Earlier in the existence of Lit Bases, I found a comment from Matthew Rosetti, who co-authored a book called The Worst of Sports which I used as a reference point once.

Although The Phoenix Inquirer did find the attention of Becky Garrison, the religious satirist for The Wittenburg Door, the blog just kind of fell into the black hole of irrelevant rambling interspersed with the occasional thoughtful post. I’m not going to write in it unless I have something real to say now. In the meantime, I’m going to begin purging all the more pointless crap, and my posts won’t be nearly as regular as they were at first.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rebirth flame to light.

Notice that the content of some of these books caused a lot of bad things. But the content of the more philosophical selections on this list could explain what often gets taught to academics. It would certainly explain a lot of the things they believe.

The main story of Phantasy Star IV revolves around a bounty hunter named Chaz, who is hired by a respected academy to round up the monsters in the basement. After he and his mentor, Alys, do the job, the academy’s principal confesses to hiding something. From there, Alys and Chaz get thrust into an epic battle with the dark wizard Zio. The plot grows and develops great twists, and of course the ultimate object of the game is to save the world. Pardon me, I meant Save the World. It’s become so routine in role-playing games that you have to use caps. Chaz and Alys wouldn’t be very good world saviors if they didn’t gather a motley crew of oddballs with their own motives, abilities, and personality quirks, which of course they do.

Now here’s where the Square-Enix creations pull ahead of Sega. While the characters in Phantasy Star IV are all different and unique, Sega doesn’t seem to understand the concept of non-pious heroes. The attempts to make characters stand out reek of the effort it took to create them. Alys, for example, has a tough chika attitude. However, as there are no situations in which her attitude could be seen as a character flaw instead of a shield, it doesn’t make Alys tough, angry, hotheaded, or anything other than a potential criminal with a bad temper and a penchant for strong-arming people. When she died in the first leg of the game, my feeling toward her death wasn’t the shock of Aeris’s death in Final Fantasy VII or Tellah’s self-sacrificial death in Final Fantasy IV. My feelings leaned more toward the “Okay, she’s dead, let’s get on with the game now” angle. Another major character, Raja, was memorable only because he had a love of telling awful jokes. Rune is an arrogant word-I-can’t-say-on-a-family-website when you meet him, but he’s one of those guys who does an instant presto-chango 180-degree attitude turnaround when he needs help.

Like the other games in the series, Phantasy Star IV uses a sci-fi setting in lieu of a fantasy setting. Every now and then you’ll see an element which would belong more in the fantasy realm. But for the most part, the sci-fi setting leans as far into sci-fi as Final Fantasy VII and Phantasy Star II. It is often indicated that the characters don’t know what magic is, and when Rune pops open a passage with a spell, the other characters act as if it’s the most amazing thing they’ve ever seen in their lives. This touch was also in Final Fantasy VI, and the concept of a forward-thinking society taking a step back to use magic is one that’s always appealed to me. This was also done in Final Fantasy VI. Both games make excellent use of this plot device, but the Squaresoft telling of the story does it just a little bit better.

An odd thing about the Phantasy Star series is that magic and tech spell names are all written in Japanese. I don’t know the reason behind this, but I can tell you I find it very distracting and confusing. It’s not that I have a problem with other languages, but I can’t think of any situations in which I might need the Japanese word for a spell name. It’s confusing because if you’re not fluent in Japanese, it can be a pain to put down the game for awhile – a month or so is what I mean by “awhile” here – and pick it up again and remember what techniques did what. You have to take the techniques entirely on whether the arrows are pointing at your enemies or allies when you make a selection. Even then, it’s a gamble because of the different effects techniques can have. What you think is a healing spell may be a shielding spell, or you may cast a light, single-enemy offensive spell instead of seeing the sleep effect you had hoped for.

Other than the Japanese names, there’s not much in the Phantasy Star IV battle system that stands out. Where you used to attack groups of enemies, you can now use the more traditional RPG system that allows you to attack enemies individually. Veterans of the first three Phantasy Star games may balk at this idea, but the change is actually a good one because it allows you to concentrate all of your attack power onto a large opponent who might otherwise suck away the scant few hit points of a weakened character. There are also big spells called combination spells which are like the multiple techs in Chrono Trigger: They really wallop the enemy, but they also require you to use the turns of many characters.

There are at least 14 combination spells. Sega claims there are more, but a quick google search or a more exploratory search on one of Phantasy Star’s many fan websites reveals that no one could come up with more than the initial 14. While I’ve always loved the idea of combined techniques, Phantasy Star IV’s way of using them is terrible. To use them, you have to select the spells the combinations require by using the individual characters. This is a bad idea because it may cause you to use a combination without meaning to. Conversely, it could also limit your ability to use combinations when you really need one at a critical moment. Fortunately, you also have the ability to use programmable attacks called macros in order to combat some of the other problems that may come up while trying to use combination attacks.

Whereas airships have always been stalwarts in the Final Fantasy series, the Phantasy Star games have always had ground vehicles. In Phantasy Star IV, you are now allowed to enter combat in these vehicles! Unfortunately, I haven’t quite figured out the twists of vehicular combat in Phantasy Star IV. A downside is that you only get a single attack per turn instead of one for however many characters you’re fielding when battles occur. Another downside is that you can’t use magic. Furthermore, the enemies seem to be more powerful and they have more hit points. And for this extra power and life, you get less experience and meseta. If you find that fighting inside the cruiser is just a way to waste time, like I do, you can’t really do anything about it. You are not given the option to get out to fight. Vehicle combat may be an innovation for Phantasy Star, but it’s also a tedious exercise.

It’s almost disappointing how basic the dungeon designs in Phantasy Star IV are. There are a few exceptions, like Zio’s tower, but a lot of dungeons tend to follow the basic point-a-to-point-b layout. In many of the space dungeons, there’s even a line on the floor for you to follow in case you get lost. I’ve seen dungeon designs thrown into many RPG’s as an apparent afterthought, but considering how beloved the Phantasy Star series is, I was really expecting more.

If you’re strapped for cash, a great thing about Phantasy Star IV is the guild system. One of the major ways people in this game make their livings is as hunters. They’re like bounty hunters but they don’t limit their bounties to just people. You can earn cash and experience fairly quickly by taking on one of the numerous jobs being offered by the Hunter’s Guild. It’s also a great way to waste time if you start to get bored by the story.

The graphics and sounds in Phantasy Star IV are purely workmanlike. There’s nothing that stands out about any of it. The character, scenery, and dungeon designs are functional, but they’re there just to help you play your way through to the conclusion. The sounds are generic, and the music is forgettable. Phantasy Star IV may have once been one of the conquering kings of role-playing, and it’s still a great game with a handful of ideas that are fun to play with. But playing Phantasy Star IV now will just make you run out and buy the more recent Phantasy Star for the Playstation 2.

The Six Most Misguided Celebrity Causes

It’s easy to condemn society because of this. I’ve done it lots of times myself. But I also think too many fingers are being pointed at James himself. If anything, those fingers should be pointed at ESPN, which decided it needed the ratings an hourlong special could bring in, and at the rest of the media for building it up so much. James deserves some of the blame for doing such a great job of building his own hype and the suspense.

But you know what? ESPN didn’t strap you to your chairs and toothpick your eyes open a la Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. People like professional sports, and with James being probably the most popular figure in North American sports at the moment, ESPN got extra money by giving the people what the people wanted.

If anything, the whining about this coming out of the counterculture is very telling because it’s just a perfect display of the sheep they really are. We’ve seen complaining about how this or that is going on in the world but LeBron James is switching teams. It’s just another example of the counterculture telling everyone what to avoid by paying attention to the mainstream. Is it stupid? Yes. Could we be paying attention to more important things going on in the world? Yes. So why the counterculture isn’t actually following that example is beyond me.

It seems to me that if counterculturalists were capable of doing anything other than criticizing everything the mainstream vomits into the world, they might not actually know who LeBron James was due to, you know, ACTUALLY ignoring the mainstream.

Soda Ban Passes in San Francisco

The double standard the left is capable of showing in this context is scary. Leftists claim to be America’s foremost defense against bigotry of every stripe, and here is a ban in the most notoriously leftist city in the United States motivated solely by bigotry. As I’ve said in the past, I can’t pretend this leftist attempt to make everyone healthier is motivated by anything else. It’s saying to people, “I don’t approve of the way you live and I’m going to make you change.”

One wonders what is going to happen to those of rounder shapes if this continues. Science has shown that there are three basic body types: Tall and lean, squat and round, and built and muscular, which is the rarest. These aren’t the results of diet and exercise routines, but genetics. (You would think a city full of people who likely read books by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, leading experts on evolution and genetics, would know that.) And the government of San Francisco has unified in a single voice, saying to the short squat people that they aren’t going to be welcome in their lean and muscular Earthly paradise much longer.

I’ve been itching to get away from Chicago and its own bad nanny state policies for some time. But what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is endorsing makes Chicago Mayor Richard Daley look like a Gasden Flag-waving libertarian. One thing is for sure – San Francisco is now officially off of my places to go list.

Systematic bigotry can’t stand, especially not when it’s coming from the politniks who claim to be fighting it.

Eight Historic Symbols that Mean the Opposite of what You Think

A good list, and I was happy to see them get Che Guevara in there. Although they do omit a few important details about Guevara’s life, like the fact that he stole a mansion with five television sets after the invasion of Cuba, was used primarily by Castro as an executioner (he ordered the deaths of thousands of insurgents and carried out the deed personally between 200 and 1000 times), almost tripled the amount of Cuban money in circulation so it became nearly worthless, frowned upon freedom of expression, saw real combat for the first time just a few days before his death, and surrendered in Bolivia with a full clip left in his gun, reminding his captors that he would be worth more to them alive than dead. (The CIA agreed with this sentiment, but the Bolivians didn’t. Since they were the ones in charge, Guevara was dead an hour after his surrender.) On a more public level, Guevara expressed a desire to nuke the United States. It’s worth noting that by “public” here, I mean “in the pages of Time magazine.”

Two symbols I would have like to see included are the Confederate flag and the swastika. The former is still seen as a symbol of defiance in certain areas of the United States, but the Ku Klux Klan uses it for their own vile purpose and it has turned into a symbol of white supremacy in other parts of the country, an image the political left, in its quest to portray everyone on the planet as racist, has helped move along whether or not the moniker “racist” applies to the person waving the Confederate flag or not.

The swastika was not invented by Hitler. It was merely bastardized by him. Until the Nazis turned it into their own universal sign of white supremacy, the swastika had been doing just fine for the previous 4000 years as, get this, a Hindu sign of good luck. Pity the poor Indian immigrant who wears it his first time out in a western country.